1 10 42 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d8dd4cb3ae57dd2728d9b7682fdc78b3.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=XJLUr1sfnk2j2LWbgXg724v6sUNvrcAfv8HujMP9ocLQTlN8Uu7mDef2ZoJaJE8K2IS3vCAjh8zwjL1eGNWCxqxhW7X3B1TCwoNVa4nVnyL4uy9Js%7E170iDBg1AVKiugF%7EnmXUv5o6c7ZpNtHDCONliNHj4OHEgl9Q0Q8rramdN9HOlq3l%7E1wDPygEql4NpOt1xgV2LEMePls5b4u-p%7EFketDJ39tagKrwqpViCojGmNtJUwb%7ETm57qd1A-R7HsZlzXlf1Y2bnE28pecN-LV2BTWbq92iSd557sjqiZHeRbsi0nffZ9hYXWEQtZGmm06C-vtSBp%7E5a-P7clFvo%7EB9A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 4e3bd466d5e64408e4389d67ce0f09da PDF Text Text THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. OCTOBER, 1873. SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.1 By A. DE QUATBEFAGES. TRANSLATED BY ELIZA A. YOUMANS. ENTLEMEN : When your honorable director invited me to speak before you, I felt much embarrassed. I desired both to interest and instruct you, but the subjects with which I am occupied are of too abstract a nature to offer you much interest. In entering upon them I run the risk of tiring you, and, as people who are tired are little instructed, my aim would be doubly missed. However, among the animals I have studied, there is one which, I think, will awaken your attention. I mean the silk-worm. Its history is full of serious instruction. It teaches us not to despise a being be­ cause, at first, it seems useless ; it proves that creatures, in ap­ pearance the most humble, may play a part of great importance to the world ; it shows us that the most useful things are often slow to attract public attention, but that sooner or later their day of justice arrives. It teaches us, consequently, not to despair when valuable ideas or practical inventions are not at first welcomed as they should be, for, though their triumph is delayed, it is not less sure. Perhaps, also, in choosing this subject, I have yielded a little to national egotism. I was born in that province which was the first in France to understand the importance of the silk-worm ; which owes to this industry, fertilized by study and management, a prosperity rarely equalled, and which, of late cruelly smitten, bears its misfortunes with a firmness worthy of imitation. We are to speak, then, of industry, of studious care, of perseverance, of courage ; I am certain that you will be interested. Pemit me, at first, to make a supposition—what we call an hypoth­ esis : what would you say if a traveller, coming from some distant G 1 A lecture delivered at the Imperial Asylum at Vincennes. vol. hi.—42 �658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. country, or a philosopher, who had found in some old book forgotten facts, should tell you, “ There exists, in a country three or four thou­ sand leagues from here, in the south of Asia, a tree and a caterpillar. The tree produces nothing but leaves which nourish the caterpillar.” To a certainty, most of you would say at first, “What of it?” If the traveller or the man of learning should go on to say: “ But this caterpillar is good for something; it produces a species of cocoon, which the inhabitants know how to spin, and which they weave into beautiful and durable fabrics. Would you not like to enter upon the manufacture?” You would infallibly reply: “Have we not wool from which to weave our winter vestments, and hemp, flax, and cotton, for our summer clothing? Why should we cultivate this caterpillar' and its cocoons ? ” But suppose that the traveller or philosopher, insisting, should add: “We should have to acclimate this tree and this caterpillar. The tree, it is true, bears no fruit, and we must plant thousands of them, for their leaves are to nourish the caterpillar, and it is necessary to raise these caterpillars by the millions. To this end we must build houses expressly for them, enlist and pay men to take care of them— to feed them, watch them, and gather by hand the leaves on which they live. The rooms where these insects are kept must be warmed and ventilated with the greatest care. Well-paid laborers will pre­ pare and serve their repasts, at regular hours. When the moment arrives for the animal to spin his cocoon, he must have a sort of bower of heather (Fig. 1), or branches of some other kind, properly prepared. Sprigs of Heather arranged so that the Silk-worm may mount into them. And then, at the last day of its life, we must, with the minutest care and the greatest pains, assure its reproduction.” Would you not shrug your shoulders and say, “ Who, then, is such a madman as to spend so much care and money to raise—what ?—some caterpillars ! ” Finally, if your interlocutor should add—“ We will gather the co­ coons spun by these caterpillars, and then the manufacture which spins them will arise, which will call out all the resources of mechanics. Still another new industry would employ this thread in fabricating stuffs. The value of this thread, of these tissues, would be counted by hundreds of millions for France alone; millions that would benefit �SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE. 659 agriculture, industry, commerce; the producer and the artisan, the laborer in the fields, and the laborer in towns. Our caterpillar and its products will find a place in the elaborate treatises of states­ men; and a time will come when France will think herself happy that the sovereign of a distant empire, some four thousand leagues away, had been pleased to permit her to buy in his states, and pay very dear for, the eggs of this caterpillar ”—you would abruptly turn your back and say, “ This man is a fool.” And you would not be alone: agriculturists, manufacturers, bankers, and officials, could not find sarcasms enough for this poor dreamer. And yet it is the dreamer who is in the right. He has not traced a picture of fancy. The caterpillar exists, and I do not ex­ aggerate the importance of this humble insect, which plays a part so superior to what seemed to have fallen to it. It is this of which I wish to give you the history. Let us first rapidly observe this animal, within and without. We call it a silk-worm, but I have told you it was a caterpillar. (Fig. 7.) I add that it has nothing marked in its appearance. It is larger than the caterpillars that habitually prey upon our fruit-trees, but smaller than the magnificent pearl-blue caterpillar so easy to find in the potato-field. Like all caterpillars, it is is transformed into a but­ terfly. To know the history of this species is to know the history of all others. Here in these bottles are some adult silk-worms, but here also are some large pictures, where you will more easily follow the de­ tails that I shall point out, beginning with the exterior. At one of the extremities of its long, almost cylindrical body (Fig. 7), we find the small head, provided with two jaws. These jaws do not move up and down, as in man and most animals that surround us, but laterally. All insects present the same arrangement. The body is divided into rings, and you see some little black points placed on the side of each of these rings ; these are the orifices of res­ piration. The air enters by these openings, and penetrates the canals that we shall presently find. The silk-worm has ten pairs of feet. The three first pairs are called the true feet, or scaly feet; the five last, placed behind, are the false feet, or the membranous feet. These are destined to disappear at length. Let us pass to the interior of the body. Here we find, at first, the digestive tube, which extends from one extremity to the other. It commences at the oesophagus, that which you call the throat. Below you remark an enormous cylindrical sac; it is the stomach, which is followed by the very short intestine. These canals, slendei* and tor­ tuous, placed on the side, represent, at the same time, the liver and kidneys. This great yellow cord is the very important organ in which is secreted the silky material (Fig. 2). In proportion as the animal �66o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. grows, this organ is filled with a liquid which, in passing through the spinners, the orifice of which you see, dries in the air, and forms a thread. This thread constitutes the silk. The nervous system of the animal, placed below the digestive tube, is with insects, as with all animals, of the highest importance. It is the nervous system which seems to animate all the other organs, and particularly the muscles. The latter are what we call flesh or meat. They are in reality the organs of movement, with our caterpillar as with man himself. Each of them is formed of elementary fibres that have the property of contracting and relaxing; that is to say, of shortening and lengthening under the influence of the will and of the nervous system. Upon this property depend all the movements exe­ cuted by any animal whatever. Fig. 3. Silk-secreting Apparatus of One Side of a Silk-worm. A, B, C, the part nearest the tail of the worm.where the silk-matter is formed. D, E, enlarged portion—reservoir of silky matter. E. F. capillary tubes proceeding from the two glands, and uniting in one single short canal F, which opens in the mouth of the worm, at its under lip. Two silk threads are therefore united together, and come out through the orifice with the appearance of a single thread. I wish you to remark, d propos of the caterpillar—of this insect that when crushed seems to be only a formless pulp—that its muscular system is admirably organized. It is superior to that of man himself, at least, in relation to the multiplicity of organs. We count in man 529 muscles; the caterpillar has 1,647, without counting those of the feet and head, which give 1,118 more. In us, as in most animals, there exists a nourishing liquid par ex­ cellence that we know under the name of blood. This liquid, set in mo­ tion by a heart, is carried into all parts of the body by arteries, and �SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE. 661 comes back to the heart by veins. In making this circuit it finds on its route the lungs filled with air by means of respiration. In our caterpillar we also find blood and a species of heart, but it has neither arteries nor veins. The blood is diffused throughout the body and bathes the organs in all directions. However, it ought to respire. Here step in the openings of which I have spoken. They lead to a system of ramified canals, of which the last divisions pene­ trate everywhere, and carry everywhere the air—that fluid essential to the existence of all living beings. In our bodies the air and blood are brought together. In insects the air seeks the blood in all parts of the body. I have sketched for you a caterpillar when it is full grown. But you well know that living beings are not born in this state. The general law is, small at birth, growth, and death. The caterpillar passes through all these phases. Fig. 3. Fig. 4. Egg and First Age, lasting five days. (An age is the interval between two moultings.) Second Age, lasting six days. I pass around among you some samples of what we call seeds of the silk-worm. These so-called seeds are in reality eggs. The cater­ pillar comes out of the egg very small ; its length at birth is about one-twentieth of an inch. Look at these samples, and you will see how Fig. 6. Fourth Age, lasting six days. Fig. 7. Fifth Age, lasting nine days. The mature worm near the end of its career, and at the time of its greatest voracity. great is the difference of size between the worm at birth and the fullgrown specimens I have shown you. This difference is much greater than in man. A man weighs about forty times as much as the new­ �66 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. born infant; the caterpillar, when perfectly developed, is 72,000 times heavier than when it first came from the egg. In every thing that relates to the body, there is between men and animals more resemblance than is ordinarily believed. We also come from an egg which essentially resembles all others. That this egg may become a man, it must undergo very great changes, many meta­ morphoses. But all these changes, all these metamorphoses occur in the bosom of the mother, as they are accomplished within the shell for the chicken. For insects in general, and consequently for the silk-worm a part of these metamorphoses occur in the open day. Hence they have drawn the attention, excited the curiosity, and provoked for a long time the study of naturalists. Let us say a few words about them. Scarcely is the caterpillar born than it begins to eat. It has no time to lose in gaining a volume 72,000 times greater than it had at first; so it acquits itself conscientiously of its task, and does nothing but eat, diges|, and sleep. At the end of some days this devouring appetite ceases ; the little worm becomes almost motionless, hangs itself by the hind-feet, raising and holding a little inclined the ante­ rior of its body. This repose lasts 24, 36, and even 48 hours, according to the tem­ perature ; then the dried-up skin splits open behind the head, and soon along the length of the body. The caterpillar comes out with a new skin, which is formed during this species of sleep. This singular crisis, during which the animal changes his skin as we change our shirt, is called moulting, when it is a question of cater­ pillars in general. For the silk-worm, we designate it under the name of sickness. It is, in fact, for the silk-worm, a grave period, during which it often succumbs, if its health is not perfect. Fig. 8. Head of Silk-worm during Moulting ; swollen, and skin wrinkled. Fig. 9. Position of Silk-worm while Moulting.—It remains at rest for from 12 to 24 hours, fast­ ing, but begins to eat an hour after the crisis in which it escapes from the old skin. The silk-worms change their skin four times. After the fourth moulting comes a redoubled appetite, which permits them to attain their full size in a few days. Then other phenomena appear. The caterpillar ceases to eat, and empties itself entirely ; it seems uneasy, wanders here and there, and seeks to climb. Warned by these symp­ toms, the breeder constructs for it with branches a cradle or bower, into which it mounts. It chooses a convenient place, hangs itself by the hind feet, and soon, through the spinner of which I have spoken (Fig. 2), �SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE. 663 we see come out a thread of silk. This is at first cast out in any di­ rection, and forms a collection of cords destined to fix the cocoon that is to be spun. Soon the work becomes regular, and the form of the cocoon is outlined. For some hours we can see the worker performing his task across the transparent gauze with which he surrounds him­ self. By little and little, this gauze thickens, and grows opaque and firm; finally it becomes a cocoon like these I place before you. At the end of about 72 hours the work is done. Once it has given out its first bit of silk, a worm in good health never stops, and the thread continues without interruption from one end to the other. You see that the cocoon is in reality a ball wound from the outside inward. The thread which forms this ball is 11 miles in length; its thickness is only of an inch. It is so light that 28 miles of it weigh only 15^ grains. So that 2| lbs. of silk is more than 2,700 miles long. Let me insist a moment on the prodigious activity of the silk-worm while weaving his cocoon. To dispose of its silk when spinning, it moves its head in all directions, and each movement is about one-sixth of an inch. As we know the length of the thread, we can calculate how many movements are made in disposing of the silk in 72 hours. We find in this way that a silk-worm makes nearly 300,000 motions in 24 hours, or 4,166 an hour, or 69 per minute. You see that our in­ sect yields not in activity to any weaver ; but we must add that it is beaten by the marvellous machines that the industry of our day has produced. Fig. 10. Spherical Cocoon or Bombyx Mori. Fig. 11. Cocoon drawn in toward the Middle. All cocoons are not alike. There exist, in fact, different races of silk-worms, as we have different races of dogs. These differences are less obvious in the animals themselves ; they are best seen in the co­ coons, which may be either white, yellow, green, or gray; some are round, others oval or depressed in the middle (Figs. 10 and 11). The silk of one is very fine and very strong, that of others is coarse and easily broken. Hence their very different values. All I have said applies to the silk-worm properly so called—to the silk-worm which feeds on the leaves of the mulberry-tree, the Bombyx mori of naturalists. But, some years since, there were introduced into France new species of caterpillars that produce cocoons, and �664 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. that live upon other leaves than the mulberry. Among these new im­ portations, the two principal ones are the yama-mai worm, which comes from Japan, and feeds upon the leaves of the oak, and the ailanthus worm. The first gives a very beautiful and very fine silk, while that of the second is dull and coarse. But the ailanthus grows very well in unproductive soils, and hence the caterpillar which it nourishes renders an important service. But let us return to our mulberry caterpillar, or the silk-worm properly so called. We left it at the moment when it disappeared from our eyes enveloped in its cocoon. There, in its 'mysterious re­ treat, it becomes torpid once more. It now shortens itself, changes form, and submits to a fifth moulting. But the animal which emerges from the old skin is no longer a caterpillar. It is in some sort a new being; it is what we call a chrysalis. This chrysalis scarcely reminds us of the silk-worm. The body is entirely swaddled ; we no longer see either head or feet (Fig. 14). The color is changed, and has be­ come a golden yellow. Only by certain obscure movements of the posterior part do we know that it is not a dead body. This apparent torpor in reality conceals a strange activity in all the organs and all the tissues, which ends in the transformation of the entire being. In fifteen or seventeen days, according to the temperature, this work is accomplished, and the last crisis arrives. The skin splits on the back; the animal moults for the last time, but the creature that now appears is no longer a caterpillar or a chrysalis ; it is a butterfly (Fig. 12). Fig. 12. Silk-worm Moth (Male). Is it needful to explain the details of this wonderful metamorpho­ sis ? The body, before almost all alike, presents now three distinct regions: the head, the chest (thorax)^ the belly (abdomen). Wings, of which there was not the least vestige, are now developed. In com­ pensation, the hind-feet have disappeared. The fore-feet persist, but you would not know them, they have become so slender, and a fine down covers all the parts. In the interior, the transformation is also complete. The oesopha­ gus (throat) is no longer a simple reversed funnel ; it is a narrow, lengthened tube, with an aerial vessel attached, of which the caterpil­ lar offers no trace. The stomach is strangely shortened. The intes­ �SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE. 665 tine is elongated, and its different parts, that we found so difficult to distinguish, are very much changed. If we examine in detail all the organs just now indicated, even to the nervous system, we shall find modifications not less striking. But these are not the strangest changes that have occurred. There are others which still more arrest our attention; they are those which relate to the production of a new generation. All caterpillars are neuters—that is to say, there are no males orfe­ males among them. They have no apparatus of reproduction. These organs are developed during the period that follows the formation of the chrysalis while the animal is motionless, and seemingly dead. Marriages occur at the coming out from the cocoon, and, immediately after, the female lays her eggs, averaging about 500 (Fig. 13). This Fig. 13. done, she dies, the male ordinarily dying first. It is a general law for insects; the butterfly of the silk-worm does not escape it. It is even more rigorous for him than for his brethren that we see flying from flower to flower. From the moment of entering the cocoon, the silk­ worm takes no nourishment. When it becomes a butterfly, and has assured the perpetuity of the species, its task is accomplished; there is nothing more but to die. Such, briefly, is the natural history of the silk-worm. It remains to trace rapidly its industrial history. Whence came this insect ? What is its country and that of the mulberry for the tree and the animal seem to have always travelled side by side? Every thing seems to indicate that China—Northern China is its point of departure. Chinese annals establish the exist­ ence of industries connected with it from those remote and semifabulous times when the emperors of the Celestial Empire had, it is said, the head of a tiger, the body of a dragon, and the horns of cattle. They attribute to the Emperor Fo-IIi, 3,400 years before our era, the merit of employing silk in a musical instrument of his own �666 TIIE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. invention. This date carries us back 5,265 years. They are said to have employed the silk of wild caterpillars, and to have spun a sort of floss. At that time they knew nothing of raising the worm or of winding the cocoon into skeins. This double industry appears to have arisen 2,650 years before our era, or 4,515 years ago, through the efforts of an empress named Siling-Chi. To her is attributed the invention of silk stuffs. You will not be surprised to see that the fabrication of silks should have a woman as its inventor. Si-ling-Chi, in creating this industry, which was to be so immense­ ly developed, enriched her country. Her countrymen seem to have understood the extent of the benefit, and to have been not ungrateful. They placed her among their deities, under the name of Sein-Thsan, two words that, according to M. Stanislas Julien, signify the first who raised the silk-worm. And still, in our time, the empresses of China, with their maids-of-honor, on an appointed day, offer solemn sacrifices to Sien-Thsan. They lay aside their brilliant dress, renounce their sewing, their embroidery, and their habitual work, and devote them­ selves to raising the silk-worm. In their sphere they imitate the Em­ peror of China, who, on his part, descends once a year from his throne to trace a furrow with the plough. The Chinese are an eminently practical race. No sooner did they understand that silk would be to them a source of wealth, than they strove to obtain a monopoly of it. They established guards along their frontier—true custom-house officers—with orders to prevent the going qut of seeds of the mulberry or of the silk-worm. Death was pronounced against him who attempted to transport from the country these precious elements which enriched the empire. So, during more than twenty centuries, we were completely ignorant of the source of these marvellous goods—the brilliant tissues manufactured from silk. For a long time we believed them to be a sort of cotton; some sup­ posed even that they were gathered in the fields, and were the webs of certain gigantic spiders. The price of silk continued so high that the Emperor Aurelian, after his victories in the Orient, refused his jvife a silken robe, as being an object of immoderate luxury, even for a Roman empress. A monopoly founded on a secret ought necessarily to come to an end, particularly when the secret is known by several millions of men. But, to export the industry of Si-ling-Chi, it was needful to risk life in deceiving the custom-house officer. It was a woman who undertook this fine contraband stroke. Toward the year* 140 before our era, a princess of the dynasty of Han, affianced to a King of Khokan, learned that the country in which she was destined to live had neither the mulberry nor the silk-worm. To renounce the worship of SeinThsan, and doubtless also to do without the beautiful stuffs, so dear to the coquette, appeared to hei' impossible. So she did not hesitate to use �SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE. 66? the privileges of her rank to violate the laws of the empire. On ap­ proaching the frontier, the princess concealed in her hair some mul­ berry-seed and eggs of the butterfly. The guards dared not put their hands on the head of a “ Princess of Heaven ; ” eggs and seeds passed the officer without disturbance, and prospered well in Khokan, situated near the middle of Asia. And so commenced that journey which was not to be arrested till the entire world possessed the mulberry and the silk-worm ; but it was accomplished slowly and with long halts. That which had oc­ curred in China occurred everywhere, each new state that obtained the precious seeds attempting prohibition. The silk-worm and mulberry got to Europe in 552, under Justinian. At this time two monks of the order of St. Basil delivered to this em.peror the seeds, said to have come from the heart of Asia. To smug­ gle them, they had taken still greater precautions than the Chinese princess, for they hollowed out their walking-sticks, and filled the in­ terior with the precious material. The Emperor Justinian did not imitate the Asiatic potentates, but sought to propagate and extend the silk-manufacture. Morea, Sicily, and Italy, were the first Euro­ pean countries that accepted and cultivated the new products. It was not till the twelfth or thirteenth century that the silk-worm penetrated into France. Louis XI. planted mulberry-trees around his Château of Plessis les-Tours. Besides, he called a Calabrian named Francis to initiate the neighboring population in raising this precious insect, and developing the several industries that are connected with it. Under Henry IV., sericulture received a great impulse, thanks chiefly, perhaps, to a simple gardener of Nîmes named François Traucat. It is always said that this nurseryman distributed throughout the neigh­ boring country more than four million mulberry-sprouts. In enrich­ ing the country, Traucat acquired a considerable fortune ; but he lost it foolishly. He had heard of treasures buried near a great castle which commanded the town of Nîmes, and which is called the Castle of Magne. He wished to increase the money he had nobly and use­ fully gained, by this imaginary gold ; he bought the great castle and neighboring ground, and dug the earth, which brought him nothing, till he ruined himself. The minister of Louis XIV., Colbert, sought also to propagate the mulberry. Sully with reluctance had done the same, and sent trees to various parts of the kingdom, some of which were still living when I was a child. They were called by the name of this minister, and I remember to have seen two of them in my father’s grounds, which no longer bore leaves, but were piously preserved as souvenirs of their origin. To lead in the development of sericulture, a man was needed who would not hesitate to set an example, and to make considerable sacri­ fices. This man, I am proud to say, was a modest officer, Captain �668 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. François de Carles, my grandfather. Returning from a campaign in Italy, where he had seen how much the culture of the mulberry en. nched the population, he resolved to transplant this industry into the heart of Cévennes, where were his estates. He proceeded in this way : He made plantations, and, in order to extend them, he did not hesitate to uproot the chestnuts, those old nourishers of the ancient Cévennols. Fig. 14. Larva, Pupa, Cocoon, and Moth, of Silk-worm. To water the mulberries, he constructed ditches and aqueducts ; then efoiced, so to say, the peasants to take these improved lands at their own price and on their own conditions. In this way he alienated almost all his land, and singularly diminished his fortune ; but he en­ riched the country. The results speak too distinctly to be misunder­ stood. You shall judge by the figures. �SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE. 66g The little valley where Captain Carles made his experiments, and where I was born, belongs to the Commune of Valleraugue. At the time of which I speak, they harvested scarcely 4,400 lbs. of very poor cocoons, that sold for very little. Recently there were produced, before the malady of which I shall presently speak, 440,000 lbs. of excellent quality, valued on an average at 2| or 2| francs per pound. At this price, a million of silver money found its way each year into this little commune of not more than 4,000 inhabitants. Let me remark that this money went not alone to the rich. The small proprietors, the day-laborers, those even who owned not the least land, had the greatest part. In fact, most of the easy proprie­ tors did not raise their own silk-worms; they contracted for them in this way: The laborer received a certain quantity of eggs of the silk­ worm on the condition of giving a fifth of the cocoons for an ounce of eggs ; they received, besides, enough mulberry-leaves to nourish all the worms from these eggs, plus a certain quantity to boot. All the cocoons above this constituted the wages or gain of the raiser. You see, we had resolved in our mountains this problem, so often encountered and still unsettled, of the association of capital and labor; and resolved it in the best possible way for both. The interest of the proprietor was, in this case, identical with that of the rearer, and re­ ciprocally ; for the success of a good workman would equally benefit both parties, and the poor workman could profit only according to his work. Now, this labor was in reality of little account. Until after the fourth moulting, when the silk-worm is preparing to make his cocoon, the rearing of the worms can be performed by the women and chil­ dren while the father pursues his ordinary occupation. Only after the fourth moult is he obliged to interrupt his work, and occupy himself, in his turn, in the gathering of leaves. The rearing ended, an indus­ trious family—and such are not rare with us—will have, on an average, from 250 to 500 francs of profit. This bright silver, added to the re­ sources of the year, this profit obtained without the investment of capital, seconded by the wise conduct of our mountaineer Cevennols, leads rapidly to competency. At the end of a few years, the laborer, who had nothing, possesses a little capital to buy some corner of rock, which, by his intelligent industry, he quickly transforms into fertile soil, and in his turn becomes a proprietor. What I am telling you is not fancy. I speak of facts that have occurred under my own eyes, and that I well know. In the country, and particularly on the soil of our old mountains, people are not strangers to each other, as in our great cities. Between the gentle­ man and the peasant there are not the same barriers as between the citizen and the laborer in towns. When a child, I played with all my little neighbors; I knew the most secret nooks of the eight or ten houses composing the modest hamlet which bordered the place where �670 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. I was born; I saluted by their names the members of all the families of the valley. And now, when I go to the country, it is always a great pleasure to visit these houses, one by one, and take by the hand those from whom I have been so long separated. But this happiness is always mingled with sorrow; the number of those I knew dimin­ ishes with each visit, and those who have come since cannot replace them for me. Permit me to give you the history of one of these families. It occurs to me first, as it contrasted with all the others by its miserable dwelling. This was a little thatch-built cottage, standing by itself at the foot of an irregular slope of perfectly bare rocks. It consisted of a single story, with only one room, scarcely larger than one of our bedrooms ; the wall, built without mortar, was any thing but regular; the roof consisted of flags of stone, retaining, as well as they were able, a mass of straw and branches. Between the rocks that sup­ ported this house and the wall, there was a little place where was kept a pig, the ordinary resource of all Cevennol house-keeping. This cottage was occupied, when I was eleven or twelve years old, by a man with his wife and four children. The father and mother worked in the field ; the eldest child, scarcely of my age, had begun to be useful, particularly in the time of gathering the mulberry-leaves ; the smaller ones drove the pig along the road, where it grew and fat­ tened, the best it could, without any expense. After an absence of ten years, I returned to my mountains, and the first thing was to call upon my old neighbors, those of whom I have spoken among the rest. In approaching, I scarcely knew the place. The rocks that supported the house had disappeared to make way for those traversiers of which I shall tell you presently; the house had been re­ built, it had gained a story, and was of double its former extent; its walls were laid in mortar; its roof covered with beautiful slate. The master of the house was absent, but his wife welcomed me with a glass of wine from a neat walnut table. Then she showed me, with proper pride, a room with two beds at the farther end, the first portion being devoted to the rearing of silk-worms; and, above all, the favorite ar­ ticle of furniture of all good Cevennol housekeeping—an immense cupboard of walnut, crammed with clothing, dresses, and raiment of all sorts. At the same time she gave me news of all the family : the eldest son was a soldier; a daughter was married ; the eldest re­ maining children attended to the business, and, as of old, the younger ones ran about watching the pig. I clasped with pleasure the hand of this brave woman, because this competence was the fruit of good conduct, of industry, of perseverance, and of economy. And what the silk-worm did in ten years for one family it has been doing for nearly a century for the whole region of Cevennes, because among them you generally find the same elements of success. That you may better understand me, I wish to give you some idea �671 SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE. of these valleys. Let me sketch for you the one I know best, the one in which I was born. It is composed of ascents so steep that, when two neighboring houses are placed one above the other, the cellar of the upper one is on the same level as the garret of the lower one. There is not much earth on these declivities, and the rocks stick out everywhere. But it is, as it were, from the rocks themselves that our mountaineers make their mulberry-plantations. They proceed in this way: They first break up the rocks, and with the larger Fig. 15. Sheets of Papeb, with Rows of Cocoons prepared for the fob laying Eggs. Exit of the Moths designed stones so obtained they raise a wall; then, with the smaller pieces, they fill up the interval between the wall and the mountain. This done, they bring upon their backs, from the bottom of the valley, soil and manure enough entirely to fill the space. This is what is called a traversier, and it is in this soil that most of the mulberry-trees are planted. I have seen a bridge built across a mountain-stream ex­ pressly to give foothold for two or three of these precious trees. To pay for all this preparation the produce should be very great. The following figures give the average value of ground planted to mulber­ ries for 20 years: Traversiers not watered Fields watered Meadows planted with mulberries 1 acre, 1 acre, 1 acre, 9,800 francs. 12,000 “ 12,400 “ and even then the money yielded five per cent. This price, which some would not believe when I told them, has been officially confirmed by M. de Lavergne, in his remarkable writings upon French agricul­ ture. This value of land, and the way it has been obtained, explain the nature of our country’s wealth. With the exception of some fami­ lies recently enriched by the silk-manufacture and the silk-trade, the level of this wealth, although very high, is more of the nature of gen­ eral competence than of great fortunes. Industry and economy have �672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. produced general well-being, without the growth of offensive differ­ ences. I cannot say how it is now, but in my childhood there were no paupers in our commune, except two infirm people who were sup­ ported in their misfortunes by voluntary aid. Fig. 16. These striking results could not fail to affect the neighboring country. This example of the culture of the mulberry was imitated throughout the south of France, and adopted more or less in other departments. You can judge of the progress made in this culture by the following figures, giving the quantity of cocoons produced an­ nually : From 1821 to 1830 44 1831 44 1840 44 1841 44 1845 44 1846 44 1852 44 1853 . . . . 22,000,000 pounds. 44 31,000,000 37,000,000 44 46,000,000 44 56,000,000 44 These 56,000,000 lbs. of cocoons sold at from 2^ to 2$ francs per lb., representing a value of about 130,000,000 francs. Now, these millions all went to agriculture, to the first producer; and so they added to the national wealth at its most vital source. If this progress had continued, in a few years we should have been able to supply our own manufactures, and relieve ourselves of the tribute of 60 or 65,000,000 francs that we pay to foreign countries. But, unhappily, at the moment when this culture was most prosperous, when mulberry-plantations were springing up on all sides, fed by the nurseries which were each day more numerous, all this prosperity disappeared before the terrible scourge to which I alluded in the beginning of my discourse. Like all our domestic animals, the silk-worm is subject to various maladies. One, called the muscardlne, that for a long time was the terror of breeders, is caused by a species of mould or microscopic mushroom. This mushroom invades the interior of the body of the insect. After affecting all the tissues, this vegetal parasite sometimes �SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE. &73 suddenly appears upon the outside of the body in the form of a white powder. Each grain of this powder, falling upon a silk-worm, plants the seed of this formidable mushroom, the ravages of which will destroy all the worms of a rearing-chamber in a few hours. Happily, science has found the means of killing these seeds, and of completely disinfecting the locality. At the very moment when this victory was announced, another yet more terrible scourge, the pebrine, appeared. The muscardine caused isolated disaster; it had never been so wide­ spread as seriously to injure the general business. Not so this other malady. It is a true epidemic, which attacks life at its very source in an inexplicable fashion. It is a pestilence like the cholera. Under the influence of this scourge, the chambers of the silk-worm no longer thrive; most of the worms die without producing silk. Those that survive as butterflies give infected eggs, and the next generation is worse than the first. To get healthy eggs, we had to go to the neigh­ boring countries; but other countries have been invaded in their turn. To-day we have to get them in Japan. Even when the egg is healthy, the epidemic bears equally on its product; a great part of the worms always succumb, and when the breeder gets half a crop he is very happy. Upon the whole, the great majority of breeders have worked at a loss since the invasion of this disease. You understand the consequences of such a state of things, con­ tinued since 1849. The people make nothing ; they lose, and yet VOL. III.—43 �674 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. they have to live and cultivate their ground. In this business the profits melt away rapidly, and particularly where the mulberry was the only crop, as at Cevennes, misery has taken the place of comfort. Those who once called themselves rich are to-day scarcely able to get food to eat. Those who used to hire day-laborers to gather their har­ vest have become day-laborers, and the laborers of former times have emigrated. This will give you an idea of the extremities to which they are reduced, for to uproot a mountaineer of Cevennes he must be dying of hunger. To escape a fatality so heavy, these people have displayed perse­ verance and courage of the highest kind. . They have undertaken dis­ tant journeys to get non-infected eggs. More than one has not come back from these journeys, where it was needful to struggle against great fatigue in inhospitable countries. Although they fell not on a field of battle, struck by ball or bullet, they were true soldiers; and, although they did not carry arms, they died in the service of the country. Fig. 18. Fig. 19. Square Net. Lozenge-shaped Net. Nets used to separate the worms from their faded and withered leaves. Fresh leaves are spread on these nets, and the worms leave the old food to get on to the new leaves. During seventeen years this exhaustion has been most aggravated in places chiefly devoted to sericulture. But, if these local sufferings merit all our sympathy, their general consequences still more demand our attention. Confidence in the culture of the silk-worm has dimin­ ished wherever it was not the exclusive occupation. Where other crops could replace it, that of the mulberry was easily discouraged. In many countries they have destroyed the tree so lately known as the tree of gold. As the foregoing interesting discourse was delivered in 1866, the following statement of Prof. Huxley regarding the p'ebrine malady, made in 1870, in his address before the British Association, will be in­ teresting.—[Editor. �SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE. 12122110 675 �676 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, “ The Italian naturalist, Filippi, discovered, in the blood of silk­ worms affected by this strange disease, p'ebrine, a multitude of cylin­ drical corpuscles, each of about -g-gVtr of an inch long. These have been carefully studied by Lebert, and named by him Panhistophyton ; for the reason that", in subjects in which the disease is strongly developed, the corpuscles swarm in every tissue and organ of the body, and even pass into the undeveloped eggs of the female moth. The French Gov­ ernment, alarmed by the continued ravages of the malady and the in­ efficiency of the remedies which had been suggested, dispatched M. Pasteur to study it, and the question has received its final settlement. It is now certain that this devastating, cholera-like p'ebrine is the effect of the growth and multiplication of the Panhistophyton in the silk­ worm. It is contagious and infectious, because the corpuscles of the Panhistophyton pass away from the bodies of the diseased caterpillars, directly or indirectly, to the alimentary canal of healthy silk-worms in their neighborhood; it is hereditary, because the corpuscles enter into the egg. There is not a single one of all the apparently capricious and unaccountable phenomena presented by the plbrine, but has re­ ceived its explanation from the fact that the disease is the result of the presence of the microscopic organism Panhistophyton. M. Pasteur has devised a method of extirpating the disease, which has proved to be completely successful when properly carried out.” MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. By HERBERT SPENCER. ROBABLY astonishment would make the reporters drop their pencils, were any member of Parliament to enunciate a psycho­ logical principle as justifying his opposition to a proposed measure. That some law of association of ideas, or some trait in emotional de­ velopment, should be deliberately set forth as a sufficient ground for saying “ ay” or “no” to a motion for second reading, would doubt­ less be too much for the gravity of legislators. And along with laughter from many there would come from a few cries of “ question: ” the entire irrelevancy to the matter in hand being conspicuous. It is true that during debates the possible behavior of citizens under the suggested arrangements is described. Evasions of this or that pro­ vision, difficulties in carrying it out, probabilities of resistance, con­ nivance, corruption, etc., are urged; and these tacitly assert that the mind of man has certain characters, and under the conditions named is likely to act in certain ways. In other words, there is an implied recognition of the truth that the effects of a law will depend on the -L �MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 677 manner in which human intelligence and human feeling are influenced by it. Experiences of men’s conduct which the legislator has gath­ ered, and which lie partially sorted in his memory, furnish him with empirical notions that guide his judgment on each question raised; and he would think it folly to ignore all this unsystematized knowl­ edge about people’s characters and actions. But, at the same time, he regards as foolish the proposal to proceed, not on vaguely-gen­ eralized facts, but on facts accurately generalized; and, as still more foolish, the proposal to merge these minor definite generalizations in generalizations expressing the ultimate laws of Mind. Guidance by intuition seems to him much more rational. Of course, I do not mean to say that his intuition is of small value. How should I say this, remembering the immense accumula­ tion of experiences by which his thoughts have been moulded into harmony with things ? We all know that when the successful man of business is urged by wife and daughters to get into Parliament, that they may attain a higher social standing, he always replies that his occupations through life have left him no leisure to prepare himself, by collecting and digesting the voluminous evidence respecting the effects of institutions and policies, and that he fears he might do mis­ chief. If the heir to some large estate, or scion of a noble house powerful in the locality, receives a deputation asking him to stand for the county, we constantly read that he pleads inadequate knowledge as a reason for declining : perhaps hinting that, after ten years spent in the needful studies, he may have courage to undertake the heavy responsibilities proposed to him. So, too, we have the familiar fact that, when, at length, men who have gathered vast stores of political information gain the confidence of voters who know how carefully they have thus fitted themselves, it still perpetually happens that after election they find they have entered on their work prematurely. It is true that beforehand they had sought anxiously through the records of the past, that they might avoid legislative errors of multitudinous kinds, like those committed in early times. Nevertheless, when acts are proposed referring to matters dealt with in past generations by acts long since cancelled or obsolete, immense inquiries open before them. Even limiting themselves to the 1,126 acts repealed in 1823-’29, and the further 770 repealed in 1861, they find that to learn what these aimed at, how they worked, why they failed, and whence^ arose the mischiefs they wrought, is an arduous task, which yet they feel bound to undertake lest they should reinflict these mischiefs; and hence the reason why so many break down under the effort, and retire with health destroyed. Nay, more—on those with constitutions vig­ orous enough to carry them through such inquiries, there continually presses the duty of making yet further inquiries. Besides tracing the results of abandoned laws in other societies, there is at home, year by year, more futile law-making to be investigated and lessons to be �678 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. drawn from it; as, for example, from the 134 public acts passed in 1856-’57, of which all but 68 are wholly or partially repealed. And thus it happens that, as every autumn shows us, even the strongest men, finding their lives during the recess overtaxed with the needful study, are obliged so to locate themselves that by an occasional day’s hard riding after the hounds, or a long walk over the moors with gun in hand, they may be enabled to bear the excessive strain on their ner­ vous systems. Of course, therefore, I am not so unreasonable as to deny that judgments, even empirical, which are guided by such care­ fully-amassed experiences, must be of much worth. But, fully recognizing the vast amount of information which the legislator has laboriously gathered from the accounts of institutions and laws, past and present, here and elsewhere, and admitting that, before thus instructing himself, he would no more think of enforcing a new law than would a medical student think of plunging an operating­ knife into the human body before learning where the arteries ran, the remarkable anomaly here demanding our attention is, that he objects to any thing like analysis of these phenomena he has so diligently collected, and has no faith in conclusions drawn from the ensemble of them. Not discriminating very correctly between the word “gen­ eral ” and the word “ abstract,” and regarding as abstract principles what are in nearly all cases general principles, he speaks contemptu­ ously of these as belonging to the region of theory, and as not con­ cerning the law-maker. Any wide truth that is insisted upon as being implied in many narrow truths, seems to him remote from reality and unimportant for guidance. The results of recent experiments in legis­ lation he thinks worth attending to; and, if any one reminds him of the experiments he has read so much about, that were made in other times and other places, he regards these also, separately taken, as de­ serving of consideration. But, if, instead of studying special classes of legislative experiments, some one compares many classes together, generalizes the results, and proposes to be guided by the generaliza­ tion, he shakes his head skeptically. And his skepticism passes into ridicule if it is proposed to affiliate such generalized results on the laws of Mind. To prescribe for society on the strength of countless unclassified observations, appears to him a sensible course ; but, to colligate and systematize the observations so as to educe tendencies of human behavior displayed throughout cases of numerous kinds, to trace these tendencies to their sources in the mental natures of men, and thence to draw conclusions for guidance, appears to him a vision­ ary course. Let us look at some of the fundamental facts he ignores, and at the results of ignoring them. Rational legislation, based as it can only be on a true theory of conduct, which is derivable only from a true theory of mind, must �MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 679 recognize as a datum the direct connection of action with feeling. That feeling and action bear a constant ratio, is a statement needing qualification ; for at the one extreme there are automatic actions which take place without feeling, and at the other extreme there are feelings so intense that, by deranging the vital functions, they impede or arrest action. But, speaking of those activities which life in general pre­ sents, it is a law tacitly recognized by all, though not distinctly formu­ lated, that action and feeling vary together in their amounts. Pas­ sivity and absence of facial expression, both implying rest of the mus­ cles, are held to show that there is being experienced neither much sensation nor much emotion, while the degree of external demon­ stration, be it in movements that rise finally to spasms and contor­ tions, or be it in sounds that end in laughter, and shrieks, and groans, is habitually accepted as a measure of the pleasure or pain, sensa­ tional or emotional. And so, too, where continued expenditure of energy is seen, be it in a violent struggle to escape, or be it in the persevering pursuit of an object, the quantity of effort is held to show the quantity of feeling. This truth, undeniable in its generality, whatever qualifications secondary truths make in it, must be joined with the truth that cog­ nition does not produce action. If I tread on a pin, or unawares dip my hand into very hot water, I start: the strong sensation produces motion without any thought intervening. Conversely, the proposition that a pin pricks, or that hot water scalds, leaves me quite unmoved. True, if to one of these propositions is joined the idea that a pin is about to pierce my skin, or to the other the idea that some hot water will fall on it, there results a tendency, more or less decided, to shrink. But that which causes shrinking is the ideal pain. The statement that the pin will hurt or the water scald produces no effect, so long as there is nothing beyond a recognition of its meaning : it produces an effect only when the pain verbally asserted becomes a pain actually con­ ceived as impending—only when there rises in consciousness a repre­ sentation of the pain, which is a faint form of the pain as before felt. That is to say, the cause of movement here, as in other cases, is a feel­ ing and not a cognition. What we see even in these simplest actions, runs through actions of all degrees of complexity. It is never the knowledge which is the moving agent in conduct, but it is always the feeling which goes along with that knowledge, or is excited by it. Though the drunkard knows that after to-day’s debauch will come to­ morrow’s headache, yet he is not deterred by consciousness of this truth, unless the penalty is distinctly represented—unless there rises in his consciousness a vivid idea of the misery to be borne—unless there is excited in him an adequate amount of feeling antagonistic to his desire for drink. Similarly with improvidence in general. If com­ ing evils are imagined with clearness and the threatened sufferings ideally felt, there is a due check on the tendency to take immediate * �68o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. gratifications without stint; but, in the absence of that consciousness of future ills which is constituted by the ideas of pains, distinct or vague, the passing desire is not opposed effectually. The truth that recklessness brings distress, fully acknowledged though it may be, re­ mains inoperative. The mere cognition does not affect conduct—con­ duct is affected only when the cognition passes out of that intellectual form in which the idea of distress is little more than verbal, into a form in which this term of the proposition is developed into a vivid imagi­ nation of distress—a mass of painful feeling. It is thus with conduct of every kind. See this group of persons clustered at the river-side. A boat has upset, and some one is in danger of drowning. The fact, that, in the absence of aid, the youth in the water will shortly die, is known to them all. That by swimming to his assistance his life may be saved, is a proposition denied by none of them. The duty of help­ ing fellow-creatures who are in difficulties, they have been taught all their lives ; and they will severally admit that running a risk to pre­ vent a death is praiseworthy. Nevertheless, though sundry of them can swim, they do nothing beyond shouting for assistance or giving advice. But now here comes one who, tearing off his coat, plunges in to the rescue. In what does he differ from the others ? Not in knowl­ edge. Their cognitions are equally clear with his. They know as well as he does that death is impending, and know, too, how it may be prevented. In him, however, these cognitions arouse certain correlative emotions more strongly than they are aroused in the rest. Groups of feelings are excited in all; but, whereas in the others the deterrent feelings of fear, etc., preponderate, in him there is a surplus of the feelings excited by sympathy, joined, it may be, with others not of so high a kind. In each case, however, the behavior is not determined by knowledge, but by emotion. Ob­ viously, change in the actions of these passive spectators is not to be effected by making their cognitions clearer, but by making their higher feelings stronger. Have we not here, then, a cardinal psychological truth, to which any rational system of human discipline must conform ? Is it not mani­ fest that a legislation which ignores it and tacitly assumes its opposite will inevitably fail ? Yet much of our legislation does this ; and we are at present, legislature and nation together, eagerly pushing for­ ward schemes which proceed on the postulate that conduct is deter­ mined not by feelings, but by cognitions. For what else is the assumption underlying this anxious urging-on of organizations for teaching ? What is the root-notion common to Secularists and Denominational!sts, but the notion that spread of knowledge is the one thing needful for bettering behavior ? Having both swallowed certain statistical fallacies, there has grown up in them the belief that State-education will check ill-doing. In newspapers, �MENTAL SCIENCE ANN SOCIOLOGY. 681 they have often met with comparisons between the numbers of crimi­ nals who can read and write and the numbers who cannot; and, find­ ing the numbers who cannot greatly exceed the numbers who can, they accept the inference that ignorance is the cause of crime. It does not occur to them to ask whether other statistics, similarly drawn up, would not prove with like conclusiveness that crime is caused by ab­ sence of ablutions, or by lack of clean linen, or by bad ventilation, or by want of a separate bedroom. Go through any jail, and ascertain how many prisoners had been in the habit of taking a morning bath, and you would find that criminality habitually went with dirtiness of skin. Count up those who had possessed a second suit of clothes, and a comparison of the figures would show you that but a small percent­ age of criminals were habitually able to change their garments. In­ quire whether they had lived in main streets or down courts, and you would discover that nearly all urban crime comes from holes and corners. Similarly, a fanatical advocate of total abstinence or of sani­ tary improvement could get equally strong statistical justifications for his belief. But, if, not accepting the random inference presented to you, that ignorance and crime are cause and effect, you consider, as above, whether crime may not with equal reason be ascribed to various other causes, you are led to see that it is really connected with an in­ ferior mode of life, itself usually consequent on original inferiority of nature ; and you are led to see that ignorance is simply one of the concomitants, no more to be held the cause of crime than various other concomitants. But this obvious criticism, and the obvious counter-conclusion it implies, are not simply overlooked, but, when insisted on, seem pow­ erless to affect the belief which has taken possession of men. Disap­ pointment alone will now affect it. A wave of opinion, reaching a cer­ tain height, cannot be changed by any evidence or argument, but has to spend itself in the gradual course of things before a reaction of opinion can arise. Otherwise it would be incomprehensible that this confidence in the curative effects of teaching, which men have care­ lessly allowed to be generated in them by the reiterations of doctrinaire politicians, should survive the direct disproofs yielded by daily ex­ perience. Is it not the trouble of every mother and every governess, that perpetual insisting on the right and denouncing the wrong do not suffice ? Is it not the constant complaint that on many natures reason­ ing and explanation and the clear demonstration of consequences are scarcely at all operative; that where they are operative there is a more or less marked difference of emotional nature ; and that where, having before failed, they begin to succeed, change of feeling rather than differ­ ence of apprehension is the cause ? Do we not similarly hear from every house-keeper that servants usually pay but little attention to re­ proofs ; that they go on perversely in old habits, regardless of clear evidence of their foolishness; and that their actions are to be altered �682 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. not by explanations and reasonings, but by either the fear of penalties or the experience of penalties—that is, by the emotions awakened in them ? When we turn from domestic life to the life of the outer world, do not like disproofs everywhere meet us ? Are not fraudulent bank­ rupts educated people, and getters-up of bubble-companies, and makers of adulterated goods, and users of false trade-marks, and retailers who have light weights, and owners of unseaworthy ships, and those who cheat insurance-companies, and those who carry on turf-chicaneries, and the great majority of gamblers ? Or, to take a more extreme form of turpitude—is there not, among those who have committed murder by poison within our memories, a considerable number of the educated—a number bearing as large a ratio to the educated classes as does the total number of murderers to the total population ? This belief in the moralizing effects of intellectual culture, flatly contradicted by facts, is absurd a priori. What imaginable connection is there between the learning that certain clusters of marks on paper stand for certain words and the getting a higher sense of duty ? What possible effect can acquirement of facility in making written signs of sounds have in strengthening the desire to do right? How does knowledge of the multiplication-table, or quickness in adding and dividing, so increase the sympathies as to restrain the tendency to trespass against fellow-creatures ? In what way can th? attainment of accuracy in spelling and parsing, etc., make the sentiment of justice more powerful than it was; or why from stores of geographical in­ formation, perseveringly gained, is there likely to come increased re­ gard for truth ? The irrelation between such causes and such effects is almost as great as that between exercise of the fingers and strength­ ening of the legs. One who should by lessons in Latin hope to give a knowledge of geometry, or one who should expect practice in draw­ ing to be followed by expressive rendering of a sonata, would be thought fit for an asylum; and yet he would be scarcely more irra­ tional than are those who by discipline of the intellectual faculties ex­ pect to produce better feelings. This faith in lesson-books and readings is one of the superstitions of the age. Even as appliances to intellectual culture, books are greatly over-estimated. Instead of second-hand knowledge being re­ garded as of less value than first-hand knowledge, and as a knowledge to be sought only where first-hand knowledge cannot be had, it is actually regarded as of greater value. Something gathered from printed pages is supposed to enter into a course of education; but, if gathered by observation of Life and Nature, is supposed not thus to enter. Reading is seeing by proxy—is learning indirectly through another man’s faculties, instead of directly through one’s own facul­ ties ; and such is the prevailing bias that the indirect learning is thought preferable to the direct learning, and usurps the name of cultivation! We smile when told that savages consider writing as �MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 683 a kind of magic: and we laugh at the story of the negro who hid a letter under a stone, that it might not inform against him when he devoured the fruit he was sent with. Yet the current notions about printed information betray a kindred delusion: a kind of magical efficacy is ascribed to ideas gained through artificial appliances, as compared with ideas otherwise gained. And this delusion, injurious in its effects even on intellectual culture, produces effects still more injurious on moral culture, by generating the assumption that this, too, can be got by reading and the repeating of lessons. It will, I know, be said that not from intellectual teaching, but from moral teaching, are improvement of conduct and diminution of crime looked for. While, unquestionably, many of those who urge on educational schemes believe in the moralizing effects of knowledge in general, it must be admitted that some hold general knowledge to be inadequate, and contend that rules of right conduct must be taught. Already, however, reasons have been given why the expec­ tations even of these are illusory; proceeding, as they do, on the as­ sumption that the intellectual acceptance of moral precepts will pro­ duce conformity to them. Plenty more reasons are forthcoming. I will not dwell on the contradictions to this assumption furnished by the Chinese, to all of whom the high ethical maxims of Confucius are taught, and who yet fail to show us a conduct proportionately exem­ plary. Nor will I enlarge on the lesson to be derived from the United States, the school-system of which brings up the whole population under the daily influence of chapters which set forth principles of right conduct, and which nevertheless in its political life, and by many of its social occurrences, shows us that conformity to these principles is any thing but complete. It will suffice if I limit myself to evidence supplied by our own society, past and present, which negatives, very decisively, these sanguine expectations. For, what have we been do­ ing all these many centuries by our religious agencies, but preaching right principles to old and young? What has been the aim of ser­ vices in our ten thousand churches, week after week, but to enforce a code of good conduct by promised rewards and threatened penalties ? —the whole population having been for many generations compelled to listen. What have Dissenting chapels, more numerous still, been used for, unless as places where pursuance of right and desistance from wrong have been unceasingly commended to all from childhood up­ ward ? And if now it is held that something more must be done— if, notwithstanding perpetual explanations and denunciations and ex­ hortations, the misconduct is so great that society is endangered, why, after all this insistance has failed, is it expected that more insistance will succeed ? See here the proposals and the implied beliefs. Teaching by clergymen not having had the desired effect, let us try teaching by school-masters. Bible-reading from a pulpit, with the ac­ companiment of imposing architecture, painted windows, tombs, and �684 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. “ dim religious light,” having proved inadequate, suppose we try bible­ reading in rooms with bare walls, relieved only by maps and drawings of animals. Commands and interdicts, uttered by a surpliced priest to minds prepared by chant and organ-peal, not having been obeyed, let us see whether they will be obeyed when mechanically repeated in school-boy sing-song to a threadbare usher, amid the buzz of lesson­ learning and clatter of slates. No very hopeful proposals, one would say; proceeding, as they do, upon one or other of the beliefs, that a moral precept will be effective in proportion as it is received without emotional accompaniment, and that its effectiveness will increase in proportion to the number of times it is repeated. Both these beliefs are directly at variance with the results of psychological analysis and of daily experience. Certainly, such influence as may be gained by addressing moral truths to the intellect, is made greater if the ac­ companiments arouse an appropriate emotional excitement, as a re­ ligious service does; while, conversely, there can be no more effectual way of divesting such moral truths of their impressiveness, than as­ sociating them with the prosaic and vulgarizing sounds and sights and smells coming from crowded children. And no less certain is it that precepts, often heard and little regarded, lose by repetition the small influence they had. What do public-schools show us ?—are the boys rendered merciful to one another by listening to religious injunctions every morning? What do universities show us?—have perpetual chapels habitually made undergraduates behave better than the average of young men ? What do cathedral-towns show us ?— is there in them a moral tone above that of other towns, or must we from the common saying, “ the nearer the church,” etc., infer a per­ vading impression to the contrary ? What do clergymen’s sons show us?—has constant insistance on right conduct made them conspicu­ ously superior, or do we not rather hear it whispered that something like an opposite effect seems produced. Or, to take one more case, what do religious newspapers show us ?—is it that the precepts of Christianity, more familiar to their writers than to other writers, are more clearly to be traced in their articles, or has there not ever been displayed a want of charity in their dealings with opponents, and is it not still displayed? Nowhere do we find that repetition of rules of right, already known but disregarded, produces regard for them; but we find that, contrariwise, it makes the regard for them less than before. The prevailing assumption is, indeed, as much disproved by analy­ sis as it is contradicted by familiar facts. Already we have seen that the connection is between action and feeling ; and hence the corollary, that only by a frequent passing of feeling into action is the tendency to such action strengthened. Just as two ideas often repeated in a certain'order become coherent in that order; and just as muscular motions, at first difficult to combine properly with one another and �MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 685 with guiding perceptions, become by practice facile, and at length au­ tomatic ; so the recurring production of any conduct by its prompting emotion makes that conduct relatively easy. Not by precept, though heard daily; not by example, unless it is followed; but only by action, often caused by the related feeling, can a moral habit be formed. And yet this truth, which Mental Science clearly teaches, and which is in harmony with familiar sayings, is a truth wholly ignored in current educational fanaticisms. There is ignored, too, the correlative truth; and ignoring it threat­ ens results still more disastrous. While we see an expectation of ben­ efits which the means used cannot achieve, we see no consciousness of injuries which will be entailed by these means. As usually happens with those absorbed in the eager pursuit of some good by govern­ mental action, there is a blindness to the evil reaction on the natures of citizens. Already the natures of citizens have suffered from kin­ dred reactions, due to actions set up centuries ago ; and now the mis­ chievous effects are to be increased by further such reactions. The English people are complained of as improvident. Very few of them lay by in anticipation of times when work is slack; and the general testimony is that higher wages commonly result only in more extravagant living or in drinking to greater excess. As we saw a while since, they neglect opportunities of becoming shareholders in the companies they are engaged under; and those who are most anx­ ious for their welfare despair on finding how little they do to raise themselves when they have the means. This tendency to seize imme­ diate gratification regardless of future penalty is commented on as characteristic of the English people ; and, contrasts between them and their Continental neighbors having been drawn, surprise is expressed that such contrasts should exist. Improvidence is spoken of as an in­ explicable trait of the race—no regard being paid to the fact that races with which it is compared are allied in blood. The people of Norway are economical and extremely prudent. The Danes, too, are thrifty; and Defoe, commenting on the extravagance of his countrymen, says that a Dutchman gets rich on wages out of which an Englishman but just lives. So, too, if we take the modern Germans. Alike by the complaints of the Americans, that the Germans are ousting them from their own businesses by working hard and living cheaply, and by the success here of German traders and the preference shown for Ger­ man waiters, we are taught that in other divisions of the Teutonic race there is nothing like this lack of self-control. Nor can we ascribe to such portion of Norman blood as exists among us this peculiar trait: de­ scendants of the Normans in France are industrious and saving. Why, then, should the English people be improvident ? If we seek explana­ tion in their remote lineage, we find none; but, if we seek it in the social conditions to which they have been subject, we find a sufficient �686 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. explanation. The English are improvident because they have been for ages disciplined in improvidence. Extravagance has been made habitual by shielding them from the sharp penalties extravagance brings. Carefulness has been discouraged by continually showing to the careful that those who were careless did as well as, or better than, themselves. Nay, there have been positive penalties on carefulness. Laborers working hard and paying their way have constantly found themselves called on to help in supporting the idle around them ; have had their goods taken under distress-warrants that paupers might be fed; and eventually have found themselves and their children reduced also to pauperism. Well-conducted poor women, supporting them­ selves without aid or encouragement, have seen the ill-conducted re­ ceiving parish-pay for their illegitimate children. Nay, to such ex­ tremes has the process gone, that women with many illegitimate children, getting from the rates a weekly sum for each, have been chosen as wives by men who wanted the sums thus derived ! Genera­ tion after generation the honest and independent, not marrying till they had means, and striving to bring up their families without assist­ ance, have been saddled with extra burdens, and hindered from leav­ ing a desirable posterity; while the dissolute and the idle, especially when given to that lying and servility by which those in authority are deluded, have been helped to produce and to rear progeny, charac­ terized, like themselves, by absence of the mental traits needed for good citizenship. And then, after centuries during which we have been breeding the race as much as possible from the improvident, and repressing the multiplication of the provident, we lift our hands and exclaim at the recklessness our people exhibit! If men, who, for a score of generations, had by preference bred from their worst-tem­ pered horses and their least-sagacious dogs, were then to wonder be­ cause their horses were vicious and their dogs stupid, we should think the absurdity of their policy paralleled only by the absurdity of their astonishment; but human beings instead of inferior animals being in question, no absurdity is seen either in the policy or in the astonish­ ment. And now something more serious happens than the overlooking of these evils wrought on men’s natures by centuries of demoralizing in­ fluences. We are deliberately establishing further such influences. Having, as much as we could, suspended the civilizing discipline of an industrial life so carried on as to achieve self-maintenance without in­ jury to others, we now proceed to suspend that civilizing discipline in another direction. Having in successive generations done our best to diminish the sense of responsibility, by warding off evils which disre­ gard of responsibility brings, we now carry the policy further by re­ lieving parents from certain other responsibilities which, in the order of Nature, fall on them. By way of checking recklessness, and dis­ couraging improvident marriages, and raising the conception of duty, �MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 687 we are diffusing the belief that it is not the concern of parents to fit their children for the business of life; but that the nation is bound to do this. Everywhere there is a tacit enunciation of the marvellous doctrine that citizens are not responsible individually for the bringing up each of his own children, but that these same citizens, incorporated into a society, are each of them responsible for the bringing up of everybody else’s children I The obligation does not fall upon A in his capacity of father to rear the minds as well as the bodies of his offspring; but in his capacity of citizen there does fall on him the ob­ ligation of mentally rearing the offspring of B, C, D, and the rest, who similarly have their direct parental obligations made secondary to their indirect obligations to children not their own ! Already it is estimated that, as matters are now being arranged, parents will soon pay in school-fees for their own children only one-sixth of the amount which is paid by them through taxes, rates, and voluntary contribu­ tions, for children at large: in terms of money, the claims of children at large to their care will be taken as six times the claim of their own children 1 And, if, looking back forty years, we observe the growth of the public claim versus the private claim, we may infer that the private claim will presently be absorbed wholly. Already the correl­ ative theory is becoming so definite and positive that you meet with the notion, uttered as though it were an unquestionable truth, that criminals are “ society’s failures.” Presently it will be seen that, since good bodily development, as well as good mental development, is a prerequisite to good citizenship (for without it the citizen cannot main­ tain himself, and so avoid wrong-doing), society is responsible also for the proper feeding and clothing of children : indeed, in school-board discussions, there is already an occasional admission that no logicallydefensible halting-place can be found between the two. And so we are progressing toward the wonderful notion, here and there finding tacit expression, that people are to marry when they feel inclined, and other people are to take the consequences ! And this is thought to be the policy conducive to improvement of behavior. Men who have been made improvident by shielding them from many of the evil results of improvidence are now to be made more provident by further shielding them from the evil results of im­ providence. Having had their self-control decreased by social ar­ rangements which lessened the need for self-control, other social ar­ rangements are devised which will make self-control still less needful: and it is hoped so to make self-control greater. This expectation is absolutely at variance with the whole order of things. Life of every kind, human included, proceeds on an exactly-opposite principle. All lower types of beings show us that the rearing of offspring affords the highest discipline for the faculties. The. parental instinct is every­ where that which calls out the energies most persistently, and in the greatest degree exercises the intelligence. The self-sacrifice and the �688 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. sagacity which inferior creatures display in the care of their young are often commented upon; and every one may see that parenthood produces a mental exaltation not otherwise producible. That it is so among mankind is daily proved. Continually we remark that men who were random grow steady when they have children to provide for; and vain, thoughtless girls, becoming mothers, begin to show higher feelings, and capacities that were not before drawn out. In both there is a daily discipline in unselfishness, in industry, in fore­ sight. The parental relation strengthens from hour to hour the habit of postponing immediate ease and egoistic pleasure to the altruistic pleasure obtained by furthering the welfare of offspring. There is a frequent subordination of the claims of self to the claims of fellow­ beings ; and by no other agency can the practice of this subordination be so effectually secured. Not, then, by a decreased, but by an in­ creased, sense of parental responsibility is self-control to be made greater and recklessness to be checked. And yet the policy now so earnestly and undoubtingly pursued is one which will inevitably di­ minish the sense of parental responsibility. This all-important dis­ cipline of parents’ emotions is to be weakened that children may get reading, and grammar, and geography, more generally than they would otherwise do. A superficial intellectualization is to be secured at the cost of a deep-seated demoralization. Few, I suppose, will deliberately assert that information is impor­ tant and character relatively unimportant. Every one observes from time to time how much more valuable to himself and others is the workman who, though unable to read, is diligent, sober, and honest, than is the well-taught workman who breaks his engagements, spends days in drinking, and neglects his family. And, comparing members of the upper classes, no one doubts that the spendthrift or the gam­ bler, however good his intellectual training, is inferior as a social unit to the man who, not having passed through the approved curriculum, nevertheless prospers by performing well the work he undertakes, and provides for his children instead of leaving them in poverty to the care of relatives. That is to say, looking at the matter in the con­ crete, all see that, for social welfare, good character is more important than much knowledge. And yet the manifest corollary is not drawn. What effect will be produced on character by artificial appliances for spreading knowledge is not asked. Of the ends to be kept in view by the legislator, all are unimportant compared with the end of char­ acter-making; and yet character-making is an end wholly unrecog­ nized. Let it be seen that the future of a nation depends on the natures of its units ; that their natures are inevitably modified in adaptation to the conditions in which they are placed; that the feelings called into play by these conditions will strengthen, while those which have diminished demands on them will dwindle; and it will be seen that �A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. 689 the bettering of conduct can be effected, not by insisting on maxims of good conduct, still less by mere intellectual culture, but only by that daily exercise of the higher sentiments and repression of the lower, which results from keeping men subordinate to the requirements of orderly social life—letting them suffer the inevitable penalties of breaking these requirements, and reap the benefits of conforming to them. This alone is national education. A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY.1 By CHARLES W. ELIOT, PRESIDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE. TURN next to my third topic, the true policy of our government as regards university instruction. In almost all the writings about a nation’s university, and of course in the two Senate bills now under discussion, there will be found the implication, if not the express as­ sertion, that it is somehow the duty of our government to maintain a magnificent university. This assumption is the foundation upon which rest the ambitious projects before us, and many similar schemes. Let me try to demonstrate that the foundation is itself unsound. The general notion that a beneficent government should provide and control an elaborate organization for teaching, just as it maintains an army, a navy, or a post-office, is of European origin, being a legiti­ mate corollary to the theory of government by divine right. It is said that the state is a person having a conscience and a moral respon­ sibility ; that the government is the visible representative of a peo­ ple’s civilization, and the guardian of its honor and its morals, and should be the embodiment of all that is high and good in the people’s character and aspirations. This moral person, this corporate repre­ sentative of a Christian nation, has high duties and functions com­ mensurate with its great powers, and none more imperative than that of diffusing knowledge and advancing science. I desire to state this argument for the conduct of high educational institutions by government, as a matter of abstract duty, with all the force which belongs to it; for, under an endless variety of thin dis­ guises, and with all sorts of amplifications and dilutions, it is a staple commodity with writers upon the relation of government to educa­ tion. The conception of government upon which this argument is I 1 Closing argument of a report by President Eliot to the National Educational Asso­ ciation at its recent session in Elmira. The first part of the report gives an account of what had been done by the Association about the project of a national university since 1869 ; and the second part examines the two bills on the subject which were brought before Congress in 1872. vol. hi.—44 �6go THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. based is obsolescent everywhere. In a free community the govern­ ment does not hold this parental, or patriarchal—I should better say godlike—position. Our government is a group of servants appointed to do certain difficult and important work. It is not the guardian of the nation’s morals ; it does not necessarily represent the best virtue of the republic, and is not responsible for the national character, being itself one of the products of that character. The doctrine of state personality and conscience, and the whole argument of the dignity and moral elevation of a Christian nation’s government as the basis of government duties, are natural enough under grace-of-God gov­ ernments, but they find no ground of practical application to modern republican confederations; they have no bearing on governments con­ sidered as purely human agencies with defined powers and limited re­ sponsibilities. Moreover, for most Americans these arguments prove a great deal too much ; for, if they have the least tendency to persuade us that government should direct any part of secular education, with how much greater force do they apply to the conduct by government of the religious education of the people ! These propositions are, in­ deed, the main arguments for an established church. Religion is the supreme human interest, government is the supreme human organiza­ tion ; therefore, government ought to take care for religion, and a Christian government should maintain distinctively Christian religious institutions. This is not theory alone ; it is the practice of all Christen­ dom, except in America and Switzerland. Now, we do not admit it to be our duty to establish a national church. We believe not only that our people are more religious than many nations which have es­ tablished churches, but also that they are far more religious under their own voluntary system than they would be under any government establishment of religion. We do not admit for a moment that estab­ lishment or no establishment is synonymous with national piety or impiety. Now, if a beneficent Christian government may rightly leave the jfeople to provide themselves with religious institutions, surely it may leave them to provide suitable universities for the edu­ cation of their youth. And here again the question of national uni­ versity or no national university is by no means synonymous with the question, Shall the country have good university education or not? The only question is, Shall we have a university supported and con­ trolled by government, or shall we continue to rely upon universities supported and controlled by other agencies ? There is, then, no foundation whatever for the assumption that it is the duty of our government to establish a national university. I venture to state one broad reason why our government should not es­ tablish and maintain a university. If the people of the United States have any special destiny, any peculiar function in the world, it is to try to work out under extraordinarily favorable circumstances the problem of free institutions for a heterogeneous, rich, multitudinous �A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. 691 population, spread over a vast territory. We, indeed, want to breed scholars, artists, poets, historians, novelists, engineers, physicians, jurists, theologians, and orators; but, first of all, we want to breed a race of independent, self-reliant freemen, capable of helping, guiding, and governing themselves. Now, the habit of being helped by the government, even if it be to things good in themselves—to churches, universities, and railroads—is a most insidious and irresistible enemy of republicanism ; for the very essence of republicanism is self-reliance. With the Continental nations of Europe it is an axiom that the gov­ ernment is to do every thing, and is responsible for every thing. The French have no word for “ public spirit,” for the reason that the sen­ timent is unknown to them. This abject dependence on the govern­ ment is an accursed inheritance from the days of the divine right of kings. Americans, on the contrary, maintain precisely the opposite theory—namely, that government is to do nothing not expressly as­ signed it to do, that it is to perform no function which any private agency can perform as well, and that it is not to do a public good even, unless that good be otherwise unattainable. It is hardly too much to say that this doctrine is the foundation of our public liberty. So long as the people are really free they will maintain it in theory and in practice. During the war of the rebellion we got accustomed to seeing the government spend vast sums of money and put forth vast efforts, and we asked ourselves, Why should not some of these great resources and powers be applied to works of peace, to creation as well as to destruction? So we subsidized railroads and steamship companies, and agricultural colleges, and now it is proposed to sub­ sidize a university. The fatal objection to this subsidizing process is that it saps the foundations of public liberty. The only adequate se­ curities of public liberty are the national habits, traditions, and char­ acter, acquired and accumulated in the practice of liberty and self­ control. Interrupt these traditions, break up these habits or cultivate the opposite ones, or poison that national character, and public liberty will suddenly be found defenceless. We deceive ourselves danger­ ously when we think or speak as if education, whether primary or university, could guarantee republican institutions. Education can do no such thing. A republican people should, indeed, be educated and intelligent; but it by no means follows that an educated and in­ telligent people will be republican. Do I seem to conjure up imaginary evils to follow from this beneficent establishment of a superb national university? We teachers should be the last people to forget the sound advice—obsta principiis. A drop of water will put out a spark which otherwise would have kindled a conflagration that rivers could not quench. Let us cling fast to the genuine American method—the old Massachu­ setts method—in the matter of public instruction. The essential feat­ ures of that system are local taxes for universal elementary education �6g2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. voted by the citizens themselves, local elective boards to spend the money raised by taxation and control the schools, and for the higher grades of instruction permanent endowments administered by incorporated bodies of trustees. This is the American voluntary system, in sharp contrast with the military, despotic organization of public instruction which prevails in Prussia and most other states of Continental Europe. Both systems have peculiar advantages, the crowning advantage of the American method being that it breeds freemen. Our ancestors well understood the principle that, to make a people free and self-re­ liant, it is necessary to let them take care of themselves, even if they do not take quite as good care of themselves as some superior power might. And now, finally, let us ask what should make a university at the capital of the United States, established and supported by the Gen­ eral Government, more national than any other American university. It might be larger and richer than any other, and it might not be; but certainly it could not have a monopoly of patriotism or of catho­ licity, or of literary or scientific enthusiasm. There are an attractive comprehensiveness and a suggestion of public spirit and love of coun­ try in the term “ national; ” but, after all, the adjective only narrows and belittles the noble conception contained in the word “ university.” Letters, science, art, philosophy, medicine, law, and theology, are larger and more enduring than nations. There is something childish in this uneasy hankering for a big university in America, as there is also in that impatient longing for a distinctive American literature which we so often hear expressed. As American life grows more various and richer in sentiment, passion, thought, and accumulated ex­ perience, American literature will become richer and more abounding, and in that better day let us hope that there will be found several universities in America, though by no means one in each State, as free, liberal, rich, national, and glorious, as the warmest advocate of a single crowning university at the national capital could imagine his desired institution to become. AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM. By JOHN FISKE, BEOENTLY LECTITBER ON PHILOSOPHY AT HABVABD UNIVERSITY. NE Friday morning, a few weeks ago, as I was looking over the Nation, my eye fell upon an advertisement, inserted by the proprietors of the New-York Tribune, announcing the final destruc­ tion of Darwinism. What especially riveted my attention was the pe­ culiar style of the announcement: “ The Darwinian Theory utterly de­ O �AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM. 693 molished ” (or words to that effect) “ by Agassiz Himself ! ” Whether from accident or design, the type-setter’s choice of Roman capitals was very happy. Upon many readers the effect must have been tre­ mendous ; and quite possibly there may be some who, without further investigation, will carry to their dying day the opinion that it is all over with the Darwinian theory, since “ Agassiz Himself” has re­ futed it. Upon me the effect was such as to make me lay down my paper and ask myself: Can it be that we have, after all, a sort of scientific pope among us ? Has it come to this, that the dicta of some one “servant and interpreter of Nature” are to be accepted as final, even against the better judgment of the majority of his compeers ? In short, who is Agassiz himself, that he should thus single-handed have demolished the stoutest edifice which observation and deduc­ tion have reared since the day when Newton built to such good pur­ pose ? Prof. Agassiz is a naturalist who is justly world-renowned for his achievements. His contributions to geology, to paleontology, and to systematic zoology, have been such as to place him in a very high rank among contemporary naturalists. Not quite in the highest place, I should say; for, apart from all questions of theory, it is probable that Mr. Darwin’s gigantic industry, his wonderful thoroughness and ac­ curacy as an observer, and his unrivalled fertility of suggestion, will cause him in the future to be ranked along with Aristotle, Linnaeus, and Cuvier; and upon this high level we cannot place Prof. Agassiz. Leaving Mr. Darwin out of the account, we may say that Prof. Agas­ siz stands in the first rank of contemporary naturalists. But any ex­ ceptional supremacy in this first rank can by no means be claimed for him. Both for learning and for sagacity, the names of Gray, Wyman, Huxley, Hooker, Wallace, Lubbock, Lyell, Vogt, Haeckel, and Gegenbaur, are quite as illustrious as the name of Agassiz; and we may note, in passing, that these are the names of men who openly indorse and defend the Darwinian theory. Possibly, however, there are some who will not be inclined to ac­ cept the estimates made in the foregoing paragraph. No doubt there are many people in this country who have long accustomed themselves to regard Prof. Agassiz not simply as one among a dozen or twenty living naturalists of the highest rank, but as occupying a solitary po­ sition as the greatest of all living naturalists—as a kind of second Cuvier, for example. There is, to the popular eye, a halo about the name of Agassiz which there is not about the name of Gray; though, if there is any man now living in America, of whom America might, justly boast as her chief ornament and pride, so far as science is con­ cerned, that man is unquestionably Prof. Asa Gray. Now, this greater popular fame of Agassiz is due to the fact that he is a Euro­ pean who cast in his lot with us at a time when we were wont to over- �694 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. rate foreign importations of whatever sort. As a European, there­ fore, he outshines such men as Profs. Gray and Wyman, and, as a man whom we know, he outshines other Europeans, like Haeckel and Gegenbaur, whose acquaintance we happen not to have made; just as Rubinstein, whose fame has filled the American newspapers, outshines Bulow (probably his equal as a pianist), who has not yet visited this country. In this way Prof. Agassiz has acquired a reputation in America which is greater than his reputation in Europe, and which is greater than his achievements—admirable as they are—would be able, on trial, to sustain. And now I come to my first point. Admitting for Prof. Agassiz all the wonderful greatness as a naturalist with which the vague sentiments of the uneducated multitude in this country would accredit him ; admitting, in other words, that he is the greatest of naturalists, and not one among a dozen or twenty equals; it must still be asked, why should his rejection of Darwinism be regarded as conclusively fatal to the Darwinian theory ? The history of science supplies us with many an instance in which a new and unpopular theory has been vehemently opposed by those whom one would at first suppose most competent to judge of its merits, and has nevertheless gained the vic­ tory. Dr. Draper brings a terrible indictment against Bacon for re­ jecting the Copernican theory, and refusing to profit by the discov­ eries of Gilbert in magnetism. This should not be allowed to detract from Bacon’s real greatness, any more than the rejection of Darwinism should be allowed to detract from the real merit of Agassiz. Great men must be measured by their positive achievements rather than by their negative shortcomings, otherwise they might all have to step down from their pedestals. Leibnitz rejected Newton’s law of gravitation ; Harvey saw nothing but foolishness in Aselli’s discovery of the lacteals ; Magen­ die ridiculed the great work in which the younger Geoffroy Saint-IIilaire began to investigate the conditions of nutrition which determine the birth of monsters ; and when Young, Fresnel, and Malus, completed the demonstration of that undulatory theory of light which has made their names immortal, Laplace, nevertheless, the greatest mathemati­ cian of the age, persisted until his dying day in heaping contumely upon these eminent men and upon their arguments. Nay, even Cu­ vier—the teacher whom Prof. Agassiz so justly reveres—did not Cuvier adhere to the last to the grotesque theory of “ pre-formation,” and reject the true theory of “ epigenesis,” which C. F. Wolff, even before Baer, had placed upon a scientific basis ? Supposing, then, that the Dar­ winian theory is rejected by Agassiz, this fact is no more decisive against the Darwinian theory than the rejection of Fresnel’s theory by Laplace was decisive against Fresnel’s theory. For the facts just cited show that even the wisest and most learned men are not infallible, and that it will not do to have a papacy where scientific questions are concerned. Strange as it may at first seem, �AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM. 695 nothing is more certain than that a man’s opinion may be eminently fallible, even with reference to matters which might appear to come directly within the range of his own specialty. Many people, I pre­ sume, think that, because Prof. Agassiz has made a specialty of the study of extinct and living organisms, because he has devoted a long and industrious life to this study, therefore his opinion with reference to the relations of present life upon the globe to past life ought to be at once conclusive. The fallacy of this inference becomes apparent as soon as we recollect that Profs. Gray, Wyman, Huxley, and Haeckel, who are equally well qualified to have an opinion on such matters, have agreed in forming an opinion diametrically opposite to that of Prof. Agassiz. But the fallacy may be shown independently of any such com­ parison. Even if all the foundations of certainty seem to be shaking beneath us when we say that an expert is not always the best judge of matters pertaining to his own specialty, we must still say it, for facts will bear us out in saying it. I have known excellent mathematicians and astronomers who had not the first word to say about the Nebular Hypothesis : they had never felt interested in it, had never studied it, and consequently did not understand it, and could hardly state it cor­ rectly. After a while one ceases to be surprised at such things. It is quite possible for one to study the structure of echinoderms and fishes during a long life, and yet remain unable to offer a satisfactory opin­ ion upon any subject connected with zoology, for the proper treatment of which there are required some power of generalization and some fa­ miliarity with large considerations. Indeed, there are many admirable experts in natural history, as well as in other studies, who never pay the slightest heed to questions involving wide-reaching considera­ tions ; and who, with all their amazing minuteness of memory con­ cerning the metamorphoses of insects and the changes which the em­ bryo of a white-fish undergoes from fecundation to maturity, are nev­ ertheless unable to see the evidentiary value of the great general facts of geological succession and geographical distribution, even when it is thrust directly before their eyes. To such persons, “ science ” means the collecting of polyps, the dissecting of mollusks, the vivisection of frogs, the registration of innumerable facts of detail, without regard to the connected story which all these facts, when put together, have it in their powei’ to tell. And all putting together of facts, with a view to elicit this connected story, they are too apt to brand as unsci­ entific speculation; forgetting that if Newton had merely occupied himself with taking observations and measuring celestial distances, in­ stead of propounding an audacious hypothesis, and then patiently verifying it, the law of gravitation might never have been discovered. Herein lies the explanation of the twice-repeated rejection of Mr. Darwin’s name by the French Academy of Sciences. The lamentable decline of science in France since the beginning of the Second Empire has been most conspicuously marked by the tendency of scientific �696 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. inquirers to occupy themselves exclusively with matters of detail, to the neglect of wide-reaching generalizations. And the rejection of Mr. Darwin’s name was justified upon the ground, not that he had made unscientific generalizations, but that he had been a mere (!) generalizer, instead of a collector of facts. The allegation was, indeed, incorrect; since Mr. Darwin is as eminent for his industry in collect­ ing facts as for his boldness in generalizing. But the form of the allegation well illustrates the truth of what I have been seeking to show—that familiarity with the details of a subject does not enable one to deal with it in the grand style, and elicit new truth from old facts, unless one also possesses some faculty for penetrating into the hidden implications of the facts ; or, in other words, some faculty for philosophizing. Now, I am far from saying of Prof. Agassiz that he is a mere col­ lector of echinoderms and dissector of fishes, with no tact whatever in philosophizing. He does not stand in the position of those who think that the end of scientific research is attained when we have carefully ticketed a few thousand specimens of corals and butterflies, in much the same spirit as that in which a school-girl collects and clas­ sifies autographs or postage-stamps. Along with his indefatigable in­ dustry as a collector and observer, Prof. Agassiz has a decided inclina­ tion toward general views. However lamentably deficient we may think him in his ability to discern the hidden implications of facts, there can be no question that his facts are of little importance to him save as items in a philosophic scheme. He knows very well—perhaps almost too well—that the value of facts lies in the conclusions to which they point. And, accordingly, lack of philosophizing is the last short­ coming with which, as a scientific writer, he can be charged. If he errs on a great scientific question, lying within his own range of inves­ tigation, it is not because he refrains steadfastly from all general con­ siderations, but because he philosophizes—and philosophizes on un­ sound principles. It is because his philosophizing is not a natural outgrowth from the facts of Nature which lie at his disposal, but is made up out of sundry traditions of his youth, which, by dint of play­ ing upon the associations of ideas which are grouped around certain combinations of words, have come to usurp the place of observed facts as a basis for forming conclusions. It is not because he abstains from generalizing that Prof. Agassiz is unable to appreciate the arguments by which Mr. Darwin has established his theory, but it is because he long ago brought his mind to acquiesce in various generalizations, of a thoroughly unscientific or non-scientific character, with the further maintenance of which the acceptance of