Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Demijohn" to "Destructors"
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Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Demijohn" to "Destructors"
Author: Various
Release date: December 15, 2009 [eBook #30685]
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Transcriber's notes:
(1) A few typographical errors have been corrected: they are
underlined in the HTML version.
(2) Chapter headings were originally constructed as side-notes. They
were placed here at the head of their respective paragraphs, and moved
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ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME VIII slice II
Demijohn to Destructor
DEMIJOHN, a glass bottle or jar with a large round body and narrow neck,
encased in wicker-work and provided with handles. The word is also used
of an earthenware jar, similarly covered with wicker. The capacity of a
demijohn varies from two to twelve gallons, but the common size contains
five gallons. According to the _New English Dictionary_ the word is an
adaptation of a French _Dame Jeanne_, or Dame Jane, an application of a
personal name to an object which is not uncommon; cf. the use of "Toby"
for a particular form of jug and the many uses of the name "Jack."
DEMISE, an Anglo-French legal term (from the Fr. _démettre_, Lat.
_dimittere_, to send away) for a transfer of an estate, especially by
lease. The word has an operative effect in a lease implying a covenant
for "quiet enjoyment" (see LANDLORD AND TENANT). The phrase "demise of
the crown" is used in English law to signify the immediate transfer of
the sovereignty, with all its attributes and prerogatives, to the
successor without any interregnum in accordance with the maxim "the king
never dies." At common law the death of the sovereign _eo facto_
dissolved parliament, but this was abolished by the Representation of
the People Act 1867, § 51. Similarly the common law doctrine that all
offices held under the crown determined at its demise has been negatived
by the Demise of the Crown Act 1901. "Demise" is thus often used loosely
for death or decease.
DEMIURGE (Gr. [Greek: dêmiourgos], from [Greek: dêmios], of or for the
people, and [Greek: ergon], work), a handicraftsman or artisan. In Homer
the word has a wide application, including not only hand-workers but
even heralds and physicians. In Attica the demiurgi formed one of the
three classes (with the Eupatridae and the geomori, georgi or agroeci)
into which the early population was divided (cf. Arist. _Ath. Pol._
xiii. 2). They represented either a class of the whole population, or,
according to Busolt, a commercial nobility (see EUPATRIDAE). In the
sense of "worker for the people" the word was used throughout the
Peloponnese, with the exception of Sparta, and in many parts of Greece,
for a higher magistrate. The demiurgi among other officials represent
Elis and Mantineia at the treaty of peace between Athens, Argos, Elis
and Mantineia in 420 B.C. (Thuc. v. 47). In the Achaean League (q.v.)
the name is given to ten elective officers who presided over the
assembly, and Corinth sent "Epidemiurgi" every year to Potidaea,
officials who apparently answered to the Spartan harmosts. In Plato
[Greek: dêmiourgos] is the name given to the "creator of the world"
(_Timaeus_, 40) and the word was so adopted by the Gnostics (see
GNOSTICISM).
DEMMIN, a town of Germany, kingdom of Prussia, on the navigable river
Peene (which in the immediate neighbourhood receives the Trebel and the
Tollense), 72 m. W.N.W. of Stettin, on the Berlin-Stralsund railway.
Pop. (1905) 12,541. It has manufactures of textiles, besides breweries,
distilleries and tanneries, and an active trade in corn and timber.
The town is of Slavonian origin and of considerable antiquity, and was a
place of importance in the time of Charlemagne. It was besieged by a
German army in 1148, and captured by Henry the Lion in 1164. In the
Thirty Years' War Demmin was the object of frequent conflicts, and even
after the peace of Westphalia was taken and retaken in the contest
between the electoral prince and the Swedes. It passed to Prussia in
1720, and its fortifications were dismantled in 1759. In 1807 several
engagements took place in the vicinity between the French and Russians.
DEMOCHARES (c. 355-275 B.C.), nephew of Demosthenes, Athenian orator and
statesman, was one of the few distinguished Athenians in the period of
decline. He is first heard of in 322, when he spoke in vain against the
surrender of Demosthenes and the other anti-Macedonian orators demanded
by Antipater. During the next fifteen years he probably lived in exile.
On the restoration of the democracy by Demetrius Poliorcetes in 307 he
occupied a prominent position, but was banished in 303 for having
ridiculed the decree of Stratocles, which contained a fulsome eulogy of
Demetrius. He was recalled in 298, and during the next four years[1]
fortified and equipped the city with provisions and ammunition. In 296
(or 295) he was again banished for having concluded an alliance with the
Boeotians, and did not return until 287 (or 286). In 280 he induced the
Athenians to erect a public monument in honour of his uncle with a
suitable inscription. After his death (some five years later) the son of
Demochares proposed and obtained a decree (Plutarch, _Vitae decem
oratorum_, p. 851) that a statue should be erected in his honour,
containing a record of his public services, which seem to have consisted
in a reduction of public expenses, a more prudent management of the
state finances (after his return in 287) and successful begging missions
to the rulers of Egypt and Macedonia. Although a friend of the Stoic
Zeno, Demochares regarded all other philosophers as the enemies of
freedom, and in 306 supported the proposal of one Sophocles, advocating
their expulsion from Attica. According to Cicero (_Brutus_, 83)
Demochares was the author of a history of his own times, written in an
oratorical rather than a historical style. As a speaker he was noted for
his freedom of language (_Parrhesiastes_, Seneca, _De ira_, iii. 23). He
was violently attacked by Timaeus, but found a strenuous defender in
Polybius (xii. 13).
See also Plutarch, _Demosthenes_, 30, _Demetrius_, 24, _Vitae decem
oratorum_, p. 847; J. G. Droysen's essay on Demochares in
_Zeitschrift für die Altertumswissenschaft_ (1836), Nos. 20, 21.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] For the "four years' war" and the chronological questions involved,
see C. W. Müller, _Frag. Hist. Graec._ ii. 445.
DEMOCRACY (Gr. [Greek: dêmokratia], from [Greek: dêmos], the people,
i.e. the commons, and [Greek: kratos], rule), in political science, that
form of government in which the people rules itself, either directly, as
in the small city-states of Greece, or through representatives.
According to Aristotle, democracy is the perverted form of the third
form of government, which he called [Greek: politeia], "polity" or
"constitutional government," the rule of the majority of the free and
equal citizens, as opposed to monarchy and aristocracy, the rule
respectively of an individual and of a minority consisting of the best
citizens (see GOVERNMENT and ARISTOCRACY). Aristotle's restriction of
"democracy" to _bad_ popular government, i.e. mob-rule, or, as it has
sometimes been called, "ochlocracy" ([Greek: ochlos], mob), was due to
the fact that the Athenian democracy had in his day degenerated far
below the ideals of the 5th century, when it reached its zenith under
Pericles. Since Aristotle's day the word has resumed its natural
meaning, but democracy in modern times is a very different thing from
what it was in its best days in Greece and Rome. The Greek states were
what are known as "city-states," the characteristic of which was that
all the citizens could assemble together in the city at regular
intervals for legislative and other purposes. This sovereign assembly of
the people was known at Athens as the Ecclesia (q.v.), at Sparta as the
Apella (q.v.), at Rome variously as the Comitia Centuriata or the
Concilium Plebis (see COMITIA). Of representative government in the
modern sense there is practically no trace in Athenian history, though
certain of the magistrates (see STRATEGUS) had a quasi-representative
character. Direct democracy is impossible except in small states. In the
second place the qualification for citizenship was rigorous; thus
Pericles restricted citizenship to those who were the sons of an
Athenian father, himself a citizen, and an Athenian mother ([Greek: ex
amphoin astoin]). This system excluded not only all the slaves, who were
more numerous than the free population, but also resident aliens,
subject allies, and those Athenians whose descent did not satisfy this
criterion ([Greek: tô genei mê katharoi]). The Athenian democracy, which
was typical in ancient Greece, was a highly exclusive form of
government.
With the growth of empire and nation states this narrow parochial type
of democracy became impossible. The population became too large and the
distance too great for regular assemblies of qualified citizens. The
rigid distinction of citizens and non-citizens was progressively more
difficult to maintain, and new criteria of citizenship came into force.
The first difficulty has been met by various forms of representative
government. The second problem has been solved in various ways in
different countries; moderate democracies have adopted a low property
qualification, while extreme democracy is based on the extension of
citizenship to all adult persons with or without distinction of sex. The
essence of modern representative government is that the people does not
govern itself, but periodically elects those who shall govern on its
behalf (see GOVERNMENT; REPRESENTATION).
DEMOCRATIC PARTY, originally DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY, the oldest of
existing political parties in the United States. Its origin lay in the
principles of local self-government and repugnance to social and
political aristocracy established as cardinal tenets of American
colonial democracy, which by the War of Independence, which was
essentially a democratic movement, became the basis of the political
institutions of the nation. The evils of lax government, both central
and state, under the Confederation caused, however, a marked
anti-democratic reaction, and this united with the temperamental
conservatism of the framers of the constitution of 1787 in the shaping
of that conservative instrument. The influences and interests for and
against its adoption took form in the groupings of Federalists and
Anti-Federalists, and these, after the creation of the new government,
became respectively, in underlying principles, and, to a large extent,
in personnel, the Federalist party (q.v.) and the Democratic-Republican
party.[1] The latter, organized by Thomas Jefferson in opposition to the
Federalists dominated by Alexander Hamilton, was a real party by 1792.
The great service of attaching to the constitution a democratic bill of
rights belongs to the Anti-Federalists or Democratic-Republican party,
although this was then amorphous. The Democratic-Republican party gained
full control of the government, save the judiciary, in 1801, and
controlled it continuously thereafter until 1825. No political
"platforms" were then known, but the writings of Jefferson, who
dominated his party throughout this period, take the place of such. His
inaugural address of 1801 is a famous statement of democratic
principles, which to-day are taken for granted only because, through the
party organized by him to secure their success, they became universally
accepted as the ideal of American institutions. In all the colonies,
says John Adams, "a court and a country party had always contended";
Jefferson's followers believed sincerely that the Federalists were a new
court party, and monarchist. Hence they called themselves "Republicans"
as against monarchists,--standing also, incidentally, for states' rights
against the centralization that monarchy (or any approach to it)
implied; and "Democrats" as against aristocrats,--standing for the
"common rights of Englishmen," the "rights of man," the levelling of
social ranks and the widening of political privileges. In the early
years of its history--and during the period of the French Revolution and
afterwards--the Republicans sympathized with the French as against the
British, the Federalists with the British as against the French.
Devotion to abstract principles of democracy and liberty, and in
practical politics a strict construction of the constitution, in order
to prevent an aggrandizement of national power at the expense of the
states (which were nearer popular control) or the citizens, have been
permanent characteristics of the Democratic party as contrasted with its
principal opponents; but neither these nor any other distinctions have
been continuously or consistently true throughout its long course.[2]
After 1801 the commercial and manufacturing nationalistic[3] elements of
the Federalist party, being now dependent on Jefferson for protection,
gradually went over to the Republicans, especially after the War of
1812; moreover, administration of government naturally developed in
Republican ranks a group of broad-constructionists. These groups fused,
and became an independent party.[4] They called themselves _National_
Republicans, while the Jacksonian Republicans soon came to be known
simply as Democrats.[5] Immediately afterward followed the tremendous
victory of the Jacksonians in 1828,--a great advance in radical
democracy over the victory of 1800. In the interval the Federalist party
had disappeared, and practically the entire country, embracing
Jeffersonian democracy, had passed through the school of the Republican
party. It had established the power of the "people" in the sense of that
word in present-day American politics. Bills of rights in every state
constitution protected the citizen; some state judges were already
elective; very soon the people came to nominate their presidential
candidates in national conventions, and draft their party platforms
through their convention representatives.[6] After the National
Republican scission the Democratic party, weakened thereby in its
nationalistic tendencies, and deprived of the leadership of Jackson,
fell quickly under the control of its Southern adherents and became
virtually sectional in its objects. Its states' rights doctrine was
turned to the defence of slavery. In thus opposing anti-slavery
sentiment--inconsistently, alike as regarded the "rights of man" and
constitutional construction, with its original and permanent
principles--it lost morale and power. As a result of the contest over
Kansas it became fatally divided, and in 1860 put forward two
presidential tickets: one representing the doctrine of Jefferson Davis
that the constitution recognized slave-property, and therefore the
national government must protect slavery in the territories; the other
representing Douglas's doctrine that the inhabitants of a territory
might virtually exclude slavery by "unfriendly legislation." The
combined popular votes for the two tickets exceeded that cast by the
new, anti-slavery Republican party (the second of the name) for Lincoln;
but the election was lost. During the ensuing Civil War such members of
the party as did not become War Democrats antagonized the Lincoln
administration, and in 1864 made the great blunder of pronouncing the
war "a failure." Owing to Republican errors in reconstruction and the
scandals of President Grant's administration, the party gradually
regained its strength and morale, until, having largely subordinated
Southern questions to economic issues, it cast for Tilden for president
in 1876 a popular vote greater than that obtained by the Republican
candidate, Hayes, and gained control of the House of Representatives.
The Electoral Commission, however, made Hayes president, and the quiet
acceptance of this decision by the Democratic party did it considerable
credit.
Since 1877 the Southern states have been almost solidly Democratic; but,
except on the negro question, such unanimity among Southern whites has
been, naturally, factitious; and by no means an unmixed good for the
party. Apart from the "Solid South," the period after 1875 is
characterized by two other party difficulties. The first was the attempt
from 1878 to 1896 to "straddle" the silver issue;[7] the second, an
attempt after 1896 to harmonize general elements of conservatism and
radicalism within the party. In 1896 the South and West gained control
of the organization, and the national campaigns of 1896 and 1900 were
fought and lost mainly on the issue of "free silver," which, however,
was abandoned before 1904. After 1898 "imperialism," to which the
Democrats were hostile, became another issue. Finally, after 1896, there
became very apparent in the party a tendency to attract the radical
elements of society in the general re-alignment of parties taking place
on industrial-social issues; the Democratic party apparently attracting,
in this readjustment, the "radicals" and the "masses" as in the time of
Jefferson and Jackson. In this process, in the years 1896-1900, it took
over many of the principles and absorbed, in large part, the members of
the radical third-party of the "Populists," only to be confronted
thereupon by the growing strength of Socialism, challenging it to a
farther radical widening of its programme. From 1860 to 1908 it elected
but a single president (Grover Cleveland, 1885-1889 and 1893-1897).[8]
All American parties accepted long ago in theory "Jeffersonian
democracy"; but the Democratic party has been "the political champion of
those elements of the [American] democracy which are most democratic. It
stands nearest the people."[9] It may be noted that the Jeffersonian
Republicans did not attempt to democratize the constitution itself. The
choice of a president was soon popularized, however, in effect; and the
popular election of United States senators is to-day a definite
Democratic tenet.[10]
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--For an exposition of the party's principles see Thomas
Jefferson, _Writings_, ed. by P. L. Ford (10 vols., New York,
1892-1899); J. P. Foley (ed.), _The Jeffersonian Cyclopaedia_ (New
York, 1900); and especially the _Campaign Text-Books_ of more recent
times, usually issued by the national Democratic committee in
alternate years, and M. Carey, _The Democratic Speaker's Handbook_
(Cincinnati, 1868). For a hostile criticism of the party, see W. D.
Jones, _Mirror of Modern Democracy_; _History of the Democratic Party
from 1825 to 1861_ (New York, 1864); Jonathan Norcross, _History of
Democracy Considered as a Party-Name and a Political Organization_
(New York, 1883); J. H. Patton, _The Democratic Party: Its Political
History and Influence_ (New York, 1884). Favourable treatises are R.
H. Gillet, _Democracy in the United States_ (New York, 1868); and
George Fitch, _Political Facts: an Historical Text-Book of the
Democratic and Other Parties_ (Baltimore, 1884). See also, for
general political history, Thomas H. Benton, _Thirty Years' View_ (2
vols., New York, 1854-1856, and later editions); James G. Blaine,
_Twenty Years of Congress_ (2 vols., Norwich, Conn., 1884-1893); S.
S. Cox, _Three Decades of Federal Legislation_ (Providence, 1885); S.
P. Orth, _Five American Politicians: a Study in the Evolution of
American Politics_ (Cleveland, 1906), containing sketches of four
Democratic leaders--Burr, De Witt Clinton, Van Buren and Douglas; J.
Macy, _Party Organization and Machinery_ (New York, 1904); J. H.
Hopkins, _History of Political Parties in the United States_ (New
York, 1900); E. S. Stanwood, _History of the Presidency_ (last ed.,
Boston, 1904); J. P. Gordy, _History of Political Parties_, i. (New
York, 1900); H. J. Ford, _Rise and Growth of American Politics_ (New
York, 1898); Alexander Johnston, _History of American Politics_ (New
York, 1900, and later editions); C. E. Merriam, _A History of
American Political Theories_ (New York, 1903), containing chapters on
the Jeffersonian and the Jacksonian Democracy; and James A. Woodburn,
_Political Parties and Party Problems in the United States_ (New
York, 1903).
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The prefix "Democratic" was not used by Jefferson; it became
established, however, and official.
[2] Under the rubric of "strict construction" fall the greatest
struggles in the party's history: those over the United States Bank,
over tariffs--for protection or for "revenue" only--over "internal
improvements," over issues of administrative economy in providing for
the "general welfare," &c. The course of the party has frequently
been inconsistent, and its doctrines have shown, absolutely
considered, progressive latitudinarianism.
[3] "Nationalistic" is used here and below, not in the sense of a
general nationalistic spirit, such as that of Jackson, but to
indicate the centralizing tendency of a broad construction of
constitutional powers in behalf of commerce and manufactures.
[4] Standing for protective tariffs, internal improvements, &c.
[5] It should be borne in mind, however, that the Democratic party of
Jackson was not strictly _identical_ with the Democratic-Republican
party of Jefferson,--and some writers date back the origin of the
present Democratic party only to 1828-1829.
[6] The Democratic national convention of 1832 was preceded by an
Anti-Masonic convention of 1830 and by the National-Republican
convention of 1831; but the Democratic platform of 1840 was the first
of its kind.
[7] The attitude of the Republican party was no less inconsistent and
evasive.
[8] It controlled the House of Representatives from 1874 to 1894
except in 1880-1882 and 1888-1890; but except for a time in
Cleveland's second term, there were never simultaneously a Democratic
president and a Democratic majority in Congress.
[9] Professor A. D. Morse in _International Monthly_, October 1900.
He adds, "It has done more to Americanize the foreigner than all
other parties." (It is predominant in the great cities of the
country.)
[10] In connexion with the prevalent popular tendency to regard the
president as a people's tribune, it may be noted that a strong
presidential veto is, historically, peculiarly a Democratic
contribution, owing to the history of Jackson's (compare Cleveland's)
administration.
DEMOCRITUS, probably the greatest of the Greek physical philosophers,
was a native of Abdera in Thrace, or as some say--probably wrongly--of
Miletus (Diog. Laërt. ix. 34). Our knowledge of his life is based almost
entirely on tradition of an untrustworthy kind. He seems to have been
born about 470 or 460 B.C., and was, therefore, an older contemporary of
Socrates. He inherited a considerable property, which enabled him to
travel widely in the East in search of information. In Egypt he settled
for seven years, during which he studied the mathematical and physical
systems of the ancient schools. The extent to which he was influenced by
the Magi and the Eastern astrologists is a matter of pure conjecture. He
returned from his travels impoverished; one tradition says that he
received 500 talents from his fellow-citizens, and that a public funeral
was decreed him. Another tradition states that he was regarded as insane
by the Abderitans, and that Hippocrates was summoned to cure him.
Diodorus Siculus tells us that he died at the age of ninety; others make
him as much as twenty years older. His works, according to Diogenes
Laërtius, numbered seventy-two, and were characterized by a purity of
style which compares favourably with that of Plato. The absurd epithet,
the "laughing philosopher," applied to him by some unknown and very
superficial thinker, may possibly have contributed in some measure to
the fact that his importance was for centuries overlooked. It is
interesting, however, to notice that Bacon (_De Principiis_) assigns to
him his true place in the history of thought, and points out that both
in his own day and later "in the times of Roman learning" he was spoken
of in terms of the highest praise. In the variety of his knowledge, and
in the importance of his influence on both Greek and modern speculation
he was the Aristotle of the 5th century, while the sanity of his
metaphysical theory has led many to regard him as the equal, if not the
superior, of Plato.
