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DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 7th FEBRUARY, 1875.
BY
G. G. ZERFFI, Ph.D., F.R.Hist.S., F.R.S.L.,
Lecturer on Historic Ornament, National Art Training School,
South Kensington.
Author of Goethe's 1 Faust, with Commentaries,' '■Spiritualism and
Animal Magnetism,’ <fc, <fc.
BOND ON:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1875.
Price Threepence.
�SYLLABUS.
Naturalism and Spiritualism.
Astrologers and Philosophers.
Perceptions either sensual or cerebral.
Dreams. Object and subject blended into one.
“ Noctambulatio.”
Dreams of reality.
Hallucinations.
Nikolai of Berlin. Abercrombie. Brierre de
Boismont.
Natural or Supernatural agencies.
Hysteria and Revivals.
Are Ghosts possible ?
How to treat those who see them.
Shakespeare’s Ghosts.
Some practical points to be taken into con
sideration.
Conclusion. .
�DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
IND is assumed to be opposed to Matter,
Nature to be different from Spirit, and
Reality to be unconnected with Ideality. These
assumptions, and a continuous misuse of words, have
for thousands of years produced misunderstandings
of the utmost importance to Science and the welfare
of Humanity.
Mysticism and Rationalism, Naturalism and
Spiritualism, have been arrayed against one another
like two hostile armies ; and whilst the one party
took everything literally, and required a certain
notion to be attached to every word, as the result
of a clear perception, the other roamed into the field
of the allegorical or parabolical, performed tropological gambols with exquisite cunning, and terrified
us by an anagogical treatment of the simplest
matters. If a certain substance was stated to be
black or white, it might be black only in substance,
whilst in essence it was white ; all depended whether
it was taken in its reality or in its ideality.
A fluid may be in substance, say, oil, but in
essence fire ; allegorically it may be food for hungry
souls; tropologically it may represent virtue gliding
smoothly through the heavenly gates, and anagogically it may be spiritual balm on our wounded
hearts to cool their passionate throbbing for the
vanities and pleasures of this world.
The difficulties were made still greater by the
combinations of these four categories ; a thing might
be to one mind allegorico-tropological, whilst to
another it appeared litero-anagogical. The term
B
M
�4
Drtams and Ghosts.
allegorical is used when you say one thing and
mean another ; the terms tropological or symbolic
are synonymous, and imply when you mean one
thing and say another; and anagogical, is to argue
from generalities to particulars; namely, “ all men
are sinners ; Joe Smith is a man, therefore he must
be a sinner.” A syllogism, which, at all events, is
not very complimentary to Joe Smith.
For centuries, nay for thousands of years, science
had often no other task than to sift the allegoricotropologico-anagogical nonsense that was propounded
by mystics, dogmatists, and metaphysicians, who
brought confusion into the simplest phenomena of
this world. The differences between mystics and
rationalists often existed in mere words,—the one
trying to oppose a common-sense explanation upon
which the other insisted. Obstinacy on both sides
made the struggle still fiercer and hindered the real
progress of knowledge. I said in one of my Lec
tures, that the “unknown” had always a mysterious
charm for man. Astrologers need not know as much
as philosophers. The astrologer gazes at the stars,
sees threads millions of miles in length extending
from certain stars to particular individuals, and
talks of the influence these mystic ties must exer
cise on the destinies of those thus attached to
heavenly bodies. If the individual believes in this
star-theory, the philosopher tries in vain to detach
him from his star, and all he can do is to prove the
impossibility of the man’s having anything to do
with the star or the star with him. So it is with
the great question in dispute concerning mind and
matter. If people start with the conviction that
there is something above nature, or as they call it
“ supernatural,” that impressions on our senses are
possible, even though an outward object to create
such impressions be wanting, that there exists
beyond nature a realm peopled by various strange
beings, how are we to proceed to argue the point ?
�Dreams and Ghosts.
5
■ What is Supernatural ?
The very expression, though continually used,
designates in itself a “ nonentity.” All things must
exist in space and time; space and time are the
first conditions of anything existent, but all nature
with its attributes of space and time fills the Uni
verse, and there is undoubtedly no room for any
thing above or beyond nature as a Universe.
Super-earthly or supersensual might have some
meaning as referring to that which is beyond our
globe, but supernatural has certainly no sense.
In discoursing on dreams and ghosts, I shall
endeavour to avoid being dogmatic, and simply take
up certain psychological phenomena, lay them before
you, and you will be kind enough to draw your
own conclusions.
First of all it must be borne in mind that our
perceptions of the outer world are not only sen
sual (by means of our senses) but also intellectual
(by means of ideas produced in the brain), that is
cerebral. The senses produce nothing but mere
sensations in their special organs, furnishing thus
the material from which intellect, by applying the
laws of causation, forms the outer world under the
existing conditions of space and time.
All our perceptions when in a waking and nor
mal state, are certainly results of impressions on
our senses, which produce an effect of which our
intellect causes us to become conscious. Now is it
possible that impressions may reach our brain from
quite a different source than the outer world,
impressions produced by our own organisation, work
ing on our brain exactly like impressions of the outer
world ? If this be possible, we should endeavour
to find out the relation in which such a phenomenon
would stand to its effect, and whether such
effect would afford us means of making ourselves
acquainted with its real cause; and we should be
at once obliged, as in the material world, to investi-
�6
Dreams and Ghosts.
gate the apparition, that is the outward impression
on our senses in its relation to its own reality.
People do dream, have dreamt, and will dream;
Apparitions, or to speak more colloquially, ghosts
have been really seen.
Dreams and spectral visions are the strong points
of those who assume an Empire of Spirits altogether
independent of matter. There was probably a time
in the phase of the progressive development of
humanity, when man was not yet able to discrimi
nate between dreams and reality. I am inclined to
consider the whole period during which myths, nur
sery tales, miracles, and pious wonders, such as flying
monks and nuns who “ levitated ” from the ground,
were assumed to be realities—a period of dreams.
For the question, whether perceptible visions, as
perfect and distinct as those caused by the impres
sions of the material world can be produced in the
brain, must be answered in the affirmative ; pheno
mena known to us all, phenomena, the effects of
which we experience nearly every night, prove this
with incontestable force, namely Dreams !
What are dreams ?
They are not, as has been assumed, a mere play of
our fancy, an echo of our imaginary faculty, or an
epilogue of those outward impressions which we
received when still awake. Fancies, as the effects
of our imagination, are weak, imperfect, and transi
tory ; so that the most vivid imagination is scarcely
able to reproduce the image of an absent person,
even for a few seconds. In oui' dreams everything
affecting our perceptive faculty appears as exterior
to ourselves as are the impressions received from
the outer world. All objects appear clear and defined,
exactly as in reality, not only with regard to our
selves, but perfectly finished in all their details,
surrounded by all real impediments; every body
with its shadow, every object with its peculiar form
and special substance. That our dreams are entirely ■.
�Dreams and Ghosts.
7
objective is shown by the actions that take place in
them being often contrary to our expectations and
our wishes. Our astonishment is excited by the
dramatic truth of the characters and their actions;
so much so that it may almost be asserted that a
person dreaming is, for the time, a kind of Shake
speare.
The deception produced by dreams is sometimes
so great that, reality stepping into its rights when
we awake, has to combat our vivid impressions to
prove that what has been was only the airy creation
of a dream. This goes far to prove that dreams are
not a function of our brain, and totally distinct
from its power of imagination. Aristotle already
called “ sleep a special sense,” and made the obser
vation that in dreams our imagination is often
engaged in representing extraneous objects. This
leads us to the conclusion that during dreams our
faculty of imagination is at our disposal, and that
this cannot be at the same time the in strum ent or
organ of our dreams.
Dreams resemble madness, they may be called a
short and passing madness, whilst madness is a long
and sometimes lasting dream. The essential con
dition of dreams is sleep, in which the normal
activity of our brain and senses is suspended.
Only when this activity ceases dreams begin to
work; just as the pictures of a magic lantern
appear in a room deprived of light. It is a further
-fact that in our very dreams our reasoning faculty
is often at work: we reason about their incongruity, their ridiculous combinations. There is,
therefore, in us a force by means of which
we can fill space with forms, we can hear and
understand voices, can see, smell, and taste with
out any outward influences on our senses ; which
influences are necessary when we are awake;
we ourselves, therefore, are the sole cause, object,
and empirical basis of our thoughts, though in no
�8
Dreams and Ghosts.
way identical with them. In working on our
imagination this force does not gather impressions
through our senses from without—but undoubtedly
from within. For our senses are closed to the
outer world, and all the objects of our dreams
appear to be the creations of our own subjectivity.
Object and subject are thus blended into one. Let
us not lose sight of this important assertion ; for
I intend to lead you step by step to the most
incredible phenomena, which, however, are facts,
and may be explained in a very rational way. We
must.only give up the old “shell and kernel theory,”
and see that there is no contest between the within
and without, but that mind and matter, however
complicated, marvellous, and incomprehensible their
functions may be, are one. The “ gross and brutal
materialism” and the “moonshiny, dreamy idealism”
formulae must be given up. If dreams are facts
whilst we are asleep, might dreams not be possible
whilst we are half or entirely awake ?
The Scotch have for this state an excellent term
—they call it “ second sightwhilst one sight
through our eyes is going on, another faculty of
seeing, as in our dreams, is at work in us. We see
and at the same time create what we see. Our
imagination is impressed, but its impressions are
produced by an inner force of our own. The term
“ second sight,” however, is applicable to a “ species ”
of our mental and bodily functions, we cannot use
it for the genus. To designate that indisputable
and undeniable force in us which produces per
ceptions without any outward influences on our
senses, we will use the expression “ organ of
dreams.” So soon as we assume an organ we
naturally wish to know its construction and mode
of acting, and, in fact, are anxious to see the
machine and its working; I must content myself at
this moment with merely giving you some further
effects of which this organ must be the cause.
�Dreams and Ghosts.
9
There are undoubtedly different degrees of dreams;
of some we are only dimly conscious, of others we
often are in doubt whether the incidents of our
dream did not happen in reality. We have dreams
in which we dream only of those realities which
surround us. What we dream is at the same time
true and real. It is as if our skull were trans
parent, as if the outer world were directly affecting
our brain, instead of impressing it by means of our
senses.
This mysterious state we might call “half
dreams,” or, still better, “ dreams of reality.”
These dreams often reach a higher phase when the
horizon of the dreamer is enlarged so as to enable
him to see beyond the walls of his bedroom. Our
“ organ of dreams ” appears often to lead us to
distant places, often utterly unknown to us, never
before seen. Instances of this are numberless.
Recently a gentleman wrote to a newspaper “ that
he was lifted up, or rather levitated on the tower
of St. Mark at Venice; that he looked down upon
the town, seeing it in all its reality as clearly as if
he had known the place before, though he had
never been at Venice.” Of course he might have
seen many engravings or paintings of the town,
and have read many descriptions of it; to this he
does not allude, but, at all events, we can have no
reason to doubt that, whilst asleep, he was trans
ferred to Venice, and was impressed by the visionary
city as though it had been the real one.
A still higher effect of which the “ organ of
dreams ” may be assumed to be the cause is “ Noctambulatio,” described by the Greeks as “upnobateia” (sleep-wandering), that is somnambulism.
It is very common in Austria and Germany, France
and Italy; less common in England, but more fre
quent in Scotland. Somnambulists dream, and at
the same time often perform their daily occupa
tions ; some have copied music, others have made
�IO
Dreams and Ghosts.
notes of sermons, others have put their rooms in
order, others have climbed dangerous heights, or
walked on parapets; and though their senses are
perfectly asleep, all the sensual functions are
performed.
They see, they feel, they avoid
chairs, tables they move about, and hear the noise
they make; this is also the case with people arti
ficially put into this peculiar state. The brain
appears to be in the deepest sleep, that is in perfect
inactivity—what organ is there active in us ? Have
we after all really a double life; is there something
active in us whilst our brain, the organ of our
mighty intellectual faculties, is at rest ? If so,
there must be in us a separate Spirit that enters
and leaves our body, and is strangely occupied not
only when still attached to us, but also when it has
left the shell and floats through the infinite. But
is this so ? I think that the theory of psycholo
gists and physiologists is much more likely to be
near the truth, than the assumption that there are
lively sprites in us which are altogether independent
of our material organisation. Modern psycholo
gists assume that in such a state as I have alluded
to, a total depression of the vital functions of-the
brain and an accumulation of all vital force in the
ganglia take place.
These ganglia have their
centre in the “ plexus Solaris,” or “ cerebrum abdominale,” (the brain of the stomach), which con
sists of a few annular vessels filled with a nervous
fluid, standing in the same relation to the ganglia
as the brain to our nervous system. This has given
origin to the hypothesis that dreams have a special
organ, which during a total depression of the func
tions of the brain is most active, so much so “ that
apparently an accumulation of all the vital force
takes place in the ganglia, whose larger tissues,
with the ‘plexus Solaris,’ are turned into a sensorium, which, as if by substitution, performs the
functions of the brain, dispensing with the aid of
�Dreams and Ghosts.
11
the senses to receive impressions from without, and
still exercising all the faculties of the brain, some
times even with greater perfection than when
awake.”—(See my work, ‘Spiritualism and Animal
Magnetism.’ London: Robert Hardwicke. 1872.
Second Edition, page 33.) By this means we may
trace a positive, self-conscious force in us, and a
negative or unconscious force ; a positive and nega
tive element in our nature. The equilibrium of
these forces or elements may be disturbed ; the
brain or the positive force may be with all its glo
rious structure, its intricate and complicated wind
ings, its admirable power of consciousness, if de
ranged, lowered, depressed, exhausted under the in
fluence of the ganglia, and the brain of the stomach
may rule the brain of the head. That is, the
“ organ of dreams ” becomes master of the “ organ
of intellect.” It is a well-authenticated fact that
somnambulists move with great decision, extreme
quickness, that they conform to anything surround
ing them ; that they observe everything with the
“ organ of dreams,” that they dare more when led
by this mysterious organ than when awake.
Our nerves of motion originate in the spine, they
are connected by the “ medulla oblongata ” with
the cerebellum, the regulator of our motions, which
again is connected with the cerebrum, the seat of
our consciousness and perception. Now, how is it
possible that perceptions which determine our
motives for movements, when transferred to the
tissue of the ganglia in the stomach, should direct
the steps of a somnambulist with the swiftness of
lightning ? All we can assume is that the cerebral
force of the somnambulist in such a state is not
entirely asleep, but only sufficiently awake to direct
his steps, to receive impressions through organs
which are different from our senses; thus dreams,
half-dreams, and somnambulism are but effects of a
special organ in us which becomes the more active
�12
Dreams and Ghosts.
the more passive our brain is. We must consider
a still stranger state, arising from a complication of
the disturbed balance between the functions of the
brain and those of the “ plexus Solaris.”
Let us assume a state in which our brain is, at
least, partially awake; we see the objects in our
room with perfect clearness; the lamp on our
writing table, the books on our shelves, the pictures,
&c., and still we suddenly see a figure before us,—
a dear relation not long dead, a beloved child, whose
last parting words still resound in our ears. Such
cases are recorded by perfectly credible persons.
How is this ? Our answer would be: we do not
doubt your assertion; we believe your having seen
your dead mother, but you were in a half-dream ;
your brain was, in spite of its partial capacity of
receiving certain impressions through your senses,
depressed, and your ganglionic system hard at work
to make you dream, whilst in this state. All cases
of hallucinations and spectral visions may be
reduced to this natural cause. If we admit that
our “ organ of dreams ” can produce impressions on
our senses when asleep, we may assume, with great
probability, and without leaving the firm ground of
physical possibility, that this organ may work in us
whilst our senses of vision and hearing are awake.
The perceptive faculties of our brain ’ will be
influenced exactly as in our dreams, though we be
not asleep. The phantom or object of our visual
organ will stand before us in a given form, as perfect
as any object of our dreams. But its immediate
cause of existence must be looked for in our own
inner organism. These phantoms, in accordance
with the faculties of our “ organ of dreams,” will
assume form, colour; emit sounds which will affect
us like the language of living beings; and if our
organ of dreams is in an excited state of activity,
the phantoms presenting themselves will be hazy in
appearance, pale, greyish, ghastly, nearly transpa-
�Dreams and Ghosts.
13
rent; their voices will be hollow and whispering, or
hoarse and whistling. A heavy supper (say, a Welsh
rare-bit,) nervous debility, over-work, great grief,
or a glass of grog as an overdose, will produce the
most important changes in these phantoms ; but as
soon as the visionary tries to bring his faculty of
reasoning into play, that is, as soon as his positive
or cerebral force becomes master of the negative or
abdominal element, the phantoms vanish. Nothing
can more speedily cure our propensity to see spectres
than a firm will to verify, by close investigation, the
reality, the substance of the apparition.
Spectres, like dealers in mysticism and dogmatic
incredibilities, prefer above all the twilight, or rather
no light at all. Visionaries of whatever sort and
stamp do not like to be disturbed in their manipu
lations by candles and gas-jets, and least of all by
some rays of common sense and sound logic. Mid
night, dark abodes with painted windows, have been
set down from old as the time and places when not
only Erin’s but “ any clouds are hung round with
ghosts.”
That visions and apparitions are facts produced
by our own selves cannot be denied, but they do not
prove anything extraneous to us, or the existence
of some undiscovered country from whose bourne
some travellers do return.
We may now investigate their causes, and we shall
find that some very material physical derangement
of our constitution is the principal one. Already
Hippokrates and Galen drew the attention of medi
cal men to phenomena of this kind, and tried to
classify the diseases according to the visions of the
sick person. It is pretty well known that those
suffering from “ delirium tremens ” generally see
rats, cats, mice, serpents, black dogs, elephants,
devils with big horns, grotesque monkeys, or some
terrifying monster of the animal kingdom. So
much so, that even the visionary realm of ghosts
�14
Dreams and Ghosts.
appears to abominate drunkenness as something
loathsome and bestial. Those suffering from con
sumption have pleasant visions; bright, sunny plains,
beautiful cool woods, present themselves to their
eyes; they see angels in long robes with broad, airy
wings, and hear strange melodies resounding through
space. The sooner people having such visions con
sult a physician the better. Madness is, not neces
sarily always, but frequently accompanied by
hallucinations.
There are some rare cases, perfectly authenticated,
in which apparitions have been seen by individuals
who at least were in a state of perfect bodily
health. The most known is that of Nikolai,' the
celebrated author and bookseller of Berlin. This
case was laid before the Academy of Sciences at
Berlin, 1799. Nikolai’s statement was the follow
ing :—“ On the 24th of February, 1791, after a sharp
altercation (the excited, nervous state of the vision
ary is to be taken into special consideration), I
suddenly perceived, at the distance of ten paces, a
dead body. (The great accuracy with which the
distance is recorded shows at once that Nikolai was
altogether dreaming; whoever heard of a man seeing
a dead body before him and trying to measure the
distance between the apparition and himself.) I
inquired of my wife whether she did not see it. My
question alarmed her. The apparition lasted eight
minutes. (Another peculiarity of these kind of
visionaries is that they always are most particular
with regard to dates and time. Is anybody childish
enough to suppose that a man seeing a dead body
takes out his watch, and counts the minutes, and
notes them down ? The tale, as told, bears in its
intrinsic evidence all the usual traces of impossi
bility which we may study in all reports on so-called
“ supernatural ” matters.) At four in the afternoon
the same vision appeared. I was then alone and
much disturbed by it. I went to my wife’s apart-
�Dreams and Ghosts.
ment. The vision followed me. At six I perceived
several figures that had no connection with the
former vision.” Nikolai was undoubtedly dreaming
whilst awake : he was bled by a judicious medical
man, and the vision did not return.
“A. stranger in Edinburgh died suddenly in an
omnibus. The corpse was exposed, and a medical
man called in to report on the cause of death. After
several days’ close study of a medical subject, he
perceived, on raising his eyes, the form of the dead
stranger opposite him, as distinctly as he had seen
him on the table of the police office.” The.over
wrought cerebral faculty was under the dominion of
the sympathetic nerve, which, in its turn, still
affected by the impression of the corpse, represented
it to the debilitated powers of the brain.
Abercrombie, in his ‘ Inquiries Concerning the
Intellectual Powers ’ (11th Ed., Lond., 1841, p. 380),
relates the case of a man who was beset with hallu
cinations all his life. “ His disposition was such
that, when he met a friend in the streets, he was
uncertain whether he were a real person or a
phantom.”
Unscientifically trained persons often give them
selves up to credulity, and to that craving after
abnormal supernatural agencies which has done so
much evil throughout the whole progressive develop
ment of humanity. They take these kind of visions
for granted, and jump at the conclusion that, as
visions were seen, they must be substances or
essences from another world. I recommend any
body suffering from “ Psycho-mania,” or from
“ Table-danceology,” or paralysis of the brain from
knock-conversation, or who has “levitation fits,”
or “ air-floating paroxysms,” to read Brierre de
Boismont ‘On Hallucination,’ 1845. His cases are,
unhappily, neither systematically arranged nor
psychologically or physiologically explained; yet
they must convince anybody believing in super-
�16
Dreams and Ghosts.
sensual agencies, that strange things may happen,
all taking their origin in a derangement of our ner
vous and cerebral system, without troubling any
spirits from another world. If spirits really exist,
why have they not yet proven themselves useful ?
Why do they not appear half-an-hour before a ship
burns down, and 400 human beings are killed and
drowned, to warn the captain ; or why do they not
alter the signals of a railway in right time to prevent
a collision and to save an infinity of wretchedness ?
Because they do not choose to do it—might be the
answer of some “ Supernaturalistbut why should
spirits come and talk nonsense at the bidding of A
or B, and why not teach us in an evening the
multiplication table, or give us some information
which might be turned to some use or comfort for
humanity ?
Hysteria on the one hand, and a reaction against
the growing materialistic and utilitarian tendencies
of our times on the other, drive those who are
endowed with a vivid emotional nature into the
regions of ghostly shadows. They tremble that
there should be no more mysteries; no more tidings
from another world, no more communications with
dear pretty angels, no horrible monsters to frighten
young and old babies ! Why do they not throw
themselves into the arms of poetry and art, num
berless spirits and fancy-wrought forms may be
brought up from the depths of our cultivated minds.
We ought not allow ourselves to be dragged into a
lowering of our cerebral powers, our faculty of
reasoning, by the inordinate use of our sympathetic
nerves, or the unconscious emotional, ganglionic
element in us. For there can be no doubt that an
unusual mental excitement, paired with bodily
depression, may abnormally develope the emotional
element in us, and produce the most destructive and
pernicious results. This statement was born, out
during the period of St. John s “ dance mania 5
�Dreams and Ghosts.
17
people in their paroxysms saw the Saviour enthroned
with the Virgin Mary. We do not doubt these
visions ; we only are convinced that Christ and the
Virgin Mary were no realities; they formed no
more the outer phenomena that impressed the
visionaries than do the forms we see in our dreams,
but the excited organs of dreams produced them.
For Ghosts are impossibilities—they can neither be
seen nor heard; except they are bodies—but then
there is an end of the so-called spiritual kingdom.
So that those who call themselves Spiritualists, are
the greatest materialists, and work into the hands
of those who intend to reduce everything to mere
ponderable and calculable substances.
In order to see—a body or a substance is required,
which by means of reflection of the rays of light
acts on our retina; in order to hear—a body or
substance is required to act by means of the vibra
tion of the air on our tympanum. All that
visionaries or ghost-see-ers may justly assert, is that
they are conscious of the impression on their per
ceptive faculties of something that reflects light,
creates sounds, though there is nothing which could
produce these phenomena—that is they dream—for
all other phenomena, if they really happen, how
ever mysterious they may appear, however incredible,
are mere deceptions a la Dr. Lynn, or Maskelyne
and Cooke, and of course not worthy of any scientific
treatment.
The danger in playing with the so-called super
natural ” is that the derangement in one individual
becomes contagious. One hysteric girl in a school
is capable of infecting all the others. But for any
such derangement the best cures are rational ones,
or wherever these do not suffice a drastic physical
one will do. An English physician was called into
a ladies’ school, where one hysterical girl had infec
ted many others ; after he had in vain tried various
remedies, he one day observed to the mistress of the
�18
Dreams and Ghosts.
establishment in the hearing of the patients that
there remained but one chance of effecting a cure,—
the application of a red-hot iron to the spine of the
patients so as to quiet their nervously excited sys
tem. Strange to say, the red-hot iron was never
applied, for the hysterical attacks ceased as if by
magic. The same was the case with a revival
mania in a large school near Cologne ; Government
sent an inspector down ; the boys pretended to
have visions of Jesus Christ, but the implacable
officer threatened to close the school if any other
spiritual inspector should interfere with his business,
and the students should be for ever excluded from
pursuing their studies : the effect was as magical as
the red-hot iron remedy—the revivals ceased at
once.
Shakespeare, that master-mind, who knew the
most hidden recesses of our hearts, whose writings
form the most complete and exhaustive psycho
logical essays, who made many a ghost “ revisit the
glimpses of the moon, to make night hideous,” has
solved the “Spirit Question” in a clear, commonsense, and exhaustive way in “ Macbeth,” when he
makes the ambitious thane exclaim :—
“ Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand 1 Come, let me clutch thee !
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight ? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ? ”
To beware of false creations in science and
religion, not to allow our heat-oppressed brain an
unruly dominion over our intellectual faculties, is
conveyed by those few lines of our immortal bard.
The brief consideration of dreams and ghosts
which I have placed before you may be summed up
in the following points :—
�Dreams and Ghosts.
’9
1. That we have an organ in us which can act
on the perceptive faculties of our brain from
within.
2. That this “ organ of dreams ” has its seat in
the centre of our ganglionic system or the sym
pathetic nerves, namely in the “ plexus Solaris.”
3. That our cerebral faculties may be lowered
and the faculty of our ganglia heightened.
4. That spectral visions, religious excitements,
emotional extravagances, mysticism, and symbolic
charlatanism are merely products of a deranged
balance between our vegetable or ganglionic and
our cerebral or intellectual life.
5. That there is nothing in nature that ought
not to be capable of explanation from a natural
point of view, as there is no room for anything to
be above or without nature.
6. That instead of admitting in some instances
our ignorance of the laws of nature with regard to
certain phenomena, to assume some “ supernatural ”
interference is an insult to the all-pervading spirit of
the Creator, who cannot allow his spirits to wander
about to serve small table-talk. Anything beyond
the horizon of human intellect is of evil. This
evil peopled heaven and earth with gods, goddesses,
angels, and demons ; it formed a strong element in
our double nature, and took its origin in our
craving to fathom the unfathomable. It is, in fact,
nothing but a piece of pride. We think ourselves
better than others when we have dear little
apparitions which others have not; we consider
ourselves chosen, elected, specially inspired, small
prophets, benighted evangelists, and mighty instru
ments to testify that God takes us more into his
councils than others. The roaming in the Empire
of Ghosts, the taking of dreams for realities, the
neglect of this world for the sake of other distant
unknown worlds is nothing but inordinate pride.
If I have erred in trying to explain hypotheti-
�20
Dreams and Ghosts.
cally some curious phenomena of our nature, I can
only plead that the striving of finite beings in
whom the cerebral functions are not lowered by
tropological or anagogical studies should be after
truth in the sense of the immortal Lessing :—
“If God were to hold in His right hand all
truth, and in his left the everlasting active desire
for truth though veiled in eternal error, and were to
bid me choose, I would humbly grasp his left,
praying, Almighty Father, grant me this gift—
absolute truth is for Thee alone.”
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement
and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May).
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 2nd May,
1875, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats— 2s., being at the rate of Threepence
each lecture.
’
For tickets apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry
Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door :—One Penny ;—Sixpence
and
(Reserved Seats) One Shilling.
PRINTED BY C. W. RRYNELL, LITTLE PULTBNBY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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Dreams and ghosts. A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society on Sunday Afternoon, 7th February, 1875
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
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Spiritualism
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Conway Tracts
Dreams
Ghosts
Naturalism
Spiritualism
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Text
ß ¿ ¿¿ 9
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
SPONTANEOUS DISSOLUTION
ANCIENT CREEDS.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
SUNDAY
AFTERNOON, 23rd JANUARY, 1876.
BY
De. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R. Hist. S.,
tßne ofthe Lecturers in H,M. Lepajtnient of Science and Art,
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
1876.
Price Threepence.
�SYLLABUS.
Definition of terms : ‘'Spontaneous” and “Creed.”-
Constituent elements in Humanity.
Mind and Matter. Imagination and Reason.
Superstition and Knowledge. Ignorance and Faith.
Intellect and Morals. Emotions and Convictions.
Analogy between Chemical and Intellectual Com
binations and Dissolutions.
Religious Reforms. Brahminism and Buddhism.
Magism and Zoroastrianism. Hesiod’s Theogony
and Greek Philosophy. Judaism and Christianity.
Religiousness and Irreligiousness.
St. Paul and St. John.
Christ’s Christianity.
Christian Unchristianity.
The Historical development of Religion based on
Reason and Science.
Polytheism, Anthropomorphism, Anthropopatism,
Acosmism, and Atheism.
Conclusion.
�THE
SPONTANEOUS DISSOLUTION
OF
ANCIENT CREEDS.
LL philosophers of ancient and modern times
agree that words are the principal instru
ments of thoughts. A correct knowledge and use
of these instruments alone can secure for us pro
fitable results of reasoning as the principal aim of
philosophy. I intend to discuss the Spontaneous
Dissolution of Ancient Creeds from an entirely ob
jective point of view. In this sentence there are
two words which I must beg you to accept in the
sense in which I intend to use them. I do not
mean to apply the word “ spontaneous ” colloquially
as something li sudden,” but scientifically as some
thing “ acting, by its own inherent energy, accord
ing to a natural law.” A spontaneous dissolution
will, therefore, be a dissolution to be traced to the
inherent constituent elements of the different creeds,
as the result of a natural law, according to which
antagonistic particles must dissolve in time so soon
as they lose the cause or force of cohesion. By the
word “ creed,” I do not signify “a summary of the
articles of the Christian faith,” but “ any system
of dogmas which is prescribed as necessary to be
believed, or, at least, to be professed.” In a former
Lecture I endeavoured to trace the influence of
natural phenomena on the formation of the different
A
�4
The Spontaneous Dissolution
religious systems or creeds. Nature in its infinity,
and man in his finiteness, are then the two princi
pal elements from which the different creeds of all
times have sprung; that is, from the very begin
ning of man’s consciousness, his notions con corning
the world, its Creator, and himself, spring from
two utterly antagonistic sources.
Man is formed of matter and endowed with mind,
This must be also the case with the whole universe.
Matter is acted upon by an inherent spirit, mani
festing itself as law—the law of causation, which
pervades space, wherever matter is existent, which
.assumes in time different shapes and forms. The
further constituent elements in humanity are man’s
utter helplessness as a single individual, and the
necessity that he should enter into a social bond
with his fellow-creatures, to render his existence as
an individual a possibility.
To make the existence of a collective social state
possible, man must submit to laws equally binding
on all. Exercising his in-born intellectual power,
man will frame such laws to facilitate the existence
both of the detached individual and of a collection of
individuals, brought together by geographical posi
tion, voluntary or forced influences, over which the
individual, as such, has little or no control. The
laws so framed are in all cases revealed; not re
vealed directly by the mouth of the Divinity, or by
some supernatural agent, but by that self-conscious
ness which, in its turn, is the result of man’s material
«organisation.
This brings us once more to the never-ending dis
cussion of mind and matter. History illustrates most
distinctly the fact that in humanity, as in electricity,
there are elements which will be negative, or positive,
or static, and dynamic. Neither the negative nor the
positive electricity, however, predominates by itself,
�of Ancient Creeds.
5
nor does a machine exist exclusively constructed on
the dynamic or static principle. A proper balance
between the two forces alone will produce action
and reaction, motion and resistance. What is static in
electricity or in a machine is moral in humanity—a
stationary element. Absolute morality, if there be
such a thing, can only be one and the same from
eternity to eternity. Relative morality may vary
with the intellectual “ plus ” or “ minus ” in man’s
social development; but “ wrong,” as wrong can only
be one in an absolute sense, and must be “ wrong ”
in all times under all circumstances. So it is with
virtue. To the philosopher “ murder ” is murder,
whether perpetrated by a single individual to satisfy
his passion, or by an army wholesale for the glory
of a nation; though relatively war, or wholesale
murder, pillaging, robbing and ravaging may be
excused under certain circumstances, and even de
serve a bright monument. To draw a sharp distinc
tion between the absolute and the relative in dialec
tics is of the very utmost importance. Absolute
morality can only be one immutable, unchangeable
element, which renders the existence of humanity
as such possible. This existence would be impossible
if theft, murder, and adultery were allowed. We
trace thus in humanity the existence of one con
stituent—a static element—morals.
The next element will be intellect—a pushing,
dynamic force, ever-changing, ever-growing, ever
varying ; to-day different from what it was yester
day, building up slowly the mighty temples of
science and art, to which every one may contribute,
consciously or even unconsciously, a small pebble or a
few grains of sand to form cement; whilst some place
the huge corner-stones, others raise a flag-staff on a
lofty spire from which a bright banner, floating in
the air, shows whence the cosmical wind blows.
�6
The Spontaneous Dissolution
These banner-bearers only become possible when
every-day working men have dug the foundations,
collected materials, mixed the mortar, heaped up
stones, constructed the edifice, and crowned it with
spires. All work according to the plan of the
grand, invisible, and still, through man’s intellectual
power, ever-present architect, who, in endowing
humanity with self-conscious intellect, ordained its
use to be continuous, leading to a correct application,
of morals by an understanding of the aim and pur
pose of humanity in its component individual
particles.
The process of constructing the progressive intel
lectual development of humanity underwent dif
ferent phases according as imagination or reason
predominated. Both are merely faculties of our
intellect; the one engendering superstition and
religious creeds, the other science and art. The
primary constituent elements begin to be subdivided,
and in their subdivision we find the first germs of
confusion, but also of activity, of action and reac
tion. Those who, by their superior intellectual
consciousness, assume the lead of humanity, begin
to be divided into two divergent groups, each
assuming that man has only to cultivate one of its
constituent elements.
The moralists presume that, with their superior
intellectual power, they have found out for eternity
the laws according to which man may be best
induced to be virtuous. They proclaim him to be
conceived in wrath, created full of wickedness and
sin, and propound that ignorance is his birthright
and faith in the system of the creeds, which they
have worked out in the name of the Divinity, his
only salvation. They pronounce the innate spirit of
inquiry to be of evil, wish us blindly to abide by
certain formulae, separate morals from intellect,
�of Ancient Creeds,
7
mind from matter, the static element from the
dynamic, and hinder the progress of our social
development, which they try to limit or altogether
to check by their dictates. . The despotic sway of
these dictates they deny, for they consider that
their wish to promote the welfare of humanity onesidedly palliates everything they say or do. They
create the first terrible rent in humanity by arbitra
rily separating the component parts of our spiritual
and material existence; they devote themselves to
the exclusive culture of morals and foster an inor
dinate contempt for intellect. The division is
brought about by their remaining stationary, and
ignoring the dynamic force as one of the compo
nent and indispensable elements in human nature.
Wherever this happens, superstition is fostered, and
knowledge is only so far promoted as it will serve
the general superstition. Faith will be exalted
as the best tool with which blind ignorance can be
made subservient to the system of an incredible
creed. Intellect will be looked down upon as of evil.
Morals in the garb of set dogmas thus often become
the greatest immorality, for they promote hypocrisy,
cowardice, and voluntary stupidity. Emotions are
excited, but convictions are silenced. Happily this
is a condition of humanity bearing the elements of
spontaneous dissolution in its unnatural and one
sided attempts.
In analysing a drop of water we know it to be
a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. Add to it
any other element, and the water loses its purity.
Take only hydrogen by itself, it may burn, but it is
not water without oxygen. Taking man as a mere
essence of morals, we have as unreal a being as a
mere essence of intellect would be. As purely moral
or intellectual he might be an angel, an imponderable
something, but not man, who is formed of dissoluble
�8
The Spontaneous "Dissolution
matter, endowed with mind. This mind is often
assumed to be an entity in itself, through itself, for
itself. This may, perhaps, be, but we cannot prove
it; we know only that it exists, thinks, reasons,
directs our motions, our will, in a certain limited
sense, but is nowhere to be found as a separate
entity. It has an analogous nature with electricity
in an electric battery. We have the machine before
us; the proper acids, the metallic elements are
there; we hear their working; we take one of the
conductors in our hand—no effect—we take the
other, and we feel the shocks, gradually and with
increasing force, passing through our body. All these
circumstances and combinations were indispensable
for the production of an effect of electricity on our
body. So it is with mind. It is there, under cer
tain circumstances and combinations of the material
elements of which we are formed; disturb these
particles, change their relative proportion or quan
tity and quality, and you have an explanation for
our different moral and intellectual faculties. Mind
is not a cause, but an effect—absolutely, it must
exist in the universe and pervade it as well as elec
tricity—relatively, it requires certain conditions,
under which it will alone come into entity and
activity. If mind be directed one-sidedly, it will
become superstition; if filled with mere emotions,
it will be driven to madness and engender ghost-seers,
spirit-rappers, ritualists, and lunatics; if left unin
structed, it will believe anything, and can be brought,
through a long training, to such a state that it will
look upon those who are anxious to enlighten or to
instruct it as its sworn enemies; hate, persecute,
murder, burn, and crucify them. Still, just as in the
external world, continuous combinations and dissolu
tions take place, forming the different phenomena, as
air, heat, water, minerals, metals, plants, animals,
�of Ancient Creeds,
9.
and human beings, so an intellectual process of the"
mind, forming and undoing religious systems andscientific theories, has been in operation since the ■
first dawn of human consciousness.
That this is the case no honest and unbiassedi
student of history can deny. The most spiritual
elements in humanity are the different religious
systems, by their very nature treating mostly of the
unknown and unknowable; and still, though every
one of them has been proclaimed as the direct or in
direct dictate of the Supreme Being, every one had
in the course of time to undergo changes, modifica
tions, to enter into different combinations, or to dis
solve into its component parts under the action of
the voltaic battery of intellect. All religions are
composed of certain elements, partly acting on our
moral, emotional, and partly on our intellectual
nature. All religions take their origin in the
natural tendency of the human mind to explain the
surrounding phenomena of nature, and to assign to
man his destiny, not only in this but often also in
another world. Religions originate in man’s imagi
nation, more or less enlightened by knowledge?
whether guided, as some teachers assert, by Divine;
inspiration or revelation, or whether as the mere
result of intellectual effort. The position of thosevwho assume a Divine revelation or inspiration is
very difficult one, and requires an immense amount
of credulity; for history furnishes us with unde
niable proofs that the Divine inspiration and re
velation of one period has often been not only
contradicted but altogether abolished by an equally
Divine inspiration and revelation at another periods
Brahma himself is asserted to have dictated the
Vedas, but he has couched his dictates in so unin
telligible a language that man, with his limited!
intellect, had continually to explain, to correct, and
B
�io
The Spontaneous Dissolution
to comment upon the utterances of the infinite
Spirit. Several times the second person of the
Indian Trinity had to assume the human form to
save humanity from utter destruction, and we may
congratulate ourselves that His Royal Highness the
Prince of Wales went to India, because one of the
religious enthusiasts has proclaimed him the last
“ Avatar,” or incarnation of Brahma. We may here
learn, in reading history backwards, how such incar
nations occurred in olden times; how they were
proclaimed by one or several poetical or fanatical
enthusiasts, and how by degrees such proclamations
were believed, and served as the bases of several
Eastern religious creeds.
Manu had in time to step into the world with a
new Code of Laws, which, as well as the Vedas,
were the breath of the Divinity in every chapter,
verse, word, and letter; and Buddha came at a later
period and had to correct again the dictates of
Brahma, and to proclaim, quite in opposition to the
Divinity, that men were not born in different castes,
but that they were all equal. How it could have
happened that the divine Being, in proclaiming His
will through Manu, should have made such a mis
take is perfectly incomprehensible. But the Divi
nity went even further in its incomprehensible
proceedings. For a thousand years the Buddhists
had been worshipping Brahma according to the
dictates of Buddha, who was Brahma himself; they
had constructed temples in honour of that BrahmaBuddha, which, in their splendour and grandeur, are
unsurpassed, and yet in the seventh century after
Christ this very Brahma-Buddha, who taught his
followers a more humane religion, and endowed
them with so much virtue, that they are still,
though the most numerous, the only sect on the
surface of the globe that has not shed one single
�of Ancient Creeds.
11
■ drop of human blood in the propagation of th.eir
faith—this very “ Brahma-Buddha ” allowed these,
his faithful worshippers, to be massacred, and to be
driven from the very birth-place of his divine mis. si on. The same occurred with the Magi and Zoroaster.
The whole religious system of the Magi was pro
claimed by means of the prophet Hom (Homanes),
who was also the great tree of life, the source of all
bliss and prosperity, the first revealer of the word,
the logos; the first teacher of the Magi, of the
learned in the Scriptures and the prophets ; and not
withstanding this another divinely-inspired master
was required to purify and to revise the revelation
of God made through Hom, and to found the
Zoroastrian creed.
In Hesiod we may trace an altogether different
process. The Asiatic gods, who assumed for cer
tain purposes, at certain times, human shape or
form; who, in fact, represented in monstrous con
ceptions the different phenomena of nature, were at
last deprived by Hesiod of their revolting material
and spiritual attributes. They were, for the first
time, represented in human shape by the humane
vand poetical Greek mind. Their beautiful outer
forms led to an elevated conception of their spiritual
. nature, and the Greek gods became mere men and
women endowed with higher bodily and intellectual
. faculties. Through the Greeks, humanity was en
abled to leave the regions of the supernatural and to
embark on the ocean of inquiry, and provided with
the compass of intellect, to make glorious voyages
of discovery in the realms of speculative philosophy,
and to furnish us with the models of rational in
quiry. When the Greeks proclaimed their “ yv^Qe
ffeawo/’—“Know thyself,” man’s spirit became
. conscious of its own self as part of the eternal divine
spirit, but not altogether freed from the fetters of
�12
The Spontaneous Dissolution
outer-fonn. . Intellect with the Greeks was yet
generalised,, and had to take a beautiful form, as
manifested in their immortal works of art; man was
not yet unfettered as pure individual intellect. We
must look for this spiritual development of humanity
elsewhere.
The historical importance of the Jews begins with
their bondage. In misery and wretchedness they
learned their higher aspirations. Their legend about
the creation of man in the image of God and the
forfeiture of his innocence in eating from the tree of
knowledge is a mighty truth, bearing in it all the
elements of future dissolution. For if man was
created in the image of God, why should the gods
have been jealous of Adam becoming as one of them,
“ knowing good and evil ?” With this antithesis the
Jewish misfortune for humanity began. They taught
us to be images of God, to long in boundless eager
ness for that Godhead, and condemned as sinful th iff
very yearning. Mankind had to undergo endless
bodily and intellectual sufferings in consequence of
this decomposing composition of heterogeneous ele
ments, placing reality in eternal opposition to the
ideal. The Jews always hoped to find a Messiah to
reconcile their old oriental antithesis, which they
had in reality borrowed from the Persians and
Egyptians; they always hoped that somebody
would redeem humanity from the fetters of spiritual
darkness or sin. It was clearly felt by the Persians,
as well as by the Jews, that this redemption could
only come through man.
Real religiousness consists in man’s consciousness
of his double attributes and his attempt to bring
harmony into the apparent dissonance of his divine
(intellectual) and human (material or animal)
nature. This pure process must not be disturbed,
interrupted, or checked by any secondary and arbi
�of Ancient Creeds.
13
trary element. Man embodies the eternal divine
spirit only in a transitional phase, that is for a
limited time. During that limited phase he has to
exert all his intellectual and moral powers to pro
mote his own as well as his fellow-creatures’ happi
ness. All those elements that hinder him in this
task through obscure verbiage, revealed and re
revealed incongruities, mystic symbolism, or theolo
gical hair-splitting, are irreligious.
The contradictions in the conception of God, the
transcendent materialism, and the complicated in
comprehensible spiritualism with which Jehovah
was conceived by the Jews; the half-Assyrian and
half-Egyptian mask which he wore—now Osiris, the
redeemer, then again Ahriman, the slayer, the de
stroyer, made him now a mystic tyrant, then again
a partial father. He promised his chosen children
plenty on earth, and many goodly things, and left
them continually in the bondage of the surrounding
Gentiles, who were proclaimed to be his abomina
tion. Now he appears in the Psalms, as in the
strains of the Vedas, to be a God after whom the soul
may thirst to lead us to holiness and righteousness,
then again it is 11 the Lord thy God ” who gives
away the cities of other people, which they built,
the trees which they planted, the wells which they
dug and the vineyards which they cultivated, as an
inheritance to the Jews, and tells them without
cause and reason: “ Thou shalt save alive nothing
that breatheth, but thou shalt utterly destroy them,
namely, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaan
ites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord commanded thee.” And if you
ask for an explanation of the morality of these
enactments, you receive the answer: “the ways of the
Lord are mysterious.” But this is no answer. The
mind of man cannot be satisfied with such replies,
�14
TAe? Spontaneous Dissolution
it finds them in their very mysteriousness irre
ligious.
The marble form of Zeus, in spite of its beauty,
had to give way to a more ideal conception of the
Divinity, and in a similar way the invisible God of
Moses had to assume another shape. Mosaism had
to undergo a reform after having long before divided
the Jews into different sects, who hated one another
with that intense fervour which is the natural out
growth of oppression and long slavery. The records
of the religious system of the Jews were more
favoured than those of the Indians or Egyptians;
for their tenets became sacred not only in the eyes of
the privileged priesthood, that kept all sacred and
profane knowledge to itself, but also in the eyes and
ears of the whole nation. Moses faithfully kept his
promise, and made the Jews “ a nation of priests; ”
in telling them, freed from all symbolism, what
made the Egyptian priesthood so powerful in their
sway over the ignorant masses for thousands of
years, he made every Jew a theologian. Notwith
standing all these advantages, the Hebrew records
had the element of dissolution as a mere formal
creed in them; for the mythic was treated as
historical; phenomenal facts were stated with an
utter ignorance of science, as was only natural in
times in which all sciences were in their infancy, or
as yet unborn. Though the spirit of inquiry was
fettered for centuries, the reform had to come as a
natural sequence of the historical progressive de
velopment of humanity. John the Baptist first
commenced it, Christ followed.
Christ again was followed by the two apostles, St.
Paul and St. John. It is an authenticated fact, that
the canonical writings of the New Testament con
tain different accounts of most important incidents,
and are the outgrowth of mighty minds who could
�of Ancient Creeds.
15
but impress with their powerful individuality what
they wrote. Next followed the Fathers, who did not
content themselves with commenting on Christ’s,
St. Paul’s, or St. John’s teachings, but added dogma
upon dogma, borrowing them from old forgotten
Egyptian mysteries, or from the writings of Greek
philosophers; so that in the course of a few cen
turies, when Christianity became the ruling faith of
the Roman empire, it comprised all the elements of
spontaneous dissolution in its heterogenous bor
rowed forms, symbols, dogmas, and articles of
faith.
Christ’s Christianity, the doctrine of love and for
bearance, of humility and self-sacrifice, of common
brotherhood, and the harrowing tragedy of his life
and death, were all turned into symbolic mysteries.
What was simple and intelligible was surrounded by
incomprehensible contradictions. Christ was to be
the mighty, royal, hoped-for Messiah of the Jews,
though he tried as amere teacher to reform Judaism
and to bring vitality into what had decayed into a
mere dead formalism. Not to abolish the old law
was His mission, but to purify it from its narrow
national particularism, and to restore its mono
theistic and moral universality.
St. Paul saw in Christ a dying God, who had to
atone for the sins of Adam, in order to satisfy the
demand of the Jewish law. Grace was everything
with him. St. John made of Christ the incarnation
of Plato’s Logos, and added that nobody could come
to God except through Christ, which was an un
charitable anathema against all those who were
honest and virtuous, but who either knew nothing
of Christ, or could not understand the mystic dogmas
under which Christ had been buried.
Christ’s
incarnation as the Logos could not have been diffe
rent to that of Brahma, as Krishna or Rama, or
�16
The Spontaneous Dissolution
Buddha, of Amn, as Osiris and Horus. Each - of
these incarnations took place under very analogous
circumstances, and for analogous purposes.
The Divinity to the student of ancient creeds
appears continually to assume new shapes and forms
and to succeed always only in a very partial redemp
tion of humanity. Did Christ, however, ever assume
a Godhead in a Buddhistic or Egyptian sense ? is a
question which will, in time, be differently answered
than at present. Christ the rigorous Jew who con
scientiously kept the spirit of the law, though He
opposed its dead meaningless formality, who ap
peared with scrupulous regularity at the grand
festivals at Jerusalem, could He have ever violated
the sacred monotheistic basis of the Jews so far as
to proclaim Himself as anything else but the “ Son of
Man,” to which title He had every claim, when He
declared the whole of humanity to be the children
of one Father in heaven ? Did Christ ever intend to
make Himself anything but the spiritual redeemer
of mankind, by proclaiming on high-ways and in
market-places what was kept as a secret by the
Esoteric teachers, that there was only one God, and
that man had one real aim, to unite whether poor or
rich, if only “ pure of heart,” into one bond of divine
love, pervading the universe ?
Love was with Christ the connecting element
between the divine and human in man. As attrac
tion is scientifically the vital element of the material
cosmos, so love is the binding element which was,
is, and will be the fundamental basis of any religion ;
and where this element of universal brotherhood is
discarded or stifled, by whatever dogmas, our en
lightened reason will never be persuaded that the
mystery is for our benefit; for the very assumption,
that morals can be fostered and best understood
through unintelligible types and symbols in antagon-
�of Ancient Creeds.
17
ism to intellect, is the very element of a spon
taneous dissolution of any creed, and always only a
question of time.
The sanguinary persecutions that disgraced the
religion of Christ would have horrified no one more
than Him, in whose name they were perpetrated.
And who were those who were most cruelly treated,
robbed, pillaged, insulted, and murdered ? Those
for whom He prayed in dying with his last breath :
<( Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do.” Christ was said to have established eternal
hell-fire. He who commanded us to forgive our
enemies “ seventy times seven,” could He have con
ceived a Divinity less forbearing in His infinite love,
wisdom and mercy, than a finite human being ? In
this cruel and contradictory assumption we have
another element of spontaneous dissolution, because
it is an unchristian dogma borrowed from the Egyp
tians, with whom Osiris was more an infernal judge,
than a loving, supreme Being. With the Egyptians
gloomy unconscious fear, and not self-conscious love,
Was the beginning of wisdom and the motive element
of their gloomy creed, which element transferred to
Christianity changed its very essence, made Romish
idolatry a possibility, and worked as an antagonistic
dissolving element in Christ’s glorious and simple
code of morals.
Day by day the historical ground was cut from
under the feet of Christ’s Christianity. Dogmas,
ceremonies, rituals, and symbolic performances were
borrowed by the Christian priesthood from Indians
(Brahmans and Buddhists), Egyptians, Greeks, Per
sians, Hebrews, and Romans. The clergy of the
Romish Church strove to become, like the Brahmans
and Hierophants, the augurs, magi and bonzes of
old, masters of the minds of the ignorant masses,
who were kept purposely and systematically in igno-
�18
The Spontaneous Dissolution
rance; for the greater the ignorance of the people
the greater the influence of allegories, symbols, and
mystic incomprehensibilities. So it came to pass
that the clearest laws of humanity and common
sense were trampled under foot with reckless fero
city. From the times of Gregory VII. Christianity
became hourly more unchristian.
Unchristian Christianity persecuted, killed and
burned for nearly a thousand years, from Charle
magne, the Christian Mahomet, down to the year of
grace 1780, when the last witch was publicly burnt
at Glarus, in the Roman Catholic part of Switzer
land. To whatever Christian country we turn we
find the militant Church of Rome desiring pre
rogatives and immunities. The Church claimed the
right to punish those who spoke disrespectfully of
the clergy • the right to the luxury of burning here
tics ; theie were continual disputes as to whether
emperor or pope, cardinal or king, should be first
in authority. Deans and bishops quarrelled in open
courts with one another about images, postures, or
the right to possess a crucifix. The clear enactment
of Christ, “ Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,”
was distorted and placed under mental reservation.
