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FRASER’S MAGAZINE
JUNE 1875.
MORAL ESTIMATE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
R. AUBREY DE VERE opens
No one ever has grudged, and no
his preface to Alexander the one will ever grudge, praise to
Great, a Dramatic Poem, by in form Alexander for .military talent; but
ing us that in the last century it the talent was not that of a scientific
was thought philosophical to sneer general who plans a campaign, as a
at ‘the Macedonian madman,’ and Von Moltke or even a Napoleon;
moral to declaim against him as a it was only that of a quick-eyed
bandit. The ancients, he says, Garibaldi or Conde. Generalship
made no such mistake. He proceeds of the highest modern type was
to panegyrise Alexander as uniting then impossible, for the plain reason
the highest military genius with a that maps did not exist, and the
statesmanship instinctive and im- roads which Alexander traversed7
erring. His intellect, he tells us, were in every instance unknown to.
was at once vast and minute. His him. Not only was he without the
aim was to consolidate the whole means of forming previous plans of
world into a single empire, redeemed operation; he was also destitute of
from barbarism and irradiated with storehouses and stores for feeding
Greek science and art; an empire his troops, and of gold or silver
Such that its citizens, from the mouths to purchase food and remunerate
of the Ganges to the pillars of Hercules, their services. The Romans, who
should be qualified to learn from methodised war, accounted money
Plato and to take delight in to be its sinews (pecuniam nervos
Sophocles. It is not necessary to belli) ; but all agree that Alexander
quote further from Mr. Aubrey de enteredupon war against the opulent
Vere. The above sufficiently shows Persian monarchy with resources of
what a picture he aims to hold up money and stores of provisions
for our admiration, what impres utterly inadequate, so that nothing
sions he desires his drama to leave but instant and continuous success
on the minds of readers. In this could save him from. ruin. But,
article it is not purposed to discuss says Plutarch gaily, though his
its poetical merits, which must be resources were so small and narrow,
left to another pen and time, but he gave away his Macedonian
to enter into the historical questions possessions freely to his comrades ;
whether Alexander the Great was houses to one, a field to another,
a beneficent or a malignant star a village to a third, harbour dues to .
to Greece and to mankind, and a fourth ; and when some one asked.,
what sentiments are just concerning ‘ O king, what do you leave for ■
him. But it may concisely be said yourself ? ’ he replied, ‘ Hopes ! ’
at once that the present writer is This was very spirited, no doubt.
intensely opposed to Mr. de Vere’s In the midst of a martial people,
avowed judgment.
and from a prince barely of age,
VOL. XI,—NO. LXVI.
NEW SERIES.
3A2
M
�668
flforaZ Estimate of Alexander the Great.
[June
it may be thought very amiable; superior. (Persian cavalry always
but with Grecian statesmen and dreaded a night attack, and
philosophers the delusiveness of systematically, according to Xeno
hope was a frequent topic. Nothing phon, passed the night some twelve
is plainer than that from the miles distant from an enemy.)
beginning Alexander was a gambler Hence the Greeks would be able to
playing ‘double or quits,’ and that cross by night without opposition.
causes over which he had no con The young king replied that, after
trol, and knew he had none, might crossing the Hellespont, it was dis
at any moment have involved him graceful to be afraid of the little
in sudden overthrow. The unex Granicus; and presently plunged
pected death of Memnon as much into the stream, bidding his thirteen
as anything (says Arrian) ruined squadrons of cavalry to follow.
Darius’s fortunes. No doubt it The violence and depth of the
was just to count on the great water, the rugged banks, and the
superiority of Greek armour, Greek enemy awaiting him, rather incited
discipline, and Macedonian military than appalled Alexander. It seemed,
tactics; also on the feebleness says Plutarch, to be a strategy of
entailed on Persia by royal luxury despair, not of wisdom, and indeed
and half-independent satraps. The to be the deed of a maniac. But
successes of Xenophon and of the young king was certain of one
Agesilaus had long familiarised the thing—that wherever he led, his
Greeks to the belief that a moderate Macedonians would follow; and this
Greek army was superior to a fact was the impetus to all his
Persian host. Experienced Greek military conduct. The Macedonians,
generals did not esteem the invasion from their long spears, had advantage
of Persia to be a wild expedition ; in close combat over the Persians
the Congress of Greece,1 from which who fought with swords ; but darts
only the Spartans were conspi and arrows from above were
cuously absent, deliberately sanc severely felt while they were in the
tioned it. No one could foresee river. Struggling up with difficulty
such a commencement as was the through the mud, they could not
battle of the Granicus; everyone keep any ranks and lines of battle,
in the retrospect judged Alexander’s and the opposite squadrons became
conduct rash in the extreme. That mixed, horse pushing against horse.
it succeeded we know, but Mr. de The signal helmet displayed Alex
Vere has not said a word to pro ander to the enemy, and three
duce conviction that such conduct eminent Persians hurried into
is that of a wise general.
personal conflict with him. Accord
The Persian satraps had as ing to Arrian, Alexander slew the
sembled a force, powerful in cavalry, first, received . from the second a
but in infantry very inferior to the blow of the sword which cut off
Greeks, to prevent his crossing of the crest of his helmet; neverthe
this river, which, by the uncertainty less him too he slew with the
of the bottom and steepness of the Macedonian pike. The third would
banks, was in itself formidable undoubtedly have killed Alexander
enough. The day was far gone, had he not himself first been
and Parmenio urged that the enemy pierced through the body by the
would not dare to pass the night in Macedonian Cleitus.
proximity to Grecian infantry so
Not unlike was the conduct of
’ It is due to those who have read an article from my pen in Fraser April 1874
to confess that, from trusting my memory, I have erroneously stated, page 474 that
Philip was assassinated before the Congress met. Since it does not at all affect mv
argument, I need only regret the blunder.—F. W. N.
J
�1875]
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
the younger Cyrus in the battle of
Cunaxa, as narrated by Xenophon ;
but Cyrus egregiously miscalculated
in expecting his mercenary, the
Spartan Clearchus, to obey orders.
Cyrus impetuously rushed against
the Persian king’s body-guard,
commanding Clearchus to support
him. But Clearchus thought this
a rash procedure, disobeyed, and
allowed Cyrus to be surrounded
and killed; thus sacrificing the
whole object of the expedition, and
exposing all the Greek troops to
difficulties so severe that their
ultimate escape appeared miracu
lous. Alexander’s troops and Alex
ander’s generals were of different
mettle; on that he counted, and
was never deceived. Fearless ex
posure of his own person was his
mode of inciting them; but they
quite understood the error and the
mischief of such conduct. Even
after the final overthrow of Darius,
if Alexander had been slain in
battle no one could measure the
calamity which such an event might
entail. Nevertheless he retained
this habit of acting the part of
soldier as well as of general, being
many times severely wounded with
swords, darts, arrows, and stones,
until he narrowly escaped with life
in his Indian campaign. Arrian
gives the account in great detail.
The wall was difficult to ascend.
The king thought his soldiers
deficient in spirit, seized a ladder,
and himself climbed to the top.
Alarm for his exposure made so
many hurry tumultuously that their
weight broke the ladders. Finding
himself alone on the top of the wall,
he leaped down on the other side,
and, in spite of prodigies of valour,
received a very dangerous arrow
wound in the breast. The Macedonians poured in after him just in
time to save his life, which for days
after was accounted doubtful. His
friends severely reproached him for
an imprudence which might have
been the ruin of them all; and (says
Arrian) he was greatly vexed, be
669
cause he knew that their reproaches
were just; but as other men are
overcome by other vices, so was he
by this impetus to fight. This
being his habit, surely no more
words are needed to show the
character of his generalship. Speed
of movement, urgency in pursuit,
were his two marked peculiarities ;
but to these he added a marvellous
quickness to perceive at the moment
whatever the moment admitted.
On this account he will ever be
named among the greatest generals
of antiquity, although he was never
matched against troops at all to
compare to his own, nor against
any experienced leader.
Without for a moment under
valuing his high military qualities,
we must not put out of sight the
pre-eminent army which his able
father had bequeathed to him. The
western world had never before seen
such an organisation. A reader of
Greek accustomed to Thucydides,
Xenophon, and Demosthenes finds
it hard to translate the new Greek
phrases made necessary in King
Philip’s army. The elaborate
ness of modern times seems to come
upon us suddenly. We find Guards,
Horse Guards, Foot Guards, the
King’s own Body Guard, the Van
guard, the King’s Horse, the
Cavalry, Equestrian Tetrarchies,
the Agema (which may seem to be
the Gros, whether of an army or of
each brigade), the Horse Darters,
the Lancers, the Horse Archers, the
Archers, the Forerunners (or
Scouts ?), besides all the Infantry
common in Greece; and an
apparatus for sieges, such as the
old Assyrians and Egyptians dis
play to us in sculpture and painting.
The history of the transmission of
this art is curious. We have no
reason for supposing that the Per
sians ever used its higher mechanism,
but the Phoenicians carried the
knowledge of it to Carthage. The
Carthaginians practised it ela
borately in some of their Sicilian
wars, and from them Dionysius of
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Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
Syracuse learned it. Philip II. of
Macedon is said to have imported
it into Greece from Dionysius ; but
his temperament was adverse to the
use of force where bribery could
effect his object. To him is im
puted the saying, that he deemed
no fortress to be impregnable if an
ass laden with gold could climb up
to the gate. He must have incor
porated with his army sappers and
miners, and men furnished with
engines and ladders, skilled also in
extempore construction; for in his
son’s campaigns these agencies
come forth whenever they are
wanted. It is quite unexplained
how in his rapid marches through
mountainous countries (as Caubul)
he could carry with him huge
machines that rained arrows on an
enemy from a distance farther than
a human arm could send them. The
speed with which his engineers
make bridges to cross rivers, even
the great river Indus, takes one
quite by surprise. Long skill and
training is here presupposed. Under
Alexander’s successors the engines
of siege attain a magnitude and im
portance previously unparalleled.
Philip disciplined every class of
troops to its own work, and from
Thrace and Thessaly had men and
horses beyond any previous Greek
potentate. Greece had been accus
tomed to admire Spartan discipline ;
but Spartan troops were nearly all
of one kind, heavy infantry. They
had scarcely any cavalry, and, with
all their solid armour, were unable
to stand against arrows, or even
against slingers and darters. Before
walls or ditches they were helpless.
Yet Agesilaus had not found the
Persians formidable. He never en
countered such clouds of arrows as
Mardonius showered on the Spartans
at Plataea; hence in general the
Greeks feared Greek mercenaries
fighting on the side of Persia far
more than they feared Persians.
Every Macedonian captain knew
[June
so well the superiority of a Mace
donian army, that they counted on
victory if only they could meet the
foe in the field, whether a Philip,
a Parmenio, or an Antipater was to
be the general. This must be re
membered in estimating Alexander’s
victories.
Plutarch, desirous of exalting
Alexander, makes much of his boy
ish utterances, among which is one
of jealousy against his father for
too great success. ‘ Why, boys,’
said he, ‘ my fathei’ will leave me
nothing to conquer.’ Everything
which is told of him by his panegy
rists points to the same intense
egotism. To be a conqueror greater
than his father, and to be a fighter
equal to Achilles, and if possible
to be celebrated by a poet as noble
as Homer, was his ardent and con
stant aspiration. Alexander him
self told Darius plainly what were
his motives for ‘persevering in
hostility. At least Arrian (who
follows the accounts of Ptolemy,
son of Lagus, and Aristobulus, one
of Alexander’s commanders) pro
fesses to have before him the
actual despatch.2 After the battle
of Issus, in which Darius’s queen
and young son and mother and
other ladies had been captured,
Darius wrote to ask of Alexander
that he would restore them, and
accept from him friendship and
alliance ; for which he offered full
pledges, and begged for the same in
turn. Alexander had treated the
captive ladies- with ostentatious
honour; therefore a mild reply
might have been hoped. Instead of
this, from beginning to end the
letter breathes reproach and defiance.
In conclusion it says: ‘ Since I
have defeated, first thy generals and
satraps, and next thee and the
forces with thee; since I hold the
country, and have now in my army
numbers of those who fought on
thy side, come to me as to him who
is lord of all Asia: then thou shaft
8 ‘ The despatch of Alexander,’ says he, * stands tutts : 23e
�1875]
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
receive back thy mother, thy wife
and children, and much beside,
whatever thou canst persuade me
by asking for it. But in future do
not send to me as thine equal, but
as the lord of all that is thine; else
I shall regard thee as injurious.’
Such a repulse of friendly overtures,
when Alexander had attained far
more than any Greek hoped or
wished, must surely be censured by
every modern. Yet, before any new
defeat was encountered, Darius
made yet another attempt at peace.
As Arrian tells it, while Alexander
was engaged in the siege of Tyre,
ambassadors came, offering to him
ten thousand talents (say, two
millions sterling) as ransom for the
king’s family ; Darius was willing
to yield to him the country as
far as the Euphrates •, he proposed
that Alexander should accept his
daughter in marriage, and that they
should be friends and allies. The
only reply of Alexander was ‘ that
he wanted no money of Darius, for
he counted all Darius’s money to
be his own; he would not accept a
part of the country instead of the
whole ; and if he wished to marry a
daughter of Darius, he would take
her by force without her father’s
leave.’ The historian who tells
this does not seem to be aware
how very inhuman was such a reply;
no censure escapes him. As far as
we can learn, to make Alexander
great and glorious, is Alexander’s
motive according to his own account.
Mr. de Vere would persuade us that
his aims were philanthropic. The
notion is in itself wholly ana
chronistic.
Ambition, not philanthropy, down
to the present time is the motive for
conquest. Philanthropy does some
times lead to annexation; we see
an instance in the archipelago of
Fiji, which has been accepted re
luctantly, not conquered, by the
rulers of England. So, we make
no doubt, the Incas of Peru bene
volently accepted the responsibility
of rule over various barbarian and
671
scattered tribes, whom they pre
sently attached to themselves by
benefits. Instances of this kind
exist in history, enough barely to
show what is possible to human
nature; but, alas! they are very
rare. Where the philanthropic
object is sincere, the sense of duty
and responsibility is keen, and there
is no coveting of territory and
power, no claim that might makes
right, no violence is used to establish
the claim. To make armed invasion
and attack on another country is an
avowal that you are not seeking
the welfare of the invaded, but
some interests or imagined rights of
your own or of your ally. Now, it
is obvious in Greek literature that
up to the time of Aristotle and
Alexander no idea of international
right existed. In the discourses
reported by Xenophon we have no
hint that Socrates thought a war of
Greeks even against Greeks to need
justification; and Aristotle lays
down that, by the natural superio
rity of the Greek mind, barbari
ans are made for subjection to
Greeks ; and if they do not submit,
they may rightly be forced to sub
mission—in fact, as brute animals.
When Aristotle so reasoned and
so believed, we cannot expect any
Greek prince, or any Greek republic,
to have moral scruples against in
vading any foreigner. If, from a
modern point of view, anyone
now call Alexander a ‘ bandit,’ as
Mr. de Vere complains, it is noton
the bare ground that he was an
invader ; it must mean that he was
a peculiarly reckless invader, who,
with no motive then generally
esteemed adequate, marked his
course with blood and devastation.
That is a question of detail. But
up to that time the world had seen
no right of territory or of empire
asserted on any other argument
than that of simple force. The
great Darius, son of Hystaspes,
piously records on his monuments
the names of the successive nations
which God gave to his sceptre.
�672
Moral Estimate oj Alexander the Great.
Hebrew princes spoke in the same
tone concerning whatever conquests
they could make on their narrower
scale. None can now wonder or
censure if Alexander, after the
battle of Issus, says to Darius, ‘ By
my victory God has given me
countries which were thine.’ The
Persians had no title but force to
the possession of Cilicia and Lydia ;
force might be repelled by force.
Brom the earliest times the Greeks
had swarmed out into colonies
planted on the coast of Asia, without
asking leave of Asiatic princes ; but
those princes no sooner became
powerful than they endeavoured to
recover the possession of their seabord,3 and the Lydian dynasty at
length absorbed into itself these
Asiatic Greeks. When the Persians
conquered Lydia, they naturally
regarded the Greek coast as an
integrant part of their domain;
but the Greeks, rejoicing in the
fall of the Lydian suzerain, hoped
for entire independence, and had
to be re-subdued. The Athenians
imprudently assisted them against
Darius, and sent a body of troops
which took part in the burning of
Sardis, the capital of Lydia. No
modern empire would wink at such
an outrage ; nor could King Darius ;
yet the Athenians always speak as
though his war against them had
been unprovoked. Each side knew
the outrages it had suffered and
forgot those which it had inflicted
—a common case. Unless treaties
and oaths forbade, war was received
as the natural and rightful relation
even , in Greece itself between city
and city.
But when ambition is the real
undeniable motive of war, there are
yet two kinds of ambition—personal
and national. However much we
may palliate, excuse, or even praise
the latter, all good feeling, all mo
rality, and all common sense unite
severely to rebuke the former. No
moral reasoner can justify the deeds
[June■
of Warren Hastings or of Clive,
yet we do not stigmatise the doers
as vile men; Cicero may defend
Bonteius, yet the reader sees that
the defence amounts to this, that
the oppressions complained of, if
criminal, were violences perpetrated
in the interests of Roman con
quest, not for Bonteius’s own en
richment or aggrandisement. Each
nation is strong by patriotism.
Patriotism seldom escapes a tinge
of national vanity, and generally
is deep dyed in absurd national
self-esteem. One who sacrifices
himself for the exaltation of his own
people has in him the vital element
of high virtue, even though he may
injuriously overlook the rights of
other peoples ; hence we can hon
our mere soldiers, faithful servants
of a dynasty or of a powerful re
public, when they wholly decline
all judgment of the right or wrong
of a war, and bestow their entire
energies and their lives to exalt
their nation and dynasty. The
more signally the selfish element is
suppressed, the higher is the hon
our due to them; but just in
proportion as the selfish element
is combined with unjust war, our
moral estimate is turned the other
way. If the separate commanders
are encouraged to love war because
it enables them to become rich by
plundering the conquered, the war
is demoralising to the victors. If
the king who decrees the war is
aiming at the exaltation not of his
own nation and race, but of his
own individual person; if he is
ready to trample his own people
underfoot, and set up the barbarian
as equal or superior, as soon as this,
in turn, conduces to his personal
magnificence; and if at the same
time he is utterly reckless of hu
man life and suffering on both, sides,
whenever he has a fancy or a whim
of glory—it is rather too great a
strain on our credulity to hold him
up to moral admiration. Now, in
3 Bord = edge, border; a different word from board.
�187S]
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
the case of Alexander we have to
enquire, of which class was his am
bition P Was he aiming to exalt
himself, or his royal race, or to
exalt Macedonia, or to exalt Greece?
Kone of these alternatives contents
Mr. de Vere, who says that Alex
ander was aiming to make Indians
and Spaniards learn wisdom of
Sophocles and Plato. But we must
go into various details in order to
get at the truth.
Alexander, in Greek belief, de
scended from Hercules onhisfather’s
side and from Achilles on his mo
ther’s. He might naturally be
proud of each genealogy. The
Macedonians were half-Thracian,
and doubtfully Greek; but the
Macedonian dynasty claimed to be
Heracleid. Philip had satisfied the
Olympian umpires of his right, as
a genuine Greek, to send chariots
and horses to contend for the prize,
and was sincerely proud of the
honour. Plutarch, a great admirer
of Alexander, censures Philip for
the pleasure which he took in the
rivalry of cultivated Greek conver
sation, and for engraving on coins
hi® Olympian victories; while the
boyish Alexander, on the contrary,
said ‘ he must have kings for his
rivals before he would enter any
contest.’ Such royal airs did he
give himself when he was but six
teen, that a jocose saying became
current: ‘ Alexander is our king,
and Philip only our general;’ and
Philip himself was pleased with it.
But the politic Philip committed at
last one imprudence; it was great
and fatal. He had long been tired
of his queen Olympias, as well he
might be, for all agree that she
was proud, intemperate, and vio
lent. Plutarch believes the story
that, as the poets tell of Thracian
women, she practised Orphic and
Bacchanalian enthusiasm, and was
a zealot of ‘ possessions,’ inspira
tion, or catalepsy, which the mo
derns do not easily believe to have
been managed without drugs or
wine. Be the cause what it may,
673
she was very overbearing and unamiable. Alexander was moulded
into pride by his mother, and was
in general very much disposed to
yield to her; but an utterance of
his, after he was supreme in Asia,
has been stereotyped : ‘ My mother
really charges me a very high rent
for my ten months’ lodging [in her
womb].’ Philip is said already to
have had another wife, Eurydice
(Arrian, iii. 6), but apparently
Olympias still held the chief place as
queen, until he became fascinated
by a much younger lady, Cleopatra,
who was introduced to the Court
in a magnificent wedding-feast.
Her uncle, Attalus, when much the
worse forwine, uttered an imprudent
blessing on the marriage. Olympias
flamed out with all the wrath
of a Medea. Alexander expected
to be disowned as successor to the
throne and superseded by a new
heir. He escaped with his mother
into Epirus, and thence took refuge
with the Illyrians. This was when
he was about seventeen. With a
slight turn of events his history
might have been that of many
■ Oriental princes;—a son contending
with his father for the throne.
Philip, by kind messages, per
suaded him to return ; but Alex
ander was still jealous, and his new
jealousy was of his brother Arrhidaaus. Pexodorus, satrap of Caria,
desired to give his daughter in
marriage to Arrhidseus. Alexan
der, suspecting some treason in
this, sent a private messenger to the
satrap, dissuading the match, and
asking why the young lady was not
rather offered in marriage to him.
Plutarch, who tells this, does not
see how unamiable this makes Alex
ander towards his brother as well
as his father. With his cousin
Amyntas he had a deadly feud,
because Amyntas, his elder, was
son of Perdiccas, who preceded
Philip on the throne, and had osten
sibly a higher claim to the succes
sion than Alexander. All danger
of collision with Philip himself was
�■674
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
removed by the assassin Pausanias,
whom Olympias was believed by
the public to have instigated.
The new reign opened with all
the symptoms of a Court revolu
tion. Noblemen who had gone into
exile returned at once, among
whom was Ptolemy, son of Lagus.
Amyntas was put to death as a
dangerous rival. Cleopatra’s infant
son suffered the same fate. Attalus,
to whom Alexander was implacable
for a drunken speech, had been sent
forward by Philip with an army into
Asia, but was there assassinated by
Hecatasus, Alexander’s emissary.
Cleopatra herself was ‘ handled
cruelly ’ by Olympias—words of
Plutarch, which are generally in
terpreted to mean that she was put
to death with bodily outrage.4 But
when the violent deeds of princes
are secret we must make allowance
for credulous exaggerations of de
tail.
Though Alexander was proud of
his descent from Hercules through
his father, so quickly was his head
turned by too rapid and dazzlingsuccess, that he presently disowned
his father Philip, and wished to be'
accounted a son of Jupiter. This
was the beginning of disgust to the
Macedonians.
His comrade and
playmate Philotas, whom Philip
had employed to reprove him for
his foolish and wrongful meddlinoagainst the marriage of his brother
Arrhideeus, wrote to him honest
truth in Egypt, when first Alexander
trumped up this monstrous fiction,
and warned him of the mischief
which he would do to himself by it.
That Alexander never forgave him
for his plain speaking appears un
deniable : for, years after, when
Philotas was accused of complicity
in a plot against Alexander’s life,
Alexander, rising in the council of
chief Macedonians, bitterly accused
Philotas of having been a traitor
[June
from the beginning, and adduced
this letter as a proof of his early
disaffection. Whether Philotas was,
or was not, at last in complicity with
the plot, it is not probable that the
moderns will ever agree. Quintus
Curtins condemns him; but the
argument which Curtius puts into
his mouth appears a complete and
sufficient defence, and on this point
makes him reply: ‘ I wrote to the
king direct; I did not write to
others concerning the king ; I feared
for him; I did not raise odium
against him • my trust in friendship,
and the dangerous freedom ofgivingtrue advice, have ruined me.’ Be
the case of Philotas as it may, all
the historians agree that Alexander
insisted on the title Son of Jupiter,
for which he had obtained the
sanction of the oracle of Hammon by
a very dangerous journey through
the desert.
On one remarkable
occasion (Arrian, vii. 8), when the
army was able to speak with a com
bined shout, by which no one should
be singled out for vengance, they cry
to him that ‘ they had best all
return to Greece, and leave him to
campaign in Asia by help of his
father ’—meaning Jupiter Hammon,
says the historian. Plutarch, who
certainly does not censure him, says
that ‘ to the Persians he assumed
the haughty tone of one who was
quite convinced of his divine birth,
but to the Greeks he was more
moderate and sparing in his
assumption of divinity, except that
to the Athenians he wrote a letter
concerning Samos saying: “I,formy
part, should not have given to you
a free and glorious city [Samos] ;
but you have received it from him
who then was master of it, and used
to be called my father ”—meaning
Philip.’ But a king who could
gratuitously write thus in a public
despatch to the Athenians displayed
a determination to enforce his pre
4 Plutarch says that Alexander was very angry with his mother for her conduct
to Cleopatra. One might interpret his words to mean that Olympias inflicted some
bodily outrage that marred her beauty; but I fear that a still more terrible sense is
truer.
�f ' 1875]
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
posterous claim.5 And here it is
difficult to understand the liberty
which Mr. Aubrey de Vere takes
with history. He represents Alex
ander as speaking with contempt
and disapproval of the mythical
tale of his miraculous origin (p. 7) :
Mark, Hephrestion!
The legend-mongers at their work! ’Twas
thus
They forg’d in Macedon that tale prepost’rous,
Scand’lous alike to me and to my mother,
Touching great Zeus.
Such a tale cannot have been in
vented before the battle of Issus,
and Alexander himself eagerly
adopted it (whoever was the in
ventor) within half a year after the
battle. It is evident, therefore, that
his head was turned by his sudden
and vast success ; and the Mace
donians saw it.
A second great disgust with them
$
I was his disparaging of his father
Philip, especially over his wine-cups.
The Macedonians were right loyal
royalists and justly proud of Philip.
He had raised their country from
a very feeble to a predominant
position. When he came to the
throne Macedonia had but half a
sea-coast, from the number of in
dependent Greek cities. He had
recovered all Macedonia and added
Thrace to it, including Byzantium
itself; had brought Thessaly and
Phocis into his dominion; had
defeated the Theban and Athenian
forces by land, and made himself at
sea equal or superior to Athens ;
had become master of Molossia and
Pseonia, and was at length ac
knowledged as the genuine Greek
K prince, who was the only rightful
50 leader of Greece.
His army he had
so organised as to make it un
675
equalled, and by the consent of one
and another State he had been
allowed to garrison many of the
most critical fortresses in Greece.
What Macedonian captain could be
willing to hear Philip the Great
disparaged by his own son ? All
the old officers of Philip were in
dignant at it. The habit of the
Macedonians, as of the Thracians,
was that of much wine-drinking,
and the king was expected to dine
with his chief captains and ministers.
It is a sufficient mark how national
customs preponderate over talents
and wisdom, that the father and son
who in all Greek history are signal
and pre-eminent were both gravely
damaged by the wine-cup. Mr.
de Vere is pleased to allude to it
as Alexander’s ‘ supposed intempe
rance ; ’ and no doubt Arrian tries
to excuse him, as does Plutarch, on
the ground that his tarrying over
the wine was from Jove of com
pany, not from sensuality.
Of
course; so it generally is. The
historical form of drunkenness
with Greeks, Romans, Persians,
Gauls, Germans, and we readily
believe also of Macedonians, was
different from that of an English
artisan who stands up at the bar of
a gin-palace to enjoy his solitary
glass. But the evidence of mischief
from these Macedonian banquets is
not to be sneered away. The be
ginning of ruin to the house of
Philip was from the wedding-feast
of the new queen Cleopatra; at which
her uncle Attalus, when overfilled
with wine,6 prayed ‘ that the gods
would give to Philip a legitimate
successor by Cleopatra.’ ‘Am I then
a bastard, you rascal?’ cried young
Alexander, and flung his cup7 at
the head of Attalus. Philip rose in
5 A curious story is told, that the priest of Hammon tried to give an oracular reply
1
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’
11
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J ' "
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, in Greek; and not ’being deep in the Greek language, thought that iraibiov for a „ A,
youth
j*? ought to be masculine; so, instead of addressing Alexander by a> iraioiov, 0 youth !
or 0 my son ! he said, a> iraibios ; and Alexander, in Greek fashion, instantly ‘ accepted
ai the omen,’ declaring that the x
priest had addressed him by the title
mxi Aios,
v
p
O child of Jupiter!
I 6 ev
irtfrcp fj,e0va>i/.
7 ‘ Scyphis pugnare, Thracum est,’ says Horace.
�676
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
anger, and, sword in hand, tried to
step across to his son; but his feet
failed him, and he fell on the floor.
‘Here is a man,’ said the youth,
‘ who is preparing to cross into Asia,
and is upset in passing from one
seat to another.’ Evidently Alex
ander, as well as Philip, was already
the worse for wine ; but that scene,
in which he might have been slain
by a tipsy father, must surely have
impressed him deeply, if he remem
bered his own scoff. One who was
planning to reorganise all Asia, one
who knew the frightful mischiefs
which a despotic king may inflict
on himself as well as on others,
when wine overmasters him, is not
exempt from our moral criticism.
The higher his intellect, the deeper
is the censure deserved. But that
Alexander was fond of wine, Plu
tarch regards as a fact, while he
apologises for it. Alexander’s body,
he says, had a delicious fragrance ;
no doubt from his hot and fiery
nature; for heat brings out aro
matic smells ; and the same heat
of body made Alexander addicted
to drink and passionate (rai irorucdv
Kat Ovpoetci]). A history written of
a king by another king, or by one of
his generals, is not likely to allude
to drunken bouts such as the
customs of the nation sanctioned,
except when special necessity re
quired; yet wine in this Macedonian
tale plays a part previously un
known in Greek history. The de
fence of Alexander rests on his love
of conversation ; but what was the
talk which he most loved ? The
poison of flattery. Arrian, his
defender, throws the fault upon
those who extolled him as superior
to Hercules and the other mythical
heroes, and of course as far and far
above his father Philip; but since
Alexander never checked them, but
manifestly enjoyed their praise, it
necessarily became the staple of
these feasts. At other times he was
too busy to listen to such reptiles ;
the essential evil of his long sittings
was, that there was plenty of time
[June
for him to drink in such adulation,
to the ever increasing disgust of
Philip’s old soldiers. Q. Curtius
regards it as a certain fact that
Alexander himself was fond of disparaging his father’s deeds and
exalting his own. The report of it
even reached Italy, where his uncle
Alexander of Epirus, who met his
death in Italian battle, uttered an
epigram which was re-echoed in
Asia—that in Italy he had had to
fight with men, but his nephew
Alexander in Asia had alighted on
women. Ho one can wonder that a
king who in his boyhood was already
comparing his own future deeds
with those of his father, should inwardly boast to himself, after conquering Asia Minor, Syria, and
Egypt in less than two years, that
he had far exceeded the deeds of
Philip ; and with each new success
new vanity and new arrogance
entered his heart. In vino veritas.
After wine had sufficiently lessened
his self-restraint, he was liable not
merely to listen to praise from
others, but to trumpet his own
praise. The same wine sometimes
affected the self-restraint of his
comrades ; and he surely must have
foreseen each possibility.
Mr. de Vere wishes us to make
light of his killing his faithful com
rade Cleitus ; and since Cleitus
could not be brought to life again,
and Alexander was shocked at his
own deed, of course all the Macedo
nians tried to comfort the king, and
to accuse Cleitus as having provoked
his own death. Arrian, a profound
royalist, is very severe upon Cleitus;
yet the fact comes out that Cleitus’s
high words were elicited by the disparagement of King Philip, which
Cleitus could not endure, whether
from Alexander or from Alexander’s
flatterers. It is seldom indeed that
one can attempt to guess the utterances of tipsy men ; but if you cut
short eithei’ the long story of Arrian
or the still longer story of Q. Curtius, you get something like this as
the result: ‘ King Philip, my prede-
’
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�1875]
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
cessor,’ says Alexander, 1 was no
ticing1 of a general compared to me.
In twelve years he did not conquer
half of what I conquered in twelve
months.’ ‘ Stop ! ’ replies Cleitus ;
‘remember that he never had the
chance Of fighting with Persians:
ho had to deal with stubborn Greeks.
Besides, he never committed such
a blunder as you did at the Granicus, where you nearly ruined us
all, and nothing but this right hand
saved your life.’ The last words
Arrian regards as abominable and
inexcusable from a soldier to a king;
and so, no doubt, all the flatterers
urged ? the greater the truth, the
worse the offence. But the absur
dity is, to expect a man who is halftipsy io retain prudence and mo
desty. Alexander, according to his
warm admirer Plutarch, was of a ‘ furious and violent nature ’ (faylalov
iceti (b£f>6p.ETov
and now,
being full of wine, of course he was
uncontrollable. When reminded
that he owed his life to Cleitus, and
virtually all his after-successes, he
could not bear such an amount of
indebtedness ; and although all the
armed men around, seeing his state,
disobeyed his orders, he succeeded
in, snatching a weapon from one of
them, and with it laid Cleitus dead.
Might not one have hoped that such
a tragedy would for ever have cured
him of long drinking ? But it did
not. Indeed, Arrian, wishing to
defend him, represents him as
already* somewhat corrupted into
Asiatic depravity, implying that he
was on the downhill track—not
that we know anything so bad of
Persian kings.
Another grievous offence to Ma
cedonian feeling was, that he ex
acted of them prostration on the
ground before him in Persian fa
shion. This was as detestable to
Greeks as to Englishmen. It was
emphatically the unmanning of free
men. JEschylus puts into the mouth
677
of Agamemnon the sentiment of
every Greek :
Nor yet, in fashion of barbaric wight,
Prostrate before me, mouth unmanly
words.
There could not be a more decisive
proof that Alexander intended to
destroy every vestige of Greek sen
timent and Greek freedom, and
reduce them all to the level of Orien
tal slaves. Disaffection was inevit
able ; his noblest comrades were the
most certain to disapprove; the
basest took the opportunity of ca
lumniating them, and ingratiated
themselves with the king by slander.
We cannot know the exact time of
this and that detestable whisper,
nor whether it be true that Alexan
der tampered with Philotas’s mis
tress, and bribed her to report
month by month whatever words
of indignation Philotas might drop.
Such is Plutarch’s account, who
indeed represents Philotas as put
to torture, and Alexander behind a
curtain listening to every word;
and when, overcome by suffering,
Philotas uttered piteous entreaties
to Hephmstion the torturer, Alex
ander drew back the curtain and
reproached Philotas with unmanli
ness. Plutarch in general is just and
tenderhearted; yet he can tell this
horrible story without seeing how
odious it makes Alexander. Arrian
cuts the tale of Philotas short, but
relates on the authority of King
Ptolemy that he was killed by the
darts of the Macedonians—equiva
lent to the modern shooting of a sol
dier. On this comes a second deadly
crime, to which Mr. Aubrey de
Vere will hardly reconcile us. ‘ Silly
is he, ’ said the Greek proverb, 1 who
slays the father and spares the son.’
‘ Silly shall I be,’ argued Alexander,
‘ if I kill Philotas and leave his
father Parmenio alive.’ Parmenio
had conquered Media for the king,
and was there at the head of a large
army. Letters are therefore sent
8 ‘For Alexander had already, in the matter of drinking-bouts, made innovation
towards more barbaric manners.’
