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IN MIND AS IN MATTER
AND ITS
BEARING UPON CHRISTIAN DOGMA AND MORAL
RESPONSIBILITY.”
PART II.
THE TRUE MEANING OF RESPONSIBILITY.
BY
CHARLES
BRAY,
AUTHOR OF “A MANUAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, OR SCIENCE OILMAN,” “MODERN
PROTESTANTISM,” “ILLUSION AND DELUSION,” &C.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Sixpence.
�J
�THE
REIGN OF LAW IN MIND AS IN MATTER
Part
IL
THE TRUE MEANING OF RESPONSIBILITY.
‘ ‘ In the eternal sequence we take the consequence.” —H. G. A.
UT it is said, if men are not free, if they must act
in accordance with the laws of their being, if no
act could therefore have been otherwise than it was,
what becomes of virtue, what of morality ?
If a man could not have done otherwise, where was
the virtue ?
This doctrine of necessity or certainty, it is alleged,
is “ fatal to every germ of morality.”
For what, if it is true, becomes of Responsibility?
You cannot, it is said, properly or consistently use
either praise or blame, reward or punishment, if a man
is not free. The opposite, as I shall show, is really
the case.
Let me answer these questions as shortly as I have
put them. Virtue is not that which is free, but that
which is for the good of mankind, for the greatest hap
piness of all God’s creatures. Our goodness or virtue,
it is said, if necessary or dependent upon our nature, is
no goodness at all; but the goodness of God, which
also is dependent upon his nature, and could not be
otherwise, is the highest goodness of all. Man is good,
because he might, it is supposed, be otherwise; God is
B
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The Reign of Law
good, because he could not be otherwise. “ The good
ness of the nature of the Supreme, we are told, is neces
sary goodness, yet it is voluntary,” that is, in accordance
with the will, but which will is governed by the nature.
Still I do not suppose that if a man’s nature and
training were such that he could not do a mean thing,
he would be thought the worse of on that account.
Morality concerns the relation of man to his fellows,
—it comprises the laws and regulations by which men
can live together most happily, and the more they can
be made binding upon all, and not free, the better for all.
Responsibility only means that we must always
take the natural and necessary consequences of our
actions, whether such actions are free or not.
Responsibility, or accountability, in the ordinary
acceptance of the term, means—and this is the meaning
usually thought to be essential to virtue and morality—
that it will be just to make people suffer as much as they
have made others suffer; it means retribution, retalia
tion, and revenge. Some one has done wrong, some one
must make atonement—that is, suffer for it; it does
not much matter who it is, so that some one suffers,
and particularly since it is supposed that the wrath of
God has been appeased by an arbitrary substitute of the
innocent for the guilty. This kind of responsibility
or retribution is not only unjust, but useless.
External things or objects are moved by what we
call Force; the mind is moved by motive, which is
mental force; but equally in each case the strongest
force prevails. “ It may be, or it may not be,” in any
supposed two or more courses—not because this action
is free or contingent, but according as one or other force
or motive shall become the strongest and prevail. The
strongest force always does prevail, and any uncertainty
we may feel is only consequent on our want of know
ledge. In'Physics we know the force must always be
made proportionate to the end we wish to_attain; in
�in Mind as in Matter.
5
Mind this is overlooked, or left to what is called the
Will; hut it is equally true. This fact is overlooked
both by the Fatalists and by those who believe in the
freedom of the will. The first hold that things come
to pass in spite of our efforts; the latter, that they are
not necessarily dependent upon them. The will is
governed by motive, and as the strongest always neces
sarily prevails, what we have to do is to increase the
strength of the motive or moving power in the direction
we wish to attain. The Eev. Daniel Moore speaks of
“ his consciousness as prompting him to put forth an
act of spontaneous volition, and thus proving the moral
agent free.” “The force of instinct,” he says, “is
stronger than the conclusion of logic.” Certainly it
must be so in this case, or logic would say an act lost
its spontaneity just in proportion as it was prompted or
influenced. Praise and blame, reward and punishment,
are the ordinary means taken to strengthen motives.
If the will were free—that is, capable of acting against
motives, or if it acted spontaneously—these meaijs
would be useless and unavailing.
It is not till an action is passed that our power over
it ceases ; then God himself could not prevent it. We
may always say we can; never that we could. The
motive may have been good or bad, but whichever it
was, the strongest must have prevailed, and the action
could not thus have been different to what it was.
Eesponsibility can have relation to the future only—
the past is past. Punishment for an act that could not
have been otherwise would be unjust, and as the act is
past it would be useless.
Punishment, therefore, that has reference to the
future, and that has for its object the good of the
sufferer, or of the community of which he is a member,
alone can be just and useful.
As every act was necessary, and could not have been
otherwise, there is no such thing as sin, as an offence
against God—only vice and error.
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The Reign of Law
All vice and error must be to the detriment of the
person erring, and punishment that prevents it in
future must be for his good.
To pray, therefore, to be delivered from such pm-iishment—that is, for the forgiveness of sin—is praying
for that which would injure us rather than benefit.
Let us take an illustration. A schoolboy may have
been told that “we should not leave till to-morrow
what we can do to-day,” so he eats all his plumcake
before he goes to bed. He takes the natural conse
quences, and is ill the next day, and the master is very
angry; but the boy says very truly, “Please, sir, I
could not help it.” “ I know you could not, my dear
boy,” says the master, “ but when you have had a black
draft and a little birch added to your present intestinal
malaise, it will enable you to help it for the future,
and will teach you also that there is no rule without
an exception.”
Responsibility means that we must take the natural
and necessary consequences of our actions—of the
“ eternal sequence we take the consequence,” and which
natural consequence may be added to by others to any
extent, with the object of producing in the future one
line of conduct rather than another; but it does not
mean that a person may be justly made to suffer for
any action that is past.
