The Contemporary Review, January 1883
by Various · English · Gutenberg #25957 · 467,484 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Contemporary Review, January 1883
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Contemporary Review, January 1883
Author: Various
Release date: July 3, 2008 [eBook #25957]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25957
Credits: Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, JANUARY 1883 ***
Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW
VOLUME XLIII. JANUARY-JUNE, 1883
ISBISTER AND COMPANY
LIMITED
56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON
1883
Ballantyne Press
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO., EDINBURGH
CHANDOS STREET, LONDON
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XLIII.
JANUARY, 1883.
PAGE
The Americans. By Herbert Spencer 1
University Elections. By Edward A. Freeman, D.C.L. 16
Hamlet: A New Reading. By Franklin Leifchild 31
Panislamism and the Caliphate 57
The Bollandists. By the Rev. G. T. Stokes 69
England, France, and Madagascar. By the Rev. James Sibree 85
The Religious Future of the World. I. By W. S. Lilly 100
Syrian Colonization. By the Rev. W. Wright, D.D 122
The Conservative Dilemma. By Henry Dunckley 141
FEBRUARY, 1883.
Contemporary Life and Thought in France. By Gabriel Monod 157
Gambetta. By A German 179
The Art of Rossetti. By Harry Quilter 190
The Religious Future of the World. II. By W. S. Lilly 204
The "Silver Streak" and the Channel Tunnel. By Professor
Boyd Dawkins 240
The Prospect of Reform. By Arthur Arnold, M.P. 250
Ancient International Law. By Professor Brougham Leech 260
A Russian Prison. By Henry Lansdell, D.D. 275
Canonical Obedience. By the Rev. Edwin Hatch 289
Democratic Toryism. By Arthur B. Forwood 294
MARCH, 1883.
County Government. By the Rt. Hon. Sir R. A. Cross, G.C.B., M.P. 305
Léon Gambetta: A Positivist Discourse. By Frederic Harrison 311
Discharged Prisoners: How to Aid Them. By C. E. Howard
Vincent, Director of Criminal Investigations 325
Miss Burney's Own Story. By Mary Elizabeth Christie 332
The Highland Crofters. By John Rae 357
Local Self-Government in India: The New Departure. By Sir
Richard Temple, Bart., G.C.S.I. 373
Siena. By Samuel James Capper 383
The Limits of Science. By the Rev. George Edmundson 404
Land Tenure and Taxation in Egypt. By Henry C. Kay 411
The Enchanted Lake: An Episode from the Mahábhárata.
By Edwin Arnold, C.S.I. 428
The Municipal Organization of Paris. By Yves Guyot, Member
of the Municipal Council of Paris 439
APRIL, 1883.
PAGE
The English Military Power, and the Egyptian Campaign of 1882.
By A German Field-Officer 457
M. Gambetta: Positivism and Christianity. By R. W. Dale, M.A. 476
The Anti-Vivisectionist Agitation:
1. By Dr. E. De Cyon 498
2. By R. H. Hutton 510
The Gospel According to Rembrandt. By Richard Heath 517
Conseils de Prud'hommes. By W. H. S. Aubrey 538
The Manchester Ship Canal. By Major-General Hamley 549
The Progress of Socialism. By Emile de Laveleye 561
Irish Murder-Societies. By Richard Pigott 583
Contemporary Life and Thought: Italian Politics. By Professor
Villari 592
MAY, 1883.
Mrs. Carlyle. By Mrs. Oliphant 609
The Business of the House o£ Commons. By the Right
Ho. W. E. Baxter, M.P. 629
The Oxford Movement of 1833. By William Palmer 636
Radiation. By Professor Tyndall 660
Cairo: The Old in the New. I. By Dr. Georg Ebers 674
Responsibilities of Unbelief. By Vernon Lee 685
Fiji. By the Hon Sir Arthur H. Gordon, G.C.M.G. 711
John Richard Green. By the Rev. H. R. Haweis, M A. 732
Fenianism. By F. H. O'Donnell, M.P. 747
JUNE, 1883.
The Congo Neutralized. By Emile de Laveleye 767
Agnostic Morality. By Frances Power Cobbe 783
Native Indian Judges: Mr. Ilbert's Bill. By the Right Hon.
Sir Arthur Hobhouse, K.C.S.I. 795
The Philosophy of the Beautiful. By Professor John Stuart Blackie 812
Nature and Thought. By G. J. Romanes, F.R.S. 831
Cairo: The Old in the New. II. By Dr. Georg Ebers 842
De Mortuis. By C. F. Gordon Cumming 858
Wanted, an Elisha. By H. D. Traill, D.C.L. 870
Two Aspects of Shakspeare's Art. By T. Hall Came 883
Insanity, Suicide and Civilization. By M. G. Mulhall 901
The New Egyptian Constitution. By Sheldon Amos 909
THE AMERICANS:
A CONVERSATION AND A SPEECH, WITH AN ADDITION.
BY HERBERT SPENCER.
I.--A CONVERSATION: _October 20, 1882_.
[The state of Mr. Spencer's health unfortunately not permitting him
to give in the form of articles the results of his observations on
American society, it is thought useful to reproduce, under his own
revision and with some additional remarks, what he has said on the
subject; especially as the accounts of it which have appeared in
this country are imperfect: reports of the conversation having been
abridged, and the speech being known only by telegraphic summary.
The earlier paragraphs of the conversation, which refer to Mr.
Spencer's persistent exclusion of reporters and his objections to
the interviewing system, are omitted, as not here concerning the
reader. There was no eventual yielding, as has been supposed. It
was not to a newspaper-reporter that the opinions which follow were
expressed, but to an intimate American friend: the primary purpose
being to correct the many misstatements to which the excluded
interviewers had given currency; and the occasion being taken for
giving utterance to impressions of American affairs.--ED.]
Has what you have seen answered your expectations?
It has far exceeded them. Such books about America as I had looked into
had given me no adequate idea of the immense developments of material
civilization which I have everywhere found. The extent, wealth, and
magnificence of your cities, and especially the splendour of New York,
have altogether astonished me. Though I have not visited the wonder of
the West, Chicago, yet some of your minor modern places, such as
Cleveland, have sufficiently amazed me by the results of one
generation's activity. Occasionally, when I have been in places of some
ten thousand inhabitants where the telephone is in general use, I have
felt somewhat ashamed of our own unenterprising towns, many of which, of
fifty thousand inhabitants and more, make no use of it.
I suppose you recognize in these results the great benefits of free
institutions?
Ah! Now comes one of the inconveniences of interviewing. I have been in
the country less than two months, have seen but a relatively small part
of it, and but comparatively few people, and yet you wish from me a
definite opinion on a difficult question.
Perhaps you will answer, subject to the qualification that you are but
giving your first impressions?
Well, with that understanding, I may reply that though the free
institutions have been partly the cause, I think they have not been the
chief cause. In the first place, the American people have come into
possession of an unparalleled fortune--the mineral wealth and the vast
tracts of virgin soil producing abundantly with small cost of culture.
Manifestly, that alone goes a long way towards producing this enormous
prosperity. Then they have profited by inheriting all the arts,
appliances, and methods, developed by older societies, while leaving
behind the obstructions existing in them. They have been able to pick
and choose from the products of all past experience, appropriating the
good and rejecting the bad. Then, besides these favours of fortune,
there are factors proper to themselves. I perceive in American faces
generally a great amount of determination--a kind of "do or die"
expression; and this trait of character, joined with a power of work
exceeding that of any other people, of course produces an unparalleled
rapidity of progress. Once more, there is the inventiveness which,
stimulated by the need for economizing labour, has been so wisely
fostered. Among us in England, there are many foolish people who, while
thinking that a man who toils with his hands has an equitable claim to
the product, and if he has special skill may rightly have the advantage
of it, also hold that if a man toils with his brain, perhaps for years,
and, uniting genius with perseverance, evolves some valuable invention,
the public may rightly claim the benefit. The Americans have been more
far-seeing. The enormous museum of patents which I saw at Washington is
significant of the attention paid to inventors' claims; and the nation
profits immensely from having in this direction (though not in all
others) recognized property in mental products. Beyond question, in
respect of mechanical appliances the Americans are ahead of all nations.
If along with your material progress there went equal progress of a
higher kind, there would remain nothing to be wished.
That is an ambiguous qualification. What do you mean by it?
You will understand me when I tell you what I was thinking the other
day. After pondering over what I have seen of your vast manufacturing
and trading establishments, the rush of traffic in your street-cars and
elevated railways, your gigantic hotels and Fifth Avenue palaces, I was
suddenly reminded of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages; and
recalled the fact that while there was growing up in them great
commercial activity, a development of the arts which made them the envy
of Europe, and a building of princely mansions which continue to be the
admiration of travellers, their people were gradually losing their
freedom.
Do you mean this as a suggestion that we are doing the like?
It seems to me that you are. You retain the forms of freedom; but, so
far as I can gather, there has been a considerable loss of the
substance. It is true that those who rule you do not do it by means of
retainers armed with swords; but they do it through regiments of men
armed with voting papers, who obey the word of command as loyally as did
the dependants of the old feudal nobles, and who thus enable their
leaders to override the general will, and make the community submit to
their exactions as effectually as their prototypes of old. It is
doubtless true that each of your citizens votes for the candidate he
chooses for this or that office, from President downwards; but his hand
is guided by an agency behind which leaves him scarcely any choice. "Use
your political power as we tell you, or else throw it away," is the
alternative offered to the citizen. The political machinery as it is now
worked, has little resemblance to that contemplated at the outset of
your political life. Manifestly, those who framed your Constitution
never dreamed that twenty thousand citizens would go to the poll led by
a "boss." America exemplifies at the other end of the social scale, a
change analogous to that which has taken place under sundry despotisms.
You know that in Japan, before the recent Revolution, the divine ruler,
the Mikado, nominally supreme, was practically a puppet in the hands of
his chief minister, the Shogun. Here it seems to me that "the sovereign
people" is fast becoming a puppet which moves and speaks as wire-pullers
determine.
Then you think that Republican institutions are a failure?
By no means: I imply no such conclusion. Thirty years ago, when often
discussing politics with an English friend, and defending Republican
institutions, as I always have done and do still, and when he urged
against me the ill-working of such institutions over here, I habitually
replied that the Americans got their form of government by a happy
accident, not by normal progress, and that they would have to go back
before they could go forward. What has since happened seems to me to
have justified that view; and what I see now, confirms me in it. America
is showing, on a larger scale than ever before, that "paper
Constitutions" will not work as they are intended to work. The truth,
first recognized by Mackintosh, that Constitutions are not made but
grow, which is part of the larger truth that societies, throughout their
whole organizations, are not made but grow, at once, when accepted,
disposes of the notion that you can work as you hope any
artificially-devised system of government. It becomes an inference that
if your political structure has been manufactured and not grown, it
will forthwith begin to grow into something different from that
intended--something in harmony with the natures of the citizens, and the
conditions under which the society exists. And it evidently has been so
with you. Within the forms of your Constitution there has grown up this
organization of professional politicians altogether uncontemplated at
the outset, which has become in large measure the ruling power.
But will not education and the diffusion of political knowledge fit men
for free institutions?
No. It is essentially a question of character, and only in a secondary
degree a question of knowledge. But for the universal delusion about
education as a panacea for political evils, this would have been made
sufficiently clear by the evidence daily disclosed in your papers. Are
not the men who officer and control your Federal, your State, and your
Municipal organizations--who manipulate your caucuses and conventions,
and run your partisan campaigns--all educated men? And has their
education prevented them from engaging in, or permitting, or condoning,
the briberies, lobbyings, and other corrupt methods which vitiate the
actions of your administrations? Perhaps party newspapers exaggerate
these things; but what am I to make of the testimony of your civil
service reformers--men of all parties? If I understand the matter
aright, they are attacking, as vicious and dangerous, a system which has
grown up under the natural spontaneous working of your free
institutions--are exposing vices which education has proved powerless to
prevent?
Of course, ambitious and unscrupulous men will secure the offices, and
education will aid them in their selfish purposes. But would not those
purposes be thwarted, and better Government secured, by raising the
standard of knowledge among the people at large?
Very little. The current theory is that if the young are taught what is
right, and the reasons why it is right, they will do what is right when
they grow up. But considering what religious teachers have been doing
these two thousand years, it seems to me that all history is against the
conclusion, as much as is the conduct of these well-educated citizens I
have referred to; and I do not see why you expect better results among
the masses. Personal interests will sway the men in the ranks, as they
sway the men above them; and the education which fails to make the last
consult public good rather than private good, will fail to make the
first do it. The benefits of political purity are so general and remote,
and the profit to each individual is so inconspicuous, that the common
citizen, educate him as you like, will habitually occupy himself with
his personal affairs, and hold it not worth his while to fight against
each abuse as soon as it appears. Not lack of information, but lack of
certain moral sentiment, is the root of the evil.
You mean that people have not a sufficient sense of public duty?
Well, that is one way of putting it; but there is a more specific way.
Probably it will surprise you if I say the American has not, I think, a
sufficiently quick sense of his own claims, and, at the same time, as a
necessary consequence, not a sufficiently quick sense of the claims of
others--for the two traits are organically related. I observe that they
tolerate various small interferences and dictations which Englishmen are
prone to resist. I am told that the English are remarked on for their
tendency to grumble in such cases; and I have no doubt it is true.
Do you think it worth while for people to make themselves disagreeable
by resenting every trifling aggression? We Americans think it involves
too much loss of time and temper, and doesn't pay.
Exactly; that is what I mean by character. It is this easy-going
readiness to permit small trespasses, because it would be troublesome or
profitless or unpopular to oppose them, which leads to the habit of
acquiescence in wrong, and the decay of free institutions. Free
institutions can be maintained only by citizens, each of whom is instant
to oppose every illegitimate act, every assumption of supremacy, every
official excess of power, however trivial it may seem. As Hamlet says,
there is such a thing as "greatly to find quarrel in a straw," when the
straw implies a principle. If, as you say of the American, he pauses to
consider whether he can afford the time and trouble--whether it will
pay, corruption is sure to creep in. All these lapses from higher to
lower forms begin in trifling ways, and it is only by incessant
watchfulness that they can be prevented. As one of your early statesmen
said--"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." But it is far less
against foreign aggressions upon national liberty that this vigilance is
required, than against the insidious growth of domestic interferences
with personal liberty. In some private administrations which I have been
concerned with, I have often insisted that instead of assuming, as
people usually do, that things are going right until it is proved that
they are going wrong, the proper course is to assume that they are going
wrong until it is proved that they are going right. You will find
continually that private corporations, such as joint-stock banking
companies, come to grief from not acting on this principle; and what
holds of these small and simple private administrations holds still more
of the great and complex public administrations. People are taught, and
I suppose believe, that the "heart of man is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked;" and yet, strangely enough, believing this, they
place implicit trust in those they appoint to this or that function. I
do not think so ill of human nature; but, on the other hand, I do not
think so well of human nature as to believe it will go straight without
being watched.
You hinted that while Americans do not assert their own individualities
sufficiently in small matters, they, reciprocally, do not sufficiently
respect the individualities of others.
Did I? Here, then, comes another of the inconveniences of interviewing.
I should have kept this opinion to myself if you had asked me no
questions; and now I must either say what I do not think, which I
cannot, or I must refuse to answer, which, perhaps, will be taken to
mean more than I intend, or I must specify, at the risk of giving
offence. As the least evil, I suppose I must do the last. The trait I
refer to comes out in various ways, small and great. It is shown by the
disrespectful manner in which individuals are dealt with in your
journals--the placarding of public men in sensational headings, the
dragging of private people and their affairs into print. There seems to
be a notion that the public have a right to intrude on private life as
far as they like; and this I take to be a kind of moral trespassing.
Then, in a larger way, the trait is seen in this damaging of private
property by your elevated railways without making compensation; and it
is again seen in the doings of railway autocrats, not only when
overriding the rights of shareholders, but in dominating over courts of
justice and State governments. The fact is that free institutions can be
properly worked only by men, each of whom is jealous of his own rights,
and also sympathetically jealous of the rights of others--who will
neither himself aggress on his neighbours in small things or great, nor
tolerate aggression on them by others. The Republican form of government
is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the
highest type of human nature--a type nowhere at present existing. We
have not grown up to it; nor have you.
But we thought, Mr. Spencer, you were in favour of free government in
the sense of relaxed restraints, and letting men and things very much
alone, or what is called _laissez faire_?
That is a persistent misunderstanding of my opponents. Everywhere, along
with the reprobation of Government intrusion into various spheres where
private activities should be left to themselves, I have contended that
in its special sphere, the maintenance of equitable relations among
citizens, governmental action should be extended and elaborated.
To return to your various criticisms, must I then understand that you
think unfavourably of our future?
No one can form anything more than vague and general conclusions
respecting your future. The factors are too numerous, too vast, too far
beyond measure in their quantities and intensities. The world has never
before seen social phenomena at all comparable with those presented in
the United States. A society spreading over enormous tracts, while still
preserving its political continuity, is a new thing. This progressive
incorporation of vast bodies of immigrants of various bloods, has never
occurred on such a scale before. Large empires, composed of different
peoples, have, in previous cases, been formed by conquest and
annexation. Then your immense _plexus_ of railways and telegraphs tends
to consolidate this vast aggregate of States in a way that no such
aggregate has ever before been consolidated. And there are many minor
co-operating causes, unlike those hitherto known. No one can say how it
is all going to work out. That there will come hereafter troubles of
various kinds, and very grave ones, seems highly probable; but all
nations have had, and will have, their troubles. Already you have
triumphed over one great trouble, and may reasonably hope to triumph
over others. It may, I think, be concluded that, both because of its
size and the heterogeneity of its components, the American nation will
be a long time in evolving its ultimate form, but that its ultimate form
will be high. One great result is, I think, tolerably clear. From
biological truths it is to be inferred that the eventual mixture of the
allied varieties of the Aryan race forming the population, will produce
a finer type of man than has hitherto existed; and a type of man more
plastic, more adaptable, more capable of undergoing the modifications
needful for complete social life. I think that whatever difficulties
they may have to surmount, and whatever tribulations they may have to
pass through, the Americans may reasonably look forward to a time when
they will have produced a civilization grander than any the world has
known.
II.--A SPEECH:
_Delivered on the occasion of a Complimentary Dinner in New York, on
November 9, 1882._
Mr. President and Gentlemen:--Along with your kindness there comes to me
a great unkindness from Fate; for, now that, above all times in my life,
I need full command of what powers of speech I possess, disturbed health
so threatens to interfere with them that I fear I shall very
inadequately express myself. Any failure in my response you must please
ascribe, in part at least, to a greatly disordered nervous system.
Regarding you as representing Americans at large, I feel that the
occasion is one on which arrears of thanks are due. I ought to begin
with the time, some two-and-twenty years ago, when my highly valued
friend Professor Youmans, making efforts to diffuse my books here,
interested on their behalf the Messrs. Appleton, who have ever treated
me so honourably and so handsomely; and I ought to detail from that time
onward the various marks and acts of sympathy by which I have been
encouraged in a struggle which was for many years disheartening. But,
intimating thus briefly my general indebtedness to my numerous friends,
most of them unknown, on this side of the Atlantic, I must name more
especially the many attentions and proffered hospitalities met with
during my late tour, as well as, lastly and chiefly, this marked
expression of the sympathies and good wishes which many of you have
travelled so far to give, at great cost of that time which is so
precious to the American. I believe I may truly say, that the better
health which you have so cordially wished me, will be in a measure
furthered by the wish; since all pleasurable emotion is conducive to
health, and, as you will fully believe, the remembrance of this event
will ever continue to be a source of pleasurable emotion, exceeded by
few, if any, of my remembrances.