His views may be treated under the following heads:--
1. _The Atoms and Cosmology_ (adopted in part at least from the
doctrines of Leucippus, though the relations between the two are
hopelessly obscure). While agreeing with the Eleatics as to the eternal
sameness of Being (nothing can arise out of nothing; nothing can be
reduced to nothing), Democritus followed the physicists in denying its
oneness and immobility. Movement and plurality being necessary to
explain the phenomena of the universe and impossible without space
(not-Being), he asserted that the latter had an equal right with Being
to be considered existent. Being is the Full ([Greek: plêres], plenum);
not-Being is the Void ([Greek: kenon], _vacuum_), the infinite space in
which moved the infinite number of atoms into which the single Being of
the Eleatics was broken up. These atoms are eternal and invisible;
absolutely small, so small that their size cannot be diminished (hence
the name [Greek: atomos], "indivisible"); absolutely full and
incompressible, they are without pores and entirely fill the space they
occupy; homogeneous, differing only in figure (as A from N), arrangement
(as AN from NA), position (as N is Z on its side), magnitude (and
consequently in weight, although some authorities dispute this). But
while the atoms thus differ in quantity, their differences of quality
are only apparent, due to the impressions caused on our senses by
different configurations and combinations of atoms. A thing is only hot
or cold, sweet or bitter, hard or soft by convention ([Greek: nomô]);
the only things that exist in reality ([Greek: eteê]) are the atoms and
the void. Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities is
here anticipated. Thus, the atoms of water and iron are the same, but
those of the former, being smooth and round, and therefore unable to
hook on to one another, roll over and over like small globes, whereas
the atoms of iron, being rough, jagged and uneven, cling together and
form a solid body. Since all phenomena are composed of the same eternal
atoms (just as a tragedy and a comedy contain the same letters) it may
be said that nothing comes into being or perishes in the absolute sense
of the words (cf. the modern "indestructibility of matter" and
"conservation of energy"), although the compounds of the atoms are
liable to increase and decrease, appearance and disappearance--in other
words, to birth and death. As the atoms are eternal and uncaused, so is
motion; it has its origin in a preceding motion, and so on _ad
infinitum_. For the Love and Hate of Empedocles and the _Nous_
(Intelligence) of Anaxagoras, Democritus substituted fixed and necessary
laws (not chance; that is a misrepresentation due chiefly to Cicero).
Everything can be explained by a purely mechanical (but not fortuitous)
system, in which there is no room for the idea of a providence or an
intelligent cause working with a view to an end. The origin of the
universe was explained as follows. An infinite number of atoms was
carried downwards through infinite space. The larger (and heavier),
falling with greater velocity, overtook and collided with the smaller
(and lighter), which were thereby forced upwards. This caused various
lateral and contrary movements, resulting in a whirling movement
([Greek: dinê]) resembling the rotation of Anaxagoras, whereby similar
atoms were brought together (as in the winnowing of grain) and united to
form larger bodies and worlds. Atoms and void being infinite in number
and extent, and motion having always existed, there must always have
been an infinite number of worlds, all consisting of similar atoms, in
various stages of growth and decay.
2. _The Soul._--Democritus devoted considerable attention to the
structure of the human body, the noblest portion of which he considered
to be the soul, which everywhere pervades it, a psychic atom being
intercalated between two corporeal atoms. Although, in accordance with
his principles, Democritus was bound to regard the soul as material
(composed of round, smooth, specially mobile atoms, identified with the
fire-atoms floating in the air), he admitted a distinction between it
and the body, and is even said to have looked upon it as something
divine. These all-pervading soul atoms exercise different functions in
different organs; the head is the seat of reason, the heart of anger,
the liver of desire. Life is maintained by the inhalation of fresh atoms
to replace those lost by exhalation, and when respiration, and
consequently the supply of atoms, ceases, the result is death. It
follows that the soul perishes with, and in the same sense as, the body.
3. _Perception._--Sensations are the changes produced in the soul by
external impressions, and are the result of contact, since every action
of one body (and all representations are corporeal phenomena) upon
another is of the nature of a shock. Certain emanations ([Greek:
aporrhoai, aporrhoiai]) or images ([Greek: eidôla]), consisting of
subtle atoms, thrown off from the surface of an object, penetrate the
body through the pores. On the principle that like acts upon like, the
particular senses are only affected by that which resembles them. We see
by means of the eye alone, and hear by means of the ear alone, these
organs being best adapted to receive the images or sound currents. The
organs are thus merely conduits or passages through which the atoms pour
into the soul. The eye, for example, is damp and porous, and the act of
seeing consists in the reflection of the image ([Greek: deikelon])
mirrored on the smooth moist surface of the pupil. To the interposition
of air is due the fact that all visual images are to some extent
blurred. At the same time Democritus distinguished between obscure
([Greek: skotiê]) cognition, resting on sensation alone, and genuine
([Greek: gnêsiê]), which is the result of inquiry by reason, and is
concerned with atoms and void, the only real existences. This knowledge,
however, he confessed was exceedingly difficult to attain.
It is in Democritus first that we find a real attempt to explain colour.
He regards black, red, white and green as primary. White is
characteristically smooth, i.e. casting no shadow, even, flat; black is
uneven, rough, shadowy and so on. The other colours result from various
mixtures of these four, and are infinite in number. Colour itself is not
objective; it is found not in the ultimate _plenum_ and _vacuum_, but
only in derived objects according to their physical qualities and
relations.
4. _Theology._--The system of Democritus was altogether anti-theistic.
But, although he rejected the notion of a deity taking part in the
creation or government of the universe, he yielded to popular prejudice
so far as to admit the existence of a class of beings, of the same form
as men, grander, composed of very subtle atoms, less liable to
dissolution, but still mortal, dwelling in the upper regions of air.
These beings also manifested themselves to man by means of images in
dreams, communicated with him, and sometimes gave him an insight into
the future. Some of them were benevolent, others malignant. According to
Plutarch, Democritus recognized one god under the form of a fiery
sphere, the soul of the world, but this idea is probably of later
origin. The popular belief in gods was attributed by Democritus to the
desire to explain extraordinary phenomena (thunder, lightning,
earthquakes) by reference to superhuman agency.
5. _Ethics._--Democritus's moral system--the first collection of ethical
precepts which deserves the name--strongly resembles the negative side
of the system of Epicurus. The _summum bonum_ is the maximum of pleasure
with the minimum of pain. But true pleasure is not sensual enjoyment; it
has its principle in the soul. It consists not in the possession of
wealth or flocks and herds, but in good humour, in the just disposition
and constant tranquillity of the soul. Hence the necessity of avoiding
extremes; too much and too little are alike evils. True happiness
consists in taking advantage of what one has and being content with it
(see ETHICS).
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Fragments edited by F. Mullach (1843) with commentary
and in his _Fragmenta philosophorum Graecorum_, i. (1860). See also
H. Ritter and L. Preller, _Historia philosophiae_ (chap. i. ad fin.);
P. Lafaist (Lafaye), _Dissertation sur la philosophie atomistique_
(1833); L. Liard, _De Democrito philosopho_ (Paris, 1873); H. C.
Liepmann, _Die Leucipp-Democritischen Atome_ (Leipzig, 1886); F. A.
Lange, _Geschichte des Materialismus_ (Eng. trans. by E. C. Thomas,
1877); G. Hart, _Zur Seelen- und Erkenntnislehre des Democritus_
(Leipzig, 1886); P. Natorp, _Die Ethika des Demokritos_ (Marburg,
1893); A. Dyroff, _Demokritstudien_ (Leipzig, 1899); among general
works C. A. Brandis, _Gesch. d. Entwickelungen d. griech.
Philosophie_ (Bonn, 1862-1864); Ed. Zeller, _Pre-Socratic Philosophy_
(Eng. trans., London, 1881); for his theory of sense-perception see
especially J. I. Beare, _Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition_
(Oxford, 1906).
DEMOGEOT, JACQUES CLAUDE (1808-1804), French man of letters, was born in
Paris on the 5th of July 1808. He was professor of rhetoric at the lycée
Saint Louis, and subsequently assistant professor at the Sorbonne. He
wrote many detached papers on various literary subjects, and two reports
on secondary education in England and Scotland in collaboration with H.
Montucci. His reputation rests on his excellent _Histoire de la
littérature française depuis ses origines jusqu'à nos jours_ (1851),
which has passed through many subsequent editions. He was also the
author of a _Tableau de la littérature française au XVII^e siècle_
(1859), and of a work (3 vols., 1880-1883) on the influence of foreign
literatures on the development of French literature. He died in Paris in
1894.
DEMOGRAPHY (from Gr. [Greek: dêmos], people, and [Greek: graphein], to
write), the science which deals with the statistics of health and
disease, of the physical, intellectual, physiological and economical
aspects of births, marriages and mortality. The first to employ the word
was Achille Guillard in his _Éléments de statistique humaine ou
démographie comparée_ (1855), but the meaning which he attached to it
was merely that of the science which treats of the condition, general
movement and progress of population in civilized countries, i.e. little
more than what is comprised in the ordinary vital statistics, gleaned
from census and registration reports. The word has come to have a much
wider meaning and may now be defined as that branch of statistics which
deals with the life-conditions of peoples.
DEMOIVRE, ABRAHAM (1667-1754), English mathematician of French
extraction, was born at Vitry, in Champagne, on the 26th of May 1667. He
belonged to a French Protestant family, and was compelled to take refuge
in England at the revocation of the edict of Nantes, in 1685. Having
laid the foundation of his mathematical studies in France, he prosecuted
them further in London, where he read public lectures on natural
philosophy for his support. The _Principia mathematica_ of Sir Isaac
Newton, which chance threw in his way, caused him to prosecute his
studies with vigour, and he soon became distinguished among first-rate
mathematicians. He was among the intimate personal friends of Newton,
and his eminence and abilities secured his admission into the Royal
Society of London in 1697, and afterwards into the Academies of Berlin
and Paris. His merit was so well known and acknowledged by the Royal
Society that they judged him a fit person to decide the famous contest
between Newton and G. W. Leibnitz (see INFINITESIMAL CALCULUS). The life
of Demoivre was quiet and uneventful. His old age was spent in obscure
poverty, his friends and associates having nearly all passed away before
him. He died at London, on the 27th of November 1754.
The _Philosophical Transactions_ contain several of his papers. He
also published some excellent works, such as _Miscellanea analytica
de seriebus et quadraturis_ (1730), in 4to. This contained some
elegant and valuable improvements on then existing methods, which
have themselves, however, long been superseded. But he has been more
generally known by his _Doctrine of Chances, or Method of Calculating
the Probabilities of Events at Play_. This work was first printed in
1618, in 4to, and dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton. It was reprinted in
1738, with great alterations and improvements; and a third edition
was afterwards published with additions in 1756. He also published a
_Treatise on Annuities_ (1725), which has passed through several
revised and corrected editions.
See C. Hutton, _Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary_ (1815).
For _Demoivre's Theorem_ see TRIGONOMETRY: Analytical.
DEMONETIZATION, a term employed in monetary science in two different
senses. (a) The depriving or divesting of a metal of its standard
monetary value. From 1663 to 1717 silver was the standard of value in
England and gold coins passed at their market value. The debasement and
underrating of the silver coinage insensibly brought about the
demonetization of silver in England as a standard of value and the
substitution of gold. During the latter half of the 19th century, the
tremendous depreciation of silver, owing to its continually increasing
production, and consequently the impossibility of preserving any ratio
of stability between it and gold, led to the abandonment or
demonetization of the metal as a standard and to its use merely as token
money. (b) The withdrawal of coin from circulation, as, for example, in
England that of all pre-Victorian gold coins under the provisions of the
Coinage Act 1889, and the royal proclamation of the 22nd of November
1890.
DEMONOLOGY ([Greek: Daimôn], demon, genius, spirit), the branch of the
science of religions which relates to superhuman beings which are not
gods. It deals both with benevolent beings which have no circle of
worshippers or so limited a circle as to be below the rank of gods, and
with malevolent beings of all kinds. It may be noted that the original
sense of "demon" was a benevolent being; but in English the name now
connotes malevolence; in German it has a neutral sense, e.g.
_Korndämonen_. Demons, when they are regarded as spirits, may belong to
either of the classes of spirits recognized by primitive animism (q.v.);
that is to say, they may be human, or non-human, separable souls, or
discarnate spirits which have never inhabited a body; a sharp
distinction is often drawn between these two classes, notably by the
Melanesians, the West Africans and others; the Arab _jinn_, for example,
are not reducible to modified human souls; at the same time these
classes are frequently conceived as producing identical results, e.g.
diseases.
Under the head of demons are classified only such spirits as are
believed to enter into relations with the human race; the term therefore
includes (1) human souls regarded as genii or familiars, (2) such as
receive a cult (for which see ANCESTOR WORSHIP), and (3) ghosts or other
malevolent revenants; excluded are souls conceived as inhabiting another
world. But just as gods are not necessarily spiritual, demons may also
be regarded as corporeal; vampires for example are sometimes described
as human heads with appended entrails, which issue from the tomb to
attack the living during the night watches. The so-called Spectre
Huntsman of the Malay Peninsula is said to be a man who scours the
firmament with his dogs, vainly seeking for what he could not find on
earth--a buck mouse-deer pregnant with male offspring; but he seems to
be a living man; there is no statement that he ever died, nor yet that
he is a spirit. The incubus and succubus of the middle ages are
sometimes regarded as spiritual beings; but they were held to give very
real proof of their bodily existence. It should, however, be remembered
that primitive peoples do not distinguish clearly between material and
immaterial beings.
_Prevalence of Demons._--According to a conception of the world
frequently found among peoples of the lower cultures, all the affairs of
life are supposed to be under the control of spirits, each ruling a
certain element or even object, and themselves in subjection to a
greater spirit. Thus, the Eskimo are said to believe in spirits of the
sea, earth and sky, the winds, the clouds and everything in nature.
Every cove of the seashore, every point, every island and prominent rock
has its guardian spirit. All are of the malignant type, to be
propitiated only by acceptable offerings from persons who desire to
visit the locality where it is supposed to reside. A rise in culture
often results in an increase in the number of spiritual beings with whom
man surrounds himself. Thus, the Koreans go far beyond the Eskimo and
number their demons by thousands of billions; they fill the chimney, the
shed, the living-room, the kitchen, they are on every shelf and jar; in
thousands they waylay the traveller as he leaves his home, beside him,
behind him, dancing in front of him, whirring over his head, crying out
upon him from air, earth and water.
Especially complicated was the ancient Babylonian demonology; all the
petty annoyances of life--a sudden fall, a headache, a quarrel--were set
down to the agency of fiends; all the stronger emotions--love, hate,
jealousy and so on--were regarded as the work of demons; in fact so
numerous were they, that there were special fiends for various parts of
the human body--one for the head, another for the neck, and so on.
Similarly in Egypt at the present day the _jinn_ are believed to swarm
so thickly that it is necessary to ask their permission before pouring
water on the ground, lest one should accidentally be soused and vent his
anger on the offending human being. But these beliefs are far from being
confined to the uncivilized; Greek philosophers like Porphyry, no less
than the fathers of the Church, held that the world was pervaded with
spirits; side by side with the belief in witchcraft, we can trace
through the middle ages the survival of primitive animistic views; and
in our own day even these beliefs subsist in unsuspected vigour among
the peasantry of the more uneducated European countries. In fact the
ready acceptance of spiritualism testifies to the force with which the
primitive animistic way of looking at things appealed to the white races
in the middle of the last century.
_Character of Spiritual World._--The ascription of malevolence to the
world of spirits is by no means universal. In West Africa the Mpongwe
believe in local spirits, just as do the Eskimo; but they are regarded
as inoffensive in the main; true, the passer-by must make some trifling
offering as he nears their place of abode; but it is only occasionally
that mischievous acts, such as the throwing down of a tree on a
passer-by, are, in the view of the natives, perpetuated by the Ombuiri.
So too, many of the spirits especially concerned with the operations of
nature are conceived as neutral or even benevolent; the European peasant
fears the corn-spirit only when he irritates him by trenching on his
domain and taking his property by cutting the corn; similarly, there is
no reason why the more insignificant personages of the pantheon should
be conceived as malevolent, and we find that the _Petara_ of the Dyaks
are far from indiscriminating and malignant, though disease and death
are laid at their door.
_Classification._--Besides the distinctions of human and non-human,
hostile and friendly, the demons in which the lower races believe are
classified by them according to function, each class with a distinctive
name, with extraordinary minuteness, the list in the case of the Malays
running to several score. They have, for example, a demon of the
waterfall, a demon of wild-beast tracks, a demon which interferes with
snares for wild-fowl, a baboon demon, which takes possession of dancers
and causes them to perform wonderful feats of climbing, &c. But it is
impossible to do more than deal with a few types, which will illustrate
the main features of the demonology of savage, barbarous and
semi-civilized peoples.
(a) Natural causes, either of death or of disease, are hardly, if at
all, recognized by the uncivilized; everything is attributed to spirits
or magical influence of some sort. The spirits which cause disease may
be human or non-human and their influence is shown in more than one way;
they may enter the body of the victim (see POSSESSION), and either
dominate his mind as well as his body, inflict specific diseases, or
cause pains of various sorts. Thus the Mintra of the Malay Peninsula
have a demon corresponding to every kind of disease known to them; the
Tasmanian ascribed a gnawing pain to the presence within him of the soul
of a dead man, whom he had unwittingly summoned by mentioning his name
and who was devouring his liver; the Samoan held that the violation of a
food tabu would result in the animal being formed within the body of the
offender and cause his death. The demon theory of disease is still
attested by some of our medical terms; epilepsy (Gr. [Greek: epilêpsis],
seizure) points to the belief that the patient is possessed. As a
logical consequence of this view of disease the mode of treatment among
peoples in the lower stages of culture is mainly magical; they endeavour
to propitiate the evil spirits by sacrifice, to expel them by spells,
&c. (see EXORCISM), to drive them away by blowing, &c.; conversely we
find the Khonds attempt to keep away smallpox by placing thorns and
brushwood in the paths leading to places decimated by that disease, in
the hope of making the disease demon retrace his steps. This theory of
disease disappeared sooner than did the belief in possession; the
energumens ([Greek: energoumenoi]) of the early Christian church, who
were under the care of a special clerical order of exorcists, testify to
a belief in possession; but the demon theory of disease receives no
recognition; the energumens find their analogues in the converts of
missionaries in China, Africa and elsewhere. Another way in which a
demon is held to cause disease is by introducing itself into the
patient's body and sucking his blood; the Malays believe that a woman
who dies in childbirth becomes a _langsuir_ and sucks the blood of
children; victims of the lycanthrope are sometimes said to be done to
death in the same way; and it is commonly believed in Africa that the
wizard has the power of killing people in this way, probably with the
aid of a familiar.
(b) One of the primary meanings of [Greek: daimôn] is that of genius or
familiar, tutelary spirit; according to Hesiod the men of the golden
race became after death guardians or watchers over mortals. The idea is
found among the Romans also; they attributed to every man a genius who
accompanied him through life. A Norse belief found in Iceland is that
the _fylgia_, a genius in animal form, attends human beings; and these
animal guardians may sometimes be seen fighting; in the same way the
Siberian shamans send their animal familiars to do battle instead of
deciding their quarrels in person. The animal guardian reappears in the
_nagual_ of Central America (see article TOTEMISM), the _yunbeai_ of
some Australian tribes, the _manitou_ of the Red Indian and the bush
soul of some West African tribes; among the latter the link between
animal and human being is said to be established by the ceremony of the
blood bond. Corresponding to the animal guardian of the ordinary man, we
have the familiar of the witch or wizard. All the world over it is held
that such people can assume the form of animals; sometimes the power of
the shaman is held to depend on his being able to summon his familiar;
among the Ostiaks the shaman's coat was covered with representations of
birds and beasts; two bear's claws were on his hands; his wand was
covered with mouse-skin; when he wished to divine he beat his drum till
a black bird appeared and perched on his hut; then the shaman swooned,
the bird vanished, and the divination could begin. Similarly the
Greenland _angekok_ is said to summon his _torngak_ (which may be an
ancestral ghost or an animal) by drumming; he is heard by the bystanders
to carry on a conversation and obtain advice as to how to treat
diseases, the prospects of good weather and other matters of importance.
The familiar, who is sometimes replaced by the devil, commonly figured
in witchcraft trials; and a statute of James I. enacted that all persons
invoking an evil spirit or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining,
employing, feeding or rewarding any evil spirit should be guilty of
felony and suffer death. In modern spiritualism the familiar is
represented by the "guide," corresponding to which we have the
theosophical "guru."
(c) The familiar is sometimes an ancestral spirit, and here we touch the
fringe of the cult of the dead (see also ANCESTOR WORSHIP). Especially
among the lower races the dead are regarded as hostile; the Australian
avoids the grave even of a kinsman and elaborate ceremonies of mourning
are found amongst most primitive peoples, whose object seems to be to
rid the living of the danger they run by association with the ghost of
the dead. Among the Zulu the spirits of the dead are held to be friendly
or hostile, just as they were in life; on the Congo a man after death
joins the good or bad spirits according as his life has been good or
bad. Especially feared among many peoples are the souls of those who
have committed suicide or died a violent death; the woman who dies in
childbed is held to become a demon of the most dangerous kind; even the
unburied, as restless, dissatisfied spirits, are more feared than
ordinary ghosts. Naturally spirits of these latter kinds are more
valuable as familiars than ordinary dead men's souls. We find many
recipes for securing their aid. In the Malay Peninsula the blood of a
murdered man must be put in a bottle and prayers said over; after seven
days of this worship a sound is heard and the operator puts his finger
into the bottle for the polong, as the demon is called, to suck; it will
fly through the air in the shape of an exceedingly diminutive female
figure, and is always preceded by its pet, the pelesit, in the shape of
a grasshopper. In Europe a similar demon is said to be obtainable from a
cock's egg. In South Africa and India, on the other hand, the magician
digs up a dead body, especially of a child, to secure a familiar. The
evocation of spirits, especially in the form of necromancy, is an
important branch of the demonology of many peoples; and the
peculiarities of trance mediumship, which seem sufficiently established
by modern research, go far to explain the vogue of this art. It seems to
have been common among the Jews, and the case of the witch of Endor is
narrated in a way to suggest something beyond fraud; in the book of
magic which bears the name of Dr Faustus may be found many of the
formulae for raising demons; in England may be mentioned especially Dr
Dee as one of the most famous of those who claimed before the days of
modern spiritualism (q.v.) to have intercourse with the unseen world and
to summon demons at his will. Sometimes the spirits were summoned to
appear as did the phantoms of the Greek heroes to Odysseus; sometimes
they were called to enter a crystal (see CRYSTAL-GAZING); sometimes they
are merely asked to declare the future or communicate by moving external
objects without taking a visible form; thus among the Karens at the
close of the burial ceremonies the ghost of the dead man, which is said
to hover round till the rites are completed, is believed to make a ring
swing round and snap the string from which it hangs.
