Nineteenth Century Questions
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Title: Nineteenth Century Questions
Author: James Freeman Clarke
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NINETEENTH CENTURY QUESTIONS ***
By James Freeman Clarke, D.D.
TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Part I. An Essay in Comparative Theology.
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SELF-CULTURE: Physical, Intellectual, Moral, and Spiritual. Crown
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NINETEENTH CENTURY QUESTIONS. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
EXOTICS. Poems translated from the French, German, and Italian,
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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
NINETEENTH CENTURY
QUESTIONS
BY
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1897.
COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY ELIOT C. CLARKE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PREFATORY NOTE
Shortly before his death, Dr. Clarke selected the material for this
book, and partly prepared it for publication. He wished thus to
preserve some of his papers which had excited interest when printed in
periodicals or read as lectures.
With slight exceptions, the book is issued just as prepared by the
author.
CONTENTS
PAGE
LITERARY STUDIES.
LYRIC AND DRAMATIC ELEMENTS IN LITERATURE AND ART 3
DUALISM IN NATIONAL LIFE 28
DID SHAKESPEARE WRITE BACON'S WORKS? 38
THE EVOLUTION OF A GREAT POEM: GRAY'S ELEGY 60
RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL.
AFFINITIES OF BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY 71
WHY I AM NOT A FREE-RELIGIONIST 90
HAVE ANIMALS SOULS? 100
APROPOS OF TYNDALL 128
LAW AND DESIGN IN NATURE 149
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
THE TWO CARLYLES, OR CARLYLE PAST AND PRESENT 162
BUCKLE AND HIS THEORY OF AVERAGES 196
VOLTAIRE 235
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 270
HARRIET MARTINEAU 284
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLAVE POWER IN AMERICA 312
LITERARY STUDIES
LYRIC AND DRAMATIC ELEMENTS IN LITERATURE AND ART
The German philosophy has made a distinction between the Subjective
and the Objective, which has been found so convenient that it has been
already naturalized and is almost acclimated in our literature.
The distinction is this: in all thought there are two factors, the
thinker himself, and that about which he thinks. All thought, say our
friends the Germans, results from these two factors: the subject, or
the man thinking; and the object, what the man thinks about. All that
part of thought which comes from the man himself, the Ego, they call
subjective; all that part which comes from the outside world, the
non-Ego, they call objective.
I am about to apply this distinction to literature and art; but instead
of the terms Subjective and Objective, I shall use the words Lyric and
Dramatic.
For example, when a writer or an artist puts a great deal of himself
into his work, I call him a lyric writer or artist. Lyrical, in poetry,
is the term applied to that species of poetry which directly expresses
the individual emotions of the poet. On the other hand, I call an
artist or poet dramatic when his own personality disappears, and is
lost in that which he paints or describes. A lyric or subjective writer
gives us more of himself than of the outside world; a dramatic or
objective writer gives us more of the outside world than of himself.
Lyric poetry is that which is to be sung; the lyre accompanies song.
Now, song is mainly personal or subjective. It expresses the singer's
personal emotions, feelings, desires; and for these reasons I select
this phrase "lyric" to express all subjective or personal utterances in
art.
The drama, on the other hand, is a photograph of life; of live men
and women acting themselves out freely and individually. The dramatic
writer ought to disappear in his drama; if he does not do so he is not
a dramatic writer, but a lyrist in disguise.
The dramatic element is the power of losing one's self--opinions,
feeling, character--in that which is outside and foreign, and
reproducing it just as it is. In perfect dramatic expression the
personal equation is wholly eliminated. The writer disappears in his
characters; his own hopes and fears, emotions and convictions, do not
color his work.
But the lyric element works in the opposite way. In song, the singer
is prominent more than what he sings. He suffuses his subject with
his own thoughts and feelings. If he describes nature, he merely gives
us the feelings it awakens in his own mind. If he attempts to write a
play, we see the same actor thinly disguised reappearing in all the
parts.
Now, there is a curious fact connected with this subject. It is that
great lyric and dramatic authors or artists are apt to appear in duads
or pairs. Whenever we meet with a highly subjective writer, we are
apt to find him associated with another as eminently objective. This
happens so often that one might imagine that each type of thought
attracts its opposite and tends to draw it out and develop it. It may
be that genius, when it acts on disciples who are persons of talent,
draws out what is like itself, and makes imitators; when it acts on a
disciple who himself possesses genius, it draws out what is opposite
to itself and develops another original thinker. Genius, like love,
is attracted by its opposite, or counterpart. Love and genius seek to
form wholes; they look for what will complete and fulfill themselves.
When, therefore, a great genius has come, fully developed on one side,
he exercises an irresistible attraction on the next great genius,
in whom the opposite side is latent, and is an important factor in
his development. Thus, perhaps, we obtain the duads, whose curious
concurrence I will now illustrate by a few striking instances.
Beginning our survey with English literature, who are the first two
great poets whose names occur to us? Naturally, Chaucer and Spenser.
Now, Chaucer is eminently dramatic and objective in his genius; while
Spenser is distinctly a lyrical and subjective poet.
Chaucer tells stories; and story-telling is objective. One of the most
renowned collections of stories is the "Arabian Nights;" but who knows
anything about the authors of those entertaining tales? They are merely
pictures of Eastern life, reflected in the minds of some impersonal
authors, whose names even are unknown.
Homer is another great story-teller; and Homer is so objective, so
little of a personality, that some modern critics suppose there may
have been several Homers.
Chaucer is a story-teller also; and in his stories everything belonging
to his age appears, except Chaucer himself. His writings are full of
pictures of life, sketches of character; in one word, he is a dramatic
or objective writer. He paints things as they are,--gives us a panorama
of his period. Knights, squires, yeomen, priests, friars, pass before
us, as in Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shalott."
The mind of an objective story-teller, like Chaucer, is the faithful
mirror, which impartially reflects all that passes before it, but
cracks from side to side whenever he lets a personal feeling enter his
mind, for then the drama suddenly disappears and a lyric of personal
hope or fear, gladness or sadness, takes its place.
Spenser is eminently a lyric poet. His own genius suffuses his stories
with a summer glow of warm, tender, generous sentiment. In his
descriptions of nature he does not catalogue details, but suggests
impressions, which is the only way of truly describing nature. There
are some writers who can describe scenery, so that the reader feels as
if he had seen it himself. The secret of all such description is that
it does not count or measure, but suggests. It is not quantitative
but qualitative analysis. It does not apply a foot rule to nature,
but gives the impression made on the mind and heart by the scene. I
have never been at Frascati nor in Sicily, but I can hardly persuade
myself that I have not seen those places. I have distinct impressions
of both, simply from reading two of George Sand's stories. I have in
my mind a picture of Frascati, with deep ravines, filled with foliage;
with climbing, clustering, straggling vines and trees and bushes; with
overhanging crags, deep masses of shadow below, bright sunshine on
the stone pines above. So I have another picture of Sicilian scenery,
wide and open, with immense depths of blue sky, and long reaches of
landscape; ever-present Etna, soaring snow-clad into the still air; an
atmosphere of purity, filling the heart with calm content. It may be
that Catania and Frascati are not like this; but I feel as if I had
seen them, not as if I had heard them described.
It is thus that Spenser describes nature; by touching some chord of
fancy in the soul. Notice this picture of a boat on the sea:--
"So forth they rowëd; and that Ferryman
With his stiff oars did brush the sea so strong
That the hoar waters from his frigate ran,
And the light bubbles dancëd all along
Whiles the salt brine out of the billows sprang;
At last, far off, they many islands spy,
On every side, floating the floods among."
You notice that you are in the boat yourself, and everything is told
as it appears to you there; you see the bending of the "stiff oars"
by your side, and the little bubbles dancing on the water, and the
islands, not as they _are_, rock-anchored, but as they _seem_ to you,
floating on the water. This is subjective description,--putting the
reader in the place, and letting him see it all from that point of
view. So Spenser speaks of the "oars sweeping the watery wilderness;"
and of the gusty winds "filling the sails with fear."
Perhaps the highest description ought to include both the lyric and
dramatic elements. Here is a specimen of sea description, by an almost
unknown American poet, Fenner, perfect in its way. The poem is called
"Gulf Weed:"--
"A weary weed washed to and fro,
Drearily drenched in the ocean brine;
Soaring high, or sinking low,
Lashed along without will of mine;
Sport of the spoom of the surging sea,
Flung on the foam afar and near;
Mark my manifold mystery,
Growth and grace in their place appear.
"I bear round berries, gray and red,
Rootless and rover though I be;
My spangled leaves, when nicely spread,
Arboresce as a trunkless tree;
Corals curious coat me o'er
White and hard in apt array;
Mid the wild waves' rude uproar
Gracefully grow I, night and day.
"Hearts there are on the sounding shore,
(Something whispers soft to me,)
Restless and roaming for evermore,
Like this weary weed of the sea;
Bear they yet on each beating breast
The eternal Type of the wondrous whole,
Growth unfolding amidst unrest,
Grace informing the silent soul."
All nature becomes alive in the Spenserian description. Take, for
example, the wonderful stanza which describes the music of the "Bower
of Bliss:"--
"The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade
Their notes unto the voice attemper'd sweet;
Th' angelical, soft, trembling voices made
To the instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver-sounding instruments did meet
With the bass murmur of the water's fall;
The water's fall, with difference discreet,
Now loud, now low, unto the winds did call;
The gentle warbling winds low answerëd to all."
Consider the splendid portrait of Belphœbe:--
"In her fair eyes two living lamps did flame,
Kindled above at the Heavenly Maker's light;
And darted fiery beams out of the same,
So passing piercing, and so wondrous bright,
They quite bereaved the rash beholder's sight;
In them the blinded god his lustful fire
To kindle oft essay'd but had no might,
For with dread majesty and awful ire
She broke his wanton darts and quenchëd base desire.
"Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave,
Like a broad tablet did itself dispread,
For love his lofty triumphs to engrave,
And write the battles of his great godhead;
All good and honor might therein be read,
For there their dwelling was; and when she spake,
Sweet words, like dropping honey she did shed;
And, twixt the pearls and rubies softly brake
A silver Sound, that heavenly music seemed to make."
If we examine this picture, we see that it is not a photograph, such as
the sun makes, but a lover's description of his mistress. He sees her,
not as she is, but as she is to _him_. He paints her out of his own
heart. In her eyes he sees, not only brilliancy and color, but heavenly
light; he reads in them an untouched purity of soul. Looking at her
forehead, he sees, not whiteness and roundness, but goodness and honor.
Shakespeare's lovers always describe their mistresses in this way,
out of their own soul and heart. It is his own feeling that the lover
gives, seeing perhaps "Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt."
After Chaucer and Spenser the next great English poets whose names
naturally occur to us are Shakespeare and Milton.
Now, Shakespeare was the most objective dramatic writer who ever lived;
while Milton was eminently and wholly a subjective and lyrical writer.
It is true that Shakespeare was so great that he is one of the very
few men of genius in whom appear both of these elements. In his plays
he is so objective that he is wholly lost in his characters, and
his personality absolutely disappears; in his sonnets he "unlocks
his heart" and is lyrical and subjective; he there gives us his
inmost self, and we seem to know him as we know a friend with whom
we have lived in intimate relations for years. Still, he will be
best remembered by his plays; and into them he put the grandeur and
universality of his genius; so we must necessarily consider him as the
greatest dramatic genius of all time. But he belonged to a group of
dramatic poets of whom he was the greatest: Ben Jonson, Beaumont and
Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, Webster,--any one of whom would make the
fortune of the stage to-day. It was a great age of dramatic literature,
and it came very naturally to meet a demand. The play then was what the
novel is to-day. As people to-day have no sooner read a new novel than
they want another, so, in Shakespeare's time, they had no sooner seen
a new play than they ran to see another. Hence the amazing fertility
of the dramatic writers. Thomas Heywood wrote the whole or a part
of two hundred and twenty plays. The manager of one of the theatres
bought a hundred and six new plays for his stage in six years; and in
the next five years a hundred and sixty. The price paid to an author
for a play would now be equal to about two or three hundred dollars.
The dramatic element, as is natural, abounds in these writings, though
in some of them the author's genius is plainly lyrical. Such, for
example, is Massinger's, who always reminds me of Schiller. Both wrote
plays, but in both writers the faculty of losing themselves in their
characters is wanting. The nobleness of Schiller appears in all his
works, and constitutes a large part of their charm. So in Massinger all
tends to generosity and elevation. His worst villains are ready to be
converted and turn saints at the least provocation. Their wickedness is
in a condition of unstable equilibrium; it topples over, and goodness
becomes supreme in a single moment. Massinger could not create really
wicked people; their wickedness is like a child's moment of passion
or willfulness, ending presently in a flood of tears, and a sweet
reconciliation with his patient mother. But how different was it with
Shakespeare! Consider his Iago. How deeply rooted was his villainy!
how it was a part of the very texture of his being! He had conformed to
it the whole philosophy of his life. His cynical notions appear in the
first scene. Iago _believes_ in meanness, selfishness, everything that
is base; to him all that seems good is either a pretense or a weakness.
The man who does not seek the gratification of his own desires is a
fool. There is to Iago nothing sweet, pure, fair, or true, in this
world or the next. He profanes everything he touches. He sneers at the
angelic innocence of Desdemona; he sneers at the generous, impulsive
soul of Othello. When some one speaks to him of virtue, he says
"Virtue? a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies
are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners." You can plant
nettles or lettuce as you please. That is to say, there is no reality
in goodness. The virtue of Desdemona will be gone to-morrow, if she
takes the whim. The Moor's faith in goodness is folly; it will cause
him to be led by the nose. There is no converting such a man as that;
or only when, by means of terrible disappointments and anguish, he is
brought to see the reality of human goodness and divine providence. And
that can hardly happen to him in this world.
Iago is a murderer of the soul, Macbeth a murderer of the body.
The wickedness of Macbeth is different from that of Iago; that of
Shylock and of Richard Third different again from either. Macbeth
is a half-brute, a man in a low state of development, with little
intellect and strong passions. Shylock is a highly intellectual man,
not a cynic like Iago, but embittered by ill-treatment, made venomous
by cruel wrong and perpetual contempt. Oppression has made this wise
man mad. Richard Third, originally bad, has been turned into a cruel
monster by the egotism born of power. He has the contempt for his race
that belongs to the aristocrat, who looks on men in humbler places
as animals of a lower order made for his use or amusement. Now, this
wonderful power of differentiating characters belongs to the essence
of the dramatic faculty. Each of these is developed from within, from
a personal centre, and is true to that. Every manifestation of this
central life is correlated to every other. If one of Shakespeare's
characters says but ten words in one scene, and then ten words more in
another, we recognize him as the same person. His speech bewrayeth him.
So it is in human life. Every man is fatally consistent with himself.
So, after we have seen a number of pictures by any one of the great
masters, we recognize him again, as soon as we enter a gallery. We know
him by a certain style. Inferior artists have a manner; great artists
have a style; manner is born of imitation; style of originality. So,
there is a special quality in every human being, if he will only allow
it to unfold. The dramatic faculty recognizes this. Its knowledge
of man is not a philosophy, nor a mere knowledge of human nature,
but a perception of individual character. It first integrates men as
human beings; then differentiates them as individuals. Play-writers,
novelists, and artists who do not possess this dramatic genius cannot
grow their characters from within, from a personal centre of life;
but build them up from without, according to a plan. In description
of nature, however, Shakespeare is, as he ought to be, subjective and
lyric; he touches nature with human feelings. Take his description of a
brook:--
"The current that with gentle murmur glides
Thou know'st, being stopp'd impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hindered,
He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage,
And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport to the wild ocean."
The brook is gentle; then it becomes angry; then it is pacified and
begins to sing; then it stops to kiss the sedge; then it is a pilgrim;
and it walks _willingly_ on to the ocean.
So in his sonnet:--
"Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain top with sovereign eye;
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face;
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with his disgrace;
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
With all triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath masked him from me now;
Yet him, for this, my love no whit disdaineth,
Suns of this world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth."
From Shakespeare, the marvel of dramatic genius, turn to Milton, and we
find the opposite tendency unfolded.
The "Paradise Lost" is indeed dramatic in form, with different
characters and dialogues, in hell, on earth, and in heaven. But in
essence it is undramatic. Milton is never for a moment lost in his
characters; his grand and noble soul is always appearing. Every one
speaks as Milton would have spoken had Milton been in the same place,
and looked at things from the same point of view. Sin and Satan, for
example, both talk like John Milton. Sin is very conscientious, and
before she will unlock the gate of hell she is obliged to argue herself
into a conviction that it is right to do so. Satan, she says, is her
father, and children ought to obey their parents; so, since he tells
her to unlock the gate, she ought to do so. Death reproaches Satan, in
good set terms, for his treason against the Almighty; and Satan, as we
all know, utters the noblest sentiments, and talks as Milton would have
talked, had Milton been in Satan's position.[1]
Coming down nearer to our own time, we find a duad of great English
poets, usually associated in our minds,--Byron and Scott.
Scott was almost the last of the dramatic poets of England, using the
word dramatic in its large sense. His plays never amounted to much; but
his stories in verse and in prose are essentially dramatic. In neither
does he reveal himself. In all his poetry you scarcely find a reference
to his personal feelings. In the L'Envoi to the "Lady of the Lake"
there is a brief allusion of this sort, touching because so unusual,
and almost the only one I now recall. Addressing the "Harp of the
North" he says:--
"Much have I owed thy strains through life's long way,
Through secret woes the world has never known,
When on the weary night dawned wearier day,
And bitterer was the grief devoured alone;
That I o'erlive such woes, Enchantress! is thine own."
Scott, like Chaucer, brings before us a long succession of characters,
from many classes, countries, and times. Scotch barons and freebooters,
English kings, soldiers, gentlemen, crusaders, Alpine peasants,
mediæval counts, serfs, Jews, Saxons,--brave, cruel, generous,--all
sweep past us, in a long succession of pictures; but of Scott himself
nothing appears except the nobleness and purity of the tone which
pervades all. He is therefore eminently a dramatic or objective writer.
But Byron is the exact opposite. The mighty exuberance of his genius,
which captivated his age, and the echoes of which thrill down to
ours, in all its vast overflow of passion, imagination, wit,--ever
sounded but one strain,--himself. His own woes, his own wrongs are
the ever-recurring theme. Though he wrote many dramas, he was more
undramatic than Milton. Every character in every play is merely a
thinly disguised Byron. It was impossible for him to get away from
himself. If Tennyson's lovely line tells the truth when he says,--
"Love took up the harp of life and smote on all its chords with
might;
Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed in music out of
sight:"
then Byron never really loved; for in his poetry the chord of self
never passes out of sight.
In his plays the principal characters are Byron undiluted--as Manfred,
Sardanapalus, Cain, Werner, Arnold. All the secondary characters are
Byron more or less diluted,--Byron and water, may we say? Never, since
the world began, has there been a poet so steeped in egotism, so sick
of self-love as he; and the magnificence of his genius appears in the
unfailing interest which he can give to this monotonous theme.
But he was the example of a spirit with which the whole age was filled
to saturation. Almost all the nineteenth century poets of England are
subjective, giving us their own experience, sentiments, reflections,
philosophies. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, revolve in this
enchanted and enchanting circle. Keats and Coleridge seem capable of
something different. So, in the double star, made up of Wordsworth
and Coleridge, the first is absolutely personal and lyric, the second
sometimes objective and dramatic. And in that other double star of
Shelley and Keats the same difference may be noted.
A still more striking instance of the combination of these antagonisms
is to be found in our time, in Robert Browning and his wife. Mrs.