A dignitary of the already half-reformed English
Church (Archbishop Sandy) dared to proclaim that
we must obey princes “ usque ad aras,” as the
proverb is, “so far as we may without disobeying
God. .And who had to decide what was considered
disobeying God ? The priesthood—which cared
more for prerogatives, the right to fell timber, to seize
lands in mortmain, to receive such estates as were
forfeited for high treason, to have the right of inves
titure., and to possess authority in lay as well as in
ecclesiastical matters, than to educate the masses, to
teach them soberness and cleanliness, forbearance;
■peace, and goodwill.
�of Ancient Creeds.
19
The priests loudly proclaimed Christ s law : “ Do
unto others as you wish that they should do- unto
you; ” hut their deeds were in contradiction to the
ordinance, and they did unto others as they must
have wished that they should never be done unto.
They acted like the great mass of the Chinese, to
whom Confucius, more than four centuries before
Christ, gave the same law : “Do unto others as you
wish that they should do unto you” ; but as we are
cheated, we cheat ; as we are calumniated, we calum
niate ; as we are persecuted, we persecute ; as we are
robbed, we rob ; and as we are served with false
measures or sham goods, we do the same.
This
is certainly not Christianity, and though commen
tators, exegists, apologists, dogmatists, and inqui
sitors tried hard to smooth down and explain the
contradictions, the creed, that had served humanity
for 1,500 years, had to undergo a new reform.
Christian unchristianity was once more to become
pure, primitive Christianity.
In the eyes of the Romish Church Christianity
was no longer the doctrine of Christ, but the enact
ments of the Church. Christ’s personal commands
had for a thousand years to give way to the assumed
higher wisdom of councils or popes. These councils
and popes could, however,not avoid being influenced
by the spirit of their times, and were forced uncon
sciously continually to vary their doctrines, according
to the exigencies of the moment, always with one
clear aim—to keep the power and the means of being
the hieratic masters of the world. So long as the
priest could live with a wife, it was Christ’s com
mand to have one ; so soon as it was found that the
priest became too worldly, too humane with a wife
and family, it was Christ’s command to resign him
self to celibacy. So long as Platonism served them
the priests were Platonists. In the first three cen-
�20
The Spontaneous Dissolution
tunes they had no Trinity, they were (Ze facto
Arians, and then they became Athanasians or Trini
tarians, in imitation of the Indo-Egyptians, and
cursed all who were not of their incomprehensible
opinion. On one day Origen, on another St. Augus
tine, swayed their minds. They had deadly contro
versies on the Lord’s Supper, and about the use of
bread and wine, or the Real Presence, or the Transubstantiation, whilst often thousands were starving
around them for want of food. They forgave sins
but only to those who could pay for such remission"
lh?y 7 J?trodu<;ed self-abnegation, self-flagellation,
and selt-torture'for the masses, and lived in pomp and
vanity. They smiled and cursedin one breath: they
spoke immediately before the Reformation, but their
language was always ambiguous, for they tried to
please all parties; and still they attached more impor
tance to outward ceremonies, vestments, symbols,
types, and mere verbal professions without any
inward spiritual meaning, than tomoral reality and
real religiousness.
. Whilst the Romish Church was thus a house
divided against itself, many honest monks and more
enlightened laymen turned back to the old Greek
and Roman classics, and tried to take up the thread
ot the progressive historical development of
humanity, which appeared to have been rent
asunder and lost for ever. To re-unite it where
it had been broken, they revived sciences and arts ;
and dogmatists, mystics, and dry school-men were
more and more silenced. The Reformation was
nally victorious in the terrible struggle; but it
had to fight its way through torrents of blood.
When the peace of Westphalia left Europe in the
possession of religious freedom, Europe sealed her
right to scientific progress. The Romish Christian
creed was then dissolved, and no Vaticanism will
�of Ancient Creeds.
21
ever revive it. Christianity with the Reformation
ceased to be a special creed based on mere outer
signs ; it was once more made universal. Christ’s
God of Love and Reason who was enthroned
through the Reformation is the God of the Universe,
his existence, in one shape or another, is believed in
by Brahmans, Buddhists, Jews, Mahometans and
Christians.
Christ, if considered as the incarnate divine spirit
of self-sacrifice and love, has freed men of their finite
ness by teaching them to surrender their outerselves
to a pure moral and intellectual consciousness of
their innerselves, and thus only has redeemed
humanity, and dissolved all ancient and modern
creeds by establishing real religion based on reason
aided by science, promoting real morality, freed of
all dogmatic dross and from the unnatural bondage
of prejudices and the mystic fetters of ignorance.
Polytheism of old had to yield to a more refined
creed of one creative power; but Polytheism had
already borne the elements or constituent particles
of spontaneous dissolution in itself. However
poetical the deification of the different phenomena
of Nature may be, it was merely the outgrowth of
an ignorant and over-heated, an unconscious and
unbridled imagination. Bitterly, though poets and
artists bewailed this time, they had to surrender
their fanciful world of self-created gods. Man,
however, wishes at all times to have his emotions
taken into consideration. The culture of the emo
tional element seems to be the last retreat of those
who think that dry morals (as if morals did not
continually exercise our emotional elements), and
mere science (cold, calculating science, as they say
in turning up their eyes) cannot suffice to fill man’s
nature. They then turn to a vague and incompre
hensible anthropomorphism, man-worship, which in
�.2 2-
The Spontaneous Dissolution
■one form or another, has not yet ceased to be the
cherished creed amongst those who crave for the
merely emotional.
The Greeks were the first and most cultivated
anthropomorphists. Their creed has vanished, but
it contained much emotional element that, purified
of idolatry, might serve the masses of our modern
times as an element of unlimited artistic emotion;
for art will and must replace that fervid craving for
„emotion. Art will yet again shape beautiful forms
for their own sake, and ethics and aesthetics will
repair our loss of barren phrases referring to super
natural masters. The anthropomorphism of old will
revive again, though in another spirit; it will not
be sanctified as a creed, but hallowed, because it
will lead man, through love, to understand the ideal
beauty of everything created, from the tiny and
bashful daisy to the lofty-snow covered summits of
the Himalayan Mountains.
Ancient Creeds, after having gone through the
dissolution of Polytheism and Anthropomorphism,
enter upon a species of anthropopatism. The leaders
of this creed try to combine revelation and reason,
faith and science; they use all possible sophistical
contortions to prove that there are no contradictions
in the Sacred books of the Eastern nations ; that all
is clear. You have only to take the different pas
sages in their corresponding allegorical, parabolical,
tropological, anagogical or literal meanings. They
assert, with a mild gentleness, that there are no
difficulties except to the blind, to the heartless, and
to those who live to cold science and have no higher
aim than the “Fata Morgana” of a dreary materi
alism. These anthropopatists work out in their own
imagination a more or less lofty portrait of the
Divinity, and describe, praise, draw, model or paint
it according to their individual idiosyncrasies, their
�of Ancient Creeds.
23
sympathies or antipathies. They persecute, hate,
despise, or, if they are very kind-hearted, pity those
who fail to see a “personal” Father in their dim
half-theological, half-rationalistic colours. These
men are like some Protestants who deny to the
Romish Church the right to have miracles, but keep
certain miracles which must be believed in. They
do not see that in this very contradiction is a
thriving element of spontaneous dissolution. Before
a tribunal of logic these half-theologians and half
Rationalists could not pass a “ spelling-bee.” These
men feel that they have lost their historical basis,
and to find a new one would necessitate too much
study; they could only find it through a correct
appreciation of the gradual development of humanity,
to attain which they would have to make them
selves acquainted with the intellectual pressure of
mind brought to bear upon progress. Fortunately
the discharges from the electric theological clouds
that have gathered, or are gathering, have, since the
invention of the lightning conductor of tolerance,
become extremely harmless, though they may
occasionally be unpleasant. The anthropopatists
should base their ethics and metaphysics, if the
latter exist, on the ruling principles of the Cosmos,
but it is much easier to talk morals than to intro
duce a new creed in our times, after so many
spontaneous dissolutions of ancient creeds.
Who, indeed, wishes for a new creed ? We do
not want the ridiculous Acosmism which denies
the reality of the world, asserting that it had been
created out of nothing, and that matter is a non
entity. These modern apostles in tail-coats talk of
an “ Unseen Universe,” as though it could be.seen ;
if it can, then to call it “ unseen ” is nonsense, and
if it is invisible, to waste time in describing it with
copious verbiage, is still more absurd. Though we
�24
The Spontaneous Dissolution
may never know what the absolute essences of
matter or life are, we may still study matter in its
phenomenal results, and see the aberrations of mind
whenever it treats of the so-called supernatural, and
its glorious conquests in arts and sciences, when
man deals with given forms and quantities, either
transforming them into works of ideal beauty, or
discovering, after centuries of hard labour and keen
observation, more scientific explanations of the secret
workings of the hidden forces of nature, than the
theologians could find on the easy and lazy path of
an assumed revelation. The world belongs in future
to another body of priests, to the priests of science
and art'
The Indian philosophers already attained the con
sciousness of creation, preservation, and transforma
tion as the external actions of one force, in three
equally powerful emanations, and, notwithstanding
this philosophical starting point, free of every taint
of dogmatism and anthropomorphism, a connecting
link of different incarnate gods was worked out by
the priesthood to satisfy the emotional ignorance of
the masses.
The Jews set up a god of their own, a national,
jealous god, who was to be stronger than all the
others, which was a silent indirect admission that
there were other gods. Jewish monotheism reached
merely the notion of a mighty ruler, who was master
even over the false gods j and those gods who gave
comfort and hope for thousands of years to innumer
able generations, saw themselves hurled by Javeh
into the abyss of hell, where they had to rule as
mighty demons. But the i( immanence” or inherence
of a pervading spirit in the universe cannot be a
person in the sense of an anthropopatist or acosmist,
for omniscience and omnipresence is only pos
sible with an impersonal deity. The burning ques-
�of Ancient Creeds.
25
tion of modern thought is not, as Renan has it, a con
test between Polytheists,—namely, Roman Catho
lics, Protestants, Buddhists and Brahmans, and
Monotheists—namely, Jews and Mahometans, but
the struggle is between those who assume an all
pervading infinite spirit, and those who deny the
existence of any Deity, between Panmonotheists
and Atheists.
. ,
But who are those who deny the Divinity ? Such
men as either cannot or will not understand the
cosmos, who can see only matter, but do not grasp
the effects produced by matter in the universe as
well as in humanity, which is but its reflex. Those
who never will draw a line between cause and effect,
and most of all those who drag the Divinity down
to their own low level, transforming it into an idol
of their own, which they wish to force upon
humanity at large ; these proud, conceited theolo
gians promote atheism even more than some pro
fessed atheists. But who are atheists ?
Certainly not the scientific men as physicists,
who bow down their heads, and profess, with child
like lips : “ We are too humble, too finite to grasp
the infinite,; we shall be contented to trace here and
there some minute workings of the innumerable
elements forming phenomena that are, that must
have had an origin and must have an aim.’ Not
the philologists who, in languages freed from all the
trammels of a paradisiacal tongue, in which God
himself spoke, trace and systematize the phases
through which languages had to pass to attain
their different sounds; alphabets, words, _ concrete
and abstract expressions. Not the geologists, who,
unfettered by any Eastern cosmogony, follow
up the growth of our globe according to law and
order, and find in this very inherent law and order
the vestiges of an eternal first cause, which personi-
�26
The Spontaneous Dissolution
Ued becomes utterly unintelligible. Not the his
torian, who, in the complicated phenomena, of which
men are the units with all their passions, yearnings,
hopes, and fears,. traces the eternal laws of action
aaid reaction, which force humanity onward on the
path of continuous progress. To so great an extent
is this the case, that if we carefully consider the sub
ject, we are astonished at the relative progress of
humanity, and this improvement has been attained
since the reformation, since the revival of classic art
.and philosophy ; . since scientific inquiries have
silenced the grand inquisition, and stopped the burn
ing of witches and heretics; since logicians have
disproven the false and pernicious principles of the
reasoning of an infallible priesthood; since tolerance
&nd forboarancG Kavo clad themselves in ermine and
meted out justice with an even hand, regardless of
the creed to which those belonged who sought re
dress for wrongs inflicted upon them ; since even
bishops and deans dare to thunder at the gates of
narrow-mindedness, and to proclaim the right of
free investigation, not only for themselves, but also
for those who are under their sway; since the layauthority took upon itself to spread sciences and
arts amongst the ignorant and neglected masses,
■and to prevent through the strong arm of the law a
reactionary and anachronistic movement inaugu
rated by some of the priesthood, who, craving for
the. emotional, think to find in tapers, fancy em
broideries, monkish dresses, and the most childish
mimicry of a creed that went through the process of
its spontaneous dissolution more than 350 years
ago, a solution of the religious questions of our
days.
Mysticism has been for thousands of years the
bane of humanity. Ignorance is her cherished
foster-sister. Mysticism and ignorance presumed
�of Ancient Creeds.
27
not only to lead humanity on the path of emotion
to virtue, through different creeds, but also to regu
late man’s intellectual powers. Ignorance and
mysticism built up astronomical, zoological, and
geological hypotheses which had to be destroyed;
they prescribed to the Divinity how and when the
world must have been created ; science had to rectify
these errors of a natural ignorance. That such
errors should have been transformed into articles of
«reed, indispensable to the salvation of our better
intellectual nature, and that this deception should
and could have been practised for thousands of years,
is not a mysterious riddle, but the natural effect of
an equally natural cause. Whenever and wherever
ignorance assumes the mask of theological know
ledge, it leads men into error. The error once
having become, through continuous repetition, an
accepted truth (though it may be only negative
truth, viz., falsehood), it takes the positive shape
•of an indispensable entity for the happiness of man
kind, and it requires thousands of years to remove
such falsehoods, and historians testify to the fact
that the whole progressive development of humanity
•consists in the destruction of such falsehoods.
In England and Germany, as the two countries
most advanced in civilisation, the one politically,
the other intellectually, this process of undoing the
past is most apparent. In both countries set dogmas
appear to go down the stream of time with ever
diminishing buoyancy, form and bulk, till they must
sink altogether. Curates and pastors become rarer
and scarcer. In 1831 there were in the eight Prus
sian Universities 2,203 theological students, and in
1875 there were scarcely 560 (about 70 to a Uni
versity). In the Universities of Southern and
Western Germany the decline of theologians was in
the same ratio. In addition to this, one-third of the
�28
The Spontaneous Dissolution
matriculated th eological students abandoned theology
altogether, and entered other professions, tired of
asserting things they could not understand ; for they
had gone through a scientific training in Logie»
Mathematics, and Universal History. The ecclesi
astical authorities in Germany had to acknowledge
that, in one year or so, one-sixth of the vacant bene
fices would have no clergymen to fill them.
Yet, in the face of this growing dissolution, we
have our “ Burials Question,” as the result of Christ’s
command, “ Love thy neighbour as thyself.” After
1875 years of grace and Christian teaching, we find
men trying to. prevent some of their Christian
brothers from lying side by side in the same church
yard, in the same soil from which we have all
sprung, to which we all return, from which all our
pleasures stream, on which all our woes are concen
trated. And why ? Because these Christians
differ, on certain theological questions without real
distinction, from those in power. For this reason
Christians of another shade of thinking should be
carried in silence to their last resting-place. What
tyranny, what cruel tyranny, perpetrated in the
name, of Christianity! And these cruelties are
practised whilst words of piety, fraternal condescen
sion, and humble submission are used on one side,
and on the other the stern, indomitable “no sur
render ” is proclaimed with the blind obstinacy of
an Eastern despot. This intolerance is the more
remarkable, in the third quarter of the nineteenth
century, in our free and enlightened country, whilst
in Germany, Russia, and Austria tolerance is prac
tised, at least amongst the different members of the
Christian faith. In Germany, Roman Catholics and
Protestants often use the same sacred building, the
one for his mass, the other foi' his sermon, and both
for their prayers to their common God. In Russia
�of Ancient Creeds.
29
and Austria the Christian children of one ruling, per
vading spirit, may lie peaceably side by side when
fate has sealed their controversies, when they can no
more pronounce God’s anger and judgment against
one another, when they rest from their labours. But
we persecute one another even beyond the grave,
notwithstanding our great political and social move
ments. We are trying to bring education into the
hovels of our rural population, and to the gutter
children of our over-crowded towns. Our scientific
discoveries are teaching us day by day to distrust
our preconceived prejudices ; our historical inquiries
demonstrate how falsehoods were spread; how truth
was distorted; how dreams, fancies, myths, and
legends were taken for realities; how space and
time were filled with the tears and sufferings ot
men for the sake of false theories; how nations and
individuals lost themselves in dogmatic oyster
shells, and were unable to see beyond their narrow
ossified world—and yet we cannot let our fellow
men sleep their last long sleep in peace.
Philosophers and physicists may smile at this
with tears in their eyes, seeing how the self-contra
dicting elements in creeds not only lead to irreligi
ousness, but contain in themselves—through placing
the form above the spirit, matter above mind, emo
tion above reason—the elements of a spontaneous
dissolution. This inevitable dissolution can only be
directed into the right groove of a higher moral and
intellectual phase by a thorough understanding of
history, which teaches us that only a synthetical
combination of the Indian and Hebrew-Christian
creeds and their sublime ethics, divested of all
extraneous matter, may furnish us with real religion,
as a code of morals binding on the whole of humanity,
without fettering in any way our intellectual
nature.
�30
The Spontaneous Dissolution
, The bigoted and credulous, the fanatics and
ignorant in the Church and in our Universities, in
our colleges and educational establishments, do nottremble in vain at the very name of “ Universal
History” as the grand store-house of man’s immortal
deeds, follies, and crimes, committed for thousands
of years, partly in the name of the Divinity, and
partly to satisfy the religious emotions of a Torquemada, or a Calvin, or some false assumptions
based on some imaginary theory or divine revela
tion. Not in vain have our Universities shut their
doors on an honest, unbiassed study of the develop
ment of humanity on general principles. Were it
not for this,, we might lose our insulated position';
we might discover a continuous gradual growth and
decay of creeds as well as sciences, and see how
one system of ancient fallacies served another as
basis of development.
Not without grave reason does Cardinal Manning
clamour against an appeal to history, and brand it
as “heresy and treachery.” He does not stand
alone, he is supported by our own theologians and
the heads of our own Universities, who consider the
study of “Universal History” superfluous, per
nicious, leading to scepticism; for it might teach us
that man formed his own gods and dogmas, in
fluenced by the aspect of nature and his relative
amount of brain; that man has wasted his time and
energy in trying to answer questions “ d priori” (out
of his imagination) before he could gather informa
tion “ d posteriori” (by experience). We might learn
that every step in the progress of humanity had to
be fought for single-handed by independent men in
whom morals and intellect were well balanced. We
might become conscious that dogmatic superstitions
in India, China, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Egypt,
Judaea, and Borne, during the Middle Ages and in
�of Ancient Creeds.
31
modern times, had caused the dissolution or station
ary state of all these Empires and times. _
For man, composed of the two constituent ele
ments of matter and mind, of morals and intellect,,
must cultivate both ; the one according to immu
table laws, necessitated by his very organisation,,
and the other unfettered by any capricious, emo
tional, and unintelligible self-created and seliimposed creed.
Man’s destiny lies in the perfect balance oi ins
moral and intellectual nature.
t
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement
and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ABE DELIVERED AT
ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May).
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 23rd April,
1876, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,_
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s.; being at the rate of Threepence
each lecture.
For tickets and the published lectures apply (by letter) to the
Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester
Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door:—One
(Reserved Seats) One Shieling.
Penny ;—Sixpence ;—and
�
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The spontaneous dissolution of ancient creeds: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 23rd January, 1876
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 31 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London.
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1876
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Religion
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Creeds
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Text
SECOND PART.
THE
:E OF THE “FATHERS” ON THE FURTHER
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIANITY.
BEING
Iferture
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY, 27th MARCH, 1881,
Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R.Hist.S.
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SYLLABUS.
Some of the most influential Fathers of the First Century.
Objections of the Jews and Heathens to Christianity.
Celsus, Lucian, Porphyrius, and Julian.
The Apologists: Athenagoras, Tatian and his Disciples.
Clemens of Alexandria.
Falsification of History.
Origen, his character and great talent.
Eusebius and Basil, Cyril and Hypatia.
Tertullian and Ambrose.
Augustine. He studies Aristotle and Plato. His influence on the Theology
of our own times. His Confessions. Pride in prayer. “ In the be
ginning.”
The Trinity. “ The City of God.”
The “ Original Sin.” A Chinese Mandarin.
Augustine and Rousseau compared.
Heathen customs and principles mixed with Christianity.
Effects of the Controversialists and Casuists on the simplicity of Christ’s
teachings.
The Third Lecture to treat on Monasticism and Scholaticism.
Conclusion.
�CHRISTIANITY.
II.
The Influence of the “ Fathers ” on the Further Development oj
C hristianity.
IHE ancient world, with its plurality of godsT ceremonies,
oracles, festivities, political and social organisation', its' moral
laws and philosophy did not die very quickly. During the first
Century of our era, the Christians were merely a small sect of re
formed Jews, called “Nazarenes,” who met secretly, often in the
dead of night, in burial places and catacombs. The few existing
records were written only in Hebrew or Syriac.
The first change brought about in the new faith, was the more
exclusive use of the Greek language, not in its classical purity,
but in a colloquial form, in order to make the teachings of the
converted Hebrews more popular. The next step was the aboli
tion of some of the most striking social arrangements of the new
sect with regard to possessing “ all things in common.”
The Indian and Egyptian priests, the Pythagoreans, Essenes,
and Buddhistic monks, had long before possessed a similar organi
sation. They were compelled to give up their private property
and to divide it amongst the members of the community which
they joined. Notwithstanding all attempts to deny, distort, or
falsify them, the records of the Evangelists, and the acts clearly
prove that the germs of “ Communism ” and “ Socialism ” may be
traced to the primitive constitution of the oldest Christian Sects.
Barnabas, one of the earliest Fathers, whose real name was Joses,
a rich Levite, sold all he possessed, and gave everything to the
Apostles. He wrote a Gospel, but this was declared apocryphal.
Hermas, another of the Fathers of the first Century, also a rich
Jow, who lived at Borne, gave up his property, followed St. Paul,
and represented Christ as an angelic shepherd preaching doctrines
of love and equality. The sudden and miraculous deaths of Ana
nias and his wife Sapphira for concealing, and not giving up their
own goods to the. community, prove conclusively that “ Communism ”
was the basis of the first Hebrew-Christian Sect. Another funda
mental creed of primitive Christianity, that concerning the return
1
�4
Christianity.
of the Son in the glory of his Father, with his angels, to bring
peace on earth, which was to happen during the lifetime of those
to whom the promise had been made, was reluctantly given up as
hopeless. The belief in this promise goes far to prove that the
first Christians must have looked upon Christ as a powerful hero
who would vanquish his enemies, and bestow worldly grandeur on
his followers.
Doubt and controversy very early pervaded the assertions of the
fathers.
Ignatius was assumed to have been the “little child” held up by
Christ to the people at Capernaum, but Chrysostom, another
Father, says that Ignatius never beheld Christ. The writings of
Ignatius were looked upon as forgeries, as they are saturated with
dogmas of a later period, and could not have been written before
the 5th or 6th Century.
The same must be said of the writings of Dionysius, of Athens,
who was a well educated man, a member of the highest tribunal,
the Areopagus, and therefore called the “ Areopagite ”; he was
made an overseer by St. Paul, and works “ On the Order of the
Heavenly Spirits,” “ On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy” (which was
not then in existence), “ On God’s Name,” “ On Mystic Theology,”
&c., were attributed to him. The very title of the last work, how
ever, proves that it could not possibly have been written in the
first Century, as mystic theology was certainly wholly unknown
at that period. The works are full of theological and dialectical
controversies not then thought of; they refer to dogmas and cere
monies, the introduction of which was of a far later date; the very
word “ Monakos,” which occurs in them, and which only came into
use about the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth
century, convincingly proves that these writings, like so many
others, were pious forgeries.
During the first centuries terrible accusations were hurled
against Christianity by both Jews and Heathens. The Jews were
more violent than the Gentiles. They saw in Christ a faithless
deserter from their own ranks. They accused him of having
taught Atheism; of having destroyed the unity of the Godhead;
of having without any right proclaimed himself the Messiah.
They complained that he bad propounded utterly impracticable
laws, commanding men “ to give to him that asketh; ” “ not to
hate, but to pray for our enemies,”—that he had asserted that the
Father in Heaven ‘f maketh the Sun to rise on the evil and on the
�Christianity.
5
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust;” and that
it would be “ easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven! ” If Christ’s
teachings were true, they would do away with the rich, and make
the poor masters of the world I What would become of trade and
commerce, of barter and exchange, of all the glorious promises of
plenty on earth, if the poor had any right to such exaltation ?
Humanity would sink into barbarism, and the whole covenant
with the chosen people be cancelled. The Mosaic law would be
abolished if men were no longer to be allowed “ to take an eye for
an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; ” or forced to hold out their left
cheek when smitten on the right. Christ had forbidden man to go
to law, for he had enacted, “ if any take away thy coat, let him have
thy cloak also 1 ” All this the Jews thought shocking, horrible,
and impossible! What was to become of the law and lawyers, of
the learned in the Scripture, and of the expounders, and teachers
of true morals? Were men no longer to be allowed to hate fer
vently, to despise cordially, to persecute, to flog, to stone, and to
crucify ? They recoiled from such a prospect, and asserted that
this Jeshua had been a dreamer, a blasphemer, nay, they even
doubted the fact of his very existence, and looked upon everything
that had been reported of his life, miracles, and resurrection, as
mere inventions. They attempted to show that he had never
taught anything new, and that everything practical and moral, he
said, was contained in the Old Testament, which he had despised
by breaking the Sabbath, and blaspheming God, whilst pretending
to be God himself.
It is a historical fact that the Jews could never comprehend a
faith based on love and mutual forbearance, and unfortunately
more than eighteen hundred years have been required to teach
Christians to understand Christ’s most valuable enactments, which
were to be taken in the spirit, and not to the letter.
The Heathens objected to Christianity because it was a social
and political revolution. It declared all men equal, and denied the
ancient gods that had ruled for thousands of years. The Christ
ians were accused of despising emperors, consuls, pro-consuls,
high priests, and philosophers, whilst they worshipped and paid
divine honours to a crucified rebel. They were called deceiving
“ Sibylists ”; dealers in mysteries, pretending to perform miracles
which they had learned from Indian and Egyptian mountebanks,
and impostors. They were taunted with objecting to the gods in
�6
Christianity.
human form, whilst they themselves were “ anthropolatrae ” (idola
trous worshippers of a man). It was said that whilst they were
opposed to the eating of certain parts of the flesh of the sacrifices,
they were themselves “ Theophagi” (god-eaters)—eating the flesh
and drinking the blood of their own God. The Old and New
Testaments were said to be full of incredible stories, contradic
tions, and fables, teeming with ignorance, and contrary to com
mon sense and reason. The Christians were accused of asserting
that all the laws of Nature had been suspended and acted against
by the eternal gods for the glorification of One who had not been
able to save himself from the most ignominious death. The Christ
ians were accused to hate humanity, to blaspheme God, and to
court death. They were charged with the grossest immorality, with
eating their own children, and with committing incest; they were
called conspirators, assassins, perjurers, infidels, communists, and
atheists ! They were also contemptuously designated Nazarenes,
Galileans, Men of the Magical Superstition, Plautinians, Corne
lians, Synedrians, Cyrillians, Apostatics, Nestorians, Arians, Eustathians, Cataphrygians, and Homousians. These different appel
lations prove that from the earliest times Christianity must have
been divided into many antagonistic sects.
The attacks on both sides became fiercer, the more plainly the
Jews and Pagans perceived that their dominion was at an end, and
that humanity was adopting entirely new principles upon which
to build up an altogether different political and social organisation.
One of the most determined opponents of Christianity (about
150 a.d.) was Celsus, who could not see the necessity of mys
ticism and secrecy in a work of general redemption. Lucian
wrote “ Three Dialogues ” against Christianity, characterising it as
a dreamy superstition, based on falsehoods. Pobphybius (Malchus
of Tyre) was said to have been a Christian, but returned to Pagan
ism. He wrote fifteen books “ On Christianity,” which have been
entirely destroyed, with the exception of a few fragments selected
by Eusebius for the purpose of refutation.
Hiebokles of Nikomedia, a philosopher under Diocletian, was
one of the principal instigators of the persecution of the Chris
tians by this emperor, as he described them as dangerous fanatics
and reckless conspirators. He endeavoured to prove that Christ
had in fact been Apollonius Tyannseus, who could see distant
occurrences, and who gave an account of the murder of Domitian
in the open market place at Ephesus, at the very moment when
�Christianity.
'
7
the terrible deed was done at Rome. Apollonius was said to have
had interviews with spirits, to have revived a dead young woman,
and to have died at the age of one hundred years. The Pagans
often confounded this contemporary of Jesus with Christ himself,
and the deeds of the one were attributed to the other.
The last but not least formidable antagonist of Christianity was
Julian the Apostate, so called because he returned to Paganism
after his conversion. He wrote seven books “On Christianity,”
which are entirely lost, with the exception of a few quotations in
the ten controversial books against him by Cyril of Alexandria.
The works of Julian may be divided into four principal groups :—
(a.) Treatises which he himself calls, Discourses of a more or
less sophistical character.
(A) Satires, written in the style of Lucian, concerning his con
temporaries, and his relations to science.
(c.) Letters, partly official, which he had written when regent,
and partly unofficial, addressed to friends and mere ac
quaintances.
(cZ.) His diatribes against Christianity.
Julian was one of the most important and cultivated men of his
time; he possessed a determined character, was an industrious
and clever administrator, promoted education, and reveals to us
more clearly than any other writer the entirely changed condition
of the world. He endeavoured to transform the religion of the
ancients into a mystic-symbolic system, to satisfy the wants of
the people, and to oppose the subversive tendencies of Christianity,
which already began to revel in gloomy superstitions, and to
discard the simplicity and lofty grandeur of Christ’s teachings.
The violent attacks on Christianity produced an entirely new
science, cultivated to the detriment of real truth up to our own
times, that of “ Apologetics.”
There are two modes of becoming an Apologist. The one is to
ignore your opponent altogether; this is the passive method.
Never mention his works; destroy every vestige of his writings,
and silence him to death. This passive mode of controversy is
exceedingly efficacious, and the least troublesome; it requires no
great effort, and after all is capable of upholding errors, preju
dices, and superstitions. The other method is active; you must
try to refute ytjur opponents. You must state first what they say
and be careful to quote only what you are able to refute; or quote
so as to turn your opponent’s statements into the grossest absurd-
�8
Christianity.
ities. To illustrate this method with an example from our own
times I need only refer to a mighty genius who has devoted him
self to the minute study of the mineral, vegetable, and animal
kingdoms, who saw everywhere connecting links and analogous
laws, and has built on these the striking theory of evolution. Do
not read Darwin’s book, but simply say:—“ Bah ! He proves
that we are all monkeys; that we are descended from monkeys,
and that there is nothing higher than a monkey !” By this means
you at once horrify the immense majority of monkeys, who dread
nothing so much as self-knowledge, and you may hope to cause
your antagonist’s theories to remain for ages a dead letter. By
this calumniating method you may most efficaciously obstruct pro
gress on whatever field of inquiry.
The primitive Christian Apologists made it a point, by fair or any
other means, to defend Christianity, and to silence their antagonists.
They were, above all, firmly convinced of the superiority of their
religion, which required no study, no particular training, no philo
sophy, but simply faith—nothing but faith; faith was to move moun
tains ; faith was to serve as the panacea for every evil to which our
flesh and spirit was heir. As long as this faith was only demanded
for the levelling enactments of Christ proclaiming the universal bro
therhood of men, it worked miracles. When, at a later period, the
Fathers called in the aid of Pagan philosophy and dialectics, when
they endeavoured to prove, in order to gain as many votaries as
possible, that Christianity contained all the dogmas of the most
influential ruling religious systems, their task became gigantic, and
we must honestly confess that many of the Apologists showed an
undoubted superiority over their enervated adversaries. The
Apologists inaugurated through their writings a struggle between
faith or religion, and reason or science, which was the principal
and vital cause of the uninterrupted progressive development of
Christianity. The mystic dogmas and incredible assertions made
with the smooth plausibility of a G-reek sophist, or the trenchant
dialectics of a Boman casuist pleading before some court of just
ice, provoked contradiction, self-thought, inquiry, and argumenta
tion. This fact explains the fierce intellectual thunderstorm of
controversy which swept over the world, silencing all contradiction
in time.
When Athenagobas (177 a.d.) proclaimed Plato and Christ to
be in perfect harmony, he united Pagan philosophy with the
Christian faith. He endeavoured to bring about a balance between
�Christianity.
9
the intellectual and moral faculties of men. But he was emotional,
and explained with assumptions and assertions what he did not
know. That his writings were altered in passing through the
hands of ignorant copyists or interested church dignitaries, may
be fairly assumed; for we find side by side with passages written
under the distinct influence of the Neo-Platonic school, others
that are altogether opposed to their mode of thinking. Some
other passages, again, are full of Hebraism in contradiction to his
Hellenism. He earnestly protested against the re-marriage of
widows, and propounded wild and fantastic speculations on the
“ fallen angels,” dividing them into two Categories, such as were
lost to all sense of justice, and such as had still something good
left in them ; that is, bad and good evil-spirits.
Tatian, who was born in Syria, devoted himself to the gloomy
Study of Gnosticism. He looked upon matter as the fountain of all
evil, recommended the mortification of the body, and introduced
Indian, Persian, and, above all, Buddhistic ideas into Christianity.
His disciples abjured all the comforts and enjoyments of life, and
abstained from wine with such rigorous obstinacy, that at the
Lord’s Supper they used nothing but water, holding that God’s will
would transform water into blood, as it had formerly transformed
it into wine. Tatian constantly referred to a Universal Soul or
Spirit pervading the universe in contradistinction to the Creator
of all things. He borrowed this idea from Plato, who took it
from the Egyptians, who had inherited it from the Indian Pan
theists.
There can be no doubt that the ancient classics with their dry
formalism no longer sufficed to satisfy man’s restless emotional
nature, craving for a deeper knowledge of the supernatural. The
theological spirit of mysticism borrowed from the East was drawn
into the mighty vortex of man’s speculative activity, and opened new
fields to the moral and intellectual forces working in Humanity.
The union between God and man, formally accomplished by the
classical world, was now to be spiritually completed. The divine
Power which had assumed form in the unsurpassed artistic, poetitical, and philosophical works of antiquity, was with Clemens of
Alexandria to become flesh, vivified by the Spirit of the East,
and newly moulded as one mystic, incomprehensible, and super
natural whole, by Christianity. The mythological conceptions of
the Greeks, the theosophies of the Hebrews, and the mysteries of
the Egyptians, were to be blended with the simple, yet sublime,
�10
Christianity.
teachings of Christ. As the prophets, Moses, Aaron, and Elijah,
had devoted themselves to the Lord; as kings had sacrificed their
heirs on the walls of their besieged towns to force the enemy to
abandon their assaults ; as Jephthah had been ready to sacrifice his
daughter—so Christ had been a sacrifice to the Most High for
humanity. The Apologists, however, ignored the fact that the
same had been said of Kama and Krishna by the Indians, of Osiris
by the Egyptians, of the Kentaur, Cheiron, of Apollo, as Adonai
or Adonis by the Hellens, and of Curtius by the Bomans. The
descendants of those who had believed in these self-sacrifices were
easily persuaded that the founder of their religion bad offered
himself as the most precious sacrifice to appease the wrath of an
angry father.
Clemens introduced Hebraism most prominently into Christ
ianity. He held that there was no truth except in the Books of
Moses and the Prophets, and that the writings known as the Old
Testament were the only reliable, the only true books, and older
than any of the writings of any other nation, and that whatever
had been asserted by whomsoever had been taken, copied, or
transcribed from these writings. This monstrous historical falsifi
cation obstructed the progress of humanity for more than 1,400
years. His misstatements were turned into articles of faith, re
peated year by year, hour by hour, in the principal Christian
schools, and thus were transformed into brain-crystallizations and
petrifactions in the believing, but not reasoning and inquiring
minds of the people. A systematic falsification of history was thus
established, fostered, and kept up by a well organised hierarchy,
supported at a later period by the wealth and power of states,
which left the whole machinery of national, collegiate, and uni
versity education in clerical hands, and imposed upon the masses
by means of penal laws, fire and sword, the gallows and the stake,
certain historical statements, chronological assertions, astronomi
cal errors, and geological impossibilities, as so many indisputable
facts.
If we have reason to complain of the primitive apologists of
Christianity, who showed at least a certain candour and probity,
we have still stronger grounds to be dissatisfied with those who
used sophistry and pious frauds. The Fathers, generally, appear
to have been destitute of penetration, learning, system, application,
and talent. They used arguments to dazzle the fancy, and not to
enlighten or convince the mind. They assumed the antiquity of a
�Clbristianit^-.
Il
doctrine to be evidence of its truth. But all these facts must not
blind us to acknowledge the great ability, and even genius of some
of them, who, notwithstanding certain brain-petrifactions really
endeavoured to promote truth, although truth had unfortunately
been already settled for them as such, by the terrible power of
credulity and undisputed authority.
These petrifactions became in time whole ranges of granite
blocks of superstition. Many a tiny barque of inquiry on the
vast ocean of free-thought, sailing with a fair wind of common
sense, guided by the compass of reason, has been dashed to pieces
and sunk by these terrible, apparently immoveable rocks! But
after all the stable rock with its resistence excited the activity of
the dashing sea-farers.
To the honour of the human intellect it must be confessed that
the credulous, who wished to persuade themselves and others that
they were right in their belief of the incredible, contributed much
to the possibility of the dissolution of their own superstitions.
Foremost in the rank of the free-thinking fathers stood Origen.
The historical development of Christianity must remain for ever
an unintelligible riddle without a thorough acquaintance with the
writings of Origen. This father endeavoured to look on the
Scriptures from a rational point of view, and shook “ Bibliolatry ”
to its very foundation. He cast aside the literal interpretation,
finding the mere letter often unintelligible and contradictory,
sought for hidden meanings, and asserted that the Scriptures
ought to be read by the light of reason. He had a higher con
ception of the Deity, believed in the pre-existence of pure
angelic souls and their fall into mortal bodies, and in a “final
restoration of all intelligent beings to order and happiness.”
This was equivalent to denying eternal hell-fire, and was too much
for the loving hearts of his contemporary Christians, so that he
was, therefore, condemned as a heretic. It is most satisfactory to
find that in our own times several Divines, and among them
Canon Farrar, have dared, in the spirit of Origen, to shake the
deluding and maddening hell-fire petrifaction in the brains of
some believers, and to free the Deity from the reproach of being an
irreconcilable and wrathful Avenger without mercy or pity.
Origen was followed by Eusebius, the Father of Christian
Historiography. He worked out a chronology which, in spite
of geology, Egyptian monuments, Assyrian inscriptions, Indian
philology, and Chinese records, serves some of our bigoted
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historians as a basis for their historical distortions. Eusebius
collected most of the raw historical material of ancient times,
and of his own age. He wrote with one aim, to prove the
superiority of Christian morals, and in doing so would not admit
that there could have been anything good in other far more
ancient religious systems. He had to sift facts and to record only
such as served his one-sided and special assumption, and this mode
of writing history is still the most cherished method of historical
sectarians of whatever denomination or tribal division.
To strike the principal death-blow at pure Christianity was
reserved to Athanasius, who borrowed Ins mystic, “ Three in
one,” from the Egyptians. To this incomprehensible “ idol,” once
petrified, thousands and thousands of human beings were sacrificed.
The Council of Nice, which, in 325 A.D., determined the Duality
of God as “ Father and Son,” (the Trinitarian dogma having
passed only in 381 A.D.), selected also the four gospels as the
only canonical books from a quantity of other gospels then
existing. The proceedings on that memorable occasion were the
following according to Pappus in his Synodicon to the council.
“ The fathers, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, placed pro
miscuously under a communion table, in front of which the
Council was assembled, all the Gospels which were known at that
time. They then prayed devoutly to God beseeching him ‘ that
the inspired writings might get upon the table, whilst the spurious
ones remained underneath.’ After the prayer a miracle took
place. The gospels which Gelasius ought to burn remained under
the table, and the four inspired ones got upon it, and were declared
to be canonical.”
A still greater miracle happened. “ It was agreed that in order
to make the Council valid, all the fathers should sign the records.
Two bishops, however, Musonius and Chrisantes, died during the
Council without having signed them. The difficulty was great, for
the Council was invalid without their signatures, but the fathers
caused guards to be placed round the tombs of the bishops, and
placed in them the Acts of the Council, which, as is well known,
were divided into sections. The fathers passed the night in
prayer, and the next day they found that the deceased bishops had
fortunately signed the records of the Council.” (See “ On Man
kind their Origin and Destiny.” By an M.A. of Baliol College,
Oxford. London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1872., pp. 166 and
167.)
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Basil and Gregory of Nazianzen were the founders of the
Eastern, whilst Tertullian and Augustine must he considered
as the bulwarks of the Western Church. They all became so many
crystallized authorities in Theology. They established obstinacy
and blind faith as the most Christian virtues, and supported their
theory with the most involved intricacies of dialectics. The pheno
menon that astonishes us is, that the learned world, until very
recently, should have applied their two-edged dialectical weapons
for one purpose—to prove what they assumed to be necessary for
the salvation of Humanity. All doubt in that which they asserted
to be an incontestable fact, they punished with stoning, crucifixion,
hanging, or burning. The intellectual, reasoning, thinking, and
inquiring faculty—in a word, the dynamic force, with which
Humanity is endowed, was to be exclusively directed to supernatural
matters and authoritative enactments settled beforehand. At this
period, the greatest calumny against God, the Creator, and Man,
His creature was brought into a systematic form. All was tempta
tion, sinfulness, and horrible wickedness. Nature was to be ex
pelled from nature. Man was to see in every other man an offspring
of hell, sent into this world to do wrong. Hatred and contempt,
trembling and fear, were thus made the chemical elements of which
man’s moral and social condition was to be composed, and a strange
mixture they produced I We need not be astonished that the
false Christians, once come to power, should have fostered an
unrelenting hatred against anything stepping into their obstructive
path. Cyril had nothing but death for the beautiful Hypatia,
who dared to think, to reason, and to inquire, when thinking was
already considered a deadly sin, reasoning a crime, and inquiry a
blasphemy! Tertullian went so far as to state in his “De Idolatria”
that all astronomers, sculptors, mythologists, and merchants were
idolaters and servants of the “Evil One.” Man was so afflicted
by the general reaction which took place in consequence of the
over-strained action of . the ancient classic times, that he lost all
self-reliance, self-thought, self-respect, and entered upon a life
which in reality was no life, or at all events no intellectual life.
That the dynamic force in Humanity cannot be stifled may be
best studied in the writings of Tertullian who exhibits in his
works a mingling of virtues and defects, of learning and ignorance,
of piety and worldliness, which makes him appear on one page as
the most profound scholar, whilst on another, he evinces the most
hopeless superstition and credulity. Through this his double nature
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he exercised great influence on the Scholastics of the Mediaeval
period.
Par greater in character and genius than the works of Tertullian
are the six books “ On the Creation,” by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.
In his obstinacy, and in his firm convictions, he was the very
model of an ecclesiastical prince. He was no Sophist or orator in
the pulpit, but a kind-hearted administrator, stern and active, who
said what he meant, and was firmly convinced that whatever he
said or wrote, was intended for the good of Humanity. In his
works we may study the transition of primitive Christianity into
a complicated system of hierarchical feudalism. Passive submission,
faith and self-abnegation were established in contradiction to the
ancient philosophers who enjoined active energy, self-conscious
conviction, and honest virtue. Ambrose insisted, above all, on
“ Faith.” He, however, attempted to distinguish between the
strictly doctrinal, and the less reliable historical parts of the Old
and New Testaments. Origen and Ambrose were the principal
founders of a broader treatment of the Bible, which led on the
uninterrupted path of progressive continuity to our most modern
theological criticism. Ambrose looked upon the emotional in
Humanity as the only force to be developed and cultivated, to be
restrained and regulated. Poetry, painting, sculpture, and music,
were to strengthen this force, and we owe to him the introduction
of a higher culture of the Arts in the Western Christian Churches.
More important than any of the other Fathers was Augustine
(Aurelius Augustinus), who in the 4th and 5th centuries a.d.,
gave Christianity an entirely new dialectical and theological shape,
widely differing from that simplicity and universal humanism
which we find in Christ’s teachings. He was born 354 a.d., at
Tageste, in Numidia. His father, Patricius, was a Pagan, and his
mother, Monica, a Christian—Paganism and Christianity being
thus blended into one in him through his parents. In his youth
at Carthage he led a wild, reckless, and immoral life; but he was
suddenly reformed through the study of “Hortensius” by Cicero,
a book unfortunately lost, and a diligent reading of the works of
Aristotle. He joined the sect of the Manichseans, went to Rome
to teach rhetorics—(philosophy and elocution)—and thence pro
ceeded to Milan, where he taught with great success. He there
made the acquaintance of Ambrose, who instructed him in the
tenets of the then already to a great degree crystallized orthodox
Christianity. Augustine renounced Manichaeism, and at once
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denounced it, with the fervour usual in converts, as the most per
nicious heresy. He now devoted himself to the exclusive study of
Plato, with the aid of whose ideal philosophical assumptions he
succeeded in constructing an abstruse metaphysical system of
Christian theology.
The influence of his works on the culture and further dog
matic development of Christianity was unbounded. His ideas
inspired the dissertations and controversies between Abelard and
Bernhard. His subtle and dialectical theories may be traced in
the dissensions between Calvinists and Lutherans, Churchmen and
Ritualists, Baptists and Methodists. The struggle between the
Jansenists and Jesuits was principally called forth by his ideas on
abstruse subjects. The influence of Augustine may be traced in
the following utterly meaningless utterances of one of our noble
Lords, who said a week or two ago, “that no law was needed to
sanction or proclaim that the Sabbath was of divine origin. The
profound wisdom inducing it, and the absolute necessity of such a
day, must be apparent to all, whilst no human mind could have
evolved such a scheme of Sunday observance; ” and immediately
after he complains that the observance which needed no law was
being jeopardised by the lawgivers of England, who intended to
abolish the law with reference to the keeping of the Sabbath ; and
thus an institution, which no human mind could have evolved,
would vanish for ever. The ignorance of the noble Lord is
stupendous; he apparently does not know that he is really de
fending an institution which took its origin in the worship of the
heathenish God, “ Sab,” which the nomadic Jews carried about in
an ark, and which they deposited every seventh day in a “ bath ”
(tent) called Sabbath, the “ tent of Sab,” and not “ tabernacle; ”
and he seems to be equally unaware of the fact that the Phoenicians,
Assyrians, and Chaldseans possessed similar movable “ sun-oracles.”
Such senseless utterances have occupied, and still occupy, more
than seven-eights of Christianity. The first great dialectical wars
which Augustine waged were directed against the Manichaeans,
Donatists, and, above all, the Pelagians, the followers of Pelagius,
a British Monk, who dared to teach that death had not been
introduced into the world by Adam, but that, on the contrary,
man was necessarily, and by nature mortal, so that even had Adam
not sinned, he would nevertheless have died; and that further, the
consequences of Adam’s sin were confined to himself, and did not
affect his posterity. Erom these premises, Pelagius drew certain
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important conclusions—which necessarily went against the inherited
sin theory, the necessity of an atonement, and the numberless calum
nies against our miserable, wretched, wicked, sinful, abominable,
and horrible nature. Pelagius shook the very foundation of the
theological structure, which in its details and dogmas began to be
far more Pagan than Christian. Augustine was in arms against
these blasphemies; and historians can trace in this quarrel between
the wild and passionate Monk, and the cool and rational British
Priest, a more developed germ of the Reformation, the seed of
which had been sown long before by the not very edifying quarrels
between St. Paul and St. Peter, as representatives of Hellenism
and Hebraism.
A Synod held at Diopolis acquitted Pelagius of heresy. Pope
Innocent I. condemned him. The next Pope, Zosimus, declared
the opinions of Pelagius perfectly orthodox, but in spite of this,
Augustine craftily obtained a decree from the Emperor, declaring
Pelagius a heretic, condemning him and his adherents to exile and
confiscating all their worldly goods.
To obtain an insight into the arguing practised and taught by
Augustine, it will be well to consider a few passages from the
11th, 12th, and 13th books of his “ Confessions.”
He of course begins by praying “that God will give him to
understand the Scriptures, and will open their meaning to him,”
and declares at once “that in them there is nothing superfluous,
but that the words have a manifold meaning.” The apparent
humility of this prayer really conceals the most inordinate pride.
First he prayed, then comes the terrible assumption that God must
have heard his prayer—and then all his utterances and writings
become embodiments of God’s spirit, and the most unscientific,
confused and incoherent loquacity is taken as spoken or written
under God’s holy inspiration.
Having invoked the help of God, Augustine begins to argue and
apparently to contradict Scripture; but as he contradicts with the
purpose of refuting his own contradictions, the doubts which he
raises are so childish, that it does not require much ingenuity to
dispose of them. This is the method generally followed bv theo
logically trained minds, a method calculated to deceive ignorant
men and emotional women.
With pomp and vanity Augustine says :—
“ The face of creation testifies that there has been a Creator;
but at once arises the question, How and when did He make
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heaven and earth ? They could not have been’made in heaven and
earth; the world could not have been made in the world, nor
could they have been made when there was nothing to make
them of.”
The solution Augustine finds is extremely simple :—
“ Thou spakest, and they were made! ” he exclaims, but does not
tell us where the Deity spoke; in or beyond the world.
The speaking of the Deity involves him in new perplexities, for
he says:—
“ The syllables thus uttered by God came forth in succession,
and there must have been some created thing to express the words.
This created thing must therefore have existed before heaven and
earth, and yet there could have been no corporeal thing before heaven
and earth. It must have been a creature because the words passed
away and came to an end; but we know that the word of the
Lord endureth for ever! Moreover, it is plain that the words
thus spoken could not have been spoken successively, but simulta
neously, else there would have been time and change; succession
in its nature implying time, whereas there was then nothing but
eternity and immortality. God knows and says eternally what
takes place in time.”
There is time and yet there is no time, there is eternity but that
is not time. There is an eternally speaking Deity, but the words
this Deity speaks could not have been spoken successively, but
must.have been spoken simultaneously and eternally. A superficial
analysis of these and similar phrases amply suffices to show their
utter hollowness and senselessness.
The next difficulty Augustine finds in the mystic words : “ In
the beginning.”
What was there before the Beginning began? He suddenly
saves himself from the terrible aspect of a beginning Beginning,
and exclaims:—
“ How wonderful are Thy works, 0 Lord! in wisdom hast Thou
made them all. This wisdom is the beginning, and in that Begin
ning the Lord created heaven and earth. But,” he adds, “ some
one may ask: ‘ What was God doing before He made the heaven
and earth ?’ for, if at any particular moment He began to employ
Himself, that means time, not eternity. In eternity nothing
transpires ; the whole is present.”
He at once answers the indirect question with one of those
direct assertions, insinuating that, though he did not intend to say
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anything, yet that he was well acquainted with the doings of the
Deity:—
“ I will not answer this question by saying that He was pre
paring Hell for pryers into his mysteries. I say that before God
made heaven and earth He did not make anything; for no crea
ture could be made before any creature was made. Time itself is
a creature, and hence it could not possibly exist before creation.
What then is time ? The past is not, the future is not, the pre
sent—who can tell what it is, unless it be that which has no dura
tion between two nonentities ? There is no such thing as 4 a long
time,’ or ‘ a short time,’ for there are no such things as the past
and the future. They have no existence, except in the soul.”
Such incoherent, rhapsodical assertions as these have been looked
upon as learned disquisitions on sacred and scientific subjects for
more than fourteen hundred years. We might quote the whole of
Augustine’s works, line by line, to prove that they are nothing but
inflated and arrogant conversations between the writer and his
assumed God. These utterances may be looked upon as those of
an individual suffering from religious hallucination, which have
become to a high degree methodical; and we may well exclaim
with Polonius : 44 Though this be madness, yet there is method
in it.”
And such mystic madness stimulated men’s thinking faculties
into action, and in time produced a Bacon, a Newton, a Leibnitz,
a Des Cartes, and a Kant.