(d) The vampire is a particular form of demon which calls for some
notice. In the Malay Peninsula, parts of Polynesia, &c., it is conceived
as a head with attached entrails, which issues, it may be from the
grave, to suck the blood of living human beings. According to the Malays
a _penanggalan_ (vampire) is a living witch, and can be killed if she
can be caught; she is especially feared in houses where a birth has
taken place and it is the custom to hang up a bunch of thistle in order
to catch her; she is said to keep vinegar at home to aid her in
re-entering her own body. In Europe the Slavonic area is the principal
seat of vampire beliefs, and here too we find, as a natural development,
that means of preventing the dead from injuring the living have been
evolved by the popular mind. The corpse of the vampire, which may often
be recognized by its unnaturally ruddy and fresh appearance, should be
staked down in the grave or its head should be cut off; it is
interesting to note that the cutting off of heads of the dead was a
neolithic burial rite.
(e) The vampire is frequently blended in popular idea with the
Poltergeist (q.v.) or knocking spirit, and also with the werwolf (see
LYCANTHROPY).
(f) As might be expected, dream demons are very common; in fact the word
"nightmare" (A. S. _mær_, spirit, elf) preserves for us a record of this
form of belief, which is found right down to the lowest planes of
culture. The Australian, when he suffers from an oppression in his
sleep, says that Koin is trying to throttle him; the Caribs say that
Maboya beats them in their sleep; and the belief persists to this day in
some parts of Europe; horses too are said to be subject to the
persecutions of demons, which ride them at night. Another class of
nocturnal demons are the incubi and succubi, who are said to consort
with human beings in their sleep; in the Antilles these were the ghosts
of the dead; in New Zealand likewise ancestral deities formed liaisons
with females; in the Samoan Islands the inferior gods were regarded as
the fathers of children otherwise unaccounted for; the Hindus have rites
prescribed by which a companion nymph may be secured. The question of
the real existence of incubi and succubi, whom the Romans identified
with the fauns, was gravely discussed by the fathers of the church; and
in 1418 Innocent VIII. set forth the doctrine of lecherous demons as an
indisputable fact; and in the history of the Inquisition and of trials
for witchcraft may be found the confessions of many who bore witness to
their reality. In the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ Burton assures us that
they were never more numerous than in A.D. 1600.
(g) Corresponding to the personal tutelary spirit (supra, b) we have the
genii of buildings and places. The Romans celebrated the birthday of a
town and of its genius, just as they celebrated that of a man; and a
snake was a frequent form for this kind of demon; when we compare with
this the South African belief that the snakes which are in the
neighbourhood of the kraal are the incarnations of the ancestors of the
residents, it seems probable that some similar idea lay at the bottom of
the Roman belief; to this day in European folklore the house snake or
toad, which lives in the cellar, is regarded as the "life index" or
other self of the father of the house; the death of one involves the
death of the other, according to popular belief. The assignment of genii
to buildings and gates is connected with an important class of
sacrifices; in order to provide a tutelary spirit, or to appease
chthonic deities, it was often the custom to sacrifice a human being or
an animal at the foundation of a building; sometimes we find a similar
guardian provided for the frontier of a country or of a tribe. The house
spirit is, however, not necessarily connected with this idea. In Russia
the _domovoi_ (house spirit) is an important personage in folk-belief;
he may object to certain kinds of animals, or to certain colours in
cattle; and must, generally speaking, be propitiated and cared for.
Corresponding to him we have the drudging goblin of English folklore.
(h) It has been shown above how the animistic creed postulates the
existence of all kinds of local spirits, which are sometimes tied to
their habitats, sometimes free to wander. Especially prominent in
Europe, classical, medieval and modern, and in East Asia, is the spirit
of the lake, river, spring, or well, often conceived as human, but also
in the form of a bull or horse; the term Old Nick may refer to the
water-horse Nök. Less specialized in their functions are many of the
figures of modern folklore, some of whom have perhaps replaced some
ancient goddess, e.g. Frau Holda; others, like the Welsh Pwck, the
Lancashire boggarts or the more widely found Jack-o'-Lantern (Will o'
the Wisp), are sprites who do no more harm than leading the wanderer
astray. The banshee is perhaps connected with ancestral or house
spirits; the Wild Huntsman, the Gabriel hounds, the Seven Whistlers,
&c., are traceable to some actual phenomenon; but the great mass of
British goblindom cannot now be traced back to savage or barbarous
analogues. Among other local sprites may be mentioned the kobolds or
spirits of the mines. The fairies (see FAIRY), located in the fairy
knolls by the inhabitants of the Shetlands, may also be put under this
head.
(i) The subject of plant souls is referred to in connexion with animism
(q.v.); but certain aspects of this phase of belief demand more detailed
treatment. Outside the European area vegetation spirits of all kinds
seem to be conceived, as a rule, as anthropomorphic; in classical
Europe, and parts of the Slavonic area at the present day, the tree
spirit was believed to have the form of a goat, or to have goats' feet.
Of special importance in Europe is the conception of the so-called "corn
spirit"; W. Mannhardt collected a mass of information proving that the
life of the corn is supposed to exist apart from the corn itself and to
take the form, sometimes of an animal, sometimes of a man or woman,
sometimes of a child. There is, however, no proof that the belief is
animistic in the proper sense. The animal which popular belief
identified with the corn demon is sometimes killed in the spring in
order to mingle its blood or bones with the seed; at harvest-time it is
supposed to sit in the last corn and the animals driven out from it are
sometimes killed; at others the reaper who cuts the last ear is said to
have killed the "wolf" or the "dog," and sometimes receives the name of
"wolf" or "dog" and retains it till the next harvest. The corn spirit is
also said to be hiding in the barn till the corn is threshed, or it may
be said to reappear at midwinter, when the farmer begins to think of his
new year of labour and harvest. Side by side with the conception of the
corn spirit as an animal is the anthropomorphic view of it; and this
element must have predominated in the evolution of the cereal deities
like Demeter; at the same time traces of the association of gods and
goddesses of corn with animal embodiments of the corn spirit are found.
(j) In many parts of the world, and especially in Africa, is found the
conception termed the "otiose creator"; that is to say, the belief in a
great deity, who is the author of all that exists but is too remote from
the world and too high above terrestrial things to concern himself with
the details of the universe. As a natural result of this belief we find
the view that the operations of nature are conducted by a multitude of
more or less obedient subordinate deities; thus, in Portuguese West
Africa the Kimbunda believe in Suku-Vakange, but hold that he has
committed the government of the universe to innumerable _kilulu_ good
and bad; the latter kind are held to be far more numerous, but
Suku-Vakange is said to keep them in order by occasionally smiting them
with his thunderbolts; were it not for this, man's lot would be
insupportable.
Sometimes the gods of an older religion degenerate into the demons of
the belief which supersedes it. A conspicuous example of this is found
in the attitude of the Hebrew prophets to the gods of the nations, whose
power they recognize without admitting their claim to reverence and
sacrifice. The same tendency is seen in many early missionary works and
is far from being without influence even at the present day. In the
folklore of European countries goblindom is peopled by gods and
nature-spirits of an earlier heathendom. We may also compare the Persian
_devs_ with the Indian _devas_.
_Expulsion of Demons._--In connexion with demonology mention must be
made of the custom of expelling ghosts, spirits or evils generally.
Primitive peoples from the Australians upwards celebrate, usually at
fixed intervals, a driving out of hurtful influences. Sometimes, as
among the Australians, it is merely the ghosts of those who have died in
the year which are thus driven out; from this custom must be
distinguished another, which consists in dismissing the souls of the
dead at the close of the year and sending them on their journey to the
other world; this latter custom seems to have an entirely different
origin and to be due to love and not fear of the dead. In other cases it
is believed that evil spirits generally or even non-personal evils such
as sins are believed to be expelled. In these customs originated perhaps
the scapegoat, some forms of sacrifice (q.v.) and other cathartic
ceremonies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Tylor, _Primitive Culture_; Frazer, _Golden Bough_;
Skeat, _Malay Magic_; Bastian, _Der Mensch in der Geschichte_;
Callaway, _Religion of the Amazulu_; Hild, _Étude sur les démons_;
Welcker, _Griechische Götterlehre_, i. 731; _Trans. Am. Phil. Soc._
xxvi. 79; Calmet, _Dissertation sur les esprits_; Maury, _La Magie_;
L. W. King, _Babylonian Magic_; Lenormant, _La Magie chez les
Chaldéens_; R. C. Thompson, _Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia_;
Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_; Roskoff, _Geschichte des Teufels_;
Sibly, _Illustration of the Occult Sciences_; Scott, _Demonology_;
Pitcairn, _Scottish Criminal Trials_; _Jewish Quarterly Rev._ viii.
576, &c.; Horst, _Zauberbibliothek_; _Jewish Encyclopedia_, s.v.
"Demonology." See also bibliography to POSSESSION, ANIMISM and other
articles. (N. W. T.)
DE MORGAN, AUGUSTUS (1806-1871), English mathematician and logician, was
born in June 1806, at Madura, in the Madras presidency. His father,
Colonel John De Morgan, was employed in the East India Company's
service, and his grandfather and great-grandfather had served under
Warren Hastings. On the mother's side he was descended from James
Dodson, F.R.S., author of the _Anti-logarithmic Canon_ and other
mathematical works of merit, and a friend of Abraham Demoivre. Seven
months after the birth of Augustus, Colonel De Morgan brought his wife,
daughter and infant son to England, where he left them during a
subsequent period of service in India, dying in 1816 on his way home.
Augustus De Morgan received his early education in several private
schools, and before the age of fourteen years had learned Latin, Greek
and some Hebrew, in addition to acquiring much general knowledge. At the
age of sixteen years and a half he entered Trinity College, Cambridge,
and studied mathematics, partly under the tuition of Sir G. B. Airy. In
1825 he gained a Trinity scholarship. De Morgan's love of wide reading
somewhat interfered with his success in the mathematical tripos, in
which he took the fourth place in 1827. He was prevented from taking his
M.A. degree, or from obtaining a fellowship, by his conscientious
objection to signing the theological tests then required from masters of
arts and fellows at Cambridge.
A career in his own university being closed against him, he entered
Lincoln's Inn; but had hardly done so when the establishment, in 1828,
of the university of London, in Gower Street, afterwards known as
University College, gave him an opportunity of continuing his
mathematical pursuits. At the early age of twenty-two he gave his first
lecture as professor of mathematics in the college which he served with
the utmost zeal and success for a third of a century. His connexion with
the college, indeed, was interrupted in 1831, when a disagreement with
the governing body caused De Morgan and some other professors to resign
their chairs simultaneously. When, in 1836, his successor was
accidentally drowned, De Morgan was requested to resume the
professorship.
In 1837 he married Sophia Elizabeth, daughter of William Frend, a
Unitarian in faith, a mathematician and actuary in occupation, a notice
of whose life, written by his son-in-law, will be found in the _Monthly
Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society_ (vol. v.). They settled in
Chelsea (30 Cheyne Row), where in later years Mrs De Morgan had a large
circle of intellectual and artistic friends.
As a teacher of mathematics De Morgan was unrivalled. He gave
instruction in the form of continuous lectures delivered extempore from
brief notes. The most prolonged mathematical reasoning, and the most
intricate formulae, were given with almost infallible accuracy from the
resources of his extraordinary memory. De Morgan's writings, however
excellent, give little idea of the perspicuity and elegance of his viva
voce expositions, which never failed to fix the attention of all who
were worthy of hearing him. Many of his pupils have distinguished
themselves, and, through Isaac Todhunter and E. J. Routh, he had an
important influence on the later Cambridge school. For thirty years he
took an active part in the business of the Royal Astronomical Society,
editing its publications, supplying obituary notices of members, and for
eighteen years acting as one of the honorary secretaries. He was also
frequently employed as consulting actuary, a business in which his
mathematical powers, combined with sound judgment and business-like
habits, fitted him to take the highest place.
De Morgan's mathematical writings contributed powerfully towards the
progress of the science. His memoirs on the "Foundation of Algebra," in
the 7th and 8th volumes of the _Cambridge Philosophical Transactions_,
contain some of the most important contributions which have been made to
the philosophy of mathematical method; and Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, in the
preface to his _Lectures on Quaternions_, refers more than once to those
papers as having led and encouraged him in the working out of the new
system of quaternions. The work on _Trigonometry and Double Algebra_
(1849) contains in the latter part a most luminous and philosophical
view of existing and possible systems of symbolic calculus. But De
Morgan's influence on mathematical science in England can only be
estimated by a review of his long series of publications, which
commence, in 1828, with a translation of part of Bourdon's _Elements of
Algebra_, prepared for his students. In 1830 appeared the first edition
of his well-known _Elements of Arithmetic_, which did much to raise the
character of elementary training. It is distinguished by a simple yet
thoroughly philosophical treatment of the ideas of number and magnitude,
as well as by the introduction of new abbreviated processes of
computation, to which De Morgan always attributed much practical
importance. Second and third editions were called for in 1832 and 1835;
a sixth edition was issued in 1876. De Morgan's other principal
mathematical works were _The Elements of Algebra_ (1835), a valuable but
somewhat dry elementary treatise; the _Essay on Probabilities_ (1838),
forming the 107th volume of _Lardner's Cyclopaedia_, which forms a
valuable introduction to the subject; and _The Elements of Trigonometry
and Trigonometrical Analysis, preliminary to the Differential Calculus_
(1837). Several of his mathematical works were published by the Society
for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, of which De Morgan was at one
time an active member. Among these may be mentioned the _Treatise on the
Differential and Integral Calculus_ (1842); the _Elementary
Illustrations of the Differential and Integral Calculus_, first
published in 1832, but often bound up with the larger treatise; the
essay, _On the Study and Difficulties of Mathematics_ (1831); and a
brief treatise on _Spherical Trigonometry_ (1834). By some accident the
work on probability in the same series, written by Sir J. W. Lubbock and
J. Drinkwater-Bethune, was attributed to De Morgan, an error which
seriously annoyed his nice sense of bibliographical accuracy. For
fifteen years he did all in his power to correct the mistake, and
finally wrote to _The Times_ to disclaim the authorship. (See _Monthly
Notices_ of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. xxvi. p. 118.) Two of
his most elaborate treatises are to be found in the _Encyclopaedia
metropolitana_, namely the articles on the Calculus of Functions, and the
Theory of Probabilities. De Morgan's minor mathematical writings were
scattered over various periodicals. A list of these and other papers
will be found in the _Royal Society's Catalogue_, which contains
forty-two entries under the name of De Morgan.
In spite, however, of the excellence and extent of his mathematical
writings, it is probably as a logical reformer that De Morgan will be
best remembered. In this respect he stands alongside of his great
contemporaries Sir W. R. Hamilton and George Boole, as one of several
independent discoverers of the all-important principle of the
quantification of the predicate. Unlike most mathematicians, De Morgan
always laid much stress upon the importance of logical training. In his
admirable papers upon the modes of teaching arithmetic and geometry,
originally published in the _Quarterly Journal of Education_ (reprinted
in _The Schoolmaster_, vol ii.), he remonstrated against the neglect of
logical doctrine. In 1839 he produced a small work called _First
Notions of Logic_, giving what he had found by experience to be much
wanted by students commencing with _Euclid_. In October 1846 he
completed the first of his investigations, in the form of a paper
printed in the _Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society_
(vol. viii. No. 29). In this paper the principle of the quantified
predicate was referred to, and there immediately ensued a memorable
controversy with Sir W. R. Hamilton regarding the independence of De
Morgan's discovery, some communications having passed between them in
the autumn of 1846. The details of this dispute will be found in the
original pamphlets, in the _Athenaeum_ and in the appendix to De
Morgan's _Formal Logic_. Suffice it to say that the independence of De
Morgan's discovery was subsequently recognized by Hamilton. The eight
forms of proposition adopted by De Morgan as the basis of his system
partially differ from those which Hamilton derived from the quantified
predicate. The general character of De Morgan's development of logical
forms was wholly peculiar and original on his part.
Late in 1847 De Morgan published his principal logical treatise, called
_Formal Logic, or the Calculus of Inference, Necessary and Probable_.
This contains a reprint of the _First Notions_, an elaborate development
of his doctrine of the syllogism, and of the numerical definite
syllogism, together with chapters of great interest on probability,
induction, old logical terms and fallacies. The severity of the treatise
is relieved by characteristic touches of humour, and by quaint anecdotes
and allusions furnished from his wide reading and perfect memory. There
followed at intervals, in the years 1850, 1858, 1860 and 1863, a series
of four elaborate memoirs on the "Syllogism," printed in volumes ix. and
x. of the _Cambridge Philosophical Transactions_. These papers taken
together constitute a great treatise on logic, in which he substituted
improved systems of notation, and developed a new logic of relations,
and a new onymatic system of logical expression. In 1860 De Morgan
endeavoured to render their contents better known by publishing a
_Syllabus of a Proposed System of Logic_, from which may be obtained a
good idea of his symbolic system, but the more readable and interesting
discussions contained in the memoirs are of necessity omitted. The
article "Logic" in the _English Cyclopaedia_ (1860) completes the list
of his logical publications.
Throughout his logical writings De Morgan was led by the idea that the
followers of the two great branches of exact science, logic and
mathematics, had made blunders,--the logicians in neglecting
mathematics, and the mathematicians in neglecting logic. He endeavoured
to reconcile them, and in the attempt showed how many errors an acute
mathematician could detect in logical writings, and how large a field
there was for discovery. But it may be doubted whether De Morgan's own
system, "horrent with mysterious spiculae," as Hamilton aptly described
it, is fitted to exhibit the real analogy between quantitative and
qualitative reasoning, which is rather to be sought in the logical works
of Boole.
Perhaps the largest part, in volume, of De Morgan's writings remains
still to be briefly mentioned; it consists of detached articles
contributed to various periodical or composite works. During the
years 1833-1843 he contributed very largely to the first edition of
the _Penny Cyclopaedia_, writing chiefly on mathematics, astronomy,
physics and biography. His articles of various length cannot be less
in number than 850, and they have been estimated to constitute a
sixth part of the whole _Cyclopaedia_, of which they formed perhaps
the most valuable portion. He also wrote biographies of Sir Isaac
Newton and Edmund Halley for Knight's _British Worthies_, various
notices of scientific men for the _Gallery of Portraits_, and for the
uncompleted _Biographical Dictionary_ of the Useful Knowledge
Society, and at least seven articles in Smith's _Dictionary of Greek
and Roman Biography_. Some of De Morgan's most interesting and useful
minor writings are to be found in the _Companions to the British
Almanack_, to which he contributed without fail one article each year
from 1831 up to 1857 inclusive. In these carefully written papers he
treats a great variety of topics relating to astronomy, chronology,
decimal coinage, life assurance, bibliography and the history of
science. Most of them are as valuable now as when written.
Among De Morgan's miscellaneous writings may be mentioned his
_Explanation of the Gnomonic Projection of the Sphere_, 1836,
including a description of the maps of the stars, published by the
Useful Knowledge Society; his _Treatise on the Globes, Celestial and
Terrestrial_, 1845, and his remarkable _Book of Almanacks_ (2nd
edition, 1871), which contains a series of thirty-five almanacs, so
arranged with indices of reference, that the almanac for any year,
whether in old style or new, from any epoch, ancient or modern, up to
A. D. 2000, may be found without difficulty, means being added for
verifying the almanac and also for discovering the days of new and
full moon from 2000 B. C. up to A. D. 2000. De Morgan expressly draws
attention to the fact that the plan of this book was that of L. B.
Francoeur and J. Ferguson, but the plan was developed by one who was
an unrivalled master of all the intricacies of chronology. The two
best tables of logarithms, the small five-figure tables of the Useful
Knowledge Society (1839 and 1857), and Shroen's Seven Figure-Table
(5th ed., 1865), were printed under De Morgan's superintendence.
Several works edited by him will be found mentioned in the _British
Museum Catalogue_. He made numerous anonymous contributions through a
long series of years to the _Athenaeum_, and to _Notes and Queries_,
and occasionally to _The North British Review_, _Macmillan's
Magazine_, &c.
Considerable labour was spent by De Morgan upon the subject of
decimal coinage. He was a great advocate of the pound and mil scheme.
His evidence on this subject was sought by the Royal Commission, and,
besides constantly supporting the Decimal Association in periodical
publications, he published several separate pamphlets on the subject.