the Darwinian theory is (or seems to Prof. Agassiz to be) incompatible. The generalizations which have thus preoccupied Prof. Agassiz’s mind are purely theological or mythological in their nature. In esti­ mating the probable soundness of his opinion upon any scientific ques- �AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM. 697 tion, it must always be remembered that he is, above all things, a dev­ otee of what J's called “ natural theology.” In his discussions concern­ ing the character of the relationships between the various members of the animal kingdom, the foreground of his consciousness is always completely occupied by theological considerations, to such an extent that the evidentiary value of scientific facts cannot always get a foot­ ing there, and is, consequently, pushed away into the background. One feels, in reading his writings, that, except when he is narrating facts with the pure joyfulness of a specialist exulting in the exposition of his subject (and, when in this mood, he often narrates facts with which his inferences are wholly incompatible), he never makes a point without some regard to its bearings upon theological propositions which his early training has led him to place paramount to all facts of obser­ vation whatever. In virtue of this peculiarity of disposition, Prof. Agassiz has become the welcome ally of those zealous but narrow­ minded theologians, in whom the rapid progress of the Darwinian theory has awakened the easily explicable but totally groundless fear that the necessary foundations of true religion, or true Christianity, are imperilled. It is not many years since these very persons re­ garded Prof. Agassiz with dread and abhorrence, because of his flat contradiction of the Bible in his theory of the multiple origin of the human race. But, now that the doctrine of Evolution has come to be the unclean thing above all others to be dreaded and abhorred, this comparatively slight iniquity of Prof. Agassiz has been condoned or forgotten, and, as the great antagonist of Evolution, he is welcomed as the defender of the true Church against her foes. This preference of theological over scientific considerations once led Prof. Agassiz (if my memory serves me rightly) to use language very unbecoming in a professed student of Nature. Some seven years ago he delivered a course of lectures at the Cooper Union, and in one of these lectures he observed that he preferred the theory which makes man out a fallen angel to the theory which makes him out an improved monkey—a remark which was quite naturally greeted with laughter and applause. But the applause was ill-bestowed, for the remark was one of the most degrading which a scientific lecturer could make. A scientific inquirer has no business to have “ preferences.” Such things are fit only for silly women of society, or for young children who play with facts, instead of making sober use of them. What matters it whether we are pleased with the notion of a monkey-ancestry or not ? The end of scientific research is the discovery of truth, and not the satisfaction of our whims or fancies, or even of what we are pleased to call our finer feelings. The proper reason for refusing to accept any doctrine is, that it is inconsistent with observed facts, or with some other doctrine which has been firmly established on a basis of fact. The refusal to entertain a theory because it seems disagreeable or de­ grading, is a mark of intellectual cowardice and insincerity. In mat­ �698 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ters of scientific inquiry, it is as grave an offence as the letting one’s note go to protest is in matters of business. In saying these things, I do not mean to charge Prof. Agassiz with intellectual cowardice and insincerity, for the remark which I criticise so sharply was not worthy of him, it did not comport with his real character as a student of sci­ ence, and to judge of him by this utterance alone would be to do him injustice. It was with the hope of finding some more legitimate objections to the Darwinian theory that I procured the Tribune's lecture-sheet con­ taining Prof. Agassiz’s twelve lectures on the natural foundations of organic affinity, and diligently searched it from beginning to end. I believe I am truthful in saying that a good staggering objection would have been quite welcome to me, just for the sake of the intellectual stimulus implied in dealing with it, for on this subject my mind was so thoroughly made up thirteen years ago, that the discussion of it, as ordinarily conducted, has long since ceased to have any interest for me. I am just as firmly convinced that the human race is descended from lower animal forms, as I am that the earth revolves in an elliptical orbit about the sun. So completely, indeed, is this proposition wrought in with my whole mental structure, that the negation of it seems to me utterly nonsensical and void of meaning, and I doubt if my mind is ca­ pable of shaping such a negation into a proposition which I could intel­ ligently state. To have such deeply-rooted convictions shaken once in a while is, I believe, a very useful and wdiolesome experiment in men­ tal hygiene. That rigidity of mind which prevents the thorough re­ vising of our opinions is sure, sooner or later, to come upon all of us ; but we ought to dread it, as we dread the stagnation of old age or death. For some such reasons as these, I am sure that I should have been glad to find, in the course of Prof. Agassiz’s lectures, at least one powerful argument against the interpretation of organic affinities which Mr. Darwin has done so much to establish. I should have been still more glad to find some alternative interpretation proposed which could deserve to be entertained as scientific in character. I am sure no task could be more delightful, or more quickening to one’s energies, than that of comparing two alternative theories upon this subject, upon which, thus far, only one has ever been propounded which possesses the marks of a scientific hypothesis. But no such pleasure or profit is in store for any one who studies these twelve lect­ ures of Prof. Agassiz. In all these lectures, there is not a single al­ lusion to Mr. Darwin’s name, save once in a citation from another author; there is not the remotest allusion to any of the arguments by which Mr. Darwin has contributed most largely to tlie establishment of the development theory; nay, there is not a single sentence from which one could learn that Mr. Darwin’s books had ever been written, or that the theories which they expound had ever taken shape in the mind of any thinking man. I do not doubt that Prof. Agassiz has, at �AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM. 699 some time read, or looked over, the “ Origin of Species but there is not a word in these lectures which might not have been written by one who had never heard of that book, or of the arguments which made the publication of it the beginning of a new epoch in the history of science. Not only is it that Prof. Agassiz does not attack the Darwinian theory in these lectures; it is also that, until the ninth lecture, he does not allude to the doctrine of Evolution in any way. TIis first eight lectures consist mostly in an account of the development of the embryo in various animals; and in this we have a pure description of facts with which no one certainly will feel like quarrelling, so far as theories are concerned. He goes to work, very much as Max Müller does, in lecturing about the science of language, when he gives you a maximum of interesting etymologies and a minimum of real philosophizing which goes to the bottom of things. But Prof. Agassiz is not so interesting or so stimulating in his discourse as Max, Müller. He does not lead us into pleasant fields of illustration, where we would fain tarry longer, forgetting the main purpose of the discussion in our delight at the un­ essential matters which occupy our attention. On the contrary, it seems to me that Prof. Agassiz’s explanation of the development of eggs is rather tedious and dry, and by no means richly fraught with novel suggestions. The exposition is a commonplace one, such as is good for students in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, who are beginning to study embryology, but there are no features which make it especially interesting or instructive to any one who has already served an apprenticeship in these matters. In his ninth lecture, Prof. Agassiz begins to make some allusion to the development theory—not to the development theory as it now stands since the publication of the “ Origin of Species,” but to the de­ velopment theory as it stood in the days when Prof. Agassiz was a young student, when Cuvier and the elder Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire waged fierce warfare in the French Academy, and when the aged Goethe, sanest and wisest of men, foresaw in the issue of that battle the speedy triumph of the development theory. Beyond this point, I will venture to say, Prof. Agassiz has never travelled. The doctrine of Evolution is still, to him, what it was in those early days ; and all the discoveries and reasonings of Mr. Darwin have passed by him un­ heeded and unnoticed. He arrived too early at that rigidity of mind which prevents us from properly comprehending new theories, and which we should all of us dread. What, now, is the doctrine which Prof. Agassiz begins to attack, in his ninth lecture, and what is the doctrine which he would propose as a substitute ? The doctrine which he attacks is simply this—that all organic beings have come into existence through some natural pro­ cess of causation ; and the doctrine which he defends is just this—that all organic beings, as classed in species, have come into existence at �700 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the outset by means of some act of which our ordinary notions of cause and effect can give no account whatever. For every one of the indi­ viduals of which a species is made up, he will admit the adequacy of the ordinary process of generation ; but for the species as a whole, this process seems to him inadequate, and he flies at once to that refuge of inconsequent and timid minds—miracle ! This is really just what Prof. Agassiz’s theory of the origin of spe­ cific forms amounts to, and this is the reason why, in spite of grave heresy on minor points, he is now regarded by the evangelical Church as one of its chief champions. Instead of the natural process of gen­ eration—which is the only process by which we have ever known or­ ganic beings to be produced—he would fain set up some unknown mys­ terious process, the nature of which he is careful not to define, but for which he endeavors to persuade us that we have a fair equivalent in sonorous phrases concerning “ creative will,” “ free action of an intel­ ligent mind,” and so on. In thus postponing considerations of pure science to considerations of “ natural theology,” I have no doubt Prof. Agassiz is actuated by a praiseworthy desire to do something for the glory of that Power of which the phenomenal universe is the perpetual but ever-changing manifestation. But how futile is such an attempt as this I How contrary to common-sense it is to say that a species is produced, not by the action of blind natural forces, but by an intelli­ gent will! For, although this most prominent of all facts seems to be oftenest overlooked by theologians and others whom it most especially concerns, we are all the time, day by day and year by year, in each and every event of our lives, having experience of the workings of that Divine Power which, whether we attribute to it “ intelligent will ” or not, is unquestionably the one active agent in all the dynamic phe­ nomena of Nature. Little as we know of the intrinsic nature of this Omnipresent Power, which, in our poor human talk, we call God, we do at least know, by daily and hourly experience, what is the char­ acter of its working. The whole experience of our lives teaches us that this Power works after a method which, in our scholastic expression, we call the method of cause and effect, or the method of natural law. Traditions of a barbarous and uncultivated age, in which mere gro­ tesque associations of thoughts were mistaken for facts, have told us that this Power has, at various times in the past, worked in a different way—causing effects to appear without cognizable antecedents, even as Aladdin’s palace rose in all its wondrous magnificence, without sound of carpenter’s hammer or mason’s chisel, in a single night. But about such modes of divine action we know nothing whatever from experience; and the awakening of literary criticism, in modern times, has taught us to distrust all such accounts of divine action which con­ flict with the lessons we learn from what is ever going on round about us. So far as we know aught concerning the works of God, which are being performed in us, through us, and around us, during �AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM. 701 every moment of that conscious intelligence which enables us to bear witness to them, we know they are works from which the essential re­ lation of a given effect to its adequate cause is never absent. And for this reason, if we view the matter in pure accordance with experience, we are led to maintain that the antagonism or contrariety which seems to exist in Prof. Agassiz’s mind between the action of God and the action of natural forces is nothing but a figment of that ancestral im­ agination from which the lessons which shaped Prof. Agassiz’s ways of thinking were derived. So far as experience can tell us any thing, it tells us that divine action is the action of natural forces; for, if we refuse to accept this conclusion, what have we to do but retreat to the confession that we have no experience of divine action whatever, and that the works of God have been made manifest only to those who lived in that unknown time when Aladdin’s palaces were built, and when species were created, in a single night, without the intervention of any natural process ? Trusting, then, in this universal teaching of experience, let us for a moment face fairly the problem which the existence of men upon the earth presents to us. Here is actually existing a group of organisms, which we call the human race. Either it has existed eternally, or some combination of circumstances has determined its coming into existence. The first alternative is maintained by no one, and our astronomical knowledge of the past career of our planet is sufficient decisively to exclude it. There is no doubt that at some time in the past the human race did not exist, and that its gradual or sudden coming into existence was determined by some combination of circum­ stances. Now, when Prof. Agassiz asks us to see, in this origination of mankind, the working of a Divine Power, we acquiesce in all rever­ ence. But when he asks us to see in this origination of mankind the working of a Divine Power, instead of the working of natural causes, we do not acquiesce, because, so far as experience has taught us any thing, it has taught us that Divine Power never works except by the way of natural causation. Experience tells us that God causes Alad­ din’s palaces to come into existence gradually, through the coopera­ tion of countless minute antecedents. And it tells us, most emphati­ cally, that such structures do not come into existence without an adequate array of antecedents, no matter what the Arabian Nights may tell us to the contrary. Now, when Prof. Agassiz asks us to believe that species have come into existence by means of a special creative fiat, and not through the operation of what are called natural causes, we reply that his request is mere inanity and nonsense. We have no reason to suppose that any creature like a man, or any other vertebrate, or articulate, or mollusk, ever came into existence by any other process than the familar process of physical generation. To ask us to believe in any other process is to ask us to abandon the experience which we have �702 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. for the chimeras which we had best not seek to acquire. But Prof. Agassiz does not even suggest any other process for our acceptance. He simply retreats upon his empty phrases, “ creative will,” the “ free workings of an intelligent mind,” and so on. Now, in his second course of lectures, I hope he will proceed to tell us, not necessarily how “ creative will ” actually operated in bringing forth a new species, but how it may conceivably have operated, save through the process of physical generation, which we know. In his “ Essay on Classifica­ tion,” I remember a passage in which he rightly rejects the notion that any species has arisen from a single pair of parents, and propounds the formula : “ Pines have originated in forests, heaths in heather, grasses in prairies, bees in hives, herrings in shoals, buffaloes in herds, men in nations.” Now, when Prof. Agassiz asserts that men originated in nations, by some other process than that of physical generation, what does he mean ? Does he mean that men dropped down from the sky ? Does he mean that the untold millions of organic particles which make up a man all rushed together from the four quarters of the compass, and proceeded, spontaneously or by virtue of some divine sorcery, to aggregate themselves into the infinitely complex organs and tissues of the human body, with all their wondrous and well-defined apti­ tudes ? It is time that this question should be faced, by Prof. Agassiz and those who agree with him, without further shirking. Instead of grandiloquent phrases about the “ free action of an intelligent mind,” let us have something like a candid suggestion of some process, other than that of physical generation, by which a creature like man can even be imagined to have come into existence. When the time comes for answering this question, we shall find that even Prof. Agassiz is utterly dumb and helpless. The sonorous phrase “ special creation,” in which he has so long taken refuge, is nothing but a synthesis of vocal sounds which covers and, to some minds, conceals a thoroughly idiotic absence of sense or significance. To say that “ Abracadabra is not a genial corkscrew,” is to make a statement quite as full of mean­ ing as the statement that species have originated by “ special crea­ tion.” The purely theological (or theologico-metaphysical and at all events unscientific) character of Prof. Agassiz’s objections to the de­ velopment theory is sufficiently shown by the fact that, in the fore­ going paragraphs, I have considered whatever of any account there is in his lectures which can be regarded as an objection. Arguments against the development theory such objections cannot be called : they are, at their very best, nothing but expressions of fear and dislike. The only remark which I have been able to find, worthy of being dignified as an argument, is the following: “We see that fishes are lowest, that reptiles are higher, that birds have a superior organization to both, and that mammals, with man at their head, are highest. The phases of development which a quadruped undergoes, in his embryonic �AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM. 7°3 growth, recall this gradation. He has a fish-like, a reptile-like stage before he shows unmistakable mammal-like features. We do not on this account suppose a quadruped grows out of a fish in our time, for this simple reason, that we live among quadrupeds and fishes, and we know that no such thing takes place. But resemblances of the same kind, separated by geological ages, allow play for the imagination, and for inference unchecked by observation.” I do not believe that Prof. Agassiz’s worst enemy—if he ever had an enemy—could have been so hard-hearted as to wish for* him the direful catastrophe into which this wonderful piece of argument has plunged him irretrievably. For the question must at once suggest itself to every reader at all familiar with the subject, If Prof. Agassiz supposes that the development theory, as held nowadays, implies that a quadruped was ever the direct issue of a fish, of what possible value can his opinion be as regards the development theory in any way ? If I may speak frankly, as I have indeed been doing from the out­ set, I will say that, as regards the Darwinian theory, Prof. Agassiz seems to me to be hopelessly behind the age. I have never yet come across the first indication that he knows what the Darwinian theory is. Against the development theory, as it was taught him by the discus­ sions of forty years ago, he is fond of uttering, I will not say argu­ ments, but expressions of dislike. With the modern development theory, with the circumstances of variation, heredity, and natural se­ lection, he never, in any of his writings, betrays the slightest acquaint­ ance. Against a mere man of straw of his own devising, he indus­ triously hurls anathemas of a quasi-theological character. But any thing like a scientific examination of the character and limits of the agency of natural selection in modifying the appearance and structure of a species, any thing like such an examination as is to be found in the interesting work of Mr. St. George Mivart, he has never yet brought forth. Now, when Prof. Agassiz fairly comes to an issue, if he ever does, and undertakes to refute the Darwinian theory, these are some of the ques­ tions which he will have to answer: 1. If all organisms are not asso­ ciated through the bonds of common descent, why is it that the facts of classification are just such as they would have been had they been due to such a common descent ? 2. Why does a mammal always begin to develop as if it were going to become a fish, and then, chang­ ing its tactics, proceed as if it were going to become a reptile or bird, and only after great delay and circumlocution take the direct road toward mammality ? In answer to this, we do not care to be told that a mammal never was the son of a fish, because we know that already ; nor do we care to hear any more about the “ free manifestations of an intelligent mind,” because we have had quite enough of metaphysical phrases which do not contain a description of some actual or imagi­ nable process. We want to know how this state of things can be sci- �7°4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. entifically interpreted save on the hypothesis of a common ultimate origin for mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes. 3. What is the mean­ ing of such facts as the homologies which exist between corresponding parts of organisms constructed on the same type ? Why does the black salamander retain fully-developed gills which he never uses, and what is the significance of rudimentary and aborted organs in gen­ eral ? Again I say, we do not want to hear about “ uniformity of de­ sign ” and “ reminiscences of a plan,” and so on, but we wish to know how this* state of things was physically brought about, save by com­ munity of descent. 4. Why is it that the facts of geological succes­ sion and geographical distribution so clearly indicate community of descent, unless there has actually been community of descent? Why have marsupials in Australia followed after other marsupials, and edentata in South America followed after other edentata, with such remarkable regularity, unless the bond which unites present with past ages be the well-known, the only known, and the only imaginable bond of physical generation ? Why are the fauna and flora of each geologic epoch in general intermediate in character between the flora and fauna of the epochs immediately preceding and succeeding? And, 5. What are we to do with the great fact of extinction if we reject Mr. Dar­ win’s explanations ? When a race is extinguished, is it because of a universal deluge, or because of the “ free manifestations of an intelli­ gent mind ? ” For surely Prof. Agassiz will not attribute such a sol­ emn result to such ignoble causes as insufficiency of food or any other of the thousand causes, “ blindly mechanical,” which conspire to make a species succumb in the struggle for life. And here the phrase, “ struggle for life,” reminds me of yet an­ other difficult task which Prof. Agassiz will have before him when he comes to undertake the refutation of Darwinism in earnest. He will have to explain away the enormous multitude of facts which show that there is a struggle for life in which the fittest survive ; or he will at any rate have to show in what imaginable way an organic type can remain constant in all its features through countless ages under the influence of such circumstances, unless by taking into the account the Darwinian interpretation of persistent types offered by Prof. Huxley. But I will desist from further enumeration of the difficulties which surround this task which Prof. Agassiz has not undertaken, and is not likely ever to undertake. For the direct grappling with that com­ plicated array of theorems which the genius of such men as Darwin and Spencer and their companions has established on a firm basis of observation and deduction, Prof. Agassiz seems in these lectures hardly better qualified than a child is qualified for improving the methods of the integral calculus. These questions have begun to occupy earnest thinkers since the period when his mind acquired that rigidity which prevents the revising of one’s opinions. The marvellous flexibility of thought with which Sir Charles Lyell so gracefully abandoned his an- �PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE. 705 tiquated position, Prof. Agassiz is never likely to show. This is largely because Lyell has always been a thinker of purely scientific habit, while Agassiz has long been accustomed to making profoundly dark metaphysical phrases do the work which properly belongs to observation and deduction. But, however we may best account for these idiosyncrasies, it remains most probable among those facts which are still future, that Prof. Agassiz will never advance any more crush­ ing refutation of the Darwinian theory than the simple expression of his personal dislike for “ mechanical agencies,” and his belief in the “ free manifestations of an intelligent mind.” Were he only to be left to himself, such expressions of personal preference could not mar the pleasure with which we often read his exposition of purely scientific truths. But when he is brought before the public as the destroyer of a theory, the elements of which he has never yet given any sign of having mastered, he is placed in a false position, which would be lu­ dicrous could he be supposed to have sought it, and which is, at all events, unworthy of his eminent fame. m-n-TT. nuTWAuv nnYPPPTR OF MODERN PHYSICAL ERRATUM. Page 710, line 32, for “impenetrability,” read “ compenetrability.” Lierman ULuraxinvn au« j. t. j --------- . . x _ Du Bois-Reymond, one of the most noted physicists of the age. “Natural science,” says Du Bois-Reymond,1 “is a reduction of the changes in the material world to motions of atoms caused by central forces independent of time, or a resolution of the phenomena of Na­ ture into atomic mechanics. . . . The resolution of all changes in the material world into motions of atoms caused by their constant central forces would be the completion of natural science.” Obviously, the proposition thus enounced assigns to physical sci1 “ Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens. Ein Vortrag in der zweiten öffentlichen Sitzung der 45. Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Aerzte zu Leipzig am 14. August 1872, gehalten von Emil Du Bois-Reymond.” Leipzig, Veit & Comp., 1872. VOL. in.—45 �7o6 • THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. enee limits so narrow that all attempts to bring the characteristic phenomena of organic life (not to speak of mental action) within them are utterly hopeless. Nevertheless, it is asserted that organic phe­ nomena are the product of ordinary physical forces alone, and that the assumption of vital agencies, as distinct from the forces of inor­ ganic Nature, is wholly inadmissible. In view of this, it seems strange that the validity of the proposition above referred to has never, so far as I know, been questioned, except in the interest of some metaphysi­ cal or theological system. It is my purpose in the following essays to offer a few suggestions in this behalf, in order to ascertain, if pos­ sible, whether the prevailing primary notions of physical science can stand, or are in need of revision. One of the prime postulates of the mechanical theory is the atomic constitution of matter. A discussion of this theory, therefore, at once leads to an examination of the grounds upon which the assump­ tion of atoms, as the ultimate constituents of the physical world, rests. The doctrine that an exhaustive analysis of a material body into its real elements, if it could be practically effected, would yield an ag­ gregate of indivisible and indestructible particles, is almost coeval with human speculation, and has held its ground more persistently than any other tenet of science or philosophy. It is true that the atomic theory, since its first promulgation by the early Greek philoso­ phers, and its elaborate statement by Lucretius, has been modified and refined. There is probably no one, at this day, who invests the atoms with hooks and loops, or (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, ii., 398, et seq.) accounts for the bitter taste of wormwood by the raggedness, and for the sweetness of honey by the smooth roundness of the constituent atoms. But the “ atom ” of modern science is still of determinate weight, if not of determinate figure, and stands for something more than an abstract unit, even in the view of those who, like Boscovich, Faraday, Ampère, or Fechner, profess to regard it as a mere centre of force. And there is no difficulty in stating the atomic doctrine in terms applicable alike to all the acceptations in which it is now held by scientific men. Whatever diversity of opinion may prevail as to the form, size, etc., of the atoms, all who advance the atomic hypothesis, in any of its varieties, as a physical theory, agree in three propositions, which may be stated as follows : 1. Atoms are absolutely simple, unchangeable, indestructible ; they are physically, if not mathematically, indivisible. 2. Matter consists of discrete parts, the constituent atoms being separated by void interstitial spaces. In contrast to the continuity of space stands the discontinuity of matter. The expansion of a body is simply an increase, its contraction a lessening of the spatial inter­ vals between the atoms. 3. The atoms composing the different chemical elements are of de- �PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE. 7q7 terminate specific weights, corresponding to their equivalents of com­ bination.1 Confessedly the atomic theory is hut an hypothesis. This in itself is not decisive against its value; all physical theories properly so called are hypotheses whose eventual recognition as truths depends upon their consistency with themselves, upon their agreement with the canons of logic, upon their congruence with the facts which they serve to connect and explain, upon their conformity with the ascer­ tained order of Nature, upon the extent to which they approve them­ selves as reliable anticipations or previsions of facts verified by subse­ quent observation or experiment, and finally upon their simplicity, or rather their reducing power. The merits of the atomic theory, too, are to be determined by seeing whether or not it satisfactorily and simply accounts for the phenomena as the explanation of which it is propounded, and whether or not it is in harmony with itself and with the known laws of Reason and of Nature. For what facts, then, is the atomic hypothesis meant to account, and to what degree is the account it offers satisfactory? It is claimed that the first of the three propositions above enu­ merated (the proposition which asserts the persistent integrity of atoms, or their unchangeability both in weight and volume) accounts for the indestructibility and impenetrability of matter; that the sec­ ond of these propositions (relating to the discontinuity of matter) is an indispensable postulate for the explanation of certain physical phe­ nomena, such as the dispersion and polarization of light; and that the third proposition (according to which the atoms composing the chem­ ical elements are of determinate specific gravities) is the necessary general expression of the laws of definite constitution, equivalent pro­ portion, and multiple combination, in chemistry. In discussing these claims, it is important, first, to verify the facts and to reduce the statements of these facts to exact expression, and then to see how far they are fused by the theory: 1. The indestructibility of matter is an unquestionable truth. But in what sense, and upon what grounds, is this indestructibility predi­ cated of matter ? The unanimous answer of the atomists is: Expe­ rience teaches that all the changes to which matter is subject are but variations of form, and that amid these variations there is an unvary­ ing constant—the mass or quantity of matter. The constancy of the mass is attested by the balance, which shows that neither fusion nor sublimation, neither generation nor corruption, can add to or detract from the weight of a body subjected to experiment. When a pound of carbon is burned, the balance demonstrates the continuing exist1 To avoid confusion, I purposely ignore the distinction between molecules as the ulti­ mate products of the physical division of matter, and atoms as the ultimate products of its chemical decomposition, preferring to use the word atoms in the sense of the least particles into which bodies are divisible or reducible by any means. �708 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ence of this pound in the carbonic acid, which is the product of com­ bustion, and from which the original weight of carbon may be re­ covered. The quantity of matter is measured by its weight, and this weight is unchangeable. Such is the fact, familiar to every one, and its interpretation, equally familiar. To test the correctness of this interpretation, we may be permitted slightly to vary the method of verifying it. Instead of burning the pound of carbon, let us simply carry it to the summit of a mountain, or remove it to a lower latitude; is its weight still the same ? Relatively it is; it will still balance the original counterpoise. But the absolute weight is no longer the same. This appears at once, if we give to the balance another form, taking a pendulum instead of a pair of scales. The pendulum on the mountain or near the equator vibrates more slowly than at the foot of the mountain or near the pole, for the reason that it has become specifically lighter by being farther removed from the centre of the earth’s attraction, in conformity to the law that the attractions of bodies vary inversely as the squares of their distances. It is thus evident that the constancy, upon the observation of which the assertion of the indestructibility of matter is based, is simply the constancy of a relation, and that the ordinary statement of the fact is crude and inadequate. Indeed, while it is true that the weight of a body is a measure of its mass, this is but a single case of the more general fact that the masses of bodies are inversely as the velocities imparted to them by the action of the same force, or, more generally still, inversely as the accelerations produced in them by the same force. In the case of gravity, the forces of attraction are directly propor­ tional to the masses, so that the action of the forces (weight) is the simplest measure of the relation between any two masses as such; but, in any inquiry relating to the validity of the atomic theory, it is necessary to bear in mind that this weight is not the equivalent, or rather presentation, of an absolute substantive entity in one of the bodies (the body weighed), but the mere expression of a relation be­ tween two bodies mutually attracting each other. And it is further necessary to remember that this weight may be indefinitely reduced, without any diminution in the mass of the body weighed, by a mere change of its position in reference to the body between which and the body weighed the relation subsists.1 1 The thoughtlessness with which it is assumed by some of the most eminent mathe­ maticians and physicists that matter is composed of particles which have an absolute primordial weight persisting in all positions, and under all circumstances, is one of the most remarkable facts in the history of science. To cite but one instance : Prof. Rettenbacher, one of the ablest analysts of his day, in his “ Dynamidensystem ” (Mannheim, Bassermann, 1857), p. 14, says, “The absolute weight of atoms is unknown”—his meaning being, as is evident from the context and from the whole tenor of his discus­ sion, that our ignorance of this absolute weight is due solely to the practical impossi­ bility of insulating an atom, and of contriving instruments delicate enough to weigh it. �PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE. 709 Masses find their true and only measure in the action of forces, and the quantitative persistence of the effect of this action is the simple and accurate expression of the fact which is ordinarily described as the indestructibility of matter. It is obvious that this persistence is in no sense explained or accounted for by the atomic hypothesis. It may be that such persistence is an attribute of the minute, insensible particles which are supposed to constitute matter, as well as of sen­ sible masses ; but, surely, the hypothetical recurrence of a fact in the atom is no explanation of the actual occurrence of the same fact in the conglomerate mass. Whatever mystery is involved in the phe­ nomenon is as great in the case of the atom as in that of a solar or planetary sphere. Breaking a magnet into fragments, and showing that each fragment is endowed with the magnetic polarity of the in­ teger magnet, is no explanation of the phenomenon of magnetism. A phenomenon is not explained by being dwarfed. A fact is not trans­ formed into a theory by being looked at through an inverted telescope. The hypothesis of ultimate indestructible atoms is not a necessary im­ plication of the persistence of weight, and can at best account for the indestructibility of matter if it can be shown that there is an absolute limit to the compressibility of matter—in other words, that there is an absolutely least volume for every determinate mass. This brings us to the consideration of that general property of matter which prob­ ably, in the minds of most men, most urgently requires the assump­ tion of atoms—its impenetrability. “ Two bodies cannot occupy the same space ”—such is the familiar statement of the fact in question. Like the indestructibility of matter, it is claimed to be a datum of experience. “ Corpora omnia impenotrabilla esse” says Sir Isaac Newton (Phil. Nat. Prine. Math., lib. iii., reg. 3), “ non ratione sed sensu colligimus.” Let us see in what sense and to what extent this claim is legitimate. The proposition, according to which a space occupied by one body cannot be occupied by another, implies the assumption that space is an absolute, self-measuring entity—an assumption which I may have occasion to examine hereafter—and the further assumption that there is a least space which a given body will absolutely fill so as to exclude any other body. A verification of this proposition by experience, therefore, must amount to proof that there is an absolute limit to the compressibility of all matter whatsoever. Now, does experience au­ thorize us to assign such a limit ? Assuredly not. It is true that in the case of solids and liquids there are practical limits beyond which compression by the mechanical means at our command is impossible ; but even here we are met by the fact that the volumes of fluids, which effectually resist all efforts at further reduction by external pressure, are readily reduced by mere mixture. Thus, sulphuric acid and water at ordinary temperatures do not sensibly yield to pressure; but, when they are mixed, the resulting volume is materially less than the aggre­ �710 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. gate volumes of the liquids mixed. But, waiving this, as well as the phenomena which emerge in the processes of solution and chemical ac­ tion, it must be said that experience does not in any manner vouch for the impenetrability of matter as such in all its states of aggrega­ tion. When gases are subjected to pressure, the result is simply an increase of the expansive force in proportion to the pressure exerted, according to the law of Boyle and Mariotte (the modifications of and apparent exceptions to which, as exhibited in the experimental results obtained by Regnault and others, need not here be stated, because they do not affect the argument). A definite experimental limit, is reached in the case of those gases only in which the pressure produces liquefaction or solidification. The most significant phenomenon, how­ ever, which experience contributes to the testimony on this subject is the diffusion of gases. Whenever two or more gases which do not act upon each other chemically are introduced into a given space, each gas diffuses itself in this space as though it were alone present there; or, as Dalton, the reputed father of the modern atomic theory, expresses it, “ Gases are mutually passive, and pass into each other as into vacua.” Whatever reality may correspond to the notion of the impenetra­ bility of matter, this impenetrability is not, in the sense of the atomists, a datum of experience. Upon the whole, it would seem that the validity of the first propo­ sition of the atomic theory is not sustained by the facts. Even if the assumed unchangeability of the supposed ultimate constituent particles of matter presented itself, upon its own showing, as more than a bare reproduction of an observed fact in the form of an hypothesis, and could be dignified with the name of a generalization or of a theory, it would still be obnoxious to the criticism that it is a generalization from facts crudely observed and imperfectly apprehended. In this connection it may be observed that the atomic theory has become next to valueless as an explanation of the impenetrability of matter, since it has been pressed into the service of the undulatory theory of light, heat, etc., and assumed the form in which it is now held by the majority of physicists, as we shall presently see. Ac­ cording to this form of the theory, the atoms are either mere points, wholly without extension, or their dimensions are infinitely small as compared with the distances between them, whatever be the state aggregation of the substances into which they enter. In this view the resistance which a body, i. e., a system of atoms, offers to the in­ trusion of another body is due, not to the rigidity or unchangeability of volume of the individual atoms, but to the relation between the attractive and repulsive forces with which they are supposed to be endowed. There are physicists holding this view who are of opinion that the atomic constitution of matter is consistent with its impene­ trability among them M. Cauchy, who, in his Sept Lemons de Phy- �PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE. 7n sique Genérale (ed. Moigno, Paris, 1868, p. 38), after defining atoms as “ material points without extension,” uses this language: “ Thus, this property of matter which we call impenetrability is explained, when we consider the atoms as material points exerting on each other attractions and repulsions which vary with the distances that separate them. . . . From this it follows that, if it pleased the author of Na­ ture simply to modify the laws according to which the atoms attract or repel each other, we might instantly see the hardest bodies pene­ trate each other ” (that we might see), “ the smallest particles of matter occupy immense spaces, or the largest masses reduce themselves to the smallest volumes, the entire universe concentrating itself, as it were, in a single point.” 2. The second fundamental proposition of the modern atomic theory avouches the essential discontinuity of matter. The advocates of the theory affirm that there is a series of physical phenomena which are inexplicable, unless we assume that the constituent par­ ticles of matter are separated by void interspaces. The most notable among these phenomena are the dispersion and polarization of light. The grounds upon which the assumption of a discrete molecular structure of matter is deemed indispensable for the explanation of these phenomena may be stated in a few words. According to the undulatory theory, the dispersion of light, or its separation into spectral colors, by means of refraction, is a conse­ quence of the unequal retardation experienced by the different waves, which produce the different colors, in their transmission through the refracting medium. This unequal retardation presupposes differences in the velocities with which the various-colored rays are transmitted through any medium whatever, and a dependence of these velocities upon the lengths of the waves. But, according to a well-established mechanical theorem, the velocities with which undulations are prop­ agated through a continuous medium depend solely upon the elasticity of the medium as compared with its inertia, and are wholly indepen­ dent of the length and form of the waves. The correctness of this the­ orem is attested by experience in the case of sound. Sounds of every pitch travel with the same velocity. If it were otherwise, music heard at a distance would evidently become chaotic; differences of velocity in the propagation of sound would entail a distortion of the rhythm, and, in many cases, a reversal of the order of succession. Now, differ­ ences of color are analogous to differences of pitch in sound, both re­ ducing themselves to differences of wave-length. The lengths of the waves increase as we descend the scale of sounds from those of a higher to those of a lower pitch; and similarly, the length of a luminar undu­ lation increases as we descend the spectral scale, from violet to red. It follows, then, that the rays of different color, like the sounds of differ­ ent pitch, should be propagated with equal velocities, and be equally refracted; that, therefore, no dispersion of light should take place. �712 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. This theoretical impossibility of dispersion has always been recog­ nized as one of the most formidable difficulties of the undulatory theory. In order to obviate it, Cauchy, at the suggestion of his friend Coriolis, entered upon a series of analytical investigations, in which he succeeded in showing that the velocities with which the various colored rays are propagated may vary according to the wave-lengths, if it be assumed that the ethereal medium of propagation, instead of being continuous, consists of particles separated by sensible distances. By means of a similar assumption, Fresnel has sought to remove the difficulties presented by the phenomena of polarization. In ordi­ nary light, the different undulations are supposed to take place in dif­ ferent directions, all transverse to the course or line of propagation, while in polarized light the vibrations, though still transverse to the ray, are parallelized, so as to occur in the same plane. Soon after this hypothesis had been expanded into an elaborate theory of polarization, Poisson observed that, at any considerable distance from the source of the light, all transverse vibrations in a continuous elastic medium must become longitudinal. As in the case of dispersion, this objection was met by the hypothesis of the existence of “definite intervals” between the ethereal particles. These are the considerations, succinctly stated, which theoretical physics are supposed to bring to the support of the atomic theory. In reference to the cogency of the argument founded upon them, it is to be said, generally, that evidence of the discrete molecular arrangement of matter is by no means proof of the alternation of unchangeable and indivisible atoms with absolute spatial voids. But it is to be feared that the argument in question is not only formally, but also materially, fallacious. It is very questionable whether the assumption of definite intervals between the particles of the luminiferous ether is competent to relieve the undulatory theory of light from its embarrassments. This subject, in one of its aspects, has been thoroughly discussed by E. B. Hunt, in an article on the dispersion of light (SiUimari8 Journal, vol. vii., 2d series, p. 364, et seq.), and the suggestions there made ap­ pear to me worthy of serious attention. They are briefly these: M. Cauchy brings the phenomena of dispersion within the do­ minion of the undulatory theory, by deducing the differences in the velocities of the several chromatic rays from the differences in the cor­ responding wave-lengths by means of the hypothesis of definite inter­ vals between the particles of the light-bearing medium. He takes it for granted, therefore, that these chromatic rays are propagated with different velocities. But is this the fact ? Astronomy affords the means to answer this question. We experience the sensation of white light, when all the chromatic rays of which it is composed strike the eye simultaneously. The light proceeding from a luminous body will appear colorless, even if the component rays move with unequal velocities, provided all the colored �PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE. 713 rays, which together make up white light, concur in their action on the retina at a given moment; in ordinary cases it is immaterial whether these rays have left the luminous body successively or together. But it is otherwise when a luminous body becomes visible suddenly, as in the case of the satellites of Jupiter, or Saturn, after their eclipses. At certain periods, more than 49 minutes are requisite for the trans­ mission of light from Jupiter to the earth. Now, at the moment when one of Jupiter’s satellites, which has been eclipsed by that planet, emerges from the shadow, the red rays, if their velocity were the great­ est, would evidently reach the eye first, the orange next, and so on through the chromatic scale, until finally the complement of colors would be filled by the arrival of the violet ray, whose velocity is supposed to be the least. The satellite, immediately after its emersion, would appear red, and gradually, in proportion to the arrival of the other rays, pass into white. Conversely, at the beginning of the eclipse, the violet rays would continue to arrive after the red and other intervening rays, and the satellite, up to the moment of its total disappearance, will gradually shade into violet. Unfortunately for Cauchy’s hypothesis, the most careful observation of the eclipses in question has failed to reveal any such variations of color, either before immersion, or after emersion, the transition between light and darkness taking place instantaneously, and without chro­ matic gradations. If it be said that these chromatic gradations escape our vision by reason of the inappreciability of the differences under discussion, as­ tronomy points to other phenomena no less subversive of the doctrine of unequal velocities in the movements of the chromatic undulations. Fixed stars beyond the parallactic limit, whose light must travel more than three years before it reaches us, are subject to great periodical variations of splendor; and yet these variations are unaccompanied by variations of color. Again, the assumption of different velocities for the different chromatic rays is discountenanced by the theory of aberration. Aberration is due to the fact that, in all cases where the orbit of the planet, on which the observer is stationed, forms an angle with the direction of the luminar ray, a composition takes place be­ tween the motion of the light and the motion of the planet, so that the direction in which the light meets the eye is a resultant of the two component directions—the direction of the ray and that of the ob­ server’s motion. If the several rays of color moved with different velocities there would evidently be several resultants, and each star would appear as a colored spectrum longitudinally parallel to the direction of the earth’s motion. The alleged dependence of the velocity of the undulatory move­ ments, which correspond to, or produce, the different colors, upon the length of the waves, is thus at variance with observed fact. The hypothesis of definite intervals is unavailable as a supplement to the �714 v . THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. undulatory theory ; other methods will have to be resorted to in order to free this theory from its difficulties.1 3. The third proposition of the atomic hypothesis assigns to the atoms, which are said to compose the different chemical elements, de­ terminate weights corresponding to their equivalents of combination, and is supposed to be necessary to account for the facts whose enumeration and theory constitute the science of chemistry. The proper verification of these facts is of great difficulty, because they have gen­ erally been observed through the lenses of the atomic theory, and stated in its doctrinal terms. Thus the differentiation and integration of bodies are invariably described as decomposition and composition ; the equivalents of combination are designated as atomic weights or volumes, and the greater part of chemical nomenclature is a system­ atic reproduction of the assumptions of atomism. Nearly all the facts to be verified are in need of preparatory enucleation from the envelops of this theory. The phenomena usually described as chemical composition and de­ composition present themselves to observation thus: A number of heterogeneous bodies concur in definite proportions of weight or vol­ ume; they interact; they disappear, and give rise to a new body pos­ sessing properties which are neither the sum nor the mean of the prop­ erties of the bodies concurring and interacting (excepting the weight which is the aggregate of the weights of the interacting bodies), and this conversion of several bodies into one is accompanied, in most cases, by changes of volume, and in all cases by the evolution or in­ volution of heat, or light, or of both. Conversely, a single homogeneous body gives rise to heterogeneous bodies, between which and the body out of which they originate the persistence of weight is the only re­ lation of identity. For the sake of convenience, these phenomena may be distributed into three classes, of which the first embraces the persistence of weight and the combination in definite proportions ; the second, the changes of volume and the evolution of light and heat; and the third, the emergence of a wholly new complement of chemical properties. Obviously, the atomic hypothesis is in no sense an explanation of the phenomena of the second class. It is clearly and confessedly in­ 1 Cauchy’s theory of dispersion is subject to another difficulty, of which no note is taken by Hunt: it does not account for the different refracting powers of different, sub­ stances. Indeed, according to Cauchy’s formula) (whose terms are expressive simply of the distances between the ethereal particles and their hypothetical forces of attraction and repulsion), the refracting powers of all substances whatever must be the same, un­ less each substance is provided with a peculiar ether of its own. If this be the case, the assemblage of atoms in a given body is certainly a very motley affair, especially if it be true, as W. A. Norton and several other physicists assert, that there is an electric ether distinct from the luminiferous ether. Rettenbacher (“Dynamidensystem,” p. 130, et seq.) attempts to overcome the difficulty by the hypothesis of mutual action between the cor­ puscular and ethereal atoms. �PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE. 715 competent to account for changes of volume or of temperature. And, with the phenomena of the third class, it is apparently incompatible. For, in the light of the atomic hypothesis, chemical compositions and decompositions are in their nature nothing more than aggregations and segregations of masses whose integrity remains inviolate. But the radical change of chemical properties, which is the result of all true chemical action, and serves to distinguish it from mere mechani­ cal mixture or separation, evinces a thorough destruction of that in­ tegrity. It may be that the appearance of this incompatibility can be obliterated by the device of ancillary hypotheses; but that leads to an abandonment of the simplicity of the atomic hypothesis itself, and thus to a surrender of its claims to merit as a theory. At best, then, the hypothesis of atoms of definite and different weights can be offered as an explanation of the phenomena of the first class. Does it explain them in the sense of generalizing them, of re­ ducing many facts to one? Not at all; it accounts for them, as it professed to account for the indestructibility and impenetrability of matter, by simply iterating the observed fact in the form of an hy­ pothesis. It is another case (to borrow a scholastic phrase) of illus­ trating idem per idem. It says: The large masses combine in definitely-proportionate weights because the small masses, the atoms of which they are multiples, are of definitely-proportionate weight. It pulverizes the fact, and claims thereby to have sublimated it into a theory. Upon closer examination, moreover, the assumption of atoms of different specific gravities proves to be, not only futile, but absurd. Its manifest theoretical ineptitude is found to mask the most fatal inconsistencies. According to the mechanical conception which un­ derlies the whole atomic hypothesis, differences of weight are differ­ ences of density; and differences of density are differences of distance between the particles contained in a given space. Now, in the atom there is no multiplicity of particles, and no void space; hence dif­ ferences of density or weight Are impossible in the case of atoms. It is to be observed that the attribution of different weights to dif­ ferent atoms is an indispensable feature of the atomic theory in chem­ istry, especially in view of the combination of gases in simple ratios of volume, so as to give rise to gaseous products bearing a simple ratio to the volumes of its constituents, and in view of the law of Ampere and Clausius, according to which all gases, of whatever nature or weight, contain equal numbers of molecules in equal volumes. The inadequacy of the atomic hypothesis as a theory of chemical changes has been repeatedly pointed out by men of the highest scien­ tific authority, such as Grove (Correlation of Physical Forces, in Youmans’s “Correlation and Conservation of Forces,” p. 164, et seqf and is becoming more apparent from day to day. I shall have occa­ sion to inquire, hereafter, what promise there is, in the present state �716 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of chemical science, of a true generalization of the phenomena of com­ bination in definite proportions, both of weight and volume, which is independent of the atomic doctrine, and will serve to connect a num­ ber of concomitant facts for which this doctrine is utterly incompetent to account. It is not infrequently asserted by the advocates of the atomic theory that there is a number of other phenomena, in addition to those of combination in definite proportions, which are strongly indica­ tive of the truth of the atomic theory. Among these phenomena are isomerism, polymerism, and allotropy. But it is very doubtful whether this theory is countenanced by the phenomena in question. The exist­ ence of different allotropic states, in an elementary body said to con­ sist of but one kind of atoms, is explicable by the atomic hypothesis in no other way than by deducing these different states from diversi­ ties in the grouping of the different atoms. But this explanation ap­ plies to solids only, and fails in the cases of liquids and gases. The same remark applies to isomerism and polymerism. From the foregoing considerations, I take it to be clear that the atomic hypothesis mistakes many of the facts which it seeks to ex­ plain ; that it accounts imperfectly or not at all for a number of other facts which are correctly apprehended; and that there are cases in which it appears to be in irreconcilable conflict with the data of expe­ rience. As a physical theory, it is barren and useless, inasmuch as it lacks the first requisite of a true theory—that of being a generaliza­ tion, a reduction of several facts to one; it is essentially one of those spurious figments of the brain, based upon an ever-increasing multiplicatio ent turn praeter necessitatem, which are characteristic of the prescientific epochs of human intelligence, and against which the whole spirit of modern science is an emphatic protest. Moreover, in its logical and psychological aspect, as we shall hereafter see more clearly, it is the clumsiest attempt ever made to transcend the sphere of relations in which all objective reality, as well as all thought, has its being, and to grasp the absolute “ ens per sese, jinitum, reale, totumP I do not speak here of a number of other difficulties which emerge upon a minute examination of the atomic hypothesis in its two prin­ cipal varieties, the atoms being regarded by some physicists as ex­ tended and figured masses, and by others as mere centres of force. In the former case the assumption of physical indivisibility becomes gratuitous, and that of mathematical indivisibility absurd; while in the latter case the whole basis of the relation between force and mass, or rather force and inertia, without which the conception of either term of the relation is impossible, is destroyed. Some of these diffi­ culties are frankly admitted by leading men of science—for instance, by Du Bois-Reymond, in the lecture above cited. Nevertheless, it is asserted that the atomic, or at least molecular, constitution of matter �FINDING THE WAY AT SEA. 7*7 is the only form of material existence which can be realized in thought. In what sense, and to what extent, this assertion is well founded, will be my next subject of examination. FINDING THE WAY AT SEA. By E. A. PEOCTOE. IHE wreck of the Atlantic, followed closely by that of the City of JL Washington nearly on the same spot, has led many to inquire into the circumstances on which depends a captain’s knowledge of the position of his ship. In each case, though not in the same way, the ship was supposed to be far from land, when in reality quite close to it. In each case, in fact, the ship had oversailed her reckoning. A slight exaggeration of what travellers so much desire—a rapid pas­ sage—proved the destruction of the ship, and in one case occasioned a fearful loss of life. And, although such events are fortunately infre­ quent in Atlantic voyages, yet the bare possibility that, besides or­ dinary sea-risks, a ship is exposed to danger from simply losing her way, suggests unpleasant apprehensions as to the general reliability of the methods in use for determining where a ship is, and her prog­ ress from day to day. I propose to give a brief sketch of the methods in use for finding the way at sea, in order that the general principles on which safety depends may be recognized by the general reader. It is known, of course, to every one, that a ship’s course and rate of sailing are carefully noted throughout her voyage. Every change of her course is taken account of, as well as every change in her rate of advance, whether under sail or steam, or both combined. If all this could be quite accurately managed, the position of the ship at any hour could be known, because it would be easy to mark down on a chart the successive stages of her journey, from the moment when she left port. But a variety of circumstances renders this impossible. To begin with: the exact course of a ship cannot be known, be­ cause there is only the ship’s compass to determine her course by, and a ship’s compass is not an instrument affording perfectly exact indica­ tions. Let any one on a sea-voyage observe the compass for a short time, being careful not to break the good old rule which forbids speech to the “ man at the wheel,” and he will presently become aware of the fact that the ship is not kept rigidly to one course, even for a short time. The steersman keeps her as near as he can to a particular course, but she is continually deviating, now a little on one side, now a little on the other, of the intended direction; and even the general accuracy with which that course is followed is a matter of estimation, �718 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. and depends on the skill of the individual steersman. Looking at the compass-card, in steady weather, a course may seem very closely followed; perhaps the needle’s end may not be a hundredth part of an inch (on the average) from the position it should have. But a hun­ dredth part of an inch on the circumference of the compass-card would correspond to a considerable deviation in the course of a run of twenty or thirty knots ; and there is nothing to prevent the errors so arising from accumulating in a long journey until a ship might be thirty or forty miles from her estimated place. To this may be added the circumstance that the direction of the needle is different in differ­ ent parts of the earth. In some places it points to the east of the north, in others to the west. And, although the actual “ variation of the compass,” as this peculiarity is called, is known in a general way for all parts of the earth, yet such knowledge has no claim to actual exactness. There is also an important danger, as recent instances have shown, in the possible change of the position of the ship’s com­ pass, on account of iron in her cargo. But a far more important cause of error, in determinations merely depending on the log-book, is that arising from uncertainty as to the ship’s rate of progress. The log-line gives only a rough idea of the 4 ship’s rate at the time when the log is cast;1 and, of course, a ship’s rate does not remain constant, even when she is under steam alone. Then, again, currents carry the ship along sometimes with consider­ able rapidity; and the log-line affords no indication of their action: while no reliance can be placed on the estimated rates, even of known currents. Thus the distance made on any course may differ consider­ ably from the estimated distance; and, when several days’ sailing are dealt with, an error of large amount may readily accumulate. For these and other reasons, a ship’s captain places little reliance on what is called “ the day’s work ”—that is, the change in the ship’s position from noon to noon as estimated from the compass-courses en­ tered in the log-book, and the distances supposed to be run on these courses. It is absolutely essential that such estimates should be careful­ ly made, because, under favorable conditions of weather, there may be no other means of guessing at the ship’s position. But the only really reliable way of determining a ship’s place is- by astronomical observa­ tions. It is on this account that the almanac published by the Ad­ miralty, in which the position and apparent motions of the celestial bodies are indicated, four or five years in advance, is called, par excel1 The log is a flat piece of wood of quadrantal shape, so loaded at the rim as to float with the point (that is, the centre of the quadrant) uppermost. To this a line about 300 yards long is fastened. The log is thrown overboard, and comes almost immediately to rest on the surface of the sea, the line being suffered to run freely out. By marks on the log-line divided into equal spaces, called knots, of known length, and by observing how many of these run out, while the sand in a half-minute hour-glass is running, the ship’s rate of motion is roughly inferred. The whole process is necessarily rough, since the line cannot even be straightened. �FINDING THE WAY AT SEA. 719 fence, the Nautical Almanac. The astronomer, in his fixed observa­ tory, finds this almanac essential to the prosecution of his observa­ tions ; the student of theoretical astronomy has continual occasion to refer to it; but, to the sea-captain, the Nautical Almanac has a far more important use. The lives of sailors and passengers are depend­ ent upon its accuracy. It is, again, chiefly for the sailor that our great nautical observatories have been erected, and that our astron­ omer-royal and his officers are engaged. What other work they may do is subsidiary, and, as it were, incidental. Their chief work is to time this great clock, our earth, and so to trace the motions of those celestial indices, which afford our fundamental time-measures, as to insure as far as possible the safety of our navy, royal and mer­ cantile.1 Let us see how this is brought about, not, indeed, by inquiring into the processes by which, at the Greenwich Observatory, the elements of safety are obtained, but by considering the method by which a sea­ man makes use of these elements. In the measures heretofore considered, the captain of a ship in reality relies on terrestrial measurements. He reasons that, being on such and such a day in a given place, and having in the interval sailed so many miles in such and such directions, he must at the time being be in such and such a place. This is called “ navigation.” In the processes next to be considered, which constitute a part of the science of nautical astronomy, the seaman trusts to celestial observations in­ dependently of all terrestrial measurements. The points to be determined by the voyager are his latitude and longitude. The latitude is the distance north or south of the equa­ tor, and is measured always from the equator in degrees, the distance from equator to pole being divided into ninety equal parts, each of which is a degree.3 The longitude is the distance east or west of Greenwich (in English usage, but other nations employ a different starting-point for measuring longitudes from). Longitude is not meas­ ured in miles, but in degrees. The way of measuring is not very 1 This consideration has been altogether lost sight of in certain recent propositions for extending government aid to astronomical inquiries of another sort. It may be a most desirable thing that government should find means for inquiring into the physical condition of sun and moon, planets and comets, stars and all the various orders of star­ clusters. But, if such matters are to be studied at government expense, it should be un­ derstood that the inquiry is undertaken with the sole purpose of advancing our knowl­ edge of these interesting subjects, and should not be brought into comparison with the utilitarian labors for which our Royal Observatory was founded. 2 Throughout this explanation all minuter details are neglected. In reality, in conse­ quence of the flattening of the earth’s globe, the degrees of latitude are not equal, being larger the farther we go from the equator. Moreover, strictly speaking, it is incorrect to speak of distances being divided into degrees, or to say that a degree of latitude or longitude contains so many miles ; yet it is so exceedingly inconvenient to employ any other way of speaking in popular description, that I trust any astronomers or mathema­ ticians who may read this article will forgive the solecism. �720 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. readily explained without a globe or diagrams, but may be thus indi­ cated : Suppose a circle to run completely round the earth, through Greenwich and both the poles; now, if this circle be supposed free to turn upon the polar axis, or on the poles as pivots, and the half which crosses Greenwich be carried (the nearest way round) till it crosses some other station, then the arc through which it is carried is called the longitude of the station, and the longitude is easterly or westerly according as this half-circle has to be shifted toward the east or west. A complete half-turn is 180°, and, by taking such a half-turn either eastwardly or westwardly, the whole surface of the earth is included. Points which are 180° east of Greenwich are thus also 180° west of Greenwich. So much is premised in the way of explanation to make the present paper complete ; but ten minutes’ inspection of an ordinary terrestrial globe will show the true meaning of latitude and longitude more clearly (to those who happen to have forgotten what they learned at school on these points) than any verbal description. Now, it is sufficiently easy for a sea-captain in fine weather to de­ termine his latitude. For places in different latitudes have different celestial scenery, if one may so describe the aspect of the stellar heav­ ens by night and the course traversed by the sun by day. The height of the pole-star above the horizon, for instance, at once indicates the latitude very closely, and would indicate the latitude exactly if the pole-star were exactly at the pole instead of being merely close to it. But the height of any known star when due south also gives the lati­ tude. For, at every place in a given latitude, a star rises to a given greatest height when due south; if we travel farther south, the star will be higher when due south ; if we travel farther north, it will be lower; and thus its observed height shows just how far north of the equator any northerly station is, while, if the traveller is in the South­ ern Hemisphere, corresponding observations show how far to the south of the equator he is. But commonly the seaman trusts to observation of the sun to give him his latitude. The observation is made at noon, when the sun is highest above the horizon. The actual height is determined by means of the instrument called the sextant. This instrument need not be here described; but thus much may be mentioned to explain that pro­ cess of taking the sun’s meridian altitude which, no doubt, every one has witnessed who has taken a long sea-journey. The sextant is so devised that the observer can see two objects at once, one directly and the other after reflection of its light; and the amount by which he has to move a certain bar carrying the reflecting arrangement, in order to bring the two objects into view in the same direction, shows him the real divergence of lines drawn from his eye to the two objects. To take the sun’s altitude, then, with this instrument, the observer takes the sun as one object and the horizon directly below the sun as the �FINDING THE WAY AT SEA. 721 other: he brings them into view together, and then, looking at the sextant to see how much he has had to move the swinging arm which carries the reflecting glasses, he learns how high the sun is. This being done at noon, with proper arrangements to insure that the greatest height then reached by the sun is observed, at once indicates the lati­ tude of the observer. Suppose, for example, he finds the sun to be 40° above the horizon, and the Nautical Almanac tells him that, at the time the sun is 10° north of the celestial equator, then he knows that the celestial equator is 30° above the southern horizon. The pole of the heavens is, therefore, 60° above the northern horizon, and the voyager is in 60° north latitude. Of course, in all ordinary cases, the number of degrees is not exact, as I have here for simplicity sup­ posed, and there are some niceties of observation which would have to be taken into account in real work. But the principle of the method is sufficiently indicated by what has been said, and no useful purpose could be served by considering minutiae. Unfortunately, the longitude is not determined so readily. The very circumstance which makes the determination of the latitude so simple introduces the great difficulty which exists in finding the lon­ gitude. I have said that all places in the same latitude have the same celestial scenery; and precisely for this reason it is difficult to dis­ tinguish one such place from another, that is, to find on what part of its particular latitude-circle any place may lie. If we consider, however, how longitude is measured, and what it really means, we shall readily see where a solution of the difficulty is to be sought. The latitude of a station means how far toward either pole the station is; its longitude means how far round the station is from some fixed longitude. But it is by turning round on her axis that the earth causes the changes which we call day and night; and therefore these must happen at different times in places at different distances round. For example, it is clear that, if it is noon at one sta­ tion, it must be midnight at a station half-way round from the former. And if any one at one station could telegraph to a person at another, “ It is exactly noon here,” while this latter person knew from his clock or watch that it was exactly midnight where he was, then he would know that he was half-way round exactly. He would, in fact, know his longitude from the other station. And so with smaller differences. The earth turns, we know, from west to east—that is, a place lying due west of another is so carried as presently to occupy the place which* its easterly neighbor had before occupied, while this last place has gone farther east yet. Let us suppose an hour is the time required to carry a westerly station to the position which had been occupied by a station to the east of it. Then manifestly every celestial phenomenon depending on the earth’s turning will occur an hour later at the west­ erly station. Sunrise and sunset are phenomena of this kind. If I telegraph to a friend at some station far to the west, but in the same vol. ni.—46 �722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. latitude, “ The sun is rising here,” and he finds that he has to wait ex­ actly an hour before the sun rises there, then he knows that he is one hour west of me in longitude, a most inexact yet very convenient and unmistakable way of speaking. As there are twenty-four hours in the day, while a complete circle running through my station and his (and everywhere in the same latitude) is supposed to be divided into 360°, he is 15° (a 24th part of 360) west of me; and, if my station is Green­ wich, he is in what we, in England, call 15° west longitude.1 But what is true of sunrise and sunset in the same latitudes and different longitudes, is true of noon whatever the latitude may be. And of course it is true of the southing of any known star. Only un­ fortunately one cannot tell the exact instant when either the sun or a star is due south or at its highest above the horizon. Still, speaking generally, and for the moment limiting our attention to noon, every station toward the west has noon later, while every station toward the east has noon earlier, than Greenwich (or whatever reference sta­ tion is employed). I shall presently return to the question how the longitude is to be determined with sufficient exactness for safety in sea-voyages. But I may digress here to note what happens in sea-voyages where the longitude changes. If a voyage is made toward the west, as from England to America, it is manifest that a watch set to Greenwich time will be in advance of the local time as the ship proceeds west­ ward, and will be more and more in advance the farther the ship trav­ els in that direction. For instance, suppose a watch shows Greenwich time ; then when it is noon at Greenwich the watch will point to twelve, but it will be an hour before noon at a place 15° west of Greenwich, two hours before noon at a place 30° west, and so on : that is, the watch will point to twelve when it is only eleven o’clock, ten o’clock, and so on, of local time. On arrival at New York, the traveller would find that his watch was nearly five hours fast. Of course the reverse happens in a voyage toward the east. For instance, a watch set to New-York time would be found to be nearly five hours slow, for Greenwich time, when the traveller arrived in England. In the following passage these effects are humorously illustrated by Mark Twain: “ Young Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West, and on his first yoyage” (from New York to Europe) “was a good deal worried by the constantly-changing ‘ ship-time.’ He was proud of his new watch at first, and used to drag it out promptly when eight bells struck at noon, but he came to look after a while as if he were losing confi1 In this case, he is “ at sea ” (which, I trust, will not be the case with the reader), and, we may suppose, connected with Greenwich by submarine telegraph in course of being laid. In fact, the position of the Great Eastern throughout her cable-laying jour­ neys, was determined by a method analogous to that sketched above. �FINDING THE WAY AT SEA. 723 dence in it. Seven days out from New York he came on deck, and said with great decision, ‘This thing’s a swindle ! ’ ‘ What’s a swin­ dle?’ ‘Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois—gave $150 for her, and I thought she was good. And, by George, she is good on shore, but somehow she don’t keep up her lick here on the water— gets sea-sick, may be. She skips ; she runs along regular enough, till half-past eleven, and then all of a sudden she lets down. I’ve set that old regulator up faster and faster, till I’ve shoved it clear round, but it don’t do any good; she just distances every watch in the ship,1 and clatters along in a way that’s astonishing till it’s noon, but them “ eight bells ” always gets in about ten minutes ahead of her any way. I don’t know what to do with her now. She’s doing all she can; she’s going her best gait, but it won’t save her. Now, don’t you know there ain’t a watch in the ship that’s making better time than she is ; but what does it signify ? When you hear them “ eight bells,” you’ll find her just ten minutes short of her score—sure.’ The ship was gaining a full hour every three days, and this fellow was trying to make his watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as he had said, he had pushed the regulator up as far as it would go, and the watch was ‘ on its best gait,’ and so nothing was left him but to fold his hands and see the ship beat in the race. We sent him to the captain, and he explained to him the mystery of ‘ ship-time,’ and set his troubled mind at rest. This young man,” proceeds Mr. Clemens, d propos des bottes, “ had asked a great many questions about sea-sickness be­ fore we left, and wanted to know what its characteristics were, and how he was to tell when he had it. He found out.” I cannot leave Mark Twain’s narrative, however, without gently criticising a passage in which he has allowed his imagination to invent effects of longitude which assuredly were never perceived in any voy­ age since the ship Argo set out after the Golden Fleece. “We had the phenomenon of a full moon,” he says, “ located just in the same spot in the heavens, at the same hour every night. The reason of this singular conduct on the part of the moon did not occur to us at first, but it did afterward, when we reflected that we were gaining about twenty minutes every day ; because we were going east so fast, we gained just about enough every day to keep along with the moon. It was becoming an old moon to the friends we had left behind us, but to us Joshuas it stood still in the same place, and remained always the same.” O Mr. Clemens, Mr. Clemens! In a work of imagination (as the “Innocents Abroad” must, I suppose, be to a great extent considered), a mistake such as that here made is perhaps not a very serious matter; but, suppose some unfortunate compiler of astronomi­ cal works should happen to remember this passage, and to state (as a 1 Because set to go “ fast.” Of course, the other watches on board would be left to go at their usual rate, and simply put forward at noon each day by so many minutes as corresponded to the run eastward since the preceding noon. �724 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. compiler would be tolerably sure to do, unless he had a mathematical friend at his elbow) that, by voyaging eastward at such and such a rate, a traveller can always have the moon “ full ” at night, in what an unpleasant predicament would the mistake have placed him ’ Such things happen, unfortunately ; nay, I have even seen works, in which precisely such mistakes have been made, in use positively as text-books for examinations. On this account, our fiction writers must be careful in introducing science details, lest peradventure science-teachers (save the mark !) be led astray. It need scarcely be said that no amount of eastwardly voyaging would cause the moon to remain always “ full ” as seen by the voyager. The moon’s phase is the same from whatever part of the earth she may be seen, and she will become “ new,” that is, pass between the earth and the sun, no matter what voyages may be undertaken by the in­ habitants of earth. Mr. Clemens has confounded the monthly motion of the moon with her daily motion. A traveller who could only go fast enough eastward might keep the moon always due south. To do this he would have to travel completely round the earth in a day and (roughly) about 50| minutes. If he continued this for a whole month, the moon would never leave the southern heavens ; but she would not continue “ full.” In fact, we see that the hour of the day (local time) would be continually changing—since the traveller would not go round once in twenty-four hours (which would be following the sun, and would cause the hour of the day to remain always the same), but in twenty-four hours and the best part of another hour; so that the day would seem to pass on, though very slowly, lasting a lunar month in­ stead of a common day. Every one who makes a long sea-voyage must have noted the im­ portance attached to moon observations; and many are misled into the supposition that these observations are directly intended for the determination of the longitude (or, which is the same thing in effect, for determining true ship-time). This, however, is a mistake. The latitude can be determined at noon, as we have seen. A rough ap­ proximation to the local time can be obtained also, and is commonly obtained, by noting when the sun begins to dip after reaching the highest part of his course above the horizon. But this is necessarily only a rough approximation, and quite unsuited for determining the ship’s longitude. For the sun’s elevation changes very slowly at noon, and no dip can be certainly recognized, even from terrafirrna, far less from a ship, within a few minutes of true noon. A determination of time effected in this way serves very well for the ship’s “ watches,” and accordingly when the sun, so observed, begins to dip, they strike “ eight bells ” and “ make it noon.” But it would be a serious matter for the crew if that was made the noon for working the ship’s place; for an error of many miles would be inevitable. The following passage from “Foul Play” illustrates the way in �FINDING THE WAY AT SEA. 725 which mistakes have arisen on this point: The hero, who, being a cler­ gyman and a university man, is, of course, a master of every branch of science, is about to distinguish himself before the heroine by work­ ing out the position of the ship Proserpine, whose captain is senseless­ ly drunk. After ten days’ murky weather, “ the sky suddenly cleared, and a rare opportunity occurred to take an observation. Hazel sug gested to Wylie, the mate, the propriety of taking advantage of the moment, as the fog-bank out of which they had just emerged would soon envelop them again, and they had not more than an hour or so of such observation available. The man gave a shuffling answer. So he sought the captain in his cabin. He found him in bed. He was dead drunk. On a shelf lay the instruments. These Hazel took, and then looked round for the chronometers. They were safely locked in their cases. He carried the instruments on deck, together with a book of tables, and quietly began to make preparations, at which Wylie, arresting his walk, gazed with utter astonishment ” (as well he might). “ ‘ Now, Mr. Wylie, I want the key of the chronometer-cases.’ “ ‘ Here is a chronometer, Mr. Hazel,’ said Helen, very innocently, ‘ if that is all you want.’ “ Hazel smiled, and explained that a ship’s clock is made to keep the most exact time; that he did not require the time of the spot where they were, but Greenwich time. He took the watch, however. It was a large one for a lady to carry; but it was one of Frodsham’s masterpieces. “ ‘ Why, Miss Rolleston,’ said he, ‘ this watch must be two hours slow. It marks ten o’clock; it is now nearly mid-day. Ah, I see,’ he added, with a smile, ‘you have wound it regularly every day, but you have forgotten to set it daily. Indeed, you may be right; it would be a useless trouble, since we change our longitude hourly. Well, let us suppose that this watch shows the exact time at Sydney, as I presume it does, I can work the ship’s reckoning from that meridian, instead of that of Greenwich.’ And he set about doing it.” Wylie, after some angry words with Hazel, brings the chronometers and the charts. Hazel “ verified Miss Rolleston’s chronometer, and, allowing for differ­ ence of time, found it to be accurate. He returned it to her, and pro­ ceeded to work on the chart. The men looked on; so did Wylie. After a few moments, Hazel read as follows: ‘West longitude 146° 53' 18”. South latitude 35° 24'. The island of Oparo 1 and the Four Crowns distant 420 miles on the N. N. E.,’ ” and so on. And, of course, “ Miss Rolleston fixed her large, soft eyes on the young clergyman with the undisguised admiration a woman is apt to feel for what she does not understand.” 1 The island fixes the longitude at about It?0, otherwise I should have thought the 4 was a misprint for 7. In longitude 177° west, Sydney time would be about 2 hours slow, but about 4 hours slow in longitude 147° west. �726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. The scene here described corresponds pretty closely, I have little doubt, with one actually witnessed by the novelist, except only that the captain or chief officer made the observations, and that either there had not been ten days’ murky weather, or else that in the fore­ noon, several hours at least before noon, an observation of the sun had been made. The noon observation would give the latitude, and com­ bined with a forenoon observation, would give the longitude, but alone would be practically useless for that purpose. It is curious that the novelist sets the longitude as assigned much more closely than the latitude, and the value given would imply that the ship’s time was known within less than a second. This would in any case be imprac­ ticable ; but, from noon observations, the time could not be learned within a minute at the least. The real fact is, that, to determine true time, the seaman selects, not noon, as is commonly supposed, but a time when the sun is nearly due east or due west. For then the sun’s elevation changes most rapidly, and so gives the surest means of de­ termining the time. The reader can easily see the rationale of this by considering the case of an ordinary clock-hand. Suppose our only means of telling the time was by noting how high the end of the min­ ute-hand was: then, clearly, we should be apt to make a greater mistake in estimating the time, when the hand was near XII., than at any other time, because then its end changes very slowly in height, and a minute more or less makes very little difference. On the contrary, when the hand was near III. and IX., we could in a very few seconds note any change of the height of its extremity. In one case we could not tell the time within a minute or two; in the other, we could tell it within a few seconds. But the noon observation would be wanted to complete the deter­ mination of the longitude ; for, until the latitude was known, the cap­ tain would not be aware what apparent path the sun was describing in the heavens, and therefore would not know the time corresponding to any particular solar observation. So that a passenger, curious in watching the captain’s work, would be apt to infer that the noon ob­ servations gave the longitude, since he would perceive that from them the captain worked out both the longitude and the latitude. It is curious that another and critical portion of the same enter­ taining novel is affected by the mistake of the novelist on this subject. After the scuttling of the Proserpine, and other events, Hazel and Miss Rolleston are alone on an island in the Pacific. Hazel seeks to deter­ mine their position, as one step toward escape. Now, “ you must know that Hazel, as he lay on his back in the boat, had often, in a half-drowsy way, watched the effect of the sun upon the boat’s mast: it now stood, a bare pole, and at certain hours acted like the needle of a dial by casting a shadow on the sands. Above all, he could see pretty well, by means of this pole and its shadow, when the sun at­ tained its greatest elevation. He now asked Miss Rolleston to assist �FINDING THE WAY AT SEA. 7*7 him in making this observation exactly. She obeyed his instructions, and, the moment the shadow reached its highest angle and showed the minutest symptom of declension, she said ‘Now,’ and Hazel called out in a loud voice ” (why did he do that ?) “ ‘ Noon ! ’ ‘ And forty nine minutes past eight at Sydney,’ said Helen, holding out her chronome­ ter ; for she had been sharp enough to get it ready of her own accord. Hazel looked at her and at the watch with amazement and incredulity. ‘ What ? ’ said he. ‘ Impossible 1 You can’t have kept Sydney time all this while.’ ‘ And pray why not ? ’ said Helen. ‘ Have you forgot­ ten that some one praised me for keeping Sydney time ? it helped you somehow or other to know where we were.’ ” After some discussion, in which she shows how natural it was that she should have wound up her watch every night, even when “ neither of them expected to see the morning,” she asks to be praised. “ ‘ Praised ! ’ cried Hazel, ex­ citedly, ‘ worshipped, you mean. Why, we have got the longitude by means of your chronometer. It is wonderful ! It is providential. It is the finger of Heaven. Pen and ink, and let me work it out.’ ” He was “ soon busy calculating the longitude of Godsend Island.” What follows is even more curiously erroneous. “ ‘ There,’ said he. ‘Now, the latitude I must guess at by certain combinations. In the first place the slight variation in the length of the days. Then I must try and make a rough calculation of the sun’s parallax.’ ” (It would have been equally to the purpose to have calculated how many cows’ tails would reach to the moon.) “ ‘ And then my botany will help me a little ; spices furnish a clew ; there are one or two that will not grow outside the tropic,’ ” and so on. He finally sets the latitude between the 26th and 33d parallels, a range of nearly 500 miles. The longi­ tude, however, which is much more closely assigned, is wrong alto­ gether, being set at 3 O3-J-0 west, as the rest of the story requires. For Godsend Island is within not many days’ sail of Valparaiso. The mistake has probably arisen from setting Sydney in west longitude in­ stead of east longitude, 151° 14' ; for the difference of time, 3h. 11m., corresponds within a minute to the difference of longitude between 151° 14' west and 103-£° west. Mere mistakes of calculation, however, matter little in such cases. They do not affect the interest of a story even in such extreme cases as in “Ivanhoe,” where a full century is dropped in such sort that one of Richard I.’s knights holds converse with a contemporary of the Conqueror, who, if my memory deceives me not, was Cœur de Lion’s great-great-grandfather. It is a pity, however, that a nov­ elist or indeed any writer should attempt to sketch scientific methods with which he is not familiar. No discredit can attach to any per­ son, not an astronomer, who does not understand the astronomical processes for determining latitude and longitude, any more than to one who, not being a lawyer, is unfamiliar with the rules of convey­ ancing. But, when an attempt is made by a writer of fiction to give �728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. an exact description of any technical matter, it is as well to secure correctness by submitting the description to some friend acquainted with the principles of the subject. For, singularly enough, people pay much more attention to these descriptions when met with in novels, than when given in text-books of science, and they thus come to re­ member thoroughly well precisely what they ought to forget. I think for instance, that it may not improbably have been some recollection of “ Foul Play” which led Mr. Lockyer to make the surprising state­ ment that longitude is determined at sea by comparing chronometer time with local time, which is found “ at noon by observing, with the aid of a sextant, when the sun is at the highest point of its path.” Our novelists really must not lead the students of astronomy astray in this manner. It will be clear to the reader, by this time, that the great point in determining the longitude is, to have the true time of Greenwich or some other reference station, in order that, by comparing this time with ship-time, the longitude east or west of the reference station may be ascertained. Ship-time can always be determined by a morning or afternoon observation of the sun, or by observing a known star when toward the east or west, at which time the diurnal motion raises or depresses it most rapidly. The latitude being known, the time of day (any given day) at which the sun or a star should have any particular altitude is known also, and, therefore, conversely, when the altitude of the sun or a star has been noted, the seaman has learned the time of day. But to find Greenwich time is another matter; and, without Greenwich time, ship-time teaches nothing as to the lon­ gitude. How is the voyager at sea or in desert places to know the exact time at Greenwich or some other fixed station? We have seen that chronometers are used for this purpose; and chronometers are now made so marvellously perfect in construction that they can be trusted to show true time within a few seconds, under ordinary con­ ditions. But it must not be overlooked that in long voyages a chro­ nometer, however perfect its construction, is more liable to get wrong than at a fixed station. That it is continually tossed and shaken is something, but is not the chief trial to which it is exposed. The great changes of temperature endured, when a ship passes from the temperate latitudes across the torrid zone to the temperate zone again, try a chronometer far more severely than any ordinary form of motion. And then it is to be noted that a very insignificant time­ error corresponds to a difference of longitude quite sufficient to occa­ sion a serious error in the ship’s estimated position. For this reason and for others, it is desirable to have some means of determining Greenwich time independently of chronometers. This, in fact, is the famous problem for the solution of which such high rewards were offered and have been given.1 It was to solve this 1 For invention of the chronometer, Harrison (a Yorkshire carpenter, and the son of �FINDING THE WAY AT SEA. 77D problem that Whiston, the same who fondly imagined Newton was afraid of him,1 suggested the use of bombs and mortars ; for which Hogarth pilloried him in the celebrated mad-house scene of the Rake’s Progress. Of course Whiston had perceived the essential feature of all methods intended for determining the longitude. Any signal which is recognizable, no matter by eye or ear, or in whatsoever way, at both stations, the reference station and the station whose longitude is required, must necessarily suffice to convey the time of one station to the other. The absurdity of Whiston’s scheme lay in the implied supposition that any form of ordnance could propel rocket-signals far enough to be seen or heard in mid-ocean. Manifestly the only signals available, when telegraphic communication is impossible, are signals in the celestial spaces, for these alone can be discerned simultaneously from widely-distant parts of the earth. It has been to such signals, then, that men of science have turned for the required means of de­ termining longitude. Galileo was the first to point out that the satellites of Jupiter sup­ ply a series of signals which might serve to determine the longitude. When one of these bodies is eclipsed in Jupiter’s shadow, or passes out of sight behind Jupiter’s disk, or reappears from eclipse or occul­ tation, the phenomenon is one which can be seen from a whole hemi­ sphere of the earth’s surface. It is as truly a signal as the appear­ ance or disappearance of a light in ordinary night-signalling. If it can be calculated beforehand that one of these events will take place at any given hour of Greenwich time, then, from whatever spot the phenomenon is observed, it is known there that the Greenwich hour is that indicated. Theoretically, this is a solution of the famous problem ; and Galileo, the discoverer of Jupiter’s four satellites, thought he had found the means of determining the longitude with great accuracy. Unfortunately, these hopes have not been realized. At sea, indeed, except in the calmest weather, it is impossible to ob­ serve the phenomena of Jupiter’s satellites, simply because the tele­ scope cannot be directed steadily upon the planet. But even on land Jupiter’s satellites afford but imperfect means of guessing at the longitude. For, at present, their motions have not been thoroughly mastered by astronomers, and though the Nautical Almanac gives the estimated epochs for the various phenomena of the four satellites, a carpenter) received £20,000. This sum had been offered for a marine chronometer which would stand the test of two voyages of assigned length. Harrison labored fifty years before he succeeded in meeting the required condition. 