Browning is wholly lyric, like a bird which sings its own tender song
of love and hope and faith till "that wild music burdens every bough;"
and those "mournful hymns" hush the night to listening sympathy.
But in her husband we have a genuine renaissance of the old dramatic
power of the English bards. Robert Browning is _so_ dramatic that
he forgets himself and his readers too, in his characters and their
situations. To study the varieties of men and women is his joy; to
reproduce them unalloyed, his triumph.
One curious instance of this self-oblivious immersion in the creations
of his mind occurs to me. In one of his early poems called "In a
Gondola"--as it first appeared--two lovers are happily conversing,
until in a moment, we know not why, the tone becomes one of despair,
and they bid each other an eternal farewell. Why this change of tone
there is no explanation. In a later edition he condescends to inform
us, inserting a note to this effect: "He is surprised and stabbed."
This is the opposite extreme to Milton's angels carefully explaining to
each other that they possess a specific levity which enables them to
drop upward.
If we think of our own poets whose names are usually
connected,--Longfellow and Lowell, for instance,--we shall easily see
which is dramatic and which lyric. But the only man of truly dramatic
faculty whom we have possessed was one in whom the quality never fully
ripened,--I mean Edgar Allan Poe.
In foreign literature we may trace the same tendency of men of genius
to arrange themselves in couplets. Take, for instance, in Italy,
Dante and Petrarch; in France, Voltaire and Rousseau; in Germany,
Goethe and Schiller. Dante is dramatic, losing himself in his stern
subject, his dramatic characters; his awful pictures of gloomy destiny.
Petrarch is lyrical, personal, singing forever his own sad and sweet
fate. Again, Voltaire is essentially dramatic,--immersed in things,
absorbed in life, a man reveling in all human accident and adventure,
and aglow with faith in an earthly paradise. The sad Rousseau goes
apart, away from men; standing like Byron, among them, but not of them;
in a cloud of thoughts that are not their thoughts. And, once more,
though Goethe resembles Shakespeare in this, that some of his works
are subjective, and others objective,--though, in the greatness of his
mind he reconciles all the usual antagonisms of thought,--yet the fully
developed Goethe, like the fully developed Shakespeare, disappears
in his characters and theme. Life to him, in all its forms, was so
intensely interesting that his own individual and subjective sentiments
are left out of sight. But Schiller stands opposed to Goethe, as being
a dramatist devoid of dramatic genius, but full of personal power;
so grand in his nobleness of soul, so majestic in the aspirations of
his sentiment, so full of patriotic ardor and devotion to truth and
goodness, that he moves all hearts as he walks through his dramas,--the
great poet visible in every scene and every line. As his tried and
noble friend says of him in an equally undying strain:--
"Burned in his cheek, with ever-deepening fire,
The spirit's youth, which never passes by;
The courage, which though worlds in hate conspire,
Conquers at last their dull hostility;
The lofty faith, which ever, mounting higher,
Now presses on, now waiteth patiently;
By which the good tends ever to its goal--
By which day lights at last the generous soul."
Goethe's characters and stories covered the widest range: Faust, made
sick with too much thought, and seeking outward joy as a relief;
Werther, a self-absorbed sentimentalist; Tasso, an Italian man of
genius, a mixture of imagination, aspiration, sensitive self-distrust;
susceptible to opinion, sympathetic; Iphigenia, a picture of antique
calm, simplicity, purity, classic repose, like that of a statue;
Hermann and Dorothea, a sweet idyl of modern life, in a simple-minded
German village with an opinionated, honest landlord, a talkative
apothecary, a motherly landlady, a sensible and good pastor, and the
two young lovers.
This law of duality, or reaction of genius on genius, will also be
found to apply to artists, philosophers, historians, orators. These
also come in pairs, manifesting the same antagonistic qualities.
Some artists are lyric; putting their own souls into every face, every
figure, making even a landscape alive with their own mood; adding--
"A gleam
Of lustre known to neither sea nor land
But borrowed from the poet-painter's dream."
In every landscape of Claude we find the soul of Claude; in every
rugged rock-defile of Salvator we read his mood. These artists are
lyric; but there are also great dramatic painters, who give you, not
themselves, but men and women; so real, so differentiated, characters
so full of the variety and antagonism of nature, that the whole life of
a period springs into being at their touch.
Take for instance two names, which always go together, standing side
by side at the summit of Italian art,--Michael Angelo and Raphael.
Though Raphael was a genius of boundless exuberance, and poured on the
wall and canvas a flood of forms, creating as nature creates, without
pause or self-repetition, yet there is a tone in all which irresistibly
speaks of the artist's own soul. He created a world of Raphaels. Grace,
sweetness, and tenderness went into all his work. Every line has the
same characteristic qualities.
Turn to the frescoes by Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel. As we
look up at those mighty forms--prophets, sibyls, seers, with multitudes
of subordinate figures--we gradually trace in each prophet, king, or
bard an individual character. Each one is himself. How fully each face
and attitude is differentiated by some inward life. How each--David,
Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Persian and the Libyan sibyl--stands out,
distinct, filled with a power or a tenderness all his own. Michael
Angelo himself is not there, except as a fountain of creative life,
from whose genius all these majestic persons come forth as living
realities.
Hanging on my walls are the well-known engravings of Guido's Aurora and
Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. One of these is purely lyrical; the
other as clearly dramatic.
The Aurora is so exquisitely lovely, the forms so full of grace, the
movement of all the figures so rapid yet so firm, that I can never pass
it without stopping to enjoy its charms. But variety is absent. The
hours are lovely sisters, as Ovid describes sisters:--
"Facies non omnibus una,
Nec diversa tamen, qualis decet esse sororum."
But when we turn to the Last Supper, we see the dramatic artist at his
best. The subject is such as almost to compel a monotonous treatment,
but there is a wonderful variety in the attitudes and grouping. Each
apostle shows by his attitude, gesture, expression, that he is affected
differently from all the others. Even the feet under the table speak.
Stand before the picture; put yourself into the attitude of each
apostle, and you will immediately understand his state of mind.[2]
The mediæval religious artists were subjective, sentimental, lyrical.
In a scene like the crucifixion, all the characters, whether apostles,
Roman soldiers, or Jewish Pharisees, hang their heads like bulrushes.
But see how Rubens, that great dramatic painter, represents the
scene. The Magdalen, wild with grief, with disheveled hair, has thrown
herself at the foot of the cross, clasping and kissing the feet of
Jesus. On the other faces are terror, dismay, doubt, unbelief, mockery,
curiosity, triumph, despair,--according to each person's character and
attitude toward the event. Meantime the Roman centurion, seated on his
splendid horse, is deliberately and carefully striking his spear into
the side of the sufferer. His face expresses only that he has a duty to
perform and means to fulfill it perfectly.
As Rubens is greatly dramatic, his pupil and follower, Vandyke, is a
great lyrical artist, whose noble aspiration and generous sentiment
shows itself in all his work.
The school of Venice, with Titian and Tintoretto at its head, is
grandly dramatic and objective. The school of Florence, with Guido and
Domenichino at its head, eminently lyrical and subjective.
If we had time, we might show that the two masters of Greek philosophy,
Plato and Aristotle, are, the one lyrical, and intensely subjective,
platonizing the universe; and the other as evidently objective,
immersed in the study of things; rejoicing in their variety, their
individuality, their persistence of type.
The two masters of Greek history, Herodotus and Thucydides, stand
opposed to each other in the same way. Herodotus is the story-teller,
the dramatic raconteur, whose charming tales are as entertaining as the
"Arabian Nights." Thucydides is the personal historian who puts himself
into his story, and determines its meaning and moral according to his
own theories and convictions.
We have another example in Livy and Tacitus.
The two great American orators most frequently mentioned together are
Webster and Clay. Though you would smile if I were to call either of
them a lyric or a dramatic speaker, yet the essential distinction we
have been considering may be clearly seen in them. Clay's inspiration
was personal, his influence, personal influence. His theme was nothing;
his treatment of it everything. But Webster rose or fell with the
magnitude and importance of the occasion and argument. When on the
wrong side, he failed, for his intellect would not work well except in
the service of reality and truth. But Clay was perhaps greatest when
arguing against all facts and all reason. Then he summoned all his
powers,--wit, illustration, analogy, syllogisms, appeals to feeling,
prejudice, and passion; and so swept along his confused and blinded
audience to his conclusions.
I think that subjective writers are loved more than dramatic. We admire
the one and we love the other. We admire Shakespeare and love Milton;
we admire Chaucer and love Spenser; we admire Dante and love Petrarch;
we admire Goethe and love Schiller; and if Byron had not been so
selfish a man, we should have loved him too. We admire Michael Angelo
and love Raphael; we admire Rubens and love Vandyke; we admire Robert
Browning and love Mrs. Browning. In short, we care more for the man who
gives us himself than for the man who gives us the whole outside world.
I have been able to give you only a few hints of this curious
distinction in art and literature. But if we carry it in our mind, we
shall find it a key by which many doors may be unlocked. It will enable
us to classify authors, and understand them better.
DUALISM IN NATIONAL LIFE
The science of comparative ethnology is one which has been greatly
developed during the last twenty-five years. The persistence of
race tendencies, as in the Semitic tribes, Jews and Arabs, or in
the Teutonic and Celtic branches of the great Aryan stock, has been
generally admitted. Though few would now say, with the ethnologist
Knox, "Race is everything," none would wholly dispense with this
factor, as Buckle did, in writing a history of civilization.
Racial varieties have existed from prehistoric times. Their origin is
lost in the remote past. As far as history goes back, we find them the
same that they are now. When and how the primitive stock differentiated
itself into the great varieties which we call Aryan, Semitic, and
Turanian, no one can tell. But there are well-established varieties of
which we can trace the rise and development; I mean national varieties.
The character of an Englishman or a Frenchman is as distinctly marked
as that of a Greek or Roman. There is a general resemblance among all
Englishmen; and the same kind of resemblance among all Frenchmen,
Spaniards, Swedes, Poles. But this crystallization into national types
of character has taken place in a comparatively short period. We look
back to a time when there were no Englishmen in Great Britain; but only
Danes, Saxons, Normans, and Celts; no Frenchmen in France; but Gauls,
Franks, and Romans. Gradually a distinct quality emerges, and we have
Frenchmen, Italians, Englishmen. The type, once arrived at, persists,
and becomes more marked. It is marked by personal looks and manners,
by a common temperament, a common style of thinking, feeling, acting;
the same kind of morals and manners. This type was formed by the action
and reaction of the divers races brought side by side--Normans and
Saxons mutually influencing each other in England, and being influenced
again by climate, conditions of life, forms of government, national
customs. So, at last, we have the well-developed national character,--a
mysterious but very certain element, from which no individual can
wholly escape. All drink of that one spirit.
Thus far I have been stating what we all know. But now I would call
your attention to a curious fact, which, so far as I am aware, has not
before been noticed. It is this,--that when two nations, during their
forming period, have been in relation to each other, there will be a
peculiar character developed in each. That is to say, they will differ
from each other according to certain well-defined lines, and these
differences will repeat themselves again and again in history, in
curious parallelisms, or dualisms.
To take the most familiar illustration of this: consider the national
qualities of the French and English. The English and French, during
several centuries, have been acting and reacting on each other, both
in war and peace. Now, what are the typical characteristics of these
two nations? Stated in a broad way they might be described something as
follows:--
The English mind is more practical than ideal; its movement is slow
but persistent; its progress is by gradual development; it excels in
the industrial arts; it reverences power; it loves liberty more than
equality, not objecting to an aristocracy. It tends to individualism.
Its conquests have been due to the power of order, and adherence to law.
The French mind is more ideal than practical; versatile, rather than
persistent; its movements rapid, its progress by crises and revolution,
rather than by development; it excels in whatever is tasteful and
artistic; it admires glory rather than power; loves equality more than
liberty; objects to an aristocracy, but is ready to yield individual
rights at the bidding of the community; renouncing individualism for
the sake of communism; and its successes have been due to enthusiasm
rather than to organization.
Next, look at the Greeks and Romans. These peoples were in intimate
relations during the forming period of national life; and we find in
them much the same contrasts of character that we do in the English and
the French. The Romans were deficient in imagination, rather prosaic,
fond of rule and fixed methods, conservative of ancient customs. The
Greeks were quick and versatile; artistic to a high degree; producing
masterpieces of architecture, painting, statuary, and creating every
form of literature; inventing the drama, the epic poem, oratory, odes,
history, philosophy. The Romans borrowed from them their art and their
literature, but were themselves the creators of law, the organizers of
force. The Greeks and Romans were the English and French of antiquity;
and you will notice that they occupy geographically the same relative
positions,--the Greeks and French on the east; the Romans and English
on the west.
But now observe another curious fact. The Roman Empire and the Greek
republics came to an end; and in Greece no important nationality took
the place of those wonderful commonwealths. But in Italy, by the union
of the old inhabitants with the Teutonic northern invaders, modern
Italy was slowly formed into a new national life. No longer deriving
any important influence from Greece (which had ceased to be a living
and independent force), Italy, during the Middle Ages, came into
relations with Spain and the Spaniards. In Spain, as in Italy, a new
national life was in process of formation by the union of the Gothic
tribes, the Mohammedan invaders, and the ancient inhabitants. The
Spaniards occupied Sicily in 1282, and Naples fell later into their
hands, about 1420, and in 1526 took possession of Milan. Thus Italy and
Spain were entangled in complex relations during their forming period.
What was the final result? Modern Italians became the very opposite of
the ancient Romans. The Spaniards on the west are now the Romans, and
the Italians, the Greeks. The Spaniards are slow, strong, conservative;
the Italians, quick-witted, full of feeling and sentiment, versatile.
The Spaniards trust to organization, the Italians to enthusiasm. The
Spaniards are practical, the Italians ideal. In fine, the Spaniards, on
the west, are like the English and the ancient Romans; the Italians,
on the east, like the French and the Greeks. The English pride, the
Roman pride, the Spanish pride, we have all heard of; but the French,
the Greeks, and the Italians are not so much inclined to pride and the
love of power, as to vanity and the love of fame. England, Rome, and
Spain, united by law and the love of organization, gradually became
solidified into empires; Greece, Italy, and France were always divided
into independent states, provinces, or republics.
Now, let us go east and consider two empires that have grown up, side
by side, with constant mutual relations: Japan and China. The people
of Japan, on the east, are described by all travelers in language
that might be applied to the ancient Greeks or the modern French. They
are said to be quick-witted, lively, volatile, ready of apprehension,
with a keen sense of honor, which prefers death to disgrace; eminently
a social and pleasure-seeking people, fond of feasts, dancing, music,
and frolics. Men and women are pleasing, polite, affable. On the
other hand, the Chinese are described as more given to reason than
to sentiment, prosaic, slow to acquire, but tenacious of all that is
gained, very conservative, great lovers of law and order; with little
taste for art, but much national pride. They are the English of Asia;
the Japanese, the French.
Go back to earlier times, when the two oldest branches of the great
Aryan stock diverged on the table-lands of central Asia; the Vedic
race descending into India, and the Zend people passing west, into
Persia. The same duplex development took place that we have seen
in other instances. The people on the Indus became what they still
are,--a people of sentiment and feeling. Like the French, they are
polite, and cultivate civility and courtesy. The same tendency to
local administration which we see in France is found in India; the
commune being, in both, the germ-cell of national life. The village
communities in India are little republics, almost independent of
anything outside. Dynasties change, new rulers and kings arrive;
Hindoo, Mohammedan, English; but the village community remains the
same. Like the Japanese, the French, the Italians, the inhabitants
of India are skillful manufacturers of ornamental articles. Their
religion tends to sentiment more than to morality,--to feeling, rather
than to action. This is the development which India took when these
races inhabited the Punjaub. But the ancient Persians were different.
Their religion included a morality which placed its essence in right
thinking and right action. A sentimental religion, like that of India
and of Italy, tends to the adoration of saints and holy images and to
multiplied ceremonies. A moral religion, like that of Persia, of Judea,
and of the Teutonic races, tends to the adoration and service of the
unseen. The Hindoos had innumerable gods, temples, idols. The Persians
worshiped the sacred fire, without temple, priest, altar, sacrifice,
or ritual. The ancient Persians, wholly unlike the modern Persians,
were a people of action, energy, enterprise. But when the old Persian
empire fell, the character of the people changed. Just as in Italy
the old Roman type disappeared, and was replaced by the opposite in
the modern Italian, so modern Persia has swung round to the opposite
pole of national character. The Persians and Turks, both professing
the Mohammedan religion, belong to different sects of that faith. The
Turks are proud, tenacious of old customs, grave in their demeanor,
generally just in their dealings, keeping their word. The Persians, as
they appear in the works of Malcolm and Monier, are changeable, kindly,
polite, given to ceremonies, fond of poetry, with taste for fine art
and decoration,--a mobile people. The Turk is silent, the Persian
talkative. The Turk is proud and cold, the Persian affable and full of
sentiment. In short, the Persian is the Frenchman, and the Turk the
Englishman. And here again, as in the other cases, the French type of
nationality unfolds itself on the east, and the English on the west.
These national doubles have not been exhausted. We have other instances
of twin nations, born of much the same confluence of race elements,
of whom, as of Esau and Jacob, it might be predicted to the mother
race, "Two nations shall be born of thee; two kinds of people shall go
forth from thee; and the one shall be stronger than the other." Thus
there are the twin races which inhabit Sweden and Norway; the Swedes,
on the east, are more intelligent, quick-witted, and versatile; the
Norwegians, on the west, slow, persistent, and disposed to foreign
conquest and adventure, as shown in the sea-kings, who discovered
Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland; and the modern emigrants who reap the
vast wheatfields of Minnesota. So, too, we might speak of the Poles and
Germans. The Polish nation, on the east, resembling the French; the
German, on the west, the English.
But time will not allow me to carry out these parallels into details.
The question is, are these mere coincidences, or do they belong to the
homologons of history, where the same law of progress repeats itself
under different conditions, as the skeleton of the mammal is found in
the whale. Such curious homologons we find in national events, and they
can hardly be explained as accidental coincidences. For instance, the
English and French revolutions proceeded by six identical steps. First,
an insurrection of the people. Secondly, the dethronement and execution
of the king. Thirdly, a military usurper. Fourthly, the old line
restored. Fifthly, after the death of the restored king, his brother
succeeds to the throne. Sixthly, a second revolution drives the brother
into exile, and a constitutional king of a collateral branch takes his
place.
But if these doubles which I have described come by some mysterious law
of polar force, as in the magnet, where the two kinds of electricity
are repelled to opposite poles, and yet attract each other, how
account for the regularity of the geographical position? Why is the
French, Greek, Hindoo, Persian, Italian, Polish, Swedish type always
at the east, and the English, Roman, Iranic, Ottoman, Spanish, German,
Norwegian type always at the west? Are nations, like tides, affected
by the diurnal revolution of the globe? This, I confess, I am unable
to explain; and I leave it to others to consider whether what I have
described is pure coincidence, or if it belongs in some way to the
philosophy of history and comes under universal law.