And now that I have thanked you, sincerely though too briefly, I am
going to find fault with you. Already, in some remarks drawn from me
respecting American affairs and American character, I have passed
criticisms, which have been accepted far more good-humouredly than I
could have reasonably expected; and it seems strange that I should now
propose again to transgress. However, the fault I have to comment upon
is one which most will scarcely regard as a fault. It seems to me that
in one respect Americans have diverged too widely from savages, I do not
mean to say that they are in general unduly civilized. Throughout large
parts of the population, even in long-settled regions, there is no
excess of those virtues needed for the maintenance of social harmony.
Especially out in the West, men's dealings do not yet betray too much of
the "sweetness and light" which we are told distinguish the cultured man
from the barbarian. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which my assertion
is true. You know that the primitive man lacks power of application.
Spurred by hunger, by danger, by revenge, he can exert himself
energetically for a time; but his energy is spasmodic. Monotonous daily
toil is impossible to him. It is otherwise with the more developed man.
The stern discipline of social life has gradually increased the aptitude
for persistent industry; until, among us, and still more among you, work
has become with many a passion. This contrast of nature has another
aspect. The savage thinks only of present satisfactions, and leaves
future satisfactions uncared for. Contrariwise, the American, eagerly
pursuing a future good, almost ignores what good the passing day offers
him; and when the future good is gained, he neglects that while striving
for some still remoter good.
What I have seen and heard during my stay among you has forced on me the
belief that this slow change from habitual inertness to persistent
activity has reached an extreme from which there must begin a
counterchange--a reaction. Everywhere I have been struck with the
number of faces which told in strong lines of the burdens that had to be
borne. I have been struck, too, with the large proportion of gray-haired
men; and inquiries have brought out the fact, that with you the hair
commonly begins to turn some ten years earlier than with us. Moreover,
in every circle I have met men who had themselves suffered from nervous
collapse due to stress of business, or named friends who had either
killed themselves by overwork, or had been permanently incapacitated, or
had wasted long periods in endeavours to recover health. I do but echo
the opinion of all the observant persons I have spoken to, that immense
injury is being done by this high-pressure life--the physique is being
undermined. That subtle thinker and poet whom you have lately had to
mourn, Emerson, says, in his essay on the Gentleman, that the first
requisite is that he shall be a good animal. The requisite is a general
one--it extends to the man, to the father, to the citizen. We hear a
great deal about "the vile body;" and many are encouraged by the phrase
to transgress the laws of health. But Nature quietly suppresses those
who treat thus disrespectfully one of her highest products, and leaves
the world to be peopled by the descendants of those who are not so
foolish.
Beyond these immediate mischiefs there are remoter mischiefs. Exclusive
devotion to work has the result that amusements cease to please; and,
when relaxation becomes imperative, life becomes dreary from lack of its
sole interest--the interest in business. The remark current in England
that, when the American travels, his aim is to do the greatest amount of
sight-seeing in the shortest time, I find current here also: it is
recognized that the satisfaction of getting on devours nearly all other
satisfactions. When recently at Niagara, which gave us a whole week's
pleasure, I learned from the landlord of the hotel that most Americans
come one day and go away the next. Old Froissart, who said of the
English of his day that "they take their pleasures sadly after their
fashion," would doubtless, if he lived now, say of the Americans that
they take their pleasures hurriedly after their fashion. In large
measure with us, and still more with you, there is not that abandonment
to the moment which is requisite for full enjoyment; and this
abandonment is prevented by the ever-present sense of multitudinous
responsibilities. So that, beyond the serious physical mischief caused
by overwork, there is the further mischief that it destroys what value
there would otherwise be in the leisure part of life.
Nor do the evils end here. There is the injury to posterity. Damaged
constitutions reappear in children, and entail on them far more of ill
than great fortunes yield them of good. When life has been duly
rationalized by science, it will be seen that among a man's duties, care
of the body is imperative; not only out of regard for personal welfare,
but also out of regard for descendants. His constitution will be
considered as an entailed estate, which he ought to pass on uninjured,
if not improved, to those who follow; and it will be held that millions
bequeathed by him will not compensate for feeble health and decreased
ability to enjoy life. Once more, there is the injury to
fellow-citizens, taking the shape of undue disregard of competitors. I
hear that a great trader among you deliberately endeavoured to crush out
every one whose business competed with his own; and manifestly the man
who, making himself a slave to accumulation, absorbs an inordinate share
of the trade or profession he is engaged in, makes life harder for all
others engaged in it, and excludes from it many who might otherwise gain
competencies. Thus, besides the egoistic motive, there are two
altruistic motives which should deter from this excess in work.
The truth is, there needs a revised ideal of life. Look back through the
past, or look abroad through the present, and we find that the ideal of
life is variable, and depends on social conditions. Every one knows that
to be a successful warrior was the highest aim among all ancient peoples
of note, as it is still among many barbarous peoples. When we remember
that in the Norseman's heaven the time was to be passed in daily
battles, with magical healing of wounds, we see how deeply rooted may
become the conception that fighting is man's proper business, and that
industry is fit only for slaves and people of low degree. That is to
say, when the chronic struggles of races necessitate perpetual wars,
there is evolved an ideal of life adapted to the requirements. We have
changed all that in modern civilized societies; especially in England,
and still more in America. With the decline of militant activity, and
the growth of industrial activity, the occupations once disgraceful have
become honourable. The duty to work has taken the place of the duty to
fight; and in the one case, as in the other, the ideal of life has
become so well established that scarcely any dream of questioning it.
Practically, business has been substituted for war as the purpose of
existence.
Is this modern ideal to survive throughout the future? I think not.
While all other things undergo continuous change, it is impossible that
ideals should remain fixed. The ancient ideal was appropriate to the
ages of conquest by man over man, and spread of the strongest races. The
modern ideal is appropriate to ages in which conquest of the earth and
subjection of the powers of Nature to human use, is the predominant
need. But hereafter, when both these ends have in the main been
achieved, the ideal formed will probably differ considerably from the
present one. May we not foresee the nature of the difference? I think we
may. Some twenty years ago, a good friend of mine, and a good friend of
yours too, though you never saw him, John Stuart Mill, delivered at St.
Andrews an inaugural address on the occasion of his appointment to the
Lord Rectorship. It contained much to be admired, as did all he wrote.
There ran through it, however, the tacit assumption that life is for
learning and working. I felt at the time that I should have liked to
take up the opposite thesis. I should have liked to contend that life is
not for learning, nor is life for working, but learning and working are
for life. The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct
under all circumstances as shall make living complete. All other uses of
knowledge are secondary. It scarcely needs saying that the primary use
of work is that of supplying the materials and aids to living
completely; and that any other uses of work are secondary. But in men's
conceptions the secondary has in great measure usurped the place of the
primary. The apostle of culture as it is commonly conceived, Mr. Matthew
Arnold, makes little or no reference to the fact that the first use of
knowledge is the right ordering of all actions; and Mr. Carlyle, who is
a good exponent of current ideas about work, insists on its virtues for
quite other reasons than that it achieves sustentation. We may trace
everywhere in human affairs a tendency to transform the means into the
end. All see that the miser does this when, making the accumulation of
money his sole satisfaction, he forgets that money is of value only to
purchase satisfactions. But it is less commonly seen that the like is
true of the work by which the money is accumulated--that industry too,
bodily or mental, is but a means; and that it is as irrational to pursue
it to the exclusion of that complete living it subserves, as it is for
the miser to accumulate money and make no use of it. Hereafter, when
this age of active material progress has yielded mankind its benefits,
there will, I think, come a better adjustment of labour and enjoyment.
Among reasons for thinking this, there is the reason that the process of
evolution throughout the organic world at large, brings an increasing
surplus of energies that are not absorbed in fulfilling material needs,
and points to a still larger surplus for the humanity of the future. And
there are other reasons, which I must pass over. In brief, I may say
that we have had somewhat too much of "the gospel of work." It is time
to preach the gospel of relaxation.
This is a very unconventional after-dinner speech. Especially it will be
thought strange that in returning thanks I should deliver something very
much like a homily. But I have thought I could not better convey my
thanks than by the expression of a sympathy which issues in a fear. If,
as I gather, this intemperance in work affects more especially the
Anglo-American part of the population--if there results an undermining
of the physique, not only in adults, but also in the young, who, as I
learn from your daily journals, are also being injured by overwork--if
the ultimate consequence should be a dwindling away of those among you
who are the inheritors of free institutions and best adapted to them;
then there will come a further difficulty in the working out of that
great future which lies before the American nation. To my anxiety on
this account you must please ascribe the unusual character of my
remarks.
And now I must bid you farewell. When I sail by the _Germanic_ on
Saturday, I shall bear with me pleasant remembrances of my intercourse
with many Americans, joined with regrets that my state of health has
prevented me from seeing a larger number.
* * * * *
[A few words may fitly be added respecting the causes of this
over-activity in American life--causes which may be identified as having
in recent times partially operated among ourselves, and as having
wrought kindred, though less marked, effects. It is the more worth while
to trace the genesis of this undue absorption of the energies in work,
since it well serves to illustrate the general truth which should be
ever present to all legislators and politicians, that the indirect and
unforeseen results of any cause affecting a society are frequently, if
not habitually, greater and more important than the direct and foreseen
results.
This high pressure under which Americans exist, and which is most
intense in places like Chicago, where the prosperity and rate of growth
are greatest, is seen by many intelligent Americans themselves to be an
indirect result of their free institutions and the absence of those
class-distinctions and restraints existing in older communities. A
society in which the man who dies a millionaire is so often one who
commenced life in poverty, and in which (to paraphrase a French saying
concerning the soldier) every news-boy carries a president's seal in his
bag, is, by consequence, a society in which all are subject to a stress
of competition for wealth and honour, greater than can exist in a
society whose members are nearly all prevented from rising out of the
ranks in which they were born, and have but remote possibilities of
acquiring fortunes. In those European societies which have in great
measure preserved their old types of structure (as in our own society up
to the time when the great development of industrialism began to open
ever-multiplying careers for the producing and distributing classes)
there is so little chance of overcoming the obstacles to any great rise
in position or possessions, that nearly all have to be content with
their places: entertaining little or no thought of bettering themselves.
A manifest concomitant is that, fulfilling, with such efficiency as a
moderate competition requires, the daily tasks of their respective
situations, the majority become habituated to making the best of such
pleasures as their lot affords, during whatever leisure they get. But
it is otherwise where an immense growth of trade multiplies greatly the
chances of success to the enterprising; and still more is it otherwise
where class-restrictions are partially removed or wholly absent. Not
only are more energy and thought put into the time daily occupied in
work, but the leisure comes to be trenched upon, either literally by
abridgment, or else by anxieties concerning business. Clearly, the
larger the number who, under such conditions, acquire property, or
achieve higher positions, or both, the sharper is the spur to the rest.
A raised standard of activity establishes itself and goes on rising.
Public applause given to the successful, becoming in communities thus
circumstanced the most familiar kind of public applause, increases
continually the stimulus to action. The struggle grows more and more
strenuous, and there comes an increasing dread of failure--a dread of
being "left," as the Americans say: a significant word, since it is
suggestive of a race in which the harder any one runs, the harder others
have to run to keep up with him--a word suggestive of that breathless
haste with which each passes from a success gained to the pursuit of a
further success. And on contrasting the English of to-day with the
English of a century ago, we may see how, in a considerable measure, the
like causes have entailed here kindred results.
Even those who are not directly spurred on by this intensified struggle
for wealth and honour, are indirectly spurred on by it. For one of its
effects is to raise the standard of living, and eventually to increase
the average rate of expenditure for all. Partly for personal enjoyment,
but much more for the display which brings admiration, those who acquire
fortunes distinguish themselves by luxurious habits. The more numerous
they become, the keener becomes the competition for that kind of public
attention given to those who make themselves conspicuous by great
expenditure. The competition spreads downwards step by step; until, to
be "respectable," those having relatively small means feel obliged to
spend more on houses, furniture, dress, and food; and are obliged to
work the harder to get the requisite larger income. This process of
causation is manifest enough among ourselves; and it is still more
manifest in America, where the extravagance in style of living is
greater than here.
Thus, though it seems beyond doubt that the removal of all political and
social barriers, and the giving to each man an unimpeded career, must be
purely beneficial; yet there is (at first) a considerable set-off from
the benefits. Among those who in older communities have by laborious
lives gained distinction, some may be heard privately to confess that
"the game is not worth the candle;" and when they hear of others who
wish to tread in their steps, shake their heads and say--"If they only
knew!" Without accepting in full so pessimistic an estimate of success,
we must still say that very generally the cost of the candle deducts
largely from the gain of the game. That which in these exceptional cases
holds among ourselves, holds more generally in America. An intensified
life, which may be summed up as--great labour, great profit, great
expenditure--has for its concomitant a wear and tear which considerably
diminishes in one direction the good gained in another. Added together,
the daily strain through many hours and the anxieties occupying many
other hours--the occupation of consciousness by feelings that are either
indifferent or painful, leaving relatively little time for occupation of
it by pleasurable feelings--tend to lower its level more than its level
is raised by the gratifications of achievement and the accompanying
benefits. So that it may, and in many cases does, result that diminished
happiness goes along with increased prosperity. Unquestionably, as long
as order is fairly maintained, that absence of political and social
restraints which gives free scope to the struggles for profit and
honour, conduces greatly to material advance of the society--develops
the industrial arts, extends and improves the business organizations,
augments the wealth; but that it raises the value of individual life, as
measured by the average state of its feeling, by no means follows. That
it will do so eventually, is certain; but that it does so now seems, to
say the least, very doubtful.
The truth is that a society and its members act and react in such wise
that while, on the one hand, the nature of the society is determined by
the natures of its members; on the other hand, the activities of its
members (and presently their natures) are redetermined by the needs of
the society, as these alter: change in either entails change in the
other. It is an obvious implication that, to a great extent, the life of
a society so sways the wills of its members as to turn them to its ends.
That which is manifest during the militant stage, when the social
aggregate coerces its units into co-operation for defence, and
sacrifices many of their lives for its corporate preservation, holds
under another form during the industrial stage, as we at present know
it. Though the co-operation of citizens is now voluntary instead of
compulsory; yet the social forces impel them to achieve social ends
while apparently achieving only their own ends. The man who, carrying
out an invention, thinks only of private welfare to be thereby secured,
is in far larger measure working for public welfare: instance the
contrast between the fortune made by Watt and the wealth which the
steam-engine has given to mankind. He who utilizes a new material,
improves a method of production, or introduces a better way of carrying
on business, and does this for the purpose of distancing competitors,
gains for himself little compared with that which he gains for the
community by facilitating the lives of all. Either unknowingly or in
spite of themselves, Nature leads men by purely personal motives to
fulfil her ends: Nature being one of our expressions for the Ultimate
Cause of things, and the end, remote when not proximate, being the
highest form of human life.
Hence no argument, however cogent, can be expected to produce much
effect: only here and there one may be influenced. As in an actively
militant stage of society it is impossible to make many believe that
there is any glory preferable to that of killing enemies; so, where
rapid material growth is going on, and affords unlimited scope for the
energies of all, little can be done by insisting that life has higher
uses than work and accumulation. While among the most powerful of
feelings continue to be the desire for public applause and dread of
public censure--while the anxiety to achieve distinction, now by
conquering enemies, now by beating competitors, continues
predominant--while the fear of public reprobation affects men more than
the fear of divine vengeance (as witness the long survival of duelling
in Christian societies); this excess of work which ambition prompts,
seems likely to continue with but small qualification. The eagerness for
the honour accorded to success, first in war and then in commerce, has
been indispensable as a means to peopling the Earth with the higher
types of man, and the subjugation of its surface and its forces to human
use. Ambition may fitly come to bear a smaller ratio to other motives,
when the working out of these needs is approaching completeness; and
when also, by consequence, the scope for satisfying ambition is
diminishing. Those who draw the obvious corollaries from the doctrine of
Evolution--those who believe that the process of modification upon
modification which has brought life to its present height must raise it
still higher, will anticipate that "the last infirmity of noble minds"
will in the distant future slowly decrease. As the sphere for
achievement becomes smaller, the desire for applause will lose that
predominance which it now has. A better ideal of life may simultaneously
come to prevail. When there is fully recognized the truth that moral
beauty is higher than intellectual power--when the wish to be admired is
in large measure replaced by the wish to be loved; that strife for
distinction which the present phase of civilization shows us will be
greatly moderated. Along with other benefits may then come a rational
proportioning of work and relaxation; and the relative claims of to-day
and to-morrow may be properly balanced.--H. S.]
UNIVERSITY ELECTIONS.
The late election for the University of Cambridge had an ending which
may well set many of us a-thinking. That Mr. Raikes should have been
chosen by an overwhelming majority rather than Mr. Stuart means a good
deal more than a mere party victory and party defeat. Combined with
several elections of late years at Oxford, it is enough to make us all
turn over in our minds the question of University representation in
general. The facts taken altogether look as if those constituencies to
which we might naturally look for the return of members of more than
average personal eminence were committed, in the choice of their
representatives, not only to one particular political party, but to
absolute indifference to every claim beyond membership of that
particular party. It would be unreasonable to expect a conscientious
Conservative to vote for a Liberal candidate; but one might expect any
party, in choosing candidates for such constituencies as the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, to put forward its best men. And
we cannot, after all, think so ill of the great Conservative party as to
believe that the present representatives of Oxford and Cambridge are its
best men. We ought indeed not to forget that, whatever Mr.
Beresford-Hope has since shown himself, he was brought forward, partly
at least, as a man of scholarship and intellectual tastes, and that he
received many Liberal votes in the belief that he was less widely
removed from Liberal ideas than another Conservative candidate. This
would seem to have been the last trace of an old tradition, the last
faint glimmering of the belief that the representative of an University
should have something about him specially appropriate to the
representation of an University. In Oxford that tradition had, on the
Conservative side, given way earlier. Another tradition gave way with
it, one which I at least did not regret, the tradition that an
University seat should be a seat for life. It sounded degrading when a
proposer of Mr. Gladstone stooped to appeal to the doctrine, "ut semel
electus semper eligatur." But be that rule wise or foolish, it was on
the Conservative side that it was broken down. It gave way to the rule
that Mr. Gladstone was always to be opposed, and that it did not matter
who could be got to oppose him. Again I cannot believe that the
Conservative ranks did not contain better men than the grotesque
succession of nobodies by whom Mr. Gladstone was opposed. But in the
course of those elections the rule was established at Oxford, and it now
seems to be adopted at Cambridge, that anybody will do to be an
University member, provided only he is an unflinching supporter of the
party which, as recent elections show, still keeps a large majority in
both Universities.