One marked characteristic of De Morgan was his intense and yet
reasonable love of books. He was a true bibliophile and loved to
surround himself, as far as his means allowed, with curious and rare
books. He revelled in all the mysteries of watermarks, title-pages,
colophons, catch-words and the like; yet he treated bibliography as
an important science. As he himself wrote, "the most worthless book
of a bygone day is a record worthy of preservation; like a telescopic
star, its obscurity may render it unavailable for most purposes; but
it serves, in hands which know how to use it, to determine the places
of more important bodies." His evidence before the Royal Commission
on the British Museum in 1850 (Questions 5704*-5815,* 6481-6513, and
8966-8967), should be studied by all who would comprehend the
principles of bibliography or the art of constructing a catalogue,
his views on the latter subject corresponding with those carried out
by Panizzi in the _British Museum Catalogue_. A sample of De Morgan's
bibliographical learning is to be found in his account of
_Arithmetical Books, from the Invention of Printing_ (1847), and
finally in his _Budget of Paradoxes_. This latter work consists of
articles most of which were originally published in the Athenaeum,
describing the various attempts which have been made to invent a
perpetual motion, to square the circle, or to trisect the angle; but
De Morgan took the opportunity to include many curious bits gathered
from his extensive reading, so that the _Budget_, as reprinted by his
widow (1872), with much additional matter prepared by himself, forms
a remarkable collection of scientific _ana_. De Morgan's
correspondence with contemporary scientific men was very extensive
and full of interest. It remains unpublished, as does also a large
mass of mathematical tracts which he prepared for the use of his
students, treating all parts of mathematical science, and embodying
some of the matter of his lectures. De Morgan's library was purchased
by Lord Overstone, and presented to the university of London.
In 1866 his life became clouded by the circumstances which led him to
abandon the institution so long the scene of his labours. The refusal of
the council to accept the recommendation of the senate, that they should
appoint an eminent Unitarian minister to the professorship of logic and
mental philosophy, revived all De Morgan's sensitiveness on the subject
of sectarian freedom; and, though his feelings were doubtless excessive,
there is no doubt that gloom was thrown over his life, intensified in
1867 by the loss of his son George Campbell De Morgan, a young man of
the highest scientific promise, whose name, as De Morgan expressly
wished, will long be connected with the London Mathematical Society, of
which he was one of the founders. From this time De Morgan rapidly fell
into ill-health, previously almost unknown to him, dying on the 18th of
March 1871. An interesting and truthful sketch of his life will be found
in the _Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society_ for the 9th
of February 1872, vol. xxii. p. 112, written by A. C. Ranyard, who says,
"He was the kindliest, as well as the most learned of men--benignant to
every one who approached him, never forgetting the claims which weakness
has on strength."
De Morgan left no published indications of his opinions on religious
questions, in regard to which he was extremely reticent. He seldom or
never entered a place of worship, and declared that he could not listen
to a sermon, a circumstance perhaps due to the extremely strict
religious discipline under which he was brought up. Nevertheless there
is reason to believe that he was of a deeply religious disposition.
Like M. Faraday and Sir I. Newton he entertained a confident belief in
Providence, founded not on any tenuous inference, but on personal
feeling. His hope of a future life also was vivid to the last.
It is impossible to omit a reference to his witty sayings, some
specimens of which are preserved in Dr Sadler's most interesting _Diary
of Henry Crabb Robinson_ (1869), which also contains a humorous account
of H. C. R. by De Morgan. It may be added that De Morgan was a great
reader and admirer of Dickens; he was also fond of music, and a fair
performer on the flute. (W. S. J.)
His son, WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN (b. 1839), first became known in
artistic circles as a potter, the "De Morgan" tiles being remarkable for
his rediscovery of the secret of some beautiful colours and glazes. But
later in life he became even better known to the literary world by his
novels, _Joseph Vance_ (1906), _Alice for Short_ (1907), _Somehow Good_
(1908) and _It Never Can Happen Again_ (1909), in which the influence of
Dickens and of his own earlier family life were conspicuous.
DEMOSTHENES, the great Attic orator and statesman, was born in 384 (or
383) B.C. His father, who bore the same name, was an Athenian citizen
belonging to the deme of Paeania. His mother, Cleobule, was the daughter
of Gylon, a citizen who had been active in procuring the protection of
the kings of Bosporus for the Athenian colony of Nymphaeon in the
Crimea, and whose wife was a native of that region. On these grounds the
adversaries of Demosthenes, in after-days, used absurdly to taunt him
with a traitorous or barbarian ancestry. The boy had a bitter foretaste
of life. He was seven years old when his father died, leaving property
(in a manufactory of swords, and another of upholstery) worth about
£3500, which, invested as it seems to have been (20% was not thought
exorbitant), would have yielded rather more than £600 a year, £300 a
year was a very comfortable income at Athens, and it was possible to
live decently on a tenth of it. Nicias, a very rich man, had property
equivalent, probably, to not more than £4000 a year. Demosthenes was
born then, to a handsome, though not a great fortune. But his
guardians--two nephews of his father, Aphobus and Demophon, and one
Therippides--abused their trust, and handed over to Demosthenes, when he
came of age, rather less than one-seventh of his patrimony, perhaps
between £50 and £60 a year. Demosthenes, after studying with Isaeus
(q.v.)--then the great master of forensic eloquence and of Attic law,
especially in will cases[1]--brought an action against Aphobus, and
gained a verdict for about £2400. But it does not appear that he got the
money; and, after some more fruitless proceedings against Onetor, the
brother-in-law of Aphobus, the matter was dropped,--not, however, before
his relatives had managed to throw a public burden (the equipment of a
ship of war) on their late ward, whereby his resources were yet further
straitened. He now became a professional writer of speeches or pleas
([Greek: logographos]) for the law courts, sometimes speaking himself.
Biographers have delighted to relate how painfully Demosthenes made
himself a tolerable speaker,--how, with pebbles in his mouth, he tried
his lungs against the waves, how he declaimed as he ran up hill, how he
shut himself up in a cell, having first guarded himself against a
longing for the haunts of men by shaving one side of his head, how he
wrote out Thucydides eight times, how he was derided by the Assembly and
encouraged by a judicious actor who met him moping about the Peiraeus.
He certainly seems to have been the reverse of athletic (the stalwart
Aeschines upbraids him with never having been a sportsman), and he
probably had some sort of defect or impediment in his speech as a boy.
Perhaps the most interesting fact about his work for the law courts is
that he seems to have continued it, in some measure, through the most
exciting parts of his great political career. The speech for Phormio
belongs to the same year as the plea for Megalopolis. The speech against
Boeotus "Concerning the Name" comes between the First Philippic and the
First Olynthiac. The speech against Pantaenetus comes between the speech
"On the Peace" and the Second Philippic.
Political career and creed.
The political career of Demosthenes, from his first direct contact with
public affairs in 355 B.C. to his death in 322, has an essential unity.
It is the assertion, in successive forms adapted to successive moments,
of unchanging principles. Externally, it is divided into the chapter
which precedes and the chapter which follows Chaeronea. But its inner
meaning, the secret of its indomitable vigour, the law which harmonizes
its apparent contrasts, cannot be understood unless it is regarded as a
whole. Still less can it be appreciated in all its large wisdom and
sustained self-mastery if it is viewed merely as a duel between the
ablest champion and the craftiest enemy of Greek freedom. The time
indeed came when Demosthenes and Philip stood face to face as
representative antagonists in a mortal conflict. But, for Demosthenes,
the special peril represented by Philip, the peril of subjugation to
Macedon, was merely a disastrous accident. Philip happened to become the
most prominent and most formidable type of a danger which was already
threatening Greece before his baleful star arose. As Demosthenes said to
the Athenians, if the Macedonian had not existed, they would have made
another Philip for themselves. Until Athens recovered something of its
old spirit, there must ever be a great standing danger, not for Athens
only, but for Greece,--the danger that sooner or later, in some shape,
from some quarter--no man could foretell the hour, the manner or the
source--barbarian violence would break up the gracious and undefiled
tradition of separate Hellenic life.
What was the true relation of Athens to Greece? The answer which he gave
to this question is the key to the life of Demosthenes. Athens, so
Demosthenes held, was the natural head of Greece. Not, however, as an
empress holding subject or subordinate cities in a dependence more or
less compulsory. Rather as that city which most nobly expressed the
noblest attributes of Greek political existence, and which, by her
preeminent gifts both of intellect and of moral insight, was primarily
responsible, everywhere and always, for the maintenance of those
attributes in their integrity. Wherever the cry of the oppressed goes up
from Greek against Greek, it was the voice of Athens which should first
remind the oppressor that Hellene differed from barbarian in postponing
the use of force to the persuasions of equal law. Wherever a barbarian
hand offered wrong to any city of the Hellenic sisterhood, it was the
arm of Athens which should first be stretched forth in the holy strength
of Apollo the Averter. Wherever among her own children the ancient
loyalty was yielding to love of pleasure or of base gain, there, above
all, it was the duty of Athens to see that the central hearth of Hellas
was kept pure. Athens must never again seek "empire" in the sense which
became odious under the influence of Cleon and Hyperbolus,--when, to use
the image of Aristophanes, the allies were as Babylonian slaves grinding
in the Athenian mill. Athens must never permit, if she could help it,
the re-establishment of such a domination as Sparta exercised in Greece
from the battle of Aegospotami to the battle of Leuctra. Athens must aim
at leading a free confederacy, of which the members should be bound to
her by their own truest interests. Athens must seek to deserve the
confidence of all Greeks alike.
Theoric fund.
Such, in the belief of Demosthenes, was the part which Athens must
perform if Greece was to be safe. But reforms must be effected before
Athens could be capable of such a part. The evils to be cured were
different phases of one malady. Athens had long been suffering from the
profound decay of public spirit. Since the early years of the
Peloponnesian War, the separation of Athenian society from the state had
been growing more and more marked. The old type of the eminent citizen,
who was at once statesman and general, had become almost extinct.
Politics were now managed by a small circle of politicians. Wars were
conducted by professional soldiers whose troops were chiefly
mercenaries, and who were usually regarded by the politicians either as
instruments or as enemies. The mass of the citizens took no active
interest in public affairs. But, though indifferent to principles, they
had quickly sensitive partialities for men, and it was necessary to keep
them in good humour. Pericles had introduced the practice of giving a
small bounty from the treasury to the poorer citizens, for the purpose
of enabling them to attend the theatre at the great festivals,--in other
words, for the purpose of bringing them under the concentrated influence
of the best Attic culture. A provision eminently wise for the age of
Pericles easily became a mischief when the once honourable name of
"demagogue" began to mean a flatterer of the mob. Before the end of the
Peloponnesian War the festival-money (_theoricon_) was abolished. A few
years after the restoration of the democracy it was again introduced.
But until 354 B.C. it had never been more than a gratuity, of which the
payment depended on the treasury having a surplus. In 354 B.C. Eubulus
became steward of the treasury. He was an able man, with a special
talent for finance, free from all taint of personal corruption, and
sincerely solicitous for the honour of Athens, but enslaved to
popularity, and without principles of policy. His first measure was to
make the festival-money a permanent item in the budget. Thenceforth this
bounty was in reality very much what Demades afterwards called it,--the
cement ([Greek: kolla]) of the democracy.
Forensic speeches in Public causes.
Years before the danger from Macedon was urgent, Demosthenes had begun
the work of his life,--the effort to lift the spirit of Athens, to
revive the old civic loyalty, to rouse the city into taking that place
and performing that part which her own welfare as well as the safety of
Greece prescribed. His formally political speeches must never be
considered apart from his forensic speeches in public causes. The
Athenian procedure against the proposer of an unconstitutional law--i.e.
of a law incompatible with existing laws--had a direct tendency to make
the law court, in such cases, a political arena. The same tendency was
indirectly exerted by the tolerance of Athenian juries (in the absence
of a presiding expert like a judge) for irrelevant matter, since it was
usually easy for a speaker to make capital out of the adversary's
political antecedents. But the forensic speeches of Demosthenes for
public causes are not only political in this general sense. They are
documents, as indispensable as the Olynthiacs or Philippics, for his own
political career. Only by taking them along with the formally political
speeches, and regarding the whole as one unbroken series, can we see
clearly the full scope of the task which he set before him,--a task in
which his long resistance to Philip was only the most dramatic incident,
and in which his real achievement is not to be measured by the event of
Chaeronea.
A forensic speech, composed for a public cause, opens the political
career of Demosthenes with a protest against a signal abuse. In 355
B.C., at the age of twenty-nine, he wrote the speech "Against
Androtion." This combats on legal grounds a proposal that the out-going
senate should receive the honour of a golden crown. In its larger
aspect, it is a denunciation of the corrupt system which that senate
represented, and especially of the manner in which the treasury had been
administered by Aristophon. In 354 B.C. Demosthenes composed and spoke
the oration "Against Leptines," who had effected a slender saving for
the state by the expedient of revoking those hereditary exemptions from
taxation which had at various times been conferred in recognition of
distinguished merit. The descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton alone
had been excepted from the operation of the law. This was the first time
that the voice of Demosthenes himself had been heard on the public
concerns of Athens, and the utterance was a worthy prelude to the career
of a statesman. He answers the advocates of the retrenchment by pointing
out that the public interest will not ultimately be served by a
wholesale violation of the public faith. In the same year he delivered
his first strictly political speech, "On the Navy Boards" (Symmories).
The Athenians, irritated by the support which Artaxerxes had lately
given to the revolt of their allies, and excited by rumours of his
hostile preparations, were feverishly eager for a war with Persia.
Demosthenes urges that such an enterprise would at present be useless;
that it would fail to unite Greece; that the energies of the city should
be reserved for a real emergency; but that, before the city can
successfully cope with any war, there must be a better organization of
resources, and, first of all, a reform of the navy, which he outlines
with characteristic lucidity and precision.
Two years later (352 B.C.) he is found dealing with a more definite
question of foreign policy. Sparta, favoured by the depression of Thebes
in the Phocian War, was threatening Megalopolis. Both Sparta and
Megalopolis sent embassies to Athens. Demosthenes supported Megalopolis.
The ruin of Megalopolis would mean, he argued, the return of Spartan
domination in the Peloponnesus. Athenians must not favour the tyranny of
any one city. They must respect the rights of all the cities, and thus
promote unity based on mutual confidence. In the same year Demosthenes
wrote the speech "Against Timocrates," to be spoken by the same Diodorus
who had before prosecuted Androtion, and who now combated an attempt to
screen Androtion and others from the penalties of embezzlement. The
speech "Against Aristocrates," also of 352 B.C., reproves that foreign
policy of feeble makeshifts which was now popular at Athens. The
Athenian tenure of the Thracian Chersonese partly depended for its
security on the good-will of the Thracian prince Cersobleptes.
Charidemus, a soldier of fortune who had already played Athens false,
was now the brother-in-law and the favourite of Cersobleptes.
Aristocrates proposed that the person of Charidemus should be invested
with a special sanctity, by the enactment that whoever attempted his
life should be an outlaw from all dominions of Athens. Demosthenes
points out that such adulation is as futile as it is fulsome. Athens can
secure the permanence of her foreign possessions only in one way--by
being strong enough to hold them.
Principles of policy.
Thus, between 355 and 352, Demosthenes had laid down the main lines of
his policy. Domestic administration must be purified. Statesmen must be
made to feel that they are responsible to the state. They must not be
allowed to anticipate judgment on their deserts by voting each other
golden crowns. They must not think to screen misappropriation of public
money by getting partisans to pass new laws about state-debtors. Foreign
policy must be guided by a larger and more provident conception of
Athenian interests. When public excitement demands a foreign war, Athens
must not rush into it without asking whether it is necessary, whether it
will have Greek support, and whether she herself is ready for it. When a
strong Greek city threatens a weak one, and seeks to purchase Athenian
connivance with the bribe of a border-town, Athens must remember that
duty and prudence alike command her to respect the independence of all
Greeks. When it is proposed, by way of insurance on Athenian possessions
abroad, to flatter the favourite of a doubtful ally, Athens must
remember that such devices will not avail a power which has no army
except on paper, and no ships fit to leave their moorings.
Athens and Philip.
But the time had gone by when Athenians could have tranquil leisure for
domestic reform. A danger, calling for prompt action, had at last come
very near. For six years Athens had been at war with Philip on account
of his seizure of Amphipolis. Meanwhile he had destroyed Potidaea and
founded Philippi. On the Thracian coasts he had become master of Abdera
and Maronea. On the Thessalian coast he had acquired Methone. In a
second invasion of Thessaly, he had overthrown the Phocians under
Onomarchus, and had advanced to Thermopylae, to find the gates of Greece
closed against him by an Athenian force. He had then marched to Heraeon
on the Propontis, and had dictated a peace to Cersobleptes. He had
formed an alliance with Cardia, Perinthus and Byzantium. Lastly, he had
begun to show designs on the great Confederacy of Olynthus, the more
warlike Miletus of the North. The First Philippic of Demosthenes was
spoken in 351 B.C. The Third Philippic--the latest of the extant
political speeches--was spoken in 341 B.C. Between these he delivered
eight political orations, of which seven are directly concerned with
Philip. The whole series falls into two great divisions. The first
division comprises those speeches which were spoken against Philip while
he was still a foreign power threatening Greece from without. Such are
the First Philippic and the three orations for Olynthus. The second
division comprises the speeches spoken against Philip when, by
admission to the Amphictyonic Council, he had now won his way within the
circle of the Greek states, and when the issue was no longer between
Greece and Macedonia, but between the Greek and Macedonian parties in
Greece. Such are the speech "On the Peace," the speech "On the Embassy,"
the speech "On the Chersonese," the Second and Third Philippics.
First Philippic.
The First Philippic, spoken early in 351 B.C., was no sudden note of
alarm drawing attention to an unnoticed peril. On the contrary, the
Assembly was weary of the subject. For six years the war with Philip had
been a theme of barren talk. Demosthenes urges that it is time to do
something, and to do it with a plan. Athens fighting Philip has fared,
he says, like an amateur boxer opposed to a skilled pugilist. The
helpless hands have only followed blows which a trained eye should have
taught them to parry. An Athenian force must be stationed in the north,
at Lemnos or Thasos. Of 2000 infantry and 200 cavalry at least one
quarter must be Athenian citizens capable of directing the mercenaries.
Later in the same year Demosthenes did another service to the cause of
national freedom. Rhodes, severed by its own act from the Athenian
Confederacy, had since 355 been virtually subject to Mausolus, prince
([Greek: dynastês]) of Caria, himself a tributary of Persia. Mausolus
died in 351, and was succeeded by his widow Artemisia. The democratic
party in Rhodes now appealed to Athens for help in throwing off the
Carian yoke. Demosthenes supported their application in his speech "For
the Rhodians." No act of his life was a truer proof of statesmanship. He
failed. But at least he had once more warned Athens that the cause of
political freedom was everywhere her own, and that, wherever that cause
was forsaken, there a new danger was created both for Athens and for
Greece.
Euboean War.
Next year (350) an Athenian force under Phocion was sent to Euboea, in
support of Plutarchus, tyrant of Eretria, against the faction of
Cleitarchus. Demosthenes protested against spending strength, needed for
greater objects, on the local quarrels of a despot. Phocion won a
victory at Tamynae. But the "inglorious and costly war" entailed an
outlay of more than £12,000 on the ransom of captives alone, and ended
in the total destruction of Athenian influence throughout Euboea. That
island was now left an open field for the intrigues of Philip. Worst of
all, the party of Eubulus not only defeated a proposal, arising from
this campaign, for applying the festival-money to the war-fund, but
actually carried a law making it high treason to renew the proposal. The
degree to which political enmity was exasperated by the Euboean War may
be judged from the incident of Midias, an adherent of Eubulus, and a
type of opulent rowdyism. Demosthenes was choragus of his tribe, and was
wearing the robe of that sacred office at the great festival in the
theatre of Dionysus, when Midias struck him on the face. The affair was
eventually compromised. The speech "Against Midias" written by
Demosthenes for the trial (in 349) was neither spoken nor completed, and
remains, as few will regret, a sketch.
Olynthiacs.
It was now three years since, in 352, the Olynthians had sent an embassy
to Athens, and had made peace with their only sure ally. In 350 a second
Olynthian embassy had sought and obtained Athenian help. The hour of
Olynthus had indeed come. In 349 Philip opened war against the Chalcidic
towns of the Olynthian League. The First and Second Olynthiacs of
Demosthenes were spoken in that year in support of sending one force to
defend Olynthus and another to attack Philip. "Better now than later,"
is the thought of the First Olynthiac. The Second argues that Philip's
strength is overrated. The Third--spoken in 348--carries us into the
midst of action.[2] It deals with practical details. The festival-fund
must be used for the war. The citizens must serve in person. A few
months later, Olynthus and the thirty-two towns of the confederacy were
swept from the earth. Men could walk over their sites, Demosthenes said
seven years afterwards, without knowing that such cities had existed. It
was now certain that Philip could not be stopped outside of Greece. The
question was, What point within Greece shall he be allowed to reach?
Peace between Philip and Athens.
End of Phocian War.
Eubulus and his party, with that versatility which is the privilege of
political vagueness, now began to call for a congress of the allies to
consider the common danger. They found a brilliant interpreter in
Aeschines, who, after having been a tragic actor and a clerk to the
assembly, had entered political life with the advantages of a splendid
gift for eloquence, a fine presence, a happy address, a ready wit and a
facile conscience. While his opponents had thus suddenly become warlike,
Demosthenes had become pacific. He saw that Athens must have time to
collect strength. Nothing could be gained, meanwhile, by going on with
the war. Macedonian sympathizers at Athens, of whom Philocrates was the
chief, also favoured peace. Eleven envoys, including Philocrates,
Aeschines, and Demosthenes, were sent to Philip in February 346 B.C.