Another passage from the twelfth book is still more charac
teristic in its originality, but less methodical:—
44 This, then, is what I conceive, O, my God,” when I hear the
Scripture saying, 4 In the beginning God made heaven and earth;
and the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was
upon the deep,’ and not mentioning what day thou createdst them;
this is what I conceive, that because of the heaven of heavens—that
intellectual heaven whose intelligence knows all at once, not in
part, not darkly, not through a glass, but as a whole, in manifesta
tion, face to face; not this thing now, and that thing anon; but
(as I said) know all at once, without any succession of times ; and
because of the earth, invisible and without form, without any
succession of times, which succession presents this thing now, that
thing anon, because where there is no form there is no distinction
of things; it is, then, on account of these two, a primitive formed,
and a primitive formless; the one heaven, but the heaven of
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heavens; the other, earth, but the earth moveable and without
form; because of these two, do I conceive did the Scripture
say, without mention of days, ‘ In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth.’ For, forthwith it subjoined what
earth it spake of, and also in that firmament is recorded to be
created the second day, and called heaven, it conveys to us of
which heaven He before spake without mention of days. Wondrous
depth of Thy words I Whose surface, behold! is before us, inviting
to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth, O, my God—a
wondrous depth I It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of
honour, and a trembling of love. The enemies, therefore, I hate
vehemently; O that Thou wouldst slay them with Thy two-edged
sword, that they might no longer be enemies to it; for so do I love
to have them slain unto themselves, that they may live unto Thee!”
Greek philosophy was turned by this passionate African fanatic
into rambling sophistry, and the teachings of Christ, full of love
and forgiveness, into a system of bloodthirsty persecution. Science
was scorned, and continually abused, but barefaced stupidity,
heartless pride, and insolent arrogance were used to destroy and
degrade pure Christianity, to transform it into a code of implacable
hatred, and to foster persecution and wholesale murder.
In the thirteenth Book of his “ Confessions,” Augustine touches
the grand Mystery of Mysteries, the “ Trinity,” and proves it to
be contained in the teachings of the immortal Jewish lawgiver,
Moses.
In great excitement, he says :—
“ Lo, now the Trinity appears unto me in a glass darkly, which
is Thou, my God, because Thou, O Father, in Him who is the
beginning of our wisdom, which is Thy wisdom, born of Thyself,
equal unto Thee, and co-eternal, that is, in Thy Son, createdst
heaven and earth. Much now have we said of the heaven of the
heavens, and of the earth, invisible and without form, and of the
darksome deep, in reference to the wandering instability of its
spiritual deformity, unless it had been converted unto Him, from
whom it. had its then degree of life, and by His enlightening became
a beauteous life, and the heaven of that heaven, which was after
wards set between water and water. And under the name of God
I now beheld the Father, who made these things ; and under the
name of the beginning, the Son in whom He made these things ;
and believing as I did, my God as the Trinity; I searched further
in His holy words, and lo! Thy Spirit moved upon the waters.
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Behold the Trinity, my God! Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost,
Creator of all Creation ! ”
As a contrast to this let us turn to a passage from the Indian
Bamayana, a poem written by Valmikis, in 24,000 double verses
(about 1200 b.c., according to the great bibliographer, Dr. Graesse).
In the Ram ay ana, no conceited monk discusses the Deity; in
directly threatening all who may dare to pry into His mysteries
with hell-fire, whilst he thinks himself authorised to commit pre
cisely the same indiscretion; but the gods are assembled in
heaven, and one of them addresses the incomprehensible first
Cause in the following lofty and sublime strain :—
“ O Thou, whom threefold might and splendour veil,
'
Maker, Preserver, and Transformer, hail!
Thy gaze surveys this world from clime to clime,
Thyself immeasurable in space and time:
To no corrupt desires, no passions prone:
Unconquered conqueror, infinite, unknown ;
«
Though in one form Thou veil’st Thy might divine,
Still, at Thy pleasure, every form is Thine.
Pure crystals thus prismatic hues assume
As varying light and varying tints illume;
Men think Thee absent; Thou art ever near,
Pitying those sorrows, which Thou ne’er canst fear.
Unsordid penance Thou alone canst pay;
Unchanged, unchanging—old without decay:
Thou knowest all things—who Thy praise can state ?
Createdst all things—Thyself uncreate! ”
What a difference in language, purity and grandeur of concep
tion I The three in one is the Universe pervaded by a Divine
Force, manifesting itself in the tri-une phenomena of Creation,
Preservation, and Transformation in space and time throughout
eternity.
In imitation of Plato’s “ State ” and Pliny’s “ History of Na
ture,” Augustine wrote a work entitled “De civitate Dei, Libri
XXII.” (The City of God, in twentv-two books). He here divides
humanity into two groups :
1. Such as have mere carnal ideas, and are damned. And—
2. Such as live in the spirit, and must be saved.
Augustine thus assumed two States, of which one would perish
in the general conflagration on the day o£ judgment. Of this
perishable State the Devil was supreme ruler; it was based on
Egotism and a contempt of God. The other he asserted to be a
heavenly State, in which God is King: the State itself being based
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on Love to God, and contempt of ourselves. The phenomenal or
visible world was with Augustine a realm of sin, wickedness,
misery, crime and wretchedness, in opposition to an ideal world of
faith and blissfulness, of purity and eternal salvation.
Reality was with him corrupt, and he left reality to the lay
power, which by degrees began to feel its strength: and the
struggle between Pope and Emperor, the Kingdom of God and the
Kingdom of the Devil commenced. This struggle was foreshadowed
in Augustine’s writings ; it lasted for more than a thousand years,
and ended in our century with the abolition of the temporal power,
of the Pope.
Augustine, in his “ City of God,” condemns all worldly endeavour
or activity as sinful; he assumes a spiritual government over all
earthly matters, and settles all moral, dogmatic and scientific sub
jects from a theological point of view.
Augustine worked out the hypotheses of “ Predestination,”
“ Special Grace,” and “ Eree Willconfusing assumptions with
an utterly false moral foundation. . If “ Predestination ” were
made the ruling force of humanity, what would become of our
self-conscious moral responsibility ? If we were to admit a higher,
more powerful, independent force not within, but without or above
us, which directly or even indirectly regulated the destinies of
individuals, nations, and humanity—individuals, nations, and
humanity would be released from all moral responsibility, and
could not become masters of their fate; their actions having been
predisposed, pre-arranged, and providentially predestined, by
“ Special Grace,” or any other arbitrary grant over which the
individual had no control, could not come under the influence of
order and law.
The hypotheses of “ Predestination ” and “ Special Grace ”
transformed man into a mere puppet, with a mighty divine wire
puller behind him ; and history enacted by such puppets could be
nothing but an incoherent pantomime, in which the scientific men
were the clowns, and the theologians the managers, directing both,
their self-constituted wire-pulling Deity and the besotted puppets,
and continually preparing “.the last transformation scene,”
illumined with the lurid glare of hell-fire.
Augustine and his theological disciples looked upon the phe-.
nomena of nature, and of man’s higher moral and intellectual
activity, as mere chance effects of the working of some supernatural
power.
. .
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Christianity.
Contrary to Confucius, mediaeval Christianity on the principles
laid down by Augustine did not follow out the axiom—“ The wise
man seeks the cause of his defects in himself ; but the fool, avoid
ing himself, seeks it in all others beside himself.” The bigoted
and uneducated under theological training look for redress in proud
humbleness and blind faith, from any force or power without, and
not within themselves, and by this means fall an easy prey to their
ecclesiastical or political task-masters. It is either “ despotism,”
pure and simple, assuming the incompetence of the masses to
govern themselves, that plays at “ Providence,” “ Predestination,”
“ Special Grace by the Will of Godor it is “ Clericalism ” in a
thousand different forms, which, in accordance with Augustine,
builds up, arranges, furnishes, decorates, and adorns “ a higher
state ” of spiritual blissfulness in unapproachable regions, where
archangels, angels, saints, confessors, martyrs, deacons, sextons,
ringers, and beadles, rule supreme in opposition to this world, in
which the masses are misled by devils, demons, infidels, unbelievers,
agnostics, pantheists, and, worst of all, scientific inquirers, who
dare to pry into the “ wonderful ” and “ awful ” mysteries of God.
Rousseau, like Augustine, wrote “Confessions”—the one from a
political, and the other from a purely theological point of view.
Both were fanatics, and both strove to improve the fate of
humanity.
Augustine, like Rousseau, gives us a precise history of his own
inner life, which he finishes by adopting the Christian religion;
the other, who began as a pious Christian child, abjured Christi
anity, became an atheist, and tells us the causes which induced him
to change his opinions on matters divine and human.
Augustine looks upon history as something utterly indifferent,
and far beneath the dignity of his consideration. He is convinced
that in all historical matters God and Predestination are doing
what is right, and that no amount of study and knowledge can
change what has been ordained by God to happen, whether in
politics or in every man’s private life. This ruling conviction still
excludes the study of General History on a scientific basis from
nearly all our educational establishments, and may serve to explain
the unanimity with which the University of Oxford hailed the
introduction of the study of Scandinavian languages and antiqui
ties, and the delight which one of our most liberal papers expressed
on this occasion, finding it perfectly clear that there could be no
taint of heresy, or of radicalism, in Scandinavian studies. The
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study of General History by reason of its drawing of analogies and
comparisons, rectifying of dates, and analysing of different religious
systems, is thought to be tainted with the horrible poison of heresy,
and the bigoted fear, lest we might learn from history that man
at all times, and in all places, had very analogous notions with
reference to the means by which his higher moral progress was to
be effected.
Bousseau on the other hand, like Vico, Guicciardini, Bolingbroke,
Herder and Lessing before him, clearly saw the necessity of the
study of history, and assigned to it the greatest importance. But
whilst Bousseau often misunderstood history, we are compelled
to admit that Augustine thoroughly grasped the wants of super
stitious and ignorant humanity. Scepticism and mere negation
are even more bleak and despairing than the most childish
“ emotionalism,” leading through fear of punishment, and hope for
reward to a certain kind of practical morals. Bousseau saw only
chance, misery, and wretchedness in the progressive development
of civilisation, and wanted to lead us back to the bosom of mother
nature. Augustine traced all the miseries besetting humanity,
not to a misunderstanding of the laws of nature, but to a Father
who mercifully punished his children for a sin committed by Adam
in Paradise—which was called “ the original sin,” and he advised
humanity to rely on this Father with childlike submission, to eat,
to drink, to sleep, but above all to pray, to sing, to believe, and
not to inquire, as we had only one destiny on earth, to atone for
the terrible inheritance left us by Adam, “ the original sin.”
Augustine heard in the first cry of a new-born child a heart
rending lament over the sinfulness of this world, which had been
created by a benevolent first Cause.
The degrading theory of an original sin cannot possibly exercise
any elevating influence on our moral development. In connection
with this it may be instructive to consider the impression this pre
posterous and impious assumption made on the mind of a cul
tivated Chinese Mandarin, who had been brought up in the
moral principles of Confucius. He met a missionary and hearing
of the superiority of the Christian religion, was ready patiently to
listen, and to allow himself to be instructed. The creation of the
world by a God was admitted; then came the special creation of
man, and the “ inherited Sin ”—and the assertion that “ by one
man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death
passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” The Mandarin
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rose in wrath, clutched a bamboo, and asked the following ques
tions : Who created the world “? “ God,” was the answer. And
who created man ? “ God,” was the next answer. And who made
man sin, and created him mortal ? The missionary hesitated, and
the Mandarin thereupon gave him a sound thrashing, and ex
claimed, “ I will teach you to have a higher notion of the Deity,
and to have a loftier conception of his most perfect and wonderful
creature—man, with all his exalted virtues of family love, know
ledge, industry, arts and sciences. Go, and annoy me no longer
with your blasphemous assumptions for which you have not a
word in the teachings of Christ.”
The fundamental theory upon which a degrading system of
morals had been constructed was, in Augustine’s time,- already
opposed by great divines and was altogether discarded by Rousseau
who, in his sceptic atheism, was more pious in assuming that
nature could not have done any wrong. Whilst Augustine insisted
upon faith, prayer and contemplation, as the only means of con
quering our sunken, sinful nature, and thus poisoned the pure
moral atmosphere of man,—Rousseau demanded practical sciences,
technical skill—anything that would strengthen the inventive and
reasoning faculty.
Both agree that the young ought to be made acquainted with
truth; but, unhappily, this word has many relative significations,
and cannot be grasped by finite beings in its absolute sense. They
both wished intellect to be cultivated; the one that it might see
the glories of the heavens, and the other, to improve man’s earthly
happiness. Both were equally blind to the fact that only in a
perfectly harmonious culture of imagination and reason, of heart
and head, of morals and intellect, could an approximate solution
of our destiny be found.
Augustine should be read side by side with Rousseau; but we
must be careful not to take the opinions of either for dogmatic
truths or mathematical rules of life. Many of their guesses at
the causes of the evils rampant among us are correct; but they are
mere suggestions thrown out, according to the spirit of the time
in which both lived. Augustine is the alpha of a theologicophilosophical system that swayed humanity to its detriment for
more than fourteen hundred years, and Rousseau is the politico
social omega produced by the same wild and fantastic theological
system. Both—in preaching faith and common sense, hope and
practical reason, charity, freedom, and equality—produced blood
�Christianity.
25
shed, hatred, despair, despotism, and political and religious perse
cution.
The forces working in Humanity were disturbed by both, be
cause they started with preconceived ideas; the one with “ a con
crete original sin,” the other with “ an abstract purity of nature
both powerfully impressed those whom they addressed, and both
failed to readjust the balance between morals and intellect in a
truly Christian sense.
There was, however, something wonderfully beneficial in the
blending of heathen notions and principles with Christianity; the
thread of continuity was kept up, isolation avoided, and humanity
appears to the assiduous student of true history as one great whole,
swayed by immutable laws.
By placing religion and science in a conflicting and antagonistic
relation the Fathers aroused a spirit of inquiry, and controversial
ists and theological casuists who sought to lead us away from the
first simple teachings of Christ were in reality instrumental in
bringing us back to them.
In Church and State an apparently retrograde movement to the
benefit of humanity at large is fortunately perceptible. The State
gives up more and more an assumed fantastic prestige of national
honour, diplomatic niceties and double dealings—the stronger a
State is, the more it can afford to be equitable and just. In reli
gion we endeavour to turn back to the primitive sources of Chris
tianity which, like all streams, was far purer, more lucid and
refreshing at its source than in its continually broadening course,
when it became mixed with the quicksands of sophistry, the shoals
of dogmatic rubbish, and coloured red by the torrents of blood
shed by the fanatics of all sects.
The Fathers benefited humanity, for they tried—
(a.) To be scientific, though they opposed science.
(6.) They used the Greek philosophical and historical writers,
though they declared them profane and heretical.
(c.) They wrote in Latin, and thus kept up the knowledge of
the language of Cicero, Caesar, Tacitus, Pliny, and Seneca.
(d.) They cursed and abused nature, prohibited its study as a
prying into the awful mysteries of God, and by degrees,
on the principle “ nitimur in vetitum ” (we crave for the
forbidden), promoted a systematic study of nature.
(e.) They used the Hebrew Scriptures, and blended the Oriental
and Hellenic mode of thinking into one.
�26
Christianity.
(/.) They fostered mysticism, and called forth the study of man
and nature, of astronomy, chemistry, physiology and psycho
logy; abounding in far greater and more intelligible mysteries
than any of the Fathers ever dreamt of.
(</.) They preached love, humility, and forbearance, and yet
openly practised hatred, pride, and persecution, by which
means they kept man’s moral and intellectual powers in a
continuous motion of action and reaction.
(A.) They introduced a controversial spirit into theology, which
stimulated and disciplined man’s mental activity, and led
Humanity through the dark cloisters of monasteries into
the broad daylight of inventions and discoveries, that put an
end to all the distorted theological conceptions of the Deity.
Thus Man began to be studied in his slow and gradual historical
development, not on false and imaginary principles, but on the
foundation of his own human nature. The calumnious assertion
that man, from the moment he entered into this world, had been
destined for evil is dying out; and the assumption that the whole
of his earthly pilgrimage is to be simply a dim attempt to answer
the inane question: “ Is life worth living ? ” is contemptuously
looked upon as the utterance of attitudinizing Pessimists, who
think that we have only one task to fulfil—to sigh and to crouch
in everlasting terror of a curse which Humanity is said to have
been blessed with by the merciful Creator of all things visible
and invisible.
�
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Christianity : second part. The influence of the "Fathers" on the further development of Christianity, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday, 27th March, 1881
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
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In this lecture Dr. G. G. Zerffi explores the most notable and influential "Fathers" and their effect on the development of Christianity.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 26, [2] p. ; 18 cm
Notes: Publisher's series list on unnumbered pages at the end.
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1881
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Christianity
Christianity
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ETHICS AND .ESTHETICS
OB,
ART AND ITS INFLUENCE ON OUR
SOCIAL PROGRESS.
‘Stctnre
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 5th MARCH, 1876.
BY
Dfi. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R. Hist. S.
One of the Lecturers in IUI. Department of Science and Art.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1876.
Price Threepence.
�SYLLABUS.
1. The component elements of man’s nature.
2. Reason and imagination.
3. Ethics and ^Esthetics.
4. The Cosmical Laws in Nature and Art.
5. Distinction between “ Sublime ” and “ Beau
tiful.”
6. The most important conditions of Art.
7. Art as it shows itself in the three groups of
mankind.
8. Religion has been always one of the prin
cipal agents in exciting our innate dynamic force
to produce works of Art. The relative changes
in Religions reflect corresponding changes in Art.
9. Oriental and Greek Art. Architecture and
Sculpture.
10. Christian Art, and its distinguishing fea
tures from Ancient Art. Carving and Painting.
11. Gothicism, a revival of Indo-Buddhism and
Renaissance, a revival of Grseco-Romanism. Ideal
ism and Realism.
12. Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the English, Ger
mans, Italians, and French on Art. Our social
progress as reflected in Art. Hogarth and Flax
man, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough.
Neglect of ^Esthetics. Symmetrophobia. China
mania. Rinkomania. Conclusion.
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS ;
OB,
ART AND ITS INFLUENCE ON OUR SOCIAL PROGRESS.
HERE can be no doubt that there are con
flicting and often contradictory constituent
elements in man. He is God’s fairest creature, but
often capable of the meanest and most cruel actions,
of which no animal is guilty. This is, and will always
be the case, whenever these conflicting elements
are not properly developed and trained. Man, at
times, is more stupid than an animal; the assertion
that he learnt his first steps in art from plants and
animals, beginning with the lowest animals, is not
a mere hypothetical assertion, but a fact. Man, in
his first periods of development, often acts on mere
unconscious impulses.
He recognises outward
objects, sees them only as detached incoherent units,
and cannot yet observe them as the emanations of
one general idea, according to which they are
formed. At a later period, however, he becomes
conscious of his power to recognise detached objects
in their coherence, and traces in them general
features which unite them into grand harmonious
groups. The more he extends this latter power,
the more he becomes master of the surrounding
phenomena of the outer world, and the more his
artistic powers develope. The force to create is
as inborn in man as the force to think. The former
power is based on imagination affecting his emo
tional element, the latter on reason affecting his
intellectual capacity. Our reason must be guided
and cultivated as carefully as the art of walking.
A child left to itself would scarcely ever learn how
T
�4
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
to walk upright—it must be taught to do so. Our
imagination requires the same training as our
reason. Necessity is the mother of invention, and
all that is unnecessary is looked upon as superfluous
and useless. But necessity is not the only mother
that leads us on to activity. As soon as we have
satisfied our wants, they cease to excite us to
further action, and we step into a second stage of
our intellectual faculty; we strive to embellish, to
beautify the means by which we have succeeded in
satisfying our wants. A knife with an ornamented
or carved handle does not cut better than one with
a plain handle; neither does a heavy club kill a
brother more quickly because its handle is ingeni
ously decorated with geometrical patterns ; a plain
pint jar does not hold more water because it is
glazed or painted with flowers and groups of dancing
nymphs, and still even savages decorate, ornament,
and embellish their every-day utensils, their huts,
and their very bodies. The faculty, the striving to
improve upon nature, is as much part of our entity
as breathing, eating, drinking, and money-making.
The power of enjoying and becoming conscious of
the cause of our enjoyment ought to be as much
cultivated as our endeavours to know. To cultivate
our reasoning faculty one-sidedly, and to pretend that
the world is a mere machine, is one of the most objec
tionable fundamental errors, one which would turn
humanity into a grand fraternity of “ Bounderbys ”
continually echoing the question into your ears,
What is the good of flowers on a carpet, or of
mouldings on a house, if only the sewage be good,
the ventilation perfect, and the wet kept out ? So
long as a nation is in a transition state from bar
barism into civilization, these “ Bounderbys ” reign
supreme ; but the moment that higher ethics take
the place of low conceptions concerning God and
the world, the inborn force of aesthetics begins to
ferment, to work in man, and to drive him to resign
�5
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
his Hebrew-Puritan coarseness, and to begin to orna
ment, to improve the outer aspect of his houses and
towns, his every-day utensils, and to foster with
great energy the culture of the Fine Arts. As little
as birds can rise and sing in the heavens whilst the
storm is raging, but will wait until it is abated, so
it is with artists; their hearts and imagination are
dumb whilst utilitarian indifference oppresses the
social atmosphere, or political passionsrageinanation.
If the Fine Arts could be imported, as tallow is from
Russia, indigo from India, or turnips from Sweden, we
might do a tolerably good trade ; but the Fine Arts
do not grow like mushrooms in musty and moist,
in dark and hidden places, but only in the broad
daylight of general culture. It is not in vain that
we speak in the artistic world so much of our
“ stars.” Stars shine only when there is night;
the darker the night the brighter are the stars,
which often lose their lustre in the light of a tole
rably bright full-moon of criticism. We can see,
however, the bright dawn of a greater love of art
tinting our horizon; but we must learn, above all,
to look upon aesthetics as an important branch of
our education. We are living in the amiable con
ceit that a knowledge of the “ Beautiful” is a mere
matter of opinion. We wrap ourselves in the say
ing “de gustibus non est disputandum.” But we
dispute about the eastern postures, the real presence,
the right of believing in a personal devil, the es
sence of the Divinity, and the efficacy of embroid
ered petticoats for dancing priests, who patronise a
kind of art which has long gone out of fashion, and
will as little come into general use as “ tattooing ”
or pretty silk tailcoats in union with iron armour,
spears, cross-bows, and helmets.
If there be no absolute law in aesthetics, there is
none in ethics. For ethics, in fact, regulate relative
beauty in actions, whilst aesthetics regulate relative
taste in forms. Ethics teach us how to act rightly ;
B
�6
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
eesthetics, how to see and appreciate beauty. The
one discerns between good and evil; the other be
tween beautiful and ugly. The one is philosophy
of action ; the other philosophy of form. The one
may be stated to be the logic of virtue; the other
the logic of taste. But between virtue and taste
there is merely a formal difference : the one affect
ing, as I have said, reason ; the other imagination
both constituent faculties of our mind. Ethics
teach us the idealisation of our nature, elevatingus into true human beings ; and aesthetics teach us.
the idealization of nature, transfiguring her worksinto works of art. The difference between the twolies in the fact that the moral teacher influencesever-changing agents and agencies, whilst the
aesthetical teacher influences the highest god-like
nature of man, through which works, that may de
light humanity for thousands of years, can be cre
ated in stone, on paper, or on canvas. Morality
is an utterly abstract and at the same time re
lative notion, like “ beauty:” but both may be
defined as based on the laws of the “ Cosmosand.
the Greeks used the same word for “ beautiful” asfor the “ universe.” The laws of nature form the
basis of all our right actions, and only so far as our
actions are in accordance with these eternal laws
can we say that we are really moral. It is a factthat the more nations deviated from these laws, the
more they built themselves “codes,” based on a
heated imagination ; the more monstrosities they
created in arts, the more sanguinary cruelties they
perpetrated in history. For morals and arts have
one and the same basis—namely, conformity to the
laws of nature. Morals consist in our becoming
masters of our own nature, and make us fit to live
as human beings in a social condition. This is ex
actly what eesthetics teach us with reference to the
forms of nature. We have to learn how to use the
laws of nature in creating anything so as to make
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
7
it a real work of art. The question whether our
reason or our sentiment was to be most affected by
a work of art led to two different schools, which
still leave it unsettled. Sentiment was to be placed
above sensation, or imagination above emotion ; as
though we could have sensations and emotions with
out our sentiments being aroused by our imagina
tion through outward impressions. The question
cannot rest on effects, but first on causes, producing
certain effects. The cause of all our striving after
emotions is found in the intellectual force with
which we are endowed, and which, driven into
false grooves through an imagination wrongly acted
upon, may seek for emotions which are either false,
ugly, pernicious, or monstrous. Nature everywhere
shows forces forming endless forms in space and
time. Here she differs from art, which has to bring
in space and time the creations of an unlimited
imagination into limited shapes and forms. Tnfinity
is the attribute of nature; finiteness the element of
art. Still, whilst nature in her infinity works
only to transform, or apparently to destroy, art
produces in her finiteness works which, stamped
with the power of intellect, outlast the works
of nature, and can be said to be immortal. How
many beautiful men and women passed away
whilst the marble-wrought gods of Phidias still live
amongst us. Where are TEschylos, Sophokles, Euri
pides, Shakespeare, Schiller, and Goethe ? The crea
tures of their imagination still live amongst us.
We hear the unrestrained curses of “ Prometheus
Bound ” resounding in our hearts ; we mourn with
Antigone ■ we are horrified with Medea; Brutus,
Antony, have vanished, but their memories, their
very speeches, have been recorded for ever by the
immortal Shakespeare ; Mary Stuart has been
clothed in an eternal, never-fading beauty by
Schiller; and Faust and the Devil have become
incarnations of a higher type through Goethe’s
master-mind.
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
Gazing at the heavens on a starry night, we see, in
addition to myriads of sparkling worlds floating in
the air, a great quantity of nebulse. Either decayed
systems of worlds, or worlds in formation. Worlds
which have lost their centre of gravity and fallen
to pieces ; or worlds which are seeking, according to
the general law of gravitation, to form a central
body by the attraction of cosmical ether. The one
phenomenon is that of destruction, the other that of
formation. This double cosmical process is continu
ally repeating itself in the development of art. Art
is like a mirror—whatever looks into it is reflected
by it. If a poor untrained imagination stares into
the mirror, no one must be astonished that poor and
distorted images result. Nature furnishes us with
mortar and stones for the building, but the archi
tect’s intellectual force has to arrange the elements
and to bring them into an artistic shape. Nature
furnishes us with flowers, trees, animals, and men ;
but the artist has to reproduce and to group them so
as to impress the objective forms of nature with his
own intellectual subjectivity. To become thoroughly
conscious of the distinction between the “ sublime ”
and “ beautiful ” is the first step towards a correct
understanding of works of art.
During the long period of the geological formation
of the earth, when mountains were towered upon
mountains, rocks upheaved, islands subsided ; when
air, water, fire, and solid matter seemed engaged in
never-ending conflict—nature was sublime. The
dynamic force appeared to be the only working
element in nature, and the counterbalancing static
force seemed to be without influence. Gradually,
vegetable and animal life in their first crude forms
commenced to show themselves. Zoophytes deve
loped into megatheriums and mastadons. Mam
moths and elks sported on plains which now form
the mountain-tops of our continents.
Scarcely
visible coral insects were still engaged in construct-
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
9
ing mountain chains, and a luxuriant vegetation
covered the small continents which were surrounded
by apparently endless seas. Such changes, trans
formations, and convulsions are gigantic, grand,
awe-inspiring—sublime—but not beautiful. When
ever nature is at work disturbing the air with elec
tric currents or shaking huge mountains so that they
bow their lofty summits, or when the dry soil is rent
asunder, and sends forth streams of glowing lava,
we are in the presence of the sublime—but not of
the beautiful. Whenever man’s nature is overawed,
whenever he is made to feel his impotence by the
phenomena of nature, he faces the sublime. When,
however, the cosmical forces had expended their
exuberant powers, when a diversified climate had
produced those plants and animals that surround
us, when man appeared in his threefold develop
ment, as black, yellow, and white man on this re
volving planet, and by degrees reached his highest
development, then only art acquired, through man’s
consciousness of what is beautiful, a real meaning
and existence on earth. Science eternally tries to
vanquish error. Industry subdues matter, and uses
it for utilitarian purposes : but the vocation of art
is to produce beauty for beauty’s sake, and to idealise
nature.
Nature produces like art. It is characteristic that
some people continually talk of the Divinity as a
“ maker,” which at once shows the low conception
they have of the incomprehensible first cause. We
may talk of a “ watchmaker ” or a “ shoemaker,”
but to speak of a “ world-maker ” degrades the
divinity which endows matter with inherent laws,
and then, according to the immutable law of causation, allows it unconsciously to assume its varie
gated forms. The products of art, on the other
hand, are the results of the conscious intellectual
power of the artist. It is the free yet well-regu
lated consciousness of the artist that elevates his
�IO
ETHICS AND ^ESTHETICS.
productions into works of art. Undoubtedly the
great store-house of the artist is nature ; he learns
from her how to create, but he has to discern, to
combine, to adapt, to select his forms, and to know
the laws of combination, adaptation, and, above all,
selection; for the whole success of an artist, in what
ever branch he works, depends on his power of
selection and rejection. This power of selection
varies in the three groups of mankind.
The negro is triangular-headed (prognathos), with
his facial lines drawn downwards; lie is the fossil,
or the antediluvian man, and as such indulges in an
antediluvian taste ; his mechanical skill is that of
a child; he never goes beyond geometrical figures
and glaringly bright colours. The negro is still the
woolly-headed, animal-faced being represented on
the tombs of the Pharaohs, because his bodily struc
ture and facial lines have not altered during thou
sands of years. In studying his artistic products,
his customs and manners, we are struck with their
resemblance to those which our more direct fore
fathers, the Turanians and Aryans, used when still
in a savage state. They used, and still use, the
same kind of flint instruments ; their pottery is the
same; their clubs, paddles, the cross-beams of their
huts, are adorned with the same rope and serpent
like windings and twistings.
Next we have the Turanian (from “ tura,” swift
ness of a horse); he is square and short-headed,
(brachikephalos), the traditionary yellow man. His
face is flat, his nose deeply sunken between his
prominent cheeks, and his reasoning faculty only
developed to a certain degree. He has small, oblique
eyes, the lines of his face being turned upwards,
expressing cunning and jocularity. He is an excel
lent rider, but a slow, though steady walker. He
looks on nature with a nomadic shepherd’s eye, and
not with that of a settled artist. He possesses
remarkable technical ability, has great powers of
�ETHICS AND ^ESTHETICS.
11
imitation, can produce geometrical ornamentations
of the most complicated and ingenious character,
and excels in a realistic reproduction of flowers,
fishes, butterflies, and birds; he has no sense for
perspective, and no talent for modelling by means
of shade and light. He is incapable of drawing a
dog, a horse, or a human being.
Finally, we have the Aryan, the long or oval
headed man (dolichokephalos), the historical white
man, the crowning product of the cosmical forces
of nature so far as our globe is concerned. His
facial lines are composed of the emblems of the two
conflicting forces working throughout nature, the
static, represented by a horizontal, and the dynamic
by a vertical line, both framed in by an oval. To
him alone we owe art in its progressive develop
ment and its highest sense. He surpasses the two
other groups of humanity not only in technical
skill, but especially in his inventive and reasoning
power, critical discernment, and purity of artistic
taste. The white man was unquestionably the
founder of all the different religious systems. He
tried with his inborn faculty of intellect to answer
the three questions : Where from ? what for ? and
where to ? He measured synthetically the three
dimensions of space and time ; he tried to trace the
three ever-stable and still ever-varying phenomena
of creation, preservation, and transformation. Art
was the most important means to give utterance in
forms to these answers ; and thus the art-forms of
the Orientals, as well as of the Greeks, are but con
tinuous commentaries on their religious conceptions.
It is this fact that necessitates a correct knowledge
of the phases, developments, and changes in the
different religions, as the abstract products of our
endeavours to solve the mysterious questions forced
upon us by nature, and their concrete results in
visible forms by means of works of art. The In
dians, in striving to give shape and form to abstract
�12
ETHICS AND ESTHETICS.
notions, lost themselves through an ill-trained, over
whelming imagination, and produced caricatures.
The Persians, in worshipping the Deity in pure
thoughts, engendering pure words and producing
pure deeds, built magnificent palaces, but scarcely
any temples. We have no representations of their
Divinities ; neither of Ormuzd nor of Ahriman, but
we have Fervers and Devas, the former as winged
human beings, the latter as winged animals or com
positions of animals, chimeras, or as symbols of the
King’s power. The theological, religious, and sym
bolical elements are altogether neglected in the
Perso-Assyrian and Babylonian reliefs. We have
the friends, relations, attendants, and servants, of
the King; tributaries submitting to Kings ; officers
holding fly-flaps of feathers; horses crossing rivers ;
kings hunting and slaying lions ; armies before be
sieged towns; warriors returning from battle; in
fantry and horse with spears, bows and arrows;
boats floating on rivers; galleys going to sea;
damsels and children with musical instruments;
and mathematical tablets with calculations of square
roots. We might study all this and verify what I say
at this moment, if our magnificent British Museum
were not a book, provided with the seven seals of
Sabbatarian bigotry, closed to the nation as a means
of higher education on the Sunday. We should see
in these Assyrian works of art the very opposite of
Egyptian art; the one the outgrowth of man’s capa
city as a human being, and the other the result of agloomy, mighty hierarchy looking on man as created
for another world—neglecting houses, but construct
ing monumental temples in honour of the gods. In
every form Egyptian art reflects the stifling influ
ences of a hierarchy. But the East never succeeded,
whether in Asia or Africa, in freeing itself from the
influence of the marvellous. Now the marvellous
can only form a certain constituent part in man’s
artistic products; so far as it reflects the sublime
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
13
impressions of natural phenomena. These impres
sions, working through our senses on our intellect,
must come under the regulating and checking in
fluences of reason, engendering symmetry, eurythmy,
proportion, action, and expression. The Indians
tried to explain the phenomena of nature in an ab
stract sense, and to bring metaphysics into outward
shapes ; the Persians were bent on the glorification
of power, visible on earth in the person of the despot,
and their sculptures are but monotonous rows of
stiff attendants as far as the men are concerned.
The animals are treated with greater freedom, be
cause the artist was not tied down by court rules or
ceremonials, as in the treatment of the King and
his myrmidons. The Egyptians tried to copy the
material phenomena of nature, brought them into geo
metrical forms, and marked them with realistically
drawn symbols. When a deity as some force of nature
was invested with a form, the form being one with
some religious dogma or mystic emblem of the power
of the gods, such form could not be changed; for it
became in art what technical words are in science.
When once a form with its symbols and emblems
was settled, as that of Brahma, Vishnu, S’iva, Osiris,
or Isis, or the serpent fixed as the symbol of
eternity, the hawk as that of light, the inner spi
ritual life of the artist was tied down to outward
forms with special inward meanings, and the con
straining sway of misunderstood nature on one side,
and the stationary precepts of an omnipotent hier
archy on the other, entangled the artist’s imagina
tion and paralysed every effort of his individual
subjectivity. The different artistic forms of the
Eastern nations became by degrees petrified and
immutable national and religious incrustations.
Even when geometrical figures, flowers or leaves,
and animals were used, the combinations were
marred by a want of harmony between the dynamic
and static elements in their composition. There is
�14
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
always a “too much,” rarely a “too little.” The
East rent nature asunder, looked upon matter as
evil, and yet matter was to be used to bring the
eternal spirit into form. The element of S’iva,
Ahriman, or Typhon was to give expression to the
essence of Brahma, Ormuzd, or Osiris. What
wonder, then, that the artists succeeded so badly,
and that their gods looked in abstracto as. well as
in concreto so much like infernal monstrosities., So
long as the Greeks were in these Asiatic fetters
they produced similar forms, as also did Christian
art in its infancy, as may be seen in the South
Kensington Museum in the splendid cast of the
Buddhistic gate of the Sanchi Tope, which is close
to a cast by Veit Stoss, a Nuremberg sculptor of the
fifteenth century. But as soon as the self-conscious
spirit of youthful humanity was aroused in the
Greeks through their poets and philosophers, art
improved in the same ratio as the hierarchical
power and the superstitious belief in their gods
diminished. Feelings and emotions were as much
fostered with the Greeks as the consciousness of
these phenomena. Prometheus may be said to
have been the best and most intelligible emblem of
classic heathen humanity, as Faust may be con
sidered the representative of romantic Christian
humanity. Prometheus longed to bring matter
into form; Faust to know what kept matter and
spirit together, and what became of the spirit if
once freed from matter. Prometheus made man of
clay, stole fire from heaven, and vivified the image
with his stolen fire. Faust knew that the heavenly
fire was a force over which he had no control, and
he called upon a spirit of the lower burning regions
to teach him — “how all one whole harmonious
weaves, each in the other works and lives. The
formal outer-form is the longing of the Greek
Faust, and the spiritual inner-life the aspiration of
the Teuton Prometheus. Architecture and sculp-
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
I5
ture were the distinguishing characters of Greek
art; carving and painting were the elements of
Christian art, especially in its first slow develop
ment, struggling to free itself in architecture as
well as in sciences from the oppressive influences of
an Indo-Egyptian hierarchy. To the immortal
honoui- of that hierarchy it must be recorded that
they helped humanity in the development of art
with all their power. I will not enter into a pain
ful inquiry as to how far they endeavoured, like
the Egyptian priests or the Buddhistic Bonzes, to
divert mankind from thinking and reasoning through
the erection of mighty churches. These edifices
were constructed in the old Egyptian sense so far
as the subterranean vaults were concerned. The
superstructures were simply revivals of IndoBuddhistic rock-hewn temples, placed as detached,
free -standing monuments in the midst of crooked
small streets, with crooked little houses in which
very crooked-thinking beings must have lived, shut
ting out the glorious daylight by means of painted
glass or numberless leaden hexagons—probably so
many symbols of the fetters which humanity had
to shake off through a revival of Grseco-Romanism
in art and in our modes of thinking, building, and
painting. How intimately our intellectual and sci
entific progress is interwoven with our progress in
morals and political freedom may nowhere be
studied to greater advantage than in the artistic
life of the Greeks under Perikles, and the artistic
movement of Italy during the sixteenth century,
when the invention of the art of printing, the dis
covery of America, the study of the ancient classics
and the Reformation brought new life, new ideas
amongst the masses ; and we must all be convinced
that art requires a certain moral and intellectual
condition under which alone it will live. If the
intellectual or moral atmosphere be changed, the
artists either work in an Egyptian or Indo-Assyrian
�16
ETHICS AND ^ESTHETICS.
style. If a continual abhorrence of the body as theseat of thousands of devils be preached, we shall be
furnished by our artists with those emaciated, elon
gated, spider-armed and legged saints that adorned
the churches with their meagre half-starved frames
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. We
shall have pictures representing men and women
roasted, boiled, quartered, pinched with iron tongs,
or broken on the wheel, or starved in dungeons.
The influence of such an art must have been
terrible on the ethical or moral education of man
kind. For what pity could man have for his fel
low-creatures when his eyes rested on the frightful
scenes of the torments which St. Catherine under
went when broken on the wheel; St. Primatius,
who was burnt alive ; St. Peter, who was crucified
with his head downwards; or St. Lambert, who was
beaten with a club, and so on ? Could men be ex
pected to have treated their wretched fellow sinners
with great kindness, when they could point to a
crucified God, and to his best followers tormented to
death ? How much art was the mere reflection of
this diabolical spirit of the darkest ages, and how
much art again contributed to the demoralised hard
ening of the masses, it would be difficult to decide.
It is a further fact that, with the revival of classic
feelings in poetry and sciences, art turned with
horror from these ugly scenes, and painted the
Virgin with the child, bringing men through a more
humane representation of the divinity into nearer
relations with our higher aspirations. But if the
surroundings of the artists be changed again through
the superstitions of an ignorant mob, the despotic
organisation of a government, or the rule of a wild
and bigoted party, the artistic force will also change
or die out altogether. The artist acts only to a cer
tain extent on the public, whilst the public re-acts
with a combined and often entirely crushing “ vis
inertias ” on the artist. I have only here to mention
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
17
the evils which Puritanism, with its Hebrew hatred of
art and refinement, produced in this once“ merry Old
England.” Artists can often only reflect the intel
lectual atmosphere in which they live. How is a
man who sees nothing but emaciated, beggarly, or
sanctimonious faces, thin limbs, hungry looks, dwel
lings bare of all domestic comfort, decayed brick
houses and crumbling walls, to paint convivial
scenes of happiness and joy ? Or let me draw
another picture; how is a man to paint mighty
dramatic scenes on a canvas, when he has to live in
an atmosphere of so-called modern respectability,
seeing always the same bland smiles around him,
the same trimmed whiskers, the same stiff collars,
with the same faultless but not less stiff bows, hear
ing the same stereotyped insignificant phrases about
the weather, the funds, the high prices of coals or
butcher’s meat, receiving an order for a so-called
nice little picture, with plenty of sentiment in a
dead cock-robin, and the important question put
under it, “ Who killed cock-robin ?” in old Gothic
letters ; or another for a yawning Christ, who, tired
of his daily work, does not enjoy his god-head,
brightly looking towards the hour when he is with
his last breath on the Cross to redeem humanity.
Such a poetical conception, painted yawning, is
truly a sign of our times, but not one of the most
encouraging. We are just passing through a crisis.
We were too strongly Platonists in our notion of
art until recently. Plato used to place artists in
the same category with hair-dressers, cooks, and
eheats, who continually try to belie us. This is a
mean view for so divine a philosopher to take,
but nothing is too mean for a divine philoso
pher to assert when it suits his preconceived hypo
theses. Aristotle improved on Plato, and advocated
“ limitation,” “ order,” and “ symmetry.” Aristotle
already treats of “ reality” in art, which has to as
sume the concrete form of beauty, and wishes that
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
our “imitation. ” (jiipr)cris') of nature should be done
under the influence of purification (icaOapais), and he
admits the effect which art must have on the gene
ral improvement of morals as they work ethically,
pathetically, and practically. Plotinus, of the
Alexandrian school, is next to be studied. Self
motion is with him the essence of absolute beauty,
which self-motion is to be expressed in a work of art.
With him a beautiful work of art is not a mere re
production of reality, but he requires to see in it
the reflection of the “ moving (subjective) spirit” of
the artist j as soon as the moving idea is not to be
traced, he condemns the work as “ ugly.” Influ
enced by the spreading “ spiritualism ” of Christia
nity, he assumes “matter” as “evil,” as the nega
tive element of the “ ideal ” of “ good.” The vivi
fying and idealising element giving form to thoughts
is the essential element of beautv. He goes beyond
the principles of antiquity in sculpture and wishes
the art of painting to concentrate all its efforts on
the expression of an inner life through the eye. For
nearly 1500 years art is left without a theoretical
guide. After a life of beauty in the antique, we
have a revived second life. This resurrection took
place through the Renaissance, this true and mighty
offspring of the Reformation. “ Love,” in its most
sublime meaning, became the fundamental basis of
modern art. It was in this glorious island that
aesthetics received, like “ political economy,” a sys
tematic form for the first time. We have continued
to cultivate the study of political economy, with its
regulations of demand and supply; we have even
gone so far as richly to reward fat cocks and pigs,
cows and bulls, big-eared rabbits, goitered pigeons,
and have our horse, baby, and barmaid shows ; but
we have not continued the study of aesthetics, and
have shut out the very word from our modern phi
losophical writings. Hutcheson, however (16941747), revived the study of the beautiful, and Cousin
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
I9
is honest enough to accord to the Englishman the
priority in having placed sentiment above sensa
tion, and written on the laws of the beautiful.
Hutcheson distinguished the faculty which perceives
pure beauty from the two which were generally sup
posed to comprise the entire soul, namely, under
standing and physical sensibility. The idea that
art would decline when metaphysics, as some mate
rialists chose to call aesthetics, flourished, is not borne
out by facts in art-history ; neither is that perni
cious idea correct, “ that the arts of poetry, painting
and sculpture may exclusively flourish under a
despotic government.” Those who have studied art
history may point to the period of Perikles, under
whom art flourished, and attained the very highest
development in sculpture and architecture. Art
began to flourish during the Middle Ages in the freetowns of Germany and Italy, and not under the
despotic sway of the Imperial House of Hapsburg.
French art revived under the Republic and during
the Liberal Government of Louis Philippe; it flour
ished, and continues to flourish, under the sway of
the liberal-minded Hohenzollerns in Prussia; it was
neither under the despotic King John, nor under
Henry VIII., but under the great and immortal
Queen Elizabeth that Shakespeare wrote his master
works, his divine historical paintings in words.
Freedom of thought in poetry and art may exist
often under a despot, whilst even a Commonwealth,
if swayed by purely utilitarian ideas, will stifle and
kill art altogether. Quetelet is incorrect in saying
that “modern art has suffered from a too servile
imitation of the ancients.” Art has suffered
from a neglect of the study of the antique, and
from the false notion that a slavish imitation
of nature could be art. Whilst Germans and French
continued in the path which Hutcheson was the
first to point out, and introduced the study of
aesthetics into all their schools, whilst no great
�20
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
French or German philosopher could dare to separate
ethics and aesthetics, our great thinkers consider the
emotional beneath their dignity. They propound
that only what can be weighed, demonstrated, or
calculated deserves an earnest man’s attention. It
was that matter of fact, philosophical Bounderby,
Feed, who said that the “ Fine arts are nothing else
but the language of nature, which we brought into
the world with us, and have unlearned by disuse,
and so find the greatest difficulty in recovering it.
Abolish the use of articulate sounds and writing
among mankind for a century and every man would
be a painter, an actor, and an orator.” It is per
fectly astounding at times to see what some of our
authorities venture to put on paper. Is there a
single fact in the whole history of humanity to bear
out this bold paradoxical assertion of a not entirely
dementicated writer. But the mischief was done.
In vain did Sir Joshua Reynolds try through theory
and practice to raise art from the contempt into
which it had fallen with us; in vain did many
masters like Gainsborough paint; in vain did Flax
man with his chisel endeavour to revive classic
sculpture, in surpassing many antique products and
emulating the very best works of antiquity; in
vain did Haydon sigh for higher aims in art, for
historical paintings, and sacrifice himself at last,
seeking despairingly death rather than a life under
the baneful influence of indifference. Hogarth, this
immortal Walter Scott in colours, Shaftesbury,
Henry Home, and Edmund Burke also contributed
some extraordinary theories on the study of aesthetics.
It was the pride of Hogarth to have discovered the
t( serpent-line,” or rather the waving line, as the
line of beauty; so that a wriggling worm is the
eternal prototype of beauty. The French early
advocated a coarse realism, whilst the Germans are
often too metaphysical and, to the detriment of
technical execution, lay too much stress on the idea
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
21
which the artist intends to carry out. We have in
later years made gigantic strides towards a correct
study and appreciation of taste in general. We
have done much towards an improvement in art.
We possess more means for cultivating art than any
other nation. No second British Museum, no
second South Kensington Museum exists in the
world. We need only employ the same energy
with which we collect old, quaint-looking China,
always with a keen eye to business, to attain great
artistic results. We admire plates dressed as ladies
in brocade and silk with flounces and lace, and
ladies or mandarins walking about like tea-pots or
flower-vases. Our symmetrophobia, which makes
us hate every straight line, and our Chinamania
are excellent signs, not less than our Rinkomania.
and Cookomania. We have at last awakened to
the emotional, if not yet in the right, at least in a
better direction. It is no more the lisping spiritual
adviser that interests us at a game of croquet. We
prefer an old plate with bright flowers to him, and
paper our walls with cups and saucers instead of
whitewashing them; we do not discuss any longer
the last dull sermon ; we slide on little wheels on
asphalte-ice, and prove to the world that with horse
racing, rowing, and rinking we intend to be the
ancient Greeks in modern Ulster coats ! All these
freaks of a misdirected taste will die out; and now
that the emotional is aroused, it will, when directed
into a proper groove, produce marvels. We had
once a Michael Angelo in words, what hinders us
from having a Shakespeare in colours. Nothing
but the indifference and tastelessness of the public.
Let us only treat aesthetics at the central seats ot
our learning, in our colleges, but essentially in our
ladies’ schools, with the same fervour as ethics, and
cur symmetrophobia, Chinamania and Rinkomania
will soon become matters of the past. There ought
not to be a town with a mayor in this wealthy
�22
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
kingdom that has not its public library, its museum,
and, above all, its picture-gallery filled with the
products of our talented, striving, home artists.
Wedgwood made his fortune, and raised English
'china to works of art, through English artists;
Minton did the same; and the Doulton manufactory
of terra-cotta, &c. has recently sent for the Inter
national Exhibition at Philadelphia works of art,
exclusively the work of English artists, that will do
honour to our progress in this long neglected branch.
We must try to support talent wherever we find it,
and not only pay fabulous sums to those who
happen to be fashionable, but to all those who strive
to improve their artistic powers, and could do so
still more if they received half the support an old
China tea-pot or a Japanese monstrosity is capable
of commanding, or is afforded to the establishment
of rinks, which display angular gymnastics to the
detriment of our sound limbs. Courses on aesthetics
proving their identity with sound ethics, arousing
and satisfying our emotional nature in a higher
direction, would be of inestimable advantage to our
political economy, our taste, and our fame as an
artistic nation.
In conclusion, I may draw your attention to the
three different points from which we may study
aesthetics. We may do this from a realistic, an his
torical, or a philosophical point of view.
Realism and idealism may be traced in a con
tinual conflict in the domains of aesthetics as in
the domains of ethics. The realistic school of art
has in later years had an immense influence with
us. In the same ratio, I may say, as the realistic
school in science. But whilst the realistic school in
science continually tries to prove some general pro
position, which is to be converted from a mere
hypothesis into a systematically proven theory, art
critics have gone so far as to demand from artists
the very stratification of rocks, or of the different
�ETHICS AND .ESTHETICS.
23
kinds of soil, to such an extent that the farmer
should be able to recognise the ground in which tosow his oats or wheat. Pictures, according to these
gesthetical wiseacres, should be geological maps or
mineralogical surveys; as far as flowers are con
cerned they ought to be perfect specimens fit for a
herbarium ; and as to the human body they should
present correct diagrams of veins and sinews and
strongly-protruding muscles. When these critics
take up the archaeological branch of art they advo
cate with indomitable tenacity the old forms and
check the imagination wherever they can. Art is
only to be a reflex of old Greek or Gothic forms, of
Chinese or Indian curiosities, or a slavish reproduc
tion of the Renaissance. The self-creative origi
nality of the artist is neither guided nor even taken
into consideration by this school.
The art-historians proceed in the right direction.
They endeavour to bring before our eyes the past,
so as to enable us to understand the present and to
influence the future of our art. But the historians
have driven us into two divergent backward direc
tions. They either advocate the antique, or they
are consistent Goths—sham Goths generally; the
one holding that everything beautiful must be a
fret, a meander, or a Korinthian pattern, or they
delight in symbolic trefoils, finials, pinnacles, but
tresses, thin and lofty spires, pointed arches, and
darkish-painted windows; neither seeing what an
anachronism is advocated. The philosophical school
at last often indulges in tall phrases—the more un
intelligible the better. We hear of the depth and
breadth of the picture, of deep sentiment and nice
feeling, of perspective in the clouds, &c. We are
startled with hypothetical paradoxes, with specu
lations of the wildest sort on grouping, expression,
and the flowing lines of the composition. As on
theological and medical matters, everyone thinks
himself justified to have an opinion of his or her
�■24
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
own on art matters ; as though ethics and aesthetics,
like medicine, were not the results of thousands of
years—now progressive, then again retrograde, but
always onward striving movements of humanity.
Music, poetry, and art have, as well as our morals,
laws which must be known and studied. Music
speaks in sounds, poetry in words, art in forms,
morals in actions. But without harmony, music
would became dissonance; without rhythm, poetry
■would be but an inflated prose ; art without aesthe
tics, a vulgar and objectionable caricature ; and our
morals without ethics, an arbitrary confusion of
whimsical actions. Ethics and aesthetics will fur
nish us with that bright and real worship of God
and his nature, reflected in our creative powers,
for which so many of us yearn with eager hearts;
they will bring to us that bright future in which
men, freed from all fetters of prejudice and super
stition, will unite reason, as the father of science,
with emotion, as the mother of art.