Mr. Gladstone was very nearly the ideal University member. I say "very
nearly," because to my mind the absolutely ideal state of things would
be if the Universities could catch such men as Mr. Gladstone young, and
could bring them into Parliament as their own, before they had been laid
hold of by any other constituency. The late jubilee of Mr. Gladstone's
political life ought to have been the jubilee of his election, not for
Newark but for Oxford. The Universities should choose men who have
already shown themselves to be scholars and who bid fair one day to be
statesmen. I am not sure about the policy of bringing forward actual
University officials. There is sure to be a cry against them, and it is
not clear that they are the best choice in themselves. It may be as well
however to remember that the example was set, though in rather an
amusing shape, by the Conservatives themselves. Dr. Marsham, late Warden
of Merton, who was brought forward thirty years ago in opposition to Mr.
Gladstone, did not belong to exactly the same class of academical
officials as Professor Stuart and Professor H. J. S. Smith; still, as an
academical official of some kind, he had something in common with them,
as distinguished from either Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Raikes. At the last
elections both for Oxford and Cambridge, the Liberal candidate was an
actual Professor. Mr. Stuart indeed is much more than a mere professor;
he has shown his capacity for practical work of various kinds. But I
could not but look on the Oxford choice of 1878 as unlucky. Mr. H. J. S.
Smith was brought forward purely on the ground of "distinction,"
distinction, it would seem, so great that moral right and wrong went for
nothing by its side. Just at that moment right and wrong were
emphatically weighing in the balance; it was the very crisis of the fate
of South-Eastern Europe. But we were told that Mr. Smith's candidature
had "no reference to the Eastern Question;" he was, we were told,
supported by men who took opposite views on that matter. That is to
say, when the most distinct question of right and wrong that ever was
put before any people was at that moment placed before our eyes, we were
asked to put away all thought of moral right and moral duty in the
presence of the long string of letters after Mr. Smith's name. Better, I
should have said, to choose, even for the University, a man who could
not read or write, if he had been ready to strive heart and soul for
justice and freedom alongside of Mr. Gladstone and the Duke of Argyll.
Yet no such hard choice was laid upon us. There was a man standing by,
another bearer of the same great Teutonic name, not young indeed in
years, but who might have gone fresh to Parliament as the University's
own choice, one whom it would have been worth some effort to keep within
the bounds of England and of Europe, one who to a list of "distinctions"
at least as long as that of the candidate actually chosen, added the
noblest distinction of all, that of having been, through a life of
varied experiences, the consistent and unflinching champion of moral
righteousness. I do not know that Mr. Goldwin Smith would have had a
greater chance--perhaps he might have had even less chance--of election
than Mr. H. J. S. Smith. But there would have been greater comfort in
manly defeat in open strife under such a leader than there could be in a
defeat which it had been vainly hoped to escape by a compromise on the
great moral question of the moment. The Oxford Liberals lost, and, I
must say, they deserved to lose. It is a great gain for an University
candidate to be "distinguished;" but one would think that it would
commonly be possible to find a "distinguished" candidate who is at once
"distinguished" and something better as well.
Still at Oxford in 1878 Mr. H. J. S. Smith was the accepted candidate of
the Liberal party, and in that character he underwent a crushing defeat.
It may be, or it may not be, that a candidate of more decided principles
would have gained more votes than the actual candidate gained; he
certainly would not have gained enough to turn the scale. Mr. Smith was
defeated by a candidate who was utterly undistinguished; and who,
instead of simply halting, like Mr. Smith, between right and wrong, was
definitely committed to the cause of wrong. Mr. Talbot became member for
the University on the same principle on which Mr. Gladstone's successive
opponents were brought forward, the principle that anybody will do, if
only he be a Tory. Any stick is good enough to beat the Liberal dog.
When Toryism showed itself in its darkest colours, when it meant the
rule of Lord Beaconsfield, and when the rule of Lord Beaconsfield meant,
before all things, the strengthening of the power of evil in
South-Eastern Europe, a constituency, in which the clerical vote is said
to be decisive, preferred, by an overwhelming majority, the candidate
who most distinctly represented the bondage of Christian nations under
the yoke of the misbeliever. It is quite possible that crowds voted at
the Oxford election, as at other elections, in support of Lord
Beaconsfield's ministry, in utter indifference or in utter ignorance as
to what support of Lord Beaconsfield's ministry meant. The Conservative
party was conventionally supposed to be the Church party; and so men
calling themselves Christians, calling themselves clergymen, rushed,
with the cry of "Church" in their mouths, to do all that in them lay for
the sworn allies of Antichrist.
A constituency which could return a supporter of Lord Beaconsfield in
1878 is hopelessly Tory--hopelessly that is, till a new generation shall
have supplanted the existing one. It is Conservative, not in the sense
of acting on any intelligible Conservative principle, but in the sense
of supporting anything that calls itself Conservative, be its principles
what they may. No measure could be less really Conservative, none could
more be opposed to the feelings and traditions of a large part of the
clergy, than the Public Worship Act. A large part of the clergy grumbled
at it; some voted for the Liberals in 1880 on the strength of it; but it
did not arouse a discontent so strong or so general as seriously to
deprive the so-called Conservative party of clerical support. It was
perhaps unreasonable to expect much change in the older class of
electors, clerical or lay; but the results of the two elections, of
Oxford in 1878 and of Cambridge in 1882, are disappointing in another
way. The Universities, and therewith the University constituencies, have
largely increased within the last few years. The number of electors at
Oxford is far greater than it was in the days of Mr. Gladstone's
elections; at Cambridge the increase must be greater still since any
earlier election at which a poll was taken. And it was certainly hoped
that the increase would have been altogether favourable to the Liberal
side. Among the new electors there was a large lay element, a certain
Nonconformist element; even among the clergy a party was known to be
growing who had found the way to reconcile strict Churchmanship with
Liberal politics, and whose Christianity was not of the kind which is
satisfied to walk hand-in-hand with the Turk. In these different ways it
was only reasonable to expect that the result of an University election
was now likely to be, if not the actual return of a Liberal member, yet
at least a poll which should show that the Conservative majority was
largely diminished. Instead of this, both at Oxford in 1878 and at
Cambridge in 1882 the Conservative candidate comes in by a majority
which is simply overwhelming. It must however be remembered that it
would be misleading to compare the poll at either of these elections
with the polls at any of Mr. Gladstone's contests. The issue was
different in the two cases. The elections of 1878 and 1880 were far more
distinctly trials between political parties than the several elections
in which Mr. Gladstone succeeded or the final one in which he failed.
First of all, there is a vast difference between Mr. Gladstone and any
other candidate. This difference indeed cuts both ways. The foremost man
in the land is at once the best loved and the best hated man in the
land. Neither Mr. Smith nor Mr. Stuart nor any other candidate that
could be thought of could call forth either the depth of enthusiasm in
his supporters or the depth of antagonism in his opponents which is
called forth by every public appearance of Mr. Gladstone. No other man
has, in the same measure as he has, won the glory of being the bugbear
of cultivated "society" and the object of the reverence and affection of
thinking men. But, apart from this, the issues were different. Mr. Smith
and Mr. Stuart stood directly as Liberal candidates. Mr. Gladstone, at
least in his earlier elections, was still in party nomenclature counted
among Conservatives, and he received but little support from professed
political Liberals. The constituency was then confined to men who had
signed the articles of the Established Church, and the election largely
turned on controversies within the Established Church. I venture to
think that the High Church party of that day was really a Liberal party,
one that had far more in common with the political Liberals than with
the political Conservatives. But it is certain that neither the High
Churchmen nor the political Liberals would have acknowledged the
kindred, and the great mass of Mr. Gladstone's supporters in 1847, in
1852, and even later, would assuredly not have voted for any avowedly
Liberal candidate. In his later elections Mr. Gladstone received a
distinct Liberal support; still he was also supported by men who would
not support a Liberal candidate now. As he came nearer and nearer to the
Liberal camp, his majorities forsook him till he was at last rejected
for Mr. Hardy. The two elections of the last four years have turned more
directly, we may say that they have turned wholly, on ordinary political
issues. Controversies within the Established Church have had little
bearing on them. So far as ecclesiastical questions have come in, the
strife has been between "Church"--that kind of Church which is
pue-fellow to the Mosque--and something which is supposed not to be
"Church." These late elections have therefore been far better tests than
the old ones of the strictly political feelings of the constituencies.
Looked at in that light, they certainly do not prove that the University
constituencies are more Conservative now than they were then. They do
prove that the Liberal growth, the Liberal reaction, or whatever we are
to call it, in the University constituencies since that time has been
far less strong than Liberals had hoped that it had been. They do prove
that the Conservatism of those constituencies is still of a kind which,
both for quantity and quality, has a very ugly look in Liberal eyes.
Thus far we have been looking at Oxford and Cambridge only. But we must
not forget that Oxford and Cambridge are not the only Universities in
the kingdom. The general results of University elections were set forth
a few weeks back in an article in the _Spectator_. They are certainly
not comfortable as a whole. We of Oxford and Cambridge may perhaps draw
a very poor satisfaction from the thought that we are at least not so
bad as Dublin. But then we must feel in the like proportion ashamed when
we see how we stand by the side of London. A better comparison than
either is with the Universities of Scotland. From a Liberal point of
view, they are much better than Oxford and Cambridge, but still they are
not nearly so good as they ought to be. The Liberalism of the
Universities of Scotland lags a long way behind the Liberalism of the
Scottish people in general. One pair of Universities returns a Liberal,
the other a Conservative, in neither case by majorities at all like the
Conservative majorities at Oxford and Cambridge. Speaking roughly, in
the Scottish Universities the two parties are nearly equally balanced, a
very different state of things from what we see in the other
constituencies of Scotland. If then in England and Ireland the
University constituencies are overwhelmingly Conservative, while in
Liberal Scotland they are more Conservative than Liberal, it follows
that there is something amiss either about Liberal principles or about
University constituencies. And those who believe that Liberal principles
are the principles of right reason and that so-called Conservative
principles represent something other than right reason, will of course
take that horn of the dilemma which throws the blame on the University
constituencies. For some reason or other, those constituencies which
might be supposed to be more enlightened, more thoughtful and better
informed, than any others are those in which the principles which we
deem to be those of right reason find least favour. Even in the most
Liberal part of the kingdom, the University constituencies are the least
Liberal part of the electoral body. The facts are clear; we must grapple
with them as we can. There is something in education, in culture, in
refinement, or whatever the qualities are which are supposed to
distinguish University electors from the electors of an ordinary county
or borough, which makes University electors less inclined to what we
hold to be the principles of right reason than the electors of an
ordinary county or borough. Education, culture, or whatever it is,
clearly has, in political matters, a weak side to it. There is the fact;
we must look it in the face.
After all perhaps the fact is not very wonderful. There is no need to
infer either that Liberal principles are wrong or that University
education is a bad thing. The _Spectator_ goes philosophically into the
matter. The Universities give--that is, we may suppose, to those who
take, only a common degree--only a moderate education, an average
education, a little knowledge and a little culture springing from it.
And the effect of this little knowledge and little culture is to make
those who have it satisfied with the state of things in which they find
themselves, and to separate themselves from those who have not even that
little knowledge and little culture. "Education," says the _Spectator_,
"to the very moderate extent to which a University degree attests it, is
a Conservative force, because to that extent at all events it does much
more to stimulate the sense of privilege and caste than it does to
enlarge the sympathies and to strengthen the sense of justice." That is,
it would seem, a pass degree tends to make a man a Tory. It does not at
all follow that even the passman's course is mischievous to him on the
whole, even if it does him no good politically. For, if it has the
effect which the _Spectator_ says, the form which that effect takes is,
in most cases, rather to keep a man a Tory than to make him one. And it
may none the less do him good in some other ways. But the _Spectator_
leaves it at least open to be inferred that a higher degree, or rather
the knowledge and consequent culture implied in the higher degree, does,
or ought to do, something different even in the political way. And such
an inference would probably be borne out by facts. If Lord Carnarvon
looks on all passmen as "men of literary eminence and intellectual
power," he must be very nearly right in his figures when he says that
three-fourths of such men are opposed to Mr. Gladstone. But those who
have really profited by their University work may doubt whether passmen
as such are entitled to that description. Indeed in the most ideal state
of an University, though it might be reasonable to expect its members to
be men of intellectual power, it would be unreasonable to expect all of
them to be men of literary eminence. If by literary eminence be meant
the writing of books, some men of very high intellectual power are men
of no literary eminence whatever. Without therefore requiring the
University members to be elected wholly by men of literary eminence, we
may fairly ask that they may be elected by men of more intellectual
power than the mass of the present electors. We should ask for this,
even if we thought that Lord Carnarvon was right, if we thought that,
the higher the standard of the electors, the safer would be the Tory
seats. But it is perhaps only human nature to ask for it the more, if we
happen to think that the raising of the standard would have the exactly
opposite result.
The evil then, to sum up the result of the _Spectator's_ argument, is
that the University elections are determined by the votes of the
passmen, and that the mass of the passmen are Tories. Now what is the
remedy for this evil? One very obvious remedy is always, on such
occasions as that which has just happened, whispered perhaps rather than
very loudly proclaimed. This is the doctrine that the representation of
Universities in Parliament is altogether a mistake, and that it would be
well if the Universities were disfranchised by the next Reform Bill.
And, if the question could be discussed as a purely abstract one, there
is no doubt much to be said, from more grounds than one, against
University representation. There is only one ground on which separate
University representation can be justified on the common principles on
which an English House of Commons is put together. This is the ground
that each University is a distinct community from the city or borough in
which it is locally placed, something in the same way in which it is
held that a city or borough is a distinct community from the county in
which it locally stands. The University of Oxford has interests,
feelings, a general corporate being, distinct from the city of Oxford,
just as the city of Oxford has interests, feelings, a general corporate
being, distinct from the county of Oxford. So, if one were maliciously
given, one might go on to argue that the choice of a representative made
by the borough of Woodstock seems to show that the inhabitants of that
borough have something in them which makes them distinct from
University, county, city, or any other known division of mankind.
Regarding then these differences, the wisdom of our forefathers has
ruled, not that the county of Oxford, the city, the University, and the
boroughs of Woodstock and Banbury, should join to elect nine members
after the principle of _scrutin de liste_, but that the nine members
should be distributed among them according to their local divisions,
after the principle of _scrutin d'arrondissement_. On any ground but
this local one, a ground which applies to some Universities and not to
others, and which seems to have less weight than formerly in those
Universities to which it does apply, the University franchise is
certainly an anomaly. It must submit to be set down as a fancy
franchise. But it is a fancy franchise which has a great weight of
precedent in its favour. Besides the original institution of the British
Solomon, there is the fact that University representation has been
extended at each moment of constitutional change for a century past. It
was extended by the Union with Ireland, by the great Reform Bill, and by
the legislation of fifteen years back. Each of these changes has added
to the number of University members. And each has added to them in a way
which more and more forsakes the local ground, and gives to the
University franchise more and more the character of a fancy franchise.
Dublin has less of local character than Oxford and Cambridge; London has
no local character at all. Such a grouping as that of Glasgow and
Aberdeen takes away all local character from Scottish University
representation. In short, whatever James the First intended, later
legislators, down to our own day, have adopted and confirmed the
principle of the fancy franchise as applied to the Universities. There
stands the anomaly, with the stamp of repeated re-enactment upon it.
Some very strong ground must therefore be found on which to attack it.
Liberals may think that there is a very strong ground in the fact that
University representation tends to strengthen the Conservative interest,
and not only to strengthen it, but to give it a kind of credit, as
stamped with the approval of the most highly educated class of electors.
But this is a ground which could not be decently brought forward. It
would not do to propose the disfranchisement of a particular class of
electors merely because they commonly use their franchise in favour of a
particular political party. From a party point of view, the
representation of the cities of London and Westminster is as great a
political evil as the representation of the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge. But we could not therefore propose the disfranchisement of
those cities. The abstract question of University representation may be
discussed some time. It may be discussed in our own time on the proposal
of a Conservative government or a Conservative opposition. It may be
discussed on the proposal of a Liberal government on the day when all
University members are Liberals. But the disfranchisement of the
Universities could not, for very shame, be proposed by a Liberal
government when the answer would at once be made, and made with truth,
that the Universities were to be disfranchised simply because most of
them return Conservative members.
We may therefore pass by the alternative of disfranchisement as lying
beyond the range of practical politics. I use that famous phrase
advisedly, because it always means that the question spoken of has
already shown that it will be a practical question some day or other.
The other choice which is commonly given us is to confine the franchise
to residents. After every University election for many years past, and
not least after the one which has just taken place, we have always heard
the outcry that the real University is swamped by the nominal
University, that the body which elects in the name of the University is
in no way qualified to speak in the name of the University, and that in
point of fact it does not speak the sentiments of those to whom the name
of University more properly belongs. Reckonings are made to show that,
if the election had depended, not on the large bodies of men who are now
entitled to vote, but on much smaller bodies of residents, above all of
official residents, professors, tutors, and the like, the result of the
election would have been different. If then, it is argued, the
Universities are to keep the right of parliamentary representation, the
right of voting should be taken away from the mass of those who at
present exercise it, and confined to those who really represent the
University, to those who are actually engaged on the spot, in the
government, the studies, or the teaching of the place.
Now every word of this outcry is true. No one can doubt that the
electoral bodies of the Universities, as at present constituted, are
quite unfit to represent the Universities, to speak in their name or to
express their wishes or feelings. The franchise, at Oxford and
Cambridge, is in the hands of the two largest bodies known to the
University constitution, the Convocation of Oxford, the Senate of
Cambridge. If we look at the University as a commonwealth of the
ancient, the mediæval, or the modern Swiss pattern, the election is in
the hands of the _Ekklêsia_, the _Comitia_ of Tribes, the
_Portmannagemót_, the _Landesgemeinde_, the _Conseil Général_. The
franchise is open to all academic citizens who have reached full
academic growth, to all who have put on the _toga virilis_ as the badge
of having taken a complete degree in any faculty. That is to say, it
belongs to all doctors and masters who have kept their names on the
books. Now, whatever such a body as this may seem in theory, we know
what it is in practice. It is not really an academic body. Those who
really know anything or care anything about University matters are a
small minority. The mass of the University electors are men who are at
once non-resident and who have taken nothing more than that common
degree which the _Spectator_, quite rightly, holds to be of such small
account. They often, we may believe, keep their name on the books simply
in order to vote at the University elections.