After a debate at Athens, peace was concluded with Philip in April.
Philip on the one hand, Athens and her allies on the other, were to keep
what they respectively held at the time when the peace was ratified. But
here the Athenians made a fatal error. Philip was bent on keeping the
door of Greece open. Demosthenes was bent on shutting it against him.
Philip was now at war with the people of Halus in Thessaly. Thebes had
for ten years been at war with Phocis. Here were two distinct chances
for Philip's armed intervention in Greece. But if the Halians and the
Phocians were included in the peace, Philip could not bear arms against
them without violating the peace. Accordingly Philip insisted that they
should not be included. Demosthenes insisted they should be included.
They were not included. The result followed speedily. The same envoys
were sent a second time to Philip at the end of April 346 for the
purpose of receiving his oaths in ratification of the peace. It was late
in June before he returned from Thrace to Pella--thus gaining, under the
terms, all the towns that he had taken meanwhile. He next took the
envoys with him through Thessaly to Thermopylae. There--at the
invitation of Thessalians and Thebans--he intervened in the Phocian War.
Phalaecus surrendered. Phocis was crushed. Philip took its place in the
Amphictyonic Council, and was thus established as a Greek power in the
very centre, at the sacred hearth, of Greece. The right of precedence in
consultation of the oracle ([Greek: promanteia]) was transferred from
Athens to Philip. While indignant Athenians were clamouring for the
revocation of the peace, Demosthenes upheld it in his speech "On the
Peace" in September. It ought never to have been made on such terms, he
said. But, having been made, it had better be kept. "If we went to war
now, where should we find allies? And after losing Oropus, Amphipolis,
Cardia, Chios, Cos, Rhodes, Byzantium, shall we fight about the shadow
of Delphi?"
Second Philippic.
Third Philippic.
During the eight years between the peace of Philocrates and the battle
of Chaeronea, the authority of Demosthenes steadily grew, until it
became first predominant and then paramount. He had, indeed, a
melancholy advantage. Each year his argument was more and more cogently
enforced by the logic of facts. In 344 he visited the Peloponnesus for
the purpose of counteracting Macedonian intrigue. Mistrust, he told the
Peloponnesian cities, is the safeguard of free communities against
tyrants. Philip lodged a formal complaint at Athens. Here, as elsewhere,
the future master of Greece reminds us of Napoleon on the eve of the
first empire. He has the same imperturbable and persuasive effrontery in
protesting that he is doing one thing at the moment when his energies
are concentrated on doing the opposite. Demosthenes replied in the
Second Philippic. "If," he said, "Philip is the friend of Greece, we are
doing wrong. If he is the enemy of Greece, we are doing right. Which is
he? I hold him to be our enemy, because everything that he has hitherto
done has benefited himself and hurt us." The prosecution of Aeschines
for malversation on the embassy (commonly known as _De falsa
legatione_), which was brought to an issue in the following year, marks
the moral strength of the position now held by Demosthenes. When the
gravity of the charge and the complexity of the evidence are considered,
the acquittal of Aeschines by a narrow majority must be deemed his
condemnation. The speech "On the Affairs of the Chersonese" and the
Third Philippic were the crowning efforts of Demosthenes. Spoken in the
same year, 341 B.C., and within a short space of each other, they must
be taken together. The speech "On the Affairs of the Chersonese" regards
the situation chiefly from an Athenian point of view. "If the peace
means," argues Demosthenes, "that Philip can seize with impunity one
Athenian possession after another, but that Athenians shall not on their
peril touch aught that belongs to Philip, where is the line to be drawn?
We shall go to war, I am told, when it is necessary. If the necessity
has not come yet, when will it come?" The Third Philippic surveys a
wider horizon. It ascends from the Athenian to the Hellenic view. Philip
has annihilated Olynthus and the Chalcidic towns. He has ruined Phocis.
He has frightened Thebes. He has divided Thessaly. Euboea and the
Peloponnesus are his. His power stretches from the Adriatic to the
Hellespont. Where shall be the end? Athens is the last hope of Greece.
And, in this final crisis, Demosthenes was the embodied energy of
Athens. It was Demosthenes who went to Byzantium, brought the estranged
city back to the Athenian alliance, and snatched it from the hands of
Philip. It was Demosthenes who, when Philip had already seized Elatea,
hurried to Thebes, who by his passionate appeal gained one last chance,
the only possible chance, for Greek freedom, who broke down the barrier
of an inveterate jealousy, who brought Thebans to fight beside
Athenians, and who thus won at the eleventh hour a victory for the
spirit of loyal union which took away at least one bitterness from the
unspeakable calamity of Chaeronea.
Municipal activity.
But the work of Demosthenes was not closed by the ruin of his cause.
During the last sixteen years of his life (338-322) he rendered services
to Athens not less important, and perhaps more difficult, than those
which he had rendered before. He was now, as a matter of course,
foremost in the public affairs of Athens. In January 337, at the annual
winter Festival of the Dead in the Outer Ceramicus, he spoke the funeral
oration over those who had fallen at Chaeronea. He was member of a
commission for strengthening the fortifications of the city ([Greek:
teichopoios]). He administered the festival-fund. During a dearth which
visited Athens between 330 and 326 he was charged with the organization
of public relief. In 324 he was chief ([Greek: architheoros]) of the
sacred embassy to Olympia. Already, in 336, Ctesiphon had proposed that
Demosthenes should receive a golden crown from the state, and that his
extraordinary merits should be proclaimed in the theatre at the Great
Dionysia. The proposal was adopted by the senate as a bill ([Greek:
probouleuma]); but it must be passed by the Assembly before it could
become an act ([Greek: psêphisma]). To prevent this, Aeschines gave
notice, in 336, that he intended to proceed against Ctesiphon for having
proposed an unconstitutional measure. For six years Aeschines avoided
action on this notice. At last, in 330, the patriotic party felt strong
enough to force him to an issue. Aeschines spoke the speech "Against
Ctesiphon," an attack on the whole public life of Demosthenes.
Demosthenes gained an overwhelming victory for himself and for the
honour of Athens in the most finished, the most splendid and the most
pathetic work of ancient eloquence--the immortal oration "On the Crown."
Affair of Harpalus.
In the winter of 325-324 Harpalus, the receiver-general of Alexander in
Asia, fled to Greece, taking with him 8000 mercenaries, and treasure
equivalent to about a million and a quarter sterling. On the motion of
Demosthenes he was warned from the harbours of Attica. Having left his
troops and part of his treasure at Taenarum, he again presented himself
at the Peiraeus, and was now admitted. He spoke fervently of the
opportunity which offered itself to those who loved the freedom of
Greece. All Asia would rise with Athens to throw off the hated yoke.
Fiery patriots like Hypereides were in raptures. For zeal which could be
bought Harpalus had other persuasions. But Demosthenes stood firm. War
with Alexander would, he saw, be madness. It could have but one
result,--some indefinitely worse doom for Athens. Antipater and Olympias
presently demanded the surrender of Harpalus. Demosthenes opposed this.
But he reconciled the dignity with the loyalty of Athens by carrying a
decree that Harpalus should be arrested, and that his treasure should be
deposited in the Parthenon, to be held in trust for Alexander. Harpalus
escaped from prison. The amount of the treasure, which Harpalus had
stated as 700 talents, proved to be no more than 350. Demosthenes
proposed that the Areopagus should inquire what had become of the other
350. Six months, spent in party intrigues, passed before the Areopagus
gave in their report ([Greek: apophasis]). The report inculpated nine
persons. Demosthenes headed the list of the accused. Hypereides was
among the ten public prosecutors. Demosthenes was condemned, fined fifty
talents, and, in default of payment, imprisoned. After a few days he
escaped from prison to Aegina, and thence to Troezen. Two things in this
obscure affair are beyond reasonable doubt. First, that Demosthenes was
not bribed by Harpalus. The hatred of the Macedonian party towards
Demosthenes, and the fury of those vehement patriots who cried out that
he had betrayed their best opportunity, combined to procure his
condemnation, with the help, probably, of some appearances which were
against him. Secondly, it can hardly be questioned that, by withstanding
the hot-headed patriots at this juncture, Demosthenes did heroic service
to Athens.
End of Lamian War.
Demosthenes condemned.
Next year (323 B.C.) Alexander died. Then the voice of Demosthenes,
calling Greece to arms, rang out like a trumpet. Early in August 322 the
battle of Crannon decided the Lamian War against Greece. Antipater
demanded, as the condition on which he would refrain from besieging
Athens, the surrender of the leading patriots. Demades moved the decree
of the Assembly by which Demosthenes, Hypereides, and some others were
condemned to death as traitors. On the 20th of Boedromion (September 16)
322, a Macedonian garrison occupied Munychia. It was a day of solemn and
happy memories, a day devoted, in the celebration of the Great
Mysteries, to sacred joy,--the day on which the glad procession of the
Initiated returned from Eleusis to Athens. It happened, however, to have
another association, more significant than any ironical contrast for the
present purpose of Antipater. It was the day on which, thirteen years
before, Alexander had punished the rebellion of Thebes with
annihilation.
Flight to Calauria.
Death.
The condemned men had fled to Aegina. Parting there from Hypereides and
the rest, Demosthenes went on to Calauria, a small island off the coast
of Argolis. In Calauria there was an ancient temple of Poseidon, once a
centre of Minyan and Ionian worship, and surrounded with a peculiar
sanctity as having been, from time immemorial, an inviolable refuge for
the pursued. Here Demosthenes sought asylum. Archias of Thurii, a man
who, like Aeschines, had begun life as a tragic actor, and who was now
in the pay of Antipater, soon traced the fugitive, landed in Calauria,
and appeared before the temple of Poseidon with a body of Thracian
spearmen. Plutarch's picturesque narrative bears the marks of artistic
elaboration. Demosthenes had dreamed the night before that he and
Archias were competing for a prize as tragic actors; the house applauded
Demosthenes; but his chorus was shabbily equipped, and Archias gained
the prize. Archias was not the man to stick at sacrilege. In Aegina,
Hypereides and the others had been taken from the shrine of Aeacus. But
he hesitated to violate an asylum so peculiarly sacred as the Calaurian
temple. Standing before its open door, with his Thracian soldiers around
him, he endeavoured to prevail on Demosthenes to quit the holy precinct.
Antipater would be certain to pardon him. Demosthenes sat silent, with
his eyes fixed on the ground. At last, as the emissary persisted in his
bland persuasions, he looked up and said,--"Archias, you never moved me
by your acting, and you will not move me now by your promises." Archias
lost his temper, and began to threaten. "Now," rejoined Demosthenes,
"you speak like a real Macedonian oracle; before you were acting. Wait a
moment, then, till I write to my friends." With these words, Demosthenes
withdrew into the inner part of the temple,--still visible, however,
from the entrance. He took out a roll of paper, as if he were going to
write, put the pen to his mouth, and bit it, as was his habit in
composing. Then he threw his head back, and drew his cloak over it. The
Thracian spearmen, who were watching him from the door, began to gibe at
his cowardice. Archias went in to him, encouraged him to rise, repeated
his old arguments, talked to him of reconciliation with Antipater. By
this time Demosthenes felt that the poison which he had sucked from the
pen was beginning to work. He drew the cloak from his face, and looked
steadily at Archias. "Now you can play the part of Creon in the tragedy
as soon as you like," he said, "and cast forth my body unburied. But I,
O gracious Poseidon, quit thy temple while I yet live; Antipater and his
Macedonians have done what they could to pollute it." He moved towards
the door, calling to them to support his tottering steps. He had just
passed the altar of the god, when he fell, and with a groan gave up the
ghost (October 322 B.C.).
Political character.
As a statesman, Demosthenes needs no epitaph but his own words in the
speech "On the Crown,"--_I say that, if the event had been manifest to
the whole world beforehand, not even then ought Athens to have forsaken
this course, if Athens had any regard for her glory, or for her past, or
for the ages to come._ The Persian soldier in Herodotus, following
Xerxes to foreseen ruin, confides to his fellow-guest at the banquet
that the bitterest pain which man can know is [Greek: polla phroneonta
mêdenoss krateein],--complete, but helpless, prescience. In the grasp of
a more inexorable necessity, the champion of Greek freedom was borne
onward to a more tremendous catastrophe than that which strewed the
waters of Salamis with Persian wrecks and the field of Plataea with
Persian dead; but to him, at least, it was given to proclaim aloud the
clear and sure foreboding that filled his soul, to do all that true
heart and free hand could do for his cause, and, though not to save, yet
to encourage, to console and to ennoble. As the inspiration of his life
was larger and higher than the mere courage of resistance, so his merit
must be regarded as standing altogether outside and above the struggle
with Macedon. The great purpose which he set before him was to revive
the public spirit, to restore the political vigour, and to re-establish
the Panhellenic influence of Athens,--never for her own advantage
merely, but always in the interest of Greece. His glory is, that while
he lived he helped Athens to live a higher life. Wherever the noblest
expressions of her mind are honoured, wherever the large conceptions of
Pericles command the admiration of statesmen, wherever the architect and
the sculptor love to dwell on the masterpieces of Ictinus and Pheidias,
wherever the spell of ideal beauty or of lofty contemplation is
exercised by the creations of Sophocles or of Plato, there it will be
remembered that the spirit which wrought in all these would have passed
sooner from among men, if it had not been recalled from a trance, which
others were content to mistake for the last sleep, by the passionate
breath of Demosthenes.
Oratory.
The orator in whom artistic genius was united, more perfectly than in
any other man, with moral enthusiasm and with intellectual grasp, has
held in the modern world the same rank which was accorded to him in the
old; but he cannot enjoy the same appreciation. Macaulay's ridicule has
rescued from oblivion the criticism which pronounced the eloquence of
Chatham to be more ornate than that of Demosthenes, and less diffuse
than that of Cicero. Did the critic, asks Macaulay, ever hear any
speaking that was less ornamented than that of Demosthenes, or more
diffuse than that of Cicero? Yet the critic's remark was not so
pointless as Macaulay thought it. Sincerity and intensity are, indeed,
to the modern reader, the most obvious characteristics of Demosthenes.
His style is, on the whole, singularly free from what we are accustomed
to regard as rhetorical embellishment. Where the modern orator would
employ a wealth of imagery, or elaborate a picture in exquisite detail,
Demosthenes is content with a phrase or a word. Burke uses, in reference
to Hyder Ali, the same image which Demosthenes uses in reference to
Philip. "Compounding all the materials of fury, havoc, desolation, into
one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivity of the mountains.
Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on
this menacing meteor, which darkened all their horizon, it suddenly
burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the
Carnatic." Demosthenes forbears to amplify. "The people gave their
voice, and the danger which hung upon our borders went by like a cloud."
To our modern feeling, the eloquence of Demosthenes exhibits everywhere
a general stamp of earnest and simple strength. But it is well to
remember the charge made against the style of Demosthenes by a
contemporary Greek orator, and the defence offered by the best Greek
critic of oratory. Aeschines reproached the diction of Demosthenes with
excess of elaboration and adornment ([Greek: periergia]). Dionysius, in
reply, admits that Demosthenes does at times depart from
simplicity,--that his style is sometimes elaborately ornate and remote
from the ordinary usage. But, he adds, Demosthenes adopts this manner
where it is justified by the elevation of his theme. The remark may
serve to remind us of our modern disadvantage for a full appreciation of
Demosthenes. The old world felt, as we do, his moral and mental
greatness, his fire, his self-devotion, his insight. But it felt also,
as we can never feel, the versatile perfection of his skill. This it was
that made Demosthenes unique to the ancients. The ardent patriot, the
far-seeing statesman, were united in his person with the consummate and
unapproachable artist. Dionysius devoted two special treatises to
Demosthenes,--one on his language and style ([Greek: lektikos topos]),
the other on his treatment of subject-matter ([Greek: pragmatikos
topos]). The latter is lost. The former is one of the best essays in
literary criticism which antiquity has bequeathed to us. The idea which
it works out is that Demosthenes has perfected Greek prose by fusing in
a glorious harmony the elements which had hitherto belonged to separate
types. The austere dignity of Antiphon, the plain elegance of Lysias,
the smooth and balanced finish of that middle or normal character which
is represented by Isocrates, have come together in Demosthenes. Nor is
this all. In each species he excels the specialists. He surpasses the
school of Antiphon in perspicuity, the school of Lysias in verve, the
school of Isocrates in variety, in felicity, in symmetry, in pathos, in
power. Demosthenes has at command all the discursive brilliancy which
fascinates a festal audience. He has that power of concise and lucid
narration, of terse reasoning, of persuasive appeal, which is required
by the forensic speaker. His political eloquence can worthily image the
majesty of the state, and enforce weighty counsels with lofty and
impassioned fervour. A true artist, he grudged no labour which could
make the least part of his work more perfect. Isocrates spent ten years
on the _Panegyricus_. After Plato's death, a manuscript was found among
his papers with the first eight words of the _Republic_ arranged in
several different orders. What wonder, then, asks the Greek critic, if
the diligence of Demosthenes was no less incessant and minute? "To me,"
he says, "it seems far more natural that a man engaged in composing
political discourses, imperishable memorials of his power, should
neglect not even the smallest details, than that the veneration of
painters and sculptors, who are darkly showing forth their manual tact
and toil in a corruptible material, should exhaust the refinements of
their art on the veins, on the feathers, on the down of the lip, and the
like niceties."
Works.
More than half of the sixty-one speeches extant under the name of
Demosthenes are certainly or probably spurious. The results to which the
preponderance of opinion leans are given in the following table. Those
marked a were already rejected or doubted in antiquity; those marked m,
first in modern times:[3]
I. DELIBERATIVE SPEECHES.
GENUINE.
Or. 14. On the Navy Boards 354 B.C.
Or. 16. For the People of Megalopolis 352 "
Or. 4. First Philippic 351 "
Or. 15. For the Rhodians 351 "
Or. 1. First Olynthiac 349 "
Or. 2. Second Olynthiac 349 "
Or. 3. Third Olynthiac 348 "
Or. 5. On the Peace 346 "
Or. 6. Second Philippic 344 "
Or. 8. On the Affairs of the Chersonese 341 "
Or. 9. Third Philippic 341 "
SPURIOUS.
(a) Or. 7. On Halonnesus (by Hegesippus) 342 B.C.
_Rhetorical Forgeries_.
(a) Or. 17. On the Treaty with Alexander.
(a) Or. 10. Fourth Philippic.
(m) Or. 11. Answer to Philip's Letter.[4]
(m) Or. 12. Philip's Letter.
(m) Or. 13. On the Assessment ([Greek: syntxis]).
II. FORENSIC SPEECHES.
A. IN PUBLIC CAUSES.
GENUINE.
Or. 22. In ([Greek: kata]) Androtionem 355 B.C.
Or. 20. Contra ([Greek: pros]) Leptinem 354 "
Or. 24. In Timocratem 352 "
Or. 23. In Aristocratem 352 "
Or. 21. In Midiam 349 "
Or. 19. On the Embassy 343 "
Or. 18. On the Crown 330 "
SPURIOUS.
(a) Or. 58. In Theocrinem 339 B.C.
(a) Or. 25, 26. In Aristogitona I. and II. (Rhetorical forgeries).
B. IN PRIVATE CAUSES.
GENUINE.
Or. 27, 28. In Aphobum I. et II. 364 B.C.
(m) Or. 30, 31. Contra Onetora I. et II. 362 "
Or. 41. Contra Spudiam ? "
(m) Or. 55. Contra Calliclem ?
Or. 54. In Cononem 356 "
Or. 36. Pro Phormione 352 "
(m) Or. 39. Contra Boeotum de Nomine 350 "
Or. 37. Contra Pantaenetum 346-5 "
(m) Or. 38. Contra Nausimachum et Diopithem ?
SPURIOUS.
(_The first eight of the following are given by Schäfer to
Apollodorus._)
(m) Or. 52. Contra Callippum. 369-8 B.C.
(a) Or. 53. Contra Nicostratum after 368 "
(a) Or. 49. Contra Timotheum 362 "
(m) Or. 50. Contra Polyclem 357 "
(a) Or. 47. In Evergum et Mnesibulum 356 "
(m) Or. 45, 46. In Stephanum I. et II. 351 "
(a) Or. 59. In Neaeram 349[343-0, Blass] "
(m) Or. 51. On the Trierarchic Crown (by 360-359 "
Cephisodotus?)
(m) Or. 43. Contra Macartatum ?
(m) Or. 48. In Olympiodorum. after 343 "
(m) Or. 44. Contra Leocharem ?
(a) Or. 35. Contra Lacritum 341 "
(a) Or. 42. Contra Phaenippum ?
(m) Or. 32. Contra Zenothemin ?
(m) Or. 34. Contra Phormionem ?
(m) Or. 29. Contra Aphobum pro Phano
(a) Or. 40. Contra Boeotum de Dote 347 "
(m) Or. 57. Contra Eubulidem 346-5 "
(m) Or. 33. Contra Apaturium ?
(a) Or. 56. In Dionysodorum not before 322-1 "
Or. 60 ([Greek: epitaphios]) and Or. 61 (Greek: erôtikos) are works
of rhetoricians. The six epistles are also forgeries; they were used
by the composer of the twelve epistles which bear the name of
Aeschines. The 56 [Greek: prooimia], exordia or sketches for
political speeches, are by various hands and of various dates.[5]
They are valuable as being compiled from Demosthenes himself, or from
other classical models.
Literary history of Demosthenes.