Responsibility or accountability also includes that if
a person has done another an injury, he owes him all
the compensation in his power.
Dr Irons says :—“ To incur the consequences of our
actions, and feel that it ought to &e so—to be subject to
a high law, and feel it to be right, this is moral
responsibility” (“Analysis of Human Responsibility,”
p. 25). I accept this definition entirely, but in a dif
ferent sense to that accorded to it by Dr Irons. We
accept the consequences of our actions, and feel that
“ we ought to do so,” and therefore “ that it is right,”
because it is by its consequences that a reasonable man
�in Mind as in Matter.
7
guides his conduct; they govern his motives, and the
motives govern the will. But this is on the supposi
tion that the consequences of our actions will be always
the same in like circumstances—that the causes, under
like conditions, will always produce the same effects,
which could not be the case if the will were free, and
obeyed no law. It is this feeling, this intuitive
perception of consequences, that people call feeling
accountable —“the great and awful fact of human
responsibility.” This feeling is transmitted, or becomes
hereditary, and then it is called Conscience, and gives
the sense of “ ought.”
Dr Irons also says:—“ It is a fact of our nature that
wrong-doing, such as stirs our own disapproval, is
haunted by the belief of retribution.” No doubt of it.
In the early ages this retribution or revenge was the
■only law, and the fear of it was often the only thing
that kept people from doing wrong, and this fear has
been transmitted, and now haunts us; but that is no
reason why revenge, or retributive justice, as it is
called, is right. A sense of duty and responsibility—
that is, of what is due to our own sense of right, and
-of the consequences to ourselves and others—still
influences, and ought to influence, our conduct; but it
■cannot be otherwise than that the strongest motive
must prevail, and when the action it dictates is past,
it could not have been otherwise. It may have been
very well for a young world, when man had to fight
his way up from the lower animals, to entertain the
■delusion that things might have been otherwise, but
we require now an entire reconstruction of the accepted
modes of thought, which shall not only accept the inevi
table in the past, but conscience must cease to blame us
or others for what must have happened exactly as it
did happen.
The great question, as we are told, is, whether the
universe is governed and arranged on rational or nonrational principles ? and this question is asked by those
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The Reign of Law
to whom free will is a necessary article in their creed.
Certainly, if the mind or will obeys no law, then theuniverse must be governed on non-rational principles,
for reason is based upon certainty, as opposed to con
tingency, in the order of nature. Science alone gives
prevision, necessary to the guidance and regulation of
action.
If prayer had the efficacy which is ordinarily
assigned to it, it would make this “ order of nature ”
impossible, there would be a constant breach in the
chain of cause and effect, and prevision and the exer
cise of reason, which is based upon unbroken law and
certainty, could not exist. “ Requests for a particular
adjustment of the weather,” says the Rev. W. Knight,
“ are irrelevant, unless the petitioner believes that the
prayer he offers may co-operate to the production of
the effect.” The same must be said of all prayers;
they are efficacious only so far as they tend to answer
themselves, and they themselves produce the effect
desired. But wherever prayer is sincere, and not
gabbled over by rote in our public service, this is
generally the case. We are governed or moved by
motive, and sincere prayer is the greatest possible
strengthener of motive. Prayer thus acts through
motive upon man, and through man upon matter and
the universe. But in proportion as we recognise the
Reign of Law, and we become conscious that there is
a natural way by which all we desire may be brought
about, prayer will no longer take the form of asking
for what we can and ought to do for ourselves, but of
simple aspiration and devotion to that unity of which
we all form a part.
We feel that we ought to take the consequences of
our actions, and that it is right we should do so,
because we have no other rule to discriminate between
right and wrong. It is not in actions themselves, or
in the motives that dictate them—being all equally
necessary—that the right or wrong consists, but in.
�in Mind as in Matter.
9
their consequences to ourselves or others. If, as a rule,
the actions are attended with pain, they are wrong; if
with pleasure, they are right. This is God’s simple
and intelligible revelation to all the world alike. The
floral Governor carries on his moral government, not
by calling people to account ages after, when the record
of every idle word would be rather long and prosy even
in eternity, but by immediate intervention—by the
direct punishment or reward or pain or pleasure attend
ing their actions.
Jeremy Bentham says:—“No man ever had, can, or
could have, a motive different to the pursuit of pleasure
or the avoidance of pain.” This has not been generally
accepted, because it has not been understood. It has
been supposed to refer only to physical or bodily pains,
and not mental. We must discriminate also between
pleasure and what are usually called pleasures. The
stern delight of fortitude would hardly be called a “plea
sure;” still delight is a highly pleasurable sensation.
Men have certain impulses to action to attain certain
ends. When these ends are legitimately attained,
.pleasure attends the action; when the ends are not
attained, then there is pain. It is these ends that are
pursued, not pleasure or pain, but pleasure or pain
attending for our guidance and compulsion. The
.aggregate of these pleasures we call happiness—of the
pains, which are the exception, misery.
These impulses, which we call propensities and senti
ments, have various objects, and are more simple and
•calculable than is generally supposed. They are self
protecting, self-regarding, social, moral, and aesthetic.
They are all connected with the brain, and the im
pulses to action are ordinarily strong in proportion to
the size of the parts of the brain with which they are
connected, the dynamical effect being dependent upon
statical conditions in mind as in matter. The impulse to
action is pleasurable, becoming painful if not gratified.
Appetite is slightly pleasurable, hunger is painful, and
�io
The Reign of Law
the pleasure of eating is in proportion to the appetite
or hunger. All the other feelings have their appetites,
hunger, and gratification, with the pleasures and pains
attending them. The object of the intellect, the action
of which is very little pleasurable in itself, is the guid
ance of these feelings towards their proper ends, and
involves the element of choice in the selection of means.