�678
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
with the utmost speed, to three ge
nerals in high command, ordering
them to assassinate Parmenio while
he is engaged in reading certain de
spatches, which are sent to put him
off his guard. That they were all
base enough to obey proves how com
pletely the Macedonian commanders
were already enslaved; but the
wrath of the common soldiers was
extreme, and might have been dan
gerous. There can be no doubt that
Alexander was now hated as much
as he was feared.
The accusation against Philotas
had risen out of a real conspiracy
of the pages when Alexander was
in Bactria, of which, it was al
leged, Philotas had had knowledge.
Philip had established the system of
royal pages—youths of the noblest
families, who waited on the king,
acted as grooms, helped him to
mount his horse, and hunted with
him. On one occasion, when a
dangerous wild boar rushed at the
king, the page Hermolaus killed the
animal with his dart. The king
was enraged at losing his own
chance of killing it, and ordered
the page to be flogged. Such a
reward for such a service was of
course unendurable to a noble Ma
cedonian youth, who at once vowed
revenge. Whether he would actual
ly have taken the king’s life we
cannot now ascertain. Other pages
shared the indignation of Hermo
laus. The evidence against them,
according to Aristobulus, was swol
len by Alexander’s belief in the
supernatural powers of a Syrian
woman who was subject to ‘ posses
sions,’ and was allowed access to the
king day and night, to warn him of
danger. She was believed to have
saved his life from Hermolaus. One
thing only is here clear—that he
knew himself to be hated, and
through his suspicions degraded
himself to precautions at once per
nicious and odious. One of the
alleged conspirators, Dimnus, slew
himself when he found what reports
and beliefs were accepted ; the rest
[June
were stoned to death, guilty or.
guiltless. For us it suffices to
know that Alexander was definitely
engaged in the task of trampling
out the Greek sentiment of freedom
from his own people. This is very
unlike the task to which Mr. de
Vere thinks he set himself, of re
deeming the world from barbarism,
and irradiating it with Greek science
and art, with the wisdom of Plato
and Sophocles.
Callisthenes the philosopher had
been the tutor of Hermolaus and a
great favourite with him. The
flatterers knew that Alexander
dreaded his honesty and his courage,
and they laid a plot to force him
to deliver his opinion on the ques
tion of prostration before the king
by questions over the wine. Arrian,
who calls him clownish or rude
(crypoiKoc), gives his speech at great
length ; but no rudeness is apparent
in it to us. He says that he honours
Alexander as the first of men, but
different honours are due to men
and to gods ; that prostration is fit
honour to gods only; that Alexander
would not approve of a low multi
tude voting a common man into the
royal throne, nor can the gods be
pleased with men voting a man
into divine honours ; that Darius,
honoured by prostrations, was
defeated by Alexander, to whom no
prostrations had been used. Indeed,
the great Cyrus, who first received
such honour, had been chastised by
the Massagetans, and the great
Darius by other Scythians, as
Xerxes and the later kings by
Greeks.
This discourse, says
Arrian, violently displeased Alex
ander, but was acceptable to the
Macedonians. Callisthenes after
wards distinctly refused to prostrate
himself. He now was accused of
having incited the pages to their
conspiracy. That the mode of his
death was uncertain, Arrian regards
as remarkable; for Aristobulus
says he was put in fetters and
carried about wherever the army
went, until he died of disease;
�1875]
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
Ptolemy says he was first tortured
on the rack and then hanged.
Every honourable Greek philoso
pher had now full warning to keep
his distance from Alexander. To
Aristotle the king had already sent
from Asia a characteristic complaint,
when the philosopher published
some lectures. Plutarch professes
to give the very words of the letter.
‘ Alexander sends greeting to Aris
totle. You do wrong in publishing
your lectures. For wherein shall
we excel other men, if you impart
to them the instruction which you
gave to us ? But I, for my part,
would rather excel men in the
noblest experiences [science] than
in military forces. Farewell.’ This
is not in the tone of one who desires
all foreign peoples to imbibe Greek
science and philosophy, as Mr. de
Vere fancies.
The pride and violence of Alex
ander, his vices and his crimes, one
by one, Arrian seems able to defend
or excuse ; but when all culminates
in his assumption and enforcement
of the Persian dress, the historian’s
eyes seem at last to be opened.
‘I do not praise,’ says he, ‘his
excessive punishment of Bessus ’
(whom he first scourged and ex'hibited naked in a cage, afterwards
cut off his nose and ears, and sent
him to be put to death by his own
countrymen), ‘and I confess that
Alexander was enticed to imitate
Persian luxury and barbaric cere
monialism ; nor can I praise that
he, being a Heracleid, wore Median
vesture instead of his native Mace
donian, and assumed the Persian
tiara instead of his own victorious
garb. But if the mighty deeds of
Alexander can teach us anything
they teach this, that no accumulation
of outward magnificence conduces
to any man’s welfare, if he cannot
retain sobriety of mind ((T<l)(|>po(Tvvr|f,
Let this be a set-off to Mr. de Vere’s
other quotation from Arrian, which
he says ‘ is doubtless right ’—that
Alexander assumed the Persian
dress that he might appear not
679
altogether to despise the barbarians.
The matter is indeed quite plain.
He himself took three noble Persian
ladies as his wives, one of them a
daughter of Darius — a frank
adopting of the Oriental seraglio,,
the curse of princes and nations.
He induced eighty of his high
officers similarly to take Persian
wives. The marriages were all
conducted with Persian ceremonies,
and to all of them the king gave
liberal dowries. More than 10,000
Greek soldiers followed the example
of marrying native women. The
king had the names of them all
registered, and sent marriage gifts
to every one. Nothing is clearer
than that he desired to shift his
centre of support.
Instead of
depending on Greeks, who were
sure to abhor and resist his striving
after Oriental despotism, he aimed
simply to step into the shoes of
Darius, and let the Persians feel
that their institutions remained
unchanged ; they had only changed
one king for another. To Mace
donians, and to all Greeks who had
a particle of free spirit, such con
duct appeared treason to Greece,
who had freely chosen him as leader,
treason also to freedom.
As
Callisthenes said to his face, the
progenitors of the Macedonian
dynasty came from Argos to Mace
donia ; there, not by force, but by
law, they were accepted as rulers,
and received honour as men, not
as gods. Surely the idea that
Alexander was bent on imparting
the blessings of Greek civilisation
to all Asia is, in the face of the
facts, only a wild fiction.
And here the thought presents
itself, What is the erudition of Mr,
Aubrey de Vere ? Has he enough
knowledge of Greek to read Arrian
oi’ Plutarch for himself? A matter
in itself slight moves strong dis
belief. Nine times in his drama he
pronounces the name Kpartpoe
Craterus. It would appear that he
cannot ever have seen the name in
Greek letters, common as it is, or
�680
MbruZ Estimate of Alexander the Great.
he could not make such a blunder.
There is no ambiguity about it.
Thus:
p. 27. Or keen-edg’d, like Craterus. This
I grant him—
p. 74. But sacrilege. I scorn your words,
Craterus.
p. 79. Which by Craterus, Ptolemy, Hepliaestion—
p. 90. Forth, sirs, and meet them. Let
Craterus bide—
He is uniformly consistent with
himself in the error. So too he
pronounces Heraclides (p. 212)
with short penultima, evidently un
aware that it is 'Hpct/ALch/c in the
Greek. The Niscean horses ('ittwoi
Nio-cuot) he converts into Nyseean
(p. 164), misled by Nvo-a, Nysa, the
supposed Bacchanalian centre. In
p. 96 he makes the Macedonians
talk familiarly of the philosophy of
Epicurus, whom our books re
present as ‘ flourishing ’ half a
century later. At that day Epicurus
surely cannot have been known.
On the whole, Mr. de Vere does
not, primd facie, command any
deference to his opinions ; else one
might be curious to know, whence
he gets his information that Alex
ander planned the conquest of Italy
and Spain. ‘ The empire which
Alexander had resolved to create
was that of the whole world. Had
he lived, he must have created it
. . . . had ten years more been
accorded. But it was not to be.
Alexander was not to tread the
banks of the Tiber....................... He
had aspired to give to one small
spot on earth’s surface, Greece, a
power extending over the earth. . ..’
Will he, perhaps, appeal to the wild
speech in which he strives to per
suade his soldiers to march to the
mouths of the Ganges, assuring them
that the sea of Bengal joins the
Caspian Sea, and that he will carry
his army from the Ganges round
Africa to the pillars of Hercules,
1 and so all Africa becomes ours ’ ?
How can a modern who knows any
thing of geography fail to see that
if he was serious, he was a fool,
[June
rather than a statesman with un
erring judgment ?
The schemes of Alexander were
wild enough, and it is not requisite
to attribute to him what is wilder
still. All his generals—and one may
add, all his soldiers—knew that
his dream of holding India to the
mouths of the Ganges was morally
and physically impossible. To ima
gine that the native Indians would
submit voluntarily and become
loyal to his sceptre, was simply
ridiculous. Greek heroism and
discipline must make the conquest;
but the entire military population of
Greece was insufficient to garrison
and maintain even the Persian em
pire, say nothing of India proper.
Alexander showed admirable mili
taryjudgment in choosing sites for
Greek colonies, but he could not
people them without unpeopling
Greece. The vast drain of young
men and mature men to fill his
armies quickly made the native
population decay, and the Mace
donian army there under Antipater
crushed all that remained of liberty.
Mr. de Vere whimsically says that
Alexander was aiming ‘ to give to
Greece (!) a power extending over the
whole earth,’ at the very time when
he was actually trampling Greece
itself, as tvell as Greek institutions
and sentiments, under foot, training
Persian levies to control what he
regarded as Greek insolence, and
putting forward native Persians,
who willingly submitted to pros
tration and all Oriental servility, into
high posts expressly as a curb on
the Macedonians. It may even
seem that from the day that Alex
ander set foot on Asia he abandoned
all thought of returning to Greece.
This explains his lavish giving away
of Macedonian revenues.
Like
Achilles, that type of pride and
royal egotism, he meant to conquer
or die; at best Macedonia was
nothing to him but a distant re
cruiting-ground. When Parmenio
or any other general dropped the
suggestion, ‘ Is it not time to think
�1875]
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
of home ? ’ he at once treated it as
disaffection. The desire of soldiers
to return to their native lands and
friends, was with him base and
stupid ingratitude. On two occa
sions Arrian gives a very full
account of his resentment, but con
densation is here desirable. After
Alexander’s victories over the In
dian king Porus the army showed
extreme reluctance to march farther
eastward, and the dissatisfaction
was too great and general to be
dissembled. He tried to persuade
them to march to the mouths of the
Ganges, and his speech shows us on
what motives he relies. ‘ He makes
them rich by plunder-, he shares
toil and danger with them; no
nation has yet withstood them, and
none will be able. Me will mahe them
satraps over new and new lands. He
gives them even now good pay. After
they have overrun all Asia he will
load them with riches, and either will
let them go home, or will lead them
home, or will make those envied
who prefer to stay with him in Asia.
Such were the base arguments by
which from the beginning he had
trained his soldiers to thrive on the
misery of the conquered peoples. But
the army felt the toils, the wounds,
the numbers who had perished, the
little chance of carrying home a ro
bust frame: in short, they were
home-sick :and, to his extreme dis
gust, he was forced to listen to an
honest speech from his old officer
Coenus, who, after long silence, ex
pounded to him the views and
feelings of the army. Mr. Aubrey
de Vere seems to think that the
soldiers were fools and narrow
minded, and that, even years later,
an inscrutable Providence, cutting
short Alexander’s life, alone
hindered the accomplishment of
conquests far more difficult than
any which he had achieved. If he
681
had economised his own strength
and that of his Greek troops, he
might doubtless have reigned over
all Darius’s empire and over Greece
in addition, but certainly not while
he lavished Greek life recklessly.
Mr. de Vere is indignant that
Alexander should be spoken of as
the Macedonian 1 madman, ’ and
evidently does not understand what
is the justification of that epithet.
It is because he was not satisfied
with encountering inevitable dangers
and losses, but gratuitously espoused
and invented needless dangers and
new losses. The battle of the
Granicus was the first manifestation
of this folly. His war against Tyre
was a signal and needless cruelty,
which might have been fatal to him.
The Tyrians, having no aid from
Darius, sent ambassadors to say they
would perform all his commands,
except that they must receive neither
a Persian nor a Macedonian force
within their city—an island. If he
had accepted this compromise, their
fleet and their resources would at
once have been at his disposal; and
as soon as the fortunes of Darius
were manifestly irretrievable, the
very small reserve of respect for
Persian rule9 was certain to vanish.
But Alexander’s pride was inflamed
that any exception or reserve, how
ever temporary, should oppose his
absolute will. He sent away the am
bassadors in anger, and commenced
a war which proved extremely
difficult. In it he received and in
flicted cruel wounds, wasting time
and enormous effort. At the end
he won a ruined city, having spoiled:
its site for ever by his works ; and
after all the slaughter in the siege,
and frightful carnage in the final
storming, he had the miserable
satisfaction of selling into slavery
thirty thousand Tyrians and fo
reigners who were in the city.
* The case is not fully explained. Perhaps the Persian kings had so far honoured
and gratified the Tyrians as to stipulate that no Persian force should enter their city.
A highly reasonable request.
VOL. XI.—NO. LXVI,
NEW SEEIES.
3 B
�682
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
No other Greek general would have
committed such an error, if we may
not call it crime. Again and again
we find him undertake dangerous
and difficult enterprises, wasteful of
Greek life, not because they are
needful, but barely because of the
difficulty.
In Sogdiana there was a natural
rock, supposed to be impregnable ;
among the Paraitakse a second
rock; among the Bazeri (modern
Caubul ?) a third, which it was
said Hercules had failed to take.
He must waste blood and time to
capture them all. The mention of
Hercules instantly inflamed his pas
sion to outdo the mythical hero.
When he came to the Iaxartes (the
Sir Deria), the river which sepa
rated the Massagetan Scythians
from the Persian empire, he of
■ course found Scythian cavalry
watching him. They shoot arrows
into the stream to show him that
he must not cross. It is an un
endurable insult, he says : he must
chastise them. He crosses the
river, undergoes hard fighting, takes
credit for victory, but presently
has to come back again, half
poisoned by drinking foul water,
with no reward but needless blood
shed. Naturally, when he turns his
back, they come over to help his
enemy. But nothing so much de
serves to be called a wicked destruc
tion of his soldiers as his march
through Gedrosia, the modern Beloochistan. After the toils, wounds,
and losses encountered to conquer
in India territories which could
not be kept permanently, he built
a fleet of transports and sailed
down to the mouths of the Indus.
There he heard that no army had
ever passed safe through Gedrosia ;
that Queen Semiramis had at
tempted it, and brought through
only twenty men, and the great
Cyrus had come through with seven
only. This immediately determined
him to do (says Nearchus, his ad
[June
miral) what to them had been
impossible. (The tales were, no
doubt, mythical; but Alexander had
an open ear to every lying legend,
equally as to soothsayers and cata
leptic women.) All the sufferings
elsewhere endured by the army
were as nothing compared to this.
Heat, want of water and of fodder,
presently reduced them to the ut
most distress. They could not feed
or water their cattle; they killed
them for food. Alexander knew it,
and did not dare to forbid it. The
waggons had to be abandoned.
They dug into the sand for partial
supplies of water. A miserable
stream and timely rain saved a part
of the army. Many are said to
have perished by excess of drinking
after long thirst and heat, probably
also after long fatigue and fasting.
Alexander in the worst suffer
ing displayed great;10 magnanimity,
and, like the Hebrew king David,
when water was brought to him
that did not suffice for many, poured
it out on the ground. The guides
professed to have quite lost the
tracks, and a miserable time had
still to be endured. That he, got
through safe with any considerable
part of his men, seemed to be a
miracle; and meanwhile several
satraps took great liberties, not
expecting that he would ever reappear. It cannot be pretended
that such a king either economised
his resources or acted as one who
understood the difficulties of his
own task. It- is vain to talk of
his statesmanship, when his mili
tary impetus and habit of sacri
ficing everything for the victory of
the moment uniformly carried him
away.
His cruelties to the unfortunate
and innocent Asiatics would not
deserve censure from a Greek point
of view, if they had proceeded
from any long-sighted policy. Philip
also was cruel to the Phocians
where it served his ambition. No
M Plutarch tells a story not unlike this on a different occasion.
�1875]
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
one greatly blamed Alexander for
his severity to Thebes; though all
shuddered. He sold all the Thebans
who survived his attack, men, wo
men, and children, into slavery,
divided their country among his
allies, and razed the walls to the
ground. This was intended to
strike terror into every Greek city,
and teach to all the danger of his
enmity. Beyond a doubt it was
politic, but not the act of one who
desired to exalt Greece. It was in
his uniform style of pure egotism.
But his cruelties to the unhappy
Asiatics who for the first time heard
his name are repeated to satiety.
He comes suddenly into Bactria,
where is only one strong place,
Gyrupolis. He captures five cities
in two days, and massacres as many
of the people as he can. He places
cavalry round one city to intercept
fugitives who might report his pre
sence to the next, lest the people
run away into the woods and moun
tains and be harder to catch.
Nevertheless the smoke of the burn
ing city gave warning. Tidings
also of the disaster came, and the
population took flight; but they
Were mercilessly slaughtered—un
armed and without discrimination.
In storming these hapless and ut
terly weak places Alexander gave
strict orders to kill every man, and
make slaves of the women and
children. (What the army could
possibly do with so many slaves,
and how they could be fed, here as
elsewhere is unexplained.) When
Alexander was wounded, as often
happened, the Macedonians were
made doubly ferocious. Nothing so
bloody is ever imputed by the
Greeks to Xerxes. Our historians
would never have been silent had
he committed such atrocities as
they tell of Alexander.
683
.And this may remind us of the
burning of the palace in Persepolis.
Alexander himself was afterwards
ashamed of it, and so, apparently,
was King Ptolemy, who represents
it as an act of mistaken policy.
Forsooth, Xerxes burnt Athens, and
Alexander wished to avenge the
outrage ! Had, then, the countless
multitudes 11 relentlessly slaugh
tered in pursuit, after his great
victories, been insufficient revenge
for ancient deeds ? And did Alex
ander forget that Persepolis was
now his own city, and that he was
burning his own palace ? Arrian
elsewhere, in courtier fashion, says
that Ptolemy, being a king, was
likely to tell the truth; but he
forgets that it must have been very
painful to him to tell facts dis
agreeable to his royal patron and
friend, on whose favour and suc
cesses his own fortune had been
built up. Plutarch gives another
account, which Mr. de Vere believes,
that the palace was burnt under
the initiative of the Attic courtesan
Thais in the midst of drunken
festivity ; that she was the mistress
of Ptolemy; that Alexander was
not master of himself when, with
garland on his head and lamp in
hand, he assisted and aided in the
conflagration ; finally, that the
Macedonians eagerly assisted, be- '
cause they thought it a certain proof
that Alexander did not mean to keep
Persia and live among barbarians.
This is the more probable account,
but it was morally impossible for
King Ptolemy to publish it.
One cannot read the details of
battle, and fire, and ravage of
peaceable homes, without seeing the
vast amount of suffering, of star
vation, and of ruined prosperity
entailed by this ruthless conquest
over a vast area of country. If it
_ J1 In all mere estimates of force we may justly suspect 'immense exaggeration. Ar
rian says that, after the last great hattie with Darius, as many as 300,000 corpses
oi barbarians were gathered, and a far greater number of persons were captured.
One may suspect that he wrote A, and that it has been corrupted to A. This would
reduce the number to 40,000, and agree with Q. Curtius.
3 B 2
�684
MoraZ Estimate of Alexander the Great.
had been followed by a total over
throw of old corrupting despotism,
and the introduction of nobler in
stitutions, we might say it was a
dreadful price paid for a great good;
but when Alexander carefully pre
served all the worst Persian insti
tutions, who will show us any good
at all from it ? So successfully
did he act. the part of a mere
Asiatic, born in a seraglio, that
Persian tradition, and the cele
brated Persian epic, represent him
as a younger Persian prince who
dethroned his own brother, and so
succeeded to the throne. If we
ask, Wherein did he improve Per
sia ? we get from some the reply,
‘ He diffused a knowledge of the
Greek language.’ Yet the Greek
language and Greek literature could
not save Greece itself from decay,
nor from worse and worse corrup
tion, under the despotism which
he imposed and bequeathed. He
exposed his own life recklessly,
month by month, yet never took a
single precaution for the benefit of
the empire in case of his death.
This is in perfect harmony with
the essential egotism of his charac
ter. He believed himself the most
generous of mankind, because he
gave away the fruit of other men’s
labour to his soldiers; and he fre
quently boasted that he retained
nothing for himself, when he was
claiming supreme power over all
their property, their lives, and their
honour. At the last, when they
saw he was dying, they implored
him to name his successor; but to
the question, ‘ To whom do you
leave the empire ? ’ he would give
no other answer than, 1 To the
strongest man among you.’ Here
by he entailed on Asia the new
misery of twenty years’ civil war
among his generals.
The mischief to Greece in each
new generation was worse and
worse. Freedom was almost every
where crushed. All the young men
had to unlearn patriotism, and
accept the creed that to become
[June
mercenary soldiers in Asia, or suffer
conscription under & tyrant, was a
life good enough for a Greek. Thai
genius in Greece perished with
Demosthenes is so often remarked,
that it is difficult to understand
how any scholars blind themselves
to the evidence that Alexander was
the assassin both of liberty and of
genius. Of course the evil result®
from the overthrow of law and of
all semblance of right could not
appear at once. The vast system
of standing armies undermined in
Greece industrial pursuits, cultiva
tion of the soil, and family life.
The same result, depopulation, fol
lowed in Italy from the demand of
men for the Roman legions; and
we cannot be wrong in tracing to
the same cause the marked and
steady decay of population in Greece.
As to Asia, we have no documents
to base assertion upon, but nothing
visible denotes that under Mace
donian or Parthian despots things
were better than under Persian.
While princes are born in a seraglio,
and practise polygamy from an early
age, no royal dynasty is long equal
to common men in body or mind.
To join personal despotism to poly
gamy is fatal to all enduring good
government; yet this is exactly
what Alexander did. Of durable
prosperity he laid no foundation®.
Military posts in abundance he
planned and fortified; docks for
ship-building he established on the
rivers of the Panjab; but how
could he hope to obtain allegiance
from the people ? He depended on
mere force. When his back was
turned they revolted. He might
well say, as Napoleon I. said, ‘ Ah I
I cannot be everywhere.’ When an
Indian king—Musicanus—revolted,
Alexander in revenge razed to the
ground the walls of the cities which
he had placed under Musicanus,
and reduced the people into slavery
(what he did with them as slaves
is never explained, and this makes
one hope there is exaggeration),
and where he had himself placed
�1875]
Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great.
garrisons he dismantled and de
stroyed the citadels; an impotent
mod® of securing future submission.
Musicanus, having been caught by
the Macedonian Pei th on, was sent
back by Alexander to be hanged
among his own people. It must
surely be evident that Alexander
could not always be an Achilles,
and that the Panjab was certain
to be lost to him the moment that
it ceased to fear an overwhelming
military force. The description of
the army with which he conquered
it, takes one quite by surprise,
though in his letter to Darius after
the battle of Issus he boasts that
many who in that battle were in
the king’s ranks now fight in his.
But in India the Greeks in Alex
ander’s army were so outnumbered
by Asiatics that, if the king had
died of the arrow-shot in his lungs,
they feared to be massacred by their
own auxiliaries. Were these to
garrison all India for the king ?
We cannot wonder at the entire
absence of prudence in a young
man spoiled from childhood, intoxi
cated with military success, and
bent on egotistical glory; but to
extol such conduct as ‘ instinctive
and unerring statesmanship ’ is very
delusive doctrine. ‘ If I were Alex
ander I would accept Darius’s
offers,’ said Parmenio. ‘ So would
I, if' I were Parmenio,’ replied
Alexander, insolently and foolishly ;
yet it is lauded as a right royal
sentiment. Parmenio thought it
better to accept treasure freely
granted by Darius, and use resources
accumulated in the past, than to
seize supplies by wasteful and odious
685
rapine ; better to accept three solid
countries with the whole sea-coast
fronting Greece, and take time to
consolidate the conquests and press
lightly on the conquered, than to
push farther at once and risk their
communications with home ; better
to establish peace with Darius, even
if it could not last very long, and
secure their home predominance,
than to make the quarrel with
Darius implacable and give hope to
all the Grecian enemies of Mace
donia. If Antipater had been de
feated in Greece, Alexander might
have been ruined by it in Asia; the
loss of a single battle by Alexander
himself against Darius might have
been fatal. Parmenio, it seems, is
a stupid pedant in Mr. de Vere’s
estimate. If his advice had been
taken—if the Greek dominion had
never gone beyond the Euphrates—
we cannot be sure that the history
of mankind would have been hap
pier, simply because vast contin
gencies always elude certain know
ledge. But, without rashness, we
may say,-—acquaintance with the
masterpieces of Greek literary
genius would even then have been
diffused in the East among minds
capable of appreciating them.
Whether Parthians or Babylonians
ever got much benefit from such
literature, it is truly hard to ascer
tain ; but high literary eminence
does not need war to extend the
sphere of its admiration. If any
one lay stress on such a result of
Macedonian conquest, he confesses
that it was very barren of good in
Asia; that it was deadly to Greece
is no theory, but manifest fact.
E. W. Newman.
�
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Moral estimate of Alexander the Great
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Collation: 667-685 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From Fraser's Magazine, Vol. XI, no. LXVI. Printed in double columns. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Text
Weakness
ELIGIOUS
OF
PROTESTANTISM.
BY
FRANCIS W. NEWMAN,
Emeritus Professor of University College, London; and formerly Fellow of
Balliol College, Orford.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
1866.
Price *d.,post free.
7
�It is proper to say that this tract appeared originally in a Review. No
moderate change would suffice to make the tone natural to the author
when writing in his own sole name. It has been thought better to leave
the impersonal character which it bore from the first. Nevertheless,
allusions to passing events which would now be misleading, are omitted
or altered; one passage which was changed to please the Editor, is
restored more nearly as it was at first written; and an erroneous para
graph has been corrected.
August, 1866.
E. W. N.
�THE RELIGIOUS
WEAKNESS OF PROTESTANTISM.
TT is humiliating to every Protestant to look on the
map of Europe, and see the vast surface which is
covered by Catholicism, and the numerical weakness
of its nobler adversary. In less than forty years from
its feeble origin, Protestantism made its widest
European conquests; and thenceforward began to
recede, nor ever again recovered the lost ground.
Through the whole of the eighteenth century
Protestant doctrine might have been preached with
little molestation in the greater part of Europe, yet
nowhere did it extend itself. Neither in Ireland,
where a victorious Government was long bent to
reduce Catholicism by severe and unjust law (in
which they were far less successful than Catholic kings
in their bigoted violences); nor in France, where
unbelief laid the national religion prostrate and stripped
the Church of its revenues; nor in the dominions of
the Emperor Joseph II., who resolutely put down
Eomish pretensions, while remaining in communion
with the Church; nor even in his kingdom of
�6
The Religious Weakness
Hungary, where the two religions co-existed in much
good-will; nor under the Prussian monarchy, and
elsewhere in Germany; nor in Tuscany, under the
enlightened Leopold II.;—in short, nowhere at all has
Protestantism, even while she had a fair field and lea/ve
to speak truth, been able to win anything perceptible
on the field of history from her Papal antagonist. We
submit, that this is a phenomenon too broad, too
uniform, too decidedly marked, for any reasonable
man to pass by as insignificant. And it is the more
remarkable, because side by side with this religious
weakness, Protestantism has more and more dis
played its political and social superiority. Noto
riously the Protestant cantons of Switzerland are
superior in industry, neatness, and abundance to the
Catholic cantons of the same land; while climate,
soil, and race are the same. A similar distinction has
often been observed between Catholic and Protestant
farmers in Ireland. England, the largest Protestant
State in Europe, has been the richest and perhaps the
best ordered country, certainly that which stretches
its power farthest.
Nowhere else, not even in
despotic countries, is the executive Government more
energetic through the prompt obedience and concur
rence of the citizens; nowhere else, not even in
Switzerland or the United States, do the citizens
exercise their right to criticize and to thwart the
Government with a more loyal submission of the
ruling powers; nowhere is there less desire of
violent revolution than there has been for two cen
turies together in Protestant Great Britain (for the
�of Protestantism.
7
ejecting of one Catholic king does not here concern
our argument); nowhere is there a country, which, in
proportion to its millions, is fuller of all the elements,
mental and material, which kings desire and patriots
extol. In Canada, where the two religions come into
equal competition, the superior energy of Protest
antism in everything that constitutes the grandeur
of nations is manifest. Now it is a familiar fact,
that such worldly superiority does in itself tend to
the progress (at least to the superficial extension) of
the religion in which it is found. It cannot be said
that Catholics, like Turks, are so fanatically wedded
to their creed as to be proof against all refutations;
for it is notorious that in Catholic Spain, France,
Germany, a disbelief in the national religion is very
widely spread through the higher and middle ranks
—a disbelief which sometimes pervades the ruling
powers themselves. Yet, though they may cast off
the Romish faith, they seldom or never adopt that of
Protestants.
Probably all men who are thoughtful enough to
abandon the Catholic Church, are also well informed
enough to be aware what are the true causes of the
energy, wealth, and intelligence of the Protestant
nations ; that it does not arise from the positive creed
which they still hold, but from the private liberty
which accompanies this creed or from the energetic
public administration which this liberty enforces
and maintains. In fact France, though nominally
Catholic, vies to a great degree with England
in all national developments; and the causes are
�8
The Religious Weakness
evidently either purely political, or inhere, not in
religious faith, but much rather in religious
scepticism. Out of that unbelief, which by the
great French revolution of the last century broke
down the power of the Church, has arisen much of
the vigour of modem France ; no part of it can be
reasonably ascribed to the positive creed. Evidently
then it is to the negative side of Protestantism that
Protestant nations owe their energy and freedom, so
far as the cause is ecclesiastical at all. It will further
be observed that Russia, having a creed which from
a Protestant point of view is in its essence neither
better nor worse than Romanism, and being without
the individual freedom which is to us so precious,
nevertheless is on the whole flourishing within and
powerful without, because of the energy of its central
executive; an energy which is upheld by summary
proceedings of the Royal House from within to
secure an able occupant of the throne. In short, on
the very surface of history is a broad fact, which is
perpetually overlooked by the panegyrists of ecclesias
tical Protestantism—namely, that while all Europe
was still Catholic, every State was prosperous in a
near proportion to its freedom, and the freest dis
played exactly those points of superiority of which
England or Prussia may now boast. Look to the
Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella—a nation profoundly
Catholic ; in fact, more Catholic then than now—for
unbelief had not as yet pervaded its higher ranks, as
in later days. The Parliaments of Arragon, of
Castile, of Valencia were more spirited than those
�of Protestantism.
9
of England at the same time. The municipalities
were as well ordered and as independent; the local
authorities as active and as responsible to the local
community; the public law as efficiently sustained;
the industry was as intelligent, as persevering, and as
highly rewarded by wealth: or rather, in all these
matters Spain then took the lead of England. Her
poetry and other literature was in advance of ours;
she had a celebrated school of painting, while we were
strange to such art. By the patriotism, high spirit,
intelligence, faithfulness, and mutual trust of Span
iards, Spain then stood at the head of all Europe, and
lent to her subsequent monarchs—Charles of Ghent,
and his son Philip II.—an enormous power which
their despotism first lessened and soon undermined.
Spain has undergone no change of religion. Evidently
then, it is not Catholicism which in itself has been
her bane; but the despotism which, to sustain the
Catholicism, has crushed her intelligence and forbid
den her activity. Nearly the same remarks may be
made on Bohemia.
Turning to another country,
Belgium, we see a people which—although not without
violence from its princes preserved to Catholicism in
the struggle of the Reformation—has yet on the
whole retained its local freedom with singular success
under Catholic and despotic houses ; and since 1830
has become a wholly independent State, with a free
Royal Constitution. Thus, to speak roughly, we may
say that Belgium has never lost either her freedom
or her Catholicism. And she has all along been a
highly industrious, energetic, prospering country—
�IO
¥he Religious Weakness
not indeed intellectually prominent, for this has been
prohibited by the ascendant ecclesiasticism—yet her
general state suffices to prove that the material well
being of England does not spring from that Protesttantism in which she differs from Belgium, but from
that freedom which she has in common with Belgium.
Thus we cannot claim that Catholics will impute
any of these exterior advantages, of which we
boast, to our remaining ecclesiasticism, or regard
them as an honour to the positive side of our national
creed.
Nay, nor can we impute to this cause any part of
our mental superiority to Belgium or to Sicily; and
for this plain reason, that on the one side the
ecclesiastical organs have done their worst to crush
our intellectual vigour; and on the other our Puri
tanical school has done its worst to scold it down.
For every stupid and mischievous error a hard fight
has been maintained by theologians, in proportion to
their “ orthodoxy.” Take, for instance, the super
stition concerning witches and possession by devils.
The truth of the latter is still guaranteed in the
Canons of the Church of England, which regulate
the casting out of devils by license of the bishop.
The reality of witchcraft was publicly maintained
on Scriptural evidence alike by clergymen and
by judges. Chief Baron Hale (a very religious
man) not only argued for it Scripturally from
the judgment-seat in 1665, but had two women
hanged for witches. Education and free thought
prevailed, against the positive evidence of the Bible;
�of Protestantism.
i1
in favour of which the celebrated John Wesley still
struggled.
“ It is true,” says he, “ that the English in general, and
indeed most of the men of learning in Europe, have given up
all accounts of witches and apparitions as mere old wives’
fables. I am sorry for it
The giving up of witch
craft is in effect giving up the Bible................... .... I cannot
give up to all the Deists in Great Britain the existence of
witchcraft, till I give up the credit of all history, sacred and
profane.”
His contemporary, the celebrated Dr Johnson, a
High Churchman and anxiously orthodox, was a
believer in the “ Cock-lane ghost ” of those days.
Certainly no one can think that the theory of “ the
Bible and the Bible only,” &c., has led Protestants to
resign the Witch of Endor.—Again, if there is any
one national enormity which more than all others
tends to repress mental energy, it is religious perse
cution. Of this there has been far less among the
Protestant countries—to their undoubted benefit; and
yet, certainly, we have not to thank Protestant
theology for it. The practice of Calvin was substan
tially the theory of all the orthodox reformed
Churches. If the hierarchy or Presbyterians of Eng
land and Scotland could have had their will, mental
freedom would have been crippled in Great Britain
as effectually as in France or even in Spain. The
Independents won, by the sword of Cromwell, with
political also a religious freedom before unheard of in
these lands; yet for heretics who went beyond them,
it was long before the law provided safety, much less
�12
The Religious Weakness
gave them their natural equality. In every step of
progress towards freedom, it is lamentable to say that
English “ orthodoxy ” has always been found on the
side of resistance. Not only were the Test and Cor
poration Acts sustained by the Church influence, and
were abolished in 1828 by a lay Parliament, whose
Protestantism had but few positive elements of the
Reformed Theology; but even much later, when the
Dissenters’ Chapel Act was passed—an Act which, in
its practical aim, did but hinder the Unitarian
revenues, chapels, and burying-grounds from being
taken from the hereditary possessors (often children
or grandchildren of the donors), and given up to be
scrambled for by strangers, with a certainty that the
whole must be swallowed up in lawyers’ fees;—in
that crisis, when Peel and Lyndhurst, and even Glad
stone, stood up for the Unitarians, all the “ ortho
doxy ” of England stirred itself to resist this act of
equity. It is to our laity, and to that part especially
which has little ostensible religious character, that
every successive victory over bigoted intolerance is
due. Hence it is to the negative, not to the positive
side of Protestantism, that we must ascribe our
mental energy and intelligence.