DID SHAKESPEARE WRITE BACON'S WORKS[3]
The greatest of English poets is Shakespeare. The greatest prose writer
in English literature is probably Bacon. Each of these writers, alone,
is a marvel of intellectual grandeur. It is hard to understand how
one man, in a few years, could have written all the masterpieces of
Shakespeare,--thirty-six dramas, each a work of genius such as the
world will never let die. It is a marvel that from one mind could
proceed the tender charm of such poems as "Romeo and Juliet," "As You
Like It," or "The Winter's Tale;" the wild romance of "The Tempest,"
or of "A Midsummer Night's Dream;" the awful tragedies of "Lear,"
"Macbeth," and "Othello;" the profound philosophy of "Hamlet;" the
perfect fun of "Twelfth Night," and "The Merry Wives of Windsor;" and
the reproductions of Roman and English history. It is another marvel
that a man like Bacon, immersed nearly all his life in business, a
successful lawyer, an ambitious statesman, a courtier cultivating the
society of the sovereign and the favorites of the sovereign, should
also be the founder of a new system of philosophy, which has been the
source of many inventions and new sciences down to the present day;
should have critically surveyed the whole domain of knowledge, and
become a master of English literary style. Each of these phenomena is
a marvel; but put them together, and assume that one man did it all,
and you have, not a marvel, but a miracle. Yet, this is the result
which the monistic tendency of modern thought has reached. Several
critics of our time have attempted to show that Bacon, besides writing
all the works usually attributed to him, was also the author of all of
Shakespeare's plays and poems.
This theory was first publicly maintained by Miss Delia Bacon in
1857. It had been, before, in 1856, asserted by an Englishman,
William Henry Smith, but only in a small volume printed for private
circulation. This book made a distinguished convert in the person of
Lord Palmerston, who openly declared his conviction that Bacon was the
author of Shakespeare's plays. Two papers by Appleton Morgan, written
in the same sense, appeared last year in "Appletons' Journal." But far
the most elaborate and masterly work in support of this attempt to
dethrone Shakespeare, and to give his seat on the summit of Parnassus
to Lord Bacon, is the book by Judge Holmes, published in 1866. He has
shown much ability, and brought forward every argument which has any
plausibility connected with it.
Judge Holmes was, of course, obliged to admit the extreme antecedent
improbability of his position. Certainly it is very difficult to
believe that the author of such immortal works should have been
willing, for any reason, permanently to conceal his authorship; or,
if he could hide that fact, should have been willing to give the
authorship to another; or, if willing, should have been able so
effectually to conceal the substitution as to blind the eyes of all
mankind down to the days of Miss Delia Bacon and Judge Holmes.
What, then, are the arguments used by Judge Holmes? The proofs he
adduces are mainly these: (1st) That there are many coincidences and
parallelisms of thought and expression between the works of Bacon and
Shakespeare; (2d) that there is an amount of knowledge and learning
in the plays, which Lord Bacon possessed, but which Shakespeare could
hardly have had. Besides these principal proofs, there are many other
reasons given which are of inferior weight,--a phrase in a letter of
Sir Tobie Matthew; another sentence of Bacon himself, which might be
possibly taken as an admission that he was the author of "Richard II.;"
the fact that some plays which Shakespeare certainly did not write were
first published with his name or his initials. But his chief argument
is that Shakespeare had neither the learning nor the time to write the
plays, both of which Lord Bacon possessed; and that there are curious
coincidences between the plays and the prose works.
These arguments have all been answered, and the world still believes in
Shakespeare as before. But I have thought it might be interesting to
show how easily another argument could be made of an exactly opposite
kind,--how easily all these proofs might be reversed. I am inclined
to think that if we are to believe that one man was the author both
of the plays and of the philosophy, it is much more probable that
Shakespeare wrote the works of Bacon than that Bacon wrote the works
of Shakespeare. For there is no evidence that Bacon was a poet as well
as a philosopher; but there is ample evidence that Shakespeare was a
philosopher as well as a poet. This, no doubt, assumes that Shakespeare
actually wrote the plays; but this we have a right to assume, in the
outset of the discussion, in order to stand on an equal ground with our
opponents.
The Bacon vs. Shakespeare argument runs thus: "Assuming that Lord
Bacon wrote the works commonly attributed to him, there is reason to
believe that he also wrote the plays and poems commonly attributed to
Shakespeare."
The counter argument would then be: "Assuming that Shakespeare wrote
the plays, and poems commonly attributed to him, there is reason to
believe that he also wrote the works commonly attributed to Bacon."
This is clearly the fair basis of the discussion. What is assumed on
the one side on behalf of Bacon we have a right to assume on the other
on behalf of Shakespeare. But before proceeding on this basis, I must
reply to the only argument of Judge Holmes which has much apparent
weight. He contends that it was impossible for Shakespeare, with the
opportunities he possessed, to acquire the knowledge which we find
in the plays. Genius, however great, cannot give the knowledge of
medical and legal terms, nor of the ancient languages. Now, it has
been shown that the plays afford evidence of a great knowledge of law
and medicine; and of works in Latin and Greek, French and Italian.
How could such information have been obtained by a boy who had no
advantages of study except at a country grammar school, which he
left at the age of fourteen, who went to London at twenty-three and
became an actor, and who spent most of his life as actor, theatrical
proprietor, and man of business?
This objection presents difficulties to us, and for our time, when
boys sometimes spend years in the study of Latin grammar. We cannot
understand the rapidity with which all sorts of knowledge were imbibed
in the period of the Renaissance. Then every one studied everything.
Then Greek and Latin books were read by prince and peasant, by queens
and generals. Then all sciences and arts were learned by men and women,
by young and old. Thus speaks Robert Burton--who was forty years old
when Shakespeare died: "What a world of books offers itself, in all
subjects, arts and sciences, to the sweet content and capacity of the
reader! In arithmetic, geometry, perspective, opticks, astronomy,
architecture, _sculptura_, _pictura_, of which so many and elaborate
treatises have lately been written; in mechanics and their mysteries,
military matters, navigation, riding of horses, fencing, swimming,
gardening, planting, great tomes of husbandry, cookery, faulconry,
hunting, fishing, fowling; with exquisite pictures of all sports and
games.... What vast tomes are extant in law, physic, and divinity,
for profit, pleasure, practice.... Some take an infinite delight to
study the very languages in which these books were written: Hebrew,
Greek, Syriac, Chaldee, Arabick, and the like." This was the fashion
of that day, to study all languages, all subjects, all authors. A mind
like that of Shakespeare could not have failed to share this universal
desire for knowledge. After leaving the grammar school, he had nine
years for such studies before he went to London. As soon as he began
to write plays, he had new motives for study; for the subjects of the
drama in vogue were often taken from classic story.
But Shakespeare had access to another source of knowledge besides
the study of books. When he reached London, five or six play-houses
were in full activity, and new plays were produced every year in
vast numbers. New plays were then in constant demand, just as the new
novel and new daily or weekly paper are called for now. The drama was
the periodical literature of the time. Dramatic authors wrote with
wonderful rapidity, borrowing their subjects from plays already on
the stage, and from classic or recent history. Marlowe, Greene, Lyly,
Peele, Kyd, Lodge, Nash, Chettle, Munday, Wilson, were all dramatic
writers before Shakespeare. Philip Henslowe, a manager or proprietor
of the theatres, bought two hundred and seventy plays in about ten
years. Thomas Heywood wrote a part or the whole of two hundred and
twenty plays during his dramatic career. Each acted play furnished
material for some other. They were the property of the play-houses, not
of the writers. One writer after another has accused Shakespeare of
indifference to his reputation, because he did not publish a complete
and revised edition of his works during his life. How could he do
this, since they did not belong to him, but to the theatre? Yet every
writer was at full liberty to make use of all he could remember of
other plays, as he saw them acted; and Shakespeare was not slow to use
this opportunity. No doubt he gained knowledge in this way, which he
afterward employed much better than did the authors from whom he took
it.
The first plays printed under Shakespeare's name did not appear
till he had been connected with the stage eleven years. This gives
time enough for him to have acquired all the knowledge to be found
in his books. That he had read Latin and Greek books we are told by
Ben Jonson; though that great scholar undervalued, as was natural,
Shakespeare's attainments in those languages.
But Ben Jonson himself furnishes the best reply to those who think
that Shakespeare could not have gained much knowledge of science
or literature because he did not go to Oxford or Cambridge. What
opportunities had Ben Jonson? A bricklayer by trade, called back
immediately from his studies to use the trowel; then running away and
enlisting as a common soldier; fighting in the Low Countries; coming
home at nineteen, and going on the stage; sent to prison for fighting
a duel--what opportunities for study had he? He was of a strong animal
nature, combative, in perpetual quarrels, fond of drink, in pecuniary
troubles, married at twenty, with a wife and children to support. Yet
Jonson was celebrated for his learning. He was master of Greek and
Latin literature. He took his characters from Athenæus, Libanius,
Philostratus. Somehow he had found time for all this study. "Greek
and Latin thought," says Taine, "were incorporated with his own, and
made a part of it. He knew alchemy, and was as familiar with alembics,
retorts, crucibles, etc., as if he had passed his life in seeking
the philosopher's stone. He seems to have had a specialty in every
branch of knowledge. He had all the methods of Latin art,--possessed
the brilliant conciseness of Seneca and Lucan." If Ben Jonson--a
bricklayer, a soldier, a fighter, a drinker--could yet find time to
acquire this vast knowledge, is there any reason why Shakespeare, with
much more leisure, might not have done the like? He did not possess as
much Greek and Latin lore as Ben Jonson, who, probably, had Shakespeare
in his mind when he wrote the following passage in his "Poetaster:"
"His learning savors not the school-like gloss
That most consists in echoing words and terms,
And soonest wins a man an empty name;
Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance
Wrapt in the curious generalties of art--
But a direct and analytic sum
Of all the worth and first effects of art.
And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life,
That it shall gather strength of life with being,
And live hereafter more admired than now."
The only other serious proof offered in support of the proposition
that Bacon wrote the immortal Shakespearean drama is that certain
coincidences of thought and language are found in the works of the two
writers. When we examine them, however, they seem very insignificant.
Take, as an example, two or three, on which Judge Holmes relies, and
which he thinks very striking.
Holmes says (page 48) that Bacon quotes Aristotle, who said that
"young men were no fit hearers of moral philosophy," and Shakespeare
says ("Troilus and Cressida"):--
"Unlike young men whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy."
But since Bacon's remark was published in 1605, and "Troilus and
Cressida" did not appear until 1609, Shakespeare might have seen it
there, and introduced it into his play from his recollection of the
passage in the "Advancement of Learning."
Another coincidence mentioned by Holmes is that both writers use the
word "thrust:" Bacon saying that a ship "thrust into Weymouth;" and
Shakespeare, that "Milan was thrust from Milan." He also thinks it
cannot be an accident that both frequently use the word "wilderness,"
though in very different ways. Both also compare Queen Elizabeth to a
"star." Bacon makes Atlantis an island in mid-ocean; and the island
of Prospero is also in mid-ocean. Both have a good deal to say about
"mirrors," and "props," and like phrases.
Such reasoning as this has very little weight. You cannot prove two
contemporaneous writings to have proceeded from one author by the same
words and phrases being found in both; for these are in the vocabulary
of the time, and are the common property of all who read and write.
My position is that if either of these writers wrote the works
attributed to the other, it is much more likely that Shakespeare wrote
the philosophical works of Bacon than that Bacon wrote the poetical
works of Shakespeare. Assuming then, as we have a right to do in this
argument, that Shakespeare wrote the plays, what reasons are there for
believing that he also wrote the philosophy?
First, this assumption will explain at once that hitherto insoluble
problem of the contradiction between Bacon's character and conduct and
his works. How could he have been, at the same time, what Pope calls
him,--
"The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind"?
He was, in his philosophy, the leader of his age, the reformer of old
abuses, the friend of progress. In his conduct, he was, as Macaulay has
shown, "far behind his age,--far behind Sir Edward Coke; clinging to
exploded abuses, withstanding the progress of improvement, struggling
to push back the human mind." In his writings, he was calm, dignified,
noble. In his life, he was an office-seeker through long years,
seeking place by cringing subservience to men in power, made wretched
to the last degree when office was denied him, addressing servile
supplications to noblemen and to the sovereign. To gain and keep office
he would desert his friends, attack his benefactors, and make abject
apologies for any manly word he might have incautiously uttered. His
philosophy rose far above earth and time, and sailed supreme in the
air of universal reason. But "his desires were set on things below.
Wealth, precedence, titles, patronage, the mace, the seals, the
coronet, large houses, fair gardens, rich manors, massy services of
plate, gay hangings," were "objects for which he stooped to everything
and endured everything." These words of Macaulay have been thought too
severe. But we defy any admirer of Bacon to read his life, by Spedding,
without admitting their essential truth. How was it possible for a man
to spend half of his life in the meanest of pursuits, and the other
half in the noblest?
This difficulty is removed if we suppose that Bacon, the courtier and
lawyer, with his other ambitions, was desirous of the fame of a great
philosopher; and that he induced Shakespeare, then in the prime of his
powers, to help him write the prose essays and treatises which are his
chief works. He has himself admitted that he did actually ask the aid
of the dramatists of his time in writing his books. This remarkable
fact is stated by Bacon in a letter to Tobie Matthew, written in June,
1623, in which he says that he is devoting himself to making his
writings more perfect--instancing the "Essays" and the "Advancement of
Learning"--"by the help of some good pens, which forsake me not." One
of these pens was that of Ben Jonson, the other might easily have been
that of Shakespeare. Certainly there was no better pen in England at
that time than his.
When Shakespeare's plays were being produced, Lord Bacon was fully
occupied in his law practice, his parliamentary duties, and his
office-seeking. The largest part of the Shakespeare drama was put on
the stage, as modern research renders probable, in the ten or twelve
years beginning with 1590. In 1597 Shakespeare was rich enough to buy
the new place at Stratford-on-Avon, and was also lending money. In 1604
he was part owner of the Globe Theatre, so that the majority of the
plays which gained for him this fortune must have been produced before
that time. Now, these were just the busiest years of Bacon's life. In
1584 he was elected to Parliament. About the same time, he wrote his
famous letter to Queen Elizabeth. In 1585 he was already seeking office
from Walsingham and Burleigh. In 1586 he sat in Parliament for Taunton,
and was active in debate and on committees. He became a bencher in the
same year, and began to plead in the courts of Westminster. In 1589 he
became queen's counsel, and member of Parliament for Liverpool. After
this he continued active, both in Parliament and at the bar. He sought,
by the help of Essex, to become Attorney-General. From that period, as
crown lawyer, his whole time and thought were required to trace and
frustrate the conspiracies with which the kingdom was full. It was
evident that during these years he had no time to compose fifteen or
twenty of the greatest works in any literature.
But how was Shakespeare occupied when Bacon's philosophy appeared? The
"Advancement of Learning" was published in 1605, after most of the
plays had been written, as we learn from the fact of Shakespeare's
purchase of houses and lands. The "Novum Organum" was published in
1620, after Shakespeare's death. But it had been written years before;
revised, altered, and copied again and again--it is said twelve times.
Bacon had been engaged upon it during thirty years, and it was at last
published incomplete and in fragments. If Shakespeare assisted in the
composition of this work, his death in 1616 would account, at once, for
its being left unfinished. And Shakespeare would have had ample time to
furnish the ideas of the "Organum" in the last years of his life, when
he had left the theatre. In 1613 he bought a house in Black Friars,
where Ben Jonson also lived. Might not this have been that they might
more conveniently coöperate in assisting Bacon to write the "Novum
Organum"?
When we ask whether it would have been easier for the author of the
philosophy to have composed the drama, or the dramatic poet to have
written the philosophy, the answer will depend on which is the greater
work of the two. The greater includes the less, but the less cannot
include the greater. Now, the universal testimony of modern criticism
in England, Germany, and France declares that no larger, deeper, or
ampler intellect has ever appeared than that which produced the
Shakespeare drama. This "myriad-minded" poet was also philosopher,
man of the world, acquainted with practical affairs, one of those who
saw the present and foresaw the future. All the ideas of the Baconian
philosophy might easily have had their home in this vast intelligence.
Great as are the thoughts of the "Novum Organum," they are far inferior
to that world of thought which is in the drama. We can easily conceive
that Shakespeare, having produced in his prime the wonders and glories
of the plays, should in his after leisure have developed the leading
ideas of the Baconian philosophy. But it is difficult to imagine that
Bacon, while devoting his main strength to politics, to law, and to
philosophy, should as a mere pastime for his leisure, have produced in
his idle moments the greatest intellectual work ever done on earth.
If the greater includes the less, the mind of Shakespeare includes that
of Bacon, and not _vice versa_. This will appear more plainly if we
consider the quality of intellect displayed respectively in the dramas
and the philosophy. The one is synthetic, creative; the other analytic,
critical. The one puts together, the other takes apart and examines.
Now, the genius which can put together can also take apart; but it by
no means follows that the power of taking apart implies that of putting
together. A watch-maker, who can put a watch together, can easily take
it to pieces; but many a child who has taken his watch to pieces has
found it impossible to put it together again.
When we compare the Shakespeare plays and the Baconian philosophy, it
is curious to see how the one is throughout a display of the synthetic
intellect, and the other of the analytic. The plays are pure creation,
the production of living wholes. They people our thought with a race of
beings who are living persons, and not pale abstractions. These airy
nothings take flesh and form, and have a name and local habitation
forever on the earth. Hamlet, Desdemona, Othello, Miranda, are as
real people as Queen Elizabeth or Mary of Scotland. But when we turn
to the Baconian philosophy, this faculty is absent. We have entered
the laboratory of a great chemist, and are surrounded by retorts and
crucibles, tests and re-agents, where the work done is a careful
analysis of all existing things, to find what are their constituents
and their qualities. Poetry creates, philosophy takes to pieces and
examines.
It is, I think, a historic fact, that while those authors whose primary
quality is poetic genius have often been also, on a lower plane,
eminent as philosophers, there is, perhaps, not a single instance of
one whose primary distinction was philosophic analysis, who has also
been, on a lower plane, eminent as a poet. Milton, Petrarch, Goethe,
Lucretius, Voltaire, Coleridge, were primarily and eminently poets;
but all excelled, too, in a less degree, as logicians, metaphysicians,
men of science, and philosophers. But what instance have we of any man
like Bacon, chiefly eminent as lawyer, statesman, and philosopher,
who was also distinguished, though in a less degree, as a poet? Among
great lawyers, is there one eminent also as a dramatic or lyric author?
Cicero tried it, but his verses are only doggerel. In Lord Campbell's
list of the lord chancellors and chief justices of England no such
instance appears. If Bacon wrote the Shakespeare drama, he is the one
exception to an otherwise universal rule. But if Shakespeare coöperated
in the production of the Baconian philosophy, he belongs to a class of
poets who have done the same. Coleridge was one of the most imaginative
of poets. His "Christabel" and "Ancient Mariner" are pure creations.
But in later life he originated a new system of philosophy in England,
the influence of which has not ceased to be felt to our day. The
case would be exactly similar if we suppose that Shakespeare, having
ranged the realm of imaginative poetry in his youth, had in his later
days of leisure coöperated with Bacon and Ben Jonson in producing the
"Advancement of Learning" and the "Novum Organum." We can easily think
of them as meeting, sometimes at the house of Ben Jonson, sometimes
at that of Shakespeare in Black Friars, and sometimes guests at that
private house built by Lord Bacon for purposes of study, near his
splendid palace of Gorhambury. "A most ingeniously contrived house,"
says Basil Montagu, "where, in the society of his philosophical
friends, he devoted himself to study and meditation." Aubrey tells
us that he had the aid of Hobbes in writing down his thoughts. Lord
Bacon appears to have possessed the happy gift of using other men's
faculties in his service. Ben Jonson, who had been a thorough student
of chemistry, alchemy, and science in all the forms then known, aided
Bacon in his observations of nature. Hobbes aided him in giving
clearness to his thoughts and his language. And from Shakespeare he
may have derived the radical and central ideas of his philosophy. He
used the help of Dr. Playfer to translate his philosophy into Latin.
Tobie Matthew gives him the last argument of Galileo for the Copernican
system. He sends his works to others, begging them to correct the
thoughts and the style. It is evident, then, that he would have been
glad of the concurrence of Shakespeare, and that could easily be had,
through their common friend, Ben Jonson.
If Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare, it is difficult to give any
satisfactory reason for his concealment of that authorship. He had
much pride, not to say vanity, in being known as an author. He had his
name attached to all his other works, and sent them as presents to the
universities, and to individuals, with letters calling their attention
to these books. Would he have been willing permanently to conceal
the fact of his being the author of the best poetry of his time?
The reasons assigned by Judge Holmes for this are not satisfactory.
They are: his desire to rise in the profession of the law, the low
reputation of a play-writer, his wish to write more freely under an
incognito, and his wish to rest his reputation on his philosophical
works. But if he were reluctant to be regarded as the author of "Lear"
and "Hamlet," he was willing to be known as the writer of "Masques,"
and a play about "Arthur," exhibited by the students of Gray's Inn.
It is an error to say that the reputation of a play-writer was low.
Judge Holmes, himself, tells us that there was nothing remarkable in a
barrister of the inns of court writing for the stage. Ford and Beaumont
were both lawyers as well as eminent play-writers. Lord Backhurst,
Lord Brooke, Sir Henry Wotton, all wrote plays. And we find nothing in
the Shakespeare dramas which Bacon need have feared to say under his
own name. It would have been ruin to Sir Philip Francis to have avowed
himself the author of "Junius." But the Shakespeare plays satirized no
one, and made no enemies. If there were any reasons for concealment,
they certainly do not apply to the year 1623, when the first folio
appeared, which was after the death of Shakespeare and the fall of
Bacon. The acknowledgment of their authorship at that time could no
longer interfere with Bacon's rise. And it would be very little to the
credit of his intelligence to assume that he was not then aware of the
value of such works, or that he did not desire the reputation of being
their author. It would have been contrary to his very nature not to
have wished for the credit of that authorship.
On the other hand, there would be nothing surprising in the fact of
Shakespeare's laying no claim to credit for having assisted in the
composition of the "Advancement of Learning." Shakespeare was by nature
as reticent and modest as Bacon was egotistical and ostentatious. What
a veil is drawn over the poet's personality in his sonnets! We read in
them his inmost sentiments, but they tell us absolutely nothing of the
events of his life, or the facts of his position. And if, as we assume,
he was one among several who helped Lord Bacon, though he might have
done the most, there was no special reason why he should proclaim that
fact.
Gervinus has shown, in three striking pages, the fundamental harmony
between the ideas and mental tendencies of Shakespeare and Bacon. Their
philosophy of man and of life was the same. If, then, Bacon needed to
be helped in thinking out his system, there was no one alive who would
have given him such stimulus and encouragement as Shakespeare. This
also may explain his not mentioning the name of Shakespeare in his
works; for that might have called too much attention to the source from
which he received this important aid.
Nevertheless, I regard the monistic theory as in the last degree
improbable. We have two great authors, and not one only. But if we
are compelled to accept the view which ascribes a common source to
the Shakespeare drama and the Baconian philosophy, I think there are
good reasons for preferring Shakespeare to Bacon as the author of
both. When the plays appeared, Bacon was absorbed in pursuits and
ambitions foreign to such work; his accepted writings show no sign of
such creative power; he was the last man in the world not to take the
credit of such a success, and had no motive to conceal his authorship.
On the other hand, there was a period in Shakespeare's life when he had
abundant leisure to coöperate in the literary plans of Bacon; his ample
intellect was full of the ideas which took form in those works; and
he was just the person neither to claim nor to desire any credit for
lending such assistance.
There is, certainly, every reason to believe that, among his other
ambitions, Bacon desired that of striking out a new path of discovery,
and initiating a better method in the study of nature. But we know
that, in doing this, he sought aid in all quarters, and especially
among Shakespeare's friends and companions. It is highly probable,
therefore, that he became acquainted with the great dramatist, and that
Shakespeare knew of Bacon's designs and became interested in them. And
if so, who could offer better suggestions than he; and who would more
willingly accept them than the overworked statesman and lawyer, who
wished to be also a philosopher?
Finally, we may refer those who believe that the shape of the brow and
head indicates the quality of mental power to the portraits of the two
men. The head of Shakespeare, according to all the busts and pictures
which remain to us, belongs to the type which antiquity has transmitted
to us in the portraits of Homer and Plato. In this vast dome of thought
there was room for everything. The head of Bacon is also a grand one,
but less ample, less complete--less
"Teres, totus atque rotundus."
These portraits therefore agree with all we know of the writings, in
showing us which, and which only, of the two minds was capable of
containing the other.
THE EVOLUTION OF A GREAT POEM[4]
There are at least three existing manuscripts of Grays "Elegy," in
the author's autograph. The earliest, containing the largest number
of variations and the most curious, is that now in the possession of
Sir William Fraser in London, and for which he paid the large sum
of £230, in 1875. By the kindness of Sir William Fraser, I examined
this manuscript at his rooms in London, in 1882. A facsimile copy of
this valuable autograph, photographed from the original in 1862, is
now before me. A second copy in the handwriting of Gray, called the
Pembroke manuscript, is in the library of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. A
facsimile of this autograph appears in Matthias's edition of Mason's
"Gray," published in 1814. A third copy, in the poet's handwriting,
copied by him for his friend, Dr. Wharton, is in the British Museum. I
examined this, also, in 1882, and had an accurate copy made for me by
one of the assistants in the museum. This was written after the other
two, as is evident from the fact that it approaches most nearly to the
form which the "Elegy" finally assumed when printed. There are only
nine or ten expressions in this manuscript which differ from the poem
as published by Gray. Most of these are unimportant. "_Or_" he changed,
in three places, into "and." "_And_ in our ashes" he changed into "Even
in our ashes," which was a clear improvement. It was not until after
this third copy was written that the improvement was made which changed
"Forgive, ye Proud, the involuntary Fault,
If Memory to These no Trophies raise,"
into
"Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise."
Another important alteration of a single word was also made after this
third manuscript was written. This was the change, in the forty-fifth
stanza, of "Reins of Empire" into "Rod of Empire."
"The Elegy in a Country Churchyard" became at once one of the most
popular poems in the language, and has remained so to this time. It has
been equally a favorite with common readers, with literary men, and
with poets. Its place will always be in the highest rank of English
poetry. The fact, however, is--and it is a very curious fact--that this
first-class poem was the work of a third-class poet. For Thomas Gray
certainly does not stand in the first class with Shakespeare, Spenser,
and Milton. Nor can he fairly be put in the second class with Dryden,
Pope, Burns, Wordsworth, and Byron. He belongs to the third, with
Cowley, Cowper, Shelley, and Keats. There may be a doubt concerning
some of whom I have named, but there can be no doubt that Gray will
never stand higher than those who may be placed by critics in the third
class. Yet it is equally certain that he has produced a first-class
poem. How is this paradox to be explained?
What is the charm of Gray's "Elegy"? The thoughts are sufficiently
commonplace. That all men must die, that the most humble may have had
in them some power which, under other circumstances, might have made
them famous,--these are somewhat trite statements; but the fascination
of the verses consists in the tone, solemn but serene, which pervades
them; in the pictures of coming night, of breaking day, of cheerful
rural life, of happy homes; and lastly, in the perfect finish of the
verse and the curious felicity of the diction. In short, the poem is a
work of high art. It was not inspired, but it was carefully elaborated.
And this appears plainly when we compare it, as it stands in the Fraser
manuscript, with its final form.
This poem was a work of eight years. Its heading in the Fraser
manuscript is "Stanzas Wrote in a Country Churchyard." It was, however,
begun at Stoke in 1742, continued at Cambridge, and had its last
touches added at Stoke-Pogis, June 12, 1750. In a letter to Horace
Walpole of that date, Gray says, "Having put an end to a thing whose
beginning you saw long ago, I immediately send it to you."
The corrections made by Gray during this period were many, and were
probably all improvements. Many poets when they try to improve their
verses only injure them. But Gray's corrections were invariably for
the better. We may even say that, if it had been published as it was
first written, and as it now stands in the Fraser manuscript, it would
have ranked only with the best poetry of Shenstone or Cowper. Let me
indicate some of the most important changes.
In line seventeen, the fine epithet of "incense-breathing" was an
addition.
"The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,"
for the Fraser manuscript reads--
"Forever sleep. The breezy call of morn."
Nineteenth line, Fraser manuscript has--
"Or chanticleer so shrill, or echoing horn,"
corrected to
"The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn."
Twenty-fourth--"Coming kiss" was corrected to "envied kiss."
Forty-third--"Awake the silent dust" was corrected to "provoke the
silent dust."
Forty-seventh--The correction of "Reins of Empire" to "Rod of Empire"
first appears in the margin of the Pembroke manuscript.
Fifty-seventh--In the Fraser manuscript it reads--
"Some village Cato, who with dauntless breast,
Some mute, inglorious Tully here may rest;
Some Cæsar," etc.
In the Pembroke manuscript, these classical personages have
disappeared, and the great improvement was made of substituting
Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, and thus maintaining the English
coloring of the poem.
Fifty-first--This verse, beginning, "But Knowledge," etc., was placed,
in the Fraser manuscript, after the one beginning, "Some village Cato,"
but with a note in the margin to transfer it to where it now stands.
The third line of the stanza was first written, "Chill Penury had
damped." This was first corrected to "depressed," and afterward to
"repressed."
Fifty-fifth--"Their fate forbade," changed to "Their lot forbade."
Sixty-sixth--"Their struggling virtues" was improved to "Their growing
virtues."
Seventy-first--"Crown the shrine" was altered to "heap the shrine,"
and in the next line "Incense hallowed by the muse's flame" was wisely
changed to "Incense kindled by the muse's flame."
After the seventy-second line stand, in the Fraser manuscript, the
following stanzas, which Gray, with admirable taste, afterward omitted.
But, before he decided to leave them out altogether, he drew a black
line down the margin, indicating that he would transfer them to another
place. These stanzas were originally intended to close the poem.
Afterward the thought occurred to him of "the hoary-headed swain" and
the "Epitaph."
"The thoughtless World to Majesty may bow,
Exalt the Brave and idolize Success,
But more to Innocence their safety owe
Than Power and Genius e'er conspire to bless.
"And thou, who, mindful of the unhonored Dead,
Dost, in these Notes, their artless Tale relate,
By Night and lonely Contemplation led
To linger in the gloomy Walks of Fate;
"Hark, how the sacred Calm that broods around
Bids every fierce, tumultuous Passion cease,
In still, small Accents whispering from the Ground
A grateful Earnest of eternal Peace.
"No more with Reason and thyself at Strife,
Give anxious Cares and useless Wishes room;
But through the cool, sequestered Vale of Life
Pursue the silent Tenor of thy Doom."
After these stanzas, according to the Fraser manuscript, were to follow
these lines, which I do not remember to have seen elsewhere:--
"If chance that e'er some pensive Spirit more,
By sympathetic Musings here delayed,
With vain though kind Enquiry shall explore
Thy once-loved Haunt, thy long-neglected Shade,
"Haply," etc.
But Gray soon dispensed with this feeble stanza, and made a new one by
changing it into the one beginning:--
"For thee, who mindful."
The ninety-ninth and one hundredth lines stand in the Fraser
manuscript--
"With hasty footsteps brush the dews away
On the high brow of yonder hanging lawn."
The following stanza is noticeable for the inversions so frequent
in Gray, and which he had, perhaps, unconsciously adopted from his
familiarity with the classics. He afterward omitted it:--
"Him have we seen the greenwood side along,
While o'er the heath we hied, our labors done.
Oft as the wood-lark piped her farewell song,
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun."
In the manuscript the word is spelled "whistful." In line 101, "hoary
beech" is corrected to "spreading beech," and afterward to "nodding
beech."
Line 113--"Dirges meet" was changed to "dirges dire;" and after 116
came the beautiful stanza, afterward omitted by Gray as being _de trop_
in this place:--
"There, scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."
Even in this verse there were two corrections. "Robin" was altered in
the Fraser manuscript into "redbreast," and "frequent violets" into
"showers of violets."
One of the most curious accidents to which this famous poem has been
subjected was an erroneous change made in the early editions, which has
been propagated almost to our time. In the stanza beginning--
"The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Power,"
Gray wrote
"Awaits alike the inevitable Hour."
And so it stands in all three manuscripts, and in the printed edition
which he himself superintended. His meaning was, "The inevitable Hour
awaits everything. It stands there, waiting the boast of Heraldry,"
etc. But his editors, misled by his inverted style, supposed that it
was the gifts of Heraldry, Power, Beauty, etc., that were waiting, and
therefore corrected what they thought Gray's bad grammar, and printed
the word "await." But so they destroyed the meaning. These things were
not waiting at all for the dread hour; they were enjoying themselves,
careless of its approach. But "the hour" was waiting for them. Gray's
original reading has been restored in the last editions.
In tracing the development of this fine poem, we see it gradually
improving under his careful touch, till it becomes a work of high art.
In some poets--Wordsworth, for example--inspiration is at its maximum,
and art at its minimum. In Gray, I think, inspiration was at its
minimum, and art at its maximum.
RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL
AFFINITIES OF BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY[5]
It has long been known that many analogies exist between Buddhism
and Christianity. The ceremonies, ritual, and rites of the Buddhists
strikingly resemble those of the Roman Catholic Church. The Buddhist
priests are monks. They take the same three vows of poverty, chastity,
and obedience which are binding on those of the Roman Church. They are
mendicants, like the mendicant orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic.
They are tonsured; use strings of beads, like the rosary, with which
to count their prayers; have incense and candles in their worship; use
fasts, processions, litanies, and holy water. They have something akin
to the adoration of saints; repeat prayers in an unknown tongue; have
a chanted psalmody with a double choir; and suspend the censer from
five chains. In China, some Buddhists worship the image of a virgin,
called the Queen of Heaven, having an infant in her arms, and holding a
cross. In Thibet the Grand Lamas wear a mitre, dalmatica, and cope, and
pronounce a benediction on the laity by extending the right hand over
their heads. The Dalai-Lama resembles the Pope, and is regarded as the
head of the Church. The worship of relics is very ancient among the
Buddhists, and so are pilgrimages to sacred places.
Besides these resemblances in outward ceremonies, more important ones
appear in the inner life and history of the two religions. Both belong
to those systems which derive their character from a human founder, and
not from a national tendency; to the class which contains the religions
of Moses, Zoroaster, Confucius, and Mohammed, and not to that in which
the Brahmanical, Egyptian, Scandinavian, Greek, and Roman religions
are found. Both Buddhism and Christianity are catholic, and not
ethnic; that is, not confined to a single race or nation, but by their
missionary spirit passing beyond these boundaries, and making converts
among many races. Christianity began among the Jews as a Semitic
religion, but, being rejected by the Jewish nation, established itself
among the Aryan races of Europe. In the same way Buddhism, beginning
among an Aryan people--the Hindoos--was expelled from Hindostan, and
established itself among the Mongol races of Eastern Asia. Besides its
resemblances to the Roman Catholic side of Christendom, Buddhism has
still closer analogies with the Protestant Church. Like Protestantism,
it is a reform, which rejects a hierarchal system and does away with
a priestly caste. Like Protestantism, it has emphasized the purely
humane side of life, and is a religion of humanity rather than of
piety. Both the Christian and Buddhist churches teach a divine
incarnation, and both worship a God-man.
Are these remarkable analogies only casual resemblances, or are they
real affinities? By affinity we here mean genetic relationship. Are
Buddhism and Christianity related as mother and child, one being
derived from the other; or are they related by both being derived from
some common ancestor? Is either derived from the other, as Christianity
from Judaism, or Protestantism from the Papal Church? That there can
be no such affinity as this seems evident from history. History shows
no trace of the contact which would be required for such influence.
If Christianity had taken its customs from Buddhism, or Buddhism from
Christianity, there must have been ample historic evidence of the fact.
But, instead of this, history shows that each has grown up by its own
natural development, and has unfolded its qualities separately and
alone. The law of evolution also teaches that such great systems do not
come from imitation, but as growths from a primal germ.
Nor does history give the least evidence of a common ancestry from
which both took their common traits. We know that Buddhism was derived
from Brahmanism, and that Christianity was derived from Judaism. Now,
Judaism and Brahmanism have few analogies; they could not, therefore,
have transmitted to their offspring what they did not themselves
possess. Brahmanism came from an Aryan stock, in Central Asia; Judaism
from a Semitic stem, thousands of miles to the west. If Buddhism and
Christianity came from a common source, that source must have antedated
both the Mosaic and Brahmanical systems. Even then it would be a case
of atavism in which the original type disappeared in the children, to
reappear in the later descendants.
Are, then, these striking resemblances, and others which are still to
be mentioned, only accidental analogies? This does not necessarily
follow; for there is a third alternative. They may be what are
called in science homologies; that is, the same law working out
similar results under the same conditions, though under different
circumstances. The whale lives under different circumstances from other
mammalia; but being a mammal, he has a like osseous structure. What
seems to be a fin, being dissected, turns out to be an arm, with hand
and fingers. There are like homologies in history. Take the instance of
the English and French revolutions. In each case the legitimate king
was tried, condemned, and executed. A republic followed. The republic
gave way before a strong-handed usurper. Then the original race of
kings was restored; but, having learned nothing and forgotten nothing,
they were displaced a second time, and a constitutional monarch placed
on the throne, who, though not the legitimate king, still belonged
to the same race. Here the same laws of human nature have worked out
similar results; for no one would suggest that France had copied its
revolutions from England. And, in religion, human nature reproduces
similar customs and ceremonies under like conditions. When, for
instance, you have a mechanical system of prayer, in which the number
of prayers is of chief importance, there must be some way of counting
them, and so the rosary has been invented independently in different
religions. We have no room to point out how this law has worked in
other instances; but it is enough to refer to the principle.
Besides these resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity, there are
also some equally remarkable differences, which should be noticed.
The first of these is the striking fact that Buddhism has been unable
to recognize the existence of the Infinite Being. It has been called
atheism by the majority of the best authorities. Even Arthur Lillie,
who defends this system from the charge of agnosticism, says:[6] "An
agnostic school of Buddhism without doubt exists. It professes plain
atheism, and holds that every mortal, when he escapes from re-births,
and the causation of Karma by the awakenment of the Bodhi or gnosis,
will be annihilated. This Buddhism, by Eugène Burnouf, Saint-Hilaire,
Max Müller, Csoma de Körös, and, I believe, almost every writer of
note, is pronounced the original Buddhism,--the Buddhism of the South."
Almost every writer of note, therefore, who has studied Buddhism in
the Pâli, Singhalese, Chinese, and other languages, and has had direct
access to its original sources, has pronounced it a system of atheism.
But this opinion is opposed to the fact that Buddhists have everywhere
worshiped unseen and superhuman powers, erected magnificent temples,
maintained an elaborate ritual, and adored Buddha as the supreme ruler
of the worlds. How shall we explain this paradox? All depends on the
definition we give to the word "atheism." If a system is atheistic
which sees only the temporal, and not the eternal; which knows no
God as the author, creator, and ruler of Nature; which ascribes the
origin of the universe to natural causes, to which only the finite is
knowable, and the infinite unknowable--then Buddhism is atheism. But,
in that case, much of the polytheism of the world must be regarded as
atheism; for polytheism has largely worshiped finite gods. The whole
race of Olympian deities were finite beings. Above them ruled the
everlasting necessity of things. But who calls the Greek worshipers
atheists? The Buddha, to most Buddhists, is a finite being, one who has
passed through numerous births, has reached Nirvana, and will one day
be superseded by another Buddha. Yet, for the time, he is the Supreme
Being, Ruler of all the Worlds. He is the object of worship, and
really divine, if in a subordinate sense.