The ancient fame of Demosthenes as an orator can be compared only with
the fame of Homer as a poet. Cicero, with generous appreciation,
recognizes Demosthenes as the standard of perfection. Dionysius, the
closest and most penetrating of his ancient critics, exhausts the
language of admiration in showing how Demosthenes united and elevated
whatever had been best in earlier masters of the Greek idiom.
Hermogenes, in his works on rhetoric, refers to Demosthenes as [Greek:
ho rhêtôr], _the_ orator. The writer of the treatise On Sublimity knows
no heights loftier than those to which Demosthenes has risen. From his
own younger contemporaries, Aristotle and Theophrastus, who founded
their theory of rhetoric in large part on his practice, down to the
latest Byzantines, the consent of theorists, orators, antiquarians,
anthologists, lexicographers, offered the same unvarying homage to
Demosthenes. His work busied commentators such as Xenon, Minucian,
Basilicus, Aelius, Theon, Zosimus of Gaza. Arguments to his speeches
were drawn up by rhetoricians so distinguished as Numenius and Libanius.
Accomplished men of letters, such as Julius Vestinus and Aelius
Dionysius, selected from his writings choice passages for declamation or
perusal, of which fragments are incorporated in the miscellany of
Photius and the lexicons of Harpocration, Pollux and Suidas. It might
have been anticipated that the purity of a text so widely read and so
renowned would, from the earliest times, have been guarded with jealous
care. The works of the three great dramatists had been thus protected,
about 340 B.C., by a standard Attic recension. But no such good fortune
befell the works of Demosthenes. Alexandrian criticism was chiefly
occupied with poetry. The titular works of Demosthenes were, indeed,
registered, with those of the other orators, in the catalogues ([Greek:
rhêtorikoi pinakes]) of Alexandria and Pergamum. But no thorough attempt
was made to separate the authentic works from those spurious works which
had even then become mingled with them. Philosophical schools which,
like the Stoic, felt the ethical interest of Demosthenes, cared little
for his language. The rhetoricians who imitated or analysed his style
cared little for the criticism of his text. Their treatment of it had,
indeed, a direct tendency to falsify it. It was customary to indicate by
marks those passages which were especially useful for study or
imitation. It then became a rhetorical exercise to recast, adapt or
interweave such passages. Sopater, the commentator on Hermogenes, wrote
on [Greek: metabolai kai metapoiêseis tôn Dêmosthenous chôriôn],
"adaptations or transcripts of passages in Demosthenes." Such
manipulation could not but lead to interpolations or confusions in the
original text. Great, too, as was the attention bestowed on the thought,
sentiment and style of Demosthenes, comparatively little care was
bestowed on his subject-matter. He was studied more on the moral and the
formal side than on the real side. An incorrect substitution of one name
for another, a reading which gave an impossible date, insertions of
spurious laws or decrees, were points which few readers would stop to
notice. Hence it resulted that, while Plato, Thucydides and Demosthenes
were the most universally popular of the classical prose-writers, the
text of Demosthenes, the most widely used perhaps of all, was also the
least pure. His more careful students at length made an effort to arrest
the process of corruption. Editions of Demosthenes based on a critical
recension, and called [Greek: Attikiana (antigrapha)], came to be
distinguished from the vulgates, or [Greek: dêmôdeis ekdoseis].
Manuscripts.
Among the extant manuscripts of Demosthenes--upwards of 170 in
number--one is far superior, as a whole, to the rest. This is
_Parisinus_ [Sigma] 2934, of the 10th century. A comparison of this MS.
with the extracts of Aelius, Aristeides and Harpocration from the Third
Philippic favours the view that it is derived from an [Greek:
Attikianon], whereas the [Greek: dêmôdeis ekdoseis], used by Hermogenes
and by the rhetoricians generally, have been the chief sources of our
other manuscripts. The collation of this manuscript by Immanuel Bekker
first placed the textual criticism of Demosthenes on a sound footing.
Not only is this manuscript nearly free from interpolations, but it is
the sole voucher for many excellent readings. Among the other MSS., some
of the most important are--_Marcianus_ 416 F, of the 10th (or 11th)
century, the basis of the Aldine edition; _Augustanus_ I. (N 85),
derived from the last, and containing scholia to the speeches on the
Crown and the Embassy, by Ulpian, with some by a younger writer, who was
perhaps Moschopulus; _Parisinus_ [Upsilon]; _Antverpiensis_
[Omega]--the last two comparatively free from additions. The fullest
authority on the MSS. is J. T. Vömel, _Notitia codicum Demosth_., and
Prolegomena Critica to his edition published at Halle (1856-1857), pp.
175-178.[6]
Scholia.
The extant scholia on Demosthenes are for the most part poor. Their
staple consists of Byzantine erudition; and their value depends chiefly
on what they have preserved of older criticism. They are better than
usual for the [Greek: Peri stephanou, Kata Timokratous]; best for the
[Greek: Peri parapresbeias]. The Greek commentaries ascribed to Ulpian
are especially defective on the historical side, and give little
essential aid. Editions:--C. W. Müller, in _Orat. Att._ ii. (1847-1858);
_Scholia Graeca in Demosth. ex cod. aucta et emendata_ (Oxon., 1851; in
W. Dindorf's ed.).
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--_Editio princeps_ (Aldus, Venice, 1504); J. J. Reiske
(with notes of J. Wolf, J. Taylor, J. Markland, &c., 1770-1775);
revised edition of Reiske by G. H. Schäfer (1823-1826); I. Bekker, in
_Oratores Attici_ (1823-1824), the first edition based on codex
[Sigma] (see above); W. S. Dobson (1828); J. G. Baiter and H. Sauppe
(1850); W. Dindorf (in Teubner series, 1867, 4th ed. by F. Blass,
1885-1889); H. Omont, facsimile edition of codex [Sigma] (1892-1893);
S. H. Butcher in Oxford _Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca_ (1903
foll.); W. Dindorf (9 vols., Oxford, 1846-1851), with notes of
previous commentators and Greek scholia; R. Whiston (political
speeches) with introductions and notes (1859-1868). For a select list
of the numerous English and foreign editions and translations of
separate speeches see J. B. Mayor, _Guide to the Choice of Classical
Books_ (1885, suppt. 1896). Mention may here be made of _De corona_
by W. W. Goodwin (1901, ed. min., 1904); W. H. Simcox (1873, with
Aeschines _In Ctesiphontem_); and P. E. Matheson (1899); _Leptines_
by J. E. Sandys (1890); _De falsa legatione_ by R. Shilleto (4th ed.,
1874); _Select Private Orations_ by J. E. Sandys and F. A. Paley (3rd
ed., 1898, 1896); _Midias_ by W. W. Goodwin (1906). C. R. Kennedy's
complete translation is a model of scholarly finish, and the
appendices on Attic law, &c., are of great value. There are indices
to Demosthenes by J. Reiske (ed. G. H. Schäfer, 1823); S. Preuss
(1892). Among recent papyrus finds are fragments of a special lexicon
to the _Aristocratea_ and a commentary by Didymus (ed. H. Diels and
W. Schubart, 1904). Illustrative literature: A. D. Schäfer,
_Demosthenes und seine Zeit_ (2nd ed., 1885-1887), a masterly and
exhaustive historical work; F. Blass, _Die attische Beredsamkeit_
(1887-1898); W. J. Brodribb, "Demosthenes" in _Ancient Classics for
English Readers_ (1877); S. H. Butcher, _Introduction to the Study of
Demosthenes_ (1881); C. G. Böhnecke, _Demosthenes, Lykurgos,
Hyperides, und ihr Zeitalter_ (1864); A. Bouillé, _Histoire de
Démosthène_ (2nd ed., 1868); J. Girard, _Études sur l'éloquence
attique_ (1874); M. Croiset, _Des idées morales dans l'Éloquence
politique de Démosthène_ (1874); A. Hug, _Demosthenes als politischer
Denker_ (1881); L. Brédit, _L'Éloquence politique en Grèce_ (2nd ed.,
1886); A. Bougot, _Rivalité d'Eschine et Démosthène_ (1891). For
fuller bibliographical information consult R. Nicolai, _Griechische
Literaturgeschichte_ (1881); W. Engelmann, _Scriptores Graeci_
(1881); G. Hüttner in C. Bursian's _Jahresbericht_, li. (1889).
(R. C. J.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Jebb's _Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos_, vol. ii. p.
267 f.
[2] It is generally agreed that the Third Olynthiac is the latest;
but the question of the order of the First and Second has been much
discussed. See Grote (_History of Greece_, chap. 88, appendix), who
prefers the arrangement ii. i. iii., and Blass, _Die attische
Beredsamkeit_, iii. p. 319.
[3] The dates agree in the main with those given by A. D. Schäfer in
_Demosthenes und seine Zeit_ (2nd ed., 1885-1887), and by F. Blass
in _Die attische Beredsamkeit_ (1887-1898), who regards thirty-three
(or possibly thirty-five) of the speeches as genuine.
[4] Or. 11 and 12 are probably both by Anaximenes of Lampsacus.
[5] According to Blass, the second and third epistles and the
_exordia_ are genuine.
[6] See also H. Usener in _Nachrichten von der Königl. Gesellschaft
der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen_, p. 188 (1892); J. H. Lipsius, "Zur
Textcritik des Demosthenes" in _Berichte ... der Königl. Sächsischen
Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften_ (1893) with special reference to
the papyrus finds at the end of the 19th century; E. Bethe,
_Demosthenis scriptorum corpus_ (1893).
DEMOTIC (Gr. [Greek: dêmotikos], of or belonging to the people), a term,
meaning popular, specially applied to that cursive script of the ancient
Egyptian language used for business and literary purposes,--for the
people. It is opposed to "hieratic" (Gr. [Greek: hieratikos], of or
belonging to the priests), the script, an abridged form of the
hieroglyphic, used in transcribing the religious texts. (See WRITING,
and EGYPT: II., _ANCIENT_, D. _LANGUAGE AND WRITING._)
DEMOTICA, or DIMOTICA, a town of European Turkey, in the vilayet of
Adrianople; on the Maritza valley branch of the Constantinople-Salonica
railway, about 35 m. S. of Adrianople. Pop. (1905) about 10,000.
Demotica is built at the foot of a conical hill on the left bank of the
river Kizildeli, near its junction with the Maritza. It was formerly the
seat of a Greek archbishop, and besides the ancient citadel and palace
on the summit of the hill contains several Greek churches, mosques and
public baths. In the middle ages, when it was named Didymotichos, it was
one of the principal marts of Thrace; in modern times it has regained
something of its commercial importance, and exports pottery, linen, silk
and grain. These goods are sent to Dédéagatch for shipment. Demotica was
the birthplace of the Turkish sultan Bayezid I. (1347); after the
battle of Poltava, Charles XII. of Sweden resided here from February
1713 to October 1714.
DEMPSTER, THOMAS (1579-1625), Scottish scholar and historian, was born
at Cliftbog, Aberdeenshire, the son of Thomas Dempster of Muresk,
Auchterless and Killesmont, sheriff of Banff and Buchan. According to
his own account, he was the twenty-fourth of twenty-nine children, and
was early remarkable for precocious talent. He obtained his early
education in Aberdeenshire, and at ten entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge;
after a short while he went to Paris, and, driven thence by the plague,
to Louvain, whence by order of the pope he was transferred with several
other Scottish students to the papal seminary at Rome. Being soon forced
by ill health to leave, he went to the English college at Douai, where
he remained three years and took his M.A. degree. While at Douai he
wrote a scurrilous attack on Queen Elizabeth, which caused a riot among
the English students. But, if his truculent character was thus early
displayed, his abilities were no less conspicuous; and, though still in
his teens, he became lecturer on the Humanities at Tournai, whence,
after but a short stay, he returned to Paris, to take his degree of
doctor of canon law, and become regent of the college of Navarre. He
soon left Paris for Toulouse, which in turn he was forced to leave owing
to the hostility of the city authorities, aroused by his violent
assertion of university rights. He was now elected professor of
eloquence at the university or academy of Nîmes, but not without a
murderous attack upon him by one of the defeated candidates and his
supporters, followed by a suit for libel, which, though he ultimately
won his case, forced him to leave the town. A short engagement in Spain,
as tutor to the son of Marshal de Saint Luc, was terminated by another
quarrel; and Dempster now returned to Scotland with the intention of
asserting a claim to his father's estates. Finding his relatives
unsympathetic, and falling into heated controversy with the Presbyterian
clergy, he made no long stay, but returned to Paris, where he remained
for seven years, becoming professor in several colleges successively. At
last, however, his temporary connexion with the collège de Beauvais was
ended by a feat of arms which proved him as stout a fighter with his
sword as with his pen; and, since his victory was won over officers of
the king's guard, it again became expedient for him to change his place
of residence. The dedication of his edition of Rosinus' _Antiquitatum
Romanorum corpus absolutissimum_ to King James I. had won him an
invitation to the English court; and in 1615 he went to London. His
reception by the king was flattering enough; but his hopes of preferment
were dashed by the opposition of the Anglican clergy to the promotion of
a papist. He left for Rome, where, after a short imprisonment on
suspicion of being a spy, he gained the favour of Pope Paul V., through
whose influence with Cosimo II., grand duke of Tuscany, he was appointed
to the professorship of the Pandects at Pisa. He had married while in
London, but ere long had reason to suspect his wife's relations with a
certain Englishman. Violent accusations followed, indignantly
repudiated; a diplomatic correspondence ensued, and a demand was made,
and supported by the grand duke, for an apology, which the professor
refused to make, preferring rather to lose his chair. He now set out
once more for Scotland, but was intercepted by the Florentine cardinal
Luigi Capponi, who induced him to remain at Bologna as professor of
Humanity. This was the most distinguished post in the most famous of
continental universities, and Dempster was now at the height of his
fame. Though his _Roman Antiquities_ and _Scotia illustrior_ had been
placed on the Index pending correction, Pope Urban VIII. made him a
knight and gave him a pension. He was not, however, to enjoy his honours
long. His wife eloped with a student, and Dempster, pursuing the
fugitives in the heat of summer, caught a fever, and died at Bologna on
the 6th of September 1625.
Dempster owed his great position in the history of scholarship to his
extraordinary memory, and to the versatility which made him equally at
home in philology, criticism, law, biography and history. His style is,
however, often barbarous; and the obvious defects of his works are due
to his restlessness and impetuosity, and to a patriotic and personal
vanity which led him in Scottish questions into absurd exaggerations,
and in matters affecting his own life into an incurable habit of
romancing. The best known of his works is the _Historia ecclesiastica
gentis Scotorum_ (Bologna, 1627). In this book he tries to prove that
Bernard (Sapiens), Alcuin, Boniface and Joannes Scotus Erigena were all
Scots, and even Boadicea becomes a Scottish author. This criticism is
not applicable to his works on antiquarian subjects, and his edition of
Benedetto Accolti's _De bello a Christianis contra barbaros_ (1623) has
great merits.
A portion of his Latin verse is printed in the first volume (pp.
306-354) of _Delitiae poëtarum Scotorum_ (Amsterdam, 1637).
DEMURRAGE (from "demur," Fr. _demeurer_, to delay, derived from Lat.
_mora_), in the law of merchant shipping, the sum payable by the
freighter to the shipowner for detention of the vessel in port beyond
the number of days allowed for the purpose of loading or unloading (see
AFFREIGHTMENT: UNDER _CHARTER-PARTIES_). The word is also used in
railway law for the charge on detention of trucks; and in banking for
the charge per ounce made by the Bank of England in exchanging coin or
notes for bullion.
DEMURRER (from Fr. _demeurer_, to delay, Lat. _morari_), in English law,
an objection taken to the sufficiency, in point of law, of the pleading
or written statement of the other side. In equity pleading a demurrer
lay only against the bill, and not against the answer; at common law any
part of the pleading could be demurred to. On the passing of the
Judicature Act of 1875 the procedure with respect to demurrers in civil
cases was amended, and, subsequently, by the Rules of the Supreme Court,
Order XXV. demurrers were abolished and a more summary process for
getting rid of pleadings which showed no reasonable cause of action or
defence was adopted, called proceedings in lieu of demurrer. Demurrer in
criminal cases still exists, but is now seldom resorted to. Demurrers
are still in constant use in the United States. See ANSWER; PLEADING.
DENAIN, a town of northern France in the department of Nord, 8 m. S.W.
of Valenciennes by steam tramway. A mere village in the beginning of the
19th century, it rapidly increased from 1850 onwards, and, according to
the census of 1906, possessed 22,845 inhabitants, mainly engaged in the
coal mines and iron-smelting works, to which it owes its development.
There are also breweries, manufactories of machinery, sugar and glass. A
school of commerce and industry is among the institutions. Denain has a
port on the left bank of the Scheldt canal. Its vicinity was the scene
of the decisive victory gained in 1712 by Marshal Villars over the
allies commanded by Prince Eugène; and the battlefield is marked by a
monolithic monument inscribed with the verses of Voltaire:--
"Regardez dans Denain l'audacieux Villars
Disputant le tonnerre à l'aigle des Césars."
DENBIGH, WILLIAM FEILDING, 1ST EARL OF (d. 1643), son of Basil
Feilding[1] of Newnham Paddox in Warwickshire, and of Elizabeth,
daughter of Sir Walter Aston, was educated at Emmanuel College,
Cambridge, and knighted in 1603. He married Susan, daughter of Sir
George Villiers, sister of the future duke of Buckingham, and on the
rise of the favourite received various offices and dignities. He was
appointed _custos rotulorum_ of Warwickshire, and master of the great
wardrobe in 1622, and created baron and viscount Feilding in 1620, and
earl of Denbigh on the 14th of September 1622. He attended Prince
Charles on the Spanish adventure, served as admiral in the unsuccessful
expedition to Cadiz in 1625, and commanded the disastrous attempt upon
Rochelle in 1628, becoming the same year a member of the council of war,
and in 1633 a member of the council of Wales. In 1631 Lord Denbigh
visited the East. On the outbreak of the Civil War he served under
Prince Rupert and was present at Edgehill. On the 3rd of April 1643
during Rupert's attack on Birmingham he was wounded and died from the
effects on the 8th, being buried at Monks Kirby in Warwickshire. His
courage, unselfishness and devotion to duty are much praised by
Clarendon.
See E. Lodge, _Portraits_ (1850), iv. 113; J. Nichols, _Hist. of
Leicestershire_ (1807), iv. pt. 1, 273; Hist. MSS. _Comm Ser._ 4th
Rep. app. 254; _Cal. of State Papers, Dom.; Studies in Peerage and
Family History_, by J. H. Round (1901), 216.
His eldest son, BASIL FEILDING, 2nd earl of Denbigh (c. 1608-1675), was
educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was summoned to the House of
Lords as Baron Feilding in March 1629. After seeing military service in
the Netherlands he was sent in 1634 by Charles I. as ambassador to
Venice, where he remained for five years. When the Civil War broke out
Feilding, unlike the other members of his family, ranged himself among
the Parliamentarians, led a regiment of horse at Edgehill, and, having
become earl of Denbigh in April 1643, was made commander-in-chief of the
Parliamentary army in Warwickshire and the neighbouring counties, and
lord-lieutenant of Warwickshire. During the year 1644 he was fairly
active in the field, but in some quarters he was distrusted and he
resigned his command after the passing of the self-denying ordinance in
April 1645. At Uxbridge in 1645 Denbigh was one of the commissioners
appointed to treat with the king, and he undertook a similar duty at
Carisbrooke in 1647. Clarendon relates how at Uxbridge Denbigh declared
privately that he regretted the position in which he found himself, and
expressed his willingness to serve Charles I. He supported the army in
its dispute with the parliament, but he would take no part in the trial
of Charles I. Under the government of the commonwealth Denbigh was a
member of the council of state, but his loyalty to his former associates
grew lukewarm, and gradually he came to be regarded as a royalist. In
1664 the earl was created Baron St Liz. Although four times married he
left no issue when he died on the 28th of November 1675.
His titles devolved on his nephew WILLIAM FEILDING (1640-1685), son and
heir of his brother George (created Baron Feilding of Lecaghe, Viscount
Callan and earl of Desmond), and the earldom of Desmond has been held by
his descendants to the present day in conjunction with the earldom of
Denbigh.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The descent of the Feildings from the house of Habsburg, through
the counts of Laufenburg and Rheinfelden, long considered authentic,
and immortalized by Gibbon, has been proved to have been based on
forged documents. See J. H. Round, _Peerage and Family History_
(1901).
DENBIGH (_Dinbych_), a municipal and (with Holt, Ruthin and Wrexham)
contributory parliamentary borough, market town and county town of
Denbighshire, N. Wales, on branches of the London & North Western and
the Great Western railways. Pop. (1901) 6438. Denbigh Castle,
surrounding the hill with a double wall, was built, in Edward I.'s
reign, by Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, from whom the town received
its first charter. The outer wall is nearly a mile round; over its main
gateway is a niche with a figure representing, possibly, Edward I., but
more probably, de Lacy. Here, in 1645, after the defeat of Rowton Moor,
Charles I. found shelter, the castle long resisting the
Parliamentarians, and being reduced to ruins by his successor. The chief
buildings are the Carmelite Priory (ruins dating perhaps from the 13th
century); a Bluecoat school (1514); a free grammar school (1527); an
orphan girl school (funds left by Thomas Howel to the Drapers' Co., in
Henry VII.'s reign); the town hall (built in 1572 by Robert Dudley, earl
of Leicester, enlarged and restored in 1780); an unfinished church
(begun by Leicester); a market hall (with arcades or "rows," such as
those of Chester or Yarmouth); and the old parish church of St Marcella.