Undoubtedly, these negative elements have been of
vast national moment, by liberating the energies of
individuals; whereby knowledge has risen into
science, industry into systematic art, wealth and
skill have increased, labour has organized itself, and
an unusually large part of the nation has employed
itself on fruitful thought and invention. But in all
�of Protestantism.
13
this there has been little or nothing of properly re
ligious influence. The more Protestantism has been
developed into its own characteristic prosperity, the
more Atheistic is the aspect of public affairs. It has
not known at all better than its Romish rival how to
combine religious earnestness with tolerant justice,
and has become just only by passing into indifference
to religion. Its divines often attack Romanism by
insisting on the vast spread of unbelief within the
pale of that Church; while they are astonishingly
blind to the very same phenomenon within all the
national Protestant Churches. This is not a recent
fact, as some imagine. Indeed, since the Restoration,
it is difficult to name the time at which it may
reasonably be thought that the existing English
statesmen had any grave and practical belief in the
national religion. Montesquieu, who passed for a
free thinker in France, found that in England (near a
century and a half ago) he had far too much religion
for our great-grandfathers. Equally in the Lutheran
Churches of Germany and of Sweden, also in the Calvinistic Churches of Switzerland and elsewhere, the
same face of events has presented itself: the clergy
tend either to lose all spiritual character, or to take
refuge in Unitarianism; the laity, in proportion to
their cultivation, have been prone to entire unbelief.
Under that measure of mental freedom which the
great rebellion against Charles I. brought in, and by
aid of the growing indifference to religion in France
and elsewhere, physical science has in the last two
centuries grown up. From this, more than from
�14
"The Religious Weakness
anything else, has proceeded the political superiority
of Europe to the Turks, the Persians, the Chinese. It
has given to us safe oceanic navigation—a vast
command of the useful metals and all material of war
—the steam-engine and all its developments —with a
miscellany ever increasing of practical applications
of chemistry. Indeed, the relative strength of differrent nations, which is ill measured by any religious
test, such as Catholicism or Protestantism, and is
not accurately measured even by a political test, such
as freedom or despotism, yet (numbers being equal)
is well measured by the development of physical
science. Russia is stronger than China, though
having but a quarter of the population; yet the form
of government in China is as despotic, the people is
as obedient, and far more conveniently situated, on
the noblest rivers, in highly advantageous concentra
tion, with a better soil and climate, and a splendid
oceanic coast. Russia has but one advantage, and
that one thing is all-important: she has introduced
the physical sciences of the West, and has turned
to Imperial service the skill of our ablest minds.
Two centuries ago, before physical science had
effected anything practical, the Protestant States
had no perceptible superiority over the Catholic;
now, they have on the whole a superiority, but
it is' proportioned chiefly to the development
and application of science. Perhaps then in truth
it is more to the science of matter than to Pro
testant theology, that we ought to attribute whatever
advantages we can boast in material strength.
�of Protestantism.
15
Meanwhile, no one can overlook the portentous
fact, that this physical science—to which we owe so
much of what some would claim for the credit of
Protestantism—is intensely repugnant and destruc
tive to the theology of the Reformation, and con
stantly drives to results not only anti-Christian, but
even Atheistic. Dr Pusey and Mr Sewell are forward
to aver this. Mr Sewell declares his aversion to the
glaring light of science, and well understands its
antagonism to the belief in miracles. It is not that
many scientific men will go to the fall length of
asserting that no imaginable evidence could be strong
enough to prove a miracle; yet, certainly, that no
such evidence as is pretended by divines can ever
prove such miracles as they allege. Science teaches
us to study every question d priori, with a view to
judge how much d posteriori evidence will suffice for
its decision. If a statement is beforehand highly
probable, we need but moderate and ordinary testi
mony to create belief in it; if it be decidedly
improbable, we want first-rate and clear testimony;
if it be intensely improbable, we need testimony
direct, conclusive, and unimpeachable. Let us pass
from this principle to the two great miracles which
lie at the foundation of orthodox Christianity; we
mean, of course, the miraculous conception and the
resurrection of Jesus; and let us calmly consider how
they would be treated if they were now for the first
time heard of, and brought to the test of ordinary
scientific evidence.
It is not our fault, if the discussion of the former
�i6
The Religious Weakness
topic somewhat shock religious decorum. In heathen
ism indecent fables are not uncommon; to have to
refute such things is disagreeable. If the refutation
prove disagreeable to the votary also, all unprejudiced
bystanders will say that he must blame those who
invented the creed, not him who refutes it; and surely
the same topic applies here. We are ordered to
believe that a certain person was born without a
human father; and when we ask, on what proof, we
have handed to us, in the first instance, the book
called Matthew, in which it is alleged that Joseph, the
ostensible father of Jesus, discovered his betrothed
wife to have premature signs of maternity ; that he
was disposed to repudiate her privately, in order to
save her shame; when, lo! he had a dream; a dream !
informing him that there was no shame in the matter,
but great glory; it was a holy miracle ; the father of
her child was no human being, but was the Spirit of
God. Such is the account in Matthew.
We should fear to insult an English magistrate, by
expecting him to believe a similar story concerning
some English peasant girl, on the ground that her
betrothed lover had had a dream to that effect, which
tranquillized his mind after a painful struggle. Not
only no English magistrate, no judge, no jury, would
believe such a tale on such evidence; but no clergy
man would believe it, no bishop, no archbishop : this
we may assert with absolute freedom and certainty,
however large demands of easy faith they make on
others. The least that even an archbishop could re
quire would be, some security,—or say, some plausible
�of Protestantism.
pretence for believing—that it was not a common
dream, but a properly miraculous vision; and that
the man to whom it was vouchsafed should display
some superiority of mind, which might, if not justify
our trust in his power to discriminate between
dreams and visions, yet palliate our credulity in so
trusting him. Who then was Joseph ? Why should
we believe him so easily ?
Who indeed was Joseph ? We know nothing of
him except that this story was told of him at a later
time. Nay, we cannot even attain any moderately
good proof that he evei’ had such a dream, or pro
fessed to have had it: for it is on the face of the
narrative that he passed as father of Jesus, and that
there was no public suspicion that that was an error,
some thirty years later, at which time Joseph has
vanished out of the narrative and is supposed to
have been dead. We have then a second question:
Who is it that tells us that Joseph ever narrated such
a dream, ever professed painful suspicions, and re
ceived such a solution of them ? The reply is: We
know little or nothing about him. It is usual now to
call him Matthew; and if Matthew was really the
writer’s name, if he even wrote within fifty years after
the dream, it helps very little to prove that Joseph
was his informant, or had ever heard the tale.
It has been observed (and the remark seems
decisive) that no young woman of ordinary good
sense or right feeling could have failed to reveal
everything of this critical nature to her betrothed
from the first moment. That she should allow him
B
�i8
The Religious Weakness
to have unjust and dishonouring suspicions, and
remain silent, is quite unnatural: it is conduct of
which no plausible explanation can be given. And
now, we are expected to believe a mighty and car
dinal miracle on evidence which would not suffice
in the laxest court of law to establish an ordinary
fact.
If the possession of an estate depended on priority
of existence, and the evidence offered were, that aman called Matthew, who died last year, had left a
MS. which stated that a certain Joseph had a dream,
and that in this dream an angel of the Lord told him
that “ James was born before Joses ; ” we say, no
ecclesiastical tribunal in Europe would believe this
very credible statement on such evidence.
There are many persons so thoughtless, or se
unreasonable, as to assume that religious credulity
is safer and more pious than incredulity. As if for the
instruction of such, the Romanist steps in, to show
them by his example to what results their easy faith
leads. For centuries together Spain was eminent in
the Romish world for its devotion to the Virgin,,
to whom the Spaniards have ascribed a prerogative
which they entitle “ immaculate conception.”
Protestants in general, misled by the phrase,
suppose it to assert the same miracle concerning the
birth of Mary (whose mother is ecclesiastically known
as St Ann), as Matthew and Luke assert concerningthe birth of Jesus. The writer of these lines has
been rebuked by two Catholics for this very error;
and as they were very explicit, he supposes they were
�of Protestantism.
J9
correct. They explained, that the miracle in the case
of St Ann was, not that the Holy Spirit acted on her
womb to supersede a human father, but so combined
his influence on that organ with that of the real
father, as to hinder the introduction of “ original
sin ” by the father’s act! Within the last few years
we have seen this doctrine raised into a dogma of the
church by the Pope; and Protestants cry out, that
the dogma is very disgusting, and that it has no basis
of proof; for of St Ann nobody knows anything. We
cannot defend the doctrine from such attacks; but
we doubt whether the “ orthodox ” Protestant has
fairly earned a right to make them. His own dogma
is equally baseless, not less puerile or more edifying.
If he insists that it is pious to believe rumours or
speculations of this nature, in which the gossip of all
heathenism abounds, he does his best to throw open
the floodgates of measureless credulity and indecent
fable.
A curious story, not much known, is alluded to by
Dr Campbell, of Aberdeen, in the fourteenth of his
celebrated “ Lectures on Ecclesiastical History.” So
late as the pontificate of Clement XI., in the begin
ning of the last century, a preacher in Rome, intend
ing to honour St Ann, applied to her the title
“ Grandmother of Godwhich, being new, appeared
highly offensive, and was suppressed by the Pope;
who doubtless foresaw that, if it were permitted, we
should next hear of “ God’s grandfather, uncle, aunt,
and cousins.” “The second Council of Nice, in quoting
the Epistle of James, do not hesitate (says Dr C.) to
�20
The Religious Weakness
style the writer God’s brother (a5eX0o0eov).”
“ The sole spring of offence is in the first step,” viz.,
the calling the Virgin Mary “ Mother of God.”
For, he adds, to distinguish between “ the mother of
the mother,” and “ the grandmother,” is impossible.
As a protestant, he of course disapproves of the
received Romish phraseology; yet, clear as he
generally is, he leaves us in doubt whether he disap
proves of saying (p. 253) that the Virgin is “ the
mother of him who is God,” equally with the other
formula, that she is “the mother of God.” He has
just .informed us that under Pope Hormisdas and
some of his successors there was a fierce strife,
*
whether we ought to say, “ One of the Trinity
suffered in the flesh,” or “ One person of the Trinity
suffered in the flesh.” Unless such controversies
are to be regarded as rightful and necessary, what
are they but a red/uctio ad alsurdum of Anglican
orthodoxy ?
We pass to the second great miracle, the Resurrec
tion, to which the Ascension is a sort of complement.
Here it is possible that men of science will admit
(though we have no right to make concessions in
their name), that evidence is vmaginable adequate to
prove facts of such a nature—which are not negative
(as in the case of miraculous conception), but posi
tive. Suppose a man’s head were cut off, or his
* “There were four different opinions. One set approved of both
expressions; a second condemned both; a third maintained the former
expression to be orthodox, the latter heterodox; and a fourth affirmed
the reverse. In this squabble, emperors, popes, and patriarchs engaged
with great fury.”—Dr Campbell.
�of Protestantism.
21
body burned to ashes; after either of these events,
duly testified, no man of science could be incredulous
of the real death. Again, suppose that after such
death testimony were offered that the same person
was still alive. Inasmuch as only from information
and experience do we hitherto disbelieve that a man
once dead ever resumes animal life in the same form,
it would seem that an amount of first-rate testimony
is imaginable^ which might force us to modify the uni
versality of this doctrine: nevertheless, the evidence
needs to be very cogent. We must have decisive
proof of the death, and decisive proof of the renewed
animal life: a failure on either side would make the
whole vain. If, for instance, a person fainted and
seemed to die from exhaustion or loss of blood, and,
after this, came overwhelming evidence that he was
still alive ; it would not have the slightest tendency
to prove that he was risen from the dead, but only
that the death had not been real. Now the very
peculiar phenomenon in the Biblical narrative of the
Resurrection is, that of the two propositions, both of
which are equally essential, it is hard to say which of
the two is less satisfactorily sustained : so that those
who find it every way impossible to believe the
miracle, are at the same time left uncertain whether
or not the alleged death was reaL Crucifixion was
notoriously the most tedious of deaths, and was for
this very reason selected by the Carthaginians and
Romans as a mode of long torment and ignominy.
The loss of blood endured by it is so trifling, that the
�no
The Religious Weakness
victim dies only by exhaustion and thirst, or by the
sufferings of muscular spasm. From the article
“ Cross,” in the ‘ Penny Cyclopaedia,’ we extract the
following:—
“ As death (from crucifixion) in many cases did not ensue
for a length of time, guards were placed to prevent the relatives
or friends of the crucified from giving them any relief, or
taking them away whilst alive, or removing their bodies after they
were dead. .... Even when it (crucifixion) took place
by nailing, neither the wounds themselves nor the quantity of
blood lost would be sufficient in all cases to bring on speedy
death. During the reign of Louis XV. several women (relig
ious enthusiasts, called Convulsionaires) voluntarily underwent
crucifixion. Dr Merand .... relates that he was pre
sent at the crucifixion of two females, named Sister Rachel
and Sister Felicite. They were laid down, fixed by nails five
inches long driven firmly through both hands and feet into the
wood of which the crosses were made. The crosses were then
raised to a vertical position. In this manner they remained
nailed, while other ceremonies of these fanatics proceeded.
Sister Rachel, who had been first crucified, was then taken
down; she lost very little blood. Sister Felicite was after
wards taken from her cross. Three small basons, called
palettes, full of blood, flowed from her hands and feet. Their
wounds were then dressed, and the meeting was terminated.
Sister Felicite declared that it was the twenty-first time she had
undergone crucifixion."
The death being ordinarily so slow, it is of great
importance to know how long Jesus hung on the cross :
and here the narrators are at variance. Mark says
distinctly (xv. 25—34) that Jesus was crucified at the
third hour, and died at the ninth hour. John as
distinctly tells us that he was not yet crucified at the
�of Protestantism.
23
*
sixth hour (xix. 14). “ It was about the sixth hour,
and Pilate saith unto the Jews, Behold your King.
And they cried out, Away with him, crucify him. . . .
Then delivered he unto them to be crucified. And
they took Jesus, and led him away. And he bearing
his cross, went forth into a ptace called ” ...
<fec. &c.
Thus, after Pilate’s command, was the
farther process of carrying the cross out from Pilate’s
judgment-seat to Golgotha; which, for anything that
appears to the contrary, may have delayed the actual
crucifixion for another hour. In short, accepting the
narratives, there is nothing in them to show that
Jesus was longer than tu)o\ hours actually on the
cross. It is further manifest in them all, that Pilate
most unwillingly consented to his execution, and was
•driven to it only by fear. He distinctly declares him
to be innocent, and tries to save him. In Matthew
he takes water, and symbolically washes his hands in
* To save the Biblical infallibility, some divines hold that John
had a different way of counting the hours from the other Evangelists.
The learned Dr Bloomfield, in his ‘ Commentary to the Greek
Testament,’ thinks such a theory too rash. He says (on Mark xv. 25),
“Although such discrepancies [as this between Mark and John] are (as
Eritz observes) ‘rather to be patiently borne, than removed by rash
measures,’ yet here we are, I conceive, not reduced to any great necessity.
For although the mode of reconciling the two accounts by a sort of
management [Italics in Dr B.], however it may be approved by many
commentators, is not to be commended, yet . . .” in short, it is best
to believe the text in John corrupt, and to alter sixth to third. Of
course this is possible; but so is the opposite; and no one can rest a
miracle on a voluntary correction of a text.
t Strauss has discussed this whole subject carefully: ‘ Life of Jesus,’
Part in. ch. iv. § 134. [First Work, 1st edition.] He thinks the addi
tions in John to be mythical inventiohs; but we here decline to discuss
such possibilities, and (concessively) abide by the statements as
given us.
�24
The Religious Weakness
sight of the multitude, saying, “ I am innocent of the
blood of this just person : see ye to it.” A governor,
who, after so humiliating a struggle, yields an inno
cent man to public death, is not unlikely to compro
mise with his conscience by giving secret orders to
the executioners not to kill him, but to put him on to
the cross for a short time, and give up his body, as if
dead, to his friends, as soon as he appeared to faint.
What might thus seem beforehand probable, is unex
pectedly confirmed by John’s information (xx. 32,
33) that the soldiers, knowing that the time was in
sufficient to kill, broke the legs of the other two who
were crucified with Jesus (not a very effectual way of
hastening death, but at least a security against their
*
resuming the trade of robbers); while they did not
break the legs of Jesus. John adds, that they re
frained because they saw him to be dead; which
appears to be a mere surmise; the real reason may
have been that they had secret orders from Pilate to
spare Jesus.
Curiously enough, John proceeds
unawares to state what distinctly suggests, that Jesus
was not dead when they began to take him down
from the cross; for he adds, that a soldier “ pierced
his side with a spear, and forthwith came out blood
and water: and he that saw it (whoever this
was) bare record, and his record is true,”
&c.
Some of the Fathers, as Strauss observes,
strongly felt how opposed this is to common expe* Strauss observes that the breaking of legs nowhere else occurs in
connexion with crucifixion among the Romans. He thinks that the
fractures would be sure to mortify, and thus cause death.
�of Protestantism.
25
Hence of death. Says Origen : “ In all other dead
bodies the blood coagulates, and no pure water flows
from them; but the marvel of the dead body in the
case of Jesus is, blood and water poured from his side
even after death.” So Euthymius: “ For out of a
dead human being, though you should stab him ten
thousand times, no blood will come. This pheno
menon is supernatural, and clearly proves that he
who was stabbed is higher than man.” We are too
aware of the delicacy of such physiological questions,
to speak so confidently ourselves. It suffices to say,
that the flow of blood is most easily and naturally
accounted for by supposing the circulation still to
be active. Indeed, even swooning makes it hard to
get blood out of a man. If he falls in battle from a
sabre-cut and faints, the heart ceasing its normal
action, the blood flows too feebly in the arteries to
issue from the wound, which presently coagulates:
and when death is complete, the stagnation must
ordinarily be still greater. It is of course possible,
that though crucifixion had not caused death, this
spear-wound proved fatal; but the alternative is
equally possible—that as he was still alive, neither
did this new wound kill him. The narrative decides
nothing either way. We however do learn from it
that Pilate desired to save him, gave him up with a
bad conscience, and subjected him to the shortest time
of crucifixion which would obviate quarrel with the
Jewish rulers; that Pilate’s executioners favoured
Jesus in comparison with the two robbers by not
breaking his legs; allowed a humane person, when
�i6
^he Religious Weakness
Jesus complained of the thirst accompanying that
miserable torment, to moisten his lips with vinegar,
which, diluted with water, was a well-known beverage
of the Roman soldiers, and is a great relief to a
fevered mouth; farther, Pilate’s officers took him
down from the cross, and prepared to deliver him to
his friends, while there were symptoms which strongly
indicate life, and after an interval so short, that (as
Mark asserts) Pilate “ marvelled if he were already
dead.” With so very imperfect a proof of death, it
is manifest that all pains in the second part of the
story to prove a Resurrection are wasted; the more
so, since, according to the accounts, neither was he
buried in such a way as could have tended to suffoca
tion. His body was given over to the friendly hand
of Joseph of Arimathaea, who laid him “ in his own
new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock that
is to say, in a rocky vault, where a wounded man
might receive surgical treatment and cordials.
The evidence offered in proof that Jesus after his
buii al was seen alive, has been many times ably dis
cussed. English readers who desire to see what can
be said against it, may consult Charles Hennell’s
1 Inquiry on the Origin of Christianity,’ Strauss’s
‘ Life of Jesus,’ or W. R. Greg’s ‘ Creed of Christen
dom.’ From the last-named, we extract the followings
p. 216
“ A marked and most significant peculiarity in these ac
counts, which has not received the attention it deserves, is,
*
* Hennell touches the topic in a short but decisive paragraph, p. 239,
second' edition.
�of Protestantism.
that scarcely any of those who are said to have seen Jesus
after his resurrection recognised him, though long and intimately
acquainted with his person. . . . (Mark xvi. 12.) ‘After
that, he appeared in another form, to two of them.’ Now, if it
really were Jesus who appeared to these various parties, would
this want of recognition have been possible ? If it was Jesus,
he was so changed that his most intimate friends did not
know him. How then can we know that it was himself ? ”
The defence put in by our divines does nothing but
show the shifting and untangible nature of their argu
ment. They say, that the risen Jesus had a glorified
body which could pass through shut doors, and of
course was sufficiently different from his former body
to embarrass recognition. We began by avowing
that human testimony was imaginable that might
prove the restoration of a dead man to life. But we
must modify the avowal, by adding, that no common
testimony could ever prove the sort of resurrection
here tendered to us : for if the risen body is not a
body of flesh and blood, but “ glorified ” and ethereal,
and so unlike the former body of Jesus that his friends
identify him only by the symbolical action of breaking
bread, as the two disciples at Emmaus (Luke xxiv.),
their testimony is unavailing. To what do they
affect to bear witness ? They do not lay before us the
impressions on their sight or hearing, but merely the
inferences of their mind, that the person who broke
bread in a certain way must have been Jesus, though he
looked v&ry unlike him.' And this leads naturally to the
important point, which Mr Hennell has so well made
prominent:—
“ It seems probable (says he, p. 204, second edition) that the
�28
The Religious Weakness
original belief among the Apostles was merely that Christ had
been raised from the dead in an invisible or spiritual manner : for
where we can arrive at Peter’s own words, viz., in his ‘ Epistle,’
he speaks of Christ as being put to death in the flesh, but made
alive in the spirit (1 Pet. iii. 18)—OavarwGels p.tv traps! ^woiroi^dels
Se nveipari. That the last phrase signifies a mode of opera
tion invisible to human eyes, appears from the following
clause, which describes Jesus as preaching, also in the spirit
(eV <£), to the spirits in prison. But some of the disciples soon
added to this idea of an invisible or spiritual resurrection, that
Jesus had appeared to many in a bodily form................... ”
Men who have seen and heard another man, have
a certain power of identifying him when they see and
hear him again; and when by eye or ear they do
identify him, we call their declaration concerning it
testimony or witness, and assign a certain weight to it.
But if they declare that they do not identify him by
eye or ear, but only by the inferences of their mind,
it is an abuse of language to call this testimony. If
the glorified spirit of a deceased friend were to appear
to one of us—whether in ecstatic vision or in what
seemed to be our waking senses—we could not claim
that other men should accept as “ testimony ” our
statement that it was he : for though they have expe
rience of the trustworthiness of sense to recognize
and identify ordinary bodies in their ordinary states,
they know nothing of the trustworthiness of sense
when it pretends to identify a form now ethereal and
glorified with what was once a human body. And as
it is not only in Peter’s epistle and in Paul’s vision
(as, indeed, in Paul’s doctrine of the “ resurrection
body”), that this idea of a merely spiritual resur
rection of Jesus is suggested, but the same occurs in
�of Protestantism.
<19
all the Gospels—partly in the difficulty of recognizing
Jesus, partly in his vanishing out of their sight or
suddenly coming through walls and doors—the whole
is removed beyond the sphere of testimony, even if
the declarations were consistent and distinct, and were
laid before us on the authority of the original eye
witnesses.
Thus those two cardinal events which Protestantism
undertakes to prove and recognizes as its basis,—when
their alleged Scriptural evidence is examined fail of
satisfying the demands of ordinary scientific reason
ing ; after which we need not wonder that Protes
tantism cannot win intelligent converts. For it does
not, like Catholicism, tell people that they must not
reason at all concerning religion. On the contrary,
it excites their reasoning powers — bids them to
examine—professes to give proof—lays before them
the Scripture as decisive—talks high of private judg
ment—and yet gives no evidence which can bear the
tests of ordinary historical and scientific inquiry.
When hereto it adds unseemly threats, denouncing
Divine judgment on all whose intellect rises against
its imbecility, none can wonder that the freer-thinking
Catholics say they may as well remain under the old
Church as go into another which, while it affects to
appeal to reason, is as essentially unreasonable as the
old one. “ My child,” said a Catholic bishop to a
Protestant in his neighbourhood, “ did I rightly hear
that you called the sacred doctrine of Transubstantiation irrational ? Oh, folly! If, in order to receive
the doctrine of the Trinity, you have crucified vain
�30
The Religious Weakness
reason, what avails to build again, that which you
have destroyed, by setting reason to carp at another
doctrine which is too hard for it ?”
Besides the miracles which inhere in the person of
Jesus, there are two great classes of miracles wrought
by him, and by or in his disciples, which may deserve
a few words here. First we have the casting-out of
devils—a miracle very prevalent in the three first
Gospels, though unknown to the fourth. No educated
physician, Catholic or Protestant, can well listen with
gravity to a truly orthodox discourse on this subject.
Indeed, many well-informed divines are ashamed of it,
and declare that popular ignorance mistook epilepsy,
catalepsy, madness, and other diseases, for a possession
by evil spirits. They are aware that the superstition
was learned by the Jews in Babylon, and still exists
in very ignorant countries ; and they tell us that the
Evangelists accommodated their dialect to that of the
ignorant,but made no substantial error. Hence, accord
ing to them, as we accept the phrase, that “ the sun
rises,” even if astronomically questionable; so must
we tacitly interpret the “ possession by a devil ” into
epilepsy, or some other disease. But such divines are
rather well-informed than candid; for they cannot
but be aware that it is impossible to get rid of the
“ devils ” by interpretation. Divines more candid,
but sometimes worse-informed, have far more cogently
argued, that the discerning of Jesus, as Son of God,
which is attributed to demoniacs—and still more
decisively, the passing of a legion of devils from a
man into a herd of swine—demonstrate the narrators
�of Protestantism.
to have had a definite belief in the supernatural know
ledge, power, and personality of the “ devils ” who
dwelt in the demoniacs. Thus our Protestant theo
logians, episcopal critics and historians, reverend
mathematicians, astronomers, geologists—men cer
tainly who know what proof is—solemnly read out in
church, for public edification, stories about devils,
which it is hard to believe they do not know to be
Babylonish frippery; and while thus glorifying
fictitious follies, wonder that many who disdain
hypocrisy rush headlong into the belief that most
religious men are hypocrites.
The second class of miracles is the speaking with
tongues, which so abounds in the book of the “ Acts
of the Apostles,” and on which there is ample discus
sion in “ Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians.”
We should in vain try here to abridge Mr Greg’s able
summary of the phenomenon, in pp. 169—178 of the
“ Creed of Christendom.” It is clear, both from the
details given by Paul, and from many other conside
rations, that these “ tongues ” were not real foreign
languages, but were gibberish, such as used to be
heard in the late Mi’ Edward Irving’s congregation
—a gibberish which Paul felt to be “ most probably
nonsensical, unworthy, and grotesque ” (Greg.)—
which he desired to repress, yet did not dare to
forbid.
“ We are driven to the painful but unavoidable conclusion,
that those mysterious and unintelligible utterances, which the
Apostles and the early Christians looked upon as the effects of
the Holy Spirit, the manifestation of its presence, the signs of
its operation, the especial indication and criterion of its having
�32
’The Religious Weakness
fallen upon any one, were in fact simply the physiologically
natural results of morbid and perilous cerebral exaltation,
induced by strong religious excitement acting on uncultivated
and susceptible minds ; results which in all ages and nations
have followed in similar circumstances and from similar
stimuli; and that these signs to which Peter appealed, and to
which the other brethren succumbed, as proving that God
intended the Gospel to be preached to Gentiles as well as to
Jews, showed only that Gentiles were susceptible to the same
excitements, and manifested that susceptibility in the same
manner as the Jews.”—Greg, p. 178.
There are other doctrines, common to the creed of
all the national Churches, which, though too cardinal
to omit, are too vast to discuss here in detail. We
allude especially to the Trinity, the Incarnation, and
the Atonement. These are rejected from Christianity
by the followers of Dr Priestley, who can fight
powerfully against the “ orthodox,” when they go
the full length of avowing that the Epistles of Paul
were of no authority in the Church at large for two
centuries, and that the fourth Gospel is full of pro
fanities, which would have shocked the earliest
Christians. But nothing can be so opposed to the
creed of European Christendom as this avowal; and
without disrespect to some great Unitarian writers,
when we speak of Christianity or Protestantism, we
do not and cannot mean their scheme of thought and
religion. The accomplished and variously-gifted
scholars who hold places as bishops or deans among
us, will justify us in treating these difficult doctrines,
with the resurrection and the miraculous conception,
as essential to Protestant Christianity. But since
they are aware that the laws of evidence are coeval
�of Protestantism,
33
with the human mind, and that the evidence strictly
and rightfully needed to establish a marvel now was
always strictly and rightfully needed, even before
men’s minds had ripened to discern it; we may fairly
propose to one of these learned persons, in the calm
retirement of his library, to put down on paper the
kind of evidence which, if tendered, would satisfy his
mind that the holiest and noblest man now living is
the Eternal (or an Eternal) Divine Being, Creator of
this world and of all worlds, future Judge of mankind,
who will give eternal life to some, and award con
demnation to others—a Being towards whom we may
exercise absolute trust and hope, and supreme adora
tion. If he seriously undertake the task we suggest,
we should not be greatly surprised if his meditation
threw unexpected light on Edward Irving’s apoph
thegm, “ Intellectual evidence is the egg of infidelity
or if it even reconciled him to the distinguished Mr
ICeble’s advice to his friend Arnold, as homely good
sense, to “ put down ” his doubts concerning the
Trinity “ by main force,” and take a curacy to get
rid of them.
At the same time, nearly the same problem as the
above rests on Unitarian Christians, whether their
philosophy grovel or aspire; who after giving active
aid to demolish the gorgeous fabric of magical ecclesiasm, now struggle to sustain its central shining
minaret—the unapproachable, absolute, moral per
fection of him, whom they elaborately maintain to be
merely human, and limited by human conditions.
But we will vary our demand. Suppose the East
�34
The Religious Weakness
and West so far to change places, that missionaries of
Buddhism come to England to convert us to their
religion. Let them proclaim, that Buddha—whom,
by reason of his virtue, his followers unwisely have
worshipped as God—was truly divine in goodness,
the incarnate image of absolute divine purity: that,
as such, his Person enters into the substance and obliga
tions of human religion; on which account they call
upon us to listen, while they preach his life, person,
and pre-eminence; and, moreover, thoughtfully to
study the ancient books which record his sanctity.
This hypothesis is, in fact, so closely akin to the real
Buddhism, that it might on any day become a case
of reality. Now, we ask of Unitarian Christians on
what primd facie evidence should we be bound to
explore the Oriental books, and listen with religious
hope to the argument, that Buddha is the Head of
mankind, and unique type of perfection ? To reply
that we have found such a Head already, and do not
want another, may be practically good, but is scien
tifically weak; for it avails equally to them, and
would justify them in exploding the perfect Christ,
because they already believe in a perfect Buddha.
Is the intrinsic unplausibility of a doctrine never a
reason for exploding it, without sacrifice of valuable
time and research ?—or can any folly concerning an
Apollo, who is physically a God and morally a liber
tine, be more unplausible than the Unitarian notion,
that Jesus was mentally a dwarf and morally a God ?
The present condition of theological “philosophy ”
among us (if the phrase be allowable) indicates that
�of Protestantism,
35
the old school is dying out. From fifty to thirty
years ago the doctrines of Paley (as regards Christian
“ Evidences ”) were dominant in both Universities,
and were acknowledged by High and Low Church
alike. At Oxford they were especially upheld by
such men as Copleston, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff;
•Shuttleworth, afterwards Bishop of Chichester;
"Whately, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin; Lloyd,
Regius Professor of Divinity, and a little while Bishop
<of Oxford; Vowler Short, now Bishop of St Asaph ;
Longley, now Archbishop of Canterbury; besides
•others who never emerged from the University.
They were able men, some remarkably able ; they
had the field to themselves, yet they could not keep
it. They sincerely believed that by invoking “ his
torical testimony ” they could recommend to the
assent of every unprejudiced and intelligent mind
such doctrines as we have denoted ; yet, against their
learning, experience, and high authority, two young
men in Oxford commenced an unexpected reaction—
Pusey, Professor of Hebrew, and J. H. Newman,
whose sole distinction then consisted in being a
Fellow of a most distinguished College; both of
whom had evidently become aware that Protestantism
•could not possibly stand on its old basis. To prove
by historical and learned evidence the postulate of
the Evangelicals, that the Bible from end to end is
infallible, they saw to be at once a hopeless and an
absurd undertaking. To lay logic as the foundation,
and make the doctrine of the Trinity the super
structure, they more than hinted, was very dangerous ;
�36
'The Religious Weakness
indeed, some of the “ Tracts for the Times ” almost
avow that no Protestant can prove the doctrine even
from the Scripture. Dr Newman (led on, we sup
pose, by polemical instincts) struck upon the method
of assailing with logic all who appeal to reason
(that is, common Protestants and liberals), while
assuming that the true faith (his own), being founded
on something higher than reason, is not bound to
justify itself to reason. This gave to his school a
delightful licence of attacking other people’s want of
logic, while reserving to itself the privilege of being
illogical at pleasure. Oxford still boasted of able
men, though some of those whom we have named
were withdrawn. The new “ Puseyism” soon reached
the ears of the outer world, and interested all England.
Baden Powell—and shall we say Hampden?—opposed
it from within; Whatelv, and Arnold, and Julius Hare,
and a host of Evangelicals, from without. At Cam
bridge, at least one man of vast and various powers,
keen ambition, deep and original thought—Whewell,
Master of Trinity College—would have started a
rival philosophy of the Christian religion, if he had
been able. In morals, Sedgwick and Whewell have
repudiated Paley; but we have never understood
that in regard to “ Christian Evidences ” they under
take to supersede him. Like the deep-souled Julius
Hare, and the sprightly, eager Arnold, they proved
unable to check the movement of Newman and
Pusey, whose attacks on the vulgar Protestantism
were very unshrinking. The Tractarians were,
no doubt, in a false position. They overthrew
�of Protestantism.
37
their allies from within, and were debarred from
attacking their great enemy without; for Romanism,
precisely on their ground, claims exemption from the
task of reconciling its dogmas with reason : moreover,
their doctrine of “ Apostolic succession ” presumes that
a Roman bishop, however wicked, has a power of
bestowing the Holy Spirit. In the result, Dr New
man discovered and repented of the sin of assailing
Rome. He has, nevertheless, done an effectual work
in England, practically showing in what those must
end who assume “ High Church ” axioms, and reason
from them with consistent logic. Simultaneously,
our knowledge of German theology has continually
been on the advance. Dr Pusey indeed himself, in
his ardent youth, was the first person to expound at
Oxford the deep Biblical learning and warm piety of
German theologians, who had in some points un
happily been carried too far, but who ought never
theless to be esteemed and honoured, and wisely
used. But he appears in a very few years to have
discerned that the free study of the Bible in the nine teenth century would never end in the theology of the
sixteenth, and by the discovery to have been forced
into a totally new career. Meanwhile, it has become
notorious that the arguments of Gardner and Paley
break down on the literary and historical side, in the
presence of the more accurate scholarship of the Ger
mans, to say nothing of a higher philosophy; so that
our academicians, if they endeavour to discuss “ evi
dences ” in Protestant fashion, dread to be precipi
tated into German neology; while, if they deprecate
�38
The Religious Weakness
private judgment and appeal to the Church, they are
fighting the battle of Rome. In such an entanglement
men of backward and stagnant minds may write and
speak as if nothing new had been added to our
knowledge of antiquity in the last fifty years; but
leading talents will no longer give their energies to
develop and maintain either theory of Anglicanism—
of the Low, or of the High Church.