But what is the remedy? I cannot think that it is to be found in
confining the election to residents, at Oxford perhaps to members of
Congregation.[1] By such a restriction we should undoubtedly get a
constituency with a much higher average of literary eminence and
intellectual power. We should get a constituency which would far more
truly represent the University as a local body. But surely we cannot
look on the Universities as purely local bodies. It has always been one
of the great characteristics--I venture to think one of the great
beauties--of the English Universities that the connexion of the graduate
with his University does not come to an end when he ceases to reside,
but that the master or doctor keeps all the rights of a master or doctor
wherever he may happen to dwell. The resident body has many merits and
does much good work; but it has its weaknesses. It is in the nature of
things a very changing body; it must change far more from year to year
than any other electoral body. And, though the restriction to residents
would undoubtedly raise the general character of the constituency, it
would get rid of one of its best elements. Surely those who have
distinguished themselves in the University, who have worked well for the
University, who are continuing in some other shape the studies or the
teaching which they have begun in the University, who are in fact
carrying the University into other places, are not to be looked on as
cut off from the University merely because they have ceased locally to
reside in it. Not a few of the best heads and the best professors--I
suspect we might say the best of both classes--are those who have not
always lived in the University, but who have been called back to it
after a period of absence. To the knowledge of local affairs, which
belong to the mere resident, they bring a wider knowledge, a wider
experience, which makes them better judges even of local affairs. And
can men whom the University thus welcomes after absence be deemed
unworthy even to give a vote during the time of absence? One reads a
great deal about the real University being swamped by voters running in
from London clubs, barristers' chambers, country houses, country
parsonages. And no doubt a great many most incompetent voters do come
from all those quarters. But some of the most competent come also. The
restriction to residents would have disfranchised for ever or for a
season most of our greatest scholars, the authors of the greatest works,
for the last forty years. Yet surely sad men are the University in the
highest sense; they are the men best entitled to speak in its name,
whether they are at a given moment locally resident or not. It would
surely not be a gain, it would not increase the literary eminence or
intellectual power of the constituency, to shut out those men, and to
confine everything to a body made up so largely of one element which is
too permanent and another which is too fluctuating, of old heads and of
young tutors. Then too there is a very reasonable presumption in the
human mind, and specially in the English mind, against taking away the
rights of any class of men without some very good reason. And in this
case there are at least as strong arguments against the restriction as
there are for it. I speak only of the simple proposal to confine the
election to residents, in Oxford language to transfer it from
Convocation to Congregation. There are indeed other plans, to let
Convocation elect one member and Congregation the other--something like
the election of the consuls at an early stage of the Roman
commonwealth--or to leave the present members as they are, and to give
the Universities yet more members to be chosen by Congregation. Now I
will not say that these schemes lie without the range of practical
politics, because they show no sign of being ever likely to come within
it. They may safely be referred to Mr. Thomas Hare.
While therefore I see as strongly as any man the evils of election by
Convocation, as Convocation is at present constituted,[2] I cannot think
that restriction to Congregation or to residents in any shape is the
right remedy for the evil. I venture to think that there is a more
excellent way. The remedy that I propose has this advantage, that,
though it would practically lessen the numbers of the constituency, and
would, gradually at least, get rid of its most incompetent elements, it
would not be, in any constitutional sense, a restrictive measure. It
would not deprive any recognized class of men of any right. And it would
have the further advantage that it would be a change which could be made
by the University itself, a change which would not be a mere political
change affecting parliamentary elections only, but a real academical
reform affecting other matters as well, a reform which would be simply
getting rid of a modern abuse and falling back on an older and better
state of things. It is one of three changes which I have looked for all
my life, but towards which, amidst countless academical revolutions, I
have never seen the least step taken. I confess that all three have this
to be said against them, that they would affect college interests and
would give the resident body a good deal of trouble. But this is no
argument against the measures themselves; it only shows that it would be
hard work to get them passed. Of these three the first and least
important is the establishment of an University matriculation
examination. (Things change so fast at Oxford that this may have been
brought in within the last term or two; but, if so, I have not heard of
it.) Secondly, a rational reconstruction of the Schools, so as to have
real schools of history and philology--perhaps better still a school of
history and philology combined--without regard to worn out and
unscientific distinctions of "ancient" and "modern." Thirdly, the change
which alone of the three concerns us now, the establishment of some kind
of standard for the degree of Master of Arts. Through all the changes of
more than thirty years, I have always said, when I have had a chance of
saying anything, Give us neither a resident oligarchy nor a non-resident
mob. Keep Convocation with its ancient powers, but let Convocation be
what it was meant to be. Let the great assembly of masters and doctors
go untouched; but let none be made masters or doctors who do not show
some fitness to bear those titles. Every degree was meant to be a
reality; it was meant, as the word _degree_ implies, to mark some kind
of proficiency; a degree which does not mark some kind of proficiency is
an absurdity in itself. A degree conferred without any regard to the
qualifications of the person receiving it is in fact a fraud; it is
giving a testimonial without regard to the truth of the facts which the
testimonial states. Now this is glaringly the case with the degree of
Master of Arts as at present given. In each faculty there are two
stages: the lower degree of bachelor, the higher degree of master or
doctor. The lower degree is meant to mark a certain measure of
proficiency in the studies of the faculty; the higher degree is meant to
mark a higher measure of proficiency, that measure which qualifies a
man to become, if he thinks good, a teacher in that faculty. The
bachelor's degree is meant to mark that a man has made satisfactory
progress in introductory studies; the master's degree is meant, as its
name implies, to mark that a man is really a master in some subject. The
bachelor's degree in short should be respectable; the master's degree
should be honourable. Nowadays we certainly cannot say that the master's
degree is honourable; it might be almost too much to say that the
bachelor's degree is respectable. I am far from saying that an
University education, even for a mere passman, is worthless; I am far
from thinking so. But the mere pass degree is very far from implying
literary eminence or intellectual power. Eminence indeed is hardly to be
looked for at the age when the bachelor's degree is taken; it is only
one or two men in a generation who can send out "The Holy Roman Empire"
as a prize essay. But the degree does not imply even the promise or
likelihood of eminence or power. The best witness to the degradation of
the simple degree is the elaborate and ever-growing system of
class-lists, designed to mark what the degree itself ought in some
measure to mark. The need of having class-lists is the clearest
confession of the very small value of the simple degree by itself. And,
whatever may be the value of the bachelor's degree, the value of the
master's degree is exactly the same. The master's degree proves no
greater knowledge or skill than the bachelor's degree; it proves only
that its bearer has lived some more years and has paid some more pounds.
It is given, as a matter of course, to every one who has taken the
degree of bachelor--never mind after how many plucks--and has reached
the standing which is required of a master. The bestowing of two degrees
is a mere make-believe; the higher degree proves nothing, beyond mere
lapse of time, which is not equally proved by the lower.
Now this surely ought not to be. That the first degree should be next
door to worthless, and that the second degree should be worth no more
than the first, is surely to make University degrees a mockery, a
delusion, and a snare. Men who do not know how little a degree means are
apt to be deceived, even in practical matters, by its outward show. Men
who see that a degree proves very little, but who do not look much
further, are apt most untruly to undervalue the whole system and studies
of the University. In common consistency, in common fairness, the
degrees should mean what their names imply. The bachelor's degree should
prove something, and the master's degree should prove something more. As
I just said, the bachelor's degree should be respectable and the
master's degree should be honourable. I should even like to see the
bachelor's degree so respectable that we might get rid of the modern
device of class-lists; but that is not our question at present. The
immediate business is to make the master's degree a real thing, an
honest thing, to make it the sign of a higher standard than the
bachelor's degree, whether the bachelor's standard be fixed high or low.
Let there be some kind of standard, some kind of test. Its particular
shape, whether an examination, or a disputation, or the writing of a
thesis, or anything else, need not now be discussed. I ask only that
there should be a test of proficiency of some kind, and that there
should be the widest possible range of subjects in which proficiency may
be tested. Let a man have the degree, if he shows himself capable of
scholarly or scientific treatment of some branch of some subject, but
not otherwise. The bachelor's degree should show a general knowledge of
several subjects, which may serve as a ground-work for the minuter
knowledge of one. The master's degree should show that that minuter
knowledge of some one subject has been gained. The complete degree
should show, if not the actual presence, at least the very certain
promise, of literary eminence or intellectual power. We should thus get,
neither the resident oligarchy nor the non-resident mob; we should have
a body of real masters and doctors worthy of the name. Men who had once
dealt minutely with some subject of their own choice would not be likely
to throw their books aside for the rest of their days, as the man who
has merely got his bachelor's degree by a compulsory smattering often
does. We should get a Convocation or Senate fit, not only to elect
members of Parliament, but to do the other duties which the constitution
of the University lays on its Convocation or Senate. And I cannot help
thinking that, if such a change as this had been adopted at the time of
the first University Commission, it would have been less needful to cut
down the powers of Convocation in the way which, Convocation being left
what it is, certainly was needful.
Such a change as I propose would doubtless lessen the numbers of the
constituency. Possibly it would not lessen them quite so much as might
seem at first sight. A high standard, but a standard attainable with
effort, would surely make many qualify themselves who at present do not.
Still it would lessen the numbers very considerably, and it would be
meant to do so. Yet it would not be a restrictive measure in the same
sense in which confining the franchise to Congregation would be a
restrictive measure. It would not take away the votes of any class. The
franchise would still be the same, exercised by the same body; only that
body would be purified and brought back to the character which it was
originally meant to bear. The purifying would be gradual. The doctrine
of vested interests, that doctrine so dear to the British mind, would of
course secure every elector in the possession of his vote as long as he
lives and keeps his name on the books. But the ranks of the unqualified
would no longer be yearly reinforced. In course of time we should have
a competent body. And the great advantage of this kind of remedy is that
it is so distinctly an academical remedy. It would not come as a mere
clause in a parliamentary reform bill. It would affect the parliamentary
constituency; but it would affect it only as one thing among others. It
would be a general improvement in the character of the Great Council of
the University, which would make it better qualified to discharge all
its duties, that of choosing members of Parliament among them. In the
purely political look-out, we may believe that one result of the change
would be to make the election of Liberal members for the Universities
much more likely. But neither this nor any other purely political result
would be the sole and direct object of the change. Even if it did not
accomplish this object, it would do good in other ways. If the
Universities, under such a system, still chose Conservative members, we
should have no right to complain. We should feel that we had been fairly
and honourably beaten by adversaries who had a right to speak. It would
be an unpleasant result if the real Universities should be proved to be
inveterately Tory. But it would be a result less provoking than the
present state of things, in which Tory members are chosen for the
Universities by men who have no call to speak in the name of the
Universities at all.
EDWARD A. FREEMAN.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] That is, to all members of Convocation who are either resident or
hold University office. This, besides the Chancellor and a few other
great personages, lets in a few professors and examiners who are
non-resident.
[2] I use Oxford language, as that which I myself best understand; but I
believe that, all that I say applies equally to Cambridge also. For
"Convocation" one must of course, in Cambridge language, read "Senate."
HAMLET: A NEW READING.
There is a sense in which the stage alone can give the full significance
to a dramatic poem, just as a lyric finds its full interpretation in
music; but we prefer that a song of Goethe or Shelley should wait for
its music, and in the meantime suggest its own aërial accompaniment,
rather than be vulgarized in the setting. And even when set for the
voice by a master, although there is a gain in as far as the charm is
brought home to the senses, yet there is a loss in proportion to the
beauty of the song; for if it is delicate the finer spiritual grace
departs, and if it is ardent the passion is liable to scream, and, above
all, there is a vague but appreciable loss of identity; so that on the
whole we please ourselves best with the literary form. There is the same
balance of gain and loss in the relation of the drama to the stage. The
gain is in proportion to the excellence of the acting, and the loss in
proportion to the beauty o£ the play. It is well then that, as the lyric
poem no longer demands the lyre, the poetical drama has become, though
more recently, independent of the stage. Each has its own perspective of
life, its own idea of Nature, its own brilliancy, its own dulness, and
finally its own public; and notwithstanding the objections of some
critics, it will soon be admitted that a work may be strictly and
intrinsically dramatic, and yet only fit for the study--that is, for
ideal representation. For there is a theatre in every imagination, where
we produce the old masterpiece in its simplicity and dignity, and where
the new work appears and is followed in plot and action, and conflict of
feeling, and play of character, and rhythm of part with part, if not
with as keen an excitement, at least with as fair a judgment, as if we
were criticizing the actors, not the piece. And were all theatres
closed, the drama--whether as the free and spontaneous outflow of
observation, fancy, and humour, or as the intense reflection of the
movement of life in its animation of joy and pain--would remain one of
the most natural and captivating forms in which the creative impulse of
the poet can work. When we look at its variety and flexibility of
structure--from the lyrical tragedy of Æschylus to a "Proverbe" of De
Musset; at its diversity of spirit--from the exuberance of a comedy of
Aristophanes and the caprice of an Elizabethan mask to the serenity of
"Comus" and Tasso, and the terror of "Agamemnon" and "Macbeth;" at its
range of expression--from, the full-toned Greek and English Iambic to
the plain but sparkling prose of Molière, and from that again to the
intricate harmonies of Calderon, Goethe, and Shelley; with its use of
all voices, from vociferous mob to melodious daughters of Ocean, and its
command of all colour, from the gloom of Medea to the splendour of
Marlowe's Helen,--it is a small matter to remember the connection of
work or author with the stage--how long they held it, how soon they were
dispossessed, how and at what intervals and with what uncertain footing
they returned. We do not accept them because they were popular in their
day, and we do not reject them because they are not suitable to ours.
They have lost no vivacity or strength or grace by their exclusion from
the stage and their exile to literature--to that permanent theatre for
which the poet, freely using any and every form of dramatic expression,
should now work.
"There is the playhouse now, there you must sit....
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our king."
The relevancy of these remarks, as an introduction to a study of one of
Shakespeare's plays, will presently appear.
I.
Shakespeare, although a master of theatrical effect, is often found
working rather away from it than toward it, and at a meaning and beauty
beyond the limits of stage expression. This is because he is more
dramatist than playwright, and will always produce and complete his work
in its ideal integrity, even if, in so doing, he outruns the sympathy of
his audience. This disposition may be traced not only in the plays it
has banished from the stage, including such a masterpiece as "Antony and
Cleopatra," but in those that are universally popular, such as "The
Merchant of Venice," where the fifth Act, although it closes and
harmonizes the drama as a work of art with perfect grace, is but a tame
conclusion to the theatrical piece; and in the scenes that furnish us
with the delicate and finished study of Antonio, we find the audience
intent on the situation and the poet on the character; for we no more
expect to see the true Antonio on the stage than to see the true
moonlight shimmering on the trees in Belmont Park. But sometimes the
play will transcend the limits of stage expression by being too purely
and perfectly dramatic, as in "Lear." For not only is it, as Lamb points
out,[3] impossible for the actor to give the convulsions of the father's
grief, and yet preserve the dignity of the king, but the sustained
intensity of passion fatigues both voice and ear when they should be
most impressive and impressed. Had Shakespeare written with a view to
stage effect, he would not in the first two acts have stretched the
voice through all the tones and intervals of passion, and then demand
more thrilling intonations and louder outcries to meet and match the
tumult of the storm. This greatest of all tragedies is written beyond
the compass of the human voice, and can only be fully represented on
that ideal stage, where, instead of hoarse lament and husky indignation,
we hear each of us the tones that most impress and affect us, and can
command the true degrees of feeling in their illimitable scale.
But in "Hamlet" the inadequacy of the stage is of another kind. It leads
to a general displacement of motive, and change of focus, the hero's
character being obscured in the attempt to make it effective. And for
this to some extent the stage itself, as a place of popular
entertainment, and not the actor, is at fault. Some such ambiguity as
this seems, indeed, only natural, when we recall the circumstances
attending the composition of the play.
By common consent of the best authorities, "Hamlet" represents the work
of many years. I make no conjectures, but content myself with Mr.
Dowden's statement of the case:--"Over 'Hamlet,' as over 'Romeo and
Juliet,' it is supposed that Shakespeare laboured long and carefully.
Like 'Romeo and Juliet,' the play exists in two forms, and there is
reason to believe that in the earlier form, in each instance, we possess
an imperfect report of Shakespeare's first treatment of his theme,"[4]
We know also that Shakespeare had before him, at least as early as 1589,
an old play in which "a ghost cried dismally like an oyster wife,
'Hamlet! Revenge!'" and Shakespeare worked upon this until from what was
probably a rather sorry melodrama he produced the most intellectual play
that keeps the stage. And the very sensational character of the piece
enabled him to steal into it the results of long and deep meditation
without hazard to its popularity. He seems to have withdrawn Hamlet from
time to time for a special study, and then to have restored and
readjusted the hero to the play, touching and modulating, here and
there, character and incident in harmony with the new expression. In
this way a new direction and significance would be given to the plot,
but in a latent and unobtrusive way, so as not to weaken the popular
interest. This leads to the ambiguity of which I have spoken. The new
thought is often not earnestly but ironically related to the old
material, and the spiritual hero seems almost to stand apart from the
rude framework of the still highly sensational theatrical piece. This
has given rise to a rather favourite saying with the Germans, that
Hamlet is a modern. Hamlet seems to step forth from an antiquated
time,--with its priestly bigotry, its duels for a province, its
heavy-headed revels, its barbarous code of revenge, and its ghostly
visitations to enforce it,--to meet and converse with a riper age. But
this is because Hamlet belongs wholly and intimately to the poet, while
the other characters, though informed with new and original expression,
are left in close relation, to the old plot.
Such being the ambiguity resulting from this continued spiritualization
of the play, the actor would instinctively endeavour to remove it, and
to bring the hero in closer relation with the main action of the stage
piece. Hamlet must not be too disengaged; he must not be too ironical. A
few omissions, a fit of misplaced fury, a too emphatic accent, a too
effective attitude, with what is called a bold grasp of character, and
Shakespeare's latest and finest work on the hero is obliterated.
Now, the great actors who have personated Hamlet have done much, and the
thrilling treatment of the ghost-story has done more, to stamp upon the
minds of learned and unlearned alike the impression that _the great
event of Hamlet's life is the command to kill his uncle_. As he does not
do this, and as he is given to much meditation and much discussion, it
is assumed that he thinks and talks in order to avoid acting. And then
the word "irresolution" leaps forth, and all is explained. This curious
assumption, that all the pains taken by Shakespeare on the work and its
hero has no other object but to illustrate this theme--a command to kill
and a delayed obedience--pervades the criticism even of those who
consider the intellectual element the great attraction of the play. And
yet, when you ask what is the dramatic situation out of which this
speculative matter arises, the German and English critics alike reply in
chorus, "Irresolution." Each one has his particular shade of it, and
finds something not quite satisfactory in the interpretations of others.
Goethe's finished portrait of Hamlet as the amiable and accomplished
young prince, too weak to support the burden of a great action, did not
recommend itself either to Schlegel or Coleridge, who take the mental
rather than the moral disposition to task. Schlegel, with some asperity,
speaks of "a calculating consideration that cripples the power of
action;" and Coleridge, with more subtlety, applies Hamlet's antithesis
of thought and resolution to the elucidation of his own character,
concluding that Hamlet "procrastinates from thought." Gervinus, while
following Schlegel as to "the bent of Hamlet's mind to reflect upon the
nature and consequences of his deed, and by this means to paralyze his
active powers," adds to this defect a deplorable conscientiousness,
which unfits Hamlet for the great duty of revenge. And Mr. Dowden, while
most ably collating these various kinds and degrees of irresolution,
concludes that Hamlet is "disqualified for action by his excess of the
reflective faculty." Mr. Swinburne alone resolutely protests against
this doctrine. He speaks of "the indomitable and ineradicable fallacy of
criticism which would find the key-note of Hamlet's character in the
quality of irresolution."[5] And he considers that Shakespeare purposely
introduces the episode of the expedition to England to exhibit "the
instant and almost unscrupulous resolution of Hamlet's character in time
of practical need." I gladly welcome this instructive remark, which,
although Mr. Swinburne calls it "the voice of one crying in the
wilderness," is more likely to gain me a patient hearing than any
arguments I can use. But before I propose my own reading, I will, as I
have given the genesis or natural history of this theory of
irresolution, compare it with the general features of Hamlet's mental
condition throughout the play.