Locke says, “The will is the last dictate of the under
standing,” but it is not the dictate of the understanding
itself, but of the impulses it may set in motion. It is
the feelings, not the intellect, that ordinarily govern
the will. Bentham’s “ pursuit of pleasure or avoidance
of pain” means the pleasures or pains attending the
action of all our mental faculties. If the propensities
predominate in a character, then the pleasures are only
of an animal nature ; if the moral feelings predominate,
then our pleasures are as intimately connected with the
interests of others as -with our own ; and these feelings
may be so trained and strengthened as to give the in
terests of others a preference over our own (i.e., we may
have more pleasure in promoting the interests of others
than our own). It is these moral feelings that make the
principal distinction between men and other animals,
subordinating individual interests to that of the com
munity. They enable men to combine and co-operate;
upon which their principal strength depends. They
probably do not so much differ in kind from those of
other animals as in degree. They are dependent upon
parts of the brain, which in animals are either absent
or merely rudimentary. The pains of conscience are
often stronger than any mere physical pains, and the
pain attending the breach of his word and the outrage
to all his highest feeling must have been greater to
Regulus than the fear of any physical pain, or other
consequences to which he could be subjected by his
enemies. Of course a man without these higher feel
ings would have sneaked away—there was no free-will
in the matter. But we do not admire Regulus the less,.
�in Mind as in Matter.
11
though few of us perhaps would be able to follow his
example. The habitual exercise of the highest, or un
selfish feelings as they are called, regardless of imme
diate consequences, produces the highest happiness,
although it may sometimes lead, as in Regulus’s case,
to the barrel of spikes; and this is only to be attained,
not by free-will, but by careful training and exercise.
It is exercise that increases structure, and the strength
of the feeling, and its habitual or intuitive action, de
pends upon its size. We love that which is loveable,
and hate that which is hateful; and if we are to love
our neighbour he must make himself loveable, or love
falls to the colder level of duty. The poor toad, not
withstanding the jewel in its head, aesthetically is not
beantiful, and it has few friends or admirers, and few
find out its virtues, and the blame that belongs to
others is laid upon its poor ugly back. We never in
quire if the toad made itself, or if it was its own free
will to be ugly. It is precisely the same with every
thing else—that which gives us pleasure we love, and
that which gives us pain we hate, with small reference
to whether this pain or pleasure was voluntarily given
to us or not. It is the same with all consequences ; as
they are required for the guidance of our actions, they
follow just the same, whether our actions are voluntary
or not. Whether we burn ourselves by accident or
voluntarily, the pain is just the same—the object of
the pain being to keep us out of the fire. This is true
responsibility or accountability which governs the will,
which is not free—no freedom fortunately being allowed
to interfere with God’s purposes in creation.
We are told that “no cogent reason has yet been
advanced why men should not follow their, own wicked
impulses, as well as others follow their virtuous ones.”
The best of all reasons I think has been assigned—
viz., that painful consequences attend the vicious im
pulses, and pleasure the virtuous ones; so that unless
a man prefers pain to pleasure, he has the strongest of
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The Reign of Law
all possible motives for good conduct. We indefinitely
increase the pains as additional motives, and where no
punishment is deterrent, as in some exceptional cases,
restraint, or even capital punishment, is justly re
sorted to.
The writer in the Edinburgh, to whom we have be
fore alluded, says : “ If these anti-christian and atheistic
sentiments should gain the wide acceptance which Dr
Strauss and his school anticipate for them, what is to
prevent a reign of universal chaos ? What is to stave
off the utter shipwreck of human society ? What hope
can survive for man when every redeeming ideal is de
stroyed; when blind destiny is enthroned in the seat
of God; and when the universe is come to be regarded
by all mankind as a dead machine, whose social law is,
that
‘ He may get who has the power,
And he may keep who can. ”
That universal anarchy will then begin, and that the
unchained passions of a human animal, devoid of the
usual animal instincts of restraint, will plunge both
himself and the social fabric he has for ages been
erecting into ruin, no one in his senses can reasonably
doubt. And such is the consummation for which
writers like these are diligently working. Such is the
chaos into which a merely destructive criticism, and a
‘ positive ’ science which, in the domain of religion, is
purely negative, and is therefore falsely so called, are
hurrying the deluded votaries of a godless secularism.”
This “ godless secularism,” as if there were any part of
the creation from which God could be excluded, would
appear to point clearly to the authorship of this article,
as none but a person whose “ calling ” was supposed to
be in danger could write like this, except it were the
American newspapers on the eve of a presidential elec
tion. The New York Herald has also its pious as well
as its political side. In commenting lately upon the
death of a rather notorious character, it says : “He
�in Mind as in Matter.
J3
•calmly fell asleep without a struggle, when, no doubt,
angels accompanied his soul to the peaceful shores of
eternity, there to dwell with his Maker for ever.” The
Edinburgh used to be considered an organ of advanced
liberalism, but think of being able to find a writer in
the present day who evidently knows something of
science, who believes that social order and progress de
pend upon a creed, and such a creed !
li It is the business of morality or moral science,”
says Herbert Spencer, “to deduce, from the laws of life
and the conditions of existence, what kinds of actions
necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds
to produce unhappiness; and having done this, its de
ductions are to be recognised as laws of conduct.”