1 Newton, for excellent reasons, had opposed Whiston’s election to the Royal Society. Like most small men, Whiston was eager to secure a distinction which, unless sponta­ neously offered to him, could have conferred no real honor. Accordingly he was amusingly indignant with Newton for opposing him. “ Newton perceived,” he wrote, “ that I could not do as his other darling friends did, that is, learn of him without contradicting him when I differed in opinion from him : he could not in his old age bear such contradiction, and so he was afraid of me the last thirteen years of his life.” �73° THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. yet, owing to the imperfection of the tables, these epochs are often found to be appreciably in error. There is yet another difficulty. The satellites are not mere points, but, being in reality also as large as or larger than our moon, they have disks of appreciable though small dimensions. Accordingly, they do not vanish or reappear in­ stantaneously, but gradually, the process lasting in reality several seconds (a longer or shorter time, according to the particular satellites considered), and the estimated moment of the phenomenon thus comes to depend on the power of the telescope employed, or the skill or the visual powers of the observer, or the condition of the atmosphere, and so on. Accordingly, very little reliance could be placed on such ob­ servations as a mean for determining the longitude with any consid­ erable degree of exactness. No other celestial phenomena present themselves except those depending on the moon’s motions.1 All the planets, as well as the sun and moon, traverse at various rates and in different paths the sphere of the fixed stars. But the moon alone moves with sufficient 1 If but one star or a few would periodically (and quite regularly) “ go out ” for a few moments, the intervals between such vanishings being long enough to insure that one would not be mistaken in point of time for the next or following one, then it would be pos­ sible to determine Greenwich or other reference time with great exactness. And here one cannot but recognize an argument against the singular theory that the stars were in­ tended simply as lights to adorn our heavens and to be of use to mankind. The ideolo­ gists who have adopted this strange view can hardly show how the theory is consistent with the fact that quite readily the stars (or a few of them) might have been so contrived as to give man the means of travelling with much more security over the length and breadth of his domain than is at present possible. In this connection I venture to quote a passage in which Sir John Herschel has touched on the usefulness of the stars, in terms which, were they not corrected by other and better-known passages in his writings, might suggest that he had adopted the theory I have just mentioned: “The stars,” he said, in an address to the Astronomical Society, in 1827, “ are landmarks of the universe; and, amid the endless and complicated fluctuations of our system, seem placed by its Creator as guides and records, not merely to elevate our minds by the contemplation of what is vast, but to teach us to direct our actions by reference to what is immutable in his works. It is indeed hardly possible to over-appreciate their value in this point of view. Every well-determined star, from the moment its place is registered, becomes to the astronomer, the geographer, the navigator, the surveyor, a point of departure which can never deceive or fail him—the same forever and in all places, of a delicacy so extreme as to be a test for every instrument yet invented by man, yet equally adapted for the most ordinary purposes; as available for regulating a town-clock as for con­ ducting a navy to the Indies; as effective for mapping down the intricacies of a petty barony as for adjusting the boundaries of transatlantic empires. When once its place has been thoroughly ascertained, and carefblly recorded, the brazen circle with which the useful work was done may moulder, the marble pillar may totter on its base, and the astronomer himself survive only in the gratitude of posterity; but the record remains, and transfuses all its own exactness into every determination which takes it for a groundwork, giving to inferior instruments, nay, even to temporary contrivances, and to the observations of a few weeks or days, all the precision attained originally at the cost of so much time, labor, and expense.” It is only necessary, as a corrective to the erroneous ideas which might otherwise be suggested by this somewhat high-flown pas­ sage, to quote the following remarks from the work which represented Sir John Her- �FINDING THE WAY AT SEA. 731 rapidity to act as a time indicator for terrestrial voyagers. It is hardly necessary to explain why rapidity of motion is important; but the following illustration may be given for the purpose. The hour-hand of a clock does in reality indicate the minute as well as the hour; yet, owing to the slowness of its motion, we regard the hour-hand as an unsatisfactory time-indicator, and only consider it as showing what hour is in progress. So with the more slowly-moving celestial bodies. They would serve well enough, at least some among them would, to show the day of the year, if we could only imagine that such informa­ tion were ever required from celestial bodies. But it would be hope­ less to attempt to ascertain the true time with any degree of accuracy from their motions. Now, the moon really moves with considerable rapidity among the stars.1 She completes the circuit of the celestial sphere in 27£ days (a period less than the common lunation), so that in one day she traverses about 13°, or her own diameter (which is rather more than half a degree), in about an hour. This, astronomi­ cally speaking, is very rapid motion; and, as it can be detected in a few seconds by telescopic comparison of the moon’s place with that of some fixed star, it serves to show the time within a few seconds, which is precisely what is required by the seaman. Theoretically, all he has to do is, to take the moon’s apparent distance from a known star, and also her height and the star’s height above the horizon. Thence he can calculate what would be the moon’s distance from the star at the moment of observation, if the observer were at the earth’s centre. But the Nautical Almanac informs him of the precise instant of Greenwich time corresponding to this calculated distance. So he has, what he requires, the true Greenwich time. It will be manifest that all methods of finding the way at sea, except the rough processes depending on the log and compass, re­ quire that the celestial bodies, or some of them, should be seen. Hence it is that cloudy weather, for any considerable length of time, occasions danger, and sometimes leads to shipwreck and loss of life. Of course the captain of a ship proceeds with extreme caution when the weather has long been cloudy, especially if, according to his reck­ oning, he is drawing near shore. Then the lead comes into play, that by soundings, if possible, the approach to shore may be indicated, schel’s more matured views, his well-known “ Outlines of Astronomy:” “For what purpose are we to suppose such magnificent bodies scattered through the abyss of space ? Surely not to illuminate our nights, which an additional moon of the thousandth part of the size of our own world would do much better; nor to sparkle as a pageant void of meaning and reality, and bewilder us among vain conjectures. Useful, it is true, they are to man as points of exact and permanent reference, but he must have studied astronomy to little purpose, who can suppose man to be the only object of his Creator’s care; or who does not see, in the vast and wonderful apparatus around us, provision for other races of animated beings.” 1 It was this doubtless which led to the distinction recognized in the book of Job, where the moon is described as “ walking in brightness.” �732 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Then, also, by day and night, a careful watch is kept for the signs of land. But it sometimes happens that, despite all such precautions, a ship is lost; for there are conditions of weather which, occurring when a ship is nearing shore, render the most careful lookout futile. These conditions may be regarded as included among ordinary sea-risks, by which term are understood all such dangers as would leave a captain blameless if shipwreck occurred. It would be well if no ships were ever lost save from ordinary sea-risks; but, unfortunately, ships are sometimes cast ashore for want of care ; either in maintaining due watch as the shore is approached, or taking advantage of oppor­ tunities, which may be few and far between, for observing sun, or moon, or stars, as the voyage proceeds. It may safely be said that the greater number of avoidable shipwrecks have been occasioned by the neglect of due care in finding the way at sea. SECULAR PROPHECY. LTHOUGH prophecy is usually supposed to be the special gift of inspiration, nothing comes more glibly from secular pens. Half of the leading articles in the daily newspapers are more or less disguised predictions. The prophecies of the Times are more numer­ ous, more confident, and more explicit, than those of Jeremiah or Isaiah. “ Secular Prophecy fulfilled” would be a good title for a book written after the model of those old and half-educated divines who zealously looked through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and the Apocalypse, for shadowy hints that Hildebrand would enforce celibacy on the clergy of the Latin Church ; that Luther would cut up the Christianity of the West into two sections; that Cromwell would sign the death-warrant of Charles I.; and that the Stuarts would become wanderers over the face of the earth. There are still, we believe, devout, mystical, and studious sectaries, who find such events as the disestablishment of the Irish Church and the meeting of the Vatican Council plainly fore­ told in the book of Revelation. They also find Mr. Gladstone’s name written in letters of fire by inspired pens that left their record while the captivity of Babylon was a recent memory, or while Nero was the scourge of the Church. Nay, Dr. Cumming, who is as different from those mystical interpreters as a smart Yankee trader is from Parson Adams, sees that the Prophet Daniel and St. John had a still more minute acquaintance with the home and Continental politics of these latter days. But “ Secular Prophecy fulfilled ” would show a much more wonderful series of glimpses into the future than we find in the interpretations of Dr. Cumming, and it would certainly bring together a strange set of soothsayers. �SECULAR PROPHECY. 733 Arthur Young, Lord Chesterfield, and William Cobbett, are not exactly the kind of men whom we should expect to find among the prophets. Arthur Young was a shrewd traveller, with a keen eye for leading facts, and a remarkable power of describing what he saw in plain, homely words. Chesterfield was a literary and philosophical dandy, who, richly furnished with the small coin of wisdom, and fear­ ing nothing so much as indecorum, would have been a great teacher if the earth had been a drawing-room. Cobbett was a coarse, rough English farmer, with an extraordinary power of reasoning at the dic­ tate of his prejudices, and with such a faculty of writing racy, vigorous English as excites the admiration and the despair of scholars. It seems almost ludicrous to speak of such men as prophets. And yet Arthur Young foretold the coming of the French Revolution at a time when the foremost men of France did not dream that the greatest of political convulsions was soon to lay low the proudest of monarchies. And the dandified morality of Lord Chesterfield did not prevent him from making a similar prediction. Cobbett made a guess which was still more notable ; for, at the beginning of the present century, he foretold the secession of the Southern States. But the most remarkable of all the secular prophets who have spoken to our time is Heine. He might seem indeed to have been a living irony on the very name of prophet, for he read backward all the sanctities of religion and all the com­ mands of the moral law. Essentially a humorist, to whom life seemed now the saddest of mysteries, and now the most laughable of jokes, he made sport of every thing that he touched. His most fervid English devotee, Mr. Matthew Arnold, is forced to admit that he was pro­ foundly disrespectable. He quarrelled with his best friends for frivo­ lously petty reasons, and he repaid their kindness by writing lampoons which are masterpieces at once of literary skill and of malignity. Neither Voltaire nor Pope scattered calumnies with such a lack of scru­ ple, and Byron himself was not a more persistent or more systematic voluptuary. Yet Heine was so true a prophet that his predictions might have been accounted the work of inspiration if he had been as famed for piety or purity as he was notorious for irreligion and profli­ gacy. He predicted that Germany and France would fight, and that France would be utterly put down. He predicted that the line of for­ tifications which M. Thiers was then building round Paris would draw to the capital a great hostile army, and that they would crush the city as if they were a contracting iron shroud. He predicted that the Communists would some day get the upper hand in Paris, that they would strike in a spirit of fiendish rage at the statues, the beautiful buildings, and all the other tangible marks of the civilization which they sought to destroy; that they would throw down the Vendome Column in their hate of the man who had made France the foe of every other people ; and that they would further show their execration for his memory by taking his ashes from the Invalides and flinging �734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. them into the Seine. All these predictions, save the last, have been fulfilled to the letter, and it would need a bolder prophet than even Heine himself to say that the last will not be verified also. For nothing is more remarkable in France than the success with which the International is teaching the artisans that the first as well as the third Napoleon was the worst enemy of their class. Although they still regard his achievements with pride, they fervently believe that he was the foe of their order, and the acts of the Commune showed their eagerness to insult his name. And there may be another Commune. Intrepid prophets would say that there certainly will be another. If that should happen, it is quite possible that the fanatics of the In­ ternational may fling the ashes of the great soldier into the Seine to mark their abhorrence of military glory. Prevost-Paradol was as different from Heine as a gifted voluptuary can be from a polished, fastidious, and decorous gentleman. Yet the refined, reserved, satirical Orleanist, who seemed to be uncomfortable when his hands were not encased in kid gloves, and who was a mas­ ter of all the literary resources of innuendo, would be as much out of place among the Hebrew prophets as Heine himself. He would find a place, nevertheless, in “ Secular Prophecy fulfilled,” by reason of the startling exactness with which he foretold the outbreak of the war between his own country and Germany. In a passage which promises to become classic, he said that the two nations were like two trains which, starting from opposite points, and placed on the same line of rails, were driven toward each other at full speed. There must be a collision. The only doubt was, where it would happen, and when, and with what results. De Tocqueville better fulfilled the traditionary idea of a prophet, and there is a startling accuracy in some of the predictions as to the future of France which he flung forth in talking with his friends, and of which we find a partial record in the journal of Mr. Nassau Senior. Eighteen years before the fall of the empire, he predicted that it would wreck itself “ in some extravagant foreign enterprise.” “ War,” he added, “ would assuredly be its death, but its death would perhaps cost dear.” M. Renan also aspires to a place among the prophets, and he has made a prediction which may be a subject of some curiosity when the next pope shall be elected. The Church of Rome will not, he says, be split up by disputes about doctrine. But he does look for a schism, and it will come, he thinks, when some papal election shall be deemed invalid; when there shall be two competing pontiffs, and Europe shall see a renewal of the strife between Rome and Avignon. It may be said, no doubt, that the verified predictions which we have cited are only stray hits; that the oracles make still more re­ markable misses; and that, since guesses about the future are shot off every hour of the day, it would be a marvel if the bull’s-eye were not struck sometimes. Such a theory might suffice to account for the hits, �SECULAR PROPHECY. 735 if the prophecies were let off in the dark and at random ; but that is not the case. It is easy to trace the path along which the mind of Heine or De Tocqueville travelled to the results of the future, and. their predictions betray nothing more wonderful than a rare power of drawing correct inferences from confused facts. A set of general rules might be laid down as a guide to prophecy. In the first place, we might give the negative caution that the analogy of past events is mis­ leading, because the same set of conditions does not appear at two different times, and an almost unseen element might suffice to deter­ mine an all-important event. Forgetting this fact, Archbishop Man­ ning has ventured into the field of prophecy with the argument that Catholics should not be made uneasy because the pope has lost his temporal power, for they should remember that he has again and again suffered worse calamities, and has then won back all his old au­ thority. Between 1378 and 1418 the Church witnessed the scandal of a schism, in which there were rival popes, and in which Rome and Avignon competed for the mastery. That calamity is worse than any which has come to the Church in our days, yet the Papacy regained its old power and glory. So late as within the present century the temporal power was reduced to nullity by the first Napoleon, and Pius TX. himself had to flee from Rome in the beginning of his reign. Why, then, should not the robber-band of Victor Emmanuel be paralyzed in turn, and the Papacy once more regain its old splendor ? Not being ambitious to play the part of prophets, we do not undertake to say whether the Papacy will or will not again climb or be flung into its ancient place, but it is not the less certain that Archbishop Man­ ning’s prophecy is a conspicuous example of a false inference. When he argues that a pope in the nineteenth century will again be the tem­ poral ruler of Rome because a pope triumphed over the schism of Avignon in the fifteenth, he forgets that the lapse of centuries has wrought a vast change of conditions. At the end of the fourteenth century a keen onlooker, a Heine or a De Tocqueville, might have con­ fidently foretold that a pope of unquestioned authority would soon govern the historic city of the Papacy, because the political and the social interests of Europe, no less than the piety or superstition of the times, required that the pope should be powerful and free. The cur­ rent of the age, if we may use the philosophical slang, was running from Avignon to Rome in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and now the current of the age is not less distinctly running against the temporal power. The very reasons which would have led a prophet in 1400 to predict that Rome would again be the unquestioned seat of the Papacy would lead the same soothsayer to affirm in 1873 that the temporal power has been shattered forever. It is in general causes that we find the guide of prophecy. Mr. Buckle attached so much importance to the physical conditions of a country, the food of a people, the air they breathe, the occupations �736 I HE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. which they are forced to follow, and the habits of thought which they display, that he undertook to tell the end of a nation from the begin­ ning. Spain was no mystery to him when he remembered that it had originally been a country of volcanoes ; that the people had conse­ quently been filled with a dread of the unseen and inscrutable power which reveals itself in convulsions of the earth; that their diseased fear of shadowy influences made them resent the teachings of science, and hence left them an easy prey to the Holy Office and Ignatius Loyola when Luther, Calvin, and Zwingle, drew away from sacerdotal­ ism all the Christianity of Northern Europe. There can be no doubt that Buckle’s theory did rest on a basis of truth, and that it erred simply by trying to account for every thing. In fact, it is not spe­ cially his doctrine, but simply the rigid and systematized application of a principle which is as old as speculative curiosity. We apply it every day of our lives. If a family go into a badly-drained house, we say the chances are that they will have typhus, diarrhoea, or chol­ era. If a rich and foolish young man bets largely on the turf, the prob­ ability is that he will be ruined. And the statistician comes to help us with a set of tables which throw uncomfortable light on the me­ chanical character of those mental and moral processes which might seem to be determined by the unprompted bidding of our own wills. Mr. Buckle was no doubt beguiled by a mere dream when he fancied that we could account for every turn and winding in the history of a country if we had only a large knowledge of its general conditions, such as the temperature of the land, the qualities of the soil, the food of the people, and their relations to their neighbors. He paid too little heed to subtle qualities of race, and he did not make sufficient allowance for the disturbing force of men gifted with extraordinary power of brain and will. Still it is a mere truism that the more cor­ rectly and fully we know the general condition of a country, the more does mystery vanish from its history, and the successive events tend to take their place in orderly sequence. It is impossible, however, to prophesy by rule, and such system­ mongers as Mr. Buckle would be the most treacherous of all ora<?les. Their hard and fast canons will not bend into the subtle crevices of human life. Men who are so ostentatiously logical that they cannot do a bit of thinking without the aid of a huge apparatus of sharplycut principles always lack a keen scent for truth. They blunder by rule when less showy people find their way by mother-wit. Hence they are the worst of all prophets. It was not by counting up how many things tell in one way, and how many tell in another, that Heine and De Tocqueville were able to guess correctly what was coming, but by watching the chief currents of the age, or, as more homely folk would say, by finding out which way the wind was blowing. They had to decide which among many social, religious, or political forces were the strongest, and which would be the most lasting. They had �SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS IN MACHINERY. 737 to give a correct decision as to the stability of particular institutions and the strength of popular passions. General rules could not be of much avail, and they had to rely on their knowledge of human nature, their acquaintance with the forces which have been at work in history, and their own sagacity. Most likely Heine could not have given such an explanation of the grounds on which he made his predictions as would have satisfied any average jury of historical students. But he could have said that he knew the working-men of Paris; that his power of poetic sympathy enabled him to see how their minds veered toward socialism, and he also knew what forces were on the side of order; and that a mental comparison of the two made him look with certainty to a ferocious outbreak of democratic passion. Being thus sure that the storm would come, he had next to ask himself which points the lightning would strike, and he looked for the most promi­ nent symbols of kingship, wealth, refinement, and military glory. The Tuileries would be a mark for the fury of the mob, because that was the palace of the man who had destroyed the populace. The public offices must go, because they represented what the bourgeois called order and the workmen called tyranny. The Louvre must go, for the mere sake of maddening rich people who took a delight in art. And the Vendóme Column must go, because it glorified a man who was the in­ carnation of the w ar-spirit, and who was consequently the w’orst foe of the working-classes. To a select committee of the House of Com­ mons such reasons would have seemed the dreams of a moon-struck visionary, and they certainly did not admit of being logically defended. No prophecy does. The power of predicting events is the power of guessing, and those guess best who are least dependent on rules, and most gifted with the mother-wit which works with the quietude and unconsciousness of instinct.—Saturday Review. 4«» SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS IN MACHINERY.* By Pbof. J. LOVEEING, . OF HARVARD COLLEGE. T the meeting of this Association in Burlington, I showed some experiments in illustration of the optical method of making sen­ sible the vibrations of the column of air in an organ-pipe. At the Chicago meeting I demonstrated the way in which the vibrations of strings could be studied by the eye in place of the ear, when these strings were attached to tuning-forks with which they could vibrate in sympathy; substituting for the small forks, originally used by Melde, A 1 From the Proceedings of the Twenty-first Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. —47 vol. hi. �738 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. a colossal tuning-fork, the prongs of which were placed between the poles of a powerful electro-magnet. This fork, which interrupted the battery current, at the proper time, by its own motion, was able to put a heavy cord, thirty feet in length, in the most ener­ getic vibration, and for an indefinite time. I propose, at the present time, to speak of those sympathetic vibrations which are pitched so low as not to come within the limits of human ears, but which are felt rather than heard, and to show how they may be seen as well as felt. All structures, large or small, simple or complex, have a definite rate of vibration, depending on their materials, size, and shape, and as fixed as the fundamental note of a musical cord. They may also vi­ brate in parts, as the cord does, and thus be capable of various increas­ ing rates of vibration, which constitute their harmonics. If one body vibrates, all others in the neighborhood will respond, if the rate of vibration in the first agrees with their own principal or secondary rates of vibration, even when no more substantial bond than the air unites a body with its neighbors. In this way, mechanical disturb­ ances, harmless in their origin, assume a troublesome and perhaps a dangerous character, when they enter bodies all too ready to move at the required rate, and sometimes beyond the sphere of their stability. When the bridge at Colebrooke Dale (the first iron bridge in the world) was building, a fiddler came along and said to the workmen that he could fiddle their bridge down. The builders thought this boast a fiddle-de-dee, and invited the itinerant musician to fiddle away to his heart’s content. One note after another was struck upon the strings until one was found with which the bridge was in sympathy. When the bridge began to shake violently, the incredulous workmen were alarmed at the unexpected result, and ordered the fiddler to stop. At one time, considerable annoyance was experienced in one of the mills in Lowell, because the walls of the building and the floors were violently shaken by the machinery: so much so that, on certain days, a pail of water would be nearly emptied of its contents, while on other days all was quiet. Upon investigation it appeared that the building shook in response to the motion of the machinery only when that moved at a particular rate, coinciding with one of the harmoriics of the structure ; and the simple remedy for the trouble consisted in making the machinery move at a little more or a little less speed, so as to put it out of time with the building. We can easily believe that, in many cases, these violent vibrations will loosen the cement and derange the parts of a building, so that it may afterward fall under the pressure of a weight which otherwise it was fully able to bear, and at a time, possibly, when the machinery is not in motion; and this may have something to do with such acci­ dents as that which happened to the Pemberton Mills in Lawrence. Large trees are uprooted in powerful gales, because the wind comes in �SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS IN MACHINERY, gusts; and, if these gusts happen to be timed in accordance with the natural swing of the tree, the effect is irresistible. The slow vibra­ tions which proceed from the largest pipes of a large organ, and which are below the range of musical sounds, are able to shake the walls and floors of a building so as to be felt, if not heard, thereby furnishing a background of noise on which the true musical sounds may be projected. We have here the reason of the rule observed by marching ar­ mies when they cross a bridge; viz., to stop the music, break step, and open column, lest the measured cadence of a condensed mass of men should urge the bridge to vibrate beyond its sphere of cohesion. A neglect of this rule has led to serious accidents. The Broughton bridge, near Manchester, gave way beneath the measured tread of only sixty men who were marching over it. The celebrated engineer, Robert Stephenson, has remarked 1 that there is not so much danger to a bridge, when it is crowded with men or cattle, or if cavalry are passing over it, as when men go over it in marching order. A chain-bridge crosses the river Dordogne on the road to Bordeaux. One of the Stephensons passed over it in 1845, and was so much struck with its defects, although it had been recently erected, that he noti­ fied the authorities in regard to them. A few years afterward it gave way when troops were marching over it.’ A few years ago, a terrible disaster befell a battalion of French infantry, while crossing the suspension-bridge at Angers, in France. Reiterated warnings were given to the troops to break into sections, as is usually done. But the rain was falling heavily, and, in the hurry of the moment, the orders were disregarded. The bridge, which was only twelve years old, and which had been repaired the year before at a cost of $7,000, fell, and 280 dead bodies were found, besides many who were wounded. Among the killed or drowned were the chief of battalion and four other officers. Many of the guns were bent double, and one musket pierced completely through the body of a soldier. The wholesale slaughter at the bridge of Beresina, in Russia, when Napoleon was retreating from Moscow, in 1812, and his troops crowded upon the bridge and broke it, furnishes a fitting parallel to this great calamity. When Galileo set a pendulum in strong vibration by blowing on it whenever it was moving away from his mouth, he gave a good illus­ tration of the way in which small but regularly-repeated disturbances grow into consequence. Tyndall tells us that the Swiss muleteers tie up the bells of the mules, for fear that the tinkle should bring an avalanche down. The breaking of a drinking-glass by the human voice, when its fundamental note is sounded, is a well-authenticated feat; and Chladni mentions an innkeeper who frequently repeated the 1 Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, vol. v., p. 255. • Smiles’s “ Life of Stephenson,” p. 390. �740 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. experiment for the entertainment of his guests and his own profit. The nightingale is said to kill by the power of its notes. The bark of a dog is able to call forth a response from certain strings of the piano. And a curious passage has been pointed out in the Talmud, which dis­ cusses the indemnity to be claimed when a vessel is broken by the voice of a domestic animal. If we enter the domain of music, there is no end to the illustrations which might be given of these sympathetic vibrations. They play a conspicuous part in most musical instru­ ments, and the sounds which these instruments produce would be meagre and ineffective without them. In the case of vibrations which are simply mechanical, without being audible, or at any rate musical, the following ocular demonstra­ tion may be given: A train of wheels, set in motion by a strong spring wound up in a drum, causes an horizontal spindle to revolve with great velocity. Two pieces of apparatus like this are placed at the opposite sides of a room. On the ends of the spindles which face one another are attached buttons about an inch in diameter, The two ends of a piece of white tape are fastened to the rims of these buttons. When the spindles, with the attached buttons, revolve, the two ends of the tape revolve, and in such directions as to prevent the tape from twistunless the velocities are different. Even if the two trains of wheels move with unequal velocities, when independent of each other, the motions tend to uniformity when the two spindles are connected by the tape. Now, by moving slightly the apparatus at one end of the room, the tape may be tightened or loosened. If the tape is tight­ ened, its rate of vibration is increased, and, at the same time, the ve­ locity of the spindles is diminished on account of the greater resist­ ance. If the tape is slackened, its rate of vibration is less, and the velocity of the spindles is greater. By this change we can readily bring the fundamental vibi’ation of the tape into unison with the machinery, and then the tape responds by a vibration of great amplitude, visible to all beholders. If we begin gradually to loosen the tape, it soon ceases to respond, on account of the twofold effect already de­ scribed, until the time comes when the velocity of the machinery ac­ cords with the first harmonic of the tape, and the latter divides beau­ tifully into two vibrating segments with a node at the middle. As the tension slowly diminishes, the different harmonics are successively developed, until finally the tape is broken up into numerous segments only an inch or two in length. The eye is as much delighted by this visible music as the ear could be if the vibrations were audible; and the optical demonstration has this advantage, that all may see, while few have musical ears. A tape is preferred to a cord in this experi­ ment, because it is better seen, and any accidental twist it may ac­ quire is less troublesome. �SPECULATION IN SCIENCE. 741 SPECULATION IN SCIENCE.1 By Pbof. J. LAWRENCE SMITH. NOW pass to the second part of my discourse. It is in reference to the methods of modern science—the caution to be observed in pursuing it, if we do not wish to pervert its end by too confident as­ sertions and deductions. It is a very common attempt, nowadays, for scientists to transcend the limits of their legitimate studies, and in doing this they run into speculations apparently the most unphilosophical, wild, and absurd; quitting the true basis of inductive philosophy, and building up the most curious theories on little else than assertion; speculating upon the merest analogy; adopting the curious views of some metaphysi­ cians, as Edward von Hartmann; striving to work out speculative results by the inductive method of natural science. And such an example as this is of great value to the reflective mind, teaching caution, and demonstrating the fact that, while the rules by which we are guided in scientific research are far in advance of those of ancient days, we must not conclude that they are perfect by any means. In our modern method of investigation how many conspicuous examples of deception we have had in pursuing even the best method of investigation ! Take, for instance, the science of ge­ ology, from the time of Werner to the present day. While we always thought we had the true interpretation of the structural phenomena of the globe, as we progressed from year to year, yet how vastly dif­ ferent are our interpretations of the present day from what they were in the time of Werner! In chemistry, the same thing is true. How clearly were all things explained to the chemist of the last century by Phlogiston, which, in the present century, receive no credence, and chemical phenomena are now viewed in an entirely different light! Lavoisier, in the latter part of the last century, elucidated the phe­ nomena of respiration and the production of animal heat by one of the most beautiful theories, based, to all appearances, upon well-observed facts; yet, at the present day, more delicate observations, and the discovery of the want of balance between the inhaled oxygen and ex­ haled carbonic acid, subverted that beautiful theory, and we are left entirely without one. It is true we have collated a number of facts in regard to respiration, molecular changes in the tissues, etc., all of which are recognized as having something to do with animal heat; still it is acknowledged that we are incapable of giving any concrete expression to the phenomena of respiration and animal heat as La­ voisier did eighty or ninety years ago. I 1 Abstract of the address before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at its late meeting in Portland, Me., by the retiring president. �742 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Electricity is the same now as it has ever been, yet it was once spoken of as a fluid, then as a force, now as an energy readily con­ vertible into caloric or mechanical energy; and in what light it will be considered fifty years hence no one can predict. Now, what I desire to enforce here is, that amid all these changes and revolutions of theories, so called, it is simply man, the inter­ preter, that has erred, and not Nature; her laws are the same; we simply have not been able to read them correctly, and perhaps never will be. AVhat, it may be asked, are we to do, then ? Must we cease theorizing ? Not at all. The lesson to be learned from this is to be more modest in our generalizations; to generalize as far as our carefully-made-out facts will permit us, and no further; check the imagina­ tion, and let it not run riot and shipwreck us upon some metaphysical quicksand. The fact is, it becomes a question whether there is such a thing as pure theory in science. No true scientific theory deserves the name that is not based on verified hypothesis; in fact, it is but a concise in­ terpretation of the deductions of scientific facts. Dumas has well said that theories are like crutches, the strength of them is, to be tested by attempting to walk with them. And I might further add, that very often scientists, who are without sure-footed facts to carry them along, take to these crutches. It is common to speak of the theory of gravitation, when there is nothing purely hypothetical in connection with the manner in which it was studied; in it we only see a clear generalization of observed laws which govern the mutual attraction of bodies. If at any time New­ ton did assume an hypothesis, it was only for the purpose of facilitat­ ing his calculations: “Newton’s passage from the falling of an apple to the falling of a moon was at the outset a leap of the imagination; ” but it was this hypothesis, verified by mathematics, which gave to the so-called theory of gravitation its present status. In regard to light, we are in the habit of connecting with it a pure hypothesis, viz., the impressions of light being produced by emission from luminous bodies, or by the undulation of an all-pervading, at­ tenuated medium; and these hypotheses are to be regarded as probable so long as the phenomena of light are explained by them, and no longer. The failure to explain one single well-observed fact is suffi­ cient to cast doubt upon or subvert any pure hypothesis, as has been the case with the emission theory of light, and may be the fate of the undulatory theory, which, however, up to the present time, serves in all cases. It is not my object to criticise the speculations of any one or more of the modern scientists who have carried their investigations into the world of the imagination; in fact, it could not be done in a dis­ course so limited as this, and one only intended as a prologue to the �SPECULATION IN SCIENCE. 743 present meeting. But, in order to illustrate this subject of method more fully, I will refer to Darwin, whose name has become synonymous with progressive development and natural selection, which we had thought had died out with Lamarck fifty years ago. In Darwin we have one of those philosophers whose great knowledge of animal and vegetable life is only transcended by his imagination. In fact, he is to be regarded more as a metaphysician with a highly-wrought im­ agination than as a scientist, although a man having a most wonderful knowledge of the facts of natural history. In England and America we find scientific men of the profoundest intellects differing completely in regard to his logic, analogies, and deductions; and in Germany and France the same thing—in the former of these countries some specu­ lators saying that “his theory is our starting-point,” and in France many of her best scientific men not ranking the labors of Darwin with those of pure science. Darwin takes up the law of life, and runs it into progressive development. In doing this, he seems to me to in­ crease the embarrassment which surrounds us on looking into the mys­ teries of creation. He is not satisfied to leave the laws of life where he finds them, or to pursue their study by logical and inductive rea­ soning. His method of reasoning will not allow him to remain at rest; he must be moving onward in his unification of the universe. He started with the lower order of animals, and brought them through their various stages of progressive development until he supposed he had touched the confines of man ; he then seems to have recoiled, and hesitated to pass the boundary which separated man from the lower order of animals ; but he saw that all his previous logic was bad if he stopped there, so man was made from the ape (with which no one can find fault, if the descent be legitimate). This stubborn logic pushes him still further, and he must find some connecting link between that most remarkable property of the human face called expression; so his ingenuity has given us a very curious and readable treatise on that subject. Yet still another step must be taken in this linking together man and the lower order of animals ; it is in connection with language; and before long it is not unreasonable to expect another production from that most wonderful and ingenious intellect on the connection be­ tween the language of man and the brute creation. Let us see for a moment what this reasoning from analogy would lead us to. The chemist has as much right to revel in the imaginary formation of sodium from potassium, or iodine and bromine from chlorine, by a process of development, and call it science, as for the naturalist to revel in many of his wild speculations, or for the physicist who studies the stellar space to imagine it permeated by mind as well as light—mind such as has formed the poet, the statesman, or the philosopher. Yet any chemist who would quit his method of investi­ gation, of marking every foot of his advance by some indelible im­ print, and go back to the speculations of Albertus Magnus, Roger �744 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Bacon, and other alchemists of former ages, would soon he dropped from the list of chemists and ranked with dreamers and speculators. What I have said is, in my humble opinion, warranted by the de­ parture Darwin and others have made from true science in their purely speculative studies; and neither he nor any other searcher after truth expects to hazard great and startling opinions without at the same time courting and desiring criticism; yet dissension from his views in no way proves him wrong—it only shows how his ideas impress the minds of other men. And just here let me contrast the daring of Darwin with the position assumed by one of the great French natural­ ists of the present day, Prof. Quatrefages, in a recent discourse of his on the physical character of the human race. In referring to the ques­ tion of the first origin of man, he says distinctly that, in his opinion, it is one that belongs not to science; these questions are treated by theologians and philosophers: “Neither here nor at the Museum am I, nor do I wish to be, either a theologian or a philosopher. I am simply a man of science; and it is in the name of comparative physiology, of botanical and zoological geography, of geology and paleontology, in the name of the laws which govern man as well as animals and plants, that I have always spoken.” And, studying man as a scientist, he goes on to say: “ It is established that man has two grand faculties, of which we find not even a trace among animals. He alone has the moral sentiment of good and evil; he alone believes in a future existence succeeding this natural life; he alone believes in beings superior to himself, that he has never seen, and that are capable of influencing his life for good or evil; in other words, man alone is endowed with morality and religion.” Our own distinguished nat­ uralist and associate, Prof. Agassiz, reverts to this theory of evolution in the same positive manner, and with such earnestness and warmth as to call forth severe editorial criticisms, by his speaking of it as a “ mere mine of assertions,” and the “ danger of stretching inferences from a few observations to a wide field; ” and he is called upon to col­ lect 11 real observations to disprove the evolution hypothesis.” I would here remark, in defence of my distinguished friend, that scien­ tific investigation will assume a curious phase when its votaries are required to occupy time in looking up facts, and seriously attempting to disprove any and every hypothesis based upon proof, some of it not even rising to the dignity of circumstantial evidence. I now come to the last point to which I wish to call the attention of the members of the Association in the pursuit of their investiga­ tions, and the speculations that these give rise to in their minds. Ref­ erence has already been made to the tendency of quitting the physical to revel in the metaphysical, which, however, is not peculiar to this age, for it belonged as well to the times of Plato and Aristotle as it does to ours. More special reference will be made here to the pro­ clivity of the present epoch among philosophers and theologians to be �SPECULATION IN SCIENCE. 745 parading science and religion side by side, talking of reconciling sci­ ence and religion, as if they have ever been unreconciled. Scientists and theologians may have quarrelled, but never science and religion. At dinners they are toasted in the same breath, and calls made on cler­ gymen to respond, who, for fear of giving offence, or lacking the fire and firmness of St. Paul, utter a vast amount of platitudes about the beauty of science and the truth of religion, trembling in theii* shoes all the time, fearing that science falsely so called may take away their professional calling, instead of uttering in a voice of thunder, like the Boanerges of the Gospel, that the “ world by wisdom knew not God.” And it never will. Our religion is made so plain by the light of faith that the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot err therein. No, gentlemen, I firmly believe that there is less connection be­ tween science and religion than there is between jurisprudence and astronomy, and the sooner this is understood the better it will be for both. Religion is based upon revelations as given to us in a book, the contents of which are never changed, and of which there have been no revised or corrected editions since it was first given, except so far as man has interpolated; a book more or less perfectly understood by mankind, but clear and unequivocal in all essential points concerning the relation of man to his Creator; a book that affords practical di­ rections, but no theory; a book of facts, and not of arguments ; a book that has been damaged more by theologians than by all the panthe­ ists and atheists that have ever lived and turned their invectives against it—and no one source of mischief on the part of theologians is greater than that of admitting the profound mystery of many parts of it, and almost in the next breath attempting some sort of explana­ tion of these mysteries. The book is just what Richard Whately says it is, viz., “ Not the philosophy of the human mind, nor yet the philos­ ophy of the divine nature in itself, but (that which is properly religion) the relation and connection of the two beings—what God is to us, what he has done and will do for us, and what we are to be in regard to him.” . . . Let us stick to science, pure, unadulterated science, and leave to religion things which pertain to it; for science and religion are like two mighty rivers flowing toward the same ocean, and, before reaching it, they will meet and mingle their pure streams, and flow together into that vast ocean of truth which encircles the throne of the great Author of all truth, whether pertaining to science or to religion. And I will here, in defence of science, assert that there is a greater proportion of its votaries who now revere and honor re­ ligion in its broadest sense, as understood by the Christian world, than that of any other of the learned secular pursuits. But, before concluding, I cannot refrain from referring to one great event in the history of American science during the past year, as it will doubtless mark an epoch in the development of science in this country. I refer to the noble gift of a noble foreigner to encourage �746 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the pool* but worthy student of pure science in this country. It is needless for me to insist on the estimation in which Prof. John Tyndall is held among us. We know him to be a man whose heart is as large as his head, both contributing to the cause of science. We regard him as one of the ablest physicists of the time, and one of the most level-headed philosophers that England has ever produced—a man whose intellect is as symmetrical as the circle, with its every point equidistant from the centre. We have been the recipient of former endowments from that land which, we thank God, was our mother­ country, for from it we have drawn our language, our liberty, our laws, our literature, our science, and our energy, and without whose wealth our material development would not be what it is at the pres­ ent day. Count Rumford, the founder of the Royal Society of Lon­ don, in earlier years endowed a scientific chair in one of our larger universities, and Smithson transferred his fortune to our shores to promote the diffusion of science. Now, while these are noble gifts, yet Count Rumford was giving to his own countrymen—for he was an American—and they were posthumous gifts from men of large for­ tune. But the one I now refer to was from a man who ranks not with the wealthy, and he laid his offering upon the altar of science in this country with his own hands; and it has been both consecrated and blest by noble words from his own lips; all of which makes the gift a rich treasure to American science; and I think we can assure him that, as the same Anglo-Saxon blood flows in our veins as does in his (tem­ pered, ’tis true, with the Celtic, Teutonic, Latin, etc.), he may expect much from the American student in pure science as the offspring of his gift and his example. THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. By Prof. JOHN TYNDALL. OON after my return from America, I learned with great concern that a little book of mine, published prior to my departure, had given grave offence to some of the friends and relatives of the late Principal Forbes; and I was specially grieved when informed that the chastisement considered due to this offence was to be administered by gentlemen between whom and myself I had hoped mutual respect and amity would forever reign. We had, it is true, met in conflict on an­ other field; but hostilities had honorably ceased, old wounds had, to all appearance, been healed, and I had no misgiving as to the per­ manence of the peace established between us. The genesis of the book referred to is this: At Christmas, 1871, it fell to my lot to give the brief course of “ Juvenile Lectures ” to which S �THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. Faraday for many years before his death lent such an inexpressible charm. The subject of glaciers, which I had never previously treated in a course of lectures, might, it was thought, be rendered pleasant and profitable to a youthful audience. The sight of young people wandering over the glaciers of the Alps with closed eyes, desiring knowledge, but not always finding it, had been a familiar one to me, and I thought it no unworthy task to respond to this desire, and to give such of my young hearers as might visit the Alps an intelligent interest in glacier phenomena. The course was, therefore, resolved upon; and, to render its value more permanent, I wrote out copious “Notes,” had them bound to­ gether, and distributed among the boys and girls. Knowing the damage which elementary books, wearily and confusedly written, had done to my own young mind, I tried, to the best of my ability, to confer upon these “ Notes ” clearness, thoroughness, and life. It was my particular desire that the imaginary pupil chosen for my com­ panion in the Alps, and for whom, odd as it may sound, I entertained a real affection, should rise from the study of the “ Notes ” with no other feeling than one of attachment and respect for those who had worked upon the glaciers. I therefore avoided all allusion to those sore personal dissensions which, to the detriment of science and of men, had begun fifteen years prior to my connection with the glaciers, and which have been unhappily continued to the present time. Prof. Youmans, of New York, was then in London, organizing the “ International Scientific Series,” with which his name and energy are identified. To prove my sympathy for his work, I had given him per­ mission to use my name as one of his probable contributors, the date of my contribution being understood to belong to the distant, and in­ deed indefinite, future. He, however, read the “ Notes,” liked them, urged me to expand them a little, and to permit him to publish them as the first volume of his series. His request was aided by that of an­ other friend, and I acceded to it—hence the little book, entitled the “Forms of Water,” which the friends and relatives of Principal Forbes have read with so much discontent. That modest volume has, we are informed, caused an uncontem­ plated addition to be made to the Life of Principal Forbes, lately published under the triple auspices of Principal Shairp, the successor of Principal Forbes in the College of St. Andrew’s, Mr. AdamsReilly, and Prof. Tait. “ It had been our hope,” says Principal Shairp, in his preface, “ that we might have been allowed to tell our story without reverting to controversies which, we had thought, had been long since extinguished. But, after most of these sheets were in press, a book appeared, in which many of the old charges against Principal Forbes in the matter of the glaciers were, if not openly repeated, not obscurely indicated. Neither the interests of truth, nor justice to the dead, could suffer such remarks to pass unchallenged. How it has �748 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. been thought best for the present to meet them, I must leave my friend and fellow-laborer, Prof. Tait, to tell.” The book here referred to is the unpretending volume whose blame­ less advent I have just described. I have not the honor of knowing Principal Shairp personally, but he will, I trust, permit me to assure him of two things : Firstly, that, in writing my book, I had no notion of rekindling an extinct fire, or of treating with any thing but tenderness the memory of his friend. Secondly, that, had such been my intention, the negative attribute, “ not obscure,” is hardly the one which he would have chosen to de­ scribe the words that I should have employed. But the fact is, the fire was not extinct : the anger of former combats, which I thought spent, was still potential, and my little book was but the finger which pulled the trigger of an already-loaded gun. Let the book speak for itself. I reproduce here in extenso the ref­ erences to Principal Forbes, which have been translated into “ charges ” against him by Principal Shairp. Having, in section 20, mentioned the early measurements of glaciers made by Hugi and Agassiz, I con­ tinue thus : “ We now approach an epoch in the scientific history of glaciers. Had the first observers been practically acquainted with the instruments of precision used in surveying, accurate measurements of the motion of glaciers would probably have been earlier executed. We are now on the point of seeing such instruments introduced almost simultaneously by Al. Agassiz on the glacier of the Unteraar, and by Prof. Forbes on the Aler de Glace. Attempts had been made by Af. Escher de la Linth to determine the motion of a series of wooden stakes driven into the Aletsch Glacier, but the melting was so rapid that the stakes soon fell. To remedy this, Af. Agassiz, in 1841, undertook the great labor of carrying boring-tools to his ‘hotel,’ and piercing the Unteraar Glacier at six different places to a depth of ten feet, in a straight line across the glacier. Into the holes six piles were so firmly driven that they remained in the glacier for a year, and, in 1842, the displacements of all six were determined. They were found to be 160 feet, 225 feet, 269 feet, 245 feet, 210 feet, and 125 feet, re­ spectively. “ A great step is here gained. You notice that the middle numbers are the largest. They correspond to the central portion of the glacier. Hence, these measurements conclusively establish, not only the fact of glacier motion, but that the centre of the glacier, like that of a river, moves more rapidly than the sides. “ With the aid of trained engineers, AT. Agassiz followed up these measure­ ments in subsequent years. His researches are recorded in a work entitled ‘ Système Glaciaire,’ which is accompanied by a very noble Atlas of the Glacier of the Unteraar, published in 1847. “ These determinations were made by means of a theodolite, of which I will give you some notion immediately. The same instrument was employed the same year by the late Principal Forbes upon the Afer de Glace. He established independently the greater central motion. He showed, moreover, that it is not necessary to wait a year, or even a week, to determine the motion of a glacier ; with a correctly-adjusted theodolite he was able to determine the motion of va­ rious points of the Afer de Glace from day to day. He affirmed, and with truth, that the motion of the glacier might be determined from hour to hour. We shall prove this farther on. Prof. Forbes also triangulated the Afer de Glace, and laid down an excellent map of it. His first observations and his survey are recorded in a celebrated book published in 1843, and entitled ‘ Travels in the Alps.’ �THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. “ These observations were also followed up in subsequent years, the results being recorded in a series of detached letters and essays of great interest. These were subsequently collected in a volume entitled ‘ Occasional Papers on the Theory of Glaciers,’ published in 1859. The labors of Agassiz and Forbes are the two chief sources of our knowledge of glacier phenomena.” It would be difficult for an unbiassed person to find in these words any semblance of a “ charge ” against Principal Forbes. His friends and relatives may be dissatisfied to see the name of M. Agassiz placed first in relation to the question of the quicker central flow of glaciers ; but in giving it this position I was guided by the printed data which are open to any writer upon this subject. I have checked this brief historic statement by consulting again the proper authorities, and this is the result: In 1841 Principal Forbes became the guest of M. Agassiz on the glacier of the Aar; and in a very able article, published some time subsequently in the Edinburgh Review, he speaks of “ the noble ardor, the generous friendship, the unvarying good temper, the true hospitality ” of his host. In order to explain the subsequent action of Principal Forbes, it is necessary to say that the kindly feeling implied in the foregoing words did not continue long to subsist between him and M. Agassiz. I am dealing, however, for the moment with scientific facts, not with personal dif­ ferences ; and, as a matter of indisputable fact, M. Agassiz did, in 1841, incur the labor of boring six holes in a straight line across the glacier of the Aar, of fixing in these holes a series of piles, and of measuring, in 1842, the distance through which the motion of the glacier had carried them. This measurement was made on July 20th ; some results of it were communicated to the Academy of Science in Paris on August 1st, and they stand in the “ Comptes Rendus ” of the Academy as an unquestionable record, from which date can be taken. But the friends quarrelled. Who was to blame I will not venture here to intimate; but the assumption that M. Agassiz was wholly in the wrong would, I am bound to say, be required to justify the sub­ sequent conduct of Principal Forbes. He was, I gather from the Life, acquainted with the use of surveying instruments; and knowing roughly the annual rate of glacier-motion, he would also know that through the precision attainable with a theodolite, a single day’s— probably a single hour’s motion—especially in summer, must be dis­ cernible. With such knowledge in his possession, as early as June, 1842, and without deeming it necessary to give his host of the Aar any notice of his intention, Principal Forbes repaired to the Mer de Glace, made in the first instance a few rapid measurements at the Montanvert, and in a letter dated from Courmayeur, on July 4th, com­ municated them to the editor of the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. He did not at that time give any numbers expressing the ratio of the side to the central motion of the glacier, but contented himself with announcing the result in these terms: “ The central portion of �75° THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the Mer de Glace moves past the edges in a very considerable pro­ portion, quite contrary to the opinion generally entertained.” This communication, as I have said, bears the date of July 4th; but it was first published in the October number of the journal to which it was addressed. My reason, therefore, for mentioning Agassiz first in the “Forms of Water” is, that, apart from all personal complications, his experiment was begun ten months prior to that of his rival, and that he had also two months’ priority of publication. Neither in his “ Travels in the Alps,” nor in his “ Occasional Pa­ pers,” does Principal Forbes, to my knowledge, make any reference to this communication of Agassiz. I am far from charging him with conscious wrong, or doubting that he justified this reticence to his own mind. But my duty at present lies with objective facts, and not with subjective judgments. And the fact is that, for eighteen years subsequent to this campaign of 1842, Agassiz, as far as the glaciers are concerned, was practically extinguished in England. The labors of the following years failed to gain for him any recognition. His early mistake regarding the quicker motion of the sides of a glacier, and other weaknesses, were duly kept in view; but his positive meas­ urements, and his Atlas, which prove the observations upon the glacier of the Aar to be far more complete than those made upon any other glacier, were never permitted to yield the slightest credit to their au­ thor. I am no partisan of Agassiz, but I desire to be just. Here, then, my case ends as regards the first reference to Principal Forbes, in section 20 of the “Forms of Water.” In section 48 I describe the dirt-bands of the Mer de Glace, and ascribe the discovery of them to Principal Forbes. There can be no thought of a “ charge ” here. The next reference that has any bearing upon this discussion oc­ curs in sections 59 and 60 of the “ Forms of Water.” I quote it fully: By none of these writers is the property of viscosity or plasticity ascribed to glacier-ice; the appearances of many glaciers are, however, so suggestive of this idea that we may be sure it would have found more frequent expression were it not in such apparent contradiction with our every-day experience of ice. “ Still the idea found its advocates. In a little book, published in 1773, and entitled ‘Picturesque Journey to the Glaciers of Savoy,’Bordier, of Geneva, wrote thus: ‘ It is now time to look at all these objects with the eyes of reason; to study, in the first place, the position and the progression of glaciers, and to seek the solution of their principal phenomena. At the first aspect of the ice­ mountains an observation presents itself, which appears sufficient to explain all. It is that the entire mass of ice is connected together, and presses from above downward after the manner of fluids. Let us, then, regard the ice, not as a mass entirely rigid and immobile, but as a heap of coagulated matter, or as softened wax, flexible and ductile to a certain point.’ Here probably for the hrst^time the quality of plasticity is ascribed to the ice of glaciers. To us, familiar with the aspect of the glaciers, it must seem strange that this idea once expressed did not at once receive recognition and development, those early days explorers were few, and the ‘Picturesque Journey’ Pr°t>ably but little known, so that the notion of plasticity lay dormant for more t an half a century. But Bordier was at length succeeded by a man of far greater scientific grasp and insight than himself. This was Rendu, a Catholic �THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. 751 priest and canon when he wrote, and afterward Bishop of Annecy. In 1841 Rendu laid before the Academy of Sciences of Savoy his 4 Theory of the Gla­ ciers of Savoy,’ a contribution forever memorable in relation to this subject. “Rendu seized the idea of glacier plasticity with great power and clearness, and followed it resolutely to its consequences. It is not known that he had ever seen the work of Bordier; probably not, as he never mentions it. Let me quote for you some of Rendu’s expressions, which, however, fail to give an ade­ quate idea of his insight and precision of thought: 4 Between the Mer de Glace and a river there is a resemblance so complete that it is impossible to find in the glacier a circumstance which does not exist in the river. In currents of water the motion is not uniform, either throughout their width or throughout their depth. The friction of the bottom and of the sides, with the action of local hindrances, causes the motion to vary, and only toward the middle of the surface do we obtain the full motion.’ “ This reads like a prediction of what has since been established by meas­ urement. Looking at the glacier of Mont Dolent, which resembles a sheaf in form, wide at both ends and narrow in the middle, and reflecting that the upper wide part had become narrow, and the narrow middle part again wide, Rendu observes: 4 There is a multitude of facts which seem to necessitate the belief that glacier-ice enjoys a kind of ductility, which enables it to mould itself to its locality, to thin out, to swell, and to contract, as if it were a soft paste.’ “ To fully test his conclusions, Rendu required the accurate measurement of glacier motion. Had he added to his other endowments the practical skill of a land-surveyor, he would now be regarded as the prince of glacialists. As it was, he was obliged to be content with imperfect measurements. In one of his excursions he examined the guides regarding the successive positions of a vast rock which he found upon the ice close to the side of the glacier. The mean of five years gave him a motion for this block of forty feet a year. 44 Another block, the transport of which he subsequently measured more accurately, gave him a velocity of 400 feet a year. Note his explanation of this discrepancy: 4 The enormous difference of these two observations arises from the fact that one block stood near the centre of the glacier, which moves most rapidly, while the other stood near the side, where the ice is held back by fric­ tion.’ So clear and definite were Rendu’s ideas of the plastic motion of gla­ ciers, that, had the question of curvature occurred to him, I entertain no doubt that he would have enunciated beforehand the shifting of the point of maximum motion from side to side across the axis of the glacier (§ 25). 44 It is right that you should know that scientific men do not always agree in their estimates of the comparative value of facts and ideas ; and it is espe­ cially right that you should know that your present tutor attaches a very high value to ideas when they spring from the profound and persistent pondering of superior minds, and are not, as is too often the case, thrown out without the warrant of either deep thought or natural capacity. It is because I believe Rendu’s labors fulfil this condition that I ascribe to them so high a value. But, when you become older and better informed, you may differ from me; and I write these words lest you should too readily accept my opinion of Rendu. Judge me, if you care to do so, when your knowledge is matured. I certainly shall not fear your verdict. 44 But, much as I prize the prompting idea, and thoroughly as I believe that often in it the force of genius mainly lies, it would, in my opinion, be an error of omission of the gravest kind, and which, if habitual, would insure the ulti­ mate decay of natural knowledge, to neglect verifying our ideas, and giving them outward reality and substance when the means of doing so are at hand. In science, thought, as far as possible, ought to be wedded to fact. This was at­ tempted by Rendu, and in great part accomplished by Agassiz and Forbes. “ Here, indeed, the merits of the distinguished glacialist last named rise con­ spicuously to view. From the able and earnest advocacy of Prof. Forbes, the public knowledge of this doctrine of glacial plasticity is almost wholly derived. He gave the doctrine a more distinctive form ; he first applied the term viscous to glacier-ice, and sought to found upon precise measurements a ‘viscous theory ’ of glacier-motion. 44 I am here obliged to state facts in their historic sequence. Prof. Forbes, �752 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. when he began his investigations, was acquainted with the labors of Rendu. In his earliest works upon the Alps he refers to those labors in terms of flattering recognition. But, though, as a matter of fact, Rendu’s ideas were there to prompt him, it would be too much to say that he needed their inspiration. Had Rendu not preceded him, he might none the less have grasped the idea of viscosity, executing his measurements, and applying his knowledge to maintain it. Be that as it may, the appearance of Prof. Forbes on the Unteraar Glacier in 1841, and on the Her de Glace in 1842, and his labors then and subse­ quently, have given him a name not to be forgotten in the scientific history of glaciers.” Here, again, I have to declare that, in writing thus, I had no no­ tion of “raking up” an old controversy. My object was to render my account historically continuous, and there is not a single word to intimate that I took exception to Principal Forbes’s treatment of Rendu. Nay, while placing the bishop in the position he merited, I went out of my way to point out that, in all probability, Principal Forbes required no such antecedent. So desirous was I that no un­ kind or disparaging word should escape me regarding Principal Forbes, that, had a reasonable objection to the phraseology here used been communicated to me by his friends, I should have altered the whole edition of the work sooner than allow the objectionable matter to ap­ pear in it............ My final reference to Principal Forbes was in § 67 of the “ Forms of Water,” where the veined structure of glacier-ice is dealt with. Its description by Guyot, who first observed it, is so brief and appropriate that I quoted his account of it. But this was certainly not with a view of damaging the originality of Principal Forbes. In paragraph 474 of my book the observation of the structure upon the glacier of the Aar is thus spoken of: “The blue veins were observed indepen­ dently three years after M. Guyot had first described them. I say in­ dependently, because M. Guyot’s description, though written in 1838, remained unprinted, and was unknown in 1841 to the observers on the Aar. These were M. Agassiz and Prof. Forbes. To the question of structure, Prof. Forbes subsequently devoted much attention, and it was mainly his observations and reasonings that gave it the important position now assigned to it in glacier phenomena.” This is the account of Guyot’s observation given by Principal Forbes himself. But it may be objected that I am not correct in class­ ing him and Agassiz thus together, and that to Principal Forbes alone belongs the credit of observing the veined structure upon the Aar Glacier. This may be true, but would an impartial writer be justified in ignoring the indignant protests of M. Agassiz and his companions ? With regard to the development of the subject, I felt perfectly sure of the merits of Principal Forbes, and did not hesitate to give him the benefit of my conviction. Such, then, are the grounds of Principal Shairp’s complaint quoted at the outset—such the “charges ” that I have made “against Prin­ cipal Forbes,” and which the “ interests of truth” and “justice to the �THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. 753 dead” could not “suffer to pass unchallenged. ” There is, I submit, no color of reason in such a complaint, and it would never, I am per­ suaded, have been made had not Principal Shairp and his colleagues found themselves in possession of a document which, though pub­ lished a dozen years ago by Principal Forbes, was never answered by me, and which, in the belief that I am unable to answer it, is now re­ produced for my confutation. The document here referred to appeared soon after the publication of the “ Glaciers of the Alps ” in 1860. It is entitled “ Reply to Pro­ fessor Tyndall’s Remarks in his Work on the ‘ Glaciers of the Alps, relating to Rendu’s ‘ Theorie des Glaciers.’ ” It was obviously written under feelings of great irritation, and, longing for peace, the only public notice I took of it at the time was to say that “ I have ab­ stained from answering my distinguished censor, not from inability to do so, but because I thought, and think, that within the limits of the case it is better to submit to misconception than to make science the arena of personal controversy.” My critics, however, do not seem to understand that, for the sake of higher occupations, statements may be allowed to pass unchallenged which, were their refutation worth the necessary time, might be blown in shreds to the winds. Of this precise character, I apprehend, are the accusations contained in the republished essay of Principal Forbes, which his friends, professing to know what he would have done were he alive, now challenge me to meet. I accept the challenge, and throw upon them the responsibility of my answer, . . ? Having thus disposed of the two really serious allegations in the reply, I am unwilling to follow it through its minor details, or to spend time in refuting the various intimations of littleness on my part con­ tained in it. The whole reply betrays a state of mental exacerbation which I willingly left to the softening influence of time, and to which, unless forced to it, I shall not recur. The biographer who has revived this subject speaks of “ the numer­ ous controversies into which he” (Principal Forbes) “was dragged.” I hardly think the passive verb the appropriate one here. The fol­ lowing momentary glimpse of Principal Forbes’s character points to a truer theory of his controversies than that which would refer them to a “ drag ” external to himself : “ The hasty glance,” says this biographer, “ which I have been able to bestow upon his less scientific letters has shown me that Forbes at­ tached great importance to mere honorary distinctions, as well as the opinion of others regarding the value of his discoveries. It has opened up a view of a, to me, totally unexpected feature of his character.” This is honest, but that the revelation should be “unexpected” is to me surprising. The “ love of approbation ” here glanced at was in Principal Forbes so strong that he could not bear the least criticism 1 We omit this portion of the discussion, for lack of space.—Editor. vol. hi.—4S �754 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of his work without resenting it as personal. I well remember the late excellent William Hopkins describing to me his astonishment when, at the meeting of the British Association at York, a purely sci­ entific remark of his on Forbes’s glacier theory was turned, with sud­ den acerbity, into a personal matter. It is of a discussion arising out of this remark that Principal Forbes writes thus : “We had a post­ poned discussion on glaciers on Saturday morning, when Hopkins and I did battle, and I am sorry to say I felt it exceedingly; it discomposed my nerves and made me very uncomfortable indeed, until I was soothed by the minster-service yesterday.” 1 But no amount of “ minster-service ” could cope with so strong a natural bias, and many a bitter drop fell from the pen of Principal Forbes into the lives of those whom he opposed subsequent to this service at York. On hearing of the paper presented by Mr. Huxley and myself to the Royal Society, he at once jumped to the conclusion that the glaciers were to be made a “ regular party question.” “ All I can do,” he says, “ is to sit still till the indictment is made out; and I cordially wish my enemy to write a book and print it speedily, as any thing is better than innuendo and suspense.”9 What he meant by “ indictment ” I do not know; and, with regard to “ innuendo,” neither of the writers of the paper would be likely to resort to it in preference to plain speaking. The words of a witty philosopher at the time here referred to are significant: “ Tyndall,” he said, “ is be­ ginning with ice, but he will end in hot water.” He knew the circum­ stances, and was able to predict the course of events with the cer­ tainty of physical prevision. The quality referred to by his biographer, and the tendency arising from it to look at things in a personal light, caused his intellect to run rapidly into hypotheses of moral action which had no counterpart in real life. I read with simple amazement his explanation to his friend Mr. Wills of the postponement of the publication of the “ Glaciers of the Alps.” Some of his supporters in the Council of the Royal So­ ciety had proposed him for the Copley Medal, but without success. Had the rules of good taste been observed, he would have known nothing of these discussions ; and, knowing them, he ought to have ignored them. But he writes to his friend : “ I believe the effect of the struggle, though unsuccessful in its immediate object, will be to render Tyndall and Huxley and their friends more cautious in their further proceedings. For instance, Tyndall’s book, again withdrawn from Murray’s ‘ immediate ’ list, will probably be infinitely more care­ fully worded relative to Rendu than he first intended.” 8 I should be exceedingly sorry to apply to Principal Forbes the noun-substantive which Byron, in “ Childe Harold,” applied to Rous­ seau, but the adjective “ self-torturing” is, I fear, only too applicable. His quick imagination suggested chimerical causes for events, but 1 Life, p. 165. 9 Ibid., p. 369. 8 Ibid., p. 387. �THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. 755 never any thing more chimerical than that here assigned for the post­ ponement of my book and its probable improvement. The “ struggle ” in the council had no influence upon me, for this good reason, if for no other, that I knew absolutely nothing of the character of the strug­ gle. In Naiure, for May 22, 1873, Prof. Huxley has effectually dis­ posed of this hypothesis ;1 and those who care to look at the opening sentences of a paper of mine in Mr. Francis Galton’s “ Vacation Tour­ ists for 1860,” will find there indicated another reason for the delay. I may add, that the only part I ever took in relation to Principal Forbes and a medal was to go on one occasion to the Royal Society with the express intention of recommending that he should have one. The features of character partly revealed by his biographer also explain that tendency on the part of Principal Forbes to bring his own labors into relief, to the manifest danger of toning down the labors of others. This is illustrated by the foot-note appended to page 419. It is also illustrated by his references to Rendu, which, frequent and flattering as they are, left no abiding impression upon the reader’s mind. By some qualifying phrase the quotation in each case is de­ prived of weight; while practical extinction for eighteen years was, as already intimated, the fate of the “ generous ” and “ hospitable ” Agassiz. Toward the close of the “ Life ” his biographer, while admitting that “ to say that Forbes thoroughly explained the behavior of gla­ ciers would be an exaggeration,” claims for him that he must “ ever stand forward in the history of the question as one of its most effective and scientific promoters.” This meed of praise I should be the last to deny him, for I believe it to be perfectly just. To secure it, how­ ever, no bitterness of controversy, no depreciation of the services of others, was necessary. One point here needs a moment’s clearing up. The word.“ theory,” as regards glaciers, slides incessantly, and with­ out warning, from one into the other of two different senses. It means sometimes the purely physical theory of their formation, structure, and motion, with which the name of Principal Forbes is so largely iden­ tified. But it has a wider sense where it embraces the geological action of glaciers on the surface of the globe. For a long time “ gla­ cier theory ” had reference mainly to the geological phenomena ; it was in this sense that the words were employed by Principal Forbes in his article in the Edinburgh Review, published in 1842. It is in this sense that they are now habitually applied by M. Agassiz, and in rela­ tion to the theory thus defined it is no more than natural for his sup­ porters to assign to M. Agassiz the highest place. I mention this to abolish the mystification which threatens to surround a question which this simple statement will render clear. I trust I may be permitted to end here. Strong reasons may cause 1 The words “ drift of ray statement,” employed in Prof. Huxley’6 letter, ought to be draft of my statement. �756 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. me to revert to this question, but they must be very strong. I would only warn my readers against the assumption that, if I do not reply to further attack, I am unable to reply to it. The present rejoinder furnishes sufficient proof of the doubtfulness of such a conclusion. There is one darkly-expressed passage in the “Life of Principal Forbes” which may cover something requiring notice. We are in­ formed that he preserved and carefully docketed all letters written to him, and that he retained copies of all his own. It is with regard to this correspondence that his biographer writes thus : “ Many extracts, and even entire letters, may be selected which are free from contro­ versy, yet in general these would give but an imperfect notion of the import of the whole. Others again cannot be published at present, be­ cause the writers supply him with details of that mysterious wire­ pulling which seems to be inseparable from every transaction involving honors (scientific, in common with all others, it is humiliating to con­ fess). The value of this unique series is, however, so great, and its preservation so complete, that it is to be hoped it may be safely de­ posited (under seal) in the care of some scientific society or institution, to be opened only when all the actors have passed from the scene.” These undignified allusions to “ wire-pulling ” are perfectly dark to me; but if the letter addressed to Mr. Wills may be taken as a specimen of the entire “series,” here referred to, then I agree with the biographer in pronouncing it “ unique.” Would it not, however, be a manlier course, and a fairer one to those who, writing without arrièrepensée, retain no copies of what they write, to let them know, while they are here to take care of themselves, how their reputations are affected by these letters of Principal Forbes ? For my own personal part I am prepared to challenge the production of this correspondence now.— Contemporary Review. THE MOON. JJR satellite holds a somewhat anomalous position in the liter. ature of astronomy. The most beautiful object in the heavens, the orb which telescopists study under the most favorable conditions, and the planet—for a planet she is—which has afforded the most im­ portant information respecting the economy of the universe, she never­ theless has not received that attention from descriptive writers which she really merits. The cause is, perhaps, not far to seek. The beauty of the moon can scarcely be described in words, and cannot be pict1 “ The Moon : her Motions, Aspect, Scenery, and Physical Condition.” By Richard A. Pïoctor, B. A., Cambridge (England), Honorary Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society of London ; author of the “ Sun,” “ Saturn,” “ Other Worlds,” etc. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Price, $4.50. �THE HO ON. 757 ured by the most skilful artist; the information conveyed by the telescope is too definite to permit of speculation as with the other planets, yet not definite enough to solve the questions about which the students of astronomical works take most interest; and the infor­ mation which astronomers have obtained from the moon’s motions can only be appreciated when those motions are thoroughly analyzed, and it has not been found easy to simplify this analysis, that the general reader might fairly be expected to take interest in the matter. The work before us is intended to remove this long-recognized want in the literature of astronomy. The time has come when this is practicable. The splendid photographs of Rutherford, of New York, and De La Rue, in England, supply the means of exhibiting truthfully the real nature of our satellite’s surface. Mr. Proctor has been for­ tunate in obtaining from Mr. Rutherford permission to use three of his most effective photographs of the moon to illustrate the present work. Recent researches, ¿gain, into the processes which are going on withiu the solar system (so long mistakenly supposed to be unchanging in condition), suggest considerations respecting the past condition of the moon, at once bringing her within the range of speculation and theory. Telescopic observations, also more scrutinizing than those made of yore, and applied more persistently, begin to indicate the possibility at least of recognizing the signs of change, and perhaps of showing that our moon is not the dead and arid waste which astron­ omers have hitherto supposed her to be. The heat measurements of Lord Rosse also throw important light on the question of her present condition. And then, as respects those points which constitute the main scientific interest of our satellite, her motions under the varying influences to which she is subjected, Mr. Proctor has devoted here his full energies and the results of a long experience, to the endeavor to make clear, even to those who are not mathematicians, the consider­ ations which, weighed and analyzed in the wonderful brain of Newton, supplied the means of demonstrating the theory of the universe. On this important department of his subject, Mr. Proctor makes the following remarks in his preface : “In Chapter II. I have given a very full account of the peculiarities of the moon’s motions ; and, not­ withstanding the acknowledged difficulty of the subject, I think my account is sufficiently clear and simple to be understood by any one, even though not acquainted with the elements of mathematics, who will be at the pains to read it attentively through. I have sought to make the subject clear to a far wider range of readers than the class for which Sir G. Airy’s treatise on ‘ Gravitation ’ was written, while yet not omitting any essential points in the argument. In order to combine independence of treatment with exactness and completeness, I first wrote the chapter without consulting any other work. Then I went through it afresh, carefully comparing each section with the cor­ responding part of Sir G. Airy’s ‘Gravitation,’ and Sir J. Herschel’s �758 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. chapters on the lunar motions in his ‘ Outlines of Astronomy.’ I was thus able to correct any errors in my own work, while in turn I de­ tected a few (mentioned in the notes) in the works referred to. I have adopted a much more complete and exact system of illustration in dealing with the moon’s motions than either of my predecessors in the explanation of this subject. I attach great importance to this feat­ ure of my explanation, experience having satisfied me not only that such matters should be very freely illustrated, but that the illustra­ tions should aim at correctness of detail, and (wherevei- practicable) of scale also. Some features, as the advance of the perigee and the retreat of the nodes, have, I believe, never before been illustrated at all.” In Chapter III. Mr. Proctor gives, among other matters, a full explanation of the effects due to the strange balancing motion called the lunar librations. He says: “ I have been surprised to find how imperfectly this interesting and important subject has been dealt with hitherto. In fact, I have sought in vain for any discussion of the subject with which to compare my own results. I have, however, in various ways sufficiently tested these results.” But probably, to the greater number of readers, the main interest of the book will be found in the chapters relating to the condition of the moon’s surface—the mountains, craters, hills, valleys, which diver­ sify its strange varieties of brightness, color, and tone, and the changes of appearance which are noted as the illumination varies, and as the lunar librations change the position of different regions. It is, bythe-way, to be noted that the moon, which we regard as of silvery whiteness, is in reality more nearly black than white, a fact which will recall to many of our readers a remark of Prof. Tyndall’s in the first lecture of the course recently delivered here. “ The moon appears to us,” he said, “ as if ‘ Clothed in white samite, mystic, beautiful,’1 but, were she covered with the blackest velvet, she would still hang in the heavens as a white orb, shining upon the world substantially as she does now.” Mr. Proctor discusses also the phenomena presented to lunarians, if such there be. The extreme rarity of the lunar atmosphere ren­ ders the idea of existence on the moon rather strange to our concep­ tions, but, as Sir J. Herschel has said in a similar case, “ we should do wrong to judge of the fitness or unfitness of” the condition of luna­ rians “ from what we see around us, when perhaps the very combina­ tions which convey to our minds only images of horror may be, in reality, theatres of the most striking and glorious displays of benefi­ cent contrivance.” Speaking of the appearances presented by lunar landscapes, two of which we borrow from his work, Mr. Proctor remarks 1 We quote Tyndall. Tennyson wrote : “ Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful.” �THE MO OX. 739 that “ we know far too little respecting the real details of lunar scenery to form any satisfactory opinion on the subject. If a landscape-painter were invited to draw a picture presenting his conceptions of the scenery of a region which he had only viewed from a distance of a hun­ dred miles, he would be under no greater difficulties than the astrono­ mer who undertakes to draw a lunar landscape, as it would actually appear to any one placed on the surface of the moon. We know cer­ tain facts—we know that there are striking forms of irregularity, that the shadows must be much darker as well during the lunar day as during an earth-lit lunar light, than on our own earth in sunlight or moonlight, and we know that, whatever features of our own land­ scapes are certainly due to the action of water in river, rain, or flood, to the action of wind and weather, or to the growth of forms of vege­ tation with which we are familiar, ought assuredly not to be shown in any lunar landscape. But a multitude of details absolutely necessary for the due presentation of lunar scenery are absolutely unknown to us. Nor is it so easy as many imagine to draw a landscape which shall be correct even as respects the circumstances known to us. For instance, though I have seen many pictures called lunar landscapes, I have never seen one in which there have not been features manifestly due to weathering and to the action of running water. The shadows, again, are never shown as they would be actually seen if regions of the indicated configuration were illuminated by a sun, but not by a sky of light. Again, aerial perspective is never totally abandoned, as it ought to be in any delineation of lunar scenery. I do not profess to have done better myself in the accompanying lunar landscapes. I have, in fact, cared rather to indicate the celestial than the lunarian features shown in these drawings. Still, I have selected a class of lunar objects which may be regarded as, on the whole, more charac­ teristic than the mountain-scenery usually exhibited. And, by pictu­ ring the greater part of the landscape as at a considerable distance, I have been freer to reproduce what the telescope actually reveals. In looking at one of these views, the observer must suppose himself sta­ tioned at the summit of some very lofty peak, and that the view shows only a very small portion of what would really be seen under such cir­ cumstances in any particular direction. The portion of the sky shown in either picture extends only a few degrees from the horizon, as is manifest from the dimensions of the earth’s disk; and thus it is shown that only a few degrees of the horizon are included in the landscape. Our author then pictures the aspect of the lunar heavens by night and by day. We have space but for a few passages from this descrip­ tion : • “ To an observer stationed upon a summit of the lunar Apen­ nines on the evening of November 1, 1872, a scene was presented un­ like any known to the inhabitants of earth. It was near the middle of the long lunar night. On a sky of inky blackness stars innu­ merable were spread, among which the orbs forming our constella- �760 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. tions could be recognized by their superior lustre, but yet were almost lost amid myriads of stars unseen by the inhabitants of earth. Nearly overhead shone the Pleiades, closely girt round by hundreds of lesser lights. From them toward Aldebaran and the clustering Hyades, and onward to the belted Orion, streams and convolutions of stars, interwoven as in fantastic garlands, marked the presence of that mysterious branch-like extension of the Milky-Way which the ob­ server on earth can, with unaided vision, trace no farther than the winged foot of Perseus. High overhead, and toward the north, the Milky-Way shone resplendent, like a vast inclined arch, full ‘ thick in­ laid with patines of bright gold.’ Instead of that faint, cloud-like zone known to terrestrial astronomers, the galaxy presented itself as an infinitely complicated star-region— ‘ With isles of light and silvery streams, And gloomy griefs of mystic shade.’ “ On all sides, this mighty star-belt spread its outlying bands of stars, far away on the one hand toward Lyra and Bobtes, where on earth we see no traces of milky lustre, and on the other toward the Twins and the clustering glories of Cancer—the ‘ dark constellation ’ of the ancients, but full of telescopic splendors. Most marvellous, too, appeared the great dark gap which lies between the Milky-Way and Taurus ; here, in the very heart of the richest region of the heavens—with Orion and the Hyades and Pleiades blazing on one side, and on the other the splendid stream laving the feet of the Twins—there lay a deep, black gulf which seemed like an opening through our star­ system into starless depths beyond. Yet, though the sky was thus aglow with starlight, though stars far fainter than the least we see on the clearest and darkest night were shining in countless myriads, an orb was above the horizon whose light would pale the lustre of our brightest stars. This orb occupied a space on the heavens more than twelve times larger than is occupied by the full moon as we see her. Its light, unlike the moon’s, was tinted with beautiful and well-marked colors. . . . “ The globe which thus adorned the lunar sky, and illuminated the lunar lands with a light far exceeding that of the full moon, was our earth. The scene was not unlike that shown to Satan when Uriel— * One of the seven Who in God’s presence, nearest to the throne, Stand ready at command ”— pointing earthward from his station amid the splendor of the sun, said to the arch-fiend: ‘ Look downward on that globe whose hither side AX ith light from hence, though but reflected, shines: That place is earth, the seat of man ; that light His day, which else, as th’ other hemisphere, Night would invade.’ �THE MOON. 761 “ In all other respects the scene presented to the spectator on the moon was similar; but, as seen from the lunar Apennines, the glorious orb of earth shone high in the heavens; and the sun, source of the light then bathing her oceans and continents, lay far down below the level of the lunar horizon. . . . “ Infinitely more wonderful, however, and transcending in sublimity all that the heavens display to the contemplation of the inhabitants of earth, was the scene presented when the sun himself had risen. I shall venture here to borrow some passages from an essay entitled ‘ A Voyage to the Sun,’ in which a friend of mine has described the aspect of the sun as seen from a station outside that atmosphere of ours which veils the chief glories of the luminary of day: ‘ The sun’s orb was more brilliantly white than when seen through the air, but close scrutiny revealed a diminution of brilliancy toward the edge of the disk, which, when fully recognized, presented him at once as the globe he really is. On this globe could be distinguished the spots and the bright streaks called faculse. This globe was surrounded with the most amazingly complex halo of glory. Close around the bright whiteness of the disk, and shining far more beautiful by contrast with that whiteness than as seen against the black disk of the moon in total eclipses, stood the colored region called the chromatosphere, not red, as it appears during eclipses, but gleaming with a mixed lustre of pink and green, through which, from time to time, passed the most startlingly brilliant coruscations of orange and golden yellow light. Above this delicate circle of color towered tall prominences and mul­ titudes of smaller ones. These, like the chromatosphere, were not red, but beautifully variegated. . . .’ “Much more might be said on this inviting subject, only that the requirements of space forbid, obliging me to remember that the moon and not the sun is the subject of this treatise. The reader, therefore, must picture to himself the advance of the sun with his splendid and complicated surroundings toward the earth, suspended almost unchangingly in the heavens, but assuming gradually the cres­ cent form as the sun drew slowly near, lie must imagine also how, in the mean time, the star-sphere was slowly moving westward, the constellations of the ecliptic in orderly succession passing behind the earth at a rate slightly exceeding that of the 6un’s approach, so that he, like the earth, only more slowly, was moving eastward, so far as the star-sphere was concerned, even while the moon’s slow diurnal ro­ tation was carrying him westward toward the earth.” In the last chapter the physical condition of the moon’s surface is treated, and the processes by which she probably reached her present condition are discussed at considerable length. �THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, EDITOR’S TABLE. ing many excellent suggestions, was not conformed to the better type of such HE twenty-second meeting of the productions. It is the custom of the American Association for the Ad­ eminent scientific men who are honored vancement of Science, which com­ with the office but once in their lives menced at Portland, Me., August 20th, to devote the occasion, either to a gen­ was fairly attended by the members, eral review of recent scientific work, and presented very good results in the or to some special subject with which way of scientific work. In estimating they are most familiar, and upon which its contributions, we must not over­ they can speak with the force of au­ look the fact that, while the numbers thority. Dr. Smith has been favorably of those in this country who are at known in the world of science as a liberty to pursue original investigations chemist who has made valuable con­ untrammelled, is not large, on the other tributions in its inorganic department. hand we have two national associations, The great activity in chemical inquiries through which the moderate amount of at the present time, and the impor­ original research that takes place is pub­ tant transition through which chemical lished to the world. While the Ameri­ theory is now passing, would certainly can Association was the only organiza­ have afforded the president a most per­ tion of national scope for the publication tinent and instructive theme, but he of new scientific results, its papers were preferred to employ the occasion in creditable both in number and quality, considering certain aspects of science and it compared favorably with its pro­ that are now prominent in public atten­ totype, the British Association for the tion, and upon which the scientific Advancement of Science. But, when, world is in much disagreement. The a few years ago, a considerable number leading feature of the address was an of its ablest members joined in the or­ attack on the Darwinians, and this ganization of the National Academy portion of it we publish; and, as the of Sciences, having substantially the question is thus reopened officially, it same object in view as the American becomes a proper subject of comment. The predecessor of President Smith, Association, but exclusive in its mem­ bership, and under government patron­ Dr. Asa Gray, of Harvard College, had age, the necessary effect was greatly to followed the better usage of presid­ weaken the older organization. The ing officers in his address at Dubuque National Academy meets twice a year, last year, and discussed some of the and draws closely upon the original larger problems of botany in the light work of its associates. If, therefore, of the derivation theory. The most the numbers in attendance upon the eminent of American botanists, an old Association and the grade of scientific and untiring student of the subject, a contributions might seem to indicate a man of philosophic grasp, and with a decline in American science, the cir­ candor and sincerity of conviction that cumstances here referred to will suffi­ commanded the highest respect, after long and thorough study of the ques­ ciently qualify the conclusion. tion, Prof. Gray did not hesitate to The address of the retiring presi­ give the weight of his authority to that dent, J. Lawrence Smith, while contain­ view of the origin and diversities of AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION— PRESIDENT SMITH'S ADDRESS. �EDITOR'S TADLE. living forms of which Mr. Darwin is now the leading representative. And although in the field of biology large numbers of its most eminent students, who are of all men most competent to decide upon it, have accepted that doc­ trine as representing the truth of Na­ ture more perfectly than any other, and as of immense value in their researches into the laws of life, yet Dr. Smith, as our readers will see, denounces it as a groundless hypothesis due to a riotous imagination, and, in the language of Agassiz, a “mere mire of assertions.” His declarations have called forth the applause of the press—always so can­ did, and intelligent, and independent, on such matters—who seize the occa­ sion to preach new sermons on the “ va­ garies of science,” and declare that they “take sides with the angels against the monkeys,” and are “ with the Creator against Darwin.” The course of the president was not commended even by his own party. Dr. Newberry, an eminent student of biology and geology, is re­ ported as having spoken in the follow­ ing decided way : “ Prof. Newberry, after a handsome allusion to the re­ tiring president, Prof. J. Lawrence Smith, protested against the opposition to the development theory as ex­ pounded in that gentleman's address. Prof. Newberry said he was not him­ self a Darwinian, but he recognized the value of the evolution theory in science. You cannot measure its value as you can the work of an astronomer, measured by definite ratios of space and time; but he considered the hy­ pothesis one of the most important con­ tributions ever made to a knowledge of Nature. Most men and women are partisans, and some are willing to sup­ pose that the hypothesis is sufficient to account for all the phenomena of the animal kingdom, while, on the other hand, there are those who see in it nothing but failure and deficiency. Let us assume a judicial position, and al­ 763 low the tests of time and truth to settle the questions involved. Go, however, in whatever direction the facts may lead, and throw prejudice to the winds. Rec­ ollect that all truth is consistent with itself.” Dr. Smith can hardly be said to have argued the question of Darwinism. He gave us his own opinion of it, and quoted, to sustain it, two distinguished authorities in natural history. But he gave the influence of his name and po­ sition to the charge that it transcends the legitimate limits of inductive in­ quiry, and is only a wild and absurd speculation. While the technical and difficult questions of natural history by which the truth or falsity of the doc­ trine must be determined are beyond the reach of unscientific readers, and belong to the biologists to decide, the question here raised as to whether the investigation, as conducted, is le­ gitimately scientific or not, is one of which all intelligent persons ought to be capable of forming a judgment. We have repeatedly considered thi3 point in the pages of The Populae Sci­ ence Monthly, and have endeavored to show that the present attitude of the doctrine of evolution is precisely the attitude which all the great es­ tablished theories and laws of science had to take at their first promulgation. It is familiar to all who know any thing of the progress of science, that astrono­ my and geology, in their early stages, passed through precisely the same or­ deal that biology is passing through now; their leading doctrines were rep­ robated as false science, and the wild dreams of distempered imaginations. Let us now take another case, in the department of pure physics, and see how scientific history repeats itself: The undulatory theory of light is now a firmly established principle in physics. Dr. Smith says that “the failure to explain one single well-ob­ served fact is sufficient to cast doubt upon, or subvert, any pure hypothesis,” �764 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. and, he adds, in reference to the undulatory theory, that, “ op to the present time, it serves in all cases.” In order that this theory, now so perfect, should be adopted, it had, of course, to be first propounded. The conception of an ethereal medium to explain the phe­ nomena of light was suggested by Huyghens and Euler, but they did not ex­ perimentally demonstrate it, and their authority was overborne by that of Newton,who maintained the emission or corpuscular theory. The true founder of the undulatory hypothesis of light was Dr. Thomas Young, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Insti­ tution of Great Britain, and whom Prof. Tyndall regards as the greatest physicist who has appeared since New­ ton. Dr. Young is thus estimated by the German Helmholtz: “ His was one of the most profound minds that the world has ever seen; but he had the misfortune to be in advance of his age. He excited the wonder of his contem­ poraries, who, however, were unable to follow him to the heights at which his daring intellect was accustomed to soar. His most important ideas lay, therefore, buried and forgotten in the folios of the Royal Society, until a new generation gradually and painfully made the same discoveries, and proved the exactness of his assertions, and the truth of his demonstrations.” Now, in this case, there was no monkey in the question, and no capital of public prejudice that could be made available in the discussion, to repress obnoxious opinions. The hypothesis was certainly innocent enough, and its truth or falsehood was a matter of sim­ ple determination by experiment. Dr. Young made the experiments which es­ tablished it—the Royal Society recog­ nized the value of the experiments, and, in 1801, assigned to their author the distinguished honor of delivering the Bakerian lecture, in which his ex­ periments were described, and their con­ clusions demonstrated. Yet, with the Royal Society to back him, and with his views capable of proof before all men, Dr. Young was crushed, and that by outside influences appealing to the public, on the ground that his hypothe­ sis was spurious science—mere wild ab­ surdity of the imagination. We ask attention to the similarity of the present ground of attack upon Dar­ win, and the ground of attack upon Dr. Young three-quarters of a century ago. Dr. Smith prefaces his strictures upon Darwinism with the following declara­ tion : “It is a very common attempt nowadays for scientists to transcend the limits of their legitimate studies, and, in doing this, they run into speculations apparently the most unphilosophical, wild, and absurd; quitting the true basis of inductive philosophy, and building up the most curious theories on little else than assertion.” Henry Brougham, afterward LordChancellor of England, writing in the second number of the Edinburgh Re­ view concerning Young’s Bakerian lect­ ure, said: “We have of late observed in the physical world a most unac­ countable predilection for vague hy­ potheses daily gaining ground ; and we are mortified to see that the Royal So­ ciety, forgetful of those improvements in science to which it owes its origin, and neglecting the precepts of its most illustrious members, is now, by the pub­ lication of such papers, giving the countenance of its highest authority to dangerous relaxations in the principles of physical logic. We wish to raise our feeble voice against innovations that can have no other effect than to check the progress of science, and re­ new all those wild phantoms of the imagination which Bacon and Newton put to flight from her temple. . . . Has the Royal Society degraded its publications into bulletins of new and fashionable theories for the ladies of the Royal Institution ? Prohpudor ! 