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement
and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May).
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture.
For tickets and the published lectures apply (by letter, enclos
ing postage-stamps, order, or cheque), to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm.
Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
PRINTED BY c. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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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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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Ethics and aesthetics; or, Art and its influence on our social progress. A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 5th March, 1876
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Presented in Memory of Dr. Moncure D. Conway by his children, July Nineteen hundred & eight.
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1876
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Ethics
Aesthetics
Philosophy
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Aesthetics
Art
Conway Tracts
Ethics
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CHRISTIANITY.
I.
THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY FROM A STRICTLY
H HISTORICAL POINT OF VIEW, •
BEING
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ON
SUNDAY, 21st NOVEMBER, 1880,
BY
Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R.Hist.S.
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�How to obtain a clear and intelligible notion of the Origin of
Christianity.
The component elements of Christianity.
Some questions to be answered by Historians of other creeds.
Universalism pervading Christianity
The Finite and the Infinite in the East and West.
The Jews and their Sects. The Pharisees, Zaducees, Essenes,
Ebionites, Therapeutics and Samaritans, Hebraism and Hel
lenism.
Description of the Social Condition of Humanity at the birth
of Jesus of Nazareth.
Universal Love the Essence of Christianity. An Arab Legend.
Christ’s conception of the Deity.
Reason, Science, and Truth.
The Historical Causes of the Spread of Christianity.
Buddha and Christ.
Difference between Christianity and Buddhism.
Early Christian Sects.—Dogmatists, Sophists, Talmudists,
Apologists, Fathers, Scholastics, Theologians. General History.
Justin Martyr.
Conclusion. The Second Lecture to treat of the Fathers
“ majorum gentium” and “minorum gentium.”
�CHRISTIANITY,
•------------- <-----------------------
I.
The Origin of Christianity from a strictly Historical Point
of View.
ISTORIANS may be divided into three distinct
classes—
(1.) The Obstructives,
(2.) The Destructives, and
(3.) The Constructives.
Until recently almost all theological historians were,
by their very nature, Obstructives—that is, they were
compelled to abide by facts as transmitted to them by
tradition, or in sacred records, and were therefore neces
sarily stationary. To inquire was in itself a dangerous
action—undermining the very foundations of faith. To
this class of historians belong the Brahmans, Bonzes,
Rabbis, Priests of the Romish Church, Ulemas, Clergy
men of the Anglican Church, or other Protestant sects,
and their disciples, educated in the same stationary way,
forced to regard certain assertions concerning events, or
certain calculations concerning the time in which these
events happened as facts—though they may have been
anything but facts. We may best classify these writers
as Orientalists. The past, in the received form of some
Sacred Book, was everything with them. The very word
History signified to them a sacrilegious attempt to un
settle the assumed truth of their particular facts,—which
alone could be true ; whilst they asserted with admirable
self-reliance and conceit that the records of all other
nations were nothing but falsehoods.
Next we have the Destructives, in whom doubt and
scepticism work supreme; who do not see how one and
the same fact could have happened in two different ways;
why one witness should be credited more than another;
or how two witnesses could have seen one and the same
fact happening in different places, under entirely different
circumstances, and with altogether different results.
H
�4
Christianity.
The Destructives began timidly to pull down, they shook
the foundation of credulity, they suddenly saw the whole
past tumble into ruins. Horrified at the havoc which
they had brought about, they stopped half-way, and the
past became nothing but a heap of dust, lumber, and
fact-rubbish. We may best classify these people as
Galileans. They are a necessary element in the progres
sive development of Humanity, for unless the old tottering
building of assumed facts, cemented together with dog
matic lime and sand were first destroyed, no new building
could be erected.
And last we have the Constructives—those who re-arrange
facts on the principles of probability and possibility; who
consult the ancient documents of different nations, not
with a mind filled with hatred and contempt for everything
not contained in their own sacred records, which they
were made to choose by mere chance of birth, education,
and established custom, but with an equal veneration for
those periods in which each tribe, race, and nation, had
their own sacred book—sacred because transmitted to them
from father to son ; and -what is more sacred to a son
than that which a kind and loving father has left him ?
That the ancient nations throughout the world, in the
fulness of their grateful hearts, should have assumed that
the first father who spoke to them was Gfod Himself,
proves only the Sameness and Oneness of Humanity, arti
ficially divided into innumerable quarrelling sects, tribes,
and peoples. The Constructives, therefore, compare,
draw analogies, separate the separables, dissect myths,
explain symbols, connect equals, inquire, sift, and finally
build up their historical edifice on the firm basis of cau
sation with facts that are facts, and cement them with
common sense—discarding all arbitrariness, all exceptional
providential interference in favour of Brahmans, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, Bomans,
Scotch or Irish—anxious to discover what we have in
common as human beings—never fostering dissent, ani
mosity, contempt or hatred, but sympathy, forbearance,
kindness, and love. We may best-elassify the Construc
tive Historians as the Hellenic-Teuton element in Hu
manity.
The spirit of these three groups of historians may be
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5
studied in three works recently published on the “ Life
of Jesus,” by an anonymous English Professor of one of
our Universities, by Renan, the Frenchman, and by Dr.
Strauss, the German.
The Englishman is obstructive, the Frenchman destruc
tive, and the German constructive.
Dr. Strauss is learned, conscientious, and systematic.
He is full of veneration, and yet unflinchingly truthful
without predilection, bias, or prejudice, and gives us the
true history of the foundation of Christianity. His
great merit lies in his having drawn a distinction between
the historical and mythical Jesus of Nazareth. Histori
cally he describes the birth of Jesus, His relation to John
the Baptist, the laws of Moses, the Gentiles, and the
belief in His being the expected Messiah. The mythical
account is divided into three chapters and twelve sub
divisions concerning the pre-historic myths of Jesus, the
mythical account of the life of Jesus, and the mythical
record of His suffering, death, and resurrection. Dr.
Strauss wrote his work with the view of furthering
Protestantism on the firm basis of historical continuity,
and eliminating from the glorious teachings of Jesus of
Nazareth whatever was merely accidental, secondary,
symbolic, and allegorical, borrowed from more ancient
creeds, which at the time of Christ were in a state of
spontaneous and natural dissolution. For whoever
wishes to have a clear and unbiassed notion of the his
torical Christ, must free Him and His doctrine from the
obscuring veil of dogmatism.
The Frenchman, Renan, is learned, but his learning- is
too much tainted with emotional outbursts of refined
phrases; his imagination outruns his criticism, and his
criticism loses itself in romantic dreams and visions. He
is far more bent on destroying an idol of the Romish
Church, than on discovering to what extent it had become
in time an entity, to dissolve which will need more than
the superficial pen-strokes of a witty Frenchman.
The English professor is grave—very grave. He pub
lished his work under the title of “ Ecce Homo,” but he
has neither the learning nor the courage of Dr. Strauss,
nor the sprightliness and imagination of Renan. He has,
however, his inherited predilections, which are apparently
�6
Christianity.
shaken by his studies and the intellectual atmosphere of
the nineteenth century. He has heard of Strauss with
conventional horror; he has heard of Renan with in
herited contempt, and he wishes to free his soul from all
doubts by arguing himself out of doubt; and yet, of the
three books, this one, written with apparent obstructive
faith, is the most destructive. It must necessarily lead to
a despairing scepticism, because the positive assertions are
made so timidly, that one sees the trembling writer afraid
to touch his subject, lest his dogmatic Christ might crumble
into dust under his own hands, and turn into a true
“ Bcce Homo,”—“ Behold a Man I ”
To be able to give a clear and intelligible picture of the
origin and spread of Christianity from a strictly historical
point of view, we must make ourselves acquainted with
the moral, political, religious, and intellectual elements
that pervaded Humanity at the advent of Christ. To
detach Christianity from the influences of the different
creeds that preceded its foundation, is to know nothing of
Christianity. The essence of the teachings of all law
givers and founders of religious systems was the redemp
tion of man from the bondage of his animal nature, and
the development and culture of his higher intellectual and
spiritual nature. To separate Christianity from the
causes of which its origin and working were a necessary
effect or sequence, is to transport it into the realm of
miracles. But in assuming Christianity to have been a
miracle, we raise terrible phantoms of doubt, or rather
of piety and veneration for the Diety, in the shape of
grave questions which necessarily present themselves to
the thinking mind:
Why was the advent of this miracle so long delayed ?
Why were millions and millions of creatures left with
out salvation, and, as some pious divines will have it,
predestined to eternal damnation ?
Why should the sanguinary miracle of a self-sacrificing
God have had so partial and sloiv an effect 1
Why was the miracle not made universally known ?
Why had Christianity to be established in torrents
of blood, amidst the horrible shrieks of tortured and
martyred human sacrifices ?
Why was the efficacy of the miracle quite imperceptible,
�Christianity.
7
save in such progress as was natural to any creed, sup
ported by fire and sword, by money, and state authority ?
Why should the early Christian authorities have deli
berately destroyed all writings bearing on the origin,
growth, and development of Christianity, if it was a
miracle ordained by God ?
Why should the Emperor Theodosius have felt him
self compelled to issue the following proclamation?:—
“We decree, therefore, that all writings whatever
which Porphyry, or any one else, has written against the
Christian religion, in the possession of whomsoever they
shall be found, should be committed to the fire; for we
would not suffer any of these things so much as to come
to men’s ears, which tend to provoke God and so offend
the minds of the pious.”
In a spirit of true tolerance, the same Emperor ordered,
“ that all those who should object to the dogma of the
Trinity, besides the condemnation of Divine justice,
would have to expect to suffer the severe penalties which
our authority, guided by heavenly wisdom, may think
proper to inflict upon them.”
Why should it have been an axiom of the Church
“ that it was an act of virtue to deceive and to lie, when by
that means the interest of the Church might be promoted?”
Why all these threatening laws, these anxious jealousies,
the falsifications of documents, the oppression of learning,
the abhorrence of our reasoning power, if this was a
miraculously ordained divine act, performed for the sal
vation of Humanity ?
In historically analysing the elements which compose
Christianity, we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that it
has become the universal storehouse of all the different
creeds that have swayed the human mind from the first
dawn of its arising consciousness. We find in Christianity
the strictest Monotheism mixed with the Trinitarian mys
teries of the Brahmans, Buddhists, and Egyptians; the
Incarnation and Atonement theories of the Indians and
Egyptians; the dualistic principle of the Avesta; the
Jewish and Persian assumptions of angels and devils; the
lofty moral enactments of Confucius and Sokrates; the
dreamy idealism of Plato, and the more practical realism
of Aristotle.
�8
Christianity.
Mystics and Rationalists, Believers and Free-thinkers,
Fanatics and Latitudinarians, Spirit-rappers and Philo
sophers, rich and poor, mighty and weak, learned and
ignorant, may find in the tenets of Christianity some
congenial and sympathetic, some suggestive and comfort
ing elements.
The most important fact with regard to the “ new
faith ” was that Christianity became but another name for
those universal principles and eternal laws which, if
recognised, and put in motion, stimulate the innate dor
mant moral and intellectual forces of our human nature
into activity. This fact must explain the superior vitality
of Christianity, which has led Humanity in the West and
North-West of the world slowly, gradually, yet unin
terruptedly on the path of progress in arts, discoveries,
inventions, and sciences to the very highest achievements.
The followers of any other creed must endeavour to
answer the following questions in their turn: Why did
empires and communities professing other beliefs remain
stationary in their development, in spite of their undoubted
priority in many useful arts and inventions ? and why
should the Christians have succeeded, by degrees, in
working out wise and beneficial laws, in producing poetical
works of unsurpassed excellence, and in raising sciences
to a climax never attained before ? Suns and planets are
measured by Christians ; the rays of light analysed; the
gradual formation of the earth’s crust is recognised; the
different chemical elements, in apparently indivisible
atoms, are traced; Christians speak by means of electri
city at distances of thousands of miles, reducing space in
its dimensions; and travel by means of fire and water
at an unheard-of speed, reducing time in its duration.
The Universalism pervading true Christianity alone
can serve as an explanation of this phenomenon. As we
may trace in nature positive and negative electricity, so we
can see the working of positive and negative intellectual
currents in humanity.
The currents in the East were generally negative. To
look backwards, to hope, as it were, everything from the
past, was the characteristic of Oriental nations. The
intellectual currents in the West were positive ; to look to
and to trust in the future, whether worldly or spiritual,
�Christianity.
9
was and is the distinguishing feature of the Western
World. Man in the East shuns new spheres of thought,
and is content to move round and round in the ever
unchangeable circle of fixed notions, ceremonies, and
customs. Man in the West strives for freedom and an
eternal activity; he must have some goal to long for,
which presents itself in the form of religious enthusiasm,
chivalrous daring, a thirst for inquiry and learning, a
contempt for all danger, and a struggle with real or
imaginary monsters.
The finite submitted in humble acquiescence to the
infinite in the East. In the West the finite strove to
grasp the infinite, and to bring harmony into the dis
cordant elements of good and evil, light and darkness,
mind and matter, God and nature. These contradictory
phenomena led the East very early to endeavour to cast
a light upon the mysterious nature of self-conscious man,
the mystic phenomena of nature, and to attempt the
solution of the riddle of life by means of allegories, sym
bols, wild fictions, incredible fables, and inspired guesses.
The nation that felt the double nature of humanity
most keenly, and first proclaimed a more spiritual concep
tion of a God, was the Jewish. In the mystic schools of
the priests of Egypt, their leaders were made acquainted
with the universal “ Monotheos,” but the Jews deprived
Him of his universality, and transformed Him into a
national Deity, who was only a merciful God to His
chosen people, under certain outward ceremonial con
ditions, and a God of wrath and merciless persecution to
all those who had not the good fortune to belong by
mere chance of birth to that chosen people. The Chinese
taught Humanity filial love, and social order; the Indians
unravelled the beauties of the universe in the eternal
Trinitarian process of Creation, Preservation, and Trans
formation ; the Egyptians established the “ I am I” mys
tery; the Persians endeavoured to practice purity in
thoughts, purity in words, and purity in deeds; the
Greeks fostered taste and refinement in arts, exalted
humane feelings in their poetry, and manifested a deep
critical discernment in philosophy; the Romans organised,
regulated, conquered, and developed an unsurpassed
patriotism ; and the Jews ?—they taught humanity reli
�10
Christianity.
gious exclusiveness, proud and fanatical intolerance, and
have had themselves to suffer under these curses for more
than 2,900 years.
Even at this very moment we see them harassed and
persecuted in Germany, a country which boasts of the
highest civilization, a country which produced a Lessing,
the Apostle of true Christian Tolerance, and a Herder,
the founder of “Humanism.” To the honour of that
country, it may be said that every distinguished German,
every learned Historian, and every true Christian abhors
the anachronistic movement of the Ultramontanes, which
is worthy of the dark middle ages of superstition and
gross ignorance. The Jews, as ever in the past, are
still at war with the Grentiles all over the world; they
use up the Gentiles for their special purposes, but never
look upon them as their equals. The Jews hoping
against hope, sublimely singing and prophesying in their
despair, loudly proclaiming their thirst after God, their
fervid longing for righteousness and holiness, formed
with their theological sentiments a terrible sanguinary
leaven of a new faith, which was a possibility only after
Persian ethics, Brahmanic tenets, Egyptian mysteries
and rituals, Buddhistic miracles and dogmas, Jewish
prophesies, Greek philosophical researches, and Boman
disciplinary organisations, had been pounded together by
the pestle of time in the mortar of History.
The Jews became the most important element in the
historical development of Humanity. They inherited the
dualistic theory of God and Devil from the Egyptians
and Persians, and worked it out theologically through
their deeply-learned prophets, who saw the terrible con
flict manifested in virtue and sin, of which they became
conscious at an earlier period and in a higher sense. By
means of this consciousness they approached a state of
reconciliation ; for self-conscious virtue must be based on
a self-conscious knowledge of evil, bringing harmony into
man’s animal and spiritual nature, developing to the
utmost his moral and intellectual faculties. In spite of
this higher moral state, they found themselves cruelly
oppressed. They prayed, sighed, and mourned at Babylon,
and mingled their scalding tears with the waves of the
Euphrates; they were driven from state to state; they
�Christianity.
11
waited and watched; they fought like despairing lions;
they clung to their God, who had so few blessings, and so
many sufferings for them on earth. They were still con
vinced “that the sceptre should not depart from Judah;
and unto him should the gathering of the people beand
yet they were trampled under foot by Boman Tetrarchs
and Praetors, had no political or social freedom, and were
themselves divided by religious sects and factions.
Amongst these were the Phabisees, who clung to the
dead letter of the law.
The Gaulonites or Galileans, a still more fanatical
branch of the Pharisees, who professed “that no one
must obey any mortal in authority, for God alone is our
Lord.” (This sentence enables us to understand those
Pharisaical survivals who, under the pretence of obeying
the self-constituted authority of their God, defy the law
of the land, and turn true religion into mockery.) These
fanatics hoped everything from the internal dissolution of
the Boman Empire. The Pharisees brought into religion
the most contemptible spirit of trading; they always
tried to make a profitable bargain with their God.
Plenty on earth was the reward of godliness. Their
piety had to manifest itself in eating and drinking. “ At
even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be
filled with bread, and ye shall know that I am the Lord
your God,” was the foundation of the egotistical creed of
the Pharisees. To eat and drink was, with the Jews, the
most solemn initiation and termination of all their reli
gious ceremonies. The Greeks cultivated man’s higher
artistic and philosophical aspirations ; the Persians ruled,
the Bomans legislated; the Egyptians built imperishable
monuments; the Indians worked out mystic problems—
the Jews did eat and drink. When the seventy (properly
seventy-two) elders accompanied Moses on Mount Sinai
and saw the God of Israel, they did eat and drink. If
we do not correctly study the principles of the different
Jewish sects of this period, we can never properly under
stand the peculiar fanatics, intolerant bigots, eating and
drinking pious hypocrites, who still grace our own social
organisation, as so many survivals in the flesh of a preChristian world.
The Sadducees (the just) were next in importance
�12
Christianity.
to the Pharisees; they were the broad-minded followers of
Zadak. They rejected all artificial explanations of the
Scriptures, and studied the prophets most diligently; they
had a supreme contempt for all those who continually
occupied their minds with mysterious benedictions, sancti
fications, days of atonement, fasting and feasting, leavened
or unleavened bread, palm branches, trumpets, sacred
vessels, offerings, defiled or undefiled gifts, trespasses, red
cows, the blood of calves and goats, scarlet wool, hyssop,
and dead bodies; and despised all those who neglected
doing good to their fellow creatures. The Sadducees
believed neither in the immortality of the soul, nor in
punishment or reward after death. They denied the
existence of angels and devils—although they thoroughly
believed in the Scriptures. They were notorious for their
virtue, honesty, tolerance, learning, and, above all, for
their justice and humanity.
The Essenes, so called from the Hebrew “ asa ” or the
Chaldaean “ asaya,” meaning “to heal”—or according to
others “ the retired ”—were still more important. They
lived a solitary life ; they devoted themselves to the study
of medicine, to the art of working miracles, and to pre
dicting the future. They practised baptism. In con
formity with the ancient Indians and Egyptians, water
was with them the mysterious life-giving element.
Water had been the essence of life when the earth was
still barren and uninhabited. They considered water to
be the fountain of regeneration, the symbol of life ; man
to be good and free from sin was to be born anew of
water. Water mystically washed away the sins of the
world. Water made the Essenes, like the Indians, twice
horn. John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth were both
Essenes, and were both baptized. The opinions advanced
by Matthew Tyndal in a work, published 150 years ago,
entitled “ Christianity as old as the Creation,” are borne
out by Eusebius, who has a whole chapter under the title,
“The Religion published by Jesus Christ is neither new
nor strange; ” and this author also states, in the most
unqualified manner, in the 17th Chapter of his 2nd Book
that the ancient Therapeutics were Christians, and that
their ancient writings were our Gospels and Epistles.
The Therapeutics, Ebionites or Essenes were “ Chres-
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13
tianse,” from “ Chrestos,” good. They were Eclectics;
they held Plato in. the highest esteem, though they
scrupled not to add to his doctrines whatever they
thought conformable to reason in the tenets and opinions
of other philosophers. According to Thomas Burnet,
the Essenes were offshoots of the Brahmans and Bud
dhists, devoting themselves to the contemplation of the
transitoriness of human life.
At last we must mention the Samakttans, who were
the independent among the Jews. They considered Jews
and Heathens equal, if good and kind, and because of
this very cosmopolitan sentiment were held in abomina
tion by all the other Jewish sects, who most furiously
quarrelled both with the outer world and amongst them
selves.—-When the Jewish Scriptures became more gene
rally known through the Greek translation, the “ Septuagint ” there suddenly sprang into unparalleled activity—
Hebraism as the static, ’and Hellenism as the dynamic
force, working in Humanity, in History, and Religion.
Dogmatism and morals were so closely interwoven in
these Scriptures that the study of history became a
religious duty. The past was to be taken on faith ; the
assertions of the Hebrew writers were not to be doubted ;
everything was to be declared credible or incredible by
reference to some scriptural passage and inquiry, and
Scepticism was to be banished from the world. This
banishment aroused a mighty spirit of controversy; the
classic writers were looked upon as perverse liars, desti
tute of light, since they had not known the True God
who had revealed Himself exclusively to the Jews. An
infinite number of lying spirits were assumed to have
deluded Humanity. The glorious works of art, sculp
ture, architecture, poetry and philosophy of the numerous
nations of the Earth were suddenly decried as the out
growths of sin, inherited from Adam. The Greeks had
been taught by Satan; the Persians, Assyrians, and
Babylonians had been annihilated by the God of Israel
for their idolatry; the Indians were children of Beelzebub;
the Buddhists horrible Atheists. All the monuments
of antiquity became objectionable works, conceived in
pride by the fallen angels ; all the historical writings and
records of all nations were considered false and untrue,
�14
Christianity.
and the Jewish records placed above them as the only
true revealed Word of God who had forsaken and
abandoned all His other creatures, and held communica
tion exclusively with the Jews.
From that moment up to our own times, there has been
something wonderfully majestic in this terrible conflict
between Hebraism and Hellenism, keeping humanity in a
continuous exertion of its moral and intellectual forces ;
now devoting every thought to theology, then again pro
moting the loftiest inquiries of science, leading us to a
state in which morals and knowledge will no more be
considered as antagonistic, but completing elements of
man’s progressive development.
We have to deal with the beginning of the new historical phase of a spiritual life that took its origin in
the Eastern provinces of the Boman Empire.
False prophets and philosophical teachers abounded
everywhere. Greek mock philosophers discussed the most
abstruse spiritual problems in the market-places. Egyptian
priests of Osiris, Isis and Horus, divulged the unintel
ligible symbolisms of their ancient creed; and the Persian
worship of Mithras (meaning the Bedeemer or Inter
mediator) was revived with all its deep mysticism.
Numbers of Boman legal casuists engaged in searching
for lawsuits, discussed everything, whilst knowing very
little of anything. The Jewish sects, in spite of their
dissensions and mutual hatred, were all equally oppressed
and plundered by Herod the Great; superstition, ignor
ance, despair and credulity were the distinguishing fea
tures of the Boman world.
The East was crowded with dreamers, visionaries,
traders in charms, augurs, horoscopists, miracle-workers
(Thaumaturgi), soothsayers, cabalists and priests of an
infinite variety of gods and goddesses. All was spiritual
chaos, like that at the dawn of the Creation of the
material world, when Jesus oe Nazareth was Born.
We have very little reliable historical information con
cerning the life of “ Christ,” meaning the Anointed. So
much we do know, that we may make of Christ what we
please; we may comment upon His recorded teachings
exegetically or in any other form. We may altogether
deny the whole later Ecclesiastical structure, built upon
�Christianity.
15
His utterances. We may demonstrate that all that was
asserted of Him, was also believed of Melchisedech,
Krishna, Osiris, Buddha, Apollo or Mithras. We may
trace in Him and to Him all the legends of divine incar
nations through which man, having become conscious,
wished to find an explanation of his own low animal
desires, and the lofty intellectual longings of his mind,
thus working out divine models of human beings, or gods
in human form.
We may study the Gospels and their contradictory
views, and critically wade through the still more contra
dictory writings of the Bathers. We may show how
dogma after dogma was attributed to Christ, which He
neither enunciated nor ever could have thought of,
because, whatever contradictions may be recorded of Him,
there was no contradiction between His teachings, and
His own self-sacrificing life. We may prove how the
Councils of the Church changed the true doctrine of
Christ, misunderstanding it altogether; we may reject
the dictates of certain synods and accept others. We
may be Papists, Episcopalians or Methodists, Presby
terians or Ritualists, Lutherans or Quakers, Dissenters
or Shakers, Idealists or Realists, Believers or Free
thinkers ; we may quarrel and hate one another with the
same fervour as did the Jewish sects, and curse every one
who does not hold our own opinions as to the sensations
of the beatitude, the length of the wings of the angels
in heaven, or the horns of the devils in hell.
We may laugh at our petty controversialists who talk
of vestments and postures, candlesticks, crosses, rubrics,
grace, conscience, transubstantiation, real and unreal
presence, and the thousand and one unintelligible, anagogical, parabolical, allegorical and symbolic niceties and
difficulties, which may all be easily settled, if no one asks
questions, and if all men have faith, and do not use their
thinking and reasoning faculty, the brightest gift of the
Creator, under whatever name He be worshipped.
But we cannot deny the immense influence which
Christ’s teachings have exercised on the Western miud.
Let all the circumstances and details have been what they
may, historians must deal with Christ’s Spirit, as it pre
sents itself, as one of the greatest of historical phenomena.
�16
Christianity.
For though we may divest Christ of all the miracles,
rightly or falsely attributed to Him, we cannot divest
Him of one grand immortal fact, “ That he died for Love,
murdered by those whom He taught with a heart full of
universal love—that the whole of humanity was one great
brotherhood ; that every human being was to love his
neighbour as himself; that every human being was the
cherished child of one Father, who loved all His children
equally, and who was in heaven ! ” Had but this simple
doctrine of mutual and universal love been taught for the
last 1880 years with the same fervour as the mystiff
dogmas with which Christ’s teachings were perverted,
and which were each and all borrowed from Egyptian,
Assyrian, Persian, Indian and Homan religious systems,
the world would undoubtedly be more Christian, and
humanity would have saved millions of precious lives
which have been wasted on the propagation, not of
Christianity, but “ of prejudiced credulity, and priestly
tyranny.” We have, unfortunately, failed to learn to look
upon Christ as He is characterised in the following ancient
Arab legend:—“ A dog had stolen some meat from a Jewish
butcher’s shop; the dog was stoned, then hanged, then
thrown into the street, and the angry Jews formed a circle
round the dog, spat on him and cursed him; all at once a
mild and gentle voice was heard asking the enraged crowd,
whether they could find nothing worthy of admiration in
the poor dead animal; there was suddenly a deep silence,
and the speaker pointed to the beautiful pearly-white
teeth of the dog. The people grumbled, and it was
whispered among them that the speaker must be Jesus of
Nazareth, for He alone was capable of finding something
good even in a dead dog! ”
This is Chbistiajstity.
The Deity of the Jews was a stem, and revengeful
Despot; Christ’s Gfod was a loving Father. The beginning
of wisdom with the Jews was fear; with Christ, the
beginning of wisdom was love. With the Jews, God was
a God of wrath, persecution and slaughter ; with Christ,
a God of mercy, forgiveness, and boundless love.
The God of the Jews, who, like the inexorable Fate of
the Greeks, or the sanguinary monsters enthroned in the
Imperial purple of Home, punished the sins of the
�Christianity.
17
fathers unto the third and fourth generation, and de
manded holocausts of murdered sacrifices, was changed by
Christ into a God of infinite kindness, rejoicing over
one repentant sinner more than over ninety and nine
just persons. Christ’s doctrine in its primitive purity
was the ever true Law of Peace, Love and Tolerance,
satisfying Season, leading to Science, and to the Search
for Truth. These are the fundamental elements of Chris
tianity, towards which, freed of all dogmatic unintelligi
bilities, humanity is striving consciously or unconsciously,
in spite of the thousands of sects, and the numberless
commentators who have done their uttermost to destroy
the simplicity and universality of Christ’s teachings. But
Beason cannot be stifled by persecution ; Science cannot
be annihilated by superstition; and Truth cannot be
silenced by blind fanaticism. Christianity checked He
braism, fostered Hellenism, brought life into the Ancient
World, and established Humanism, the last possible phase
in the development of Humanity.
If we look for the principal historical causes of the
sudden spread of Christianity, we have :
1st. The extent of the Boman Empire, with two prin
cipal languages—Greek and Latin.
2nd. The scattering ofthe Jews and the Jewish Christians.
3rd. The general tendency to mysticism, fanaticism,
and symbolism, and the total absence of a correct know
ledge of the Laws of Nature.
4th. The immense number of freed men, slaves, and
beggars. To such people equality was preached; equality
before a God in whose eyes the living visible God on
earth—the Emperor was no more than the lowest beggar.
The poor grew proud, and condescended to admit the
rich into their now blessed community; and the rich,
terrified by the hungry and haggard looks of the people,
enervated by profligacy and licentiousness, were glad to
be made partakers of a future kingdom of bliss, since
they did not feel very safe on earth, and trembled equally
before the covetousness of the tyrants in power, and the
daily increasing number of homeless slaves.
5th. The decline of faith in the old gods of the
classical world, who were now proved to have been
mere idols of stone, or brass, as otherwise they could
�18
Christianity.
not have permitted humanity to sink to such a depth of
immorality as was reached under the Emperors, for men’s
lives had no value, justice was nowhere to be found.
6th. The sanguinary political and religious persecution
which the Emperors repeatedly ordered against the everincreasing Christians.
The Greeks and Romans were in general extremely
tolerant in religious matters. They had either a personal or
a political interest in persecuting some single individual,
and used the religious fanaticism of the mob as the means to
attain their special political or worldly object. They
never had priests in our sense of the word. The early
Christians began slowly to find favour at Court in conse
quence of their universalism. They proved that they did
not hold all the exclusive, national opinions of the Jews,
who would not recognise any other authority but that of
Javeh—they honestly referred to Christ’s command :
“ Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are
Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s ”—
and the new Religion was at last introduced at Court
under the Emperor Alexander Severus, whose mother,
Mammsea, was said to have been a true Christian. Decius
tried in vain to stamp out the Christians. Under
Gallienus they enjoyed peace ; and the last vain attempts
to abolish Christianity by means of sanguinary persecu
tions were made under the Emperor Diocletian. As is
invariably the case, cruelty only served the more to
develop the whole vitality of Christianity. At this
period certain causes were at work, which altogether
changed, if not the essence, at least the form of Chris
tianity. Some sudden disturbances occurred in the
provinces, situated between China aud the Caspian Sea,
which had been conquered about the first Century of
the Christian Era. “ It appears that, in consequence
of these convulsions, the Samanseans, disciples of Buddha,
(who probably lived about the time of the Israelitish
Kingdom of the Ten Tribes,) departed from their former
seat, the ancient Aria, and took refuge in the mountains
of Cashmere and Thibet.” Some of these disciples must
have also settled in the more western parts of Asia, and
must have come into contact with the then more and
more spreading Christians, who endeavoured with all the
�Christianity.
19
activity of their intellectual power to bring Christianity
into a system—a dogmatic system. In many of their
details, the tenets of Buddha bear the greatest resem
blance to certain superadded Christian dogmas; “Bor
the chief doctrine of the Sainansean Bonzes was, that
Buddha was of Royal descent, born of the Virgin Maja,
worthy of adoration as next in dignity to God whose
ninth incarnation he was, and that he would assume
at the end of all earthly things his tenth incarnation
as Kali, and appear on a white horse to judge the quick
and the dead.” The Samansean priesthood taught men
to prepare for this event, to lead a retired contemplative
life, to suffer persecution but never to persecute, humbly
to submit to any lay power, since this world was a mere
fleeting, transitory abode of misery and decay, prepara
tory to a higher spiritual life to be enjoyed in Eternity in
Nirvana, the unceasing contemplation of the Deity in
His eternal peace and glory. Christianity absorbed ail
these elements, but with the Christians, the endeavour to
spread this belief in the bliss of redemption became a
sacred duty, which they thought themselves justified in
performing by means of violence, inexorable cruelty, cruci
fixions, boilings and burnings, by fire and sword “Ad
majorem Dei gloriam.”
Here the striking difference between Buddhism and
Christianity becomes apparent. Buddhism is passive
contemplation ; Christianity is positive activity. The
one remained stationary, the other progressively developed
and is still developing. The one acquiesced in any form
so long as the worship of Buddha was the aim ; the other
devoted itself to an unparalleled spiritual activity, en
dowing Christianity with mystic meanings, allegorical
beauties, dressed in the. shreds of myths and fables, col
lected from all the religious systems of the ancient
world, adorned with Platonic dreams and visions, and
Aristotelian sophistries and dialectics. Intolerance and
fanaticism spread more and more; and delusion and
ignorance served to build up that glorious spiritual
Revolution which brought new life into the world.
Scarcely had Christ expired on the Cross when a host
of pious preachers and teachers inundated the world with
descriptions of the details of His private and public life.
�20
Christianity.
St. Luke informs us “ that many have taken in hand
to set forth those things which are most surely believed
among us.” There were about 146 independent sacred
writings, among which were 34 Gospels, 20 Epistles,
22 Acts, 5 Revelations, and 22 miscellaneous works ;
several books published under the name of James, and
books under the name of Peter. That these works existed,
is undeniable, for the various diverging and quarrellinosects of early Christianity were founded on the very
possession of these different sacred books. Letters were
forged, interpolations fabricated, omissions resorted to,
fictions invented, exaggerations propounded, miracles pro
claimed, and interpretations given, so that it is exceed
ingly difficult to gather any reliable facts. To prove how
far such deceptions went, we may point out that Gregory,
of Tours, in the sixth Century a.d., firmly believed that
he possessed the authenticated account of the miracles at
the death and resurrection of Christ in the very docu
ment which Pilate had sent to the Emperor Tiberius.
Lucian, in the latter half of the second Century after
the birth of Christ, bitterly complained that the Christians
were so reserved respecting their mysteries.
Tacitus, Pliny, and others could not understand why
morals and truth should be proclaimed by miracle
workers, magicians and necromancers, who began to
drive a very profitable trade. At first, Jewish and
Pagan priests had heaped opprobrious calumnies upon
the Christians on account of the simplicity of their
worship, esteeming them little better than Atheists,
because they had no temples, altars, sacrifices, priests nor
any of that external pomp in which the vulgar are so
prone to place the essence of religion. The rulers of the
Christians now adopted external, mystic ceremonies, and
suddenly the primitive simplicity which had characterised
the first followers of Christ was gone, and a multitude of
half-Jewish and half-Pagan enthusiasts, visionaries, theosophists, snake-charmers, and adepts abounded in the Chris
tian communities, and proclaimed themselves to be Ascetic,
self-denying, miracle-working Christians. Mysticism and
symbolism became the leading elements in Christianity.
The mysteries engendered sects, in accordance with the
various explanations given ro the meaning of the different
�Christianity.
21
symbols, allegories, types, prophesies, gospels, epistles, or
any vague traditions. Sects persecuted sects, each stig
matising their opponents as heretics. Every one of these
sects pretended to have received certain traditions from
the founder of Christianity Himself, or at least from
prophets, apostles, or pious men who had stood near to
Christ; yet subsequently, all their dogmas were declared
to have been heresies by later councils and synods.
The Gnostics, Ebionites, Marcionites, Alogians, Manichaeans, Novitians, Sabellians, Patripassians, and Arians,
&c., may be adduced to prove that Christianity was at first
broad-hearted and broad-minded, so long as it was not
yet fettered by the inexorable power of the State. Dog
matists were permitted to put forward new dogmas and
mysteries, but unfortunately Constantine, in the fourth
century a.d., adopted Christianity as a state religion, and
employed learned converted Talmudists and Sophists to
shape the simple tenets of Christ, and from that time down
to the Reformation everything received a theological basis,
and was looked upon from a one-sided religious point of
view. Gregory of Nazianzen says of this period ; “ the
learned diatribes of Stoics, Platonists, Aristotelians, and
even the teachings of the most important Fathers were
silenced, and every “shop-boy” preached and talked on
the Trinity in Unity of God the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost, or on the “ Hypostasis,” meaning the subor
dinate substances of the Trinity. The City of Constan
tinople was full of working men and slaves who were
profound theologians, and preached in their workshops
and in the streets. If you wanted of anyone change for
a silver coin, he informed you of the distinction between
Father and Son; if you asked for the price of a loaf of
bread, you were lectured on the inferiority of the Son to
the Father; and if you asked whether the bread were
baked, the rejoinder was that the Son had been created
out of nothing.”
It was in vain that Justin Martyr, one of the most
zealous defenders of Christianity, proved with trenchant
conviction that Christ was the Logos, or “ Universal
Reason,” of which mankind were all partakers: and,
therefore, those who lived according to the Logos or
Reason, were Christians, notwithstanding that they
�22
Christianity.
might pass for Atheists. Such among the Greeks were
Sokrates and Herakleitos, and the like; and such among
the Barbarians were Abraham and Ananias, and many
others. So on the other hand, those who had lived in
former times in defiance of the Logos or Reason were
evil, and enemies to Christ, and murderers of such as
lived according to the Logos or Beason; but those who
made or make the Logos or Reason the rule of their
actions, were and are “ Christians, and men without fear
and trembling.”
It is deeply to be regretted that Christ’s teachings
were deprived of their charming simplicity. But it could
not be otherwise. By the daily increasing number of
theological Sophists, Greek and Roman Dialecticians,
converted Talmudists and Cabalists, who made it their
duty to obscure every intelligible passage in the Old and
New Testaments; to find types where there were none;
to take allegories and metaphors to the letter; and to
transform into deep symbols what had been the literal
record of some every-day occurrence. Man was to be
forced into the narrow Procrustean bed of Dogmatism,
and to know nothing but incomprehensible mysteries.
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy raised their spiteful and
venomous heads, aud spread like dragons the fire of
destructive disunion throughout the world. Councils
and Synods denounced and persecuted, excommunicated
and succeeded in bringing about a dead silence in the
realm of thought, or submissive professions of the pre
scribed religious formulae.
In the sixth century after Christ the Church, with the
aid of the lay power, at last was enabled to stamp out
by fire and sword all the so-called Heretics, and the
Bathers, Apologists, and the Church dignitaries began to
rule supreme. The writings of the Bathers are the only
important literary products of these times which throw a
considerable light on the gradual development of Chris
tianity from the second to the twelfth century a.d.
The Bathers, like the ancient Patricians of Pagan
Rome, were divided into two classes. Those from the
second to the sixth century a.d. were the “ Patres majorum gentiumwhilst those from the seventh to the
twelfth century A.D. were the “Patres minorum gentium.”
�Christianity.
23
During the mediseval period of history the priests of the
Romish Church, occupying themselves with writing on or
discussing theology, were called “ Scholastics,” and only
since the Reformation the Clergy treating religious mat
ters philosophically or ethically, assumed the title of
“ Theologians” (Scientists of God). We cannot fail to
perceive that the struggle between faith or religion, and
reason or science was the vital force that made it possible
for Christians to progress, morally as well as intellec
tually.
The principal tendency of the most learned and most
honest theologians of our day (like Dean Stanley, Prin
cipals Tulloch and Caird,—Stopford Brooke and many
others) is to restore to Christianity that universal spirit
of tolerance which will make culture and true civilisation
a common good, not dependent on rubrics, eastern postures,
vestments, or articles, but on a correct understanding of
our nature, humanising even the bigoted middle classes;
purifying society and making it a general philanthropic
brotherhood, turning capital into a blessing instead of a
curse ; and endowing our dogmatic and arbitrary educa
tional institutions with one analogous system, fitted to
bring out all our higher reasoning faculties. Thus the
pure spirit of true Christianity will once more sway our
hearts and vivify our lifeless and cold, yet eternally
quarrelling, denominational sects. Science and art will
work together, spiritualising our higher nature, foster
ing Hellenic-Teuton culture instead of Romano-Hebrew
narrow-mindedness, leading us to a universal bodily
and mental happiness, and establishing a practical—not
clerical—“ Millenium.”
We shall endeavour in future lectures to trace how the
historical development of Christianity commenced in a
controversial thunderstorm, fierce, terrible and destructive
at first; followed by a gloomy calm, silent, deadening
and oisZrucZwe; and at last arousing science, purifying
our moral and intellectual atmosphere, spreading the
broad daylight of culture in union with morals, enabling
humanity to be free, good, and truly constructive.
�The Society’s Lectures by Dr. Zerffi, which have been printed, are—
On “Natural Phenomena and their Influence on different Religious
Systems.”
On “The Vedas and the Zend-Avesta: the first Dawn of Religious Con
sciousness in Humanity.”
On “The Origin aud the Abstract and Concrete Nature of the Devil.”
On “ Dreams and Ghosts.”
On “ Ethics and ^Esthetics.”
The above are out of print.
On “ The Spontaneous Dissolution of Ancient Creeds.”
On “ Dogma and Science.”
On “ The Eastern Question; from a Religious and Social point of view.”
On “Jesuitism: and the Priest in Absolution.”
On “ Pre-Adamites; or, Prejudice and Science.”
On “ Long and Short Chronologists; or Egypt from a Religious, Social,
and Historical point of view.”
All price 3d., or post-free 3|d.
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to
encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—
physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art;
especially in their bearing upon the improvement and social well
being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
are delivered at
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLAGE,
On SUNT)A Y Afternoons, at FO UR o’clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May.)
Twenty-four Lectures (in three series), ending 24th April, 1881,
will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket, trans
ferable (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single
reserved seat tickets, available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s., being at the rate of Threepence each
lecture.
For tickets, and the printed Lectures, and for list of all the Lectures
published by the Society, apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer,
Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door:—One Penny;—Sixpence;—and (Reserved
Seats) One Shilling.
Kenny & Co., Printers, 25, Camden Road, London, N.W.
�
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Christianity: the origin of Christianity from a strictly historical point of view, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday, 21st November, 1880
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
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Place of Publication: London
Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: List of the Society's lectures on unnumbered page at the end. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed at the Industrial Press Works, Greek Street, Soho, London.
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Christianity
Conway Tracts
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s 33 37
MATIONAL secular society
DOGMA AND SCIENCE:
51 Inta
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY
LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 19th NOVEMBER, 1876.
BY
Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R. Hist. S.,
One of the Lecturers of H. M. Department of Science and Art.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
Price Threepence.
�SYLLABUS.
Impressions and Sensations.
Our Reflective and Reasoning Faculties.
Imagination, Intellect, and Reason.
Ignorance of the Causes of the Phenomena of Nature
the only source of Dogmatism.
Science and its aim.
Difference between Dogma and Science.
Dogmatism is as pernicious in Science as in Ethics.
Dogmatic mode of persuasion.—Hudibras.
“ Inherited Sin ” treated Dogmatically and Scienti
fically.
“Grace” in its religious working, and as a' stimulus
of our intellectual faculty.
Dogma in Astronomy, Geology, and Geography.
Dogma in dates.
Dogma, a proof of man’s greatest fallibility.
Dogma and Science in their historical development.
War and bloodshed ; progress and peace.
Science combined with Art, and their mission.
How far Dogma and Science may work together.
Conclusion.
�DOGMA AND SCIENCE.
---------♦---------
ABENT.suafata libelli,”—..not only books, essays,
and lectures, but,often. sudden flights of thought
have, all their own origin, ^qu must .kindly > attribute
thisifleeture, “ On Dogma* and Science,” io the -second
instalment of. the Archbishop of Canterbury’s charge, to
the, clergy of his diocese. The, conflict; between “Dqgma
and Science ” was .stated in- that charge with a fijariknessj.and.-courage which testify . to ;fhe Jpglr scientific
standing r of the wery highest authority in dogmatic
matters. I have ioften taken occasion,frorndh^ platform
to exult:in fhe. progressive movementf,thrQ.ughQutc,the
world. in general, .in, spite of some gloomy .phenomena
that* appeared here and. there, and seemed, to imply fhat
the wheel of time had been stopped, or was eyen to 'be
turned baokwards. We are.steadily advancing; if only
every idealistic or realistic pioneer of our times will put
his shoulder to the wheel, we are sure to rescue.humanity
from the; mire of inherited; pjrejudices aud musty incre
dibilities.
, Brom' time,immemorial man’s intellectual powers have
been continually .directed ,towards answering three grand
questionShtbat, must -have impressed the conscious mind
of; humanity with naysiticmnd. mysterious force. Where
from ? What for? -And where to ? To a more or less
direct .attempt toj answer these three questions all the
religious ;and scientific,.efforts of humanity, from the
times of Vaiwaqvata.down to,,John Stuart Mill, may be
traced. We find this in the ‘Tanjura’ in 225 folio
volumes,, in. the Greek philosophers, the writings of the
Bathers, .and ,the,mass of scholastic effusions of the
Middle Ages. It is,no .less evident in Bacon’s first
scientific revelations, .in the works of Jieibnitz, Hume,
Locke, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, and in innumerable
books, pamphlets, and essays, written -and printed. The
millions of sermons, whether dull or lively, that have
H
�4
Dogma and Science.
been preached, the numberless lectures that have been
delivered in universities, in colleges, and on platforms,
may all be reduced to an endeavour to find answers to
the three questions, which in reality form the basis of
man’s whole bodily and mental activity.
This universal sameness or oneness is of the utmost
importance to the student of history. We need not
fear that the unbiassed knowledge of the different
answers that have been given in time, according to the
available elements of our mental culture, will in any way
endanger the sanctity of ethics or the onward progres
sive striving of humanity. On the contrary, the more
we make ourselves acquainted with the slow and gradual
struggle of dogmatism and science, the more we sur
round ourselves with the bright halo of inquiry; the
more we stand on the basis of a well-tutored conscious
ness of the past, the more we are able to approach truth
by means of firm conviction; and the less we are enve
loped in symbolism, mysticism, or any other incom
prehensibility, the higher will be our real moral stand
point. The forms in which ethics are given may change,
just as the answers given to the three questions have
varied and will vary, but the primitive essences of ethics
and science have never changed, do not change, and
cannot change.
Man has grown out of this earth; “ he is but a de
tached radius of this globe,” as I have often said, and
his language and mode of thinking have developed into
shape and form with his increasing consciousness. Not
the “ fear of God,” but the love and consciousness of
God, is the beginning of all wisdom. The fear of God
led to a variety of idolatries and dogmatic monstrosities;
whilst the love and consciousness of God, as He mani
fests Himself from eternity to eternity in the phenomena
of nature, led to inquiry and science. This assertion in
itself may serve as a starting-point to enable us to include
the whole range of our possible impressions from the
phenomena of nature in a systematic circle, followed by
a corresponding circle of sensations, leading to a third
circle of consciousness, and a fourth symbolic of the
three others.
All our outward impressions may be reduced to the
following elements :—
�Dogma and Science.
5
Beauty is the positive pole, and ugliness the negative.
Beauty is flanked by the sublime and charming, whilst
the ugly, in strict opposition to beauty, is encompassed
by the vulgar and awful. On the line dividing the
I.
CIRCLE OF IMPRESSIONS.
The Sublime
The Terrible
The Awful
The Ugly.
circle stand the Ridiculous and the Terrible. All
other possible impressions are mere combinations of
these six elements striving towards the positive or
negative poles of the Beautiful or the Ugly. Impres
sions can only be conveyed through our senses to our
mind, the operations of which are three-fold: emo
tional, affecting our imagination ; reflective, exciting
our intellect; and sifting, combining, and systematising,
as the functions of our reason.
In placing the sensations engendered by the possible
impressions of outward phenomena on our mind in a
systematic circle, we find that beauty engenders love,
the positive pole of all our mental and bodily powers,
whilst ugliness produces its negative pole, hatred. Love
is flanked by sympathy and veneration, whilst hatred
oscillates between contempt and horror. On the line
dividing this circle we have Indifference and Fear.
Whatever our sensations may be, however complicated
they may appear, they are but combinations of these
six sensations, caused by the corresponding six impres-
�6
Dogma and Science.
sions, striving towards the positive or negative poles of
iJove or Hatred.
ii.
CIRCLE OF SENSATIONS.
Veneration
Fear
Horror
Hatred.
> These two circles' led iir time to a third, the circle
ofyConsciousness with its- positive pole Truth, flanked by
III.
CIRCLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
Truth.
Probability
Dogmatism
Hypothesis
Falsehood’.
Probability and Theory, and its negative pole Falsehood,
flanked by “ the fool’s paradise,” Chattoe and Hypothesis.
�Dogma and Science.
7
On the stern line dividing the two opposite elements are
Ignorance and Dogmatism, engendered by a mixture of
ridiculous and terrible impressions, producing the
corresponding sensations of indifference and fear. I
have endeavoured to trace clearly through the circles of
impressions, sensations, and consciousness the origin of
Dogmatism in fear.
Dor those who are inclined to look upon the spiritual
world from a more realistic point of view., I have a
fourth circle, that of Primary and complementary
colours, which may serve to symbolically confirm the
three previous circles.
White is the combination of all colours, and, like
Beauty, Love, and Truth, in the spheres of impressions,
sensations, and consciousness, the positive pole-; whilst
black, as the absence of all colour, is, like Ugliness,
Hatred, and Falsehood, the negative pole. Correspond
ing to the impression of the Sublime, Veneration, and
Probability is blue, filling us with the feeling of the in
finite. Green has an indisputably charming influence,
inviting us to repose. Who has not felt its.power on a
lovely plain covered with bright grass ? Orange, the
colour of destructive fire, corresponds to the terrible,
producing fear and dogmatism; and purple to the
awful. Tyrants and cardinals have generally clad them
selves in purple. Yellow is the representative of in
difference and the ridiculous, it is the jaundiced colour
of ignorance; whilst red is the very essence of vul
garity. Children and savages delight in its loud hues,
whilst bulls, with better sesthetical taste, are filled with
rage at the very sight of it.
It will rest with Dogmatism, whether it will try to
leave the lower regions of these circles, and give up its
twin-brother or sister^ Ignorance, and rise through a
correct appreciation of the impressions of the beautiful,
the charming, and the sublime, to build its future on
sympathy, veneration, and love. In fostering proba
bilities through theories it may reach the serene regions
of Truth, and, standing hand in hand with Science,
attain the most glorious aim of humanity, endowed with
activity of mind by the infinite Creator.
The more we study, and the more we inquire into the
formation of ancient creeds, the. more firmly we shall
�8
Dogma and Science.
become convinced that these circles exhaustively place
before us the origin and elements of our sensations and
consciousness through the outer-impressions of the
phenomena of nature.
The more ignorant we were of these impressions and
their causes, the less we were able to group them or
to reduce them to an intelligible system the more we
dogmatised. Starting with stupid fear in their minds,
produced by the terrible, men were led to a ridiculous
indifference with regard to everything charming, sub
lime, and beautiful. They discarded all higher feel
ings of sympathy, veneration, and love, derided proba
bilities and theories even when based on facts, and
clung to self-concocted hypotheses. They appealed to the
mighty powers of chance, predestination, or fatalism,
or fancied they could see inconsistency and variability
in the laws of nature; they worshipped incredible false
hoods as truths, and barred the way or progress and
inquiry as mischievous and sinful. No honest student
of Universal History can grow angry when he con
siders these childish efforts of humanity, lor he must
know to conviction,that as little as the creative elements
of inorganic and organic material nature could have
developed at once into the highest form>, our intellec
tual progress could have possibly attained either beauty,
love, or truth without a slow and gradually progressive
development.
To further this progressive development is the
province of science. Whether we look to the scientific
attempts of the Brahmans and Egyptian priests, to the
ethic efforts of the Hebrew prophets, to the different,
systems of the Greek philosophers, or to the teachers
of pure Christianity, we everywhere sec men of science
impressed by the beautiful, charming, ami sublime in
God’s creation. They contemplate the smallest pebble,
the tissue and colours of flowers, the solar systems-,
comets,? meteors, glaciers, and volcanoes with equal
reverence inspired by the sensations of love, sympathy,
and veneration. They seek to find out the law of pro
bability, and build up theories, striving after truth,
so far as our limited faculties may grasp it, but, if they
are true scientific men, never dogmatising. The great
est gain of learning and study is the glorious and humble
consciousness that we know so little.