Morality relates, notwithstanding the high-flown lan
guage usually used with respect to it, simply to the
laws and regulations by which men may live together
in the most happy manner possible—the laws, in fact,
■of their wellbeing—and as it is the “law” of their
nature to seek their happiness or wellbeing, the interests
of morality are fortunately sufficiently assured. Of
-course this will be called a “ godless secularism,” and it
is said that these natural motives will be very much
.strengthened if we add to them the rewards and punish
ments of another world; but the highest morality is
independent of such low personal motives, and people
-do what is right because it is right—that is, because it
promotes the best interests of the community at large—
-of others besides themselves. As to the laws of “ an
eternal and immutable morality,” the laws of morality
have always varied according to the varying interests of
mankind, and with advancing civilisation; as the family
has extended to the clan, the clan to the country, the
country to the world. What has been right in one age
-and country has been wrong in another, as the interests
of the community were different at one time and place
to what they were in another. It is rather singular
that we should hear most of eternal and immutable
�14
The Reign of Law
morality from those whose whole theological system isbased upon vicarious atonement, upon the sacrifice of
the just for the unjust.
Coleridge says : “ It is not the motive makes the
man, but the man the motive.” This is ordinarily ad
duced to prove that as man makes the motive, and the
motive governs the will, the man must be free, and his
will also; but it is just the reverse. Objectively, a
man is judged by his motive; subjectively, it is man—
that is, the man’s nature that dictates the motive. If
he is of a benevolent disposition, this furnishes the
motive to kindly action; if he is conscientious, the
motive to act justly. The appeal of outward circum
stances will be answered according to the nature of the
man, and whatever you may want to get out of him, if
it is not in him, you cannot get it out of him. A man
does not always act in accordance with his conscience, or
sense of right and wrong; he acts according to his
nature, and the strongest feeling predominates, whetherthat be conscience, fear of punishment, or self-indul
gence at the expense of others. A man with the natureof a pig will act like a pig, whatever may be his know
ledge of his duties to others. To say that he has the
ability to act otherwise, is to say that a pig might be
an angel if he pleased, or at least act in accordance with
those higher human attributes which he does not possess.
As to an appeal to his free-will, there is no free-will in
the case, any more than a blind man is free to separatedifferent colours. All the preaching in the world would
not turn him into the higher man, any more than it
would the pig itself. He might be taught to talk
piously, but he would not be less a pig underneath.
Very little can be done towards a change of nature in
one generation. I am quite aware of the effect of what
has been called “ conversion,” but it does little more
than keep people outwardly correct in their conduct,
and give selfishness another direction; that is, turn
worldliness into other-worldliness. A man, however,.
�in Mind as in Matter.
15
is not the less responsible—i.e., is not the less liable to
take the consequences of his actions, whatever his nature
may be; the consequences, if painful, being intended
to improve that nature, and push him forward to a
higher grade. The conviction that different circum
stances act upon different individuals according to their
nature--which nature depends upon race, organisation,
civilisation, and education—is gradually extending, and
it must continue to extend, till all admit that no action
could have been otherwise than it was under the cir
cumstances. If you want to alter the action, you must
alter the man or alter the circumstances, and cease to
trust anything to free-will.
In the early days of our missionary societies, a savage
presented himself for baptism. Among other things
he was asked how many wives he had. He said five.
He was told that Christianity only admitted of one
wife, and that he could not be received into the Church.
The next year, when the missionary was on the station,
he presented himself again as a candidate, with only
one wife. He was asked what had become of the other
four. He said he had eaten them. This is among the
conditions to which wedlock is liable in some other
countries. The way in which the marriage ceremony
is initiated among the bushmen of Australia is equally
simple and humane, not to say loving, and it is less
costly than with us. The man, having selected his
lady-love, knocks her down with a club, and drags her
to his camp.
Sir Samuel Baker has lately told us of the interesting
customs of the people whom he has lately sought to
emancipate and bring within the borders of civilisation
in Africa. The king, who attacked his stronghold in
his absence, and whom he afterwards defeated, had just
celebrated his accession to the throne by burying all
his relations alive. If the young child of a chief dies,
the nurse is buried with it—sometimes alive, sometimes
she has her throat cut—that she may look after it in
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The Reign of Law
the next world. Sir Samuel found the natives verymuch opposed to slavery, and solicitous to aid him in
putting it down. They objected to it because the
traders took their wives, daughters, children, and fol
lowers without compensation. One of the strongest
objectors offered to Sir Samuel to sell his son for a
spade ■, this he thought the right thing.
These little differences of thought and custom be
tween these interesting people and ourselves will
scarcely, I think, be laid altogether to free-will. The
people and circumstances surely had something to do
with it.
But even this seems matter of opinion. Thus the
Bev. J. A. Picton, agreeing with me, says, “ Is the
will as free to give its casting vote for generosity and
righteousness in a Troppman, or a Nero, or a savage, as
in a civilized St. Francis, or a Washington ?” But why
not, if the will rules the motives, and not the motives
the will ? On the contrary, the Spectator thinks that
we can, by a heave of the will, without motive, and
undetermined by the past, alter our whole life. It
says, “ Certainly we should have said that if there is
one experience more than another by which the “ I ” is
known, and known as something not to be explained
by “ a series of states of feeling,” it is the sense of
creative power connected with the feeling of effort, the
consciousness that you can by a heave of the will alter
your whole life, and that that heave of the will, or
refusal to exert it, is not the mere resultant of the
motives present to you, but is undetermined by the past
—is free.”—(Feb. 21, 1874, p. 234.) It certainly
must have required a very considerable “ heave of the
will ” to have enabled the Spectator to arrive at such a
state of consciousness, and it must have been quite
“undetermined by the past” experience, or present
reason 1 I have no such consciousness of truly creative
power, that is, of something made out of nothing.
�in Mind as in Matter.
17
Quite as great differences as between these savages
and ourselves exist in the very midst of our civilisation.