1 Let the professor continue to amuse his audience with an endless variety of For shame! �EDITOR'S TABLE. such harmless trifles, but, in the name of science, let them not find admittance into that venerable repository which contains the works of Newton and Boyle. . . . The making of an hy­ pothesis is not the discovery of a truth. It is a mere sporting with the subject ; it is a sham-fight which may amuse in the moment of idleness and relaxation, but will neither gain victories over pre­ judice and error, nor extend the em­ pire of science. A mere theory is in truth destitute of merit of every kind, except that of a warm and misguided imagination.” Dr. Young’s theory “ teaches no truth, reconciles no con­ tradictions, arranges no anomalous facts, suggests no new experiments, and leads to no new inquiries. It has not even the pitiful merit of affording an agreeable play to the fancy. It is infinitely more useless, and less ingen­ ious, than the Indian theory of the elephant and tortoise. It may be ranked in the same class with that stupid invention of metaphysical the­ ology. ... We cannot conclude our review of these articles without en­ treating for a moment the attention of that illustrious body which has ad­ mitted of late years so many paltry and unsubstantial papers into its trans­ actions. ... We implore the coun­ cil, if they will deign to cast their eyes upon our humble page, to prevent a degradation of the institution which has so long held the first rank among scientific bodies.” For the second time Dr. Young was selected by the Royal Society to give the Bakerian lecture, and he again chose for its subject “Experiments and Calculations relative to Physical Op­ tics,” and again the Edinburgh Review came down upon him as follows : “ The paper which stands first is another Ba­ kerian lecture, containing more fan­ cies, more blunders, more unfounded hypotheses, more gratuitous fictions, all upon the same field on which New­ ton trode, and all from the fertile yet 7^5 fruitless brain of the same eternal Dr. Young.” The reviewer thus winds up the controversy: “We now dismiss, for the present, the feeble lucubrations of this author, in which we have searched without success for some traces of learning, acuteness, and ingenuity, that might compensate his evident defi­ ciency in the powers of solid thinking, calm and patient investigation, and successful development of the laws of Nature, by steady and modest observa­ tion of her operations. We came to the examination with no other preju­ dice than the very allowable prepos­ session against vague hypothesis, by which all true lovers of science have for above a century and a half been swayed. We pursued it, both on the present and on a former occasion, with­ out any feelings except those of regret at the abuse of that time and oppor­ tunity which no greater share of tal­ ents than Dr. Young’s are sufficient to render fruitful by mere diligence and moderation. From us, however, he cannot claim any portion of respect, until he shall alter his mode of pro­ ceeding, or change the subject of his lucubrations; and we feel ourselves more particularly called upon to ex­ press our disapprobation, because, as distinction has been unwarily bestowed on his labors by the most illustrious of scientific bodies, it is the more ne­ cessary that a free protest should be recorded before the more humble tri­ bunals of literature.” The reader will perceive that this strain is not unfamiliar. Young was denounced as Darwin is now de­ nounced, professedly in the interest of science; but the pretext was as false then as it is now. In the former case the animus of the assault was mere personal spite: Brougham’s in­ ordinate vanity having been wounded by some very moderate criticisms of Dr. Young upon his mathematical works. But a man who did not un­ derstand the subject, appealing to a �766 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. tribunal which knew nothing about it, against wild speculations degrading to science, was able to depreciate and suppress for a quarter of a century one of the most solid and perfect theories of natural phenomena that modern re­ search has produced. And, strange as it may seem, the work was effectually done; for, although Young made a masterly reply, but a single copy was sold, and, as Tyndall remarks, “for twenty years this man of genius was quenched—hidden from the apprecia­ tive intellect of his countrymen — deemed, in fact, a dreamer through the vigorous sarcasm of a writer who had then possession of the public ear.” Happily, the time is past when the investigators of Nature can be thus crushed out; but still the old tactics are imitated, and not without evil effect for the time. The men of sci­ ence, to whom the question belongs, are not left to pursue it in peace. The press and the pulpit, with such scientific help as it is not difficult to get, stir up such a clamor of popular opprobrium that biological students who hold to evolution as the fact and law of Na­ ture, and guide their researches by its light, do not choose to have it pub­ licly known that they are adherents of the doctrine. We are behind Eng­ land in fair and tolerant treatment of the Darwinian question, but may expect the same improvement in this respect that Huxley tells us has taken place with the English. In a recent article he remarks: “The gradual lapse of time has now separated us by more than a decade from the date of the pub­ lication of the ‘ Origin of Species; ’ and whatever may be thought or said about Mr. Darwin’s doctrines, or the manner in which he has propounded them, this much is certain, that, in a dozen years, the ‘ Origin of Species’ has worked as complete a revolution in biological sci­ ence as the ‘ Principia ’ did in astrono­ my—and it has done so, because, in the words of Helmholtz, it contains ‘ an essentially new creative thought.’ And, as time has slipped by, a happy change has come over Mr. Darwin’s critics. The mixture of ignorance and insolence which, at first, characterized a large proportion of the attacks with which he was assailed, is no longer the sad distinction of anti-Darwinian criti­ cism. Instead of abusive nonsense, which merely discredited its writers, we read essays, which are, at worst, more or less intelligent and apprecia­ tive ; while, sometimes, like that which appeared in the North British Review for 1867, they have a real and perma­ nent value.” THE EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION AT ELIIIRA. The national educational associa­ tion recently held at Elmira, N. Y., was of unusual interest, and evinced a marked progress in the public method of dealing with educational subjects. We have for some years refrained from attendance upon teachers’ conventions, having been wearied ■with the narrow technical range and pedantic pettiness of the discussions. But the recent meeting showed that educators are be­ ginning to outgrow their old profes­ sional limitations, and to consider the various questions that come before them in the light of broad principles, and in the spirit of radical and rational im­ provement. Many men of ability, presi­ dents of leading colleges, eminent pro­ fessors, principals of high-schools, and State and city superintendents, were present, contributing valuable papers, and giving strength and character to the debates which followed them. President McCosh delivered an able address on the higher education, and maintained that the national Govern­ ment should not give the balance of its lands to the agricultural colleges, nor yet to other collegiate institutions, but should appropriate them for the benefit of high-schools and academies through­ �EDITOR'S TABLE. 767 out the country. Dr. McCosh thus old scholastic culture which took its stated his main position : shape at a period when popular educa­ “ I don’t propose that any portion of this tion was not thought of, and culture $90,000,000 should be given to colleges. We was confined to the professional classes. cannot aid all, and to select a few would be These institutions are not holding their injurious. In regard to elementary educa­ own at the present time. Their stu­ tion, the Northern, the Middle, and the dents are falling off, for the reason that Western States, are able and willing to do there is a decline in the academies by their duty. I venture to propose that in these the unappropriated lands be devoted which the colleges are fed; that is, as to the encouragement of secondary schools. Dr. McCosh says, “ the grand difficulty Let each State obtain its share, and the which colleges have to contend against money handed over to it under certain rigid arises from there being so few schools rules and restrictions to prevent the abuse fitted to prepare young men for them.” of the public money. In particular, to se­ But the cause of the decline of the cure that upper schools be endowed only where needed, I suggest that money be allo­ academies is the rivalry of the newlycated only when a district, or, it may be, a instituted high-schools, and these are combination of two or more districts, has the outgrowth and now an essential raised a certain portion, say one-half, of the part of the common - school system. necessary funds. By this means the money The modern idea of universal educa­ may be made to stimulate the erection of high-schools all over America. These tion has become organized in such a schools would aid colleges far more power­ way as to antagonize the old college fully than a direct grant to them, as, in fact, system. The common schools are not the grand difficulty which colleges have to constructed upon the scholastic pattern; contend against ariseB from there being so they aim to give to all a useful practical few schools fitted to prepare young men for education, that shall be available in them with their rising standard of excellence. the common work of life. It was But I plead for these schools, not merely as a means of feeding colleges, but as compe­ found that they did not go far enough tent to give a high education in varied in this direction for the wants of many, branches, literary and scientific, to a far and so high-schools were organized in greater number who do not go on to any thing which the pupils of the common schools higher. These schools, like the elementary schools, should be open to all children, of might graduate into the working world the poor as well as the rich. They should with a better preparation than the be set up, like the German gymnasium, in lower schools can furnish. It was stated convenient localities, so that all the popula­ in the discussion that but one in fif­ tion may have access to them. They should teen hundred of the population passes embrace every useful branch suited to young through college, while it is left for men and women under sixteen and eighteen years of age—English composition, English the common and high schools to edu­ language, history, classics, modern language, cate the rest of the people. As the and elementary science. The best scholars old academies disappear, therefore, in our primary schools would be drafted up the colleges seek to get control of to these higher schools, and thus the young the high-schools, to be used as feeders talent of the country would be turned to for themselves; and this, of course, ne­ good account, while the teachers in the com­ mon schools would be encouraged by seeing cessitates a high-school curriculum fit­ ted to prepare young men for college. their best pupils advance.” « This is the point at which the two sys­ The discussion that followed this tems are unconformable, and is to be speech brought out difficulties which the point of conflict in the future. the doctor had not considered, and, in What shall be the course of study in fact, opened the way to the most vital the high-schools? Shall it be a sequel problem of American education. The to the common schools, or a prelude to colleges of the country represent the the colleges, for these are different �768 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. things? Already in some of them we have two distinct systems of education. A principal of one of these institutions in the West said to the writer: “We are working under the disadvantages of a double curriculum. We have a scheme of studies, scientific and practi­ cal, drawn with reference to the larger number of our pupils who come from the common schools, and who close their studies with us. We take them through an English course, with mathematics, book-keeping, political economy, phys­ ics, chemistry, botany, and physiology. And we have also a classical course for a small number of students who are preparing for college. But the exac­ tions of Latin and Greek are so great upon these that they get hardly a smat­ tering of the subjects pursued by the other students.” The tactics of Dr. McCosh were admirable. To keep the proceeds of the public lands from going to the agricultural colleges and scien­ tific institutions, he is willing to resign all claim upon them for the benefit of the classical colleges ; at the same time, if the money is expended for the ex­ tension of high-schools, as the doctor says, “ these schools would aid colleges far more powerfully than a direct grant to them.” Yet, as long as the two sys­ tems of education remain so diverse that the regular high-school graduation is not accepted as preparation for college, there will be conflict for the control of these establishments. Only as the col­ lege curriculum becomes more broad, modern, and scientific, and the classical studies are restricted to the special classes who have need of them, can American education become harmon­ ized in its elements and unified in its system. Tne report of President Eliot, of Harvard, on a national university, was a strong document. We publish the last portion of it, which deals with the main question, and ask attention to the high grounds on which he bases his de­ mand for the non-interference of gov­ ernment with the system of higher edu­ cation. His paper started a warm debate on the broad and important question of the proper relations of gov­ ernment to the work of instruction, and, of course, his views met with vigorous opposition. It was maintained that there is no break in the logic by which government action is prescribed; and that, admitting the propriety of state action in primary education, there is no halting-place until the govern­ ment takes charge of the entire school machinery of the country. And such is the overshadowing influence of poli­ tics, and so profound the superstition regarding government omnipotence, that this view found its urgent advo­ cates, who seem blind to the conse­ quences that are certain to follow when the people shirk the responsibilities of attending directly to the education of the young, and shoulder it off upon a mass of politicians holding the offices of government. The friends of state education certainly pressed their case to its extreme conclusions. Govern­ ment contributes money to support common schools, and appoints officers to regulate them; therefore let it appropriate $20,000,000 to establish a national university at Washington, with $1,000,000 a year to be divided among the congressional appointees, who will hold the professorships. Dr. McCosh suggested that recent congres­ sional experiences were hardly calcu­ lated to inspire confidence in the action of that body, and asked what guarantee we should have against a university ring and systematic educational job­ bing ; and it was objected by others that the class of men who congregate in the capital, and the whole spirit of the place, would make it more unfit than any other in the country for such an institution. Prof. Eichards, of Washington, came to the rescue of the reputation of his town, and asked, em­ �EDITOR'S TABLE. phatically, “Where do its knaves and rascals come from? We do not make them; you send them to us from all parts of the nation.” But the argu­ ment was not helped by the retort, for it is quite immaterial whether Wash­ ington breeds its scoundrels or imports them. If our republican system is one that sifts out its most venal and un­ scrupulous intriguers and sharpers, and gathers them into one place, it is ques­ tionable whether that place had better not be avoided as the seat of a great model university—especially if said in­ triguers and sharpers are to have the management of it. 769 for 1872-’73, and presents the statistics which bear upon the subject. The “ elections ” of subjects of study or choices of the students are shown in a succession of tables, the last of which divides the college studies into “dis­ ciplinary” and “practical,” and ex­ hibits the results as follows: DISCIPLINARY STUDIES. Ancient languages . 100 History..................................... 8T Mathematics .... . 21 Philosophy.............................. 15 Political science .... . 12 185 PRACTICAL STUDIES. Modern languages Physics and chemistry Natural history .... . . 80 87 28 145 ELECTIVE STUDIES AT HARVARD. In an instructive article upon this subject, the Nation says : “ There was a vague but very general impression, a few years ago, that, if the elective system were introduced into the older American colleges, the practical sci­ ences, as they are called, especially physics, chemistry, and natural his­ tory, would crowd out the study of the ancient languages. There was also a feeling that the obvious utility of the modern languages, and particularly of French and of German, would help to throw the “ dead languages ” into the background. A great many enthusiasts fancied that the good time a-coming was at hand, when books would be thrown aside, and all intellectual ac­ tivity would be narrowed down to the study of physical Nature; and so much noise has been made about the natural sciences that a great many people un­ doubtedly think this is the principal if not the only subject taught where an elective system prevails.” To submit this matter to a test, and “ ascertain what it is that the mass of students feel the need of most and flock to most when the choice is left entirely to themselves,” the Nation overhauls the university catalogue of Harvard vol. hi.—49 “By this arrangement the disci­ plinary studies preponderate over the practical in the ratio of 185:145 or 100: 78.” Upon this the Nation proceeds to remark: “ The figures show conclusive­ ly that, in spite of the crusade which has been carried on against the ancient languages, they are still full of vitality, still a power, still a popular study, and, in fact, the greatest interest in the little college world. As our inquiry is purely numerical and statistical, we do not ask why the students make the selections they do. Doubtless, the reasons are not very obvious; still, one fact is plain, that they are not guided wholly by utilitarian views.” Now, if the Nation had looked a little into the “ why ” of this matter, we are sure it would have found the reasons for this state of things obvious enough, and, although it might have somewhat qualified its conclusion, it would have made the statement more valuable. The number of votes cast at an election is usually an expression of public opinion, but, if in any case there happen to have been military interference and dictation, the numeri­ cal report of ballots cast, if taken alone, would be misleading. We are told that �770 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the working of the option system at Har­ vard affords an indication of the prefer­ ences and tendencies of the students in regard to the studies they incline to pur­ sue ; but is not entrance to Harvard a part of its policy, and what about the option there? Is there not at the door of the university a big winnowingmachine which delivers the “ discipli­ nary ” studies as acceptable wheat, and blows the “ utilitarian ” studies to the winds as the veriest chaff? All the preparation exacted of students for entrance to college is in the “ discipli­ nary ” studies, and mainly in the Latin and Greek languages. Besides being incessantly told in the preparatory schools that the very poles of the intel­ lectual world are two dead languages, and that a classical education is the only real broad liberal education, they are kept for years drilling at Latin and Greek as the only condition upon which they can get to college at all. The standard is here kept as high as it was twenty years ago, and President Eliot stated at the late Elmira conven­ tion that, in the estimation of the pre­ paratory teachers in New England, Har­ vard requires a year more study of Latin and Greek than the other col­ leges. The student thus enters college warped and biassed by his preparation for it. Of the sciences he knows noth­ ing, and he is prejudiced against them as mere utilitarian studies to be con­ trasted on all occasions with liberal mental pursuits. When these facts are remembered, it is certainly no matter of surprise that Latin and Greek lead in the collegiate elections of study; it is rather surprising that they lead by so small a number. It is very far from being a fair or open choice when a pupil has to repudiate his past acquisi­ tions, and stem the tide of opinion which has forced them upon him, to take up studies under the grave dis­ advantage of no early preparation. We think the lesson of the Harvard statis­ tics is not altogether exhilarating to the partisans of the classics. When Harvard will accept a scientific prep­ aration for college as of equal value with the classical, we shall be better prepared to estimate the strength of the tendencies in the two directions. LIFE OF PRINCIPAL FORBES. biographer of Sir Walter Scott alludes to a “ first love ” which ended unfortunately for the great romancer. It is related that, rain happening to fall one Sunday after church-time, Scott offered his umbrella to a young lady, and, the tender having been accepted, he escorted her to her home. The ac­ quaintance was continued, and ripened into a strong attachment on the part of Scott; but he was doomed to disappointment, and Lockhart states that it produced a profound effect upon his character. “Keble, in a beautiful essay on Scott, more than hints a .be­ lief that it was this imaginary regret haunting Scott all his life long which became the true well-spring of his in­ spiration in all his minstrelsy and ro­ mance.” Be that as it may, the lady, whose name was Williamina Belches, instead of marrying Scott, chose his friend, Sir William Forbes. They had a family, of which the youngest, James David, was born in 1809. When the son was nineteen years old his father died, and, under the immediate influ­ ence of the bereavement, he drew up a set of brief resolutions for the regu­ lation of his life, one of which was “ to curb pride and over-anxiety in the pursuit of worldly objects, especially fame.” Young Forbes became a fa­ mous man. He took to science, and mas­ tered it rapidly under the guidance of his intimate friend Sir David Brewster, choosing physics as his department. At the death of Sir John Leslie, Pro­ fessor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, he offered himself as a candidate for the chair, in The �EDITOR'S TABLE. opposition to his old friend Brewster and others, and was elected to the po­ sition at the age of twenty-four. He was an original investigator in a wide field of physics, contributed to the ex­ tension of knowledge in many direc­ tions, and was an able writer. His health failing, he resigned his chair in the Edinburgh University, and accept­ ed the principalship of St. Andrew’s, and is therefore known as Principal Forbes. He died the last day of 1868, and an elaborate biography, by three of his Scotch friends, has just been pub­ lished by Macmillan, which is an ex­ tremely interesting book. Among other subjects of his inves­ tigation were the glaciers, upon which he published an important volume. He met Agassiz in the Alps, while that gentleman was experimenting upon glacial motions, and they made obser­ vations together, but subsequently fell out with each other about the division of the honors of discovery. The com­ plication extended, involving the claims of Bishop Rendu, Prof. Guyot, and others. In his “ Glaciers of the Alps,” published in 1860, Prof. Tyndall under­ took to do justice to the claims of all parties. Prof. Forbes was not satisfied with the awards, and replied to Prof. Tyndall’s work, vindicating his own claims to a larger share of the investi­ gation than had been accorded him. To this Prof. Tyndall at the time made no rejoinder; but in his recently-published “Forms of Water” he restated the case in a way that was not satisfactory to Forbes’s biographers, who have met it by an appendix to the volume. In the Contemporary Review for August, Prof. Tyndall returns to the question in an elaborate paper, entitled “ Prin­ cipal Forbes and his Biographers,” of which we publish the first and last portions, that are of most general interest. We have not space for the whole article, which is long, and omit­ ted the extended extracts from Rendu’s work in French, and that portion of 771 the argument which will mainly con­ cern the special students of glacial lit­ erature. In an introductory note to the article, Prof. Tyndall briefly states the origin and cause of the controversy, and earnestly deprecates its present re­ vival. He says, speaking of the biogra­ phers : “I am challenged to meet their criticisms, which, I find, are considered to be conclusive by some able public journals and magazines. Thus the at­ titude of a controversialist is once more forced upon me. Since the death of Principal Forbes no one has heard me utter a word inconsistent with tender­ ness for his memory; and it is with an' unwillingness amounting to repugnance that I now defend myself across his grave. His biographers profess to know what he would have done were he alive, and hold themselves to be the simple executors of his will. I cannot act entirely upon this assumption, or deal with the dead as I should with the living. Hence, though these pages may appear to some to be sufficiently full, they lack the completeness, and still more the strength, which I ’should have sought to confer upon them had my present position been forced upon me by Principal Forbes himself instead of by his friends.” It is to be feared that Prof. Forbes did not sufficiently abide by the rule of life which was formed under the solemn circumstances of his father’s death. We commend to the attention of our scientific readers, with philosophi­ cal inclinations, the series of articles on “The Primary Concepts of Modern Physical Science,” the first of which appears this month, on “The Theory of the Atomic Constitution of Matter.” The depth and force of the criticism are only equalled by the clearness of the conceptions, and the precision and felicity of the statement. The interest of the discussion will not be lessened �772 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. when we say that ;t is by an Ohio law­ yer-formerly a judge of Cincinnati. It has been held as one of the redeem­ ing features of the English bar, that the author of the able and admirable essay on “The Correlation of Forces ” belongs to it; and it is certainly to the credit of the legal profession in this country that a member of it has culti­ vated physical philosophy to such ex­ cellent purpose as is evinced by the article we now publish. • LITERARY NOTICES. A Popular Introduction to the Study of the Forces of Nature. From the French of M. Emile Saigey. With an Intro­ duction and Notes by Thomas Freeman Moses, A. M., M. D. Boston : Estes & Laureat. Price $1.50. 253 pages. Although this neat and attractive little volume claims to be a popular introduction to the study of the forces of Nature, we think it should rather be regarded as a book for those who have been previously introduced to the subject. It is rather devoted to an exposition of the author’s speculative views than to a simplified and elementary statement for those who are beginning to study. The author holds to a universal ether, and maintains besides that matter is constituted from it, and consists of it, and he aims to build up the universe of ethereal atoms and motion. The work is written from the modem point of view of the correlation of forces, and contains much interesting information upon this subject, but the author is less concerned merely to interpret the phenomena of inter­ action among the forces than to get below them to what he regards as the causes of their unity. “The atom and motion, be­ hold the universe! ” is a somewhat Frenchy and fantastic cosmology. To readers of a speculative turn of mind the book will prove interesting. The Unity of Natural Phenomena. Sanitary Engineering : a Guide to the Construction of Works of Sewerage and House-Drainage. By Baldwin Latham, C. E. 352 pages. Price $12. New York : E. & F. N. Spon. This work is in all respects a contrast to that of M. Saigey. Instead of transcen­ dental ether, it treats of descendental sew­ erage, and, instead of remote imaginative speculations, it is occupied with the most immediate and practical of the interests of daily life. Of the importance of the sub­ ject treated, the preservation of life and health by the thorough construction of sanitary works, there can be no question, and the author claims that it is the first book exclusively devoted to subjects re­ lating to sanitary engineering. He has gathered his material from official reports, periodical papers, and various works which touch the subject incidentally, and, adding to them the results of his own practice, has produced a most valuable treatise. As science unravels the complicated conditions of life, it becomes more and more apparent that health can only be maintained by the destruction or thorough removal of those deleterious products which are engendered in dwellings. The necessity of drainage is well understood, and the art has been long practised in all civilized countries; but, like all other arts, its intelligent and efficient practice depends upon scientific principles, and therefore progresses with a growing knowledge of the subject. The questions involved in the proper sewerage of a district are numerous. Its geological character and physical features have to be considered; the meteorological element of rainfall is important; the constitution of the soil and subsoil must be taken into account; the sources and extent of artificial water-supply are of moment; and the area of the district to be sewered, and its present and pro­ spective population, cannot be overlooked. Much information of this kind requires also to be called into requisition in the construc­ tion of separate country-residences. The physical circumstances being given, there then arise numerous questions in regard to drainage, construction, household contriv­ ances, the materials employed, and the cost, efficiency, and permanency of works. Mr. Latham’s volume treats this whole series of topics in a systematic and exhaustive way. It is profusely illustrated with wood­ cuts and maps, and contains numerous tables which are indispensable for the guidance of constructors. It is not re­ printed, but is supplied by the New-York branch of the London house, who hold it at an exorbitant pice. �LITERARY NOTICES. 773 and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and attractiveness, due to a certain subtle tact Superstitions interpreted by Compara­ or refinement hard to analyze, but quite tive Mythology. By John Fiske. Price, sensibly felt, which marks the best Ameri­ $2.00. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., can essay-writing; and his manner of deal­ 1873. ing with his subject is well fitted to reassure Travellers to the United States, and those who have been deterred from seeking American authors themselves, have often any acquaintance with comparative my­ remarked on the affectionate veneration thology, either by the formidable appearance shown by Americans for the oldest things of philological apparatus and Vedic proper in Europe, and for all the associations con­ names, or by the aggressive boldness of necting their present life with the life of one or two champions of the new learning. their forefathers in the old country. Not It is very natural to feel a rebellious impulse long ago, it may be remembered, the build­ at being told that half the gods and heroes ers of a new meeting-house at Boston of the classical epics, or even the nursery (United States), sent for a brick from the tales, which have delighted us from our prototype still standing at our Boston in youth up, are sun and sky, light and dark­ England. We now find an officer of Har­ ness, summer and winter, in various dis­ vard University putting forth labor which guises. is evidently a labor of love, and the literary The myth is in its origin neither an al­ skill and taste in which the best American legory—as Bacon and many others have writers set an example worth commending thought—nor a metaphor—as seems now to many of ours ; and the things he speaks and then to be implied in the language of of belong to the Old World; to a world, modern comparative mythologists—but a indeed, so far off that for centuries we had genuinely-accepted explanation of facts, a lost its meaning, and have only just learned “ theorem of primitive Aryan science,” as to spell it out again. His theme takes Mr. Fiske happily expresses it. This view him back from the New World, not only to is brought out in the last essay of the vol­ England, not only to Europe, but to the ume, entitled “ The Primeval Ghost World,” ancient home of the Aryan race, a world where the genesis of mythology is held not still full of wonders for the dwellers in it, to be explicable by the science of language whose changes of days' and seasons, inter­ alone, and is rather ascribed to the complete preted by the analogy of human will and absence of distinction between animate and action, were instinct with manifold life; inanimate Nature, which is now known to where the imagination of our fathers shaped be common to all tribes of men in a primi­ the splendid and gracious forms which have tive condition, and to which Mr. Tylor has gone forth over the earth, as their children given the name of Animism. We are went forth, and prevailed in many lands, pleased to find Mr. Fiske praising Mr. Tyand have lived on through all the diverse lor’s work warmly, and even enthusiasti­ fates of the kindred peoples in India, in cally : here is another of the many proofs Greece, in Iceland, to bear witness in the that the ties of common language and cult­ latter days to the unity of the parent stock. ure are in the long-run stronger than diplo­ This book, which Mr. Fiske modestly intro­ macy and Indirect Claims. We find men­ duces as a “ somewhat rambling and unsys­ tioned, among other instances of animism, tematic series of papers,” seems to us to the belief that a man’s shadow is a sort of give the leading results of comparative my­ ghost or other self. This belief has, in thology in a happier manner and with comparatively-recent times, made its mark greater success than has yet been attained even in so civilized a tongue as the Greek, in so small a compass. It is the work of in Romaic is a ghost, or rather a a student who follows in the steps of the personified object generally, and seems to great leaders with right-minded apprecia­ correspond exactly to the other self attrib­ tion, and who, though he does not make uted by primitive man to all creatures, liv­ any claim to originality, is no ordinary ing or not living, indiscriminately. Mr. compiler. He is enthusiastic in his pursuit, Geldart, in a note to his book on Modem without being a fanatic; his style has the Greek (Oxford, 1870), which well deserves Myths �774 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the attention of students of language and mythology, traces this as well as older al­ lied meanings from the original meaning of aroi-xYiov in classical Greek, as the shadow on the sun-dial, acutely observing that the moving shadow would seem to the natural man far more alive and mysterious than the fixed rod. There are several matters dealt with in special chapters by Mr. Fiske which we must put off with little more than allusion: the book is indeed a small one, but so full of interest that choice among its contents is not easy. An essay on “ The Descent of Fire ” treats of the divining-rod and other talismans endowed with the faculty of rend­ ing open rocks and revealing hidden treas­ ure, which all appear to be symbols, some­ times obvious, sometimes remotely and fan­ cifully derived, of the lightning which breaks the cloud and lets loose the treasures of the rain. There is also a chapter on the my­ thology of non-Aryan tribes, showing the difference between the vague resemblance of these to Aryan myths and to one another, and the close family likeness which leads to the certain conclusion that the great mass of Aryan mythology came from a common stock.—Spectator. and School : A Journal of Popular Education. Morton & Co., Louisville. In a late number of this journal is an excellent article by Prof. Alexander Hogg, of the Alabama Agricultural and Mechani­ cal College, entitled “ More Geometry— less Arithmetic,” that contains various sug­ gestions worthy the thoughtful attention of teachers. It was a favorite idea of the late Josiah Holbrook, which he enforced upon educators on all occasions, that rudi­ mentary geometry should be introduced into all primary schools; but he insisted with equal earnestness upon his theory of their order, which was embodied in his aphorism, “ Drawing before writing, and geometry before arithmetic.” The priority of geometrical or arithmetical conception in the unfolding mind is a subtle psycho­ logical question, into which it is not neces­ sary for the teacher to go, the practical question being to get a recognition of the larger claims of geometry, and this is the point to which Prof. Hogg wisely directs Home the discussion. The fact is, mental devel­ opment has been too much considered in its linear and successive aspects, and the theories that are laid down concerning the true order of studies have been hitherto too much confined to this idea. Starting with inherited aptitudes, mental develop­ ment begins in the intercourse of the infant mind with the environment, and, while it is true that there is a sequence of mental ex­ perience in each increasing complexity, it is equally true that many kinds of mental ac­ tion are unfolded together. Ideas of form are certainly among the earliest, and there­ fore should have an early cultivation. To all that Prof. Hogg says about the need of increasing the amount of geometry in edu­ cation we cordially subscribe, and we think he is equally right in condemning the excess of attention that is given to arithmetic, which is mainly due to its supposed prac­ tical character as a preparation for business. But neither is geometry without its impor­ tant practical uses. The professor says : “ Let us see, then, what a pupil with enough arithmetic and the plane geometry can perform. He can measure heights and distances; determine areas; knows that, having enclosed one acre with a certain amount of fencing, to enclose four acres he only has to double the amount of fencing; that the same is true of his buildings. In circles, in round plats, or in cylindrical ves­ sels, he will see a beautiful, universal law pervading the whole—the increase of the circumference is proportional to the in­ crease of the diameter, while the increase of the circle is as the square of the diam­ eter. . . . “ Thousands of boys are stuffed to re­ pletion with ‘interest,’ ‘discount,’ and ‘ partnership,’ in which they have experi­ enced much ‘ loss ’ but no ‘ profit; ’ have mastered as many as five arithmetics, and yet, upon being sent into the surveyor’s of­ fice, machine-shop, and carpenter-shop, could not erect a perpendicular to a straight line, or find the centre of a circle already described, if their lives depended upon it. Many eminent teachers think that young persons are incapable of reasoning, and that the truths of geometry are too ab­ struse to be comprehended by them. . . . “ Children are taught to read, not for �LITERARY NOTICES. what is contained in the reading-books, but that they may be able to read through life; so, let enough of the leading branches be taught, if no more, to enable the pupil to pursue whatever he may need most in after­ life. Let, then, an amount of geometry commensurate with its importance be taught even in the common schools; let it be taught at the same time with arithmetic; let as much time be given to it, and we shall find thousands who, instead of closing their mathematical books on leaving school, will be led to pursue the higher mathematics in their maturer years.” The Mystery of Matter and Other Es­ says. By J. Allanson Picton. 12mo, pp. 482. Price $3.50. Macmillan & Co. The purpose of this work is to reconcile the essential principles of religious faith with the present tendencies of thought in the sphere of positive and physical science. Mr. Picton is not a votary of modem skepti­ cism, although he recognizes the fact of its existence, and its bearing on vital questions. Nor is he a partisan of any of the current systems of philosophy or science, but dis­ cusses their various pretensions in the spirit of intelligent and impartial criticism. He has no fear of their progress or influence; he accepts many of their conclusions; he honors the earnestness and ability of their expounders ; while he believes that their re­ sults are in harmony with the essential ideas of religion. It is possible, he affirms, that all forms of finite existence may be reduced to modes of motion. But this is of no con­ sequence in a religious point of view, for motion itself is only the visible manifesta­ tion of the energy of an infinite life. “ To me,” he says, “ the doctrine of an eternal continuity of development has no terrors ; for, believing matter to be in its ultimate essence spiritual, I see in every cosmic revo­ lution a ‘ change from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.’ I can look down the uncreated, unbeginning past, without the sickness of bewildered faith. I want no silent dark eternity in which no world was ; for I am a disciple of One who said, * My Father worketh hitherto.’ My sense of eternal order is no longer jarred by the sud­ den appearance in the universe of a dead, inane substance, foreign to God and spiritual 775 being. And if, with a true insight, I could stand so high above the world as to take any comprehensive survey of its unceasing evolutions—here a nebula dawning at the silent fiat ‘ be light,’ there the populous globe, where the communion of the many with the One brings the creature back to the Creator—I am sure that the oneness of the vision, so far from degrading, would un­ speakably elevate my sense of the dignity and blessedness of created being. I have no temptation, therefore, to join in cursing the discoverer who tracks the chain of divine forces by which finite consciousness has been brought to take its present form ; be­ cause I know he can never find more than that which was in the beginning, and is, and ever shall be—the ‘ power of an endless life.’ ” With regard to the speculations of Prof. Huxley, the author, so far from bewailing their effects, pronounces them decidedly favorable to the interests of religion. They present a formidable barrier to the encroach­ ments of materialism. In this respect, he thinks that Prof. Huxley has rendered ser­ vices to the Church, if less signal, not less valuable, than those which he has rendered to science. He has brought the religious world face to face with facts with a vigor and a clearness peculiar to himself. Not only so. In the opinion of the author, he has made suggestions concerning those facts of vast importance to the future of religion. He has defined the only terms on which harmony is possible between spiritual re­ ligion and physical science. Equalling Berkeley in transparent distinctness of statement, while he far surpasses him in knowledge of physical phenomena, Mr. Hux­ ley has shown that, whether we start with materialism or idealism, we are brought at length to the same point. He has thus proved himself one of the most powerful op­ ponents that materialism ever had. All that he did in his celebrated discourse on the “ Physical Basis of Life ” was, to call attention to certain indisputable facts. “And perhaps it was the impossibility of denying these facts which was a main cause of the uneasiness that most of us felt. Thus he told us that all organizations, from the lichen up to the man, are all composed mainly of one sort of matter, which in all �776 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. cases, even those at the extremity of the deed follow that materialism, in a fair sense scale, is almost identical in composition. of the word, is impossible, still the conclu­ And the one other fact on which he insisted sion cannot be avoided that materialism was, that every living action, from the vi­ and spiritualism would then exhibit only brations of cilia by the foraminifer to the different aspects of the same everlasting imagination of Hamlet or the composition fact, and physical research might henceforth of the Messiah, is accompanied by, and in a unfold to us only the energies of Infinite sense finds an equivalent expression in, a Life self-governed by eternal law. definite waste or disintegration of material But, admitting the universal action of tissue. Thus it is no less certain that the molecular mechanics, the author adduces muscles of a horse are strained by a heavy numerous instances which show that the load, than it is that the brain of a Shake­ explanation they offer of the phenomena of speare undergoes molecular agitation, pro­ sensation cannot be realized in conscious­ ducing definite chemical results, in the sub­ ness. Nothing is really an explanation lime effort of imagination.” which cannot be reproduced in conscious­ But, at first blush, such statements pro­ ness as such. We demand a cause from duce a shock in the minds of most readers. which the effect can rationally be educed. They are reluctant to be told that the soul The perception of distance, for example, is never acts by itself apart from some excite­ explained by the action of the muscular ment of bodily tissue. It seems monstrous sense and the experience of touch. This is that thought and love, which in one direc­ an adequate explanation, for it can be re­ tion find their expression in the majesty of alized in consciousness. But the case is far eloquence, should in another direction find otherwise with the explanation of sensation their expression in evolving carbonic acid by molecular mechanics. Physical research and water. Such a union between soul and lands us in a dead inert substance called body seemed to amount to identity. And matter, which, though without soul or mean­ yet the soul was conscious that, whatever ing in itself, produces by its vibrations the might be said, it was not one of the chemi­ most beautiful visions and sublime emotions cal elements, nor all of them put together. in our consciousness. But the external phe­ The mental anxiety referred to has been nomena, inseparable from our consciousness aggravated by the hold which has been of sight or sound, cannot be rationally con­ taken on most inquiring minds, by the doc­ nected with the consciousness that gives trine of development. Whether natural them all their interest. No one to whom selection is or is not sufficient to account the Hallelujah Chorus utters the joy of for the origin of species, the idea of suc­ heaven, or for whom a sonata of Beethoven cessive acts of creation out of nothing has gives a voice to the unutterable, can make been virtually abandoned by all whose ob­ it seem real to himself that his mind is in­ servations of Nature have been on such a vaded by mere waves of vibrating air. At scale as to entitle their opinions to any no point in the chain of vibrations, not even weight. What was once the property of a the point most deeply buried in the brain, few isolated thinkers has been made com­ can we conceive that molecular action is pletely accessible to minds of common in­ converted into any thing besides material telligence. But the terrors which have movement, or resistance to movement. But been awakened by the popular reception of this does not exhaust the consciousness. novel scientific theories are entirely founded The emotional, imaginative, and moral on the assumption that matter and spirit wealth of human life opens a world of re­ are fundamentally distinct in their nature. ality immeasurably greater than can be con­ It has been the general belief that matter tained in mere mechanical movement. was something heavy, lifeless, inert, some­ Assuming, then, the fact of a nature in thing that forms the hidden basis of the man, of which the molecular laws are not ethereal vision of the world. But, argues the substance, but the condition, the author the author, if that assumption be the mere takes up the inquiry as to the essential creature of false analogy, and is wholly in­ nature of religion. This he defines to be congruous and unthinkable, it does not in­ the endeavor after a practical expression of �LITERARY NOTICES. man’s conscious relation to the Infinite. The savage who wonders at the unseen but mighty wind that streams from unknown realms of power has already the germ of the feeling which inspires religion. But the conscious relation to the Infinite includes every stage in this consciousness, just as the name of a plant includes the blade as well as the fruit. If the evolution of reli­ gion be a normal phase in the development of mankind, there must be at the root of it that grand and measureless Power which is the inevitable complement of the conception of evolution. All evolution implies a divine Power, but religious evolution has to do with the dim apprehension of that Power in consciousness. Mr. Herbert Spencer, to continue the reasoning of the author, has been much blamed, by many religious think­ ers, for making the reconciliation between science and religion to lie in the recognition on both sides that “ the Power which the universe manifests to us is utterly inscru­ table.” Yet the very persons who most strenuously object to this suggestion are in the habit of quoting the words of Scripture which declare the unsearchable mystery of the Divine Nature. Those words are used to rebuke the arrogance of philosophy. But, when philosophy learns the lesson, its hu­ mility is condemned as wilful blindness. The true philosophy of ignorance, however, retains as an indestructible element of hu­ man consciousness an apprehension of something beyond all fragmentary existence, the Absolute Being, at once the only true substance, and the One that constitutes a universe from the phenomenal world. It is inevitable that attempts should be made to give practical expression to this feeling. And in such efforts we find the first germs of religion. With the imperfect summary which we have given of the views maintained in this volume, it will be perceived that its position in literature is that of a commentary on new developments of thought, rather than of a complete exposition of any system of philosophy or science. Accepting the con­ sequences of modem physical research, it aims to establish their consistency with the principles of a high religious faith, and thus to remove the vague alarms which their prevalence has called forth in certain por­ 711 tions of the community. The author is evidently a man of an ardent poetical tem­ perament, of a reverent and tender spirit, and an aptitude for illustration rather than for demonstration.—N. Y. Tribune. Chimneys for Furnaces, Fireplaces, and Steam-Boilers. By R. Armstrong, C. E., 12mo, 76 pages. Price, 50 cents. This is number one of Van Nostrand’s science series, and is a technological mono­ graph that will be useful to engineers and builders. The author says : “ Furnaces or closed fireplaces, which it is the main de­ sign of this essay to treat upon, are essen­ tially different in principle and construction to the ordinary open fireplaces of dwelling­ houses, as they are exceedingly different in their general scope and object, and in the vast variety of their applications; ” and he then proceeds to expound the general phi­ losophy of special chimneys for furnaces and steam-boilers. Steam-Boiler Explosions. By Zerah Col­ burn. 12mo, 98 pages. New York : D. Van Nostrand. This is number two of the same series, and is a most instructive and readable essay. The editor states that, although published ten years ago, later experiences would add but little if any thing to the knowledge it affords. The various observed scientific questions in regard to the causes of steamboiler explosions, such as over-heating, elec­ tricity, the spheroidal state, decomposed steam, etc., are considered, but Mr. Colburn maintains that, whether these are valid causes of explosion or not, they are colleotively as nothing compared with the one great cause—defective boilers. The style in which this essay is written is a model of simplicity and clearness. Bulletin ural of the Buffalo Society of Nat­ Sciences. Vol. I., Nos. 1 and 2. Buffalo, 1873. The Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences commences this year the publication of their Bulletin, which it is proposed to continue, four numbers to be issued annually. The two numbers before us contain seven papers, six of which are devoted to the describing and cataloguing of American moths, and one gives descriptions of new species of �778 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. fungi. The author of the latter paper is Charles H. Peck ; all the others are by Au­ gustus R. Grote. Mr. Grote is well known to entomologists as an authority on the sub­ jects which he discusses, and the Buffalo society is to be congratulated for being the medium through which the laborious and valuable researches of so able a naturalist are published to the world. The papers are strictly scientific and technical, being in­ tended solely for those who pursue method­ ically the special branches of science to which they refer. They are not popular expositions, but rather brief notes on cer­ tain departments of natural science, to be understood and valued only by the initiated. The Bulletin is handsomely printed on good paper, in octavo form. Subscription price, $2.50 per volume. Scientific and Industrial Education. A Lecture. By G. B. Stebbins. Detroit, 1873, pp. 24. The Railroads of the United States. By Henry V. Poor. New York : H. V. & H. W. Poor, 68 Broadway, pp. 29. Cosmical and Molecular Harmonics, No. II. By Pliny Earle Chase, M. A. Philadel­ phia, 1873, pp. 16. Nickel. pp. 19. By Dr. Lewis Feuchtwanger, Diminution of Water on the Earth, and its Permament Conversion into Solid Forms. By Mrs. George W. Houk. Dayton, 0., 1873, pp. 39. Sixth Annual Report of the Trustees of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeol­ ogy and Ethnology. Cambridge, 1873, pp. Atmospheric Theory of the Open Polar 27. Mr. Gillman’s report of his explora­ Sea : with Remarks on the Present State tions of the ancient mounds on the St. Clair of the Question. By William W. Wheil- River is an important contribution to ar­ don. First Paper. Boston, 1872. chaeology. The museum is in a flourishing This paper was read at the meeting of the state, and growing steadily. The Niccolucci American Association for the Advancement collection of ancient crania and implements of Science, held at Newport, R. I., in 1860, was the most important addition made and was published in the volume of proceed­ during the past year. ings of the Association for that year. The ex­ traordinary interest taken in Arctic affairs during the past two years has led to its re­ MISCELLANY. issue in pamphlet form, with brief introduc­ Utilization of Waste Coal.—The English tory observations on the present state of the problem. Accepting the view, now quite gen­ Mechanic gives an historical sketch of the erally held, that an open sea, or at least a various processes suggested for the utiliza­ much ameliorated climate, exists in the vi­ tion of the waste of coal-mines. From this cinity of the pole, the author, in this paper, account it would appear that so early as the aims to show that such a condition of things close of the sixteenth century the waste of “ is largely if not entirely <Me to the cur­ small coal attracted notice. About the year rents of the air from the equatorial regions 1594 one Sir Hugh Platt proposed a mixture which move in the higher strata of the of coal-dust and loam, together with such earth’s atmosphere, bearing heat and moist­ combustible materials as sawdust and tan­ ure with them.” How well he succeeds in ners’ bark: the loam being the cement this undertaking, we leave the readers of which was to hold the other ingredients to­ gether. But Sir Hugh’s suggestions did not the argument to judge. receive much attention in those early times, when coal was but little, used, wood being the staple fuel of England. BOOKS RECEIVED. It was only at the beginning of the Washington Catalogue of Stars. By or­ present century that this question began to der of Rear-Admiral Sands, U. S. N. Wash­ receive serious attention. A patent was ington, 1873. then granted for a mixture of refuse coal First Annual Report of the Minnesota with charcoal, wood, breeze, tan, peat, saw­ State Board of Health. St. Paul, 1873, dust, cork-cuttings, and other inflammable pp. 102. ingredients. A capital objection to such a �MISCELLANY. scheme is its expense. The product would necessarily cost about as much per ton as good coal, without being at all as service­ able. The next attempt was the production of “gaseous coke.” Here the object was to convert small coal, by the addition of coaltar, either pure, or mixed with naphtha, into a well-mixed mass. It was then to be put into an oven and coked ; afterward it was to be broken into suitable blocks for use. There were several modifications of this process, but as they all more or less involved the previous manufacture of their most es­ sential ingredient, coal-tar, the anticipations of the projectors were not realized. In 1823 a step was taken in the right direction by the combination of bituminous and anthracite coals, and converting them, by partial carbonization in an oven, into a kind of soft coke. In 1845 Frederick Ran­ some introduced a plan for cementing to­ gether small coal by means of a solution of silica dissolved in caustic soda, the small refuse coal so treated to be then compressed into blocks suitable for use. In 1849 Henry Bessemer proposed simply to heat small coal sufficient to soften it, and thus render it capable of being easily pressed into moulds and formed into solid blocks. The coal, according to this plan, might be soft­ ened either by the action of steam or in suitable ovens. Coal alone was used, no extraneous matter of any kind being em­ ployed. In 1856 F. Ransome brought for­ ward one of the best plans yet offered. He placed the small coal in suitable moulds, which were then passed into an oven, and there heated just sufficiently to cause the mass to agglomerate. Though the writer in the Mechanic com­ mends highly the Ransome and the Besse­ mer plans, it is clear that they do not fully solve the problem, for inventors are still busy on both sides of the Atlantic devising other and better methods. Perhaps, how­ ever, the successful working of the Crans­ ton “Automatic Reverberatory Furnace,” which is adapted for the consumption of powdered coal, will cause such a demand for small coal as will leave these utilizing processes without material to work on. 779 nia of the Human Races,” and recently laid before the Paris Academy of Sciences a synopsis of the results which he there proposes to establish. The materials he has at hand for this investigation are abundant—no less than 4,000 skulls; and he acknowledges the valuable assistance rendered to him by the most eminent sa­ vants both of France and of the rest of Europe. He holds that the fossil races are not extinct, but that, on the contrary, they have yet living representatives. He regards the skull discovered in 1700 at Canstadt, near Stuttgart, as the type of the most an­ cient human race of which we have ac­ knowledge. This skull is dolichocephalous —that is, having a length greater than its breadth. With the Canstadt skull he classes those of Enghisheim, Brux, Nean­ derthal, La Denise, Staengenaes, Olmo, and Clichy—the last-named three being the skulls of females. Among the representa­ tives, in historical times, of the dolichoceph­ alous race, M. Quatrefages reckons Kay Lykke, a Danish statesman of the seven­ teenth century, whose skull is portrayed in the forthcoming work; Saint Mansuy, Bishop of Toul in the fourth century, whose skull is also figured ; and Robert Bruce. Whether the cranium is long or short—dolichoceph­ alous or brachycephalous—is a question which has nothing to do with the intel­ lectual status of the man, according to M. Quatrefages. Heart-Disease and Overwork.—The ear­ ly break-down of health observed among Cornish miners, and commonly regarded as an affection of the lungs —“ miners’ phthisis ”—is declared, by competent au­ thority, to proceed rather from disturbed action of the heart; and this, according to Dr. Houghton, the distinguished Dublin physiologist, is caused by the great and sudden strain put upon the system by the ascent from the pits, at a time when the body is not sufficiently fortified with food. In his valuable address on the “ Relation of Food to Work,” Dr. Houghton says: “ The labor of the miner is peculiar, and his food appears to me badly suited to meet its requirements. At the close of a hard day’s Qnatrefages on Human Crania.—Quatre- toil the weary miner has to climb, by verti­ fages is engaged on a work entitled “ Cra­ cal ladders, through a height of from 600 to �780 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 1,200 feet, before he can reach his cottage, where he naturally looks for his food and sleep. This climbing of the ladders is per­ formed hastily, almost as a gymnastic feat, and throws a heavy strain (amounting to from one-eighth to one-quarter of the whole day’s work) upon the muscles of the tired miner, during the half-hour or hour that con­ cludes his daily toil. A flesh-fed man (as a red Indian) would run up the ladders like a cat, using the stores of force already in re­ serve in his blood ; but the Cornish miner, who is fed chiefly upon dough and fat, finds himself greatly distressed by the climbing of the ladders—more so, indeed, than by the slower labor of quarrying in the mine. His heart, over-stimulated by the rapid exer­ tion of muscular work, beats more and more quickly in its efforts to oxidate the blood in the lungs, and so supply the force required. Local congestion of the lung it­ self frequently follows, and lays the founda­ tion for the affection so graphically though sadly described by the miner at forty years of age, who tells you that his other works are very good, but that he is ‘ beginning to leak in the valves ’ Were I a Cornish miner, and able to afford the luxury, I should train myself for the ‘ ladder-feat ’ by dining on half a pound of rare beefsteak and a glass of ale from one to two hours before com­ mencing the ascent,” San Jorge. In 1866, for instance, the vol­ cano of Santorin emitted smoke charged with acid, which produced on plants effects similar to those observed at San Jorge in 1808. A writer in the Revue Scientijique is of the opinion that the facts above stated give the solution of some of the problems raised by the exhumations at Pompeii. The strange posture of skeletons found in the streets of that town is very difficult to ac­ count for, if we insist on finding analogies with phenomena observed in modem erup­ tions of Vesuvius. A shower of ashes, how­ ever heavy, however charged with humidity, could never have thrown down and choked a strong man like the one who met his death while making his escape, in company with his two daughters, along one of the public roads. They must have inhaled a poisonous gas of some kind, which caused them to perish in fearful agony. This gas would not lie in a layer of equal thickness : in some places it might have a greater depth than in others. Hence, while some of the inhabitants would perish, the remainder would escape. It is very probable that the eruption in the year 79 was accompanied with local emissions of carbonic acid, springing from points remote from the crater. In all vol­ canic regions, says the author, there are localities where, even when the volcano is inactive, carbonic acid exists in the atmos­ phere, in quantities sufficient to produce asphyxia: and the neighborhood of Vesu­ vius is particularly noted for the number of 6uch localities. During an eruption, the amount of the gas given out is usually in­ creased, and wells, ditches, quarries, etc., are filled with carbonic acid. It is some­ times dangerous to enter cavities in the rocks on the coast when a fresh breeze does not keep them free of the poisonous gas. In 1861 Ste.-Claire Deville came near meet­ ing his death by entering one of these cavi­ ties for a few moments. The following week he and the author barely escaped being asphyxiated in the bed of a great quarry, which they had previously visited many a time with impunity. Poisonous Volcanie Gases. — During a volcanic eruption on the little island of San Jorge, one of the Azores, in the year 1808, vaporous clouds were seen to roll down the sides of the mountain, and to move along the valley. Wherever they passed, plants and animals wilted and perished instanta­ neously. From this asphyxiating action, as also from their downward movement on the mountain-side and toward the sea, we may conclude that they consisted chiefly of some dense, deleterious gas, most probably carbonic acid. Their opacity is to be at­ tributed to the presence of watery vapor, and their reddish color to the presence of tine volcanic dust. Finally, their injurious action on plants was doubtless owing to the presence of chlorhydric and sulphurous acid. Similar phenomena have been observed on occasion of other volcanic outbreaks, A Relie of Ancient Etrurian Art. — An but nowhere so marked as in the case of antiquarian discovery of very considerable �MISCELLANY. interest was recently made at Cervetri, Italy, being a terra-cotta sarcophagus of native Etruscan production. The ancient Etrurians were noted for the honor they bestowed upon their dead, and their custom of paying homage to ancestors by placing their effigies upon their tombs seems to have been peculiar to themselves, and un­ known among the Greeks. The recentlydiscovered sarcophagus is now in the British Museum. It measures internally four feet ten inches in length, and two feet in width. The floor is hollowed out, or rather marked by a raised border, which takes the form of a human figure. It rests upon four claw feet projecting beyond the angles, and ter­ minating above in the head and breasts of a winged siren. The lid of the sarcophagus represents an upholstered couch upon which recline two human figures, male and female. There are inscriptions on the four sides of the couch. The panel at the foot has the figures of two warriors in panoply, and the front panel exhibits the same pair of war­ riors engaged in mortal combat. Several accessory figures are also to be seen. On the panel at the head of the couch are rep­ resented four sitting figures in opposing pairs, plunged in deep sorrow. The monu­ ment has no counterpart among those of its kind hitherto discovered, the only one at all resembling it being that of the Campana Collection in the Louvre. The latter is, however, of a much more recent date than the former, nor is it adorned with either reliefs or inscriptions. The Cervetri sar­ cophagus probably dates from the period of Etruscan ascendency in Italy. Audible and Inaudible Sounds.—The phenomenon of color-blindness is a familiar fact; but an analogous phenomenon, what might be called pitch-deafness, though not uncommon, is not so generally known. By •Ditch-deafness is meant insensibility to cer­ tain sound-vibrations. Prof. Donaldson, of the University of Edinburgh, used to illus­ trate the different grades of sensibility to sound by a very simple experiment, namely, by sounding a set of small organ-pipes of great acuteness of tone. The gravest note would be sounded first, and this would be heard by the entire class. Soon some one would remark, “ There, ’tis silent,” whereas 781 all the rest, perhaps, would distinctly hear the shrill piping continued. As the tone rose, one after another of the students would lose sensation of the acute sounds, until finally they became inaudible to all. There is reason for supposing that per­ sons whose ear is sensitive to very acute sounds are least able to hear very grave notes, and vice versa. Probably the hear­ ing capacity of the human ear ranges over no more than 12 octaves. The gravest note audible to the human ear is supposed to represent about 15 vibrations per second, and the sharpest 48,000 per second. The auditory range of animals is doubt­ less very different from that of man; they hear sounds which are insensible to us, and vice versa. Many persons are insensible to the scream of the bat—it is too acute. But to the bat itself that sound must be in all cases perfectly sensible. If, then, we sup­ pose the bat to have an auditory range of 12 octaves, and its scream or cry to stand midway in that range, the animal would hear tones some six octaves higher than those audible to the human ear—two and a half million vibrations per second. Scoresby and other arctic voyagers and whale-hunters have observed that whales have some means of communicating with one another at great distances. It is prob­ able that the animals bellow in a tone too grave for the human ear, but quite within the range of the cetacean ear. The Motions of the Heart.—According to the generally-accepted teachings of phys­ iologists, the heart rests after each pulsa­ tion ; that is, each complete contraction during which the auricles are emptied into the ventricles, and the ventricles into the vessels, is followed by a moment’s repose, when the organ is entirely at rest. Dr. J. Bell Pettigrew, in his recently-published lectures on the “ Physiology of the Circula­ tion,” takes a different view, affirming that the normal action of the heart is a con­ tinuous one, and that as a whole it never ceases to act until it comes to a final stop. He says : “ When the heart is beating nor­ mally, one or other part of it is always mov­ ing. When the veins cease to close, and the auricles to open, the auricles begin to close and the ventricles to open ; and so on �782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. in endless succession. In order to admit of these changes, the auriculo-ventricular valves, as has been stated, rise and fall like the diaphragm in respiration; the valves protruding, now into the auricular cavities, now into the ventricular ones. There is in reality no pause in the heart’s action. The one movement glides into the other as a snake glides into the grass. All that the eye can detect is a quickening of the gliding movements, at stated and very short inter­ vals. A careful examination of the sounds of the heart shows that the sounds, like the movements, glide into each other. There is no actual cessation of sound when the heart is in action. There are periods when the sounds are very faint, and when only a sharp or an educated ear can detect them, and there are other periods when the sounds are so distinct that even a dull person must hear; but the sounds—and this is the point to be attended to—merge into each other by slow or sudden transitions. It would be more accurate, when speaking of the movements and sounds of the heart, to say they are only faintly indicated at one time, and strongly emphasized at another, but that neither ever altogether ceases. If, however, the heart is acting more or less vigorously as a whole, the question which naturally presents itself is, How is the heart rested ? There can be little doubt it rests, as it acts, viz., in parts. The centripetal and centrif­ ugal wave-movements pass through the sarcous elements of the different portions of the heart very much as the wind passes through the leaves : its particles are stirred in rapid succession, but never at exactly the same instant; the heart is moving as a whole, but its particles are only moving at regular and stated intervals ; the periods of repose, there is every reason to believe, greatly exceeding the periods of activity. The nourishment, life, and movements of the heart are, in this sense, synonymous.” phere being represented as 100), he found the birds seized with violent convulsions. The same result followed when sparrows were confined in common air under a press­ ure of 17 atmospheres. In oxygen, at 3| atmospheres’ pressure, or in air at 22 at­ mospheres, the convulsions were extremely violent and quickly fatal. The symptoms in the latter case were these: Convulsions set in after four or five minutes: in moving about, the bird hobbles on its feet, as though walking on hot coals. It then flut­ ters its wings, falls on its back, and spins about, the claws doubled up. Death super­ venes after a few such spasms. The toxic dose of oxygen for a dog was found to require, for convulsions, a pressure of 350 in oxygen; and a pressure of 500 is fatal. The amount of oxygen in the arterial blood of a dog in convulsions was found to be considerably less than twice the normal quantity. Hence the author’s startling con­ clusion, that oxygen is the mostfearful poison known. Taking a dog in full convulsion out of the receiver, M. Bert found the paws rigid, the body bent backward in the shape of an arch, the eyes protruding, pupil dilated, jaws clinched. Soon there is relaxation, followed by another crisis, combining the symptoms of strychnine-poisoning and of lockjaw. The convulsionary periods, at first recurring every five or six minutes, be­ come gradually less violent and less fre­ quent. The author sums up his conclusions as follows : 1. Oxygen behaves like a rapidlyfatal poison, when its amount in the arte­ rial blood is about 35 cubic centimetres per cent, of the liquid; 2. The poisoning is characterized by convulsions which repre­ sent, according to the intensity of the symp­ toms, the various types of tetanus, epilepsy, poisoning by phrenic acid and strychnine, etc.; 3. These symptoms, which are allayed by chloroform, are due to an exaggeration of the excito-motor power of the spinal cord; 4. They are accompanied by a considerable and constant diminution of the internal tem­ perature of the animal. Poisoning by Oxygen.—M. Paul Bert, whose observations upon the physiological effects of high atmospheric pressure we have already noted in the Monthly, communi­ cates to the Paris Academy of Sciences the Infant Mortality.—During the year 1868, results of his observations on the toxic ac­ tion of oxygen. Placing sparrows in oxygen 23,198 children under one year of age, under a pressure of 850 (that of the atmos­ died by convulsions in England, the num­ �NOTES. ber of births being 786,858—one in 34. In the same year the births in Scotland were 115,514, and only.312 infants under one year—one in 370—fell victims to con­ vulsions. This striking difference in the mortality statistics of the two countries is accounted for in a report of the Scottish Registrar-General by the difference between the English and the Scottish modes of rear­ ing infants. “ The English,” he writes, “ are in the habit of stuffing their babies with spoon-meat almost from birth, while the Scotch, excepting in cases where the mother is delicate, or the child is out nurs­ ing, w isely give nothing but the mother’s milk till the child begins to cut its teeth.” The statistics of infantile deaths from diarrhoea may also be adduced as an argu­ ment in favor of the Scottish system. In England more than twice as many infants die of this disorder than in Scotland. On comparing these statistics with those of the last United States census, it will be seen that the chances of life for infants in their first year are far more favorable in this country than in England, though not so favorable as in Scotland. In the year end­ ing May 31, 1870, there were born in the United States 1,100,475 children. Of these there died, during the same year 4,863 by convulsions, and 1,534 by diarrhoea, or one in 236 from the former cause, and one in 724 from the latter. In England the deaths from diarrhoea amounted to 138 in 100,000 infants, and in Scotland to 66 in the same number. It will be seen, on computation, that the proportion of deaths from this cause are by a very small fraction less in the United States than in Scotland. But now are we to attribute these very credita­ ble results to our more rational system of rearing children, or to the better social con­ dition of the population here ? 783 He has the testimony of fifty-six witnesses who saw the young enter the parent’s mouth. Of these fifty-six, nineteen testify that they heard the parent snake warning her young of danger by a loud whistle. Two of the witnesses waited to see the young emerge again from their refuge, after the danger was past; and one of them went again and again to the snake’s haunt, ob­ serving the same act on several successive days. Four saw the young rush out when the parent was struck ; eighteen saw the young shaken out by dogs, or escaping from the mouth of their dead parent. These tes­ timonies are confirmed by the observations of scientific men, such as Prof. Smith, of Yale College, Dr. Palmer, of the Smithsonian Institution, and others. NOTES. The year 1759, which witnessed the completion of the Eddystone Lighthouse, closed with tremendous storms, and the courage of the light-keepers was tested to the utmost. A biography of John Smeaton, the builder of the Eddystone, states that for twelve days the sea ran over them so much that they could not open the door of the lantern, or any other door. “The house did shake,” said one of the keepers, “ as if we had been up a great tree. The old men were frightened out of their lives, wishing they had never seen the place. The fear seized them in the back, but rub­ bing them with oil of turpentine gave them relief!” Sir Charles Lyell, in his “ Geology,” speaking of Madagascar, says that, with two or three small islands in its immediate vicin­ ity, it forms a zoological sub-province, in which all the species except one, and nearly all the genera, are peculiar. He singles out for special remark the lemurs of Madagas­ car, comprising seven genera, only one of which has any representatives on the nearest main-land of Africa. Hitherto no fossil re­ mains of these Madagascar species have Snakes swallowing their Young.—The been known to exist, but M. Delfortrie, of question, “ Do snakes swallow their young ?” the French Academy of Sciences, announces that he has found, in the phosphorite of that is, give them shelter in the maternal the department of Lot, an almost complete stomach when danger threatens, was dis­ skull of an individual belonging to this lecussed in a paper presented to the Ameri­ murine family. can Association by G. Brown Goode. The Of the 35,170,294 passengers carried author some time since asked, through the over the railroads of Pennsylvania last year, public press, for testimony bearing on this only thirty-three were killed, less than one subject, and he now comes forward with in a million. But the English lines make a far more favorable showing, the number what appears to be perfectly satisfactory killed in the year 1871 being only twelve—■ evidence in favor of the affirmative side. or one in 31,000,000. �784 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. In the “ History of the Fishes of the Brit­ ish Islands,” Giraldus Cambrensis, a writer of the twelfth century, is quoted for the• observation that in the Lyn y Cwn, or Pool1 of Dogs, in Wales, the trout, the perch, andI the eel, were deficient of the left eye. A recent work on “ Trout and Salmon Fishing; in Wales,” strangely enough, confirms in part this observation, asserting that one-• eyed trout are still caught in the same waters. Professor Smee recently, at the Berlin Chemical Society, proposed a method for detecting organic matters contained in the air, and for effecting at the same time a kind of distillation by cold. A glass fun­ nel, closed at its narrow end, is held sus­ pended in the air and filled with ice. The moisture of the air is condensed, in contact with the exterior surface; it trickles to the bottom of the apparatus, and falls into a small basin placed for its reception. The liquid obtained in a given time is weighed. It generally contains ammonia, which is de­ termined by known methods. Distillation by cold may be employed for separating volatile substances which might be injured by heat. Thus, if flowers are placed under a large bell-glass along with the refrigerat­ ing funnel, a liquid is obtained in the basin saturated with the odorous principles of the flowers. At various points on the river Thames, between Woolwich and Erith, there are visible at low water the remains of a sub­ merged forest, over which the river now flows. This fact, taken in connection with other local phenomena, has led geologists to conclude that the present outlet of the Thames to the North Sea is of quite recent origin, the waters having formerly passed southward into the Weald by channels which still remain. Excavations in the marshes expose to view a deep stratum of twigs, leaves, seed-vessels, and stools of trees, chiefly of the yew, alder, and oak kinds. A traveller in Zanzibar describes the red and black ants as one of the greatest scourges with which Eastern Africa is af­ flicted. These insects, he says, move along the roads in masses so dense that beasts of burden refuse to step among them. If the traveller should fail to see them coming, in time to make his escape, he soon finds them swarming about his person. Sometimes, too, they ascend the trees and drop upon the wayfarer. The natives call them madinodo, that is, boiling water, to signify the scalding sensation produced by their bite. These ants are of great size, and burrow so deep into the flesh that it is not easy to pick them out. In certain forests they are said to exist in such numbers as to be able to destroy rats and lizards. An eccentric and methodical man is Dr. Rudolf, Danish governor of Upernavik, Greenland. Dr. Rudolf is a scientist of some distinction, and has contributed his share to the scientific literature of his own coun­ try, yet it is his choice to live in a region where darkness prevails four months in the year, and where he can have no communication with civilized life beyond the annual visit from the government storeship, and the casual arrival of whalers. By the storeship the governor receives annually a file of Danish newspapers; but instead of glan­ cing through them hastily, he takes a fresh journal every morning, reading the Dagblad of Jan. 1, 1872, on Jan. 1, 1873. He thus follows, day for day, the changes in the mind of Denmark: is glad in the order in which Copenhagen is glad, and vice versa, but al­ ways precisely twelve months after the event. If the white of an egg be immersed for some 12 hours in cold water, it undergoes a chemico-molecular change, becoming solid and insoluble. The hitherto transparent albumen assumes an opaque and snow-white appearance, far surpassing that of the ordi­ nary egg. Dr. John Goodman, writing in the Chemical News, recommends this mate­ rial for diet in cases where a patient’s blood lacks fibrine. The substance being light and easily digested, it is not rejected even by a feeble stomach; and as it creates a feeling of want rather than of repletion, it pro­ motes, rather than decreases, the appetite for food. After the fibrine has been pro­ duced in the manner described above, it must be submitted to the action of a boil­ ing heat, and is then ready for use. One of the great dangers attending the use of the various sedatives employed in the nursery is that they tend to produce the opium-habit. These quack medicines owe their soothing and quieting effects to the action of opium, and the infant is by them given a morbid appetite for narcotic stimulants. The offering for sale of such nostrums should be prohibited, as tending to the physical and moral deterioration of the race. In India mothers give to their infants sugar-pills containing opium, and the result is a languid, sensual race of hope­ less debauchees. In the United States the poisonous dose is administered under an­ other name ; but the consequences will prob­ ably be the same. During last autumn, says the Journal of ithe Society of Arts, there were no less than 1 seventeen companies engaged in extracting j gold from the auriferous sand of Finland. 'The alluvial deposits at Toalo are said to be <extremely rich in gold, the total production 1last season being estimated at about $50,000. <One of the companies returned a dividend <of 70 per cent The largest nugget weighed t40 grammes. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; 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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 3, October 1873 Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [Harlan, Iowa] Collation: [657]-784 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Complete issue. Contents: Silk-worms and sericulture / A. de Quatrefages -- Mental science and sociology / Herbert Spencer -- A national university / Charles Eliot -- Agassiz and Darwinism / John Fiske -- The primary concepts of modern physical science / J.B. Stallo -- Finding the way at sea / R.A. Proctor -- Secular prophecy [from Saturday Review] -- Sympathetic vibrations in machinery / Prof. J. Lovering -- Speculation in science / Prof. J. Lawrence Smith -- The glaciers and their investigation / Prof. John Tyndall -- The Moon / Richard A. Proctor. The Popular Science is an American bi-monthly magazine carrying popular science content, which refers to articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects; edited by Joe Brown. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1873 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D. Appleton and Company Subject The topic of the resource Science Periodicals Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 3, October 1873), 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> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5426 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Science https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/2d9b20d6e91b5bf1860644f2c3087cc1.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=tRRDEN4-ygcNc8zauXJc%7E%7EJt773kZSjk9MXK3cAfaf4pdHlEo0hOgBl6D1H3OB7bDKMERu379AbVNnfVftk35hEDZRrxgdFp-Zb7hYJw7uC5og6dsCmBF6D1t9FWcIH%7EHVE49kX9uOSh%7EHzjbxRLM2vZ7bTF9cahPXFQ-mH-aoE0dOZRU3VufTRasXQkeMrrNK4kNWb2ZrQnEwP-SuE4ApQVFFdU8LuH9-E8ZuDmKeYoP3wKXuytBFBVTvLUuqH9Og0xjk3vqxWJuUiVdYqySeZOYvJdenVPRep8lohgJArPtA9U5fgDG%7E-Rs99KTPZyAQS%7EWH%7EV0epRavoo7q5R-Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c7ce4aa88d0a9958c6361260961219a7 PDF Text Text CT m THE PENTATEUCH IN CONTRAST WITH THE SCIENCE AND MORAL SENSE OF OUR AGE. By A PHYSICIAN. “ Zufallige Geschichtswahrheiten konnen der Beweis von nothwendigen Vernunftswahrheiten nie werden ”—Contingent historical truths can never be demonstration of necessary rational truths.—Lessing. ' PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. 1873. Price Sixpence. �LONDON! PRINTED BY C. W. RBYNELL, 16 LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET, W. �Exodus: The Decalogue. 205 “Honour thy father and thy mother”:—a com­ mandment natural, beautiful, good and proper in itself assuredly, but unhappily immediately marred by the context which adds : “ that thy days may be long in the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee;” as if there were no finer sense of duty or moral obligation in question, and the merely selfish or animal element in the nature of man were the only ground of appeal for its observance ! The commandment, as it stands, is not unconditional, as it ought to be, but is weighted with a motive, and so meets us in guise of a compact or bargain, much of the same kind as that which Jacob proffers for the acceptance of his God when he sets up the stone Pillar at Beth-El, and vows a vow, saying, “ If God will keep me in the way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, &c., then shall Jehovah be my God.” (Gen. xxviii. 20, 22). “ Thou shalt not kill.” “ Thou shalt not commit adultery.” “ Thou shalt not steal.” Respect for life, respect for that which is won by industry and thrift—property in the proper sense of the word ; and respect for the sanctity of the hearth and all that pertains to it,—these the Hebrew writer sees as the foundations on which human society rests. Propounded in this place as coming immediately from God, these laws, comprised as they are in the primary nature of man, are in complete accordance with the necessities and contingencies amid which he lives. More than one of them, indeed, appears to obtain even among certain of the sociable lower animals. Unhappily they are not all, and at all times, so carefully observed among ourselves as they deserve to be. How little they were regarded by the early Hebrews, is seen throughout the whole course of their history,—from the murderous invasion of Palestine and the rapine that accompanied it; the treachery of Simeon and Levi when they slew the Sechemites; the terrible order of Moses to the Q �206 The Pentateuch. Levites to consecrate themselves to Jehovah and earn a blessing by slaying their sons, their brothers, and their neighbours ; the wholesale murders perpe­ trated by such heroes as Samson, Gideon, Samgar, and the rest; the individual homicides of Moses and Phinehas, and Jael and Judith ; the incestuous acts of Reuben and Amnon; the cruelty, vindictiveness, unforgiveness, and adultery of David, &c., &c. “ Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” Nothing, undoubtedly, can be imagined more im­ moral and reprehensible in itself, or more adverse to the security of settled life, than false witness-bearing. Such a commandment, however imperative in a policied state of society, could obviously have had little application among nomads in the wilderness. Its place in the Decalogue consequently gives us another assurance of the late date at which this summary was composed and promulgated. “ Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his man­ servant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s.” The injunction against covetousness in general is a decided advance, in a moral point of view, on all that had gone before, and may be said to anticipate the high tone of feeling presumed possible in humanity by Jesus of Nazareth when he said that whosoever lusted unlawfully had already committed the sin in his heart. But it may not be impertinent to observe that the commandments against false witness-bearing and covetousness are not propounded as of universal application. It is his neighbour alone that the Jew is to have in respect. It was even held lawful to spoil the Egyptians; was it not, perchance, lawful also to swear falsely against them, and to covet their men- and maid-servants, their asses and their oxen. The Israelites are repeatedly enjoined to keep these commandments ? �Exodus: The Decalogue. 207 Repeatedly, but never on the ground of moral pro­ priety or unconditional necessity. It is always in prospect of some material advantage or return : that they may have long lives, that they may have a numerous progeny, that they may be victorious over their enemies, that they may escape Jehovah’s anger, and not become victims of pestilence, famine, or the sword. The Decalogue, however, comprised but a very small part of the Hebrew legislation. Almost every particular in the life of the Jewish people, even to its most private and intimate relationships, is touched upon and regulated; practices being in several places denounced that proclaim a state of morals to have prevailed among the people which shocks the higher and more delicate feelings happily current in these our days. Slavery is one of the subjects particularly referred to ? Slavery was an authorised institution among the Jews, as it continues to be among so many other bar­ barous and half-civilised peoples at the present time; notable, however, in the case of the chosen seed, as countenanced and regulated by their God. What is remarkable, too, is this : That Jewish slaves were not only obtained from abroad, but were purchased from among themselves. Parents were even authorised to sell their sons and daughters into slavery. The native Hebrew slave, however, had privileges of his own, for when he had served six years he recovered his freedom. Had he fallen into slavery having neither wife nor child, he then went out as he had come ; but had he married and had had sons and daughters born to him during the term of his servitude, the children went not with him : they were the master’s property, and—hard measure—the husband and father only ob­ tained permission to remain with his wife and children by vowing himself to slavery for the rest of his life! Resolving to share their fate, a particular ceremony was gone through ? �20 8 The Pentateuch. The man being brought before the judge, and, we may presume, a declaration made and implemented, his ear was then bored through with an awl against the door-post, to signify his ascription to the house for ever, and the ceremony was complete. The Israelites were in the habit not only of selling their daughters as slaves, but as concubines ? “ If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant [concubine, as appears by the context], she shall not go out as the men-servants [slaves] do,”—to labour in the fields, doubtless. She is to do the indoor-work of the house and be her master’s bed-fellow. If she pleased not her master, however, “who hath betrothed her to himself,” or if she ceased to find favour in his eyes, she might be redeemed [euphemism for bought] by another ; or she might be handed over to the owner’s son; but she was not to be sold to one of a strange nation. Did her owner, notwithstanding his disgust, continue to keep her, having taken to himself another wife, he was to provide her with food and raiment, and still to comport himself towards her in all things else as a husband. .Failing in any of these particulars, the woman was free to go ; but it was to be “ without money,” i.e., without a provision from the man to whom she had been as a wife. An easy way, therefore, lay open to the peculiar people of ridding themselves of disagreeable wives or concu­ bines : they had but to neglect to be quit of them. Did a man smite another so that he died, the offender was to be put to death ? So it is said, but with important reservations; for if the smiter had not lain in wait for his enemy, but “ God had delivered him into his hands,” that is, had he come upon him unawares and slain him, then was he to have a place of refuge to flee to, Jehovah himself being held in this case to have thrown the obnoxious party in the slayer’s way, and given him the required opportunity to wreak his vengeance on his enemy. �Exodus: Domestic Legislation. 209 “ If, in striving together, one man smite another with a stone or his fist, and he die not, but keep his bed, if he rise again and walk abroad upon his staff, then he that smote him shall be quit; only he shall pay him for loss of time and his healing ”—surely an equitable law, though something more might possibly in many cases have been required. Did a man smite his servant or his maid (his male or female slave) with a rod, and he or she died under his hand, then was the smiter to be surely punished ; but, did the servant or the maid “ continue fora day or two,” he was not to be punished, for the servant or maid “ is his money.” A notable distinction this between a cause im­ mediate and a cause a little more remote, and made on grounds that excite our wonder in the present day when met with in a book still believed by so many to be the word of God to man ; to have been composed under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, whatever meaning is attached to the phrase, and to be used as among the prime and indispensable instruments in the education of the young. The slave, however, was not even thus indifferently protected, save when his life was endangered ? Did a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, says the inspired text, so that it perish, he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake ! Worse we are to understand might have befallen the unhappy slave, and he was, therefore, to be well content that he had only lost an eye. The same pleasant award is made in case the loss were the minor one of a tooth ? Did the owner smite out his man-servant’s tooth, or his maid-servant’s tooth, he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake I Did a man strive with and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit departed from her, and no far­ ther mischief followed, he was to be surely punished �210 'The Pentateuch. as the woman’s husband should lay upon him, or, “ he shall pay as the judge determines,” but if other mis­ chief followed—if the woman died, then should life be given for life. This paying of like with like was a general prin­ ciple in the ancient Israelitish legislation ? Not carried out to the letter in every case, however, as we have seen above, still it is said : Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe,—the Zea? tdlionis, in a. word, was the rule. But the savage nature of the precept, though delivered as from God, and the evils to which it necessarily led, were seen through by more than one of the later Prophets, and the moral teacher of Nazareth expunged it from the code of humanity for ever when he said : “It was said of old, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth ; but I say unto you, do good to them that hate you,” &c. (Matt, v.) If we perchance see that this is carrying matters somewhat far, we are still within the pale of our proper humanity when we abstain from returning evil with the like. Among these ancient ordinances or laws ascribed to Moses, though a few of them only can be presumed to date from of old, there is one that is completely in harmony with what seems natural right, though entirely ignored by modern legislation ? That which says in these terms : “ If a man entice a maid that is not betrothed and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife” (Exod. xxii. 16.) Were such a law now on the statute book there would certainly be less seduction practised, and fewer bastard children brought into the world. If union of bodies be the sole bond of marriage, as it is acknow­ ledged to be by our laws—ceremonies and parchments going for nothing, but being mere shams or makebelieves, would it not be logical were the fact of such union having taken place to be constituted legal marriage in every instance ? �Exodus : General Legislation. 211 Such being God’s or Nature’s law, there can be but one consistent answer to the question. An ordinance follows those we have on matters connubial which had long a most disastrous influence on human society ? That which says: “ Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” A witch ! what is a witch ? An old woman presumed to be possessed of super­ natural power of a wicked or maleficent kind. We have no such personage among us now ? The kind became extinct when physical science was born. The last reputed English witch was judicially murdered by a learned but credulous judge about two centuries ago—'Warning for all time that pre­ scriptive learning and legal eminence are no safeguards against superstition and its offspring inhumanity. The learned judge in the instance referred to, as in others—and they are legion—that had gone before, only followed in all simplicity and blind sincerity the injunction he found in his Bible, and administered the law of the land, based, like his belief, on its text ? No question of this. But the bad law has been abrogated, and the judge is now pitied for his cre­ dulity ; the belief in witches and witchcraft having died out from among the cultivated, though it still lingers among the imperfectly educated and the vulgar, kept alive as it is by the authority of the book which the clergy and ignorant laity alike continue to force on the world as inspired by God, and as the absolute guide in morals and religion, which the open-eyed see that it most assuredly is not. There is another ordinance among these reliques of old and barbarous times that must have wrung the hearts of parents, and brought mourning into the homes of men through countless ages of the ancient world ? �212 The Pentateuch. The one we have seen attempted to be particularly connected with the escape from Egypt and the insti­ tution of the Passover, which says : “ The first-born of thy sons shalt thou give unto me, likewise of thine oxen and thy sheep; seven days it shall be with his dam, on the eighth thou shatt give it unto me.” Of the terrible meaning hidden in these words we have already had occasion to speak, and found it not doubtful that “ giving to the God ” in ancient times meant sacrifice upon his altar. And it is to be noted that the ordinance as it stands in this—one of the least manipulated parts of the Hebrew Scriptures,— makes no provision for redemption by substitution or by money : the first-born of man and beast, by the oldest Hebrew statute we possess, was Glierem to the God ; and that which was cherem could not be redeemed, but must surely be put to death. The word in the original which is softened down in the English version into “ set apart,” means burned :— the blood as the life was poured out about the altar, and the body burned upon its fire as an offering of a sweet savour to the El God,—Baal (Saturn), or Molech. So late as the days of the prophet Ezekiel, the redemption clause made no part of the text; it was interpolated after his day. * Sacrifice we know, by the universal practice of ancient peoples, to have been among the oldest, as it was also believed to be the most potent of all the means possessed by man of propitiating the God he feared as having power to do him good or ill ? It was so unquestionably, especially among the Semitic tribes that peopled Western Asia, and the more precious the offering, whether in itself or to the giver, the higher rose the claim upon the God for favour through its means. But the life of a human being was obviously of far more’ worth than that of a �Exodus: Human Sacrifices. 