If Hamlet "procrastinates from thought," if "the burden of the action is
too heavy for him to bear," if "by a calculating consideration he
exhausts all possible issues of the action," it should at least be
continually present to his mind. We should look for the delineation of a
soul harassed and haunted by one idea; torn by the conflict between
conscience and filial obedience; or balancing advantage and peril in an
agony of suspense and vacillation; forecasting consequence and result to
himself and others; and so absorbed in this terrible secret as to
exclude all other interests. We have two studies of such a state of
irresolution, in Macbeth and Brutus. Of Macbeth it may truly be said
that he has an action upon his mind the burden of which is too heavy for
him to bear. It is constantly before him; he is shaken with it,
possessed by it, to such a degree that
"function
Is smother'd in surmise; and nothing is
But what is not."
Now "he will proceed no further in this business," and now "he is
settled and bound up to it," and in one long perturbed soliloquy stands
before us the very picture of that irresolution which "procrastinates
from thought." Brutus thus describes his own suspense:--
"Between the action of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:
The genius, and the mortal instruments,
Are then in council: and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection."
But what is the general course and scope of Hamlet's utterance, whether
to himself or others? We find musings and broodings on the possibility
of escape from so vile a world alternating with cool and keen analysis,
polished criticism, and petulant wit; we find a pervading ironical
bitterness, rising at times to fierce invective, and even to the frenzy
of passion when his mother is the theme, relapsing again to trance-like
meditations on the depravity of the world, the littleness of man and the
nullity of appearance; and when his mind does revert to this "great
action," this "dread command," which is supposed to haunt it, and to
keep it in a whirl of doubt and irresolution, it is because it is
forcibly recalled to it, because some incident startles him to
recollection, proves to him that he has forgotten it, and he turns upon
himself with surprise and indignation: Why is it this thing remains to
do? Am I a coward! Do I lack gall? Is it "bestial oblivion?" or is it
"some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event?"
On this text, so often quoted in support of the orthodox "irresolution"
theory, I will content myself at present with the remark, thats surely
no one before or after Hamlet ever accounted for his non-performance of
a duty by the double explanation that he had either entirely forgotten
it or had been thinking too much about it.
Looking then at the general features of Hamlet's talk, it is plain that
to make this command to revenge the clue to his mental condition, is to
make him utter a great deal of desultory talk without dramatic point or
pertinence; for if, except when surprised by the actors' tears or by the
gallant bearing of the troops of Fortinbras, he wholly forgets it, what
does he remember? What is the secret motive of this prolonged criticism
of the world which "charms all within its magic circle?"
The true centre will be found, I think, by substituting the word
"preoccupation" for the word "irresolution." And the "preoccupation" is
found by antedating the crisis of Hamlet's career from the revelation of
the ghost to the marriage of his mother, and the persistent mental and
moral condition thus induced. Start from this, as a fixed point, and a
dramatic situation is gained in which every stroke of satire, every
curiosity of logic, every strain of melancholy; is appropriate and
pertinent to the action.
In order to measure the full effect of this strange event, we must bring
before us the Hamlet of the earlier time, before his father's death, and
for this we have abundant material in the play.
II.
Hamlet was an enthusiast. His love for his father was not an ordinary
filial affection, it was a hero-worship. He was to him the type of
sovereignty--
"The front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;"
a link between earth and heaven--
"A combination, and a form, indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man."
To Hamlet, this "assurance of a man" was the great reality which made
other things real, which gave meaning to life, and substance to the
world. That his love for his mother was equally intense, is clearly
discernible in the inverted characters of his rage and grief. In her he
reverenced wifehood and womanhood. He sees the rose on
"the fair forehead of an innocent love."
And of his mother we are told--
"The queen his mother
Lives almost by his looks."
But this enthusiasm was connected with a habit of thought that was
rather critical than sentimental. Hamlet had a shrewd judgment, a lively
and caustic wit, an exacting standard, and a turn for satire. He was
fond of question and debate, an enemy to all illusion, impatient of
dulness,[typo for dullness?] and not indisposed to alarm and bewilder
it; and he had brought with him from Wittenberg a philosophy half
stoical and half transcendental, with whose eccentricities he would
torment the wisdom of the Court. He looked upon the machinery of power
as part of the comedy of life, and would be more amused than impressed
by the equipage of office, its chains and titles, the frowns of
authority, and the smiles of imaginary greatness. He therefore of all
men needed a personal centre in which faith and affection could unite to
give seriousness and dignity to life; and this he had found from his
childhood in the sovereign virtues of the King and Queen. So that his
criticism in these earlier days was but the fastidiousness of love, that
disparages all other excellence in comparison with its own ideal; his
philosophy was a disallowance of all other reality; and his negations
only defined and brightened his faith. Doubt, question and speculation,
mystery and anomaly, the illusions of sense, the instability of natures,
all that was irrational in life, with its certainties of logic and
hazards of chance, all that was unproven in religion, dubious in
received opinion, obscure in the destiny of man, were but glimpses of a
larger unity, vistas of truth unexplored.
Hamlet's thinking is always marked by that quality of penetration into
and through the thoughts of others, that is called free-thinking. The
discovery, as he moved in the spiritual world of established ideas and
settled doctrines, apparently immovable, that they were of the same
stuff as his own thoughts--were pliant and yielding, and could be
readily unwoven by the logic that wove them, would tempt him to move and
displace, and build and construct, until he might have a collection of
opinions large enough to be termed a philosophy. But it would be
gathered rather in the joy of intellectual activity, realizing its own
energy, and ravelling up to its own form the woof of other minds, than
with any practical bearing on life. All this was a work in another
sphere--
"of no allowance to his bosom's truth."
The light of a sovereign manhood and womanhood was reflected on the
world around him, and afar on the world of thought---their greatness
reconciled all the contradictions of life. And in pure submission to
their control all the various activities of his versatile nature, its
irony and its earnestness, its shrewdness and its fancy, its piety and
its free-thinking, harmonized like sweet bells not yet jangled or
untuned. He lived at peace with all, in fellowship with all; he could
rally Polonius without malice, and mimic Osric without contempt.
It is plain that Hamlet looked forward to a life of activity under his
father's guidance. He was no dreamer--we hear of "the great love the
general gender bear him," and the people are not fond of dreamers. In
truth, the Germans have had too much their own way with Hamlet, and have
read into him something of their own laboriousness and phlegm. But
Hamlet was more of a poet than a professor. He had the temperament of a
man of genius--impatient, animated, eager, swift to feel, to like or
dislike, praise or resent--with a character of rapidity in all his
actions, and even in his meditation, of which he is conscious when he
says, "as swift as meditation." He did not live apart as a student, but
in public as a prince--
"the observed of all observers;"
he was of a free, open, unsuspicious temper--
"remiss,
Most generous and free from all contriving."
He was fond of all martial exercises and expert in the use of the sword.
He was a soldier first, a scholar afterwards; a soldier in his alacrity
to fight
"Until his eyelids would no longer wag;"
a soldier even to
"The glass of fashion, and the mould of form;"
and, above all, a soldier in his sensibility on the point of honour, one
who would think it well
"Greatly to find quarrel in a straw,
When honour is at stake."
And Fortinbras, type of the man of action, recognized in him a kindred
spirit--
"Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally;"
while Hamlet eyed Fortinbras with the envious longing of one who had
missed his career. What must have been the felicity of life to such a
man, whose vivacity no stress of calamity, no accumulation of sorrow
could tame, whose enthusiasm embraced Nature, art, and literature, and
whose delight was always fresh and new, "in this excellent canopy the
air, in this brave o'erhanging firmament,"' and in the spectacle of man
"so excellent in faculty, in form and moving so express and admirable,
in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god?"
Without a warning the blow fell. His father was suddenly struck down;
and while he was indulging a grief, poignant and profound indeed, but
natural, wholesome, manly, his uncle usurped the crown. This second blow
would be acutely felt, but it would rather rouse than prostrate his
energies. There is no passion in Hamlet when there has been no love. And
he had always held his uncle in slight esteem--foreboded something from
his smiling insincerity. He never mentions him without an expression of
contempt, hardly acknowledges him as king; he is a thing--of nothing--a
farcical monarch--"a peacock"--and, in this particular act, no dread
usurper, but a "cut-purse of the realm." Whether he designed to wait or
was prepared to strike, his future was still intact, his energy
unimpaired. His mother remained to him, now doubly dear and doubly
great, and with her the tradition of the past. She was, as he gathered
from her silence, like himself, retired from the world, absorbed in
grief; but he was assured of her constancy and truth. Even the kind of
distance between them in age and sex, in mind and character, was no
barrier to this sympathetic relation. She was there with the expectation
that makes heroism possible; she was there to watch, if not to further
his enterprise, and to give it lustre with her praise. We are often
quite unconscious of the commanding influence exerted on our life by
those who are least in contact with it. To be cognizant of one steadfast
and stainless soul is to have encouragement in difficulty and support in
pain. The mere knowledge of its existence is a light within the mind,
and a secret incentive to the best action. Though silent and apart, it
is the witness of what is great, and our life is always seeking to rise
within its sphere; while, by a secret transference--for souls are not
retentive of their own goodness--our standards of living and thinking
are maintained at their highest level, like water fed by a distant
spring. All this and infinitely more than this was the Queen his mother
to Hamlet. It is impossible, therefore, to measure the effect upon him
of her marriage with his uncle. The shock of it is ever fresh throughout
the play. In the third Act the whole frame of nature is still aghast at
it:--
"Heaven's face doth glow;
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act."
And this was not only after the revelation of the Ghost, but after the
confirmation of its truth by the test Hamlet had himself applied. Even
then the first paroxysm has hardly subsided. You see the whole being
measured by it, the mind stretched to give it utterance, the world
called as a witness to its enormity:--
III.
But it is at an earlier stage of this impression, when the thought of
this profanation of the sacredness of life and the sanctity of love
chills the life-blood of his heart, and then rushes burning through it
like the shame of a personal insult, that he first stands before us in
the palace of the King. In appearance nothing is changed. He sees the
same crowd, the same obsequious attitudes, the same decorous forms; the
trumpets with their usual flourish announce the arrival of the King and
Queen; the Ministers of State precede them, and the Court ladies; the
pretentious gravity of Polonius' brow; the dreamy innocence of Ophelia.
The sovereigns seat themselves, the Queen looks smilingly around her as
of old. All is easy, bright, and festive. All goes on as if this
horrible revolution were the most natural thing in the world. Oh, that
he could avoid the sight of it! Oh, that he could be quit of it all!
"Oh! that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!"
Although the nervous horror of his address to the Ghost is greater,
there is no speech in which Hamlet betrays so deep an agitation as in
this. He struggles for utterance, repeats himself, mingles oaths and
axioms, confuses and then annihilates time in the breathless tumult of
his soul. "Why, she, _even she_. O Heaven!" What can he say? what is
vile enough? "A _beast_
"that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourned longer--married with my uncle."
In this opening speech we see at once the immediate relation of the
feeling of life-weariness so prevalent throughout the play to this
supreme emotion; we see also his comprehensive criticism of the world
branching from the same root--
"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seems to me all the uses of this world!
Fie, on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden;"
and
"Frailty, thy name is woman."
These themes are developed Act by Act, we can follow them to the
graveyard scene, and to the moment before death.
And it is not unnatural that Hamlet's grief should assume a
comprehensive form. The Queen had drawn the world in her train. Nobles
and people, councillors and courtiers, the honoured statesman, the
artless maiden, had joined her, had connived, were her accomplices. They
had, parted among them, all the vices appropriate to _her_ Court, _her_
people. The world was betrayed to Hamlet in all its meanness and
littleness: and he looked at it to see if he could discover the secret
of his mother's treason, as Lear would anatomize the heart of Regan to
account for her ingratitude. In attacking it he is attacking her guilt,
in its inferior forms and obscure disguises. It is the nest of her
depravity, and the small vices are but hers in the shell, and the whole
is a vast confederacy of evil. Here are no "superfluous activities," no
desultory talk; Hamlet's preoccupation is one throughout. He alternates
between the desire to escape from so vile a world, and the pleasure of
exposing its vice and fraud. The one gives us soliloquies, the other
dialogues. Now he looks out at an obscure eternity from a time that was
more obscure, and now the tension of the mind relieves the tension of
the heart. On the one side we have all passages of life-weariness,
whether as the issue of long meditation, or as the outcome of familiar
talk; and on the other we have the brilliant and discursive criticism of
man and Nature continued throughout the play. All this is so closely
connected with the treason of his mother, that we see the very
attachment of the feeling to the thought.
This explains the particular bitterness with which he attacks the
Ministers and parasites of the Court. As soon as he sees them he crosses
the current of their talk, commits them to an argument, confuses them
with the evolutions of a logic too rapid for their senses to follow, and
makes their bewilderment a sport. How small their world appears in the
mirror of his ironical mind! The state-craft, the love-making, the
"absurd pomp," the "heavy-headed revels," the women that "jig and amble
and lisp," the nobles that are "spacious in the possession of dirt," the
sovereign that is a "king of shreds and patches;" as for their opinions,
"do but blow; them to their trials, and the bubbles are out;" as for
their ideas of prosperity, it is to act as "sponges and soak up the
king's countenance, his rewards and authorities;" as for their standard
of worth, "let a beast be a lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at
the king's table." It is a disgrace to live in such a world, and
contemptible to share its pleasures and prizes.
But his quarrel with it does not end here. The flaw runs through the
whole constitution of things; there is no possible equation between the
anomalies and dislocations on which he turns the dry light of that
sceptical philosophy which has usurped the place of faith. Thought is
good and action is good, but they will not work together. Our reason is
our glory, but our indiscretions serve us best--we must either be
cowards or fools. We have a perception of infinite goodness, just
sufficient to make us conclude that we are "arrant knaves, all of us,"
and just enough belief in immortality "to perplex our wills." There is
nothing but disagreement and disproportion--a constant missing of the
mark, a stretching of the hand for that which is not. How is it possible
to take seriously such a life if you pause to think?
It is not only irrational but visionary. The evanescence and fluency of
Nature would matter little, but man himself, with his ingenuities of wit
and triumphs of ambition, is whirled from form to form in "a fine
revolution if we had the trick to see it." This is a favourite idea, it
lends itself so easily to the contempt of the world--
"Imperious Cæsar, dead, and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,"
is only a variation of "a man may fish with the worm that has eat of a
king, and eat of the fish that has fed on the worm."
In this collision with the world, alone and unsupported, Hamlet's
natural buoyancy returns. It is the moment of isolation, but it is the
moment also of intellectual freedom. It is desertion, but it is also
independence. Every incongruity feeds his fanciful and inventive humour.
He follows vanity and affectation with irony and mimicry, removes a mask
with the point of his dexterous wit, and exposes the pretence of virtue
or conceit of knowledge with sarcastic glee, while there is a savour of
retribution in his chastisement of vice. The vivacity of this running
comment, critical and satirical, on the ways and works of men adds much
to the charm of the play, but it is a charm that properly belongs to
the best comedy. And Shakespeare has marked this disengagement of his
hero from the sanguinary plot by reserving the exaltation of verse to
the expression of personal feeling, while the lithe and nimble movement
of his prose follows with its undulating rhythm every turn of Hamlet's
wayward mind, in subtlety of argument or caprice of fancy.
Such is the "preoccupation" of Hamlet, emotional and intellectual. I
have purposely made it seem a separate study, as thus alone could this
fatal "thought-sickness," in which Heaven and Earth seemed to partake,
be treated with the requisite clearness and fulness.
We can see at once that no other claim to the command of his spirit is
likely to succeed. His mind is already haunted. No Ghost can be more
spiritual than his own thoughts, or more spectral than the world around
him. No revelation of a particular crime can rival the revelation lately
made to him of sin in the most holy place--the seat of virtue itself and
heavenly purity. He may acknowledge the ties of filial obedience and the
duty of revenge, but there is no place, nor obligation to
hold, no world to which it may be attached, no faith or interest strong
enough within him to give it vitality, no fruit of good result to be
looked for without. The place is occupied:
"For where the greater malady is fixed
The lesser scarce is felt."
When Hamlet says, "There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it
so," he confesses himself an idealist--that is, one to whom ideas are
not images or opinions, but the avenues of life. They garner up
happiness and they store the harvest of pain; they make the "majestical
roof fretted with golden fire" and the "pestilential cloud." The basis
on which Hamlet's happiness had rested had been suddenly removed, and
with the sanctity of the past the promise of the future had disappeared;
the sky and the earth. He could say to his mother:
"Du hast sie zerstört
Die schöne Welt;"
but the new world is built of the same materials--that is, absorbing
ideas. The shadow descends till it measures the former brightness; the
revulsion is as great as the enthusiasm.
IV.
Why, then, does he accept the mission of the Ghost? To answer this fully
we must accompany him to the platform.
In this scene Hamlet exhibits in perfection all the elements of
courage--coolness, determination, daring. He is singularly free from
excitement; and this is not because he is absorbed in his own thoughts,
for he easily falls into conversation, and treats the first subject that
comes to hand with his usual felicity and fulness, rising from the
private instance to a public law, and applying it to large and larger
groups of facts till his father's spirit stands before him. Thrilled and
startled he pauses not, "harrowed with fear and wonder like Horatio on
the previous night, but at once addresses it, as he said he would,
though hell itself should gape." No more dignified rebuke ever shamed
terror from the soul than Hamlet administers to his panic-stricken
friends, and when they would forcibly withhold him from following the
Ghost, the steady determination with which he draws his sword is marked
by the play upon words:
"By Heav'n, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me."
In the presence of his father the old life is rekindled within his
filial awe and affection, unquestioned obedience, daring resolve. He
will "sweep to his revenge,"
"And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter."
And this commandment had forbidden him to taint his mind against his
mother.
But what is his first exclamation when he is released from physical
horror, and his thoughts regain the living world? It is
"O! most pernicious woman!"
This singular phrase is one of Shakespeare's final touches, as does not
appear in the quarto of 1603; and it marks, therefore, his deliberate
intention, and is of the highest significance. He who will hereafter be
so often amazed at his own forgetfulness has already forgotten.
When his friends reappear, Hamlet is in a half-ironical humourous and
assuming an astonishing superiority over ghost and mortal alike informs
them--
"It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you."
But when this honest ghost plays sepulchral tricks, Hamlet shows small
respect to it, and at last, in a tone of almost command, cries--
"Rest! rest! perturbed spirit!"
Does Hamlet slight the command of the Ghost? By no means. He never
repudiates it or even calls it in question. There is no hesitation,
cavil, or debate in the acceptance of it as a duty. But the purpose
cools. It cools even on the platform. What passes within him is hardly a
process of thought, otherwise some intimation of it would be given in
his numerous self-communings. But there is a process prior to thought
in which the relations of things are felt before they are defined, and a
conclusion is reached, and a disposition decided, without the mediation
of the reason. There is a vague attraction this way or that, a blind
forecast and correlation of issues, and the whole being is so influenced
that, while there is no register of result in the memory, there is a
direction of the will and a determination of conduct. From the shadow of
the future that passes thus before his spirit he shrinks averse. To
scramble for a throne--to lord it over such a crew--to be linked to them
as by chains--to return to that polluted Court--to be the centre of
intrigues and hatreds--and for what? To leave the darker deeper evil
untouched. Some process such as this may account for the change from
"sweeping to his revenge" to
"The time is out of joint;--O cursed spite!
That ever I was born to set it right!"