�Dogma and Science.
‘9
I do not mean to assert by this, that all is vanity in
the old Hebrew sense, which must check all mental and
bodily activity,—this uncertainty of knowledge should
exite our mental activity, so that we may add day by
day an atom to our previous knowledge. The sum total
of human knowledge has resulted from the efforts of
single individuals to add their little mite to a grand
total, which is increased even by the very smallest con
tribution of ideas.
The task of science, through its very aim, is extremely
arduous. Men abhor nothing more than the trouble of
reasoning, especially if business goes on briskly without
reasoning. Why should men give up their prejudices,
their comfortable social intercourse, and the noisy din of
parties, for some ideal “ terra incognita ”—of which they
know as little as of the North Pole, after so many ex
peditions ? What is the use of sacrificing an inherited
notion of ignorance to some universal, unalterable prin
ciple, especially if such principles demand study, cool
hours of reflection, an honest application to never
ceasing inquiry, with the constant conviction that, after
all, absolute and real truth will not be attained. Besides
can that be false which has tilled thousands and thou
sands of nice little and big books with weighty words ?
Could anything capable of lightening the purses of some
2-5,000,000 human beings to the extent of not less
than 30,000,000 pounds sterling, during the last forty
years, be either wrong or false ? Is there any clearer
proof of the genuineness of the supply than the brisk
ness of the demand ? The scantily aided men of science
are obliged to listen to such arguments, and are expected
to crouch in devout annihilation—before what ? Before
the golden Nundi, or golden Apis, or golden calf that
is everlastingly raised before the ignorant masses to be
worshipped in humble submission. False principles that
pay, are undoubtedly better than truth that does not
pay. “Hine illae lacrymae! ” How titanic were and
are the efforts of science in the face of such a phenome
non. Bare and naked, only veiled in scepticism and
doubt, house and homeless—an outcast from the masses,
laughed at, mocked, derided, abused, cursed, trampled
under foot, baffled in its own efforts, contradicted, dis
torted, crucified, and burned often by its own votaries,
Science has gone onward to truth step by step.
�io
Dogma and Science.
Here a mighty bastion of dim hypotheses has been
stormed,—there a huge castle of ignorance has been
taken.
It has demolished miles and miles of
Chinese walls built up of huge stones of chance, of
bigoted surmises, cemented together with the chalk and
mortar of scarcely destructible mysticism, decorated
with symbolic niceties, the more confused and muddled
the better, and yet science is neither tired out, nor
vanquished. How many falsehoods, that were once
raised on the pedestal of truth, have been hurled into
the dust by Science, unaided by State support, by
voluntary contributions, collections, and extorted
monetary help in one shape or another? Facts
had to be detached from myths; myths had to be traced
to their dim origin. Different authors of different
periods, in different languages, had to be studied ; an
infinite variety of methods and forms of thinking,
seeing, and arguing at different times under different
influences, with totally different dialectics, had to be
gone through ; order had to be traced, laws had to be
found out, groups had to be created, analogies to be
drawn, and differences to be established, in order to
attain what science lias attained. And Science has had
to do all this without flourish ; it has always tried the
shortest, the clearest way—but this shortest and clearest
way is also the most difficult, the steepest, the least in
viting and comfortable.
Lactantius, one of the fathers, called the Christian
Cicero, who was not yet altogether blinded by dogma
tism, having lived so much nearer to the foundation of
Christianity, says : “ Pure and naked truth is so much
the clearer, because it has ornaments enough of its own;
and therefore, when it is daubed over with external
additional ornaments, it is corrupted by them ; so that a
lie is therefore pleasing, because it appears in the shape
that is not its own.” What would Lactantius have said
to all the dogmas as additional ornaments with which
Christ’s simple ethics have been daubed over ? In dis
cussing only one single phenomenon, its origin, cause,
or effect, science strives to make use of all our mental
powers to correct the phantoms of our imagination.
Our sensations are combined, divided, and traced by the
unbiassed power of our intellect, which turns them over
�Dogma and Science.
11
in our memory, enters and registers them, draws
balances, and collects axioms, theorems, experiments,
and observations. When our mind with its threefold
functions has imagined, reflected, and reasoned, collected
its materials from all quarters of the globe, from all
ages, then only it can come to some probable conclusion
based on some probable premisses.
Whilst probability is the starting point of the scien
tific inquirer, leading to theory and truth, the starting
point of dogmatism, whether in science or ethics, is
ignorance.
The dogmatist also uses the three func
tions of our mind, but in an inverted ratio. He uses
reason and intellect to prove the outgrowths of an
ignorant, terrified, overawed imagination to be facts.
The man of science has continually to fight against
wild hypotheses, based on chance and falsehood, that
have been sustained, fostered, and promoted by igno
rance, often for thousands of years. The man of
science has to use his intellect to combat mysticism, and
to exert his reason to show that the probable only is
possible, if based on a succession of causes producing
the same effects.
The dogmatists arose in the childhood of humanity,
and became, with their fairy tales,the nurses of mankind.
Humanity, in the meantime, has gone through its boy
hood, youth, and manhood, and is approaching more
and more the bright, passionless, serene, and moral
age of wisdom, yet the dogmatic nurses, with wrinkled
faces, still repeat the same nursery-tales. Here and
there they try to disguise them with affectedly
scientific interpolations made to fit their little myths
and legends. No one could venture to assert that our
scientific reasoning has not sprung from these nursery
tales, just as the human form has developed from a
scarcely microscopically visible embryo ; but the embryo
must not assume the judge’s ermine and wig, and at
tempt to teach the learned grown-up man that he is
still an embryo and nothing else. The embryos should
not continually make use of the outgrowths of the
awful, the vulgar, the false, and the ugly, which have
fostered horror, contempt, and hatred, to contradict
science, abuse science, abhor science as only an embryo
in intellect could do. Let them not—
�12
Dogma and Science.
‘ ‘ Decide all controversy by
Infallible artillery ;
And prove tlieir doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks ; ”
for they are still where the pious arguers of Hudibras
were. ‘‘They still talk of the talking serpent; they
know the seatof Paradise to an inch, how sin came into
the world, and what it is and that in fact we, the fairest
creatures of the Creator, endowed with intellect and
reason, are but wretches conceived in wrath and sin.
It would be considered most unfair to any well-bred
gentleman continually to tell him that all he said or
wrote was utter nonsense. Yet this is what some people
are really doing when they abuse the fairest creation of
God as the most abject of His performances. What
w'ould an artist think of a person who entered his
studio and there proclaimed all his works daubs, all his
statues terrible monsters ? Yet men have built up on such
ideas whole systems of ethics, amongst the Indians,
Egyptians, Persians, and Hebrews. First God is said
to create, then He is said to tempt and seduce, if not
directly, indirectly, and then He is supposed to allow
humanity to continue to be conceived in sin and wrath.
This is anything but an excellent basis for the evolu
tion of a glorious system of ethics. What do we really
mean by an inherited sin ? In one of my former lectures
I had the pleasure of tracing before yon “the Origin
and Nature of the Devil,” and the closer we looked at
hims.the more we lifted him out of the regions of hypo
thesis, chance, and falsehood, the more we gazed by the
dim lamp of probability, the torch of scientific theory,
and the bright rays of truth, into his stupid face, the
more he vanished into the past as a phantom of our
terrified, untutored childhood. Permit me, now, to
treat,, with every regard and reverence for inherited
prejudices, the inherited sin, first dogmatically, and then
scientifically..
A society based on the assumption that our animal
passions: are the consequence of an Indian, Assyrian,
Egyptian, and Hebrew myth,, must look on every one as
a creature of sin and wrath. That such an assumption
must create an immense a/mouiat of uncharitableness, it
is not difficult to imagine. TTie little innocent child to
�Dogma and Science.
whom such notions are taught, must become altogether
bewildered. Of course he is accustomed to look
upon this horrible inheritance with a kind of mystic
fear; he spills some milk, and sees in this fact the con
sequences of a frightful legacy; he breaks a tumbler or
smashes a wine-bottle, and is punished, to drive out of
him the original sin. The child thus grows by degrees
stubborn, and begins to fear and tremble; fear and
trembling produce hypocrisy and falsehood, and, under
these impressions and sensations, hatred instead of love
is fostered in his little heart. Into what, monsters even
tender women may be transformed by such pious assump
tions could be seen not long since in the pages of the
higbly'-religious Guardian, where a widow lady adver
tised for a person experienced in the art of whipping,
and able to administer a severe flogging with a new
birch-rod on the tender bodies of her fatherless children,
aged nine and ten respectively. Bulgarian atrocities
are exciting our horror and indignation, whilst in our
enlightened Christian country the birch-rod is looked
upon as the only means of educating ! With terrible
anxiety to get rid of an inheritance that has cost so
many bitter tears, and has tormented his childhood, the
growing human plant or creature enters school. Here
he meets again with nothing but inherited wickedness ;
he has a head-ache and does not know his Latin verb.
What else could this be but the inherited sin! He
grows angry at the ruffianism of the elder schoolboys,
gets involved in quarrels, and fights, and is thrashed and
beaten in order that he may be purged of the remnants
of his inherited sin. At last he becomes a young man;
life lies before him with all its temptations and seduc
tions ; the inherited sin does not forsake him, it clings
to him like an unseen but ever present demon ; he wastes
his time in bad company, saves himself at last by be
coming a dreamy hypocrite, renouncing the Devil and
his temptations, and in his turn has children, and thinks
nothing can be better than to frighten the inherited sin
out of them in the way suggested by our widow lady.
It is this terrible dogma that leads to morbid longings
and carnal criminalities; that peoples our workhouses,
creates drunkards and criminals, pauperism and over
population. At the very dawn of man s growing con-
�14
Dogma and Science.
sciousness, when still ignorant of his nature, he con
cocted this “ inherited-sin dogma,” and degraded his own
position as God’s fairest creature. This dogma gave
rise to mystic explanations, incantations, allegories, arbi
trary commentaries, Jewish, Mahometan, and Christian
formularies in theology ; in philosophy it led to fantastic
explanations and meaningless dialectics, and in natural
sciences to a systematising parallelism.
We see in all these efforts nothing but the tendency
to improve and enlighten man; the means are, how
ever, now obsolete, having led by degrees to a scientific
treatment of this grand mystery—the inherited sin. We
began to study the component parts of man, and built
up on experience physiology; we tried to assign a cause
to man’s false reasoning, and we embarked on the study
of psychology and the functions of the brain ; we endea
voured to discover the cause of man’s passion for mar
riage and the possession of children, and found ourselves
launched into political economy and ‘ Malthus on Popu
lation.’ We wanted to learn whethei' man was exempt
from the laws of creation, and found him to be the same
outgrowth of the cosmical forces as the smallest crystal
lisation or the most insignificant cellule. We have thus
gained a rational consciousness of our calling, and can
regulate our passions. Through education we attempt
to diminish poverty, to free our workhouses from super
fluous inmates, and to place society on a firm scientific
footing of comfort and happiness.
The same change has befallen the dogma of “ Grace.”
The amount of inordinate pride this little word in all
its humility has created, is almost incredible. The
Brahman by his very birth was endowed with a special
divine grace. Only he could understand how God’s
breath condensed and formed sounds, how these sounds
were turned into letters, the letters into syllables, the
syllables into words, the words into sentences, and the
sentences into periods. The same special grace was
claimed by the priests of Buddha, by the Magi, the
initiated Egyptian hierophants, the Hebrew prophets,
and the Romish clergy. They only knew through
special grace what suited humanity; how society could
exist; what ought to be believed and what not; they
often distorted all the principles of right and wrong,
�Dogma and Science.
15
and peopled heaven and earth with phantoms. They
could hear the grass grow, could transfer their inherited
grace to others, remit sins, and use humanity as one big
flock of sheep, of which they pretended to be the only
appointed shepherds, distributing the pastures, and ex
cluding any reasoning thinking sheep as a black sheep
from the universal fold. But “ grace,” in a scientific
sense, has worked perfect marvels. Without faith in
man’s real inborn grace, manifesting itself in intellect
and reason, Christianity would have sunk into a kind
of heathenish idolatry; the Reformation could never
have dispersed the dark and oppressive shadows of the
Middle Ages ; the gates of our modern times would not
have been torn open by the immortal thinkers of Eng
land, always a grand and mighty country in the realms
of free thought, in spite of the efforts of obscurantists
and bigots. The Germans could never have followed
up the English philosophers and established on their
principles that mighty fabric of progressive inquiry in
philology, biology, chemistry, and cosmology that now
places them intellectually in the van of all other nations.
Had the grace of our intellectual consciousness not
touched us, we should still be writing learned books
“ on the number of angels that might dance on the tip
of a needle,” or on the all-important question “ whether
a man in a regenerated state commits sin.” We should
still study the fifty-three folio volumes by Bolland, a
most learned Jesuit, whose work contains the lives of
more than 25,000 confessors, martyrs, ascetics, and self
tormentors. We should pore over Father Jocelyn’s
‘ Life of St. Patrick,’ in 146 chapters, and learn how
the Saint conferred beauty on an old man and increased
his stature ; how he miraculously fed 14,000 men (pro
bably on nothing) ; how he changed flesh-meat into
fishes ; how the tooth of St. Patrick shone in the river ;
how he converted certain cheeses into stone ; how St.
Patrick’s goat, stolen and eaten by a thief, bleated in
the thief’s stomach, and other similarly incontrovertible
facts and truths. Prior to the Reformation the litera
ture of enlightened Europe consisted of Psalters, can
ticles, miracles, tales, legends, numberless Hours of
devotion, chronicles full of incredible deeds, and
some sharply satirical works foreboding the coming
�16
Dogma and Science.
change. After the Reformation, philosophical and
political books were printed, and we had ‘ News from
Hell’ (1536), proving the impossibility of its geo
graphical position, as there was no above or below.
Works appeared against “ The power of the Clergy,” on
‘The Enormities of the Clergy,’ on ‘The Beginning
and Ending of Popery’ (1546), on ‘ The Practices of the
Inquisition,’ and on ‘ The Discovery of the Inquisition.’
Now we analyse the rays of the sun, and leave discus
sions on unintelligible matters to men who are mere
“ survivals ” of the Middle Ages amongst us.
Bernhard, of Clairvaux, who repudiated the dogma
of the “ Immaculate Conception,” and preached in favour
of the Crusade of 1146, though he tried to hinder the
merciless and sanguinary crusades against the Jews, in
which he did not succeed, says that: “ Faith is a pre
sentiment of some not yet discovered truth, and is based
on authority and revelation, whilst our inner vision
(contemplatio) is the certain, and, at the same time,
clear cognition of the invisible.” Buddhists and Brah
mans have given utterance to an abundance of equally
obscure and unintelligible sentences. This is the mighty
charm of the so-called “ supernatural
it enlists in
terest, and is the more cherished, the less it is under
stood. It was the presentiment of truth, wrapped in
authority and revelation, that proclaimed the earth to
have sprung ready made from a cosmical egg ; what
hen, however, laid the egg, neither authority nor revela
tion told us. It was the presentiment of truth, based on
authority and revelation, that made the earth a square,
resting on pillars, firmly fixed on a foundation, and the
sun revolve round this flat square, which was studded
with mountains to serve as footstools for the Deity. It
was again the presentiment of truth, based on authority
and revelation, that decreed how the world had been
created in. six days. Our inner vision, however, after
having studied geology, has come to a totally different
cognition of the now visible strata of the earth’s crust,
and has built up, in going backwards, the slow forma
tion of our earth, which is not square, but globular,
which does not rest on pillars, is not fixed, and therefore
a very uncomfortable footstool, unless the Deity re
volves with it at the rate of about 1,220 miles per
�Dogma and Science.
17
minute; an idea which is far from respectful to
the Creator of more than 20,374,000 visible stars;
amongst which our earth is one of the least significant
planets. The inner vision and cognition of the percep
tible and visible, having so gloriously failed us, in spite
of authority and revelation, we certainly need not
trouble ourselves much with the certain and clear cogni
tion of the invisible arrived at by Bernhard of Clairvaux, who is now a canonised saint of the Roman
Church.
The most objectionable confusion was created by dog
matists in dates. Now, a date is certainly nothing
particularly important, except to small-minded indi
viduals, who think that if they know the date of the
birth of some king, or the dates of battles, or other in
cidents, they know history, as though history were but
a chronological register of dry facts. Dates are im
portant to ascertain certain incidents, especially in legal
matters, but who is to fix dates for the creation of the
world, the growth of the Assyrian Empire, the produc
tion of the Vedas, or the age in which the laws of
Manu were compiled, and astronomy was brought into a
system ? Who can date the age, which must have
preceded the 331 Kings of Manetho, the age in which
Atalanta formed part of the Eastern Continents, and
mammoths and elks roamed through the earth, whilst
palm-trees, sigillaria, stigmaria, &c., grew to a height of
120 to 150 feet on our island ? All these phenomena
could not have happened during the short lapse of 5,376
years, as some dogmatists assume, teach, and piously
believe, if we read history backwards and consider how
slowly we advance in spite of telegraphic wires and
steam engines. For the merely natural development of
languages, works of art, stone constructions, sculpture,
tile-making, and the formation of languages much more
time is required than dogmatists are willing to allow.
This obstinacy in dealing with dates has its pernicious
influence. It helps people to falsify facts as to time,
by degrees also as to space, and finally, as to their
mode and possibility of having happened at all. Nothing
is so pitiful as to see men of learning twisting facts in
order not to sin against the chronology of Rabbi Hillel
or Bishop Usher. If dates are dogmas, they only serve,
�18
Dogma and Science.
like all other dogmas, to prove the utter fallibility of
man, Thus it was asserted that the sun moves and the
earth stands; that there are no antipodes. Every one
who dared to doubt these dogmatic assertions was
branded as a perverter of truth, an infidel, and a
“ godless wretch.” Dogmatists ought to be contented
with the innumerable disenchantments and disappoint
ments they have had to suffer.
To remedy this fallibility they have invented a new
dogma in opposition to all experience of sound reason
and common sense, the dogma of the Infallibility of a
hnman Being. That there should be people who cling
to the infallibility of some small sectarian preacher, and
oppose with inordinate vehemence the infallibility of the
Pope, is not surprising. Such persons see themselves
wronged in their own infallible understanding of what
they assume to be essential dogmas, and fear they
might see themselves outdone; they are angry that a
chosen high priest should do what the unchosen crowd
of talkers on holy matters do for themselves.
There can be no doubt that a narrow-minded dogma
tism has blighted for thousands of years all our better
progressive efforts. Like the Colorado beetle it has
eaten away the very best roots of our mental seeds. It
crept slowly and gradually into Christianity—that bright
doctrine of mutual love ; it has undermined those pre
cepts which were as little dogmatic for the welfare of
our souls as the prescriptions of a physician for the health
of our bodies. Christianity, according to Dr. Barlow,
had no other laws but such “as politicians would allow
to be needful for the peace of the State ; as Epicurean
philosophers recommend for the tranquillity of our
minds, and pleasures of our lives; such as reason dic
tates, and daily shows conducive to our welfare in all
respects ; which, consequently, were there no law enact
ing them, we should in wisdom choose to observe, and
voluntarily impose them on ourselves ; confessing them
to be fit matters of law, as most advantageous and
requisite to the good, general and particular, of man
kind.”
These are truly Christian words. For Christianity in
its beginning was as free from dogmas as the rays of the
sun, the formation of the earth, or the eternal laws of
�Dogma and Science.
19
nature. Christ taught us one grand law—love, founded
on beauty, leading to truth, that holds us as self-con
scious beings together in one brotherhood, just as the
law of attraction holds the universe eternally united.
Historically both dogma and science had their growth
and decay—with this difference—that dogmas grew to
might and activity in the dark ages, when no science
was possible. In 325, A.D., the Trinitarian dogma
was borrowed from Indians and Egyptians; 346, a.d.
some ritualistic innovations, such as the worship of
relics, were adopted from the Buddhists ; the worship
of images was taken from the Indians and Egyptians;
asceticism, self-abnegation and self-torture from Brah
mans and Buddhists ; Jubilees from Romans and Egyp
tians ; the Confession from Plato. Tran substantiation
came from the Egyptians in 1215 at the Council of
Lateran under Pope Innocent III. The worship of Mary
is to be traced to the Assyrians and Babylonians, for it
was a revival of the worship of Alilatt, Astarte, or
Astaroth. Processions were taken from Indians,
Romans, and Egyptians. The incarnation, resurrec
tion, descent to hell and ascension into heaven, are
dogmas of Brahmanic and Buddhistic origin.
St.
Jerome tells us that “ we ought to worship where the
feet of our Lord stood,” chiefly meaning his last foot
steps, when be mounted up to heaven ; the print of
which, say Sulpicius Severus and Paulinus remains to
this day. This was, however, exactly the case with
Buddha, the ninth incarnation of the second person of
the Indian Trinity, who ascended into heaven from
Peak Adam, on the Island of Ceylon, and who there
left his extremely large footprints, casts of which we
possess in our British Museum. It was dogmatism that
led the Romish Church to the establishment of the In
quisition under Popes Innocent III., and Gregory IX., in
the 13th century after Christ. The Inquisition and its
sanguinary crimes afford the historian clear proofs that
dogmatism and fanaticism will lead men to wild atroci
ties, whether committed by learned Christian priests
and judges in the sixteenth century against Protestants,
or by Protestants against Dissenters in the seven
teenth century, or by Radicals against Royalists in
the eighteenth century, or by Mahometans against
�20
Dogma and Science.
Bulgarians in the nineteenth century, or by Russians
against Poles in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen
turies. Bloodshed and murder follow in the track
of all those who base the welfare of humanity on dry,
unintelligible dogmas. The dogma can only begin where
knowledge ceases, and no mystic, symbolic, allegorical,
parabolical, metaphorical, metonymical, hypostatical,
and anagogical verbiage can turn nonsense into sense, the
unseen into the seen, the invisible into the visible, or the
unknown into the known. Bloodshed and war will
always be the outgrowths of dogmatic fanaticism. For
any wilful assertion, based on ignorance, must necessarily
lead to falsehood, and the mighty endeavour to impose
incredibilities by force and violence on those whom we
cannot persuade by means of arguments and sound
reasoning. The dogma can only exist in annihilating
our independent judgment; whilst science can only
prosper in trying to prove even those intuitions, which
hypothetically approach probabilities. But the scientific
men of all ages and times have willingly given up their
most cherished prejudices, as soon as better reasons
have been adduced for the assumption of different
theories. Spinoza’s “ Substance ” had to yield to
Fichte’s “Ego,” Shelling’s “ Subject-object,” to Hegel’s
“World’s soul” (Weltseele), this to Schoppenhauer’s
“ Will,” and this to Hartmann’s “ Unconsciousness,” or
Agnosticism. We in England must turn back, if we
seek to study the reasonable grounds on which the
Christianity of the future was established by those
glorious prelates of the English Church, Hooker, Chil
lings worth, Hale and Tillotson, who all tried to find for
Christianity a firm basis in sound reason. They were
seconded in their efforts by the immortal writers of
the 17th and 18th centuries. The third Earl of Shaftes
bury would have heard with amazement the asser
tion made by one of his descendants that we wanted
500 Spurgeons for London alone to oppose some of our
most enlightened preachers. Such names as Collins, Tyn
dall, Wolleston, Chubb, and Bolingbroke, and the princi
ples they represent are familiar even to the students in
German Ladies’ Schools, whilst with ns they are alto
gether passed over in silence, none of these titans of freethinking being so much as mentioned in a primer, which
�Dogma and Science.
21
is to serve our boys as a school-book. These writers
more that 150 years ago felt that dogmatism ought to
unite with science and art, with truth and beauty to
rouse in us all our higher faculties. The strains of
harmonies on the wings of sound, the chisels of sculptors,
the pencils and paint-brushes of the painters, the pro
ductions of the architects, were all at the disposal of the
holy cause—but when and under what circumstances ?—
When the divine light of freer thinking vivified the
brains of humanity. Ecclesiastics of whatever denomi
nation, w’ho inveigh against our progressive Free-think
ing, encourage falsehood and immorality ; for nothing
can be more immoral than the concealment or with
holding of truth. In order to preserve some obsolete
incredibilities, as little necessary to the genuine mo
rality of man as the wearing of a coloured chasuble,
with or without an embroidered gilt cross at the back,
dogmatists are prone to persecute the most moral men,
if they differ from them on unintelligible, speculative,
or symbolic points, and force the respectable to play the
hypocrite. Against whom do the preachers of the
gospel of love show more inveterate hatred and uncharit
ableness than against their very best men, if these wish
to use their rights as true Protestants? Need I quote facts ?
Are not the persecutions of the Essayists and Reviewers,
of Bishop Colenso, and others fresh in our memories ?
It is the very nature of Protestantism to be progres
sive, else it would have even less raison d etre than
Romanism. From the period of the establishment of the
Reformation the minds of men, now advancing and
then retrograding in certain countries, at certain times,
have become intellectually more and more enlightened.
Our increased love of natural and historical sciences, a
neglect of metaphysics, and a growing fervour for genuine
art are laudable Signs of our Times. What the Primate
of England has been pleased to call “ the seething
thoughts of this anxious age ” are but the visible efforts
of the progressive development of humanity, to leave
the wilderness of mysticism and dogmatism, and to seek
goodness, beauty and truth, no more in formulae and
assertions contradicting the very first principles of our
commonest common sense, but in science and art, leading
to the purest morality.
�22
Dogma and Science.
It remains to be seen whether the dogmatists will play
the part of the merchant’s honest old clerk,'who wrote a
remarkably fine hand, and who thought so highly of it
that, undei’ the idea that calligraphy must sooner or later
supersede the press, he wrote out an entire copy of (the
Bible for fear the sacred volume should ever get out of
print. Dogmatism is calligraphy, science is print. Bnint
will no more be superseded by calligraphy. Let the
priest give up i his eternal looking backwiards; let him
look courageously forward. Let . him viewihh:the lay
man in all the branches of our modern knowledge ; let
him study comparative philology, comparative).mytho
logy, the growth of dogmas at various times: amongst
various nations. Let him mot be ashamed to confess
that the'borrowed symbolic plumage has nothing to xlo
with the inner soul of Christian ethics, and he rifill
stand firm as a > rock. Let ■ him > strive < (to > act on aur
reflective'andreaso®ingfaculties, andieaaiting us ta deeds
of beauty and truthfulness, ■ be jagain whati he ought
to be—a conscientious "teacher of i;h.umanity,i<who does
not tremble before every glimmer of light, but can boldly
face thejsuniof 'scientific truth and the glorious beauties
of art.
In'-one shape or another teachers will .always be wanted,
and it should'be fer more comforti/ng.to our teachers fear
lessly to work on our higher intellectual faculties, through
love, than to mourn over our wicked? nature, and continu
ally try to impress theenaotional element in \us th roughfear,
or promises of ^‘Sweebmeats-ao cbaugafr-pLnms ”rin another
world. Truth ought not toibe represented as attainable
without any trouble by mere inspiration ; rnothing nseful
or practical being done, whilst the advent of such inspi
ration is waited'for, nor should any (unnatural thought,
that may have been thrown outinignorantiages, be.mis
taken for the result of such inspiration.
Let our instructors teach men rand women to treiy
upon their mental culture, and not on gnardian.angels,
incense, candles, or coloured chasubles bright: with; the
green of hope, or dipped in the white. d£ dearlyI beloved
innocence, the red of heavenly love, the.blue of holy
constancy, the orange of glorious iihehtitnde,. or) the
purple of supernatural dignify, all enveloped in ztthe
thick black cloak of superstition and ignorance. JLet
�Dogma and Science.
23
them work as men on men, and not as emotional women
on women ; let them take an example from oar strongminded women, who do study .and do know. That
which they would then lose as dogmatists, they would
gain as influential leaders of our ideal better nature; for
our age is a practical' age. We want men of higher sen
timent, for without them we might altogether sink into
wretched materialism, and become mere calculating,
buying and selling machines, without any higher aspi
rations, pursuing even science only so far as it pays.
We may, however, confidently look forward to a time
when humanity will be one great universal priesthood,
worshipping in- boundless love, truth and beauty, science
and art, leading us. to the purest ethics.
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement
and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May).
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending April,) 1877,
will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual (ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s.' 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s. being at the rate of Threepence
each lecture.
’
For tickets and the published lectures apply (by letter, enclos
ing postage stamps, order, or cheque), to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm.
Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park,'W.
Payment at the door :—One Penny Sixpence ;—and
(Reserved Seats) One Shilling.
�The Society's Lectures now Printed are—
Miss MARY E. BEEDY. On “ Joint Education of Young
Men and Women in the American Schools and Colleges.”
Mr. GEORGE BROWNING. “ The Edda Songs and Sagas
of Ireland.”
Dr. W. B. CARPENTER. On “ The Doctrine of Human Au
tomatism.”
Professor CLIFFORD. On “ Body and Mind.”
On “ The first and the last Catastrophe : A criticism on some
recent speculations about the duration of the Universe.”
On “ Right and Wrong ; the scientific ground of their dis
tinction.”
Mr. EDWARD CLODD. On “The birth and growth of
Mvth, and its survival in Folk Lore, Legend and Dogma.”
Mr. WM. HENRY DOMVILLE. On “The Rights and
Duties of Parents in regard to their children’s religious
education and beliefs.” With notes.
Mr. A. ELLEY FINCH. On “Erasmus, his Life, Works, and
Influence upon the Spirit of the Reformation.”
On “Civilization; its modern safeguardsand future prospects.”
Mr. CHARLES J. PLUMPTRE. On “The Religion and
Morality of Shakespeare’s Works.”
Dr. G. G. ZERFFI. “ A Dissertation on the Origin and the
abstract and concrete Nature of the Devil.”
On “ Dreams and Ghosts.”
On “ The spontaneous dissolution of Ancient Creeds.”
On “ Ethics and Esthetics; or, Art in its influence on our
Social Progress.”
On “ Dogma and Science.”
The price of each of the above Lectures is 3d., or post-free 3jd.
Professor CLIFFORD. On “ Atoms ; being an Explanation of
what is Definitely Known about them.” Price Id. Two,
post-free, 2|d.
Mr. A. ELLEY FINCH. On “The Pursuit of Truth; as
exemplified in the Principles of Evidence—Theological,
Scientific, and Judicial.” With copious Notes and Authori
ties. Price 5s., or post-free 5s. 3d., cloth 8vo., pp. 106.
On “ The Inductive Philosophy: with a parallel between
Lord Bacon and A Comte.” With Notes and Authorities.
Same price. Cloth 8vo., pp. 100.
Mr. EDWARD MAITLAND. On “ Jewish Literature and
Modern Education ; or, the use and misuse of the Bible in
the Schoolroom.” Price Is. 6d., or post-free Is. 8d.
Dr. PATRICK BLACK. On “ Respiration ; or, Why do we
breathe ? ” Price Is. 6d. or Is. 8d. post-free.
Can be obtained (on remittance of postage stamps) of the Hon.
Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Cres
cent, Hyde Park, W., or at the Hall on the days of Lecture.
PRINTED BY C. W. BEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENET STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Dogma and science : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 19th November, 1876
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
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Sunday Lecture Society
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1876
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Religion
Science
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Dogma
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CHRISTIANITY.
THIRD PART.
MONASTICISM AND SCHOLASTICISM: INVENTIONS AND
DISCOVERIES; FAITHAND SCIENCE; HEBRAISM
AND HELLENISM.
BEING
lecture
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S IIALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY, 20th NOVEMBER, 1881,
BY
Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R.Hist.S.
Honljon:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SYLLABUS.
Influence of Heathenism on Christianity.
Monks and Monasteries; Cloisters and Nuns.
The Crusades. East and West.
Gregory VII. Church and State.
The Popes and the German Emperors. Conflict between the Static and
Dynamic Forces working in Humanity.
Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas.
Demonology and Angelology.
Occam—Inventions and Discoveries.
The Reformation, an apparently retrograde movement.
The Conflict between Hebraism and Hellenism an undoubtedly progres
sive movement.
Conspiracies against the rights of Humanity. The Inquisition.
The Dawn of Modern Thought.
Francis Lord Bacon, Newton, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, and the Hierarchy.
Spiritual Despotism and Intellectual Democracy.
�CHRISTIANITY.
------------ 4------------
III.
Monasticism and Scholasticism.
and Science.
Inventions and Discoveries.
Faith
Hebraism and Hellenism.
N tracing step by step, and date by date, the historical evolu
tion of Christianity, we are
by the gradual, everIincreasing influence of Heathenismstrucka religion which in its pure
on
origin made the most determined opposition to all outward ritual
and idolatrous ceremonial. Christianity was to have redeemed
man’s higher spiritual nature from all fetters of dogmatism and
theological obscurantism.
The “ word” as the most important living manifestation of the
divine Spirit in love, wisdom, and truth, engendering pure thoughts,
pure words, and pure actions, had been already with the ancient
Persians the primitive force, spreading spiritual enlightenment all
over the world. Its symbol was the Sun.
The “ word,” as. the condensation of God’s breath, was with the
Indians the very foundation of their religious development. The
“word”—or God—the universal “neuter,” the “Thad,” the im
personal, became Creator, Preserver and Transformer, as the three
cosmical forces working in one.—Ideas which may be expressed in
words, preserved in traditions or writings, and transformed, con
tinually producing new ideas and words, were with the Indians
the elements of progressive culture. With the Egyptians Toth, or
Hermes, the “ Logos,” the “ word ” in its spiritual sense, was the
life-giver, the founder of all wisdom and truth. With the Greeks
the myth, that Pallas-Athene, provided with helmet, spear and
shield, had sprung from the head of Zeus, meant symbolically that
the “ word,” clad in wisdom, justice, and truth, was the most inlportant embodiment of the divine Spirit. Pythagoras (569 b.c.),
initiated at Thebes into the mysteries of the Egyptian priests (after
this distinction had been refused to him at Heliopolis and Mem
�4
Christianity.
phis), brought thence the knowledge of the “ Logos ” (the word),
as the first vivification of the divine Spirit, without which the very
notion of the Deity would be impossible. Plato (380 B.o.) learnt in
Egypt that the voSs (Spirit) can only become reality through the
X&yos (the word), and he proclaimed that God was the word—the
beginning of all things —that He was goodness. Plato, therefore,
opposed the ancient notion that God could be passionate, envious,
or jealous, or that evil could have originated with Him. Intellect
was with Plato productive (creative), indivisible, and all-pervading.
No thoughts could come to reality without “ words.”—The word,
with Plato, was God, in the sense of the Egyptians, and “ God
was in the beginning the word, and the word was with God, and
the word was God,” and was adopted in the spirit of Plato by the
later Christians.
*
According to Philo (a contemporary of Christ), the Jews be
lieved God to be enthroned in eternal perfection and wisdom
in Heaven, rewarding the good and the virtuous. All other divine
deeds were done by different spirits (messengers)—especially the
judging and punishing of the wicked. God did not judge, but a
Being standing next to Him—the divine “ Logos ”—the “ word ”
(reason, intellect, understanding,) performed that function. The
Logos was with Philo the invisible, bodiless spiritual essence of all
things visible; it was no person, nothing tangible or expanded,
but the purest manifestation of mind, the principal element of all
ideas, the life of life, the eye of eyes, the primitive conception of
the universe. The “ Logos ” was omniscient, it was past, present,
and future; it was the Alpha and the Omega of all things ; it was
imperishable, eternal, passionless, and infallible. God was its father,
Sophia (wisdom) its mother. It was the splendour, reflection, and
essence of God. It was God’s angel and messenger. God’s ser
vant and mediator. The “ word ” had created the world, and
given laws and order. The “word” was the supreme judge be
tween God and man, mortality and immortality, the spiritual and
the material; it was the light of God and of the world ; the ruler
and guide of all things created, and all creatures. The “ Logos ”
was the first-born “ Son of God.” All these notions were applied
tQ Christ, though they are distinctly found in the mysteries, and
* See—Plato: Phsedrus, Theaetetus, Sophist, &c. C. S. Henry, D.D.
*“ An Epitome of the History of Philosophy,” London: Longman and Co.,
1849.—Dr. Kostlin, “ Theologische Jahrbiicher,” 1851.—Dr. Zeller, “Theol.
Jahrb.,” 1841.—Ackermann, “ Das Christliche in Plato,” 1835.
�Christianity.
5
philosophical systems of the Heathens and Jews. So far as the
spiritual essence of all this metaphysical symbolism is concerned,
it was unquestionably correct to have ascribed it to Christ, for we
< may trace to him and his pure, unalloyed teachings, the principle
of the Logos as universal love and brotherhood.
But historical Christianity, as it evolved itself in time and space,
did not maintain this spiritual broadness, this homogeneous foun
dation, which could have turned humanity into one great brother
hood. It is a fact, an incontestable historical fact, that nearly all
the more highly developed religious systems of humanity had at
first monotheism for their basis. This, however, did not long satisfy
the craving of the masses for emotional excitement. The Fathers
“ majorum gentium” were followed by Fathers “ minorum gen
tium.” The unity of the Deity was divided into three persons.
A disguised Polytheism was slowly, but surely, introduced through
the worship of various angels and saints—opposed by correspond
ing demons and wicked spirits. The Heathens, with their poetical
impersonations of the forces and phenomena of nature, were
abhorred and cursed, and yet their polytheistic mode of thinking
and worshipping was adopted. Up to the year 60 a.d. the Chris
tians had to observe the diet of the Jews, and to practise circum
cision.
The use of holy water was ordered by the Christians 120 a.d.,
in conformity with the Persians, Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, and
Romans, who looked upon water as the mysterious life-giving ele
ment. According to the Indian sacred writings, “ When the world
was still buried in the night of chaos, water existed, veiling as the
breath of the Divinity the unshapen earth.” According to the
G-enesis of Manti, “ Water separated heaven and earth.” “ Water
was the essence of life, when the earth was still barren and uninha
bited.” The efficacy of water was recognised thousands of years ago
by the lawgivers of India and their Brahmans; the Persians intro
duced baptism, the Egyptians hallowed it; the Jews had it; the
Essenes considered it an essential act, symbolic of the purification
from all worldliness, and the Greeks practised it in their Orphic
mysteries. We trace the rites of baptism over the Atlantic Ocean,
and find that they were observed by the Aztecs in America. Water
was considered all over the world the “ fountain of regeneration,”
“ the symbol of life.” “ Man must be born anew of water.”
Through water the Heathens of old, and the Christians of a later’
period, were to enter into rpligious communities. “ Water mysti
�6
Christianity.
cally washed away the sins of the world, water made ns twice-born,
and admitted us into the state of chosen Brahmans.”
In order to detach Christianity from Judaism, the celebration
of the Sunday, instead of the Sabbath, was decreed in the second
century, after Christ himself had opposed the rigid observance of
that day with all his power. At the same period (150 a.d.) the
worship of Christ as God was instituted. Not in the sense of the
“Logos,”but in the sense of the worship of the visible ancient
Heathen Gods. His form, as the good shepherd, was carved and
painted, he was represented on the Cross, with a drooping head, a
picture of suffering and misery. The bright, the glorious Redeemer
of humanity, the incarnation of love, was not shown with a beam
ing countenance, rejoicing that he had fulfilled his destiny—but '
heart-broken, and writhing in the agony of death, though death
could not exist for a God !
By degrees the Apostles and Saints received body and form,
and the worship of images was introduced 350 A.n. The old
Boman household gods were exchanged for images of the saints.
The “ Lararium,” a recess for the tutelary god in every Pagan
house, became an “ Oratorio.” Cybele, the mother of the heathen
gods, had her substitute in Mary, the mother of Christ. The
Christian images began to weep, to perspire, and to wink, just as
the miraculous images of the Heathens had done, like Apollo at
Cumae, and Juno at Lanuvium. The images of Christ,—the
Virgin and some saints were dressed, decorated with jewels, and
carried about in processions, in the same way as the heathen images
had been treated in India, Egypt, Greece, and Borne. This led to
a schism in the church. Some Christians, strengthened in their
abhorrence of these idolatrous practices by the purer monotheistic
Jews and Arabs, by Greek and Boman philosophers, considered
that the teachings of Christ were being defiled, and the first
“ iconoclasts ” began to rage against customs and ceremonies which
they held were opposed to the fundamental principles of Christ
ianity. We trace the same iconoclastic spirit in the Netherlandish
image-breakers and the Puritans of England, as the survival of a
tendency which manifested itself during the earliest times of
Christianity.
The establishment of monks and monasteries, of cloisters and
nuns, followed next, in imitation of Indian Vanaprasthas (inhabi
tants of woods, deserts and caves), Sunnyasis, Yogis, or Bisbis,
who for the greater glory of God were. capable of standing on one
�Christianity.
7
leg for twelve years, or holding up their clasped hands until their
nails grew through their flesh. Like Egyptian and Buddhistic
fanatics who thought idle contemplation far more meritorious
than useful activity, monks and nuns began to take possession of
Christianity. They indulged in peculiar hoods, beards, caps, and
dresses; affected sombre colours in combination with white and
brown, or red and blue; some wore shoes, others had none; some
neglected personal cleanliness, others did not comb or trim their
beards, or cut their hair ; others made themselves a crown of
thorns of their hair by shaving the top of the head; some wore
iron girdles studded with nails round their waists on the bare
skin. Some lived on locusts, others on dry bread; others again, as
the “ Boskoi ” (grazing monks), on grass. Some lived alone in caves
and huts. Claudius Rutilius Numantianus (in the 5th cent, a.d.),
gives a description of the island of “ Capreria,” in his “ Itinerarium,” which runs thus: “ The whole island is filled, or rather
defiled by men who fly from the light. They call themselves
Monks or Solitaries, because they choose to live without any
witnesses of their actions. They fear the gifts of fortune, from
the apprehension of losing them, and, lest they should be miserable,
they embrace a life of voluntary wretchedness.” The sensible
Roman writer then exclaims: “ How absurd is this choice! how
perverse their understanding! to dread evils without being able to
support the blessings of the human condition. Either this melan
choly madness is the effect of disease, or else the consciousness of
guilt urges these unhappy men to exercise on their own bodies
the tortures which are inflicted on fugitive slaves by the hand of
justice.”
The glorious teachings of Christ were turned more and more
into a gloomy ritual, deadening common sense and destroying the
reasoning faculty in those who did not shrink from allowing
superstitious frenzy to become master of their better understanding.
There is no delusion which these men and women did not turn
into an act of pious worship. “ Stylytes ” and “ Sancti Columnares ” began to abound. In imitation of their founder, Simeon,
a Syrian, these saints used to stand on pillars 40 feet high, and
there pray, in opposition to Christ’s distinct condemnation of
those hypocrites “ who pray standing in the synagogues, and
standing in the corners of streets that they may be seen.” “ When
thou pravest,” said Christ, “Enter into thy closet, and when thou
hast shut thy door pray to thy Father which is in secret.” Osten
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Christianity.
tation, pride, and boastfulness were fostered, instead of a correct
understanding of true Christianity, and this form of Fanaticism
produced, as all action does, a strong reaction. The Shemitic
spirit of the East revolted against this terrible mixture of a pure
monotheism with the most complicated and mystic polytheism,
and as I had the pleasure of showing in my lecture “ On the
Eastern Question,” delivered on the 25th of March, 1877, Mahomet
rose, and East and West were rent asunder, until “Blood and
Iron,” nearly 200 years later, gave another form to Christianity.
Whilst the establishment of monks and nuns was a silent, con
templative delusion, the crusades were a noisy and raving madness,
and as all raving, howling, screaming madness is to some extent
contagious, the whole of Europe was drawn into its vortex, and
millions of otherwise peaceful and sober-minded men were driven
to certain death on the distant battlefields of Asia and Africa.
This astonishing commotion had, however, a most salutary effect
on the culture and further development of Humanity. Europe
got rid of the noisy, fighting, drinking knights, and the temporal
possessions of the killed fell into the hands of the Church, or were
acquired by toiling, working, trading towns-men. What had been
till then, without real discipline and cohesion, received a firm and
undisputed organization. It is true that before this happened
Christianity had to undergo considerable changes. In 325 the
Duality of the Godhead in the Father and the Son was established,
and in 348 the monastic life was decreed to be sacred. Nothing
was then easier than to become a saint, it was only necessary to
retire from the world and do nothing; but at a later period
canonization became a rather expensive distinction. In 381 the
doctrine of the Trinity of the Godhead was decreed, and ten years
later, in 391, the Latin mass was introduced, in order to separate
the praying priests from the people who spoke different languages.
Up to 433 the worship of the Virgin Mary, in imitation of the
Egyptian Virgin and Goddess Isis with her son Horus, had been
optional; it now became essential, and the double nature of Christ,
as God and Man, was made an indisputable article of faith. In
533 the belief in the double nature of Christ was advanced to an
indispensable dogma, necessary for our salvation. In imitation of
Indian, Persian, and Egyptian customs, extreme unction was intro
duced as a means of entering heaven.
Festive days in imitation of Indians, Persians, Egyptians, Phoe
nicians, Phrygians, Jews, Greeks, and Bomans were established.
�Christianity.
9
The Purification, Annunciation, Assumption, &c. of the Virgin
Mary became holy days. In imitation of the heathen ceremonies
in honour of Vesta, the Church ordained a corresponding festival.
Asses were walked in procession, decorated with flowers and leaves.
Prophets, Sybils, and Balaam himself were represented on such
occasions. A Virgin and a child were seated on a donkey, and
led by the motley crowd into one of the Churches. High Mass
was said, and priest and people brayed, instead of chanting “ Amen.”
Sometimes the revellers had the churches to themselves, like the
Babylonians when worshiping Mylitta (the Goddess of Love), once
a year, or like the Greeks and Bomans, when worshipping the God
of Wine, Dyonisius or Bacchus. The Christians on such occasions
dressed themselves as Satyrs or wild beasts, they celebrated a
burlesque mass of their own composition, consumed fat bacon, and
played at dice on the altar. A pope or abbot of fools was chosen.
This custom still survives in Mayence and Cologne, where the
feasts of Pools, “ the feriae stultorum ” of the Pagans are celebrated.
The Carnival, followed by fasting, was instituted in imitation of the
Saturnalia and Lupercalia of the Bomans. Prom the Indian
Brahmans, Buddhists, and Egyptians the doctrine of purgatory was
borrowed, and became from 593 one of the most profitable sources
for enriching the Papal exchequer. It was, however, also instru
mental, after more than 900 years, in breaking up a system built
on the distorted teachings of Christ. In 653 East and West
separated doctrinally, the Clergy in the East not acknowledging the
likeness and equality of the Eather and Son, but asserting that the
Son though like, was not equal to the Pather. The West, on the
other hand, insisted on the likeness and equality of the Pather and
the Son. In the year 750, as another means to enrich the Church
and priesthood, Masses for departed Souls were ordered to be said.
How vast the spread of idolatry and superstition amongst Christ
ians must have been, may best be judged from the decision of the
Synod, held at Prankfort in 794, which forbade the offering of
prayers to Saints. Like the Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, and
Bomans, the Christians had their patron Saints. God, the Logos
and his incarnation Christ were forgotten and ignored, but the
worship of Saints and relics was introduced, altogether changing
the sublime character of Christianity, whose founder had discarded
all outward formal observances, and taught us the most exalted
principles of morals and mutual love. Belies were suddenly not
only introduced, but prayed to. A kind of Eetish-worship was
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Christianity.
established. The priests pretended to possess a feather from the
wing of the Archangel Gabriel; the sword and shield of the
Archangel Michael; some of the breath of Christ preserved in a
sacred pyx; a bottle filled with Egyptian darkness I sounds
from the bells which were rung at the entrance of Christ in
Jerusalem ; a ray of the star which guided the Wise Men from the
East. Later they pretended to possess a piece of the skin of St.
Dorotheus, who was flayed alive; some of the pitchers used at the
wedding at Cana; the comb of the Virgin Mary; the pole on which
the Cock perched when he crew after Peter had thrice denied his
master; some feathers from the wings of the same bird ; hay from
the manger in which Christ had lain ; the staff with which Moses
divided the Red Sea; thorns from the fiery bush before which
Moses stood. The chains of Peter, Paul, and John the Baptist; a
tooth of St. John, the Evangelist, and a piece of his shirt; a piece
of the arm of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary ; the sword
of St. Maurice which an Angel brought from heaven (at Nurem
berg, 1464) ; the head of John the Baptist; the bones of Balaam’s
ass ; the slippers of St. Clara, and nails from the cross (at Amiens).
All this may seem barely credible, but it must not be forgotten that
in our own century, this nineteenth century of progress and en
lightenment, the seamless Coat which Christ was said to have worn,
was exhibited at Treves, and attested to have worked miracles.
Of the cross to which Christ was nailed, more chips were sold than of
the 7 bones of Buddha, each of which was said to have been divided
into 12,000 pieces, making 84,000 fragments; if collected these splin
ters of the one cross would probably have furnished enough material
for some 12,000 crosses. Not less important were the real skulls of
the three Wise Men of the East, “ Caspar,” “ Melchior,” and “ Bal
thazar,” which were preserved in three different places, making nine
heads for the three, or three heads for each Saint. More miraculous
still was “ the house of the Virgin Mary,” which is not to be found
in Palestine, but at Loreto in Italy. The Legend tells us that,
when the Saracens conquered Judaea, Angels bore away the house
in which Mary had dwelt, and first deposited it at Tersate, near
Eiume, but later took it to Loreto, where it bears the following
Inscription: — “ The house of the Mother of God in which the
word became Flesh.” There is, however, some doubt as to whether
this is the house in which Christ was conceived at Nazareth, or the
one in which Christ was born at Bethlehem. If this legend may
be believed in, why not that which makes the Wizard, Merlin,
�Christianity,
11
carry Stonehenge through the air from Giant’s Causeway to the
plains of Salisbury; or why should it not be true that Zarathustra
lived for 40 years on one piece of cheese, which never grew old or
diminished in size.
The terrible, sunken state of Christianity at this period may be
further studied in the dry enactments of the Church in 800 a.d.
An English Monk, Winfred, known under the name of Bonifacius,
attempted at this time to reform the morals of the Clergy, and
exhibited great zeal in propagating Christianity in Germany. He
assisted Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus) in his endeavour to bring
some kind of order into the dissolute state of the Church. Win
fred succeeded in persuading the first German-Roman Emperor to
submit to the sole authority of the Pope. The Bishops were in
future to be confirmed by the Pope, their provincial Synods were
to be abolished, and their resolutions declared null and void.
Legates, as representatives of the Pope, were sent all over the
Christian world, and it was their duty to carry out the dictates of
the one and indivisible central Papal power. The Pope was then to
be raised to the dignity of a temporal Prince, and united in his per
son Church and State, or rather the power over Heaven, Earth, and
Hell. In 805 the decree forbidding direct prayers to Saints was
enforced by Charlemagne. In 850 the Episcopal power, as an
independent element, was abolished by means of the falsified
Decrees of Isidorus, which began to form the basis of the Pope’s
supremacy in lay as well as in spiritual matters. In 993 Pope
John XV. ordered the worship of the Mother of Christ, as the
Mother of God : many Saints were canonized, and the right of'
canonization by Bishops was approved. In 1000 Church Bells
came into general use for the first time. In the year 1015 the
monks had to conform to a strict rule of celibacy, and in 1074,
Gregory VII. extended celibacy to all priests.
The Church became day by day wealthier. Masses for the dead
and the living were to be paid for; relics were sold wholesale;
sins were forgiven according to fixed tariffs ; souls were freed from
purgatory for so much money paid into the Pope’s exchequer; dis
pensations from fasting, and eating fish on Fridays, or from contract
ing forbidden marriages, were bargained for ; pilgrimages were en
couraged to obtain money from the deluded wanderers; the dying
were assiduously attended to, and their last wills carefully drawn
up, generally ensuring the augmentation of the worldly goods of the
church in exchange for the spiritual welfare guaranteed to the tes-
�12
Christianity.
tator in another world. Tithes were imposed, alms were demanded,
subscriptions were solicited, collections were made; kings, princes,
counts, nobles, citizens, traders, and even beggars, had to pay for
licences, in order to practise their vocations. Heretics were
ferreted out, their bodies burned in reality, or in effigy; and
their goods and chattels, their lands and property invariably con
fiscated for the benefit of the Church. On all occasions, in all
churches, throughout the whole of Christendom, the phrase re
sounded “blessed are the poor” not so much “in Spirit” as in
worldly goods, “ for their’s is the kingdom of Heaven.” By
means of a distorted phrase of Christ’s teachings the Church grew
richer and richer, so that more than two-thirds of the landed
property of Europe fell into the hands of the clergy.