213 beast, and the life of a man’s own child priceless to him in comparison with any other human life. Hence the value attached to human sacrifice in general, but, above and beyond all other, to the sacrifice of a son by his father. Ideas of the same nature appear to have continued to influence men’s minds and their acts up to relatively recent epochs in religious history ? That they have done so is as unquestionable as that they continue to do so at the present hour. Ecclesi­ astical Christianity has no other foundation. The “ crowning sacrifice,” as the death of their Christ is characterised by the churches, has been well said by an able and learned writer to perpetuate an ancient rite in its most appalling form, making of a merciful God a ruthless demon, and giving to the purely moral doctrine of Jesus of Nazareth the character of a religion of Molech. * In the later periods of the Jewish History, however, as we have it, the first-born of men were ordered to be redeemed ? They were so, and Jehovah is even made by one of the later prophets to repudiate the claim to all that opened the matrix which is put into his mouth by the earlier writer: “ They caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I commanded them not.” (Jerem. xxxii. 35). Such a rite as the ever-recurring sacrifice of a new-born babe, the first of its parents, wore too terrible an aspect to continue as an institution after some little progress had been made from utterly barbarous to more civilised life. Substitution was, doubtless, the first step taken in favour of the human victim, and among the Hebrews may even be supposed to have preceded the circum­ cision, or partial sacrifice, and the money price that were finally paid to the priest in its stead. But it Mackay, 1 Progress of the Intellect,’ ii., 460. �214 The Pentateuch. was not among the Israelites alone that redemption of the human subject from immolation to the God by­ means of a substitute or a payment in money came at length to be effected. We have evidence of a like advance in ideas leading to like results in practice among other ancient peoples. If in the Hebrew legends we have the ram caught in the thicket as a substitute for Isaac on the point of being sacrificed by his father Abraham—a tale of very modern inven­ tion, as has been hinted, the name of Abraham not * having been known to the Jews before the days of David—in those of Greece we find Athamas spared the trial of sacrificing his son Phrixos, the divinity in his now more placable aspect consenting, like Jehovah, to receive a ram instead of the youth. Iphigenia, too, in some of the myths, escapes her impending doom by the goddess at whose shrine she was to have bled, accepting a hind in her place. Belonging to still earlier periods, perhaps, there is, further, the myth of Jupiter Laphisteus, to whom Rhea presents a stone in swaddling bands instead of the customary new-born child,—Jupiter Laphisteus, in whom we not only recognise the Chronos and Saturnus of the Aryan race, but the El-Elijon, the Chijun, Chamos, Baal, and Molech of the Semites under another name. In the Egyptian records, still farther, we have the story of the Three Candles burnt to the Sun God in his temple at On, in lieu of the Three Men who, from immemorial times, had been the daily sacrifice at his shrine. These legendary and mythical tales all proclaim the advance that may have been made somewhat simultaneously among the better policied and more civilised peoples of the ancient world in their ideas of what might be truly acceptable to their gods ? Very possibly : Substitution—an animal for a human * Vide Our Genesis, page 70-71. �Exodus : Human Sacrifices. 215 being; Circumcision—Sacrifice of a small but signifi­ cant part for the whole ; Presentation at the shrine with an Initiatory rite of no more moment than the sprinkling with a little water—still practised in these days, and a Money payment to the priest—still also part of the ceremony.—Such, in all likelihood, were successive steps, proclaiming advances in the Religious Idea, due, undoubtedly, to progress in the knowledge of Nature, as well as in civilisation and general refine­ ment among mankind. Human victims, however, long continued in ancient times to be offered to the Gods on extraordinary occasions ? No longer presented as the rule, they nevertheless continued to be offered occasionally and exceptionally. In entering on their wars, some of the ancient peoples seem to have thought that an oblation of the kind to the God of Slaughter was a due and necessary pre­ liminary. Achilles, as we read in the Iliad, offered up a number of his Trojan captives to Ares ; and Themistocles, in less mythical times, sacrificed three distinguished Persian prisoners to Dionysus on the eve of the battle of Salamis. After his victory over Antony, Augustus, to propitiate the manes of the deified Caesar, sacrificed three hundred victims of senatorial and equestrian rank upon his altar. Commodus offered up a human victim with his own hand in the Mithriac mysteries to which he was attached ; and Heliogabalus, two centuries after the Christian era, had the sons of some of the most distinguished families of Italy brought to Rome and sacrificed in the Syriac mysteries which supplied the fashion of his religious clothing. In the Hebrew history we have the story of Mesha, King of Moab, besieged in his capital and sorely pressed by the Israelites, sacrificing his son and heir, dressed in the royal robes, upon the wall in sight of the besiegers, and with such effect that they, indignant, alarmed, and satisfied that no �2l6 The Pentateuch. further effort on their part would now avail them— the God being necessarily propitiated by so distin­ guished a victim—raised the siege and departed home. Is it needful, in fine, to allude to the great sacrifice which the successors of the Jewish sect having Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph, for their teacher, believe to have been offered to Jehovah as a propitiation for the sins of mankind; or to speak of the fiery deaths of heretics and so-called blasphemers in modern times, as other than offerings to appease the offended majesty of God ?—Ordinary criminals were beheaded or hanged; they to whom heresy or blasphemy was imputed were done to death by fire. What may be said to be the general character of the many commandments or ordinances that now follow in the book of Exodus ? That many of them are good and humane, some of them childish, and a few positively wicked. But all obviously are not by the same hand ; numerous inter­ polations in favour of the Levitical caste and the priesthood being especially conspicuous. There is further such incongruity between so many of the commandments and the circumstances of the times in which they are generally presumed to have been promulgated, that it is easy to see they cannot all date from the days of Moses. They are, indeed, mostly and very distinctly adapted to a people policied in a certain sense, settled in fixed homes, and having the culture of the soil for their principal occupation, not to a multitude wandering in the wilderness, destitute of everything, and only kept from perishing of hunger and thirst by reiterated miraculous interpositions—a multitude who could not possibly have brought ripe fruits and fermented liquors, the produce of carefully tended vineyards and fields, nor consumed in smoke upon the altars of their God holocausts of the bullocks, sheep, and �Exodus : Sources of the Legislation. 217 goats which, had they had them, were so much wanted for their own subsistence. What lands, among other items spoken of in the legislation, could they have had at this time either to till or to leave untilled ; with what were they to hold high festival three times in the year, when they had neither leavened nor unleavened bread to eat; what could they have sown, what reaped in the waterless wilder­ ness ; and how could they have appeared otherwise than empty-handed at all times before Jehovah ? Let us cease to think of these ancient writings as con­ temporaneous with the still more ancient times and circumstances they pretend to portray ! All, indeed, seems plainly enough to imply that the legislation ascribed to Moses or referred to his age must have been the product of much more modern times ? Such a cenclusion is inevitable. There is, never­ theless, so much that is old in the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd Chapters of the Book of Exodus that they have together been referred in the main to ancient docu­ ments, believed to have been extant in the time of the authors of the text in its present form. * Moses is now called up into the mountain along with Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the Elders of Israel; but Moses alone is admitted to the presence of Jehovah, the rest being ordered to worshp afar off. In spite of this, however, and very incon­ sistently as it seems, we are by and by informed that the Elders of Israel saw God and he laid not his * Compare particularly Dr Davidson’s Introduction to the Old Testament: ‘Authorship and Composition of the Penta­ teuch,’ Vol. I., p. 1—134; Knobel’s ‘ Kurzgefasstes Exegetisches Handbuch zum alten Testament—Die Bucher Exodus and Leviticus,’ 8vo, Leipz. 1857; Kuehnen, ‘Hist, critique des Livres de l’Ancien Testament,’ Trad, de l’Hollandais par M. A. Pierson, .Torn. I.; the Bishop of Natal’s exhaustive work, ‘The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua,’ and the learned Dr Kalisch’s ‘ Commentaries on Exodus and Leviticus.’ �218 The Pentateuch. hand on them; they saw God and yet did eat and drink! Saw God ! What man has ever seen God, save in the manifestations made of his Being and Agency in the things of heaven and earth, and in their various properties or aptitudes ? If we are not informed in so many words that it was an Image of their God that was seen by the Elders, the context seems to show that it could have been nothing else; for, under his feet, it is said, “they saw as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness ”—the similitude of the God, in a word, relieved by the clear blue sky. Or, did the Elders of Israel perchance see more of the Infinite body of God than appears in the expanse of heaven—called Dyaus by our far off Aryan Ancestors, Zeus and Deus by their descendants, the Greeks and Romans ? If it was not an Image on which they looked they certainly saw no more of God —the Infinite, the Eternal—than meets man’s eye when he gazes on the depths of endless space. But this is not what is meant in the text. The ancient Hebrews, like modern Christians, thought of God as a Person, and so, perforce, possessed of parts and proportions, as well as of the intellectual and moral endowments they owned themselves. The Elders see Jehovah, however, as said, and sur­ vive the sight; but Moses alone is allowed to come into his immediate presence. And there upon the mountain, shrouded by a cloud, he remains according to the record for forty days and forty nights, without meat or drink—a long time if we measure it by what we knpw of aught that passed between his God and him. Jehovah, it is said, bids Moses speak to the chil­ dren of Israel and order them to bring offerings of gold, silver and brass, of blue, purple and scarlet fine linen, of goats’ hair, rams’ skins dyed red and badgers’ �Exodus : The Ark of the Testimony. 219 skins, of shittim wood, oil for the lights, spices for the anointing oil, ingredients for sweet incense, onyx stones for the Ephod, and precious stones for the breastplate of the priest. “ And that I may dwell among ye,” proceeds the narrative, making Jehovah the speaker, “ let them make me a Sanctuary after the pattern of the Tabernacle, two cubits and a half long, a cubit and a half broad, and a cubit and a half high, to be overlaid with gold within and without; and a Mercy Seat of pure gold two cubits and a half high, a cubit and a half broad; and two Cherubims of beaten gold, one at either end with wings covering the Mercy Seat, their faces looking towards one another,” &c. This Ark or Sanctuary was a highly-important piece of furniture with the ancient Hebrews ? As with several others among the peoples of the old world—Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, &c. Upon the proper ark or coffer, the seat or throne, de­ signated Mercy Seat in the Old Testament, is ordered to be placed, where the God was to be found for con­ sultation by the priest; and within it the object entitled Eduth was commanded to be kept. The ark itself, in some sort the symbol as containing the symbols of Deity, was believed to be possessed of supernatural powers ; for it was death to touch or attempt to look into it, and the power and counte­ nance of the tutelary God was supposed to accompany it wherever it went. We have already had the Eduth mentioned inci­ dentally in connection with the miraculous manna of the wilderness, when we found the word translated Testimony, and used now as if it were Jehovah that was meant, and again, as if the Law or Tables of the Law were the thing signified; the word Eduth, in­ deed, is always translated Testimony in this sense in the English version of the Bible. But when the con­ text is taken into account, it seems as if it cannot �210 The Pentateuch. always have such a meaning. It constantly meets us as if it could only apply to an image or symbolical figure of some sort. The Israelites, however, were emphatically for­ bidden to make molten or graven images, or the like­ ness of anything in heaven or earth ? At an advanced period of their history as a people; certainly not before the age of Solomon. But neither in the days of this Sybarite king, nor even in much later times, do the Jews appear to have known, or, if they knew, to have given any heed to the prohibition. We have but just seen figures of Cherubim ordered by Jehovah himself for the covering of the Ark; and an empty seat would have been an indifferent object for consultation by the priest when he entered the holy of holies to ask advice. The seat must have been occupied, therefore, and doubtless by the Image or Symbol of the God. If neighbouring tribes and peoples had images and emblems of their Gods, we may be very certain that the early Hebrews also had theirs :—They had borne for forty years in the wilder­ ness the “ Tabernacle of their Chiun, their idol, the Star of their God which they had made,” says one of the earlier prophets whose writings have escaped mutilation by modern editors (Amos v. 26). The golden calf set up by Aaron in the Wilderness and the golden calves erected by Jeroboam at a subsequent period, as the God and the Gods who had brought them out of Egypt, could have been no novelties to the Israelites. On the contrary, they were the old familiar forms under which Deity was conceived and approached with offerings by their fathers as by them­ selves. The interdict against molten and graven images came from the advanced Jehovistic party of the kingdom of Judah, about the time of Hezekiah probably, if it were not even so late as that of Josiah, when the leading minds among the Jews had attained, to the conception of the all-pervading, or so-styled, �Exodus: The Ark of the Testimony. 221 spiritual nature of the Godhead, which as Infinite and Ubiquitous can be fitly represented by no “similitude.” The Eduth may, therefore, have been an image, if not of any such specific Divinity as was conceived of under the names of El, Eloha, Chiun, Chemosh, Baal, Melkart, Molech, or Jahveh, yet of the emblem that was once universally held typical of the repro­ ductive power inherent in Nature or the Nature God ? There are hints in various places of the Hebrew sacred writings that have escaped the expurgating hands of their latest editors which necessarily lead to the conclusion that the seat in the sanctuary was not unoccupied, but was verily filled by an image of the God himself, carefully secluded, however, in later times at least, from the prying eyes of vulgar curiosity. Aaron, on entering the inner veiled compartment of the shrine, was to take a censer full of live coals from the altar of burnt offerings, to sprinkle incense there­ on, and “ raise a cloud before Jehovah.” The prophet Isaiah must have seen something more than an empty stool when he exclaimed that he was undone, for that he “ a man of unclean lips had seen the king (Melek, Molech), the Lord of Hosts (Jahveh-Tzabaoth) vi. 5. Ezekiel, indeed, does not hesitate to fill the throne which he saw with the “likeness of the appearance of a man ” (i. 26), a roundabout way of saying an image of Jehovah; and then we have Jehovah’s own orders for the construction of the sanctuary in which he promises to dwell among his people. But God the Infinite and Eternal can have his dwelling-place in no sanctuary made by the hands of man. It was his similitude, therefore, or his symbolical representation that was to be seen on the lid of the Sacred Coffer between the Cherubim ; and, when not there displayed, that was laid up with other sacred apparatus in its interior, the coffer being of the precise dimensions calculated to receive the life-size seated figure of a man. R �222 The Pentateuch. The ancient Hebrews were not, as already hinted, the only people who had a sacred ark or coffer, in which articles held holy, or apparatus employed in their religious rites were stored ? By no means. The ark of the ancient Egyptians, as we see it in their paintings and sculptures, bears the most exact resemblance to that of the Hebrews as described in their records. It has the mysterious figures of the cherubim with wings on its cover, and between them the Truncated Cone, symbol of the generative or reproductive principle immanent in nature. Among the peoples of the ancient world the Ark or Sacred Coffer appears to have been more especially connected with the worship of Dionysus— the Sun, in his character of regenerator. In the one said to have been found in the citadel of Troy, when taken by the Greeks, the image or emblem of Dionysus—AyaXpa Azorovaov (ayaX/za simulacrum, res auro ornata, an Image, a gilded Something), is the article that is particularly mentioned as having been found within it; and from an old writer, Cle­ ment of Alexandria, we learn that in the heathen arks or sacred coffers, generally, the article laid up was tov Atovovoov Aibotov (atboia pudenda ab aibws'). These references may help us to a conclusion as to what the Eduth really was which was stowed away in the Hebrew Ark of the Covenant, and so carefully concealed from all eyes save those of the priest. Is not the Greek word AzJws, in fact, the Hebrew word Eduth ? * * On the Hebrew Ark of the Testimony see Spencer, De Legibus Hsebrseor. Ritualibus, Lib. iii. Diss. v. Singularly enough the word Eduth is not mentioned in that mine of learning and interesting information, Winer’s Biblisches Realworterbuch (3tte. Aufl., 2 vols., 8vo, Leipz., 1847). To suppose that Winer was ignorant of what is said above were absurd. He knew it all; but the theologian could not face the conclusion to which the scholar and critic must necessarily have come. See also Movers, Die Phoenizier i., chaps. 2 and 3. �Exodus : The Seven-light Candlestick. 223 There are several other articles connected with the Hebrew ritualistic worship which require more than a passing notice ? The Seven-light Candlestick in particular, with its arms—three on either side, to hold as many lamps ; its shaft, branches, bowls, knobs, flowers, and even the accessory tongs and snuff dishes being all alike ordered to be “ one beaten work of pure gold, after the pattern that was shown thee in the mount.” The lavish expenditure of gold and precious stones, and of such costly stuffs as purple, blue and scarlet linen, &c., might lead to the conclusion that the fugitives had spoiled the Egyptians more effectually than it is easy to imagine them willing to lend. But the whole tale is a fiction, involving as it does childish or worse conceptions of the Deity, and containing injunctions so utterly impossible of execution under the circumstances, that there needs no more than a hint to satisfy every reasonable person not blinded by a foregone conclusion, that it must date from days when Jerusalem was the capital of the kingdom of Judah, with the first or even the second Temple already in existence, and serving as a model from which the writer drew. The gold candlestick with its seven lights, so par­ ticularly described in the text, must be presumed to have had a special significance, symbolical or other­ wise ? That it was symbolical, may be safely assumed, of the Sun, Moon, and five known Planets—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and, high and far removed over all, Saturn, the peculiar star of the ancient Hebrew race—the star of their God by whatever name known to them at different epochs of their history—Chiun, Chamos, El, Israel, Baal, Molech, or Jahveh. This costly piece of furniture it has been surmised Was not for ornament only or even for giving light ? �224 The Pentateuch. Besides its symbolical significance and every-day uses, it appears to have been in constant requisition, in conformity with the astrological notions of anti­ quity, for purposes of divination, and especially in casting nativities. The arms of the candlestick being in sockets and moveable, the lamps they carried, severally representing a planet, were probably arranged by the priest in fanciful accordance with the relative positions in the heavens of the sun, moon, and wandering stars at the moment of a birth, and a forecast thus obtained of the fate that was to befal the future man or woman. * Such forecasts or predictions, however, must have been constantly falsified by events ? No doubt; but in spite of this the belief in Judicial Astrology has either had such tenacity of life in itself, or continues to possess such attractions for the super­ stitious and uninformed, that it cannot be said even now to have wholly died out from among us. Though no use is ever made, in so far as we know, of the information obtained, and the end for which it was once so eagerly sought after is not even surmised, the precise moment at which every child born among us comes into the world is still regularly noted by the gossips who hold high festival in the Lying-in room. There are other remnants of the old sun, moon, and star worship, and of the beliefs once universal in planetary influences that still linger in the world ? The general and genial merry-making at the winter solstice—Dies nctlalis Solis, of the ancient world the brief period of mourning followed, by rejoicings at the vernal equinox—Easter (A® Orienie Lux)- of which we have already had occasion to speak ; the Beal-fires (El, Bel, Baal), still danced about and leaped through with shouts and exclamations by the Breton and Irish peasantry at the summer solstice ; See Landseer, ‘ Sabsean Researches,’ 4to, Lond., 1823. �Exodus: The Altar; the Priest's Robes. 225 the sacrifice of the goats, one to Jehovah, another to Asazel, by the Israelites on Soul-Affliction Day, and the weeping of the women of Northern Palestine for Tammuz, in the olden time, at the autumnal equinox, are all alike reminders or relics of the Sun, Moon, Star, and Time or Season worship that once prevailed so extensively over the ancient world; a form of worship, however, implying a considerably advanced epoch in the history of human society ; for Astrologism proper could have formed no element in the reli­ gious system of the primitive races of mankind. Among these the mere sense of A Something beyond them­ selves, accredited with power to do them good or ill, would seem to have constituted, as it still continues with the Savage to constitute, the ground and the substance of all religious belief and observance. Particular instructions are given for the fashion and quality of the altar, or altars,—for there were two, one for burnt offerings, another for incense ? The sacrificial altar in earlier times was of the simplest possible construction, consisting of nothing more than a heap of earth or a circle of twelve unhewn stones—one for each month of the year—set up on level ground. At a later period it seems to have con­ sisted of a grating of brass, resting at the sides on supports, and approached by a number of steps. The Priest’s robes are also objects of most minute instructions to Moses ? They are so indeed; he was to speak to such as were “ wise-hearted and filled by the Lord with the spirit of wisdom; ” and they, with the directions he should give them, were to make a robe and broidered coat, an ephod and girdle, all of gold, and of blue and purple and scarlet fine twined linen, with cunning work; a cap or mitre for the head ; two chains of pure gold of wreathen work for the neck, hung from two onyx stones on the shoulders, set in gold and engraven with the names of the twelve tribes of �226 The Pentateuch. Israel. Besides which, there was to be a “ Breast­ plate of Judgment,”—Choschen,—four-square, with four rows of precious stones, three in each row, engraven with the names of the twelve tribes, and attached to the Ephod by means of gold chains ; and another article that has been the subject of much discussion with Bible expositors and commentators,— the “ Urim and Thummim.” What was the Urim and the Thummim ? The text says no more than this :—“ Thou shalt put in the breast-plate of Judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart when he goeth in before Jehovah.” This would make the Urim and Thummim distinct from the breast-plate of Judgment:—something to be put into or contained within it ? It would so according to the rendering of the original usually followed. But the Hebrew may as well be translated put upon as put into. The Urim and Thummim has consequently been thought by competent critics to be nothing more than the com­ plete breast-plate under another name—a conclusion which has much to recommend it. By one distin­ guished scholar and historical writer, however (Michaelis, Mosaisches Recht), it is believed to have consisted of two or more precious stones, cut as dice, which were used in “ asking Jehovah by Lot ”—a mode of essaying to look into futurity of which we find such frequent mention in the Hebrew Scriptures, although the lots or means used are nowhere named. The learned Spencer (De Legibus Hsebrzeorum Ritualibus, Lib. iii. Diss, vii.), following the LXX., and assuming the words to signify Manifestation and Truth, after a disquisition extending over one hun­ dred and ninety-three quarto pages ! opines that the Urim and Thummim were Teraphim or sacred domestic images of the God or Gods! Great obscurity, therefore, manifestly hangs over the sub-. �Exodus : The Urim and Thummim. 227 ject of the Urim and Thummim. But when we think of the many hands through which the Hebrew Scriptures have passed, the numberless manipulations they have undergone, and the interest later editors had in keeping everything like Idolatry and Sabeeism out of sight, we shall not wonder that so little is left us by which we may positively know what the Urim and Thummim signified in itself, or how it was used for purposes of divination, in which, as its designation, Breast-plate of Judgment, implies, it was undoubtedly an important instrument. The thing called Urim and Thummim is ordered to be composed of twelve precious stones, which are said to have been— A Ruby, a Topaz, a Carbuncle, an Emerald, a Sapphire, and a Diamond; a Ligure or Cornelian, an Agate, an Amethyst, a Beryl, an Onyx, and a Jasper ? Assuming the stones to be rightly named, the first series of six is seen to consist of such as are of a lustrous or brilliant character ; the second series, like in number, of others that are generally opaque or lustreless. To the first series it must have been that the epithet Urim (Ur, Or, Light) was applied ; as to the lustreless set of six, it was that the title Thummim was given (Tumas, Sanskrit, Darkness). Ordered to * be engraved with the names of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the twelve stones upon the High Priest’s Choschen certainly also typified the twelve signs of the zodiac, which, besides symbolizing the months of the year, were likewise held to be the houses of the planets and of several of the more remarkable among the fixed stars, whose rising and setting marked the seasons. The brilliant stones were doubtless repre­ sentatives of the signs when the sun, in the ascendant in the northern hemisphere, was pouring light and * Nork, Biblische Mythologie, i. 175, note. �228 The Pentateuch. life upon the world ; the dark or lustreless stones, again, stood for the inferior signs, when the power of the sun is in abeyance, and darkness, symbolical of night and death, dominates the hour. The composition of the Urim and Thummim seems, therefore, to proclaim the astrological or divining nature of the instrument ? That it was consulted through the priest as an oracle, and referred to at times in learning the will of Jehovah, is certain. It is to be presumed that the aspect of the heavens and the places therein of the planets and principal fixed stars having been noted at the time action in any contingency was proposed to be taken, the Urim and Thummim was then consulted by the priest in conformity with the rules of the diviner’s art, and an answer in affirmation or negation of the purpose in question obtained. We have instances in the Hebrew Scriptures in which the Urim and Thummim was used in this way ? When Joshua, the son of Nun, was chosen by Moses as his successor, he was set before Eleazar the priest, and the congregation of Israel, and the priest is ordered at all times to “ ask counsel for him after the judgment of the Urim before Jehovah” (Numb, xxvii. 21). Saul enquiring of Jehovah on a certain occasion after he had fallen out of favour with Samuel the priest, through non-compliance with his behests, “ received no answer, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by the prophets,” i.e., the sooth­ sayers (1 Sam. xxviii. 6). The Teraphim, or house­ hold gods, of which the Ephod was one of the forms most familiar to the chosen people of Jehovah in historical times, appears to have been frequently sub­ stituted for the Urim and Thummin : “Bring hither the Ephod,” says King David, the man according to God’s own heart—by credit and report, to Abiathai’ the priest, upon a certain occasion; and addressing �Exodus: The E'phod an Idol. 229 the Idol he says : “ 0 Jehovah God, will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his (Saul’s) hand ? ” And Jehovah said: “They will deliver thee up” (1 Sam. xxiii; 9). Another time the same pious and exemplary monarch—according to the Bible and the clergy—says : “ Bring me hither the Ephod,” and he “ enquires of Jehovah, saying, shall I pursue after this troop P ” and is answered : “pursue” (lb. xxx. 7). The Urim and the Ephod, or Gilded Image of Jehovah, were therefore used indifferently as means of ascertaining the will and pleasure of their God by the Hebrew people. But the children of Israel are always credited with having been worshippers of the one only God, and to have known nothing of idolatry ? Let the reader conclude for himself on the above showing what they were in fact, and begin, if by possibility he may, to read the Bible with his eyes unsealed and his reason as his guide. Returning to the prescriptions for the priest’s robes, a certain part called Ephod, is particularly described ? It was to be made in fashion of a habergeon, or cape, having a hole in the upper part for the head to pass through. Its hem, however, was elaborately ornamented with figures of pomegranates of blue, and purple, and scarlet, having gold bells interposed. . The pomegranate had a particular symbolical sig­ nificance in the religious mysteries of the ancient world ? It was a special emblem of fertility, and an element in the cult of the Reproductive Principle inherent in Nature, with which, as with Sabmism, the Hebrew system, when seen with the eyes of the understanding, is found to assimilate in so many particulars. The word Ephod has, therefore, two different meanings in the Hebrew scriptures ? In one we have seen it applied to the Image of �230 The Pentateuch. Jehovah, used by King David as an oracle ; here we find it applied to a part of the priest’s robes. The High Priest was further to have his special title or designation engraved on a plate of gold fastened to the front of his mitre or cap ? A title expressed in these solemn and significant words: Holy to Jehovah (Holiness to the Lord * Eng. vers.). What might this imply ? More than appears at first sight. The High Priest —Aaron—was “ to bear the iniquity of the offerings hallowed by the children of Israel in their giftsi. e. Aaron, as High Priest and consecrated to Jehovah, in receiving the offerings of the people at the door of the Sanctuary was presumed to concentrate on himself the essence of their expiatory powers, and in virtue of his office was liable to be called on at any moment to enact the part of substitute and make atonement in his individual person for the sins of the people at large. And we shall find sufficient reason by and by for concluding that Aaron was actually required, at a critical moment in the progress of the Israelites to­ wards the Promised Land, to make good the terms of the contract or understanding on which he held his office. Aaron’s sons, solemnly consecrated as his assistants in the priestly office, and so devoted to Jehovah, are also furnished with clothing according to special patterns ordered by their God ? They are to have coats, breeches to cover their nakedness, caps of a certain fashion, &c. Can we, living in this 19th century of the Christian aara, believe that any orders for the clothing of Aaron and his sons ever came from God ? The Infinite all-pervading Essence or Spirit con­ ceived by us as Cause, and called God, sends man into the world naked enough, but furnished with the senses which induce, and the ingenuity which enables �Exodus : Consecration of Aaron & his Sons. 231 him to clothe himself for decency, for comfort, and even for what he intends as ornament—whence not only the loin-band, and the blanket and skewer, but the embroidered coat, the chignon, and the bustle— all according to patterns he devises for himself; cer­ tainly after none devised for him by God. The ceremonies by which Aaron and his sons are consecrated to their office are also matters of particular instruction to Moses from Jehovah ? Besides anointing with consecrated oil, a bullock and two rams are to be sacrificed before the taberna­ cle of the congregation. The fat, kidneys, and caul of the bullock are to be burned on the altar of sacri­ fice, but the rest of the carcase is to be consumed with fire outside the camp. The blood, as Jehovah’s most peculiar portion, was to be streaked upon the horns of the altar, and poured out about its base. And the rams—how were they to be disposed of ? One of them was to be sacrificed, like the bullock, but the whole carcase was to be burned upon the altar as an offering to Jehovah ; the bullock, doubtless, was seen as too bulky to be conveniently dealt with in this way. The other ram, having been slaughtered, its blood was to be put on the tip of the right ear of Aaron and his sons, on the thumbs of their right hands and the great toes of their right feet severally, their robes being at the same time sprinkled with anointing oil and blood ; and whilst the fat and kid­ neys, the rump and right shoulder were burnt on the altar as Jehovah’s portion, the rest of the carcase was to be seethed in the holy place, and there eaten by Aaron and his sons. This eating of the victims sacrificed in view of the expiation of sin was held to be an indispensable part of the religious rite ? Without it the act of atonement was not believed to be complete. As the Life had gone to Jehovah in the blood, and certain parts, sublimated by fire, been �232 The Pentateuch. presented to him for a sweet savour and for food, so was it by the flesh of the victim, hallowed through Jehovah’s acceptance of his share, entering the bodies of the priest and the assembly, that they were pre­ sumed to be sanctified and their sins forgiven them. Like other old observances grounded on speculative notions, the custom of offering an imaginary sacrifice, eating the imaginary flesh, drinking the imaginary blood of an imaginary victim, and so obtaining for­ giveness of their sins—oftener real than imaginary—• is still kept up by communities boasting of the ad­ vances they have made in reason and refinement. Can we in the present age of the world, and with the lights we have through our cultivated under­ standing and accumulated knowledge, believe that God ever gave such instructions as we have but just perused—ever ordered the fashion of the priest’s garments—ever, as a means of consecration to his service, commanded his ministers to be anointed with spiced oil; to be touched on the tips of their ears, their thumbs, their great toes, and to have their clothes sprinkled with the blood of a sheep ? It is impossible to do so any longer. Or that forgiveness for his sins and shortcomings can be had by man through eating and drinking, were it even the body and blood of the God he worshipped ? Let every man answer this query for himself. If he have not been crippled in his capacity to judge aright by a vicious education, or have not naturally a soft part in his head, he will only be able to answer it in one way. The more advanced among the Jews themselves indeed must, in later times, have come to the conclusion at which all reasonable men, whether Jew or Gentile, have now arrived, when we find one of their more advanced writers addressing them in such words as these :—“ For what, 0 man, does Jehovah require of thee but to do justly and to love �Exodus: The Sacrifices. 233 mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ” (Micah vi. 8). Can we, however, suppose that God gives command­ ments at one time which he abrogates at another ? God is the changeless and eternal: the same yester­ day, to-day, and for ever. It is man who changes, makes and unmakes, orders and annuls, not knowing his mind from one hour to another. What, then, conclude as to these minute command­ ments about slaying and burning, anointing with oil and sprinkling with blood, roasting, seething, and eating in the holy place, &c., &c. ? That very certainly they never came from God; and that the men who maintain that they do are either possessed of the moral and intellectual obliquity of vision that leads astray, or are chargeable with the blindness that comes of wilfulness. Certain ordinances follow concerning the various kinds of sacrifice that were to be offered, and the times and seasons at which particular rites were to be observed ? A bullock is ordered to be offered daily for a sin offering and for an atonement; two lambs also, day by day throughout the year, one in the morning, the other in the evening; these last being presented ap­ parently as a kind of daily ration to Jehovah : Anthropomorphosing God, man imagined that God must be fed like himself. In this case flesh meat required the addition of bread ? Which is not forgotten any more than a measure of wine to flavour the repast. Twelve cakes of un­ leavened bread baked of wheaten flour, with olive oil seasoned with salt and spice, were to be duly laid with each recurring Sabbath morn upon the table which stood beside the altar of sacrifice, the stale cakes being then removed for the use of the priests, whose perquisite they were. �234 The Pentateuch. There is also a special altar of Incense, the Jewish Jehovah being held to delight in other and to human nostrils sweeter scents than the smell of burning fat, flesh, and blood ? This altar, ordered to be overlaid with pure gold, was to stand by the Ark of the Testimony, before the Mercy Seat. On it Aaron was to burn sweet incense every morning when he dressed the lamps, and at even also, when he lighted them; for there it was that Jehovah was to be met with and “ give the children of Israel to know that he was Jehovah their God, and that he dwelt among them.” Are we not to think that God is the God of All the inhabitants of the earth, and that he dwells not here or there, in a tent or tabernacle, seated on the lid of a coffer, but has his habitation in the universe ? Our reason and philosophy assure us of so much ; but the children of Israel and their teachers did not think so ; and they who accept their annals as from God are bound in consistency to agree with them ; an obligation, however, with which we see the world feeling it every day more and more difficult to comply. “ When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel, says the text, then shall every man give a ransom for his soul (life) unto Jehovah, that there be no plague among them.” The price to be paid as insurance of their lives against pestilence being ? Half a shekel of the sanctuary, the rich giving no more, the poor no less. Such an ordinance must surely point to a time when the Israelites were a settled community, not to one when they were wanderers in the wilderness, and at starvation point ? No doubt of it; and the order, now seen in this light by every competent and candid critic, proclaims the relatively modern date not only of the writing, but of the institution of the festival itself; for neither in Exodus (xxiii. 14), nor in Deuteronomy (xvi.), �Exodus: Temple Furniture. 235 where the festivals of the year are particularly commanded, do we find any mention made of an atonement festival. It cannot even have been known to Ezekiel (xlv. 18), the festivals of the Seventh month of which he speaks being mere repetitions of those of the First month, and the word Atonement does not occur in his text. The great day of the year to the Jews of Post-Exilic times, con­ sequently, was unknown to the Israelites who lived before the Babylonian Captivity. Is it reasonable, however, to suppose that man can ransom his life-, atone for his sins, or make an offer­ ing to God by means of a piece of money ? It is most unreasonable to think that he can. Man can approach God in no way save by studying to know and religiously obeying his laws. The money price was a recent tax for the support of the religious establishment of the country : “ thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation.” There could obviously be neither numbering nor taxing of a horde wandering in the wilderness, and having no tabernacle of the congrega­ tion with numerous attached officials to maintain. There were to be lavers of brass for the ministering priests to wash in—furniture most essential, con­ sidering the bloody work in which they were habitu­ ally engaged. The oil used in anointing or conse­ crating was also to be prepared in a particular manner with oil olive, myrrh, and cassia; it was a holy anointing oil, not to be imitated nor put upon a stranger under penalty of death. The confection for burning on the altar of incense also, composed of sweet spices and frankincense, was to be prepared after the art of the apothecary, and was to be ac­ counted holy to Jehovah; whosoever should make any like it, or who should even “ smell thereto,” was to be cut off from his people. �236 The Pentateuch. Can we, we ask yet again, as reasonable beings, believe that instructions for such trifles as these were ever given by the great God of Nature to mankind ? No, no, no! Or that he should threaten death to the man who smelled at a compound of spice and frankincense ? Never! And can the book in which such commandments are propounded as coming from God either be, or by possibility be conceived to contain, the word of his will to man ? It is impossible to think that it can, when viewed in connection with the Idea we are now privileged to form of God. All that is said in the book before us on the topics in question is, however, in perfect con­ formity with the Idea which the legendary Moses, and generations long after Moses and his age, may be presumed to have entertained of their God, who was in no wise the impartial parent of the universe, but the partial God of the children of Israel; not the God who makes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike, but a capricious despot who guided the sunbeam and the shower at his arbitrary will and pleasure on those he favoured or had in despite. How could the Israelites, so lately slaves to the Egyptians, be supposed to have had among them workmen possessed of skill to prepare the materials and execute the details of the apparatus ordered for use in the worship of their God ? We can only conceive them short-handed in this respect; still Jehovah, according to the text, informs Moses that he had called Bezaleel, the son of Uri, and filled him with the wisdom to contrive cunning works in silver, and gold, and brass, in cutting and setting precious stones, and in carving timber, and had given him Aholiab, of the tribe of Dan, to help him, beside �Exodus: Moses in the Mount. 237 others, wise-hearted, though unnamed,, and filled with the wisdom necessary to make all as commanded. It is somewhat difficult, nevertheless, to imagine gold- and silver-smiths, lapidaries and engravers in jasper and calcedony, carvers, gilders, weavers, up­ holsterers, and the like, at work in the midst of a starving multitude of fugitives from slavery, locked in by a howling wilderness, and in want of the merest necessaries of life ? It is certainly difficult to think of arts that only belong to settled and peaceful communities being carried on under such circumstances. Whence we conclude ? That all these instructions are the work of rela­ tively modern times, and that so much of the Penta­ teuch as embodies them, as it cannot be from Moses, so neither can it be from any document derived from his age. The writer lived after the age of Solomon and had the temple as a model from which he drew, and the skilled Phoenician artizans who built and ornamented it—Hirom of Tyre and his assistants, as types of Bezaleel, the son of Uri, and Aholiab of the tribe of Dan. Even in times when the Chaldmans and Assyrians were policied peoples—astronomers, artizans, &c., and using engraved cylinders as seals in their dealings with one another, the intaglio of the cylinder is not cut by the lapidary’s wheel of later days, but by scratching with some point harder than jasper or cornelian. * Moses must have been some considerable time away whilst receiving all the minute instructions said to have been given him by Jehovah on the mountain ? He was absent, according to the record, for forty days and forty nights, and is said neither to have eaten bread nor drunk water during all that time— * See Landseer, ‘ Sabasan Researches.’ S �238 The Pentateuch. a statement sufficient of itself to stamp the entire narrative as mythical; for as by God’s eternal fiat man must eat and drink that he may live, so fasting from solid and liquid food cannot be continued for more than a very few days without serious derange­ ment to the health, and, if persisted in for any much longer term, without death ensuing as the penalty. A very notable incident occurs during the absence of Moses in the Mount ? The people come to Aaron and say : Up ! make us Gods to go before us ; for as for this Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt we wot not what has become of him. Is this a style of address likely to have been made to Aaron the Priest, the brother of Moses, the leader of the people ? A late writer might be supposed to speak in such terms—more respectfully couched, however,—for the information of his public ; but the people about Aaron could scarcely have thought it necessary to remind him that it was Moses who had brought them out of Egypt; and they could not but have known that their leader was up in the mountain, in conference with Jehovah. Aaron, however, remonstrates with the foolish people, and bids them think of all the wonders done for them by Jehovah, who still dwelt amid the cloud which only hid Moses from their sight upon the mountain ? He does nothing of the sort; assenting at once to the reasonableness of their clamour apparently, and familiar, as it might seem, with the worship of God under the figure of a Bull, he bids them bring him the rings of their wives and of their sons and daughters; and having made a molten calf of the gold, and fashioned it with a graving tool, he presents it to the people as the God who had brought them out of their Egyptian bondage 1 He does even more �Exodus : The Golden Calf. 239 than this; he builds an altar before the Image of the Bull-calf he has fashioned, and makes procla­ mation for the morrow of a feast “ to the Lord! ” This is most extraordinary—altogether incom­ prehensible and incredible ! Would the man who had witnessed and even taken an active part in the performance of the extraordinary wonders said to have been wrought in Egypt, and who could not but have felt assured of the continuing countenance of Jehovah, have acted as Aaron is now reported to have done ? It is impossible to believe that he would. Would a brave man, a truly pious man, who put his trust in God through simple natural instinct, have done anything of the kind ? He would have suffered himself to be torn in pieces by the rabid multitude first. ' What then conclude concerning the tale of the golden calf? Either that it is a fabrication, contrived for a purpose which the writer has in view, or that Aaron is inadvertently allowed to appear as he probably was in fact—no priest of Jehovah, the spiritual conception of the late writer of the Pentateuch, but the minister of the God—El, Baal, Chiun, or Chamos, the true deity of the ancient Hebrew and other cognate Semitic tribes—the God of Times and Seasons and Repro­ duction ; the God who ceaselessly begetting ceaselessly devours his offspring, and whose visible image in the early ages of the world struggling from darkness into light was the Stone, the Tree, the Serpent, the Bull, and the universally recognised symbol of the reproductive power inherent in nature—the Phallus. The mythical Aaron, we must conclude, either pre­ sented the people with the image of the God with whose worship they were already familiar ; or the late writer whose work we have before us—one of the Jehovistic Reformers, a priest of Judah, and living in or after the reign of Hezekiah—may have �240 The Pentateuch. invented the tale of the Golden Calf of the Wilder­ ness for the purpose of proclaiming how abhorrent to Jehovah, the God of the Jews, was the Calf worship established by Jeroboam as the religion of his realm of Israel, which he had rent from the kingdom of Judah. The people are well content with the Idol which Aaron has provided, and the feast he has promised ? They rise up early in the morning, and having made burnt and peace offerings to their Calf-God, they sit down to eat and to drink, give themselves up to merriment and the rites hallowed in the worship of the Nature-God, upon the particular character of which it is not necessary to speak more at large in this place. What, according to the text, says Jehovah to Moses on the Mount, whilst all this is going on below ? “Get thee down,” says he, “for the people have corrupted themselves ; they have turned aside quickly out of the way I commanded them; they have made them a golden calf, and have worshipped it, and made offerings to it, and said: This is thy God, 0 Israel, which has brought thee out of the land of Egypt! ” It is Aaron the priest, however, who has just said so ; but what more ? “ Behold, this is a stiff-necked people; now, there­ fore, let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them and that I may consume them.” Jehovah would, apparently, have Moses restrain him from breaking out upon the people and con­ suming them. What answer does Moses make ? He beseeches Jehovah, and asks him why he should be wroth with the people and give the Egyptians occasion to say :—He brought them out for mischief, to slay them in the mountain and consume them from the face of the earth. “ Turn from thy fierce wrath,” he continues, “ and repent of this evil against thy �Exodus : Moses and the Golden Calf. 241 people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom thou swearedst by thine own self and saidst, I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and this land I have spoken of I will give to your seed to inherit it for ever.” What reply is the Jewish writer’s Jehovah—gene­ rally accepted by Christians as the Omnipotent Creator of the Universe—made to give to this friendly remonstrance and reminder of the man Moses ? It certainly is not the God of Philosophy and Enlightened Piety who replies; it is the redactor of this Hebrew legend who speaks when he makes his God say that he “repents of the evil he thought to do to his people;” for God is not a man that he should repent, as a later and more advanced writer in the same heterogeneous collection of books and frag­ ments of books has said of the Deity whom he, in better days, conceived. Moses comes down from the mountain with the two tables of the law in his hand, the writing, we are in­ formed, being on both sides, and the handy work of God himself. Coming near he hears shouting and uproar in the camp, which Joshua, who seems now to have joined him—although we have heard nothing of this before—mistakes for sounds of discord or war, but which Moses, with a truer ear and the intelligence he had from Jehovah, interprets as no sounds of strife but of mirth and rejoicing. Reaching the camp, he sees the Calf and the dancing; his anger is roused, and in his passion he casts the tables out of his hand and breaks them in pieces beneath the mount. This last act was surely unbecoming in a great leader, as showing a lack of self-control, although his anger was natural enough. What does he with the Calf ? That, it is said, he burns in the fire, grinds to powder, strews it on water which he makes the people drink, and so compels them to swallow the God that Aaron had made for them. �242 The Pentateuch. Can Gold be burned into ashes in the fire, and strewed on water so that it may be drunk ? Gold is unchangeable in any heat short of that which is centred in the electric spark, by which, if in leaf, it is dissipated in vapour. Gold, however, may be beaten out into leaves and then broken up into particles so fine as to be diffusible through liquids; but it cannot be reduced to powder by burning in a furnace; neither, indeed, can it be melted and cast into an image of any description save wTith means and appliances such as Aaron could not have commanded in the wilderness. So much at least of the story must, therefore, be a product of the writer’s imagination; even as must the information he gives, whereby we learn that the tables which Moses brake in his vexation were written on this side and on that by the finger of God himself, a fact—if by possibility it could have been a fact, and as involving an absurdity we unhesitatingly declare it could be none, the Supreme Cause not having fingers like a man—which the narrator could by no possibility have known ? So much presents itself as certain to the unpreju­ diced mind. Moses will, of course, be wroth with Aaron his brother for what he has done ? So we should have expected; but there is little show of anger in the remonstrance he makes. “What,” says he, in the mildest terms imaginable, where the most severe would have been so much in place, “ did this people unto thee that thou hast brought this great sin upon them ? ” A question to which Aaron can find no better reply than by begging my Lord, his brother, not to be angry with him, repeat­ ing the particulars of his reprehensible act, and declar­ ing that, having cast the gold given him by the people into the fire “ there came out this calf;” a miracu­ lous image, therefore, that fell out of the fire, like �Exodus : Slaughter of the People. 243 those we read of in Greek and Roman legends which fell from heaven ! After this the subject is dropped in so far as Aaron, the chief offender, is concerned. But not as regards the ignorant people who, by their doings, have roused the anger of Jehovah, and the still more significant wrath of their leader ? No, truly ! For Moses seeing that the people were naked—“ Aaron having,” as it is said, “ made them naked to their shame ”—scant clothing or nothing on being the proper costume in the religious orgies of the earlier ages of the world—he takes his stand in the gate of the camp and says : “ Who is on Jehovah’s side, let him come unto me; when all the sons of Levi gathered themselves to him.” What order is given-them in the name of Jehovah, the God of Israel ? A very terrible order indeed ! “ Put every man his sword by his side,” says he, “ and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.” What! in spite of his having persuaded Jehovah to repent of the evil he had intended against his people ? So it appears by the report, which, though we may cling to the hope that it never had any foundation in fact, is nevertheless not entirely out of keeping with Other horrible practices of barbarous man—the custom of the West Coast of Africa at the present time for example. “ On that day it is said there fell of the people three thousand men ! for Moses had said : ‘ Consecrate yourselves to-day to Jehovah, even every man upon his son and upon his brother, that he may bestow a blessing upon you this day !!! ”’ And there are men with open eyes and accessible understandings among us who still maintain that human sacrifices were not only never offered to their God by the early Hebrews, but that they were even �244 The Pentateuch. abhorrent to the old Jewish mind ; that the firstborn of the sons and daughters of Israel were at all times redeemable by presentation at the Tabernacle to the priest and payment of the petty sum of five silver shekels of the sanctuary ? Many men whose soundness of understanding, scholarly acquirements, critical acumen and candour can be implicitly relied on in all other directions, halt in this one, and become false to themselves and the great task they undertake of bringing light and proclaiming the truth. And how shall we, living near the end of this nineteenth century since Jesus of Nazareth, our brother, and Epictetus, and Anto­ ninus, and Seneca, and Marcus Tullius, and so many others spoke their words of reason and of love and mercy to the world, imagine that God could ever have ordered the men who lived in any age to conse­ crate themselves and earn his blessing by the wholesale murder of naked, defenceless men, their sons, their brothers, their neighbours, and their friends ; or how continue to receive the record of such atrocities as the revealed word of God ? How, indeed I But such stories begin at length to be questioned even by the many; the few—the really educated, the well informed, the rational, the merciful—have long rejected them as blasphemies, if there be any such 1 against every conception which reasonable man can form of the Supreme Not our­ selves of a pious writer of the present day, by us called shortly God. What have we in the way of assurance that the tale of this massacre cannot be founded on fact— cannot be true ? The certainty that the Levites did not exist as a priestly caste—and the priestly character is implied in the sacrificial part they are here made to enact— in the age of Moses. Though pains are taken by the late writers and editors of the Pentateuch to refer �Exodus : Moses remonstrates with Jehovah. 245 the connection of the Levites with sacred matters to the age of Moses, the Levitical Priesthood is satis­ factorily ascertained to have been a relatively modern institution—certainly not to have existed until after the age of Solomon. God, therefore, we must believe, never gave orders to Moses of the kind detailed ? God speaks not and never spoke in human speech to man. We know not what amount of barbarity had place in the mind of the mythical Moses, but an order to slay ignorant men for yielding to the blind instincts of their nature and conforming to the usages of their forefathers very certainly never came from God. What does Moses now ? He tells the people that they had sinned a great sin, and full sorely have they been made to know and to pay for it; but he adds that he will now go up to Jehovah and peradventure make atonement for their sin-—-speaking as if none had already been made through the three thousand lives sacrificed by his own orders ! What says Moses to Jehovah ? Oh ! this people have sinned a great sin and made them gods of gold ; yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin [and here there seems to be a gap in the narrative, the terms Moses would make for the sin­ ners being wanting], and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. What answer does he receive ? “ Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book,” is the curt reply. This surely cannot be the God whom men in the present day conceive and speak of as the loving father of all, ready to forgive the sin of whosoever repents and amends his ways ? Certainly not; he is the God of a still earlier age 'of the world even than that of the Jehovistic writer �246 The Pentateuch. whose work we have before us,—a God delighting in blood-stained altars, best pleased of all with human sacrifices, requiring the first-born of man and beast as burnt-offerings to himself, having his preferences and partialities, commanding the extermination of the peaceful and less powerful inhabitants of lands no longer in his gift, and making lavish promises of dominion, never attained, to a horde of barbarians arrogating to themselves the title of his peculiar people. Jehovah, too, is represented as keeping a sort of debtor and creditor account against mankind, after the manner of things on earth ; but we find no notice of the unwarranted use that had just been made of his name, and of the slaughter of the three thousand defenceless men in defiance of his own resolution, on remonstrance made to him, to abstain from the evil he had purposed against his people. Moses’ order to the murderous Levites, however, was surely a crime of a far deeper dye than the people’s sin—admitting for a moment that the worship of their God under the form of the Bull was a sin rather than an act of ignorance, harmless in itself, sanctioned by the high priest, and in conformity with immemorial usage among themselves ? There is no mention of anything of the kind; neither is Moses taken to task for having himself presumed to order the act of vengeance from which he had diverted his God. He is merely commanded to lead on towards the promised land. Jehovah, however, still angry! with his people, will not accom­ pany them in person as usual; he will not trust him­ self among them, “ lest he break forth on them and consume them by the wayhe will only send his angel with the host in his stead. This cannot surely be any likeness of the one God, ruler of heaven and earth, with the conception of whom the Jews are generally credited ? �Exodus: Jehovah plagues the People. 247 It is much rather the portrait of an irascible mortal not over-much possessed of self-control. It certainly has nothing in common with the Idea of the Infinite, Ubiquitous Cause, which men of culture now appre­ hend under the name of God. Though represented as not breaking out on the people at once, and consuming them on the spot, the Jehovah of the writer, we soon find, does not really forego his purpose of revenge; he does not truly keep his word to Moses, and “ repent of the evil he had purposed against his peoplehe rather, as it appears, abides by his resolution to blot them out of his book; for in striking contrast with his merciful purpose as previously announced, he now assures Moses that “ the sins of the people shall be visited upon them.” And the threat is not idle; for even as if nothing had already been done in the way of expia­ tion or amends by the slaughter of the three thousand, Jehovah, we now learn, visits the people with a plague “ because of the Calf which Aaron made.” Do not the poor people appear to us in these days rather to have needed instruction than merited plaguing for yielding to the error of their age and worshipping, under the form of a Calf or Bull, the unknown Something beyond themselves which their intuitive nature led them to divine, but which the knowledge of their age did not permit them to con­ ceive aright ? As simply compassionate and considerate men we should assuredly say so. And there is indeed excuse as ample for the efforts of early man by personification to obtain something like a definite conception of his Deity as there is now nothing to be said for those who still insist on speaking of God as a Person. Modern theologians do, in fact, fall into the same error as the ancient Hebrews when they speak of a personal God; for a Person is an Entity among other entities, limited in space, having length, breadth, �248 The Pentateuch. and thickness,—in other words, having a Form of some sort. But figure God as he may, and in the noblest fashion he can imagine, man’s Image of God must still be as far from having any similitude to the Supreme as was the golden Calf of the idolatrous Israelites. Referring to the later history of the Jewish people —the split that took place between the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, their mutual jealousies, animosities, disastrous wars, and the coarsely expressed hostility of the Jehovistic religious party of Jerusalem to the worship of any other than the conception of Deity under the name of Jehovah, to which the leading minds among them had attained,—may we not infer a motive for the invention of such a story as that of the Golden Calf and the slaughter that followed its worship ? The tale may almost certainly be said to have been composed after the reign of Solomon, its purpose being as certainly to show the terrible consequences that followed the desertion of Jehovah, the God of Judah, for such Gods as Jeroboam, King of Israel, set up for his subjects in Sechem and Dan. * Jehovah, then, all in renewing his promises of giving the people possession of the land flowing with milk and honey, having driven out its present occu­ pants the Amorites, Hivites, Hittites, and others from before them, will not trust himself to go in their midst as heretofore, lest enraged by their perversity and stiff-neckedness he break out and consume them by the way—how does Moses proceed ? He pitches the Tabernacle without the camp, and whilst all the people stand at their tent doors, he him­ self enters the structure, and it comes to pass, says the text, that the cloudy pillar descends and stands * See Bernstein : ‘ On the Origin of the Legends of Abra­ ham, Isaac, and Jacob,’ one of Mr Scott’s series of papers, of great interest. �Exodus : Moses and Jehovah. 249 at the Tabernacle door. “And Jehovah talked with Moses,” speaking to him “face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend.” How could so vast a multitude as the Israelites are said to have been, have stood at their tent doors within sight of the Tabernacle, and seen Moses enter it to have a colloquy with Jehovah ? How, indeed, seeing that they were millions in number. But have we the matter of the conversation ? We have—from the writer, understood. Moses entreats Jehovah not to desert them, and reminds him (!) that the people are his people. “ Is it not in that thou goest with us that it shall be known that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight, and so are separated from all the people that are on the face of the earth ? ” Does Jehovah yield to the remonstrance of the man ? He does. The foolish mortal whose words we have here, presuming to speak in the name of his God, pro­ ceeds : “I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken; for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee byname.” Moses, presuming apparently on this compliant mood of his God, makes another request as a kind of personal favour : “ I beseech thee,” he says, “ show me thy glory.” To which Jehovah, according to the text, replies : “ I will make all my goodness pass before thee; I will proclaim the name of Jehovah before thee, and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy but “ thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and live. Behold there is a place by me; thou shalt stand upon a rock; and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with . my hand while I pass by; and I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts.” �2^0 The Pentateuch. All this is worse than childish—it is absurd—alto­ gether unworthy even to have been imagined, much more to have been reduced to terms by man gifted with reason. How shall the Omnipresent God, im­ manent in the yet farther than the farthest of the fixed stars plunged in the depths of endless space as in the point therein that is filled by the mote on which we dwell, be conceived of as shrunk to the limits of a person, communing in human speech with an in­ quisitive man as with his fellow, and showing him his back parts ? God, let us be well assured, hides not his face, though it have no feature in common with the face of man, from him who reverently seeks to know and to hold communion with him. In the uni­ verse of things is God ever to be clearly seen, and in the changeless laws by which the wondrous fabric is upheld are his power and his providence ceaselessly made known. Perusing these man dies not, but rises ever into newness of life. Have we not something analogous to this tale of Moses’ curiosity in wishing to see the face of Jehovah in what is called the heathen to distinguish it from the Hebrew mythology ? We have. Hercules, urgent with Jupiter to be allowed to see his face, is long denied by the Father of Gods and men. But, yielding at length, Jove slays a Ram, wraps himself in the fleece, puts the head of the animal over his own as a mask, and so meets the Hero. Whilst it is extremely difficult to connect a meaning with the Hebrew myth, it is not difficult to read the mystery involved in the one we have from the Greeks. Herakles, the Sun, in his annual course through the Zodiac, is eager to arrive at the vernal equinox, whose sign in the olden days was the Ram, when, emerging from the inferior to the superior signs, he escapes from his wintery impotence to his summer power—from seeming death to renovated life. This old astrological myth, the later Jewish �Exodus: Jehovah and Moses. 251 writer, without understanding its meaning, has in all probability transferred to his pages, but so travestied as to leave it without the symbolical and poetical significance it had in its original shape. After his interview with Jehovah in the Tabernacle and the vision he has whilst ensconced in the cleft of the rock, Moses receives fresh instructions ? He is commanded to hew two tables of stone like the first, on which, says Jehovah, “ I will write the words that were in the first tables which thou breakedst; and be ready in the morning and come up unto Mount Sinai ? ” Moses does as he is commanded ? With the two tables of stone in his hand he ascends the mountain, and Jehovah, on his part, descends in a cloud and proclaims himself as “ Jahveh-Elohim, mer­ ciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the chil­ dren’s children unto the third and fourth genera­ tion.” The former and the latter clauses of this communi­ cation do not very well agree ? Certainly they do not, and herein we have fresh assurance of the composite character of the text— evidence of the manipulation it has undergone and of the additions that have been made to it at different times. The merciful idea of one, and he, we may presume, the later writer, is utterly opposed to the revengeful and merciless conception of the other and, let us believe, the older hand. God the absolute, had he ever spoken—and we venture to say again that God never did speak in articulate sounds to man—• could not in one breath have so mixed up mercy with far-reaching vengeance. We know the world is so 'constituted that all things with their being have in- �2^2 The Pentateuch. herent aptitudes which fit them for their states; and it is in the exercise of these that sentient beings enjoy their lives, and that what is called the goodness of God finds its expression ; as, on the other hand, it is in contravention of the laws of Nature, which are the laws of God, that they bring down pains and penalties on themselves, and that that which must be held to be the righteous justice—never to be spoken of as the vengeance—of God is displayed. God does not surely visit the sins of the fathers on their children ? Never, in the sense in which the statement in the text is made and is meant to be understood. In con­ formity with the laws of hereditary descent, however, the children of vicious and immoral parents, as well as of those who have injured their health by indul­ gence and excess of any kind, are apt to be vicious and immoral, sickly and short-lived. Jehovah renews the covenant he has already made at several times with Moses and the patriarchs, and declares his purpose of doing marvels such as have not been done in the earth before. He will drive out the inhabitants of the land to which he is leading his people, and they, on their part, are to destroy the altars of the natives, to break in pieces their images, and cut down their groves [Aschera—wooden pillars, typical of Astarte]. They are to worship no God other than Jehovah, “for Jehovah, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous Godto make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land; to make no sacrifices to their gods ; not to take of their daughters as wives or concubines for their sons; to make no molten gods ; to keep the feast of unleavened bread; and much besides, though it is mostly repetition of what has gone before, even to the seething of the kid in its mother’s milk; the injunction as regards the first­ born of man and beast being here accompanied by the interpolated clause authorising its redemption, in �Exodus: Moses and Dionysos. 253 contravention of the positive order elsewhere imple­ mented, that it was Jehovah’s unconditionally, and that whatsoever was ch&rem or devoted to Jehovah “was' surely to be put to death.” How long does Moses remain in the mountain on this second visit ? Forty days and forty nights, of course, forty being the sacred number; and under the same impossible conditions as before, without meat or drink during all that time. There is something remarkable about Moses when he comes down from the mountain ? “ The skin of his face shone,” it is said, “ though he wist it not.” The people being afraid to come near him, he puts on a veil whilst speaking with them, which he only removes when he goes in to commune with Jehovah. What may be the meaning of this ? It were hard to say, unless it be that Moses is occasionally made to take the place of his God, as he certainly at times shows himself the more placable and considerate of the two,-—-than which nothing can be conceived more absurd; or it may be that, coming from the great presence in which he is said to have stood, he is represented as shedding physical as well as metaphysical light; whence the shining of his face and the need of the veil; hence, too, the horns, typical of rays of light, with which the sculptor and painter have felt themselves authorised to ornament his brow. These extraordinary particulars appear to turn Moses into a wholly mythical personage ? Assimilating him as they do in so remarkable a manner with the Dionysos, or Bacchus, of the Pagan Mythology. He, as well as Moses, is born in Egypt, and the birth of each is concealed for a time, to escape the hostility of a royal personage. Both are exposed in an ark or cradle on the Nile, and are alike rescued by a king’s daughter. Both lead a host to victory—Dionysos in India, Moses in Palestine— T �254 The Pentateuch, with a rout of women and children among them. Both walk dryshod through seas and rivers, which part at the word of command; and both draw water from the rock by striking it with a magic rod. Both have one of their names, at least, from Water—Mow, in Egyptian, signifying water,—the Hebrew leader being called Mouses, and the heathen god Myses. Dionysos, moreover, like Moses, has the predicate Legislator, Thesmophoros ; and both are represented as horned,—Dionysos being characterised as Taurokeros, Bull-horned, and Moses, as just said, being familiarly represented with horns upon his forehead. As the heathen god, to conclude, was styled Luaios and Liber, the Free, the Freer, so is Moses the De­ liverer ■ and if Dionysos have several proper names, so has Moses,-—Manetho informing us that he was known as Osarsiph and Tisithes ; Osarsiph being no other than Osiris, and Tisithes, i.e. Seth, the sacred name of Sirius, the star whose heliacal rising regu­ lated the Egyptian year and symbolised its God. Is there not something like inconsistency in the circumstances amid which the Tables of the Law are at length delivered to Moses, and the fact that the Law itself—in so far, at least, as the decalogue is concerned—has been already imparted, with every possible impressive adjunct,—Mount Sinai quaking and being all of a smoke, thunder bellowing, lightning flashing about its crown, and loud and long-breathed trumpet-blasts coming out of the cloud that hung about it ? It might be said, with great show of truth, that the account we have of the delivery of these Tables is but another version, and by another hand, of the delivery of The Law at large—many of the heads of the Deca­ logue following in the part of the text that is now before us, such as the commandment to have no God but Jehovah, to make no molten images, and to rest on the seventh day. To these, however, are appended �Exodus: Legislation. 255 many other injunctions, some momentous, many in­ different, but all alike left out of the Eclectic Sum­ mary under the Ten heads which we presume we owe to the more practised and much later writer of the Twentieth Chapter. Among the number of these additional commandments is the order to keep the feasts of unleavened bread and of weeks, of firstfruits and the in-gathering of the year’s increase at the year’s end; to appear thrice in the year before Jahveh-Elohim, the Elohim (God) of Israel; not to offer the blood of his sacrifices with leaven ; to leave nothing of the feast of the passover until the morn­ ing; and not to seethe a kid in its mother’s milk—a procedure that must have had a significance to the Israelites which we fail to discover. Besides these, there is the important reminder that all that opens the womb, whether of man or beast, ox or sheep, that is a male, is Jehovah’s ; the firstling of an ass, however, being ordered exceptionally either to be redeemed 'with a lamb or to be put to death by having his neck broken. What Jehovah’s objection to receive the firstling of the ass may have been we do not learn from the Hebrew scriptures. Erom other sources of information, however, we know that the ass was one of the animals sacred to the Egyptian Typhon, the God in his adverse aspect; and that the mode of sacrifice of the animal to him was that pre­ cisely which is commanded in the Hebrew text,—it was thrown down from a height, and so killed or had its neck broken. The first-born son of the human kind, is now ordered to be redeemed, and none are to appear before Jehovah empty. The redemption clauses, where they occur, we have already seen reason to conclude, must have been added subsequently to the original requisition for the first-born ? When we observe that the text in several other places has nothing about redemption, that this is in �256 The Pentateuch. direct contradiction to antecedent positive require­ ments, and that denunciations against the practice of child-sacrifice are of frequent occurrence in the writings of the later prophets, we shall find no reason to doubt * that inasmuch as the first-born of man, being males, are now ordered to be redeemed, so were they in former times, and as the rule, sacrificed on the altar of El, Bel or Baal-Molech, the proper God of the early Hebrew people and no other than Saturn, the chief God of the Semitic race. So much for the Book of the Exodus; all that fol­ lows after the thirty-fifth chapter, to which we have now arrived, containing little or nothing but repe­ titions of what has been already minutely set forth in the chapters from the twenty-first to the thirty-fourth inclusive. The whole of this concluding part of the Book has been held by two esteemed Jewish critics and scholars to be the composition of a writer who lived not earlier than from the 270th to the 260th year before the Christian sera.f The text of these chapters, how­ ever, being referred by Kuehnen to the Book of the Origins, and given by Dr Davidson to the Elohist, may, possibly, be as old as the earlier portions of the Book which treat of the same matters. But questions of age and authorship do not greatly, and at every turn, interest us here, engaged as we chiefly are with the moral aspects of the subject, and * To quote a single instance from the Prophets: “ They built the high places in Tophet, in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire.” (Jerem. vii. 31.) The restriction of the sacrifice to males appears even to have been a late addition. All that opened the matrix, whether male or female, was doubtless the original form. + See Kalisch, ‘ Hist, and Crit. Comment, on the Old Testa­ ment : Exodus and Leviticus; ’ and Popper, ‘ Die biblische Bericht fiber die Stiftshiitte.’ 8vo. Leipz. 1862. �Exodus: Composition of the Book. 257 the possibility of receiving it as the veritable word of God to man. That Exodus comprises some of the most ancient records of the Hebrew myths and legislative enactments that have reached us, is unquestionable. Down to the thirty-fifth chapter it is, in the main, very certainly older than every part of the Book of Genesis, and has been presumed to have been compiled and put together about the beginning of the seventh century before Christ—a thousand years after the age of Moses, but both added to and altered in still more recent times. How can we, in truth, as reasonable men, imagine Moses surrounded by the Israelites in the desert calling to him Bezaleel and Aholiab, and others, cunning workers in gold and silver and precious stones, weavers, dyers, embroiderers, tanners, with a host of artificers besides, and setting them to carry out the minute instructions he is said to have received from Jehovah for making the Tent or Tabernacle, the Ark of the Testimony, the Altars of burnt offering and Incense, the Table of the Show­ bread, &c., &c.,—the surfaces of these last being ordered to be overlaid with pure gold (when they are not to be wholly composed of this precious metal), the cherubim all of beaten gold, the seven-light lamp­ stand with its knobs, branches, lamps, snuffers and snuffer dishes, all also of pure gold; the hangings of fine twined linen—scarlet, purple, and blue—inter­ laced with gold, fastened to pillars having chapiters overlaid with silver by means of hooks of the same precious and, in the olden time, little known metal, &c., &c.,—as we find matters set forth with wearisome prolixity and iteration in this concluding part of the book of Exodus ? It is not possible to do so. The people, according to the record, were only kept from starving by mira­ culous showers of manna (which we feel certain never fell from heaven, though it may then have been, as it still is, scantily produced at a particular season by �• 258 The Pentateuch. the thorny mimosa that lives a dwarfed existence in many parts of the desert), and flights of quails, which still arrive in Egypt, Palestine, and other lands at certain times of the year. How could a community so circumstanced have had the apparatus-furnaces, crucibles, moulds, lathes, looms, saws, planes, dye­ stuffs, tan-pits, and the hundred other implements and appliances indispensable to workers in wood, metal, and precious stones, in wool, flax, and leather ? The Israelites were never mechanics or mechanicians. So late as the age of Saul they had not a blacksmith among them, but sent their ploughshares and coulters to their neighbours, the Philistines, to be sharpened. If this be true their early battles could have been fought with no better arms than clubs ; in the days of the Judges, Samgar is said to have used an ox­ goad, and Samson so primitive a weapon as the jaw­ bone of an ass, in the mythical combats in which so many hundreds or thousands of the enemy compla­ cently suffered themselves to be slaughtered by these heroes of the imagination—even so late as the age of Solomon artificers had to be brought from Tyre to plan and build the Temple ! The whole of the tales about Moses’ laws and constructions are beyond all question the creation of writers who lived long, very long, after the age of the great leader—men who had seen settled life, and must be presumed to have had not only the First but the Sqcond Temple as the model from which they drew. It was not very long, according to the record, after the Exodus, before the Tent or Tabernacle, the Ark and Altars, with their furniture complete, were set up and ready for inauguration ? No more than a year : “ On the First day of the First month of the Second year after quitting Egypt,” all being in order, the ceremony of Inauguration was performed. The lamps having been lighted, incense sublimated, and burnt offerings presented, “a cloud,” �Exodus : Composition of the Book. 259 it is said, descended and covered the Tent, and the Glory of Jehovah filled the Tabernacle. This is but a short time, all things else considered ? Were so much accomplished by the end of the first year or beginning of the second, it becomes by so much the more difficult to imagine what the Israelites could have been about during the remaining thirty­ eight or rather thirty-nine years said to have been spent by them as wanderers in the wilderness. From the inauguration of the Tabernacle the history of the people is a blank until we meet with them making an attempt, in which they were foiled, to penetrate Palestine proper on the side of Moab. Forty years, however,—forty being the sacred number and indis­ pensable in the narrative—had to be got over, and the historian—or shall we say the poet—uses them in a series of marchings and counter-marchings, to and fro, from one imaginary station or camping-place to another, with ever-recurring miraculous interpositions of Jehovah to keep the people from dying of hunger and thirst, and repeated murmurings and rebellions on their part, not without good reason as it seems ;—• eight or nine-and-thirty years are consumed in getting over ground that, with every allowance for contingencies in the shape of delays, difficulties, necessary halts, &c., could easily have been left behind in something less than eighteen months after quitting Sinai, by a horde numerically great as it is possible to imagine the Israelites to have been, if they managed to live even for a year in the wilder­ * ness. The Book of the Exodus ended, and the apparatus for the ceremonial worship of the sons of Israel com­ plete, we now come to the minute instructions for * Goethe—Nihil quod non tetegit, &c.—has discussed this subject in a very complete manner in his notes to the better understanding of his West-East Divan: Zum bessern Verstandniss des West-Ostlichen Divan : Israel in der Wuste. �26o The Pentateuch. carrying it into practice, these being especially com­ prised in the next Book of the Series—Leviticus— although many points have already fallen under our notice in the book that engages us. The ceremonial worship of the Jews, however, interests us little in the present age ; it had even in most particulars ceased to interest the better minds among themselves some considerable time before their disruption and disper­ sion as a people. Its practice has long since and necessarily been abandoned in many of its most im­ posing elements by the modern Jew, the dweller in every inhabited land beneath the sun where there is a living to be made by petty or more liberal traffic, money-dealing, and the like. The record of such a system of religious observance, the outcome of the blind religious sense, indeed, could have no real interest apart from the tale it unfolds of the childish beliefs and barbarous acts mistakenly held good and acceptable to God in an early age of the world’s history, were it not for the influence it has had on the religious ideas and religious practices of the most civilised among the peoples of the earth. There is now no longer any slaughter of bullocks and rams, goats and turtle-doves, before the Image of Jehovah at the door of the Tabernacle or Temple, no burning of fat and flesh to make what was regarded as a sweet savour to Jehovah, no longer the lamb at morning and at evening as his daily ration, nor the show-bread as its complement and the measure of wine as the indispensable drink offering ! The terms of the later Jewish legislation may even be said to have made the continuance of the sacrificial and ceremonial system of earlier days, entitled Mosaic or Levitical, impos­ sible. By the modern reformed code sacrifice could only be performed in one, place, and that Jerusalem, and at one altar—that of the Temple—an ordinance which may have been devised in view of the Jewish people scattered over the face of the globe, and �Exodus : Conclusion. 261 announced as a means of getting rid of the blood­ stained rites of the earlier system. The worship of God by the descendants of the ancient Hebrews has indeed been long purified from almost everything that can offend the reasonable reli­ gious views of the cultivated in the present age; and it might even seem that there was a possible future for the Jehovism professed by the most advanced and enlightened of their later writers. Could the Jews but abandon the insolent and indefensible idea of their being, or ever having been, in any sense, the peculiar people of God; discard the barbarous rite of circum­ cision as a necessity of their initiation ; cease to think of any kind of wholesome aliment as otherwise than clean, and of bullocks and sheep as food unfit for them unless slaughtered in a certain way by one of them­ selves, they would have done away with almost all that keeps them Parias in the midst of the enlightened among European communities. The last named silly prejudice in particular given up, one great bar to a good social understanding between Jew and Gentile would be removed ; and until it is removed no per­ fectly good understanding can be come to between them, for must not my brother eat of the same mess and drink of the same cup as myself I If so much be ever accomplished, the descendants of the ancient Hebrew stock will have made a greater stride in the Religious Idea than did their fathers when they forsook the worship of BaalPeor, Moloch, and Astarte, gave up eating with the blood (eating raw flesh) on High-places, and ceased to celebrate the orgies of the Phoenician Venus in booths and under the shade of green trees. Com­ porting themselves in all respects as reasonable beings, they would possibly find that, instead of being looked on as subjects for the proselytising zeal of ignorant, bigoted, and presumptuous men and women to wreak itself hopelessly upon, they might, �262 The Pentateuch. without themselves coming under the influence of any such bad passion, discover that adherents to the simple theism they professed were to be won from among their uncircumcised neighbours, more piously minded than the mass, but lacking the capacity to believe that God had ever cursed the world, or con­ trived matters so indifferently as to make its redemp­ tion necessary by appearing in human shape to be a propitiatory sacrifice to himself. The people of Eng­ land spend a million a-year in missions and futile efforts to convert the Jew and the heathen to Christi­ anity,-—-whence may the mission come that shall con­ vert them from the unworthy ideas of the Supreme they entertain, and teach them the eternal laws he has ordained for the rule of their lives, of the earth they inhabit, and of the infinite Universe of which they and it are so small and insignificant a part! � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; 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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Pentateuch in contrast with the science and moral sense of our age. Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 205-262 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: "By a Physician". Author believed to be Robert Willis. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Willis, Robert Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1873 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Subject The topic of the resource Bible Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 Pentateuch in contrast with the science and moral sense of our age.), 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> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT123 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Bible Conway Tracts https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/cb0de6ef7363b65eb851fa4a15bfd190.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=qIUxZmuHofKsVAygjlMelw17q41jEDfFah1NGqQ5lGq5Ivewj7dgWojcRYAe37D31yQjihwR5lm0rwBa%7E%7Eb5m%7Ef2yVHJQznDpVFS6wxWcp9ENGVIOkz%7E1FXEIAiFEfuAvQspbXMqcQhjmmNdtyf5ZcuR6kSy3NWiv4ZGXQgv6l1y8VnJeir7z63g9k5Y0J8knP8CEksdYPaZRf9KiD%7EKcFqWn97p3mq94Lnw4Gmkf25IRNGQdYmiKWRkqJAkMC%7EmsbpwnZ8ntAVBSIu3OKQFWs0SL71ihmnp-14IGA9y4-axAn9E4VgM765%7ExV2W9GaFp6Jxc-q9jKp2Gt8koUlLtA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 9520394cdd0bcc750d6c6146bc6ef50f PDF Text Text REFORM IN BURIAL RITES. LETTER BY REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, B.A., IN THE “INDEX,” Aran. 12, 1873. Editor of the Index, Sib,—'Without waiting to know the effect upon your readers of my last letter about Euthanasia, I proceed to give them another violent shock. From my past experience of human kind, I feel convinced that it is much more difficult to effect a change in their social customs than in their ethics. In every country the births, marriages, and deaths are attended by certain social rites which are more imperious than any demands of conscience, and it would be easier far to relax or to tighten the restraints of morality than to alter one of the social ceremonies. I half expect then that, for every one whom I may have startled by my last letter, there will be a score to be horrified by what I am going to say in this. I wish to revolutionize our funeral rites. I want to abolish the burial of the dead, and the wearing of •‘mourning.” If the reader should lose his breath here, let me pause for a moment and tell him that my object originates in pure pity. I desire to relieve mankind of a great and needless burden; to remove some of the greatest aggravations to which we have foolishly submitted in times of our deepest grief; and to insti­ tute customs which will be an unspeakable relief to the poor. My objections to the present system of interment, with its distressing paraphernalia of Under takerism, are as follows :— To the �The first and least important objection is that it is needlessly expensive and an undoubted hardship on the poor. Second, that it is sooner or later a source of great injury to the public health. Third, that our cemeteries occupy a vast amount of space which could be more profitably filled. Fourth,—and this I reckon to be the chief of all objections,—it is a needless and ' cruel aggravation of our physical and mental pain in bereave­ ment, to witness the process of interment. There may be some persons whose feelings are not harrowed by this sight; but I can speak for myself and for thousands of persons of equally sensitive nerves and strong imagination, that it is positive torture to witness the burial of the body of a very near and dear relative. The outward form which we have loved and caressed we place in a coffin, close fitting to the outline of a human body (a coffin is in itself a melancholy object, quite apart from its associations); and this gloomy case, containing our beloved dead, we follow to the dark vault or deep grave, into which it is lowered amid choking sobs and a dead weight at our hearts. We leave the loved object at the bottom of a cold, dark pit, in which we picture to ourselves, for months and years afterwards, all the foul and revolting processes of chemical decay, our thoughts being positively scourged by this haunting picture. It is bad enough to lose our friends and to miss them • day by day ; but it is a monstrous aggravation of our physical pain in losing them, to be tortured by such visions, such memories. Now what I would propose is this. As soon as death is per­ fectly assured,—after such an interval as would render it impossible for a medical man to doubt that death had ensued,— the body should be chemically destroyed. It should be placed in some receptacle containing those powerful agents known to chemical science, which would simply annihilate the outward forip. and practically destroy it. There would necessarily be some deposit, which one might call the “ashes” of the dead; and these might be reverently gathered and placed in a beauti­ ful urn or vase, to be disposed of according to the wishes of the .survivors. They might easily be deposited in consecrated places, in niches in the walls of churches, or in mortuary chapels designed for their reception. This, too, might be accompanied by a religious service ; so that. the religious element is left untouched by my revolutionary proposal. The advantage of all this to people of highly-wrought feel­ ings would be immense. I can imagine the peaceful calm which would steal over the mind when one could take reverently into �3 one’s hands the sacred urn and say, “ This holds all that remains of my beloved.” No horror of dark vaults and damp graves, with their seething corruption. No precious body being eaten piecemeal by worms of the earth, or melting away in a loath• some stream. The form is changed; the substance really remaining after chemical burning is not in the least degree sug­ gestive of the past or the future. The body is saved thereby from every possible dishonour, purified from every decay. No words can describe the relief which such a process would bring to many and many an afflicted soul. On the ground of health to the community, it would also be most salutary. We little know, in England at least, what mischief is brewing for us in our seething cemeteries. They are getting fuller and fuller, at the rate of I know not how many hundreds of corpses a day, the later ones being nearer and nearer the surface. Many are within four feet of the turf, and that is not enough to prevent the escape of the most foul and pestilential gases. I know of one old cemetery which is now occupied by a cooperage, and which is constantly wet with stagnant water. All around it typhus fever is perpetually raging. The danger would not be so great if the bodies were buried without a coffin. The earth would sooner disinfect them; but as it is, the mischief is nursed and multiplied a hundred-fold by the process of decay being delayed. It is quite possible that an outcry might be made on the plea of my scheme being impracticable. I can only say that our Undertakers might take this' subject into their consideration, * and see whether they could not furnish all that was necessary, and conduct the business of destroying the body with decency and skill. Science will not fail to furnish the best chemi cal agents for performing this service speedily and inoffensively. I should not have touched on the question of economy but for my sad experience amongst the poor. The most ordinary burial costs them five pounds; that is a fearful sum for a really poor family to contribute, and that often after heavy medical expenses. Whereas my plan ought to be quite within the cost of a fifth of that sum, let it be done in the best manner possible. As for the rites of burial in themselves, no wise man would care what became of his own dead body, so long as it was not left to be an injury to the living. I should not mind being sent to the dissecting room, or to the kennels. But the rites of burial assume a very important aspect in the interests of the surviving relatives and friends. And for their sakes I plead �4 that those rites may be made as little harrowing as possible ; may conduce as much as possible to console and cheer them, and leave no artificially cruel memories and associations behind them. It is on this ground that I object to the barbarous prac­ tice of‘ ‘Christian” burial and would do my utmost to revolutionize our customs in this matter, and introduce -a refined method of burning instead. Christianity is deeply to blame for aggrava­ ting our fear of death, and for aggravating our grief when death visits our homes. It is time that we turned such a reli­ gion out of doors; not only expelling it from our hearts and minds, but driving out its offensive and oppressive customs,—thus claiming the privileges of consolation under bereavement, which are ours by nature. In another letter I must write a word or two on the subj ect of wearing 11 mourning.’’ I am very sincerely yours, Charles Voysey. Camden House, Dulwich, S.E., March 14, 1873. P. S. I have mentioned the subject to some of my most admired and cultivated friends, and I never met yet with a disc ouraging remark from them. All we want is for some brave family to set the example. The Index is published weekly in Toledo, Ohio. Wertheimer, Lea and Co., Printers, Finsbury Circus, London. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; 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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Reform in burial rites: letter by Rev. Charles Voysey Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Voysey, Charles Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [s.l.] Collation: 9 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Wertheimer, Lea and Co., Finsbury Circus, London. Reprinted from The Index, April 12 1873. The Index is published weekly in Toledo, Ohio. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1873 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5527 Subject The topic of the resource Death Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 (Reform in burial rites: letter by Rev. Charles Voysey), 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> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Burial Conway Tracts Funeral Rites and Ceremonies https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/6259e6a37be1ba17f47cf3de61e04718.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=ma7MkDNldcKQUsDls32fSznkoXEsNRtcZ9Nvk2FR2Qs5WjIu9PG%7EQm0H9CUFzVQmC3RVHkXbdm4xQWhSO-I-Vf7a9AK8mBbNSuvSPN2e7VNogjENGoAulyAnH-%7EC8n2gkZPMngwLP2wtPk%7E3dc1T17hc8E%7EGqrQiMEhXyQLB%7EVO7flzDkPR9qJSpv4Kp0tc5q6a8VCtk%7E28TtZzBL3mZNIFIMzQfj6d6-M8lLx4tBgXUEm9jdGX9hGyB1aiV%7EyYHC4zZYRsMm20jmfyfxr0NvGLBmkz4dRvbUJG82-4Qd90De4iI1ZiWns%7E8sn7rIw1BnVENj1uL4lR40G5ySecLhg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 4d60279bb388b2a71cd6a9f993f8e2d5 PDF Text Text THE QUESTION OF METHOD ’AS affecting RELIGIOUS THOU.GHT. BY A CLERGYMAN of the CHURCH of ENGLAND. OiiK alcrxpbv 3i?ra ret \eyeiv ; Owe, et rb trcodrivai ye rb tyevtios ipepei. To speak untruly—dost not think it shame ? Not when we fare the better for the same. Sophocles Philoctetes. f PUBLISHED BY 'THOMAS SCOTT, NO. II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. ' 1873. Price Threepence. ��THE QUESTION OF METHOD AS AFFECTING RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. HENCE comes the possibility of that strange fact,—strange indeed, yet in the present day by no means unfrequent,—that men having like opportunities and abilities come to utterly diverse conclusions on religious subjects? You may note, say for example, two brothers, each possessed of un­ usual talents, starting from the same early training, each animated by a pure zeal for truth, one of whom, through whatever wanderings, holds fast at least by the great doctrines of Christianity, while the other leaves all orthodox belief far behind him. For— wonder at the fact if you will—we are constrained to admit that men do doubt and disbelieve every Christian dogma, who, whatever judgment may here­ after be passed upon them, live, so far as human eye can see, not less pure or upright lives than the most strenuous upholders of the faith. How can these things be ? How can two men, both sane and sound, affirm of the same fountain, the one that its waters are sweet, the other that they are bitter ? Christianity is true or it is false. That is to say, those occurrences on which all orthodox bodies ■ found their religion have historically happened or they have not. The issue is a simple one, and one W �4 The Question of Method might suppose that honest men who wished for nothing but the truth would have little difficulty in arriving at a similar conclusion one way or other. Yet we find that men apparently possessed of honesty, ability and learning, hold contrary opinions on the subject. The object of the present paper is to point out the broad beaten road which leads to orthodoxy, and also the narrow thorny path which ends in un­ belief. Now if in studying the same subject inquirers arrive at opposite conclusions, either they must start from different premises, or they must adopt a different method of inquiry. Obviously, starting from different premises is a fruitful source of difference in religious as in other matters. Thus in disputes between a Christian and an unbeliever the former will often base his arguments upon biblical texts, forgetting that the other will by no means accept them as conclusive. The one starts from the premiss that the Bible affords an infallible source of information, the truth of which the other denies. Such an argument often ends in mere bitterness, as the parties do not see that there is no common ground between them on which the argu­ ment may rest. Or if they consent to go deeper, and discuss the proposition which to one side formed the premiss of the previous argument, yet again they fail to find common ground, and therefore to appear reasonable to each other. Now the source of the difference must surely be this, that they approach the subject in a different spirit: each adopts a different method of inquiry. I believe the most common method used by the orthodox party is that of assuming some one point,—as the authority of the Church, or of the Bible,—and then arguing from that. This method, however, labours under the disadvantage mentioned above. However satisfactory it may be to the individual who accepts it, it cannot enable him to convince unbelievers. Such a method may even to �as Affecting Religious Thought. 