The streams near Denbigh are the Clwyd and Elwy. The inhabitants of
Denbigh are chiefly occupied in the timber trade, butter-making,
poultry-farming, bootmaking, tanning and quarrying (lime, slate and
paving-stones). The borough of Denbigh has a separate commission of the
peace, but no separate court of quarter sessions. The town has long been
known as a Welsh publishing centre, the vernacular newspaper, _Baner_,
being edited and printed here. Near Denbigh, at Bodelwyddan, &c., coal
is worked.
The old British tower and castle were called _Castell caled fryn yn
Rhôs_, the "castle of the hard hill in Rhôs." _Din_ in _Dinbych_ means
a fort. There is a goblin well at the castle. Historically, David
(_Dafydd_), brother of the last Llewelyn, was here (_aet._ Edward I.)
perhaps on a foray; also Henry Lacy, who built the castle (_aet._ Edward
I.), given to the Mortimers and to Leicester (under Edward III. and
Elizabeth, respectively).
DENBIGHSHIRE (_Dinbych_), a county of N. Wales, bounded N. by the Irish
Sea, N.E. by Flint and Cheshire, S.E. by Flint and Shropshire, S. by
Montgomery and Merioneth, and W. by Carnarvon. Area, 662 sq. m. On the
N. coast, within the Denbighshire borders and between Old Colwyn and
Llandulas, is a wedge of land included in Carnarvonshire, owing to a
change in the course of the Conwy stream. (Thus, also, Llandudno is
partly in the Bangor, and partly in the St Asaph, diocese.) The surface
of Denbighshire is irregular, and physically diversified. In the N.W.
are the bleak Hiraethog ("longing") hills, sloping W. to the Conwy and
E. to the Clwyd. In the N. are Colwyn and Abergele bays, on the S. the
Yspytty (Lat. _Hospitium_) and Llangwm range, between Denbigh and
Merioneth. From this watershed flow the Elwy, Aled, Clywedog, Merddwr
and Alwen, tributaries of the Clwyd, Conwy and Dee (_Dyfrdwy_). Some of
the valleys contrast agreeably with the bleak hills, e.g. those of the
Clwyd and Elwy. The portion lying between Ruabon (_Rhiwabon_) hills and
the Dee is agricultural and rich in minerals; the Berwyn to Offa's Dyke
(_Wâl Offa_) is wild and barren, except the Tanat valley, Llansilin and
Ceiriog. One feeder of the Tanat forms the Pistyll Rhaiadr (waterspout
fall), another rises in Llyncaws (cheese pool) under Moel Sych (dry
bare-hill), the highest point in the county. Aled and Alwen are both
lakes and streams.
_Geology._-The geology of the county is full of interest, as it
develops all the principal strata that intervenes between the
Ordovician and the Triassic series. In the Ordovician district, which
extends from the southern boundary to the Ceiriog, the Llandeilo
formation of the eastern slopes of the Berwyn and the Bala beds of
shelly sandstone are traversed east and west by bands of intrusive
felspathic porphyry and ashes. The same formation occurs just within
the county border at Cerrig-y-Druidion, Langum, Bettys-y-coed and in
the Fairy Glen. Northwards from the Ceiriog to the limestone fringe
at Llandrillo the Wenlock shale of the Silurian covers the entire
mass of the Hiraethog and Clwydian hills, but verging on its western
slopes into the Denbighshire grit, which may be traced southward in a
continuous line from the mouth of the Conway as far as Llanddewi
Ystrad Enni in Radnorshire, near Pentre-Voelas and Conway they are
abundantly fossiliferous. On its eastern slope a narrow broken band
of the Old Red, or what may be a conglomeratic basement bed of the
Carboniferous Limestone series, crops up along the Vale of Clwyd and
in Eglwyseg. Resting upon this the Carboniferous Limestone extends
from Llanymynach, its extreme southern point, to the Cyrnybrain
fault, and there forks into two divisions that terminate respectively
in the Great Orme's Head and in Talargoch, and are separated from
each other by the denuded shales of the Moel Famma range. In the Vale
of Clwyd the limestone underlies the New Red Sandstone, and in the
eastern division it is itself overlaid by the Millstone Grit of
Ruabon and Minera, and by a long reach of the Coal Measures which
near Wrexham are 4½ m. in breadth. Eastward of these a broad strip of
the red marly beds succeeds, formerly considered to be Permian but
now regarded as belonging to the Coal Measures, and yet again between
this and the Dee the ground is occupied--as in the Vale of Clwyd--by
the New Red rocks. As in the other northern counties of Wales, the
whole of the lower ground is covered more or less thickly with
glacial drift. On the western side of the Vale of Clwyd, at Cefn and
Plâs Heaton, the caves, which are a common feature in such limestone
districts, have yielded the remains of the rhinoceros, mammoth,
hippopotamus and other extinct mammals.
Coal is mined from the Coal Measures, and from the limestone below,
lead with silver and zinc ores have been obtained. Valuable fireclays
and terra-cotta marls are also taken from the Coal Measures about
Wrexham.
The uplands being uncongenial for corn, ponies, sheep and black cattle
are reared, for fattening in the Midlands of England and sale in London.
Oats and turnips, rather than wheat, barley and potatoes, occupy the
tilled land. The county is fairly wooded. There are several important
farmers' clubs (the Denbighshire and Flintshire, the vale of Conway, the
Cerrig y druidion, &c.). The London & North-Western railway (Holyhead
line), with the Conway and Clwyd valleys branches, together with the
lines connecting Denbigh with Ruabon (Rhiwabon), via Ruthin and Corwen,
Wrexham with Connah's Quay (Great Central) and Rhosllanerchrhugog with
Glyn Ceiriog (for the Great Western and Great Central railways) have
opened up the county. Down the valley of Llangollen also runs the
Holyhead road from London, well built and passing through fine scenery.
At Nantglyn paving flags are raised, at Rhiwfelen (near Llangollen)
slabs and slates, and good slates are also obtained at Glyn Ceiriog.
There is plenty of limestone, with china stone at Brymbo. Cefn Rhiwabon
yields sandstone (for hones) and millstone grit. Chirk, Ruabon and
Brymbo have coal mines. The great Minera is the principal lead mine.
There is much brick and pottery clay. The Ceiriog valley has a dynamite
factory. Llangollen and Llansantffraid (St Bridgit's) have woollen
manufactures.
The area of the ancient county is 423,499 acres, with a population in
1901 of 129,942. The area of the administrative county is 426,084 acres.
The chief towns are: Wrexham, a mining centre and N. Wales military
centre, with a fine church; Denbigh; Ruthin, where assizes are held
(here are a grammar school, a warden and a 13th-century castle rebuilt);
Llangollen and Llanrwst; and Holt, with an old ruined castle. The
Denbigh district of parliamentary boroughs is formed of: Denbigh (pop.
6483), Holt (1059), Ruthin (2643), and Wrexham (14,966). The county has
two parliamentary divisions. The urban districts are: Abergele and
Pensarn (2083), Colwyn Bay and Colwyn (8689), Llangollen (3303), and
Llanrwst (2645). Denbighshire is in the N. Wales circuit, assizes being
held at Ruthin. Denbigh and Wrexham boroughs have separate commissions
of the peace, but no separate quarter-session courts. The ancient
county, which is in the diocese of St Asaph, contains seventy-five
ecclesiastical parishes and districts and part of a parish.
The county was formed, by an act of Henry VIII., out of the lordships of
Denbigh, Ruthin (Rhuthyn), Rhos and Rhyfoniog, which are roughly the
Perfeddwlad (midland) between Conway and Clwyd, and the lordships of
Bromfield, Yale (_Iâl_, open land) and Chirkland, the old possessions of
Gruffydd ap Madoc, _arglwydd_ (lord) of Dinas Brân. Cefn (Elwy Valley)
limestone caves hold the prehistoric hippopotamus, elephant, rhinoceros,
lion, hyena, bear, reindeer, &c.; Plâs Heaton cave, the glutton; Pont
Newydd, felstone tools and a polished stone axe (like that of
Rhosdigre); Carnedd Tyddyn Bleiddian, "platycnemic (skeleton) men of
Denbighshire" (like those of Perthi Chwareu). Clawdd Coch has traces of
the Romans; so also Penygaer and Penbarras. Roman roads ran from Deva
(Chester) to Segontium (Carnarvon) and from Deva to Mons Heriri (_Tomen
y mur_). To their period belong the inscribed Gwytherin and Pentrefoelas
(near Bettws-y-coed) stones. The Valle Crucis "Eliseg's pillar" tells of
Brochmael and the Cairlegion (Chester) struggle against Æthelfrith's
invading Northumbrians, A.D. 613, while Offa's dike goes back to the
Mercian advance. Near and parallel to Offa's is the shorter and
mysterious Watt's dike. Chirk is the only Denbighshire castle
comparatively untouched by time and still occupied. Ruthin has
cloisters; Wrexham, the Brynffynnon "nunnery"; and at both are
collegiate churches. Llanrwst, Gresford and Derwen boast rood lofts and
screens; Whitchurch and Llanrwst, portrait brasses and monuments;
Derwen, a churchyard cross; Gresford and Llanrhaiadr (Dyffryn Clwyd),
stained glass. Near Abergele, known for its sea baths, is the _ogof_ (or
cave), traditionally the refuge of Richard II. and the scene of his
capture by Bolingbroke in 1399.
See J. Williams, _Denbigh_ (1856), and T. F. Tout, _Welsh Shires_.
DENDERA, a village in Upper Egypt, situated in the angle of the great
westward bend of the Nile opposite Kena. Here was the ancient city of
Tentyra, capital of the Tentyrite nome, the sixth of Upper Egypt, and
the principal seat of the worship of Hathor [Aphrodite] the cow-goddess
of love and joy. The old Egyptian name of Tentyra was written 'In·t
(Ant), but the pronunciation of it is unknown: in later days it was
'In·t-t-ntr·t, "ant of the goddess," pronounced Ni-tentôri, whence
[Greek: Tentyra, Tentyris]. The temple of Hathor was built in the 1st
century B.C., being begun under the later Ptolemies (Ptol. XIII.) and
finished by Augustus, but much of the decoration is later. A great
rectangular enclosure of crude bricks, measuring about 900 X 850 ft.,
contains the sacred buildings: it was entered by two stone gateways, in
the north and the east sides, built by Domitian. Another smaller
enclosure lies to the east with a gateway also of the Roman period.
The plan of the temple may be supposed to have included a colonnaded
court in front of the present façade, and pylon towers at the entrance;
but these were never built, probably for lack of funds. The building,
which is of sandstone, measures about 300 ft. from front to back, and
consists of two oblong rectangles; the foremost, placed transversely to
the other, is the great hypostyle hall or pronaos, the broadest and
loftiest part of the temple, measuring 135 ft. in width, and comprising
about one-third of the whole structure; the façade has six columns with
heads of Hathor, and the ceiling is supported by eighteen great columns.
The second rectangle contains a small hypostyle hall with six columns,
and the sanctuary, with their subsidiary chambers. The sanctuary is
surrounded by a corridor into which the chambers open: on the west side
is an apartment forming a court and kiosk for the celebration of the
feast of the New Year, the principal festival of Dendera. On the roof of
the temple, reached by two staircases, are a pavilion and several
chambers dedicated to the worship of Osiris. Inside and out, the whole
of the temple is covered with scenes and inscriptions in crowded
characters, of ceremonial and religious import; the decoration is even
carried into a remarkable series of hidden passages and chambers or
crypts made in the solid walls for the reception of its most valuable
treasures. The architectural style is dignified and pleasing in design
and proportions. The interior of the building has been completely
cleared: from the outside, however, its imposing effect is quite lost,
owing to the mounds of rubbish amongst which it is sunk. North-east of
the entrance is a "Birth House" for the cult of the child Harsemteu, and
behind the temple a small temple of Isis, dating from the reign of
Augustus. The original foundation of the temple must date back to a
remote time: the work of some of the early builders is in fact referred
to in the inscriptions on the present structure. Petrie's excavation of
the cemetery behind the temple enclosures revealed burials dating from
the fourth dynasty onwards, the most important being mastables of the
period from the sixth to the eleventh dynasties; many of these exhibited
a peculiar degradation of the contemporary style of sculpture.
The zodiacs of the temple of Dendera gave rise to a considerable
literature before their late origin was established by Champollion in
1822: one of them, from a chamber on the roof, was removed in 1820 to
the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Figures of the celebrated Cleopatra
VI. occur amongst the sculptures on the exterior of the temple, but they
are purely conventional, without a trace of portraiture. Horus of Edfu,
the enemy of the crocodiles and hippopotami of Set, appears sometimes as
the consort of Hathor of Dendera. The skill displayed by the Tentyrites
in capturing the crocodile is referred to by Strabo and other Greek
writers. Juvenal, in his seventeenth satire, takes as his text a
religious riot between the Tentyrites and the neighbouring Ombites, in
the course of which an unlucky Ombite was torn to pieces and devoured by
the opposite party. The Ombos in question is not the distant Ombos south
of Edfu, where the crocodile was worshipped; Petrie has shown that
opposite Coptos, only about 15 m. from Tentyra, there was another Ombos,
venerating the hippopotamus sacred to Set.
See A. Mariette, _Dendérah_ (5 vols. atlas and text, 1869-1880); W.
M. F. Petrie, _Denderah_ (1900); _Nagada_ and _Ballas_ (1896).
(F. LL. G.)
DENDROCOMETES (so named by F. Stein), a genus of suctorian Infusoria,
characterized by the repeatedly branched attached body; each of the
lobes of the body gives off a few retractile tentacles. It is parasitic
on the gills of the so-called freshwater shrimp _Gammarus pulex_.
For its conjugation see Sydney H. Hickson, in _Quarterly Journ. of
Microsc. Science_, vol xlv. (1902), p. 325.
DENE-HOLES, the name given to certain caves or excavations in England,
which have been popularly supposed to be due to the Danes or some other
of the early northern invaders of the country. The common spelling "Dane
hole" is adduced as evidence of this, and individual names, such as
Vortigern's Caves at Margate, and Canute's Gold Mine near Bexley,
naturally follow the same theory. The word, however, is probably derived
from the Anglo-Saxon _den_, a hole or valley. There are many underground
excavations in the south of the country, also found to some extent in
the midlands and the north, but true dene-holes are found chiefly in
those parts of Kent and Essex along the lower banks of the Thames. With
one exception there are no recorded specimens farther east than those of
the Grays Thurrock district, situated in Hangman's Wood, on the north,
and one near Rochester on the south side of the river.
The general outline of the formation of these caves is invariably the
same. The entrance is a vertical shaft some 3 ft. in diameter falling,
on an average, to a depth of 60 ft. The depth is regulated, obviously,
by the depth of the chalk from the surface, but, although chalk could
have been obtained close at hand within a few feet, or even inches, from
the surface, a depth of from 45 to 80 ft., or more, is a characteristic
feature. It is believed that dene-holes were also excavated in sand, but
as these would be of a perishable nature there are no available data of
any value. The shaft, when the chalk is reached, widens out into a domed
chamber with a roof of chalk some 3 ft. thick. The walls frequently
contract somewhat as they near the floor. As a rule there is only one
chamber, from 16 to 18 ft. in height, beneath each shaft. From this
excessive height it has been inferred that the caves were not primarily
intended for habitations or even hiding-places. In some cases the
chamber is extended, the roof being supported by pillars of chalk left
standing. A rare specimen of a twin-chamber was discovered at Gravesend.
In this case the one entrance served for both caves, although a separate
aperture connected them on the floor level. Where galleries are found
connecting the chambers, forming a bewildering labyrinth, a careful
scrutiny of the walls usually reveals evidence that they are the work of
a people of a much later period than that of the chambers, or, as they
become in these cases, the halls of the galleries.
Isolated specimens have been discovered in various parts of Kent and
Essex, but the most important groups have been found at Grays Thurrock,
in the districts of Woolwich, Abbey Wood and Bexley, and at Gravesend.
Those at Bexley and Grays Thurrock are the most valuable still existing.
It is generally found that the tool work on the roof or ceiling is
rougher than that on the walls, where an upright position could be
maintained. Casts taken of some of the pick-holes near the roof show
that, in all probability, they were made by bone or horn picks. And
numerous bone picks have been discovered in Essex and Kent. These
pick-holes are amongst the most valuable data for the study of
dene-holes, and have assisted in fixing the date of their formation to
pre-Roman times. Very few relics of antiquarian value have been
discovered in any of the known dene-holes which have assisted in fixing
the date or determining the uses of these prehistoric excavations. Pliny
mentions pits sunk to a depth of a hundred feet, "where they branched
out like the veins of mines." This has been used in support of the
theory that dene-holes were wells sunk for the extraction of chalk; but
no known dene-hole branches out in this way. Chrétien de Troyes has a
passage on underground caves in Britain which may have reference to
dene-holes, and tradition of the 14th century treated the dene-holes of
Grays as the fabled gold mines of Cunobeline (or Cymbeline) of the 1st
century.
Vortigern's Caves at Margate are possibly dene-holes which have been
adapted by later peoples to other purposes; and excellent examples of
various pick-holes may be seen on different parts of the walls.
Local tradition in some cases traces the use of these caves to the
smugglers, and, when it is remembered that illicit traffic was common
not only on the coast but in the Thames as far up the river as Barking
Creek, the theory is at least tenable that these ready-made
hiding-places, difficult of approach and dangerous to descend, were so
utilized.
There are three purposes for which dene-holes may have been originally
excavated: (a) as hiding-places or dwellings, (b) draw-wells for the
extraction of chalk for agricultural uses, and (c) storehouses for
grain. For several reasons it is unlikely that they were used as
habitations, although they may have been used occasionally as
hiding-places. Other evidence has shown that it is equally improbable
that they were used for the extraction of chalk. The chief reasons
against this theory are that chalk could have been obtained outcropping
close by, and that every trace of loose chalk has been removed from the
vicinity of the holes, while known examples of chalk draw-wells do not
descend to so great a depth. The discovery of a shallow dene-hole, about
14 ft. below the surface, at Stone negatives this theory still further.
The last of the three possible uses for which these prehistoric
excavations were designed is usually accepted as the most probable.
Silos, or underground storehouses, are well known in the south of Europe
and Morocco. It is supposed that the grain was stored in the ear and
carefully protected from damp by straw. A curious smoothness of the roof
of one of the chambers of the Gravesend twin-chamber dene-hole has been
put forward as additional evidence in support of this theory. One other
theory has been advanced, viz. that the excavations were made in order
to get flints for implements, but this is quite impossible, as a careful
examination of a few examples will show.
Further reference may be made to _Essex Dene-holes_ by T. V. Holmes
and W. Cole; to _The Archaeological Journal_ (1882); the
_Transactions_ of the Essex Field Club; _Archaeologia Cantiana_, &c.;
_Dene-holes_ by F. W. Reader, in _Old Essex_, ed. A. C. Kelway
(1908).
(A. J. P.)
DENGUE (pronounced deng-ga), an infectious fever occurring in warm
climates. The symptoms are a sudden attack of fever, accompanied by
rheumatic pains in the joints and muscles with severe headache and
erythema. After a few days a crisis is reached and an interval of two or
three days is followed by a slighter return of fever and pain and an
eruption resembling measles, the most marked characteristic of the
disease. The disease is rarely fatal, death occurring only in cases of
extreme weakness caused by old age, infancy or other illness. Little is
known of the aetiology of "dengue." The virus is probably similar to
that of other exanthematous fevers and communicated by an intermediary
culex. The disease is nearly always epidemic, though at intervals it
appears to be pandemic and in certain districts almost endemic. The area
over which the disease ranges may be stated generally to be between 32°
47' N. and 23° 23' S. Throughout this area "dengue" is constantly
epidemic. The earliest epidemic of which anything is known occurred in
1779-1780 in Egypt and the East Indies. The chief epidemics have been
those of 1824-1826 in India, and in the West Indies and the southern
states of North America, of 1870-1875, extending practically over the
whole of the tropical portions of the East and reaching as far as China.
In 1888 and 1889 a great outbreak spread along the shores of the Aegean
and over nearly the whole of Asia Minor. Perhaps "dengue" is most nearly
endemic in equatorial East Africa and in the West Indies. The word has
usually been identified with the Spanish _dengue_, meaning stiff or prim
behaviour, and adopted in the West Indies as a name suitable to the
curious cramped movements of a sufferer from the disease, similar to the
name "dandy-fever" which was given to it by the negroes. According to
the _New English Dictionary_ (quoting Dr Christie in _The Glasgow
Medical Journal_, September 1881), both "dengue" and "dandy" are
corruptions of the Swahili word _dinga_ or _denga_, meaning a sudden
attack of cramp, the Swahili name for the disease being _ka-dinga pepo_.
See Sir Patrick Manson, _Tropical Diseases; a Manual of Diseases of
Warm Climates_ (1903).