The school of Paley has now, for perhaps the last
twenty years, its most prominent representative in
Mr Henry Rogers, whose grave Edinburgh articles
have been succeeded by elaborate effusions, called
coarseness and ribaldry by some critics, sacred mirth
by others. Most of our readers have probably read
his conception of an Irish Adam talking brogue to
the Creator against the Ten Commandments ; and
will add epithets at their own discretion to MrRogers’s name. We believe that he writes from the
outside of the Established Church. Within, Oxford
and Cambridge are waiting for a religious philosophy.
That of Professor Jowett may be very noble and very
true ; but it is so different from the hereditary Pro
testant doctrines, that the Oxonians cannot be blamed
for looking askance and timidly at it.
They are in general paralyzed, from an uneasy
foreboding of the dangers contingent on a close
reconsideration of first principles.
Precisely because theologians will not reconsider
first principles, but, with infinite disputes about their
superstructure, are careless about their foundation,
therefore it is that science tends to become Atheistic,
�of Protestantism.
39
alike in Protestant as in Catholic countries. The
blame of this may be justly laid upon the doctrine
which elaborately seeks for marks of God in every
thing unusual and exceptional, and denies His pre
sence in all that is ordinary and established. We are
aware that there are enlightened Protestant divines,
who disapprove this position; eminently the Rev.
Baden Powell, who, in the first of his “ Three Essays
on the Unity of Worlds,” speaks as follows:—
“ According to this mode of representation [by religious
writers] ‘ nature ’ was the rule, ‘ Deity ’ the exception. The
belief in nature was the doctrine of reason and knowledge;
the acknowledgment of a God was only the confession of
ignorance. So long as we could trace physical laws, nature
was our only and legitimate guide; when we could attain
nothing better, we were to rest satisfied with a God. Even learned
writers on natural theology have thought it pious to argue in
this way.”—p. 162, Second Edition. [Italics as in Mr Powell.]
Mr Powell’s protest is right and wise; but, with
deference to him, we add, it cannot be effectual unless
he pull down the whole Protestant theory, of which
the avowed foundation is the miraculous—the excep
tional. It commands us, not to look within our hearts,
or into human history, for the Divine, but into one
miraculous book and one miraculous history. It
virtually shuts God out" from inspiring us now,
by the stress which it lays on the special inspi
ration once granted by Him to a few. It lays
down that the Jewish history is sacred, and other
histories profane; and treats even the history of
the Christian Church as too secular for the pulpit,
from the day that the canon of Scripture was closed.
�40
The Religious Weakness
It represents that God is certainly present wherever
there is miracle, but that where miracle is not, no
one can be sure of the presence of God. Nothing
else is meant or can be meant by the infallible and
authoritative Bible, than to desecrate, in comparison
to it, all the ordinary modes of learning truth, and
duty, and right. In proportion to the power and
activity of this theory concerning miracles and the
Bible, will be the intensity with which a man
embraces the exceptionable and obscure phenomena
of the world as the great manifestation of Deiiy.
Undoubtedly Mr Powell rightly regards this to tend
to Atheism, for every step onward of knowledge is
then a lessening and weakening of the Theist’s
resources. But we submit to him that we are right
in insisting, that a theory which places the strength
of religion in the miraculous is naturally of Atheistic
tendency. It entraps into Atheism those students of
science, who, having no religious philosophy of their
own, borrow its fundamental principles from the
Church. In fact, those writers on “ Evidences,” who
now seem to have the field to themselves, make no
secret of their conviction that Atheism is the neces
sary logical result of an appeal to Science, the
Universe, and Man. On the one side, we see a great
ecclesiast, the Rev. Dr Irons, frankly declare that,
without the authoritative and supernatural revelation
by miracle, Nature preaches to us nothing concern
ing God. On the other, a would-be philosopher and
liberal Christian, Mr Rogers, in his “ Eclipse of
�of Protestantism.
4i
Faith,” announces that the Atheist has the argument
entirely in his own hands, as against the Deist, and
that without the Bible the only God preached by
Nature is an immoral or malignant Being. The
learned and highly popular author of a work called
“ The Restoration of Belief” goes so far as to insist,
that one who does not acknowledge the supernatural
authority of “ The Book,” not only ought to be an
Atheist, but has no right to talk of “ Conscience,
Truth, Righteousness, and Sin; ” and that sacrifices
for Truth are in such a one “not constancy, but
opinionativeness.” How can Christians avoid shud
dering at such avowals from their own advocates ?
which, if true, utterly destroy Christianity with
Theism, and prepare to plunge mankind into a state
of universal profligate recklessness.
That the Protestant theory has no future, is indi
cated by many marks. We have seen Arnold and
Julius Hare (good, noble, able men, of peculiar
acquirements) live and die without being able to
make themselves understood; a pretty clear proof that
the age has no susceptibility for their doctrine. The
same is true of the Rev. Frederick Maurice, and of the
Chevalier Bunsen. Mr Maurice is a man of acknow
ledged goodness and largeness of heart; as Professor
or Preacher, untiring in industry; devoted to raise
the working classes; so copious a writer on theology
that he will probably outdo Archbishop Whately in
amount; and he has evidently undertaken as the
work of his life to sublimate Church orthodoxy into
�42
’The Religious Weakness
a transcendental philosophy. Yet, in spite of the
high commendation bestowed upon his talents and
discrimination by a few, to the public at large he
seems to be only subtle, flimsy, and evasive. He may
be wise, but the age cannot understand him. “ What
does he mean ? ” is the cry which escapes from the
perplexed novices who would fain admire him. Not
dissimilar is the case with the accomplished Bunsen,
who invests in gorgeous colours and vast pomp of
intricate words a system of religious historicism, in
which the common intellect can discover no solidity,
no fixed shape, no firm and certain meaning. And as
the new quasi-Coleridgian school proves feeble to us
and dim, so neither does the old nursery rear any
thriving plants. No young Whatelys show them
selves. Nobody of high reputation now writes trea
tises on the Trinity. Whately did but bring on him
self a strong and dangerous imputation of “ Sabellianism,” by the remarks in his Logic on the word
“Person
Hampden half ruined himself by being
too learned on the same subject. Men of the Evan
gelical school, who have no philosophic reputation to
lose, may publish sermons on the Atonement; but a
systematic treatise on this involves much risk to a
man of note. Schleiermacher’s “ Discourse on St
Luke” was translated about twenty years ago (as
was believed) by Dr now Bishop Thirlwall: we have
never heard that it has been answered by any one.
Many have claimed, that the Bishop will answer it
himself, since he now disavows it. Nor does any
�of Protestantism.
43
leading divine undertake to refute the works of
Charles Hennell or W. R. Greg. When the wise
men hold their peace under such attacks, it must be
thought that they are but too conscious of the weak
ness of their own cause.
In consequence of the freedom which in Protestant
countries many sects attain, we see from time to time
the doctrine of personal inspiration (perhaps with
some fanaticism) assert itself strongly against the
ecclesiastical, which makes inspiration an exceptional
thing of the past. Thus Whitfield, and thus Hunt
ington the coalheaver, thus also Edward Irving, were
distinguished. Speculators have marked out as revi
vals such periodical recurrences of a simpler and
nobler theology, but have lamented that the fresh
ness of religious enthusiasm always decays in the
second generation. Some even have elicited from
this a “ law ” of nature: that the stage of languor
follows that of excitement; or that the era of com
mentators follows . that of men of genius. The
existence of this “ law ” may seem plausible from the
side of total unbelief; but it is difficult to understand
what intelligent theory of the phenomenon can
rightly recommend itself to a devout Evangelical or
to any earnest Protestant. The phenomenon is not
confined to our sects, nor to the ignorant and excite
able. Neither in Geneva, nor in Scotland, nor in
England, nor in Protestant Germany, could a second
and third generation sustain the religious warmth of
the first; nor indeed is it denied by Romanists that
�44
The Religious Weakness
learning is the fertile mother of heresy. Assuredly,
if religion be a deep and noble principle, rightful and
reasonable to man, then a particular form of religion
must be involved in some very essential falsehood, if
its vigour and vitality are uniformly undermined by
accessions to its knowledge, or by the tranquil
advance of experience. A true religion can but strike
its roots deeper with cultivation of mind and increase
of wisdom. That must be a fundamental fanaticism
which thrives only upon action and excitement, and
wastes by calm examination and learning. Alike in
Catholic and in Protestant countries, the world has
still to wait for a religion which shall grow stronger
and stronger with every development of sound scien
tific acquirement.
Nor perhaps is this the worst: for we must add
Europe has yet to wait for a religion which shall
exert any good influence over public measures. A
distinguished foreigner, in his own consciousness a
true Christian—whose name we could not properly
here bring forward—on a recent day said, in a select
circle : “ I begin to doubt whether Christianity has a
future in the world.” “ Why so ? ” asked one pre
sent, in surprise at such an augury from such a
quarter. “ Because,” he replied, ■ neither in India,
nor in America, nor anywhere at all in Europe, does
any of the governments called ‘ Christian ”—I do
not say, do what is right, but—even affect and pre
tend to take the Right as the law of action. What
ever it was once, Christianity is now in all the great
�of Protestantism.
45
concerns of nations a mere ecclesiasticism, powerful
for mischief, but helpless and useless for good.
Therefore I begin to doubt whether it has a future ;
for if it cannot become anything better than it is, it
has no right to a future in God’s world.”
C. IT. BEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENET ST., HAYMARKET.
�
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The religious weakness of Protestantism
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LECTURE
ON
VEGETARIANISM.
BY EMERITUS PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
[Delivered at Gloucester, December 2, 1870; J/r. Price, M.P., in the Chair,
and reprinted from the Dietetic Reformer, January, 1871.]
LONDON:
F. PITMAN, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1871.
Price One Penny, or Five Shillings per Hundred.
�THE VEGETARIAN SOCIETY.
ESTABLISHED A.D. 1847.
$rmtant.
J. Haughton, Esq., J.P., Dublin.
i
Vice^wsi&ents.
i
W. G. Ward, Esq., Ross.
Professor Newman.
i
SrrasuiTf.
John Davie, Esq., Dunfermline.
P^onoratg Sewtsm.
Mr. T. H. Barker, Manchester; Rev. James Clark, 126, Cross Lane, Salford.
g>ecrctarg.
Mr. R. Bailey Walker, 13, Cathedral Close, Manchester.
SLocal specretanes,
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London.................
Leeds....................
Glasgow................
Colchester ..........
Dunfermline ......
Hull .............. .
Perth....................
Bury.......................
Plymouth.............
Dublin...................
Bradford.............
Cardiff.................
Mr. G. Dornbusch, 11, Grove-street Road, South Hackney, N.E.
Mr. John Andrew, 14, Bishopgate-street.
Mr. J. Smith.
Mr. John Beach, Military Road.
Mr. J. Clark.
Mr. T. D. Hardgrove, 1, Rutland Place.
Mr. Henry MTntosh, 36, South Methven-street.
Mr. William Hoyle, Tottington.
Mr. E. H. Poster, Homoeopathic Chemist.
Mr. J. A. Mowatt.
Miss M. A. Kellett, Paradise Green, Great Horton.
Mr. J. K. Collett.
^Foreign CTonrsponlRng SwretariYs.
I
Mr. Emil Weilshaeuser, Neustadt, Silesia.
Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen, Calcutta.
Mr. Alfred von Seefeld, Hanover.
Rev. Dr. Taylor, 349, North Ninth-street, Philadelphia.
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ipHE OBJECTS of the Society are, to induce habits of abstinence from the Flesh |
i
means of tracts, essays, and lectures, proving the many advantages of a physical,
intellectual, and moral character, resulting from Vegetarian habits of Diet; and thus,
to secure, through the association, example, and efforts of its members, the adoption
of a principle which will tend essentially to true civilisation, to universal brotherhood,
and to the increase of human happiness generally.
Constitution. — The Society is constituted of a President, a Treasurer, an
Executive Committee, a Secretary, Local Secretaries, Foreign Corresponding Secre
taries, and an unlimited number of Members in the United Kingdom, and HonoraryMembers abroad, above the age of fourteen years, who have subscribed to the
Declaration of the Society.
Declaration. —“I hereby declare that I have Abstained from the Flesh of
Animals as Food, for One Month, and upwards ; and that I desire to become a
Member of the Vegetarian Society; and to co-operate with that Body in promul
gating the knowledge of the advantages of a Vegetarian Diet.”
The Subscription is Two Shillings and Sixpence per year, which entitles a mem
ber to a copy of the Dietetic Reformer, quarterly, post free.
All inquiries, and applications for information, should be addressed to the
Secretary of the Vegetarian Society, 13, Cathedral Close, Manchester.
i L of Animals as Food, by the dissemination of information upon the subject, by i
.
�LECTURE ON VEGETARIANISM,
BY EMERITUS PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
[Delivered at Gloucester, December 2, 1870; Afr. Price, M.P., in the chair.]
“ What shall we eat
is really a question of first importance: but it .is seldom so
treated. In general, the rich eat what they like, and the poor what they can;
neither the one nor the other studies what is best. Besides, there is a perverse
influence at work of which few seem to be aware. Rich men are ashamed to give
cheap food to their friends, even when the cheap is better than the^dear. London
sprats are, in the opinion of many, superior to Greenwich whitebait: yet those who
eat sprats in private, and prefer them, dare not offer them to their friends, because
they are cheap. This does but illustrate a pervading principle. It is a baneful
folly to think, that what is rare, what is difficult, and what is out of season, is
best. And when the richer, who can well afford it, aim at expensive food because
it is expensive, the poorer, who ill afford it, imitate them, and get worse food at
greater cost. I cannot treat the subject of food, unless you will, at least for a little
while, consent to look at things with fresh eyes, and refuse to be blinded by fashion
and routine.
I have called my lecture Vegetarianism; but, as the word does not wholly
explain itself, you may justly ask me for its meaning. Many suppose it to mean,
a diet consisting of table vegetables. It is true, that these are an essential part of
Vegetarian diet, yet they are by no means the most important. Vegetarian food
consists mainly of four heads—farinacea, pulse, fruit, and table vegetables.
1. The foremost is farinacea; they are the “staff of life.” They are chiefly
wheat, barley, oats, maize, perhaps rye; also potatoes, yams, rice and sago,
tapioca, and such like. Vegetarians seldom endure baker’s bread; they always
become fastidious about bread, as teetotalers about water; and very often prefer
unleavened cakes, as Scotch scones, or biscuits not too hard; else, macaroni, also
oatmeal porridge. The makers of aerated bread find that four per cent of the
material is wasted in fermentation. Besides, we have delicious Oswego or rice
blancmange, or it may be hominy and frumenty. I guarantee to you all, that no one
loses a taste for nice things, by vegetarian food, however cheap.
2. Under pulse we practically understand peas, beans, and lentils. They have
excellent feeding qualities, but also a particular defect, which is chiefly remedied
by onions adequately mixed,
3. The word fruit speaks for itself; only it may be well to add that the dearer
fruits are j ust of the least importance for food. Apples might be much cheaper
than they are; and no fruit is more universally serviceable. The cheaper figs,
French, Italian, and Spanish, are less cloying and more feeding than the luscious
Smyrna fig of the shops. Raisins and dates are now supplied in cheerful abundance.
But peculiarly, as I believe, nuts are undervalued as substantial food. We do them
great injustice. We put them on the table as dessert, to be eaten when the stomach
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VEGETARIANISM.
is full, and then slander them as indigestible, because the stomach groans under
an excess of nutriment. We call them heavy, because they are nutritious. In
Syria, walnuts and coarse dry figs make an admirable meal. Filberts I count better
than walnuts, and Brazil nuts better still. Chestnuts have the disadvantage of
needing to be cooked, and being hard to cook uniformly well; but when rightly
dressed, perhaps of all nuts accessible in England they are the most valuable.
Cocoanuts, when we are wiser, will be better applied, than to tempt a jaded appetite
to hurtful indulgence. Almonds are too dear to be available as food; yet concerning
almonds, a physician who is no Vegetarian gave me interesting information the
other day. “No man,” said he, “need starve on a journey, who can fill his
waistcoat pocket with almonds. If you crush almonds thoroughly and duly mix
them with water, no chemist in Europe can distinguish the substanee from milk,
and milk we regard as the most perfect food.” This suggests moreover, that nuts,
to become wholesome, must be very thoroughly crushed and bitten. As to other
fruits, I barely add; that the delicious grape, noblest of the fruits in our latitude,
will be hereafter redeemed by teetotalers from corruption, and will become a general
food. But no fruit must be eaten for amusement, and taken on a full stomach ; or
it will not be food at all.
4. A few words on table vegetables. Potatoes and pulse I have noticed, and
now pass them by. Mushrooms are by far the most delicious, and abound with
nitrogen ; a rare advantage : but we have them too seldom in the market. On the
whole I regard those vegetables to be most important which supply flavour
or correct defects in other food; pre-eminently the tribe of onions, also celery,
parsley, sage, savory, mint, with the foreign articles ginger and pepper. Onions
and celery we do not cook half enough ; indeed cabbage and cauliflower are eateih
half raw by the English ; on which account we do not know their value. Much
the same may be said of what the farmer calls roots, i,e., turnips, carrots, parsnips,
beet. Do not think that I despise any of these, when I insist that this class of food
stands only fourth. One who confines himself to these four heads of diet is indis
putably a Vegetarian.
Yet in fact few Vegetarians do confine themselves to this diet, and herein
consists my difficulty in definition. We are open to the scoff of being, not Vegeta
rians, but Brahmins, who do not object to animal food, but only to the taking of
animal life. Few of us refuse eggs, or milk and its products. This is highly
illogical, if we seek consistency with an abstract theory. I do not shut my eyes
to it. The truth is, that in cookery we need some grease, and it is hard to eat dry
bread without butter or cheese. Our climate does not hitherto produce oils. It is _
not easy to buy oil delicate enough for food, and oil (to most Englishmen) is
offensive, from tasting like degenerate butter. Cheese, like nuts, is maligned as
indigestible, barely because it is heaped on a full stomach. However, since most
Vegetarians admit eggs and milk, I define the diet as consisting of food which is
substantially the growth of the earth, without animal slaughter. If you prefer to
call this Brahminism, I will not object. It is a respectable name.
We shall all admit that the food which is natural to man is best for man ; but
we are not agreed how to find out what is natural. I cannot wholly accede to the
students of comparative anatomy, that the line of argument which they adopt is
decisive; yet it is well to know what it is, and How far it carries us. They assume
that as in wild animals we see instinct unperverted, and as such instinct is a test
of what is natural, we have to compare the structure of the human teeth and
�VEGETARIANISM.
3
digestive apparatus with those of brutes, and thereby learn what is natural to man.
Since unluckily certain sharp teeth of ours are called canine, superficial inquirers
jumped to the conclusion that our teeth were made to rend flesh; and on discovering
that the alimentary canal, of the sheep is much longer than of the lion, longer also
than of the man, they inferred that we are not naturally herbivorous, but carnivor
ous. Vegetarians easily refute these arguments. They reply, that our sharp teeth
are ill-called canine, for they do not lap over one another. Such teeth are larger
and stronger in the ape than in the man. I believe they are chiefly useful to crack
nuts, of which monkeys are very fond. Be this as it may, no monkey naturally
eats flesh; if even, when tame, some may be coaxed into eating it. And it is
undeniable that the digestive apparatus of the monkey comes very near to that of
the man: hence Vegetarians generally infer that flesh meat is unnatural to us.
The same thing follows from the doctrine of the old naturalists, who thought the
pig and the man to have marked similarities ; but wild swine certainly will not eat
flesh, therefore man ought not. As to the length of the alimentary canal, there
also the Vegetarians are easily triumphant. The length of it in the man, as in the
monkey, is between two extremes, the lion and the sheep; therefore the human
constitution for food is intermediate. Man is neither herbivorous, as the sheep and
horse, nor carnivorous, as the lion ; but is frugivorous, as the monkey.
There is another argument of Vegetarians which I must not omit, though I do
not undertake to say how much it proves. They allege that carnivorous animals
never sweat, but man certainly does sweat; therefore he is not carnivorous. Here
I feel myself uncertain as to fact. Carnivorous animals, made to prowl by night,
have thick loose skins for defence against cold and wet, even in hot climates. In
consequence sweat would not easily relieve them from internal heat. How is it
with the sheep ? can they sweat ? I find I do not know. But in truth this whole
side of argument from the comparison of animals seems to me but of secondary
value. We cannot find by it what is natural to us ; for, universally, you cannot
find out the characteristics of the higher being by studying the lower being. The
assumption that you can is the main cUuse why external philosophy gravitates into
materialism and atheism. The specific difference of man and brute lies in the
human mind; and this, at once and manifestly, has an essential bearing on the
question of human food. No known animal lights a fire, or fosters a fire when
lighted. However tender their affections, however warm their gratitude or their
resentment, however wonderful their self-devotion, however they may deserve our
fond protection and our reciprocal gratitude, there is not one that understands the
relation of fuel to fire ; therefore there is not one that can cook. On this account
the old logicians called man “the cooking animal;” and though, happily, this
description does not exhaust the capacity of our nature, it affords (on the lower side
of nature) a sufficient criterion, distinguishing us from all known brutes. Without
our power of cookery, we could not make half the use that we do of Vegetarian food.
What would a potato be to us uncooked ? I fear it might turn out to be a narcotic
poison, like the potato-apple. Of how little avail would onions and cauliflower,
turnips and beans, or even corn itself, be without fire ? We can no more conceive
of man without power of cooking than of man without power of sowing, reaping,
and grinding. It may fairly be maintained by the advocate of flesh eating that if it
pleased the Creator to develop the gorilla’s brain, and give him a little more good
sense, without altering his digestive organs or his teeth, the creature would begin
by roasting chestnuts and broiling mushrooms, and go on to discover that roast
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VEGETARIANISM.
flesh has many of the qualities of those princely fungi, in whose praises enthusiastic
votaries rave to us. Now, if I have to admit that a gorilla might perhaps become
a flesh-eater, if he had only the wit to cook, you may think that I abandon the
cause of Vegetarianism. Nay ; but my cause is so strong that I can afford not to
overstrain a single argument.
If man had not the power of cooking, and had a natural incapacity for eating
raw flesh, his command of food would be so limited, that he could not have over
spread the earth as he has done. He certainly never could’have found food in
arctic regions ; scarcely would he have found it adequate for his sustenance in the
temperate zone, when he alighted on a country covered with forest and swamp.
The operations of agriculture require long time and much co-operation before a
wild land can be tamed ; and meanwhile, on what is the first cultivator to live ?
We know what has been the course of history in nearly all countries. Only in
a few, as China, India, Assyria, Egypt, the banks of the great ^navigable
rivers, with alluvial or inundated land, gave such facility to the sower, that
there is not even tradition of the time when tillage began. But in general,
wild men in a wild country ate whatevei’ they could get,—or get most
easily. In the woods wild game abounded—everywhere something, though
varying from continent to continent. Besides birds innumerable, endless tribes
of antelope and deer in one place, of kine in another,—whether the cow or
the buffalo or the bison—of sheep in a third, allured the hunter; and cookery
made the flesh of all eatable. We certainly can eat uncooked oysters. It
is dangerous to deny that savage stomachs, when half-starved, could live on raw
flesh and raw fish. But whether it be cause or effect, the tribes which have come
nearest to this state have been either very degenerate or very primitive specimens
of humanity. If very primitive, they do but display undeveloped man, and they are
the smallest fraction of the human race. The second stage in human civilization, is,
to rear tame cattle; if there are wild animals capable of being tamed. In the old
world the sheep, the cow, the reindeer, or the buffalo became domesticated, time out
of mind; also the camel; and in South America the llama ; but the bison of North
America, it seems, is untameable, so that the pastoral state did not there develop
itself. The transition from pasture to agriculture is a serious difficulty. To defend
crops is most arduous; in fact, is impossible to the private cultivator, unless he is
armed with formidable weapons of war which the savage cannot get. Agriculture
must ordinarily be, in the first instance, the act of the tribe collectively, and the
crops be their common property, protected by their joint force. Until there is a
powerful public executive, armed to defend private property, agriculture is too
dangerous foran individual. On this account certain tribes have abhorred cultivation
and fixed dwellings, as exposing the industrious man to slavery under marauders.
Thus the Nabatheans of old, thus Jonadab the son of Rechab, forbade their children
to build houses, or sow seed, or plant vines, because it interfered with wild liberty.
Tribes who live by hunting only, need a vast space of land in which their game
may live quietly; from a small area it would quickly be frightened away: hence
such tribes have always been a very sparse population, and insignificant in the
world’s history. Those who live by pasturage, driving their flocks and herds from
place to place, and building no houses, have generally been marauders: indeed the
Tartars and Scythians, who used the waggon as their home, in all earlier ages were
the great military nations, the conquerors of the more civilised. Though they
might begin by living on the flesh and milk of their cattle, they soon learned to
�VEGETARIANISM.
5
obtain grain, either by cultivating it themselves (for they were strong enough to
protect it) or by purchasing it from neighbours by giving cattle in exchange or by
extorting it as tribute from peaceful but weaker cultivators. And in proportion as
they lived on grain, they were capable of becoming more populous ; thus population
became denser, step by step, as flesh meat was superseded by wheat and barley, by
maize and rice. In the far north, where Finns and Lapps dwell almost side by side,
the Lapps feed as of old, on the products of the sea, or on the milk and flesh of the
reindeer; but the Finns have introduced corn culture, and live upon grain. The
Finns are the stronger, larger, and handsomer men. At any rate their diet has
agreed with them, even in that latitude; but I do not mean to say that men may
not retain perfect health and strength on either food, so far as health can be tested
by the surgeon. The ancient Germans practised but little agriculture, says Caesar.
By intercourse with Rome, especially on the Roman frontier, they became cul
tivators. In our own island, as we well know, agriculture has existed before Saxon
times; but at the Norman conquest, and long after, the land devoted to cattle or
left in a state of nature vastly predominated. In those days the poorest ate much
more flesh meat than now. There has been a continual diminution of flesh meat,
and far larger supplies of Vegetarian food. This is neither from unjust institutions
nor from unfair taxation ; but it is a normal result of increased population. It is
inevitable on an island, sensibly limited in size: for to produce as much human
food as one acre of cultivated land will yield, three, or even /owr acres of grazing land
are needed. That era had its own disadvantages. The cattle had then little winter
food ; they were killed and salted down in the close of autumn. Much salt meat
and salt fish was eaten, and fresh vegetables were few in species and scarce.
Parsnips are said to have been long the only root, before there were turnips or
carrots : potatoes, we know, came in from America. Native fruit was very limited,
and our climate was thought hardly capable of bearing more sorts ; foreign fruit
was not in the market. Now, what I want to point out, is this : that the diet of
flesh meat belongs to the time of barbarism—the time of loiv cultivation and thin popu
lation; and that it naturally, normally, decreases with higher cultivation. We see the
same thing in ancient civilisation and modern. The Brahmins in India, who stood
at the head in intellect and in beauty, were wholly or prevalently Vegetarians. I
believe, much the same was true of ancient Egypt. Men of lower caste ate flesh,
and the lowest most: and among these principally foul diseases of the skin prevailed ;
no doubt, because, where population is dense, the poorer classes, if they eat flesh
meatat all, are sure to get a sensible portion of their supply diseased and unwholesome.
And now let me say. what is the true test of anything being natural to man.
He is a progressive being; you must test it by his more mature, not by his
immature era; by his civilisation, not by his barbarism. Flesh meat helped him
through his less developed state; it then existed around him in superfluity, while
vegetarian food was scarce ; moreover, the beasts slain for food were then generally
in a natural and healthy condition. But to attempt to keep up in the later and
more developed stage the habits of the earlier and ruder is in many ways perni
cious. At first each man kills his own game, or slaughters a beast of his own
flock; and long after that time is passed, the animals wander in the field or
mountain, or under the forest. The pig eats beech-nuts and oakmast and horse
chestnuts. The steer browses on soft leaves and on grass. There is no stuffing
with oilcake, no stall-feeding nor indoors life. The beast of the field abides in the
field. When the herds abound, and the supply is easily adequate to the human
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VEGETARIANISM.
population, the market is not likely to be tampered with. Neither roguery, nor
artificial management of the animal is to be feared. Great Oriental communities put
the slaughter of cattle for food under religious regulation. With the Jews, and
indeed with the earliest Romans, the butcher was a priest; and anxious distinctions
were made of clean and unclean beasts, to exclude the eating of such flesh as either
was supposed to be unwholesome or was forbidden for some economic reason. Now
ij in fact,—owing, as I believe, to the great pressure for milk in a populous nation,—
i the cow is of a peculiarly feeble constitution with us. This is manifest in her
liability to suffer severely in calving, which is certainly a striking phenomenon.
But surely it is only what might be expected from the very artificial and unnatural
demand that we make on her, to give us milk in quantity far beyond anything
needed for her calf, and for a length of time so prolonged. So intimate is the
relation of calving to milk-giving that to overstrain one side of the female system
must naturally derange the other. But to this is added stall-feeding and cramming,
instead of the open field and natural herbage. Though these practices may save
money to the grazier and produce more pounds of meat and of unhealthy fat, they
cannot conduce to the robustness of the animal, nor of the man who eats it. A
worse thing is now revealed. I lately read in a newspaper that many farmers
believe they have found out the cause of what is called the foot and mouth disease;
namely, they ascribe it to the fact that the animals are bred from parents too
young. Now I lay no stress on their opinion that they have here discovered the
cause of that disease. Their opinion may be erroneous, but they cannot be mistaken
in what they state as a fact; namely, that in eagerness to supply the meat market,
and gain the utmost return to their capital, they artificially bring about a premature
breeding of the cattle. The moment it is mentioned, one sees what the temptation
must be to a breeder; one sees also that the offspring is sure to be feeble, and
therefore liable to any or every disease. It is well known that in Bengal, for
religious reasons, the Brahmin girls are prevalently married at a very tender age,
so that great numbers of mothers are hardly more than children themselves ; and
to this is ascribed the peculiar delicacy and frequent small stature in such classes.
I do not assume that such offspring need be unhealthy; but unless protected as
only men can be protected, if exposed as cattle must be exposed, one must expect
them to catch any epidemic that may be abroad, and more and more to propagate
feebleness. Municipal law struggles in vain against such tricks of the market.
They go on for many years without the persons who practise them being aware of
their harm. Prohibitions are hard to execute ; they are sure to come too late ; and
after they are enacted, some new artifice equally bad grows up. While the pressure
for flesh-meat is great, unless the Government will take into its own hands both
the slaughtering and the sales, it seems impossible to keep the sausage trade under
control. In last Monday’s Daily News I see there is a man to be brought to trial
for boiling up old horses for sausage meat. There is nothing intrinsically wrong
in that, if it were avowed to be horse-flesh; but since all is done by stealth,
evidently far more horrid substances are likely to enter the market.
The United States have a vast abundance of soil, a very thin population : hence
they might, like our ancestors, have flesh meat and milk of a natural kind. But
they have large towns, to be fed on a great scale by enterprising capitalists ; so that
many of the same evils grow up among them as with us. In New York a distiller
of spirits added to his trade the trade of cowkeeping, having learned that co»vs, fed
upon the refuse grains of a distillery, give more milk. It is true that they do ; but
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�VEGETARIANISM.
7
the milk is inferior in quality ; and the cows gradually become diseased—whether
by the food, or by the unwholesome confinement in the cellars beneath the distillery,
I cannot say. But the complaints of the milk are bitter : moreover, the cowkeepers
in the country around have followed the evil example ; and it is positively stated
that the mortality of children in New York is enormous; which is a suspicious
coincidence. These are but single instances and illustrations of the evils to which
we are exposed, from the tampering of the grazier with the animals in whose flesh
or milk he deals.
But I return to my point. With the progress of population Vegetarianism
naturally increases. I do not say, which is cause, and which is effect: they react
on one another. When more food is wanted, and the price of corn rises, there is a
motive to break up new land. Pasture is diminished. Perhaps by artificial grasses
and by cultivation of roots the quantity of cattle is nevertheless sustained; yet if
the process goes on, as in China (for an extreme case), the larger cattle will not at all
increase in proportion to the population. Nor indeed among ourselves has it increased
proportionally. The English roast beef that foreigners talk of is rarely indeed the
diet of our villagers. Thirty years ago even our town artizans ate little flesh meat.
Bacon, principally fat, was nearly the sole animal food consumed by our peasants,
whose state has but little altered. They may almost be called Vegetarians ; for fat,
like oil, supplies only animal heat, not the substance of muscle. Nevertheless, it
is now taught, that on animal heat vital force depends, which muscle will not give.
Now lest you should pity our peasants too much, I must state that we have the
decisive testimony of the most eminent scientific men to the sufficiency of a purely
Vegetarian diet; men, not themselves Vegetarians, nor intending to urge the
practice. Our society has printed a handbill, with extracts from Haller, Liebig,
Linnaeus, Gassendi, Professor Lawrence, Professor Owen, Baron Cuvier, and many
others. Hear a few illustrations how those speak, who mean to be our opponents.*
Dr. 8. Brown writes: “We are ready to admit that Vegetarian writers have
triumphantly proved, that physical horse-like strength is not only compatible with,
but also favoured by, a well-chosen diet from the vegetable kingdom, and likewise,
that such a table is conducive to length of days.” Dr. W, B. Carpenter writes :
“ We freely concede to the advocates of Vegetarianism, that as regards the endurance
of physical labour there is ample proof of the capacity of [their diet"| to afford the
requisite sustenance.” He adds that if it is sufficiently oily, “ it will maintain the
powers of the body at their highest natural elevation, even under exposure to the
extreme of cold.” Thus the labourer, according to these high authorities, is not at
all dependent on flesh meat. And of this we have abundant proof in foreign nations.
We have no stronger men among our flesh-dieted “navvies” than the African
negroes of the U.S. who were fed, while slaves, on yams, maize, and other vegetable
food. We perhaps cannot anywhere produce a class of men to equal the porters of
Constantinople. The London Spectator., not long back (though it is anything but
Vegetarian in purpose) wondered at the ignorance of men who doubted whether
Vegetarian food was compatible with the greatest strength; for a Constantinople
porter (said the writer) would not only easily carry the load of any English porter,
but would carry off the man besides. Mr. Winwood Reade, a surgeon who has
travelled much in Africa; Mr. A. F. Kennedy, once Governor of Sierra Leone, and
Captain P. Eardley Wilmot, attest that the Kroomen of Western Africa are eminent
in endurance. Mr. Kennedy says “ their power and endurance exceeds that of any
race with which I am acquainted.” Mr. Winwood Reade expresses himself even
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VEGETARIANISM.
more pointedly : “ The Kroomen are, I believe, the strongest men in the world.’’
Yet the Krooman, he adds, lives on a few handfuls of rice per day ; and rice has not
been supposed by our chemists to be at all favourable to human strength. They
depreciated it, as giving too great a proportion of animal heat; but they did not
know that animal heat gives vital force also. It may be said, that these cases
bejong to hot climates ; but indeed Constantinople can be anything but hot. And
we can further appeal to Northern Persia, where the winter is intensely cold. The
English officers at Tabriz, the northern capital,—who for a long series of years had
the drilling of Persian troops,—were enthusiastic in their praises, and testified that
they make the longest marches, on nothing but bread, cheese, and water, carrying
three or four days’ provisions in their sash. These, however, are not strictly
Persians, but of Turkoman race. I did not need to go to Persia for illustration.