In the meantime, in the well-lit chambers of consciousness, no note is
taken of this shadowy logic. This may appear paradoxical: but the last
of the changes from love to indifference, from faith to doubt, is the
avowal of change. When the ties of habit and tradition are inwardly
outgrown, we bend and intend with our whole being in a new direction
without the purpose or even the desire to move. So Hamlet silently
evades the obligation he so readily undertakes, and sinks back into that
more powerful interest that almost at once regains possession of his
mind. Still, before he quits the scene of this ghastly disclosure, he
resolves to counterfeit madness--and this for two reasons: he will seem
(to himself) to be conspiring, and he will gain a license to speak his
mind without offence. This is the only use to which he puts this mask of
madness, as Coleridge has remarked. But why should he instinctively seek
to gain more latitude of speech? Because since the marriage of his
mother he had suffered from an enforced silence with regard to the
proceedings of the Court, as he distinctly tells us in the first
soliloquy--
"But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!"
From his first utterances after he had left the platform, we at once
infer that the mission of the Ghost had failed. There is nothing that
Hamlet would sooner part with "than his life." There is, therefore, no
prospect before his mind, no awakening energy, no latent enterprise.
With what relief, on the contrary, does he turn from the real to the
ideal world! How cordially does he welcome the players, and how
gracefully, so that we seem for the first time to make acquaintance with
his natural tone and manner. Here at least is man's world, whose reality
can never be undermined. He plies them with questions, indulges in
literary criticism, and asks for a recitation. Suddenly he sees tears
in the actors' eyes. He hurries them away, and when he is alone breaks
out--
"Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!"
He is jealous of the players' tears. Here again is no debate, but simply
surprise at his own apathy. He tries to lash himself to fury but fails,
and falls back on the practical test he is about to apply to the guilt
of the king which he must appear to doubt, or this pseudo-activity
would be too obviously superfluous.
In the interval between the instruction to the players and the play,
Hamlet's mind, unless absorbed by some strong preoccupation, would
naturally turn to the issue of the plot; and he would reveal, if he
admitted us to the secret workings of his mind, if not resolution, at
least irresolution, something to mark the vacillation of which we hear
so much. But we find that the whole matter has dropped from his mind,
and that he has drifted back to the theme of--
"Oh! that this too too solid flesh would melt!"
It is now recast more in the tone of deliberate thought than of excited
feeling: he asks not which is best for him, but which is "nobler in the
mind,"--an impersonal, a profoundly human question, which so fascinates
our attention that we forget its irrelevance to the matter in hand or
what we assume to be the matter in hand. It is as if he had never seen
the Ghost. In his profound preoccupation he speaks of the "bourne from
which no traveller returns," and of "evils that we know not of,"
although the Ghost had told him "of sulphurous and tormenting flames."
Hamlet muses, "To sleep! perchance to dream,--ay, there's the rub," but
the Ghost had said--
"I am thy father's spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And, for the day, confined to fast in fires."
It is plain that the "traveller" that had returned was not present at
all to his mental vision nor his tale remembered. In his former
meditation he had accepted the doctrine of the church; here he
interrogates the human spirit in its still place of judgment; and he
gives its verdict with a sigh of reluctance--
"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all."
Considering that this and the succeeding lines occur at the end of a
soliloquy on suicide,--that there is not only the absence of any
reference to the ghostly action, but positive proof that the subject was
not present to his thoughts, it is nothing less than astonishing that
this passage should be quoted as Hamlet's witness to his own
"irresolution." He would willingly take his own life; conscience forbids
it; therefore conscience makes us cowards: and then with a still
further generalization he announces the opposition of thought and
resolution, causing the failure of
"enterprises of great pith and moment."
Now the only enterprise on which lie was engaged--the testing of the
king's conscience--was in a fair way of success, and did, in fact,
ultimately succeed.
The scene with Ophelia that immediately follows is the development of
another theme in the first soliloquy, "Frailty! thy name is woman."
Ophelia is inseparably connected with the queen in Hamlet's mind. She is
a Court maiden, sheltered, guarded, cautioned, and, as we see in the
warnings of Polonius and Laertes, cautioned in a tone that is suggestive
of evil. What scenes she must have witnessed--the confusion on the death
of the king, the exclusion of Hamlet from the throne, the marriage of
the queen to the usurper! Yet she takes it all quite sweetly and
subserviently. She is as docile to events as she is to parental advice.
To such a one every circumstance is a fate, and she bows to it, as she
bows to her father: "Yes, my lord, I will obey my lord." She denies
Hamlet's access to her though he is in sorrow; though he has lost all,
she will "come in for an after loss." One would rather leave her
blameless in the sweetness of her maiden prime and the pathos of her
end, but to place her, as some do, high on the list of Shakespeare's
peerless women fastens upon Hamlet unmerited reproach. There is a love
that includes friendship, as religion includes morality, and such was
Portia's for Bassanio. There is a love whose first instinctive movement
is to share the burden of the loved one, and such was Miranda's love for
Ferdinand. And there is a love that reserves the light of its light and
the perfume of its sweetness for the shadowed heart and the sunless
mind. How would Cordelia have addressed this king and queen--how would
she have aroused the energy of Hamlet and rehabilitated his trust, with
that voice, soft and low indeed, but firmer than the voice of Cato's
daughter claiming to know her husband's cause of grief! As Hamlet talks
to Ophelia, you perceive that the marriage of his mother is more present
to him than the murder of his father. He discourses on the frailty of
woman and the corruption of the world; "Go to, it hath made me mad. We
will have no more marriages."
The play is acted. The king is "frighted with false fire," and Hamlet is
left with the feeling of a dramatic success and the proof of his uncle's
guilt. He sings snatches of song. Horatio falls in with his mood. "You
might have rhymed," he says. The only effect of the confirmation of the
ghost's story, as at its first hearing, is a fresh blaze of indignation
against his mother. When Polonius has delivered his message that the
queen would speak with him, Hamlet presently says, "Leave me, friend;"
and then his mind clouds like the mind of Macbeth before he enters the
chamber of Duncan--
"'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on."
As he passes to the Queen's closet in this tense and dangerous mood, he
sees the king on his knees. His brow relaxes in a moment; he stops,
looks curiously at him, and says, familiarly--
"Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying."
He did not mean to do it, because he was on his way to his mother's
closet, but some reason must be found. The word "praying" suggests it.
"This would be scanned;" and he scans it, and decides to leave him for
another day. As he enters the closet to speak the words "like daggers,"
his quick decisive gesture and shrill peremptory tones alarm the queen.
She rises to call for help; he seizes her roughly: "Come, come, and sit
you down." Nothing can mark Hamlet's awful resentment more than his
persistence through two interruptions that would have unnerved the
bravest, and checked the most relentless spirit. As he looks at his
mother there is that in his countenance bids her cry aloud for
assistance. There is a movement behind the arras. Hamlet lunges at once.
Is it the king? No; it is but Polonius. Had it been the king, it would
not have diverted him from his purpose. He is no more afraid of killing
than he is afraid of death, and is as hard to arrest in his reproof of
his mother as in his talk with his father:
"Leave wringing of your hands; peace, sit you down."
His mother confesses her guilt. Hamlet is not appeased. He vilifies her
husband with increasing vehemence; the Ghost rises as if to protect the
queen. "Do not forget," he cries, although the king's name was at that
moment on Hamlet's lips in terms of bitterest contempt. But it was
understood between the two spirits that it was the queen's husband and
not his father's murderer that he was thus denouncing. After the
disappearance of the ghost, he turns again to his mother; and on leaving
her almost reluctantly, without further punishment, asks pardon of his
own genius--"Forgive me this my virtue," more authoritative to Hamlet
than a legion of spirits.
This scene is the spiritual climax of the play, and from it the whole
tragedy directly proceeds. The death of Polonius leads on the one side
to the madness of Ophelia, on the other to the revenge of Laertes and
the final catastrophe. Hamlet's apathy at the death of Polonius is of
the same character as his oblivion of the ghost's command, and has the
same origin. For there is no apathy like that of an over-mastering
passion, whether it be love or jealousy, or a new faith, or a terrible
doubt. It draws away the life from other duties and interests, and
leaves them pale and semi-vital. Men thus possessed acknowledge the
duties they evade, let slip occasion, are "lapsed in time and passion,"
and are surprised at their own oblivion.
This happens again to Hamlet as he is leaving Denmark. His own inaction
is flashed back upon him by the sight of the gallant array of
Fortinbras, and his first words--
"How all occasions do inform against me,"
disclose that the duty of revenge has its obligations and sanctions, not
in the inward but the outward world; not in the genius of the
man--secret, individual, detached--but in the outward mind of inherited
opinion and ancestral creed, that we share with others in unreflecting
fellowship. The world has charge of it, and reflects it back upon him
new in the actor's tears, and now--
"In this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince."
This speech must be read, like a Spartan despatch, on the [Greek:
skutalê] or counterpart of Hamlet's personality. He begins, as after the
player's recitation, with a confession, and ends with an excuse. He is
startled into an avowal, which he qualifies by a subtle
after-thought--"What is a man," he cries, who acts as I have acted, who
allows
"That capability and god-like reason,
To fust in him unused?"
"A beast, no more." But as he looks at Fortinbras and his soldiers,
another thought strikes him. These men act because they do not pause to
think. I must have been thinking, _not too little, but too much_; and
with that he turns short round upon his first confession, escapes from
the charge of "bestial oblivion," and takes refuge in an imaginary
"thinking too precisely on the event;" which indeed, as he remembers,
had more than once prevented him taking his own life. But he condemns
himself without cause; he cannot now return to that earlier stage of
unreasoning activity in appointed paths, and the joy and grace of
unconscious obedience.
When Hamlet returns from England, he takes Horatio apart to recount his
adventures and unfold the plot of the king; but before he utters a word
of this his settled mood is revealed to us in the graveyard scene.
Hamlet, ever prone to belittle the world, is not loth to watch the
making of a grave. There is the limit and boundary of what can be done
or suffered; there the triumph is ended, and there the enmity is stayed.
He advances step by step to look closely at the ruins of mortality; to
slight the great names of kings and follow heroes to the dust. As he
sees the skull tossed out of the grave, the king is already dead to him.
"How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jawbone,
that did the first murder. This might be the pate of a politician, which
this ass now o'erreaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?"
He is not satisfied till he takes the skull in his hand, and is
sarcastic on beauty and festive wit, and the base uses to which we may
come; when, from the other side, the procession of Ophelia advances. The
grace and allurement of Ophelia had awakened in the imaginative Hamlet a
feeling stronger and warmer indeed, but of the same relation to his
capacity of loving as that of Romeo for Rosaline, and as easily lost in
the glow or shadow of a deeper passion. That it was without depth and
sacredness is plain from his delighting to ridicule and torment her
father, and from his careless and equivocal jesting with her at the
play. But though not a deep experience, it was of a quality different
from that of other life. And the death of Ophelia had gathered into one
the records of the hours of love; the first and the last; the meetings
and the partings; the gifts, and flowers, and snatches of song. On these
tender memories the hollow clamour of Laertes breaks with a discord so
intolerable that Hamlet, who had with his usual reserve received the
news of her death with the cold exclamation, "What! the fair Ophelia!"
suddenly breaks into a fury and leaps into her grave.
* * * * *
In this study of Hamlet in relation to the ghost-story, we have seen
that the effect, both of the first recital and of its subsequent
confirmation, was to whet his mind against his mother; and that the
passages in which this is expressed are among the _final touches_ of the
master; that the deed of revenge is only flashed upon him from without;
and that, in the intervals between such awakenings of memory, he
relapses to the thought-sickness of the first soliloquy; that on the
only occasion when the bitterness of his sorrow leads him to meditate
self-destruction, there is no question of the ghost, the murder, or the
king; that the only ungovernable bit of fury is in the presence of his
mother; and that from this scene the drama is developed, and the final
catastrophe ensues.
V.
Supposing this "preoccupation" proved, what is the particular value and
significance of the fact? Before we can answer this we must set the
character of Hamlet in this new light clearly before us.
Shakespeare gives to him the rare nobility of feeling with the keenness
of personal pleasure and pain, the presence or absence of moral beauty.
He is one to whom public falsehood is private affliction, to whom
goodness in its purity, truth in its severity, honour in its brightness,
are the only goods worth a man's possessing, and the rest but a dream
and the shadow of a dream. Hamlet bears his private griefs with proud
composure. We have no lamentation on the death of his father, on the
defection of Ophelia, on his exclusion from the throne. Among the images
of horror and distress that crowd upon his mind in his mother's closet
there is one on which he is silent then, and throughout the play, and
that is her heartless desertion of his cause, as natural successor to
the crown. To make it entirely clear that we have here no type of morbid
weakness and excess, but the portrait of a representative man, we have
only to look at the careful way in which all the other characters are
touched and modelled so as to allow and enhance Hamlet's superiority,
This is true even of Horatio. We have already remarked that in their
scenes with the ghost the manhood of Hamlet is of a higher strain and
dignity. And not only in resolution, but in that other manly virtue of
self-reliance, his superiority is incontestable. Horatio follows Hamlet
at a distance as Lucilius follows Brutus, content if from time to time
he may stand at his side. Whatever is Hamlet's mood he reflects it, for
to him Hamlet is always great. Horatio never questions, presumes not to
give advice, echoes the scorn or laughter of his friend, is equally
contemptuous of the king, and, as he never urges to action, is, if his
friend is supposed to procrastinate, accomplice in his delay. Hamlet
detaches himself from the world and follows his own bent; he will admit
no guidance, and be subject to no dictation. He is not the man to be
hag-ridden like Macbeth, or humoured into remorseful deeds like Brutus.
The strong dramatic feature of his character, the secret of his
attraction on the stage, is his pure and independent personality. Who
has a word of solace from him, but when does he claim it? Who leaves any
mark or dint of intellectual impact on that firm and self-determined
mind? And if he is superior to Horatio, how much more to Laertes? Had
Shakespeare wished to exalt the quality of resolution at Hamlet's
expense, he would not have chosen so ignoble a representative of it as
this man. A true son of Polonius, a prater of moral maxims, while he is
all for Paris and its pleasures; violent, but weak; who, when he is told
of the tragic and untimely death of his sister, can find nothing better
to say than--
"Too much of water, hast thou, dear Ophelia?"
who, like Aufidius, has the outward habit and encounter of honour, but
is a facile tool of treacherous murder in the hands of the king. Compare
the conduct of the two when they are brought into collision, and the
final impression they leave. The readiness with which Hamlet undertakes
to fence for his uncle's wager is one of the most surprising strokes in
the play. What! with the foil in his hand, no plot, no project, not even
a word, not a look between him and Horatio that the occasion might be
improved! What absolute freedom from the malice which in another mind
is preparing his death. The treachery of Laertes is the more odious in
this, that the success of his plot depends on the generous confidence of
his victim. Polonius is handled in the same way with special reference
to Hamlet. His thinking is marked by slowness and insincerity, and when
he comes in contact with the rapid current of Hamlet's mind he is
benumbed; he can only mutter, "If this is madness, there is method in
it." What little portable wisdom was given to him in the first Act is
soon withdrawn--he stammers in his deceit, and the old indirectness
having no material of thought to work upon becomes a circumlocution of
truisms. As the play proceeds he is made, as if with a second intention,
more and more the antithesis, as he is the antipathy, of the prince. It
is the careful portrait of what Hamlet would hate--a remnant of senile
craft in the method with folly in the matter--a shy look in the dull and
glazing eye, that insults the honesty of Hamlet as much as the
shrivelled meaning with its pompous phrase insults his intelligence. So
with the other characters; they are all made to justify his demeanour
towards them. The queen is heard to confess her guilt, Ophelia is seen
to act as a decoy; his college friends attempt his death.
In as far then as Hamlet is right in his verdicts, blameless in his
aims, lofty in his ideal, and just in his resentment, he is a
representative man; and we have not the study of a special affliction,
but the fundamental drama of the soul and the world. This, whatever we
may call it, was the work at which Shakespeare laboured so long, and for
which he withdrew Hamlet from time to time for special study, every
fresh touch telling in this direction.
VI.
How far is such an interpretation consonant with the genius and method
of Shakespeare? Certainly I should hardly have found courage to add
another to the many studies of Hamlet had it not been for the hope of
bringing out a characteristic of our great national poet that is rather
unobtrusive than obscure. I mean a singular unworldliness of thought and
feeling; a cherished idealism; an inborn magnanimity. Not the
unworldliness of the study and the cloister, or the other-worldliness of
such poets as Dante and Milton, but the unworldliness of a man of the
world, the idealism that is closely allied with humour. And it is in
this union and not elsewhere that the "breadth" of Shakespeare, of which
we hear so much, is found. This unworldliness is elusive, ubiquitous,
full of disguise. Now it is militant, and now observant; now it is
fastidious in its scorn, and now it is piercing in its dissection; now
it is satire, and now it is melancholy. He gives the most knightly
chivalry of friendship to a merchant, and the most exquisite fidelity of
service to a fool, and makes the ingrained worldliness of Cleopatra die
before her love. He not only scatters through his pages rebukes of the
arrogance of power and the more pitiable pride of wealth, but makes his
kings deride their own ceremonies and mock their own state. Who has not
observed the easy and effortless way in which his heroes and heroines
move from one station to the other, from authority to service like Kent,
from obscurity to splendour like Perdita, or to the greenwood from the
palace like Rosalind. The change affects their happiness no more than
the change of their position in the sky affects the brightness of the
stars. It is all so truthful and clear that we grow more simple as we
read. Lear utters but one cry of joy, and that is when he is entering a
prison with Cordelia:
"Come, let's away to prison!
We two alone will sing like birds in a cage;"
while the Queen of France has just said:
"For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down,
Myself could else outfrown false fortune's frown."
In these two lines the magnanimity of Shakespeare is pure, unveiled, as
he gives us the last words of his favourite heroine: we must read them
backwards and forwards to catch the portrait they enclose. We see the
unconscious elevation of Cordelia's mind, not so much superior as
invulnerable to mortal ills; we see this dignity and lovely pride cast
down by pity and love, and then in answer to Lear's troubled and anxious
look we hear in measured and steadfast tones the reassurance of perfect
peace.
Remark too Shakespeare's habit of looking upon the world as a masque or
pageant, not to be treated with too much respectful anxiety as if it
were as real as ourselves. He who can give so perfectly the texture of
common life, the solidities of common sense, likes to wave his wand over
the domain of sturdy prose and incontrovertible custom, and to show how
plastic it is, and how easily pierced, and how readily transformed. He
has a malicious pleasure in confusing the boundaries of nature and
fancy, and mocking the purblind understanding. In the "Midsummer Night's
Dream" we have an ambiguous and bewildering light, with the horizon
always shifting, and the boundaries of fact and fable confused with an
inseparable mingling of forms; both outwardly, as when Theseus enters
the forest on the skirts of the fairy crew; and inwardly in the memories
of the lovers. And we are expressly told after the enchantment of the
"Tempest" that this summary dealing with the solid world was not merely
by way of entertainment but was a presentation of truth. And Macbeth,
after grasping all that life could offer of tangible reward or palpable
power, pronounces it
"such stuff as dreams are made of."
No doubt something will be said on the other side, of Shakespeare's
broad and indulgent humanity, and of his toleration even of vice itself
when it is convivial and amusing. It should be remembered, however, that
his comedies while more realistic are not so real as his tragedies. They
are, as he himself insists, entertainments; to which jovial sensuality,
witty falsehood, and even hypocrisy when it is not morose are admitted,
as diverting in their very aberration from the mean rule of life. So
that a touch of rascality is a genuine element in comedy, as a touch of
danger in sport, and the provocation of the moral sense is part of the
fun. But they are all under guard. The moment they pass a certain
boundary and break into reality, the moment that intemperance leads to
disorder, and vice to suffering, as in real life, then suddenly Harry
turns upon Falstaff, or Olivia on Sir Toby, and vice is called by its
right name.