DENHAM, DIXON (1786-1828), English traveller in West Central Africa, was
born in London on the 1st of January 1786. He was educated at Merchant
Taylors' School, and was articled to a solicitor, but joined the army in
1811. First in the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and afterwards in the
54th foot, he served in the campaigns in Portugal, Spain, France and
Belgium, and received the Waterloo medal. In 1821 he volunteered to join
Dr Oudney and Hugh Clapperton (q.v.), who had been sent by the British
government via Tripoli to the central Sudan. He joined the expedition at
Murzuk in Fezzan. Finding the promised escort not forthcoming, Denham,
whose energy was boundless, started for England to complain of the
"duplicity" of the pasha of Tripoli. The pasha, alarmed, sent messengers
after him with promises to meet his demands. Denham, who had reached
Marseilles, consented to return, the escort was forthcoming, and Murzuk
was regained in November 1822. Thence the expedition made its way across
the Sahara to Bornu, reached in February 1823. Here Denham, against the
wish of Oudney and Clapperton, accompanied a slave-raiding expedition
into the Mandara highlands south of Bornu. The raiders were defeated,
and Denham barely escaped with his life. When Oudney and Clapperton set
out, December 1823, for the Hausa states, Denham remained behind. He
explored the western, south and south-eastern shores of Lake Chad, and
the lower courses of the rivers Waube, Logone and Shari. In August 1824,
Clapperton having returned and Oudney being dead, Bornu was left on the
return journey to Tripoli and England. In December 1826 Denham, promoted
lieutenant-colonel, sailed for Sierra Leone as superintendent of
liberated Africans. In 1828 he was appointed governor of Sierra Leone,
but after administering the colony for five weeks died of fever at
Freetown on the 8th of May 1828.
See _Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central
Africa in the years 1822-1824_ (London, 1826), the greater part of
which is written by Denham; _The Story of Africa_, vol. i. chap.
xiii. (London, 1892), by Dr Robert Brown.
DENHAM, SIR JOHN (1615-1669), English poet, only son of Sir John Denham
(1559-1639), lord chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland, was born in
Dublin in 1615. In 1617 his father became baron of the exchequer in
England, and removed to London with his family. In Michaelmas term 1631
the future poet was entered as a gentleman commoner at Trinity College,
Oxford. He removed in 1634 to Lincoln's Inn, where he was, says John
Aubrey, a good student, but not suspected of being a wit. The reputation
he had gained at Oxford of being the "dreamingest young fellow" gave way
to a scandalous reputation for gambling. In 1634 he married Ann Cotton,
and seems to have lived with his father at Egham, Surrey. In 1636 he
wrote his paraphrase of the second book of the Aeneid (published in 1656
as _The Destruction of Troy_, with an excellent verse essay on the art
of translation). About the same time he wrote a prose tract against
gambling, _The Anatomy of Play_ (printed 1651), designed to assure his
father of his repentance, but as soon as he came into his fortune he
squandered it at play. It was a surprise to everyone when in 1642 he
suddenly, as Edmund Waller said, "broke out like the Irish rebellion,
three score thousand strong, when no one was aware, nor in the least
expected it," by publishing _The Sophy_, a tragedy in five acts, the
subject of which was drawn from Sir Thomas Herbert's travels. At the
beginning of the Civil War Denham was high sheriff for Surrey, and was
appointed governor of Farnham Castle. He showed no military ability, and
speedily surrendered the castle to the parliament. He was sent as a
prisoner to London, but was soon permitted to join the king at Oxford.
In 1642 appeared _Cooper's Hill_, a poem describing the Thames scenery
round his home at Egham. The first edition was anonymous: subsequent
editions show numerous alterations, and the poem did not assume its
final form until 1655. This famous piece, which was Pope's model for his
_Windsor Forest_, was not new in theme or manner, but the praise which
it received was well merited by its ease and grace. Moreover Denham
expressed his commonplaces with great dignity and skill. He followed the
taste of the time in his frequent use of antithesis and metaphor, but
these devices seem to arise out of the matter, and are not of the nature
of mere external ornament. At Oxford he wrote many squibs against the
roundheads. One of the few serious pieces belonging to this period is
the short poem "On the Earl of Strafford's Trial and Death."
From this time Denham was much in Charles I.'s confidence. He was
entrusted with the charge of forwarding letters to and from the king
when he was in the custody of the parliament, a duty which he
discharged successfully with Abraham Cowley, but in 1648 he was
suspected by the Parliamentary authorities, and thought it wiser to
cross the Channel. He helped in the removal of the young duke of York to
Holland, and for some time he served Queen Henrietta Maria in Paris,
being entrusted by her with despatches for Holland. In 1650 he was sent
to Poland in company with Lord Crofts to obtain money for Charles II.
They succeeded in raising £10,000. After two years spent at the exiled
court in Holland, Denham returned to London and being quite without
resources, he was for some time the guest of the earl of Pembroke at
Wilton. In 1655 an order was given that Denham should restrict himself
to some place of residence to be selected by himself at a distance of
not less than 20 m. from London; subsequently he obtained from the
Protector a licence to live at Bury St Edmunds, and in 1658 a passport
to travel abroad with the earl of Pembroke. At the Restoration Denham's
services were rewarded by the office of surveyor-general of works. His
qualifications as an architect were probably slight, but it is safe to
regard as grossly exaggerated the accusations of incompetence and
peculation made by Samuel Butler in his brutal "Panegyric upon Sir John
Denham's Recovery from his Madness." He eventually secured the services
of Christopher Wren as deputy-surveyor. In 1660 he was also made a
knight of the Bath.
In 1665 he married for the second time. His wife, Margaret, daughter of
Sir William Brooke, was, according to the comte de Gramont, a beautiful
girl of eighteen. She soon became known as the mistress of the duke of
York, and the scandal, according to common report, shattered the poet's
reason. While Denham was recovering, his wife died, poisoned, it was
said, by a cup of chocolate. Some suspected the duchess of York of the
crime, but the Comte de Gramont says that the general opinion was that
Denham himself was guilty. No sign of poison, however, was found in the
examination after Lady Denham's death. Denham survived her for two
years, dying at his house near Whitehall in March 1669. He was buried on
the 23rd in Westminster Abbey. In the last years of his life he wrote
the bitter political satires on the shameful conduct of the Dutch War
entitled "Directions to a Painter," and "Fresh Directions," continuing
Edmund Waller's "Instructions to a Painter." The printer of these poems,
with which were printed one by Andrew Marvell, was sentenced to stand in
the pillory. In 1667 Denham wrote his beautiful elegy on Abraham Cowley.
Denham's poems include, beside those already given, a verse
paraphrase of Cicero's _Cato major_, and a metrical version of the
Psalms. As a writer of didactic verse, he was perhaps too highly
praised by his immediate successors. Dryden called _Cooper's Hill_
"the exact standard of good writing," and Pope in his _Windsor
Forest_ called him "majestic Denham." His collected poems with a
dedicatory epistle to Charles II. appeared in 1668. Other editions
followed, and they are reprinted in Chalmers' (1810) and other
collections of the English poets. His political satires were printed
with some of Rochester's and Marvell's in _Bibliotheca curiosa_, vol.
i. (Edinburgh, 1885).
DÉNIA, a seaport of eastern Spain, in the province of Alicante; on the
Mediterranean Sea, at the head of a railway from Carcagente. Pop. (1900)
12,431. Dénia occupies the seaward slopes of a hill surmounted by a
ruined castle, and divided by a narrow valley on the south from the
limestone ridge of Mongó (2500 ft.), which commands a magnificent view
of the Balearic Islands and the Valencian coast. The older houses of
Dénia are characterized by their flat Moorish roofs (_azoteas_) and
view-turrets (_miradores_), while fragments of the Moorish ramparts are
also visible near the harbour; owing, however, to the rapid extension of
local commerce, many of the older quarters were modernized at the
beginning of the 20th century. Nails, and woollen, linen and esparto
grass fabrics are manufactured here; and there is a brisk export trade
in grapes, raisins and onions, mostly consigned to Great Britain or the
United States. Baltic timber and British coal are largely imported. The
harbour bay, which is well lighted and sheltered by a breakwater,
contains only a small space of deep water, shut in by deposits of sand
on three sides. In 1904 it accommodated 402 vessels of 175,000 tons;
about half of which were small fishing craft, and coasters carrying
agricultural produce to Spanish and African ports.
Dénia was colonized by Greek merchants from Emporiae (Ampurias in
Catalonia), or Massilia (Marseilles), at a very early date; but its
Greek name of _Hemeroskopeion_ was soon superseded by the Roman
_Dianium_. In the 1st century B.C., Sertorius made it the naval
headquarters of his resistance to Rome; and, as its name implies, it was
already famous for its temple of Diana, built in imitation of that at
Ephesus. The site of this temple can be traced at the foot of the castle
hill. Dénia was captured by the Moors in 713, and from 1031 to 1253
belonged successively to the Moorish kingdoms of Murcia and Valencia.
According to an ancient but questionable tradition, its population rose
at this period to 50,000, and its commerce proportionately increased.
After the city was retaken by the Christians in 1253, its prosperity
dwindled away, and only began to revive in the 19th century. During the
War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), Dénia was thrice besieged; and
in 1813 the citadel was held for five months by the French against the
allied British and Spanish forces, until the garrison was reduced to 100
men, and compelled to surrender, on honourable terms.
DENIKER, JOSEPH (1852- ) French naturalist and anthropologist, was
born of French parents at Astrakhan, Russia, on the 6th of March 1852.
After receiving his education at the university and technical institute
of St Petersburg, he adopted engineering as a profession, and in this
capacity travelled extensively in the petroleum districts of the
Caucasus, in Central Europe, Italy and Dalmatia. Settling at Paris in
1876, he studied at the Sorbonne, where he took his degree in natural
science. In 1888 he was appointed chief librarian of the Natural History
Museum, Paris. Among his many valuable ethnological works mention may be
made of _Recherches anatomiques et embryologiques sur les singes
anthropoides_ (1886); _Étude sur les Kalmouks_ (1883); _Les Ghiliaks_
(1883); and _Races et peuples de la terre_ (1900). He became one of the
chief editors of the _Dictionnaire de géographie universelle_, and
published many papers in the anthropological and zoological journals of
France.
DENILIQUIN, a municipal town of Townsend county, New South Wales,
Australia, 534 m. direct S.W. of Sydney, and 195 m. by rail N. of
Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 2644. The business of the town is chiefly
connected with the interests of the sheep and cattle farmers of the
Riverina district, a plain country, in the main pastoral, but suited in
some parts for cultivation. Deniliquin has a well-known public school.
DENIM (an abbreviation of _serge de Nîmes_), the name originally given
to a kind of serge. It is now applied to a stout twilled cloth made in
various colours, usually of cotton, and used for overalls, &c.
DENINA, CARLO GIOVANNI MARIA (1731-1813), Italian historian, was born at
Revello, Piedmont, in 1731, and was educated at Saluzzo and Turin. In
1753 he was appointed to the chair of humanity at Pignerol, but he was
soon compelled by the influence of the Jesuits to retire from it. In
1756 he graduated as doctor in theology, and began authorship with a
theological treatise. Promoted to the professorship of humanity and
rhetoric in the college of Turin, he published (1769-1772) his _Delle
revoluzioni d'Italia_, the work on which his reputation is mainly
founded. Collegiate honours accompanied the issue of its successive
volumes, which, however, at the same time multiplied his foes and
stimulated their hatred. In 1782, at Frederick the Great's invitation,
he went to Berlin, where he remained for many years, in the course of
which he published his _Vie et règne de Frédéric II_ (Berlin, 1788) and
_La Prusse littéraire sous Frédéric II_ (3 vols., Berlin, 1790-1791).
His _Delle revoluzioni della Germania_ was published at Florence in
1804, in which year he went to Paris as the imperial librarian, on the
invitation of Napoleon. At Paris he published in 1805 his _Tableau de la
Haute Italie, et des Alpes qui l'entourent_. He died there on the 5th of
December 1813.
DENIS (DIONYSIUS), SAINT, first bishop of Paris, patron saint of France.
According to Gregory of Tours (_Hist. Franc._ i. 30), he was sent into
Gaul at the time of the emperor Decius. He suffered martyrdom at the
village of Catulliacus, the modern St Denis. His tomb was situated by the
side of the Roman road, where rose the priory of St-Denis-de-l'Estrée,
which existed until the 18th century. In the 5th century the clergy of
the diocese of Paris built a basilica over the tomb. About 625 Dagobert,
son of Lothair II., founded in honour of St Denis, at some distance from
the basilica, the monastery where the greater number of the kings of
France have been buried. The festival of St Denis is celebrated on the
9th of October. With his name are already associated in the
_Martyrologium Hieronymianum_ the priest Rusticus and the deacon
Eleutherius. Other traditions--of no value--are connected with the name
of St Denis. A false interpretation of Gregory of Tours, apparently
dating from 724, represented St Denis as having received his mission from
Pope Clement, and as having suffered martyrdom under Domitian (81-96).
Hilduin, abbot of St-Denis in the first half of the 9th century,
identified Denis of Paris with Denis (Dionysius) the Areopagite
(mentioned in Acts xviii. 34), bishop of Athens (Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._
iii. 4. 10, iv. 23. 3), and naturally attributed to him the celebrated
writings of the pseudo-Areopagite. St Denis is generally represented
carrying his head in his hands.
See _Acta Sanctorum_, Octobris, iv. 696-987; _Bibliotheca
hagiographica graeca_, p. 37 (Brussels, 1895); _Bibliotheca
hagiographica latina_, No. 2171-2203 (Brussels, 1899); J. Havet, _Les
Origines de Saint-Denis_, in his collected works, i. 191-246 (Paris,
1896); Cahier, _Caractéristiques des saints_, p. 761 (Paris, 1867).
(H. DE.)
DENIS, JOHANN NEPOMUK COSMAS MICHAEL (1729-1800), Austrian poet, was
born at Schärding on the Inn, on the 27th of September 1729. He was
brought up by the Jesuits, entered their order, and in 1759 was
appointed professor in the Theresianum in Vienna, a Jesuit college. In
1784, after the suppression of the college, he was made second custodian
of the court library, and seven years later became chief librarian. He
died on the 29th of September 1800. A warm admirer of Klopstock, he was
one of the leading members of the group of so-called "bards"; and his
original poetry, published under the title _Die Lieder Sineds des
Barden_ (1772), shows all the extravagances of the "bardic" movement. He
is best remembered as the translator of _Ossian_ (1768-1769; also
published together with his own poems in 5 vols. as _Ossians und Sineds
Lieder_, 1784). More important than either his original poetry or his
translations were his efforts to familiarize the Austrians with the
literature of North Germany; his _Sammlung kürzerer Gedichte aus den
neuern Dichtern Deutschlands_, 3 vols. (1762-1766), was in this respect
invaluable. He has also left a number of bibliographical compilations,
_Grundriss der Bibliographie und Bücherkunde_ (1774), _Grundriss der
Literaturgeschichte_ (1776), _Einleitung in die Bücherkunde_ (1777) and
_Wiens Buchdruckergeschichte bis 1560_ (1782).
_Ossians und Sineds_ Lieder have not been reprinted since 1791; but a
selection of his poetry edited by R. Hamel will be found in vol. 48
(1884) of Kürschner's _Deutsche Nationalliteratur_. His
_Literarischer Nachlass_ was published by J. F. von Retzer in 1802 (2
vols.). See P. von Hofmann-Wellenhof, _Michael Denis_ (1881).
DENISON, GEORGE ANTHONY (1805-1896), English churchman, brother of John
Evelyn Denison (1800-1873; speaker of the House of Commons 1857-1872;
Viscount Ossington), was born at Ossington, Notts, on the 11th of
December 1805, and educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1828
he was elected fellow of Oriel; and after a few years there as a tutor,
during which he was ordained and acted as curate at Cuddesdon, he became
rector of Broadwindsor, Dorset (1838). He became a prebendary of Sarum
in 1841 and of Wells in 1849. In 1851 he was preferred to the valuable
living of East Brent, Somerset, and in the same year was made archdeacon
of Taunton. For many years Archdeacon Denison represented the extreme
High Tory party not only in politics but in the Church, regarding all
"progressive" movements in education or theology as abomination, and
vehemently repudiating the "higher criticism" from the days of _Essays
and Reviews_ (1860) to those of _Lux Mundi_ (1890). In 1853 he resigned
his position as examining chaplain to the bishop of Bath and Wells owing
to his pronounced eucharistic views. A suit on the complaint of a
neighbouring clergyman ensued and after various complications Denison
was condemned by the archbishops' court at Bath (1856); but on appeal
the court of Arches and the privy council quashed this judgment on a
technical plea. The result was to make Denison a keen champion of the
ritualistic school. He edited _The Church and State Review_ (1862-1865).
Secular state education and the "conscience clause" were anathema to
him. Until the end of his life he remained a protagonist in theological
controversy and a keen fighter against latitudinarianism and liberalism;
but the sharpest religious or political differences never broke his
personal friendships and his Christian charity. Among other things for
which he will be remembered was his origination of harvest festivals. He
died on the 21st of March 1896.
DENISON, GEORGE TAYLOR (1839- ), Canadian soldier and publicist, was
born in Toronto on the 31st of August 1839. In 1861 he was called to the
bar, and was from 1865-1867 a member of the city council. From the first
he took a prominent part in the organization of the military forces of
Canada, becoming a lieutenant-colonel in the active militia in 1866. He
saw active service during the Fenian raid of 1866, and during the
rebellion of 1885. Owing to his dissatisfaction with the conduct of the
Conservative ministry during the Red River Rebellion in 1869-70, he
abandoned that party, and in 1872 unsuccessfully contested Algoma in the
Liberal interest. Thereafter he remained free from party ties. In 1877
he was appointed police magistrate of Toronto. Colonel Denison was one
of the founders of the "Canada First" party, which did much to shape the
national aspirations from 1870 to 1878, and was a consistent supporter
of imperial federation and of preferential trade between Great Britain
and her colonies. He became a member of the Royal Society of Canada, and
was president of the section dealing with English history and
literature. The best known of his military works is his _History of
Modern Cavalry_ (London, 1877), which was awarded first prize by the
Russian government in an open competition and has been translated into
German, Russian and Japanese. In 1900 he published his reminiscences
under the title of _Soldiering in Canada_.
DENISON, a city of Grayson county, Texas, U.S.A., about 2½ m. from the
S. bank of the Red river, about 70 m. N. of Dallas. Pop. (1890) 10,958;
(1900) 11,807, of whom 2251 were negroes; (1910 census) 13,632. It is
served by the Houston & Texas Central, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, the
Texas & Pacific, and the St Louis & San Francisco ('Frisco System)
railways, and is connected with Sherman, Texas, by an electric line.
Denison is the seat of the Gate City business college (generally known
as Harshaw Academy), and of St Xavier's academy (Roman Catholic). It is
chiefly important as a railway centre, as a collecting and distributing
point for the fruit, vegetables, hogs and poultry, and general farming
products of the surrounding region, and as a wholesale and jobbing
market for the upper Red river valley. It has railway repair shops, and
among its manufactures are cotton-seed oil, cotton, machinery and
foundry products, flour, wooden-ware, and dairy products. In 1905 its
factory products were valued at $1,234,956, 47.0% more than in 1900.
Denison was settled by Northerners at the time of the construction of
the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railway to this point in 1872, and was
named in honour of George Denison (1822-1876), a director of the
railway; it became a city in 1891, and in 1907 adopted the commission
form of government.
DENIZEN (derived through the Fr. from Lat. _de intus_, "from within,"
i.e. as opposed to "foreign"), an alien who obtains by letters patent
(_ex donatione regis_) certain of the privileges of a British subject.
He cannot be a member of the privy council or of parliament, or hold any
civil or military office of trust, or take a grant of land from the
crown. The Naturalization Act 1870 provides that nothing therein
contained shall affect the grant of any letters of denization by the
sovereign.
DENIZLI (anc. _Laodicea (q.v.) ad Lycum_), chief town of a sanjak of the
Aidin vilayet of Asia Minor, altitude 1167 ft. Pop. about 17,000. It is
beautifully situated at the foot of Baba Dagh (Mt. Salbacus), on a
tributary of the Churuk Su (Lycus), and is connected by a branch line
with the station of Gonjeli on the Smyrna-Dineir railway. It took the
place of Laodicea when that town was deserted during the wars between
the Byzantines and Seljuk Turks, probably between 1158 and 1174. It had
become a fine Moslem city in the 14th century, and was then called
Ladik, being famous for the woven and embroidered products of its Greek
inhabitants. The delightful gardens of Denizli have obtained for it the
name of the "Damascus of Anatolia."
DENMAN, THOMAS, 1ST BARON (1779-1854), English judge, was born in
London, the son of a well-known physician, on the 23rd of July 1779. He
was educated at Eton and St John's College, Cambridge, where he
graduated in 1800. Soon after leaving Cambridge he married; and in 1806
he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, and at once entered upon
practice. His success was rapid, and in a few years he attained a
position at the bar second only to that of Brougham and Scarlett (Lord
Abinger). He distinguished himself by his eloquent defence of the
Luddites; but his most brilliant appearance was as one of the counsel
for Queen Caroline. His speech before the Lords was very powerful, and
some competent judges even considered it not inferior to Brougham's. It
contained one or two daring passages, which made the king his bitter
enemy, and retarded his legal promotion. At the general election of 1818
he was returned M.P. for Wareham, and at once took his seat with the
Whig opposition. In the following year he was returned for Nottingham,
for which place he continued to sit till his elevation to the bench in
1832. His liberal principles had caused his exclusion from office till
in 1822 he was appointed common serjeant by the corporation of London.
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