These were the component elements which enabled one of the
most accomplished rulers of the Christian Church, Gregory VII.,
to establish its supremacy and universal dominion. Studies were
commended; arts were cultivated; schools, seminaries, and univer
sities were established with one exclusive aim: to increase the
temporal and spiritual power of the Pope.
This provoked the antagonism of the Teuton Emperors who
with their indomitable subjects, more than any other nation, stood
in need of the Christian discipline of passive obedience, and con
trolled activity. But the acting forces of morals and intellect, if
one-sidedly cultivated in humanity, may, through this dangerous
disturbance, easily come into conflict; and this now happened.
The lay-power saw itself reduced to a nonentity; altogether effaced
in temporal as well as in spiritual matters by the Popes, and their
obedient tools. The emperors began to revolt—not for intellectual,
but for pecuniary reasons. The bishops and other church-digni
taries had hitherto been called upon to pay to the imperial ex
chequer a certain sum for their investiture. This privilege was
now taken from the emperors, and the popes were endowed with
the sole right to appoint bishops and other church-dignitaries, and
to receive the fees for such investitures. This led to one of the
grandest struggles, recorded in the annals of history, between
Henry IV. and Gregory VII. At a diet, called together at Worms
(1076), the Pope was deposed, and in answer to this insult he ex
communicated the German Emperor, and all those who supported
him, and absolved his subjects of their allegiance to their lawful
lord and king. The dukes and nobles in the north of Germany were
for the Emperor, but most of the princes of southern Germany took
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13
the part of the Pope. The majority of the bishops who felt the
autocratic power of the Pope, sided with the Emperor; but the
monks, controlling the consciences of the ignorant masses, fought
the battle of the Pope, and were successful.
The Emperor saw himself day by day more deserted and isolated,
and resolved at last to ask the forgiveness of his spiritual superior,
who had fled to Canossa. Three days and three nights the mighty
Emperor of Germany had to stand, barefooted, bareheaded, in a
penitent’s white dress, exposed to hunger and thirst, to cold and
ignominy, to receive at last the Pope’s forgiveness. This did not
prevent the long and sanguinary strife which the revengeful, insa
tiable, and indomitable High-priest of the Romish Church kindled
in the German Empire. Bishops and counter-bishops, kings and
counter-kings, fought against one another. The battle-cries,
“ Pope ” or “ Emperor,” resounded everywhere. Devastation ruled
supreme. Fanaticism and superstition, plague and hunger, held
their awful revels, and death mowed down the people by thousands.
This terrible storm, produced by a conflict between the conservative
static power of morals, one-sidedly used by the Church, and the pro
gressive dynamic force of intellect as embodied in the lay-power of
the German emperors, was however most salutary in its effects on
humanity. The storm subsided. Towns and monasteries learned
to know their own powers. The former in opposing, the latter in
supporting the papal authority. Towns and monasteries became
the next safe refuges of wealth, free-thought, and learning.
The oppressed and neglected, or only one-sidedly cultivated
dynamic force broke forth into glorious activity in those very caves,
holes and dungeons which had been erected to destroy man’s
reasoning, inquiring, inventing and discovering faculty,—to
turn him into a groaning, praying, sighing, chanting, and
altogether useless machine. Prior to the ninth century there had
been no system either in History, or Philosophy. All was legendary
poetry. Dead bodies carried their own heads under their arms.
Saints were seen at the same time in different places. The sacred
tooth of Apollonia (still preserved in a jewelled casket at Cologne)
cured tooth-ache, when merely looked at. Records abounded of
fires which had been extinguished by the mere mention of the
name of Florian; and pigs and fishes were said to have listened
with rapt attention to eloquent sermons on the “conditional
immortality of the soul.” It was here, in England, that from the
dark recesses of the lonely cloisters and monastic schools, Scotus
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Christianity.
Erigena, the founder of the Nominalists, proclaimed his meta
physical hypotheses “ On nature,” based on the following four forces:
а. One that creates, and is not created.
б. One that is created, and creates.
c. One that is created, but does not create.
d. One that is neither created, nor creates.
The “ Nominalists” who relied on Aristotle, were opposed by
the “ Realists” who took Plato for their foundation, and had their
leader in St. Anselm (Archbishop of Canterbury), who devoted the
whole of his life to find out the real “ origin of evil.” Sanguinary
battles did not cease; but men began to take an interest in those
word-tournaments that took place in the different theatres of the
universities at Salerno, Bologna, Florence, Cordova, Paris, Oxford,
Montcassin, &c. “ The disputants both fought with dialectical
Grecian swords, Roman clubs, and theological word-spears, they
quoted and re-quoted, explained, finessed with phrases, thrust in >
the name of Aristotle, and parried with a sentence from Plato.” *
In the midst of the dark night of Mediaeval superstition and
artificially kept up ignorance we hear Bonaventura discoursing on
the external, and the inferior ; the internal, and the superior fight;
till we come to Friar Boger Bacon, who attempted experimental
philosophy, whilst the angelic Doctor Thomas Aquinas discoursed
on the substance of “ absolute” or “ relative” angels; whether there
are different species of angels, and whether they are corruptible or
incorruptible; in what direct or indirect relation do angels stand to
time or space, and how many angels might concentrate on one mathe
matical point. This led to another learned dissertation on the ques
tion how many angels could assemble on the tip of a needle; whether
angels are of matter, and what kind of matter; whether angels
have the power to understand, to comprehend, to communicate
what they think; whether their cognition is sharper in the morning
than in the evening; whether angels are capable of love and
hatred; whether they delight in bodily, or only spiritual enjoyments;
whether they can multiply, and how they originated; whether they
were created in grace, and whether they partake of the eternal
beatitude and glory, or whether they can be wicked and sinful.
Finding that some of the angels had been proud and overbearing,
the transition from Angelology to Demonology was easy, and the
angelic Doctor shows himself as well acquainted with all the subtle
niceties of devilry, the pride and insolence of devils, their mis* “ The Historical Development of Idealism and Realism,” by Dr. G. G.
Zerffi. Trans: R. Hist. Soc. Vol. VII., p. 136.
�Christianity.
15
chievous propensities and unlimited wickedness, as though he had
lived a hundred years amongst the demons, and explored the
physical geography, topography, climate, fauna and flora of the
different infernal regions.
Let us not assume for one moment that the intellectual powers
of Thomas Aquinas were uselessly wasted. It was he who proved
to demonstration and conviction that one may talk any amount of
nonsense in the mystic garb of dialectical sense; that one may use
first, second, and thirdly with great apparent learning, to prove
nothing, and fill the air by means of lung-power with empty words
—words—words. We ought diligently to study the 10 volumes
of Thomas Aquinas’s “ Summa Totius Theologiae.” Many learned
men have done so, and left the barren fields of metaphysics in
consequence, turning, like Occam, the invincible Doctor, to common
sense, and demanding a total reform of philosophy, just as we in
modern times insist on a total reform of education.
The vagaries and dreams, the delusions and hallucinations of the
“ Patres minorum gentium,” led to a better study of the hidden
forces of nature. Abstractions and reflections were made subor
dinate to impressions, exciting perceptions, engendering sensations,
which had to be mastered, grouped, and classified on the basis of
causation by a clear self-conscious mind, able to distinguish
between the probable and possible, and the improbable and im
possible.
In spite of St. Benedict’s assertion that there was such a thing
as “ ignorant knowledge ” and ” wise ignorance,” one of a number of
senseless sayings which have served to check Humanity in the
proper exercise of its reasoning powers, a better appreciation and
application of arithmetic, mathematics and geometry worked great
changes in the intellectual world. Agriculture was treated scien
tifically by the monks; classics were copied; bridges were built;
abbeys, cathedrals and churches constructed; works of art pro
duced ; colours used, leading to the study of chemistry, and gra
dually the inherent dynamic force of humanity burst asunder the
chains of gross ignorance, and became, through “ gunpowder,” the
torch-bearer of equality and brotherly love in the dark night of
superstition. America was discovered, and the dogmatically con
tradicted rotundity of the earth established. Mother Church con
demned the new-fangled ideas, and burnt heretics who ventured to
assert that the earth was moving round the sun, and not the sun
round the earth. More powerfully even than gunpowder and the
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Christianity.
discovery of America, the invention of the “ art of printing ” con
tributed to the possibility of the grand and mighty Reformation,
which was instituted by Wyckliff, Huss, Beuchlin, Erasmus of
Rotterdam, Luther, and Melanchthon. The Reformation en
deavoured to lead Christianity back to its primitive purity,—and
assumed, therefore apparently, a retrograde movement. This Re
formation is still going on—in spite of the stationary efforts of
some sects, however powerful, who think that man ought to pro
gress materially, financially, commercially, hygienically, and tech
nically, that he ought to be a free-trader, but on no account a free
thinker who dares to inquire into the past historical develop
ment of Humanity from a higher scientific point of view, with the
same freedom that is conceded to researches into the statistical
tables of export and import, of diseases, of births, deaths, and
marriages, the mileage of railways and electric wires, the state of
the army and navy, and the land-question.
It is still the spirit of authority, borrowed from the Hebrews,
that opposes the spirit of inquiry, taught us by the Hellens. Faith
and Science—or Hebraism and Hellenism are at war. In speaking
of Hebraism I must not be understood to attack those who now
profess the Jewish religion ; all who have followed my lectures will
know that I have at all times advocated, and shall always advocate,
complete tolerance of all creeds, and equal civil right® for all races,
whether white, yellow, or black. It is, however, my duty to point
out the influences of Hebraism and Hellenism from a historical
point of view, and in doing this, I do not mean to abuse the one
or inordinately to exalt the other. Both Faith and Science are
based on ignorance, with this distinction, that the votaries of
Faith submit to a doubtful authority, arbitrarily set up by most
distinguished, wise, and moral men who, however, could not
possibly have known more than the spirit of the times in which
they lived allowed, or the means of acquiring knowledge at their dis
posal enabled them to learn, but who are to be looked upon as in
fallible authorities for all times to come. This assumption neces
sarily led to a stationary state of believing, and checked the im
portant faculty of inquiry. Hebraism was bent one-sidedly on
proving that the past alone was true, that it was to be invariably
so in the present and the future; though this is contrary to the
very thinking, reasoning, inquiring spirit of intellect, with which
God has endowed us, and which was developed in us by Christ.
Science, on the other hand, endeavours to vanquish the curse
�Christianity.
17
of ignorance by free-inquiry, and not by Faith. The supernatural
may be there, the miraculous may have occurred, but neither of
them can be an object of Science. For if supernatural, it must be
incomprehensible, and to treat the incomprehensible scientifically
is in itself an idle attempt.
We must not assume that the static force can alone push on
humanity, nor discard the dynamic power, which fosters in us the
good sense to acknowledge the necessity of a counteracting power,
and is ready to do justice to the past, in endeavouring to change it
slowly, by degrees, and with all reverence for its antiquity. But
the spirit of reaction, of stability, of retrogression, is always directed
to the past, complaining bitterly that the present and future will
not abide by its notions, and to this phantom millions and millions
of human beings have been sacrificed. What are all the conspi
racies against single despots, popes or autocrats, in comparison
with the conspiracies of priests and blinded sectarians against the
innocent masses of the people whom they trampled under foot, left
in ignorance, and who were generally murdered, if in their misery
they endeavoured to improve their wretched lot. According to the
Old Testament, millions were slaughtered because they worshipped
a golden calf, set up by one of their rulers; or because they could
not pronounce the word “ Shibboleth,” looked at the broken ark,
or had a king after “ God’s own heart,” who committed every pos
sible crime, but generally did penance, and managed to have his
people punished for the wrong he had done. Wholesale murders
of the people attributed to the allwise, just, and merciful God, with
which the records of the past abound, were initiated by the Jews,
who began their proscriptions of the Gentiles under Trajan, and
were at last proscribed themselves. Theodosius persecuted the
Thessalonians in this spirit, and had 8000 of them massacred in the
amphitheatre. The Empress Theodora, a professed pious Chris
tian lady, blinded and maddened by misunderstood piety, had
100,000 inoffensive Manichseans slaughtered.
For a thousand years the world had to witness the persecution,
torture, and murder of innocent, hard-working Jews; but on what
principles did the deluded Christians base their wholesale massa
cres ? On the terrible law of retaliation, abolished by Christ: “ Ye
have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for
a tooth : But I say unto you That ye resist not evil.” We can have
no right to persecute any human being on account of his religious
opinions. We should endeavour, without any distinction of race
�18
Christianity.
or creed, to inspire humanity with loftier ideas of forgiveness,
patience, kindness, humility, and, above all, mutual love. We
should cease to perpetuate the inherited sin of exclusiveness, ignor
ing all that was glorious and divine in other nations, and not so
loudly proclaim our own holiness, because we adhere to certain
dogmas, or keep certain ritual and ceremonial formalities. The
seeds of stubborn righteousness; of cavilling on words ; on the
observance of outward postures without inward sense or meaning;
of hatred, persecution, and murder, were sown by those heartless
and narrow-minded Christians who endeavoured to oppose Hellen
ism, and fostered the dark spirit of Hebraism. These were the
men who checked the study of astronomy; discarded the knowledge
of geography; ignored zoology and ethnology; declared chemistry
a sinful prying into Grod’s mysteries; denied that geology was a
science; repudiated the theory of evolution; falsified chronology and
history, and treated cosmology with utter contempt. They placed
the spirit of stationary Hebraism above the progressive tendency
of Hellenism, inspired by the more cheerful and tolerant spirit of
Christianity.
“ If any prophet comes who dreams a dream, you shall put him
to death.” This terrible saying became a religious brain incrusta
tion, a pious unrelenting brain-petrification, and was the cause of
the Crusades, the persecution of the Albigenses, *
the Sicilian
Vespers, the 30 Years’ War, the misdeeds of the Inquisition, the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the Dragonades in Alsace. A
wild chaos of superstition and ignorance spread its poisoning
influence all over the regions where Christians ruled under the
false pretence of “ Loving their neighbours as themselves.” Witch
hunters with retrievers went out to discover the hidden haunts of
the Devil, in a squinting woman, a mole on the body of a child, or
the unholy speeches of old crones. The slightest doubt in a dogma
was sufficient cause to have a man or a woman put to the rack, and
finally under ceremonies which might almost be called comical, if
they had not been so revoltingly cruel, burnt to death. Even
Popes did not escape suspicion. One of them, who studied at the
University of Cordova, and was well versed in the rule of three,
was suspected of having been aided in acquiring this astounding
accomplishment by his Infernal Majesty “in propria persona.”
An Archbishop of Mayence was accused of downright heresy, be
cause he dared to make some chemical experiments. The mother
of the celebrated Astronomer Kepler, who was accused by hei’
�Christianity.
19
son-in-law of witchcraft, escaped being burned alive only through
the presence of mind of her son, who proved by mathematical
calculations that the dates of her birth, her age, and the constel
lations at the time of her marriage, were all in contradiction of her
being a witch. Terrible madness, under the garb of a distorted
Christianity, deluded even the most learned of those times. Fury,
envy, covetousness, ignorance, prejudice, and intolerance sought
everywhere for sanguinary sacrifices, because the blinded Theolo
gians in their zealous excitement, were more bent on the perpetua
tion of a spirit of hatred and wholesale murder, than the practice
of Christ’s command : “ Ye have heard that it had been said, Thou
shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy: but I say unto
you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you.”
Had human beings understood Christ’s teachings and philosophy,
supported by however superficial a knowledge of the historical
progress of humanity, they could never have committed such
crimes. Christians sacrificed, at the lowest possible computation,
16,083,019 human beings in 1600 years to their theological
differences, endeavouring to oppose Philosophy and History with
the same cruelty as the Bomans opposed Christianity at its bright
dawn.
Science now occupies the same position in regard to antiquated
superstitions, as did Christianity in opposition to the sunken
morals of the Heathens, and the petrified formalism of the He
brews. All the military force of the world cannot stop the pro
gress of Modern Thought. And what is that progress ? Is it
destructive or constructive? Are its tendencies bent upon the
annihilation of true Christianity, or are the followers of Francis
Lord Bacon in endeavouring to study nature and her phenomena
not promoting true Christianity ? Are we not to leave the Idols of
the tribe, the cave, the market-place, and the pulpit, in order to
practise benevolence and kindness, not only towards dumb crea
tures, but also towards human beings ? In our social organization,
we have neither attained the solution of the, mathematically correct,
moral laws of Spinoza, nor the sublime laws ruling the universe
as discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, being attraction (love), and
gravitation (order). The “ monas monadum ” of Pythagoras revived
by Leibnitz, is not yet Christ’s loving Father “ who maketh his
sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just
and the unjust.” Had we earnestly acted upon this principle, the
terrible scene enacted at the gates of one of our workhouses,
�20
Christianity.
where a poor woman died on a cold November morning—refused
admittance by the heartless master—could never have occurred.
This man escaped unpunished, whilst another individual who sent
six canaries through the post, had to suffer two months hard labour,
because two of the birds were found dead. Is this fact not a clear
proof that the life of a canary bird is of far greater value to us,
than that of a human creature ? But why ? Because we trouble
ourselves far more about the mystery of Transubstantiation or
grace, decreed as an article of faith, necessary to our salvation by
Innocent III. in 1215; or the necessity of auricular confession in
imitation of Egyptians and Greeks, ordered by the same Innocent
III., and revived by some clergymen, though they are members of
the reformed Church of England. We are still uncertain, whether
the Church had a right in 1440 to prohibit the Sacrament of the
Communion to be given to laymen in the two elements. It was only
in 1563 that all ecclesiastical power was to be concentrated in the
Pope, and that the Bishops were deprived of their rights to hold
regular convocations. The Christian faith, as late as 1563, at the
Council of Trent, was for ever established as the only true faith,
proclaiming the eternal damnation of all those who did not profess
the Christian, or rather, Papal faith. This astounding belief, so
degrading to the Creator, may be best illustrated by calculating
only the followers of Buddha, who must have numbered since 500
B.C., that is for 2,300 years, no less than 17,250,000,000,000 of
human beings, all created by an Almighty and merciful God, sent
into this world, in order to toil, to do no special harm, to die, and
then to be cast for ever into Hell fire. I know that this is not
the view of all Divines, for some of them have kindly invented
a neutral place in the universe for shady, colourless souls, who are
not exactly good enough for heaven, nor bad enough for the infernal
regions; for souls of good and kind-hearted men who do no harm,
but think for themselves, and who do not wish humanity to be
governed by the hierarchical dictates of spiritual despots, but by
the laws of an Intellectual Democracy that knows the limits of its
own power. The conclusive philosophy of Immanuel Kant shows
us the real tendency of our modern times, “ to spread the greatest
amount of happiness among the people of all languages and creeds,”
bringing them into one common brotherhood. But Kant’s philo
sophy has done more than this; the mode of reasoning propounded
in it has unconsciously become the logical and mental heredity in
our generation. We think differently; the glorious awe of mys-
�Christianity.
21
tery, and the wonderful uncertainty of knowledge—the marvellous
domains of the supernatural—fade more and more away. It is in
vain that the grand-mother of Christ, the Holy Anne, should have
been distinguished according to a decree of the Church in 1854, by
an immaculate conception; that Pope Pius IX. should have issued a
syllabus in 1864, declaring war against all the scientific efforts of
our age, leading to scepticism, infidelity, and a prospective de
crease of the Peter’s pence; it is in vain that Pius IX. should
have established in 1870, to his own satisfaction, the infallibility
of the Pope—the electric light of common sense is opposed to all
supernatural agencies. We have only to try to be moral, and
to be intellectually cultivated, and all other unintelligible subjects
can be left to themselves. History teaches us the great fact that
there have been good and bad men, in all ages, at all places
under all religious creeds; and that with the growth of learn
ing and the spread of education, at all events we have become
more tolerant, and are now convinced that, no matter what
a man may profess, if his actions are in contradiction, with
our common laws, based on justice, he is a bad man. The
limits of our pure reasoning faculty have been narrowed, but
our powers to promote and develope our intellectual force have
marvellously increased with each succeeding generation. This
power will go onwards, unchecked by any artificial means. This
process of our progressive development I may illustrate by a scene
from life. A father sat one morning in his library pondering
over his books, when his eldest son, a boy just in his teens, rushed
in with a joyful face and exclaimed “ Papa, Colenso is right! ”
The father turned round astonished at his boy’s theological learn
ing, and asked him quietly, “ Have you read Colenso ? ’’ “ No,”
replied the boy, “ I have read a refutation of him, called ‘ Moses,
or the Zulu,’ which has convinced me that Colenso must be right.”
The father was silent, but was deeply impressed with the use
lessness of the exertions of the reverend opposer to Bishop Colenso
vainly applied in this age, when our whole brain-formation is
revolting against mere dialectical efforts; when an intellectual
democracy sways the minds of our very children, to check which
would be a crime—a crime which to commit, is becoming day by
day a greater impossibility. A bright and glorious future is
before humanity, when Christianity will revive, and turn our Arm
strongs and Woolwich infants into locomotives and motors of
electric light, when the last remnants of our monasteries and
�22
Christianity.
nunneries will be changed into schools and lecture halls; when
sects shall cease. Then a new heaven, and a new earth will be
visible, and the Alpha and the Omega of humanity will be love
in truth and truth in love. This future state of Christianity, based
on science and justice, on intellect and morals, I will endeavour to
describe in my next, the fourth and last lecture on “ Christianity.”
The Society’s Lectures by Dr. Zerffi. which have been printed, are—
On “Natural Phenomena and their Influence on different Religious
Systems.”
On “The Vedas and the Zend-Avesta: the First Dawn of Religious
Consciousness in Humanity.”
On “ The Origin and the Abstract and Concrete Nature of the Devil.”
On “ Dreams and Ghosts.”
On “ Ethics and ^Esthetics.”
The above are out ofprint.
On “ The Spontaneous dissolution of Ancient Creeds.”
On “ Dogma and Science.”
On “ The Eastern Question; from a Religious and Social point of view.”
On “ Jesuitism; and the Priest in Absolution.”
On “ Pre-Adamites; or, Prejudice and Science.”
On “ Long and short Chronologists.”
On “ Christianity—I. The Origin of Christianity from a strictly historical
point of view.”
II. “The Influence of the ‘Fathers’ on the further deve
lopment of Christianity.”
III. “Monasticism and Scholasticism; Inventions an
Discoveries; Faith and Science; Hebraism and
Hellenism.”
All price 3d., or post-free 3£d.
By the same Author are the following Works:—
“Faust,” by Goethe, with Critical and Explanatory Notes. Second
Edition. London: David Nutt, 270, Strand. 1862.
“ Spiritualism and Animal Magnetism.” Third Edition. London: Hardwicke and Bogue, 192, Piccadilly. 1876.
“ A manual of the Historical Development of Art: Pre-historic, Ancient,
Classic, and Early Christian.” London: Hardwicke and Bogue, 192,
Piccadilly. 1876.
�
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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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Christianity : third part. Monasticism and scholasticism; inventions and discoveries; faith and science; hebraism and hellenism, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's, Langham Place, on Sunday 20th November 1881
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
Sunday Lecture Society
Description
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Dr. G. G. Zerffi discusses a variety of topics in the third part of his series of lectures on the history of Christianity, including the influence of Heathenism, the Crusades and the Reformation.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 22, [2] p. ; 18 cm
Notes: A list of the Society's lectures listed p. 22 and the following unnumbered page.
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Sunday Lecture Society
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1881
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G3433
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<strong><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></strong><br />This work (Christianity : third part. Monasticism and scholasticism; inventions and discoveries; faith and science; hebraism and hellenism, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's, Langham Place, on Sunday 20th November 1881), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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Christianity
Christianity
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B 333#
N7M
THE
EASTERN QUESTION;
FROM A
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL POINT OF VIEW.
Q
lecture
DELIVERED
SUNDAY
BEFORE
THE
LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE'S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 25th MARCH, 1877,
By Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R.Hist.S.
lEonbon :
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1877.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�Origin of the Eastern Question.
Constantine the Great.
State of Society in the East.
Believers and Heretics.
The Hierarchy and the different Christian Sects.
Dissension amongst Christians.
The Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches.
Homousion and Ilomoiusion.
Idolatry in the West; Iconoclasm in the East.
The Arabs.
Mahomet.
The Koran and its Tenets.
Crusades and Scholasticism.
Influence of the East on the West.
Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks.
Social and Religious Organization of Turkey.
Home Rule and Foreign Affairs. Arts and Sciences.
Position of Women in Turkey.
Christians, Jews, Greeks, and Turks.
Russia. The Cross and the Crescent.
Possibility of a Solution of the Eastern Question.
Conclusion.
�THE EASTERN QUESTION;
FROM A
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL POINT OF VIEW.
HE Eastern Question has come upon us like a political and
intellectual thunderstorm. Thunderstorms in the
world,
Tlike those in the real, are produced by accumulationsidealacting and
of
counteracting electric or religious and social streams or currents.
The negative and positive electric currents rise up and concentrate,
some motion of air brings them into collision, and the storm with
its fierce lightnings and roaring thunder bursts out, often devasta
ting whole districts, but always purifying the air, and leaving
traces of a beneficial influence behind it. Eor more than a year
the thunderstorm of the “ Eastern Question ” has been raging
amongst us with the lightning of well-set, sensational phrases,
real or unreal atrocities, flashes of horrifying contradictory tele
graphic messages, reports of special, unspecial, “ our own,” and
“nobody else’s correspondents,” and the thunders of angry
pamphlets and platform speeches, delivered at boisterous indigna
tion meetings. East and West are one again, not in mutual love,
but in mutual hatred and animosity. There are people who would
like to see Cross and Crescent arrayed against one another in
deadly combat, and who would like to see the Turks leave Europe
at a moment’s notice with “ bag and baggage.”
What is this Eastern Question ? Has it been asked only
recently, or is it a historical problem, that has long stood before
the eves of Europe awaiting a solution ? How and when did this
Eastern Question arise ? Where and when did it originate ?
The Eastern Question began with Constantine the Great, when
he saw a burning cross hovering above the sun with the inscrip
tion “in hoc signo vinces ! ” (in this sign thou wilt conquer). The
same night, according to Bishop Eusebius, Christ appeared to
Constantine, and ordered him to have a banner made, bearing the
sign he had seen during the day, and assuring him that under this
banner (the labarum) he would conquer. It so happened that
Constantine disposed his troops with consummate skill, while his
�4
The Eastern Question; from a
adversary, Maxentius, occupied a very spacious plain, having the
Tiber in the rear of his army, which rendered retreat impossible.
The cavalry of Maxentius was composed of unwieldy cuirassiers,
or light Moors and Numidians, whilst Constantine had at his
disposal the vigour of splendid gallic horse “ which possessed
more activity than the one and more firmness than the other.”
The defeat of the hostile army was—in consequence of his better
tactics, and not in consequence of his dream and vision—complete.
Maxentius was driven into the Tiber, his head was cut oft’ and
publicly exposed, and Constantine became master of the Roman
Empire, after having put the two sons of Maxentius to death, and
extirpated his whole race. Constantine undoubtedly abolished the
Praetorian guards by the sword, deprived the Senate and people of
their dignities, exposed Rome to the insults or neglect of the
Emperors, and transferred the seat of the Roman Emperors to
Byzantium, which as Constantinople became from that time a new
Rome, and the centre point of the Eastern Question. Constantine
was an ambitious and genial character, as cunning as he was
generous, and as bigoted as he was cruel. He recognised in Chris
tianity a means for effectually destroying the old heathen world
(for monotheism stands so much nearer to “monodespotism ” than
polytheism), and exalting himself as omnipotent ruler on earth
and in heaven through the newr state religion.
The means he employed were not very Christian. He had his
own son, Crispus, executed on an unsupported charge brought
against him by his stepmother, Fausta; at the same time he
murdered his nephew, the son of Licinius ; and finally, convinced
of the groundlessness of the charge brought against his son, he
had his wife, Fausta, killed. Murder, superstition, visions,
dreams, apparitions, and sacred symbolic signs, mixed with
heathen ceremonies and a theocratic organization of the Church,
were the elements of which Constantine formed a new Christianity
in the East.
The Church suddenly raised to power soon arrogated to herself
infallibility, and assumed the terrible right of taliation, waging
sanguinary war against those who were not of her opinion.
Having the mighty arm of the lay power at her disposal, the
Church became by degrees omnipotent, and Christ’s simple teach
ing “ of a kingdom that is not of this world ” wTas used, to
found the most sanguinary Empire.
At the beginning of Christianity there were only loving com
munities that chose their own elders ; the communities increased,
�Religious and Social Point of View.
5
and overseers of the elders were found necessary; the overseers
again required patriarchs, and the patriarchs needed one above
them, the Bishop of Rome. This hierarchical crystallisation went
on gradually and slowly, became sterner and more powerful
through the increasing number of false prophets, mock-philosophers,
necromancers, Taumathurgi, miracle-workers, Egyptian priests of
Isis, Persian Magi, Jewish controversialists, and Greek casuists,
who all united to seek first, a living, and then a position, in order to
prosper through the credulity, superstition, and ignorance of the
masses. There was at that period a vast crowd of adventurers in
the East, who all traded in mystic doctrines, symbolic little
charms, incredible miracles, visions, dreams, and prophetic calcula
tions.
The Spiritualists abounded; they filled the market-places,
where they exhibited the most incredible feats before the eyes
of the gazing, wondering, and believing masses. In reading
history backwards, we may imagine what the effect of those
tricksters in supernatural wares must have been, when we find
in the nineteenth century, in spite of our advanced state of
civilization and learning, numbers of weak-minded men and
women, even of the better classes, who believe in any nonsense,
so soon as it is labelled “ supernatural.”
So long as the Church had no material support from the State,
Christianity spread through love and persuasion in spite of
competing miracle-workers, in spite of treachery, deceit and in
numerable incredibilities that hindered its progress amongst the
so-called educated classes. When Constantine took it up, and
lent it the imperial sword; when the tiaras and Mitres felt
themselves supported by the consuls, pro-consuls, magistrates,
lictors, and especially the executioners of the Roman Empire—
then the miracles ceased, and the supernatural became quite
natural. “ Woe” to any one who would have doubted that the
supernatural was not quite natural, and yet the dissensions
amongst the Christians, the heresies amongst the believers, and
the views the unbelievers took, were of an astonishing variety. But
the mighty State Church was equal to the terrible task which faith
imposed upon it. The massacres and executions of the unbelievers,
infidels, and heretics increased in a corresponding ratio with the
wealth and power, the sweet humility and self-abnegation of those
who styled themselves the followers of Christ. The unification of
the Christian Church, the purification of the different doctrines all
more or less tainted with abominable heresy, became the supreme
�6
The Eastern Question; from a
duty of the Church. It is a well-known and indisputable fact, that
after the death of Christ, his disciples dispersed, and formed nearly
as many sects as there were disciples.
There were the Gnostics, who most elaborately worked out the
theory of good and evil, of original sin and emanation, but they
could not see “ how the word became flesh,” and though they
believed Christ to be the Demiurgos, that is, an emanation of the
supreme Deity, they were extirpated as heretics in the sixth
century, a.d.
There were the Kerinthians, who could not see how any human
being could be born of a virgin ; they did not doubt that Joseph was
the father of Christ, but they could not believe in the resurrection
of Christ, and were extirpated in the sixth century, a.d.
The Ebionites objected to the genealogy of S. Matthew. Through
one of their leaders, Symmac, they propounded that Jesus was
never incarnate, that the Jews crucified one Simon the Kyerenian,
that Christ witnessed his own execution, ascended into heaven to
join his father, and was neither known by angels nor by men.
These theorists were extirpated in the sixth century, a d.
The Karpokratians believed in Christ as a superior human being,
endowed with a divine genius, but they disbelieved the resurrection
of the body, and they were extirpated in the sixth century, a.d.
The Cainists looked upon Judaism as full of immorality, and did
not believe that Christ could have come into the world to fulfil the
old law. They were also extirpated about the sixth century, a.d.
Marcion dared to teach that the gospels contradicted one another:
fortunately he founded no school, and when the authenticity of the
four gospels was settled by Church and State, there was no more
room for such wicked doubts.
The Alogians rejected the gospel of St. John, but were sacrificed
to that terrible error, and extirpated in the sixth century, a.d.
The Manicheans founded by Manes, who believed himself the
promised “Paraklitos” (St. John, xiv. 26), wished to bring harmony
into the comfortless teachings of the Gnostics and Zoroastrians, and
maintained a general return to God of all purified emanations.
Manes did not believe in the annihilation of matter, assuming it to
have been uncreated. This in itself was, of course, a most wicked
and erroneous assumption. Though Manes believed that Christ
and the Holy Ghost were sent into this world by God in order to
save humanity from the triumphant spirit of egotism, embodied in
Judaism and heathenism; though he himself and his followers led
a life of virtuous simplicity and ascetic self-denial, he was put to
�Religious and Social Point of View.
1
death 274 a.d., and his followers extirpated by fire and sword with
all possible love and kindness in the sixth century, a.d.
The Montanists, founded by Montanus, a Phrygian, who without
the permission of the Church believed himself, like Manes, to be the
promised “ Paraklitos,” professed Buddhistic tenets with the most
irreproachable vigour. “To renounce this world, was according to
Montanus, the duty of every free Christian, to live in God and to
rejoice in death his only aim.” lie proclaimed all knowledge and
earthly enjoyments as sinful. Until the sixth century, a.d., the
Montanists formed a special sect, but their tenets concerning the
duty of profound ignorance, and the sinfulness of all earthly en
joyments, found favour with the State Church, and they were kindly
received in the motherly bosom of Catholicism.
Arians, Novitians and Donatists fared no better than the others,
they were extirpated by fire and sword during the sixth century, a.d.
But the fathers and apologists, primitive writers and propounders
of Christianity, were not less numerous in their divergent opinions
with reference to tenets and dogmas, gospels and writings than
these sects. Simeon and Cleobius published works in the name of
Christ and bis Apostles. Eusebius published a letter from Christ
to King Abgarus, but Pope Gelasius declared this document a
forgery. A letter from the Virgin Mary to the inhabitants of
Messina is preserved in that town, dated Jerusalem, 42 a.d.
Though this was a clear forgery, a Jesuit, Inchofer, proved its
genuineness with great lucidity, and one must be obdurate indeed
not to be convinced by his proofs.
St. Justinus the martyr refers to certain documents relating to
Christ which must have been lost or voluntarily destroyed.
Tertullian mentions that Pontius Pilate sent the minutes of the
trial of Jesus of Nazareth or Bethlehem to the Emperor Tiberius,
who was so struck with the innocence of Christ that he ordered
the Senate to pay divine honours to the memory of Christ, which
the Roman Senate refused, not having been directly asked by those
concerned in the matter. It is scarcely necessary to mention that
this statement of things induced many pious forgers to write
reports in the name of Pilate. Gregory of Tours sternly believed
that he possessed the authenticated accounts of the miracles at the
death and the resurrection of Christ, just as Pilate sent them to
Tiberius. Scarcely had Christ expired on the cross with a prayer
for his enemies on his lips, when a host of forgers inundated the
world with descriptions and details of his private and public life.
S. Luke informs us “that many have taken in hand to set forth
�8
The Eastern Question; from a
those things which are most surely believed among us” (c. i. v. 1),
and notwithstanding that S. Mark and S. Matthew had written
their accounts, S. Ambrosius, Theophylaktes and other learned
commentators, assure us that this Evangelist only undertook to
write his gospel in order to counteract the great number of false
gospels, which S. Jerome finds too long to enumerate (ennumerare
longissimum esl). Origen, S. Ambrosius, S. Jerome and others,
mention a gospel of the twelve apostles: there were gospels of
S. Barnabas, S. Andrew, S. Bartholomew, S. Mathias, S. Peter
and S. James the younger; there were gospels of the Egyptians,
Hebrews, Nazarenes and a gospel of Truth. According to some,
there were some seventy and according to others about 146 in all.
With Constantine the Great, at last, some kind of harmony was
brought into the discordant spiritual life of the believing, but
disagreeing, Christians. This union was not fostered by persua
sion leading to conviction; but by the inexorable formula of old
Imperial Rome, that was suddenly enunciated in matters of faith.
The “ sic volo, sic jubeo ” of the episcopal majority at the council
of Nicea brought about union, but at the same time the most
sanguinary dissension between the Western and Eastern Churches.
They both agreed in the persecution of so-called heretics, who
could not at once detach themselves from the ancient holy books,
holy dogmas, and holy symbols which they had received on trust
from those who had stood so much nearer to the founder of
Christianity, and who could not follow the new theological casuists
into all their intricate windings of Egypto-Hebrew and Indo
Greek mysticism.
West and East, however, separated.
The small letter i was the real cause of that deadly separation.
“ Equal but not like,” and “like and equal,” this “ equal likeness ”
and “ equality but not likeness ” worked marvels of animosity,
hatred, and persecution amongst those who received the eternal
divine command, “ Love thy neighbour as thyself! ” The disputes
all bore upon the nature of Christ, not upon his glorious enact
ments of love and forgiveness, tolerance and peace, but upon the
mystic words, “Homousion,” meaning equality, sameness, or
oneness of essence or substance or being, and the equally mystic
word, “ Homoiusion,” meaning likeness of essence or substance or
being—as if anything could be like and not equal, or equal and
not like. With the East, Christ’s nature was like God the Father,
but not equal—not one and the same : and in the West, Christ’s
nature was not only like and equal, but the same as that of the
�Religious and Social Point of View.
9
Father. The East began to abhor this blasphemous assumption,
and to prove their subtle distinction with fire and sword. The
West, on the other hand, began to introduce more and more Pagan
ceremonies and festivities, the worship of saints, whose images
were painted and sculptured, in order to bring the originals
nearer to the senses of the believers, and to exhort them through
visible concrete forms to a more exalted spiritual life. No lover of
art will find fault with this tendency. Those painted walls and
painted windows, the sculptured saints and prophets served
Christianity as our modern illustrated alphabets or spelling books.
The child remembers so much easier that A stands for archer, if
it has at the same time the picture of a big-faced, fierce-looking
archer before it, who stands with crooked legs, letting fly an
immense arrow at an enormous black eagle with big claws, or at a
clumsy-looking frog ; or that B stands for butcher, killing a
ferocious, well-chained bull. Whilst the West laid down the
foundations of architectural, sculptural, and pictorial art, the East
demolished statues and quarrelled over abstruse formula. Turn
ing from statues to human beings, the Eastern Church extirpated
sectarians root and branch, murdered and poisoned and changed the
Christian religion into a perfect mockery, a system of most incredible
superstition and hypocrisy, and nameless crimes defiled the
once flourishing, glorious provinces of Asia Minor and the Greek
Peninsula. Temples and statues were hurled into ruin and dust.
In the West the old heathen gods and goddesses became Christian
saints : A enus was revived as the Virgin Mary: Minerva was
turned into St. Sophia: in Hermes,the good shepherd, and Apollo,
the sungod, they worshipped Christ; Bacchus became St. Paul:
J anus was turned into St. Peter; Hercules into St. Christopher:
Poseidon into St. Nicholas ; the “ Lares ” of the Romans were
advanced to household saints; St. Florian had to watch over fire,
like Vulcanus or Hepheistos ; the Titans were declared to have
been the fallen angels, and Cupid or Eros was revived as Asmodaeus, a mischief-making demon in matters of love. The forces
of nature that had been personified as lovely nymphs, tritons,
naiads, and nereids were degraded to uglv witches, imps, devils, or
infernal spectres. Whilst this idolatrous transformation scene
took place in the West, the East, with iconoclastic rage, disputed
on how the hand should be held when blessing, whether the
three fingers should be stretched out, or whether the thumb
should be joined to the third finger, and the first twro
fingers alone held up erect with the fourth, whether to have
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The Eastern Question ; from a
carved or only painted saints on a gold ground, and similarly
important questions.
In the meantime, trade, industry, commerce, arts and sciences
languished, and the new faith that ought to have stimulated the
vitality of humanity into new activity of love and kindness,
excited it to an utter dissolution of the religious and social
condition of the Byzantine Empire. Add to all this the variety
of nationalities, the scattered remnants of house and homeless
Jews, Greek sophists, Egyptian mystics, Roman plunderers,
Persian necromencers, fantastic gipsy cabbalists, and you will have
some idea of the Eastern Question that is to be solved once more
after 1552 years of continuous confusion.
Free from all such dissensions at this period were the direct
descendants of Abraham or Joktan, the son of Heber, or of
Ishmael, the Semitic race of the Arabs, who lived under Sheiks or
Emirs. They were divided into three principal groups : (1) the
Arabs or Aribahs, the direct descendants of Iram or Aram, the
son of Shein; (2) the Mouta-Aribahs, or the settled descendants
of Joktan or Jokatan, according to Erevtag from “Katana,” to
take up a fixed abode, the son of Heber, son of Salah, son of
Arphaxad, son of Shein: and (3) the Mousta-Aribahs, the
descendants of Ishmael (he who was born in the desert). They
had their sanguinary feuds, not referring to theological niceties
but to their tribal genealogical tables—each of the Sheiks or
Emirs priding himself on a purer and more direct descent from
Abraham. They were valorous, loved their independence above
all, and combined the perfect freedom of a nomadic and pastoral
life with the courteous refinement of daring traders. They
possessed settlements, but they hated the corruption of large towns;
they were proud of their one god, one sanctuary, the Caaba, one
horse, one sword, one bow, and as many arrows as they could
carry. They were chivalrous, wild in their love as in their hatred
and sanguinary revenge, but they were like the northern Teutons
of Europe, honest and tolerant of those who had not the honour
of being direct descendants of Abraham, or Joktan or Ishmael.
There were all the elements of a great historical future in these
wandering tribes if they could but be inspired with one common
thought, for one common cause; if they could but be made
conscious of their irresistible power, if once united to destroy
quarrelling and dogmatising Christianity in the East, to spread
one creed all over the world, to instal one God as the Supreme
Lord of the Universe. The moving power to accomplish this
�Religious and Social Point of View.
11
appeared in Mahomet at the right moment. Every right-minded
man must blush when he refers to our so-called learned Encyclo
pedias and finds if he looks for the article Mahomet, the assertion
made with surprising unanimity that Mahomet was “ one of the
greatest impostors.” This false notion, this contemptible ignoring
of the grandeur and intellectual and moral power of individuals,
so soon as they are not of our opinion, produces those entangled
questions between East and West, nations and nations that have
cost humanity torrents of blood. Ideas, which we would resent
with indignation if taught of us, are taught in schools for thousands
of years to millions and millions of human beings, and then we
are astonished if after having sown contempt and wild hatred we
find we cannot reap forbearance and love. If Christians cannot
afford to be charitable, when is charity to come into the world ?
Mahomet when he appeared on the stage of the world found
human society in a state of dissolution analogous to that which had
existed at the advent of Christ. The Arabs were addicted to a
rude kind of idolatry; they had but one unseemly sanctuary, the
Caaba, a simple square building, by the side of the well in which
Hagar found water for her pining Ishmael. The building contained
a black stone, the grand national talisman, a meteor which the
Arabs believed had been dropped from heaven by their supreme
deity Allah or Allah-Taala (the male or active principle of creation),
in honour of Alilath (the female or passive principle of creation);
the Greek Bacchus and Venus. This black stone was placed in the
south-western corner of the Caaba, at Mecca, and was consecrated
to Sabba, or Abbah (the Abads of the Zend-people in the centre of
Asia, and the Asen of the Teutons in the farthest north of Europe),
and entrusted to the care of the Koreish tribe, more particularly
to the Hashem family of which Mahomet was a descendant.
Abul Kasem Muhammed (the glorious) was born 571 in the sixth
century, a.d.—and died 632 (61 years old). His father was
Abdallah (the beautiful) who married Amina, and on this occasion
two hundred ladies are said to have expired of jealousy and despair.
His grandfather was Abdul Motalleb, who saved Mecca from the
Abyssinians, and triumphantly carried away the talisman, the black
stone, and had it replaced in the sanctuary. His great-grand
father was Hashem, who succeeded in averting a famine by sacrific
ing all his worldly goods to the suffering. What wonder that a
boy, with such a pedigree, should have become a religious dreamer
and a fanatic, in times, when he heard nothing but theological
discussions. The Persian legends assert that at the birth of
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The Eastern Question; from a
Mahomet the eternal fires on the altars of the Magi were ex
tinguished. It was further said that on the night of his birth all
heathen and Christian idols sighed and shrieked, and that a wise
Jew proclaimed from a watch-tower that the star of Messiah had
just risen, and that the Saviour of the world had been born. It
was said, that the first spiritual ray proceeding from Allah was
Mahomet’s soul, of which God proclaimed: “In thee dwells my
light, for thy sake let the earth expand itself, and I create paradise
and hell. The divine first ray had burned in Adam and Seth, in
Abraham and Moses, the prophets and Christ, but became flesh in
Mahomet.” When such ideas with reference to any mortal teacher
are spread, taught, and continually repeated from father to son, he
must in time become a mighty spiritual agent, and sway the minds
of millions and millions of people.
Divested of all “supernatural” cant, Mahomet must have been a
great and powerfid mind. He was undoubtedly a wise man in his
generation. When twenty-five years old he married an elderly but
rich widow Cadijah, and at the age of forty-one he first confessed
that he had received a divine revelation, which commanded him to put
an end to the idolatrous state of humanity and to teach in the true
Semitic sense the absolute indivisible unity of the one indivisible
Deity. Mahomet was illiterate and uneducated in theological
casuistry, but he read and studied the book of human nature. He
travelled as a keenly observant merchant, came into contact with
men of all nations and denominations, drew comparisons and
analogies between the creeds of all nations, and discovered with a
clear perception of combinations the weakness of the fallen Persian
and Roman Empires. He saw with a terrified and troubled heart
the degeneracy, profligacy, licentiousness of his times, and the
division, animosity and hatred amongst the Christian, Jewish,
Greek, and Egyptian absolute and dissolute theologians; he con
versed with Jewish rabbis, Persian parsees, Syrian monks, and
Christian sectarians who found refuge and protection amongst the
wild sons of the desert; he made himself acquainted with the laws
of Moses, the abstruse doctrines of Zoroaster, and the pure vivifying
teachings of Christ. Each year during the month of Ramadan
he withdrew from the world in the cave of Hera, three miles
from Mecca, and there he dreamt dreams, had lively visions,
spiritualistic communications from God, and visits from the angel
Namaus (Gabriel), who thundered into his ears these grand words:
“Devote thyself to the service of Allah (the one God), the Lord of
the East and West, of Winter and Summer; for there is no other
�Religious and Social Point of View.
13
God but He!” During fully three years he succeeded in converting
no more than seven or fourteen persons. The majority of his
family and the leaders of the Koreish tribe were violently opposed
to the reformer, seventy of the latter swore to plunge their swords
into his irreligious heart. Mahomet’s house was surrounded by
these wild fanatics, but he escaped (622 a.d. 16tb of July)- Ten
years later, Syria, the territories on the Euphrates and the Greek
Empire were invaded and Mecca taken by the victorious followers
of Mahomet, and the surrounding country as far as the Arabian
Gulf was conquered and placed under the dominion of this mighty
Puritan monotheistic ruler and his sword. Up to the period of his
flight Mahomet had wished to teach by persuasion: he was kind and
tolerant, but through violent resistance and unexpected victory his
wild Asiatic nature and his Semitic egotistic character gained the
upper hand. He then declared war—sanguinary war against all
those who did not share his religious opinions, and sacrificed them
to the wrath of his Allah. The Koran was to be the only holv
book of the world, written by the pen of light on God’s tablet,
containing the eternal decrees of God himself.
Mahomet’s faith stood to the other religions of the East exactly
in the same relation as Puritanism to the Established Church in
England; his soldiers were the mighty valiant covenanters of the
East, who rushed with their Koran as these with their Bibles into
battle and conquered. “To believe in the one God, to fast, to drink
no wine (which neither our covenanters have observed, and least of all
their descendants do observe), to remove the sense of speciality and
consequent separation from the infinite, arising from bodily limita
tion, and to give alms, that is, to get rid of particular private
possession,” were Mahomet’s principal injunctions; but the highest
merit in a believer on earth was his dving for the orthodox faith of
the prophet. “He who perished for this faith in battle after having
killed at least one infidel, was sure of Paradise.” Eor twelve
centuries Mahomet’s ideas have ruled the daily life, the hopes in a
future world, the prayers, morals and destinies of nearly one-fifth
of the human race. Since he first proclaimed his revelation to the
world, 3765 generations have passed away, amounting to about
thirty-six thousand millions of human beings (at a low rate), who
all acknowledge him as a special messenger from God. His
followers kindled in the West an analogous fanatic religious ex
citement, first in Charlemagne, who was a Christian Mahomet,
wielding the cross instead of the crescent, obeying a pope, instead
of Allah and his prophet; next in the mighty crusaders. Through
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The Eastern Question; from a
the Mahometans poetry, arts and sciences, chivalry and philosophy
were revived in the West. Scholasticism with all its brilliant
negative successes, its division into realists and nominalists, its
fierce battles on inherited sin and grace, regeneration, predestina
tion, and the eucharist—and its final positive results, showing at
last the utter uselessness of the dry, barren, dialectical efforts
leading to mere verbiage —or to speak with Hamlet to “words—
words—words!” — had its root in Mahometanism. Whilst our
ecclesiastical wise men contended that it is sinful to use blood, or
to eat things strangled, to partake of lard, to wear rings on the
fingers, that the priests ought to have beards, and that at baptism
men ought not to be contented with one single immersion, the
Arabs in the East still retained a high degree of zeal for the culture
of the sciences. They studied astronomy, arithmetic, algebra,
geometry, anatomy, chemistry, botany, and above all geography
and philosophy, especially in the more practical sense of Aristotle
through the immortal Averroes. Architecture and decorative
art received new impulses—for as long as Persians and Arabs
were the apostles of Mahometanism it had vitality. Thirtysix thousand fortified camps and places in Persia, Asia Minor,
Africa, and Europe were stormed and taken. More than twenty
thousand four hundred mosques, pointing with their slim minarets
to heaven, were constructed from the borders of the Ebro in Spain
to the shores of the Granges, from the Oxus and Euphrates to the
Atlantic Ocean, proclaiming the glory of Allah. All this was
accomplished a few decades after Mahomet's flight to Medina.
Without the quarrelling Christians there could have been no
Mahometans. The appearance and success of Mahomet prove the
eternal law of action and reaction in the intellectual as well as in
the physical world. The disturbed balance between morals and
intellect, between professions and actions, between mind and matter,
was to be adjusted in the East, and Mahomet with his faith worked
at this task. Religion was freed from all metaphysical subtleties.
The simplicity of faith was concentrated in one single indisputable
sentence : “There is but one Grod”—or “one first incomprehensible
cause.” Allah was to be the Grod of all, whether poor or rich, wise
or ignorant, who believed in Him, and his worship was to be purely
intellectual. No ceremonies, no symbols, no mystic representations,
no images of animals or men were tolerated. When Omar came
from Medina on a camel, carrying only two bags, one with rice,
the other with dates, a wooden dish and a leathern water-bottle,
constituting the whole of his furniture, and took possession of
�Religious and Social Point of View.
15
Jerusalem, the sacred town of Judaism and Christianity, he proved
the power of the fanatic faith on which Mahometanism was based.
In opposition to the Christian Church, pomp and vanity were to
give way to stern and shapeless faith. Theological discussions had
to yield to a deeper study of nature and science. The ink of the
doctors, not discussing incomprehensible mysteries, but the powers
of nature or the abstractions of geometry and mathematics, was
considered “equally valuable with the blood of martyrs.” Under
the gentle sway of the Caliphs, paradise was as much for him who
had rightly used his pen, not in questions of faith, (for these were
all settled in the Koran), but in subjects of medicine or alchemy,
as for him who had fallen by the sword. The world was declared
to be sustained by/our things: the learning of the wise, the justice
of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valour of the brave.