There are a class of people amongst us whose animal
propensities so decidedly predominate, that, turned
loose upon society, they cannot help but prey upon it.
There are others whose animal and human faculties
are so nicely balanced that their conduct depends entirely
upon education and circumstances.
Others are so far a law unto themselves that if they
fall it must be inadvertently, or from strong temptation.
All these may plead “Not guilty” to our ordinary
notion of responsibility. Each may say truly, whatever
he had done, “I could not help it.” What, then,
vrould be our conduct towards them1? Why, exactly
that, and no more, which would enable them to pre
vent it for the future. The first we should confine for
life, or if it was a very dangerous animal, perhaps put
it out of the way altogether (capital punishment). But
if society will breed such animals, it ought to take the
responsibility, and be obliged at least to go to the
expense of keeping them for life. To the second we
should apply just that discipline that would incline the
balance of motive and action in favour of society for
the future. The third would require only to be put
into the path of right to go straight for the future.
“ Turn to the right, and keep straight forward,” are the
only directions required to be given to them.
The only effort that I know of to induce our
legislators to apply science in this direction, in the
discrimination of character and the classification of
criminals, was made by Sir George S. Mackenzie, in
February 1836. He petitioned the Right Hon. Lord
Glenelg, the then Secretary for the Colonies, that a
classification might be made of criminals in accordance
with the above threefold division. This was accom
panied by certificates from a long list of eminent men
that the Science of Mind we possessed was quite adequate
to the purpose. Sir George says, “ that a discovery of'
�18
The Reign of Law
the true mental constitution of man has been made,
and that it furnishes us with an all-powerful means to
improve our race. . . . That man is a tabula rasa, on
which we may stamp what talent and character we
please, has long been demonstrated, by thousands of
facts of daily occurrence, to be a mere delusion. Dif
ferences in talent, intelligence, and moral character, are
now ascertained to be the effects of differences in
cerebral organisation. . . . These differences are, as the
certificates which accompany this show, sufficient to
indicate externally general dispositions, as they are
proportioned among one another. Hence, we have the
means of estimating, with something like precision, the
actual natural characters of convicts (as of all human
beings), so that we may at once determine the means
best adapted for their reformation, or discover their
incapacity for improvement, and their being propdr
subjects of continued restraint, in order to prevent
their further injuring society.” Sir George says, with
reference to cerebral physiology, that “ attacks are still
made on the science of phrenology; but it is a science
which its enemies have never, in a single instance, been
found to have studied. Gross misrepresentations of
fact, as well as wild, unfounded assertion, have been
brought to bear against it again and again, and have
been again and again exposed.” This kind of injustice
I firmly believe to be quite as applicable, if not more
so, to the present time as it was then. The testi
mony then given by the anatomists, surgeons, eminent
physiologists, and others, was generally to the effect
■that “the natural dispositions are indicated by the
form and size of the brain to such an extent as to
render it quite possible, during life, to distinguish men
•of desperate and dangerous tendencies from those of
good disposition;” and that “it is quite possible to
determine the dispositions of men by an inspection of
their heads with so much precision as to render a
knowledge of phrenology of the utmost importance to
�in Mind as in Matter.
*9
persons whose duties involve the care and management
■of criminals?’ And, allow me to add, it will be found
of equal importance to all persons who have the care
and management of any one, whether schoolmasters,
doctors, or parsons. For want of this knowledge of
cerebral physiology, James Mill was very nearly killing
his son, John S. Mill, or making him an idiot for life,
by overworking a brain whose activity already amounted
-almost to disease. The brain gave way, however, when
he was above twenty years old, and he had one of
those fits of mental depression which are well known to
-attend its overwork. It is a singular fact that neither
he nor any of the reviewers of his autobiography seem
to be aware that it was not Marmontel’s “ Memoires ”
•or Wordsworth’s “Poems” to which he was indebted
for recovery, but to his wanderings in the Pyrenean
mountains, the love of natural beauty, and the rest of
brain. It has been J. S. Mill’s ignorance of cerebral physi
ology, and his diversion of the public mind from the
subject by his “Logic” and “Examination of Sir
William Hamilton,” that has mainly helped to bring
back P>erkeley and the reign of Metaphysics, and to put
off the true science of Mind, based on physiology,
half a century.
The discrimination of character is not so great a
mystery as some people suppose. Statistics show that
people act very much alike under the same circum■stances. People fall in love, and marry according to the
price of bread, and even the number of people who put
their letters into the post without an address are the same
in a given area; knowledge is constantly narrowing
the space between general rules and particular cases.
Of course Sir George Mackenzie’s advice could not
be taken; public opinion was not prepared for it;
neither is it at present, as is evidenced by the return
to torture (flogging) during the last few years, and the
whole spirit of the public press. Take an illustration
from one of our first-class Journals. The Pall. Mall
-Gazette of January 9, 1874, says :—
�20
The Reign of Law
“Imprisonment is not only fast losing its terrors, but,,
owing to the kindness of magistrates and judges, it is becom
ing a real boon to the dishonest and violent, to whom it is
doled out, like funds from the poor-box, according to their
necessities. The other day ‘ a novel and suggestive applica
tion,’ it is stated, was made to the Recorder in Dublin by a
female prisoner, aged twenty-nine years, who had been forty
eight times convicted of indictable offences, and pleaded
guilty to a charge of stealing 7s. 6d. from the pockets of a
drunken man in the streets. The Recorder was proceeding to
sentence the prisoner to twelve months’ imprisonment, when
she earnestly implored him to make the sentence one of five
years’ penal servitude, alleging as a reason for desiring the
change that she might then have a chance of earning an honest
livelihood, whereas if she only got twelve months’ imprison
ment she could do nothing but return to the streets. The
Recorder, ‘ believing her to be sincere in her desire to lead
an honest life, complied with her wish. ’ This was very kind
to the prisoner, but rather hard on those who will have to
support her for five years instead of for one, because she
requires the lengthened period for her own convenience. It
is of course most desirable that prisoners, when they leave
gaol, should ‘earn an honest livelihood;’ but imprisonment
is intended as a punishment, and not as a boon.”