5 some extent be open to the charge brought against it by uncivil persons of being a petitio principii. To those who endeavour to go to the root of the Blatter, there are, as far as I can see, but two methods which they can use as instruments of thought, between which they must take their choice. I shall call these the emotional method and the critical method. These may be briefly characterised as follows : The former method accepts an explanation simply as satisfactory to the mind: it does not seek to compars or test further: it rests on intimate conviction. The critical method, on the contrary, mistrusts every hypothesis until verified ; if an explanation seem pro­ bable in itself, it is not allowed to rest there: it is brought face to face with other facts and theories, and questioned as to its agreement with them; it is, in short, tested in every conceivable way, and not accepted unless it can endure the trial. The critical method is based on verification. I shall now endeavour to show that while the latter method has its value—perhaps is the only one of any value—in scientific inquiries, the emotional method alone can lead to orthodox results in religious inves­ tigations. In ancient times the critical method was almost or quite unknown. Whatever men wished to explain, from the genesis of the earth and the human race to the derivation of a word, was explained out of hand, and evolved with child-like confidence out of the mind of the explainer. When Pindar told of the birth of Ajax (Aias), he derived the name from aleros (aietos) an eagle. It was enough for him that the first two letters corresponded in each word, and that the explanation seemed to him a probable one. When Eve bare her first-born she called his name Cain, and said I have gotten (from the verb hanah, to get) a man. There was a sufficient resemblance between Kain and kanah ; although, according to the �6 The Question of Method critical method, Cain would seem to have been a smith (pp) by name, although not in trade, and Cain’s sons were smiths. These two examples will suffice to show the principle on which names were anciently derived. But a similar method was em­ ployed in other and more important matters. In order to illustrate this, perhaps the reader will allow me to tell him a story out of Philo. An animal is placed on the list of those allowed to be eaten in Levit. xi. 22, which our translators, for some myste­ rious reason, call “ beetle,” and which the Septuagint version as unaccountably renders ophiomachus, ser­ pent-fighter. Now Philo had already proved to his satisfaction that the Serpent which tempted Eve was pleasure. Therefore the reason why this ophioma­ chus was recommended for the Jewish table was plain. “For,” says he, “this ophiomachus seems to me to be nothing else than temperance symbolically, which wages endless war against intemperance and pleasure.” I was charmed when I read this passage, for nothing could more evidently set forth the advan­ tages of the emotional method. See how beautifully the old worthy works it out! The otpiopaxys, which he lit on in his Septuagint, fitted into the theory he was constructing, just like a long-sought, queer-cor­ nered bit in a child’s puzzle-map. Then what “ uses,” what edification, proceed from this interpretation ? What earthly meaning could there be in bidding the Hebrews eat a particular sort of locust ? But when you understand how the locust represents asceticism, what light and interest is shed on the Mosaic com­ mand I And to think that Philo and we should have lost all this had he only been cursed with the very smallest tincture of the critical method ! Had he had any notion of verifying his facts, he would have compared the Septuagint with the Hebrew version, and thus have found that the name of the creature in the original language has nothing to do with ser- �as Affecting Religious thought, 7 penis, but means simply a leap er (chargol), and so his theory would have fallen to pieces at once. For­ tunately he was secure in the strength of his method ; the inward satisfaction which he felt was ample proof of the correctness of his position ; and as the Septuagint version suited him, why should he go further to seek another which might not suit so well ? It would be easy to multiply instances of the use of the emo­ tional method from the writings of authors of all ages ; but I forbear to quote further from uninspired writers. To do so would seem to be the more unne­ cessary, inasmuch as this method, and no other, was employed by the writers of the Books contained in the New Testament. If this be shown, it will be obvious that those who wish to hold to the faith which those holy men pro­ mulgated must walk in their steps and use their method. If we attempt to use the critical method in the exegesis of the Bible, we commence by placing ourselves at a point of view utterly different from that at which its authors contemplated their subject; and shall therefore understand it in a sense alien from theirs. It is by so doing that so many writers and others, whose learning and honesty of purpose are beyond all question, have changed that which Christians hold to be the Word of God into a collec­ tion of more or less curious myths. When the New Testament writers found a passage of the Hebrew Scriptures which seemed to them to bear upon the life of Christ, they assumed at once that it was in its origin prophetic of him. For example, Matthew re­ members the words of Hosea, “ Out of Egypt have I called my Son.” The critical inquirer remembers that the prophet was alluding to the Exodus of Israel. To the Evangelist it is sufficient that these words, taken apart from their context, serve to illus­ trate his narrative. So little did the Evangelists and Apostles care for such accuracy as is required by the �8 The Question of Method critical method, that their quotations from the older Scriptures are often distortions of the words and meaning of the originals, at least as these latter have come down to us. I am not now writing a treatise on prophecy, and it will be sufficient to request the reader who may doubt my assertion to compare the quotations in the New Testament with the prophecies themselves ; he will often be able to detect the distor­ tion, even if he has no knowledge of the original lan­ guages. I may observe here that what has been said holds true of the doctrine of Types. What critical inquirer could ever believe that the narratives of the brazen serpent, of David, Jonah, &c., have any refer­ ence to Christ ? These stories are complete in them­ selves as they stand in the Old Testament, and do not require any further fulfilment. He alone who proceeds always on the emotional method can perceive that the fact that an older narrative may profitably be em­ ployed to illustrate the life of Christ, justifies the assumption that it was intended to do so. So im­ pressed, however, were the Apostolic writers with the truth of this doctrine, that they seemed to have considered the Hebrew Scriptures as of little impor­ tance for any other purpose. Thus Paul cares only for the story of Isaac and Ishmael in so far as they typify the Christian and Jewish churches, and for that of the passage of the Red Sea as exemplifying the doctrine of Baptism. When he reads the words, “To Abraham and his seed were the promises made,” he does not understand “ seed ” to refer to the de­ scendants of the patriarch, as any critical student would, but he insists upon applying it to Christ. Indeed Paul is perhaps the most consistent of all the New Testament writers in his exclusion of the critical spirit. So much so, that he rests entirely on his emotional convictions. He is far indeed from com­ paring critically the accounts of the Resurrection. He will not confer with flesh and blood. He rejects �as Affecting Religious ’Thought. 9 all knowledge of Christ “ after the flesh his inner belief, apart from all comparison with the convictions of others, or verification from external facts, is suffi­ cient for him. It is impossible within the limits of the present paper to do more than illustrate the position here taken up by a few examples. But I feel no doubt that any candid person who will consider those here brought forward, and himself search the Scriptures for others, will be convinced that the writers of the books composing our Bible had not the very slightest idea of the critical method, and would, could they have understood it, have condemned it as unsuited to their purposes. If this be so, let those who would continue to think as the evangelists and prophets thought, beware how they tamper with a method so alien from their spirit. At the risk of being tedious I must adduce another example of the danger of deserting the emotional method. Many such suggest themselves ; indeed the adoption of the opposite method breaks up the Bible in all directions, and leaves, in place of one homoge­ neous infallible book, a collection of tales, most of them of little historical value. I cannot, however, go into this subject any further at present. The one instance which follows may be sufficient to serve as a caution to those who wish to stand in the paths of orthodoxy in these slippery days. The apparent contradictions in the Gospel narra­ tives have driven our orthodox commentators into great straits, except when they have got over a diffi­ culty by omitting to notice it. They would, however, find no difficulty at all if they had sufficient faith in the emotional method, and forebore the attempt to wield the weapons of their adversaries. They need not fear lest they should fail to be secure against doubts and disputations if they will be care­ ful to avoid the critical method. When the critical �io The Question of Method inquirer compares the different narratives of the life of Christ, he finds, among other points of a similar nature, that Jesus is said to have ascended to heaven both from Bethany and also from a mountain in Galilee. According to Matthew,—who is so far confirmed by the narrative which closes the second Gospel as we have it,—the disciples met the risen Christ by ap-. pointment in Galilee. There Mark further informs us that the Ascension took place, they having first been charged to go at once (as it appears) and teach all nations. In Luke, on the contrary, the Eleven do not quit the immediate neighbourhood of Jerusalem; nay, they are expressly charged not to do so until they should be “ endued with power from on high.” This account agrees with that given in Acts, while John does not mention the Ascension at all. Here we see plainly the effect of the comparing or critical method. To one who adopts it, it seems im­ possible that the disciples could both have remained at Jerusalem for a considerable time, and also during part of that very time have been in Galilee ; nor less so that one and the same Ascension should have taken place at Bethany and on a far distant moun­ tain. The emotionalist, on the other hand, feels no difficulty. To compare the different and differing accounts in a critical spirit would be foreign to his nature. Each several account satisfies and edifies him, and he cares for nothing more. Should such an one be pressed to the point by an unbeliever, he might reply that the sojourn of the disciples at Jerusalem is to be understood in a spiritual sense. They were commanded to tarry at Jerusalem, that is, not to break with the Jews and Jewish customs, until the descent of the Holy Ghost. Eor the double site assigned to the Ascension I have indeed no explana­ tion to suggest; yet I am confident that the holy ingenuity of a second Philo—who would care nothing for historic truth and everything for spiritual edifica- �as Affecting Religious 'Thought. 11 cation—would explain this also as triumphantly as the first turned the leaping locust into a slayer of allegorical serpents. If the reader has done me the honour to follow my arguments up to this point, it is ten chances to one that he feels somewhat disposed to quarrel with my position. It is likely enough that he will ask whether the critical method be not that by which all scientific discoveries have been made, and all our knowledge of historic truth obtained ; whether, if that be so, it be not the right method to use in that inquiry which is of all others most important; and whether in fact many eminent writers on religious subjects have not used that method and no other. To the last question I reply, that I am not acquainted with the works of any theologian who has successfully used the critical method and at the same time kept within the confines of orthodoxy; nor can I conceive it possible that there should be such. There are, indeed, orthodox writers who use with more or less success the critical method throughout the bulk of their work; but, so far as I know, they always start with one or more assumptions which are arrived at by the emotional, not the critical method. They assume the authority of the Bible or of the Church ; the necessity of a Divine revelation, and of its miraculous character; the authenticity of the sacred writings on which they rely; and other such points. Having made these assumptions, or some of them, they may proceed to deduce their conclusions from them by the critical method. But the propositions on which their whole subsequent reasoning is based are assumed, not as critically demonstrated, but as appearing natural and necessary to the mind of the writer. The super­ structure may be critical, but the foundation is emotional; and it is from the latter, not the former, that the entire work must take its distinguishino1 character. ° �12 The Question of Method With regard to the other question, viz., whether the critical method be not the better, and therefore the right one to employ, it should be considered that either method is an instrument for aiding us to attain certain ends. We must choose the one best fitted for our purpose. The critical method is an admirable instrument for enabling us to ascertain truth of fact. If we wish to acquaint ourselves with the probability of a reported occurrence having really taken place or otherwise, with no care whether we are led to the affirmative or the negative conclusion, the critical method will serve our turn. But—I am addressing myself to those who are predetermined to preserve their orthodox faith—is this desired ? The critical method is very exacting. If we adopt it we must take nothing for granted : we must not say I will believe this because it satisfies my emotional needs ; or because it is so conducive to public morality and the peace of the individual mind. This method binds us to the pursuit of truth pure and simple, un­ influenced by any preconceived wish as to the result. The emotional method, on the contrary, allows a man’s feelings to determine his belief. If we adopt it we shall never need to trouble ourselves with disagreeable questions, such as, Do we know when and by whom the Gospels were written ? Do they or do they not contain numerous contradictory statements ? Are the accounts therein given of the doings and sayings of Christ in all cases to be relied upon as matters of historical certainty ? and the like. These and many such beset the path of the critical inquirer like im­ portunate beggars, who will not be shaken off until they have their answer. He whose first object is to continue stedfast in his religious belief should refuse altogether to enter upon such inquiries. To deal with them candidly implies a wish to know the truth rather than to continue orthodox ; and such a wish, if acted on, is apt to be fatal to orthodoxy. The �Affecting Religious Thought. 13 importance of inquiry after truth in religious matters Bas been much overstated. An orthodox believer should never inquire after truth ; he should assume that he has it. The word truth is indeed occasionally used in the Bible, yet always in a sense widely different from that in which it is used by the modern critic. Thus the Apostle says : “ We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truthbut by truth he means his own system of religious belief, the truth of which he assumes, and which indeed is the only truth for which he cares. So, again, Christians are bidden searc i the Scriptures.” ' But it is implied, as I have attempted to show, that they are to use a method of search,—a mode of interpretation,—which certainly would not lead to such truth as is sought by the man ©f science or modern historian. I say again, let your wish to know truth always stand second to your desire to continue orthodox; otherwise there is much danger that your truth will not be that of the Church or of the Bible. Should any one say in reply to this : “ What is orthodoxy to me ? I desire to know whether or not the religion I have been taught to profess be really founded on fact. If it be so, it will stand the severest testing by the most rigorous method ; if not, I will none of it: ” to such an one the arguments used in this paper are not addressed. Let him go on his way, if he is sure he has strength to follow it out: taking however this warning with him. I have known those who have acted as he proposes to act; who, starting with a more or less orthodox belief, have insisted on subjecting it to the critical method without fear or favour. The consequence has been that they have found them­ selves in the end stripped of most of those garments with which their earliest instructors had invested their minds, and, in some cases, with their worldly prospects blasted. Let him then count the cost first, lest having begun he should not dare to finish. �The Question of Method, &e. I turn for a concluding word to those who prize their religious faith above all things : who know that it brings them peace, comfort, and worldly prosperity; and are not to be ousted from these solid advantages by a sneer about honesty. Let such be careful to abide by the emotional method, to take the satisfaction which religion and religious books bring to their minds as the surest—the only—basis of their belief. The men of science have with their critical method “ turned the world upside down ” as effectually as did the Apostles of old. Beware then how you allow yourselves to inquire on their method into the truth of sacred narratives. Consider that faith is not as robust as it was ; it now needs hot-house treatment: it must be glazed, and warmed artificially, and kept from rude scientific contact. Guard it from critical thought as you do your exotic plants from frost. Consider, a few degrees of cold will consign it to a grave from which no coming spring can summon it to resurrection. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; 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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The question of method as affecting religious thought Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 14 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: "By a Clergyman of the Church of England". From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1873 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT114 Subject The topic of the resource Bible Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource [Unknown] Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 question of method as affecting religious thought), 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> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Bible-Criticism and Interpretation Conway Tracts Religious Thought https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/c2640e84895cbb2a6cd2b7b8f457ffc8.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=OZp4c8v7A8g9Ew1raCy8tk1LHq5YTVbEmdPJrKufBdAeJGAImuG3McBdQjYnTUjOauCAj-l6mAjWmJraQwM%7E2RhOiksjikRLFYqVQ5nSe%7EyfQPPSjLFbT8U1O9%7En-4p-QQ8Q5nDoAXuZEmuSkpcoLotqd%7EG8zAGod%7EMK2g87ll137J7icRK7I6CXBqVHps0%7EOWtRf06EY0MbXchnPbXMjQfclHFrKeP0UeBxenpaZaNfqJj3PAEQxn1VvzPZAqAsF1xBYRzQUEPB8SfV-HLgEraLBh-He4i6IL4Q5TO4WVCspG362ei44KdlqYegJlqgF-9Hjpe7LENCVJs9WFDh%7Eg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 5fb87945d6e3eb162bfe22d8ea3ad47d PDF Text Text 697 NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY vóilscroj TkirmaS^ • I I EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT A LETTER a O C) TO THOMAS SCOTT. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS II THE TERRACE, SCOTT, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. 1873. Price Sixpence. �On religion, in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is the duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have on mature consideration satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known : at least, if they are among those whose station or reputation gives their opinion a chance of being attended to. Such an avowal would put an end, at once and for ever, to the vulgar prejudice, that what is called, very improperly, unbelief, is connected with any bad qualities either of mindt or heart. The world would be astonished if it knew how great a pro­ portion of its brightest ornaments—of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue—are complete sceptics in religion; many of them refraining from avowal, less from personal considerations, than from a conscientious, though now, in my opinion a most mistaken apprehension, lest by speaking out what would tend to weaken existing beliefs, and by consequence (as they suppose) exist­ ing restraints, they should do harm instead of good. Autobiography by John Stuart Mill. �EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. ■> DEAR FRIEND,— ULD that the topic were more genial or humane, to say nothing of divine, for, assuredly, the odour of such a sulphurous thesis is the reverse of that of “sanctity.” Yet I will decline no subject on which you think that what I may have to say can possibly serve the cause we both have at heart,—for I am persuaded that the cause pleaded by yourself and your distinguished coadjutors is mainly the same as that to which my poor thoughts and aspirations have been long directed. Many of us, I have no doubt, see several of the questions at issue from various points of view and through different media, with glasses not adjusted to the same focus; but we are all of the Human-Catholic Church, seeking to realise a religion reasonable no less than aspira­ tional, satisfying, that is, the sentimental or emotional requirements of the spirit, no less than the logical and intellectual demands of the understanding. Ignoring neither, our endeavour is to conciliate and unite the two, in common allegiance and devotion to rhe one Power from which they both spring. Our Faith is faith in “ Principles,” and that I believe is true Christian Faith, as contradistinguished from shallow assent and consent to opinions and conjec­ tures of a quasi-historical or traditional sort, often assuming the name of a sacred grace to which it is in no degree entitled. “Faith ” is an inward confiding temper of the soul Godward, and has nothing reli- �4 Everlasting Punishment. giously in common with acceptance or rejection of lo, here ! or lo, there! assertions of circumstantial import, which have to be judged solely by laws of evidence or antecedent probability—whether too cre­ dulously received or too incredulously denied, affect­ ing only the intelligence, and by no means the spiritual depth or breadth of our being. Surely those who put their trust, through calm and storm, in the abiding principles of Faith, Hope, and Love are true mem­ bers of the one indivisible and universal Church of which Christ is the Spiritual High Priest. He came to proclaim peace and goodwill among men—a gospel only to be realised by unity of principle, but never attainable by any attempt at an impossible and un­ desirable uniformity of opinion. If community of Churchmanship is to depend upon multitudes of free and true men agreeing to numerous propositions, physical and metaphysical, alike incapable of proof, but each of which has adherents whose pertinacity is usually in the inverse ratio of their knowledge, then may we postpone such Christian fellowship to the Greek Kalends or the Apocalyptic Millennium. Thus much of preface as to a probable divergence of views which, when truthfully and charitably enter­ tained, I take to be more conducive to edification and mutual esteem than any conformity of a stereotyped sort. Why should not all be content to travel in the same direction by different paths and at different speeds ? Dean Swift used to say it mattered little whether we journeyed Heavenward in a carriage-andfour or a donkey-cart, provided we did but get there ; and the Emperor Constantine told a favourite bishop of peculiarly pedantic orthodoxy, that he must climb to Heaven on his own proper ladder, for nobody else would mount it with him. But now to our theme,—time was when I could have written on the dismal dogma with more interest and earnestness than it at present inspires me with. �Everlasting Punishment. $ Not that I hold it, in its gross and literal accepta­ tion, a whit less subversive of all religious and reason­ able principles than I did years ago, when taking its matter more au serieux and occasionally feeling its dyspeptic incubus weighing upon my own faith and trust in the goodness and mercy of God, the “Mercy that is over all His Works,” and the “ Mercy that endureth for ever ! ” Is it a real “ Article of Belief” that we have to deal with ? Does it exist in men’s minds and make them miserable and make them mad, as it assuredly must, supremely miserable and despe­ rately mad, if it exist at all as an earnest conviction in their spirit or understanding ? My full persua­ sion is that no man of sound mind in sound body is nowadays ever seriously disquieted by the grisly phan­ tom begotten of theologic hatred and conceived of theologic fear, the fear that indeed “ has torment,” the fear which Paith casts out as gibbering frantic blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, by imputing hate to the Supreme Spirit whose Being is Love, and endless vengeance to the God whose nature and property is ever to forgive. It is here, if anywhere, when turning backto this mediaeval abortion of the odiumtlieologicum, that one is reminded of Plutarch and Bacon in their identical relative estimates of “ Superstition ” and “ Atheism.” Who does not remember the manly and honest simplicity with which the noble old Boeotian tells us he would rather people said there was no Plutarch, than that Plutarch was fickle, passionate, and vindictive ! How many folios of so-called Chris­ tian theology would kick the beam when weighed in divine scales against that little treatise of a dozen pages (vrepi Aeio-iSatpor/as) by a benighted heathen ! And then our Chancellor !—“ Better to have no opin­ ion of God at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy of Him; for the one is unbelief, the other is con­ tumely ! ” Surely those two essays might be read in Churches as lessons approved by apostles who �6 Everlasting Punishment. denounce the beggarly elements of fanaticism, and proclaim faith without charity as nothing worth !—• approved by evangelists and prophets who preach acceptable religion as “doingjustice,loving mercy,and walking humbly with our God.” Well may our great British regenerator of human thought talk of super­ stition being to religion as a monkey is to a Man, for never could any travesty by genus “Simia” exceed the parody that superstition has put upon religion, when trumpeting endless vindictive punishment for punishment’s sake in the name of the Deity who has proclaimed Himself as chastening whom He loveth, and loving whom He chasteneth ! You will remind me, perhaps, that this is emphatic language, and that I began by disclaiming any deep feeling on the subject; and I am quite sensible of the apparent inconsistency. The fact is, that one is prone to oscillate on such a topic between extreme indig­ nation and very thorough contempt. A healthy mind will, no doubt, easily and at once shake itself free from morbid and lurid imaginations, that would deform and deface God’s beautiful universe by per­ petuating misery and deifying evil as coequal and coterminate with good. And while under the bracing influence of such health and healthy surroundings, one is apt to be ashamed of fighting as one that beateth the air, with no adversary but the unwhole­ some illusion of feverish weakness or designing wickedness. The “hell-fire” of superstition is to Religion and Reason but an ignis fatuus, flickering among the dead bones and mouldering1 remains of ages darker than our own ; and wise neighbours call no. engines, and fill no buckets to put it out. From this point of view we can look at such “ fire ” calmly and talk about it composedly. But when again one remembers that mental health and strength are bv no means the inheritance of us all, and that for hypo"chondria, dyspepsia, and hysteria, the spectral finger �Everlasting Punishment. n that points to hell in another world, usually points down the road to madness in this—why, then, indig­ nation once more is likely to get the upper hand of indifference. But even a less hideous and more frequent consummation than absolute insanity in­ trudes itself inevitably on attention, and is, to a religious and reverential estimate, totally incom­ patible with philosophic apathy. The doctrine, even when not earnestly believed in, but only languidly tolerated, as tending towards checking and alarming gross and ignorant vice by false but portentously horrible representations of distant penalties incurred —this doctrine, I maintain, is still fraught with irre­ ligious and immoral mischief — as, indeed, in a universe under the ultimate sovereignty of Supreme Truth, uZZ false teaching must be irreligiously and immorally mischievous. Let us go into the heated and feverish atmosphere that surrounds “ popular preachers,” proclaiming, in the name of an Almighty, Allwise, and Allgood Godhead, the final and per­ petual plunging into the fiery lake of the devil and his angels, with all the myriads of human sinners, heretics, infidels, and others, that cannot present an orthodox passport at heaven’s gate. Let us look round upon the excited and excitable crowd that feels a sensational thrill, almost allied to horrid pleasure, in the stupendous, infernal drama depicted for their edifi­ cation, and then let us inquire for a moment into the nature of such edification. It assuredly is seldom of that highest sort which prompted Moses and Paul to reject their individual salvation unless that of their brethren could be simultaneously secured : “ Blot me also out of thy book !” and “ I could wish myself also accursed for my Brethren’s sake !” It is hardly a breach of charity to conclude that this is not quite the feeling that actuates the anxious benches of 11 Tabernacles ” and “ Ebenezers,” as they listen to fulminations of “ hell-fire” reserved for all but the �8 Everlasting Punishment. elect few, to join whose exceptional ii glory” they are naturally inclined to make a rush, under an impulse and watchword not absolutely identical with that of “ loving their neighbour as themselves.” Yet, with­ out rising to the level of a Moses or a Paul, how often do we find simple sailors and soldiers, who, in the service of an earthly master, will scorn to hurry first into the boats that can save but a fraction of their company! How cheerfully will the noble fellows hold back till at least the women and children are made room for! But, it may be said, their threaten­ ing danger is only of natural death; while the religionists are in frantic terror of supernatural tor­ ments, &c., &c. Strange, at any rate, that a religious doctrine, preached in the name of Christ, should tend towards so low a pitch of selfishness as to be satisfied to be supremely happy with the knowledge of the supreme contemporary misery of theirfellow-creatures! How does such doctrine look, when tried by the divine test of “ knowing them by their fruits ? ” Or is this an exceptional case, in which the heavenly vine produces such very earthly thorns ? Turning from the human ethics consequent on the dogma that lends such point and zest to the oratory of popular pulpits, let us see how it stands with the system of celestial government in accordance -with, such theory. Those gentlemen who proclaim it would no doubt be much surprised to hear that their gospel of ultimate and infinite suffering is altogether incom­ patible with their worship of one God, Almighty an cl Allgood,—and that they are bound in logic and con­ sistency to announce themselves henceforth as recog­ nising two eternal principles, one of Good and the other of Evil, like Persians of old, or later disciples of the Heresiarch Manes. They are very possibly of opinion that, having done such poetical justice upon all fallen sinners, whether angelic or human, as cast­ ing them into the perpetual lake of burning brimstone, �Everlasting Punishment. 9 nothing further can be required towards the vindica­ tion of sole and supreme Good throughout the universe. But surely this position cannot stand scrutiny. How can supreme good reign triumphant in a universe degraded and dishonoured by the infinite evil of end­ less unrepenting and unamending angelic and human misery ? Were the agonies announced as of a limited or purgatorial kind, the case would of course be differ­ ent, but it certainly does excite fair astonishment that the advocates of eternal vindictive, non-curative, and non-purifying punishments should not see that they are thereby maintaining a coequal sovereignty of evil with good, always, everywhere, and for ever. The seeming ignorance of, or indifference to, this inevitable sequitur, no doubt arises from such persons using the metaphysical words “infinite,” “eternal,” &c.,’in quite a limited and physical acceptation. But it is time, in the present stage of mental cultivation and era of exact science, that they should recast their nomenclature. They must learn to see and acknow­ ledge that no evil can be greater than that of the endless sinful existence of spiritual beings, created in the image of God—multitudinous beings of such high origin, for ever unrepenting and unamending, of neces­ sity cursing both the Creator that created them and tlie Creation that their endless sinful suffering darkens, deforms, and disgraces, to no purpose but that of inflicting pain and perpetuating cruelty ! I ought now, perhaps, in reference to my signature as a commissioned officer of our Established Church, to say a word or two as to the Biblical and Litur­ gical bearings of the dogma that I venture to condemn as not only anti-Christian but absolutely inhuman, and implying “contumely” to the God of Goodness. I have no difficulty or scruple whatever in asserting that, to the best of my judgment, the Bible not only ignores, but would absolutely anathematise, such doc­ trine as that which endeavours to brand Creation �Io Everlasting Punishment. with indelible failure and deformity, while dethron­ ing the one God and Lord of all, in favour of a dualistic scheme of Ormuzd and Ahriman, projecting through the universe the distorted semblance of a “house divided against itself.” It ought not to be required that we should descend to the examination of mere Hebrew and Greek vocables to establish a truth, the miscarriage of which would be fatal to all claims of divine inspiration in the providential books that have been so venerated for decades of centuries by Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian. Enough, surely, that we can appeal to the “ Spirit ” of these Scriptures that always quickens, without haggling over . the “ letter ” that occasionally “kills.” Not that in this case, as I apprehend, there can be any difficulty in securing the witness of the “ letter ” as well as that of the “ Spirit” to the honour and glory of God. Yet who needs it who is already familiar with the Scriptural attributes ascribed to Deity, as ever culminating in goodness, and in mercy enduring for ever, and enfolding all his works in the “ everlast­ ing arms ” that are spread beneath them ? Why should we be tasked to gild refined gold and paint the lily white, by trying to strengthen, through itera­ tion and variety of texts, such pandects of supreme truth and holiness as are expressed in passages of Old and New Testament, which every real lover of their lore will bind as signs upon his hands and frontlets between his eyes ? Let us appeal at once to the fountain-head of our Biblical allegiance, to the Teacher who has taught us to approach our God as our Father which is in heaven, ever ready to forgive us our trespasses as even we to forgive them that trespass against us! Think we, perchance, that any human malignity could ever reach the pitch of relentless and endless unforgiveness to its offspring, in whose behalf even a Roman dra­ matist would write Propeccato magnopaululum supplicii �Everlasting Punishment. 11 satis est Patri. “ If ye, then,” says the Christ, “ being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give to them that ask Him.” Dare men, while worshipping such a God through such a Mediator, still venture to assert that He for bread gives us a stone, for fish a serpent, for an egg a scorpion ! But away with figures of serpents and scorpions — mere maudlin metaphors to veil the ineffable monstrum liorrendum informe, ingens cui lumen ademptum—“ monstrous, hideous, blind, horrible, and huge,” which would impute “ hell fire ” as the divine rejoinder to our poor human prayers to the “Lord of all power and might, declaring His Almighty rule most chiefly in mercy and in pity.” Has the “contumely” of superstition, our Baconian “Monkeyism of Manhood,” ever gone further or descended lower in travesty and caricature of a Godhead created in its own image ? Really Samson’s riddle was easy reading compared with the theologic enigma that, instead of weakness out of strength, brings hatred out of love, and relent­ less vengeance out of infinite mercy and compassion! Many fantastic tricks have we sons of Adam played before High Heaven to make the angels weep; but here is surely a trick of Angry-Apism that would petrify angelic tears in blank amazement, to say nothing of classic philosophy, whether of the school that laughs or the school that weeps at the aberrations of our eccentric nature. We read of James and John asking their Lord’s sanction for a mere momentary flash of earthly fire to consume his enemies, and how sternly does that Lord rebuke the spirit that suggested the wish, as emphatically no spirit of his ! Yet there are those among us, neither few nor always of the dullest, who would confidently, - in the name of the same Master, invoke flames of preternatural fire, to agonise perpetually, without consuming, the disputants who vex the pragmatic �12 Everlasting Punishment. zeal that found such, small countenance from him in whose cause it bestirred itself. When one remem­ bers, moreover, that Christ most unmistakably endorses the really divine law of commensurate and inevitable penalties of an instructive and chastening sort, as awaiting all transgressions of the moral or physical code of light and life, one feels that it is but taking pains to little purpose to argue against fore­ gone conclusions. Would any advocate of “ infinite ” penalties await­ ing the very “ finite ” difference, moral or spiritual, between Messrs A and B, do us the favour to give their note and commentary on the text of “ many stripes ” due to the one, and “ few stripes ” due to the other ? I would not willingly adopt a light tone in reference to so dismal a theory, but it is a law of our nature, that the “ sublime ” of unreason should stand in close contiguity to its corresponding extreme. Pardon me, then, for looking round on the counte­ nances of the first dozen fellow travellers from Charing Cross to St Paul’s, to conjecture, on available data, their future destiny as eternal heavenly angels or cooeval infernal dsemons ! 0 for the Egyptian sphynx or Athenian owl, to cast the horoscope of Mr Br—gs ! Who does not at once recoil from conclusions too grossly preposterous to abide for a moment, when confronted with the barest sufficiency of sense and soberness that distinguishes us from idiots ! The dogma, as already said, is a psychological phenome­ non that sets aside all religion and all reason; and one cannot easily bring religious or reasonable argument to bear upon that which can only exist by strict denial of every elementary postulate of one or the other. If it really had any root in the hearts or heads of people outside an asylum, we should be in imminent danger of a collapse in any human society of which they were members. It would remove all our moral landmarks and confound all our moral �Everlasting Punishment. 13 weights and measures, to a degree utterly incom­ patible with any healthy and honest intercourse with our kind; for what faith or hope could we have in fair dealing on earth, while stupendous false scales were hung up to our view in Heaven, in the name of that Lord to whom Religion and Reason have hitherto made them an abomination ! When the divine Head of Christendom dramatises the great “ Judgment according to Works,” surely He distinguishes the ethics of the gospel plainly enough from the false reckoning that would allot an infinite interval to the infi/nitessimal unknown X that repre­ sents the surplus of A’s doings over those of his brother B. Put the “ finite ” into one dish of the balance and the “ infinite ” into the other, and we have an inconceivably small fraction of a grain weighed against a sum-total of tons, compared with which a rule of arithmetic digits reaching from London to Edinburgh would be as nothing ! One has to talk in this way with the forlorn hope of fixing the attention of the volubility that trifles so com­ placently with words that stand for ideas unrealisable by the human brain. Is it not, after all, this utter unintelligibility of the questions mooted that can alone account for the phenomenon of intense irri­ tability proverbial as odium theologicum, appro­ priating exclusively to itself the tprm “ polemics ” as satirically characterising the temper of disputing devotees, whose common principle and badge of recognition was to be their “ Love of one another.” Why do devotees of exact sciences indulge in no such venomous polemics ? How hard it seems to our human pretention to acknowledge that we cannot see through the thick veil that it has pleased Providence to let fall between things earthly and things unearthly. How little we like to appropriate the lesson, “ What is that to thee, follow thou me.” “ Do justice,” that is, “ and love mercy,” leaving reverentially to God �14 Everlasting Punishment. the things that are God’s, and as yet God’s only. What should we say to monkeys bent on mathematics, with infinite nuts pending on the issue, and tearing one another to pieces over definitions and axioms of Euclid. Rage unspeakable and irrepressible between two sects, to one of which a triangle is assuredly three right angles, and to the other as positively four ! (Itisum teneatis ! ” Fabula ta/men de nobis nct/rrcbtur— the case is pretty much our own. _ Enough, however, for the moment as to broad views connected with the changeless principles of religion and reason. Let us now turn for an instant to that sort of argument that seeks, in the written “ letter” of our sacred books, for ways and means of invalidating its divine “spirit.” Do we not read repeatedly of “ hell ” and “ everlasting fire ” in the Old Testament and the New ? and dare we doubt or reject such words on such pages ? To the latter question the reply of Christ and his apostles is to try all such words, representing what ideas they may, and to hold fast to those alone of them that are good— trying, that is, the inky words on paper by the living words traced by the “ finger of God upon the tablets of our heart ” or conscience. No mistake about the revelations written there, and those that are wilting to know them shall know of the doctrines whether they be of God (Ear ns Qe\rj ■ynvuerai). True faith in such revelations, “ saving us by the answer of a good conscience,” would bravely and loyally renounce both Old Testament and New, though they had fallen, ready printed and bound, from heaven to earth, rather than for a moment sin against the Holy Ghost by imputing to it on their authority that which we know by its inspiration to be of the nature of evil. But here, happily, our faith is exposed to no such trial, for neither does the Old Testament nor the New say a word, to the best of iny knowledge, which, fairly interpreted, can reduce us to choose between �Everlasting Punishment. i5 “ Bibliolatry ” on the one hand, and that “ liberty ” of conscience on the other which always exists where the spirit of the Lord is. The least learned English reader can easily convince himself that the “ hell ” of the Old Testament is simply the word meaning a “ hollow place,” and habitually used as equivalent to 11 grave ” or “ tomb.” Why our translators sometimes render it as “ grave ” and sometimes as “ hell ” is by no means clear. We should be surprised, for example, to read of the patriarch’s “grey hairs being brought down with sorrow unto hell,” or of Jacob “ going down into hell unto his son mourning yet it is precisely the same word which, in the Psalms, is given as, “ Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell,” where it evidently means “ grave,” no less than in the other passages. When Jonah is represented as “crying out of the belly of hell,” meaning the belly of the fish, every one knows that he refers to his living “tomb.” But there is an unjustifiable laxity in substituting the one word for the other where popular misapprehension is so likely to follow. So much for the “hell” of the Old Testament, thus reduced from its mythological and monstrous accepta­ tion to one with which we are all familiarly acquainted. Next let us see how far the metaphysical idea of endless duration of time, or Eternity, is represented by the in i in of the Hebrew F It may be rightfully maintained that in the early epochs of Jewish litera­ ture, the idea of such transcendent duration had not yet dawned upon human intelligence, and, therefore that the words m and nift could never have repre­ sented a thought not yet extant in its bewildering vagueness. For many centuries the calculations of mankind were pretty much limited to the sum total of the digits at the extremities of hands and feet, and we all know that the prophets take refuge in sacred and indefinite numbers, seven, forty, seventy, &c., where �16 Everlasting Punishment. precision might be embarrassing or needless. Certain it is that no confidence can be placed in our modern renderings of high numbers in the Pentateuch, and equally sure that we have no right to attach our notion of “ everlasting,” &c., to words which we find applied to the hills of Judea and the possession of the pro­ mised land, to the lives of kings, and so on. When Juda so beautifully pleads with Israel for leave to take Benjamin with him, and winds up with “ If I bring him not back, let me bear the blame for ever,” who is embarrassed with the cmvrbn that we translate as “ for ever,” quietly accepting it, as every one does, for “ all the days of my life.” Turning to the pages of the New Testament on the same quest, what word do we find for this theological representation of end­ less fire, agonising irreclaimable sinners for duration of time mathematically endless ? Simply the Syriac term “Gehenna,” a corruption of “Valley of Hinnom,” where, outside the walls of Jerusalem, the offal of the city and bones of malefactors were consumed ; that is, “ Gehenna ” is a metaphorical expression for the disgrace, desolation, and destruction awaiting excommunicated sin and sinners, cast into outer lurid darkness, where weeping and gnashing of teeth are in full harmony with their surroundings. When we read of Christ, that he pronounces cause­ less anger worthy of judgment (magisterial), and foul-mouthed abuse (para) liable to a higher court, but “thou fool” (juwpe), that is, deliberate contempt and scorn of arrogance, versus humility, liable to “ heli-fire,”—can any disciple of Justice tempered by Mercy suppose this “ Gehenna of Fire ” to mean what popular superstition is taught to attach to the term, instead of forming the natural climax, as it probably does, to intramural penalties, culminating in being cast out to the dreary and unclean valley of burning bones F If Christ rebuked with such withering sar­ casm the zeal of James and John, desiring fire to �Everlasting Punishment. 17 ' consume the adversaries of his preaching, what cohesion or congruity can we find in a lesson that would inculcate eierwaZ fire for the folly of inflated self-conceit depreciating its neighbours ? It is true, however, that this “ Hinnom-Valley ” is not the only equivalent for our expression “ Hell­ fire ” in the New Testament. There is another term, the classical “ Hades,” meaning the invisible abode of departed spirits, but no more resembling our theologic Hell than a Greek statue is like a scare-crow. When the “gates of Hell” (ivvXai a&ov) are said to be power­ less against the Church, this has no reference what­ ever to the “ Gehenna ” outside Jerusalem, but is the expressive Syriac-Greek metaphor for powers of dark ignorance, as opposed to the light, and life, and love of truth, which constitute the real “ orthodoxy ” of the Human Catholic Church. In the parable of Dives and Lazarus there is certainly mention of fire tormenting the rich man in Hades, but it must be a very prosaic spirit indeed that attaches the notion of material fire to the language of Allegory depicting remorse burning into memory the reproachful regret of gifts and opportunities wasted or abused. All this may sound as minute and elementary cri­ ticism to those acquainted with the ancient languages of our two Testaments, but it cannot be quite super­ fluous as long as the doctrine we are considering even nominally defaces and defames the Gracious Gospel of Faith, Hope, and Love; of which the last is alone eternal, as being in itself the soul of the Godhead. Let us look again for the Greek word which we make to bear the weight of such portentous meaning (or rather no meaning), and we find a comparatively harmless aittvios and els tov aiiiva, signifying only duration of a limited sort, equivalent to “ ages ” or “ centuries ” with us. When the fig-tree is to bear no more fruit “ for ever,” what has that to do with endless time, when the life of the tree itself is but for B �18 Everlasting Punishment. a few years ? No doubt these words are used for indefinite or infinite duration, when the intention is to convey the highest possible idea of such duration, as of the word, or wisdom, or goodness of God ; but they are equally used for temporary existence, and that carries with it all the weight of argument we require. When Jonah says, “The earth with her laws was about him for ever,” he uses the Hebrew obv, just as the New Testament uses e<s rov ativra for the duration of the “ house of Jacob as the prophets speak of “ everlasting mountains,” &c. The only important point is to save the credit of Scriptures otherwise responsible for a doctrine fatal to their claims to “ infallibility.” Enough that their language will bear a good meaning, to make it incumbent on us not to assign to it a bad one. If the requirements of language had insisted on an acceptation of “ everlasting,” &c., incompatible with any limitation, we might have sought refuge perhaps in the ingenious bit of sophistry which maintains that all punishment is of necessity eternal; inasmuch as it is an everlasting deduction from the sum total of enjoyment. A magistrate, for example, fines us five shillings, and we are for ever poorer by said five shil­ lings, than we should have been without such penalty ; so also with imprisonment and bodily suffering, so much for ever substracted from our normal stock of liberty and absence from pain. But we are not driven to such casuistry, though of a sort justifiable enough in self-defence against the unjustifiable despotism of dominant stupidity. It might also be a question to moot, were it wanted, whether we can entertain any logical idea of an “eternity” limited at one end; whether, that is, any thing can be conceived as endless which has a beginning. My own impression is that it cannot, though I may be inadvertently running into “ heresy ” by saying so. �Everlasting Punishment. i9 Between ourselves, as you are not going to turn Grand Inquisitor, I could confess to something like an Article of Belief, in the eternity of every thing that IS, allowing for “ circulation,” with permutations, combinations, and the like. Was there ever a time when “matter” did not exist, or “time” either? “ When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, ’twas no matter what he said,” &c., &c. Excuse my trifling, to relieve for a moment the very heavy dis­ quisition you have lured me into. If I am right in saying that the literal Hell dogma is not in the Bible, it would of course follow from our Vlth Article, that it is in no degree incumbent upon any one signing the XXXIX, maugre even the “ Athanasian ” Creed, which our Parliament in its wisdom still thinks fit to ratify and maintain. Apropos to which Anglican symbol, I cannot say that I, in my individual insignificance, have ever found it the pre-eminent stumbling block that it seems to many. In the first place, if I read it at all, it is in obedience to Parliamentary Law in our Parliamentary Church—and I consider myself free not to read it, provided I am ready to submit to the Parliamentary penalty for neglecting the rubric. Secondly, if I individually demur to its logical meaning, I can avail myself of the fact io which my attention was once called by an excellent and distinguished Spiritual Peer, viz., that the symbol is appointed to be either ‘ said or sung.'' Now, as “singing” was never yet intended to be subjected to laws of strict reasoning, it would be like seeking difficulties to apply rules of dry logic to triumphant outbursts of “ orthodox ” rhythm, hymning victorious pagans of JSomoousion vic­ tory over discomfited partisans of JSomoiousion schism in the hot areha of Byzantian polemics ! The argument as to the meaning of words applies, moreover, as well to the “ Creed,” whether prose or poetry, as to the Bible, and the “ everlasting fire ” seems threatened �20 Everlasting Punishment. rather to “ doing evil ” than to involuntarily believing correctly or incorrectly, which is at any rate some comfort to common sense. There can be no harm, however, in an obscure Presbyter echoing the wish of a bygone Primate touching “ Quicunque yult,” to the effect that “ we were well rid of it.” The remark may not be worth much, but it is a remark many of us have, perhaps, made in reference to “ Athanasian Creeds ” and similar phenomena, that the “ people,” so called, find little or no diffi­ culty, and make little or no objection, to them. In village congregations the “ Quicunque vult,” with its magnificent rhythm, much more effective than “ Reason,” is heard with great edification, and with very little of the scrupulosity about “ damnatory clauses ” that is apt to disturb more delicate and refined constitutions. The fact seems to be that dense and pachydermatous natures only experience agreeable sensations under a currycomb that would flay the skin of more susceptible subjects. The most popular pulpits are known to be those which fulmi­ nate the fiercest and loudest,—well illustrating Lord Bacon’s apothegm, that the “ People is the master of superstition, in which wise men follow fools, with arguments fitted to facts in reversed order.” Arch­ bishops and Bishops, and Presbyters, would be ready to be rid of a personified Devil and his doings on much easier terms than rustics would approve, and I well remember the story as told by the wisest and truest of living prophets and humourists, how the little lassie came weeping back from a discourse where “ the gentleman said there was na’ deil.” If there is one Scriptural book more peculiarly pic­ turesque in imagery of fiery-lake scenery than another it is the Apocalypse, and that, as every one knows who knows country cottages, is beyond comparison the favourite village reading. Simple and uncritical, an agricultural population will revel in the gorgeous �Everlasting Punishment. 21 imagery and stupendous machinery of visions of Patmos, impervious to doubts and difficulties which could make such a divine as South exclaim, more pointedly than decorously, that they “ either found a man cracked or left him so.” The strongest imagin­ ary appeals have little effect upon natures rendered rugged and unimpressionable by constant contact with hard and rough realities, but exemplify your figura­ tive “ everlasting punishment” by showing such per­ sons an old-fashioned “ cat-o’-nine-tail ” infliction, and then ask them what they would think of a doctrine teaching that such suffering was to be inflicted for ever by heavenly power upon human sinners : not for their amendment, but only for their punishment; not for the sake of saving discipline, but only for per­ petuating sin and unrepenting maledictions. Those who, knowing better, would countenance such horrid phantasmagoria, under the impression of frightening people from crime, are as wrong practically as they are morally and religiously. Practically such threats have no effect at all beyond lending vigour to the popular blasphemy that borrows their infernal vocabulary. If, indeed, such terrors could avail prac­ tically, we ought consistently to bring back the rack and the wheel to supplement the prison and the gibbet. We should be justified, for the general good, in pour­ ing melted lead and boiling oil, as in good old times they did upon the body and limbs of a Ravaillac or a Damiens, approaching by human ingenuity, for an hour or so, to the agonies reserved by Theologic “ Divinity” for the majority of mankind “ for ever” and a day! But in this, as in every attempt to change divine laws and improve them by human device, we inevita­ bly go wrong. It will never answer to do evil that good may come, and the course of truth can never be forwarded by untruth. The Laws of Life are God’s laws, and provide inevitable corresponding penalties �22 Everlasting Punishment. for all infraction of such laws, however they he dis­ tinguished as physical or moral. The “Pama claudo pede ” doctrine, teaching that the penalty is as insep­ arable from the offence of commission or omission as the shadow from its substance, is the only true and effective penal code ; and till national education teaches that, it is no religious education, least of all a Christian, i.e., of Judgment according to works or fruits. Every jurisconsult knows that the fear of punishment is in the ratio of its certainty and propin­ quity, and by no means in that of its enormity and uncertainty. No man in his senses thinks himself bad enough for the “ Hell-fire ” with which he occa­ sionally may hear himself menaced in a very indefinite way as to time, place, and circumstance. The worst criminal, moreover, shrinks religiously from the per­ sonification of Deity painted as infinite strength wreaking insatiable vengeance upon infinite weakness. It would be an apotheosis or consecration of iniquity, like that of Lucifer’s “ Evil be thou my Good ! ” Teach, only teach, in God’s name, that as surely as fire, if we defy it, will burn us, and water drown us, so surely will the defiance of any other law bring inevitable and terrible penalty in its train, and that is education for time and for eternity. Teach that poison is poison, whether it poisons the body or the soul, with the only difference that the moral poison of untruth or injustice poisons our human, the other only our animal constitution. Away with the unworthy dream of God’s inflicting mere vindictive punishments, as tormenting without instructing or improving. Teach that His laws for body and soul are only in so far inexorable as they are unchangeable, and that no folly can equal that which flatters itself with hope of escape from the inevitable. What should we say of one who pitched himself from a precipice with the hope of escaping or defying the “ law of gravitation ?” JSx uno omnia discamus. What bird is that that buries its head in the sand to escape observation ? �Everlasting 'Punishment. 23 I had no notion of writing so much upon a subject for which a dozen words might seem exhausting, and must hasten to a full stop. I began by saying that the “ Monstrum Horrendum,” we have been talking about, was begotten of Theologic hatred out of Theologic terror, but happily, by divine Providence was, as it could only be, an “ abortion ” from the first. I have not been attempting so much to argue against belief in the hideous phantom, as against the more or less prevalent disposition to “make believe” as believing it. I do not suppose that any sane indi­ vidual believes it, or can believe it, and remain sane; but here, as elsewhere, the canker-worm of “ Sham ” is eating, by Parliamentary sanction, into our National entrails, and till Nationally, both in Church and State, we speak truth, and think truth, we are but a weak People, though we case our ships in iron a yard thick, and hurl ton-weight shot across our Channel. If we believe in God we must trust in truth and shame the Devil, or ignore him, as either may tend to greater edification. We have no time to inquire as to the precise where and when of the first apparition of the grim imagina­ tion conjured up by human malice and fear to con­ found all faith and hope,. as well as all sense and soberness. Its latitude and longitude we, of course, know to be Byzantine, and the date of its full development in the wilderness of Scholastic-Theology to have been that of the Nicene Synod about year 325 of our sera. Of that Council, so pregnant of results theologic rather than evangelic, but little in the way of circumstantial detail has been handed down. We read that what most impressed the nearly contemporary heathen historian Ammianus, was the wonderful ferocity of party spirit that marked the controversies of Hornoousions and Eomoiowsions— Athanasians, that is, and Arians—tearing one another to pieces for dialectic and philologic niceties that had �24 Everlasting Punishment. centuries before harmlessly puzzled the sublime brain of a Plato in the cool groves of the Athenian Academy,now, alas! destined to rouse inextinguishable wrath and hatred in the hot arena of Byzantine faction. Such faction, we must remember, was now no longer mere speculative theorising on the Platonic, Johannic, or Alexandrian Aoyos, but involving prac­ tical _ results, carrying with them no less than the distribution and possession of all the new and vast Ecclesiastical patronage of the Roman Empire. We may in some measure then, at least, comprehend the breadth and. depth of the passions invoked among crowds of ignorant burly monks, on either side, assembled to back their leaders in debate on questions which they understood, as peasants may be supposed to have . understood Plato, but on the decision of which hinged, as they might readily be persuaded, their chances of preferment in this world and the next. When such a head as that of Athanasius reeled, by his own confession, over thoughts and theorems the longer studied the less mastered, we may imagine the effect they would work on the dull brains of hundreds of coarse and ignorant partisans summoned to the vote in numbers that the Historian describes as fatal to the post-horses of the Imperial ser­ vice. The Council of Nice is said to have been attended by some 2,000 orthodox and heterodox zealots, whose zeal was apparently not less furious and not less sanguinary than that which afterwards, on more worldly pretexts, deluged the new Roman capital with frantic slaughter. Old Rome had seen the blood of gladiators and wild beasts shed in torrents for the pleasure of a brutal populace, but the walls of the Coliseum had never witnessed our human nature so demoniacally maddened as in the City of Constantine, in behalf of a Cause whose badge and test is that we “Love one another.”Nullce tarn infestoe hominibus bestice guam sunt sibi ferales plengue Christianorum, is the �Everlasting Punishment. 2$ ' commentary of a contemporary annalist. Gregory Nazianzus, Arcljoishop of Constantinople, withdrew from its fury to the Cappadocian desert, declaring that the “ Kingdom of Heaven ” had been turned into Hell and Chaos. Such hell and chaos was the cradle of the “ Credo ” that would still enthrone hell and chaos on the site of the Church of Christ, against which it stands recorded that the gates of hell shall not prevail. Surely the cradle was worthy of the nursling. Is it fair to charge the anathemas of the anonymous Athanasian Creed to the credit of the Nicene which contains no anathemas in its present form ? Once deduct the “ clauses ” from the Athanasian symbol, and even the most ardent votaries of popular “fire and brimstone ” might be puzzled to find Bibli­ cal or canonical footing for their favourite doctrine. When Wesley held on strictly to “Witchcraft,” because Witchcraft is Biblical, he was at least logi­ cally true to his “ Bibliolatry,” though it unavoidably led to a good man and able scholar linking himself to an obsolete absurdity. Yet was the moral and reli­ gious mischief of his superstition infinitesimal com­ pared with that which results from ascribing perpetual and infinite evil to the one omnipotent source of supreme good. What disturbances in the divine scheme of the universe consequent on the stupid torturing of helpless and harmless old women, could compare with that emanating from endless and useless vindictive torment inflicted on the majority of our race at the fiat of a power whom we are taught to praise for mercy over all His works, or at worst, with “ wrath enduring but as the twinkling of an eye ?” The partisans of this “contumely ” cannot plead the Biblical sanction that Wesley fairly urged for his puerility. Oriental imagery picturing the worm never dead, and the fire never quenched, neither would nor could suggest the theologic “ Hell ” to any sane under- �26 Everlasting Punishment. standing, while studying words of Christian life and truth, culminating in the charity tlmt thinketh no evil. Not in our Hebrew or Greek scriptures, whose spirit is always ultimately that of doing justice and loving mercy, but in hot fermentations of hate and fear, seething in that Nicene Basilica, is to be found the birth of the most portentous phantasm that ever darkened mythology, whether of Jew or Gentile, Greek or Barbarian. Yet if, as seems certain, this dogma of divine vengeance (infinite power torment­ ing infinite weakness) be by no means Biblical, how comes it in any sort to be “ Anglican,” or why should such a question in these later days be forced intru­ sively on sensible and sober consideration ? This deponent ventures the inquiry but not the answer, unless by respectful glance, “ quousque tandem," towards Lords and Commons at Westminster. Suum cuique; iw'iA them it rests that such “ things be so ordered and settled by their endeavours upon the best and surest foundations, that peace and happiness, truth and justice. . . .” We can all complete the quotation. Depend upon it, as 11 witchcraft ” has so lately found its way to limbo, it cannot be long before the grimmer superstition follows in its wake, leaving no trace but that of contrite amazement at the “ con­ tumely ” that Christendom so long connived at. I venture to maintain that the Bible has never sanc­ tioned it, but it were only a halting allegiance to truth to shirk the avowal that, had the Bible sanc­ tioned it, in every book from Genesis to Apocalypse, it would not be less the duty of every religious and reasonable man to reject it with all his strength of spirit and understanding as “ contumely ” to the honour and glory of God. We must choose in such case between tablets of pen and ink and those of our own heart traced indelibly by the divine hand. It is �Everlasting Punishment. 27 the refusal to do this that still constitutes our diffi­ culty and our “.idolatry.” It is this idolising a book, as a palladium fallen down from Jupiter, that still shows us trammelled in the bonds of Feticliism. It matters not how good the book, itsworship is not the use but the degrading abuse of its goodness, and never was stronger example of corruptio optimi pessima. It is this “ Bibliolatry ” that is the bane and paralysis of Protestantism, riveting on our necks a dead yoke of “stereotype” more slavish and grievous than that living yoke of a Roman hierarchy which the great mental move of the 16th century lifted for a while from our wrung withers. We must get rid of this incubus, or our Protestantism will protest to little purpose against the logic-disciplined legions of Rome on the one hand, or the anarchic rabble of Babel on the other. If “ Protestantism ” be less than a protest against all authoritative unreason, it is but a lame thing travelling neither on two legs nor four. If we would hold our own we must read our Providential book on its own terms, trying its con­ clusions, whether of “letter ” or “spirit,” before the tribunal of our own conscience and intelligence—a defective tribunal, no doubt, but the only one we can appeal to, and by God’s grace sufficient for the nonce. We must typify Biblical wisdom by that of the serpent sloughing skin after skin and scale after scale to reappear again and again in renewed or regenerate splendour. As it has sloughed . away “witchcraft,” “Mosaic cosmogony,” and the like, so assuredly will it slough away a local “ hell, a per­ sonal “ devil,” and sundry other dead scales that dim. and deform its vital and integral beauty. Our slavish allegiance to the “ letter ” of a literature, however sacred and providential, is as powerful a weapon in the armoury of Antichrist as that of the “ scholasti­ cism ” that dates its reign from the Council of Nice, and to which, among other boons, we are �28 Everlasting Punishment. indebted for the minatory hell-fire still extant by sanction of Church and State. , There is, no doubt, a respectable halo of antiquity about such Byzantine polemics that lends them a prestige not intrinsically their own; but if we must lean upon “ Councils ” of ancient date, why not go back 300 years further to another Council, where an Ambassador of a Gospel other than Athanasian reasoned also before Royalty, not indeed on meta­ physical OUSION or OISION,but upon lowlier topics of “ righteousness and temperance,” and judgment to come (Acts xxiv. 25). This argument is addressed to Felix. That at which King Agrippa was present is subsequent (ch. 26), and before Festus, almost per­ suading King Agrippa to be a Christian ! Would it be very rash to conjecture the Athanasian clamour of wrath and unreason, almost persuading the shrewd Imperial Constantine, again to be a Pagan ! But let me conclude a much longer lucubration than intended or needed, by “summing up ” to the effect that the popular dogma of “Everlasting Hell-fire” is a chaotic imagination totally subversive of all reli­ gious and moral principle. So far is the doctrine from being endorsed by Biblical authority, that it is absolutely and diametrically opposed to the Pandects of divine justice and mercy gradually unfolded in its pages, till finding their climax in our Evangelic “ Sonship ” to a Father which is in heaven. What is not “Biblical” cannot (by Article VI.) be part or parcel of Church-of-England doctrine, as legalised by Parliament. Neither, independently of such Article, is there anything in its liturgical or canonical teach­ ing that, fairly interpreted, would countenance such perversion of the gracious message of goodwill to man as published by Christ. The ascription to “ paternal deity ” of gratuitous and endless punishment inflicted on His offspring is, moreover, while removing all our landmarks of morality, most dangerously calculated to �Everlasting Punishment. 29 distract our attention from the true, benevolent, and instructive code that inevitably visits with inexorable but reclaiming chastisement every violation of divine law, whether material or mental. And so, my dear Scott, having fulfilled an old promise, perhaps more fully than you expected or desired, by vindicating a plain truth with a lengthy development of “ truisms,” Believe me, With Faith in the Love that casts out Fear, Yours truly, Foreign Chaplain. POSTSCRIPT. Since the above was written, the following admi­ rable “ Appeal to the Orthodox ” has appeared in The Manchester Friend of Oct. 15, 1873. The writer is so much in harmony with my friend the “ Foreign Chaplain,” that I cannot resist the temptation of giving to his article all the publicity in my power. Thomas Scott.. “ APPEAL TO THE ORTHODOX.” If there be a place of torment to which sinners are consigned at the day of judgment, the existence of such a place is by infinite degrees the most important fact in the Universe. Compared with so vivid a reality, the material world is an unsubstantial dream, and Heaven itself a colourless abstraction. The one surpassing object, which is alone worthy of our anxious care, is the means of escape from so horrible a destiny. And as God is a just and righteous Being, who would not entrap His creatures blindfold �30 Everlasting Punishment. into so piteous a doom, He would not leave one of those creatures in a state of doubt as to its reality. If there fee a Hell, therefore, and if there be, as we reverently trust, a righteous Ruler of the universe, the existence of that hell must be a patent and conspicuous fact, attested by a species and a mass of evidence which no sane intellect could think of ques­ tioning. And if no such evidence be producible, we are bound by common sense, as well as fealty to our Creator, to reject the fable of its existence as an outrage on His righteous character. Now, we do not complain that there are difficulties connected with the doctrine of an everlasting hell, nor yet that its evidences fall short of what we deem desirable; our contention is that there is no sub­ stantial warrant of any kind for its existence. During the thousands of years throughout which, according to the popular notion, men have been falling by myriads into this place of torment, and that under the ever-watchful eye of our Heavenly Parent, there is not an authentic instance of any person who has come back to forewarn his friends of the fate which he is now realising, and which is supposed to await every unconverted sinner. If there were any truth in this ghastly superstition, and if it were the will of God that we should believe in it, He has only to throw open the prison-doors for one brief interval, and millions of our forefathers, like Dives in the parable, would rush back to earth to give us warning of our danger. Or, if it were matter of vital moment that we should believe in it, He has only to expand our spiritual vision, and the mysteries of the unseen world would be as plain to us as the material universe now is to our bodily perceptions. There can be no lack of means to Omnipotence ; if this doctrine were not a figment of man’s invention, He would reveal it to us in ways which would leave no room to suspect its verity. �Everlasting Punishment. 31 But if we have no Divine warrant for the truth of this dogma, we have metaphysical sophistry which is tendered us in lieu of it. In the first place it is asserted that sin against an Infinite God must partake of the infinite nature of the Being whose law it violates ; that it is an infinite sin, in short, and must receive an infinite punishment. That this is nothing but a play upon words is evident from two considera­ tions. If a sin committed against an Infinite Being be infinite, a sin committed ly a finite being is finite; and, therefore, sin is at the same time infinite and finite, venial and unpardonable. And, again, if an offence against an Infinite Being deserve an infinite punishment, obedience to an Infinite Being will deserve an infinite reward; and, therefore, every sinner who complies with any of the Divine enact­ ments is at once entitled both to everlasting torment and to everlasting blessedness. All such reasoning is the merest verbal sophistication; such terms as “ infinite ” have no practical significance when applied to human actions. They only amount to the very obvious truism that the consequences of our deeds, whether good or evil, are incalculable : in an abstract sense they may be said to endure for ever; but for the most part their effect is incalculably small, and counts for nothing in the mighty play of con­ flicting forces. There is another argument which is intended to supply the place of evidence upon this subject. We are told that our conscience teaches us that sin merits everlasting chastisement, and that our conscience is the voice of God in this matter. This argument is doubly delusive ; its assumed data are untrue, and its conclusion does not follow from the premises. Our conscience is the voice of God in this sense only : it is the highest authority that He has given us for our individual guidance : in no case can it be assumed as the absolute expression of His will. And, as a �32 Everlasting Punishment. matter of fact, the teaching of our conscience varies with each individual, and varies very much in accord­ ance with the training which we have received. It is not true that the conscience of mankind has pro­ nounced in favour of eternal punishment. There may be a few men of disordered minds, like the un­ happy Cowper, who really believe that they deserve an infinite measure of Divine wrath, and there are millions of Christians who verbally assent to the doctrine on the authority of others ; but this belief is not shared by the most enlightened section of man­ kind. Where the voice of conscience is not over­ powered by some external authority, its teaching is very different. When we knowingly sacrifice our bodies through intemperance, it may suggest to us that we deserve to lose our health, if not our life, in consequence ; when we wilfully wrong our neighbour, it will probably warn us that we deserve not only to forfeit the goodwill of our fellow-men, but likewise to suffer all such punishment as the loss of that good­ will may carry in its train ; and so long as we refuse to bow our heads in submission to our chastisement, we shall probably experience a sense of alienation from the Author of that chastisement; but of penalties protracted through the cycles of eternity it gives us no intimation. So little does the average conscience speak about the heinousness of sin, that the majority of mankind would seem to hold that there is scarcely any offence for which some trifling penance will not make atonement; and many excellent Christians are of opinion that an instantaneous act of faith in the sacrifice of Christ will blot out a life-time of iniquity. ‘‘ Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved,” is the accepted formula. In truth, however, this sort of reasoning would satisfy no one who was not already convinced upon other grounds. It is the supposed authority of Jesus which has persuaded Christendom of the reality of an �Everlasting Punishment. 33 everlasting Hell. Now, while I have no wish to detract from the sublime character of Jesus, in some respects unique in human history, I am constrained to observe that on such a subject his authority has no validity for us. There is no proof that he possessed omniscience. Assuming the truth of the record, there is, on the contrary, ample evidence that his knowledge was limited in extent. If we may so far credit the Evangelists, he was a believer in all the current legends of his time. The stories of the Noachian Deluge, and the miraculous destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and even the grotesque legend of Jonah and the whale, were received without mis­ giving as to their historic truth. He was impressed with an intense conviction of the approaching ruin of the world. “ This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.” His belief in diabolical possession was simple and unquestioning. . One of the Evangelists expressly intimates that he increased in wisdom; ” that is to say, his knowledge was sub­ ject to the universal law of growth in accordance with experience; and another represents him as acknowledging his ignorance of the exact period at which the world should be destroyed. In none of the Gospels will the attentive reader discover the least indication that upon any subject, scientific, literary, or historical, he possessed greater knowledge than his contemporaries. Indeed it is plain to any critical insight that he was much less well informed than the Apostle Paul, for example. There is no use in shrinking from this admission; it is the truth, and we cannot alter it. God is not honoured by the sup­ pression of such facts. But even in theological matters his language shows that he had no definite knowledge beyond that shared by his fellow-countrymen. “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from Heaven is a vague declaration, to which almost any meaning might be assigned. �34 Everlasting Punishment, “More than twelve legions of angels” is another loose expression, which will not admit of rigid defini­ tion. “ Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched,” is figurative language, and cannot be construed literally. “ These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal,” evinces no perception of the important truth that the great majority of mankind are neither “ righteous ” nor “ wicked,” but more or less imper­ fect strugglers after righteousness. Nearly all his reported utterances upon this subject are hasty generalisations which are incompatible with exact knowledge, and have no validity for conscientious thinkers in this nineteenth century. Nor is it at all demonstrable that he was the author of any of these utterances. Many of them, in all probability, have been rightly ascribed to him; but this is the most that can be affirmed respecting them. It is tolerably certain that he left no written exposi­ tion of his doctrine, and that none of our canonical Gospels was committed to manuscript for years after his crucifixion ; not until a mass of legendary matter had time to grow up around his real biography. None of these brief and inadequate sketches can be traced directly to his disciples ; indeed there is not one which is authenticated by any writer who had personal knowledge of its author. In the second century, and by such men as Papias and Ireneeus, they were ascribed to our four reputed Evangelists; but this is all that can be positively affirmed. I need hardly remark that if hell were the greatest of realities, affecting the everlasting welfare of a large proportion of mankind, a just and righteous Father would not leave us to extract our knowledge of it from the opinions of Papias and Irenaeus, nor yet from the legendary narratives of our four Evangelists. When they are construed with a due regard for the limitations of human knowledge, these reported �Everlasting Punishment. 35 sayings of Jesus are invaluable proclamations of the truth that sin is an enormous evil, and has momentous consequences; a truth which all experience verifies; but how far those consequences may extend into the unseen world, God has not revealed, nor are we at liberty to dogmatise. From our general experience of His government, however, we may righteously believe that in whatever sense our punishment pursues us beyond the grave, that punishment will be remedial in its object, and will result in our final restoration to purity and peace. Rationalist. ��INDEX TO THOMAS SCOTT’S PUBLICATIONS. ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED. The following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on addressing a letter enclosing the price in postage stamps to Mr Thomas Scott, 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood, Rondon, S.EPrice. Post-free. s. ABBOT, FRANCIS E., Editor of ‘Index,’ Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A. d. of Christianity. With Letters from Miss Frances P. Cobbe and Professor F. W. Newman, giving their Reasons for not calling themselves Christians 0 3 Truths for the Times -03 The Impeachment ANONYMOUS. A.I. Conversations. Recorded by a Woman, for Women. Parts I., II., and III. 6d. each Part - 1 6 A Few Self-Contradictions of the Bible - 1 0 Modern Orthodoxy and Modern Liberalism - 0 6 Modern Protestantism. By the Author of “The Philosophy of Necessity” -06 On Public Worship - 0 3 Questions to which the Orthodox are Earnestly Requested to Give Answers ------01 Sacred History as a Branch of Elementary Education. Part I.—Its Influence on the Intellect. Part II.—Its Influence on the Development of the Conscience. 6d. each Part - 1 0 The Church and its Reform. A Reprint - 1 0 The Church : the Pillar and Ground of the Truth - 0 6 The Opinions of Professor David F. Strauss - 0 6 Tiie Twelve Apostles -06 Via Catholica; or, Passages from the Autobiography of a Country Parson. Part I. -13 Woman’s Letter -03 BARRISTER, A. Notes on Bishop Magee’s Pleadings BASTARD, THOMAS H0RL00K. Scepticism and Social Justice - for Christ - - - - 0 6 - - -0,3 �ii Index to Ihomas Scoti s Publications. Price. Post-free. BENEFICED CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. The Chronological Weakness of Prophetic Interpretation -11 The Evangelist and the Divine -10 The Gospel of the Kingdom - 0 6 BENTHAM, JEREMY. The Church of England Catechism Examined. A Reprint - 1 0 BERNSTEIN, A. Origin of the Legends Critically Examined - Abraham, of - - - Isaac, and Jacob - - - -10 BROOK, W. 0. CARR. Reason versus Authority - - 0 3 BROWN, GAMALIEL. An Appeal to the Preachers Sunday Lyrics The New Doxology - of all the - Creeds - - - - - 0 3 -03 - 0 3 CARROLL, Rev. W. G., Rector of St Bride’s, Dublin. The Collapse of the by the Orthodox - Faith; or, the Deity of Christ as now taught - - - - -06 CLARK, W. G., M.A., Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. A Review of a Pamphlet, entitled, “ The Present Dangers of the Church of England ”. -06 CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. An Examination of Canon Liddon’s Bampton Lectures Letter and Spirit Rational Piety and Prayers for Fine Weather The Analogy of Nature and Religion—Good and Evil The Question of Method, as affecting Religious Thought - - 0 6 -06 - 0 3 - 0 6 - 0 3 COBBE, Miss F. P. Letter on Christian Name. (See Abbot) CONWAY, MONCURE D. The Spiritual Serfdom of The Voysey Case - the Laity. With Portrait - - - - - 0 6 -06 COUNTRY PARSON, A. The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Creeds,—Their Sense and their Non-Sense. Parts L, II., and III. 6d. each Part - - - 1 6 COUNTRY VICAR, A. Criticism the Restoration of Christianity, being a Review of a - Paper by Dr Lang The Bible for Man, not - - Man for the Bible - - CRANBROOK, The late Rev. JAMES. On the Formation of Religious Opinions On the Hindrances to Progress' in Theology The Tendencies of Modern Religious Thought F. H. I. Spiritual Pantheism FOREIGN CHAPLAIN. The Efficacy of Prayer. - - - A Letter to Thomas Scott - - -06 - 0 6 - - 0 3 - 0 3 - 0 3 - -06 - - 0 3 �Index to Thomas Scott's Publications. iii Price.Post-free, s. d. FORMER ELDER IN A SCOTCH CHURCH. On Religion - - - - -06 GELDART, Rev. E. M. The Living God - 0 3 GRAHAM, A. D., and F. H. -------- 0 3 On Faith HANSON, Sir R. D., Chief-Justice of South Australia. Science and Theology ------ 0 4 HARE, The Right Rev. FRANCIS, D. D., formerly Lord Bishop of Chichester. The Difficulties and Discouragements which Attend the Study of the Scriptures - - - - - _ _ 0 6 HINDS, SAMUEL, D.D., late Bishop of Norwich. Annotations on the Lord’s Prayer. (See Scott’s Practical Remarks) Another Reply to the Question, “What have we got to Rely on, IF WE CANNOT Rely on the Bible ? ” (See Professor Newman’s Reply) A Reply to the Question, “ Apart from Supernatural Revela­ tion, what is the Prospect of Man’s Living after Death ’ ” A Reply to the Question,. “ Shall I Seek Ordination in the Church of England? ” Free Discussion of Religious Topics. Part I., is. Part II Is 6d The Nature and Origin of Evil. A Letter to a Friend - ’ 0 6 0 6 0 6 2 6 0 6 HOPPS, Rev. J. PAGE. Thirty-Nine Questions on the Thirty-Nine Articles Portrait ------ With 0 3 JEVONS, WILLIAM. The Book of Common Prayer Examined in the Light of the Present Age. Parts I. and II. 6d. each Part - 1 0 The Claims of Christianity to the Character of a Divine Revelation Considered . 0 6 The Prayer Book adapted to the Age _ 0 3 KALISCH, M., Ph.D. of the Past and the Future. Reprinted from Part I. of his Commentary on Leviticus. With Portrait _ . 1 0 Theology KIRKMAN, The Rev. THOMAS P., Rector of Croft, Warrington. Church Cursing and Atheism _ ® 1 On Church Pedigrees. Parts I. and II. With Portrait. 6d. each Part 1 On the Infidelity of Orthodoxy. In Three Parts. 6d. each Part - 1 LAKE, J. W. The Mythos of the Ark 0 0 6 0 6 LA TOUCHE, J. D., Vicar of Stokesay, Salop. The Judgment of the Committee of Council in Mr Voysey _ . _ the LAYMAN, A, and M.A. of Trinity College, Dublin. Case of _ 0 3 Law and the Creeds ------ 0 6 Thoughts on Religion and the Bible 0 6 M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge. Pleas for Free Inquiry. Parts I. and II. 6d. each Part 1 0 �IV Index to Homas Scott1 s Publieations. Price. Post-free. MACFIE, MATT. d’ Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience to the Laws of the Universe . -06 MAITLAND, EDWARD. Jewish Literature and Modern Education ; or, the Use and Abuse of the Bible in the Schoolroom. How to Complete the Reformation. With Portrait The Utilisation of the Church Establishment - - 1 6 - 0 6 - 0 6 - - 0 6 M.P., Letter by. The Dean of Canterbury on Science and Revelation NEALE, EDWARD VANSITTART. Does Morality depend on Longevity ? - 0 6 Genesis Critically Analysed, and continuously arranged; with Intro­ ductory Remarks - - - - - - The Mythical Element in Christianity The New Bible Commentary and the Ten Commandments -10 - 1 0 - 0 3 NEWMAN, Professor F. W. Against Hero-Making in Religion -06 James and Paul -06 Letter on Name Christian. (See Abbot) On the Causes of Atheism. With Portrait - 0 6 On the Relations of Theism to Pantheism; and On the Galla Religion -06 Reply to a Letter from an Evangelical Lay Preacher - 0 3 The Bigot and the Sceptic - 0 6 The Controversy about Prayer - 0 3 The Divergence of Calvinism from Pauline Doctrines - 0 3 The Religious Weakness of Protestantism - 0 7 The True Temptation of Jesus. With Portrait - 0 6 Thoughts on the Existence of Evil - 0 3 OLD GRADUATE. Remarks on Paley’s Evidences - 0 6 - - - - - - - - 0 6 - - - 0 6 - - - 0 6 OXLEE, the Rev. JOHN. A Confutation of the Diabolarchy PADRE OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. The Unity of the Faith among all Nations PARENT AND TEACHER, A. Is Death the end of all things for PHYSICIAN, A. Man ? A Dialogue by way of Catechism,—Religious, Moral, and Philosophical. Parts I. and II. 6d. each Part The Pentateuch, in Contrast with the Science and Moral Sense of our Age. Part I.—Genesis - - PRESBYTER ANGLICANUS. - - 1 0 - 1 6 Eternal Punishment. An Examination of the Doctrines held by the Clergy of the Church of England - - - - The Doctrine of Immortality in its Bearing on Education ROBERTSON, JOHN, Ooupar-Angus. Intellectual Liberty The Finding of the Book - ROW, A. JYRAM. Christianity and Education in - - India. St George’s Hall, London, Nov. 12, 1871 - - - - 0 6 0 6 -06 - 2 0 A Lecture delivered at - 0 6 �V Price. Post-free, s. d. Index to Thomas Scott's Publications. SGOTT, THOMAS. 0 9 AS IS UP A. JAiJSYY __ Commentators and Hierophants ; or, The Honesty of Christian 1 0 Commentators. In Two Parts. 6d. each Part 0 6 Miracles and Prophecies 0 6 Original Sin * 0 6 Practical Remarks on “ The Lord s Prayer The Dean of Ripon on the Physical Resurrection of Jesus, in its Bearing on the Truth of Christianity "51 The English Life of Jesus. A New Edition - 4 i The Tactics and Defeat of the Christian Evidence Society -00 STATHAM, F. REGINALD. Rational Theology. A Lecture - - - - - 0 3 STRANGE, T. LUMISDEN, late Judge of the High Court of Madras. A Critical Catechism. Criticised by a Doctor Defended by T. L. Strange Clerical Integrity . Communion with God The Bennett Judgment The Bible; Is it “The Word of God?” The Speaker’s Commentary Reviewed - of - - Divinity, and ’ - - SYMONDS, J. ADDINGTON. The Renaissance q 0 3 Modern Europe of a " A « - 0 3 "12 - 0 0 -26 TAYLOR, P. A., M.P. Realities - VOYSEY, The Rev. CHARLES. A Lecture A Lecture on Rationalism on the Bible An Episode in the History On Moral Evil W. E. B. An Examination of of Religious Liberty. 0 6 0 6 With Portrait 0 6 Some Recent Writings about Immortality - 0 6 WHEELWRIGHT, the Rev. GEORGE. Three Letters on the Voysey Judgment Evidence Society’s Lectures - WILD, GEO. J., LL.D. Sacerdotalism - - - and the - • Christian - - 0 6 - -06 WORTHINGTON, The Rev. W. R. On the Efficacy of Opinion in Matters of Religion - 0 6 Two Essays : On the Interpretation of the Language of The Old Testament, and Believing without Understanding - 0 6 ZERFFI, G. G., Ph.D., Natural Phenomena and their Influence on Different Religious Systems 0 3 �Since printing the preceding List the following Pamphlets have been published. Price. Post-free. & d. BENEFIOED CLERGYMAN, WIFE OF A. the Deity of Jesus of Nazareth. Parts I. and II. Price Six­ pence each Part ----1 On MACKAY, CHARLES, LL.D. The Souls of the 0 - Children NEWMAN, Professor F. W. „TTHistorical Depravation of Christianity 0 3 PHYSICIAN, A. The Pentateuch, in Contrast with the Science and Moral Sense of our Age. Part II.—Exodus STRANGE, r^' TUMISDEN, late Judge of the High Court of Madras. The Christian Evidence Society An Address to all Earnest Christians The Exercise of Prayer - 0 3 0 3 SUFFIELD, the Rev. ROBERT RODOLPH. The Resurrection -----Is Jesus God? -----Five Letters on a Roman Catholic Conversion - W. E. B. The Province of CANTAB, A. 0 3 2 0 3 0 3 Prayer - 0 6 Jesus versus Christianity 0 6 DUPUIS, from the French of. Christianity a Form of the BRAY, CHARLES. Illusion and Delusion - Our First Century Via Catholica. Part II. great Solar Myth . ANON. MACLEOD, JOHN. 1 0 - . 0 9 0 0 6 1 3 - Religion : its Place in Human Culture - 0 6 The Story 0 3 STONE, WILLIAM. of ti-ie Garden of Eden KIRKMAN, Rev. T. P. Orthodoxy from the Hebrew Point of View FROM “ THE INDEX,” published at Boston, U.S.A. Talk Kindly, MUIR, J., D.C.L. but Avoid Argument Three Notices of “The Speaker’s Commentary,” Translated from the Dutch of Dr A. Kuenen MACFIE, MATT. 0 6 0 3 0 6 The Religious Faculty : Its Relation to the other Faculties, and its Perils ------ FOREIGN CHAPLAIN. Everlasting Punishment. A Letter to Thos. Scott - C. W. REYNELL, PRINTER, LITTLE PliLTENEY-STREET, HAYMARKET, LONDON, W. 0 6 0 ��SCOTT’S ‘ ENGLISH LIFE OF JESUS.’ In One Volume, 8vo, bound in cloth, post free, 4s. id., SECOND EDITION OF THE ENGLISH LIFE OF JESUS. RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR, THOMAS SCOTT, 11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; 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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Everlasting punishment : a letter to Thomas Scott Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Wilson, John [b.1811] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 35, [6] p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Published anonymously. Author identified by earlier cataloguer as Thomas Wilson, b.1811, and in publisher's list as Foreign Chaplain. Signed at end of text (p.35): Rationalist. Index to (list of) Thomas Scott's publications at end (6 p.). Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1873 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N697 Subject The topic of the resource Christianity Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 (Everlasting punishment : a letter to Thomas Scott), 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> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Future Punishment Hell NSS https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/099ae881621e71c8551174ffa173a8f8.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=Y3Wbbqo1yUaBXBV6PnyovzgPL22jI%7E0VIHNWbU0hPNtFgOs9zxBgpllyVzY65i-362k9oaVa%7EeUhleb01krPR0bT7z1%7EaqFl5nnn9GzWlu8oTM3hQJEzM1iAJSMaqcdRK1VcmvIOV3tqkuhyuqrVQTR85I5wMUnwrQNNMk6cEK2UdWrv6Ryn6a52CoGf-Q6MOpgsmlFoiOjVSt1WsmwkdErbwE6Z8h4FBZJlU24Y5JYEK89-cOtamxCtaoCo2hOT7daGFvy-vBAWwRQ0vFDSPePUmww4X0xZHA86cRgxi%7EDEgzDx7VRpvr7wQQoenoUQAS4K9RBTlIF2NvdEzqEbjg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 0a2c7cda3ba4f9970558693288462e0a PDF Text Text C( FIVE LETTERS ON A CONVERSION TO ROMAN CATHOLICISM BY ROBERT RODOLPH SUFFIELD. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. Price Threepence. ��ON A CONVERSION TO ROMAN CATHOLICISM. Alfred Villa, 2 Parson’s Mead, Croydon, Surrey. My Dear Sir,—Your niece is, with the best inten­ tions, preparing for herself an almost irreparable calamity. For a brief period, she can, without selfreproach, use those powers of reason and conscience given to her by God, to be cultivated—not abrogated. It would be a crime to destroy our own natural limbs, our own natural eyes, and replace them with the limbs of another or the docile eyes of a machine. But it is also a crime (though perpetrated without malice) to substitute for our individual reason, the conscience and will of another. From the moment she has sworn the soul’s servitude to an Italian nobleman, and to any English or foreign gentleman appointed to represent him in the confessional, she will deem herself bound not to think “ what is right ? ” but to ask another, “ Tell me what is right and I will be your slave and do it, and if my thought or conscience suggest to me that you are mistaken, I swear to banish such sugges­ tions from my mind as a temptation ? ” She will reply, “1 do not intend submitting to these men as men, but as the chosen and infallible representatives and mouth­ pieces of God.” Then to elect that infallibility, she must use her own fallibility. Thus, the result can �6 On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. never (logically) be to her more infallible than the result of her own fallible investigations, but it will become all that the man claiming that infallibility chooses to make it, for that man will use his absolute and irresponsible authority to forbid his mental and moral slave from ever even interiorly questioning his assumptions. Obeying an ex-officer, a nobleman’s son, an Italian who received a very meagre education, who is aged, benevolent, infirm, wayward, honest, obstinate, and profoundly self-conscious that he is the inspired representative and infallible vicegerent of the god of the universe, your niece will imagine that she is performing an heroic act, in prostrating before a foreigner she has never seen, the conscience, the re­ sponsibility, the judgment imparted to her by God. She will reply “ God tells me thus to cast my mental and moral nature at the feet of a stranger.” Where ? How ? When ? Those are the tremendous questions she is now preparing to solve. That investigation must indeed be lengthened and profound, seeing how stupendous, how unnatural is the result. A miracle of miracles, indeed, is needed, to set aside the personal responsibilities proclaimed by the creation of God. Your niece is preparing to consign to eternal torture every individual who does not recognise a Roman nobleman as the infallible governor of mankind: who does not accept as essential to eternal sal­ vation, a dogma, which was an open question amongst Roman Catholics until the last three years. She is preparing to renounce the Universal Father and to substitute for worship the God of a privileged sect, who will appear on the altar like a small biscuit. She is preparing to renounce the brotherhood of mankind, to seek admission into a sect anathematizing—not only her parents and friends, but millions and millions of mankind. Profound, indeed, must be the investigations, certain the convictions which can enable her thus, innocently, to blaspheme �On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. 7 Gocl’s goodness, to limit His mercy, and to anathema­ tize His children. When I was a Roman Catholic I often discussed with fervent and believing Roman Catholic priests, a fact we all noticed, namely—that converts invariably deteriorated—either mentally or morally ; we puzzled ourselves over the solution. I am inclined to think the solution is this—Converts are very sincere and earnest; they work out the system thoroughly and practically, and thus reap its gravest disadvantages. For a few years your niece will be very fervent, very eccentric, and very happy. Then if her former better human nature begins to arise again, she will sadly feel that she has made a mistake. She will probably hardly dare, thoroughly, to own it to herself and never to others, but will bear it as a silent sorrow to her grave. She will say strong bitter things against heretics, and wear scapulars, and confer for hours with a “ director,” but a universal scepticism will have possessed her heart—wearied, disappoint­ ed, and fearful. I have witnessed this a thousand times. She is worshipping a vision of beauty which only exists in her imagination ; like many other gentle and good souls, she will cling to the illusion and fancy it a reality. Should she enter the Roman sect, I could almost wish that the illusion should endure to the end ; otherwise, when the disenchantment comes, and she, awakening to the reality, sees not a vision of beauty, a heavenly Jerusalem on earth, but an ecclesi­ astical polity, striving by ignoble means for the mastery j sickened, saddened, and deceived, she will wish she had never been born. You ask me what books would help her. The question is to me a difficult one. I have read much in defence of the Roman Catholic dogmas, but very little on the other side. There are works which I could commend for many facts and arguments, but ■disfigured by calumnious attacks upon the Roman �8 On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. Catholic clergy and the Roman Catholic nuns, and by misapprehensions as to some doctrines. Moreover, the present Roman Catholic Church is only three years old, and the antagonistic literature is therefore limited. The controversy is limited now to the infallibility of the Pope. If the Vatican dogma be accepted, all the rest must follow. Upon that subject I might name “ The Pope and the Council, by Janus.”—“ Papal Infallibility and Persecution; ” a small brochure (Mac­ millan, 1870), “ The Roman Catholic not the one true religion ” (Triibner), and Whately’s “ Errors of Romanism ” and “ Cautions for the Times,” Blanco White’s works are invaluable, but unfortun­ ately difficult to obtain ; they ought to be reprinted. I name authors who assume as divinely authoritative the Canonical Scriptures, and who believe that in our little world the God of the Universe became an infant and died; but I consider that she ought to study deeper, and to ask herself “ Is the Bible infallible ? ” “ Did God become a baby ? ” “Did God die?” In such inquiries she would be helped by the works of FrancisNewman, Greg, Martineau, Hennell, Voysey, Vance Smith, and Thomas Scott of Norwood. Surely she ought to pause and examine before com­ mitting herself to a position from which she would not easily recede. She will become attached to priests and nuns, and Roman Catholics, for she will find them, in England and Ireland—kind, gentle, and affection­ ate ; just the characters she would the least wish towound ; not in reality, more good than others, but, in some respects, perhaps to her, more attractive. If I exaggerate the virtues of English and Irish Roman Catholics, you will pardon the partialities of affection,, of gratitude, and of memory. The more I love them, the more do I lament that terrific dogma which compels them to reply to that love with an anathema. These words of warning you may use as you like—but I am not hopeful—many �On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. 9 are the slaves of the imagination, and they offer themselves as holocausts to an illusion.—-Yours very sincerely, Robert Rodolph Sufeield. Second Letter. It is probable that your niece has made up her mind to become a Roman Catholic; in that case, I do not think that the most cogent arguments would affect her. She has committed herself to a corpse, and her whole existence will be occupied in an unceas­ ing effort to galvanise it into life, and dreaming amidst illusions to persuade herself that they are realities. Once let a person with blinded eyes grasp a leader,t and be persuaded that it would be criminal to doubt his infallibility, the docile slave “knows” that all arguments and facts opposed to his claims are wrong, and only asks, “What are the best replies?”