The Italians of the north, or anywhere on the Apennines, would have served my
argument. Bread, with figs or raisins, are their sufficient food ; and they were old
Napoleon’s hardiest soldiers round Moscow. Indeed, in every civilised country the
strongest class of men are the peasants, who are everywhere all but Vegetarians.
Dr. E. Smith, who reported to the Privy Council on the food of the three kingdoms,
comes to the conclusion that the Irish are the strongest, next to them the Scotch,
next the northern English; after the southern peasants ; lowest of all, the
towns-man; and that their Vegetarianism is graduated in the same way, the
strongest being the most Vegetarian, and the townsfolk, who are the weakest, being
the greatest eaters of flesh. I do not mean to assert that the diet is the only cause
of strength or weakness : it is sufficient to insist that Vegetarianism is compatible
with the highest strength. The old Greek athlete was a Vegetarian : Hercules,
according to their comic poets, lived chiefly on pease pudding.
But what of health? The testimony of scientific men is here still more
remarkable. Haller, the great physiologist, writes thus: “ This food then, in
which flesh has no part, is salutary, inasmuch as it fully nourishes a man, protracts
life to an advanced period, and prevents or cures such disorders as are attributable
to the acrimony or grossness of the blood.” That eminent physician, Dr. Cheyne
of Dublin, who some forty years ago was at the head of his profession, declared:
“ For those who are extremely broken down with chronic disease I have found no
other relief than a total abstinence from all animal food, and from all sorts of strong
and fermented liquors. In about thirty years’ practice, in which I have (in some
degree or other) advised this method in proper cases, I have had but two cases in
whose total recovery I have been mistaken.” A remarkable instance is attested,—
that of Professor Fergusson, the historian,—who at the age of sixty-one had a
dangerous attack of paralysis. He called in his friend Dr. Black, the celebrated
discoverer of latent heat. Dr. Black, though not a Vegetarian, prescribed total
abstinence from flesh-meat. Professor Fergusson obeyed, and not only recovered
entirely and never had a second attack, but was a remarkably vigorous old man at
ninety, and died at ninety-three.* In such cases I think we have an explanation of
the success of some things called quack remedies,—as, the grape-cure of the
Germans. I am ready to believe that it is not so much the grapes that cure, as the
abstinence from a gross and evil diet. Dr. A. P. Buchan teaches that a diet of
farinacea, with milk and fruits, is the most hopeful way of curing pulmonary
consumption : many examples of such cure in an early stage of the disease, says
he, are recorded. He adds: “ If vegetables and milk were more used in diet, we
A gentleman present corrected 93 into 95.
�VEGETARIANISM.
9
should have less scurvy, and likewise fewer putrid and inflammatory fevers.”
Drs. Craigie and Cullen are very strong as to the power of Vegetarianism to preserve
one from gout. Drs. Marcet, Oliver, and other physiologists, declare that human
chyle, elaborated from flesh meat, putrifies in three or four days at longest; while
chvle from vegetable food, from its greater purity and more perfect vitality, may
be kept for many days without becoming putrid. We need not therefore wonder
that Vegetarians are so little liable to fever, or to any form of putrid disease. It is
asserted, indeed, that such a thing is not known, as that a Vegetarian should suffer
cholera. On the other hand, it is also asserted that none but Vegetarians have
attained the age of 100: undoubtedly a majority of centenarians have held to
this diet.
Now I know some persons will answer quick : “I do not want to live to a 100
but remember, I pray you, what such longevity implies. The man who lives to a
100 is generally as strong at eighty, and as perfect in all his faculties, as are the
majority of men at sixty-five ; and he is not as much worn out at ninety as the man
who lives to eighty-two or eighty-three is at eighty. It is not the last seven years,,
of the centenarian which give him advantage, but the twenty years which precede
these seven. However, wish what you please about long life; it remains, that
long life, if it exist in a class of men, implies that that class excels in vital force; is
superior therefore in health, probably in strength ; and health is more valuable than
strength. Once more ; reflect what is contained in the avowal that pulmonary
consumption is best treated, and is sometimes cured, by abstinence from flesh-meat
and wine. Consumption is notoriously a disease of weakness. Hence we must
infer that more strength is given by Vegetarian diet than by that which is called
stimulating. All the arguments converge to the same point. Vital force is
measured by length of life, and by power of recovering from dangerous wounds.
Vegetarianism conduces at once to length of life, and to success in such recovery,
I have mentioned that Dr. Cheyne and Dr. Black trusted in it as a recipe when the
constitution was broken down ; how much more must it be a preservative of
strength to the healthy? Dr. S. Nicolls, of the Longford Fever Hospital, wrote in
1864, after sixteen years’ experience in the hospital, that the success of treatment
by a total withdrawal of flesh-meat and of alcoholic liquors gave him the greatest
satisfaction. The long and short is, that whatever is inflammatory is weakening ;
the highest vigour is got out of that food and drink which gives the maximum pf
nutrition and the minimum of inflammation. We allow ourselves to be cheated by
calling inflammation stimulus. Further, I will ask, of the English race, what
portion is most unhealthy ? Beyond question, the English of the United States.
And they are also the greatest flesh-eaters.
Now let me add a word concerning the North American Indian. It is long
since a few of the tribes introduced the cultivation of maize, ascribed to Hiawatha
in Longfellow’s poem. The Cherokees adopted an agricultural life while yet in
Georgia; but the distant and the roaming tribes continue to dhpend on hunting,
and even their boys and girls must live chiefly on flesh. How solid is the national
constitution is strikingly shown in the strength of the women, who, in the journeyings of a tribe, if visited by child-birth, need but half-a-day’s rest, and then start
on the march, carrying the infant on their back. I lately read a letter from the
well-kno5yn Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, in which she details how an Indian woman
trudged to Mrs. Child’s house through many miles of deep snow, and next day
came the same journey, carrying an infant which she had brought to light in the
i
�10
VEGETARIANISM.
interval. The vigour and activity of the Indian continues unimpaired till within a
short time (perhaps till within a fortnight) of natural death, when he is made
aware of weakness and death approaching. Now some one might quote these facts as
a clear testimony to the value of a flesh diet; but against it there are two draw
backs. If disease arise in an Indian, it is apt to be exceedingly violent; smallpox
may carry off a whole tribe; they seem to be very inflammatory; but I speak under
correction. Further, no one attributes to them peculiarly long life. They are said
to die worn out at eighty. Again, I do not speak confidently; for it is hard to
be sure of facts. Yet I believe they are less longlived, and recover worse from
disease than the Vegetarian Africans dwelling on the same land; less longlived
also than the Arabs, who live more on milk and less on meat. On the whole, I
think that life in the open air, a cautious choice of healthy places for encamping,
and consequent purity of blood, gives to those men and women their great robustness.
All food comes alike to such stomachs, as regards its power of nourishing ; but if
the flesh meat produces a more inflammable habit, it shortens natural life, as well
as intensifies disease.
I have tried your patience long, in the attempt to develop facts. It remains to
draw my conclusion. I first have to insist, that ever since 1847, we have been
striving to reverse the natural current of affairs—an enterprize which will necessarily
entail disease and a vast train of calamity. In the first 45 years of this century, the
population of the three kingdoms more than doubled itself in spite of emigration.
Great areas of land were broken up for cultivation, partly under the allurements of
a high price for corn, partly to take advantage of the Tithe Commutation Act. But
after the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1847, the increased prosperity of the manu
facturing towns led, not only to an importation of corn, but also to a remarkable
demand of the artizan population for flesh-meat. Cattle were brought from abroad
in great numbers. Prices still went up. A great stimulus was given to cattlebreeding. The markets of England were supplied from Scotland (and Ireland as
well as from foreign ports, until in Ireland land was thrown out of culture, and taken
up for grazing. The clamour for flesh continuing, we bring it from Australia and
from South America, artificially preserved. From importing instead of raising food,
our worst evils are increased. Rustic industry is not developed. The new births
of the country can find no employment there, and flock into towns. Masses of
population become liable to starvation from a displacement of foreign markets, or
from the imprudence of their employers ; and when personal prudence has less
reward, improvidence prevails. Town-life is less robust; sanitary conditions are
harder to fulfil. A nation fed from foreign markets suffers convulsion through
other people’s wars. And when more and more the land is occupied by large
estates, by parks, by wildernesses kept for sheep or deer, while huge towns prevail,
we have the type of national decay. Our statesmen look on helplessly, while a
robust peasantry is supplanted by a feeble and unhealthy town-population. Our
sage sanitarians want to bring water to our cities from Welsh, Scotch, or Cum
berland lakes, for fear we should remember that it is as possible for the country to be
occupied and cultivated by men, as to be grazed by cattle. England will not long
hold up her head in Europe, if she allow the system of empty country and everincreasing towns to prevail. There are other causes of the evil, I am aware, besides
this zeal for flesh meat. We have to open our eyes to more things than one; and
a hard battle perhaps has to be fought. But in regard to flesh-meat, each family has
the remedy in its own hands. The waste of its resources is caused by an attempt to
�VEGETARIANISM.
11
bring back the condition of things belonging to comparative barbarism, and make us
a flesh-eating nation again, when the era of flesh-eating is naturally past. And
what is the consequence ? I repeat a sentence which I have already uttered,
Where the population is dense, the poorer classes, if they eat flesh meat at all, are sure
to get a sensible portion of their supply in an unwholesome state. What said Dr.
Letheby, inspector of the London markets, to the Social Science Association lately?
“The use of unsound meat,” he said, “was more injurious than that of any other
unsound food. In the three city markets there are 400 tons of meat received and
sold daily. With a staff of but two inspectors it was hardly possible to make a
sufficient and satisfactory supervision; but nevertheles they seized from one to two
tons of diseased meat every week. The seizures last year (1867) amounted to no
less than 288,0001bs., or 129 tons.” But he says, in the country at large the case
is vastly worse. Taking all the markets in the country, it had been calculated
“that only one part in every Jive sent to market was sound.” Now, I think the last
statement must be exaggerated. I cannot say that I believe it; yet how very bad
the case must be, to allow of such a statement being made ! If instead of one-fifth
of the meat being unwholesome, it were every day one fiftieth, the case would be
awful enough. For remember, that where one ton is condemned, there is sure to
be a margin of three tons which is suspected, but cannot be condemned; and
importers or graziers, to save themselves from great loss, are driven to disguise
disease as well as they can. This suspected meat is sold at half-price,
and by its cheapness attracts the poor. Hence disease is certain to arise.
Smallpox has surprized us by virulent outbursts; yet what reason is there for
surprize? Do not Pariahs in India, and a like class in Egypt, by eating flesh or fish in
an unwholesome state bring on leprosy and smallpox and other foul con
tagious diseases? How do our doctors suppose that the smallpox arose for
the first time ? They say it came from China, and that it cannot, come to us unless
we catch it from a human being. Was ever anything so imbecile? The first
patient did not catch it from an earlier patient, but brought it on himself by foul
diet or some uncleanness ; and of course, if any of us use the same foulness, he is
liable to bring it on himself without anyone to transmit it to him. Paris is the
city that cooks up and disguises offal; Paris can generate smallpox as well as
China. Our doctors divert us from the true scent. For fear that we should discover
what is our uncleanness of living, they tell us that smallpox comes because we are
not vaccinated—and that also is not at all true. Indeed none are oftener vaccinated
than French soldiers, and no part of the French population suffers worse from
smallpox than the soldiers. Bad diet and unclean herding together must be the
cause. Diet? why, if we are to believe our newspapers, for a fortnight past
gentlemen have been eating in Paris the rats from the sewers, not from any real
deficiency of wholesome food, but from an infatuated determination to get flesh
meat. And at the same time, in the same letter, the correspondent who praises
the flavour of the rat, tells us that the smallpox has broken out again during
the siege; and now, says he, in the week ending November 5th the deaths from
smallpox were 380; in this last week [ending November 12th] they were 419.
Perhaps it is needless to say, why the animals brought to market must be diseased.
It is not natural to an ox to get into a steamer, or into a railway car, nor
to walk through the streets, nor to take his place quietly as in a pew at the
market. A great deal of beating and terrifying him is needed. His
fatigue in a long journey—manage it as you will—is necessarily great; he suffers
�12
VEGETARIANISM.
also from thirst. The cars and steamers cannot be cleanly. In short, it would be
wonderful if forty-nine in fifty arrived in tolerable health. Ho long as there is a
forced market, the cattle brought from a distance will be like the miserable Africans
carried in slave ships ; and all our cattle will be of a feeble constitution, liable to
diseases from slight cause, because bred artificially and reared artificially. The
poorer classes suffer, first and inevitably, in the squandering of their resources;
secondly, a fraction of them by disease, and many more by infection from the sick.
And those who evade disease do not get more strength, and do get a somewhat
more inflammatory habit from the flesh meat. At the same time, by eating more
expensive food they cannot afford so healthy habitations. Such are the evils on the
side of health and economy.
But besides, the evils of inhumanity in the slaughter of larger cattle are very
terrible. No one has yet found a remedy for the clumsiness of butchers’ boys. 1
cannot now dwell on this acutely painful part of my subject: I will only say, it
quite reconciles me to be called a Brahmin. At the same time, recurring to the
inconsistency of milk and eggs with strict Vegetarianism, I will observe, that by
the avowal of medical science, milk has none of the inflammatory properties of
flesh meat; in so far, it is akin to Vegetarian food. But undoubtedly the pressure
of dense population for milk is an evil, and tends to the adulteration of the milk, to
a deterioration of it by giving to the cow whatever will increase its quantity, and
to an enfeebling of cows generally, by asking too much milk of them, and by breeding
them too quickly. Therefore I take pains to make no increased use of milk since I
am a Vegetarian, nor yet of eggs. We have not yet learned to get substitutes
from oleaginous nuts. We are in a state of transition. A future age will look back
on this as barbarism ; yet we are moving towards the higher and nobler development,
in becoming even thus partial Vegetarians.
Finally, I must not omit one topic, the evils of over-feeding, which flesh-eating
induces. A Vegetarian may eat too much, yet it is more difficult to him, from the
bulk of his food; nearly all over-feeding is practically caused by flesh, fish, and
fowl. The late witty Sydney Smith, wishing to reprove this vice, jocosely said:
“ As accurately as I can calculate, between the ages of ten and seventy I have
eaten forty-four waggon loads of food more than was good for me.” Every ounce
that a man eats more than he needs, positively weakens him, for his vegetable forces
use up his energy in getting rid of the needless food. The gormandizing in great
towns is despicable, from one side, but from another is afflicting ; when one thinks
of countless disease engendered in the classes who eat too much, while there are so
many who get too little. Yet to the poorer a far worse evil than the deprivation
of flesh is, that they are incited to long for it when they see that all who can afford
it will pay any price rather than go without it. Our working classes will not attain
the elevation which is possible to them, until they put on the sentiment of Brahmins
and look down upon flesh-eating as a lower state.
[Reprinted fromfthe Dietetic Reformer, Jan., 1871.]
A. IRELAND AND CO., PRINTERS, MANCHESTER.
�VEGETARIAN
PUBLICATIONS.
May all be had from the Secretary, 13, Cathedral Close, Manchester.
Published on the 1st of January, 1871, Price 3d., No. XLI. of The
Dietetic
reformer and vegetarian messenger.
Contents:—Twenty-second Annual Meeting: Business Proceedings —
Annual Soiree. Only in Heaven (Poetry). Lecture by Professor Newman.
The Return to Nature. Dr. Bellows on the Philosophy of Eating. Follow
Thou Me (Poetry). Correspondence ; Obituary; Intelligence; Reports, &c.
Just Published, Price Id.
i
□THOUGHTS, FACTS, AND HINTS ON HUMAN DIETETICS.
_L Mr. Thomas H. Barker. Reprinted from “ The Dietetic Reformer,” July,
1865. Friends desirous of aiding the circulation of the above tract will be supplied
with them at half price.
REPRINT OF DR. TRALL’S ADDRESS.
Now ready, Price Threepence; or Six Copies sent post free for One Shilling.
SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF .VEGETARIANISM: An Address
O delivered at the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the American Vegetarian Society,
by Dr. TRALL, of New York.
Reprinted from the Dietetic Heformer.
Royal 32mo, price Id. per packet, or 13 for Is.; also in Sixpenny packets,
Three Series of
VEGETARIAN MESSENGER TRACTS. These Tracts are adapted
. * for extensive distribution, and any one Tract may be had separately by order
ing a Sixpenny Packet, and stating the number required ; or, if no particular number
be specified, “Assorted” Packets will be sent.
A Fifth and Improved Edition of
ipHE PENNY VEGETARIAN COOKERY : Or Vegetarianism
JL adapted to the Working Classes; containing an Introduction, showing the
economical and beneficial tendency of Vegetarian habits; an Invalid’s Dietary
Table (being suggestions for Dyspeptic patients); a Family Dietary Table; a
Bachelor’s Dietary Table ; a Marketing Table ; a Chemical Table, and instructions
and recipes for upwards of fifty different articles of food.
296 pp., Foolscap 8vo., Reduced price 2s. 6d. (by post 3s.), cloth boards, the Fifth
Edition of
VEGETARIAN COOKERY. By a Lady. This edition of VegetaT . rian Cookery has been carefully revised and entirely re-written. Many new
Recipes have been added to those already published, and the work now contains—an
Introduction, explanatory of Vegetarian Principles; an Exposition of Vegetarian
Practice, describing three Styles of Cookery, which are illustrated by plans of Tables
and Bills of Fare, with numerous references to the Recipes ; upwards of seven
hundred and fifty Recipes, and a copious Index.
PRIZE ESSAYS.
rpHE PRIMITIVE DIET OF MAN. By Dr. F. R. Lees. !
JL
Price Fourpence.
OW TO PROMOTE STABILITY AND ZEAL AMONG THE !
H
MEMBERS of the VEGETARIAN SOCIETY. By R. Gammage.
Fourpence. Tubbs and Brook, Manchester. Caudwell, London.
Price j
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�
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Lecture on vegetarianism
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Newman, Francis William
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Place of publications: London
Collation: 12, [1] p. 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Signature on front cover: Moncure D. Conway. Delivered at Gloucester, December 2, 1870; Mr. Price, M.P., in the Chair. Reprinted from the Dietetic Reformer, January, 1871. List of publications on vegetarianism on final page. Printed by A. Ireland and Co., Manchester. Objectives and constitution of the Vegetarian Society (established 1847) outlined inside front cover.
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Vegetarianism
Health
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Diet
Health
Nutrition
Vegetarianism
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Text
AGAINST HERO-MAKING
in BELiaion.
�AGAINST HERO-MAKING
IN
RELIGION.
BY
FRANCIS W. NEWMAN.
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION, FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION-
COPIES OF THIS PAMPHLET ARE SOLD BY TRUBNER &. CO.,
60 Paternoster Row.
LONDON:
-
PRINTED BY CHARLES W. REYNELL,
LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�“ Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but Ministers by whom ye
believed? ”
“ Paul planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. Where
fore let no man glory in men."
“ We can do nothing against Truth, but for the Truth.”
“ Seek the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.”
�AGAINST HERO-MAKING
IX RELIGION.
OR more than twenty years we have been made
familiar with the phrase Hero-Worship. It has
been applied not only in the regions of politics and
literature, but in religion, as the phrase itself strictly
claims. We have been told, from very opposite
quarters, that the excellence, as well as the charac
teristic, of the Christian religion turns on its
venerating a personal hero in Jesus of Nazareth.
Many who regard Jesus as a mere man, yet insist
upon inscribing themselves his servants and followers,
and on so wedding their honour for him with their
adoration to God most high, as systematically to
incorporate the two. Nay, some who utterly disown
allegiance to Jesus—who think him to have taught
many things erroneously, and to have had nothing
supernatural in his character, in his powers, in his
knowledge, in his virtue, in his birth, or in his com
munications with God-—still maintain that he is fitly
called the Regenerator of mankind, and ought to
receive—I know not what acknowledgment—as our
Saviour. It appears then not superfluous to bestow
a little space on the treatment of this question.
F
�6
Against Hero-Making
I need hardly observe that personal qualities alone
in no case constitute a hero. Action and success
must be added; and action cannot succeed until the
times are ripe. No one knows this better than the
true hero. True genius is modest in self-apprecia
tion, and is fully aware how many other men could
have achieved the same results if the same rare con
juncture of circumstances had presented itself to
them. Men of genius are fewer than common men,
but they are no accident. God has provided for
their regular and continuous recurrence ; their birth
is ordinary and certain in every nation which is
counted by millions. The same is true in every form
of mental pre-eminence, whether capacity for leader
ship, or genius for science, or religious and moral
susceptibility. Religion, separate from morals, is, of
course, only fanaticism. We venerate religion only
when built upon pure morals. Moral religion is
notoriously a historic growth, and has depended on
traditional culture at least as much as what is
especially called science; and its progress is not
more wayward and arbitrary than that of science, if
the whole of human history be surveyed. The present
is ever growing out of the past, with a vigour and a
certainty which never allow the fortunes of the race
to be seriously dependent on any individual. Each
of us is, morally as well as physically, a birth out of
antecedents. From childhood we are tutored in right
and wrong, not only by professed teachers, but by all
elder persons who are around us. Improper deeds
or words of a child are reproved by a servant, or by
�In Religion.
7
an elder brother, or even by a stranger, as well as by
a parent or a priest. We imbibe moral sentiment,
as it were, at every pore of our moral nature; nor do
we often know from whom we learned to abhor this
course of conduct and to love that. Hence no wise
man will claim originality for his moral judgments
or religious sentiments. A foolish dogma, a fanciful
tenet, may easily be original; but a pure sound truth
is more likely to have been old. To prove its novelty
is impossible, and certainly could not recommend it:
on the contrary, the older we can prove it to have
been, the greater its ostensible authority. For these
reasons, in the theory of morals and religion, a claim
of originality can seldom or never be sustained: in
this whole field the question is less what a man has
taught, than what he has persuaded others. Hun
dreds of us may have said, truly and wisely : “ It is
a great pity that Mahommedans, Jews, and Christians
of every sect will not unlearn their dissensions, and
blend into one religious community.” The sentiment
must once have been even new; yet its utterance
could never have earned praise and distinction.
But if any one devoted his life to bring about such
union, and succeeded in it, we should undoubtedly
regard him as a moral hero; though (as just said) no
one could succeed, until the fulness of time arrived
and the crisis was seized judiciously.
Thus, in discussing the claims put forth for special
and indeed exclusive honour to the name of Jesus, we
have to consider, not so much what he said, or is said
to have said, as what he effected; what impression
�Against Hero-Making
he actually produced by his life and teaching; what
great, noble, abiding results his energies originated
and bequeathed. The moment we ask, What are the
facts ? we seem to be plunged into waves of most
uncertain controversy; into discussions of literature
unsuitable for short treatment. Yet, I may with full
propriety claim as admitted that which greatly clears
our way. I presume you to know familiarly, that
the picture of Jesus in the fourth gospel is essentially
irreconcilable with that in the three which precede,
and is neither trustworthy nor credible. The three
first gospels, taken by themselves, do present a
character, a moral picture, sufficiently self-consistent
and intelligible to reason about. But our present
question (allow me carefully to insist) is not, Do we
see in Jesus a remarkable man, a gifted peasant, a
dogmatist by whom we may profit, whose noble
sentiments we may admire or applaud ? but rather,
Do we find one who dwarfs all others before and
after him ? one to whose high superiority sages and
prophets must bow; before whom it is reasonable
and healthful for those who have a hundredfold of
his knowledge and breadth of thought to take the
place of little children ? Or, at least, Has Europe
and the world (as a fact) learned from him what it
was not likely to learn without him ? Is that true
which is dinned into our ears, that Christendom has
imbibed from him a pure, spiritual, large-hearted,
universal religion, adapted to man as man, cementing
mankind as a family, and ennobling the individual
by a new and living Spirit, unknown to the philoso
�In Religion.
g
phies, unknown, to the priesthoods, untaught by the
prophets, before him ?
Even if we had no insight as to the comparative
value of the several gospels, one broad certainty
affords solid ground to plant the foot upon. The
positive institutions and active spirit of the • first
Christian Church are notorious and indubitable. On
learning what the Apostles established in their
Master’s name within a few weeks of his death, we
know with full certainty what they had understood him
to teach, what impression he actually produced, what
was the real net result of his life and preaching: and
this, in fact, is our main question. Now, it is true
beyond dispute—it is conceded by every sect of
Christians—that in the first Christian Church the
Levitical ceremonies were maintained with zealous
rigour, and that its only visible religious peculiarity
consisted in community of goods. The candidate for
baptism professed no other creed but that Jesus was
Messiah; and the obedience of the disciple to the Mas
ter was practically manifested in the sudden renuncia
tion of private property. This ordinance was not, in
theory, compulsory, but, while the fervour of faith was
new, it was enforced by the public opinion of the
Church so sharply, as to tempt the richer disciples
to hypocrisy. The story of Ananias and Sapphira is
full of instruction. They did not wish to alienate all
their goods, though they were willing to be very
liberal. Tn deference to the prevailing sentiment,
they sold property and gave largely to the Church:
yet were guilty of keeping back a part for themselves
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Against Hero-Making
secretly. For this fraud (according to the legend)
they were both struck dead at the voice of Peter!
Such a legend could not have arisen, except in a
Church which regarded absolute Communism as the
characteristic Christian virtue. Higher proof is not
needed that Jesus established this duty as the touch
stone of discipleship : but, in fact, the account in the
three gospels tallies herewith perfectly. Jesus there
mourns over a rich young man, as refusing the law of
perfection, because he hesitates to sell all his goods,
give them to the poor, and become a mendicant friar.
When his disciples, commenting on the young man’s
failure to fulfil the test, say : “ Lo ! we have left all
and followed thee : what shall we have therefore ? ”
Jesus in reply promises, that, in reward for having
sacrificed to him the gains of their industry and
abandoning their relatives, they shall sit upon thrones,
and judge the twelve tribes of Israel. (In passing I
remark, that the idea of such a reward for such a deed
is shocking to a Pauline Christian.)
The Jerusalem Church was, alone of all Churches,
founded by the chosen representatives of Jesus on
the doctrine of Jesus himself, while the remembrance
of that doctrine was fresh. It was a special com
munity, not unlike a “religious order” of modern
Europe ; and could not be discriminated, by Jews any
more than by Romans, from a Jewish sect. In the
next century, those who seem to have been its direct
successors were called Ebionite heretics by the
Gentile Christians. When Paul, who ostentatiously
refused to learn anything from the actual hearers of
�In Religion.
11
Jesus, had put forth what he calls “ his own ” gospel
—namely, “the mystery that Gentiles were to be
fellow-heirs ” without Levitical purity—he brought on
himself animosity and violent opposition from the
Christians of Jerusalem, who were the historical fruit
of Jesus’ own planting. When Paul was in Jerusalem,
one of the leaders called his attention to the fact that,
while many thousands of Jews were believers, they
were “ all zealous of the law ; ” he therefore advised
him to pacify their misgivings and suspicions of him,
by performing publicly certain Judaical ceremonies.
Paul obeyed him : nevertheless, no such conformities
could atone for his offence in teaching that Gentiles,
while free from the law, were equal to the Jews before
God; and Paul to his last day experienced enmity
from the zealous members of that Church. His rela
tions to the other Apostles we know by his own
account to have been certainly cold. He seems to be
personally pointed at in the Epistle of James, as “ a
vain man,” who preaches faith without works ; while
he himself (as he tells us) publicly attacked Peter at
Antioch as a dissembler and weak truckler to Jeru
salem bigotry. When, from first to last, the doctrine
of the Church at Jerusalem was sternly Levitical, it
is quite incredible that Jesus ever taught his disci
ples the religious nullity of Levitical ceremonies and
the equality of Gentiles with Jews before God. But
why need I argue about this, when it is distinctly
clear on the face of the narrative ? In the book of
Acts the idea that “ God is no respecter of persons ”
—or of nations—breaks upon the mind of Peter as a
a
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Against Hero-Making
new revelation, and is said to have been imparted by
a special vision. It is not pretended that Jesus had
taught it; nor does Paul, in any of his controversies
against Judaism, dare to appeal to the authority and
doctrine of the earthly Jesus as on his side. In fact,
in the Sermon on the Mount, as also in a passage of
Luke (xvi. 17), Jesus declares that he is not come to
destroy the law; and that “ Rather shall heaven and
earth pass away, than shall one tittle of the law fail.”
I am, of course, aware that Christian theologians
would have us believe that Luke is here defective,
and that the words in Matthew, “ Until all be ful
filled,” mean “ Until my death shall fulfil all the
types'’ But this would make Jesus purposely to
deceive his disciples by a riddle. This is indeed
worse than trifling, and a gratuitous imputation on
the teacher’s truthfulness. He must have known
how he was understood. They supposed him to mean
that Levitism was eternal; and he did not correct
the impression. It was then the very impression,
which he designed to make, simply and truthfully;
and the disciples, one and all, rightly understood
him, and knew it well.
The verse which follows in Matthew clenches the
argument; although (I see I must in candour add) I
do not believe that Jesus spoke it in exactly this
form. Nevertheless, it emphatically shows how the
writer interpreted the verse preceding. For he makes
Jesus to add: “ Wherefore, whosoever shall break
one of these least commandments, and shall teach
men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of
�In Religion.
heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the
same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
I find myself unable to doubt that these words were
written to mean: “ Wherefore, one like Paul, who
breaks the Levitical ceremonies, and teaches the
Gentiles to break them, is least in my kingdom; but
James, and the Apostles in Jerusalem, who do and
teach them, are great in my kingdom.” The inten
sity of feeling on this subject was such, that the
Jewish Christians easily believed Jesus to have pro
phetically warned them against Paul’s error. Be this
as it may, the formula, “ break one of these least com
mandments, and teach men to break it,” is in con
trast to “ fulfilling the law,” and distinctly shows
that “ fulfilling the law ” refers to doing and enforcing
even the least commandments.
The Jerusalem Church was the product (and, as
far as we know, the only direct product) of the
teachings of Jesus. Of its sentiment we have an
interesting exhibition in the epistle of James; in
whom we see a high and severe moralist, pure and
exacting, full of righteous indignation against the
oppression of the poor by the rich, and against all
haughtiness of wealth. He does not treat all private
property as unchristian; but only large property..
Evidently no rich man could have seemed venerable
to the chief saints in that Church. He assumes the
guilt of all rich men, and announces misery about to
come on them, as does Jesus in the parable of
Lazarus: nevertheless, in him all the harshest parts
of Jesus’ precepts have been softened by the trial of
�Against Hero-Making
practical life. In fact, this epistle is much in the tone
of the very noblest of the Hebrew prophets. As with
them, so in him, the moral element is wholly predo
minant, and nothing ceremonial obtrudes itself. Nay,
what is really remarkable, he calls his doctrine the
|‘ perfect law of liberty; ” so little did those ceremo
nies oppress him, to which from childhood he had
been accustomed. Let due honour be given to this
specimen of the first and only genuine Christianity ;
yet it is difficult to find anything that morally dis
tinguishes it from the teachings of an Isaiah or a
Joel. There is certainly a diversity: for the political
elements of thought have disappeared, which under
the Hebrew monarchy were prominent. The great
day of the Lord was no longer expected to glorify the
royalty of Jerusalem and its national laws: and in
this diversity lay the germ of great changes.
It would be absurd to censure an epistle because it
is not a ritual, or to demand in it the fervours of
spirituality found in this or that psalm. Nevertheless,
in the present connection, I must claim attention to
the fact that neither the three Gospels nor the epistle
of James have ever been in high favour with that
Calvinistic or Augustinian school which most nearly
represents Paul to the moderns. To bring out the
argument in hand more clearly, allow me to make a
..short digression. Morality requires both action and
.sentiment. No reasonable teacher can undervalue
^either: yet some moral teachers press more on action,
and are said to preach duty and work I and even make
sa duty of sentiment, laying down as a command that
�In Religion.
we shall love God, love our neighbours, love not ease,
love not self. Other teachers endeavour to excite,
foster, and develop just sentiment, and trust that it
will generate just action: possibly they even run
into the error of shunning definite instruction as to
what action is good. Finite and one-sided as we are,
two schools naturally grow up among teachers, who
may be classed as the preachers of duty and the
preachers of sentiment: but perhaps, if the question
be distinctly proposed to the ablest men of either
school, “ Do we learn action from sentiment, or senti
ment from action ?” they would alike reply (as in
substance does Aristotle) that both processes neces
sarily co-exist. From childhood upward, right action
promotes right feeling, and right feeling generates
or heightens right action. There is no real or just
collision of the two schools. Nevertheless, as a fact
of human history easily explained, the preaching of
duty and of outward action gains everywhere an early
and undue ascendancy, perhaps especially where
morals and religion are taught by law, which deals
in command and threat. The rude man and the
child are subjected to rule more or less arbitrary;
and it is only when intellect rises in a nation or in
an individual that the spiritual side of morals receives
its proportionate attention. In Greek history, we
know the fact in the philosophy of Socrates and
Plato. Among the Hebrews, a secular increase of
spirituality in the highest teachers will probably be
conceded by critics of every school to have gone on
from the time of the judge Samuel to the writer from
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Against Hero-Making
whom came the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah.
The characteristic difference of the Greek and the
Hebrew is this: that, however spiritual the Greek
morality might be, it seldom blended with religion ;
and (with exceptions perhaps only to be found under
Hebrew influences, as at Alexandria) the moral affec
tions found no place in religion at all. Now it has
been recently asserted by a Theist, that it is to Jesus
that we owe that regeneration of religion, which
makes it begin and grow from within. He is not (it
is said) “ a mere teacher of pure ethics but “ his
work has been in the lieart. He has transformed the
Law into the Gospel. He has changed the bondage
of the alien for the liberty of the sons of God. He
has glorified virtue into holiness, religion into piety,
and duty into love.” Hence it is inferred that “ his
coming was to the life of humanity what regeneration
is to the life of the individual.”*
Deep as is my sympathy with the writer from
whom I quote, I am constrained to say that every
part of the statement appears to me historically
incorrect. It does, in the first place, violent injustice
to the Hebrews who preceded Jesus. Did he first
“ glorify virtue into holiness” ? Nay, from the very
beo’inninp’ of Hebraism this was done—at least as
o
o
* I quote from the striking treatise of my friend Miss Cobbe, called
“Broken Lights.” The whole protest against M. Renan, of which the
words above are the summary, should be read to understand their rela
tion. I am authorized to say that she has not even the remotest wish to
make honour to Jesus a part of religion: she intended to write as a
historian only.
�In Religion.
early as Samuel. Did he first “ glorify religion into
piety” ? Is there then no piety in the 42nd Psalm?
in the 63rd ? in the 27th ? in the 23rd ? Nay,
I might ask; from what utterances of Jesus can
piety be learned by the man who cannot learn it from
the Psalms ? Holiness and piety appear to me to
have been taught and exemplified quite as effectively
before Jesus as since. Surely in the religion of the
Psalmists piety dominated, as much as in Fenelon or
in the poet Cowper. But finally I have to ask, 11 Did
Jesus glorify duty into love ?” And, in order to
reply, I turn to the three gospels, as containing our
best account of what he taught.