That is, punishment is retributive, and not reformatory.
But I wonder society does not discover that this rough
and ready method of dealing with criminals does not
pay, and that forty-eight convictions in a person only
twenty-nine years old is a very expensive way of taking
its revenge. No, I suppose it would never do to.
admit that a man’s conduct was the result of his mental
constitution and the circumstances in which he was
placed—that there was no freedom in the matter,
except the freedom to act in accordance with the dic
tates. of the will. It would be most dangerous doctrine
to allow that no man could have acted differently to
what he did act—that the strongest motive, whatever
it was, must of necessity have prevailed; and that
all we had to do, therefore, was to alter the constitu
tion and circumstances, and prevent such motives,
whether of conscience—that is, sense of right—or of
fear, that would enable him to do differently for the
�in Mind as in Matter.
21
-future. No, the vengeance of the law must continue
still to be visited upon our Bill Sykeses, and Fagins,
and Artful Dodgers, although it is well known to others
besides M. Quetelet that “ society prepares crime, and
the guilty are only the instruments by which it is
■executed?’ We must still continue to dole out so
■much suffering for so much sin, without reference to
■cause and effect, either past or future; for is not a man
responsible for his actions—that is, may we not justly
■retaliate and make another suffer as much as he has
•entailed upon us ? To the popular mind vengeance
seems a divine institution; and it is impossible ‘ to love
•our enemies and to do good to those who despitefully
use us and persecute us,’ as long as this vulgar notion
of moral desert prevails. It is only Science—the
Science of Mind—that can put an end to this; and
that there is a Science of Mind is at present not even
recognized by the President of the Social Science Asso
ciation. When we have a Science of Man we may
have a Science of Society, and we shall then advance as
rapidly towards its improvement as we have done in
Physics since Bacon’s time. Induction is equally
-applicable to mind and matter, any supposed difference
is consequent upon our ignorance. Bree-will and spon
taneity will disappear as our knowledge extends, and
all will be brought within “the reign of law.” When
we have a Science of Mind we shall cease to take the
absorbing interest we now do in kitchen-middens and
the dust heaps and bones of the past, and shall take to
the study of cerebral physiology, upon which the laws
■of mind depend. Our attention will not be given, as
now, exclusively to short-horns and south-downs, or to
horses and dogs, but to improving the race of men. If
we wish to induce any special line of conduct which
we call moral—that is, more to the interest of society
at large than another—we must collect and direct the
force of mind that will produce it. This can only be
done and become habitual by growing the organization
�' 22
The Reign of Law
upon which it depends. Preaching and dogma go only
a very little way towards it; and education, upon which
so much reliance is now placed, will not do much more.
Education has a refining influence, and so far as it
may tend to direct the propensities, and call the higher
feelings into activity, it is of value. Its influence is
very much overrated; for, as we have said, it is the
feelings and not the intellect that govern the will, and
reading, writing, and arithmetic have little direct in
fluence upon them. It is on this account that many
well-disposed people are so anxious to add religion to
the instruction in our common schools. By religion
here little more is meant than, “ Be good, my boy, or
Bogie ’ll have you,” and surely it is not worth drag
ging religion into all the dirt, and familiarity which
breeds contempt, of our common schools for this, to the
injury of all that deserves to be called religion in after
life. It would be much better to teach the natural
consequences—the real responsibility that attends all
the children’s actions—how, if they lie, no one will
believe them; if they steal, no one will trust them,
&c., attended with short and sharp immediate punish
ment. Future rewards and punishments have a very
remote bearing upon immediate conduct, and I doubt
the policy of turning the Almighty into a sort of head
policeman, with his eye always upon them, ready to
strike if they do wrong. This may beget fear, but never
love, and children soon find out that as far as the imme
diate consequences to themselves are concerned it is not
true, and this damages their faith in their real liability.
But the Science of Mind will introduce a truer
knowledge of what really constitutes Education, which
means the developing and perfecting of all our facul
ties, social, moral, religious, and aesthetic,* as well as
the intellect. This only will make a complete man,
this only will make him find his happiness and there* See “Education of the Feelings,” 4th edition.
■& Co.
Longmans
�in Mind as in Matter.
23
fore his interest in virtue, and enable him to do his
duty here, without either hope of heaven or fear of
hell. The study of the nature of each mental faculty,
and-its direction towards its legitimate objects, is what
is required by Education. Of how much may be done
by education is seen in the cultivation of musical
talent.
Social evolution follows the law of organic modi
fication. It is the exercise of the feelings we wish to
predominate that alone will strengthen them and in
crease the size of the organs with which they are con
nected. The commercial age in which we live-—its
machinery and facility of intercourse—is making all men
better off, and binding all together by a common tie of
interest. When a man is well off and happy he desires
to make others so, exercising his benevolence. When
he is in daily close intercourse with his fellows it shows
him the necessity for honesty and integrity, and this
exercises his conscientiousness or sense of justice. Men
are thus obliged to live for others as well as for them
selves ; they everywhere find it their interest to help
one another, and as combination and co-operation thus
increase, so do civilization and the growth of those
mental habits which enable men to live most happily
together.