I would not, therefore, call this religion atheism. No religion which
worships superhuman powers can justly be called atheistic on account of
its meagre metaphysics. How many Christians there are who do not fully
realize the infinite and eternal nature of the Deity! To many He is no
more than the Buddha is to his worshipers,--a supreme being, a mighty
ruler, governing all things by his will. How few see God everywhere
in nature, as Jesus saw Him, letting his sun shine on the evil and
good, and sending his rain on the just and unjust. How few see Him in
all of life, so that not a sparrow dies, or a single hair of the head
falls, without the Father. Most Christians recognize the Deity only as
occasionally interfering by special providences, particular judgments,
and the like.
But in Christianity this ignorance of the eternal nature of God is the
exception, while in Buddhism it is the rule. In the reaction against
Brahmanism, the Brahmanic faith in the infinite was lost. In the
fully developed system of the ancient Hindoo religion the infinite
overpowered the finite, the temporal world was regarded as an illusion,
and only the eternal was real. The reaction from this extreme was so
complete as to carry the Buddhists to the exact opposite. If to the
Brahman all the finite visible world was only _maya_--illusion, to the
Buddhists all the infinite unseen world was unknowable, and practically
nothing.
Perhaps the most original feature of Christianity is the fact
that it has combined in a living synthesis that which in other
systems was divided. Jesus regarded love to God and love to man as
identical,--positing a harmonious whole of time and eternity, piety
and humanity, faith and works,--and thus laid the foundation of a
larger system than either Brahmanism or Buddhism. He did not invent
piety, nor discover humanity. Long before he came the Brahmanic
literature had sounded the deepest depths of spiritual life, and the
Buddhist missionaries had preached universal benevolence to mankind.
But the angelic hymn which foretold the new religion as bringing at
once "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to
men" indicated the essence of the faith which was at the same time a
heavenly love and an earthly blessing. This difference of result in the
two systems came probably from the different methods of their authors.
With Jesus life was the source of knowledge; the life was the light of
men. With the Buddha, reflection, meditation, thought was the source
of knowledge. In this, however, he included intuition no less than
reflection. Sakya-muni understood perfectly that a mere intellectual
judgment possessed little motive power; therefore he was not satisfied
till he had obtained an intuitive perception of truth. That alone gave
at once rest and power. But as the pure intellect, even in its highest
act, is unable to grasp the infinite, the Buddha was an agnostic on
this side of his creed by the very success of his method. Who, by
searching, can find out God? The infinite can only be known by the
process of living experience. This was the method of Jesus, and has
been that of his religion. For what is faith but that receptive state
of mind which waits on the Lord to receive the illumination which it
cannot create by its own processes? However this may be, it is probable
that the fatal defect in Buddhism which has neutralized its generous
philanthropy and its noble humanities has been the absence of the
inspiration which comes from the belief in an eternal world. Man is
too great to be satisfied with time alone, or eternity alone; he needs
to live from and for both. Hence, Buddhism is an arrested religion,
while Christianity is progressive. Christianity has shown the capacity
of outgrowing its own defects and correcting its own mistakes. For
example, it has largely outgrown its habit of persecuting infidels and
heretics. No one is now put to death for heresy. It has also passed out
of the stage in which religion is considered to consist in leaving the
world and entering a monastery. The anchorites of the early centuries
are no longer to be found in Christendom. Even in Catholic countries
the purpose of monastic life is no longer to save the soul by ascetic
tortures, but to attain some practical end. The Protestant Reformation,
which broke the yoke of priestly power and set free the mind of
Europe, was a movement originating in Christianity itself, like other
developments of a similar kind. No such signs of progress exist in
the system of Buddhism. It has lost the missionary ardor of its early
years; it has ceased from creating a vast literature such as grew up in
its younger days; it no longer produces any wonders of architecture.
It even lags behind the active life of the countries where it has its
greatest power.
It is a curious analogy between the two systems that, while neither
the Christ nor the Buddha practiced or taught asceticism, their
followers soon made the essence of religion to consist in some form
of monastic life. Both Jesus and Sakya-muni went about doing good.
Both sent their followers into the world to preach a gospel. Jesus,
after thirty years of a retired life, came among men "eating and
drinking," and associating with "publicans and sinners." Sakya-muni,
after spending some years as an anchorite, deliberately renounced that
mode of religion as unsatisfactory, and associated with all men, as
Jesus afterward did. Within a few centuries after their death, their
followers relapsed into ascetic and monastic practices; but with this
difference, that while in Christendom there has always been both a
regular and a secular clergy, in the Buddhist countries the whole
priesthood live in monasteries. They have no parish priests, unless
as an exception. While in Christian countries the clergy has become
more and more a practical body, in sympathy with the common life, in
Buddhist lands they live apart and exercise little influence on the
civil condition of the people.
Nor must we pass by the important fact that the word Christendom
is synonymous with a progressive civilization, while Buddhism is
everywhere connected with one which is arrested and stationary. The
boundaries of the Christian religion are exactly coextensive with
the advance of science, art, literature; and with the continued
accumulation of knowledge, power, wealth, and the comforts of human
life. According to Kuenen,[7] one of the most recent students of these
questions, this difference is due to the principle of hope which exists
in Christianity, but is absent in Buddhism. The one has always believed
in a kingdom of God here and a blessed immortality hereafter. Buddhism
has not this hope; and this, says Kuenen, "is a blank which nothing can
fill." So large a thinker as Albert Réville has expressed his belief
that even the intolerance of Christianity indicated a passionate love
of truth which has created modern science. He says that "if Europe had
not passed through those ages of intolerance, it is doubtful whether
the science of our day would ever have arrived."[8] It is only within
the boundaries of nations professing the Christian faith that we must
go to-day to learn the latest discoveries in science, the best works
of art, the most flourishing literature. Only within the same circle
of Christian states is there a government by law, and not by will.
Only within these boundaries have the rights of the individual been
secured, while the power of the state has been increased. Government
by law, joined with personal freedom, is only to be found where the
faith exists which teaches that God not only supports the universal
order of natural things, but is also the friend of the individual soul;
and in just that circle of states in which the doctrine is taught that
there is no individual soul for God to love and no Divine presence in
the order of nature, human life has subsided into apathy, progress has
ceased, and it has been found impossible to construct national unity.
Saint-Hilaire affirms[9] that "in politics and legislation the dogma
of Buddhism has remained inferior even to that of Brahmanism," and
"has been able to do nothing to constitute states or to govern them by
equitable rules." These Buddhist nations are really six: Siam, Burma,
Nepaul, Thibet, Tartary, and Ceylon. The activity and social progress
in China and Japan are no exceptions to this rule; for in neither
country has Buddhism any appreciable influence on the character of the
people.
To those who deny that the theology of a people influences its
character, it may be instructive to see how exactly the good and evil
influences of Buddhism correspond to the positive and negative traits
of its doctrine. Its merits, says Saint-Hilaire, are its practical
character, its abnegation of vulgar gratifications, its benevolence,
mildness, sentiment of human equality, austerity of manners, dislike of
falsehood, and respect for the family. Its defects are want of social
power, egotistical aims, ignorance of the ideal good, of the sense of
human right and human freedom, skepticism, incurable despair, contempt
of life. All its human qualities correspond to its doctrinal teaching
from the beginning. It has always taught benevolence, patience,
self-denial, charity, and toleration. Its defects arise inevitably
from its negative aim,--to get rid of sorrow and evil by sinking into
apathy, instead of seeking for the triumph of good and the coming of a
reign of God here on the earth.
As regards the Buddha himself, modern students differ widely. Some, of
course, deny his very existence, and reduce him to a solar myth. M.
Emile Senart, as quoted by Oldenberg,[10] following the Lalita Vistara
as his authority, makes of him a solar hero, born of the morning cloud,
contending by the power of light with the demons of darkness, rising in
triumph to the zenith of heavenly glory, then passing into the night of
Nirvana and disappearing from the scene.
The difficulty about this solar myth theory is that it proves too
much; it is too powerful a solvent; it would dissolve all history. How
easy it would be, in a few centuries, to turn General Washington and
the American Revolution into a solar myth! Great Britain, a region of
clouds and rain, represents the Kingdom of Darkness; America, with more
sunshine, is the Day. Great Britain, as Darkness, wishes to devour the
Young Day, or dawn of light, which America is about to diffuse over the
earth. But Washington, the solar hero, arrives. He is from Virginia,
that is, born of a virgin. He was born in February, in the sign of
Aquarius and the Fishes,--plainly referring to the birth of the sun
from the ocean. As the sun surveys the earth, so Washington was said to
be a surveyor of many regions. The story of the fruitless attempts of
the Indians to shoot him at Braddock's defeat is evidently legendary;
and, in fact, this battle itself must be a myth, for how can we suppose
two English and French armies to have crossed the Atlantic, and then
gone into a wilderness west of the mountains, to fight a battle? So
easy is it to turn history into a solar myth.
The character of Sakya-muni must be learned from his religion and from
authentic tradition. In many respects his character and influence
resembled that of Jesus. He opposed priestly assumptions, taught the
equality and brotherhood of man, sent out disciples to teach his
doctrine, was a reformer who relied on the power of truth and love.
Many of his reported sayings resemble those of Jesus. He was opposed
by the Brahmans as Jesus by the Pharisees. He compared the Brahmans
who followed their traditions to a chain of blind men, who move on,
not seeing where they go.[11] Like Jesus, he taught that mercy was
better than sacrifices. Like Jesus, he taught orally, and left no
writing. Jesus did not teach in Hebrew, but in the Aramaic, which was
the popular dialect, and so the Buddha did not speak to the people in
Sanskrit, but in their own tongue, which was Pâli. Like Jesus, he seems
to have instructed his hearers by parables or stories. He was one of
the greatest reformers the world has ever seen; and his influence,
after that of the Christ, has probably exceeded that of any one who
ever lived.
But, beside such real resemblances between these two masters, we are
told of others still more striking, which would certainly be hard to
explain unless one of the systems had borrowed from the other. These
are said to be the preëxistence of Buddha in heaven; his birth of a
virgin; salutation by angels; presentation in the temple; baptism by
fire and water; dispute with the doctors; temptation in the wilderness;
transfiguration; descent into hell; ascension into heaven.[12] If
these legends could be traced back to the time before Christ, then it
might be argued that the Gospels have borrowed from Buddhism. Such,
however, is not the fact. These stories are taken from the Lalita
Vistara, which, according to Rhys Davids,[13] was probably composed
between six hundred and a thousand years after the time of Buddha, by
some Buddhist poet in Nepaul. Rhys Davids, one of our best authorities,
says of this poem: "As evidence of what early Buddhism actually was,
it is of about the same value as some mediæval poem would be of the
real facts of the gospel history."[13] M. Ernest de Bunsen, in his work
on the "Angel Messiah," has given a very exhaustive statement, says
Mr. Davids, of all the possible channels through which Christians can
be supposed to have borrowed from the Buddhists. But Mr. Davids's
conclusion is that he finds no evidence of any such communications of
ideas from the East to the West.[14] The difference between the wild
stories of the Lalita Vistara and the sober narratives of the Gospels
is quite apparent. Another writer, Professor Seydel,[15] thinks, after
a full and careful examination, that only five facts in the Gospels
may have been borrowed from Buddhism. These are: (1) The fast of Jesus
before his work; (2) The question in regard to the blind man--"Who did
sin, this man, or his parents"? (3) The preëxistence of Christ; (4) The
presentation in the Temple; (5) Nathanael sitting under a fig-tree,
compared with Buddha under a Bo-tree. But Kuenen has examined these
parallels, and considers them merely accidental coincidences. And, in
truth, it is very hard to conceive of one religion borrowing its facts
or legends from another, if that other stands in no historic relation
to it. That Buddhism should have taken much from Brahmanism is natural;
for Brahmanism was its mother. That Christianity should have borrowed
many of its methods from Judaism is equally natural; for Judaism was
its cradle. Modern travelers in Burma and Tartary have found that the
Buddhists hold a kind of camp-meeting in the open air, where they pray
and sing. Suppose that some critic, noticing this, should assert that,
when Wesley and his followers established similar customs, they must
have borrowed them from the Buddhists. The absurdity would be evident.
New religions grow, they are not imitations.
It has been thought, however, that Christianity was derived from the
Essenes, because of certain resemblances, and it is argued that the
Essenes must have obtained their monastic habits from the Therapeutæ
in Egypt, and that the Therapeutæ received them from the Buddhists,
because they could not have found them elsewhere. This theory, however,
has been dismissed from the scene by the young German scholar,[16]
who has proved that the essay on the Therapeutæ ascribed to Philo was
really written by a Christian anchorite in the third or fourth century.
The result, then, of our investigation, is this: There is no
probability that the analogies between Christianity and Buddhism have
been derived the one from the other. They have come from the common and
universal needs and nature of man, which repeat themselves again and
again in like positions and like circumstances. That Jesus and Buddha
should both have retired into the wilderness before undertaking their
great work is probable, for it has been the habit of other reformers
to let a period of meditation precede their coming before the world.
That both should have been tempted to renounce their enterprise is
also in accordance with human nature. That, in after times, the simple
narratives should be overlaid with additions, and a whole mass of
supernatural wonders added,--as we find in the Apocryphal Gospels and
the Lalita Vistara,--is also in accordance with the working of the
human mind.
Laying aside all such unsatisfactory resemblances, we must regard the
Buddha as having been one of the noblest of men, and one whom Jesus
would have readily welcomed as a fellow worker and a friend. He opposed
a dominant priesthood, maintained the equal religious rights of all
mankind, overthrew caste, encouraged woman to take her place as man's
equal, forbade all bloody sacrifices, and preached a religion of peace
and good will, seeking to triumph only in the fair conflict of reason
with reason. If he was defective in the loftiest instincts of the soul;
if he knew nothing of the infinite and eternal; if he saw nothing
permanent in the soul of man; if his highest purpose was negative,--to
escape from pain, sorrow, anxiety, toil,--let us still be grateful for
the influence which has done so much to tame the savage Mongols, and to
introduce hospitality and humanity into the homes of Lassa and Siam. If
Edwin Arnold, a poet, idealizes him too highly, it is the better fault,
and should be easily forgiven. Hero-worshipers are becoming scarce in
our time; let us make the most of those we have.
WHY I AM NOT A FREE-RELIGIONIST[17]
What is meant by "Free Religion"? I understand by it, individualism in
religion. It is the religious belief which has made itself independent
of historic and traditional influences, so far as it is in the power
of any one to attain such independence. In Christian lands it means a
religion which has cut loose from the Bible and the Christian Church,
and which is as ready to question the teaching of Jesus as that of
Socrates or Buddha. It is, what Emerson called himself, an endless
seeker, with no past behind it. It is entire trust in the private
reason as the sole authority in matters of religion.
Free Religion may be regarded as Protestantism carried to its ultimate
results. A Protestant _Christian_ accepts the leadership of Jesus, and
keeps himself in the Christian communion; but he uses his own private
judgment to discover what Jesus taught, and what Christianity really
is. The Free Religionist goes a step farther, and decides by his own
private judgment what is true and what false, no matter whether taught
by Jesus or not.
Free Religion, as thus understood, seems to me opposed to the law of
evolution, and incompatible with it. Evolution educes the present from
the past by a continuous process. Free Religion cuts itself loose
from the past, and makes every man the founder of his own religion.
According to the law of evolution, confirmed by history, every advance
in religion is the development from something going before. Jewish
monotheism grew out of polytheism; Christianity and Mohammedanism out
of Judaism; Buddhism out of Brahmanism; Protestant Christianity out of
the Roman Catholic Church. Jesus himself said, "Think not that I am
come to destroy the Law or the Prophets: I am not come to destroy, but
to fulfil." The higher religions are not made; they grow. Of each it
may be said, as of the poet: "Nascitur, non fit." Therefore, if there
is to arrive something higher than our existing Christianity, it must
not be a system which forsakes the Christian belief, but something
developed from it.
According to the principle of evolution, every growing and productive
religion obeys the laws of heredity and of variation. It has an
inherited common life, and a tendency to modification by individual
activity. Omit or depress either factor, and the religion loses its
power of growth. Without a common life, the principle of development
is arrested. He who leaves the great current which comes from the
past loses headway. This current, in the Christian communion, is the
inherited spirit of Jesus. It is his life, continued in his Church;
his central convictions of love to God and to man; of fatherhood
and brotherhood; of the power of truth to conquer error, of good to
overcome evil; of a Kingdom of Heaven to come to us here. It is the
faith of Jesus in things unseen; his hope of the triumph of right
over wrong; his love going down to the lowliest child of God. These
vital convictions in the soul of Jesus are communicated by contact
from generation to generation. They are propagated, as he suggested,
like leaven hidden in the dough. By a different figure, Plato, in
his dialogue of Ion, shows that inspiration is transmitted like the
magnetic influence, which causes iron rings to adhere and hang together
in a chain. Thoughts and opinions are communicated by argument,
reasoning, speech, and writing; but faith and inspiration by the
influence of life on life. The life of Jesus is thus continued in his
Church, and those who stand outside of it lose much of this transmitted
and sympathetic influence. Common life in a religious body furnishes
the motive force which carries it forward, while individual freedom
gives the power of improvement. The two principles of heredity and
variation must be united in order to combine union and freedom, and
to secure progress. Where freedom of thought ceases, religion becomes
rigid. It is incapable of development. Such, for instance, is the
condition of Buddhism, which, at first full of intellectual activity,
has now hardened into a monkish ritual.
Free Religion sacrifices the motive power derived from association
and religious sympathy for the sake of a larger intellectual freedom.
The result is individualism. It founds no churches, but spends much
force in criticising the Christian community, its belief, and its
methods. These are, no doubt, open to criticism, which would do good
if administered sympathetically and from within, but produce little
result when delivered in the spirit of antagonism. Imperfect as the
Christian Church is, it ought to be remembered that in it are to be
found the chief strength and help of the charities, philanthropies, and
moral reforms of our time. Every one who has at heart a movement for
the benefit of humanity appeals instinctively for aid to the Christian
churches. It is in these that such movements usually originate, and are
carried on. Even when, as in the antislavery movement, a part of the
churches refuse to sympathize with a new moral or social movement, the
reproaches made against them show that in the mind of the community
an interest in all humane endeavor is considered to be a part of
their work. The common life and convictions of these bodies enable
them to accomplish what individualism does not venture to undertake.
Individualism is incapable of organized and sustained work of this
sort, though it can, and often does, coöperate earnestly with it.
The teaching of Jesus is founded on the synthesis of Truth and Love.
Jesus declares himself to have been born "to bear witness to the
truth," and he also makes love, divine and human, the substance of his
gospel. The love element produces union, the truth element, freedom.
Union without freedom stiffens into a rigid conservatism. Freedom
without union breaks up into an intellectual atomism. The Christian
churches have gone into both extremes, but never permanently; for
Christianity, as long as it adheres to its founder and his ideas, has
the power of self-recovery. Its diseases are self-limited.
It has had many such periods, but has recovered from them. It passed
through an age in which it ran to ascetic self-denial, and made saints
of self-torturing anchorites. It afterward became a speculative system,
and tended to metaphysical creeds and doctrinal distinctions. It became
a persecuting church, burning heretics and Jews, and torturing infidels
as an act of faith. It was tormented by dark superstitions, believing
in witchcraft and magic. But it has left all these evils behind. No
one is now put to death for heresy or witchcraft. The monastic orders
in the Church are preachers and teachers, or given to charity. No
one could be burned to-day as a heretic. No one to-day believes in
witchcraft. The old creeds which once held the Church in irons are
now slowly disintegrating. But reform, as I have said, must come from
within, by the gradual elimination of those inherited beliefs which
interfere with the unity of the Church and the leadership of Christ
himself. The Platonic and Egyptian Trinity remaining as dogma, repeated
but not understood,--the Manichæan division of the human race into
children of God and children of the Devil,--the scholastic doctrine of
the Atonement, by which the blood of Jesus expiates human guilt,--are
being gradually explained in accordance with reason and the teaching of
Jesus.