Instead of erecting dim-looking churches and splendidly decorated
public-houses in close vicinity, they built the school near the
mosque, and often the mosques were merely schools. Every thing
changed, when by degrees the wild Mongol hordes came down
from the highlands of Northern Asia, took possession of the
kingdom of the Caliphs, superseded the gentler rule of the Persians
and Arabs, and developed all the hidden faults and incongruities of
the Koran. The Eastern question became from that moment not
a religious, but a racial or tribal and social question. About 1100
a.d. the Mahometans were divided into several states, namely, the
Persian, Syrian, Median, Khorasan and the territory beyond the
Oxus river. The Tartars rose to power in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, and these hordes, under their leader Osman, meaning the
“ bone-breaker,” strengthened by robbers, fugitive Christian slaves,
founded a mighty Ottoman Empire on the ruins of the Seldshooks,
Arabs and Persians, aided by the dissensions of the degenerated
subjects of the Byzantine Emperors. This Empire expanded under
his successors, especially Mahomet I., who advanced as far as
Salzburg and Bavaria, whilst the pious fathers of Western Europe
tried to give spiritual peace to the Church by burning Huss at
Constance and deposing three popes. His son Murad II. though
opposed by the heroic Skanderbeg, and the still more heroic
Johannes Hunnyady, augmented the Empire till Mahomet II. took
Constantinople on the 29th of May, 1453, with the help of Christian
soldiers, who felt themselves more comfortable under the sway of
the Turks and Tartars than under their more implacable theological
masters. We may sneer at the Turks, who struck terror into all
Europe by their conquests, but it is a fact, that for three centuries
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The Eastern Question; from a
and a half, under twelve heroic sultans, they were invincible: they
subdued Egypt, the Barbary States, and all the Arabian Coasts on
the Bed Sea. “ In Europe they conquered the Crimea, and the
countries along the Danube; they overran Hungary and Tran
sylvania, and repeatedly laid siege to A ienna. At sea, notwith
standing the gallant resistance of the Venetians, they subdued
Rhodes, Kyprus, and all the Greek islands,” says the immortal
Cobden in his pamphlet on Russia, written exactly a quarter of a
century ago, in which he gave us sound advice with reference to
Turkey. He was, however, a preacher in the desert. Cobden
referred to the social and religious organization of the Turks, which
dates from 1538, when Soliman united in the Sultan the dignities
of the A ice-regent of the Prophet and the lay-ruler. The Koran
became from that time the only guide in social and political
matters: all other fields of learning and art were cordially despised.
The Turks are religiously ignorant of all that forms the education
of an Italian, Englishman, Frenchman or German. A Turk, or
rather Ottoman, knows nothing of the countries beyond the bounds
of the Sultan's dominions. “Notwithstanding that this people
have been for nearly four centuries in absolute possession of all the
noblest remains of ancient art, they have evinced no taste for
architecture or sculpture, whilst painting and music are equally
unknown to them.” But why? Because they have to bow down
to the most bigoted and intolerant branch of the Mahometan faith.
They have become what we should have become if the intolerant
bigots had borne all before them. Our own bigots whitewashed
our sacred buildings, smashed in our painted windows, abominated
sculptured men and women, whether saints or heathen gods and
goddesses. They tried to stop all progress, cursed astronomy,
zoology and geology as contrary to the word of God, despised
learning as creating sceptics and infidels; and some of their leaders,
who pretend to learning, even now force chronology in the narrow
time-boundaries of Rabbi Hillel’s and Bishop Usher’s dates. They
composed garbled inscriptions in our own British Museum, which
they keep closed ou Sundays, fearing lest the masses should find
greater spiritual delight in draughts of knowledge than in alcoholic
spirits. They are afraid that comparative mythology might dawn
upon the people; that Egyptian monuments and relics might teach
them that their important symbols, about which they quarrel with
the same bitterness as the Turkish theologians on the knotty point,
“whether the feet should be washed at rising, or only rubbed with
the dry hand,” are only purloined from old heathens; that their
�Religious and Social Point of View.
17
eastern and western postures are as irrevalent to piety, as the
Turk’s turning towards Mecca (the birth-place of the prophet), in
saying his prayers.
■ From the moment when the Turks placed their home-rule and
foreign affairs under the stable, immovable dictates of the Koran
progress became impossible. For the. nomadic character of the
shepherd predominates in them. “ The Divine Glory,” is said, in
a speech of Mohamet’s, “ is among the shepherds; vanity and
impudence among the agriculturists.” The accredited collections
of traditions tell the following of Abu Umama al-Bahili : “ Once
on seeing a ploughshare and another agricultural implement, he
said, 1 heard the prophet sav : “ These implements do not
enter into the house of a nation, unless that Allah causes lowmindedness to enter in there at the same time.”—(Abuchan
Recueil). Of Chalif Omar the Turks believe, that when dying he
recommended in his political testament the Bedawi (nomads) to
his successors, “ ff»r they are the root of the Arabs and the germ of
Islam,” and “ how little this Arabian politician could appreciate
the importance of agriculture,” says Dr. Goldziher in his work,
“Mythology among the Hebrews” (London: Longmans, Green,
and Co., 1877), “ is evident from the edict in which he most
strictly forbade the Arabs to acquire landed possession and
practise agriculture in the conquered districts. The only mode of
life equally privileged with the roving nomad life, was held to be the
equally roving military profession, or life of nomads without herds
and with arms.” These few lines permit us a deep insight into
the state of Turkey. The Turks keep too faithfully to their
sacred book and the traditions of the military founders of their
faith.
We advance because we possess the great talent of bringing
our sacred laws into harmony with the exigencies of our times and
social condition. It is enacted that “ the hare because he cheweth
the cud (which the hare, however, does not do), but divideth not
the hoof (which the hare most extraordinarily does), he is unclean
unto von ; ” but we eat it. It is enacted that “ the swine, though
he divided the hoof and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the
cud, he is unclean to you ; ” yet we eat bacon for breakfast, and
pork in many ways. It is enacted “ that if anyone asks your
coat, we ought to give him our cloak: ” but if anyone writes to
us a mere begging letter, we give him in charge as au impostor,
and leave him to the tender mercies of the police, or of a Rev.
County magistrate, who sends a little girl of nine years of age to
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The Eastern Question ; from a
jail, because she picks up a few potatoes or a half-rotten cabbage
in some rich farmer's field. It is enacted “ that if anyone smites
your right cheek, you should turn to him your left; ” but if any
good believer were to smite anybody’s right cheek, he would soon
find out in a police-cell that we refuse to hold out our left cheek,
but have, in the interest of society, the man locked up who would
dare to live up to the literal sense of our holv book. Unhappily
with the Turks all this is not the case. They still believe with
blind faith in fatalism, or as we call it, in predestination. “ What
must happen will happen ! ” For Allah's will must be done.
1 have often had the pleasure of visiting mighty Pashas in the
East, they lived in castles and fortressess at Belgrad, Widdin,
Rustshuk, Varna, and Constantinople; half the windows were
broken, sometimes mended with paper, sometimes left broken—
“ Allah will mend them
but Allah does not do so. The Pasha,
however, who lived in a castle with broken windows, dilapidated
staircases, broken doors, without any furniture, smoked a “tshibuk”
that had an amber mouthpiece set with diamonds worth from two
to three thousand pounds ; the coffee was brought in on a tray of
pure gold, and served in “ filtchans ” of gold studded with precious
stones. Everything here still betrays the nomadic character—they
hoard moveable goods, but have no concern with agriculture or a
settled state of life. Their administration is as bad as was that in
France before the grand and sanguinary revolution. The judges
administer justice according to the dictates of the Koran. The
tax-gatherers are farmers of the public revenue. “ The situations
of Pasha, cadi, or judge are all given to the highest bidders,” and
all offices are publicly sold. Under such an administration pro
gress must be very slow or altogether impossible. A fierce
unmitigated military despotism, swayed bv a gloomy, religious
fanaticism, that teaches its followers to rely solely on Allah and
the sword crushes all vitality in the state-body, checks arts, and
makes science subservient to the requirements of the army or
navy, hinders the growth of cities, the increase of knowledge, and
the accumulation of wealth. The first step with the Ottomans in
the direction of reform must be to separate politics and religion,
and obtain an honest and conscientious administration for Greeks,
Turks, Jews, Christians, Roman Catholics, Nestorians, Unitarians,
Armenians, and Bashi-Bozouks. Above all they must emancipate
their women !
The Turks, like all oriental nations, especially those of the Semitic
branch of humanity, degrade the position of women. We ourselves
�Religious and Social Point of View.
19
are struggling against the religious remnants of Asiatic customs,
tempered to a certain degree by our Teutonic forefathers, and the
teachings of Christianity. We still look upon women as inferior
creatures, teach them less than men, and leave them more at the
mercy of the spiritual advisers, who often use the powerful female
element to create serious mischief in families and even States.
Neither Russian police officers, nor Kosacks, nor a mixed com
mittee of European statesmen, none of whom will agree with the
other, each of whom will strive to promote some secondary object
in the East, will be of any service in the regeneration of Turkey—
but the advantage to be gained by replacing woman into her legiti
mate social and family position would be incalculable.
Neither Cross nor Crescent can bring about freedom and a
salutary reform in the East till woman is reinstated in her rights
in Eastern society, freed from the stupifying and brutalising
influences of the Harem. Women are the teachers of our next
generations during the most sacred time of our lives, the dawn of
our consciousness, when all impressions are most vivid and leave
imperishable traces. And what are the women in the East ? They
must be elevated to be the companions of the Turk’s social life in
which woman ought to shine as the static, passive element of
humanity, softening man's passions, guiding his taste, and elevating
his more boisterous nature. Woman in the East has no share in
the administration of the Empire, except the brutal influence under
sensual impulses. The disturbed relations between men and
women in Turkey practically transform morality into immorality,
checking in men the use of their brain-power, and making them
peevish women. Men and women, thus deprived of freedom of
action, can neither establish the rule of intellect nor the sway of
genuine morals. There are, however, many good qualities in the
Turks. Air. W. R. S. Ralston has pointed them out in a masterly
article on “ Turkish Story-books ” in the first number of “ The
Nineteenth Century Review.” “ All who know the Turkish common
people intimately speak well of them. Sober, honest, and
industrious, the Turk, so long as he is poor and lowly, is a
respectable member of society.” We must not forget that the
Turks keep guard with guns and swords at the grave of Christ at
Jerusalem, and prevent the dissenting Greeks and Roman
Catholics, Armenians, and Nestorians from discussing their theo
logical differences with blows at that sacred place. There is
undoubtedly more cohesion amongst the Turks than amongst the
motley crowd of Greeks, Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, who all
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The Eastern Question; from a
hate one another, persecute one another, and prefer to bend under
the government of their common foe, the Turk, than to allow any
of the other tribes or denominations to rule over them. The
Jews, Armenians, Greeks, and Roman Catholics are all free under
the Turks, but all of them persecute one another. The Jew must
not possess in Servia, the Greek is hunted down in Bosnia, the
united Armenian will have nothing to do with a Greek not
united believer, and to this religious animosity must be added
the national idiosinerasies. The Slavons hate the Greeks, the
Bosnians detest the Bulgarians, the Greeks return the feeling
with interest to the Slavons. The Turks have not hitherto been
able to bring union and cohesion into these antagonistic elements.
How then might this difficult question be solved ? So long as Sir
Stratford Canning (now Lord Stratford de Redcliffe) ruled
supreme in Constantinople, Turkey prospered and advanced steadily;
for to assert that nothing has improved in Turkey during the last fifty
years is a deliberate untruth, or the outburst of utter ignorance ; but
since Lord Stratford de Redclifle left, the Turks have relapsed into
their “koranic” apathy of fatalism. We ought to send out English
administrators to teach the Turks how to rule and become masters
of the eternal intrigues of Slavon agitators, conspirators, emissaries,
spies, diplomatic agents, missionaries, theologians, and special
correspondents, who go out from here, without any historical or
social knowledge of the country, and who on arrival become
“ atrocity-mongers ”—reporting one-sidedly, according to the cue
thev receive—endeavouring to excite a Russian crusade in the
name of down-trodden Christianity. Are we perhaps to revive
the old rule of the Greek Christian Emperors in the East—are we
to have a repetition of the misdeeds that disgraced humanity, and
produced the Mahometan reaction ? Do we aspire to see another
Basilios murder Michael and usurp his throne ; is a second Con
stantine to rule by the grace of his mother, and priests and
monks ? Is another Theophana to poison her husbands ; a second
Tzimiskes to become Emperor, after he had murdered Nikepheros
in his bed room, to be slowly poisoned in his turn to make room
for another murderer? Do we want to see another Basilios II.
(976—1015) blind 15,000 Bulgarians, sending them back to
their country, because they dared to attack him? The Turks had
in the Christian rulers, that swayed the destinies of the East
before them, not exactly the most forgiving teachers in the practice
of forbearance and tolerance. Are these times to be revived ?
Can we hope anything for Turkey from mere diplomatic agents,
�Religious and Social Point of View.
21
settling the destinies of 30,000,000 of human beings with pen and
ink ? If we are not prepared to support our protocols with
Armstrongs and Woolwich infants, with “blood and iron,” as
Bismarck would say, it would be better for us to pour oil on the
troubled waters, instead of fanning the flames of rebellion in the
East bv frightening the Turks, rousing their fanaticism, or by
encouraging the Slavons to disobedience, and then leaving them to
the tender mercies of their terrified task-masters, abusing them in
their turn, when they dared to imitate our ways to put down a
rebellion. The Austrian Government, after it restored peace in
Hungary with 80,000 Russians, had more than 1000 of the
noblest Hungarian patriots hanged and shot: Louis Napoleon III.,
after having dragonaded the Bourgeoisie of Paris, shooting down
some 4000 human beings, bombarding the Boulevards des Italiens,
had from 20—30,000 Trench citizens, who dared to adhere to the
legitimate Republican Government, transported to Cayenne. Men
and women were seized in the dead of the night and hurled away to
perish in misery and want. Are the riders of Turkey to govern
according to these noble examples? We must teach the Turks to
rely upon themselves. Exhausted, down-trodden, over-regulated,
the Hungarians gloriously attained their rights and privileges,
their freedom and happiness, not through foreign intervention or
protocols, newspaper articles, and one-sided speeches, to make
political capital out of the sufferings, agonies and despair of
Christians and Turks—but by relying on themselves.
Russia can, and will never solve the Eastern question. Of
her Government Herzen says in his work, “ Russia, and her
Social Condition : ” “ Terrible, nay fearful is the lot prepared for
him who dares in Russia to lift his head above the yoke imposed
upon us by the imperial Sceptre. The history of Russian litera
ture is a list of martyrs, or a register of criminals.” Rylejeff was
hanged. Pushkin was shot, when scarcely twenty-eight years old.
Gribojedoff was murdered at Taheran. Lermontoff was killed in
the Caucasus. Wenewitinoff perished, when thirtv-two years old,
through the influences of a dissolute society. Kolzoff was per
secuted to death by a bigoted relative, and died of grief at the age
of thirty-three. Belinsky, when thirty-five, starved to death in
misery. Polejaeff died in exile. Bestusheff died when quite young
in the Caucasus as a private soldier, after having served a period of
hard labour in Siberia. These are the Russian Byrons, Words
worths, Swinburnes, Buchanans, Macaulays. Maurices, and Carlyles,
who are treated in this merciless style. From Russia we have to
�22
The Eastern Question; from a
hope nothing for the regeneration of the East, neither from an
intellectual nor commercial point of view. Freedom and tolerance
are even less practised in Russia than in Turkey.
We may hope everything from an internal movement of the
united populations of Turkey. Let them become conscious of the
beauty, fertility and resources of their soil, which extends from 34
to 48 degrees north within the temperate zone, upon the same
parallels as France, Spain, and all the best portion of the United
States. Let them revive industry and agriculture, for “ Turkey in
many parts is more fruitful than the richest plains in Sicily.
When grazed by the rudest plough, it yields a more abundant
harvest than the finest fields between the Eure and the Loire, the
granary of France. Mines of silver and copper and iron still exist
(and could be worked to the benefit of the country), and salt
abounds. Tobacco, cotton and silk might be made the staple
exports of this region, and their culture admits of almost unlimited
extension throughout the Turkish territory: whilst some of the
native wines are equal to those of Burgundy. The heights of the
Danube are clad with apple, plum, cherry, and apricot trees—whole
forests cover the hills of Thrace, Macedonia and Epirus. The olive,
orange, mastic, fig and pomegranate, the laurel, myrtle, and nearly
all the beautiful and aromatic shrubs and plants are natural to the
soil. Nor are the animal productions less valuable than those of
vegetable life. The finest horses have been drawn from this
quarter to improve the breeds of Western Europe; and the rich
pastures of European Turkey are, probably, the best adapted in the
world for rearing the largest growth of cattle and sheep.”
Let the Turks above all discard all religious prejudices and
national animosities, and unite in one brotherhood to free their
country for the benefit of every citizen of whatever nationality or
religion. Freedom will be a stronger bond of union than Russian
battalions. But freedom never comes from heaven downwards, it
must take root in the lowest layers of a people here on earth and
grow upwards, and when grown it will apparently shower down its
blessings from above.
Neither Sultan nor Czar will free men, they must do it for
themselves. Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Bosnians, Armenians and
Turks must hope everything from themselves: they must not
refuse to go to their so-called mock-parliament, they must go and
make their brethren hear the public voice of wants and complaints,
of right and justice. They must take their constitution as we took
ours, cherish and fondle it, nurse it during its childhood, educate
�Religious and Social Point of View.
23
it into boyhood and rear it in time into manhood. They must
learn to do as we did, and not think that neglected nations can
grow over-night into patterns of freely constituted societies. They
must, however, do all their reforms amongst themselves, on their
own soil unaided, uninspired by foreign secret societies.
“Man’s fate lies in his own hand,” is an old apophthegm, and it
stands for nations as well; for nations are but multiplications of
individuals. The destinies of nations have generally been most
retarded or altogether ruined by foreign meddling.
Our duty in England is to watch over Turkey with a heart full of
love for freedom and justice. We have only the sacred interests of
humanity to guard, we have nothing in common with the clandestine
Bulgarian conspirators nor their mysterious instigators, or the
Servian rebels, nor with the wild and wrathful Bashi-Bozouks: we
must try to bring them all to their senses and relative duties.
Why does diplomacy not venture to interfere with our Home
rulers or our Fenians or our prosecutions of spiritualists or
refractory ritualistic priests? Simply because we have learned to
manage our own business. Why did no one attempt to interfere
with the North American presidential elections and ask for an
international committee for the protection of Republicans and
Democrats ? Because the American people know how to manage
their own business. We should teach the Turks that Bible and
Koran, missal and hymn book might go together; that Patriarchs
and Sheik-Ul-Islams, Imams and Papas, preachers and Khatibs,
rabbis and priests, Great-Logethets and Khakham-Bashis can be
made to agree, if they live under an enlightened lay-government
that knows how to enforce respect for the laws, and grants perfect
freedom to the individual to develop as an independent member of
a well regulated society. A new life would arise on the golden
horn—Constantinople would become the most splendid city in
Europe, the most attractive resort for civilized Europeans, a kind
of 1 ans of the East. F reedom and equality of religion would
bring the three monotheistic religions into fraternal union and
glorious harmony—the demoralizing position of women would be
changed—Greek, Slavon and Arab, poets and learned men would
vie with one another on the fields of glowing imagination and cool
reflecting reason. Instead of a burning Eastern question we
should then have a solution worthy of the spirit of our age, and
should give a new life to Turkey in the North of Asia, as we have
given to India in the South.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage
the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—physical, intellectual,
and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially in their bearing
upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S
LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely
(Annually—from November to May).
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 29tli April, 1877, will
be given.
Members’ .£1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket transfer
able (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reservedseat tickets available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s., being at the rate of Threepence each
lecture.
For tickets, also for printed lectures, apply (by letter) to the lion.
Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde
Park, W.
Payment at the doorOne Penny;—Sixpence;—and (Reserved Seats)
One Shilling.
The Society’s Lectures by the same Author, which have
been printed, are—on
“ Natural Phenomena and their Influence on different Religious Systems.”
“ The Vedas and the Zend-Avesta : the First Dawn of Religious Conscious
ness in Humanity.”
The above are out of print.
“ The Origin and the Abstract and Concrete Nature of the Devil.”
“ Dreams and Ghosts.”
” Ethics and ^Esthetics.”
“ The Spontaneous Dissolution of Ancient Creeds.”
“ Dogma and Science.”
All price 3d., or post-free, 3bd.
By the same Author are the following Works:—
“ Faust,” by Goethe, with Critical and Explanatory Notes. Second Edition.
London: David Nutt, 270, Strand. 18(52.
“ Spiritualism and Animal Magnetism.” Third Edition. London: Hardwicke & Bogue, 192, Piccadilly. 1870.
“ A Manual of the Historical Development of Art: Pre-historic, Ancient,
Classic, and Early Christian.” London: Hardwick & Bogue, 192,
Piccadilly. 1876.
Kenny & Co., Printbbs, 25, Camden Road, London, N.W.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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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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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The Eastern question from a religious and social point of view : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on 25th March, 1877
Creator
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's advertisements on back page. In diplomatic history, the "Eastern Question" refers to the strategic competition and political considerations of the European Great Powers in light of the political and economic instability in the Ottoman Empire from the late 18th to early 20th centuries. [Source: Wikipedia, 3/2018].
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Sunday Lecture Society
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1877
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N701
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Ottoman Empire
Religion
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Eastern question from a religious and social point of view : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on 25th March, 1877), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Eastern Question
NSS
Ottoman Empire
-
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Text
IMMANUEL KANT
IN HIS RELATION TO MODERN HISTORY.
PAPER READ BEFORE THE FELLOWS OF THE ROYAL
HISTORICAL SOCIETY ON THE lUh MARCH 1875,
BY
Dr G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.RHist.S.,
ONB OF THE LECTURERS IN H.M. DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, 8.E.
Price Sixpence.
��IMMANUEL KANT.
INGLE individuals stand to the general historical
in the
Sdo development of humanity corbels, same relation as
detached stones, statues,
spires, or weather
cocks to a building. The individual, in the eyes of
the philosophical historian, has only so far an interest
as he forms a link in the great chain of human activi
ties, or one stone in the historical dome. The indivi
dual is the outgrowth of his times, his dwelling-place
or country, the intellectual and social atmosphere in
which he has been reared and nourished. In propos
ing to read a paper on Immanuel Kant I did not
intend to take up your time with his private life, little
biographical notices of his character, but to place
before you my objective views as to his influence on
our modern mode of thinking, as the basis of our
modern history. I purpose to keep to the general
principles which I laid down before you in my paper
“ On the possibility of a strictly scientific treatment of
Universal History ” (see vol. III. Transactions of the
E. H. S., page 380) ; and shall try to apply those
principles in sketching the development of an indivi
dual in whom the static and dynamic forces w’orking
in humanity were well balanced. Kant, as philoso
pher, is merely a link in a long chain of mighty spe
culative and empirical, or deductive and inductive
thinkers, who serve to illustrate, that from the earliest
times of the awakening consciousness of humanity man
tried to bring about an understanding of the natural
�6
Immanuel Kant
and intellectual phenomena surrounding him. The
method which these thinkers pursued was either a
priori or a posteriori ; they either started with general
principles, and reasoned from them down to particu
lars ; or they followed the more thorny path of arguing
from particulars in order to come to general conclu
sions. Finally, Kant stands by himself in founding a
system which succeeded in bringing harmony into
these two conflicting methods. He may be said to
have been the only “ deducto-inductive ” philosopher ;
he was a genius, able to grasp mind and matter, the
noumenal and phenomenal in their innermost connec
tion, and succeeded in destroying a one-sidedness in
philosophy which often had been detrimental to the
real progress of science.
Bacon and Descartes opposed the old methods of
philosophy, and endeavoured to explain the various
phenomena of nature on a merely mechanical basis.
But Bacon, after all, was a reviver of the atomistic
theory of Demokritos, whilst Leibnitz, in opposing
Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza, and their teleological
principles, turned back to Plato and Aristotle, in order
to unite d priori the conflicting elements of the two
Greek philosophers in his theory of monads. Kant is
neither exclusively empirical nor teleological, he is the
creator of an entirely new mode of thinking and study
ing. All philosophy before Kant was more or less
theology. The circle of experience was extremely
narrow ; and theology bore all before it : no one could
gainsay it. Explanations and hypotheses drawn from
the fertile sources of imagination and intuition, pro
ductive of surmises and conjecture, had full play and
ruled supreme. Free-will, the senses, perception,
matter, spirit, body, soul, nature, God, and universe,
were settled as entities out of the inner consciousness
of poets, prophets, or philosophers. By degrees and
slowly, experience tried to collect and heap up obser
vations ; which were at first isolated; often in con
�In his Relation to Modern History.
7
tradiction to certain d priori settled assumptions, but
subsequently they were arranged and brought into
mutual relation, and we see natural sciences take a
position apparently opposed to theology, philosophy,
and metaphysics. Matter affecting and impressing our
senses, acting and reacting on them, was pronounced to
be the only thing we could grasp, or know anything of.
The experimentalist grew angry with the metaphy
sicians or theologians, and blamed the efforts of those
who argued on matters which he was trying to dis
cover by means of scientific observation. “ Either the
theologians come to the same final results as we men of
science, then they are entirely superfluous ; or they
persist in opposing us with false assumptions, propa
gating thus errors which are detrimental to the progress
of knowledge, and then they are worse than super
fluous ; they are altogether pernicious.” From this
conflict also a division in the scientific world arose.
Some devoted themselves exclusively to “ realism,”
others to “ idealism.” Everywhere at this period we
see strife and warfare.
In ancient times, as in the Middle Ages, the experi
mental sciences were but unruly and undisciplined
children, continually finding fault with their mother,
speculation; history was yet unknown, mere chronicles,
or at the most biographies, existed. The knowledge of
connecting laws was wanting, all was guess work, all
was a disconnected heap of facts in sciences as well as
in history. The discovery of America and the Refor
mation suddenly changed the very mode of thinking.
Without the Reformation, no philosopher of the stamp
of Bacon could have been possible. Philosophy
detached itself through Bacon from theology, and
entered the lists of experimental sciences ; so intimate
was the connection between philosophy and experiment,
that we in England speak of a microscope as a philo
sophical instrument, and might even call a new method
of dyeing silk, or a new way of manuring, a philoso
�8
Immanuel Kant
phical invention. In consequence of this one-sided
ness, inagurated by Bacon, we became more and more
devoted to a realistic, or as some people have it, matejealistic and practical philosophy, and failed to see that
there was a power in us which has to arrange, to system
atize, and even to apply what has been gathered on
the fields of experience. Opposed to this realistic
school were first Descartes and Leibnitz. The pure
intellect was to be the source of all knowledge;
nothing was worth studying, except what could be
reduced to an algebraic formula. Spinoza brought
this theory to perfection. Not only nature, but all
human life, with all its fluctuating passions, was to be
explained by mathematical rules. Man’s sufferings,
actions, intentions, and motives were to be treated as
planes, triangles, spheres, cubes, squares, pyramids, or
polyhedrons, &c. Leibnitz tried to save philosophy
from these matter-of-fact tendencies. He discovered
in mathematics the differential and infinitesimal “ cal
culus ; ” and in physics a new law—motion. He
strove to establish a union between primitive and final
causes. He had an idea that the contrast between
inorganic and organic, natural and spiritual, mechanical
and moral elements must cease through the notion of
continuity in the unity of gradually progressive, selfacting forces. His system reached its climax in his
“ Theodicy,” altogether beyond the comprehension of
human intellect. He dimly felt that there ought to be
a union between metaphysics and experience, but the
solution of this problem was beyond his powers.
Professor Christian Wolf was a thorough dogmatist.
Philosophy was to him the knowledge of everything
possible. Anything was possible that could be brought
under a strict logical law, according to the “principium,
identitatis,” “ contradictionis,” and “ rationis sufficientis.” We were taken back by him to the categories
of Aristotle. Experimental philosophy and meta
physics were again separated; the latter was to make
�In his Relation to Modern History.
9
us acquainted with the essence of things from a specu
lative point of view, this was treated of by Wolf in his
Ontology, under the heading “ De Entitate ; ” compris
ing the simple, compound, final, infinite, perfect, im
perfect, accidental, and necessary substances. The
universe, soul, and God were discussed according to
these ontological categories, as subjects of Wolf’s cos
mology, pneumatology, and theology. Dogmatism in
philosophy celebrated its greatest triumphs before the
dazzled eyes of Europe. Dialectics ruled supreme.
Explanations were given, and the unfathomable was
again fathomed — of course only in words. Kant
stepped on the philosophical platform when the dog
matism of Wolf was in its zenith ; he was himself a
pupil of this mighty metaphysician. The struggle
between the sciences, a priori and those a posteriori,
was recommenced. The foundations of metaphysics un
dermined by Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Spinoza,
stood propped up by Wolf’s ingenuity, but his system
was terribly shaken again by the mighty sceptical
philosophers of England and Scotland. Bacon already
denied that metaphysics, treating of the supernatural,
could be a science. Locke went further ; he set down
experience and perceptions as the basis upon which to
build up a system of philosophy. Sensation and
reflection were to be the leading elements. Bacon
declared the supernatural to be an impossibility, and
Locke pronounced even the supersensual a mere fiction,
opposing Descartes as the latter opposed Bacon. Locke’s
final dogma was, that experience cannot make us
acquainted with the essence of things, but merely with
their impressions on our senses. Berkeley, in analys
ing sensual impressions, found them producing per
ceptions, and therefore turned upon the realists and
proclaimed triumphantly that after all everything is
“ idea.” He thus confounded effect and cause, and
pronounced them to be identical. All observations are
mere impressions on our senses, but these produce
B
�IO
Immanuel Kant
perceptions, perceptions are ideas, therefore everything
is mere idea. All material things if deprived of our
perception are nothing. There are only perceiving and
perceived elements or ideas in us, which take their
origin in God. Berkeley's dogma may he summed up
thus : God has endowed us with the faculty of percep
tion through impression, all knowledge is therefore of
divine origin. His dogmatism led to Hume’s scepticism.
Hume started by endeavouring to find out, whether
we may become conscious of the impressions made by
perceptions on our senses, and whether knowledge were
possible beyond such perceptions. He assumes only
one possible science—mathematics—the conclusions of
which are analytic (according to him) by means of
equations. Empirical conclusions he wishes only to
be based on the law of causation (the nexus causalis),
and the whole of his philosophy may be reduced to the
question : is a cognisable causal “ nexus ” between the
objects of experience and their impressions on our
senses, possible ? He denies this most peremptorily.
Reason cannot connect different impressions, and at
the same time trace their causes with certainty; her
conclusions are only analytic but never synthetic. All
conclusions drawn by experience can therefore never
be strictly demonstrated, as we can only recognise the
effect but never the necessary cause. Neither reason
nor experience can give us real insight into causality,
and this very causality is one of the essential factors of
science. What we are capable of attaining is a con
tinuation of facts and impressions. The post hoc
becomes a propter hoc, or the “after” a “therefore.”
This change is performed through our reasoning faculty.
The causal nexus is a mere assumption, it is a faith, a
belief, like any other, and not a reality. This will
suffice to characterise the philosophical stand-point at
the period when Kant began his career.
Glancing at the political and social condition of his
times, we find him entering the University when Wolf
�In his Relation to Modern History.
11
returned, to Halle, and Frederic II. ascended the throne.
The seven years’ war interrupted his academical
studies. He finished his great work at the time when
Frederic the Great ended his glorious life. He was
attacked and persecuted under the government of
Frederic William II., but ended his career, once more
allowed to breathe a free and independent thinker
under Frederic William III. Kant was born on the
22nd of April 1724 at Konigsberg. His ancestors were
of Scotch origin, thus Kant indirectly is a countryman
of the great Scotchman David Hume, from whom he
descended in a direct spiritual line as philosopher. It
is often interesting to trace the general law of action
and reaction in single individuals. The most influential
agents have been educated by those who were to fall
a sacrifice to the destructive intellectual powers of their
pupils. Bacon was educated by Scholastics; Descartes
by Jesuits; Spinoza by Rabbis; and Kant by
Pietists. Kant never could understand the unhealthy
and deadening principles of his pietistic masters; he
learned from them a certain discipline of the mind for
which he was always grateful. He was a stern moralist
in thought and deed all his life.
Seven years, from 1733 to 1740 he frequented the
“Collegium Fredericianum”—nine years (from 17461755) he was tutor in three different families ; and
on the 12th of June 1755 he took his degree with a
dissertation “on fire.” In April 1756 he was made a
private teacher at the University, and he had to spend
fifteen years of his life in that position till he was at
last appointed “Professor Ordinarius” at the University
at Konigsberg.
In the year 1756 he delivered his first Lecture; he
was so nervous that his voice nearly failed him, and he
was scarcely heard—but the next Lecture was better,
and at last he became famous for his learning and the
amiability of his delivery. He continually asserted
that his intention was not to teach what had been
�12
Immanuel Kant
taught, but to suggest and to rouse the minds of his
hearers to self-thought and self-reasoning. He declared
publicly that his students would not learn philosophy
from him—but how to think for themselves. From
the year 1760 he took up various subjects besides
Philosophy. He lectured to the theological faculty
on “ Natural Theology ; ” to large audiences on “ An
thropology” and “Physical Geography.” In 1763 and
1764 he published his “ Only possible means to prove
the existence of the Divinity,” and his “ Observations
on the Beautiful and Sublime ”—and gave Lectures on
these two subjects. In 1781 appeared his greatest
work under the title “ Critique of pure reason,” 1783 he
published his “ Prolegomena of any possible Meta
physics,” 1785 his “Principles of a Metaphysic of
Morals,” 1786 his “Metaphysical Introduction to
Natural Sciences,” 1788 his “Critique of Practical
Reason,” and 1790 his “ Critique of our Reasoning
Faculty,” 1793 his “ Religion within the limits of Pure
Reason.”
He died on the 12th of February 1804. What a
period—what a life from 1724-1804 ! He witnessed
the Seven Years’ war, the French Revolution, the
establishment of the American Republic; the fall of
the convention, the rise of Napoleon—the political and
social change of everything in Europe. Schiller and
Goethe were inspired by him—-he saw action and
reaction, flux and reflux in human thoughts and
achievements—Sciences of unknown subjects sprang
up—Geology under Werner began hypothetically to
step forward with uncertainty and timidity—Oken
proclaimed his theory of evolution in unintelligible
alchemistic phrases. Everything appeared to assume
new phases. Men were either inclined to Voltairian
incredulity, to Rousseau’s fanaticism; Hume’s scep
ticism; or Jesuitic bigotry. Mysticism went hand in
hand with a negation of all things. Swedenborg stood
in the foreground with his supernatural epileptic fits ;
�In his Relation to Modern History.
13
whilst Holbach, Grimm, and D’Alembert denied even
our spiritual faculty of “ negation.” The intellectual
state of Europe was but a reflex of the social and
political condition of those times. Old mediaeval
Erance, with her centralised organization grown out of
the grossest feudalism, was in dissolution; Germany
sighed under 240 major and minor despots, and a
childish, almost Chinese, over-regulation in public
matters ; England was at least parliamentarily free, the
abode of the greatest orators that ever raised their
voices for the public welfare. America possessed a
Washington; France a Robespierre and Napoleon;
England a Chatham and Burke; and Germany a Kant,
a Hamann, Herder, and Jacobi.
Like a bright sun shedding lustre around, the Teuton
philosopher stands high above his times witnessing in
serene splendour the intellectual, religious, and political
chaos beneath him, out of which grew our 19th
Century. Not without meaning has he been placed on
the monument of Frederic the Great as the first amongst
the mighty generals of the still mightier king. Socially
and politically Frederic II., and intellectually and
philosophically Immanuel Kant understood the pro
gressively advancing spirit of their times. And therein
consists the real merit of a historical character. No
glorious battles, no victories, no extensions of territory,
no artificially embellished towns, no momentary
prosperity in commercial enterprises, can make up for a
misunderstanding, or according to my theory for an
untimely disturbance of the acting and reacting moral
and intellectual forces in humanity. He who in
history or sciences dares to touch that balance and
disturb its equilibrium, can but bring trouble on
humanity, for he forces generation after generation to
readjust that balance. Kant’s private as well as public
life was one great and successful effort to keep our
morals and our intellect within the boundaries of the
possible.
�14
Immanuel Kant
Independence and the most punctual legality were
to be the basis of the individual and of the state, as
but an aggregate of individuals; Pure moral principles,
without any admixture of dogmatic dross, were to be
the moving springs of humanity; our knowledge ' was
to be based on a full consciousness of the possibility and
certainty of our conclusions. The most important step
to attain this was to trace in the phenomena of human
thoughts and actions a certain law. To show how far
we, as finite beings, endowed with intellect, might
grasp space and time, the infinite, the invisible, the
transcendental, and the supersensual, so as not to waste
our faculties on matters which must remain for ever
unapproachable in the dominion of science, was to
render the very greatest service to humanity. Kant
achieved this task. His “Critique of Pure Season”
was partly misunderstood, or rather generally not
understood at all, or was distorted because some felt it
to be a death-warrant of all speculative efforts, meta
physical verbiage and dogmatic quarrels. The book
was decried as unintelligible transcendentalism and
incomprehensible dialecticism. Kant’s interpretation
of transcendentalism was one which some people
would not like to admit; by this expression he meant
simply, to transcend, “ to step over ” the boundaries of
dogmatism, and to ascertain after having shaken off
this dead weight, how far we might proceed in the
regions of the Supersensual. His great merit was to
prove that our transcending certain limits leads to
-nothing but to mere assumptions; whether such
assumptions and surmises are necessary for certain
emotional purposes, he does not decide. He affirms
our capacity of becoming conscious of perceptions and
tries to trace the conditions under which perceptions
may be systematized and thus increase our scientific
acquirements.
His philosophy is therefore not sceptic, but criti
cal. His very first principle in starting on the thorny
�In his Relation to Modern History.
15
path of philosophy was 11 never to take an assertion for
granted, without having carefully examined it.”
“ Neither affirm nor deny without the most minute in
vestigation.”
Who does not see in these propositions the germ, of
our modern mode of thinking ? who does not perceive
that the intellectual development of humanity was to
be based on principles differing totally from those of
antiquated authority or blind faith ? He was by no
means an anti-dogmatist; he only looked on dogmatic
metaphysics and experimental philosophy as two un
known quantities. The more the latter increased, the
more the former decreased in value; till, when experi
mental philosophy went over into scepticism, the stand
point of metaphysics was brought down to Zero; at
this point Kant pronounced it not only valueless, but
utterly useless. The mere playing with words on words,
dialectical contortions and distortions, metaphysical
writhings and grimaces were utterly repulsive to his
noble, straightforward nature. The power that thought
in us and was conscious of the process, namely, mind,
he not only recognised, but tried to discipline.
He began his philosophical studies in 1740, and
thirty years later, he founded his new system. The
first work with which he inaugurated his new method
of reasoning was published in 1768, and his last ap
peared in 1798, again, after exactly thirty years of
mature reflection. Each decennary had its task. Dur
ing the first three, he approaches step by step the solu
tion of his system, whilst during the last three, we see
him applying his discovery, and bringing his system to
perfection. During the first two decennaries (17401760), Kant investigates and follows up the postulates
of the Leibnitz-Wolf philosophy ; during the third
(1760-1770), he is occupied withan analysis of the
leading English philosophers, especially with Hume’s
scepticism; and in 1770 he raises himself far above the
dogmatic metaphysicians and the dry experimentalists,
and takes his own lofty position. During the fourth
�16
Immanuel Kant
decennary, he is silent; during the fifth, he publishes
his “Critique of Pure Reason,” (1780-1790), and de
fines the extent to which we may trust our power to
draw conclusions, and tries in the last decennary to
apply his well-founded system to solve the positive
problems of universal history.
During the first period, he enters into an inquiry on
the moving forces of the universe; and endeavours to
establish a nexus between cause and effect.
During the second period, he traces the possibility
or impossibility of proving a first cause. If cause, why
first, and how so first ? He then comes to the only
possible mode of proving the existence of a first cause,
namely, the ontological. Out of the mere notion,
“God,” the existence of God cannot be proved; but,
taking all the attributes necessary to form the concep
tion of God, such a being may not only be assumed to
exist, but must necessarily exist. In following up
Kant’s critical reasoning, we arrive at a mathematical
conviction of the existence of God, which is of greater
value than the mere dogmatic assumption. Anything
not in itself contradictory, is cognisable, say the ideal
ists ; only that is cognisable which exists, say the real
ists. Supposing nothing existed, then we could think
nothing. In denying these two conditions, we should
deny every intellectual and material possibility. As
suming that something is possible, we must look upon
it as the sequence of something that existed previously.
There must be for everything a final cause. This final
cause cannot be denied ; its existence, on the contrary,
must be assumed. There must be a something before
anything is possible without which nothing could
be possible. This necessary existence may be con
ceived as indivisible in its essence, simple in its ele
ment, spiritual in its being, eternal in its duration, un
changeable in its condition—in one word, it must be
God 1 This once enunciated and assumed, he went on a
step farther and examined the modus operand! of our
mind, with its intellectual and reasoning faculties.
�In his Relation to Modern History.
What, he asked, is within the range of real cognition ?
He compares metaphysics and mathematics, and finds,
that whilst the former is entirely based on analysis, the
latter is founded on synthesis.
By drawing a strict distinction between analytic and
synthetic conclusions, Kant created an entirely new
stand-point for all our studies. He distinguishes be
tween the emotional, as our moral and sesthetical, and
-between the intellectual as our reasoning and scientific
faculties. As morals and beauty, so are strict reason
ing and science analogous elements. Here he is at
issue with Hume, who assumes analysis as the basis in
mathematics. Kant asserts the very opposite. Quan
tities and forms are the objects of mathematics—but
these quantities and forms are not given, but,constructed,
they are combined, built up synthetically. To become
conscious of a triangle, is to construct the required for
mal conditions, enabling us to perceive in them a tri
angle. Metaphysicians, however, have only analysis at
their command. Analytic judgments or conclusions are
those in which the predicate is already contained in the
subject, by which a part of a whole is merely detached.
In the assertion, “ God is omnipotent,” I detach an
attribute of the subject God, and assert in reality nothing
but that God is God. For, if I have a conception of
God, I have also a knowledge of his omnipotence.
Such conclusions as these may be very ingenious, but
they do not contribute to a widening of our knowledge,.
Synthetic conclusions are those in which a predicate
is joined to a subject which is altogether extraneous to,
and often apparently in contradiction with, it. As “ water
freezes,” I have to prove how, under what conditions,
and why water freezes. I have to know what water
and what freezing is ; whether in such a condition water
ceases to be a fluid, and if it cease, what is its condi
tion in a state of crystallisation, what are crystals ; does
water in a frozen condition still contain heat; what is
heat; how can heat be latent in ice; does water freeze
�i8
Immanuel Kant
if mixed with salt, why should it freeze with greater
difficulty if so mixed. The amount of knowledge ac
quired through synthetic conclusions is ever increasing
—analysis is a mere repetition of the same things.
Kant took a mediating position between Descartes
and Leibnitz, between Leibnitz and Newton, be
tween Wolf and Crusius, and between Crusius and
Hume. Between the English experimentalists and
German metaphysicians there appeared always to
be an insurmountable gulf. Kant tried to bridge
over this gulf. Metaphysics was to be turned into an
experimental science. He establishes the principles of
natural theology and morals, out of the very properties
of things, though we may for ever remain ignorant of
their real essence. With reference to the existence of
the divinity, he tried this with his ontological proof.
With reference to morals, he proceeded in the same
way. Every moral action must have an aim or pur
pose—either an aim for another secondary aim, or for
its own final purpose. In both instances, the action is
caused and necessary ; but, in the first instance, it is
conditional, and in the second, unconditional. An
action done for a secondary purpose, for hope of re
ward or for fear of punishment, is at the utmost right,
clever, or reasonable, but it is not absolutely moral. In
order to become moral, it must be done unconditionally,
for its own sake. This led him to the contemplation
of the beautiful which Hutcheson and Shaftsbury be
fore him closely connected with our moral feelings.
Morals and aesthetics are so closely allied, that our
moral feelings are but a taste for right action ; Shafts
bury calls morals the beautiful in our emotions, the
harmony in our sentiments, the right proportion be
tween our self-love and benevolence. Virtue is beauty
of action ; our sense of virtue is but our aesthetical feel
ing put into practice; whilst art puts it into forms.
Virtue and taste are innate forces in human nature,
like any other faculty of our mind, but they have to be
�In his- Relation to Modern History.
19
developed, cultivated and fostered. For morals and
aesthetics have one common root, they complete one an
other. Art was thus elevated to its very highest stan
dard. How Kant’s lofty and sublime ideas influenced
poetry may be best studied in the works of the im
mortal Schiller, whose writings are permeated with
Kant’s theories and principles. To suggest was the
principal aim of all his writings of this period. The
student was not to be filled with given thoughts, .he
was to be excited to think ; he was neither to be carried
or led, he was to be made to walk for himself. “ In
inverting this method of teaching, the students pick
up some kind of reasoning before ever their intellect
has been cultivated, and they carry about a mere bor
rowed science. This is the cause that we meet with
learned men, who have so little intellect, and why our
academies send so many more muddled (abgeschmackte)
heads into the world than any other state of the com
munity.”
During the third period of his mental evolution
Kant occupied himself with a close investigation of
our mental functions. Psychology and physiology are
with him not separated but closely united studies.
The workings of the brain and the mind were in his
eyes in close relation, and he attributed all visions,
fanaticism, melancholy and sentimental amativeness
to a greater or lesser degree of mental aberration ; the
cause of which must be sought in the derangement of
our cerebral organs.
If the phantoms of our imagination turn into
visions ; if our inner sensations become outwardly
perceptible, our senses are in a state of dream. If our
reason assumes certain conceptions of its own as
realities our reason is in a state of dream. “ There are
emotional dreams, and there are dreams of our intellec
tual faculty. Visions belong to the first class;
metaphysics, undoubtedly, to the second.” He thus
arrives at a point when metaphysics and madness are
�20
Immanuel Kant
treated as equal aberrations of our emotional and mental
nature, though their origin is distinct, according to
our different organization.
Dogmatists and Meta
physicians, visionaries and ghost-seers are declared to
be but “airy architects of imaginary worlds.” Let
them dream on as long as they like—that they but
dream, becomes day by day clearer. Metaphysics were
developed by Kant’s inquiries into a study to make
ourselves acquainted with the limitation of human
reason. We may, with its aid, as Goethe says in a
Kantian sense
“ There see that you can clearly explain
What fits not into the human brain. ”
This slow and gradual destruction of all hollow
knowledge led us to a greater culture of those sciences
which are possible, and have become an ever-growing
barrier to false and credulous sentimentalism, and
emotional dogmatism.
The “ supersensual ” is not
within the boundaries of human reason. Transcendental
philosophy has to deal with experience, and not to
ignore it.
No knowledge is possible beyond the
domains of our direct perception; of the essence of
things we know nothing; the noumenal is and must
remain to us a mystery ; the phenomenal is within our
grasp. An absolute psychology, cosmology, or theology
is impossible. Kant thus does not deny the existence
of the “ supersensual,” he only denies our faculty of
becoming cognisant of it. What an immense stride
towards a really human, and, at the same time, humane
investigation of all those elements, which ought to
form the basis of our possible studies. Kant then goes
farther and proves with his trenchant power of criticism
that morals are independent of metaphysics, that
humanity in general and every individual in particular
carry the regulating force of morals already in their
very organization. He distinguishes between opinion,
faith, and knowledge. We may have reasons to make
�In.his Relation to Modern History.
21
a statement, but these reasons may be based on an utterly
subjective conviction, such a conviction is but an opinion
and does not exclude doubt; if, however, our convic
tions are based on objective observation, our opinion
rises into the reliable domain of knowledge; if again
our convictions are based on subjective elements
supported by doubtful objective proofs, we may,
individually, be convinced of certain assumed facts,
we may believe in them, but we do not know. In
applying these important distinctions to the whole
sphere of our intellectual and material world, we
were induced by Kant to draw more definite distinc
tions between the possible and impossible, the necessary
and merely accidental. In the mighty circle of religion
we have to bear three points in view. 1. If all faith in
a supernatural world be based on morals (Ethic actions)
religion cannot have any other essential and real
object than a purely moral one; all elements that do
not foster pure morality will be secondary, strange,
indifferent, or even dangerous. Religion, in fact, with
Kant becomes pure Ethics. 2. Ethics are not based
on a strictly scientific cognition, or theoretical convic
tion but on moral actions and practical necessity. Not
theoretical assumption, but practical reason becomes
thus the basis of religious faith. 3. Granting this, it
follows that our practical reason is independent of
mere logical operations, that it discards as will and
moral force all such boundaries as are erected by
speculation, and drives us to conform to laws which
must be common to the whole of humanity.
During the fourth period he is silent. The storm of
sceptic doubt was conquered. In this period we best
perceive the positive results of the convulsions which
brought forth Criticism instead of Scepticism—for,
though we acknowledge the force of doubt, we think it
should be subject to a regulating higher power—viz. :
Criticism. During the fifth period he shakes off the
fetters of idealism and materialism, and defines in his
�22
Immanuel Kant
a Critique of Pure Reason ” the boundaries of man’s
understanding. In accomplishing this he assumes two
principles upon which all knowledge and philosophy
must rest. The one is idealistic—subjective, and the
other empirical—objective. The inborn intellectual
faculty—mind—can as little be neglected as the outer
world with its impressions acting on our idealistic
subjectivity. He thus founded cosmology—worked
out by Alex. v. Humboldt—Geology by Leopold Buch,
and Sir Charles Lyell,* and then he paved the way to
the grand theory of Darwinism, or the theory of the
gradual development of matter; he excited to Anthro
pology and Ethnology, for he strove, through exper
ience, to trace law in all the phenomena surrounding
us, in nature as well as in the subtle regions of our
mental operations.
These principles changed the whole system of our
philosophical and historical studies. Creation was not
assumed as having taken place according to a certain
dictum, but we had to investigate the earth’s crust to
see how far we might trace the gradual formation
of our globe. Kant’s method produced compara
tive philology and mythology. Language was not to
be a settled gift, but was to be traced back to its first
origin ; this was the case with the different religions
of ancient times. We were not to suppose that millions
were left without religious comfort, but to investigate
and ascertain how far the religious systems are rooted
in the impressions of nature, how far they represent
the moral and social condition of certain groups of
mankind. This distinction led to a closer study of the
nature of man, leading to biology and sociology, but
above all to a deeper and systematic study of history.
There is no branch of learning which should be culti
vated with greater care than history, that is history
* Whose recent death we must all deeply regret—though he left us
his immortal works as the most glorious monument of his earthly
existence.
�In his Relation to Modern History.
23
from a scientific point of view. What appears in single
individuals as mere chance, or the result of coincidence
might perhaps be looked upon as subject to law like
any other natural phenomenon j though, in the latter
case, unconscious material particles are the elements,
whilst in history, man with his consciousness, his as
sumed free will, passions, intellectual and bodily facul
ties, is the complicated agent. Kant affirmed, (and he
can claim the honour of having been the first to do so,)
in 1784, when statistical tables were still in their in
fancy, that in looking on humanity as a whole, appa
rently disconnected incidents may be brought under
the sway of certain laws acting with stern regularity.
He drew attention to the complicated phenomena of
the changes in the weather, the growth of plants under
certain climatological conditions, the course of streams
and their influences on the progress of civilization.
Individuals, like whole nations, are entirely unconsci
ous of the fact, that whilst they appear to work against
one another, or have only their own egotistic aims in
view, they are working according to certain laws to
accomplish the grand destiny of mankind. If it may
be assumed as an axiom, “ that the natural capacities
of a creature have to develop according to a purpose,”
we may assert that this must be the case with man too.
Applied to animals, we find this law obeyed, and pro
ducing natural selection. Any organ not wanted is
thrown off. Taking man, we find, that though he is
the only consciously reasoning creature on earth, his
natural capacities are destined to be developed in the
genus, and not in the individual. Thus, the study of
a single individual is like the analysis of a single in
sect without any cognisance of the different varieties
of animals. Historical progress is not only not the
result of the exertions of single individuals, but those
very individuals are but the outgrowths of generations
after generations, inheriting their mode of thinking and
acting, and finally maturing the innate intellectual
�24
Immanuel Kant
germ to a fruit which in its turn is again the seed of
further developments. For the first cause has willed
that man, if we except the automatic function of his
animal nature, should evolve everything necessary for
his happiness and perfection, in opposition to his natu
ral instincts, out of his own reason, or rather out of the
sum total of reason, existing in humanity. “The
means which nature employs to attain this aim,” is,
according to Kant, “ antagonism,” which, in its turn,
becomes the very basis of legal order and social com
fort. History is but one long series of wars, murders,
conquests, intrigues, opposition of individuals against
individuals, of families against families, of tribes against
tribes, and of nations against nations, as if man only
delighted in destruction and ruin. But is this so ?