We thus progress surely, but slowly, not in con
sequence of, but in spite of, our conflicting creeds, and
when at last we arrive at the conviction that nothing
could have happened otherwise than it did; that the
present and the future only are in our power—-when
we have determined to “let the dead past bury its
dead ”—we shall have made a great advance towards
the more easy practice of justice and benevolence. Of
course, the usual cry about gross matter and materialism
and iron fate may be expected, but all that is highest
which man has ever reasonably looked forward to may
be more immediately expected when science and cer
tainty are welcomed in the place of chance and spon
�24
The Reign of Law
taneity. We are approaching daily in practice, if not
in theory, in this direction. At present our religious
creeds stand directly across our path. But utility, if
not philosopy, is teaching our law-makers that they
cannot mend the past, and this gradual application of
the Science of Mind to legislation will ultimately ex
tend to the people for whose benefit the laws are made,
until all will feel that nothing must be left to accident
in the moral world any more than in the physical.
The effect upon the individual of the reconstruction
of his ethical code upon a scientific basis is most
favourable to the growth of all the higher feelings
upon which conduct and happiness depend. The sup
position that things ought to have been otherwise, and
might have been otherwise, is the source of half the
worry in the world, and revenge, remorse, and retri
butive punishment cause half its misery. Revenge is
not only wicked, but absurd; as applied to the past, it
is like a child beating a table. When we have done
wrong, the experienced consequences are generally suf
ficient for our future guidance, and “ repentance whereby
we forsake sin” is admirable, but remorse for that
which could not have been otherwise is both absurd
and useless. An Irish priest told his congregation that
it was a most providential thing that death had been
placed at the end of life, instead of at the beginning,
as it gave more time for repentance. With this we
can scarcely agree. Our verdict, as it must be now,
would be rather that of the Irish jury, “ Not guilty,
but would advise the accused not to do it again.” But
is this verdict of not guilty just ? Certainly it is, as
regards the past; it could not have been otherwise.
But surely it will be said this is dangerous doctrine.
Is no one to be blamed for anything he has done?
Blame is both unjust and useless as applied to the>
past ; it is only so far as it may influence the future
that it can be of any use. This praise and blame is a
rough-and-ready way of influencing future action, which
�in Mind as in Matter.
25
has a very uncertain effect upon conduct. We assume
that people might have done differently, and, after
scolding or punishing, we leave them to do so, but
there is no certainty that they will. Would it not be
better to inquire into the causes that induced them to
act as they did, and alter them, otherwise they are
certain to do the same again. Society’s conduct with
respect to offences at present is very much like Bartie
Massey’s ideal of woman as cook, -— “ the porridge
would be awk’ard now and then; if it’s wrong, it’s
summat in the meal, or it’s summat in the milk, or it’s
summat in the water.” Is it not time that we, as well
■as our cooks, began to measure the proportion between
the meal and the milk ? As to dangerous doctrine, we
must not forget that “ philosophical certainty ” implies
that everything that will influence conduct in the pre sent or the future is still open to us, only in one case
we trust to science and law, in the other to chance and
free will. In proportion as we extend our dominion
over the darkness of ignorance, and are able to conquer
fresh fields of knowledge, as the domain of law becomes
every year wider and wider, and we gain enlarged
views of the eternal sequence and universal order, all
contingency and spontaneity must vanish. What we
call chance or free-will is nothing more than the action
of hitherto undiscovered causes. As to the past, that
we feel is inevitable, and more, it could not have been
otherwise—the causes then in operation must have pro
duced the effects they did—and when we know a thing
is inevitable we can “grin” and bear it; it is the
mental worry, not the mere physical pain that is hard
to bear. As the proverb says, “ It is of no use crying
over spilt milk.” Few know the peace of mind and
internal quiet which the habitual practice of this mental
attitude secures, but all may know it as science ad
vances, and it is this state of mind which it is the true
function of philosophy to enable us to attain.
There is infinite peace also in the conviction that we
�26
The Reign of Law.
are in higher hands than our own ; that the interests of
morality and virtue are ultimately assured, being based
upon law; that we may forget ourselves in the glory of
the whole of which we are so infinitely small a part;
and that we may thus rest satisfied that something
much better is being secured than the freedom of the
will, and with which that Will will not be allowed to
interfere.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS. PRINTERS. EDINBURGH.
�
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"The reign of law in mind as in matter, and its bearing upon Christian dogma and moral responsibility." Part II. The true meaning of responsibility
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Bray, Charles [1811-1884]
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THE
REIGN OF LAW
IN MIND AS IN MATTER,
AND ITS
BEARING UPON CHRISTIAN DOGMA AND MORAL
RESPONSIBILITY.
FART I.
BY
CHARLES
BRAY,
AUTHOR OF “A MANUAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, OR SCIENCE OF MAN,” “ MODERN
PROTESTANTISM,” “ILLUSION AND DELUSION,”„&C.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Sixpence.
��THE
REIGN OF LAW IN MIND AS IN MATTER,
AND ITS
■
BEARING UPON CHRISTIAN DOGMA.
“At first laying down, as a fact fundamental,
That nothing with God can be accidental.”
Longfellow.