Some beliefs, once thought to be of vital importance, are now seen by
many to be unessential, or are looked at in a different light. Instead
of making Jesus an exceptional person, we are coming to regard him as
a representative man, the realized ideal of what man was meant to be,
and will one day become. Instead of considering his sinlessness as
setting him apart from his race, we look on it as showing that sin is
not the natural, but unnatural, condition of mankind. His miracles are
regarded not as violations of the laws of nature, but anticipations of
laws which one day will be universally known, and which are boundless
as the universe. Nor will they in future be regarded as evidence of
the mission of Jesus, since he himself was grieved when they were
so looked upon, and he made his truth and his character the true
evidence that he came from God. The old distinction between "natural"
and "supernatural" will disappear when it is seen that Jesus had a
supernatural work and character, the same in kind as ours, though
higher in degree. The supreme gifts which make him the providential
leader of the race do not set him apart from his brethren if we see
that it is a law of humanity that gifts differ, and that men endowed
with superior powers become leaders in science, art, literature,
politics; as Jesus has become the chief great spiritual leader of
mankind.
Men are now searching the Scriptures, not under the bondage of an
infallible letter, but seeking for the central ideas of Jesus and
the spirit of his gospel. They begin to accept the maxim of Goethe:
"No matter how much the gospels contradict each other, provided the
Gospel does not contradict itself." The profound convictions of
Christ, which pervade all his teaching, give the clue by which to
explain the divergences in the narrative. We interpret the letter by
the light of the spirit. We see how Jesus emphasized the law of human
happiness,--that it comes from within, not from without; that the pure
in heart see God, and that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
We comprehend the stress he lays on the laws of progress,--that he who
humbleth himself shall be exalted. We recognize his profound conviction
that all God's children are dear to him, that his sun shines on the
evil and the good, and that he will seek the one lost sheep till he
find it. We see his trust in the coming of the Kingdom of God in this
world, the triumph of good over evil, and the approaching time when the
knowledge of God shall fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. And
we find his profound faith in the immortal life which abides in us, so
that whoever shares that faith with him can never die.
The more firmly these central ideas of Jesus are understood and held,
the less importance belongs to any criticism of the letter. This or
that saying, attributed to Jesus in the record, maybe subjected to
attack; but it is the main current of his teaching which has made him
the leader of civilized man for eighteen centuries. That majestic
stream will sweep on undisturbed, though there may be eddies here or
stagnant pools there, which induce hasty observers to suppose that it
has ceased to flow.
"Rusticus expectat dum defluit amnis, at ille
Volvitur et volvetur, in omne volubilis ævium."
I sometimes read attacks on special sayings of the record, which
argue, to the critic's mind, that Jesus was in error here, or mistaken
there. But I would recommend to such writers to ponder the suggestive
rule of Coleridge: "Until I can understand the ignorance of Plato, I
shall consider myself ignorant of his understanding;" or the remark of
Emerson to the youth who brought him a paper in which he thought he
had refuted Plato: "If you attack the king, be sure that you kill him."
When the Christian world really takes Jesus _himself_ as its leader,
instead of building its faith on opinions _about_ him, we may
anticipate the arrival of that union which he foresaw and foretold--"As
thou, father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one
in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." Then
Christians, ceasing from party strife and sectarian dissension,
will unite in one mighty effort to cure the evils of humanity and
redress its wrongs. Before a united Christendom, what miseries could
remain unrelieved? War, that criminal absurdity, that monstrous
anachronism, must at last be abolished. Pauperism, vice, and crime,
though continuing in sporadic forms, would cease to exist as a part of
the permanent institutions of civilization. A truly Catholic Church,
united under the Master, would lead all humanity up to a higher plane.
The immense forces developed by modern science, and the magnificent
discoveries in the realm of nature, helpless now to cure the wrongs
of suffering man, would become instruments of potent use under the
guidance of moral forces.
According to the law of evolution, this is what we have a right to
expect. If we follow the lines of historic development, not being led
into extreme individualism; if we maintain the continuity of human
progress, this vast result must finally arrive. For such reasons I
prefer to remain in the communion of the Christian body, doing what I
may to assist its upward movement. For such reasons I am not a Free
Religionist.
HAVE ANIMALS SOULS[18]
To answer this question, we must first inquire what we mean by a soul.
If we mean a human soul, it is certain that animals do not possess
it,--at least not in a fully developed condition. If we mean, "Do they
possess an immortal soul?" that is, perhaps, a question difficult to
answer either in the affirmative or the negative. But if we mean by
the soul an immaterial principle of life, which coördinates the bodily
organization to a unity; which is the ground of growth, activity,
perception, volition; which is intelligent, affectionate, and to a
certain extent free; then we must admit that animals have souls.
The same arguments which induce us to believe that there is a soul in
man apply to animals. The world has generally believed that in man,
beside the body, there is also soul. Why have people believed it? The
reason probably is, that, beside all that can be accounted for as the
result of the juxtaposition of material particles, there remains a very
important element unaccounted for. Mechanical and physical agency may
explain much, but the most essential characteristic of vital phenomena
they do not explain. They do not account for the unity in variety,
permanence in change, growth from within by continuous processes,
coming from the vital functions in an organized body. Every such
body has a unity peculiar to itself, which cannot be considered the
result of the collocation of material molecules. It is a unity which
controls these molecules, arranges and rearranges them, maintains a
steady activity, carries the body through the phenomena of growth, and
causes the various organs to coöperate for the purposes of the whole.
The vital power is not merely the result of material phenomena, but
it reacts on these as a cause. Add to this that strange phenomenon of
human consciousness, the sense of personality,--which is the clear
perception of selfhood as a distinct unchanging unit, residing in
a body all of whose parts are in perpetual flux,--and we see why
the opinion of a soul has arisen. It has been assumed by the common
sense of mankind that in every living body the cause of the mode of
existence of each part is contained in the whole. As soon as death
intervenes each part is left free to pass through changes peculiar
to itself alone. Life is a power which acts from the whole upon the
parts, causing them to resist chemical laws, which begin to act as soon
as life departs. The unity of a living body does not result from an
ingenious juxtaposition of parts, like that of a watch, for example.
For the unity of a living body implies that which is called "the vital
vortex," or perpetual exchange of particles.
A watch or clock is the nearest approach which has been made by man
to the creation of a living being. A watch, for instance, contains
the principle of its action in itself, and is not moved from without;
in that it resembles a living creature. We can easily conceive of a
watch which might be made to go seventy years, without being wound
up. It might need to be oiled occasionally, but not as often as an
animal needs to be fed. A watch is also like a living creature in
having a unity as a whole not belonging to the separate parts, and to
which all parts conspire,--namely, that of marking the progress of
time. Why, then, say that a man has a soul, and that a watch has not?
The difference is this. The higher principle of unity in the watch,
that is, its power of marking time, is wholly an effect, and never a
cause. It is purely and only the result of the arrangement of wheels
and springs; in other words, of material conditions. But in man, the
principle of unity is also a cause. Life reacts upon body. The laws of
matter are modified by the power of life, chemical action is suspended,
living muscles are able to endure without laceration the application of
forces which would destroy the dead fibre. So the thought, the love,
the will of a living creature react on the physical frame. A sight, a
sound, a few spoken words, a message seen in a letter, cause an immense
revulsion in the physical condition. Something is suddenly told us,
and we faint away, or even die, from the effect of the message. Here
mind acts upon matter, showing that in man mind is not merely a result,
but also a cause. Hence men have generally believed in the existence
of a soul in man. They have not been taught it by metaphysicians, it
is one of the spontaneous inductions of common sense from universal
experience.
But this argument applies equally to prove a soul in animals. The same
reaction of soul on body is constantly apparent. Every time that you
whistle to your dog, and he comes bounding toward you, his mind has
acted on his body. His will has obeyed his thought, his muscles have
obeyed his will. The cause of his motion was mental, not physical.
This is too evident to require any further illustration. Therefore,
regarding the soul as a principle of life, connected with the body
but not its result, or, in other words, as an immaterial principle of
activity, there is the same reason for believing in the soul of animals
that there is for believing in the soul of man.
But when we ask as to the nature of the animal soul, and how far it is
analogous to that of man, we meet with certain difficulties. Let us
see then how many of the human qualities of the soul are to be found
in animals, and so discover if there is any remainder not possessed by
them, peculiar to ourselves.
That the vital soul, or principle of life, belongs equally to plants,
animals, and men, is evident. This is so apparent as to be granted
even by Descartes, who regards animals as mere machines, or automata,
destitute of a thinking soul, but not of life or feeling. They are
automata, but living and feeling automata. Descartes denies them a
soul, because he defines the soul as the thinking and knowing power.
But Locke (with whom Leibnitz fully agreed on this point) ascribes to
animals thought as well as feeling, and makes their difference from man
to consist in their not possessing abstract ideas. We shall presently
see the truth of this most sagacious remark.
Plants, animals, and men are alike in possessing the vital principle,
which produces growth, which causes them to pass through regular
phases of development, which enables them to digest and assimilate
food taken from without, and which carries on a steady circulation
within. To this are added, in the animal, the function of voluntary
locomotion, perception through the senses of an outward world, the
power of feeling pleasure and pain, some wonderful instincts, and some
degree of reflective thought. Animals also possess memory, imagination,
playfulness, industry, the sense of shame, and many other very human
qualities.
Take, for example, Buffon's fine description of the dog ("Histoire du
Chien"):--
"By nature fiery, irritable, ferocious, and sanguinary, the dog in
his savage state is a terror to other animals. But domesticated he
becomes gentle, attached, and desirous to please. He hastens to lay
at the feet of his master his courage, his strength, and all his
abilities. He listens for his master's orders, inquires his will,
consults his opinion, begs his permission, understands the indications
of his wishes. Without possessing the power of human thought, he has
all the warmth of human sentiment. He has more than human fidelity,
he is constant in his attachments. He is made up of zeal, ardor, and
obedience. He remembers kindness longer than wrong. He endures bad
treatment and forgets it--disarming it by patience and submission."
No one who has ever had a dog for a friend will think this description
exaggerated. If any should so consider it, we will cite for their
benefit what Mr. Jesse, one of the latest students of the canine
race, asserts concerning it, in his "Researches into the History of
the British Dog" (London, 1866). He says that remarkable instances
of the following virtues, feelings, and powers of mind are well
authenticated:--
"The dog risks his life to give help; goes for assistance; saves
life from drowning, fire, other animals, and men; assists distress;
guards property; knows boundaries; resents injuries; repays benefits;
communicates ideas; combines with other dogs for several purposes;
understands language; knows when he is about to die; knows death in
a human being; devotes his whole life to the object of his love; dies
of grief and of joy; dies in his master's defense; commits suicide;
remains by the dead; solicits, and gives alarm; knows the characters
of men; recognizes a portrait, and men after long absence; is fond of
praise and sensible to ridicule; feels shame, and is sensible of a
fault; is playful; is incorruptible; finds his way back from distant
countries; is magnanimous to smaller animals; is jealous; has dreams;
and takes a last farewell when dying."
Much of this, it may be said, is instinctive. We must therefore
distinguish between Instinct and Intelligence; or, rather, between
instinctive intelligence and reflective intelligence. Many writers on
the subject of animals have not carefully distinguished these very
different activities of the soul. Even M. Leroy, one of the first in
modern times who brought careful observation to the study of the nature
of animals, has not always kept in view this distinction---as has been
noticed by a subsequent French writer of very considerable ability,
M. Flourens.[19] The following marks, according to M. Flourens,
distinguish instinct from intelligence:--
INSTINCT INTELLIGENCE
Is spontaneous, Is deliberate,
" necessary, " conditional,
" invariable, " modifiable,
" innate, comes from observation and experience,
" fatal, is free,
" particular. " general.
Thus the building faculty of the beaver is an instinct, for it acts
spontaneously, and always in the same way. It is not a general faculty
of building in all places and ways, but a special power of building
houses of sticks, mud, and other materials, with the entrance under
water and a dry place within. When beavers build on a running stream,
they begin by making a dam across it, which preserves them from losing
the water in a drought; but this also is a spontaneous and invariable
act. The old stories of their driving piles, using their tails for
trowels, and having well-planned houses with many chambers, have been
found to be fictitious. That the beaver builds by instinct, though
intelligence comes in to modify the instinct, appears from his wishing
to build his house or his dam when it is not needed. Mr. Broderip,
the English naturalist, had a pet beaver that manifested his building
instinct by dragging together warming-pans, sweeping-brushes, boots,
and sticks, which he would lay crosswise. He then would fill in his
wall with clothes, bits of coal, turf, laying it very even. Finally,
he made a nest for himself behind his wall with clothes, hay, and
cotton. As this creature had been brought from America very young, all
this procedure must have been instinctive. But his intelligence showed
itself in his adapting his mode of building to his new circumstances.
His instinct led him to build his wall, and to lay his sticks
crosswise, and to fill in with what he could find, according to the
universal and spontaneous procedure of all beavers. But his making use
of a chest of drawers for one side of his wall, and taking brushes and
boots instead of cutting down trees, were no doubt acts of intelligence.
A large part of the wonderful procedure of bees is purely instinctive.
Bees, from the beginning of the world, and in all countries of the
earth, have lived in similar communities; have had their queen, to
lay eggs for them: if their queen is lost, have developed a new one
in the same way, by altering the conditions of existence in one of
their larvæ; have constructed their hexagonal cells by the same
mathematical law, so as to secure the most strength with the least
outlay of material. All this is instinct--for it is spontaneous and not
deliberate; it is universal and constant. But when the bee deflects his
comb in order to avoid a stick thrust across the inside of the hive,
and begins the variation before he reaches the stick, this can only be
regarded as an act of intelligence.
Animals, then, have both instincts and intelligence; and so has man. A
large part of human life proceeds from tendencies as purely, if not as
vigorously, instinctive as those of animals. Man has social instincts,
which create human society. Children play from an instinct. The
maternal instinct in a human mother is, till modified by reflection, as
spontaneous, universal, and necessary as the same instinct in animals.
But in man the instincts are reduced to a minimum, and are soon
modified by observation, experience, and reflection. In animals they
are at their maximum, and are modified in a much less degree.
It is sometimes said that animals do not reason, but man does. But
animals are quite capable of at least two modes of reasoning, that of
comparison and that of inference. They compare two modes of action, or
two substances, and judge the one to be preferable to the other, and
accordingly select it. Sir Emerson Tennent tells us that elephants,
employed to build stone walls in Ceylon, will lay each stone in its
place, then stand off and look to see if it is plumb, and, if not, will
move it with their trunk, till it lies perfectly straight. This is a
pure act of reflective judgment. He narrates an adventure which befell
himself in Ceylon while riding on a narrow road through the forest. He
heard a rumbling sound approaching, and directly there came to meet him
an elephant, bearing on his tusks a large log of wood, which he had
been directed to carry to the place where it was needed. Sir Emerson
Tennent's horse, unused to these monsters, was alarmed, and refused to
go forward. The sagacious elephant, perceiving this, evidently decided
that he must himself go out of the way. But to do this, he was obliged
first to take the log from his tusks with his trunk, and lay it on the
ground, which he did, and then backed out of the road between the trees
till only his head was visible. But the horse was still too timid to go
by, whereupon the judicious pachyderm pushed himself farther back, till
all of his body, except the end of his trunk, had disappeared. Then Sir
Emerson succeeded in getting his horse by, but stopped to witness the
result. The elephant came out, took the log up again, laid it across
his tusks, and went on his way. This story, told by an unimpeachable
witness, shows several successive acts of reasoning. The log-bearer
inferred from the horse's terror that it would not pass; he again
inferred that in that case he must himself get out of the way; that, to
do this, he must lay down his log; that he must go farther back; and
accompanying this was his sense of duty, making him faithful to his
task; and, most of all, his consideration of what was due to this human
traveler, which kept him from driving the horse and man before him as
he went on.
There is another well-authenticated anecdote of an elephant; he was
following an ammunition wagon, and saw the man who was seated on it
fall off just before the wheel. The man would have been crushed had
not the animal instantly run forward, and, without an order, lifted
the wheel with his trunk, and held it suspended in the air, till the
wagon had passed over the man without hurting him. Here were combined
presence of mind, good will, knowledge of the danger to the man, and a
rapid calculation of how he could be saved.
Perhaps I may properly introduce here an account of the manifestations
of mind in the animals I have had the most opportunity of observing.
I have a horse, who was named Rubezahl, after the mountain spirit of
the Harz made famous in the stories of Musaeus. We have contracted his
name to Ruby for convenience. Now I have reason to believe that Ruby
can distinguish Sunday from other days. On Sunday I have been in the
habit of driving to Boston to church; but on other days, I drive to the
neighboring village, where are the post-office, shops of mechanics, and
other stores. To go to Boston, I usually turn to the right when I leave
my driveway; to go to the village, I turn to the left. Now, on Sunday,
if I leave the reins loose, so that the horse may do as he pleases, he
invariably turns to the right, and goes to Boston. On other days, he
as invariably turns to the left, and goes to the village. He does this
so constantly and regularly, that none of the family have any doubt
of the fact that he knows that it is Sunday; _how_ he knows it we are
unable to discover. I have left my house at the same hour on Sunday
and on Monday, in the same carriage, with the same number of persons
in it; and yet on Sunday he always turns to the right, and on Monday
to the left. He is fed at the same time on Sunday as on other days,
but the man comes back to harness him a little later on Sunday than at
other times, and that is possibly his method of knowing that it is the
day for going to Boston. But see how much of observation, memory, and
thought is implied in all this.
Again, Ruby has shown a very distinct feeling of the supernatural.
Driving one day up a hill near my house, we met a horse-car coming down
toward us, running without horses, simply by the force of gravity. My
horse became so frightened that he ran into the gutter, and nearly
overturned me; and I got him past with the greatest difficulty. Now
he had met the cars coming down that hill, drawn by horses, a hundred
times, and had never been alarmed. Moreover, only a day or two after,
in going up the same hill, we saw a car moving uphill, before us, where
the horses were entirely invisible, being concealed by the car itself,
which was between us and the horses. But this did not frighten Ruby
at all. He evidently said to himself, "The horses are there, though I
do not see them." But in the other case it seemed to him an effect
without a cause--something plainly supernatural. There was nothing
in the aspect of the car itself to alarm him; he had seen that often
enough. He was simply terrified by seeing it move without any adequate
cause--just as we should be, if we saw our chairs begin to walk about
the room.
Our Newfoundland dog's name is Donatello; which, again, is shortened
to Don in common parlance. He has all the affectionate and excellent
qualities of his race. He is the most good-natured creature I ever saw.
Nothing provokes him. Little dogs may yelp at him, the cat or kittens
may snarl and spit at him: he pays no attention to them. A little
dog climbs on his back, and lies down there; one of the cats will
lie between his legs. But at night, when he is on guard, no one can
approach the house unchallenged.
But his affection for the family is very great. To be allowed to come
into the house and lie down near us is his chief happiness. He was very
fond of my son E----, who played with him a good deal, and when the
young man went away, during the war, with a three months' regiment,
Don was much depressed by his absence. He walked down regularly to the
station, and stood there till a train of cars came in; and when his
friend did not arrive in it, he went back, with a melancholy air, to
the house. But at last the young man returned. It was in the evening,
and Don was lying on the piazza. As soon as he saw his friend, his
exultation knew no bounds. He leaped upon him, and ran round him,
barking and showing the wildest signs of delight. All at once he turned
and ran up into the garden, and came back bringing an apple, which he
laid down at the feet of his young master. It was the only thing he
could think of to do for him--and this sign of his affection was quite
pathetic.