And as life awakens and reality enters, either the grace or the
sentiment or the passion of unworldliness is more and more distinctly
present. And in the tragedies even the pleasant vices are seen as part
of a world-wide corruption that wrongs, debases, and betrays.
Shakespeare has painted every phase of antagonism to the world, from the
pensive aloofness of Antonio to the impassioned misanthropy of Timon.
Every excited feeling emits light into the dark places of the earth, and
every suffering is a revelation of more than its own injury. It is as if
the soul, fully aroused, became aware by its own light of the oppression
and injustice abroad upon the earth.
But there is a more vague and general disaffection to the world than is
the outcome of any particular experience. It may be called a spiritual
discontent which few have felt as a passion, but many have known as a
mood: when that average goodness of human nature which we have found so
companionable, and to which we have so pleasantly adapted ourselves,
becomes "very tolerable and not to be endured;" when the world seems to
be made of our vices, and our virtues seem to be looking on, or if they
enter into the fray are too tame and conventional for the selfish fire
and unscrupulous industry of their rivals; and when to our excited
sensibility there is a taint in the moral atmosphere, and we long to
escape if only to breathe more freely. This is more than a mood with
Shakespeare, and is present in those slight but distinctive touches that
mark the unconscious intrusion of character in an artist's work; and is
frankly confessed in one of his Sonnets:---
"Tired with all these; for restful death I cry;
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing drest in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn.....
Tired with all these, from, these would I be gone."
We find, then, scattered through the dramas of Shakespeare a
disaffection to the world as deep-grained as it is comprehensive; and we
find the various elements of it--the contempt of fortune, the ideal
virtue, the disinterested passion, the mysticism, the fellowship with
the oppressed, the distaste of the world's enjoyment and the weariness
of its burden--concentrated in Hamlet for full and exhaustive study;
thus presenting what I have called the interior or fundamental drama of
the soul and the world.
But the tragedy of "Hamlet" includes more than this. It is not merely
the doom of suffering on a soul above a certain strain, still less is it
the accidental death of a sluggard in revenge; it is the implication of
a noble mind in the intrigues and malignities of a world it has
renounced. In vain Hamlet contracts his ambition till it is bounded by a
nutshell; he is ordered to strike for a throne. No abnegation clears him
from entanglement. The world permits not his escape, but drags him back
with those crooked hands of which Dante speaks, which pierce while they
hold. This is the tragedy in all its fulness, the involution of the
inward and outward drama to the immense advantage of both. For while the
spiritual agony of Hamlet gives an incomparable dignity to the
ghost-story, yet by the very interruptions and checkings and crossings
of it through the accidents and oppositions of the plot, its physiognomy
is more distinctly and delicately revealed. Instead of the majestic but
monotonous declamation of Timon, we have every variety of that ironical
humour (indicating some yet unconquered province of the soul) that
guards and embalms the purer strength of feeling, keeps it airy and
spiritual, and frees it from moan and heaviness. Here we have no
insistance on suffering, no literary heart-breaks, no dilettante
pessimism; but those indefinable harmonies of freedom and law, of the
ascendency of the soul and the sovereignty of fate, of Nature and the
spaces of the mind, that in the works of the great masters represent, if
they do not explain, the mystery of life.
The religion of Hamlet is that faith in God which survives after the
extinction of the faith in man. Losing the light of human worth and
dignity through which, alone the soul can reach to the idea of what is
truly divine, and with it the link between earth and heaven, Hamlet's
religion is reduced to its elements again; to the vague and fragmentary
hints of Nature, and instincts of the spirit; to intimations of
limitless power, of mysterious destiny, of a "something after death,"
of a "divinity that shapes our ends;" and with these, gleams of a
transcendent religion of humanity, for devotion to which he was
suffering; and on the other side, binding him to the stage-plot, relics
of childish superstition, half-beliefs, inherited opinions, "_our_
circumstance and course of thought," which he adopted when he
pleased,--as, for instance, when he feared lest he should dismiss the
murderer to heaven, or half-believed that his blameless father was
tormented in sulphurous flames for having endured a horrible death. But
however obscure and indefinite the religion of Hamlet may be, and partly
because it is so, and hence of universal experience, it adds reach and
depth to his struggle with the world. His soul flies out of bounds and
away in airy liberty on these excursions to the vast unknown, and
escapes at last victorious with the light through the darkness of
conscious immortality, and the lamp in his hand of "the readiness is
all." There is always a certain vacuity in the positive or realistic
treatment of passion, in which it is confined to the area of mortality,
and after a sultry strife delivered over to the mercy of its enemies.
But the world cannot so beset and beleaguer the soul as to block up the
access and passage of invisible allies, or intercept the communications
of infinite strength and infinite charity, or follow to its distant
haunts and inaccessible refuges the migrations of thought--
"In the hoar deep to colonize."
FRANKLIN LEIFCHILD.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] "To see Lear acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with
a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night,
has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting."--_Lamb's Essays._
[4] "Shakspere: His Mind and Art," p. 96.
[5] "A Study of Shakespeare," p. 166.
PANISLAMISM AND THE CALIPHATE.[6]
I use the word "Panislamism," simply because it is one of the political
catchwords of the day. The prefix _Pan_ is supposed to have some great
and terrible significance. It is not long since Europe exerted all her
power to save Islam from the jaws of Panslavism, but now that a _Pan_
has been added to Islam, it has become in its turn the bugbear of
Europe. It is even supposed that England was fighting with this new
monster, when she put down the revolution in Egypt. England could never
have so far forgotten her liberality as to take up arms against Islam,
but Panislam must be crushed by a new crusade. Such is the wondrous
power of a prefix. So far as I can understand the mysterious force of
this word, it is designed to express the idea that the scattered
fragments of the Mohammedan world have all rallied around the Caliph to
join in a new attack upon Christendom, or that they are about to do so.
There is just enough of truth in this idea to give it currency, and to
make it desirable that the whole truth should be known. Most of the
mistakes of Europe in dealing with the Ottoman empire, during the
present century, have come from a misapprehension of the forces of
Islam, and the position, and influence of the Sultan of Turkey. There is
danger now of such a misapprehension as may lead to the most unfortunate
complications.
The first essential point, which must always be kept in mind by those
who would understand the movements of the Mohammedan world, is the exact
relation of the Ottoman Sultans to the Caliphate. The word Caliph means
the vicar or the successor of the Prophet. The origin and history of the
Caliphate is well known, but it may be well to give a brief _résumé_ of
it here. During the life of the Prophet it was his custom to name a
Caliph to act for him when he was absent from Medina. During his last
illness he named his father-in-law, Abou-Bekir, and after his death this
appointment was confirmed by election. Omar, Osman, and Ali were
successively chosen to this office, and these four are recognized by all
orthodox Mohammedans as perfect Caliphs. The Persians and other Shiites
recognize only Ali. It is said that the Prophet predicted that the true
Caliphate would continue only thirty years. His words are quoted: "The
Caliphate after me will be for thirty years. After this there will be
only powers established by force, usurpation, and tyranny." The death of
Ali and the usurpation of Mouawiye came just thirty years after the
death of the Prophet, and this was the end of the true and perfect
Caliphate. The sixty-eight imperfect Caliphs who followed were all of
the family of the Prophet, although of different branches, but they
fulfilled the demand of the sacred law, that the Caliph must be of the
family of Koreish, who was a direct descendant from Abraham. Mouawiye
and the Ommiades, fourteen in all, were of the same branch as Osman, the
third Caliph. The Abassides of Kufa, Bagdad, and Cairo, fifty-four in
all, descended from Abas, the great-uncle of the Prophet. There were
many others who at different times usurped the name of Caliph, but these
seventy-two are all who are recognized as universal Caliphs. Mohammed
XII., the last of these died in obscurity in Egypt in 1538. The power of
the Caliphs gradually decayed, until for hundreds of years it was little
more than nominal, and exclusively religious.
The claim of the Ottoman Sultans to the Caliphate dates back to the time
of Sultan Selim I. This Sultan conquered Egypt and over-threw the
dynasty of the Mamelukes. He found at Cairo the Caliph Mohammed XII.,
and brought him as a prisoner to Constantinople. He was kept at the
fortress of the Seven Towers for several years, and then sent back to
Egypt with a small pension. While Selim was in Cairo, the Shereeff of
Mecca presented to him the keys of the holy cities, and accepted him as
their protector. In 1517 Mohammed XII. also made over to him all his
right and title to the Caliphate. This involuntary cession, and the
voluntary homage of the Shereeff of Mecca are the only titles possessed
by the Ottoman Sultans to the Caliphate, which, according to the word of
the Prophet himself, must always remain in his own family. If the
Ommiades and the Abassides were imperfect Caliphs, it is plain that the
Ottoman Sultans must be doubly imperfect. It was easy, however, for an
all-powerful Sultan to obtain an opinion from the Ulema that his claim
was well-founded; and it has been very generally recognized by orthodox
Mohammedans, in spite of its essential weakness. When the time comes,
however, that the Ottoman Sultans are no longer powerful, it will be
still more easy to obtain an opinion that the Shereeff of Mecca, who is
of the family of the Prophet, is the true Caliph.
The Ottoman Sultans have also assumed the other and more generally used
title of _Imam-ul-Mussilmin_, which may be roughly translated Grand
Pontiff of all the Moslems, although, strictly speaking, the functions
of an Imam are not priestly. This title is based upon an article of the
Mohammedan faith which says--"The Mussulmans ought to be governed by an
Imam, who has the right and authority to secure obedience to the law, to
defend the frontiers, to raise armies, to collect tithes, to put down
rebels, to celebrate public prayers on Fridays, and at Beiram," &c. This
article of faith is based upon the words of the Prophet--"He who dies
without recognizing the authority of the Imam of his time, is judged to
have died in ignorance and infidelity."
The law goes on to say--"All Moslems ought to be governed by one Imam.
His authority is absolute, and embraces everything. All are bound to
submit to him. No country can render submission to any other."
Under this law the Ottoman Sultans claim absolute and unquestioning
obedience from all Moslems throughout the world; but their right to this
title rests upon the same foundation as that upon which is based the
title of Caliph. The Prophet himself said, and the accepted law repeats,
that the Imam-ul-Mussilmin must be of the family of Koreish. The Ottoman
Sultans belong not only to a different family, but to a different race.
With this evident weakness in their title to the Caliphate, and the
accompanying rank of universal Imam, it is a question of interest on
what grounds the doctors of Mohammedan law have justified their claims,
and how far these have been recognized.
In addition to the rights said to have been conferred by the Caliph
Mohammed XII. and by the Shereef of Mecca upon Sultan Selim I., and by
him transmitted to his posterity, the Mohammedan doctors make use of a
very different argument. They say--
"The rights of the house of Othman are based upon its power and
success, for one of the most ancient canonical books declares that
the authority of a prince who has usurped the Caliphate by force
and violence, ought not the less to be considered legitimate,
because, since the end of the perfect Caliphate, the sovereign
power is held to reside in the person of him who is the strongest,
who is the actual ruler, and whose right to command rests upon the
power of his armies."
This statement presents the real basis of the claims of the Sultans to
the Caliphate. It is the right of the strongest. Any man who disputes
it, does so at his peril; and, since 1517, the Ottoman Sultans have been
able to command the submission of the Mohammedan world. Their title has
not been seriously disputed.
But the title has this weak point in it. It is good only so long as the
Sultan is strong enough to maintain it. It has not destroyed the rights
of the family of Koreish. It only holds them in abeyance, until some
one of that family is strong enough to put an end to the Turkish
usurpation. The power of the Sultan does not depend upon the title, but
the title depends upon his power. This is a point the political
importance of which should never be overlooked.
We come now to our second question. How far is the claim of the Ottoman
Sultans to the Caliphate now recognized in the Mohammedan world? Except
with the Shiites, who have never acknowledged it, there is no open
rebellion against it. But the decay of the Ottoman Empire during the
last hundred years has been obvious to all the world. Not only has it
been gradually dismembered, not only have many of its Mohammedan
subjects been brought under the dominion of Christian Powers, and many
of its Christian subjects set free, not only have its African
possessions become practically independent, except Tripoli, but the
house of Othman exists to-day, only because Christian Europe interfered
to defend it against its own Mohammedan subjects. The house of Mohammed
Ali would otherwise have taken its place. Again and again have the
Sultans shown their inability to defend the frontiers of Islam. Since
the advent of the present Sultan, the process of dismemberment has gone
on more rapidly than ever.
The influence of these facts upon the Mohammedan world has been very
marked. I cannot speak from personal knowledge of the people of India
and Central Asia, but from the best information that I can obtain, I
conclude that while they have lost none of their interest in Islam,
while they are still interested in the fate of their Turkish brethren,
they would not lift a finger to maintain the right of the Sultan to the
Caliphate against any claimant of the family of the Prophet. The feeling
of the Arabic-speaking Mohammedans is well known. Islam is an Arab
religion; the Prophet was an Arab; the Caliph should be an Arab. The
Ottoman Sultans are barbarian usurpers, who have taken and hold the
Caliphate by force. The Arabs have been ready for open revolt for years,
and have only waited for a leader of the house of the Prophet. Their
natural leader would be the Shereef of Mecca; and it is understood that
the Shereef who has just been deposed by the Sultan, as well as his
predecessor who was mysteriously assassinated, was on the point of
declaring himself Caliph. The new Shereef is a young man of the same
family.
So far as the Turkish, Circassian, and Slavic Mohammedans are concerned,
their interests are bound up with those of the Sultan. They do not
distinguish between the Caliphate and the Sultanat. Their ruler is the
Imam-ul-Mussilmin, their law is the Sheraat, their country is the
Dar-Islam; and when they are fighting for their Sultan they are fighting
for their faith. They know nothing of any other possible Caliph. But if
a new Caliph should appear at Mecca, and declare the Sultan a usurper
and a Kaffir, it is very doubtful whether they would stand by the
Sultan. They would not know what to do.
Another element enters just now into the question of the Caliphate, of
which so much has been written of late that it is only necessary to
mention it here. The Mohammedan world is looking for the coming of the
Mehdy. The time appointed by many traditions for his appearance has
already come, the year of the Hedjira 1300. Other traditions, however,
fix no definite time--they only say "towards the end of the world," and
many impostors have already appeared at different times and places
claiming to be the Mehdy. According to Shiite tradition, it is the
twelfth Imam of the race of Ali who is to appear. At the age of twelve
he was lost in a cave, where he still lives, awaiting his time.
According to the Sunnis, the _Mehdy_ is to come from Heaven with 360
celestial spirits, to purify Islam and convert the world. He will be a
perfect Caliph, and will rule over all nations.
It is impossible for any Christian to speak with absolute certainty of
the real feeling of Mohammedans; but it is evident that this expected
Mehdy is talked of by Mohammedans everywhere, and that there is more or
less faith in his speedy appearance. No one who anticipates his coming,
can have any interest in the claims of the Sultan to be the Caliph.
Should any one appear to fulfil the demands of the tradition, and meet
with success in rousing any part of the Mohammedan world, the excitement
would become intense, especially in Africa and Arabia. The claims of the
Sultan would be repudiated at once. Still I think it probable that too
much has been made of this Mehdy in Europe. I do not think that the
Pachas of Constantinople have any more faith in his coming than Mr.
Herbert Spencer has in the second coming of Christ. They only fear that
some impostor may take advantage of the tradition to create division in
the empire. This is the real danger.
It has been evident for many years that the Sultans have felt that their
influence in the Mohammedan world was declining. They have seen that
beyond their own dominions the Caliph has no real authority; that
whatever influence they have depends upon the strength of their own
empire. Abd-ul-Medjid and Abd-ul-Aziz seem to have had a pretty clear
conception of their weakness, and of the necessity of restoring the
vitality of the Ottoman empire, by the introduction of radical reforms.
There is no reason to suppose that the Hatt-i-houmayoun and the other
innumerable Hatts issued by these Sultans, were all intended simply to
blind the eyes of Europe. None knew better than they that the empire
must be reformed or lost. But they were Caliphs as well as Sultans, and
what they would do as Sultans they could not do as Caliphs. The very
nature of their claims to the Caliphate made them more timid. They could
not execute the reforms which they promised, without encountering the
opposition of the whole body of the Ulema, the most powerful and the
best organized force in the empire. If they could have saved their
empire by resigning the Caliphate, they might possibly have been willing
to do it; but they were made to believe that in surrendering the
Caliphate they would lose the support of the only part of the nation
upon which they could fully depend. So they hesitated, promising much
and doing little, raising hopes on one side which could never be
forgotten, and raising fears on the other which they could not allay;
seeing clearly the need of reform, but seeing no way in which to
accomplish it. They could decide upon nothing, and drifted on until
Abd-ul-Aziz was deposed and assassinated by his own ministers, and the
empire was on the verge of ruin.
The next Sultan was overwhelmed by the burdens which fell upon him, and
in a few months was deposed as a lunatic. Sultan Hamid came to the
throne under these trying circumstances, and it seemed for a time that
he might be the last of the Sultans. He was but little known, as he had
been forced to live in retirement, and it was supposed that he would
follow meekly in the steps of his predecessors; but it very soon became
evident to those about him that he had a mind and a will of his
own--more than this, that he had a policy which he was determined to
carry out. A Sultan with a fixed policy was a new thing, and to this day
Europe is somewhat sceptical about it; but it very soon became apparent
to close observers at Constantinople. Sultan Hamid was determined to be
first of all the Caliph, the Imam-ul-Mussilmin, and to sacrifice all
other interests to this. His education had been exclusively religious,
and in his retirement he had lived a serious life, associating much with
the Ulema, who, no doubt, pointed out to him the vacillating policy of
his predecessors, and the danger that there was that the Caliphate and
the empire would be lost together. He determined to strengthen his
empire by restoring the influence of the Caliphate, and rallying the
Mohammedan world once more around the throne of Othman. Judged from a
European standpoint, this policy is at once reactionary and suicidal. It
ignores the fact that the Ottoman empire is dependent for its existence
upon the good-will of Europe; that it has measured its strength with a
single Christian Power, and been utterly crushed in a year. It ignores
the principle that a government can never be strong abroad which is weak
at home. It ignores the history of the last hundred years. It may be
doubted whether it is a policy which can be justified from the
standpoint of Islam. Turkey is the last surviving Mohammedan Power of
any importance. Its influence depends upon its strength, and its
strength upon the prosperity of its people, and this upon a wise and
enlightened administration of the government. It would seem that the
best thing the Sultan could have done for Islam, would have been not to
excite the fears of Europe by the phantom of a Panislamic league, but to
have devoted all his energies to the reformation of his government.
But Sultan Hamid chose the path of Faith rather than of Reason, and,
however we may think the choice unwise, we are bound to treat it with
respect. It is easy to say that it was a mere question of policy, and
very bad policy; it certainly was, but I think we have good reason to
believe that the Sultan was actuated by religious rather than political
motives, that he is a sincere and honest Moslem, and feels that it is
better to trust in God than in the Giaour. I have a sincere respect and
no little admiration for Sultan Hamid. Had he been less a Caliph and
more a Sultan, with his courage, industry, and pertinacity, he might
have done for Turkey what he has failed to do for Islam. He might have
revived and consolidated the empire. It is possible that he may do it
yet, and should he attempt it he will have the sympathy of the world.