—and there are plenty of replies—replies sufficiently plausible to satisfy those who are determined to be convinced ; sufficiently skilful, contradictory, and refined to em­ barrass those who have good sense, an honest heart, £nd not much learning. All persons have their special moral weaknesses. Men and women whose minds have been either effeminated by the “nothingness” of what is with cruel sarcasm called “ good society,” or at once wearied and weakened in futile search after that absolute certainty which all the sects insist on declaring to be ■essential for “ salvation,” plunge into the Roman Church, much as the fevered forlorn will plunge into the dark flowing river—one leap, and it is all over. During the leap, what can you do ? After the leap, the corpse floats along with the current; if eddies of foam occasionally are seen, it is because there is still a remnant of life, and amidst the pleasantly benumb­ ing flood, the victim moves on restlessly to death. �io On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. No arguments can dispel a moral weakness which all the churches have conspired to create, and to enforce by creeds. All her life she has been praying against “ heresy,” as if it were a foul moral crime, and profess­ ing opinions over and over again, as if so to do were the essential virtue. Correct opinions on abstruse and intangible questions have been done up into amulets,, which hung in chains over her mind as an Anglican ;— she suddenly has been startled by perceiving that there are difficulties she cannot solve;—morality would require her to think—weakness makes it easier to submit —and she submits to the most reckless asserter. A mind weakened finds comfort in yielding to whatever is the most positive. The Roman Church has no doubts, can answer everything, and though the answers con­ tain absolute contradictions, that is all so much the better, because ‘it is all a mystery.’ Moreover, the mind cannot easily embrace in its vision opposing difficul­ ties, when each difficulty aggregates around a dogma, set off with all the paraphernalia of poetry, legend, and tradition. In the Church of England she had a cultured and zealous priesthood, confessors, absolution, sacraments, baptismal regeneration, sodalities, creeds, superstitions, prayers, anathemas against sectaries, apostolic succes­ sion, submission enjoined to ecclesiastical authority— she is frightened lest there should be a flaw in some of these, so she resolves to seek them in the church whence they flowed into the Church of England. If we say to her, “ Perhaps there is a flaw in the Roman Church,” she replies, “ Oh, but there must be certainty and security somewhere, and where, if not in Rome ? ” She is probably too much imbued with anglican orthodoxy to be able to accept the only reply, “ There is not absolute certainty anywhere, but there is security everywhere to the seeker who never utters or acts a conscious lie in the name of religion.” Nevertheless she may possibly be open to a warn- �On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. 11 ing; and you may, as you desire it, use my name in conveying to her the following :— My statements on this subject cannot be treated as devoid of authority. For twenty years I was apos­ tolic missionary, and discharged duties not unim­ portant in many parts of England, Ireland, Scot­ land, and France. I published a work (“ The Crown of Jesus,”) which obtained the widest cir­ culation, was publicly commended by all the arch­ bishops, and received the papal blessing. I left the Roman Catholic Church on the day on which the Papal Infallibility was proclaimed. I never in­ curred, even in the smallest matter, the censure of any ecclesiastical super'or. I never even had a quarrel with any Roman Catholic lay or ecclesiastic. There­ fore I have none of the bi tterness which sometimes is found as the result of con flict. I have the most per­ fect and intimate acquaintance with all the minutest workings of the system in all departments of the Roman Church. All who have known me in public or in private during the last three years, can testify to the affectionate kindness of my feelings and speech as -to all the Roman Catholics whom I have known at any period of my life. From my father, who, like all his predecessors and relatives, belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, into which I was received by lay baptism in infancy, I obtained those feelings of respect and sympathy towards the old religion which brought me to its sacraments in the midst of my uni­ versity career. My father had privately ceased to be­ lieve in any orthodox creed, and though during twothirds of his life he never practised the Roman Catholic religion, he never opposed it. Sharing the liberal ideas then so common amongst educated Romanists, he re­ garded the Church of England as almost identical with the Roman Catholic Church, but more beneficial in its influence, less dangerous, less logical, less arrogant, �12 On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. less consistent, more enlightened. His remembrance of the first French Revolution retained him in a con­ servatism at once religious and political, and family traditions flung around Catholicism a halo of poetry, and inspired, even to a sceptic, a chivalric affection like that felt by Royalists towards the Pretender. Reared thus amidst a union of Scepticism, Conservat­ ism, Catholicism, and Anglicanism, and surrounded by characters of singular beauty, just at the period when Anglicanism was extolling Romanism, and returning to it as a child to its mother, I gave myself to the priestly life with an enthusiastic and undivided alle­ giance. Unable to prove to my satisfaction any of the dogmas of orthodoxy, I accepted them all “ on the authority of the Church.” The “ authority of the Church” I accepted because a revelation without a distinct interpreter could be no revelation at all, and taking the premise for granted, there was no alternative for a Christian but to acknowledge either the Roman Church or the Greek Church; but the Greek did not claim a living infallibility. At that time the “ autho­ rity of the Church” was left undefined—a faithful Roman Catholic could change his stand-point accord­ ing to the exigencies of historic or logical difficulties; at one time he could mentally meet a difficulty by remembering that the personal infallibility of the Pope had never been defined; at another time he could allow to the system its full logical development, and deem the papal infallibility true, though modified by restrictions mentally invented to meet difficulties as they arose. Thus argumentatively the “ authority of the Church” rested on its necessity, if dogmas be essential. The Roman Church presented the creden­ tials of supplying that condition now; and having supplied it in times past, it possessed the logic of success, a success by no means adequate to its claims, but the success of having alone lived through genera­ tions to realise the idea of a wide-spread theocracy. �On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. 13 Under that vague conception of “authority” vested in a divine society, many could have died peacefully without a doubt. But the present Pope was deter­ mined to accomplish in his reign the wildest dreams of mediaeval ambition. Encyclicals were issued to anathematise liberty of conscience, the liberty of the press, the liberty of the state, the liberty of science, the liberty of association, the liberty of the episcopate; to denounce civilisation, freedom, progress, and inves­ tigation ; the world was to be divided between slaves and the accursed. Honest men began to say the Pope cannot be infallible, for these teachings are obviously immoral, they renew in precept the very enormities which we have all our life long been indignantly repudiating. If these decrees are to be deemed infallible, no Boman Catholic can without hypocrisy engage in political life, or demand a single political liberty. Then a few prelates like Dr Man­ ning, urged on by laymen like Dr Ward and M. Veuillot, and by a section of the Jesuits, flung them­ selves into the papal schemes, and began to urge on the definition of Papal Infallibility ; thus for two or three years raged a domestic controversy which touched the very foundation of the Roman Catholic system, viz., “ Where does the infallibility exist 1” The most learned Romanists proved that the con­ templated dogma of papal infallibility was utterly opposed to Scripture, reason, history, morality, reli­ gion.. The infallibilists (or Neo-Catholics) argued that it was the only logical development, and that it obviously existed nowhere else. During this contro­ versy doubts arose in numerous minds. Most Roman Catholics determined to refuse to think, they drove away doubts by the violence of their denunciations and the loudness of their professions. Many priests and laymen (to my certain knowledge) lost all faith, but bound to the Church by the ties of interest, affection, family, and pride, have remained in it, often �14 On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. siding with the bitter outward profession of the party of non-thought. Several of the learned refusing to abdicate reason, virtue, and history, yet clinging to sacramental and traditional Christianity, being men of courage and sincerity, renounced papal allegiance, and became “ Old Catholics.” Some (of whom I was one) saw every atom of the fabric crumble away on its foundation of mist. Such, from the religion of a sect girding itself for the persecution and debasement of humanity, passed, at first sadly (how sadly few can tell), out of the associations of the past, into the reli­ gion of the universe, the theism which, if undefined, embraces all. When the fearful interior conflict had ended, and I found myself no longer a slave to Pope, bishop, supe­ rior, confessor, and a sectarian God, it still seemed to me almost wrong to think or to act independently. It was only by degrees that I could realise the degrad­ ing, soul-subduing bondage from which I had been delivered; then great joy and peace possessed me, as I felt myself rise from slave into man. Most docile Roman Catholics are happy whilst they believe; slaves are happy under prudent masters, but it is a happi­ ness which degrades master and slave. This personal history will explain the mixture of opposing feelings with which I touch the Roman Catholic question, viz., tenderness, gratitude, and love towards the Roman Catholics I have personally known, and heard of in my family, along with an intense dislike and dread of the system of Neo-Catholicism which is now identified with Vatican Infallibility. Your niece, like many others, has mistaken for palliation of the system, my homage of affection rendered to persons who conscien­ tiously are its victims. Moreover, I have no sympathy with the vulgar, ignorant calumnies against Roman Catholics, and therefore, even in the first sermon I preached in London as a Unitarian or Theist, in a Unitarian Chapel, hearing that some intended to come �On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. 15 expecting to hear an anti-Romanist oration, I selected for my subject, a practice familiar to Roman Catholics and many other religionists, but rejected by most Pro­ testants. Thus, whilst I systematically deprived my secession of every feature which could conciliate vul­ gar support, I felt that I reserved to myself that power which in the end belongs to those who, though they occasionally with calmness warn, yet more frequently ■extenuate, and never calumniate. Third Letter. The English Romanism of to-day differs from that •of Gother, Charles Butler, and Lingard, as much as Pusey differs from Tillotson. The declarations made by the Vicars Apostolic whereby Roman Catholic emancipation was obtained, are now “ damnable heresies.” For the modern Vatican religion teaches that the Pope is, and always has been, infallible whenever he in his own mind means to speak or write authoritatively as Bishop of Rome and Vicar of Christ. That decree elevates all former bulls, encycli­ cals, pastorals, and pontifical teachings into inspired and infallible documents. The Pope is by divine right supreme (in all matters he deems important) over all potentates and all individuals. He is an irresponsible universal dictator. A Roman Catholic has to believe with interior assent not only every statement in the Old and New Testament and in the apocrypha, but also everything in the bullarium. Almost every in­ famy and absurdity possible has at some time or other been thus proclaimed. Besides the dead weight of the past, nothing remains for the future but a leaden despotism. At any moment the Pope may, at the instigation of an ignorant Italian monsignore, send a telegram or letter which he may intend to be official (ex Cathedra)—that document may contradict �16 On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. science, fact, and the whole universe of God, but it must be not only obeyed, but believed—intentionally to doubt it would entail an eternal hell. Volumesare already filled with “ condemned propositions ”— all these are now divine condemnations, and mercy, justice, and toleration, will be found therein accursed. To ordinary Roman Catholics, the papal authority is publicly exercised through the Bishop, and privately through the Confessor. If an ecclesiastical order is given, and to a grave degree violated, it is a mortal sin, such as excludes from heaven unless absolution has been given to the penitent promising never to repeat the disobedience. These orders regard innumerable matters of ordinary secular, domestic, political, social, educational, commercial, scientific, and social life—in short everything a person cares about. Books, news­ papers, societies, amusements, soldiers, magistrates, peace, war, parents, husband and wife, children, —all are minutely legislated for. It is a mortal sin in any matter to obey the state, or parent, or con­ science, in defiance of the Pope. Therefore all such matters have to be treated of in the confessional, and settled there. However, still there remain a few things at the choice of this papal slave. There is a machinery to enslave even that feeble remnant of personal re­ sponsibility. The system of the Jesuits has now permeated the Roman Catholic Church, and operates through the Bishops quite as much as through the “ Society? Tl*e Jesuits annihilate the individual by “'direction.” During the last few years they have rapidly spread the system of direction throughout this country, and the Anglicans are extensively adopting it. The theory of direction is this—besides the con­ fession of sins—it is highly pleasing to God to ask the advice of the confessor on all the minutest details of life,—individual, domestic, political:—the direction �On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. of the confessor is not infallible, “ but his very errors­ will be overruled to the spiritual benefit of the docile penitent.” Jesuit directors chiefly exercise their skill on people of the higher and middle classes, or on interesting penitents, but, to the disgust of many of the older clergy and laity, this odious system of espionage and arbitrary interference is rapidly per­ vading all the confessionals. Frequently have I heard good and experienced Priests deplore the fatal results—the character rendered morbid and weak, cast at the feet of a man the least qualified to guide—-for it is notorious that the Priests who chiefly strive to become “ directors ” are the most self-sufficient, narrow, con­ ceited, and egotistic, though under a mark of sanctity which deceives no one more than themselves. On incidental occasions the confessional has rendered a service, but I fully concur in the conviction ex­ pressed by several of the most thoughtful, excellent, and believing Priests, that very frequent confession is invariably an evil. Continually are Priests pain­ fully puzzled by noticing that people never improve by confession—that those who do the least required by the ecclesiastical law, are nearly always superior in character to those who do the most. Knowing, as I do, the excellent intentions of most of the priests and most of the lay people practising that rite—knowing the many sacrifices entailed for tis accomplishment—I do not make these remarks with pleasure, but I tear them from my memory, with grief of heart, in answer to your inquiries. Fourth Letter. Your niece says that whether the Eoman Catholic religion be true or not, anyhow it is good for her— of course it is right for her to do whatever she honestly and thoughtfully deems right. Individual rectitude �18 On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. depends on conscientious intention. In such cases intentions are sometimes mixed and vague. Although not agreeing with you in blaming the priests. I cannot accept the statement as worded by your niece. In the end, an illusion cannot be the best for any sane person. The question is whether certain state­ ments are true or not. If true, we ought all of us to embrace them. If false, it is morally wrong knowingly to embrace or to encourage them.—it is injurious to do so ignorantly,—e.g., Was Peter Pope at Rome when Paul wrote to the Romans without naming him? Was Peter Pope when Paul opposed him? Does ecclesiastical history show us the Bishops of Rome claiming the infallible powers now claimed by Pius IX? All the modern Roman Catho­ lic religion rests on papal infallibility. What are the overwhelming proofs to substantiate a dogma dis­ believed by the most learned Roman Catholics only three years since? Such matters do not rest on internal consciousness, but on history. Can it be God’s intention that all religion should rest upon a complicated historical investigation ? Again, all past papal teachings are now infallible, therefore the con­ demnation of Copernicus and Galileo, should be ap­ proved. The devout Roman Catholic ought to believe that the sun moves round the earth, the earth being stationary and flat. Again, all the past decrees about purgatory, indul­ gence, and the scapulary now bind as articles of faith. Therefore any one who can contrive to die wearing two bits of blessed brown cloth cannot go to hell, and will be saved from purgatory by the Virgin Mary on the Saturday after death. All miracles and visions approved by the Pope, now are articles of Christian Faith. These things are either facts or fables. Dr Manning sometime after the death of his wife became a Roman Catholic; almost immediately he was or­ dained a Roman Catholic Priest, then he went to �On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. 19 begin the study of Theology at Rome. He main­ tained the papal claims and became archbishop; a young man kneels before him, gets his head touched by him, and a little oil rubbed on his hand, whilst a few words are muttered. The next morning that young man takes hold of a little biscuit and a glass of sherry, and when he has whispered four words over these, the biscuit becomes a man, and the glass of sherry becomes a man—any person must go to hell for ever who should in his mind fail in his belief that all the flesh, blood, and limbs of Jesus as man are in each, as also his human soul, and his divinity—should any crumbs drop from this divine man, who looks, feels, tastes, like baked bread—each such crumb contains the hands, feet, and entire body of that same man. A priest had taken this “ sacrament ” in a pyx in a little bag in his waistcoat pocket to give it to a sick person [for a Roman Catholic has to believe that he eats a man, and swallows his God]; the sick person died without the sacraments necessary for salva­ tion, because the priest had on his way called on a friend to fix a boating trip. The priest was grieved, but as the man was dead, he went his boating trip, having the “host” in his pocket—a shower of rain came on, and the water got into the pyx in which Jesus Christ was. The priest on his arrival at the house, opened the pyx and could not decide whether what he saw was Jesus Christ or dough—if the ap­ pearance of bread remained, then it was Jesus Christ -—if the appearance was that of dough, then Jesus Christ was not there. Such is the theology binding on all. The question is, are such things revealed truths? if so, how tremendous must be the evidence which can alone justify our accepting such statements without the immorality of hypocrisy or conscious illusion. What evidence did the Apostles adduce that they possessed such powers ? Did they ever �20 On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. claim, such powers ? Priests now only claim them by a virtue handed down to them by the rite of ordina­ tion. How would the evidence satisfy an English court of law ? When a Roman Catholic has swallowed the host, he has within his stomach the limbs, feet, hands, heart, blood of Jesus—the identical human body which was once on the cross—that body continues within his body as long as the qualities and appear­ ances of bread remain, z'.e. until it is decomposed. The appearances of bread are’ merely present in the host miraculously. Surely such transcendent miracles ought to have been propounded distinctly by Jesus and the early disciples, if truly believed by them. Fifth Letter. Roman Catholics are strictly forbidden to dwell'on any thought likely to produce doubts ;—but for that crushing of the mind, no one could live in such un­ ceasing uncertainty. Uncertainty accompanies every act of his religious life, from its commencement to its close. Nothing in his religion is valid unless the minister of the sacrament means the miracle—the outward act is not enough. Unless the Pope means to speak officially, his utterances are not infallible; his saying that he means it is not sufficient, he must mean it; but the outward act binds others just as much as if he did mean it. I would never do any­ thing for the sake of wounding the feelings of Roman Catholics ; but if I, though no longer a priest, (ex­ cept by a Papal theory), chose to go into a baker’s shop and say, Hoc est corpus meum, and meant to con­ secrate ; all the quarterns, half quarterns, rolls and biscuits made of pure flour and water would become men—so many Jesus Christs ;—but those wherein the ingredients were, to a considerable part, potatoe, �On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. 11 alum or rice, would not change. When I was at St Sulpice, a devout priest of the Solitude at Issy, thus thought he had accidentally consecrated all the French rolls at dinner, and requested people to pause and adore their God present on the table-cloth with his human body. On another occasion, that same priest forgot to say the words of consecration at mass, being in ecstasy; so he communicated all the people with bread instead of flesh, and only afterwards remem­ bered his mistake. If I went into a wine merchant’s, and whispered a short sentence over the bottles and casks adequately open to my view,—the wine, if not too much brandied, watered, or adulterated, would all become God and man. If the wine on the altar be not pure, there is no change produced at consecra­ tion—no God—no human body—no blood. The priest buys his altar breads of a bookseller; his house­ keeper cuts them up and trims them with scissors, and puts them out ready for consecration; if the priest does not mean to consecrate when he says the words, or if he says the words erroneously, no conse­ cration takes place ; or if he means only to consecrate the hosts in one particular vase’on the altar, whereas other hosts are lying close by, these others continue bread. The same doubts infest all the Sacraments. The Roman Catholic abdicates his reason to a church' which presents to him nothing but a complication of uncertainties, to be acted upon without investigation. As to the beauty of the services—it is all very well for people who like tinsel, and haberdashery, and genuflections, and plenty of wax candles ;—undoubt­ edly, young children, and grown up children, are pleased with such pretty baubles, but those who are Behind the scenes are perfectly sick of them, and only go through them as a duty. Before a high festival, a vestry is like the green-room of a theatre ; and in the month of May, the dressing up of the Madonna is gone through with a feeling of shame by every man �22. On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. who is not a born woman. I think an exception must be made for the bishops. I believe that when a bishop is dressed up in all liis tawdry, crowned with a mitre of gilt pasteboard, and genuflected to, and addressed as my Lord, that it does rather please the recipient—though I know that some of the bishops are not beguiled by the adulation, but regard it all as necessary nonsense to be gone through for the sake of a good slice of absolute power. People who like a show, can see it done better in a theatre—and it is quite as religious ; for the instruction given to all the performers of the solemn masses, and other grand func­ tions, is not to pray, but to mind the ceremonies, so as to perform them accurately. Dr Gentili used to say —“ I have been all over Italy, and found once, in a country village, a sacristan who was not an atheist; ” reminding me thus of the repeated saying of an Eng­ lish Roman Catholic bishop when he returned from Rome: “There is one honest man there, and he is weak, vain, and obstinate.” Every one understood him to mean the Pope. The whole thing is rotten where it is not an illusion; and these dear good Eng­ lish and Irish Roman Catholics being not allowed to think or to question, are the more easily surrounded with the halo of their own gentleness, and tenderness, and reverence. I do not mean that they are gentle or tender towards heretics and unbelievers, for they are not. They are bound to believe them morally criminal; hateful to God, and deserving of all pun­ ishment. To a believing Roman Catholic, persecu­ tion is now de fide, and a virtue. The Vatican sect is at enmity with the human race. You are not correct in your opinion regarding priests and nuns. I quite concur with your statement, that if your niece gives herself up to them, and then leaves them, she will have to endure much from them even in this country. When Dr Newman and Dr Manning left the Church of England, and joined the �On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. ■ 23 Church of Rome ; when —-—- (a Unitarian lady) became a Roman Catholic, Unitarians expressed surprise, but never calumniated, knowing how im­ possible it is for all good and clever people to think alike; but if your niece leaves the Roman Catholic church, she must expect to be calumniated. The Roman Catholics regard heresy as so foul a moral crime, that to impute to a heretic one or two more lesser crimes, cannot be regarded as a grave injury. The kindest thing they will say of her will be—“ She is mad;—she always was rather weak—she is not re­ sponsible or else it will be, “ She deceived us when she joined us; she never really had faith, only opin­ ion she is proud and wayward.” Such sayings whispered against her, will not be pleasant; espe­ cially when, in all probability, accompanied with more malignant insinuations ; she had much better pause now, reflect more, read on both sides, weigh real evidence. It will be terribly difficult and painful to retract; particularly in countries like Eng­ land or Ireland, where she will probably not get shocked by scandals, but on the contrary, attracted by many gentle virtues and pleasing child-like simplicities. At one time I thought such virtues existed only amongst Romanists, and those Anglicans who approximated to them. I now perceive with gladness that all these beautiful qualities are the appanage of human nature, that where they exist, their existence is not the crea­ tion of any dogma or sect-—that they are to be found in all churches, sects, and creeds, united with all be­ liefs and disbeliefs. When I left the Roman Catholic Church, I expected never again to find some of the attractive specialities of characters I had known and loved. I have found them just the same—just the same variations—I now believe in human nature. �24 On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. You will thus perceive that I cannot endorse your apprehensions regarding the Roman Catholic clergy in •countries happily possessing numerous opposing sects. Nothing would be so fatal to morality as what anglicans call the union of the churches. You know the admirable reputation of the anglican and noncon­ formist clergy—the Roman Catholic clergy equal them. The life of a Roman Catholic priest (especially if belonging to a religious order) is a very comfortable life ; he has no anxieties, no responsibilities, no future to provide for; he may become somewhat egotistic, self-indulgent, and pharisaical; he may attend sick calls and the confessional much, as an ordinary minded surgeon will visit cases j the high-flown things said of him are in general moonshine ; but his life will be as morally respectable as if he were a rector or a minister. The differences will be merely external. In most parts of South America no native ever goes to confession—the “religion ” consists in wax madon­ nas—and the madonnas are decidedly preferable to the priests; also as to Spain, Portugal, and Italy, unim­ aginative Roman Catholic travellers do not report well. But in England, Ireland, and Scotland, it is different—the priests vary as to birth, education, and characteristics, but they are neither better or worse than their fathers, brothers, and companions. As to the nuns, most priests of experience are agreed that they ought not to have parochial schools, reformatories, or boarding schools; that secular teachers succeed much better, with much less show; also, that nuns after some years of convent life, nearly invari­ ably deteriorate. But never in the way you suppose. I do not mean that nuns do not even, very frequently, ■dote on their confessor with a morbid, sickly, and intense personal attachment ; they very often do ; as do also the girls injudiciously secluded in convent boarding schools; but I assert, emphatically, that •other accusations as applied to this country, are not �On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. 2 5- true ; I have been “ extraordinary ” of different con­ vents j if I knew of scandals through private confid­ ences thus intrusted to me, I should of course, in honour, be silent on the whole subject: but I unhesi­ tatingly assert that, as to the popular rumours of criminalities between nuns and their confessors, it is, to the best of my English experience, absolutely false. I the more willingly glance at real evils, that I may be trusted when I deny unfounded charges. Many nuns in convents are not happy, but then they deem that unhappiness a sign that it is pleasing to God, and if they were turned out by Mr Newdegate, they would seek re-admission. But many more are very happy—lead the life of harmless and rather supercil­ ious, self-righteous children, and if they never become superiors, retain their childish simplicity and sweet­ ness much more than when they become “ representa­ tives of God.” Nuns all regard Jesus Christ as their husband, and cultivate towards him the conjugal feel­ ing, especially in the most recluse communities. And now I have answered all your questions. I leave my letters at your disposal according to your urgent request. You can unite with them the first inclosure, changing in all the letters enough to conceal the persons alluded to. The other parties agree to their free circulation or publication. For myself, under the circumstances I felt bound to speak, but it has been with pain. When anglican converts have left the English church—in which they had passed so many happy and holy years, they speedily published against it diatribes, in which they seemed to delight, for they dipped their pen in gall. I cannot say that it is with any approach to such feelings that I write of Roman Catholics ; I know that, theoretically, they cannot reciprocate my affec­ tion and esteem ; but it has been always a delight to me when I have been able to clear them from unjust �16 On a Conversion to Roman Catholicism. aspersions; it is with sadness that I warn against that fearful despotism, under which they must, as time advances, be prostrated more and more. May some of those, dear to me by a thousand memories, obtain courage to investigate, and then, conscientiously shaking off the incubus, arise as the freed children of the Universal Father.—Yours very sincerely, Robert Rodolph Suffield. TURNBULL AND SPEARS PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; 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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Five Letters on a conversion to Roman Catholicism Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Suffield, Robert Rudolph Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 26 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Date of publication from KVK. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1873 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT94 Subject The topic of the resource Catholic Church Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 (Five Letters on a conversion to Roman Catholicism), 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> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conversion-Catholic Church Conway Tracts https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/8bdb6eb30f3f63857b9d63714cd36f78.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=oEafPDn5%7EH2lqyI4ebclwK0QC5d-E1jJ6esIdg%7E4GST%7EVkE4aJ0aSSDpgzhtVtQKkyYbVQ1DBzk5fqKD3syugka8Vto1W0XafqpWS6JPieQJIzrzJx0YTkfQ8DuaNWZ-vhnb2k0QHHBmd8lhZqbW7bd3tRmSRcJC5TddF8m-q8WOTOvPEJJJ3agkeihBcWDrlg3ZD0EWRq8LXjycdXIapk4qTHawzUgQvOeuwd8-nesdvgVs4z7rNCpK453DqEJ5AMQKszxG69teOz6sLxIenNSsssrJaom3%7EJkmpolnwNZLldhiIiTx4diz41x54uDVL59Gpgjnbbsg34pO5S9Huw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d0344e73ecdfe9fbb59b09950cf35ea9 PDF Text Text ct AN ADDRESS TO ALL EARNEST CHRISTIANS. BY T. LUMISDEN STRANGE, LATE JUDGE OF THE HIGH COURT OF MADRAS. AUTHOR OF “THE BIBLE, IS IT 4 THE WORD OF GOD, * ” “THE SPEAKER’S COMMENTARY. REVISED,” “ A CRITICAL CATECHISM,” ETC. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. �AN ADDRESS TO ALL EARNEST CHRISTIANS. The Christian Evidence Society maintain their posi­ tion, such as it is, in seeming composure. They have a world of their own, and abstract themselves from what is outside their circle. They are at sea, aware of the storm blowing around them, but prefer the shelter of their cabins to facing the troublesome elements. They have nailed their colours to the masthead ; the old vessel tumbles about sadly, and creaks in all its timbers; but it still floats, and they trust will continue to do so. They wish not to alarm the crew with the revelation of what is assailing them. They keep them, therefore, battened down under the hatches. Mr Scott and his writers habit­ ually knock at their doors, but they are not to be disturbed. His personal appeal to them, made two years ago, has met with no attention. Mine, of April last, remains similarly unnoticed. We appear to have been addressing “watchmen,” such as those of old, who are “ all dumb dogs,” and “cannot bark and are allowed to roam about, unscathed, like the relent­ less Philistines, when the chosen people, in the time of their first king, hid themselves in holes, conscious �3 that they had not a weapon among them wherewith to face the enemy. The Christian Evidence Society are not the only persons guilty of evading their opponents. There are multitudes bound up in the same cause, provided also with a host of professional standard bearers. Many of these are continually appealed to, and in vain. It ’ is sad, but true, that those professing to have divine truth on their side hesitate to have it examined by the light of the present day. With indifference we cannot charge them. Many of them abound in zeal, doubtless; but it is a zeal so tempered with caution, as to be practically, on such occasions as I speak of, inoperative. We doubt not that they would match themselves with us were they reasonably con­ fident of the results. It is just, we must conclude, the apprehension that the issue might be otherwise than favourable that deters them from incurring the venture. This is neither manly nor honest. Nor can it avert the threatening danger. In the confid­ ence of the power of insubvertible truth, we advance openly and boldly, fearing no adversaries. The day is our own, but as yet only in the distance. We earnestly desire to hasten the march of that enlighten­ ment which has visited ourselves. We have a duty to perform towards those still shrouded in darkness. We should be untrue to them, as well as to ourselves, were we to be guilty of retaining in silence the sense we have of the prevailing error. We know its potency, and how it enslaves the understanding and debases the thoughts and sentiments. We know of the miserable dominion of fear it establishes, and of the forbidding nature of the representation it makes to mankind at large of the author of their beings. To be silent would be to leave the erroi' to free currency. �4 We should be maintaining a forced indifference to its prevalence such as we do not feel. We therefore speak out with what power of expression we can command. We are called destructors, and. should be so had we no better thing to offer than the scheme we denounce. I have personally had considerable experience of both elements. I lived for years upon the food presented by the religious system I have turned from. I thought its records came from the source of all truth, had been uttered by instruments divinely inspired, and contained all that was to govern me in this life, and fit me for the life that has to come. I fervently and undoubtingly believed, and strove to conform myself in all respects to what was thus put before me. And when facts and considerations, too plain to be misunderstood, presented themselves to disturb my faith in the sources of my dependence, I struggled for years before the strands were severed which bound me to my past convictions. Now I am willing to be tested in every way by those remaining in the position I have left, and for whom I have in truth the deepest sympathies. If any one of them will open a correspondence with me, he has my per­ mission to probe my present faith to the utmost. I should be glad, at the same time, if not too painful to his feelings, to be allowed to make some searching inquiries connected with the foundations of his frith. Either side should be at liberty at the close of the correspondence to publish the results. T. L. STRANGE. . Great Malvern, September 1873. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; 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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource An address to all earnest Christians Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Strange, Thomas Lumisden Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 4 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1873 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT97 Subject The topic of the resource Christianity Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 (An address to all earnest Christians), 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> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Christianity-Controversial Literature Christians Conway Tracts https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/f21a96a178808c6ef0d11b3df437b455.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=uWXL8Iq6GP51zBgiPiQvBVU6i9xMrGaH2ssw5f8Pe0cO0kpdwRbEcOkZqNuYXTVp4PoUIL-2DeN5TcVk1jAYXgpm5XBEXFUYGgznMphTvL9HbnbVY7plP6ZVNd77TxdDF3F2NwIOEEMhy7VAip76NRtNny-x1MYcRKNsMmfFS-XszniLQVUfuscing0hG8fc89SF%7E7vK0tXSoXnoSpPPtDuSaozl25kWwvTgsKuEZ2G8XTVmMnzK81DfDbbAXNarasYb%7EjIAP7FOGq-O3P7ml36-I8RCN-G9rv46J0iQTmFF8V%7EfXetaGymyDZRod4Xbzk6JhwwodfUGlR5tbrN7TA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 5010f96cfb759495ce92b18d4f2aa166 PDF Text Text ON THE DEITY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH. AN ENQUIRY INTO THE NATURE OF JESUS BY AN EXAMINATION OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. BY THE WIFE OF A BENEFICED CLERGYMAN. EDITED AND PREFACED BY REV. CHARLES VOrSEY, R.A. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. 11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. 1873. �LO N DO N : PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY HAYMARKET, W. STREET, �EDITOR’S PREFACE. HE following pages were put into my hands — beneficed clergyman. T by a ladyto the wife of a her husband, she has Not wishing compromise withheld hei' name from publication, and deserves all honour for the concession. But the fact led me to write a few words as a Preface, in which I would remind the Bishops and dignitaries of our Church that this is no uncommon case. Ortho­ doxy is riddled through and through with heresy. Every family has its heretic. And although but few clergymen or their wives could be found to write such an Essay as the following with equally felicitous logic and simplicity, there are many quite capable of relishing arguments so lucidly stated and so ably drawn. If most of Mr Scott’s regular readers are familiar with the line of argu­ ment, there are many outside the circle whom this pamphlet may reach to whom it will be new, and whom it may powerfully affect. The position which the person of Jesus occu­ pies in modern Christendom is the very citadel of Christianity, and on the settlement of his claims will turn the future of the Churches. We, who have been all our lives sceptics, are growing weary of the very name ; but we must not forget that we have a great duty to perform towards those who are yet orthodox, or are clinging, like some Unitarians, to the skirts of a fading system. �iv Editor's Preface. When I first knew this lady, she had given up all points of disputed orthodoxy except this one of the nature of Jesus, whom she still regarded as perfect and divine. Careful and independent study of the whole question, however, led her at length to see the facts clearly—to own them to herself in spite of strong predilections the other way—and to write them down here for the benefit of others. In the course of this change I was appealed to for an authoritative opinion. I absolutely refused to give one. I refused to be made the means of shovelling second-hand opinions into any one’s mind. All I said was— “ If you believe Christ to be God, stick to it: you are not obliged to believe as I do. Only make up your mind for yourself.” This was no case of converting or proselytising. It was one of independent growth and natural conviction. There are hundreds of clergymen, and clergy­ men’s wives too, who are fast treading the same road, if they have not yet reached the same goal. The alarmists are quite right. Christianity is in terrible danger. We wish we could add—in ex­ tremis ; but when the break up of a faith has begun with its teachers, with those most in­ terested in its being maintained, the days of that faith are numbered. Such little works as this Essay, if well placed and well digested, will do more to open people’s eyes than many a more pretentious and elaborate treatise. CHARLES VOYSEY. Camden House, Dulwich, S.E., March, 1873. �ON THE DEITY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH. ----- *----64 think ye of Christ, whose son is he ? ” Human child of human parents, or divine Son of the Almighty God ? When we con­ sider his purity, his faith in the Father, his forgiving patience, his devoted work among the offscourings of society, his brotherly love to sinners and outcasts— when our minds dwell on these alone, we all feel the marvellous fascination which has drawn millions to the feet of this “ son of man,” and the needle of our faith begins to tremble towards the Christian pole. If we would keep unsullied the purity of our faith in God alone, we are obliged to turn our eyes some times—however unwillingly—towards the other side of the picture and to mark the human weaknesses which remind us that he is but one of our race. His harshness to his mother, his bitterness towards some of his opponents, the marked failure of one or two of his rare prophecies, the palpable limitation of his knowledge—little enough, indeed, when all are told, —are more than enough to show us that, however great as man, he is not the A11-righteous, the Allseeing, the All-knowing, God. No one, however, whom Christian exaggeration has not goaded into unfair detraction, or who is not blinded by theological hostility, can fail to revere portions of the character sketched out in the three synoptic gospels. I shall not dwell here on the Christ of the fourth Evangelist: we can scarcely trace in that figure the lineaments of the Jesus of Nazareth whom we have learnt to love. VV �6 On the Deity of I propose, in this essay, to examine the claims of Jesus to be more than the man he appeared to be during his life-time : claims—be it noted—which are put forward on his behalf by others rather than by himself. His own assertions of his divinity are to be found only in the unreliable fourth gospel, and in it they are destroyed by the sentence there put into his mouth with strange inconsistency : “ If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.” It is evident that by his contemporaries Jesus was not regarded as God incarnate. The people in general appear to have looked upon him as a great prophet, and to have often debated among themselves whether he were their expected Messiah or not. The band of men who accepted him as their teacher were as far from worshipping him as God as were their fellowcountrymen : their prompt desertion of him when attacked by his enemies, their complete hopelessness when they saw him overcome and put to death, are sufficient proofs that though they regarded him—to quote their own words—as “ a prophet mighty in word and deed,” they never guessed that the teacher they followed, and the friend they lived with in the inti­ macy of social life, was Almighty God Himself. As has been well pointed out, if they believed their Master to be God, surely when they were attacked they would have fled to him for protection, instead of endeavour­ ing to save themselves by deserting him : we may add that this would have been their natural instinct, since they could never have imagined beforehand that the Creator Himself could really be taken captive by His creatures and suffer death at their hands. The third class of his contemporaries, the learned Pha­ risees and Scribes, were as far from regarding him as divine as were the people or his disciples. They seem to have viewed the new teacher somewhat con­ temptuously at first, as one who unwisely persisted in expounding the highest doctrines to the many, instead �Jesus of Nazareth. 7 of—a second Hillel—adding to the stores of their own learned circle. As his influence spread and appeared to be undermining their own,—still more, when he placed himself in direct opposition, warning the people against them,—they were roused to a course of active hostility, and at length determined to save themselves by destroying him. But all through their passive contempt and direct antagonism, there, is never a trace of their dreaming him to be anything more than a religious enthusiast who finally became dangerous : we never for a moment see them assuming the manifestly absurd position, of men knowingly measuring their strength against God, and endea­ vouring to silence and destroy their Maker. So much for the opinions of those who had the best oppor­ tunities of observing his ordinary life. A “ good man, a “deceiver,” a “mighty prophet,” such are the recorded opinions of his contemporaries: not one is found to step forward and proclaim him to be Jehovah, the God of Israel. One of the most trusted strongholds of Christians, in defending their Lord’s Divinity, is the evidence of prophecy. They gather’ from the sacred books of the Jewish nation the predictions of the longed-for Messiah, and claim them as prophecies fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. But there is one stubborn fact which destroys the force of this argument: the Jews, to whom these writings belong, and who from tradi­ tion and national peculiarities, may reasonably be supposed to be the best exponents of their own prophets, emphatically deny that these prophecies are fulfilled in Jesus at all. Indeed, one main reason for their rejection of Jesus is precisely this, that he does not resemble in any way the predicted Messiah. There is no doubt that the Jewish nation were eagerly looking for their Deliverer when Jesus was born; these very longings produced several pseudo-Messiahs, who each gained in turn a considerable following, �8 On the Deity of because each bore some resemblance to the expected Prince. Much of the popular rage which swept Jesus to bis death was the re-action of disappoint­ ment after the hopes raised by the position of autho­ rity he assumed. The sudden burst of anger against one so benevolent and inoffensive can only be ex­ plained by the intense hopes excited by his regal entry into Jerusalem, and the utter destruction of those hopes by his failing to ascend the throne of David. Proclaimed as David’s son, he came riding on an ass as king of Zion, and allowed himself to be welcomed as the king of Israel : there his short fulfilling of the prophecies ended, and the people, furious at his failing them, rose and clamoured for his death. Because he did not fulfil the ancient Jewish oracles, he died: he was too noble for the role laid down in them for the Messiah, his ideal was far other than that of a conqueror, with “ garments rolled in blood.” But even if, against all evidence, Jesus was one with the Messiah of the prophets, this would destroy, instead of implying, his Divine claims. For the Jews were pure monotheists; their Messiah was a prince of David’s line, the favoured servant, the anointed of Jehovah, the king who should rule in His name : a Jew would shrink with horror from the blasphemy of seating Messiah on Jehovah’s throne, remembering how their prophets had taught them that their God “ would not give His honour to another.” So that, as to prophecy, the case stands thus : If Jesus be the Messiah prophesied of in the old Jewish books, then he is not God: if he be not the Messiah, Jewish prophecy is silent as regards him altogether, and an appeal to prophecy is abso­ lutely useless. After the evidence of prophecy Christians generally rely on that furnished by miracles. It is remarkable that Jesus himself laid but little stress on his mira­ cles; in fact, he refused to appeal to them as credentials �Jesus of Nazareth. 9 of his authority, and either could not or would not work them when met with determined unbelief. We must notice also that the people, while “ glorifying God, who had given such power unto men,” were not inclined to admit his miracles as proofs of his right to claim absolute obedience: his miracles did not even invest him with such sacredness as to protect him from arrest and death. Herod, on his trial, was simply anxious to see him work a miracle, as a matter of curiosity. This stolid indifference to marvels as attestations of authority, is natural enough, when we remember that Jewish history was crowded with miracles, wrought for and against the favoured people, and also that they had been specially warned against being misled by signs and wonders. Without entering into the question whether miracles are possible, let us, for argument’s sake, take them for granted, and see what they are worth as proofs of Divinity. If Jesus fed a multitude with a few loaves, so did Elisha: if he raised the dead, so did Elijah and Elisha; if he healed lepers, so did Moses and Elisha; if he opened the eyes of the blind, Elisha smote a whole army with blindness and afterward restored their sight: if he cast out devils, his contemporaries, by his own testimony, did the same. If miracles prove Deity, what miracle of Jesus can stand comparison with the divided Red Sea of Moses, the stoppage of the earth’s motion by Joshua, the check of the rushing waters of the Jordan by Elijah’s cloak ? If we are told that these men worked by conferred power and Jesus by inherent, we can only answer that this is a gratuitous assumption and begs the whole question. The Bible records the miracles in equivalent terms : no difference is drawn between the manner of working of Elisha or Jesus ; of each it is sometimes said they prayed; of each it is sometimes said they spake. Miracles indeed must not be relied on as proofs of divinity, unless believers in them are prepared to pay �IO On the Deity of divine honours not to Jesus only, but also to a crowd of others, and to build a Christian Pantheon to the new found gods. So far we. have only seen the insufficiency of the usual Christian arguments to establish a doctrine so stupendous and so prima facie improbable, as the in­ carnation of the Divine Being: this kind of negative testimony, this insufficient evidence, is not however the principal reason which compels Theists to protest against the central dogma of Christianity. The stronger proofs of the simple manhood of Jesus re­ main, and we now proceed to positive evidence of his not being God. I propose to draw attention to the traces of human infirmity in his noble character, to his absolute mistakes in prophecy, and to his evidently limited knowledge. In accepting as substantially true the account of Jesus given by the evangelists, we are taking his character as it appeared to his devoted followers. We have not to do with slight blemishes, inserted by envious detractors of his greatness ; the history of Jesus was written when his disciples wor­ shipped him as God, and his manhood, in their eyes, reached ideal perfection. We are then forced to believe that, in the Gospels, the life of Jesus is given at its highest, and that he was, at least, not more spotless than he appears in these records of his friends. But here again, in order not to do a gross injustice, we must put aside the fourth Gospel: to study his character “ according to S. John ” would need a separate essay, so different is it from that drawn by the three ; and by all rules of history we should judge him by the earlier records, more especially as they corroborate each other in the main. The first thing which jars upon an attentive reader of the Gospels is the want of affection and respect shown by Jesus to his mother. When only a child of twelve he lets his parents leave Jerusalem to return home, while he repairs alone to the temple. The �Jesus of Nazareth. 11 fascination of the ancient city and the gorgeous temple services was doubtless almost overpowering to a thoughtful Jewish boy, more especially on his first visit: but the careless forgetfulness of his parents’ anxiety must be considered as a grave childish fault, the more so as its character is darkened by the in­ difference shown by his answer to his mother’s grieved reproof. That no high, though mistaken, sense of duty kept him in Jerusalem is evident from his return home with his parents ; for had he felt that “his Father’s business ” detained him in Jerusalem at all, it is evident that this sense of duty would not have been satisfied by a three days’ delay. But the Christian advocate would bar criticism by an appeal to the Deity of Jesus: he asks us therefore to believe, that Jesus, being God, saw with indiffer­ ence his parents’ anguish at discovering his absence ; knew all about that three-days’ agonised search (for they, ignorant of his divinity, felt the terrible anxiety as to his safety, natural to country people losing a child in a crowded city) ; did not, in spite of the tremendous powers at his command, take any steps to re-assure them ; and, finally, met them again with no words of sympathy, only with a mysterious allu­ sion, incomprehensible to them, to some higher claim than theirs, which, however, he promptly set aside to obey them. If God was incarnate in a boy, we may trust that example as a model of childhood: yet, are Christians prepared to set this “ early piety and desire for religious instruction ” before their young children as an example they are to follow ? Are boys and girls of twelve to be free to absent themselves for days from their parents’ guardianship under the plea that a higher business claims their attention ? This episode of the childhood of Jesus should be relegated to those “gospels of the infancy ” full of most un­ childlike acts, which the wise discretion of Christendom has stamped with disapproval. The same want of �I2 On the Deity of filial reverence appears later in his life : on one occa­ sion he was teaching, and his mother sent in, desiring to speak to him : the sole reply recorded to the message is the harsh remark : “Who is my mother?” The most practical proof that Christian morality has, on this head, outstripped the example of Jesus, is the prompt disapproval which similar conduct would meet with in the present day. By the strange warping of morality often caused by controversial exigencies, this want of filial reverence has been triumphantly pointed out by Christian divines; the indifference shown by Jesus to family ties is accepted as a proof that he was more than man! Thus, conduct which they implicitly acknowledge to be unseemly in a son to his mother, they claim as natural and right in the Son of God, to His! In the present day if a person is driven by conscience to a course painful to those who have claims on his respect, his recognised duty, as well as his natural instinct, is to try and make up by added affection and more courteous deference for the pain he is forced to inflict: above all, he would not wantonly add to that pain by public and uncalled-for disrespect. The attitude of Jesus towards his opponents in high places was marked with unwarrantable bitterness. Here also the lofty and gentle spirit of his whole life has moulded Christian opinion in favour of a course different on this head to his own, so that abuse of an opponent is now commonly called m- Christian. Wearied with three years’ calumny and contempt, sore at the little apparent success which rewarded his labour, full of a sad foreboding that his enemies would shortly crush him, Jesus was goaded into passionate denunciations: “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pha­ risees, hypocrites ... ye fools and blind ... ye make a proselyte twofold more the child of hell than your­ selves ... ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell! ” Surely this is not the spirit which breathed in, “If ye love them �Jesus of Nazareth. 13 which love you, what thanks have ye ? . . . Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that persecute you.” Had he not even specially for­ bidden the very expression, “Thou fool!” Was not this rendering “ evil for evil, railing for railing ? ” It is painful to point out these blemishes : reverence for the great leaders of humanity is a duty deal’ to all human hearts ; but when homage turns into idolatry, then men must rise up to point out faults which otherwise they would pass over in respectful silence, mindful only of the work so nobly done. I turn then, with a sense of glad relief, to the evidence of the limited knowledge of Jesus, for here no blame attaches to him, although one proved mistake is fatal to belief in his Godhead. First as to prophecy: “ The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels : and then shall he reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” Later, he amplifies the same idea: he speaks of a coming tribulation, succeeded by his own return, and then adds the emphatic declaration : “ Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass till all these things be done.” The non-fulfilment of these prophecies is simply a question of fact: let men explain away the words now as they may, yet, if the record is true, Jesus did believe in his own speedy return, and impressed the same belief on his followers. It is plain, indeed, that he succeeded in impressing it on them, from the references to his return scattered through the epistles. The latest writings show an anxiety to remove the doubts which were disturbing the converts consequent on the non-appearance of Jesus, and the fourth Gospel omits any reference to his coming. It is worth remarking in the latter, the spiritual sense which is hinted at—either purposely or unintention­ �14- 0# the Deity of ally—in the words, “ The hour . . . now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, they that hear shall live.” These words may be the popular feeling on the advent and resurrection, forced on the Christians by the failure of their Lord’s prophecies in any literal sense. He could not be mistaken, ergo they must spiritualise his words. The limited know­ ledge of Jesus is further evident from his confusing Zacharias the son of Jehoiada with Zacharias the son of Barachias : the former, a priest, was slain in the temple court, as Jesus states; but the son of Barachias was Zacharias, or Zechariah, the prophet.* He himself owned a limitation of his knowledge, when he confessed his ignorance of the day of his own return, and said it was known to the “ Father only.” Of the same class of sayings is his answer to the mother of James and John, that the high seats of the coming kingdom “are not mine to give.” That Jesus believed in the fearful doctrine of eternal punishment is evident, in spite of the ingenious attempts to prove that the doctrine is not scriptural: that he, in common with his countrymen, ascribed many diseases to the immediate power of Satan, which we should now probably refer to natural causes, as epilepsy, mania, and the like, is also self-evident. But on such points as these it is useless to dwell, for the Christian believes them on the authority of Jesus, and the subjects, from their nature, cannot be brought to the test of ascertained facts. Of the same character are some of his sayings : his discouraging “ Strive to enter in at the strait gate,/or many,” etc.; his using in defence of partiality Isaiah’s awful prophecy, “ that seeing theymaysee and not perceive,” etc.; his using Scripture at one time as binding, while he, at another, depre­ ciates it; his fondness for silencing an opponent by an ingenious retort: all these things are blameworthy to those who regard him as man, while they are * See Appendix, page 20. �Jesus of Nazareth. i5 shielded from criticism by his divinity to those who worship him as God. Their morality is a question of opinion, and it is wasted time to dwell on them when arguing with Christians, whose moral sense is for the time held in check by their mental prostration at his feet. But the truth of the quoted prophecies, and the historical fact of the parentage of Zachariah, can be tested, and on these Jesus made palpable mistakes. The obvious corollary is, that being mistaken—as he was—his knowledge was limited, and was therefore human, not divine. In turning to the teaching of Jesus (I still confine myself to the three Gospels), we find no support of the Christian theory. If we take his didactic teaching, we can discover no trace of his offering himself as an object of either faith or worship. His life’s work, as teacher, was to speak of the Father. In the sermon on the Mount he is always striking the keynote, “your heavenly Father; ” in teaching his disciples to pray, it is to “ Our Father,” and the Christian idea of ending a prayer “through Jesus Christ” is quite foreign to the simple filial spirit of their master. Indeed, when we think of the position Jesus holds in Christian theology, it seems strange to notice the utter absence of any suggestion of duty to himself throughout this whole code of so-called Christian morality. In strict accordance with his more formal teaching is his treatment of inquirers : when a young man comes kneeling, and, addressing him as “ Good Master,” asks what he shall do to inherit eternal life, the loyal heart of Jesus first rejects the homage, before he proceeds to answer the all-important ques­ tion : “ Why callest thou me good : there is none good but one, that is, God.” He then directs the youth on the way to eternal life, and he sends that young man home without one word of the doctrine on which, according to Christians, his salvation rested. If the “ Gospel ” came to that man later, he would �16 On the Deity of reject it on the authority of Jesus who had told him a different “ way of salvation and if Chris­ tianity is true, the perdition of that young man’s soul is owing to the defective teaching of Jesus him­ self. Another time, he tells a Scribe that the first commandment is that God is one, and that all a man’s love is due to Him; then adding the duty of neigh­ bourly love, he says; “ There is none other command­ ment greater than these:” so that belief in Jesus, if incumbent at all, must come after love to God and man, and is not necessary, by his own testimony, to “ entering into life.” On Jesus himself then rests the primary responsibility of affirming that belief in him is a matter of secondary importance, at most, letting alone the fact that he never inculcated belief in his Deity as an article of faith at all. In the same spirit of frank loyalty to God, are his words on the unpar­ donable sin : in answer to a gross personal affront, he tells his insuiters that they shall be forgiven for speaking against him, a simple son of man, but warns them of the danger of confounding the work of God’s Spirit with that of Satan, “because they said” that works done by God, using Jesus as His instrument, were done by Beelzebub. There remains yet one argument of tremendous force, which can only be appreciated by personal meditation. We find Jesus praying to God, relying on God, in his greatest need crying in agony to God for deliverance, in his last struggle, deserted by his friends, asking why God, his God, had also forsaken him. We feel how natural, how true to life, this whole account is : in our heart’s reverence for that noble life, that “ faithfulness unto death,” we can scarcely bear to think of the insult offered to it by Christian lips : they take every beauty out of it by telling us that through all that struggle Jesus was the Eternal, the Almighty, God: it is all apparent, not real: in his temptation he could not fall: in his �Jesus of Nazareth. \"j prayers lie needed no support: in his cry that the cup might pass away he foresaw it was inevitable : in his agony of desertion and loneliness he was present everywhere with God. In all that life, then, there is no hope for man, no pledge of man’s victory, no promise for humanity. This is no man's life at all, it is only a wonderful drama enacted on earth. What God could do is no measure of man’s powers : what have we in common with this “ God-man ?” This Jesus, whom we had thought our brother, is, after all, removed from us by the immeasurable distance which separates the feebleness of man from the omnipotence of God. Nothing can compensate us for such a loss as this. We had rejoiced in that many-sided noble­ ness, and its very blemishes were dear, because they assured us of his brotherhood to ourselves : we are given an ideal picture where we had studied a history, another Deity where we had hoped to emulate a life. Instead of the encouragement we had found, what does Christianity offer us ?—a perfect life ? But we knew before that God was perfect: an example ? it starts from a different level: a Saviour ? we cannot be safer than we are with God: an Advocate ? we need none with our Father: a Substitute to endure God’s wrath for us ? we had rather trust God’s justice to punish us as we deserve, and His wisdom to do what is best for us. As God, Jesus can give us nothing that we have not already in his Father and ours : as man, he gives us all the encouragement and support which we derive from every noble soul which God sends into this world, “ a burning and a shining light ” : “ Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of His light For us in the dark to rise by.” As God, he confuses our perceptions of God’s unity, bewilders our reason with endless contradictions, and turns away from the Supreme all those emotions of �i8 On the Deity of love and adoration which can only flow towards a single object, and which are the due of our Creator alone : as man, he gives us an example to strive after, a beacon to steer by; he is one more leader for humanity, one more star in our darkness. As God, all his words would be truth, and but few would enter into heaven, while hell would overflow with victims: as man, we may refuse to believe such a slander on our Father, and take all the comfort pledged to us by that name. Thank God, then, that Jesus is only man, human child of human parents : that we need not dwarf our conceptions of God to fit human faculties, or envelope the illimitable spirit in a baby’s feeble frame. But though only man, he has reached a standard of human greatness which no other man, so far as we know, has touched: the very height of his character is almost a pledge of the truthfulness of the records in the main: his life had to be lived before its conception became possible, at that period and among such a people. They could recognise his greatness when it was before their eyes : they would scarcely have imagined it for themselves, more espe­ cially that, as we have seen, he was so different from the Jewish ideal. His code of morality stands un­ rivalled, and he was the first who taught the universal Fatherhood of God publicly and to the common people. Many of his loftiest precepts may be found in the books of the Rabbis, but it is the glorious prerogative of Jesus that he spread abroad among the many the wise and holy maxims that had hitherto been the sacred treasures of the few. With him none were too degraded to be called the children of the Father: none too simple to be worthy of the highest teaching. By example, as well as by precept, he taught that all men were brothers, and all the good he had he showered at their feet. “ Pure in heart,” he saw God, and what he saw he called all to see : he longed that all might share in his own joyous trust in �Jesus of Nazareth. 19 the Father, and seemed to be always seeking for fresh images to describe the freedom and fulness of the universal love of God. In his unwavering love of truth, but his patience with doubters—in his personal purity, but his tenderness to the fallen—in his hatred of evil, but his friendliness to the sinner—we see splendid virtues rarely met in combination. His brotherliness, his yearning to raise the degraded, his lofty piety, his unswerving morality, his perfect self­ sacrifice, are his indefeasible titles to human love and reverence. Of the world’s benefactors he is the chief, not only by his own life, but by the enthusiasm he has known to inspire in others : “ Our plummet has not sounded his depth words fail to tell what humanity owes to the Prophet of Nazareth. On his example the great Christian heroes have based their lives: from the foundation laid by his teaching the world is slowly rising to a purer faith in God. We need now such a leader as he was, one who would dare to follow the Father’s will as he did, casting a long-prized revelation aside when it conflicts with the higher voice of conscience. It is the teaching of Jesus that Theism gladly makes its own, purifying it from the inconsistencies which mar its perfection. It is the example of Jesus which Theists are following, though they correct that example in some points by his loftiest sayings. It is the work of Jesus which Theists are carrying on, by worshipping, as he did, the Father, and the Father alone, and by endeavour­ ing to turn all men’s love, all men’s hopes, and all men’s adoration, to that “ God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and,” not in Jesus only, but “ in us all.” �20 On the Deity of Jesus of Nazareth. APPENDIX. “Josephus mentions a Zacharias, son of Baruch (‘Wars of the Jews,’ Book iv., sec. 4), who was slain under the circumstances described by Jesus. His name would be more suitable at the close of the long list of Jewish crimes, as it occurred just before the destruction of Jerusalem. But, as it took place about thirty-four years after the death of Jesus, it is clear that he could not have referred to it; therefore, if we admit that he made no mistake, we strike a serious blow at the credibility of his historian, who then puts into his mouth a remark he never uttered.” � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; 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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. 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The author is Annie Besant, an attribution from Dr Williams Library Catalogue and Besant's biographer G.M. Williams. Williams believes this to be her 'literary debut'. Printed by C.W. Reynell, London. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1873 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT121 Subject The topic of the resource Bible Jesus Christ Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 (On the deity of Jesus of Nazareth: an enquiry into the nature of Jesus by an examination of the synoptic gospels), 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> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Bible-Criticism Conway Tracts Jesus Christ https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/a239da282f3b81095813e20abe94ae85.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=shbkRBmspfOPdyBf4LCuPC0zHxrLAC2asddPYwEDdBgqznS%7E0yHyUEuL4p9c2hnDWvepWKhzd0sPCV6KeIc2iE6Iz-aNothIeTY1yQDM-B1jKt3OXw-olqOSv2JPpqpq6klKZTtGwKfuUx20vDnSUF7ZidMu8cirVmMmF483tiKrFWdtfXVV%7EIEQe9d1Bo%7EbTzL9paIEAQmnX0mTv0LOsUhU-SyFv7eqS-OgPm4z0Z30cWZQ2uK1l4GK5g4CUY7uIY0QvEA7J%7EfiWfkYkmaQ023gTTjEBeIPafGQSVe31jtUvAxmd4EVCUIiUSP1GbWxk4YCk1IL-LSOXRC%7EiS9Jzg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 591dbdfc3e645b9e051ec2bb75f1f15b PDF Text Text ci . THE FREE-WILL CONTROVERSY. BY THOMAS DANCER HUTCHISON, Ex-Siz. T.C.D. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. Price Sixpence. ��ON THE FREE-WILL CONTROVERSY. HATEVER may be thought of the interest and importance hitherto attaching to the Problem of the Human Will, whether regarded as the subject of religious or of metaphysical disputation, it is certain that at no period in its history has it come forward with such weighty and urgent claims to the serious attention of all thinking men, as in our own immediate times. Emerging into notoriety some fourteen hun­ dred years ago, in the celebrated Pelagian controversy concerning human freedom, it was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that it escaped from the dark and bewildering mists of theological discussion, into the higher and serener atmosphere of purely philosophical enquiry. Eor our own time was reserved the further step which it was destined to take, and whereby it has descended from the remoteness of abstract speculation, to take its place among the importunate problems of practical life, challenging with an ever increasing emphasis the exertion of our highest efforts in its solution. Tremendous as were the issues that hung upon the decision of the theological phase of the Free-Will controversy, it must not be supposed that these issues were any of them of a distinctively practical character. Terrible and repugnant as it might well seem to be forced to regard man “ as incurably wicked—wicked by the constitution of his flesh, and wicked by eternal decree—as doomed, unless exempted by special grace W �4 On the Free-Will Controversy. which he cannot merit, or by any effort of his own obtain, to live in sin while he remains on earth, and to be eternally miserable when he leaves it,—to regard him as born unable to keep the commandments, yet as justly liable to everlasting punishment for break­ ing them,” *—nevertheless these, and all other such conclusions of theology, left the men by whom they were entertained, for all practical purposes pretty much in the same position as that in which they found them. We do not observe that the possession of a fatalist creed exercised any blighting or paralysing influence on the active nature of the great leaders ou the Calvinistic side: indeed, if we are to believe Mr Froude, “they were men possessed of all the qualities which give nobility and grandeur to human nature,—unalterably just when duty required them to be stern, but with the tenderness of a woman in their hearts ; frank, true, cheerful, humorous, as unlike sour fanatics as it is pos­ sible to imagine any one.” However stupendous, then, the questions involved in the Arminian controversy concerning Human Freedom, this much is certain, that these questions had, one and all' of them, little or no bearing upon the conduct of men in this present life. As far as external behaviour went, you would have had no grounds for distinguish­ ing between Libertarian and Calvinist,—between the man who believed himself to be the arbiter of his own destiny, and the man who regarded himself as a mere puppet in the hands of an irresistible and unyielding external Power. In a word, the differences which separated the Calvinist from the Arminian were theological, not moral,—points of belief, and not of practice. In matters involving considerations purely ethical,—good or evil, virtue, responsibility, wrong­ doing—the two antagonistic parties met on common ground. While it is thus manifest that the theological phase * Froude, “ Short Studies,” vol. ii. p. 3. �On the Free-Will Controversy. 5 of this great controversy is open to the charge of a want of practical interest, it must at the same time be allowed that the Problem of the Will, when viewed in the aspect which it presents to us of the present day, comes home to men’s business and bosoms with a cogency and force which are unquestionable. The main controversy now-a-days lies between those who uphold the Principle of Determinism, or the uniformity of Sequence between motive and action, on the one hand, and the defenders of the metaphysical theory * of Pree-Will, on the other. The Determinists maintain (to use the words of one of the ablest of their number)! that “ an invariable sequence exists between the sum of motives present in the mind of a given individual, and the action (or attempted action) which follows ; ” and that consequently the phenomena of human voli­ tion constitute a legitimate subject for scientific explanation, calculation and prediction. Thus the great department of human action is brought under the sway of the law of causation ; and as a necessary result following the recognition of the correlation between mental and cerebral changes, the vast principle of the transformation and equivalence of forces is seen to embrace and pervade, not only the action, organic and inorganic, of the external world, but also the widelyextended field of volitional agency, whether individual or in the aggregate.| It may readily be imagined how numerous and how momentous are the results of the application of this Determinist principle or doctrine to the subjects of morality and education; but its import­ ance does not rest on this alone. It is made the basis of a science of politics or sociology, which, applying the laws of mind to the scientific explanation of the * We say metaphysical theory, as opposed to the practical feeling of freedom, which, as J. Stuart Mill points out, (Logic, Bk. vi. ch. ii.) is in no wise inconsistent with the Determinist, or (as it is often improperly called), the Necessitarian theory. + See Review for October 1873. t Cf. Herbert Spencer’s work “ On the Study of Sociology,” p. 6. �6 On the Free-Will Controversy. actions of mankind in the aggregate, seeks thereby to arrive at a system of general principles for the guidance of the politician. Nay more,—-this principle is at the very root of the science of Psychology itself; for if we refuse to acknowledge uniformity of succession in the phenomena of volition,—if we believe that the normal action of motives is liable to be at any time neutralised and superseded, in a manner wholly irregular and un­ foreseeable by us,—then indeed the attempt to establish any even approximate general principles or laws of the association and reproduction of ideas becomes as absurd as it would be to set about developing a science of mechanics “ on a planet where gravitation was liable to fits of intermission.” Annihilate the principle of Determinism, and Mental Science becomes the baseless fabric of a vision. Thus it is quite clear that the principle of Determinism, if admitted to be true, carries with it practical results of wide and deep importance. To the Determinist, the ordinary notions of responsibility and punishment will appear to be merely the vague and unreal products of the imagination; virtue will be simply good luck, and vice misfortune, while punishment will be regarded simply as a means to an end—the end being the refor­ mation of the criminal and the protection of society. For him, the science of education opens a prospect of unlimited advancement in the condition of the indi­ vidual ; while Sociology, through the long vista of future years, gives glimpses of a coming golden age. He is possessed with the idea “ of the gradual develop­ ment of the human mind—of the spiritual unity of the human race; ” and throughout the troubles and anxieties that attend the fluctuating and often appar­ ently retrogressive movement of his day, he is sustained and cheered by a firm belief in the mighty “ human organism, fraught with the vast results of ages, and big with a life which stretched over myriads of years,” * * WWwi winter Review for October 1860, p. 308. �On the Free-Will Controversy. 7 ever slowly growing more and more unto the light of perfect day. It need hardly be said that all this is absolutely incompatible with the Libertarian’s creed. He believes that the phenomena of volition are marked out in the strongest manner from all other phenomena whatever ; that whereas by reason of the uniformity of sequence which is permitted to prevail in the material world, the whole of the vast department of physical phenomena forms a legitimate subject for scientific explanation and prediction, the individual and collective action of man­ kind, on the contrary, admits neither “ scientific calcu­ lations before the fact,” nor “scientific explanations after the fact.” His theory maintains that there is inherent in man a mysterious power, completely inde­ pendent of motives, and capable of acting against the preponderance of them—“ as if ” (to quote the words of Dr Carpenter), “ when one scale of a balance is inclining downwards, a hand placed on the beam from which the ocher scale is suspended, were to cause that lighter scale to go down.” It arrogates for man a faculty of ■undetermined Choice, called forth indeed into active operation on the presentation of some motive or motives to the mind, but in no wise conditioned or coerced by their influence. This notion of an undeter­ mined power of choice is regarded by those who hold the doctrine of Dree Will as a necessary factor in our common emotions of admiration, disapprobation, and contrition. “ If there is no free choice ” (says Mr Froude), “ the praise or blame with which we regard one another are impertinent and out of place.” Of course, those who maintain this theory ipso facto deny the possibility of the sciences of Psychology and Sociology, together with the fair hopes which they hold out to us. Mr Froude talks of the time 11 when the speculative formulas into which we have mapped out the mysterious continents of the spiritual world shall have been consigned to the place already thronged �8 On the Free-Will Controversy. with the ghosts of like delusions which have had their day and perished ”—thus contemplating the possible collapse of Psychology at some future day. He scouts at the notion of a science of History (i.e., a social science developed after the Deductive or Historic method) so long as “ natural causes are liable to be set aside and neutralised by what is called volition.” True, men are “ at least half animals, and are subject in this aspect of them to the conditions of animals. So far as those parts of man’s doings are concerned, which neither have, nor have had, anything moral about them, so far the laws of him are calculable. . . . But pass beyond them, and where are we 1 In a world where it would be as easy to calculate man’s actions by laws like those of positive philosophy as to measure the orbit of Neptune with a foot-rule, or weigh Sirius in a grocer’s scale.” After what has been already said, it will be readily admitted that the decision of the Pree Will question at the present day, carries with it results of no small practical importance, and that it is manifestly incuim bent on us to put forth our best efforts in the attempt to solve it. In some quarters, indeed, our endeavours would meet with small encouragement. Many persons —notably, Professor Huxley—believe that the battle between Libertarian and Necessitarian is destined for ever to remain a drawn one. But it is only right that before we acquiesce in so disheartening an opinion, we should ourselves review with some carefulness the con­ troversy as it stands at present, and try to find out whether after all the battle does not afford us indica­ tions, however faint, of a definite issue. “The advocate of Eree Will appeals to conscience and instinct—to an b priori sense of what ought in equity to be. The Necessitarian falls back upon the experienced reality of facts.” * It is admitted on all hands that the testimony of experience is in favour of * Froude, “Short Studies,” vol. i. p. 4. �On the Free-Will Controversy. 9 necessity. Thus even Mr Mansel writes :—“ Were it not for the direct testimony of my own consciousness to my own freedom, I could regard human actions only as necessary links in the endless chain of phenomenal cause and effect/ * This fact, when taken in connec­ tion with the extremely unique and exceptional nature of the Free Will theory (according to which there is, as Herbert Spencer says, “ one law for the rest of the universe, and another law for mankind ”), seems fully to justify the enquiry whether in thus denying the universality of the law of uniform Succession, men may not be under the influence of some bias which misleads their judgment. Now, it is a well known fact that the universality of this law has often been denied, both in ancient and in modern times, the supposed excep­ tions to it being always some one or other of the more mysterious and apparently unpredictable phenomena of nature. Thus Sokrates denied that Astronomy or Physical Philosophy in general were fit subjects for human study, maintaining that these two departments were under the immediate and special control of the gods. We are all familiar with that type of the pietist which sees the handiwork of an all-wise and doubt­ less retributory Providence in each of the petty acci­ dents of life —so long as these be advantageous to himself or calamitous merely to his neighbour.t This attitude of mind is well illustrated by the following story, which Dean Stanley relates as having been told of a late dignitary of the Church by himself :—“ A friend,” he used to relate, “ invited me to go out with him on the water. The sky was threatening, and I declined. At length he succeeded in persuading me, and we embarked. A squall came on, the boat lurched, and my friend fell overboard. Twice he sank, * “ Metaphysics,” p. 168. t “ Think ye that those eighteen upon the tower of Siloam fell,” is the characteristic lesson of the Gospel on the occasion of any sudden visitation. Yet it is another reading of such calamities which is commonly insisted upon.”—“ Essays and Reviews,” p. 365. �IO On the Free-Will Controversy. and twice he rose to the surface. He placed his hands on the prow, and endeavoured to climb in. There was great _ apprehension lest he should upset the boat. Pt ovidentially I had brought my umbrella with me. I had the presence of mind to strike him two or three hard blows over the knuckles. He let go his hand, and sank. The boat righted itself, and we were saved.” Mr Huxley reminds us of the vast difference between our mode of accounting for the Great Plague and the Great Fire which devastated London in the 17th cen­ tury, and that which recommended itself to our ances­ * tors. It can hardly be asserted even of the most cultivated classes of this country, that there prevails amongst them a unanimous belief in the uniformity of physical phenomena. The Prayer Book of the Estab­ lished Church of England still contains prayers for rain and for fair weather ; and a public Thanksgiving was celebrated not long since on the recovery of the heir to the Throne from a dangerous illness ; though in this latter case (as Herbert Spencer points out) a different interpretation of the issue would seem to be indicated by the conferring of a baronetcy upon the attendant physician. The doctrine of a particular providence, as it is preached from our pulpits, while conceding the prevalence of law in all those phenomena which are familiar and thoroughly understood, main­ tains that in the as yet unexplained mysteries of nature (such as the changes of the weather, the process of deliberative thought, &c.), the Deity may and does direct the course of nature according to his pleasure. We see then that there is, and always has been, in the human mind a tendency to refer all the apparently irregular and unforeseeable phenomena of nature to the agency of some free and unconditioned power. Viewed in the light of this fact, the undoubtedly complex and (to all appearance) variable nature of volitional action “ Lay Sermons: Essay pn the Advisableness of Improving' Natural Knowledge.” �On the Free-Will Controversy. 11 assumes at once a deep significance in the explanation of the origin of the Free Will hypothesis. Another influence modifying our conceptions of the will is to he found in the conservative power which language exercises over our thoughts and beliefs. It is notorious that the Libertarian theory can claim a far higher antiquity than its rival; indeed, even during the period in which speech was in process of formation, some conception more or less crude of Indeterminism must have prevailed amongst mankind. This concep­ tion has by means of language become fixed and crystallised in the general mind, to such a degree that it is only by means of a considerable effort, and after some practice, that we can entertain the notion of an unbroken sequence of antecedent and consequent in the world of human action. Thus it is seen that a potent influence on the side of the Free-Will theory is con­ stantly at work in the language of every-day life. Here too we must call attention to the unfortunate complication which has been introduced into the Pro­ blem of the Will by the general adoption of the figure embodied in the terms “ Freedom of the Will,” “ NecessityI’ and others of like nature. This metaphor originated with the Stoics, who declared the virtuous man to be free, the vicious man to be a slave. It was subsequently adopted, and applied in a similar sense, by Philo Judaeus and the early Christian Fathers. It need hardly be said that this figure was addressed to the heart rather than to the understanding; “as regards appropriateness in everything but the associa­ tions of dignity and indignity” says Professor Bain, “ no metaphor could have been more unhappy. So far as the idea of subjection is concerned, the virtuous man is the greater slave of the two.” * The epithet “ free ” was subsequently adopted by those who controverted the Predestinarian theories of Augustine. This theologian taught that all men were the slaves of some * Bain, “Mental and Moral Science,”p. 398.'; �12 Qn the Free-Will Controversy. external constraining power—the elect being subject to irresistible grace, and the reprobate to original sin. As opposed to this notion of external compulsion, the term Free-Will had a definite intelligible meaning. Augustine maintained that for every man there existed a certain class of motives, the due operation of which in arousing him to volitional action was hindered by some external force—that the elect were restrained from sinning, and the reprobate from doing what was good. This was evidently to suspend volitional action, quite as much as it is suspended when men are thrown into prison; and in opposition to this notion, any conscious being “under a motive to act, and not interfered with by any other being, is to all intents free ; ” * and this moreover is the only meaning which can possibly be attached to the word Freedom. But, most unhappily, after the emergence of the theory of determinism in the writings of Hobbes and his followers, this term “ Freedom of the Will ” was borrowed from the ancient theological controversy by the opponents of the new philosophical system, and, carrying with it all the inveterate and potent associations of dignity which had belonged to it in its former employment, thus intro­ duced an emotional bias of immense force into the question now at issue. The Determinists were called Necessitarians, and their antagonists were men who upheld the Freedom of the Human Will. In conse­ quence of the associations attaching to these words, necessity and freedom, it came to pass that “ the doctrine of causation, when considered as obtaining between our volitions and their antecedents, was almost, universally conceived as involving more than uniform sequence.................Even if the reason repudiated, the imagination retained, the feeling of some more intimate connection, of some peculiar tie, or mysterious con­ straint exercised by the antecedent over the consequent. Now this it was which, considered as applying to the human will, conflicted with men’s consciousness * Bain, “ Mental and Moral Science,” p. 398. �On the Free-Will Controversy. 13 and revolted their feelings. They were certain that, in the case of their volitions, there was not this mysterious constraint. They felt, that if they wished to prove that they had the power of resisting the motive, they could do so (that wish being, it needs scarcely he observed, a new antecedent;) and it would have been humiliating to their pride, and (what is of more import­ ance) paralysing to their desire of excellence, had they thought otherwise. But neither is any such mysterious compulsion now supposed, by the best philosophical authorities, to be exercised by any other cause over its effect. Those who think that causes draw their effects after them by a mystical tie, are right in believing that the relation between volitions and their antecedents is of another nature. But they should go further, and admit that this is also true of all other effects and their antecedents. If such a tie is considered to be involved in the word necessity, the doctrine is not true of human actions ; but neither is it then true of inanimate objects. It would be more correct to say that matter is not bound by necessity, than that mind is so.” * There is a further emotional influence tending to foster the belief in Free-Will which must be briefly noticed here. It is manifest that when men claim to have a direct consciousness of liberty, they are thinking, not so much of their past conduct as of their future and yet unrealised volitions. With regard to the past, as has already been remarked, most persons are ready to admit that experience proves their actions to have uniformly followed some preponderating motive. Now the con­ templation of a man’s past history does not, in the majority of cases, bring with it any keen emotions of pride or satisfaction ; too often it is but the record of the conquest of temporary fleeting solicitations of the present over the permanent interests embodied in our more comprehensive and ideal motives. Hence the belief that our course of action will be pretty much the * J. S. Mill, “ Logic,” Bk. vi., Chap, ii., § 2. > �14 On the Free-Will Controversy. same in the future as it has been in the past is one which administers a heavy blow to our feelings of self­ satisfaction and of power ; and we are apt under the influence of these feelings to imagine that in our future course of life the higher and more permanent aims will, through the operation of our hitherto inactive power of Free Choice, predominate over the more sensual and transient motives,—“the fleeting actualities of pleasure and pain.” Here also, then, it is evident that the notion of an undetermined Will finds strong support in the natural instincts of emotion. In concluding this portion of our subject, it will be necessary to call attention to a well-known infirmity of thought, which plainly operates in favour of the per­ sistence of Libertarianism. We allude to the strong tendency existing in the mind to objectify, or ascribe separate existence to, its abstractions. “ Mankind in all ages have had a strong propensity to conclude that wherever there is a name, there must be a distinguish­ able separate entity corresponding to the name ; and every complex idea which the mind has- formed for itself by operating upon its conceptions of individual things, was considered to have an outward objective reality answering to it. Fate, Chance, Nature, Time, Space, were real beings, nay, even gods. In ancient times to the vulgar and to the scientific alike, whiteness was an entity, inhering or sticking in the white sub­ stance : and so of all other qualities.” * Language favours this fallacious tendency of the mind; the abstract name (“alike the facility and the snare of general expression,” as it has been aptly described), is generally understood to denote something more than the bare fact of similarity between a number of objects, some mysterious entity wherebij they resemble each other as they do, and which resides in each and all of them. We are inclined to believe that for every name there must be a corresponding thing. In this * Mill, “ Logic,” Bk. v., Chap, iii., § 4. �On the Free-Will Controversy. *5 manner, after that men had fonnd it convenient to frame a general term which should embrace all volitional phenomena, the constant employment of this term (velle “to will,”) easily generated a belief in some mysterious entity or power, underlying all volitional action, and originating within itself all those effects of “deliberating, weighing, and choosing,” which con­ stituted the most obvious common element originally embodied in the abstract idea of Will. Just as the Eleatic Philosophy taught that a peculiar entity or sub­ stance, to sv or Oneness, inhered in all things which are said to be one, so did men frame for themselves “ the conception of an underlying substantive power, the will, from which all single acts of volition were supposed to emanate.”* Having now enumerated some of the principal psychological causes for the wide and early prevalence, and the long continuance of the doctrine of Free-Will, we will now proceed to pass in review some of the de­ finitions of freedom which have been advanced by the upholders of this doctrine. In doing so, we shall pass over without comment the theological phase of the controversy, as conducted on principles, and proceed­ ing by a method wholly alien to the spirit of scientific enquiry, and we shall commence with a notice of Descartes, who may be said to be the first of the purely philosophical libertarians. Descartes was a cotemporary of Hobbes, the first philosopher who consistently taught and believed the doctrine of Determinism. It would be a mistake, how­ ever, to suppose that in writing on the subject of the Will, Descartes had any conception of this doctrine in his mind; for the pamphlet in which Hobbes made known his system to the world was not published until * Westminster Review, July 1871. Whoever desires to attain to an adequate conception of the various causes of the genesis and per­ sistence of Libertarianism, cannot do better than read the masterly article on the subject contained in this number of the Review. �16 On the Free-Will Controversy. after the year 1655, while the writings in which Descartes’ opinions concerning the Will are chiefly found, appeared at Paris in the year 1641. As might have been expected, then, Descartes’ doctrine of FreeWill was set up in opposition, not to Determinism, but to that system of Necessitarianism or Fatalism with which Bishop Butler deals in his Analogy, and which, it need hardly be said, is altogether distinct from and incompatible with the Determinist theory. Accord­ ingly, Descartes’ definition of Freedom is such as might be conscientiously adopted by the most scrupulous of Determinists. “ The power of will,” he says, “ consists in this alone, that in pursuing or shunning what is proposed to us by the understanding, we so act that we are not conscious of being determined to a particular action by any external force. * This is a perfectly truthful, though inadequate, definition of the Will, and it is with strict justice that Descartes replies to Hobbes (who had remarked on the passage quoted above, that it assumed, without proving, the doctrine of Free-Will) • “ I have assumed or advanced nothing concerning Freedom, save that which we experience to be true every day of our lives, and which the light of nature plainly teaches us.” * That Descartes was not far off from Determinism in his views is seen from his remarks on Indifference. “ In order to be free,” he says, “ it is not necessary that I should be indifferent as to the choice of one or other of two contrary things. Nay, rather, the more I incline towards one .thing (whether because I see clearly that right and truth agree in it, or because God has so ordered the course of my feelings), with so much the greater freedom do I make my choice and adhere to that thing. And assuredly the grace of God and my natural understanding, far from diminishing my freedom, augment it and strengthen it ratherj so that the indifference which I feel when I am not led away on one side more than on the other by ♦ Q.uatrieme Meditation. + Troisieme Response. �On the Free-Will Controversy. 17 the influence of any motive, is the lowest kind of liberty, and indicates rather a defect in knowledge than a perfection of the will. For if I always knew clearly what was true and what was good, I would never have to go to the trouble of deliberating what decision and what choice I should make; and so I should be per­ fectly free without ever being indifferent. * Accord­ ing to Descartes, then, “ every sentient being, under a motive to act, and not interfered with by any other being, is to all intents freef’t and thus “the fox impelled by hunger, and proceeding unmolested to the poultry yard, would be a free agent.But this, it needs hardly be said, is precisely the teaching of De­ terminism. Indeed Descartes has fallen short of that system merely in so far as he has admitted the con­ ception of a liberty of indifference. This is, of course, to give a double sense to the word liberty, and so to confuse the question not a little. But we have already seen that on this point Descartes speaks with hesitation, and we may safely agree with Professor Bain in regard­ ing him as “ willing to give up the liberty of in­ difference,” while anxious to establish the internal feel­ ing of freedom. While Descartes is thus to be regarded merely as the exponent of the popular practical feeling of liberty protesting against the paralysing creed of fatalism, or of an overruling and irresistible external power which guides men’s actions irrespective of their will; Clarke, Price, and Reid, on the other hand, have each framed definitions of Freedom, having special reference to, and combating, the doctrine of Determinism. Clarke and Price agree in making freedom to consist in a power of self-motion or self-determination, -which in all animate agents, is spontaneity, in moral agents, is liberty. How, they asked, can it be supposed that motives are the immediate cause of action ? It is true that our faculty * Quatrifeme Meditation. I Bain, “Mental and Moral Science,” page 398. t Bain, “Mental and Moral Science,” p. 398. B �18 On the Free-Will Controversy. of self-determination is never called forth into action save on the presentation of some end or design to the mind. But it is unmeaning to make such ends or motives the physical causes of action. “ Our ideas may be the occasion of our acting, but are certainly not mechanical efficients.” “ If,” says Clarke, “ every action of man is to be regarded as determined by some motive, then either abstracted notions (t.e. motives) have a real subsistence (which would be Realism), or else what is not a substance can put a body in motion.”