The reason why Don thought of the apple was probably this: we had
taught him to go and get an apple for the horse, when so directed. We
would say, "Go, Don, get an apple for poor Ruby;" then he would run up
into the garden, and bring an apple, and hold it up to the horse; and
perhaps when the horse tried to take it he would pull it away. After
doing this a few times, he would finally lie down on his back under the
horse's nose, and allow the latter to take the apple from his mouth.
He would also kiss the horse, on being told to do so. When we said,
"Don, kiss poor Ruby," he leaped up and kissed the horse's nose. But he
afterwards hit upon a more convenient method of doing it. He got his
paw over the rein and pulled down the horse's head, so that he could
continue the osculatory process more at his ease, sitting comfortably
on the ground.
Animals know when they have done wrong; so far, at least, as that means
disobeying our will or command. The only great fault which Don ever
committed was stealing a piece of meat from our neighbor's kitchen. I
do not think he was punished or even scolded for it; for we did not
find it out till later, when it would have done no good to punish him.
But a week or two after that, the gentleman whose kitchen had been
robbed was standing on my lawn, talking with me, and he referred,
laughingly, to what Don had done. He did not even look at the dog, much
less change his tones to those of rebuke. But the moment Don heard his
name mentioned, he turned and walked away, and hid himself under the
low branches of a Norway spruce near by. He was evidently profoundly
ashamed of himself. Was this the result of conscience, or of the love
of approbation? In either case, it was very human.
That the love of approbation is common to many animals we all know.
Dogs and horses certainly can be influenced by praise and blame, as
easily as men. Many years ago we had occasion to draw a load of gravel,
and we put Ruby into a tip-cart to do the work. He was profoundly
depressed, and evidently felt it as a degradation. He hung his head,
and showed such marks of humiliation that we have never done it since.
But on the other hand, when he goes out, under the saddle, by the side
of a young horse, this veteran animal tries as hard to appear young
as any old bachelor of sixty years who is still ambitious of social
triumphs. He dances along, and goes sideways, and has all the airs and
graces of a young colt. All this, too, is very human.
At one time my dog was fond of going to the railway station to see
the people, and I always ordered him to go home, fearing he should
be hurt by the cars. He easily understood that if he went there, it
was contrary to my wishes. Nevertheless, he often went; and I do not
know but this fondness for forbidden fruit was rather human, too. So,
whenever he was near the station, if he saw me coming, he would look
the other way, and pretend not to know me. If he met me anywhere else,
he always bounded to meet me with great delight. But at the station
it was quite different. He would pay no attention to my whistle or my
call. He even pretended to be another dog, and would look me right in
the face without apparently recognizing me. He gave me the cut direct,
in the most impertinent manner; the reason evidently being that he knew
he was doing what was wrong, and did not like to be found out. Possibly
he may have relied a little on my near-sightedness, in this manœuvre.
That animals have acute observation, memory, imagination, the sense of
approbation, strong affections, and the power of reasoning is therefore
very evident. Lord Bacon also speaks of a dog's reverence for his
master as partaking of a religious element. "Mark," says he, "what
a generosity and courage a dog will put on, when he finds himself
maintained by a man, who to him is instead of a God--which courage
he could not attain, without that confidence in a better nature than
his own." Who that has seen the mute admiration and trust in a dog's
eye, as he looks up at his master, but can see in it something of a
religious reverence, the germ and first principle of religion?
What, then, is the difference between the human soul and that of the
animal in its highest development?
That there is a very marked difference between man and the highest
animal is evident. The human being, weaker in proportion than all other
animals, has subjected them all to himself. He has subdued the earth by
his inventions. Physically too feeble to dig a hole in the ground like
a rabbit, or to fell a tree like a beaver; unable to live in the water
like a fish, or to move through the air like a bird; he yet, by his
inventive power and his machinery, can compel the forces of nature to
work for him. They are the true genii, slaves of his lamp. Air, fire,
water, electricity, and magnetism build his cities and his stately
ships, run his errands, carry him from land to land, and accept him as
their master.
Whence does man obtain this power? Some say it is _the human hand_
which has made man supreme. It is, no doubt, a wonderful machine; a
box of tools in itself. The size and strength of the thumb, and the
power of opposing it to the extremities of the fingers, distinguishes,
according to most anatomists, the human hand from that of the
quadrumanous animals. In those monkeys which are nearest to man, the
thumb is so short and weak, and the fingers so long and slender,
that their tips can scarcely be brought in opposition. Excellent for
climbing, they are not good for taking up small objects or supporting
large ones. But the hand of man could accomplish little without the
mind behind it. It was therefore a good remark of Galen, that "man is
not the wisest of animals because he has a hand; but God has given him
a hand because he is the wisest of animals."
The size of the human brain, relatively greater than that of almost any
other animal; man's structure, adapting him to stand erect; his ability
to exist in all climates; his power of subsisting on varied food: all
these facts of his physical nature are associated with his superior
mental power, but do not produce it. The question recurs, What enables
him to stand at the head of the animal creation?
Perhaps the chief apparent distinctions between man and other animals
are these:--
1. The lowest races of men use tools; other animals do not.
2. The lowest human beings possess a verbal language; other animals
have none.
3. Man has the capacity of self-culture, as an individual; other
animals have not.
4. Human beings, associated in society, are capable of progress in
civilization, by means of science, art, literature, and religion; other
animals are not.
5. Men have a capacity for religion; no animal, except man, has this.
The lowest races of men use tools, but no other animal does this. This
is so universally admitted by science that the presence of the rudest
tools of stone is considered a sufficient trace of the presence of man.
If stone hatchets or hammers or arrowheads are found in any stratum,
though no human bones are detected, anthropologists regard this as
a sufficient proof of the existence of human beings in the period
indicated by such a geologic formation. The only tools used by animals
in procuring food, in war, or in building their homes, are their
natural organs: their beaks, teeth, claws, etc. It may be added that
man alone wears clothes; other animals being sufficiently clothed by
nature. No animals make a fire, though they often suffer from cold; but
there is no race of men unacquainted with the use of fire.[20]
No animals possess a verbal language. Animals can remember some of the
words used by men, and associate with them their meaning. But this is
not the use of language. It is merely the memory of two associated
facts,--as when the animal recollects where he found food, and goes to
the same place to look for it again. Animals have different cries,
indicating different wants. They use one cry to call their mate,
another to terrify their prey. But this is not the use of verbal
language. Human language implies not merely an acquaintance with the
meaning of particular words, but the power of putting them together in
a sentence. Animals have no such language as this; for, if they had,
it would have been learned by men. Man has the power of learning any
verbal language. Adelung and Vater reckon over three thousand languages
spoken by men, and any man can learn any of them. The negroes speak
their own languages in their own countries; they speak Arabic in North
Africa; they learn to speak English, French, and Spanish in America,
and Oriental languages when they go to the East. If any animals had a
verbal language, with its vocabulary and grammar, men would long ago
have learned it, and would have been able to converse with them.
Again, no animal except man is capable of self-culture, as an
individual. Animals are trained by external influences; they do not
teach themselves. An old wolf is much more cunning than a young one,
but he has been made so by the force of circumstances. You can teach
your dog tricks, but no dog has ever taught himself any. Yet the lowest
savages teach themselves to make tools, to ornament their paddles
and clubs, and acquire certain arts by diligent effort. Birds will
sometimes practice the tunes which they hear played, till they have
learned them. They will also sometimes imitate each other's songs.
That is, they possess the power of vocal imitation. But to imitate
the sounds we hear is not self-culture. It is not developing a new
power, but it is exercising in a new way a natural gift. Yet we must
admit that in this habit of birds there is the rudiment, at least, of
self-education.
All races of men are capable of progress in civilization. Many,
indeed, remain in a savage state for thousands of years, and we cannot
positively prove that any particular race which has always been
uncivilized is capable of civilization. But we are led to believe
it from having known of so many tribes of men who have emerged from
apathy, ignorance, and barbarism into the light of science and art.
So it was with all the Teutonic races,--the Goths, Germans, Kelts,
Lombards, Scandinavians. So it was with the Arabs, who roamed for
thousands of years over the deserts, a race of ignorant robbers, and
then, filled with the great inspiration of Islam, flamed up into a
brilliant coruscation of science, literature, art, military success,
and profound learning. What great civilizations have grown up in
China, India, Persia, Assyria, Babylon, Phœnicia, Egypt, Greece,
Rome, Carthage, Etruria! But no such progress has ever appeared among
the animals. As their parents were, five thousand years ago, so,
essentially, are they now.
Nor are animals religious, in the sense of worshiping unseen powers
higher than themselves. My horse showed a sense of the supernatural,
but this is not worship.
These are some of the most marked points of difference between man and
all other animals. Now these can all be accounted for by the hypothesis
in which Locke and Leibnitz both agreed; namely, that while animals are
capable of reasoning about facts, they are incapable of abstract ideas.
Or, we may say with Coleridge, that while animals, in common with man,
possess the faculty of understanding, they do not possess that of
reason. Coleridge seems to have intended by this exactly what Locke
and Leibnitz meant by their statement. When my dog Don heard the word
"apple," he thought of the particular concrete apple under the tree;
and not of apples in general, and their relation to pears, peaches,
etc. Don understood me when I told him to go and get an apple, and
obeyed; but he would not have understood me if I had remarked to him
that apples were better than pears, more wholesome than peaches, not so
handsome as grapes. I should then have gone into the region of abstract
and general ideas.
Now it is precisely the possession of this power of abstract thought
which will explain the superiority of man to all other animals. It
explains the use of tools; for a tool is an instrument prepared, not
for one special purpose, but to be used generally, in certain ways.
A baboon, like a man, might pick up a particular stone with which to
crack a particular nut; but the ape does not make and keep a stone
hammer, to be used on many similar occasions. A box of tools contains a
collection of saws, planes, draw-knives, etc., not made to use on one
occasion merely, but made for sawing, cutting, and planing purposes
generally.
Still more evident is it that the power of abstraction is necessary
for verbal language. We do not here use the common term "articulate
speech," for we can conceive of animals articulating their vocal
sounds. But "a word" is an abstraction. The notion is lifted out of the
concrete particular fact, and deposited in the abstract general term.
All words, except proper names, are abstract; and to possess and use a
verbal language is impossible, without the possession of this mental
faculty.
In regard to self-culture, it is clear that for any steady progress
one must keep before his mind an abstract idea of what he wishes to
do. This enables him to rise above impulse, passion, instinct, habit,
circumstance. By the steady contemplation of the proposed aim, one can
arrange circumstances, restrain impulse, direct one's activity, and
become really free.
In like manner, races become developed in civilization by the impact
of abstract ideas. Sometimes it is by coming in contact with other
civilized nations, which gives them an ideal superior to anything
before known. Sometimes the motive power of their progress is the
reception of truths of science, art, literature, or religion.
It is not necessary to show that without abstract, universal, and
necessary ideas no religion is possible; for religion, being the
worship of unseen powers, conceived as existing, as active, as
spiritual, necessarily implies these ideas in the mind of the worshiper.
We find, then, in the soul of animals all active, affectionate,
and intelligent capacities, as in that of man. The only difference
is that man is capable of abstract ideas, which give him a larger
liberty of action, which enable him to adopt an aim and pursue it,
and which change his affections from an instinctive attachment into a
principle of generous love. Add, then, to the animal soul the capacity
for abstract ideas, and it would rise at once to the level of man.
Meantime, in a large part of their nature, they have the same faculties
with ourselves. They share our emotions, and we theirs. They are made
"a little lower" than man, and if we are souls, so surely are they.
Are they immortal? To discuss this question would require more space
than we can here give to it. For my own part, I fully believe in the
continued existence of all souls, at the same time assuming their
continued advance. The law of life is progress; and one of the best
features in the somewhat unspiritual theory of Darwin is its profound
faith in perpetual improvement. This theory is the most startling
optimism that has ever been taught, for it makes perpetual progress to
be the law of the whole universe.
Many of the arguments for the immortality of man cannot indeed be
used for our dumb relations, the animals. We cannot argue from their
universal faith in a future life; nor contend that they need an
immortality on moral grounds, to recompense their good conduct and
punish their wickedness. We might indeed adduce a reason implied in
our Saviour's parable, and believe that the poor creatures who have
received their evil things in this life will be comforted in another.
Moreover, we might find in many animals qualities fitting them for a
higher state. There are animals, as we have seen, who show a fidelity,
courage, generosity, often superior to what we see in man. The dogs
who have loved their master more than food, and starved to death on
his grave, are surely well fitted for a higher existence. Jesse tells
a story of a cat which was being stoned by cruel boys. Men went by,
and did not interfere; but a dog, that saw it, did. He drove away the
boys, and then took the cat to his kennel, licked her all over with his
tongue, and his conduct interested people, who brought her milk. The
canine nurse took care of her till she was well, and the cat and dog
remained fast friends ever after. Such an action in a man would have
been called heroic; and we think such a dog would not be out of place
in heaven.
Yet it is not so much on particular cases of animal superiority that
we rely, but on the difficulty of conceiving, in any sense, of the
destruction of life. The principle of life, whether we call it soul
or body, matter or spirit, escapes all observation of the senses. All
that we know of it by observation is that, beside the particles of
matter which compose an organized body, there is something else, not
cognizable by the senses, which attracts and dismisses them, modifies
and coördinates them. The unity of the body is not to be found in
its sensible phenomena, but in something which escapes the senses.
Into the vortex of that life material molecules are being continually
absorbed, and from it they are perpetually discharged. If death means
the dissolution of the body, we die many times in the course of our
earthly career, for every body is said by human anatomists to be
changed in all its particles once in seven years. What then remains,
if all the particles go? The principle of organization remains, and
this invisible, persistent principle constitutes the identity of every
organized body. If I say that I have the _same_ body when I am fifty
which I had at twenty, it is because I mean by "body" that which
continues unaltered amid the fast-flying particles of matter. This life
principle makes and remakes the material frame; that body does not
make it. When what we call death intervenes, all that we can assert
is that the life principle has done wholly and at once what it has
always been doing gradually and in part. What happens to the material
particles, we see: they become detached from the organizing principle,
and relapse into simply mechanical and chemical conditions. What has
happened to that organizing principle we neither see nor know; and we
have absolutely no reason at all for saying that it has ceased to exist.
This is as true of plants and of animals as of men; and there is no
reason for supposing that when these die their principle of life
is ended. It probably has reached a crisis, which consists in the
putting on of new forms and ascending into a higher order of organized
existence.
APROPOS OF TYNDALL[21]
We have all read in our "Vicar of Wakefield" the famous speech made
by the venerable and learned Ephraim Jenkinson to good Dr. Primrose:
"The cosmogony, or creation of the world, has puzzled philosophers in
all ages. Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus have
all attempted it in vain," etc. But we hardly expected to have this
question of cosmogony reopened by an eminent scientist in an address
to the British Association. What "Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Berosus, and
Ocellus Lucanus have all attempted in vain" Professor Tyndall has not
only discussed before a body of men learned in the physical sciences,
but has done it in such a manner as to rouse two continents to a new
interest in the question. One party has immediately accused him of
irreligion and infidelity, while another has declared his statements
innocent if not virtuous. But the question which has been least debated
is, What has the professor really said? or, Has he said anything?
The celebrated sentence which has occasioned this excitement is as
follows:--
"Abandoning all disguise, the confession that I feel bound to make
before you is, that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary
of the experimental evidence, and discern in that matter which we in
our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its
Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency
of every form and quality of life."
Does he, then, declare himself a materialist? A materialist is one
who asserts everything which exists to be matter, or an affection of
matter. What, then, is matter, and how is that to be defined? The
common definition of matter is, that which is perceived by the senses,
or the substance underlying sensible phenomena. By means of the senses
we perceive such qualities or phenomena as resistance, form, color,
perfume, sound. Whenever we observe these phenomena, whenever we see,
hear, taste, touch, or smell, we attribute the affections thus excited
to an external substance, which we call _matter_. But we are aware of
other phenomena which are _not_ perceived by the senses,--- such as
thought, love, and will. We are as certain of their existence as we
are of sensible phenomena. I am as sure of the reality of love as I am
of the whiteness of chalk. By a law of our mind, whenever we perceive
sensible phenomena, we necessarily attribute them to a substance
outside of ourselves, which we call matter. And by another law, or the
same law, whenever we perceive the phenomena of consciousness, we
necessarily attribute them to a substance which we call soul, mind, or
spirit. All that we know of matter, and all that we know of soul, is
their phenomena, and as these are entirely different, we are obliged
to assume that matter and mind are different. None of the qualities or
attributes of matter belong to mind, none of those of mind to matter.
Does Tyndall deny this distinction? Apparently not. He not only makes
Bishop Butler declare, with unanswerable power, that materialism can
never show any connection between molecular processes and the phenomena
of consciousness, but he distinctly iterates this in his own person
at the end of the address; asserting that there is no fusion possible
between the two classes of facts, those of sensation and those of
consciousness. Professor Tyndall, then, in the famous sentence above
quoted, does not declare himself a materialist in the only sense
in which the term has hitherto been used. He does not pretend that
sensation, thought, emotion, and will are reducible, in the last
analysis, to solidity, extension, divisibility, etc.; he positively and
absolutely denies this.
When Tyndall, therefore, asserts that he discerns in matter the
promise and potency of every form and quality of life, he uses the
word "matter" in a new sense. He does not mean by it the underlying
subject of sensible phenomena. It is not the matter which we see,
hear, touch, taste, and smell. What is it then? It is something beyond
the limits of observation and experiment; for he says that in order to
discover it we must "prolong the vision backward across the boundary
of the experimental evidence." In short, it is something which we know
nothing about. It is a conjecture, an opinion, a theoretical matter. In
another place he calls this imaginary substance "a cosmical life." This
something, which shall be the common basis of the phenomena of sense
and soul, not only is not known, but apparently is not knowable. For he
assures us that the very attempt to understand this cosmical life which
makes the connection between physical and mental phenomena, is "to soar
in a vacuum," or "to try to lift one's self by his own waistband."
Of course, then, the contents of the famous sentence are not _science_.
It is not the great scientist, the profound observer of nature, the
distinguished experimentalist, who speaks to us in that sentence, but
one who is theorizing, as we all have a right to theorize. We also,
if we choose, may imagine some "cosmical life" behind both matter and
soul, as the common origin of both, and call this life _spirit_. We
shall then be thinking of exactly the same substance that Tyndall is
thinking of, only we give it another name. He has merely given another
name to the great Being behind all the phenomena of body and soul, out
of which or whom all proceed. But to give another name to a fact is
not to tell us anything more about it. All meaning having evaporated
from the word "matter," the sentence loses its whole significance, and
it appears that the alarming declaration asserts nothing at all! In
"abandoning all disguise" Tyndall has run little risk, for our analysis
shows that he has not asserted anything except, perhaps, this, that
there is, in his judgment, some unknown common basis in which matter
and mind both inhere. This assertion is not alarming nor dangerous, for
it is only what has always been believed.
As there is no materialism, in any known sense of that term, in the
doctrine of this address, so likewise there is no atheism. In fact, in
this same sentence Tyndall speaks of the "creator" of what he likes
to call "matter" or "cosmical life." He objects strongly to a creator
who works mechanically, and he seems to reprove Darwin for admitting
an original or primordial form, created at first by the Deity. "The
anthropomorphism, which it seemed the object of Mr. Darwin to set
aside, is as firmly associated with the creation of a few forms as with
the creation of a multitude." In another passage he says: "Is there not
a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms
that nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without
the meddling of the gods?". But this last sentence shows a singular
vacillation in so clear a thinker as Tyndall. How can one close "to
some extent" with such a statement as that of Lucretius? Either the
gods meddle, or they do not meddle. They can hardly be considered as
meddling "to some extent." In still another passage he contrasts the
doctrine of evolution with the usual doctrine of creation, rejecting
the last in favor of the other, because creation makes of God "an
artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting by broken
efforts, as man is seen to act."