A phenomenon there very remarkable is the
severity with which Jesus enforces as duty the most
painful renunciations ; and the contempt with which
he rejects anything short of immediate obedience to
his arbitrary demands. I know not whether the
narrators have overcoloured him; but they give us,
on the one side, examples of prompt obedience to the
command, “Follow me first, in Andrew and Peter,
next, in James and John ; who “immediately left the
ship and their father, and followed him.” This is
afterwards praised as highly meritorious. On the
other side, when Jesus says to a man, “ Follow me,”
and receives the reply, “ Lord, suffer me first to go
and bury my father,” Jesus retorts : “ Let the dead
bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom
of God. Another also said, Lord, I will follow thee,
but let me first go and hid them farewell which are at
home in my house. And Jesus said unto him, No
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Against Hero-Making
man, having put his hand to the plough and looking
back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” The peremp
tory command to abandon their parents, not bury a
dead father, and not even say a word of farewell to
the living, is perhaps a credulous exaggeration of the
writer; yet it is in close harmony with the whole
account, and with the declaration, “ He that hateth
not his father and mother, and wife and children,
cannot be my disciplefor evidently the following
of Jesus, as interpreted and enforced by himself,
involved an abandonment (perhaps to starvation) of
these near relatives. It is not my purpose to dwell
now on the right or wrong of such precepts, but on
the imperious tone in which they are imposed from
without, not the slightest attempt being made to
recommend them to the heart or understanding.
Again, in perfect harmony with the same is the reply,
already adduced, of Jesus to the rich young man,
Xvho comes to ask, “ What shall I do that I may
inherit eternal life ?” The opportunity was excellent
to set forth that no outward actions could bring
eternal life, but that such life was an interior and
divine state, to be sought by love and faithfulness.
Instead of spiritual instruction, Jesus gives a crushing
arbitrary command: “ If thou wilt be perfect, go,
sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou
shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come and follow
me.” Does such a teacher build from within by
implanting Love ? Does he act upon Love at all, or
rather on selfish Ambition ? He deals in hard duty
and fierce threat; commands too high, and motives
�In Religion.
l9
too low; thoughts of reward; promises of power ;
salvation by works ; investment of money for returns
beyond the grave; prudential adoption of virtue,
which may soften judgment, win promotion, deliver
from prospective prison and hell fire: topics which at
best are elements of Law, as opposed to Gospel.
In the opinion of an increasing fraction of the most
enlightened Christians, the most noxious element in
the popular creed is the eternal Hell: the stronghold
of this doctrine is in the discourses of Jesus. But
what of Faith ? If Faith be a purely spiritual move
ment, which cleaves to Goodness and Truth for its
own sake, and without regard to selfish interests, it is
hard to say in what part of the three gospels it is
found. In the mind of Jesus all actions seem to
stand in the closestrelation to the thoughts of punish
ment or reward on a great future day. To lose one’s
soul means, to be sentenced when that day shall
come: cutting off a sin means, escaping mutilated
from a future hell. In a religion practically moulded
on these discourses, calculation of what we shall
hereafter get by present obedience inheres as a primary
essence. The only faith which Jesus extols, is, faith to
work miracles, and faith that he is Messiah and can
work them. Inquiry is frowned down and sighed over
as unbelief. Power to forgive sin is claimed by him;
and, when this is reproved as impious in a human
teacher, the claim is marvellously justified by
identifying forgiveness with cure of bodily disease.
Add to this the grant of miraculous powers to the
Seventy, and a delegation of power to forgive is
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Against Hero-Making
made out at which Protestants may well shudder.
In another place (Luke vii. 4, 5) Jesus declares
forgiveness of sin to be earned by personal affection
to himself; but I am bound to add that, on special
*
grounds, I do not believe the account.
Luke has in some parts added softer touches to
Jesus, and gives us two fine parables which it is
astonishing that Matthew and Mark omit, while they
retail so many that are monotonous : yet even in Luke
I seek in vain for anything calculated to implant in
the heart a sense of freedom; to excite willing
service ; or to cherish spiritual desire, gratitude and
tranquil love, careless of other reward than love itself.
In fact, Luke is sometimes harsher than Matthew.
Thus, in vi. 20, “ Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the
* The narrative in Luke vii. 37—50 seems to be an inaccurate duplicate
of that in Matt, xxvi, 6, Mark xiv. 3, John xii. 3; which nearly agree as
to time and place—viz., it was in Bethany, a little before the last Passover.
Matthew and Mark say, it was in the house of Simon the leper; Luke
says, of Simon the Pharisee. John calls the woman Mary of Bethany,
sister of Lazarus and of Martha: Luke sayB, a woman notorious for sin.
I will here remark, that discussion on the behaviour of Jesus to women
of ill fame, which is called “delicate,” “beautiful,” “characteristic,” &c.
appears to me wholly without basis of fact. Those who allow no historical
character to the discourses in John will not quote John iv. 16—-19, nor
John viii. 1—11, against this remark: and nothing remains but Luke vii.
■37—50. The fair fame of Mary Magdalene has been blasted by believing
this story in Luke, and then identifying her with the woman.
I will add that many who must know- seem to forget, that no Greek
philosopher—neither an Anaxagoras nor a Zeno, to say nothing of
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca—would ever have felt crude or
unjust severity towards a woman’s faults. If English sentiment some
times appear harsh against women who have made a trade of themselves,
is it not because sins which are gainful to the sinner are more inveterate
and more contagious than sins which impoverish him ?
�In Religion.
21
kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now, for
ye shall be filled. . . But woe unto you that are rich ;
for ye have recei/oed your consolation. Woe unto you
that are full; for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you
that laugh now; for ye shall mourn and weep.” So
indiscriminate and thoughtless are devotees, that
such doctrine meets with the same theoretic glorifi
cation as the essentially different version of Matthew:
“ Blessed are the poor in spirit. . . Blessed are ye
who hunger and thirst after righteousness.” If
Matthew be correct and Luke wrong, Luke has
foisted upon Jesus curses against rich and mirthful
men, in contrast to the blessings on poverty and
weeping: but if the curses came from the lips of
Jesus, Luke gives the opposite clauses justly; in
which case Matthew has improved monkish into
spiritual sentiment. It would be a hard task to prove
Luke’s version out of harmony with the constant
doctrines of Jesus. To borrow Calvinistic phrase
ology, and (if my memory serves me) the very words of
a Pauline spiritualist: “ The three gospels may be read
in the churches till doomsday, without converting a
single soul.” The spiritual side of Christianity,
inherited from the Hebrew psalmists, not from Jesus,
was diffused beyond Judaaa, first by the Jewish
synagogues, next by the school of Paul, to whom the
school of Jesus was in fixed opposition, preaching
Works and the Law, while Paul preached the Spirit
and Faith. “ Though I give all my goods to feed the
poor,” says Paul, “ and give my body to be burned,
and have not charity, I am nothing.” How vast the
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Against Hero-Making
contrast here to the doctrine of Jesus: “ Every one
that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or
father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for
my name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and
shall inherit eternal life." To make ascetic sacrifices
for the honour of Jesus was indeed a surpassing merit
in his eyes, unless the most important discourses,
even in these three gospels, extravagantly belie him.
I am unable to discover on what just ground the
opinion stands that the character of Jesus is less
harsh, and his precepts less sourly austere than those
of John the Baptist. Little as we are told of the
latter (all of which is honourable), the two must have
had close similarities. Let it be remembered that
Apollos is spoken of in the Acts of the Apostles as
“ instructed in the way of the Lord, and fervent in
spirit, and teaching diligently the things of the Lord,"
while he “ knew only the baptism of John.” So also
Paul falls in with “ certain disciples ” at Ephesus,
who pass as Christians; yet he presently discovers
that they also know only John’s baptism. It seems
therefore evident, that the two schools had nothing
essential to divide them, and were intimately alike.
When, on the othef hand, the sharp opposition of the
Pauline doctrine to that of James and the church of
Jesus at Jerusalem is duly estimated, some may
think that certain words put into the mouth of John
the Baptist will become less untrue if changed as
follows : “ I indeed and Jesus baptize you with water
unto repentance and poverty; but Paul shall baptize
you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Be that as
�In Religion.
23
it may—give as little weight as you please to Paul’s
strong points—press as heavily as you will on his
weak side, out of which came the worst part of Calvin
ism—the fact remains, that Jesus did not teach
Christianity to the Gentiles, or declare them admis
sible to his church without observing Mosaism; and
that to the Jews themselves he preached merely
severe precepts, ethical or monkish, with a minimum
of what can be called Gospel;—precepts, on which a
religious order might be founded, but totally unsuit
able for a world-wide religion.
When people calmly tell me that Jesus first
established the brotherhood of man, the equality of
races, the nullity of ceremonies; that he overthrew
the narrowness of Judaism; that he found a national,
but left a universal religion ; found a narrow-minded
ceremonial, and originated a spiritual principle, I can
do nothing but reply that every one of these state
ments is groundless and contrary to fact. What his
disciples never understood him to teach, he certainly
did not teach effectually. It is childish to reply that
the fault lay in the stupidity of the twelve Apostles.
What! could not Jesus speak as plainly as Paul did?
Surely, the more stupid the hearer, the more plainly
the teacher is bound to speak. If Jesus had so
spoken, never could want of spirituality in the hearer
have made the words unintelligible. Did only the
spiritual understand Paul when he proclaimed the
overthrow of ceremonies ? Could the most stupid of
mortals have failed to understand Jesus also, if he
had avowed that the Levitical ordinances were a
�24
Against Hero-Making
nullity and Gentiles the religious equals of Jews ? I
may seem to insult men’s intellect by pressing these
questions ; but do not they rather insult our intellect ?
For they would have us believe Jesus to have
originated doctrines which are the very opposite of
all that his actual hearers and authorized expounders
established as his, before there was time for his
teaching to fade from their memory, and to be modi
fied by novelties supervening.
I have called the primitive church of Jerusalem
the only direct product of Jesus. Do I deny that
Jesus bore any part at all in setting up the creed
known in Europe as Christianism ? I wish I could
wholly deny it. Gladly would I relieve his memory
of all responsibility for dogmas, whence proceed far
more darkness and weakness of mind, confusion,
bitterness, and untractable enmities, than his moral
teaching can ever dispel; dogmas which as effect
ually break up good men into hostile sects, with fixed
walls of partition between them, as ever did the
ceremonialism which he is falsely imagined to have
destroyed. But, hard as it is to know how much of
the gospels is historical, I suppose that no one for
three centuries at least has doubted that Jesus
avowed himself to be Messiah, at first privately, at
last ostentatiously; and was put to death for the
avowal. If so much be historical, we are on firm
ground. There is then no room for transcendental
philosophies and imaginative theories, as to what
authority and honour Jesus was claiming. The Jews
of that day familiarly understood that Messiah was
�In Religion.
^5
to be a Prince from Heaven, who should rule and
judge on earth. As to the great outlines of his
character and power, manifestly there was no dispute.
If the popular notions on this subject were wrong, the
first business with Jesus must have been to set them
right. But he never discourses against them, nor
shows alarm lest he be thought to claim super
natural dignity and lordship: nor could his ridingtriumphantly on the ass, amid shouts of “ Hosanna
to the Son of David ! ” have been intended to dis
courage the belief that he was to exercise temporal
as well as spiritual royalty. The learned and the
vulgar were in full agreement that Messiah was to be
a supreme Prince and Teacher to Israel, Judge and
Lord of all nations: but the rulers regarded it as
impious, criminal, and treasonable to aspire to this
dignity while unable to exhibit some miraculous
credentials. The fixed belief concerning Messiah
was gathered, not only from our canonical prophets
but also from the book called “ The Wisdom of
Solomon” (which was in the Greek Bible of
Paul and other Hellenist Jews), and still more
vividly from the book of Enoch, which Jude
and Peter quote reverentially, and Jude ascribes
to the prophet Enoch, the seventh from Adam.
With the discovery of that book early in this
century a new era for the criticism of Christianity
ought to have begun; for it is evidently the most
direct fountain of the Messianic creed. The book
of Mormon does not stand alone as a manifest
fiction which had power to generate a new religion ;
�q.6
Against Hero-Making
the book of Enoch is a like marvellous exhibition of
human credulity. A recent German critic has given
the following summary of its principal contents :—
“ It not only comprizes the scattered allusions of the
Old Testament in one grand picture of unspeakable
bliss, unalloyed virtue, and unlimited knowledge : it
represents the Messiah as both King and Judge of the
world, who has the decision over everything on earth
and in heaven. He is the Son of Man who possesses
righteousness; since the God of all spirits has elected
him, and since he has conquered all by righteousness
in eternity. He is also the Son of God, the Elected
one, the Prince of Righteousness. He is gifted with
that wisdom which knows all secret things. The
Spirit in all its fulness is poured out upon him. His
glory lasts to all eternity. He shares the throne of
God’s majesty: kings and princes will worship him,
and will invoke his mercy.”* So much from the book
of Enoch; which undoubtedly was widely believed
among the contemporaries of Jesus. How much of
the self-glorifying language put into the mouth of
Jesus was actually uttered by him it is impossible to
know. There is always room for the opinion that
only later credulity ascribed this and that to him—
that (for instance) he did not really speak the para
ble about the sheep and goats, representing himself
as the Supreme Judge who awards heaven or hell to
every human soul. But it remains, that this parable
* I quote from a summary of the book of Enoch by the German
theologian Kalisch, given in Bishop Colenso’s Appendix to his 4th
volume on the Pentateuch.
�In Religion.
*7
distinctly shows the nature of the dignity which Jesus
was supposed to claim in calling himself Son of Man ;
and, even if we arbitrarily pare away from his dis
courses this and other details in deference to Unitarian
surmise, we still cannot get rid of what pervades the
-whole narrative, that Jesus from the beginning’
adopted a tone of superhuman authority and obtru
sion of his own personal greatness, with the title
“ Son of Man,” allusive both to Daniel and to the
book of Enoch. According to Daniel, one like unto
a Son of Man will come in the clouds of heaven to
receive eternal dominion over all nations. It is im
possible to doubt, that, in the mind of those to whom
Jesus spoke, the character of Messiah implied an
overshadowing supremacy, a high leadership over
Israel, and hereby over the Gentiles, who were to
come and sit at Israel’s feet: a religious and, as it
were, princely pre-eminence, which only one mortal
could receive, who by it was raised immeasurably
above all others. If he did not intend to claim this,
it was obviously his first duty to disclaim it, and to
warn all against false, dangerous, or foolish concep
tions of Messiah ; to protest that Messiah was only a
teacher, not a prince, not a divine lawgiver, not a
supreme judge sitting on the throne of God and dis
posing of men’s eternal destinies. Nay, why claim
the title Messiah at all, if it could only suggest false
hood ? Since he sedulously fostered the belief that
he was Messiah, without attempting to define the
term, or guide the public mind, he could only be
understood, and must have wished to be understood,
�Against Hero-Making
to present himself as Messiah in the popular, notorious
sense. If he was really this, honour him as such. If
his claim was delusive, he cannot be held guiltless.
Every high post has its own besetting sin, which
must be conquered by him who is to earn any admi
ration. A finance minister, who pilfers the treasury,
can never be honoured as a hero, whatever the merits
of his public measures. A statesman or prince,
entrusted with the supreme executive power, ruins
his claims to veneration if he use that power violently
to overthrow the laws. Such as is the crime of a.
statesman who usurps a despotism, such is the guilt
of a religious teacher who usurps lordship over the
taught and aggrandizes himself. It is a bottomless
gulf of demerit, swallowing up all possible merit, and
making silence concerning him our kindest course, if
only his panegyrists allow us to be silent. A teacher
who exalts himself into our Lord and Saviour and.
Judge, leaves to his hearers no reasonable choice
between two extremes of conduct. Whoso is not
with him is against him. For we must either submit
frankly to his claims, and acknowledge ourselves
little children—abhor the idea of criticizing him or
his precepts, and in short become morally annihilated,
in his presence—or, on the opposite, we cannot help
seeing him to have fallen into something worse than,
ignominy.
I digress to remark, that a teachei’ supposed by us
to be the infallible arbiter of our eternity would detain
our minds for ever in a puerile state if he taught dog
matically, not to say imperiously. If he aimed to
�In Religion.
•
29
elicit our own powers of judgment, and not to crush
us into submissive imbecility, the method which
Socrates carried to an extreme appears alone suited
to the object; namely, to refrain from expressing his
own decisions, but lay before the hearers the material
of thought half-prepared, and claim of them to com
bine it into some conclusion themselves. 'In fact, this
is fundamentally the mode in which the Supremely
Wise, who inhabits this infinite world, trains our
minds and souls. His greatness does not oppress our
faculties, because it is ever silent from without.
Displaying before us abundantly the materials of
judgment, he elicits our powers ; never commanding
us to become little children, but always inviting our
minds to grow up into manhood. But, if there were
also an opposite side of teaching healthful to us—if
it were well to start from dogmas guaranteed to us
from heaven, which it is impiety to canvas—then the
matter of first necessity would be, that the uttered
decrees to which we are to submit should be free
from all enigma, all extravagance of hyperbole, all
parable, dark allusion, and hard metaphor, all appa
rent self-contrariety; and, moreover, that we should
have no uncertainty what were the teacher’s precise
words, no mere mutilated reports and inconsistent
duplicates, but a reliable genuine copy of every
utterance on which there is to be no criticism. Ta
sum up, I will say: nothing can be less suited io
minister. the Spirit and train the powers of the human
soul, than to be subject to a superhuman dictation of
truth ; and nothing could be more unlike a divine law
�3°
Against Hero-Making
0/ the letter (admitting for a moment the possibility
of the thing), than the incoherent, hyperbolic, enig
matic, inconsistent fragments of discourses given to
us authoritatively as teachings of Jesus.
But I return to my main subject. I have shown
what conclusions seem inevitable, so soon as we cease
to believe that Jesus is the celestial Prince Messiah
of the book of Enoch, popularly expected in his day.
To. lay stress on his possession of this or that gentle
and beautiful virtue is quite away from the purpose.
Let it be allowed that Luke has rightly added this
and that soft touch to the picture in Matthew and
Mark. Let it be granted that the nobler as well as
the baser side of the Jerusalem Church came direct
from Jesus himself. Whether any of the actual
virtues of European Christians have been kindled
from fires which really burnt in Jesus, it appears to
me impossible to know. The heart of Paul gushed
with the tenderest and warmest love, and he believed
Christ to be its source. But the Christ whom he
loved to glorify was not the Christ of our books,
which did not yet exist; nor a Christ reported to him
by the Apostles, to whom he studiously refused to
listen; but the Christ whom he made out in the Mes
sianic Psalms, in parts of Isaiah, in the apocryphal
book called Wisdom, and perhaps also in the book of
Enoch. With such sources of meditation and infor
mation open, the personal and bodily existence of
Jesus was thought superfluous by a number of
Christians considerable enough to earn denunciations
in the epistles of John. A great and good man,
�In Religion.
3i
Theodore Parker, tells me that it would take a Jesus
to invent a Jesus. I reply, that, though to invent a
Jesus was undoubtedly difficult, to colour a Jesus
was very easy. The colouring drawn from a suffer
ing Messiah was superimposed on Jesus by the per
petual meditations of the Churches, which, after he
had disappeared, sought the Scriptures diligently,
not to discover whether Jesus was Messiah, which
was already an axiom, but to discover what, and
what sort of a person, Messiah was. According as the
inquirers studied more in one or in another book, the
conception of Messiah came out different; and here
we have an obvious explanation of the varieties of
portrait in different gospels. The first disciples, who
thus by prophetical studies supplemented the dry
*
outlines which alone could be communicated by the
actual hearers of Jesus, would naturally affix to him
many traits not strictly human, nor laudable except
on the theory of his superhuman character. Never
theless, in a Church exalted by moral enthusiasm
and self-sacrifice, in which the highest spirits were
truly devoted to practical holiness, it is to be expected
that whatever is most beautiful and tender, pure and
good, in the traits of character which in Isaiah or
elsewhere were believed to belong to Messiah, would
be eagerly appropriated to Jesus, as they evidently
* To my personal knowledge, this is the systematic practice of Pauline
Christians in the present day. They read of Jesus in the Psalms, in the
Prophets, in the “types” of Leviticus, in the Song of Solomon, in the
Proverbs,—anywhere, in short,—with more zeal and pleasure than in the
three gospels. A free instinct guides them to feed on less stubborn
material.
�Against Hero-Making
were by Paul. Some of these would be likely to
tinge often-repeated narratives; so that, although
none could invent the outline portrait of Jesus, no
difficulty appears in the way of a theory, that the
moral sentiment of the Church has cast a soft halo
over a character perhaps rather stern and ambitious,
than discriminating, wise, or tender.
We cannot recover lost history. Into the narra
tives and discourses of Jesus so much of legendary
error has crept that we may write or wrangle about
him for ever: Paul is a palpable and positive cer
tainty. In what single moral or religious quality
Jesus was superior to Paul, I find myself unable to
say. Is it really a duty incumbent on each of us to
decide such questions ? Why must the task of award
ing the palm of spiritual greatness among men be
foisted into religion ?
It is a fact on the surface of history, that Paul,
more than any one else, overthrew ceremonialism.
Hereby he founded a religion more expansive than
that of Isaiah, and, in his fond belief, expansive as
the human race, as the children of God. He was not
the first Jew to propound the nullity of ceremonies.
If time allowed, that topic might admit instructive
amplification. The controversy against ceremonies
was inevitable, and, with or without him, must have
been fought out. What he effected, let us thankfully
record; but God does not allow us to owe our souls
to any one man, as though he were a fountain of life.
It is an evil thing to call ourselves a man’s followers,
to express devotion to him, and blazon forth his name.
�In Religion^
33
Every teacher is largely the product of his age:
whatever light and truth he imparts, the glory of it
is due to the Father of Light alone, from whom
•cometh down every good and perfect gift. Any glory
for it would be inexpressibly painful to a true-hearted
prophet; I mean, for instance, to one true-hearted as
Paul. He had no wish to be called Master, Master.
He could not bear to hear any one say, “ I am of
Paul.” “ Who then is Paul, and who Apollos,
but ministers by whom ye have believed ? ” What!
when a man believes himself to be the channel by
which it has pleased the Unseen Lord to pour out
some portion of hidden truth for the feeding of
hungry souls, can such a one bear to be praised and
thanked for his ministrations ? Nay, in proportion as
he knows himself to speak God’s truth by the impulse
of God’s spirit, in the same proportion he feels his
own personality to be annihilated, and he breathes
out an intense desire that God in him may be glorified,
but the man be forgotten. I say then, let not us
thwart and counteract such yearnings of the simplehearted instructor. Hear Paul himself further on
this matter. “ Let no man glory in men; for all
things are yours : whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas,
or the world or life or death, or things present or
things to come—all are yours.” He means that the
collective children of God are the end, for whom God
has provided teachers as tools and instruments. But
this is not all. In proportion as the teachers are
elevated, the taught become unable to judge of their
relative rank in honour. Paul therefore forbad tho
�34
Against Hero-Making in Religion.
attempt, and deprecated praise. “.With me,” ho
continues, “ it is a very small thing that I should be
judged of you, or of man’s judgment; yea, I judge
not my own self, but he that judgeth me is the Lord.
Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the
Lord come ; who both will bring to light the hidden
things of darkness, and will make manifest the
counsels of hearts; and then shall every man have
(his own) praise of God.” What else did he mean
to say but: Think not to distribute awards among
those to whom you look up. To graduate the claims
of equals and inferiors is generally more than a
sufficient task. Leave God to pass his awards on
those who are spiritually above you; who possibly,
like Paul, may receive your praise as painful, and be
wholly unconcerned at your blame. The glorifying
of religious teachers has hitherto never borne any
fruit but canonizations and deifications, “ voluntary
humility and worshipping of messengers,” vain
competitions and rival sects; stagnation in the letter,
quenching of the Spirit.
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�By the same Author.
TRANSLATION OF THE UMBRIAN (IGUVINE) IN
SCRIPTIONS BY INTERLINEAR LATIN, UNDER THE
COMPLETE TEXT. With Ample Notes. 8vo.
[In the Press.
LECTURES ON POLITICAL ECONOMY.
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�The following Pamphlets and' Pqpers ma/y be had
on addressing a reguest for- -any of them to
Thomas Scott, JBsg., West Clif, Ramsgate.
PHILOSOPHIC
TRUTH.
RESEARCH INTO GOD’S OWN
COULD THE JEWS, WITH DUE REGARD TO THE
MOSAIC LAW, HAVE ACTED OTHERWISE THAN THEY
DID TO JESUS OF NAZARETH?
ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.
An Examination of
Doctrines held by the Clergy of the Church of England.
Presbyter Anglicanus.
the
By
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TORICAL DEVELOPMENT.
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AGAINST HERO-MAKING IN RELIGION. By Professor
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�
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Victorian Blogging
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Against hero-making in religion
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Newman, Francis William
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 34, [2] p. ; 18 cm
Notes: 'Reprinted by permission, for private circulation' [From title page]. Printed by Charles W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, Haymarket, London and copies sold by Trubner & Co. A list of works by the same author on unnumbered pages at the end.
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Jesus Christ
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Hero-Worship
Jesus Christ
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r 'bV
388
[September
CONTRASTS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY,
HE whole interest of history broadly what contrasts can be traced
depends on the eternal likeness between ancient and modern times,
of human nature to itself, and on leaving it to be inquired how far
the similarities or analogies which these may happen to affect any case
we in consequence perpetually dis in hand.
cover between that which has been
The very expressions, Ancient and
and that which is. Were it other Modern History, need a preliminary
wise, all the narratives of the past caution. Some nations may seem
would be an enigma to our under to be in nearly the same state in
standings ; for we should be with ancient and in modern times : as
out that sympathy which kindles the roving Arabs and Tartars ; per
imagination and gives insight; nor haps even the inhabitants of China
would the experience of the ancient and its neighbouring Archipelago.
world afford instruction or warning All such people are tacitly excluded
to him who is trying to anticipate from this discussion ; roving tribes,
futurity. With good reason, there because they have no history worth
fore, the greatest stress is ordinarily the name ; the Chinese nations, be
laid on this side of the question— cause their culture notoriously has
the similarities to be detected be become stationary, and, as we have
tween the past and the present. In no history of their earlier times, we
the world of Greece or Rome, of cannot detect such contrasts as may
Egypt or Judaea, Carthage or really exist between their present
Babylon, the same never-ending and former state. By modern
struggles of opposite principles were history we must chiefly mean
at work, with which we are so well Christian history, yet not so as to
acquainted in modern times. The exclude the Mohammedan nations.
contests between high birth and They too have their strong points
wealth, between rich and poor, be of contrast to the ancient military
tween conservatives and progres monarchies, and will be treated in
sists, to say nothing of the purely their turn; but their history is
moral conflicts of patriotism and certainly monotonous. One form
selfishness, justice and oppression, of government only—military des
mercy and cruelty, all show them potism—has arisen among them ;
selves in every highly developed and, owing to this meagreness,
community, in proportion to the there is less to say about them.
fulness of information which we The Mohammedan empires, as in
enjoy concerning it. The names chronology they more properly be
and the form often differ, when the long to the middle age, so in their
substance was the same as now. actual development appear to be
Nevertheless, it is equally needful midway between their prototypes in
to be aware of the points at which the ancient and their representatives
similarity ceases and contrast in the modern Christian world.
begins ; otherwise, our application Generally speaking, it is only be
of history to practical uses will be tween things in important senses
mere delusive pedantry. This, no alike that it is worth while to insist
doubt, is the difficulty, through on unlikeness. To contrast things
which no golden rule can avail to different in kind, is seldom needed;
help us. We are thrown back upon but where similarity is close, to
good sense to judge of each question point out dissimilarity is instructive.
I. The first topic which we may
as it occurs, and all that the writer
of history or the philosopher can do make prominent is contained in the
for the aid of readers, is, to state word slavery. In modern Christen-
�1874]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
dom slavery is ail anomaly. It liad
pined away and vanished in Europe
in proportion to civilisation. When
first it was established in the
American colonies, no one foresaw
the magnitude it would assume.
When the great Republican Union
arose, its founders would not admit
the word slave or any equivalent
into the Federal constitution. Be
lieving that slavery must soon die
out of itself, they declined any direct
controversy about it, and veiled
its actual existence under a general
term thafwould include apprentices,
criminals under sentence, or even
minors ; alas I not foreseeing that
the invention of the cotton-gin
would give a new money-value to
slaves, and generate a fanatical
theory which glorified slavery as a
precious institution. Hence without
a terrible civil war the proud ambi
tion of slave owners could not be
crushed. But the mighty price was
paid. Slavery in the Spanish and
Portuguese colonies all now seems
to be doomed. Simultaneously the
Russian dynasty has reversed its
policy. Having for several centuries
by a gradual succession of imperial
edicts depressed the peasants, first
into serfs and next into slaves, it
has raised them into free labourers
who have legal rights in the soil
and a status which the English
peasant may envy. The most en
lightened of the Mussulmans now
glorify their Prophet as a promoter
of freedom, a panegyrist of emanci
pation. In the judgment now of
all highly cultivated men, slavery is
an unnatural, unjust, dangerous
institution, doomed by the voice of
conscience, and suffrage of reason, to
total extinction ; though we grieve
to know the perpetual effort which
freebooters make, and will make, to
renew it; not least, the degenerate
offspring of Europeans, whenever
they get beyond the reach of
European law. But in the ancient
world neither law nor philosophy
nor religion forbade slavery; slightly
to regulate its worst enormities,
389
was all that religion or law at
tempted. Slavery was with them
not the exception, but the rule. No
philosopher theorised against it, no
philanthropist (if such we may call
any Greek or Roman) was ashamed
of it, no statesman dreamed of taking
measures to destroy it. The savage
who wandered over the steppes of
southern Russia needed a slave to
milk his mares, and blinded him
lest he should escape. The Lacedae
monian warrior, proud of freedom,
regarded public slaves as essential
to his existence, important alike in
the camp, on the field of battle, and
in his own city. Even the simple
and comparatively virtuous German,
in his forest hut, coveted and often
attained the attendance of slaves,
whose status perhaps was rather
that of a serf. To the leading
commercial states, Tyre, Corinth,
2Egina, slaves were a staple article
of merchandise. Chattels they were,
yet not in these clays mere cattle,
useful for their brute force and
for little beside. They were often
persons of greater accomplishment
than their masters, and this accom
plishment enhanced their price.
Some persons kept schools of slaves,
in which they learned music and
other elegant arts, or arithmetic
and bookkeeping, cooking and
domestic service, or agriculture and
its kindred branches ; or some other
trade ; of course, not for the slaves’
benefit, but to raise their market
able value.
Through the ferocities of war,
the ancient slave trade raged most
cruelly against civilised man. All
captives from an enemy, however
seized, became the booty of the
captor and liable to personal slavery.
Pirates even in peace prowled along
the coasts, and often carried off as
prey any promising children, hand
some women, or stout men, on whom
they could lay hands. In many
cases, the same ship played the part
of merchant and kidnapper, as occa
sion might serve. After the suc
cessful siege of an opulent town, it
�390
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
was not uncommon for the entire
population, young and old, of both,
sexes and of all ranks, to be sold
into bondage : whereby sometimes
the slave market was so glutted
that they might be had for a trifle.
It thus not seldom happened, that
the well educated and delicately
nurtured were degraded beneath
humanity ; and, dreadful as was the
personal suffering to individuals,
the result was in one sense more
favourable to slaves collectively,
than the very different state of
modern colonial bondage. Slaves,
as such, were less despised, and
there was not so great a chasm as
to moral feeling between them and
the free community. The freeborn
and instructed were probably better
treated in slavery than others ; aud
certainly were often set free by
benevolent persons or by grate
ful masters. There was no pre
judice against colour. In no two
countries was the actual or legal
state of slaves quite the same, and
in some places and times the transi
tion from slavery to unprivileged
freedom was not very great. This
may have been among the reasons
which blinded thoughtful persons
to the essential immorality of the
system, however modified ; yet it is
wonderful that Aristotle should de
fine a slave to be ‘ a living tool ’ (a
phrase which one might expect
rather from an indignant aboli
tionist), and not draw any inference
against the system as inhuman.
Nay, he says, that nature by giving
to the Greeks minds so superior,
marked out slavery to the Greeks
as the natural status for barbarians.
Barbarian Romans could not assent
to this doctrine ; yet no voice in all
antiquity uttered an indignant pro
test against slavery as such. In
one country only of the ancient
world—a part, or some reported, the
whole of India—was slave-labour
said to be unknown. A species of
slavery, serving some of the pur
poses of apprenticeship, may have
existed then, as recently, without
[September
being particularly noticed ; so too
may the practice of selling beautiful
maidens to supply the harems of
chieftains.
That Egypt, as well as India,
should have dispensed with an or
dinary slave class, was perhaps a
natural result of the system of
caste. Where a Pariah caste exists
there is no want of men for any
sort of rude or unpleasant labour,
such as the Greeks believed none
but slaves would undertake. The
strength of domestic animals, aided
by good roads, and, still more,
modern machinery, relieves man
kind from a thousand hard tasks,
which the ancients exacted from the
sinews of bondsmen. It is interest
ing here to observe by what pro
cess those oppressions are removed
which weigh direfully on the lowest
class of a civilised community.
Even when Solomon built his cele
brated little temple (about as large
as an English parish church), for
which cedars were cut in Mount
Lebanon by aid of the skilful
Tyrians, it was believed that he
used 70,000 bondsmen that bare
burdens, and 80,000 hewers of tim
ber. No mention is made of mules
or ponies to carry down the loads;
even asses might better have borne
the toil, if it had been matter of
simple carrying on a clear path.
Egyptian pictures represent vast
weights as drawn by the hands of
men, who tug simultaneously when
the conductor sings or waves his
wand.
Shall we suppose that
brutes, though stronger, could not
be trained to the co-operation re
quisite ? Be this as it may, the
strain fell on human sinews. Hewers
of wood and drawers of water are
phrases often conjoined to express
the suffering of bondsmen from
causes which in the present day in
volve no kind of distressing toil.
With us, if enormous masses of
granite are to be moved along a
prepared road, not even bullocks or
horses are often thought in place,
but the engineer supersedes them
�1874]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
by a steam-engine and one or more
chains.
It is recorded that, when the
Spaniards first learned the wealth
of the American mines, their ava
rice pressed the unhappy natives so
severely as to kill them in great
numbers by the toil of ascending
and descending the mines with
heavy burdens. Of course, our
most rudimental machinery im
mensely relieves or supersedes this.
Yet, even to this day, a miner’s life
is so revolting to one who has not
been, as it were, born and bred in
it, that we cannot wonder at the
ancient doubt whether any but a
slave would work in a mine. For
this purpose, criminals and prisoners
of war were used by the Egyptians,
which would seem to be the only
form of slavery in that kingdom ;
and their labour is described as of
the most galling cruelty. Whether
the Indians had slaves in their
mines, perhaps the Greeks were not
well informed enough to ascertain.
To labour in the dark, and under
ground, may appear to most of us
an unbearable infliction, but modern
experience proves that, by aid of
machinery, it may be so lightened
as to be chosen voluntarily for gain.
To a thoughtful Athenian or Roman
it may have seemed doubtful whe
ther civilization was not purchased
too dearly, for its maintenance was
thought to require the permanent
degradation of, perhaps, the majo
rity of a nation into the unmanly
and demoralising state of bondage.