* According to Leibnitz, the will is to be compared to a balance, whose motion one way or an­ other is determined by the weights in the scales (the motives). In the opinion of Clarke and his followers, however, the true comparison would be to a hand placed on either side of the beam, and determining the motion of the scales irrespective of, and possibly in opposition to, the preponderance of weights. In thus assimilating Spontaneity and Freedom, Clarke and Price laid themselves open to the severe criticism of Sir W. Hamilton, who writes (note to Reid on “The Active Powers”):—“The Liberty from Co-action or Violence—the Liberty of Spontaneity—is admitted by all parties; is common equally to brutes and men; is not a peculiar quality of the Will; and is, in fact, essential to it, for the will cannot possibly be forced. The greatest spontaneity is the greatest necessity. Thus a hungry horse, who turns of necessity to food, is said, on this definition of liberty, to do so with freedom, because he does so spontaneously; and, in general, the desire of happiness, which is the most necessary tendency, will, on this application of the term, be the most free. The definition of liberty given by the celebrated advocate of moral freedom, Dr Samuel Clarke, is in reality only that of the liberty of spontaneity.” But while Clarke and Price, by incautiously identi* For an explanation of the misconception involved here, see Bain “ Mind and Body,” pp. 76, 132. �On the Free-Will Controversy. i9 fying spontaneity and liberty, were guilty of confusing together the freedom of self-determination with the freedom which is opposed to external constraint (i.e., the “ liberty from co-action” of Hamilton, Reid is careful to withhold from the brute creation the posses­ sion of any faculty analogous to our volitional power. Reid, Clarke, and Price, however, unite in regarding this power as a faculty of self-determination. “ By the liberty of a Moral Agent,” says Reid, “I understand a power over the determinations of his own will.” “A free agent,” says Clarke, “when there is more than one perfectly reasonable way of acting (i.e., when there is a perfect equilibrium of motives), has still within itself, by virtue of its self-motive principle, a power of acting.” This notion of a self-determining agent has been criti­ cally examined both by Edwards and Hamilton, a brief outline of whose remarks on the subject will next he given. Edwards starts by proclaiming the inconceivability of such a notion as that of self-determination. The Will, he says, is said to determine its own acts. Now, / it is manifest that it can do this solely by means of an act of volition ; for (to quote Hamilton’s words) “ it is only through a rational determination or volition that we can freely exert power.” But if this be so, then it follows that every free volitional act requires a preceding volition to constitute it free; and so on ad infinihtm. This evidently is to bring the matter to an absurdity. If it be answered that the act of determining the volitional action, and the act of willing, are one and the same, then the obvious rejoinder is, that a free action is determined by nothing, and is entirely un­ caused. Self-determinism, therefore, is a misnomer, and the correct name for such a creed is Indeterminism. Now Indeterminism teaches that the actions of our will do not originate in any causes. It therefore contradicts the law of causality. But if this law be made void, then the foundation of all reasoning—nay, the only possible proof for the existence of God—will have vanished; and there will remain nothing save the �20 On the Free-Will Controversy. fleeting thoughts present to our consciousness, of the existence of which we can be certain. * Nor is Sir William Hamilton less emphatic when he exposes the inconsistent and inconceivable character of Heid’s definition of Freedom. “According to Reid,” he writes, “ Moral Liberty does not merely consist in doing wliat we will, but in the power of willing what we will. For a power over the determinations of our will supposes an act of will that our will should deter­ mine so and so. . . . But here question upon question remains (and this ad infinitum)—Have we a power (a will) over such anterior will ? And until this question shall be distinctively answered, we must be unable to conceive the possibility of the fact of Liberty I’ To those Libertarians who endeavoured to evade the charge of denying causality by affirming that the per­ son was the cause of his volitions, Hamilton puts the question :—“ Is the person an original undetermined cause of the determination of his will ? If he be not, then he is not a free agent, and the scheme of Necessity is admitted. If he be, in the first place, it is imposs­ ible to concewe the possibility of this; and, in the second, if the fact, though inconceivable, be allowed, it is impossible to see how a cause, undetermined by any motive, can be a rational, moral, and accountable cause.” But while Sir William Hamilton insisted so unspar­ ingly on the inconceivability of the liberty of a moral agent as defined by Reid, and on the fact that, if conceived, it could only be conceived as morally worth­ less, it is nevertheless notorious that he regarded this * “To show that any doctrine contradicted the law of cause and effect was, Edwards conceived, a perfect reductio ad absurdum. He did not anticipate that anyone would impugn the universality of cause and effect.” Some Libertarians, endeavouring to save the law of causation by a verbal quibble, asserted that the soul was the cause of its volitions. “Edwards answers, that this may explain why the soul acts at all, but not why it acts in a particular manner. And unless the soul produce diverse acts, it cannot produce diverse effects, otherwise the same cause, in the same circumstances, would produce different effects at different times.”—Bain, Mental and Moral Science, page 417. �On the Free-Will Controversy. 21 definition as correct, and that he was a strenuous upholder of the doctrine of self-determination. Hamil­ ton adopts a peculiar attitude towards the controversy of the Will, and his positions on this subject cannot be understood without a reference to his general philo­ sophical system. In this system a very prominent place is assigned to what he calls the Law of the Conditioned, which is expressed thus :—“ All that is conceivable in thought lies between two extremes, which, as contradictory of each other, cannot both be true, but of which, as mutual contradictories (by the Law of Excluded Middle), one must.’" This law Hamilton illustrates by adducing our conceptions of Space and Time. “ Space must be bounded or not bounded, but we are unable to conceive either alter­ native. We cannot conceive space as a whole, beyond which there is no further space. Neither can we conceive space as without limits. Let us imagine space never so large, we yet fall infinitely short of infinite space. But finite and infinite space are contradictories ; therefore, although we are unable to conceive either alternative, one must be true and the other false. The conception of Time illustrates the same law. Starting from the present, we cannot think past time as bounded, as beginning to be. On the other hand, we cannot conceive time going backwards without end ; eternity is too big for our imaginations. Yet time had either a beginning or it had not. Thus ‘ the con­ ditioned or the thinkable lies between two extremes or poles ; and these extremes or poles are each of them unconditioned, each of them inconceivable, each of them exclusive or contradictory of the other.’ ” * To apply this doctrine to the subject of the Will; the two unconditioned extremes or poles are here represented by the contradictory doctrines of Deter­ minism and Casualism (or the self-determinist theory of Liberty). These two contradictory schemes are * Bain’s Compendium of Mental and Moral Science, Appendix B, p. 68. �22 On the Free-Will Controversy. equally inconceivable. “ For, as we cannot compass in thought an undetermined cause, an absolute com­ mencement—the fundamental hypothesis of the one ; so we can as little think an infinite series of determined causes—of relative commencements,-—the fundamental hypothesis of the other. The champions of the opposite doctrines are thus at once resistless in assault and impotent in defence. The doctrine of Moral Liberty cannot be made conceivable, for we can only conceive the determined and the relative. * All that can be done is to show, (1.) That, for the fact of Liberty, we have immediately or mediately, the evidence of con­ sciousness ; and (2.) that there are, among the phenomena of mind, many facts which we must admit as actual, but of whose possibility we are wholly unable to form any notion.” Thus according to Hamilton, the inconceivability of the self-determinist scheme is counterbalanced by a co-equal inconceivability in the doctrine of determinism, and the scale is turned in favour of self-determinism by the testimony, mediate or immediate, of consciousness. If Sir William Hamilton has displayed no small stringency in his destructive criticisms upon the defini­ tions of Freedom coming from Clarke and Reid, and has thus saved his adversaries a considerable amount of trouble by vigorously demolishing his friends, his own peculiar doctrines, on the other hand, have been subjected to an examination no less searching and no less destructive, by the illustrious philosopher recently gone from among us, John Stuart Mill. In one of the concluding chapters of his masterly work, the “ Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy,” Mill enters upon a minute and exhaustive discussion on the subject of the Will, and of the Libertarian theories of it. After severely censuring Hamilton for his attempt to give a fictitious importance to his doctrine of Freedom by representing it as affording the * It has already been pointed out that Hamilton rejects the evasive quibble that the soul is the cause of our volitions. �On the Free-Will Controversy. 23 only valid argument in support of the existence of God, he proceeds :—“ Let us concede to Hamilton the co­ equal inconceivability of the conflicting hypothesis, an uncaused commencement and an infinite regress. But this choice of inconceivabilities is not offered to us in the case of volitions only. We are held, as he not only admits but contends, to the same alternative in all cases of causation whatever. But we find our way out of the difficulty, in other cases, in quite a different manner. In the case of every other kind of fact, we do not elect the hypothesis that the event took place without a cause : we accept the other supposition, that of a regress, not indeed to infinity, but either generally into the region of the unknowable, or back to a universal cause, regarding which, as we are only con­ cerned with it in relation to what it preceded, and not as itself preceded by anything, we can afford to make a plain avowal of our ignorance.” Now why do we thus, in all cases save only our volitions, accept the alternative of regress ? “ Apparently it is because the causation hypothesis, inconceivable as he ” (Hamilton) “ may think it, possesses the advantage of having experience on its side. And how or by what evidence does experience testify to it? Not by disclosing any nexus between the cause and the effect, any sufficient reason in the cause itself why the effect should follow it. ■ No philosopher now makes this supposition, and Sir W. Hamilton positively disclaims it. What experience makes known, is the fact of an invariable sequence between every event and some special com­ bination of antecedent conditions, in such sort that wherever and whenever that union of antecedents exists, the event does not fail to occur. Any 'must in the case, any necessity, other than the unconditional universality of the fact, we know nothing of. Still this a posteriori “does,” though' not confirmed by an a priori “ must,” decides our choice between the two inconceivables, and leads us to the belief that every event within the phenomenal universe, except human �24 On the Free-Will Controversy. volitions, is determined to take place by a cause. Now the so-called Necessitarians demand the application of the same rule of judgment to our volitions. They maintain that there is the same evidence for it. They affirm as a truth of experience that volitions do, in point of fact, follow determinate moral antecedents with the same uniformity and . . . with the same certainty as physical effects follow their physical causes. . . . Whether they must do so, I acknowledge myself to be entirely ignorant, be the phenomenon moral or physical; and I condemn accordingly the word necessity as applied to either case. All I know is that they do.”* The testimony of experience, then, which is admitted on all hands to be in favour of (so called) Necessity, is that on which the Determinists ground their system. The Libertarians, on the other hand, agree in claiming the evidence of consciousness as making for their side. “We have by our constitution,” says Reid, “a natural conviction or belief that we act freely.” In his notes to Reid’s essay on the Active Powers, Hamilton hesitates between regarding the sense of freedom as an ultimate datum of consciousness, and treating it as involved in our consciousness of the law of moral obligation or responsibility; in his lectures on Meta­ physics, however, he speaks of it more plainly as a fact of which we are directly conscious. Is it really the case, then, asks Mill, that the admitted testimony of man’s universal experience, is hopelessly at variance with the testimony of his consciousness 1 If this b.e so, then is the mental philosopher in an unenviable plight indeed. But let us examine more nearly what is meant by the testimony of consciousness. “ To be conscious of free-will, must mean, to be conscious before I have decided that I am able to decide either way. Exception may be taken, in limine, to the use of the word consciousness in such an application. Consciousness tells me what I do or feel. But what I am able to do, * “ Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy,” p. 500. �On the Free-Will Controversy. 25 is not a subject of consciousness. Consciousness is not prophetic; we are conscious of what is, not of what will or can be. We never know that we are able to do a thing except from having done it or something equal or similar to it. . . . If our so-called conscious­ ness of what we are able to do is not borne out by experience, it is a delusion. It has no title to credence but as an interpretation of experience, and if it is a false interpretation it must give way.” Our so-called consciousness of, or belief in, freedom, therefore, must be an interpretation of our past experience, i.e., with regard to foregone acts of deliberation and choice, we must be conscious that we could have decided the other way; “ but, the truth is, not unless we preferred that way. When we imagine ourselves acting differ­ ently from what we did, we think of a change in the antecedents, as by knowing something that we did not know. Mill therefore altogether disputes the assertion that we are conscious of being able to act in opposition to the strongest present desire or aversion.”* Having in this manner pointed out the error of those who claim the testimony of consciousness in support of the Freedom or Indeterminatensss of the will, Mill proceeds to consider the other position assumed by Hamilton, viz., that the fact of freedom is involved in our consciousness of moral obligation or responsibility. To quote Hamilton’s words :—“ Our consciousness of the moral law, which, without a moral liberty in man, would be a mendacious imperative, gives a decisive preponderance to the doctrine of freedom over the doctrine of fate. We are free in act, if we are account­ able for our actions.” Now this is the main argument of the Indeterminist; it seeks to establish the doctrine of free-will by representing it as inextricably involved in the common conception of accountability or moral desert, so that the two must stand or fall together. There is not a writer on the side of Libertarianism who has not dwelt with emphasis upon this argument. * Bain, “Mental and Moral Science,” p. 427. �26 On the Free-Will Controversy. Thus Reid writes, “Let us suppose a man necessarily determined in all cases to will and to do what is best to be done • he would surely be innocent and inculp­ able. But as far as I am able to judge, he would not be entitled to the esteem and moral approbation of those who knew and believed this necessity. . . . On the other hand, if a man be necessarily determined to do ill, this case seems to me to move pity, but not dis­ approbation. He was ill because he could not be otherwise. Who can blame him ? Necessity has no law.” “If there is no free choice,” writes Mr Froude, “ the praise or blame with which we regard one another are impertinent and out of place.”* “ Man,” says Hamilton in another place, “ is a moral agent only as he is unaccountable for his actions—in other words, as he is the object of praise or blame ; and this he is only inasmuch as he has prescribed to him a rule of duty, and as he is able to act, or not to act, in conformity with its precepts. The possibility of morality thus depends on the possibility of liberty; for if a man be not a free agent he is not the author of his actions, and has, therefore, no responsibility,—no moral personality at all.” Now, in order to determine whether freedom from causation is involved in the notion of moral responsi­ bility, we shall be obliged to subject that notion to a careful analysis. What, then, is meant by the feeling of responsibility? Simply a conviction that if we committed certain actions, we should deserve punish­ ment for so doing. A sense of responsibility is pre­ cisely identical with a sense of the justice of punish­ ment. Now, punishment presupposes Law, of which it is the sanction, i.e., to ensure obedience to -which it is inflicted on the disobedient. Accountability, then, or responsibility, involves a sense of the justice of Law; and the question before us resolves itself into this—Is it necessary to assume that human voluntary action is undetermined by any moral antecedents, in order to * Quoted before on p. 7. �On the Free-Will Controversy. justify the institution of law and punishment ? So far is this from being the case, that (to use the words of Herbert Spencer) “ if there is no natural causation throughout the actions of incorporated humanity, government and legislation are absurd. Acts of Par­ liament may, as well as not, be made to depend on the drawing of lots or the tossing of a coin; or, rather, there may as well be none at all.”* The exigencies of human society require that restrictions should be placed upon the conduct of the individuals who together make it up ; this justifies the institution of Law. The justi­ fication of Punishment absolutely necessitates the assumption that men’s actions follow the law of cause and effect. “ Unless pain, present or prospective, impels hnman beings to avoid whatever brings it, and to perform whatever delivers from it, punishment has no relevance, whether the end be the benefit of the society, or the benefit of the offender, or both to­ gether.’’ f It may be asked—“ Is it just to punish a man for what he cannot help ? Certainly it is, if punishment is the only means by which he can be enabled to help it. Punishment is inflicted as a means towards an end—that is to say, if our volitions are not determined by motives, then punishment is without justification. If an end is justifiable, the sole and necessary means to that end must be justifiable. Now the Necessitarian theory proceeds upon two ends —the benefit of the offender himself and the protection of others. To punish a child for its benefit, is no more unjust than to administer medicine.” J Such is a brief outline of Mill’s answer to the position of Hamilton, that freedom is involved in our consciousness of moral responsibility. Those who wish to examine the arguments on both sides in detail, will find them in the 26th chapter of Mill’s “Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy,” and in the admir. * “Study of Sociology,” p. 46. t Bain, “ Compendium,” p. 404, + Bain, “ Compendium,” p. 428. �28 On the Free-Will Controversy. able remarks on “Liberty and Necessity,” contained in the 11th chapter of Bain’s “Exposition of the Will,” to be found in his invaluable “ Compendium of Psy­ chology and Ethics.” We have seen that in demolish­ ing this position of his opponent, Mill has established the very opposite principle, viz., that the doctrine of Determinism is necessarily implicated in the notion of moral agency or responsibility. This, however, does not hinder but that there should be some truth in the assertion that the common notion of responsibility involves in it the hypothesis of a free and undeter­ mined will. Eor, according to the common conception of moral desert, there is inherent in moral evil or wrong-doing a heinousness and a perniciousness quite unique, irrespective of its consequences; and it is obviously difficult to reconcile with this view the hypo­ thesis of a will determined by the strongest motive, seeing that the peculiar pravity which is the essential characteristic of moral evil ought in the natural course of things to exercise a deterring influence stronger than any counter-influence arising from the prospect of pos­ sible advantage to be gained thereby. Accordingly, the notion of a free and undetermined will, raised above the influence of motive, and resolving on a course of wickedness in spite of the dissuasive considerations suggested by the horrible nature of wrong-doing, was called in to explain the phenomena of man’s moral frailty; and this notion soon generated a conception of punishment as of a kind of vengeance, rightly and duly inflicted upon the ill-doer, without regard to any bene­ ficial results accruing to himself or to society. Now, this vague notion of the nature of punishment is wholly incompatible with the definition of it which has been already given, and which is admitted on all hands to embody some at least, if not all, of the elements con­ tained in the positive signification of the word “ pun­ ishment.” On the Determinist theory of volition, therefore, the vulgar notions of virtue and of vice, as qualities to be lauded and reprobated irrespective of �On the Free-Will Controversy. 29 their consequences, as well as the conception of punish­ ment as a righteous retribution for ill-doing, apart from any consideration of the useful ends to he served by it, must disappear altogether. Virtue is “ a great happi­ ness, but no merit in the vulgar sense of the term; ” and vice is “ a great misfortune, but no demerit.” * We have now concluded our review of the great controversy of the Will. Starting with the considera­ tion of the question as it stands at the present day, we saw how numerous and how momentous are the practi­ cal issues involved in its solution. We then went on to enquire whether any, and if so, what psychological or other causes there were, which would exercise a dis­ turbing influence in the decision of this question, and, as a result, we found that there were many and potent emotional and other agencies at work in generating and fostering the belief in an indeterminate will. Finally, we have passed in review the leading definitions of Free-Will which have been advanced on the side of Indeterminism, and have given a brief outline of the destructive criticism of these definitions which has pro­ ceeded from Edwards, Hamilton, and Mill successively. We have seen that our consciousness, which has been so triumphantly appealed to by the supporters of free­ will, does not in truth, when closely interrogated, yield any evidence whatever in favour of that doctrine ; and that the testimony of experience, which is universally regarded as a sufficient ground for the belief in the law of causality as holding throughout the phenomenal uni­ verse (volitional acts alone being excepted), is admitted by everybody to be altogether in favour of Determinism, i.e. of the law of causality as extending over the field of human action also. We have noticed, however, that the theory of Determinism involves the sacrifice of the common notions of moral excellence and depravity; and it is precisely here (as has been shown by the writer in the Westminster Revieio) that the strength of Libertar­ ianism lies. Men are indignant when it is insinuated * Westminster Review, October 1873, p. 311, �3° On the Free-Will Controversy. that the popular beliefs with regard to merit and demerit, responsibility, and punishment, are in great part the products of lying imagination. They refuse to allow any moral excellence to actions performed unconsciously under the constraining influence of unreflecting love or sympathy. Mr Mivart declares that “acts unaccom­ panied by mental acts of conscious will directed towards the fulfilment of duty ” are “ absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree of real or formal goodness.”* According to Reid, a man necessarily determined by the constitution of his nature to will and to do what is best to be done, “ would not be entitled to the esteem and moral approbation of those who knew and believed this necessity.” “ What was by an ancient author said of Cato, might indeed be said of him -.—lie was good be­ cause he could not be otherwise. But this saying if understood literally and strictly is not the praise of Cato, but of his constitution, which was no more the. work of Cato than his existence/’ Now, in the first place, be it remarked that this view of moral excellence, as involving free and undetermined choice of the good, excludes not only the man who does good without thinking about it, but the Deity also, from the category of beings possessed of a claim to our moral approbation. We are compelled to think of God as necessarily good; to attribute to Him the power of moral evil is, as Hamilton has pointed out, to detract from his essential goodness. Precisely in the same sense as Cato was said to be good, because he could not be otherwise, so is God declared to be, in virtue of his nature, necessarily determined to goodness. “As Euripides hath it, h Oeo'i ri (tpaxriv auty'p'ov, ovz zlsiv Oeo/.”t According to the Libertarian definition of moral excellence, then, we shall be obliged to deny that God possesses any moral attributes at all, or else to detract from his essential goodness by admitting the possibility of his becoming * “On the Genesis of Species,” quoted by Huxley, “Critiques,” &c. p. 287. f Hamilton, note to Reid’s Essay on the Active Powers. �On the Free-Will Controversy. 3i evil; and it need hardly be said that this is a corollary of their doctrine from which most Libertarians would recoil with horror. But, not to press this point any further—can it be possible that we are to regard all actions prompted by unreflecting sympathy and affection as “ absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree of real or formal goodness ?” Surely not; the unanimous verdict of mankind forbids it. The perfect ideal of a virtuous character is that of the man whose actions invariably have for their spring and source an instinc­ tive feeling of sympathy for his fellow-men, irrespective of any selfish considerations. Or do Mr Mivart and those who agree with him think to persuade us that the mother who rushes forward to save her child’s life at the sacrifice of her own—that a Howard and a Nightingale, whom the importunate promptings of their inner nature urge irresistibly forth from the refinements and the pleasures of domestic life, to all the horrors and miseries of an existence passed in the midst of prisons, lazar-houses, and hospitals—that these are creatures devoid of any “ title to our esteem or moral approbation?” Such a doctrine only requires to be fully and definitely stated, in order to be instantly and unequivocally repudiated. Our space will not permit us to enter upon a con­ sideration of the various collateral arguments urged by the two sides of this great controversy of the will. Bor a full account of these, the reader is referred to the admirable “ History of the Tree-Will Controversy,” to be found in Professor Bain’s Compendium of Mental and Moral Science. We will merely add, in conclusion, that the Determinist hypothesis has always been practi­ cally recognised by men in their dealings with one another. It has been already shown that the institution of Law presupposes the fact of a uniform connection between pain and the action necessary to avoid it, that is, of the law of uniform succession in our acts and their moral antecedents. Nor does the conduct of individuals towards one another show less clearly the �32 On the Free-Will Controversy. conviction of such a principle of uniformity. For ex­ ample (to quote an instance from J. Stuart Mill), “Men often regard the doubt what their conduct will be, as a mark of ignorance of their character, and sometimes even resent it as an imputation.”* Indeed, not only is prevision concerning the conduct of others constantly necessary, in virtue of the interdependence of human beings aggregated in society; it is also no less easy and sure than the prevision of physical phenomena. “ If, in crossing a street, a man sees a carriage coming upon him, you may safely assert that, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, he will try to get out of the way. ... If he can buy next door a com­ modity of daily consumption better and cheaper than at the other end of town, we may affirm that, if he does not buy next door, some special relation between him and the remoter shopkeeper furnishes a strong reason for taking a worse commodity at greater cost of money and trouble.”! Finally, what logical justification of sympathy can there be—how is it possible to reconcile reason and fellow-feeling, save on the hypothesis of determinism? Is it not in this creed that we find the strongest incentive to mercy, charity, long-suffering— to “ hatred of the sin, and yet love for the sinner ; ” in a word, to all that is highest and noblest in the charac­ ter of man as a social being ? May the day soon come —and perhaps it is not far distant—when a public and practical recognition shall he given to this great prin­ ciple, and when the popular sanction shall establish a basis and a system of psychology so fruitful in beneficial result, not only in Legislation, but in the Sciences of Morality and Education also. This paper will not have been written in vain, if it should arouse any to the earnest and sincere examination of the great sub­ ject with which it has dealt. * Mill, “ Logic,” Book VI., chapter if., § 2. I Spencer, “Study of Sociology,” page 38. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; 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. 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Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1873 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT165 Subject The topic of the resource Determinism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The free-will controversy), 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> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Free Will and Determinism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/51388ae1abf42c388441ad3dbc9a8d1a.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=KnpAMOVNbnCEsH-HvUaqkq%7EPTd5DNTDKjvn4X6%7EFne8Db8IXJj0kksHUhewYvFV5Kci-QbOpVxhcq2vbbq9snsrCBM4NU1%7E5FsabKYZZYrdIVIAoEoyryOESSfylEZBPUQJix%7EJiE17KVBaNCiNVO2Pqa0q7m5aglljs2AYy30kphNO%7E3e09gQaL55w2867jFTp8UJ%7EX7-%7E3DvaEVdqmKQbc5liHbCB580NN9ii1tph8MVzzDd5OrbQEzkH0Iic946VHHEis8vfa2pqm4ANhejv-kTZxmm51VUZPViOBXZdBswO-0LturCxQzoT%7EDDa0IEuZo6NJWs63mMYR8rcQVQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7650a83df639e01aa5a7a17ebd8614e7 PDF Text Text T E T s ON THE WING. BRIEF NARRATIVE OF MY TRAVELS AND LABORS AS A MISSIONARY SENT FORTH AND SUSTAINED BY THE ASSOCIATION OF BENEFICENTS IN SPIRIT LAND. .'j; ' ■ BY JOHN MURRAY SPEAR. PREFACE BI ALLEN PUTNAM. BOSTON: WILLIAM WHITE AND COMPANY, No. 14 Hanover Street. 1873. �Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, By WILLIAM WHITE & CO., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, No. 19 Spring Lane. �PREFACE. BY ALLEN PUTNAM. Careful students of the spiritualistic literature which the last twenty-five years have been furnishing, have noticed from time to time allusions to,' and occasionally rather distinct accounts of, extensive a^Mations of spirits in the spirit world, whose special purpose was and is to devise and use ways and means for systematic and extensive action, upon men, with a view to reform and improve the religious, civil, social, domestic, and individual conditiorM the dwellers Upon earth. In his “ Present Age and Inner Life,^beginning at page 82, A. J. Davis gives interesting descriptions of his visions of “ The Spiritual Congress,” its readings of the prominent nations on the earth, its prophecies concerning many of them, and its purpose to come nearer to earth/*-to do whatsoever good thing we find to do with one accord, for so shall at last Eternal Justice be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” Methods of associated spirits in acting upon men are hinted at in “ Twelve Messages,” by John Quincy Adams, page 417. Allusion is made to an u assemblage of spirits,” by Dr. Hare, page 14, in “ Spiritualism Scientifically Demonstrated.” The fact of such associations is most promi­ nently presented, however, in the “ Educator,” embracing com­ munications through John M. Speaa^where the “ General As­ sembly,” which seems but a large committee appointed by the “Spiritual Congress,” have outlined the projects of the spirit world for improving the condition of men more fully than in any other work that the writer has seen. This very large General 3 �4 PREFACE. Assembly subdivided itself into at least seven sub-associations, each having its specific field of labor. One of these committees was called the “Association of Beneficents,” consisting of Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, and ten others of kindred spirit, who chose and set apart John M. Spear to be their scribe, “ to execute their schemes, and to com­ plete their beneficent intentions 5 ’land they sent him forth, “ with­ out scrip,” and have kept him journeying up and down over the earth for twenty years, calling,, under impression, upon numerous people, giving huge volumes of communications, most of which have been recorded, have i»iusweleased him from his position as their scribe and communicator, asked from him a brief out­ line report of his doings, and requested him to submit it, for in­ spection and revisal, to myself. The reader will find the work a simple and interesting narrative, by a man of fidelity and faith — showing how the invisibles can sustain those who confide in them without any misgivings. The writer has had tatter intimate knowledge of very many mediums for spirit communkjaiTo'ns, but among them all, of no other one who seemed to him so trustful of the wisdom, power, and beneficence of his spirit gyles and controllers as Mr. Spear. In him has been manifested the nearest approach I have ever seen to that Abrahamic faith which could raise the knife to slay one’s son at the bidding of a supermundane call. He is the only medium whom I ever heard say to the spirits, “I am entirely at your service—do with me, and through me, whatever you judge to be useful to my iellow-m@n.” They seem to have taken him at his word, and his submission has indicated the sincerity of his devotion. His trials and buffetings have been most severe. The thorough fitting of him for his work apparently required him to sever all old domestic and social ties, even by processes which caused him to be despised of ^nen*—of most men ; though a few who knew the source and purpose of his eccentricities could ap­ preciate and sympathize with the suffering philanthropist. It was from the outset, and has been for more than twenty years, my �PREFACE. 5 privilege to know enough to secure for him my sympathy in his most-intense mental and affectional agonies, and my admiration of a man who would submit to be dumb as the lamb in the hands of its shearers, because of his unfaltering faith in the wisdom and love which chastened and molded him, that he might become a better instrument for benefiting his fellow-men. If the question be put, whether it is right for one thus to sur­ render his individuality,/tfaejgse reply seems to be, that it is not; yet we must either admit exceptions, or be severe in our condem­ nations of Abraham, when he made preparation to sacrifice his son, and commendatory of Jonah for his attempt to get away from the presence of the HLord by taking ^voyage at sea. Sending the thoughts off bEoad^ oy<ar the fields of spirit reve­ lation and history, and letting {teem generalize the apparent teachings, a fair s tatement QfiTth!e1m »iS^ be substantially this : The different associations of beneficent spirits, though having a common benevolent pufeppse toward men, can best accomplish their work by causing the® human fesSuments to misunderstand each other, become somewhat at variance, move in quite distinct paths, and be kept to a great e-x^^Mgnorant of each other’s do­ ings. Some can be^ made most useful in the quiet home and social circles ; some upon the rostrum and before the public; others under the ban of society: these classes, and others into which mediums might b®ii®|Hed^ become, or are made to become, measurably rivals, and are not exempt from jealousies and re­ criminations. No one of all mediums whom-»®ve known came into the field of mediumship with a better record for purity of morals, for active beneficence, for devotion to whatever promised to relieve human suffering, than Mr. Spear. For many years, as a clergy­ man of good standing in the denomination of Universalists, and especially as the prisoner’s friend, he labored in season and out of season, in summer’s heats and winter’s colds, with the appro­ bation, respect, and support of very many of the ablest and best among the clergymen, the physicians, the lawyers, and the mer- �6 PREFACE. chants of Boston. I have full confidence that his purity and devo­ tion to humanity’s good were then genuine, and that they have never lessened in degree or character to this day. Whatever seeming disregards of the proprieties or moralities may have been manifested through his organism were not his own acts, though most men, without conscious injustice, will hold him re­ sponsible for them. He is to a greater extent than most others an unconsciozis medium; has no knowledge of, and no control over, any word or act of his lips or body when in the trance. Such being his susceptibility, provided his controllers judged thatz they could accomplish their work throughWhim better by making him “despised and disesteemed of men,” they had power to manifest such action through him as would bring him into con­ tempt when tried by any human standard. Mediums of this class may have less advantages for pefcSonaljpevelopment and education than others, but they are obviouslyffirose through whom spirit teachings come most free from adulterations or perversion, and are therefore among the most reliable as reporters of spirit utterances. Once, before a vast crowd which had assemffed to hear him lecture in a hall at Cleveland, Ohio, he was made to turn his back to his audience and speak to the wall, Whether^is was because the magnetisms flowing from the assembly were unfavorable to control, or whether the spirits wished, by humiliating him, to ren­ der him more pliant in their hands, or whether they had other motives for it, has never been revealed. But such was their usage of him. His eccentricities are not discordant with many manifested by prophets of former ages. All history, Jewish and Christian as well as Pagan, teaches that seers and prophets were often manifestors of unseemM| and sometimes of uncleanly actions, admissible only by maniacs. Read of Saul as a prophet, and you will find that when the spirit^as*upon him, he stripped off his clothes in public, and “ lay down naked all that day and all that night,” obviously acting in such harmony with the ordinary man­ * ^z ? �PREFACE. 7 ner of those who were subject to spirit control that his acquaint­ ances asked in astonishment, “ Is Saul also among the prophets ? ” Turn to the writings of Ezekiel and you will find that he was made to lie on his left side three hundred and ninety days — then on his right forty days, and that he received instructions for preparing his food which it is indelicate to quote. He was directed also to smother the deepest' affections. The spirit said to him, “ Forbear to cry ; make no mourning for the dead; ” and he adds, “ So I spake unto the people in the morning, and at even my wife died.” MHfe case, as is in some others, the deep­ est and holiest affections of mortal life must give way to the .free exercise of mediumistic functions. On the side showing the consequences of resisting the spirit, look at Jonah. Trying to get away “from the presence of the Lord,” that is, from the call of his controlling spirit, he paid his fare for passage by ship to Tarshish; when out at sea he was thrown overboawMEa^»owecWBv‘ amgreat fish,” vomited out again upon dry land, and then made to prophesy that in forty days Nineveh should be overthrown; yet, as the Ninevites re­ pented, God his threat made through his prophet, and the^eSeMbnah was made to appear as a lying prophet. This so maddened him that in his wrath he said, “ It is better for me to die than to live;” and many a modern medium, truthful and obedient, has been made to feel as much ashamed and mortified at wh®w®|i b|||®>aiiWand done through them as Jonah was. The methods of invisible intelligences, who are obviously intent on promoting the highest interests of men, are not always in full accordance with of expediency and right. Their ways are not a^^S’ wafe. Frequently, when human organisms are controlled by spirits for communicating with mor­ tals, those organisms are made to manifest actions and utter­ ances far from harmonious with the ordinary ways and speech of the minds and hearts to whom such organisms specially belong. Sometimes the ordinarily gross and sensual become proclaim- �8 PREFACE. ers of high spirituality in refined and polished diction — also, the highly spiritual and refined are sometimes made to utter coarse thoughts in offensive language, and to manifest almost beastly disregard for the decencies of refined life. Facts like the above furnish a just basis for very charitable judgments as to the individual, personal character of those ordinarily benevolent and estimable persons who are sometimes, as mediums, made to do what sqeiety may justly censure. We are so accustomed to consider whatever comes out through human lips as the offspring of the head and heart for which those lips were especially formed, that we find it difficult to ascribe them to any other intelligence. However it is essential to a just judgment of persons whose outer organisms are highly mediumistic, that we overcome that difficulty, and look upon mediums, at times, as only trumpets or pencils used by others than their own­ ers, and not expressing the sentiments and thoughts of those who ordinarily use them, but of some temporary borrower. A. J. Davis, in his “ Present Age and Inner Life,” page 186, says, “John M. Spear stands quite prominently before the world‘as a missionary medium.’ Recommended, as he is, to public credulity by virtue of his well-known truthfulness, sim­ plicity, and uniform conscientious philanthropy of character, his spiritual experience is particularly and generally interesting and acceptable. According to my wrceptions of his state, he is a compound medium —pulsatory, missionary, and speaking. The most prominent manifestation, it seems to me, and the most reliable in his case, is the missionary develop­ ment.” The work from which the above extract is taken was published in 1853, while the commission of Mr. Spear is dated April 1, the same yearl| consequently the characterization was written before Mr. Spear had scarcely entered upon his special labors. Those who have so long employed Mr. Spear, and have moved the hearts of men to supply his needs, now, when he is permit­ ted to put off the harness and seek the repose which his advanced f . �PREFACE. 9 years and previous toil make very desirable, express a hope that “ the readers of this narrative will give some substantial tokens of their personal regards, and their appreciation of his numerous love-labors,” for the purpose of helping him to a small, quiet, comfortable home, where he may rest from active labor, and pass his remaining days amid peaceful and happy social and domestic enjoyments. J Allen Putnam. J-*-*— '/> // g 426 Dudley Stre^ Boston, Oct. 20, 1872. APPHNDiXU Prophetical^ apprehending that such enunciations as are contained in the agaj^me feast amount of unpub­ lished manuscripts emanating from the same source, will in future ages be regarded as a rich collection of prophetic gleams, I am disposed to make public a sample of what the spirit world is purposing to accomplish. In 1859 there was transmitted to me the following docum®HWM® the public is hardly prepared to receive, though it must admit that it is pregnant with most momentous suggestions. �TO THE APOSTLE OF PRECISION. It belongs to the unfoldive labors of the General Assembly to teach of the vast field of adjustments and of true balance or Pre­ cision. The papers now in the hands of the Assembly are quite numerous, and some are most Intricate, and, to some extent, of a character not usually laid before ®he public eye. First. Of the origin and<g||||Ba of the human species, which is a masterly effort by the author to show that man has been, and, in harmony with certafe laws, can be again, generated with­ out the ordinary copulative processes. Second. And therefore a child may be begotten to order as one begets a spade, shovel, or hoe ; and the work will be perfect in correspondence with the Elementist who combines and arranges, and with the condition-of the mother and the harmony and wis­ dom of her surroundings, 1— and Third. Scales can be so perfectly constructed that all varia­ tions, however slight, may be seen by the mos| precise micro­ scope ; and in this paper the history and variations of the com­ pass are noticed by a careful microscopist, — and Fourth. The reasons why there is a lack of sexual precision on some planets, and why^ere is just sexual equipoise on other planets, — and Fifth. What elements are important to constitute precision of life ? What to constitute a mathematician, what a surgeon, what an engineer ? — and Sixth. Of the overcoming of gravitation by the application of electricity and the magnetlms, so that the steam-car can be made to move with yet greater precision and increased velocity, — and Seventh. Of the human <®ody as an electrical machine, and acted uponby persons in the higher lifes, — and Eighth. Of insulatory laws for certain practical purposes. These and kindred subjects are considered by the Branch of Precisionists, for and in b'ehalf of the General Assembly, and re­ ports thereof are made at suitable seasons. The Apostle of Pre­ cision is a middle man, and hence he has the ability to, as it were, hit the mark, find both radicals and conservatives gather about him, and he becomes to both an able counselor and valu­ able guide. For and in behalf of the Branch of Precision of the General Assembly. Isaac Newton. Given September 17, 1859. 10 �NARRATIVE. Retiring from the field of domestic and foreign missions, in which I have been diligently and con­ stantly employed Kor twenty years, and called now to resign my commission to another, it is impressed upon my mind to make a brief report of my labors, hoping it may be of service to her who is to succeed me in directing the missionary work; and it is felt also to be due to the numerous friends with whom I have been and am associated, and who, by their words and deeds, have encouraged and assisted me. It is proper to say that my labors have been performed in Faith. Very few have so understood my mission that they could give me either counsel or assistance, and there­ fore my trust has been in the invisible world. Most per­ sons have doubted if the spirits from whom I claimed to have received my commission, had even an exist­ ence, and not a few considered me deluded, if not demented, when I assured them it was my belief that they did exist, did communicate, and had organized to promote certain specified purposes. The association by whom I was commissioned had not at command any tangible means by which my 11 �12 „ j NARRATIVE. traveling expenses and daily needs could be met. Such was the nature of my labor that I must have constantly near me a competent amanuensis, since otherwise much that was to be said by me, while in the superior state, would be lost. Over and above these things, I was informed that I must leave all other pursuits, however •pleasan^honorable, or profit­ able, that I might devote myself altogether to my mission; and it was further shown me that I must disconnect myself from^moM? associations of either a private or public character, els< I could not do my best in the field I was entering. Leaving all earthly considerations, I gave myself unreservedly to my mis­ sionary work. Thoughtful ^^fons,^ho value the world’s approval,'its honors, emoluments, and reputa­ tion, can somewhat realize the early struggles that opened before me. I met them, when they appeared, as best I could, and pursued my onward way, feeling that if I was deluded, God was just, would not for­ sake me, and in due time^mgprror being discovered, I could retreat and warn.^hers of danger. My mediumship may be said to have commenced April 1, 1852. I was then in a measure prepared to begin my missionaS. work., and was from that time sent out on some domestic missions of an individual character. Names of persons were given me of whose existence I had noEgthe tightest knowledge. I was told where they dwelt, when to see them, and was so acted upon when in their presence, that I immedi­ ately relieved them of their infirmities. The prompt­ ers of these missions exhibited unusual intelligence and great benevolence, and I became much interested in obeying them. �NARRATIVE. 13 In July, 1852, John Murray, the father of Univer­ salism in America (whose name I bear, and by whom I was dedicated when an infant), through my hand wrote a programme of subjects, upon which he de­ sired, through my instrumentality, to speak. A pho­ nographic reporter, Miss Matilda Goddard, being en­ gaged, twelve messages were delivered in Boston, my native city, at regular intervals. The themes were of a moral, religious, and spiritual character, and were subsequently published by Bela Marsh. Two messa­ ges were now given me: the first, dated September 11, 1852, was written through the hand of my beloved daughter, Mrs. Sophronia B. Butler; the second, dated September 12, 1852, was written through my own hand. Here they are : — First. “You will soon be directed in the work you are to be engaged in promoting. The teachings will come in a way and at a time least to be expected. To-morrow you will receive almost important commu­ nication from a number of spirit friends. Do all they direct in all cases. |^ulaw to receive new teachings — different, from those' you have received. Have Faith. s A new work is open before you, and great shall be your reward, as you shall see. Some new spirit friends will soon teach you. You will know your work to do. Be quiet: all is well that is done with good impressions, and yours are. When the new light shines in upon the minds of the inhabitants of your earth, then shall the world be changed. It shall grow wiser and better, so that after a few years things shall be altogether changed, and you will hardly believe that things were as they now are. �14 | NARRATIVE. The day to spread joy and happiness is near at hand, when all shall love one another, and all shall feel that they are brothers. The darkest complexioned man shall not be crushed on account of his color, but you shall live, eat, drink together, and not know any dif­ ference,— shall feel that you are all of one great family, and are to do good to all around you. Great and important will be the instruction given from the spirit world, and men will soon be directed by their friends there. Their faith shall bejstrengthened by the communications they will receive. They shall be restored to health by spiritual physicians, and new mediums shall be made throughout the world, and their truth shall teach men to lead good and pure lives. Crime shall decrease, and beautiful thoughts shall fill men’s minds. When they attempt to do wrong, they shall be directed differently, and all shall pass pleasantly along.” Second. “ A most Important Communication. Your spirit friends, whose names when on ^our earth will be hereafter mentioned, mogt earnestly desire now to communicate important information, which will be most useful to you, and through you to the inhabit­ ants of the earth on which you nowSbr the present dwell. It is perceived that your past manner of liv­ ing, thinking, and laboring has admirably prepared you to engage in a new and impfeant labor. “ You will for a coming season be under the more especial supervision and immediate direction of the spirit friends whose* earthly names will be mentioned. They have been commissioned, prepared, instructed, and qualified to direct, prepare, and- lead you on in your important work. They will be, some of them, �NARRATIVE. 15 always near you, and when it is seen that you re­ quire assistance of one or more, or all, it shall be freely given unto you. You will now be most quiet, most patient, and at the same time most watchful and most active ; and your wants shall be supplied as they come unto you. Let this be most carefully preserved, and placed in a conspicuous position, that it may be seen and read. Benj. Rush, John Howard, Franklin, Oliver Dennett, John Murray, Zacheus Hamlin, Joseph Hallett, Thos. Jefferson, Roger Sherman, John Spear. “September I looked at these remSkable messages with much care, and finaly show®d'tnern IRome valued friends. Most of them doubted. For a time I hesitated. But while in this unsettled and unhappy state of mind, doubtful whether Spiritualism was or was not a delu­ sion, it was my good fortune to hear an able address on spirit manifestations, given by Allen Putnam, Esq., in Roxbury, Mass. _ I looked critically at the speaker as he entered the desk, observed the class of persons assembled to hear him, among whom were many of the most respectable citizens of that ciS noticed the fairness, candor, and clearness of his statements: and the evidences pre­ sented were, to my mind, irresistible ; and from that time I date my perfect, unwavering conviction of the truth of an open communication between persons in the spiritual and material worlds, and then concluded I would not retreat. Other messages came, and among them the following: — �16 NARRATIVE. MESSAGE FROM THE ASSOCIATION OF BENEFICENTS. “ The undersigned, by the instrument which is being herein communicated, say to the inhabitants of the earth on which this Scribe dwells, that an associa­ tion, called ‘ The Association of Beneficents,’ has been selected, qualified, and commissioned, to teach of the Benefices ; and they now say and declare that they have in contemplation a system of revealments which will much surprise the dwellers of the lower earth. They moreover make declaration that, through the various instrumentalities which now are, and which, as they are most needed, will be under their control, teaching, and direction, this association will greatly, wisely, and seasonably instruct and bless the diseased, the suffering, and the wretched of the aforesaid earth. And they declare that this scribe, known by the name of John Murray Spear, is now chosen and set apart to execute their schemes, and to complete their beneficent intentions! \ Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Howard, Roger Sherman, Oliver Dennett, Thos. Clarkson, Joseph Hallett, John Murray, John Pounds, Thos. Jefferson, John Spear, I. T. Hopper. “ Communicated and dated April 1,1853 (being the commencement of thf united labors of the Association of Beneficents), and delivered into the hand of John Murray Spear.” It was now supposed I was insane. Physicians and �NARRATIVE. 17 others were sent to converse with and examine me. I showed them the above commission. They looked upon me with tender, compassionate eye, as they de­ cided that I had become a lunatic. I knew their ver­ dict, and greatly feared I might be confined in an asylum for the insane; but I was mercifully preserved from such unhappy fate. I was then made to avoid society, to write much, to make strange drawings, to do many things that I did not comprehend, and some that seemed to me quite foolish and ridiculous. My missionary fieWKoon began to enlarge. I was commissioned to visit the city of Cleveland, Ohio, at a distance of seven hundred miles. I expected there to meet John M. Sterling, a gentleman whom I had seen at Worcester, Mass. He was absent from home, but I made the acquaintance of Dr. Abel Underhill, Dr. John Mayhew, Horace Fenton, and others. A meeting was called in Brainard’s Hall the Sunday after my arrival. A large assemblage convened to see and hear me. WR3|ithoW tW slightest preparation on my part, without the least hint of what I was to say or do, I was mQ<J^p^jfc>rth the following dec­ larations : — “We come from the higher life to declare things which are soon to place, — which are schemed in wisdom and will be completed in beneficence. We come to harmonize things apparently discordant, and out of discords to bring concords. We come to in­ struct the uninstructed of things supereminently prac­ tical. We come to inspire the inactive to high states of activity. We come to promulge a more critical knowledge of Nature’s- laws. We come to raise the low to conditions eminently high. We come to intro2 �18 NARRATIVE. duce, by wise schemes, a new and better era. We come to supersede things apparently unimportant by things which are practical and highly useful. We come to institute and organize a new Church, to es­ tablish new systems of Education, to teach of new Architectures, to organize new Governments, to teach of new Garments, to instruct of proper Foods, to teach of the more symmetricdLainfolding of mortal bodies, and thereby the more perfect unfolding of spiritual bodies. We come to select wise instrumentalities to execute beneficent schemes. “We come to introduce a new era, unlike the two prominent eras of the past, namelw the Jewish and the Christian. The Jewish was an era of Force ; the Christian was an era of Feeling. The third era, which has now commencA the era of Wisdom. It will embrace, however, both Force and Feeling, adding a still nobler attribute, making of the thr^fe one grand, beautiful Trinity,—’•Force, Feeling, Wisdom. Thus no truly useful thing of the past will be lost or de­ molished. Force and feeling will be deleted by Wis­ dom, leading all to ask, in simplicity of (Spirit, ‘What wilt thou have me to do ? ’ This question, they who come from the higher life are now prepared to an­ swer, so that each one can find his proper place. “ The preceding era® have hadpheir primary books, which, to a very considemble extent, have molded the public mind of their respective times* Containing, as they have, portions of permanent. truths, they have been preserved from 5jhe moMering hand of time, answering the purposes for which, in highest wisdom, they were designed. The era which has now begun has its book, superior to those of the former eras. �NARR ATI V E. 19 This has been termed The Book of Nature ; but, for distinction’s sake, it may henceforth be called The Book of Unfoldings. It can never be superseded, because it is perpetually unfolding. It has no last chapter; but chapter after chapter will be revealed, precisely in proportion to the mental expansion of its readers. “ The unfoldings of former eras ended when they were founded. On their respective foundations super­ structures were reared 9Ht these could not be broader than their bases. Th® new era, unlike the former, is to be founded on imperishabfl, indestructible, and ever-multiplying Facts. Hence its base can never be wholly laid; for there can never arrive a period when facts shall cease to multiply. As a consequence, no book can be written by hand comprehending the basis-facts of the new era; for they will embrace those of the past, the present, and the interminable future. “ The eras of the past have only, to a limited ex­ tent, satisfied man’s expanding mental wants. Theyhave been unable fully to fill vacuums, because they were angular in their unfoldings, and, of necessity, created mental angularities. The new era, deriving instruction from the past, the present, and the future, will develop Truth in its completeness or circularity. Consequently, its primitive lesson has been the forma­ tion of circles ; and there have been gatherings around the tables of your dwellings. It was not primarily for the mere purpose of listening to unusual sounds that these circles were organized; but it was symbolic of truths which are to be unfolded. “ The former eras have been commenced, and to a �20 NARRATIVE. very considerable extent perpetuated, by the mascu­ line sex. And in the second era one declared, ‘I suffer not a woman to teach.’ From the utterance of that unseemly declaration woman has been denied the right of public teaching. Thus has one sex monop­ olized the power which has been wielded to the high­ est detriment of the other A The new era, unlike the two preceding, for the purpose of regaining a lost equilibrium, will, for a suitable season, place the fem­ inine element in preponderance. Another Trinity is to be introduced, namely, Economy, Convenience, Beauty ; and woman, being specially adapted there­ for, is to aid in its development. “ The students of preceding eras have especially been taught to reverence the books, writtffli by mortal hands, for their respective periods. In the new era, truths alone are to be reverenced, for truths are immortal. “In the eras of the past, reverence of individual persons has been taught. In the new era, man, as A grand whole, with all other portions of Nature, is to be reverenced. “ The teachers of past eras have established forms and observances, suited to their respective degrees of unfoldment. The new era dwells not in outer forms, ceremonies, or observances. These are but the scaf­ folds of the superstructure; they are transitory, and, of necessity, pass away. Each individual person will be left free to express her or his thought in her on his way; so that woman and man, wife and husband, daughter and son, will be at liberty to adopt forms, ceremonies, and observances, as they may from season to season find to be individually agreeable.” At Cleveland, while in the trance condition, my �NARRATIVE. 21 eyes being closed, persons whom I never had seen entered the room where I was seated. I approached one of these, a lady, and addressing her, gave her the name of “ Leaderess.” Returned to my normal con­ dition, I inquired what I had been doing, and was in­ formed, among other things, that I had made an ad­ dress to Mrs. Caroline S. Lewis, and had designated her as the Leaderess. This was all inexplicable to me, as it certainly* w^ta to herself and others. I saw nothing then to beT led which called for any Leaderess. I was now commissioned to go from Cleveland to some springs that had been discovered by a spirit medium, and were owned by Oliver G. Chase, John Chase his brotherland W. W. Brittingham, on a farm then occupied by John Chase, in Farmington, Pa. Accompanied by Horace Fenton, Dr. Abel Underhill, Dr. John Mayhew, "Samuil Treat, Dr. and Mrs. Burritt, William E. Dunn, Emily Hickox, Caroline Sykes, Sarah Fuller, and Hannah F. M. Brown, I left Clever land on the 10th of May. I have not much recollec­ tion now of the things I was impressed to say and do while at the springs; but remember I was directed to make a second appointment to be there again in a few weeks. All was yet dark and mysterious to me; but I decided to move on a little further, supposing and hoping these strange missions would soon terminate. At a time previously named I made a second journey to Cleveland, accompanied by my beloved daughter, now in the spirit world, Mrs. S. B. Butler, who acted as my amanuensis. From there I made a second visit, by spirit direction, to the spiritual springs in Farming­ ton, and arrived there on June 10th. At that time, �22 NARRATIVE. the domain where I now write (Kiantone) was pur­ chased by Horace Fenton, Dr. Underhill, and others. I was then directed to go to Rochester, N. Y., and Niagara Falls, and Dr. Abel Underhill was requested to accompany me, which he did. While at the Falls, some statements were made in respect to the future of the American nation, and of a union of the Canadas with the United States! At Rochester, June 30,1853, seated with Charles Hammond, a writing and speaking medium, interchangeably, i. e., I naming the first, third, &c., and he' the second, [fourth, &c., we were made to announce the existence of sWen associations in the spirit world, Ithe names of whichfas reported by Dr. Abel Underhill, are as follows®— 1. Association of Beneficents.^ 2. Association of Electricizers. 3. Association of Elementizers. j 4. Association of Educationizers. ' 5. Association of Healthfulizers. . 6. Association of Agriculturalizers. 7. Association of Governinentizers. Some time subsequentMto these announcements, it was furthermore intimated that all these bodies sus­ tained a subordinate relation to a yet more numerous and comprehensive organization, called the “ General Assembly ” of the spirit world, from which they were special delegations or committees. The following pa­ per, communicatee! as will be seen, about a year after the commencement of I these unfoldings, contains a lucid and succinct statement of the mutual relations of these several alleged bodies, and of some of their methods of operations : — �NARRATIVE. 23 ADDRESS TO THE INHABITANTS OF THIS EARTH. “ Something more than a year since, a number of persons in the spirit world resolved to associate to­ gether for the promotion of several scientific, useful, and philanthropic purposes. Organization- was the result. A body called the General Assembly was formed. Entering immediately on its duties, the General Assembly resolved to organize several subor­ dinate bodies. Seven, a numerical perfection, was the number determined on. Cheerfully these subordinate bodies immediately commenced their labors. They selected a prominent person to journey from place to place, with a view of seeking, selecting, and appoint­ ing its general agent. At the earliest possible mo­ ment these subordinate bodies commenced their dis­ tinct, though co-operative labors. / “ It was deemed wise, by the subordinate bodies, for that asso ciatiora which would, of necessity, bring out most prominently important fundamental principles, to first enter upon the work,whereby forming a sub­ stantial basis upon’which kindred associations could safely build. Among these bodies was one significant­ ly denominated the Electric-izers. At the head of that association the name of Benjamin Franklin was placed. His great intellectual ability, his skill as a diplomatist, and his philanthropy, qualified him for a position so important. That association in due time commenced its laborsjwcarrying them forward to a con­ dition when others might wisely commence their efforts. “Each of these subordinate bodies has now un­ folded its general plan, and presented its fundamental �24 NARRATIVE. principles. Difficulties have been encountered in this undertaking, but they have not been more numerous than are usually connected with labors of this charac­ ter. Looking carefully over the whole ground which has thus far been traveled, the General Assembly is satisfied with the results. “ The General Assembly, as such, takes this oppor­ tunity to somewhat^ fully declare its purposes and plans. While the subordinate bodies have each their distinct labors, acting uSfe a class or classes of per­ sons, the General Assembly proposes to affect in sev•erSj. ways the general mind,—hence its name. And its labors and plans will generally tend to the promo­ tion of the more individual labors of the subordinate bodies. “ One of the first, objects which the General Assem­ bly proposes to accomplish is to- select from a large class of persons a body of representatives, each being distinct, and yet all, when unitedrforming a whole. They will be selected in different locations, and, to some extent, in different nations f but the majority will be from this, the American nation. “ When the General Assembly has completed this branch of its labors, it will then proceed deliberately in unfolding its general plans, which, briefly, are the following: — “ ‘ First, to construct a new general Government^ selecting from the governmental institutions of the past and the present the essential and the useful, hap­ pily combining and arranging the s'ame, introducing new principles, and constructing for the inhabitants of this earth a new general government, presenting • it as a model to this and other nations. �NARRATIVE. 25 “ ‘ Secondly. It proposes to prepare a general Code of Laws, embracing essential moral principles ; and it proposes to present this code to the consideration of distinguished legislators, eminent jurists, and other judicial persons. “ ‘ Thirdly. It proposes to present certain religious or spiritual teachings, embracing the essentials gath­ ered from the various Bibles and other volumes of the past, connecting them with the highest spiritual teach­ ings of the presentthus bringing together compre­ hensively all that spiritual instruction which man needs, and constructing a basis upon which a new, living, and rational Clvwrch can be built.’ “ While the General Assembly will be engaged in promoting its general labors, the subordinate associa­ tions will continue, quietly and perseveringly, their respective efforts, tiding, as far as may be practicable, the general undertakings of the Assembly. That its plans may be promoted, certain selected persons will, at a proper time, visit fet only certain important loca­ tions in this nation, but will also visit other nations. Various persons, from time to time, will be employed in generally advai^jgg ' the objects contemplated by the General Assembly. Obstacles which may lie in its way will be, by various means, removed. Persons friendly or unfriendly, whether in the garb of friend­ ship or otherwise, will be exhibited in their true char­ acters. “For and in behalf of the General Assembly, “ Daniel Webster.” The names of the original twelve Teachers selected by the General Assembly were as follows : — �26 NARRATIVE. Allen Putnam, Roxbury, Mass., Apostle of Precision. Distribution. Jonathan Buffum, Lynn, “ “ Devotion. Daniel Goddard, Chelsea, “ “ Government. Eliza J. Kenney, Salem, “ “ Resignation. Emily Rogers, Utica, N. Y. “ Harmony. Thad. S. Sheldon, Randolph, N.Y., “ Freedom. Mary Gardner, Farmington, Pa. “ Education. Angelina Munn, Springfield, Mass., “ Direction. Eliza W. Farnham, New York City, “ Treasures. Jno. M. Sterling, Cleveland, 0., “ Commerce. Thos. Richmond, Chicago, Ill., “ Accumula­ George Haskell, Rockford,*^ “ tion. A basis for a new government and a new church was indicated, and twelve representative persons selected, some of whom have been translated to the spirit world. Persons in England have been chosen to aid this work, among whom is Mary Howitt, who was called the “ Celestial Poetess; ” Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, called the “ Spiritual Analyzer; ” Andrew Leighton, called the “ British Interchanger.” Numerous others in Great Britain and other lands, among whom stand prominent William and Mary Tebb, of London, were given spiritual names, but I am not permitted to recall more at this time of writing. To each and all of the twelve apostles addresses 4ave been made, stating in explicit language what the Assembly desired, through their aid, to accom­ plish. Nearly one hundred papers have been given to the Apostle of Commerce, upon the subject of com­ merce in its inner and outer, its spiritual and material sense. More addresses have been made to the Apos- �NARRATIVE. 27 tie of Treasures, on spiritual and material wealth, of their value and good uses, and not a small number of papers have been transmitted to the Apostle of Har­ mony. To the extent they have promulged the ideas and thoughts given them, they have been the teachers representing the “ General Assembly.” While on my w|y back to my native city, from Rochester and thejFalls^Kwas informed that it was proposed to bring out, through me, a New Motive Power, and that I must be prepped for revelations on that subject. They lame, and continued to come, for nine months : following out with precision the varied instructions as tnOggwere rgiven, an external mech­ anism was elaborated, vibratory motion was secured, which was perpetuiMBWong as the mechanism lasted; but on being removed by direction to Randolph, N. Y., a mob broke into the building in which it was stored, and the machine was demolished ; though the principles brought out by its construction are pre­ served, and in due time that work, as I was informed, is to be resumed. I was much assisted in this effort by Mrs. Sarah J. Newhm, Al E. Newton, Thaddeus S. Sheldon, S. C. HOl Jonathan Buffum and wife, Samuel G. Love, and many others, whose names do not now come to me. I was now commissioned to visit Cincinnati, St. Louis, and other important places, and while at the last-name® place a course of twelve lec­ tures was given of JElements; Warren Chase, Mrs. French,. Mrs. Hyer, Horace Fenton, and others, assist­ ing me in various ways to their transmission. I was now instructed to again visit the domain, with some others, to engage in excavatory labors. It had been declared through several mediums that an ancient �28 NARRATIVE. and highly cultivated people had dwelt there. Driven from this location, they here deposited certain valua­ bles, which were to be exhumed and used for certain beneficent purposes. Here I worked, in the heat of summer and the frosts of winter, for seven months, entering into the bowels of the earth more than one hundred and thirty fee^> ^during many privations, suffering much through doubt and anxiety of mind. When that work terminated I was informed that at a future day it was to be recommenced. While engaged in this labor a valuable minerA spring was opened, and very many papers were transmitted and carefully reported, some of which compose “ The Educator,” a volume of more than s’even hundred pages, carefully prepared for the press by A, E. Newton. January 1,1861, an organi^fen was founded under spirit direction, called the “Sacred Order of Union­ ists,” which was to termifliSatl harness contracts at the end of seven years. Its general purposes are ex­ pressed substantially thus: T® unite man to man, nation to nation,- planet to planet.; To abolish war in all its forms, and to promote universal peace. To or­ ganize various beneficent aodw-operative institutions, which, without injuring the rich^^would greatly aid and help to educate the poor and improvident classes. To establish such religfelSl^institutions and ceremo­ nies as are in harmony with man’s nature, and tend to his highest culture. To establish a system of meas­ ures which will encourage iwustry, render labor hon­ orable, remunerative, and attractive. To institute means whereby education may be made thorough, equal, and universal. To secure to all a right to the cultivation of the soil for useful purposes. To ad­ �NARRATIVE. 29 vance and encourage all the important sciences and the useful arts. To teach of the intimate and sacred relations which exist between the material-and spirit­ ual worlds. To aid and encourage inventors in the use of their powers for human advancement. To open new fields of thought, institute new and unitary meth­ ods of labor and of daily life, and to encourage perpet­ ual progress, and so instruct mankind that they may bring heaven down to earth and lift earth up to heaven. The following werejthe precepts of this order : — I. Thou shalt be strictly just in all thy dealings and in all thy intercours^ with thy fellow-men. II. If thou seest thy neighbor at fault in word or deed, thou shalt teach him the way of everlasting fife, and lead him therein. III. Thou shalt not covet the goods of another, in thought, word, or deed. IV. Thou shalt make ft thy daily prayer to so walk before thy fellow-men that th^example may be wor­ thy of universal imitation. V. To the extent of thy individual and social pow­ er thou shalt contribute to the virtue, sobriety, indus­ try, neatness, order, and happiness of thy kind. VI. It shall be thy pleasure to aid the sick, the distressed, the poor, and the oppressed; to weep with those that weep, and rejoice with those that rejoice. VII. Thou shalt not|ommit adultery of any name or nature in thy thought, by thy heart, thy eye, or overt act. VIII. Thou shalt welcome all new thoughts, retain the good and eschew the evil. IX. Thou shalt avoid all harsh, unseemly, or �30 NARRATIVE. angry debate, and thy affirmation shall be yea, and thy denial nay. X. Thou shalt strive to so perfect thy dress that thy whole body and spirit shall be enlarged and improved thereby. XI. Thou shalt eat of such food as shall be con­ ducive to the highest health and harmony, as shall best fit thee for thy daily labors.. XII. Thou shalt ever speak the truth, whatever may be the cost to thee or to others, reserving to thyself the right to decide when and where thou wilt speak, and wheg be silggt. With my wife I 'fcoae traveled for more than fifteen years, she essentially aiding me in the labors to which I have devoted the best part of my life. I have labored without price, but not without re­ ward, finding it in the love of the work itself. I have been specially sent four times to that remarka­ ble people, the Mormons, dwelling" in Utah. Some seed there sown has grown. Some excellent friends of moral, social, and religious progress have there been led to the building of a Liberal Institute, in which free thought and free speech are encouraged, and the way has been opened by which That abomina­ tion, Polygamy, may eventually'disappear. I have several times visited, by direction, the Shakers, to observe their order, neatness, economy, industry, modes of worship, manners and customs, and I have ever been welcomed by them in the most cordial manner, and refreshed in the outer and inner man while with them. A suit of their garments, presented me by Elder �NARRATIVE. 31 James Prescott, I have preserved with care, wearing them only when they would serve to make fitting con­ ditions for the reception of certain writings. I feel sure they are the purest and most spiritual body of persons I have ever met. In business matters the associated spirit world has exhibited much skill and commercial insight. It has predicted the state of the flour, stock, and real estate markets with accuracy. Tracts of land and buildings have been purchased, and held or sold ad­ vantageously under its guidance. Much more might have been done in this direction had capitalists had more faith in the unseen. The future of many indi­ viduals, living in the New and the Old World, has been predicted wi^<pi^^iir®n, tana d national convul­ sions and wars been foretold years before they have occurred. December 30, 1853, my hand was moved to write thus: — “ It is now permitted to be prophetically declared that the following events are at hand, and that they will transpire without the aid of miracle, and without suspension of Nature’s laws. “ First. Several nations holding important and high influential positions on your earth, will soon be engaged in most acrimonifcs and sanguinary strife. “ Second. The American nation will not be except­ ed from the great commotions which are at hand. “ Third. The more especially oppressed, enslaved, and hunted, will, of absolute necessity, be emanci­ pated. �32 NARRATIVE. “ Fourth. There will be dissolutions, and unions, and new governments, as necessary results of the mighty national struggles ; and, among these unions and disunions, there will be a union of the United States with the Canadas and neighboring provinces. These unions will cause a dismemberment of some of the now Confederated States ; and, as a conse­ quence of that dismembermentj there will arise a new and glorious REPUBLIC, which shall have for its basis “JUSTICE, EQUALITY, AND UNI­ VERSAL FREEDOM” “ Fifth. Prominent persons will be placed at the helm of the new ship of state, whose motto shall be, ‘ ETERNAL PRINCIPLES, NOT PARTIES.’ “ Sixth. A new Religion shall take the place of dead forms, which shall lead to high, energetic action, and to wise endeavors to elevate the oppressed, and instruct the uninformed. “ Seventh. The new Republic will invite to its broad shores the greatly enlightened of all the nations of your earth ; and by new co®Mnations of character, of thought, and actio®, there shall be a new and higher order of being than has at any former period inhabited your earth. “These prophecies are presented at this present moment, that greatly spiritualized persons may be wisely informed, and somewhat [prepared for the important things which are at hand, and also that they may be unmoved and undisturbed when they transpire. “For the Association of Governmentizers, “ Robert Rantoul.” �NARRATIVE. 33 ■ The fall of Napoleon III. was seen and stated several years before that remarkable national event occurred. Hundreds of programmes have been written of things proposed to be done, of messages to be de­ livered, of series of discourses on an immense num­ ber and variety of themes; all of which has been done with wonderful exactness. I will narrate a singular mission to Hamilton College, New York. I was informed that it was in contemplation to give through me a series of twelve papers on Geology, a subject on which I have not read, and in which, to this day, I take but little interest, my mind being of a moral, social, religious, and philanthropic cast, rather than scientific. I was directed to go to Clinton, where the above named college is. Arriving there, I made the ac­ quaintance of Professor Avery, a liberal-minded and large-hearted gentleman. Informing him of the strange mission on which I was sent, he inquired if I had a programme of the proposed course. I placed the outline in his hand which had previously been given me. Critically inspecting it, he asked how long I was in writing it; J answered, about twenty minutes. Evincing surprise at my reply, he remarked that the subjects proposed to be treated of were very important. He then desired to be informed what aid I needed to enable me to do the proposed work. I replied, I had been instructed to obtain, if possible, a room in the college building, and to secure the use of its cabinet. The Professor kindly assured me I should have the assistance I had named, and further said he would 3 �34 NARRATIVE. hear the discourses, adding, that he has lectured on geology ten years, and was orthodox on that subject. Before I was prepared, however, to commence the discourses, the Professor was thrown from his carriage, and his ankle being sprained, he was unable to walk. He then kindly invited me to occupy his private dwelling, and offered a suitable room for the delivery of lectures. Accepting his generous offer, two gentle­ men (Dr. Abel Underhill and Thaddeus S. Sheldon) reported the lectures as they were delivered. The minerals needed to illustrate the several subjects dis­ coursed of were brought from the college, and in­ spected while my eyes were closed. The Professor heard all that was said, and carefully observed all that was done. When I had finished my work, and had returned to my normal state, I inquired of him what I had been doing. His reply much surprised me. Said he, “ You have taken up geology just where the books stop. You have not contradicted what they teach, but have presented, finer thoughts, some of which have been hinted at by a few English geolo­ gists, but are not considered orthodox.” And he added, with a pleasant smile, ‘fcE shall teach some things you have said, but shall not tell where I ob­ tained them.” Thus ended my mission to Hamilton College to give lectures on geology. I can not refrain from adding that Mrs. Avery kindly seconded her husband’s noble efforts, and I will also add that the lectures embraced, among other points, Concretions, Petrifactions, Man Geologically Considered, Woman as a Combinist, Conchology, Pearls, Rubies, Diamonds, the Various Ores in their Natural Conditions, Coals, Rods, Talismans, Charms, �nAbe.ATi v k. 35 Discovery of Natural Deposits, Uses of Knowledge, &c. To carry forward these labors, needed means have come in unusual ways. Among the generous donors and benefactors, John M. Sterling gave the first dol­ lar, and his purse and heart have ever been ready when he has felt it was his place to act. Another has done more labor and given much means, who has been translated to the higwer life, Thaddeus M. Sheldon, of Randolph, N. Y. Much hard labor and liberal means have been furnished byHorace Fenton, of Cleveland. Dr. Abel Underhill for many months acted as my amanuensis. Caroline S. Lewis has traveled with me extensively. John bMn liberal with his means, and done muchto aid the social work. Jona­ than Buffum and wife, Oliver Chase and wife, Stephen and Mary Gardner, Dr. George Haskell, have been ready to give a genemus helping; hand when their aid has been needed. In. England, foremost among the numerous persons who have assisted me, I am pleased to mention the names of Andrew Leighton, of Liver­ pool, James Burns, William' and Mary Tebb, Thomas Shorter (Editor of London Spiritual Magazine), John G. Crawford, Georgiana Houghton, all of London, and Thomas Grant, of MaidstoneJ Through their kind counsel Mrs. Spear was aided in the preparation and publication of a littie workfon the position of woman, and in founding the London Spiritual Institute. Many pleasant recollections come to me as I write, of counsel, encouragements, and benefactions, while in California. Among these, stand out in bold relief the names of Laura Cuppy, William Smith, and William M. Rider. At Utah, I have been encouraged in many �36 NARRATIVE. ways by William and Mary Godbe, Henry Lawrence, and others. In pursuing my missionary labors, I have been in twenty-nine of the States and Territories of the American Union; have traveled extensively in Eng­ land ; have been in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, the Canadas, and Central America. Under commis­ sion, I have visited England from the United States twice, and been sent to Paris four times. Few per­ sons can be aware of the trials, sorrows, difficulties, or pleasures, joys, and encouragements that attend me­ diumship. Most mediums, who have had much expe­ rience, and have been beibre the public, have been looked upon with a degree of suspicion, and have been thought to be self-seeking. In my twenty years’ ex­ perience I have not been exempt from trials. Persons have come to me for counsel in respect to their health,, their private or public mutters. Advice has been given. Following, in whole or in part, directions or ■ suggestions, results have not always been as pleasant and satisfactory as they anticipated, and they have blamed me. In vain have I said to such, “ I did not, as a person, give you the counsel you have followed. I did but give you what, at the time, was given me.” Disappointed, they have heaped abuse on my head. Sometimes I have felt called on to severely reprove persons for unwise or wicke:d«conduct, and instead of reforming, they have become my deadly enemies. I have been sent on special missions to find certain per­ sons ; selecting some,1 others have complained because they were not chosen. But I had no choice in the matter. I felt that I was acting under the direction and guidance of unseen intelligences, who had associ­ ated to accomplish certain specified purposes; and �NARRATIVE. 37 there I rested. In some cases I have been compelled to differ with, and to separate from some, for whom I had had the highest respect and tenderly loved. These trials, borne mostly in the secret chambers of my soul, have been hard to endure. My missions have not al­ ways been promotive of immediate union and peace, but have sometimes been provocative of discord. Indi­ viduals, families, and neighborhoods that had previ­ ously dwelt in love and union, have been so disturbed and separated, that I have been regarded as “ a pesti­ lent fellow, and a mover of sedition.” But they, under whose guidance I was, have taught me when reviled not to revile again, but to return good for evil. Doubtless the numerous trials and sorrows I have borne, have had their good uses. Usually it is through tribulation that we come into the fullest enjoyment of highest truths. Bu^there is another side to which I turn in my missionary labors. I have had more joys, perhaps, than most persons. - Dearly have I loved the work in which I was ®gaged. I have been helped to see that, beyond the clouds that were round about me, there was a living, guiding, intelligent, beneficent pur­ pose, — the elevation, regeneration, and redemption of the inhabitants of this earth. Although I have been called to travel hundreds of thousands of miles in my native land and foreign countries, yet, at the termination of my labors, I can truly say that all my needs, if not all my wants, have been seasonably supplied. Sometimes they have seemed to come in ways im­ pinging on the miraculous, and occasionally in answer to prayer. As an encouragement to others, I will mention a few instances: — Some fifteen years ago, when in Cleveland, one �38 NARRATIVE. morning when dressing, I perceived that I needed new nnder-clothes. I looked to Heaven for them. On the evening of that day my friend, John M. Ster­ ling, called on me with a bundle under his arm, say­ ing, as he entered, “ I have always worn cotton flannels, but recently I bought woolen. I did not feel comfortable in them, and so laid them aside. This morning it occurred to me that you might want them, and here they are.” I felt sure Heaven had an­ swered my prayer the morning it was offered. When engaged in developing the new motive power, of which I have before spoken, I was directed not to ask for external aid, being assured it would come when needed. A Spiritualist from New Hampshire called on me. Inspecting the mechanism, he said, “ I per­ ceive it needs nursing. I think I will sell a share I hold in the Boston and Maine Railroad and send you the proceeds. At all events,” he continued, “I will give you ten dollars now; ” which he did, and de­ parted. Subsequently he informed me that he had sold the share for one hundred dollars; but inasmuch as he had already given me ten dollars, he hesitated whether to send the one hundred or only ninety dol­ lars. He had two sons who were mediums. They knew nothing of the question in their father’s mind. One evening they said,Father, we must read the Bible.” They read the conduct of Ananias and Sapphira; and turning to their father, said, “ It won’t do; you must not keep back a part of the price ; ” and he immediately forwarded to me the one hundred dollars. It came at an opportune moment, strengthening my faith in the work to which my whole energies were then directed. �NARRATIVE. 39 While on our first mission to England, we engaged I rooms near Regent Park. One week we had not the means to pay our rent. Among strangers, as we then were, we knew of nothing to do but to pray. We knelt by our bedside, and asked for the aid we needed. Our prayer was answered in the following remarkable manner: A lady, Mrs. McDougal Gregory, drove to our door, and entering our apartment, said, “ I never make calls on Sunday, but this morning, although Sunday, I felt I must come to you, without knowing the purpose for which I have come.” Neither Mrs. Spear nor myself said a word to her of our pressing needs. But on rising to leave, she said, in a tender, affectionate tone, “You are far away from your native land, among strangers, and as there is war in your country, perhaps you do not receive remittances as often as you need them.” She then placed in Mrs. Spear’s hand the amount needed to pay our rent. Dear woman, she knew not of the faith and trust in God and the invisibles with which she, by her words and deeds, was inspiring us. Neither did she know that she had been sent in answer to our prayer on that dark and cloudy Sunday morning. I have said, on a preceding page, that I was commissioned to go to Paris four times. Although unable to speak, the French language, yet Mrs. Spear had a sufficient knowledge of it to answer needful purposes. At the outset of these French missions we always had just enough to reach our destination, but not means to live there or to return to London; and yet all our wants were supplied. During one of these visits, we met a noble Russian gentleman, Alexandre Aksakof, who had read with interest, in his native land, the �40 NARRATIVE. “ Educator.” He was not content to express his pleasure at our meeting in words, but made a hand­ some money-present, which -helped us on our way, and encouraged our hearts to continue our foreign missinnary work. One day, just as I was about to commence a journey from London to the North of England, a lady medium called to see me. I informed her of my purpose. Seating herself quietly, she said, “It is right for you to go, and I peaceive that I must pay the expenses of the journey.” I wondered how she could know the sum required. Taking out her purse, she handed me the exact amount. By what power was she sent to me? Who informed her of the precise sum needed to make that journey ? Very many more instances might b^Jtamed of providential aid, but I will narrate only one. Awaking one morning from my slumbers, while in California, I said to Mrs. Spear, “ I ought to go im­ mediately to Salt Lake City.” When the first morn­ ing postman came, he brought a letter from William Godbe, of Salt Lake City, a gentleman deeply inter­ ested in Spiritualism and other progressive ideas, who had just left the Mormon Church, informing me that our dearly-beloved friends, William and Mary Tebb, of London, were there; that they had intended to come to California to visit us, but it was now doubt­ ful if they would make the journey on account of Mr. Tebb’s health. I now felt an irrepressible desire to start at once for the “ City w the Saints,” but did not see the quarter from whence the needed means were to come to make the journey, a distance of more than eight hundred miles. But to my great astonishment and delight, the second postman brought me a letter �NARRATIVE. 41 from Colonel G. F. Lewis, of Cleveland, in which was enclosed a check for money, to be used, as he said, for missionary purposes. This letter had been twenty days on its way. It should have reached me in five or six. I made the journey to Salt Lake, and on my return to California I had more means than when I started. Who impressed Colonel Lewis to send me that money? I had long known him, but he had never before sent me a dollar. How came he to write it was to be used for _missionary purposes ? I did not know that he took interest enough in these missions to aid by word or deed. Where was that letter for twenty days which should have reached me in five ? Had there been detention of the mails at that time ? None. The road was open all the way from Cleve­ land to San Francisco. , How came the letter to ar­ rive the very morning jhen jt was so much desired and needed ? Thesiil questions are easy to propose. Who can answer them ? August 6, 1872uteh® “Report of Domestic and Foreign Missions,” written up to July 30, being read to the “Spirit Missionist” (Mrs. Manley, my successor), she wrote thedfes^'ollows: — “ Blessed angels of lovti and wisdom crown thy head with the ever-living immortal flowers of power ! Powerful utterances they give thee at this time; power and strength are seen in the air, and come, as health cometh, by thy own life. Blessings are com­ ing even at this life-season. Aids and auxiliaries are coming not seen. Knowledge cometh to thee of thousands of aids never before known. Ever present with thee is the love of God, — ever present the home love of all ages. The sorrowing flee to thy own home �42 NARRATIVE. of rest in the coming time, and a beautifully roundedout home mansion shall be the one given to thee,—not as compensating thee for thy labors, but as a token of love and affection from varied lives. Most lovingly do we tender our thanks to thee for all thou hast suf­ fered, and all thou hast passed through to attain the eminence now seen, whose principal hights are seen but by few of earth’s dwellers. Somewhat we have to say to thee : One dawning of glorious morning stars is seen for thy life ; one glorious home shall be made the light of the age, and never shall any want who eat at thy plenteous board; never shall any fam­ ish who drink of the wine given by the celestials, even at thy home table. How wonderfully hast thou been led! ever by high intelligences. How proudly we come to thee in this humble room, and give thee choicest flowers of heart’s ease, that thy life may be refreshed! One land is seen for thee to rest on, even for a few days; and the ones who love to listen to sweet home songs, even the birds of the air, will love to sing to thee ; will give to thee for couches sweet mosses, — being mosses from the garden of Christ. “ One love we will give thee of the fruitsdain on the table of the Divine. We will eat with thee this day ; we will ask our writer to eat with thee, to make lovely life to be known; we will ask all here to eat with thee, to be as one harmonious family. Eat and receive fresh fair flowers of inspiration. Wash in the waters of sweet life-giving elements ; make sweet the air with thy songs, because the air is so holy, so full of divine songs and celestial harmonies at this hour, we would baptize each form. Hear what is given at this natal hour 1 Natal hour, why were ye so long �NARRATIVE. 43 coming ? Whosoever liveth to narrate to the children of men a history of this movement thousands of years hence, will call this a day of feasting when the pow­ ers crowned thy brow with the diamond crown of strength; when added to thy life were powerful aux­ iliaries, who must come and lean on the strong anchor of truth. Eat and be called the, master of th^family; eat and be called the one whom the gods of wisdom delight to honor. Eat and be refreshed, for truly it is said, Whom the angels of wisdom love they give sweet feast seasons, and fullness beyond the earth’s fullness. Whatever is given thee accept in the spirit of love, and take it as a gift from the higher intelli­ gences. Their eyes read the smiles of many, and their strength will be given to influencing many to leave thee a memorial of their interest in thy labors. We will make request for the blessed light of the General Assembly to give thee.a mantle, to make thee a staff, even a staff of strength, to enable thee to live ever as one who eateth at the table of power, and needeth not the viands that sustain the children of earth. Needs shall be supplied; and manifested for thee shall be the tenderness of love coming from thou­ sands of souls who receive the bread of wisdom from thy teachings, the wine of love from thy leaves of righteousness. Hold! here cometh a messenger from the Assembly, — one man of love, called Sheldon, who hath a huge wheaten loaf; and here cometh one harvest basket from combined lives, that not one hour shall thy strength fail. Eat now, and be as one who hath supped with the assembled souls. A chain of gold we give thee, — a chain of gold we give unto the writer. Let peace ever reign in your lives. Let �44 NARRATIVE. sweetest harmonies ever be here where your lives fest in seats of power. Let this hour be as one life of blessed rest. Morning is dawning, and the sun hath hid his face from the glorious realities of the coming Sun of righteousness.” MESSAGE FROM THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, THIS DAY CONVENED BY THE DIRECTION AND THE CALL OF THE SPIRITUAL CONGRESS, ASSEMBLED IN GENERAL CONCLAVE. Old things, customs, manners, habits, are passing f away, to clear the path for those that are to take their places. The Spiritual Congress this day directs the General Assembly, it being one of its numerous auxil­ iaries, to declare through you, its general agent and communicator, to the inhabitants of earth, that through its varied instrumentalities a social revolution has now begun, that is to extend from individuals to families, and from families to tribes and nations, shaking and removing whatever can be shaken, while that which can not be shaken will remain. The Spiritual Con­ gress holds this day one of its grand jubilees, it being the twentieth anniversary of its annunciation to the clear vision of the chosen Apostle of Nature. Well has he performed his work, and he soon retires from public life to engage in proposed private pursuits, for which, by his social position and spiritual and intel­ lectual culture, he has become eminently prepared. On the 12th day of the 9th month of the present year the general labors and mission of the General Assem­ bly closes its conjoined efforts, and with its cessation terminate all the missions of its apostles, teachers, and �NARRATIVE. 45 healers, including those of its general agent and com­ municator, and it desires that all documents, books, or other property, be placed in the hand and at the dis­ posal of the newly-selected spirit missionist, and she will in due time direct of their future uses and dispo­ sal. Personal addresses are not included in this direc­ tion. Retiring to private life, the general agent and communicator of the General Assembly will accept such assistance as may be tendered him or his com­ panion, or to their friends or agents; and as sums of cash or other property shall be tendered them, the same shall be placed in the careful hands, or be under the direction of, the gentleman known in the spirit world as the Homeologist; he making such provision for the home of the communicator of the General As­ sembly and his companion as shall be in harmony with his business judgment; thus securing one home for the earnest and faithful, it will open the way for other homes, that in the time of the present social revolu■fion will be needed. Some will be concealed from the gaze of the world, while others in open field will fight valiantly the great battle now to be commenced; their weapons being spi^tual, they will be mighty to • silence, overcome, and conquer the evils of the present disorganized social state. The faithful Deborah is to co-operate with the Homeologist in the home efforts in such ways as has been and will be indicated, through z the writing of her who is known by the General Assem­ bly as the spirit missionist, she becoming an interme­ diate agent until other movements on the part of the spiritual congress shall have, through her, been made known to other parties. The General Assembly now directs the general agenl and communicator to offi­ �46 NARRATIVE. cially inform the Homeologist of the work desired of him, and it also directs that the report begun be fin­ ished on or before the twentieth anniversary of his appointment, and that the address of the spirit missionist, and also the message now being given, be in­ corporated into the report to the spirit missionist; that the general agent keep in his own care the origi­ nal of the report, and that another copy of the same be placed in the hand of him who temporarily is called the Colonial Supervisor. Inspected by the Mission Committee of the Spirit­ ual Congress, in connection with the Committee of the General Assembly |l and unitedly sanctioned and unanimously approved by the President of the Spirit­ ual Congress, John Hancock, and the President of the General Assembly, Benj. Franklin. Frances Wright, Secretary, and General Communicator of the Spiritual Congress, in conjunction with the General Assembly. August 7, 1872. “Dear Spirit Missionist: I place this report in your hands, having in some degree trodden the missionary path ; rough though it has sometimes been, it will be easier for those who come after me to follow. It is ever to be borne in mind that while Paul may plant and Apollos water, God give th the increase. Allow me to ask that you heed with care the voices that shall salute your spiritual ear. Retir­ ing from missionary labors, I now proceed to the organization and upbuilding of colonial homes, to �NARRATIVE 47 which, you will be welcome when the infirmities of age shall be upon you, receiving there the reward's of private and of public duties faithfully performed. Let thy motto ever be, ‘ Do justly, love mercy, act in harmony with the light given thee.’ ” John Murray Spear. Ancoba, N. J., September 12, 1872. �Friends who may desire to make contributions of any kind/ to furnish the comforts of a home for Mr. Spear, in harmony with the kind hope expressed by Mr. Putnam, in his PrefaceCp. 9,J can send the same to either of the following named per­ sons, or directly to Mr. Spear, 241 North Eleventh Street, Phila! delpliia. Allen Putnam, 426 Dudley Street, Boston. Thatcher Hinckley, Hyannis, Mass. Mrs, Oliver Dennett, Portland, Maine. Dr. George Hashell. Ancora, N. J. Mrs. Caroline S. Lewis, Cleveland, Ohio. Mrs. Thomas Hornbrook, Wheeling, West Virginia. Dr. John Mayhew. Washington, D. C. Fox Holden, Watkins, N. Y. Oliver G. Chase, Jamestown, N. Y. Milo A. Townsend, Beaver Falls. Pa. Thomas Richmond, Chicago, Illinois. Warren Chase, 614 N. Fifth Street, St. Louis, Mo. Laura Cuppy Smith, 179 Temple Street, New Haven, Conn. A. B. Child, West Fairlee, Vermont. Andrew T. Foss, Manchester, N. H. Mrs. Mary Godbe, Salt Lake City, Utah Wm. M. Rider, San Francisco. California. Mrs. H. F. M. Brown, San Diego, California. Andrew Leighton, Liverpool. William Tebb, 20 Rochester Road, Camden Road. London. Hay Nisbett, 164 Trongate, Glasgow. Alexander Aksakoe, St. Petersburg, � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; 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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Twenty years on the wing: brief narrative of my travels and labors as a missionary sent forth and sustained by the association of beneficents in spirit land Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Spear, John Murray [1804-1887.] Putnam, Allen Description An account of the resource Place of publication: Boston Collation: 47 p. ; 20 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Smaller sheet bound in following last page listing people who have made "contributions of any kind to furnish the comforts of a home for Mr. Spear ...". Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available William White and Company Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1873 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5223 Subject The topic of the resource Missionaries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 (Twenty years on the wing: brief narrative of my travels and labors as a missionary sent forth and sustained by the association of beneficents in spirit land), 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> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Missionaries Spiritualism Spiritualists-United States