On the contrary, what unphilosophical minds bewail,
is but a process in operation to attain in the end the
greatest amount of happiness for mankind. Man was
not destined to be idle, but he has to learn how to use
his bodily and intellectual faculties.
Wars, controversies, passions, and strife lead to
activity, and activity is life. Wars engender peace;
controversies, truth ; covetousness, commercial enter
prise ; passion, virtue; and strife, brotherly love and
good will. Antagonism drives us to seek the solution
of the only problem that should occupy humanity, to
form one grand community, ruled by the laws of right.
The most ingenious institutions, all our philosophical
systems, all our religious efforts, are but continuous pro
gressive attempts to lead humanity from a savage state
to that of civilization. To further the solution of this
difficult problem, we want a guide, a leader, and this we
find in the consciousness of our nature and knowledge
of the past, enabling us to make ourselves acquainted
with our destiny. We have not to look to an indi
vidual for guidance, but to the supreme principles of
right. Individual rulers are only instruments to watch
over these principles and see them practised. This
�In his Relation to Modern History.
25
problem of a perfect constitution of humanity will only
be attained when man will form a grand international
tribunal which will settle the disputes of nations ac
cording to just laws binding on humanity at large.
As Kant saw in his mind’s eye the necessity for the
existence of a planet beyond Saturn, the then last
known planet of our solar system (1754), which planet,
“ Uranus,” was discovered twenty-six years later, by
Herschel (1781); so he foresaw in 1784, that which
America and England inaugurated in Geneva nearly
ninety years later. An international tribunal settling
the disputes of two of the greatest nations of the world
at a table covered with green baize, by means of quiet
arguments, and not on blood-stained battlefields with
the sacrifice of wealth, happiness, and the lives of in
numerable human beings. Kant clearly saw that
history is but the outer garb of inward forces working
in humanity according to a pre-arranged law, which
law must be assumed to be as fixed as that by which
the solar systems are brought into order and cohesion.
The endeavours of modern historians should be to trace
this law.
Law has to deal with forces, producing as causes—
effects, and these forces must act and react, because a
stationary force would be lifeless. The two forces
working in antagonism and conflict can but be our moral
and intellectual faculties, which, in their disturbed
balances explain all the phenomena of history. Kant
must be looked upon as the real founder of modern
thought, for his ideas, like those of every powerful mind,
pervade our whole intellectual and social atmosphere.
The writers following Kant, whether in England
or Erance, consciously or unconsciously continue in
the path which he began to hew out for coming
generations. Eichte, his antagonist, really strengthened
the position he attacked. Schelling worked out, like
Comte, with copious verbosity, Kant’s principles.
Their terminology differs from that of Kant, but in
�26
Immanuel Kant
essence they add nothing to his first principles.
Schelling proclaims his immanence of spirit in nature,
which immanence we can only trace in law. In assert
ing that the universe has its ground in what in God is
not God, Schelling deviates from Kant, and leads us
to the Pythagorean Monad and Dyad, a severance of
mind and matter, or of God and creation, which is
mere verbiage.
Hegel built on Kant with the difference, that with
him the subjective becomes the absolute; whilst the
objective is turned into the differentiation of the abso
lute • adding to these phenomena a third one when the
absolute turns from its externality back into itself.
Schoppenhauer and Hartmann continued to develope
Kant’s principles in an idealistic direction, whilst the
host of naturalists, geologists, physiologists, biologists,
psychologists, ethnologists, and comparative gramma
rians follow him, cured of all cravings after the super
sensual, and try to ascertain what we may learn in the
ever varying empire of the phenomenal.
Kant did not destroy thrones, he made no kings or
kinglets, he did not brandish a blood-stained sword,
command armies, hold levees, create marshalls, com
manders-in-chief, shoot free-thinking men, or trample
under foot the rights of nations and individuals, like
so many a phantom of glory, that could only be reared
in the chaotic disorder of our ill-balanced moral and
intellectual forces. Unlike these he did not vanish
like a thunder-storm, which purifies the air but leaves
wreck and ruin behind.
The mighty warriors often are like swollen mountain
streams after a violent shower ; bubbling noisily, these
streams rush down in torrents, tear down fences and
houses, inundate plains and fields—carrying devastation
in every one of their waves, and then disappear; whilst
the philosopher, of the stamp of the great and immortal
Kant, resembles a broad and majestic intellectual river,
cutting deeply through mountains, meadows, fields,
�In his Relation to Modern History.
27
villages, and towns, flowing slowly and noiselessly, but
spreading happiness, fertility, and abundance around,
serving as a mighty high-road to connect nations through
their most noble outgrowths, their philosophers and
searchers for truth into one grand progressively advanc
ing community.
The great and inexhaustible means for furthering
this union is an indefatigable study of history. For is
it not a calumny of the Creator, whose wisdom we
continually praise in a thousand tongues, to assume,
that we ought to study only certain of his works, and
neglect altogether the Creator’s fairest product, man
in his gradual development 1 In the unconscious
regions of the empire of nature, in stars and nebulae,
solar systems, crystallisations and chemical combina
tions we trace wisdom, law, and order; only the stages
of man’s intellectual activity, as they present them
selves in history, are looked upon as an eternal re
proach to the Creator, who is’ assumed to have acted
on firm principles in the minutest of his inorganic or
organic creatures, but who is thought to have left
humanity without aim, law, or purpose on this globe,
so that we are forced to turn our eyes despairingly
from this world and to hope for the fulfilment of our
destiny in unknown regions.
History treated from a scientific point of view
teaches us, that this is not the case.
History as it is usually written without the basis of
a general principle or merely as an accumulation of
disconnected facts, state-enactments, or copied docu
ments collected in musty archives, is only very useful
building material, out of which we have to construct
an intelligible and comprehensive system of history.
It is distressing to contemplate what later generations
may do 'with history if details grow at the ratio of the
last twenty or seventy years. Unfortunately, professed
historians, ignorant as they too often are, assert that
“ history is a mere child’s box of letters out of which
�28
Immanuel Kant.
the historian picks what he wants to spell out; ” but
this is the view of a narrow-minded state-paper copyist;
and not of a philosophical historian, whose aim can never
be to glorify individuals or to distort facts according to
the wants of a party or the fashion of a period, but to
look upon humanity as one great whole, and to trace in
its complicated actions, order based on law.
The historical world is as little barred as the ideal
world—both are open; it is our faculty of seeing
blinded by details, it is our mind confused by isolated
facts, that will or cannot comprehend the stern law
that drives man towards his real destiny : the greatest
possible happiness of all united into one common
brotherhood.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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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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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Immanuel Kant in his relation to modern history: paper read before the Fellows of the Royal Historical Society on the 11th March 1875
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 28 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
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Thomas Scott
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[1875]
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G5515
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Philosophy
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Immanuel Kant in his relation to modern history: paper read before the Fellows of the Royal Historical Society on the 11th March 1875), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Conway Tracts
History
Immanuel Kant
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CHRISTIANITY.
FOURTH PART.
THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY.
BEING
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY, 29th JANUARY, 1882,
BY
Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R.Hist.S.
Hanbon:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1882.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SYLLABUS.
The development of human culture from a general historical point of
view.
Our modern method of studying.
The Free-Thinkers of England, France, and Germany.
Evolution.
Myths and Miracles.
Astronomy, Geology, and Zoology.
Chemistry and Archaeology.
Cosmogony, Gqpthe, Alexander von Humboldt, Darwin.
Comparative Philology, Mythology, and Religion.
Comparative General History and Politics.
Emotion and Reason.
Art and Science.
Biology and Sociology.
Dr. Strauss, Biblical Criticism.
Agnosticism and Atheism.
The future of Christianity.
Conclusion.
�CHRISTIANITY.
II Emotion and Reason. Art and Science. Common Sense and Theology.
The attainment of a perfect balance between the static (moral), and
|
the dynamic (intellectual) forces working in Humanity. The
future of Christianity.
HAT Christianity had an historical development I endeavoured
to
my three previous lectures. Pure
Tbasedshow inunalloyed principles of its founder, wasChristianity,
on the
sadly changed,
and dogmatic Christianity, with its admixture of Hebraism and
Heathenism, remained stationary for a time. Its assumed spiritual
authority was entirely devoted to a one-sided culture of emotional
credulity in man, and with very few isolated exceptions in single
individuals, it failed to keep pace with the suddenly aroused scien
tific tendencies of the seventeenth century.
In considering the development of humanity from a general
historical point of view, we must necessarily become conscious
of the fact that religion played a prominent part in the destinies
of mankind;
In modern times we have learnt to combine facts, to draw
analogies, and to decipher allegories. We point out similarities,
ignore incongruities, trace affinities, and have thus succeeded in
establishing, through a more logical treatment of our emotional
(religious), and reasoning (scientific) faculties, a “ oneness ’’ and
“ sameness ” in the most discordant moral and philosophical
systems. Alan in history had invariably to pass through certain
stages of culture, which can be as clearly defined as the different
geological strata in the formation of the earth’s crust.
All was separation and isolation with the Orientals, as I en
deavoured to prove in my former lectures. Their mystic sym
bolism exclusively occupied itself with the “One,” the Monotheos,
the “Nuk pu Nuk,” the “ I am I,” the Javeh, the Brahma. This
mystic first cause was symbolized or personified in clay, stone,
�4
Christianity.
marble, in concrete, or as with the Jews in abstracto, as an elderly
human Being, whose actions were assumed to be arbitrary, cruel,
jealous, revengeful, despotic, and full of wrath. The glance of his
eyes was lightning; his voice was thunder. Fire and water were
the paternal means which he used to correct, and punish his sinful,
trembling, and crouching children. To terrify and horrify was his
aim. This false conception of the Deity had its origin in a gross
ignorance of the phenomena of nature, as I showed in my lecture
“ On Natural Phenomena and their Influence on Different Reli
gious Systems ” (1873). This ignorance was first dispersed by the
Greeks, who, through their religious combinations and mythological
conceptions in poetry and art, deprived the hideous divine phantoms
of the East of their revolting attributes. The Greeks had a far
purer notion of the abstract powers of the Deity, and of the phe
nomena of nature, which they personified as beautiful concrete
gods and goddesses. They thus succeeded in blending the Divine
with the Human, making their gods more humane, and raising
men towards the Divine. This harmonious union between the
universal or divine, and the special or human, is the most impor
tant feature in Greek thought.
During the mythical period, the natural causes of cosmical phe
nomena being unknown, they were assumed to be miracles, and
miracles were transferred to the incidents of everyday life in a
thousand different forms. This tendency still exists, as a survival
of those times, amongst our prejudiced and untutored believers, or,
as they prefer calling themselves, “religious people.” The “mythi
cal ” was followed by a “ symbolic ” period, which again changed
into a period of confused “ dogmatism.” The leaders of the people,
the priests or religious teachers, and their subordinates, the kings
and lay rulers, did not strive to promote knowledge or truth, but
for thousands of years worked upon certain phenomena in politics,
religion, and science, as the hidden, though sometimes revealed,
mysteries of a God or several gods, or of some wicked and diabolical
power, and they strove by sacrificial performances and prescribed
prayers to appease the former, or to conquer and pacify the latter.
A similar change took place in the simple teachings of Christ,
W'hich were made wholly unintelligible by means of a complicated
theological and dogmatic system, borrowed from the ancient
heathen priests, and often directly opposed to the fundamental
principles of true ethics.
With the Seventeenth Century a new impetus was given to the
�Christianity.
5
intellectual development of humanity through the revival of the
study of the ancient classics on their own general, moral, and
scientific merits, and the study of nature inaugurated by Francis
Lord Bacon (1560-1626). This advance was followed up by the
inquiring intellects of the world, and the “ theological ” age had to
yield to a “philosophically speculative,”and this again to a “purely
scientific” age, in which our knowledge of the marvellous proper
ties of matter has been increased to such an extent that we are
in danger of assuming, that we ought to shun all speculation as
vain word juggling, restrict our researches exclusively to mere
matter, looking upon philosophy, art, history and religion (in
the pthical meaning of the word), as so much idle and useless
waste of time.
The mental condition of humanity, fostered by this realistic one
sidedness, is, however, far less perilous than that engendered by
an exclusive culture of the emotional and ideal, for the ignorant
masses have been, and are always much more easily led by abstract
speculations than by a hard study of facts, and their causes and
effects. It is not without a terrible struggle that man will give up
supernatural authorities, petrified into mental idols, which save
him all the trouble of inquiry, ratiocination, and investigation.
What Bacon began in philosophy, “ was afterwards carried into
politics by Cromwell; ” and “ during that very generation was en
forced in theology by Chillingworth, Owen, and Hales ; in meta
physics by Hobbes and Glanvil; and in the theory of government
by Harrington, Sidney, and Locke.”* The transition from blind
credulity into violent scepticism may best be studied in the writings
of Sir Thomas Brown (1606-1682). In his “Beligio Medici,”
published about 1633, he shares in all the vagaries of religious
obscurantism. He professes his firm belief in spirits, tutelary
angels, predestination, palmistry, and witches, and even goes so
far as to say that those who deny the existence of witches “ are
not merely infidels, but atheists.” He loves to keep the road in
divinity. He follows the great wheel of the church, by which he
moves. He has no gap for heresy, schisms, or errors of which
he “ has no taint or tincture.” And yet we may trace in this work
a mighty undercurrent of scepticism. The book was translated
into French, German, Italian, and Dutch, and produced more than
* See “ History of Civilization in England,” by H. T. Buckle, vol. i,,.
p. 333. London, 1858.
�6
. Christianity.
thirty independent works on the religion of soldiers, lawyers,
noblemen, princes, bookworms, laymen, stoics, clergymen, philoso
phers, gentiles, and churchmen.
Only thirteen years after the publication of this apparently
orthodox work, the same author published his still more celebrated
“ Inquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors.” His faith in the
infallibility of dogmatism, witches, and the philosopher’s stone had
disappeared as if by magic. He clearly and sharply pointed out
that the two great pillars of truth “are experience and solid
reason.” “ Adherence to authority,” “ neglect of inquiry,” and
“ credulity,” he set down as the main causes of error. He exposed
some of the innumerable blunders of the Fathers, and to his in
fluence may be ascribed the fact that Christians began to doubt,
to inquire, to discover, and to seek to establish a correct and wellbalanced union between empiricism and speculative philosophy, for
the two are so closely allied that only a culture of both has pro
duced our most modern unparalleled advance in sciences. It was
Sir Isaac Newton (1642—1727) who, through the mystic w®rd
“ gravitation,” solved many unintelligible phenomena of the visible
world in space and time. He did away with isolation in the
material world by showing that cosmical bodies acted on other
cosmieal bodies, and that the minutest particles composing these
bodies were all subject to immutable laws of combination and
dissolution.
Why should these laws not apply equally to the variegated
phenomena in plants and animals, and finally be found in man’s
historical development ? Up to the Seventeenth Century, in spite
of Greek philosophers and Boman orators,—Christian Casuists,
miracle-mongers, and inspired emotionalists, Jewish Babbis, Tal
mudists and Cabalists, learned mediaeval Bealists and Nominalists,
Boman Catholics, Inquisitors, and Protestant witch-finders, Cal
vinists and Methodists, had continually confounded cause and
effect, and pandered to credulity, prejudice, and mere authorita
tive assumptions, based on misunderstood and unexplained facts.
John Locke (1632-1704) broke the spell, and showed humanity
that we can know nothing beyond what our senses can grasp.
Impressions, sensations (or emotions), and consciousness, are the
only gates, windows, openings, and crevices, through which the
dark night of our intellect may receive some rays of knowledge.
From the times of the patriarchal beginnings of man’s social con
dition, the efforts of all priesthoods have been directed to taking
�Christianity.
1
possession of this earth, whilst creating somewhere in infinite space
a more glorious abode for those who blindly followed their dictates.
Through the whole sanguinary period of mediaeval feudalism,
during the Reformation, and down to our own times, all sorts of
means were used to create false impressions, which produced cor
responding false sensations or emotions, and having once become
conscious of them, we cherished, fostered, propagated, and left
them as sacred inheritances to future generations, thus sadly hin
dering, preventing, and retarding man’s progressive culture. Single
phrases, often single words, kept up false knowledge and credulity,
and all this was done under the mystic pretext of religion which
often showed itself to be the greatest irreligion, especially from a
Christian point of view.
One of the greatest fallacies, blocking the path of inquiry, was
the assumption that a thing must be true, because millions and
millions believed in it. The question how, and in what way did
these millions come to take some prejudice, some ignorant assertion
for truth, was not even thought of, and never inquired into.
“ Credulity, however widespread, is no proof of truth,” said Locke;
and he went further, and insisted that “ even revelation ought to
stand the test of reason,” and that “ fanaticism was no criterion
for the divine origin of any creed.” Locke thus broke still more
with the old traditional authorities in Philosophy and Theology.
Basedow (1723-1790), in Germany, worked out a systematic
method of education by means of “ object lessons,” without any
intermixture of texts, or sentimental tales about sickly boys and
girls who became little angels, playing endless hymns on harps
that never required tuning. Before children became sectarians
they were to be trained to be good, intellectual, and useful human
beings, thinking, inventing, and arguing for themselves. Through
the efforts of our liberal government we have, in most recent
times, introduced the same system by rooting out denominationalism in our Board Schools; and these unsectarian schools are
sure to become the foundation of that broader Religiousness which
was already dreamt of by the great philosopher Spinoza (1632—
1677), who opposed the priests of every nation, sect, or denomi
nation as fostering hatred, and transforming synagogues, mosques,
temples,, churches, and chapels into mock-stages on which dog
matists were heard, “ who did not care to instruct the people, but
rather to excite their admiration, and to condemn publicly those
who held different opinions, and to preach only what was new, in
�8
Christianity.
comprehensible, and most delighted the crowd.” We have still many
survivals of this species of “prsedicatores” amongst us, industriously
spreading “ odium theologicum.” If these praedicatores “ possessed
but one spark of the Divine light they would not be so senselessly
proud, and would learn to worship God more wisely; and, instead
of distinguishing themselves by hatred, would foster love towards
everyone.” Dor such ideas Spinoza was stamped an atheist—
though he was one of the most pious Philosophers.
We may look upon the Seventeenth Century as a transition
period during which a wholesome reaction against some of the most
objectionable teachings of Luther and Calvin set in. Both repu
diated “ good works.” The one declared them “ mortal sins; ” the
other went not so far, but asserted “that God pays no attention
to good works;” whilst some divines in England insisted “that
works done before the grace of Christ, are not only not pleasant to
God, but have the nature of sin.” In 1618 (after Bacon had
published his “Novum Organum ”) the Calvinist synod had the
audacity to proclaim “thatmorality had nothing to do with justifica
tion.” This teaching culminated in the Westminster Confession of
Faith, asserting “ that God has chosen those of mankind that are
predestinated into life before the foundation of the world was laid,
without any foresight of faith, or good works, or perseverance
in either of them, and that the rest of mankind God was pleased
to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their
sins, to the praise of his glorious justice.”
Horrified at these monstrous assertions, which trampled all moral
laws under foot, the Eighteenth Century was ushered in by a long
row of independent thinkers, who could only have been produced
by a correct understanding of the truly moral in Christianity.
The “Patres majorum gentium” of Free-thought, pure reasoning,
and logical criticism began to proclaim the modern “ gospel of
common sense,” and to turn the scapegoat of dogmatism into the
wilderness, burdened with the dark sins of ignorance and super
stition.
These “Fathers of free thought” were all Englishmen—their
ideas were transcribed into French and German, and their homilies,
essays, sermons, epistles, and commentaries, form the very elements
of that progressive intellectual air which we are now allowed to
breathe, without being compelled to filter it through a theological
respirator. At their head stood the Earl of Shaftbsbuky (16711713), one of those independent thinkers so often found in the
�Christianity.
9
ranks of the English aristocracy. The glorious spirit that inspired
the Chandos on the battle-field, has never left some of the nobles of
England on the subtle fighting-ground of advanced thought and
free inquiry. Shaftesbury’s works were to a certain degree the
revival of the ideas of Plato, tempered by the notions of Aristotle,
modified by an interval of more than 2,000 years, and transcribed
into practical, plain English. To Shaftesbury “ the world existed in
all her glory and beauty through eternally contrasting, acting and
reacting forces that formed a marvellous picture of light and shade.”
Life around us consisted of an everlasting change of matter. Plants
died away, to foster with their death the life of animals and men;
and animals and men died, to give life to plants in their turn. The
air that surrounded us, the vapours that rose from the water, the
meteors that shot above our heads, all followed their laws, and
contributed to the preservation of the whole.
Next to Shaftesbury stood Toland (1670-1722), whose most
important work, amongst many others, was “ Christianity not
*
Mysterious ” (1696). Though the book gave great offence, it was
one of the most remarkable signs of the times, foreshadowing a
treatment of Christianity which, after a lapse of nearly two cen
turies, is undoubtedly becoming more and more general.
The tendency to keep up mysticism is certainly on the wane.
Astronomy has lost none of its importance or truthfulness because
we have substituted the heliocentric theory for the geocentric, or
because we no longer assume that the 365 days of the year are
presided over by so many guardian saints, some of them of a rather
doubtful character. The animal kingdom has not been deprived of
its marvels, nor have public morals deteriorated, because we now
know that Moses, in spite of his inspiration, was not deeply versed
in zoology or geology. The sun has lost nothing of his splendour,
because we are convinced that he is no Divine charioteer, driving
across the heavens in a fiery chariot, drawn by four horses. Nor
has the earth been degraded, because in opposition to inspired
geography, it has been proved to be spherical in form, and not
square or flat. Our moral sense has not suffered, even though
we have learnt through chemistry that there are more than four
elements. Are the master-works of art less glorious because
through a correct knowledge of archaeology we are able to trace in
* “ Abeisidsemon,” “ Nazarenus,” “ Tetradynamus,” and “ Pantheisticon,”
works scarcely known even by name in our educational establishments.
I
L
�10
Christianity.'
them a gradual and slow development from the most primitive
stone weapons and pottery of pre-historic times ?
Have religions been deprived of their moral grandeur and the
Creator of His omnipotence, because we are convinced, as was
already Collins (1676-1729), that “all religions were everywhere
at first natural and simple, plain and intelligible ” ? Sir William
Jones (Diss. vi. on the Persians) confirms the views of Collins, for
he says: “ The primeval religion of Iran, on the authorities
adduced by Monsani Farft, was that which Newton calls the oldest
(and it may justly be called the noblest) of all religions; a firm
belief that ‘ one supreme God made the world by His power ’
(acting on matter through motion, and thus producing all the
different phenomena in the universe) ; continually governed it by
His providence (manifesting itself as immutable law of causation;
same cause producing the same effect); a pious fear, love, and
adoration of Him (which can be best effected in reverential silence,
and a deep study of His direct works in nature, or in the works
of art and science made by the instrumentality of man) ; and due
reverence for parents and aged persons; a fraternal affection for
the whole human species ; and a compassionate tenderness even
for the brute creation. But like every other religion its simplicity
was changed.” “ Myths and fables were added,” as Collins says ;
“ sacrifices, whether real or typical, were introduced which had to
be paid for; the priests grew wealthy and fat, and the people
became poor and lean.” What we want in modern times is not
exactly to invert the relation of leanness and fatness between
people and priests, but in a true Christian sense to give only such
hire to the labourer as he is worthy of. Would religion lose any
thing of its moral efficacy, if we were to assume with Dr. Matthew
Tyndal (1657-1733) that “ Christianity is as old as the Creation,”
instead of having myths and miracles of our own, whilst constantly
discrediting the myths and miracles of others? Would it not be
far more reasonable to assume that the moral laws of Christianity
must have existed from eternity, “ as God acts (and has acted) in
conformity to the Beason and Nature of things,” and has never
contradicted Himself by entering into old or new covenants with
certain people, neglecting others ? Dogmatically, only the chosen
people and believers in certain “ formulae ” are to be saved. Accord
ing to the Bomans “ the welfare, or rather safety, of the Bepublic
(of course of their own Bepublic, to the detriment and destruction
of all the other surrounding States), was the foundation of all
�>
Christianity.
11
morals ; ” whilst Tyndal proclaimed “ the good of the people to be
the supreme law.”
William Wollaston (1659-1724), more than 150 years ago,
endeavoured to improve the religious feelings of the masses. He
demanded that instead of being based on unintelligible dogmas,
the whole of our State organization should have for its firm
foundation the Triad: “Beason, Truth, and Happiness.” His
celebrated work, which appeared under the title of “ The Religion
of Nature Delineated,” and the principles laid down in it are still
applicable to the burning questions that agitate our own times.
The demand for the disestablishment of the Church, and its separa
tion from the State, as well as the refusal of the masses in Ger
many, Belgium, France, and Italy to leave education exclusively
in the hands of the clergy, are natural out-growths of that intel
lectual movement which was inaugurated in England, and which,
after an apparent inactivity of more than a century and a half,
begins anew to disturb the dogmatic slumber of our stationary
believers.
In studying the writings of Mandeville (?—1733), and the accu
sations which theological charity hurled against him, we may learn
that a free-thinker may be a far better Christian than those who
throw their sharp missiles of abuse at him. Mandeville published
in 1714 a poem under the title of “ The Grumbling Hive, or
Knaves Turned Honest,” and re-published the same in 1723 under
the title of “ The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices made Public
Benefits; with an Essay on Charity and Charity Schools, and a
Search into the Nature of Society.” One hundred and fifty-nine
years ago a keen and honest writer, in a truly prophetic spirit,
already exposed our present workhouses and their shortcomings;
our charities and their atrocious uncharitableness ; our hospitals,
where a patient may hear an abundance of cant, but can never be
sure that when a pious sister is engaged in meditation on the
salvation of her soul, she may not make a mistake, and give him
poison instead of quinine; our charity and industrial schools,
where pious masters and mistresses flog the children of the poor
almost to death, stint them in food, and leave them in the most
revolting ignorance, consoling them with some reflections on the
wickedness of poverty. As to the “ Nature of our Society,” we
need only glance superficially over our so-called “ Society papers,”
to convince ourselves that even if orthodox Theology, under the
banner of dogmatism, may have regained the ground lost in the
�12
C hristianity.
Eighteenth Century, true practical Christianity has been left where
it was 160 years ago. Mandeville was especially accused of having
collected all the false notions of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, and
Bayle; of having openly blasphemed, and denied the doctrine of
the ever-blessed Trinity. He was further charged with having
endeavoured to revive the Arian Heresy, with believing in Fate,
and denying Providence; with attempting to undermine the order
and discipline of the Church; with maliciously and falsely decry
ing the Universities, in order to prevent them from instructing
youth in the Christian religion; and with recommending luxury,
avarice, pride, and all the vices, as necessary to public welfare.
Mandeville committed none of all these grave crimes. He showed
that in the highly artificial society of his times, gross selfishness
and unscrupulous egotism prospered—exactly as in our own day—
that knavery and flattery could boast of success, whilst honesty and
straightforwardness did not always bear out the modern theory of
the survival of the fittest. This accusation can, however, no longer
be advanced against the majority of our people, who, in opposition
to dogmatism and social flunkeyism, have fortunately begun to free
themselves from the fetters of prejudice, forged on the anvil of
ignorance by dialectical blacksmiths.
Mandeville asserted further that falsehood, hypocrisy and crime
ruled supreme, if their votaries could only succeed in making
money. Money is still a very great factor in our social organi
zation. In no direction are the enactments of Christ more
discarded and ignored than in the paths of money-making. That
all sorts of falsehoods are often propounded, that hypocrisy is made
use of, that even crimes against widows and orphans, who are
robbed of all they possess, are committed for the purpose of making
money, cannot be denied. Let a statistical compiler collect the
sums of money that have been extorted under the false pretence of
“ life and insurance companies,” “ co-operative stores,” “ commer
cial, railway, navigation, canal, building, and mining companies and
societies,” and we shall find that the longing for turning an honest
penny with Pecksniffian hypocrisy into a dishonest pound, is far
from being extinguished. On the other hand, we must admit that
our honest manufacturers, merchants, traders, and working men
have on the whole become convinced that the opinion a man holds
about “ the colour of the beatitude,” “ the efficacy of grace,” or
“ the power of election ” has very little to do with his merchandise
or his productions. It is the distinguishing feature of progressive
�Christianity.
13
Christianity that it has step by step given up wild hatred and
frantic religious “ boycotting,” the merciless torturing and burning
of so-called heretics, the drowning and hanging of witches, Noncon
formists, Papists, Latitudinarians, and Socinians. It has changed
the cruel “Act of Uniformity ” into an “Edict of Tolerance,”
emancipated Dissenters, Papists, and Jews, and will finally per
mit every one to be saved according to his own light. Bronze and
marble statues are now erected to John Huss, Giordano Bruno,
and Savonarola, who were burnt alive by the very ancestors of
those who now, with truer Christian feelings, honour the memory
of these fearless martyrs of free-thought. Christians at last have
extended equal rights to their most hostile religious antagonists.
We have public officials of many various religious creeds. Unitatarians, Jews, Papists, and Nonconformists sit on the benches of
our highest Courts of Justice. In this broadness of tolerance lies
the power of Christianity, and all those who attempt to diminish
this equalization of humanity, are men without any higher princi
ples.
Mobgan (?—1743) felt all this more than 150 years ago. The
religion of pure reason alone was divine with him. Discussions
on the parabolical or symbolical, the typical or mystical, or any
thing remote from human understanding, he treated with the
utmost contempt. The salvation of persons “ elected ” could never
be attained, save by their own individual moral exertions.
Thomas Chubb (1697-1747) was more systematic than any of
his predecessors. He must be considered the very founder of a
regulated system of secular Christianity, which is still looked upon
as very heretical in certain quarters. Chubb was “ the partner of
a tallow-chandler,” and, no historian can deny, that he kindled a
fiery torch of enlightenment which spread tolerance and freedom not
only throughout all the classes of English society, but extended its
rays to the mighty philosophers of France and Germany, and the
entire Continent. He could not see the necessity of mysticism ;
his brain was not made for senseless impressions, producing dim
and inexplicable emotions. He wished to honour the “ Father,”
in asserting His supremacy ; he opposed the immoral doctrine of
“ Predestination,” destroying in man all his moral responsibility ;
he controverted the degrading assumption of “ original sin,” and
contradicted the equally pernicious doctrine, that “ man was
naturally incapable of doing anything good.”
The last, and by far,the most celebrated of these English Fathers
�14
Christianity.
of Free-thought, was the witty and learned Viscount Bolingbboke
(1672-1751), the contemporary of Vico in Italy, and the fore
runner of Herder in Germany and Voltaire in France. His
“Letters on the Study and Use of History,” published for the
first time in 1735, have become the corner-stone of that broad,
ever-widening edifice of modern culture, in which all branches of
arts and sciences are cultivated on entirely different principles.
In accordance with Bolingbroke’s teachings, history became, and
is, and must continue to be, the most important branch of educa
tion. We must fight on for political freedom, but at the same
time not allow ourselves to be fettered by dogmatism, otherwise
our so-called freedom will prove a delusion. What is the use of
our being free to grumble at a half-penny tax, when we are for
bidden to compare one religion with another; when we are socially
(and social tyranny is far worse than any other autocracy) bound
to believe dates which we know must be wrong, or a cosmogony
which is certainly contrary to the very laws which God teaches us
in His Nature. Why should we not be permitted to draw analo
gies between the mythological and religious systems of different
nations ? Some persons consider that it poisons the mind of the
people to tell them that Zerdusht (Zoroaster), long before Con
fucius, said, “ Hold it not meet to do unto others what thou
wouldest not have done to thyselfand that Confucius, nearly
500 years before Christ exhorted his disciples “ to do to another
what you would he should do unto you; and not do unto another
what you would not should be done unto you ”; adding the memor
able words, •“ Thou only needest this law alone, it is the founda
tion and principle of all the rest.” Is telling the truth poison to
the mind ? Are we to be allowed to state truth only so far as it
may suit the distorters of all history: and must we store our minds
with crude undigested facts and sentences, with fables and myths,
with improbabilities and impossibilities ; are we not to be allowed
to awaken in ourselves and others the latent energy of reason, and
to find out a connection between cause and effect ? Bolingbroke
already scorned the idea of filling our brains with assumptions and
details; with facts that never happened; with oracular sayings
that have generally been written down long after the facts pre
dicted had occurred. The ponderous works of Scaliger, Bochart,
Petavius, Usher, and even of Marsham, were robbed of their dim
halo of authority. These writers, like the generality of theological
arguers, did not write to find out facts in their possible or probable
�Christianity.
15
truthfulness, but continually practised deception, to prove, that
what they assumed and believed to have happened, must have
occurred. It is of little avail to connect disjointed passages, to
use fantastic similitudes of sounds, in order to prop up some pre
conceived historical system. Egyptology, Assyriology; the decyphering of hieroglyphs and cuneiform inscriptions, have on all
sides helped us to unmask the pompous dignitaries of stationary
sal learning, however loudly the survivals of by-gone scholastic systems
:ur may clamour. Eor nearly 1800 years general history, and the comparative historical studies of special countries and nations have been
iiZ distorted. Dates or facts, whole epochs of civilization and com
bi plicated religious systems have been, either altogether ignored, or
'ji if mentioned, the dates of their development altered. The priority
Jp of moral principles in other religions has been denied, and the
| world taught to believe them taken from later systems. All our
■±a| studies have been made subservient to the requirements of the
i < dialectical banner-bearers of some arbitrarily worked out theoloi J gical system, who held aloft the flimsy flag of prejudice and bigotry,
nil under which they gather the ignorant, and terrify independent
ujl inquirers and votaries of true morals and pure Christianity.
j Eor more than half a century the reactionary opponents of proigI gress were in the ascendant. This terrible. period of Reaction,
uj| distinguished by an increasing power of stationary dogmatism and
despotism, was due to that political, moral, and religious cataclysm,
m which took place in Erance. The Erench people had been left
njl in utter ignorance by aristocrats, bureaucrats, priests, and monks ;
iis the normal development of the intellectual and moral welfare of
B| the masses was prevented; everything was exaggerated, and all
■B the ties of society were forcibly broken. Neither reason, nor a
i'j regulated emotion, but obstinate passion and fanaticism, the out
re growths of that very religious system which some wished to support,
jj ruled supreme, and plunged Europe into mad rebellions and sanre guinary wars. Whilst in Erance the demented lawgivers of the
j Convention deposed God (on the 7th of May, 1794) ; in England
penal or civil laws began to protect old-fashioned theological noI tions; and in Germany the rulers gave up the supernatural to the
$ people as a bone of contention, but kept them in strict order by
ffl means of severe police overregulation. The practical was to formthe only aim of tl^p English people; the Erench, with an utter
contempt for all religion, began to occupy themselves with politics ;
whilst in Germany the spirit of inquiry was to find vent in ponnJ
fw
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tkj
3
�16
Christianity.
derous critical volumes on all sorts of metaphysical and religious
subjects. Only thus we can explain the following apparently
incredible fact.
A chair for geology was founded at the Cambridge University in
1815, and down to 1830 not one student dared to attend the pro
posed Lectures of the Rev. Mr. Sedgwick for fear of being at once
looked down upon as a heretic, and so blighting the whole of his
worldly career. That this state of narrow-mindedness has con
siderably changed is in some part owing to a few English Bivines.
We have learnt to rise from particular and detached, to general and
connected knowledge; from single incoherent facts to a higher
study of the universal causal connection between incidents and in
cidents, and periods and periods. What is the use of all such
studies is still the terrible question asked by tens of thousands, if
they only serve “ to disturb the peace of mind of believers.” A
peace of mind, based on ignorance, is a very poor peace.
This was deeply felt by the master minds of France and Ger
many. At the head of the French reformers stood Montesquieu
(1689-1755), who had seen and studied England, and who united
in himself all the brilliant qualities of a Frenchman with the stern
virtues of an independent Englishman. Next to him stood Vol
taire (1694-1778), the prophet, apostle, teacher, and idol of a
court and people which produced a Louis XIV., a Louis XV., a
Robespierre, and a Marat. Voltaire, though a firm believer in a
God, was accused of Atheism, because he devoted all his genial
powers to denouncing the false doctrines according to which
Church and State ruled, oppressed, insulted, and beggared the
people on the Continent. Only a Titanic spirit, like his, could have
succeeded in counteracting the growing immorality of the State,
the rampant hypocrisy of the Church, the revolting cant of priests,
the foolish pretensions of the scholastics and Jesuits, and the
sentimental distortions of the Jansenists. Voltaire was honoured,
protected, and admired by Frederick the Great of Prussia, who
never looked upon genius, truthfulness, and satire as dangerous
foes, but, on the contrary, welcomed them as worthy helpmates to
purify the sunken moral and intellectual state of Europe. That
Voltaire was used by low scoffers and sarcastic critics, that he was
misunderstood, and made a tool in the hands of headless revolu
tionaries in France, was not his fault. Nothjng can excuse the
duplicity of those aristocrats, bureaucrats, priests, monks, and
bigots who, instead of studying his writings, and learning from
�Christianity.
17
them, considered it their duty to abuse, vilify, and curse him.
His spirit has never died away, and is even at this present moment
far more active than the priests suspect. In France, as in Ger
many, if an idol of the past has once been dissolved in its compo
nent particles, and if these particles are found to have been incon
gruously put together, the idol is for ever destroyed. Not so in
England. The powerful vested interests, living, thriving, and pros
pering on antiquated ideas, sometimes relax in their static force,
and permit a dynamic current of progress to pervade the intellec
tual atmosphere of the people; but, trembling for their tempo
ralities, they soon rouse themselves to oppose the progressive
continuity of new ideas.
When the courageous Lessing (1729-1781) once attacked idling
monks and nuns, bigoted pastors and ignorant preachers; monks
and nuns began to vanish, and pastors and preachers were com
pelled to study, and to endeavour to attain the same degree of learn
ing as that possessed by the better informed lay-world. This fact
may serve to explain the existence of that phalanx of fearless
Theologians in Germany who, during the Eighteenth and Nine
teenth Centuries, influenced the Christians of all countries. After
Lessing had exposed pedants to ridicule; hypocrisy to scorn; falsi
fiers to contempt; dialecticians to derision, and false moralists to
mockery, men like Gesenius, Jost, Schleiermacher, Niebuhr, Schel
ling, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, were enabled, individually and
collectively, to use the ponderous clubs of their deep learning and
correct reasoning to prepare the way for the immortal Darwin, who
put an end to the assumption of a detached, arbitrary, and special
creation, and established the fact of “ evolution,” as the firm founda
tion of all bur studies. Mental reforms are no longer hated,
critical inquiries no longer despised, analogies and comparisons
may be drawn even at the University of Oxford.
According to Dean Ramsay, four millions of sermons are
preached annually in Great Britain; these four millions of sermons
are only listened to by thirty per cent, of our population, whilst
seventy per cent, can do without them. The 100 per cent, however,
have to pay annually £ 10,211,321 (exclusive of payments made by
Boman Catholics and Jews). All this is at the very lowest com
putation, and yet even these four millions of sermons represent a
lamentable waste of time. Assuming that each sermon takes up
only 30 minutes, we arrive at a period of 83,333 days, or 22|
years, half at least of which are annually spent by the combined
�18
Cliristianity.
efforts of the clergy in. discussing dogmatic matters. As to
material,—if every sermon were only 15 pages in length, the'
amount spoken annually would furnish us with 60,000,000 of
pages, or 83,333 vols. of 720 pages each.
It would be as well to enquire how much of this collective
brain-force, and complex lung-power has been used to bring about
a union between Christ’s enactments, and our often diametrically
opposed social organization, without which, however, our present
state of civilization would be impossible.
Christ said: “ Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for
the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof ” (Matt. vi. 34). If we were to
live according to this precept we should have long given up all
progress in arts, sciences, discoveries, and inventions. We should
have lived like Buddhist mendicants, and lost ourselves in useless
meditations ; mean poverty would have been our lot, and in
carrying out the command of God the Son, we should have acted
in direct opposition to the dictates of Grod the Father who
endowed us with intellect and reason.
Christ said: “ Freely ye have received, freely give” (Matt. x. 8).
And what do the heads of the different denominations do ? They
freely demand money, and as freely keep it. Church dignitaries
are liberally paid, and leave the hard working curates to some 300
charity organizations.
Christ said: “ Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in
your purses ” (Matt. x. 9, Luke ix. 3, x. 4, xxii. 35). The eternal
collections, the everlasting sending round of plates, the merciless
exactions of tithes are in contradiction to this law.
Christ said: “ I say unto you, swear not at all, neither by
heaven . . . nor by the earth . . . neither shalt thou
swear by thy head . . . But let your communication be, Yea,
yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”
(Matt. v. 34-37.)
We boastfully call England a “God-fearing and Christian”
country, and yet we ignore God’s direct, and most explicit com
mand: “swear not.” After many tardy steps in tolerance, we
are sure not to stop half way. The greatest and wisest in the
land will out-number the prejudiced and narrow-minded, and free
every citizen from all the shackles of religious qualification. Not
what a man “ professes to believe,” but how he acts, ought to
be taken as the criterion of his character.
�Christianity.
19
M
The higher inner life of the masses, in spite of the. 4,000,000
W of annual sermons, was till lately sorely neglected. We at last
lai attained the conviction that Reason, Politics, and Science, as well
sb I as Emotion, Religion, and Art, had their rights. We have learnt
ft that Reason cannot be satisfied with mere dogmatic assumptions,
[B and, that to be truly free, we must emancipate ourselves from all
$ fetters imposed on our development as human beings.
What is Man ?
Man consists of matter, forming the constituent particles of his
id body. The study of this, his material constitution, has led to
ff Biology. Biology must not be treated one-sidedly, as if there were
For man consists also of mind, a
T! in man nothing but matter.
q power of doing work, receiving impressions, which produce sensa
ii tions, of which we become conscious. Man has, therefore, a double
Both matter and mind
fi nature, composed of matter and mind.
R) can only be brought into life and activity by a force ; and wherever
ft . we are able to trace a force, we can trace law. We may thus treat
ft man scientifically as a unit, and consequently we can similarly con
This is done by Sociology and
E8 sider any number of these units.
a \ General History. For, any principle applicable to the unit, must
a ' similarly affect any number composed of the same units.
All natural science is based on tracing the working of acting
B and counteracting, combining or dissolving forces. In mechanics
i those forces are assumed to be two in number, the one static, the
o other dynamic. The first manifests itself as the law of conserva
d tion of force or energy, the second as the ever-varying, creating,
3 changing, combining, transforming force of activity.
We here face the mystic Indian Trimurty (Trinity), as Creator,
i Preserver, and Transformer; or the great Egyptian “Unity in
E Trinity” of their more advanced religious and philosophical de
Leaving the
'.i velopment—as “ Creator, Created, and Creature.”
Creator, in humble reverence, we have around us the Created world
) (the phenomenal) and the Creature (as the embodiment of the
Ct noumenal), and in this Creature we find combined the two acting
and reacting forces, pervading the universe as static and dynamic
£
energy, which manifests itself in man as morals and intellect.
$ Morals are and can only be static; they are a restraining, correcting
•1 force—they are the passive element in our nature: moral laws are
I generally given in the negative form. On the other hand, intellect
d is undoubtedly the dynamic pushing, inquiring, inventing force—
1 the active element; for all efforts in arts, sciences, and discoveries
�20
Christianity.
are of a positive nature. The working of these two forces may be
either conflicting, or harmonious, and on the greater or less degree
of harmony must depend the progressive development of single
individuals, and that of whole communities, nations, and Humanity
at large. We may thus scientifically reduce all the phenomena of
history to a plus or minus in the relative quantities of the two acting
and reacting forces in man.
Those who, under the pretext of religion, wish one-sidedly to
cultivate the moral force in humanity, often commit the most re
volting immoralities. We have on one side the Mormons, a sect
living in polygamy, according to the practice of the Patriarchs as
recorded in the Old Testament, and we have opposed to them the
state authority quoting the same sacred Book, protesting against
polygamy, and endeavouring to put it down by the force of law.
And intellect, reason that could alone decide between the two sects,
is abhorred by both. For controversy and contradictions are the
eternal outgrowths of so called sacred Books which, assumed to
have been inspired by infinite wisdom, are so little understood by
finite commentators that they have led to nothing but confusion in
our most important social relations.
A popular preacher protests against “ vivisection,” and this
preacher feeds on killed fishes, eats oysters with delight, enjoys a
brace of partridges, and has no condemnation for fox-hunting, deer
stalking, pigeon-shooting, &c. Now, if a Buddhist priest or teacher
who never touched food that was derived from any creature once
alive, were to speak against the dissection of living animals, with
the object of extending our knowledge of physiology and biology,
in order to lessen the sufferings of our more highly developed
fellow-creatures, we could understand his horror of the practice;
but it can only be mere verbiage and hypocritical rodomontade
when some priests, who feed on mutton, beef, and pork, rave
against vivisection in order to stop the prying into the wonderful,
and awful mysteries of God, and declare that the Darwins and
Huxleys of our times should not be furnished with more facts for
their unorthodox theories.
These contradictions between practical life, and the enactments
of religious books, at last led men, like Mr. Houston, to devote
themselves to biblical criticism in the spirit of simple reason,
unassisted by assumptions, theological dictates, dialectical distinc
tions and differences, and the amount of work since done in this
direction is incredible. Houston published in 1813 a book under
�C hristianity.
21
kb the title “ Ecce Homo,” or a “ Rational Analysis of the Gospels,”
V- which created a tremendous sensation.
The clergy took no trouble
>$! to refute the writer, but set the courts of j ustice in motion, and
III Houston was condemned to two years’ imprisonment, and a fine
oil of <£200 to be paid to the king!
The enactment of “judge not that ye be not judged” (Matt,
«|
V ; vii. 1) was disregarded by King and Judges. Neither Houston,
nor Dr. Strauss in more recent times, did “judge.” They simply
applied the commonest rules of criticism to a compilation of
writings which were pronounced to be infallible; and for this use
& of their reason, the one was imprisoned and fined, and the other
8 sent out of the country as a detestable heretic, and nearly mur
»| dered by a fanatical mob in Switzerland.
The enemies of progress, the controversialists on doctrine, the
1 propounders of revelations had continually to take refuge behind
I , new inspirations and new revelations, till the people became
8> I convinced that a revelation which produces so many contradictory
M deductions, must be after all simply a revelation worked out in
jI the inner consciousness of the prophets and revealers themselves.
[| But as feelings, emotions, and ideas, through self-consciousness,
1 have but a subjective meaning, the independent thinkers of Christ
ianity have now turned to a more correct contemplation of nature
with an entirely objective tendency. The province of the emotional
has been thus assigned to art, morals are studied as natural effects
> of our very bodily organization, the quarrels about formulae have
i become fainter, and man begins to understand true religion.
What is religion in a Christian sense ?
It is neither Pessimism, nor Agnosticism, and least of all,
Atheism.
Pessimism is a morbid craving after an ideal world, which con
>. demns the present variegated reality, because optimism has not
r worked itself into a tangible entity.
Agnosticism goes as far as our finite senses can go in grasping
£ the phenomenal outward nature, and stops at the first cause of
! which it professes to know nothing.
Atheism has, in its dogmatic assertions, the most repulsive
3, similarity to orthodoxy. It is, in fact, nothing but an illogical
I negation of a positive assertion, and has therefore no sense at all.
True religion, according to the origin of the Latin word “religo,”
f, means to honour, to take care of, to order, to treat, to observe
> carefully, or to be bound down, which does not mean to observe or
�22
Christianity.
to be bound down to ritualistic performances, the burning of can
dles, embroidered altar-cloths, sacrificial symbols and types, but to
take care of, and honour a close study and understanding of the
laws of nature in a clear recognition of our relations to our fellow
creatures.
Mind and matter : the one the cause, the other the effect; the
one the pervading ideality, the other the pervaded reality; these
two completing each other, and manifesting themselves as com
bined elements in the variegated phenomena of the universe, can
be the only objects of study for Christianity in the Future.
Christianity which is the only Religion through which inward
reflection, and outward contemplation may be best evolved in man,
as a complex power to balance morals and intellect, emotion, and
reason in us, will have to accomplish the following glorious tasks :—
(a.) To bring back Christ’s teachings to their primitive purity and
simplicity ; to eliminate everything that has been imported into it
from older heathen religions and creeds, in the shape of ceremonies
and contradictory mysteries.
(6.) To fulfil what the Reformation began in the sixteenth cen
tury, and not to stop half-way in the purification of faith, allowing
dogmatic petrifications to hinder the progressive development of
Humanity. We must try to establish a perfect balance between
our morals and our intellect, basing all our actions on such
principles as are universal, and easily understood by reason.
(c.) To educate our clergy in all the branches of true knowledge,
that the people may not accustom themselves to look down upon
them as survivals of a by-gone, bigoted, ante-intellectual period,
and only attend their sermons because it is respectable to be seen
amongst one’s neighbours at a place of worship on a Sunday. Let
the teachers of the more than two hundred quarrelling uncharitable
sects of Christendom stand on the common platform of human
nature, loving and not hating those who, through self thought and
indefatigable study, have acquired a different mode of seeing,
judging, and believing, and they will be sure to regain that bene
ficial influence on the fields of pure ethics which they have lost in
the dark labyrinths of mysticism.
(cZ.) To find a common ground in Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism,
Buddhism, Confucianism, Sokratian principles, Hebraism, and
Mahometanism, connecting all that is pure, moral, and intellectual
in all the different religious sects into one grand whole, cemented
together with brotherly love and forbearance, allowing to art and
�Christianity.
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23
science their free, purifying, and elevating influences, and fostering
them to the fullest possible extent.
Similar notions were already set forth in the Twelfth Century
within the Romish Church, in a new gospel, called “ Evangelium
Eternum,” preached for some time by Joachim, the Abbot of Sora,
in Calabria. This gospel was also called the Covenant of Peace,
or the Gospel of the Holy Ghost. It taught that the two imper
fect ages, that of the Father and of the Son, represented by the
Old and New Testaments, were past, and that that of the Holy
Ghost, the perfect one, was at hand. According to this gospel
Jews, Christians, Mahometans, and all other sects were to be
united into one loving brotherhood. For upwards of thirty years
the Roman See supported this gospel. In 1250 A.D. a Franciscan
*
monk, Gerhard, published an introduction to it, in which he pro
phesied the destruction of the Roman See, in 1260 ; but neither
the moon nor the stars fell from heaven to bring about the Millenium
—so the prophecy is yet to be fulfilled; and we still wait for the
time when Indians and Chinese, philosophers and free-thinkers,
Hebrews, Mahometans and Christians, will be enabled to raise to
their different teachers one grand Walhalla in which all who have
contributed to the fulfilment of Christ’s promise of One Shepherd
(God in Heaven, or first cause in the universe), and one fold
(enclosing the whole of Humanity), might find a place.
To sum up, we have individually and collectively :
(1.) to purify Christianity of all Dogmatism and Mysticism ;
(2.) to make morals, which are ingrafted in our very nature, the
foundation of our social organization ;
(3.) to enlarge religion through genuine tolerance into a code of
our duties towards our fellow-creatures ;
(4.) to educate our public teachers so that with broad hearts and
independent thoughts they may propagate the beauties of art and
the truths of science.
So MAY IT BE I
* For further information see “The Gospel History and Doctrinal Teach
ing” critically examined by the Author of “Mankind, their Origin and
Destiny.” London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1873.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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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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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Christianity: fourth part. The future of Christianity, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's, Langham Place, on Sunday 29th January 1882
Creator
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
Description
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In the fourth part of his series of lectures on the history of Christianity, Dr. G. G. Zerffi explores current and future issues affecting the faith such as evolution, atheism and free thought.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 18 cm
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 5. A list of the Society's lectures by the same author which have been printed listed on unnumbered final page.
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Sunday Lecture Society
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1882
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G3434
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Christianity
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Christianity: fourth part. The future of Christianity, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's, Langham Place, on Sunday 29th January 1882), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions.
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Christianity
Morris Tracts