But this was an exaggeration, true
only of a brilliant but luxurious and
unsound state of society. In the
simpler and earlier order of things,
the labours of the field and work
shop were performed by freemen;
but, with the development of the
military spirit, and owing to the
small extent of a homogeneous na
tive population, the freemen were
drafted off for soldiers, and their
place was supplied by captives of
war. This undue predominance of
military institutions, especially in
391
the Roman world, engendered and
fostered preedial slavery. Under the
Emperors, through the comparative
cessation of wars and piracy, the
slave-trade became far less active,
and imperial legislation, in many
ways, regulated the state of slavery,
so that very great cruelties became
rarer, and some exceptional forms
of cruelty impossible ; nevertheless,
so much the more was a general
grinding degradation riveted upon
the masses of the country people.
Such an idea as the common Rights
of Men was nowhere sounded forth.
What then was never heard is now
an axiom, that all men, of every
class, of every nation, of every
complexion and climate, have some
indefeasible rights, which neither
conquest nor legislation, nor sale by
parents can take away. Herein lies
an enormous difference between the
past and future. Whatever the
origin of human races, wenow recog
nise all menas morally homogeneous,
and, in a just state, subject to a
single code of law. On the con
trary, antiquity admitted the prin
ciple of favoured races, even among
freemen. This may deserve a few
detailed remarks.
II. The first step upward from
slavery is into serfdom. Indeed
the former always tends to merge
itself into the latter, when the
slave trade is inactive. If slaves
can only be had from the natural
home supply, the value of the
workman immediately rises. It
becomes fit once the interest of the
master, and the duty of the law
giver, to secure the due increase
of the working population, and the
maintenance of their full strength.
In a tranquil society, developed only
from within, this would secure the
transition to serfdom, which is com
plete when families of labourers are
inseparable from an estate. But
besides the slaves and serfs, many
ancient nations, great and small,
recognised ranks very diverse, sub
ject even to different systems of
law. A ruling race was sure to be
�392
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
a privileged order, whose liberties
with the property or persons of
others were ill repressed by law ; and
of the rest, some were able to rise,
others not; some without political
lights, but endowed with full social
rights ; others treated as foreigners.
The principle may be seen alike
in despotic Persia, in oligarchical
Lacedamion and Rome; in part, also,
in democratic Athens. In some
sense it was superseded by a system
of caste, where that existed, which
by no means implied necessarily a
primitive difference of race. But
where an empire was founded by
conquest of numerous cities and
tribes, diverse in race and language,
the distinction of race and race
arose naturally, and was unblameable while the revolution was still
recent. But meddling and jealous
legislation endeavours to enact as a
law for ever that which ought only
to be a temporary caution of the
executive government—a caution
which the timidity of newly-seized
power is never apt to neglect.
Since our renewal of the East
India Company’s Charter in 1833,
the natives of India are by law put
on a perfect equality with the Bri
tish born, and were declared admis
sible to every office of power except
free; that of Governor-General, and
Commander-in-Chief. Yet every
one knows how little danger there
is that the executive will be too
eager to fill up its appointments
with born Indians. If, for security
against this imaginary danger, it
were forbidden by express laws, this
would forbid the barriers which
separate the conquered from the
conquering race to decay with time ;
and if to this were added a law
against intermarriage, it would ex
hibit anew the mischievous prin
ciples of exclusion, which have so
often sustained the galling iniqui
ties of conquest. It is a fallacy to
insist that because some races of
men have greater talents for go
vernment than others—even if the
fact be conceded—therefore they
[September
are entitled to award to themselves
peculiar legal privileges and rights.
A dominant race is never liable to
think too highly of its subjects and
too meanly of itself; the opposite
error is uniformly that from which
mankind has suffered. If the race
which is in power has greater capa
cities, it will outstrip the rest in a
fair field, without advantage from
the law. Each individual has ad
vantage already in the very name
of his nation. But jealousies and
pride in general prevailed. Most
ancient empires split up societies
into sharply distinguished orders
of men ; and as there was no
sudden chasm, they were the less
startled at the depth to which hu
manity was sunk in the unfortunate
slave.
We have less reason for boasting
than for mourning and contrition;
for our practice is by no means
commensurate with our theory ; but
European theory is now far more
humane than that of the ancients.
No high executive officer, no judge,
no member of a high council, no
authority in jurisprudence, will
justify giving to the members of a
ruling race any indefinite claims for
service, facilities foi’ oppression, or for
evading rightful obligations. What
ever our difficulties in administering
justice where a population is hetero
geneous, we loudly and unshrink
ingly avow our duty of abiding by
and enforcing equal law. This, wo
may feel confident, will henceforth
be the received principle of the
modern world, wherever European
influence has once been dominant.
Those powers who fail of enforcing
their own principle will not the less
successfully indoctrinate the sub
ject population with it, perhaps to
their own overthrow; for to the
enthroning of the idea of Equal
Rights to all races, events are sure
to gravitate, when the rulers them
selves enunciate it; nor can men
in power recede from a principle
which all the intellect of their own
nation proclaims and glorifies. This
�1874]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
is a great contrast between us and
antiquity.
III. One may not pass by a topic
closely akin to the last, although
prudence forbids any great confi
dence of tone concerning a move
ment which, is but in embryo. A
cry arises, not only against depres
sion of any Races, but also against
the depression of one Sex. Every
imperial power uses lavishly the
lives of its young men as soldiers.
Imperial England lavishes them also
in emigration and in nautical dan
gers. Hence women have the toil
of self-support, and, perhaps, the
double toil of family support, thrown
upon them; and in nearly every
market it is discovered by themthat their male rivals have unfair
advantage. Hitherto women have
suffered in silence, and with little
interchange of thought. The novel
fact is now, that in the freest coun
tries the sex is the most loudly
avowing discontent with its poli
tical depression. The movement
already belongs to so many coun
tries of Christendom, as to indicate
that it is no transient phenomenon,
but has deep causes. Partial suc
cess in so many places (as in the
municipal franchise of England) is
a promise that the movement must
expand into greater force. Hitherto
women of the higher ranks have
often held executive power, directly
as queens, or indirectly as mis
tresses of kings ; or, again, as vice
regents, or representatives of barons
and squires, their husbands; but
women from the families of private
citizens, who are the mass of every
nation, have hitherto been utterly
without political power, and rarely
hold any subordinate public posi
tion, except the worst paid. In
the American Union they have
rebelled against this state of things
for a full quarter of a century.
The force of mind and grasp of
knowledge which many women dis
play in various spheres of thought,
and not least in politics, are a fact
which cannot count for nothing ;
393
so that one who shuns to be rash
may yet forebode that the countries
which allow a political vote to un
educated men will not long refuse
it to the mass of educated women.
In this prospect we most surely see
a remarkable and hopeful contrast
of the Future to the Past, when
it is considered how large a part of
the miseries of history have arisen
from the sensualities and cruelties
of the male sex. Of course, we
know that, women, equally with
men, can be corrupted by the pos
session of power, and can be ex
quisitely cruel; but this is rare,
and somewhat abnormal. In gene
ral the sex is more tender-hearted
and refined; and their collective
exercise of power would forbid
many a war, and be generally fa
vourable to the side of humanity.
But wishing here to speak rather
of what is positively attained and
recognisable by all minds, than of
that which is only probable, I stay
my pen from further remark on
this topic.
IV. There is a signal contrast of
external circumstances between the
older and newer state of things
herein; that nearly every ancient
civilised state looked out upon a
barbarism immeasurable in mass
and power; barbarism, on which it
could never hope to make a per
manent impression, and by which
it might well fear io be swallowed
up. Tartary was the mightiest
realm of Barbaria. Gibbon has elo
quently and instructively detailed
the causes which made the Tartars
pre-eminently familiar with the art
of campaigning and guiding the
marches of immense hosts. At no
time known to us can the Tartar
nations have been so low in the
scale of civilisation as numerous
tribes whom we call savages. They
always had an abundance of sheep
and goats, and an extraordinary
number of horses. They always
had the art of mining for iron, and
forging swords. Even the inven
tion of steel was ascribed to north-
�394
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
ern people, otherwise backward in
civilisation. Waggons were brought
to a high state of perfection, and
over vast steppes of Tartary were
able to traverse the open country
without roads. This implies suffi
ciently good carpentry, and no lack
of needful tools. The whole nation
being moveable, it was hard to
limit the magnitude of a Tartar
army. The northern region could
not be coveted by the southerners,
and was practically unconquerable
by them. It fell under their sway
only -when some Tartar dynasty
conquered a southern people, and
still retained the homage of its na
tive realm. This has happened
again and again with Tartar con
querors of China. At the earliest
era of which we have notice of
Persia from Greeks or Romans, it
is manifest how powerful were the
Tartar sovereigns who interfered
in Persian domestic politics, when
they did not affect direct con
quest. This eternal conflict of the
Tartars and the Persians is sym
bolised in the mythical Turan and
Iran. In our mediaeval period a
Mogul dynasty seated itself in India,
two successive dynasties of Turks,
the Seljuks and the Ottomans, over
whelmed Asia Minor, and the exist
ing dynasty of Persia is esteemed
Tartar. Such is the peculiarity of
Asiatic geography, that it may seem
difficult to boast of civilisation
being ever there safe from bar
barism. Nevertheless the Tartar
power is virtually broken by the
wonderful development of Russian
empire. Mistress of the Amoor,
and. exercising control over Khiva,
Russia shuts the Tartars in on both
sides, and teaches them the su
premacy of civilised force in ways
so intelligible, that no future sove
reign of Tartary (if all were united
under one chief) could fancy him
self the chief potentate on earth.
Southern nations are no longer
palsied by the idea that their north
ern invaders are innumerable. Geo
graphy discloses their weakness as
[September
■well as their strength ; even China
has less to fear from Tartary than
in ancient times.
But when we approach Western
Asia and Europe, the contrast is
far more marked and important.
The Gauls, who temporarily over
whelmed Italy, and a century later,
Greece, are described as an ex
tremely rude people; so are the
Scythians, whose cavalry was gene
rally formidable to Persia, and to
Rome. Even Germany, Hungary,
and the regions south of the
Danube, often threatened overthrow
to the civilisation of their southern
neighbours. Imperial Rome for
several centuries stood at bay
against the Germans, but could do
little more; and when her best-in
formed men had begun to learn the
intractable character and vast ex
tent of the more or less closely
related tribes, despair for civilisa
tion was apt to seize them. Even
under the splendid military reign
of Trajan, conqueror of Dacia, the
historian Tacitus, relating a war in
which Germans slew one another,
earnestly hopes that the gods will
increase this fratricidal spirit, since
‘ the vates of the Empire pressing
us hard ’ there is no better prayer
to offer. Apparently he regarded it
as inevitable that the savage would
break the barriers of the Roman
provinces and sweep away all
culture before him ; which, in
deed, is the very thing which hap
pened, through the essential error
of Roman policy and the disorgani
zations incident to mere military
rule.
If a civilised power can entirely
subdue a barbarian neighbour, it
may, at considerable expense, per
haps civilise him ; but when the
nature of the country forbids this,
it is unwise in the more civilised to
admit a common frontier. Augustus
aspired to conquer Germany, and
actually pushed the frontier of the
empire to the Elbe, but the insur
rection under Arminius drove him
back to the Rhine ; then at last he
�1874]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
learned that, through her swamps
and forests and the wild nature of
her people, Germany was not worth
having, and that moderation is an
imperial virtue. But Germany and
the Empire were still conterminous,
though the frontier was pushed
back. The thing to be desired was
to sustain between them—as a sort
of buffer that should break German
assault — a half-civilised highspirited people, intelligent enough
to estimate Roman power, proud of
alliance and honours, but aware of
its essential inferiority to the mighty
Empire. Such a people, well armed
and -well supported by Roman re
sources, and taught all the arts of
Roman war, would have been worth
half-a-dozen armies; but to main
tain in them a free spirit was essen
tial to success, and this free spirit
was dreaded by the Romans as
contagious. Agricola planned to
conquer Ireland (says Tacitus, who
seems to approve the policy) lest
the knowledge that the Irish were
free should make the Britons less
contented in vassalage. It was
because the Romans systematically
broke the spirit of every nation
whom they conquered, and allowed
of none but imperial armies, that
the neighbour barbarians found no
resistance in the provinces, when
(from whatever cause) imperial
troops were not at hand. Thus
little good resulted to the world’s
history from the Roman conquest
of the ruder populations of Gaul,
or from the complete conquest of
Britain and of Dacia. Even wild
animals (says the Caledonian orator
in Tacitus), if you keep them caged
up, forget their courage. The
Britons and the Dacians were not
merely tamed; they were cowed
and unmanned. To have subdued
all Germany in this way would
have been useless. Charlemagne at
length undertook the problem,
which had been too hard for Trajan
and Marcus Antoninus ; but he was
already as much German as
VOL. X .----NO. LVII,
NEW SERIES.
395
Gaulish, and his chief struggle was
against Saxony. The next great
gain to civilisation was in Poland—
in Hungary — and in Southern
Russia. When Herodotus wrote,
the whole region to the north of
the Black Sea acknowledged the
sovereignty of roving equestrian
tribes ;only agriculturists of foreign
origin were settled among them in
Podolia and in the Crimea, who
paid them tribute. These, it may
be conjectured, were the nucleus of
the Ostrogoths, who afterwards
appeared in great strength in that
region, and from it migrated into
the Roman empire. Other tribes
filled the vacuum, but became agri
culturists like the Goths ; so that
the Russians easily retained them
under settled institutions. To Peter
the Great, in the last century, we
owe the establishment of the whole
of European Russia as industrious
people under well organised Go
vernments. Even Siberia, along
the high-roads which have been
reclaimed from the interminable
forests, has a settled population
attached to its own soil and proud
of its name. In the course of the
last thousand years, in Mongolia
itself, the same process has gone on,
of restricting the limits of the rov
ing tribes. In numbers they must
now be ever inferior to the settled
populations, and every development
of the art of war throws them
farther and farther behind. Much
more is Europe secure from all
alarms of the barbarian from with
out. Our dangers are solely w’hen,
by bad national institutions and
selfish neglect of our home popula
tion, we allow barbarism to grow up
from within.
V. Another contrast to be ob
served between the ancients and the
moderns lies in the number of great
states which have simultaneously
attained a robust civilisation, no one
of which is able to establish a uni
versal dominion. This was for two
or three centuries a cause of turbuE E
�39 G
('out easts of Ancient and Modern History,
lent yet thriving progress in Greece;
bnt all the Powers were there on
too small a scale to be able to resist
the great monarchies. No doubt
in China, in India, in Persia, civi
lised states on a grand scale existed
simultaneously; but each was a
separate world. Possibly in China
and in India at an early time there
was a complex internal struggle
similar to those of which we know
in Greece and in Europe ; but as far
as is recorded, the history of each
great country went on independently
of the other countries ; just as the
Roman and the Persian Empires,
though conterminous, were little
affected in their internal concerns,
each by the other. Ancient free
dom was generally on a small scale.
According to Aristotle, no Polity
could consist of so many as a hun
dred thousand citizens. A state
with only so many, may be con
quered by foreign force, in spite of
wise policy and the utmost bravery;
but to a homogeneous people of
twenty or thirty millions this can
only happen through the gravest
domestic errors. In ancient times
the attempt at widespread conquest
was unhappily more and more pros
perous as time went on. A succes
sion of great empires is displayed
before us, Assyrian, Median, Per
sian, Macedonian, Roman, each
larger than the preceding. The
last swallowed up into itself the
whole cultivation of the West and
much of its barbarism : each empire
in its turn was practically isolated,
independent and wholly self-willed,
aware of no earthly equal. A victim
of Roman tyranny scarcely had a
hope of escaping into the remote
Persia, any more than into the bar
barous populations which girt the
empire north and south. Under
despotism thus uncontrolled, all that
was manly and noble, all genius and
all the highest art, with love of
country, died away: the resources
of civilisation were crumbling and
sensibly declining, even during the
century which produced the very
[September
best Roman Emperors, Vespasian,
Titus, Trajan, Hadrian and the two
Antonines, before any Gothic in
road ; hence, when the barbarian
triumphed, what remained of the
precious fabric fell as in a mass.
But the rivalry of great powers in
Europe effectively sustains all vital
principles. Despotic and wilful as
Russia may seem, she is really so
anxious to secure the good opinion
of Europe, that she does not disdain
to subsidize foreign newspapers as
her advocates. The dynasties col
lectively form a sort of European
Commonwealth, which displays
great jealousy if one make encroach
ments on another. Thus in their
external action they encounter muoh
criticism, remonstrance, or severer
checks, and nevei’ think that they
are irresponsible. Even as to their
internal concerns, in which none
■will endure that another should in
terfere with diplomatic suggestion
or advice, they cannot be exempt
from the criticism of European
literature. For in this greater
Commonwealth there is in some
sense a common literature. Modern
languages more and more assume a
form in which it becomes a deter
minate problem, and not an ardu
ous one, to translate from one into
the other. Through travellers, fixed
embassies, and newspaper corre
spondents, an atmosphere of common
knowledge is maintained, largely
pervaded by a common sentiment,
which, in proportion to the extent
of education, inevitably affects the
minds of public men. Moreover,
in all the foremost states, and
especially those in which despotism
and bureaucracy predominate, a
severe cultivation is thought neces
sary to high office. A despotism
like that of Turkey, recent Naples
or recent Spain, which accounts
education to be needless for its
functionaries, is understood to be
decaying, and is despised by the
other powers. So large a moral
and mental action of state on state
was unknown to antiquity. In it
�1*74]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
we have a valuable guarantee for
the maintenance and preservation
of anything good which has been
earned by civilised effort. In this
connection we ought not to pass
over the joint cultivation of science
by all the leading nations of Chris
tendom. The material sciences have
emphatically become ‘ sinews of
war ’ as well as means of wealth ;
so that no imperial power can de
spise them. Each great country has
its peculiar objects or facilities of
study, and what is discovered in
one is studied and must be learned
by others. Science is notoriously
cosmopolitan, and steadily aids the
diffusion of common thought and
common knowledge upon which
common sentiment may reasonably
establish itself.
VI. We have not at all abandoned,
scarcely have we relaxed, the rigid
formalities by which imperial power
seeks to elevate its high personages
and maintain the steadiness of its
ordinances. Nevertheless, with the
stability of freedom under law, and
the growth of a scientific spirit,
criticism of national institutions
becomes more and more fundamen
tal, in a country so free as England.
Hence it is scarcely credible that
we can long continue to be, what
we are, a marked exception to the
rest of Christendom in regard to
the tenure of land. So far as we
know of antiquity, conquest and
conquest alone, unmodified by con
siderations of moral right, enacted
the landed institutions. Out of
unequal rights in the soil, more than
out of any other single cause, springs
social depression to the excluded,
and often a wide pauperism. In all
Europe like causes produced like
results, and nearly everywhere the
actual cultivators of the soil were
oppressed in various degrees ; but
time has in most countries largely
altered their position for the better.
In less than a hundred years an
immense change has passed over
the Continent. In Italy, Switzer
land, and Spain, things were never
397
so bad as elsewhere, nor perhaps in
Holland and parts of Germany.
Norway retains a state of equality
unbroken by conquest. France and
Prussia, Hungary and Austria,
Poland, Sweden, and Russia, have
all endowed the peasantry with de
finite rights in the soil. Over the
entire breadth of the Continent the
principle has now established itself,
which permits of arguing politically,
as all will argue morally, that land,
water, and air are gifts of God
to collective man, necessary to life,
and therefore not natural possessions
of individuals, except as actual cul
tivators. Small states of antiquity,
sometimes in favour of their own
citizens (generally at the expense
of another nation), avowed a doc
trine of each family having a right
to land: even this was exceptional.
No doctrine concerning land was
propounded by moral philosophy ;
no practical recognition of right in
the cultivator, as such, was ever
dreamed of by great imperial
powers; no dogma concerning it was
put forth by a hierarchy, even
after a Christian apostle had writ
ten, that the cry of those who sow
and reap the fields, whose hire the
powerful keep back by fraud, had
entered the ears of the Lord of
Hosts. When moral philosophy
deals with the question of property
in land, as it already deals with
that of property in human bodies,
the effect on all civilised nations
will be immense; and it is now
pretty clear that such a develop
ment must come, and that shortly.
The English aristocracy will shriek
and storm, as did the American
slaveholders. A Marquis lately
spoke of certain landed property as
sacred, because it had been sanc
tioned by Parliament. Just so, it
was pleaded that slaves were A
sacred property because they had
been bought, and because slave
owners had passed laws to sanction
it.
Such arguments are good
enough for those who hold on by
the law of might, but are contemp-
�398
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
tible to all who appeal to the law of
right. They avail to show that it
is prudent and equitable in the
state to give an ample consideration
whenever it dispossesses an indi
vidual ; but never can establish that
it is right to keep a whole nation
of cultivators living from hand to
mouth, without any fixed tenure of
the soil, without roof or hearth of
their own, or increased profit from
increased diligence in culture. If
England were in this matter at the
head of Europe, existing inequali
ties might last for centuries longer.
But since she lingers ignominiously
behind all the best known powers,
—and while Ireland is her old
scandal, the Scottish and English
peasants have no better security
whatever in their tenure, and are ac
cidentally superior, chiefly through
manufacturing and commercial
wealth—since, moreover, the Eng
lish colonies entirely renounce that
doctrine of land which English
landlords have set up, — finally,
since in India the supreme power
avows and enforces a widely dif
ferent doctrine ; the existing system
is destined to a fundamental change.
Precisely because those who claim
reform feel towards the landlord
class as tenderly as abolitionists felt
towards slave-owners—making all
allowance for their false position
blamelessly inherited,—desiring to
make the change as gentle to them
as public justice will permit; there
fore the more decisive and unhesi
tating is the appeal to moral prin
ciple in the political argument. In
this resolute appeal to morals is
involved a great contrast to the
state of things possible in any
ancient power, where slavery, serf
dom, or caste existed. A claim of
landholders which rests on the
enactments of a Parliament from
which all but landholders were
systematically excluded for cen
turies, is signally destitute of moral
weight. They who use it do not
know that they are courting conmpt. Unless they will undertake
[September
to establish that the claim is morally
just, they effect nothing but to show
that, having stepped into legislative
power, they have used it for their
private benefit; while, by excluding
all but their own order, they be
trayed their own consciousness of
malversation. This, in part, relates
to past generations, but, of course,
the alleged rights are hereditary
only. The evil deeds of predeces
sors have wrongfully enriched the
present holders. In every case, it
is by moral argument that they will
have to be established, if established
they can be, against the consensus of
all Europe, tlie American Union,
the other British colonies, and the
Anglo-Indian empire.
VII. Last, perhaps not least, of
the general moral contrasts which
will make a signal difference be
tween the ancients and the moderns,
is the elementary education of the
masses of every community. This
education, no doubt, is as yet chiefly
in the future. In the late American
civil war the ‘ mean whites ’ of the
South were so ignorant that only by
seeing and feeling the force of Nor
thern armies could they learn that
there was any greater power in the
world than their own State. Germany
and the American Union having de
clared for, and vigorously carried out,
the education of the lowest people, it
is morally certain that first England,
next Austria and France, will follow.
Partial interests, religious animosi
ties, old prejudices, timid forebod
ings, will impede, but can only de
lay, the movement; though a century
may be needed before it is strictly
European. When it is established
that there are to be no slaves, no
serfs, no dangerous class of citizens,
the problem cannot be worked out
with the vast masses of ignorant
freemen. Hence general national
education is one of the certainties
of the future. It is the last con
trast of modern and ancient times
which it is expedient to treat in
one article.
Francis W. Newman.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Contrasts of ancient and modern history. [Part 1].
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Newman, Francis William
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Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 388-398 ; 22 cm.
Notes: Printed in double columns. Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country was a general and literary journal published in London from 1830 to 1882, which initially took a strong Tory line in politics. From Fasier's Magazine 10, no. 57 (September 1874]. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. First of a 4-part article deploys contrasts in terms of periodisation, slavery, serfdom, gender, the contrast between barbarity and civilization, the application of science and land tenure.
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C223
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QTZ!
THE
RIGHT AND DUTY
OF
EVERY STATE
TO ENFORCE SOBRIETY
ON ITS CITIZENS.
BY
F. W. NEWMAN, M.E.A.S.,
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE, LONDON. -
NOTTINGHAM :
PRINTED BY STEVENSON, BAILEY, AND SMITH, LISTER GATE.
1882.
��THE RIGHT AND DUTY OF EVERY STATE
TO ENFORCE SOBRIETY
ON ITS CITIZENS.
No human community can be so small as not to involve
duties from each member to the rest; duties to which a
sound human mind is requisite. Neither an idiot nor a
madman can be a normal citizen. The former ranks
as in permanent childhood; the latter, being generally
dangerous, must be classed with criminals. A de
humanized brain impairs a citizen’s rights because it
unmans him,—disabling him from duty, even making him
dangerous. In India, such a one now and then runs
amuck, stabbing every one whom he meets: in England,
he beats and tramples down those nearest to him,—those
whom he is most bound to protect. A human community
cannot be constituted out of men and brutes, nor ought
civilized men to be forced to carry arms or armour for selfdefence. For all these reasons, to be drunk is in itself
an offence against the community, prior to any statute
forbidding it, prior to any misdemeanor superinduced by
it. In the State it is both a right and a duty to enforce
(as far as its means reach) sobriety in every citizen, rich
or poor, in private or in public; and with a view to this,
to use such methods as will best prevent, discourage, or
deter from intoxication.
When a national religion totally forbids the use of
intoxicating drugs, vigilance in the State is less needful:
public opinion, or even public show of disgust and violence,
effectively stifles the evil. But if the national religion
�4
does not forbid the use, but solely enjoins moderation (a
word which every one interprets for himself), a far heavier
task falls on the State, whose right and duty nevertheless
in this matter several causes have concurred to obscure,
not least in England and Scotland. Out of the teachings
of Rome, our forefathers very ill learned the rights of the
State or the distinction of Morals from Religion. Although
even men not highly educated must have known that
Moral truth is far older than any special system of Religious
beliefs, yet in the popular idea morals have no other basis
than religion. Hence, the demand for freedom of con
science against an oppressive State Policy (besides the
vices of Courts and Courtiers) led to a vehement jealousy
of State power even in moral concerns. Many generous
minds feared, that to concede to the State a right of
enforcing morality, covertly allowed religious persecution.
Who first uttered the formula,—“The only duty of the State
is, to protect persons and property ”—is unknown to the
present writer; but certainly 50, 40, even 30 years ago,
this principle was widely accepted by radical politicians
and active-minded dissenters. The late Dr. Arnold of
Rugby regarded this denial of the State’s moral character
as a wide-spread, untractable and mischievous delusion.
After long torpor the prohibition of Lotteries showed
that Parliament was waking to its moral duties. Little by
little, the mass of the middle classes and the gentry imbibed
nobler views of human life, and have discovered, that of
all the powers which make a nation immoral the State is
the most influential. One day of licensed debauch undoes
the work of the Clergy on 52 Sundays. No wonder that
in the past the State collectively has been our worst cor
rupter : but to open this whole question space does not
here allow. A long struggle has gone on, to implore
public men not to connive at drunkenness,—a national pest
which for more than a century was greeted with merriment,
�5
though politically avowed to be criminal. None dare now
to laugh at it, except the depraved men who laugh at
bribery, and use drunkenness as a trump-card at Elections,
and, if in office, rejoice in the vast revenue sucked by the
Exchequer out of the vice and misery of the people.
Earnest religionists of every creed have happily rallied to
a common conviction, that the State has grievously failed
of its duty and must now turn over a new leaf. Our worst
opponents are men who cannot be reckoned in any reli
gious body, men who find nothing so sacred as Liberty to
buy and sell and indulge appetite; generally eccentric
“Liberals,” who are in many respects too good not to
esteem, and too intellectual to despise.
One of these some years ago opened attack on me in a
private letter, which summed up the arguments decisive
with this class of “ advanced Liberals in whose hatred
of Over Legislation I heartily share. He taunted me for
thinking that the State ought to concern itself about the
drinks of citizens more than about their dress; saying that I
could not hold the State to have a control of public morals,
without, in logical consistency, admitting the right of
Parliament to forbid dancing and card-playing ; or to
command my attendance at any Church worship, or to fine
and imprison me for heresy. The double confusion here
involved is wonderful from an educated man, and lowers
his reputation for good sense. Eeligion is a topic on
which eminent persons and foremost nations widely differ :
concerning Moral Duty there is more agreement in man
kind than perhaps on anything that is beyond the five
senses. To argue that in claiming of the State an enforce
ment of duties cardinal to citizenship, we admit its right
to dictate in religion, is a pestilent anachronism; it
confounds Morals with Eeligion just as did the ancient
world, Pagan and Hebrew.—Again: the test of soundness
in Morals is found in the agreement of the human race.
�6
There is no nation, no elementary tribe of men, so ignorantor so besotted, as not to condemn drunkenness as immoral
and utterly evil. In justifying penalties against a vice
condemned by all mankind, we justify (forsooth!) the
punishing of amusements thought harmless by a great
majority everywhere.
Such an assertion is not the less
silly, even in the mouth of a disciple of John Stuart Mill.
Of course we all know that Law cannot be made a,gain at
every misuse of time, or of energy, or of money. There is
certainly no danger whatever that a modern Parliament,
elected from very different circles and representing widely
different elements, will ever adopt as its measure of sound
morals the special opinions of any historical sect, however
virtuous and wise.
Neither of an individual nor of a community does the
highest interest consist in Liberty, but in soundness of
morals; without which Liberty only means licence to be
vicious ; licence to ruin oneself, and diffuse misery to
others. To a man not proof against the omnipresent,
drinkshop, high wages are a curse; days called holy and
short hours of work do but more quickly engulf him in
ruin. But he pulls others too down in his fall. That
nearly every Vice tends to waste, and preeminently intoxi
cation by liquors or drugs, certain Economists are strangely
slow to learn. Moreover, nearly every wide-spread vice
makes wealth andlifeless enjoyable to the whole community.
Confining remark to the vice of drunkards, it suffices to
point in brief to the enormous extension which it gives to
Violent Crime, to Orphanhood, to Pauperism, to Prostitu
tion, to disease in Children, and to Insanity. Hence comes
an enormous expense for Police and Criminal Courts, for
Jails and Jail-officers, for Magistrates and Judges, for
Insane Asylums, and Poor Rates. Hence also endless
suffering to the victims of crime and to the families of
criminals, and a grave lessening of happiness to innocent
�7
persons by the ribaldry of drunkards planted at their side,
with fear lest their children be corrupted ; fear also of
personal outrage. Our daily comfort largely depends on
homely virtue in our neighbours. In every great organi
zation of industry the drunkenness of workmen is a firstrate mischief to others, crippling enterprize by increased
expense and risk. From sailors fond of grog and tobacco,
proceed fire in ships out at sea; and on foreign coasts,
broils that disgrace England and Christendom, and lay a
train which sometimes explodes in war. The drunkenness
of a captain has before now stranded a noble ship. On a
railroad, access of the engine driver to drink is a prime
danger; and shall we say that there is no danger in
Parliament legislating when half asleep with wine, and
hereby open to the intrigue of any scheming clique, who
may wish to fasten suddenly on the nation fraudulent or
wicked law ? Wisely does the American Congress forbid
to its members wine in its own dining room, because those
who have to make sacred law are bound to deliberate and
vote with clear heads. Evil law is of all tyrannies the
most hateful, and makes a State contemptible to its own
citizens,—thus preparing Revolution.
English Statesmen have yet to learn Yankee wisdom ;
but no one who is, or hopes to be, in high office dares to
speak lightly of drunkenness. The celebrated Committee
of 1834 advised Parliament to reverse its course, with a
view to the ultimate extinction of the trade in ardentspirits.
The advice was disgracefully spurned; yet neither the
legislature nor the executive has ever dared to deny that
drunkenness is a civil offence. Our opponents plead only
for the use, not for the abuse of intoxicating drink.
No doubt, teetotallers maintain that all use of such
liquors for drink is an abuse.
The avowals of Dr.
William Gull, who calls our view extreme, beside those of
Sir Henry Thompson and Dr. Benjamin Richardson, seem
�8
to justify the extreme view: so do the Parisian experi
ments of 1860-1. Yet it is not necessary to go so far in a
political argument. I desire to obtain common ground
with such men as my friend Mr. P. A. Taylor, M.P. for
Leicester, and waive our difference with him as to moderate
use. Let us admit (that is, temporarily) that as Prussic
Acid is fatal in ever so small a draught, yet is safe as well
as delicious in extract of almonds and in custard flavored
by bay-leaf, so alcohol is harmless, not only in Plum
Pudding and Tipsy Cake, but also in one tumbler of Table
Beer and one wineglass of pure Claret. Let us further
concede that the propensity of very many to excess makes
out no case for State-interference against the man whose
use of the dangerous drink is so sparing, that no one can
discover any ill effect of it on
Nevertheless, irrefu
table reasons remain, why we should claim new legislation,
and a transference of control over the trade from the
magistrates who do not suffer from it to the local public
who do.
First of all, let me speak of undeniable excess. At one
time perhaps it was punished by exposure in the pillory
or stocks; but for a long time past, the penalty (when not
aggravated by other offences) has been at most a pecuniary
fine : five shillings used often to be inflicted. A “ gentle
man ” who could pay, was let off: a more destitute man
might fare worse. Inevitably, the vices of the eighteenth
century affected national opinion. The wealthier classes
were so addicted to wine, that to be “as drunk as a lord”
became a current phrase. From highest to lowest the
drunkard was an object more of merriment than of pity,
and scarcely at all of censure, unless he were a soldier or
sailor on duty. When a host intoxicated his guests, it
was called hospitality; to refuse the proffered glass was
in many a club an offence to good company. Peers and
Members of Parliament, officers of Army and Navy,
�9
Clergymen and Fellows of Colleges,—nay, some Royal
Princes—loved wine, often too much. Who then could
be earnest and eager to punish poorer men for love of
strong beer ? The preaching of Whitefield and Wesley
began the awakening of the nation. A very able Spaniard
despondingly said of his country : “ A profligate individual
may be converted, but a debased nation never; ” and the
recovery no doubt is arduous, when the national taste has
been depraved and vicious customs have fixed themselves
in society. Even now, few indeed are able to rejoice in
the punishment of mere drunkenness; for, the only
penalty imagined is a pecuniary fine, which never can
prevent repetition nor deter others : when most severe, it
does but aggravate suffering to an innocent wife and
children. To be “drunk and disorderly” is now the
general imputation before a magistrate. Unless molesta
tion of others can be charged, the drunkard is very seldom’
made to feel the hand of the law. Hereby many persons
seem to believe (as apparently does one bishop) that, as a
part of English liberty, every one has a right to be drunk.
While we complain that authorities are negligent and
connive at vice, after accepting and assuming the duty to
prevent it; the sellers of the drink are open to a severer
charge. A man too poor to keep a servant is glad to get
a wife to serve him. She is to him housemaid and cook
and nurse of his children. For all these functions she
has a clear right to full wages, besides careful nurture
during motherly weakness. The husband manifestly is
bound to supply to his wife more than all she might have
earned in serving others, before he spends a sixpence on
his own needless indulgences: and the publican knows it;
knows, sometimes in definite certainty, always in broad
suspicion, that he is receiving money which does not in
right belong to his customer. Of course he cannot be
convicted by law; but in a moral estimate he is com
�10
parable to a lottery-keeper who accepts from shopmen
money which he suspects is taken from their master’s
till, or to a receiver of goods which he ought to suspect to
be stolen. Such is the immoral aspect of traders, who
now claim 11 compensation,” if the twelve-month licences
granted to them as privilege, for no merit of their own,
be, in the interest of public morality, terminated at the end
of the twelve months. In the interest and at the will of
landlord magistrates such traders have borne extinction
meekly, over a very wide rural area. What made them
then so meek and unpretending? Apparently because
against powerful Peers and Squires impudence was not
elicited in them by the encouragement of a John Bright
and a Gladstone.