But thus far, having transferred the seat of government from the Porte
to the Palace, having secured a declaration from the Ulema that his will
is the highest law, and that as Caliph he needs no advice, he has
sought, first of all, to make his influence felt in every part of the
Mohammedan world, to revive the spirit of Islam, and to unite it in
opposition to all European and Christian influences. Utterly unable to
resist Europe by force of arms, he has sought to outwit her by diplomacy
and finesse. I know of nothing more remarkable in the history of Turkey
than the skill with which he made a tool of Sir Henry Layard. Sir Henry
could not be bought; but he could be flattered and blinded by such
attentions as no Ottoman Sultan ever bestowed upon any Ambassador
before; and to accomplish this object, the Sultan did not hesitate to
ignore all Mohammedan ideas of propriety. His demonstrations of
friendship for Germany is another illustration of his diplomatic skill.
But while ready to yield any point of etiquette to accomplish his ends,
he has resisted to the last every attempt to induce him to do anything
to repress or punish any development of Moslem fanaticism. All Europe
combined could not force him to punish the murderer of Colonel
Coumaroff, the secretary of the Russian Embassy, who was shot down in
the street like a dog by a servant of the Palace; nor, so far as I know,
has he ever suffered a Moslem to be punished for murdering a Christian.
His agents have done their best to rouse the Mohammedans of India and
Central Asia. He has armed the tribes of Northern Africa against France,
and encouraged them to resist to the end. He has given new life to
Mohammedan fanaticism in Turkey. The change from the days of Abd-ul-Aziz
is very marked. The counsellors of the Sultan are no longer the
Ministers, but the astrologers, eunuchs, and holy men of the Palace. No
Mussulman could now change his faith in Constantinople without losing
his life. Firmans can no longer be obtained for Christian churches, and
it is extremely difficult to obtain permission to print a Christian
book, even in a Christian language. The greatest care is taken to seize
books of every description in the Custom House. It is not long since the
Life of Mr. Gladstone was seized as a forbidden book. It is a curious
fact in this connection that the fanaticism of the Government is far in
advance of the fanaticism of the people. There is no fear of the people,
except as they are encouraged and pushed forward by those in authority.
If left to themselves, Turks and Christians would have no difficulty in
living together amicably.
The relation of the Sultan to the rebellion in Egypt is not perfectly
clear, and probably never will be. In one sense he was no doubt the
cause of it. It was a direct result of the agitation which his policy
had roused. But it was not intended by Arabi to strengthen the power of
a Turkish Caliph. It was originally anti-Turkish, and looked to the
revival of the Arab Caliphate, as well as to the personal advantage of
Arabi himself. The Sultan could not oppose it without exciting the
enmity of those whom he most wished to conciliate, so he sought to
control it and turn it to his own advantage. He gave Arabi all possible
aid and support. There is no reason to suppose that Arabi and his
friends were deceived by this; but it was for their interest to avoid a
conflict with the Sultan as long as possible, and to get what aid from
him they could. But for the intervention of England, Arabi would no
doubt have won the game against the Turk. He might even have caused the
downfall of the Sultan; for it is a well-known fact that so great was
the enthusiasm of the Moslems in Syria and Arabia for Arabi, that they
were with difficulty restrained by the Turkish authorities from breaking
out into open rebellion. This spirit had been fostered by the Sultan;
but it naturally turned, not to the Turkish Caliph, but to the
successful Arab adventurer. Even in Asia Minor and Constantinople the
enthusiasm for Arabi was universal, and had he been allowed to triumph
unmolested, it seems probable the Sultan would have been forced either
to unite with him in a crusade against Christendom, or to send an army
to put him down. Either of these courses would have been fatal; for no
Moslem army would have fought against Arabi under such circumstances,
and as against Europe the Sultan could have accomplished nothing.
It is no doubt perfectly legitimate for a Caliph, especially for one
whose title depends upon the strength of his sword, to stir up the
enthusiasm of his people and attract their attention to himself as their
leader. He cannot be blamed for improving every occasion to defend their
rights and interfere in their behalf. If he is strong enough to do so,
it is no doubt in full accord with the example and teaching of the
Prophet that he should lead them against the infidels. It is not strange
that a man of faith should be so dazzled by the possibility of such a
crusade as to forget his own weakness. As he sits in his palace
to-night,[7] and hears the roar of the guns announcing the great
festival of Courban Beiram, and thinks that more than two hundred
millions of the faithful are uniting with him in the sacrifice, and
confessing their faith in the Prophet of whom he claims to be the
successor and representative, it will be strange if he does not dream of
what might be if he could but rally them round his throne; strange if he
does not catch something of the inspiration of the Prophet himself, who,
with God on his side, dared alone to face all Mecca, and with a few
half-naked Arabs to brave the world. There is nothing in the Palace
unfavourable to such a dream as this, and there will be nothing in the
pomp and ceremony of the homage to be paid to him to-morrow morning to
recall him from it. What a contrast it will be to come back from such a
dream of universal dominion, and the triumph of the true faith, to the
discussion of the sixty-first Article of the Treaty of Berlin and the
rights of the Armenians! It is perfectly legitimate for a Caliph to have
such dreams, and perfectly natural for him to prefer to try to realize
them, rather than to give his attention to the reform of his empire; but
without blaming the Caliph we may well doubt whether it is altogether
wise for the Sultan of Turkey to indulge in such dreams.
I believe that it would be better not only for Turkey but for Islam
also, if the Sultan would give up his doubtful title to the Caliphate,
and pass it over to the descendant of the Prophet who is Shereef of
Mecca. As for Turkey, this is the only hope of the empire; and the
experience of the Pope of Rome has made it clear that the loss of
temporal power tends rather to strengthen than to weaken a great
religious organization. There is no inclination in any part of the world
to persecute Mohammedans, or interfere in any way with their faith. Only
a very small minority of them are under the government of the Sultan,
and those who are not enjoy as much religious liberty as those who are.
This is not from fear of the Sultan, but it is in accord with the spirit
of the age, and the manifest interest of other Governments. As a Caliph
cannot by any possibility restore the strength of the Ottoman empire, so
a Sultan of Turkey cannot be the spiritual leader of millions who are
not in any way under his control. I see no reason to suppose that the
transfer of the Caliph to Mecca would in any way weaken the faith of
Moslems or diminish their zeal. Mohammedans in India and in Russia show
no more inclination to abandon their faith than those who reside at
Constantinople under the shadow of the Caliph; on the contrary, there is
more unbelief in Constantinople than there. What is more, there is every
reason to believe that such a transfer would gratify the great majority
of Mohammedans, probably a majority of those living in the Turkish
Empire, certainly all the Arabic-speaking population. In one way or
another this change is sure to come, however it may be resisted by the
Sultan; the very effort that he has made to arouse the spirit of Islam
has made it more apparent than before that he is really powerless to
defend any Mohammedan country against aggression. He could do nothing
for Tunis against France. He could do nothing for Arabi against England.
The very encouragement that he gave in these cases was an injury to
them. The Arabs are all ready to assert their rights to the Caliphate
and defend them against the Sultan. If he does not surrender the title
voluntarily, sooner or later they will take it by force, and that part
of the empire along with it.
The Sultan complains of the interference of Europe in the affairs of his
empire; but, in fact, he owes not only his throne, but his continued
possession of the Caliphate, to their protection. Let it be known in
Mecca to-day that Europe would favour such a change and encourage an
insurrection in Syria and Arabia, and the new Shereef of Mecca would
celebrate the Courban Beiram as Caliph amidst such enthusiasm as has not
been known there for a hundred years.
In spite of all this, however, in spite of the imperfection of his
title, and the coolness or discontent of Mohammedans throughout the
world, in spite of the growing weakness of the empire and his failure to
defend those whom he has encouraged to resist Europe, it is not probable
that Sultan Hamid will voluntarily surrender the Caliphate. Abd-ul-Aziz
might have done it to save his empire, but Sultan Hamid is too religious
a man; he values his title of Imam-ul-Mussilmin too highly to give it up
without a struggle. It is safe to conclude that he will cling to it
until it is taken by force by a stronger man.
I have already mentioned incidentally the relation of Europe to the
Caliphate. England and France are most directly interested in this
question, and hitherto their policy has been to sustain the claims of
the Sultans. They seem to be quite as anxious to maintain the Caliphate
of Constantinople as the Sultans themselves, and its continuance has
been due in great measure to their protection. As the interest of France
in this question is only secondary, I will confine myself to the policy
of England. It is not strange that England, with her Indian Empire and
40,000,000 Mohammedan subjects, should be deeply interested in the
question of the Caliphate. It must be a question of vital importance to
her whether it is better for the peace of India to have the Caliphate in
the hands of a temporal sovereign at Constantinople or of a Shereef of
Mecca in Arabia. So long as she was in close alliance with the Sultan,
and her influence at Constantinople was supreme, there could not be any
doubt on this subject, for a Caliph at Mecca would be practically beyond
her reach; but since the Crimean war English influence has seldom been
paramount at Constantinople. Still, English statesmen have probably
reasoned that, even if he were decidedly unfriendly, it was better to
have a Caliph who had something to lose, and who, on occasion, could be
reached by a British fleet and bombarded in his palace, than one in the
deserts of Arabia, who could not be reached by pressure of any kind,
either diplomatic or military, who might proclaim a holy war without
fear of being called to account for it. There is always a great
practical advantage in dealing with a responsible person. Then, again,
the late Sultans have manifested no inclination to rouse the fanaticism
of Mohammedans against Christendom. They have been only anxious that
Christendom should forget them, and leave them to manage their own
affairs in their own way. Under these circumstances no English interest
has demanded the consideration of the question of the Caliphate. It is a
religious question which no Christian Government could wish to take up
unless forced to do so. Whatever the Turks may believe, it is certain
that no European Power has any inclination to enter upon a crusade
against the Mohammedan religion. Even the Pope of Rome, who in former
days decreed crusades against the Moslem, is now on terms of the most
friendly intimacy with the Caliph. England not only carefully protects
the rights of Mohammedans in India, but she has used all her influence
for years to strengthen the Ottoman Empire and discourage all agitation
against the Caliphate of the Sultan.
Such has been the policy of the past. But circumstances have changed,
and long-cherished hopes have been disappointed. The effort to reform
and strengthen the Turkish empire has failed chiefly because the Sultans
have been unwilling or unable to abandon the strictly religious
constitution of the Government, and to distinguish between their duties
as Caliphs, and their duties as civil rulers over a mixed population of
various sects. This failure has led to most unhappy complications in
Europe, to the dismemberment of European Turkey, and to a great
development of the influence of Russia, the Power most unfriendly to the
existence of the Turkish Empire. It is now clear to all the world that
Turkey cannot be reformed by a Caliph. In addition to this, the present
Sultan, departing from the prudent course of his predecessors, has
undertaken to rouse the hostility of Islam against Christendom, and to
encourage fanatical outbreaks, not only in Africa, but in Asia as well.
As Caliph he is no longer the friendly ally of the Christian Powers,
but, as far as he dares, is acting against them. Under these changed
circumstances the question must arise whether it is any longer for the
interest of England to defend the Caliphate of Constantinople. It is not
a question of deposing one Caliph and setting up another. This is not
the work of a Christian Power. It is for Mohammedans to settle this
question among themselves. If they prefer to continue to recognize the
Sultan as Caliph, they should be free to do so. But the policy of
England has not hitherto been one of neutrality. It has been the active
support of the Sultan. The question now is whether this support should
not be withdrawn, and the Arabs made to understand that if they prefer
an Arab Caliph at Mecca, England will not interfere to prevent it.
This is a very serious question, and the plan is open to the objection
already suggested of the inaccessibility of Mecca. It is also to be
considered that the Arabs are more fanatical and more easily excited
than the Turks. But, on the other hand, it may be doubted whether the
influence of the Shereef of Mecca would be greatly increased by his
assuming the title of Caliph. It would not be recognized by the Turks,
and Constantinople would be even more opposed to Mecca than it is now.
The nature of the new Caliph's influence would be the same that it is
now as Shereef of Mecca--a purely moral influence.
Another thing to be considered is the fact that this is only a question
of time. Sooner or later this change is sure to come. As the power of
the Sultan continues to decline, he will be less and less able to resist
the progress of this Arab movement. It is not easy to see exactly what
England will gain by postponing this change. Certainly not the
friendship of the Arabs. I cannot speak with authority of the feeling in
India; but it is understood that Indian Mohammedans sympathize with the
Arabs rather than the Turks. I cannot presume to give a decided opinion
on this question; but the new responsibilities assumed by the British
Government in Egypt, make it one of immediate practical importance. Are
the real interests of England with the Turk or the Arab?
FOOTNOTES:
[6] We have received this article from a valued correspondent, whose
name, for obvious reasons, is not given.--ED.
[7] The eve of Courban Beiram.
THE BOLLANDISTS:
THE LITERARY HISTORY OF A MAGNUM OPUS.
The majority of educated people have, from time to time, in the course
of their historical reading, come across some mention of the "Acta
Sanctorum," or "Lives of the Saints;" while but few know anything as to
the contents, or authorship, or history of that work. Yet it is a very
great, nay a stupendous monument of what human industry, steadily
directed for ages towards one point, can effect. Industry, directed for
ages, I have said--an expression, which to some must seem almost like a
misprint, but which is quite justified by facts, since the first volume
issued by the company of the Bollandists, is dated Antwerp, 1643; and
the last, Paris, A.D. 1875. Two hundred and forty years have thus
elapsed, and yet the work is not concluded. Indeed, as it has taken
well-nigh two centuries and a half to narrate the lives of the Saints
commemorated in the first ten months of the year, it may easily happen
that the bones of the present generation will all be mingled with the
dust, before those Saints be reached who are celebrated on the 31st of
December. Some indeed--prejudiced by the very name "Acta Sanctorum"--may
be inclined to turn away, with a contempt bred of ignorance, from the
whole subject. But if it were only as a mental and intellectual tonic
the contemplation of these sixty stately folios, embracing about a
thousand pages each, would be a most healthy exercise for the men of
this age. This is the halcyon period of primers, introductions,
handbooks, manuals. "Knowledge made Easy" is the cry on every side. We
take our mental pabulum just as we take Liebig's essence of beef, in a
very concentrated form, or as hom[oe]opathists imbibe their medicine, in
the shape of globules. I do not desire, however, to say one word against
such publications. The great scholars of the seventeenth century, the
Bollandists, Casaubon, Fabricius, Valesius Baluze, D'Achery, Mabillon,
Combefis, Vossius, Canisius, shut up their learning in immense folios,
which failed to reach the masses as our primers and handbooks do,
penetrating the darkness and diffusing knowledge in regions inaccessible
to their more ponderous brethren. But at the same time their majestic
tomes stand as everlasting protests on behalf of real and learned
inquiry, of accurate, painstaking, and often most critical research into
the sources whence history, if worth anything, must be drawn.
I propose in this paper to give an account of the origin, progress,
contents, and value of the work of the Bollandists, regarded as the
vastest repertory of original material for the history of mediæval
times. This immense series is popularly known either as the "Acta
Sanctorum" or the Bollandists. The former is the proper designation. The
latter, however, will suit best as the peg on which we shall hang our
narrative. John Bolland, or Joannes Bollandus as it is in Latin, was the
name of the founder of a Company which, more fortunate than most
literary clubs, has lasted well-nigh three centuries. To him must be
ascribed the honour of initiating the work, drawing the lines and laying
the foundations of a building which has not yet been completed. That
work was one often contemplated but never undertaken on the same
exhaustive principles. Clement, the reputed disciple of the Apostles
Peter and Paul, is reported--in the "Liber Pontificalis" or "Lives of
the Popes;" dating from the early years of the sixth century--to have
made provision for preserving the "Acts of the Martyrs." Apocryphal as
this account seems, yet the honest reader of Eusebius must confess that
the idea was no novel one in the second century, as is manifest from the
well-known letter narrating the sufferings of the martyrs of Lyons and
Vienne. Space would now fail us to trace the development of hagiography
in the Church. Let it suffice to say that century after century, as it
slowly rolled by, contributed its quota both in east and west. In the
east even an emperor, Basil, gave his name to a Greek martyrology; while
in both west and east the writings of Metaphrastes, Mombritius, Surius,
Lipomanus, and Baronius, embalmed abundant legends in many a portly
volume. Still the mind of a certain Heribert Rosweid, a professor at
Douai, a Jesuit and an enthusiastic antiquarian, was not satisfied.
Rosweid was a typical instance of those Jesuits, learned and devout, who
at a great crisis in the battle restored the fallen fortunes of the
Church of Rome. As the original idea of the "Acta Sanctorum" is due to
him, we may be pardoned in giving a brief sketch of his career, though
he was not in strictness a member of the Bollandist Company.
Rosweid was born at Utrecht, in 1569, and entered the Society of Jesus
in 1589, the year when all Europe, and the world at large, was ringing
with the defeat of the Armada and the triumph of Protestantism. He
studied and taught first at Douai and then at Antwerp, where, also after
the manner of the Jesuits, he entered upon active pastoral work, in
which he caught a contagious fever, of which he died A.D. 1629. His
literary life was very active, and very fruitful in such literature as
delighted that age. Thus he produced editions of various martyrologies,
the modern Roman, the ancient Roman, and that of Ado; he discussed the
question of keeping faith with heretics; took an active share in the
everlasting controversy concerning the "Imitatio Christi," wherein he
espoused the side of A-Kempis and the Augustinians, as against Gerson
and the Benedictines; published the lives of the Eastern Ascetics, who
were the founders of modern monasticism; debated with Isaac Casaubon
concerning Baronius; and published, in 1607, the "Lives of the Belgic
Saints," where we find the first sketch or general plan of the "Acta
Sanctorum." The idea of this great work suggested itself to Rosweid
while living at Douai, where he used to employ his leisure time in the
libraries of the neighbouring Benedictine monasteries, in search of
manuscripts bearing on the lives of the Saints. It was an age of
criticism, and he doubtless felt dissatisfied with all existing
compilations, content as they were to repeat, parrot-like and without
any examination, the legends of earlier ages. It was an age of research,
too--more fruitful in some respects than those which have followed--and
he felt that an immense mass of original material had never yet been
utilized. It was at this period of his life he produced the work above
mentioned, which we have briefly named the "Lives of the Belgic Saints,"
but the full title of which is, "Fasti Sanctorum quorum Vitæ in Belgicis
Bibliothecis Manuscriptæ." He intended it as a specimen of a greater and
more comprehensive work, embracing the lives of all the Saints known to
the Church throughout the world. He proposed that it should embrace
sixteen volumes, divided in the following manner:--The first volume
dealing with the life of Christ and the great feasts; the second with
the life of the Blessed Virgin and her feasts; the third to the
sixteenth with the lives of the Saints according to the days of the
month, together with no less than thirteen distinct indexes,
biographical, historical, controversial, geographical, and moral; so
that the reader might not have any ground for the complaint so often
brought against modern German scholars, that they afford no apparatus to
help the busy student when consulting their works. Rosweid's idea as to
the manner in which those volumes should be compiled was no less
original. He proposed first of all to bring together all the lives of
Saints that had been ever published by previous hagiographers; which he
would then compare with anc
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/25957