All these expressions are somewhat vague, implying, as it seems, a
certain obscurity in Tyndall's own thought. But it is not atheism.
His "cosmical life" probably is exactly what Cudworth means by
"plastic life." It is well known that Cudworth, whose great work
is a confutation of all atheism, himself admits what he calls "a
plastic nature" in the universe as a subordinate instrument of divine
Providence. Just as Tyndall objects to regarding the Deity as "an
artificer," Cudworth objects to the "mechanic theists," who make the
Deity act directly upon matter from without, by separate efforts,
instead of pouring a creative and arranging life into nature. We can
easily see that Cudworth, like Tyndall, would object to Darwin's one or
two "primordial germs." His "plastic nature" is working everywhere and
always, though under a divine guidance. It is "a life," and therefore
incorporeal. It is an unconscious life, which acts, not knowingly,
but fatally. Man, according to Cudworth, partakes of this life from
the life of the universe, just as he partakes of heat and cold from
the heat and cold of the universe. Thus Cudworth, believing in some
such "cosmical life" as Tyndall imagines, conceives it as being itself
the organ and instrument of the Deity. Tyndall, therefore, though
less clear in his statements than Cudworth, is not logically involved
in atheism by those statements, unless we implicate in the same
condemnation the writer whose vast work constitutes the fullest arsenal
of weapons against all the forms of atheism.
Unfortunately, however, Tyndall does not come to any clearness on
this point, which in one possessing such a lucidity of intellect must
be occasioned by his leaving his own domain of science and venturing
into this metaphysical world, with which he is not so familiar.
His acquaintance with the history of these studies seems not to be
extensive. For example, he attributes to Herbert Spencer, as if he were
the discoverer, what both Hobbes and Descartes had already stated,
that there is no necessary resemblance between our sensations and the
external objects from which they are derived. In regard to a belief in
God, he tells us that in his weaker moments he loses it, or that it
becomes clouded and dim, but that when he is at his best he accepts it
most fully. This belief, therefore, is not with Tyndall a matter of
conviction, founded on reason, but a question of moods. No wonder,
then, that he relegates religion to the region of sentiment, and
declares that it has nothing to do with knowledge. It must not touch
any question of cosmogony, or, if it does, must "submit to the control
of science" in that field. But what has science to do with cosmogony?
Science rests on observation of facts; but our professor tells us
that he obtains his great cosmological idea of "a cosmical life" by
prolonging his vision backward "across the boundary of the experimental
evidence." Such science as this, which is based on no experience, and
is incapable of verification, has hardly the right to warn religious
belief away from any field.
Tyndall seems a little astray in making creation and evolution
contradictory and incompatible. Evolution, he tells us, is the
manifestation of a power wholly inscrutable to the intellect of man. We
know that God is,--that is, we know it in our better moods,--but _what_
God is, we cannot ever know. At all events we must not consider him as
a Creator. "Two courses," says Tyndall, "and only two, are possible.
Either let us open our doors freely to the conception of creative acts,
or, abandoning them, let us radically change our notions of matter."
His objections to the idea of a Creator appear to be (1) that it is
"derived, not from the study of Nature, but from the observation of
men;" and (2) that it represents the Deity "as an artificer, fashioned
after a human model, and acting by broken efforts as man is seen to
act."
Are these objections sound? When we study man, are we not then also
studying Nature? Is not man himself the highest manifestation of
Nature? If so, and if we see the quality of any power best in its
highest and fullest operations, we can study the nature of God best
by looking into our own. We should, in fact, know very little of
Nature if we did not look within as well as without. Tyndall justly
demands unlimited freedom of investigation in the pursuit of science.
But whence came this very idea of freedom except from the human mind?
Nothing in the external world is free; all is fatal. Such ideas as
cause, force, substance, law, unity, ideality, are not observed in
the outward world--they are given by the activity of the mind itself.
Subtract these from our thought, and we should know very little of
Nature or its origin.
No doubt the idea of a Creator, and of one perfect in wisdom, power,
and goodness, is derived by man from his own mind. But it is not
necessary that such a Creator should be an "artificer," or proceed by
"broken efforts." He may act by evolution, or processes of development.
He may create perpetually, by a life flowing from himself into all
things. He may create the universe anew at every moment--not as a
man lights a torch with a match and then goes away, but as the sun
creates his image in the water by a perpetual process. Thus God may be
regarded as _creating_ each animal and each plant, while he maintains
the mysterious force of development by which it grows from its egg or
its seed. The essential idea of creation is an infinite cause, acting
according to a perfect intelligence, for a perfect good. There is
nothing, necessarily, of an artificer or of broken efforts in this. It
is the very idea of divine creation given in the New Testament. "From
whom, and through whom, and to whom, are all things." "In him, we live,
and move, and have our being." The theist may well accept the view
given by Goethe, in his little poem, "Gott, Gemüth, und Welt."
"What kind of God would He be who only pushes the universe from
without?
Who lets the All of Things run round and round on his finger?
It becomes him far better to move the universe from within,
To take Nature up into Himself, to let Himself down into Nature,
So that whatever lives, and moves, and has its being in Him
Never loses His power, never misses His spirit."
Such a conception of God, as a perpetual Creator, is essential to the
intellectual rest of the human mind, and it is painful to see the
irresolution of Professor Tyndall in regard to it. "Clear and confident
as Jove" in the domain which is his own, where his masterly powers of
observation, discrimination, and judgment leave him without a peer, he
seems shorn of his strength on entering this field of metaphysics.
He has warned theology not to trespass on the grounds of science; or,
if she enters them, to submit to science as her superior. Theology
has been in the habit of treating science in the same supercilious
way; telling her that she was an intruder if she ventured to discuss
questions of psychology or religion. This is equally unwise on either
part. Theologians should be glad when men of science become seriously
interested in these great questions of the Whence and the Whither. The
address of Professor Tyndall is excellent in its intention as well as
in its candid and manly treatment of the subject. Its indecision and
indistinctness are probably due to his having accepted too implicitly
the guidance of Spencer, thus assuming that religious truth is
unknowable, that creation is impossible, and that only phenomena can
become objects of knowledge. "Insoluble mystery" is therefore his final
answer to the questions he has himself raised.
Goethe is wiser when he follows the Apostle Paul, and regards the
Deity as "the fullness which filleth all in all." There is no unity
to thought, and no hope for scientific progress, more than for moral
culture, unless we see intelligence at the centre, intelligence on the
circumference of being. To place an impenetrable darkness instead of
an unclouded light on the throne of the universe, is to throw a shadow
over the Creation.
We say that there is no unity in thought without this conviction. The
only real unity we know in the world is our own. All we see around
us, including our own body, is divisible, subject to alteration and
change. Only the ego, or soul, is conscious of a perfect unity in a
perpetual identity. Unless we can attribute to the source of all being
a similar personal unity, there can be no coherence to science, but it
must forever remain fragmentary and divided. This is what we mean by
asserting the personality of Deity. This idea reaches what Lord Bacon
calls "the vertical point of natural philosophy" or "the summary law of
Nature," and constitutes, as he declares, "the union of all things in a
perpetual and uniform law."
And unless we can recognize in the ultimate fountain of being an
intelligent purpose, the meaning of the universe departs. Without
intelligence in the cause there is none in the effect. Then the world
has no meaning, life no aim. The universe comes out of darkness, and is
plunging into darkness again.
Take away from the domain of knowledge the idea of a creating and
presiding intelligence, and there remains no motive for science itself.
Professor Tyndall is sagacious enough to see and candid enough to admit
that "without moral force to whip it into action the achievements of
the intellect would be poor indeed," and that "science itself not
unfrequently derives motive power from ultra-scientific sources." Faith
in God, as an intelligent creator and ruler of the world, has awakened
enthusiasm for scientific investigation among both the Aryan and the
Semitic races.
The purest and highest form of monotheism is that of Christianity; and
in Christendom has science made its largest progress. Not by martyrs
for science, but by martyrs for religion, has the human mind been
emancipated. Mr. Tyndall says of scientific freedom, "We fought and won
our battle even in the middle ages." But the heroes of intellectual
liberty have been the heroes of faith. Hundreds of thousands have died
for a religious creed; but how many have died for a scientific theory?
Luther went to Worms, and maintained his opinions there in defiance
of the anathemas of the church and the ban of the empire, but Galileo
denied his most cherished convictions on his knees. Galileo was as
noble a character as Luther; but science does not create the texture
of soul which makes so many martyrs in all the religious sects of
Christendom. Let the doctrine of cosmical force supplant our faith in
the Almighty, and in a few hundred years science would probably fade
out of the world from pure inanition. The world would probably not care
enough for _anything_ to care for science. The light of eternity must
fall on this our human and earthly life, to arouse the soul to a living
and permanent interest even in things seen and temporal.
Professor Tyndall says: "Whether the views of Lucretius, Darwin, and
Spencer are right or wrong, we claim the freedom to discuss them. The
ground which they cover is scientific ground."
It is not only a right, but a duty to examine these theories, since
they are held seriously and urged earnestly by able men. But we must
doubt whether they ought to claim the authority of science. They are
proposed by scientific men, and they refer to scientific subjects. But
these theories, in their present development, belong to metaphysics
rather than to science. Science consists, first, of observation of
facts; secondly, of laws inferred from those facts; and thirdly, of
a verification of those laws by new observation and experiment. That
which cannot be verified is no part of science; astronomy is a science,
since every eclipse and occultation verifies its laws; geology is a
science, since every new observation of the strata and their contents
accords with the established part of the system; chemistry is a
science for the same reason. But Darwin's theory of the transformation
of species by natural selection is as yet unverified. "There is no
evidence of a direct descent of earlier from later species in the
geological succession of animals." So says Agassiz, and on this point
his testimony can hardly be impeached. Professor W. Thompson, another
good geological authority, says: "In successive geological formations,
although new species are constantly appearing, and there is abundant
evidence of progressive change, no single case has yet been observed
of one species passing through a series of inappreciable modifications
into another." Neither has any such change taken place within historic
times, for the animals and plants found in the tombs of Egypt are
"identical, in all respects," says M. Quatrefages, "with those now
existing." He adds the opinion, after a very careful and candid
examination of the hypothesis of Darwin, that "the theory and the
facts do not agree." Not being verified, then, this theory is not yet
science, but an unverified mental hypothesis, that is, metaphysics.
It is important that this should be distinctly said, for when men
eminent in science propound new theories, these theories themselves are
apt to be regarded as science, and those who oppose them are accused
of being opposed to science. This is the tendency which Professor
Tyndall has so justly described in this very address: "When the human
mind has achieved greatness and given evidence of power in any domain,
there is a tendency to credit it with similar power in any other
domain." Because Tyndall is great in experimental science, many are
apt to accept his cosmological conclusions. Because he is a great
observer in natural history, his metaphysical theories are supposed
to be supported by observation, and to rest on experience. Professor
Tyndall's own address terminates, not in science, but nescience. It
treats of a realm of atoms and molecules whose existence science has
never demonstrated, and attributes to them potencies which science has
never verified. It is a system, not made necessary by the stringent
constraint of facts, but avowedly constructed in order to avoid the
belief in an intelligent Creator, and a universe marked by the presence
of design. His theory, he admits, no less than that of Darwin, was not
constructed in the pure interests of truth for its own sake. There was
another purpose in both,--to get rid of a theology of final causes, of
a theology which conceives of God as a human artificer. He wished to
exclude religion from the field of cosmogony, and forbid it to intrude
on the region of knowledge. Theologians have often been reproached
for studying "with a purpose," but it seems that this is a frailty
belonging not to theologians only, but to all human beings who care a
good deal for what they believe.
Professor Tyndall accepts religious faith as an important element of
human nature, but considers it as confined to the sentiments, and
as not based in knowledge. He doubtless comes to this conclusion
from following too implicitly the traditions of modern English
psychology. These assume that knowledge comes only from without,
through the senses, and never from within, through intuition. This
prepossession, singularly English and insular, is thus stated by John
Stuart Mill in his article on Coleridge. "Sensation, and the mind's
consciousness of its own acts, are not only the exclusive sources,
but the sole materials of our knowledge. There is no knowledge _a
priori_; no truths cognizable by the mind's inward light, and grounded
on intuitive evidence." These views have been developed in England by
the two Mills, Herbert Spencer, Bain, and others, who have made great
efforts to show how sensations may be transformed into thoughts; how
association of ideas may have developed instincts; how hereditary
impressions, repeated for a million years, may at last have taken on
the aspect of necessary truths. In short, they have laid out great
labor and ingenuity in proving that a sensation may, very gradually, be
transformed into a thought.
But all this labor is probably a waste of time and of intellectual
power. The attempt at turning sensation into thought only results in
turning thought into sensation. It is an error that we only know what
we perceive through the senses, or transform by the action of the
mind. It is not true that we only know that of which we can form a
sensible image. We know the existence of the soul as certainly as that
of the body. We know the infinite and the eternal as well as we know
the finite and temporal. We know substance, cause, immortal beauty,
absolute truth, as surely as the flitting phenomena which pass within
the sphere of sensational experience. These convictions belong, not to
the sphere of sentiment and emotion, but to that of knowledge. It is
because they show us realities and not imaginations, that they nerve
the soul to such vast efforts in the sphere of morals, literature, and
religion.
The arguments against the independent existence of the soul which
Tyndall puts into the mouth of his Lucretian disciple are not difficult
to answer. "You can form no picture of the soul," he says. No; and
neither can we form a mental picture of love or hate, of right and
wrong, or even of bodily pain and pleasure. "If localized in the body,
the soul must have form." Must a pain, localized in the finger, have
form? "When a leg is amputated, in which part does the soul reside?"
We answer, that the soul resides in the body, with reduced power. Its
instrument is less perfect than before--like a telescope which has
lost a lens. "If consciousness is an essential attribute of the soul,
where is the soul when consciousness ceases by the depression of the
brain?" Is there any difficulty, we reply, in supposing that the soul
may pass sometimes into a state of torpor, when its instrument is
injured? A soul may sleep, and so be unconscious, without being dead.
"The diseased brain may produce immorality: can the reason control it?
If not, what is the use of the reason?" To this we answer that the
soul may lose its power with a diseased body; but when furnished with
another and better body, it will regain it. "If you regard the body
only as an instrument, you will neglect to take care of it." Does the
astronomer neglect to take care of his telescope?
These answers to the Lucretian may be far from complete; but they are
at least as good as the objections. The soul, no doubt, depends on the
body, and cannot do its work well when the body is out of order; but
does that prove it to be the _result_ of the body? If so, the same
argument would prove the carpenter to be the result of his box of
tools, and the organist to be the result of his organ. The organist
draws sweet music from his instrument. But as his organ grows old,
or is injured by the weather, or the pipes crack, and the pedals get
out of order, the music becomes more and more imperfect. At last the
instrument is wholly ruined, and the music wholly ceases. Is, then,
the organist dead, or was he only the result of the organ? "Without
phosphorus, no thought," say the materialists. True. So, "without the
organ, no music." Just as in addition to the musical instrument we need
a performer, so in addition to the brain we need a soul.
There are two worlds of knowledge,--the outward world, which is
perceived through the senses, and which belongs to physical science,
and the inward world, perceived by the nobler reason, and from which
a celestial light streams in, irradiating the mind through all its
powers. Religion and science are not opposed, though different; their
spheres are different, though not to be divided. Each is supreme in
its own region, but each needs the help of the other in order to do
its own work well. Professor Tyndall claims freedom of discussion and
inquiry for himself and his scientific brethren, and says he will
oppose to the death any limitation of this liberty. He need not be
anxious on this point. Religious faith has already fought this battle,
and won for science as well as for itself perfect liberty of thought.
The Protestant churches may say, "With a great sum obtained we this
freedom." By the lives of its confessors and the blood of its martyrs
has it secured for all men to-day equal rights of thought and speech.
What neither Copernicus, Kepler, nor Galileo could do was accomplished
by the courage of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and Oliver
Cromwell.
And now the freedom they obtained by such sacrifices we inherit and
enjoy: "We are free-born." We may be thankful that in most countries
to-day no repression nor dictation prevents any man from expressing
his inmost thought. We are glad that the most rabid unbelief and
extreme denial can be spoken calmly in the open day. This is one great
discovery of modern times, that errors lose half their influence when
openly uttered. We owe this discovery to the Reformation. The reformers
made possible a toleration much larger than their own; unwittingly,
while seeking freedom for their own thoughts, they won the same
freedom for others, who went farther than they. They builded better
than they knew.
* * * * *
Professor Tyndall's address is tranquil yet earnest, modest, and manly.
But its best result is, that it shows us the impotence of the method
of sensation to explain the mystery of the universe. It has shown us
clearly the limitations of "the understanding judging by sense"--shown
that it sees our world clearly, but is blind to the other. It can tell
every blade of grass, and name every mineral; but it stands helpless
and hopeless before the problem of being. Science and religion may each
say with the apostle, "We know in part and prophesy in part." Together
and united, they may one day see and know the whole.
LAW AND DESIGN IN NATURE[22]
In the paper which opens this discussion on "Law and Design in Nature,"
Professor Newcomb announces in a single sentence a proposition, the
truth or falsehood of which, he tells us, is "the sole question
presented for discussion in the present series of papers."
But, as soon as we examine this proposition, we find that it contains
not one sole question, but three. The three are independent of each
other, and do not necessarily stand or fall together. They are these:--
1. "The whole course of Nature, considered as a succession of
phenomena, is conditioned solely by antecedent causes."
2. In the action of these causes, "no regard to consequences is
traceable."
3. And no regard to consequences is "necessary to foresee the
phenomena."
Of these three propositions I admit the truth of the first; deny
the truth of the second; and, for want of space, and because of its
relative unimportance, leave the third unexamined.
The first proposition is so evidently true, and so universally
admitted, that it was hardly worth positing for discussion. It is
merely affirming that every natural phenomenon implies a cause. The
word "antecedent" is ambiguous, but, if it intends logical and not
chronological antecedence, it is unobjectionable. So understood, we are
merely asked if we can accept the law of universal causation; which
I suppose we shall all readily do, since this law is the basis of
theology no less than of science. Without it, we could not prove the
existence of the first cause. Professor Newcomb has divided us into two
conflicting schools, one of theology and the other of science. Taking
my place in the school of theology, I think I may safely assert for
my brethren that on this point there is no conflict, but that we all
admit the truth of the law of universal causation. It will be noticed
that Professor Newcomb has carefully worded his statement, so as not to
confine us to physical causes, nor even to exclude supernatural causes
from without, working into the nexus of natural laws. He does not
say "antecedent physical causes," nor does he say "causes which have
existed from the beginning."
Admitting thus the truth of the first proposition, I must resolutely
deny that of the second; since, by accepting it, I should surrender
the very cause I wish to defend, namely, that we can perceive design
in Nature. Final causes are those which "regard consequences." The
principle of finality is defined by M. Janet (in his recent exhaustive
work, "Les Causes finales") as "the present determined by the future."
One example of the way in which we can trace in Nature "a regard to
consequences" is so excellently stated by this eminent philosopher
that we will introduce it here: "Consider what is implied in the egg
of a bird. In the mystery and night of incubation there comes, by the
combination of an incredible number of causes, a living machine within
the egg. It is absolutely se
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