How then ought the State to deal with a drunkard ?
Obviously by the most merciful, kind and effective of all
punishments,— by forbidding to him the fatal liquor.
How much better than asylums for drunkards 1 asylums
which make a job for medical men, take the drunkard
•away from his family and business, without anything to
guarantee that on his release from prison he will have a
Will strong enough to resist the old temptation. Such
asylums please medical philanthropy ; nor is any animosity
■displayed against them in Parliament. How can we
account for the fact, that M.P.’s who strongly oppose
interference with the existing shops, and avow as much
distress and grief at drunkenness as is possible to any
teetotaller, have never proposed to withhold the baneful
drink from a convicted drunkard ? Did it never come into
their heads ? Had they never heard of it ? This would
convict them of ignorance disgraceful in an M.P., still
more so in a Minister. Perhaps some one charitably
suggests : “ They think the prohibition never could be
enforced.” To this pretence General Neal Dow makes
reply: “ What we Yankees have done, you English cer
�11
tainly can do, whenever you have the Will.” Nothing
is easier, when anyone has been convicted of drunkenness,
than to send official notice to all licensed shops (say,
within five miles) forbidding them to supply him, under
penalty of forfeiting their licences. At the same time it
should be made a misdemeanour in anyone else to supply
him gratuitously. (It would be pedantic here to suggest
after how long probation, and under what conditions, this
stigma should be effaceable.)
The misery which husband can inflict on wife, or wife
on husband, by drunkenness, has led many Yankees
further, and—to our shame—we have as yet refused to
learn from them. If a wife (with certain legal formalities)
forbid the drinkshops to supply her husband, this should
be of the same avail, as if the husband were convicted of
drunkenness before a magistrate. Of course a husband
ought to have the same right against a wife, and either
parent against a son or daughter under age. Such an
enactment, as it seems to me, ought to be at once passed,
as a law for all the Queen’s realms, not as matter for
local option. Passed over the heads of existing magis
trates, it would remain valid over whatever authority may
succeed them.
This is no place to dwell on any details of horrors
inflicted on the country by the present imbecile control.
Of course it is far better than the free trade in drink,
towards which Liverpool twenty years back took a long
stride, with results most wretched and justly repented of.
How deadly is now the propensity of the country, will
sufficiently appear from an experience of the late Sir
Titus Salt in his little kingdom of Saltaire.
For a single year he made trial of granting to four
select shops a licence to supply table beer in bottles, de
livered at the houses in quantity proportioned to the
number of inmates;—a more severe limitation than any
�12.
previously heard of. Yet in the course of some months
evil grew up and multiplied. Something stronger than
table beer (apparently) had been substituted. The liquor
was smuggled into his works. Disobedience and disorders
arose ; and at length a deputation of his own men com
plained to him that their women at home were getting too
much of the drink. At the year’s end he cancelled the
licences, and to the general content and benefit restored
absolute prohibition. Nothing short of this extinguishes
the unnatural taste. Female drunkenness is a new vice,
at least in any but the most debased of the sex : yet alas !
courtly physicians now tell us that it has invaded the
boudoirs of great ladies. Such has been the mischief of
Confectioners’ and Grocers’ Licences.
Unsatisfactory as has been the control of the drink trade
by the magistrates, their neglect has never been resented
in higher quarters, ever since, by gift of the Excise, Par
liament made the Exchequer a sleeping partner in the
gains of the Drink Trade. The Queen’s Exchequer has
hence a revenue of about thirty-three millions a year, of
which probably two-thirds, say twenty-two millions, is
from excess: a formidable sum as hush-money. No
earnest reformer expects the leopard to change his spots.
A transference of power is claimed, chiefly under the title
of Local Option. To give the power to town councils has
been proved wholly insufficient in Scotland ; though the
Right Hon. John Bright seems obstinately to shut eyes
and ears to the fact.
Again and again in crowded meetings the Resolution
has been affirmed : “ The people who suffer by the trade
ought to have a veto against it.”—Those who seem re
solved to oppose every scheme which seeks to break down
and restrict this horrible vice, tauntingly reply, that this
measure would ensure its continuance in its worst centres.
They do but show their own unwisdom herein. The
�13
Publicans know far better, and they avow, there is nothing
they so much dread as local option. In Maine itself, a
State frightfully drunken in the first half of the century,
the opponents of Neal Dow in the State Legislature scorn
fully allowed him to carry a Bill which gave to each parish
Permission to accept his measure as law. They expected
that the drunkards would out-vote it: but to their dis
comfiture found that the drunkards were glad of his law,
and nailed it firm. Let all sound-hearted Englishmen
trust our suffering population to use their own remedy.
Under Local Option we now embrace two systems which
have been already discussed in Parliament,—that of
Sir Wilfrid Lawson, and that upon the outlines of
Mr. Joseph Cowen’s Bill.
Personally I yield to Sir Wilfrid Lawson the highest
honour. Beyond all other men he is the hero in this long
battle. If I account his Bill defective, he will not blame
me : for in its original form, which he would be glad to
carry, it closely resembled the Maine Law, and superseded
the Magistrates. He has simplified it by making it only
a half measure. After Parliament has been teazed by the
drink question for more than twenty-five years, (one
might almost say, ever since 1834)—after candidates at
every election have been made anxious by it, we must
calculate that all public men will desire to make a final
settlement and get rid of the topic in Parliament. But
Sir Wilfrid’s Bill, whatever its other merits (and I think
them great) will not set Parliament free. For so soon as
any district adopts his permission to stop the Drink Trade,
an outcry must arise from local medical men and chemists
and varnishers, demanding new shops for their needs :
and intense jealousy will follow, lest the new sellers,
though called chemists or grocers or oilmen, presently
become purveyors of drink ; hence a fresh struggle must
continue in our overworked Legislature concerning the
�14
new and necessary regulations. Sir Wilfrid’s half measure
supersedes neither the Magistrates nor the Parliament,
though for two hundred years the Nation has suffered
through the laxity of both. Surely we chiefly need real
Provincial Legislatures, and, until we get them, Local Folk
Motes and Local Elective Boards are our best substitutes.
This is the other and the complete measure: yet some
thing remains to be said on it. The great evil is, that by
reason of competition, a trade cannot live, except by
pushing its sales. The Americans have wisely seen that
the necessary sales must be effected by Agents publicly
appointed, with a fixed salary and nothing to gain by an
increase of sales. Such Agents must receive public in
structions. This was in fact Sir Wilfrid’s original scheme,
only that it forbad absolutely the selling wine or beer for
drink, unless by medical order: and the last condition
would involve in Parliament endless contention. It is
simpler, and I think far better, to give to an Elective
Board a general free discretion. Parliament might indeed
dictate that sales should go on through a public officer only.
I, for one, should rejoice in this. But the most eager
teetotaller will not hope that in the present generation any
English Parliament will be more severe against a wine
loving gentry, and more dictatorial to medical men, than
is the law of Maine. If therefore it did command that sales
should be without gain, it certainly would not allow an
entire prohibition of selling alcohol as beverage to be imposed
on the Agent for sale. It is not so in Maine: and this
fact occasioned Mr. Plimsoll’s stupendous blunder, who
declared in Parliament that the Maine Law was a dead
letter in Maine itself. The fact on which he built this
outrageously false assertion, was, that when Mr. Plimsoll
asked for Whiskey, the Agent instantly sold it to him without
a moment’s hesitation.—But why ? “ Because he knew
that Mr. Plimsoll was an English M. P. and a teetotaller,”
�15
such was the Agent’s reply when interrogated afterwards.—
Again, any richer man, or any club of poorer men in
Maine is allowed to order from abroad a cask of wine or
porter : but it must reach the house to which it is addressed
in package unbroken. Thus the Maine Law does not
set itself against the man who, resolute in sobriety, has yet
a fixed purpose to drink alcoholic liquor. An Agent is
selected who is earnest to check excess, and has no motive
to be lax; but he is not shackled in his discretion, nor
forbidden (where he trusts the applicant) to sell for
medical use, that is, for drink. If English teetotallers
choose to be indignant at the thought, I make sure that
they waste their energy. It will be a vast advantage to
sobriety, if Parliament give absolute discretion to a Local
Elective Board, with the sole proviso, that the purchase
of these liquors shall not be made impossible nor vexatiously difficult, to an applicant against whom no primd
facie note of excess can be pleaded.
The power must be placed somewhere of giving wine or
ale to persons who think they need it, or to whom physi
cians recommend it. A nation may be led, but cannot be
forced, into wisdom of drinking or eating. Moreover, as
soon as the problem is opened, of lessening the number of
shops (which all allow to be the most urgent matter,
only many of us wish the number to be zero) an outcry
is sure to arise of partiality and unfairness, and a new
bonus will be given to the shops that remain. The in
crease in the number of shops has done mischief; but a
lessening of the number will but very slowly undo the
mischief. Out of these difficulties a trial of the American
scheme is sure to arise in some town where local knowknowledge is ripest; and each place will quickly learn
from the experience of other places. Every local popula
tion desires relief from the evils of intoxication. I cannot
understand how any who profess to trust those who suffer
�16
from the trade, can be terrified at the transfer of full
power from the magistrates to the local public.
Finally, I must express my conviction, that if by the
over-occupation of Parliament, or by any other cause, it be
impossible to effect in the present Session the general and
final settlement concerning the control of sales, great good
would arise from a short and simple Act to which there
ought to be no jealous opposition;—an Act in which
philanthropic Brewers would (we may hope) concur—to
give to husband and wife and parents a direct veto such as
was named above, as also to command a withholding of
supply to one convicted of drunkenness. How can an
M.P. with any face pretend that he sorrows over the effects
of this deadly vice, if he oppose this reasonable veto ?
P.S. — A friend in Manchester, minutely acquainted
with the history of the Maine Law, assures me that the
statement in p. 13, (which I make as heard, by me from
Neal Dow,) confounds the original law of 1851 with a
law of 1858, which was sanctioned by a Plebiscite of the
whole State.—This, if more correct, in no respect alters
the moral meaning and weight of my argument.
Another friend wishes me to explain, that by Sir
Wilfrid’s Bill, I mean the Permissive Bill, and not his naked
resolution ; and by its “original form” I allude to a paper
privately circulated in order to gather opinions before
hand.
F. W. N.
STEVENSON, BAILEY AND SMITH, PRINTERS. LISTER GATE, NOTTINGHAM.
�
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The right and duty of every state to enforce sobriety on its citizens
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Newman, Francis William
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Place of publication: Nottingham
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
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Stevenson, Bailey and Smith, printers
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1882
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CT81
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Temperance
Social problems
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Conway Tracts
Sobriety
State
Temperance
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THE CONTROVERSY
ABOUT
PRAYER.
BY PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
No. 11
The Tebeace, Fabquhar Road, Uppee Nobwood,
London,
S.E.
1873.
Price Threepence.
��THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT
PRAYER.
OME have said that religious knowledge is not
progressive: with about as
Ssay that medical knowledge much tr.uth we might On
is not progressive.
each topic mankind has made enormous errors, and
on each is still very far from a sound and satisfactory
state ; yet on each it has left many errors far behind.
Primitive theology is man’s interpretation of the
outer world which he perceives ; and his interpreta
tion is largely influenced by his consciousness and his
emotions. Enlarged and improved knowledge of the
universe almost necessarily modifies theology, as does
the improved moral culture of nations. Religion
therefore (in its popular sense of “ thought concerning
God”), unless artificially stereotyped by nationally
established creeds and by sacerdotal authority, must
everywhere tend to improve, as nations become
nobler in morals, or in breadth and accuracy of know
ledge. So strong indeed is this natural tendency,
that we do in fact trace this improvement, in spite of
hierarchies and domineering institutions, and some
times, in the higher minds, even in spite of public
demoralization. Theological opinion, and the inter
pretation of generally received doctrines, cannot but
undergo change, when the ascendant system of (what
is called) metaphysics changes; much more, when,
�4
^he Controversy about Prayer.
as in the last three centuries of Europe, acquaintance
with the outer world has been immensely enlarged
and at the same time become beyond comparison
more accurate.
But the mass of the population in Christendom is
very far from duly appreciating the truths of natural
science ; and the teachers of religion on the one
side are bound down by Church Articles and Liturgies,
or on the other cannot conveniently outrun the tra
ditionary creed of their congregations. Men of
business have not much time for original thought
concerning religion; and a great majority of the
female sex have too little scientific knowledge or too
little independence of judgment to deviate knowingly
from current .opinion. Necessarily therefore within
the same Church, whatever the submission to common
ordinances, there is a great mental gap between those
who are most and those who are least influenced by
the thought and knowledge of the age, especially in
Astronomy, in Geology, in Geography, in Physiology,
to say nothing of History and Literary Criticism.
Minds which have by no means gone so far as to
throw off belief of an established religion, or the
cardinal and prominent tenets of a creed, nevertheless
to a great extent interpret things differently, so as
practically to come to a different result from the
older beliefs.
Now in this matter of Prayer, it is obvious what
was the primitive doctrine of most nations, and in
particular both of the Hebrews and of the early
Christians. That God ruled the universe by law,
none had any idea. They supposed that His rule
might be compared to that of an earthly king, who
said to one servant Go, to another Gome, to a third
Do this, and was obeyed. Indeed the Hebrews,
like the Persians and Arabs, supposed ministering
spirits to guide the actions of the elements and of the
heavenly bodies ; also, to guard or watch humaji in
�The Controversy about Prayer.
5
dividuals. Instinct, under a sense of weakness or
desire, often impelled them, as it impels us, to pray
for this, or for that; and they could but very
vaguely define to themselves the limits within which
prayer was right, and beyond which it would be rather
impious than pious. We should all be much astonished
to hear of barbarians so stupid as to pray that the
new moon should give as much light as the full moon,'
or that a winter day should be luminous and long as
a day of summer. In the very infancy of man the
steadiness of sun and moon was so fully recognized,
that it would have seemed idiotic to pray for any irre
gularity. But there has always been an enormous
margin of events concerning which man saw no reve
lation of a fixed divine purpose, and therefore could
not chide prayer as a presumptuous desire to turn the
divine decrees aside. Indeed under polytheistic belief,
the gods are morally imperfect; and no greater im
propriety was felt in coaxing a god (a genius, a fairy)
than in coaxing a mortal man. A vow,—in which a
promise was made contingently upon the god hearing
a prayer,—was thought a pious procedure ; yet it is
nothing but an attempt to bargain with the god. Such
bargains in antiquity were solemnly sanctioned by
many states, as by the Romans, and public money
was often voted in fulfilment. In the Hebrew book
of “ Judges ” the atrocious vow of Jephthah is not
blamed. To vow to a god the tithe of an enemy’s
spoil on condition of victory, seemed wholly unblameable and decidedly pious to most ancient nations.
It may be doubted whether in any Christian sect
of England or the United States prayers of this
character could be endured. A vow, as understood
by Christians, has nothing conditional in it. If it be
an arbitrary, yet it is an absolute, promise to the Most
High ; it is not a bargain, as with the Romans. Of
necessity those among us who believe the tides, the
meteors, the clouds, the winds, to be guided by laws
�6
'The Controversy about Prayer.
as fixed as gravitation, are hereby disabled from
praying about them or against them, equally as about
an eclipse. Nevertheless, whatever weaknesses—the
fruit of ancient ignorance—are incorporated with the
Christian Scriptures, are accepted and even treasured
up by simple hearted and pious persons, whose intel
lect either is not duly informed or has not duly acted
on their creeds ; and the deplorable dogma of Infalli
bility has made it very difficult for the pious to go
directly against the sacred book, however grave and
obvious the error. But within the compass of that
book itself there is a variety of doctrine, a higher as
well as a baser view; and to the higher view the
nobler and more thoughtful minds tend. If at one
time encouragement is given to importunity in prayer,
on the assumption that God is comparable to a man
who grants a petition merely to get rid of a teazing
beggar ; yet elsewhere it is laid down that repetition
in prayer is vain, and that God is not moved by much
speaking. If in one place it is said, that when two
or three shall agree to pray for a thing, be it what it
may, it shall be granted to them ; in other places
there is limitation, and human ignorance of what it is
wise to ask is pointed at. In fact, in every prayer
for things outward, among persons not wholly fana
tical, the proviso, “ if it be according to Thy will,”
is now understood or expressed; and in matters of
vehement personal desire, the clause is probably
added: “ nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be
done.” Also, if any Christian teacher be asked, under
what circumstances it is reasonable to have confidence
that our prayer will be granted, he will hardly fail to
reply, under the guidance of a familiar text, that it is
only when we know that we ask a thing which is in
accordance with the will of God.
Under such a complication,—which is the ordinary
state of every Church,—it is (I must think) painful
rudeness in an opponent, if indeed he is as well
�The Controversy about Prayer.
7
informed of the facts as a critic ought to be, to assume
in the present generation of English Christians the
lowest and meanest views of prayer which prevailed
in less instructed and Pagan times. It exasperates
too much to enlighten. It was a simple insult, nothing
less, to propose that Christians should pray for the
sick in one special ward of an infirmary, and then (as
a test of the utility of prayer) should observe whether
the patients recovered better in that ward than in the
other wards. Did its proposer imagine that a Christian
is a&Ze to pray for any thing that others may dictate
to him ? One must be drawn keenly by desire from
within or by painful distress, and must feel either
assurance or strong hope that the petition conforms
with the divine mind, before he can pray fervently.
A philosopher (whatever his merits in his own line)
sadly lowers himself when he so intrudes into sacred
feelings and j udgments which he does not understand.
At the same time, there was and is abundant cause
for grave remonstrance with the religion of the day in
this very matter ; and with a moderate turn, the same
proposal might have given point unblameably to the
argument.
It might have been set before English Christians,
that they would certainly resent it as an insult, if any
one were to propose, as a test of the utility of prayer,
petition for a given topic (such as that concerning
the hospital-ward)—without caring to ascertain first
whether the thing asked could reasonably be esteemed
in accordance with the divine will, or whether they
themselves had any fervent desire for it. This being
the ease, how can the same enlightened Christians
passively endure that the Privy Council should dictate
to them what they are to ask of God for each member
of the Royal Family ? How can they approve of a
stereotype prayer against public enemies, as if it were
always a priori certain that in every war England is
right and has God on her side ? Knowing, as all the
�8
The Controversy about Prayer.
educated do, that rains and droughts and pestilences,
follow laws of matter as fixedly as do the planets,
how can they think it pious to supplicate the Most
High to interfere with them ? Such public prayers,
written in an age of lower knowledge, and sustained
by the routine of State, train all the educated to
hypocrisy, and lower the standard of truthfulness.
Evidently, to pray for the royal family is enforced as
a test of loyalty ; which is on a par with the command
to show loyalty by worshipping Caesar’s image. The
coarseness of (what is called) the National Anthem,—
“ God save the Queen,”—against the Queen’s (imagi
nary) foes, is quite disgusting. There is plenty of
matter here for just and profitable attack from those
who never pray, if they would make the attack from
the highest and noblest principles of Christians them
selves ; moreover, it is very reasonable to claim, that
those who hold high dignity in Church or State, and
at the same time are distinguished by intellect and
freedom of thought, will initiate public movement
against these evil stereotyped prayers. Will they for
ever preserve a dastardly silence, and leave reform to
avowed opponents or to enemies who are strangers to
the deep things of the Christian heart ?
Cicero and Horace alike held, that men ought to
pray to God for things external,—which man cannot
control and God does control;—not for things
internal, such as contentment, courage, or in a word,
virtue; which a man ought to provide by his own
effort. To despise any one for believing with Cicero,
I find myself unable; the contumely which I read in
many quarters is to me very unseemly and painful.
Nevertheless, I regard it as quite certain that the
progress of knowledge will ere long enforce the entire
abandonment of stereotype prayer,—prayer made
beforehand,—for outward blessings or conveniences
however inevitable it be, that under pain, want or
severe anxiety human nature will ejaculate to the All-
�The Controversy about Prayer.
9
ruler earnest desire, not unprofitably. “He who
searcheth hearts ” knows how to estimate such prayers
aright,—cannot blame them,—and has his own way
of answering them. But to plan beforehand how
others may or shall pray for a King or Queen’s “ health,
wealth, long life ” and “ victory,” is quite a different
matter from prayer that is extorted by inward instinct
or agony. So too is the “ agreeing together ” before
hand what to pray for, as if (in the coarse words of a
ranting preacher) “ by a long pull, a strong pull, and
a pull all-together ” men could rival Keliama, and drag
God along with them.
Undoubtedly the received belief of old was, that
God’s Providence ruled the world by agencies from
without. A pious saint in danger from enemies was
imagined to pray for (perhaps) “twelve legions of
angels ” as a military aid. A prophet’s eyes were
opened to see chariots and horses, invisible to other
mortals, fighting on the side of his people. To such
a mental condition the prayer of those days adjusted
itself. But now all thoughtful persons educated in
England are aware that the Divine rule is carried on
by the laws of the material universe, and by the
agencies of the human mind; and as it is no longer
admissible to entreat that the Most High will tamper
with his own laws, prayer tends to concentrate itself
upon the human mind,—that is, invokes influence
from the Divine Spirit on the mind either of him
who prays or of some others.
Against this form of prayer, which may be called
spiritual prayer, materialists rush with as rude and
coarse attack as against prayer for things external.
Their tone, and frequently their bold utterances, all
but make an axiom of Atheism. Now I have no
harsh feeling for Atheists, knowing as I do with what
difficulties noble intellects struggle, and how cruelly
the follies and crimes of theological devotees have led
astray and exasperated meaner intellects. But it
�io
The Controversy about Prayer.
suffices to accept and accost Atheists as our equals,
whom we invite to courteous debate on fit occasion,
and will always esteem and love, if they be morally
worthy. Many of them seem to manifest nothing but
scorn for Theism, and demand to lay down axioms of
their own, which no wise Theist can ever accept.
One of these axioms is, that “ of course we can know
nothing but phenomena.” Since God assuredly is
not a phenomenon, this assumes that “of course ” we
can know nothing of God. Another axiom is, that
when we speak of one thing as the cause of another,
all that we mean is, that the latter invariably follows
the former; so they attempt to resolve causation into
antecedence. I stoutly deny that that is all that I
mean when I say “ causeand if they reply that it
it is all that I ought to mean, I beg them to prove
that, and not assume it without proof, as they do.
The purport of their pretended axiom is to involve
the whole universe, material, moral, and mental, in a
rigid mechanical chain,—that is, in Fate : this granted,
prayer of course is vain. Again, the idea of a Per
sonal Deity they treat with contempt as “ anthropo
morphic,” and assert that Personality implies limita
tion. Nay, but Person is only another word for Mind
or Spirit. If we say Divine Spirit, they show equal
enmity to the phrase. What avails the objections of
such men to prayer ? Their attack is not against
prayer as such,—i.e., entreaty made to a Divine Spirit,
but against the existence or accessibility of any such
Spirit. Spiritual prayer of course assumes that God
is in the human mind,—that he is aware and (so to
say) conscious of all our minds,—moreover, that he
not only approves of, but is concerned to promote,
human virtue. In the attacks which I read against
spiritual prayer, it is visible that these axioms of
Theism are denied: hence the attack is really that of
Atheism against Theism,—which is all fair, if it be
conducted by quiet reasonable argument, not by
�Che Controversy about Prayer.
ti
scornful assumptions, nor under a pretence that they
are only attacking a practice of Theists.
As Cicero and Tacitus and Aristotle, and the wisest
modern moralists, insist, there is no morality if there
be no freedom of the will. . If a man’s action is in all
details predetermined like the path of a comet, he can
no more be virtuous or vicious, praiseworthy or blame
able, than the comet. Whatever may be said for
a doctrine of universal Necessity by eccentric and con
fident reasoners, who think themselves pre-eminently
philosophic, the great mass of mankind continue to
believe as firmly as their own existence, that they
have a choice between the better and the worse, and
that they deserve blame for many of their bad actions ;
in short, that God, “ while binding Nature fast in
Fate, left free the human will.” For myself, I must
profess that my belief in my Free Will is coeval with
and as firm as my belief in matter; and I think it
'clear that the belief in both is the first principle of all
knowledge, and of course is prior to a belief in God.
The assailant of spiritual prayer is apt to assume
that the actions of the human will are as much deter
mined beforehand as the movements of material par
ticles, and therefore such prayer is as vain as prayer
for things outward. But he does not pretend any
proof that the will is thus mechanically predeter
mined : indeed he knows that proof is impossible:
but he says that we probably shall hereafter find that
the case of mind is similar to that of meteorology,
and that in the progress of knowledge it will be dis
covered that the mind has no freedom. This amounts
to saying that the progress of knowledge will probably
annul the first axioms on which all knowledge is
built. I need only reply that it has not yet done so,
and I utterly disbelieve that it ever will.
We see in the marvellous instincts of brute minds,
and in human instinct too, the operation of a Higher
Mind in the animated universe. How this action
�12
The Controversy about Prayer.
takes place we are necessarily ignorant, just as we
are how we think at all. We can have no ultimate
standing ground but in simple fact. Thought, life,
existence, must remain for ever a mystery. So must
the action of the Divine Spirit on the animal mind,
which I see as a fact; and seeing it, I cannot doubt
the action of the same Spirit in the higher regions of
the human mind. Religion has long been described
by pious persons as a “walking with God that is,
as a permanent tendency of the mind, when relieved
of other necessary thought, to remember the over
sight, the insight, the joint consciousness of the Divine
Spirit, who essentially and primarily loves goodness,
justice,—in short, moral perfection. That virtue is
the final object for which man and the whole of human
life is ordained is a main principle of Theism. To
supplicate God inwardly for increase of virtue, or
pour out gratitude for his tender mercies to ourselves,
and admiration of his manifold infinitude, is therefore
its natural instinct; and such instinct cannot have
been given us for nothing. In fact, its moral influence
on the heart which cultivates it is the richest of all
rewards. Materialists and Atheists are generally very
severe against those who needlessly mortify lower
and animal instincts, and are often slow to discover
when it is not needless: they have then certainly no
right to claim that a pure and noble instinct shall be
repressed rather than cultivated. The best informed
among the opponents of all prayer will (with good
reason) deprecate the epithet Atheist; but if the God
whom alone they admit to be possible has none but a
mechanical existence, and praying to him is no wiser
than praying to the clouds, he is no more to us than
the gods of Epicurus ; we can have no personal rela
tions with him any more than with dead men.
Let the strong and scornful opposition to Prayer,
which has been so widely echoed, be directed . on
formal, public, cut-and-dried Prayer, lengthy musical
�The Controversy about Prayer.
13
Prayer, profane singing of sacred words for the sake
of fine music, Litanies with endless repetition, the
“Lord’s Prayer ” recited so often and so fast that it
becomes unintelligible ;—and much good may come
of this outburst. There is scarcely a public prayer
used in all Christendom which does not admit,
perhaps urgently need, keen criticism. The “ Lord’s
Prayer ” is nowise to be excepted from this remark.
Moreover, to pray without desire, is the more profane,
the more it is done in combination and in system.
What then of coaxing or scolding young people into
it ? What of paying choristers and public singers of
addresses to God ? There is abundant room for
intelligent and profitable correction, without shocking
any of the rightful sanctities of the heart.
�INDEX TO MR SCOTT’S PUBLICATIONS,
ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED.
The following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on addressing
a letter enclosing the price in postage stamps to Mr Thomas
Scott, 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
London, S.E.
Price.
Post-free.
ABBOT, FRANCIS E., Editor of ‘Index,’ Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A.
S’
The Impeachment of Christianity. With Letters from Miss Frances
P. Cobbe and Professor W. F. Newman, giving their Reasons for not
calling themselves Christians
0 3
Truths for the Times
-03
ANONYMOUS.
A.I. Conversations. Recorded by a.Woman, for Women. Parts I., II.,
and III. 6d. each Part
-16
A Few Self-Contradictions of the Bible
- 1 0
Modern Orthodoxy and Modern Liberalism
- 0 6
Modern Protestantism. By the Author of “ The Philosophy of
Necessity”
-06
On Public Worship
-03
Questions to which the Orthodox are Earnestly Requested to Give
Answers -------Sacred History as a Branch of Elementary Education.
Part I.—Its Influence on the Intellect. Part II.—Its Influence on the
Development of the Conscience. 6d. each Part
- 1 0
The Church and its Reform. A Reprint - 1 0
The Church : the Pillar and Ground of the Truth
- 0 6
The Opinions of Professor David F. Strauss - 0 6
The Twelve Apostles
-06
Via Catholica; or, Passages from the Autobiography of a Country
Parson. Part I. -13
Woman’s Letter -03
BARRISTER, A.
Notes on Bishop Magee’s Pleadings for Christ •
- 0 6
BASTARD, THOMAS HORLOCK.
Scepticism and Social Justice
- 0 3
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BENEFICED CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
The Chronological Weakness of Prophetic Interpretation - 1 1
The Evangelist and the Divine - 1 0
The Gospel of the Kingdom
- 0 6
BENTHAM, JEREMY.
The Church of England Catechism Examined. A Reprint
- 1 0
BERNSTEIN, A.
Origin of the Legends of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
Critically Examined -10
BROOK, W. 0. CARR.
Reason versus Authority -03
BROWN, GAMALIEL.
An Appeal to the Preachers of all the Creeds - 0 3
Sunday Lyrics
------The New Doxology
- 0 3
CARROLL, Rev. W. G., Rector of St Bride’s, Dublin.
The Collapse of the Faith; or, the Deity of Christ as now taught
by the Orthodox -06
CLARK, W. G., M.A., Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.
A Review of a Pamphlet, entitled, “ The Present Dangers of the Church
of England ”
-06
CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
Letter and Spirit -06
The Analogy of Nature and Religion—Good and Evil - 0 6
The Question of Method, as affecting Religious Thought
- 0 3
COBBE, Miss F. P.
Letter on Christian Name. (See Abbot) .
CONWAY, MONCURE D.
The Spiritual Serfdom of the Laity. With Portrait
- 0 6
The Voysey Case -06
COUNTRY PARSON, A.
The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Creeds,—Their Sense and their
Non-Sense. Parts I., II., and III. 6d. each Part - 1 6
COUNTRY VICAR, A.
Criticism the Restoration of Christianity, being a Review of a
Paper by Dr Lang
-03
The Bible for Man, not Man for the Bible
- 0 6
CRANBROOK, The late Rev. JAMES.
On the Formation of Religious Opinions - 0 3
On the Hindrances to Progress in Theology
- 0 3
The Tendencies of Modern Religious Thought
- 0 3
F. H. I.
Spiritual Pantheism
.
-06
FORMER ELDER IN A SCOTCH CHURCH.
On Religion
--06
GELDART, Rev. E. M.
The Living God
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GRAHAM, A. D,, and F. H.
On Faith ------03
HANSON, Sir R. D., Chief-Justice of South Australia.
Science and Theology
-04
HARE, The Right Rev. FRANCIS, D.D., formerly Lord Bishop of
Chichester.
The Difficulties and Discouragements which Attend the Study of
the Scriptures
-06
HINDS, SAMUEL, D.D., late Bishop of Norwich.
Annotations on the Lord’s Prayer. (See Scott’s Practical Remarks)
Another Reply to the Question, “ What have we got to Rely
on, if we cannot Rely on the Bible ? ” (See Professor Newman’s
Reply)
>
.
- 0 6
A Reply to the Question, “ Apart from Supernatural Revela
tion, what is the Prospect of Man’s Living after Death ? ” 0 6
A Reply to the Question, “Shall I Seek Ordination in the
Church of England? ”
-06
Free Discussion of Religious Topics. Part I., Is. Part II.
- 1 6*
The Nature and Origin of Evil. A Letter to a Friend
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HOPPS, Rev. J. PAGE.
Thirty-Nine Questions on the Thirty-Nine Articles. With
Portrait -03
JEVONS, WILLIAM.
The Book of Common Prayer Examined in the Light of the
Present Age. Parts I. and II. 6d. each Part
- 1 0
The Claims of Christianity to the Character of a Divine
Revelation Considered
- 0 6
The Prayer Book adapted to the Age - 0 6
KALISCH, M., Ph.D.
Theology of the Past and the Future. Reprinted from Part I. of
his Commentary on Leviticus. With Portrait
- 1 0
KIRKMAN, The Rev. THOMAS P., Rector of Croft, Warrington.
Church Cursing and Atheism
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On Church Pedigrees. Parts I. and II. With Portrait. 6d. each Part 1 0
On the Infidelity of Orthodoxy. In Three Parts. 6d. each Part - 1 6
LAKE, J. W.
The Mythos of the Ark -06
Tree and Serpent Worship
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LA TOUCHE, J. D., Vicar of Stokesay, Salop.
The Judgment of the Committee of Council in the Case of
Mr Voysey
-03
LAYMAN, A, and M.A. of Trinity College, Dublin.
Law and the Creeds
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Thoughts on Religion and the Bible
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M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge.
Pleas for Free Inquiry. Parts I. and II. 6d. each Part
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MACFIE, MATT.
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience to the Laws of the
Universe
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Jewish Literature and Modern Education ; or, the Use and Abuse
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How to Complete the Reformation. With Portrait
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The Utilisation of the Church Establishment
- 0 6
M.P., Letter by.
The Dean of Canterbury on Science and Revelation - 0 6
NEALE, EDWARD VANSITTART.
Does Morality depend on Longevity ?
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Genesis Critically Analysed, and continuously arranged; with Intro
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The Mythical Element in Christianity - 1 0
The New Bible Commentary and the Ten Commandments
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NEWMAN, Professor F. W.
Against Hero-Making in Religion
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A Reply to the Question, “What have we got to Rely on, if
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James and Paul .
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Letter on Name Christian. (See Abbot) On the Causes of Atheism With Portrait - 0 6
On the Relations of Theism to Pantheism; and On the Galla
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The Bigot and the Sceptic
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The Controversy about Prayer - 0 3
The Divergence of Calvinism from Pauline Doctrines
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The Religious Weakness of Protestantism
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The True Temptation of Jesus. With Portrait
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Thoughts on the Existence of Evil
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OXLEE, the Rev. JOHN.
A Confutation of the Diabolarchy
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PADRE OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH.
The Unity of the Faith among all Nations
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PARENT AND TEACHER, A.
Is Death the end of all things for Man ?
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The Pentateuch, in Contrast with the Science and Moral Sense of
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ROBERTSON, JOHN, Coupar-Angus.
Intellectual Liberty
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The Finding of the Book .
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Christianity and Education in India. A Lecture delivered at
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STATHAM, F. REGINALD.
Rational Theology. A Lecture
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Clerical Integrity
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Communion with God
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The Bennett Judgment
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The Bible; Is it “ The Word of God ? ”
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The Speaker’s Commentary Reviewed
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The Renaissance of Modern Europe
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Realities -------VOYSEY, The Rev. CHARLES.
A Lecture on Rationalism
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A Lecture on the Bible - 0 6
An Episode in the History of Religious Liberty. With Portrait 0 6
On Moral Evil
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An Examination of Some Recent Writings about Immortality - 0 6
WILD, GEO. J., LL.D.
Sacerdotalism
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On the Efficacy of Opinion in Matters of Religion - 0 6
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The controversy about prayer
Creator
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Newman, Francis William
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 13, [5] p. ; 19 cm
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Publisher's series list on unnumbered pages at the end.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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1873
Identifier
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G4853
Subject
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Religious Practice
Prayer
Rights
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (The controversy about prayer), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Morris Tracts
Prayer