ECKY’S admirable histories of Rationalism and
European Morals, show most clearly that there is
a law of orderly and progressive transformation to which
our speculative opinions are subject, the causes of
which are to be sought in the general intellectual con
dition of society. Every great change, therefore, in
the popular creed is always preceded by a great
change in the intellectual condition of the people,
and speculative opinions which are embraced by
any large body of men, are accepted, not on account
of the arguments upon which they rest, but on
account of a predisposition to receive them. Opinion
pervades society as water does a sponge, or like yeast
cells growing in a fermented mass. Reasoning, which,
in one age, would make no impression whatever, in the
next is received with enthusiastic applause. This is
owing to the fact, that, as a general rule,—not entirely,
however, without exception,—it is our feelings and
not the intellect that rule us; it is the feelings that
connect us with the prevailing state of public opinion
with which we are en rapport that shape our conduct,
and not our theoretical convictions. It is this that makes
L
�4
The Reign of Law
missionary efforts so fruitless, and proselytising almost
impossible in old and partially civilized countries
which have already a religion of their own. Mr Becky
shows us that the history of the abolition of torture,
the history of punishments, the history of the treatment
of the conquered in war, the history of slavery, all pre
sent us with examples of practices which in one age
were accepted as perfectly right and natural, and
which in another age were repudiated as palpably and
atrociously inhuman. In each case, the change was
effected much less by any intellectual process than by
a certain quickening of the emotions, and consequently
of the moral judgments.
Galileo was condemned because the Scripture says,
that “ the sun runneth about from one end of the earth
to the other,” and that “ the foundations of the earth
are so firmly fixed, that they cannot be moved.”
Science might show that the earth did move notwith
standing, but then many refused to look through Gali
leo’s telescope, and those who did were disposed to
compromise the matter like the young student who,
when asked by the examiners whether the earth moved
round the sun, or the sun round the earth, said, with
a spirit of “ reconciliation ” worthy of the present age,
“ Sometimes one, and sometimes the other.” Even the
great Lord Bacon was sceptical on this question of the
earth’s motion, although not quite in the same direc
tion ; he said, “ It is the absurdity of these opinions
that has driven men to the'diurnal motion of the earth,
which I am convinced is most false.” It took a cen
tury and a-half to reconcile mankind to the Copernican
Astronomy, and there are many now who refuse to
believe that the earth is round, the fact being con
trary to Scripture : for how in such case could people
at the antipodes see the Son of God descending in his
glory ? If there are some who thus suspect their geo
graphy to be unorthodox, there are others equally at
fault in their natural history. Being religiously
�in Mind as in Matter.
5
"brought up, and therefore in early possession of a
Noah’s Ark, they know perfectly well the truth of the
story about it■ but as they get older, they do not see
very well how all the animals could be got into it, and
in this discrepancy between Science and Scripture, df
■course, the former has to give way. They are not pre
pared to accept St Augustine’s road out of the difficulty,
that the assembling the animals in the ark must have
been for the sake of prefiguring the gathering of all
nations into the Church, and not in order to secure the
replenishing of the world with life.
But if it took so long to introduce the Copernican
system, it took much longer to get rid of witchcraft, or
the firm conviction which all had, that the Devil,
through ugly old women and others, interfered per
sonally in our affairs. The horrors attending this be
lief it is impossible to describe or even to conceive.
The way in which the truth of the accusation was
tested, had the logic that peculiarly distinguishes theo
logical controversy ; the witch was put into water, and
if she was drowned, she was innocent, if not, she was
guilty, and burned alive. Chief Baron Sir Matthew
Hale’s reasoning seems almost equally conclusive.
Charging the jury in the trial for witchcraft of Amy
Duny and Rose Callender in 1664, he says, “That
there are such creatures as witches, I make no doubt
at all ; for, first, the Scriptures have affirmed as much ;
and secondly, the wisdom of all nations, particularly of
our own, hath provided laws against them.” Among
•others, an Anglican clergyman, named Lower, who was
now verging on eighty, and who for fifty years had
been an irreproachable minister of his church, fell
under suspicion. He was thrown into the water, con
demned and hung, and we are told that, “ Baxter re
lates the whole story with evident pleasure.” Lecky,
Rationalism, Vol. i. p. 117. “As late as 1773, the
divines of the Associated Presbytery passed a resolu
tion declaring their belief in witchcraft, and deploring
�6
The Reign of Law
the scepticism that was general,” Lecky, Vol. i. p. 147..
John Wesley also was a firm believer in witchcraft, and
for some time we know inhabited a haunted house. He
said that the giving up of witchcraft was in effect
giving up the bible. But, notwithstanding the strenu
ous opposition of the clergy everywhere, the belief in
witchcraft died a natural death. It was not argument
that killed it, but it could not breathe the spirit of the
age, and it was then very naturally discovered that the
word translated witch in Leviticus may be translated
“ poisoner.” Both the translation and explanation of
the Bible have always admitted of great adaptation and
reconciliation.
The belief in the devil’s agents and imps having
gone out in the light of the age, the belief in the devil
himself is fast following ; he is getting very faint; in
fact, he is not admitted at all into polite society. The
belief in the existence of a personal embodiment of the
principle of evil may be said no longer to exist among
educated people, but at one titne it was a most vivid
reality. To Luther he was a constant presence, and the
black stain is still shown in the castle of Wartburg,
where he threw his inkstand at him. He gradually,
however, got more accustomed to him, and he tells us
how, in the monastery of Wittemberg, hearing a noise
in the night, he perceived that it was only the Devil,
and accordingly he went to sleep again.
We now ask, Is public opinion prepared to accept the
doctrine that the Reign of Law is universal in Mind as
in Matter ? That there is no exception to the Reign of
Law ? That there is no such thing as chance or spon
taneity, or a free-will, or a free anything, but that there
is a sufficient cause for everything ? I fear this ques
tion must be answered in the negative. Natural
Science has gradually substituted the conception of har
monious and unchanging law, for the conception of a
universe governed by perpetual miracle, or capricious
will, or chance in the world of matter; but that law, or
�in Mind as in Matter.
7
necessity, or certainty, equally pervades tlie world of
mind, is at present confined to philosophers, and to
those only who have made the Science of Mind their
study. Still it is a great truth which must ultimately
prevail, and when it does, it will bring as great and
beneficial a change in our system of ethics, as the Coper
nican system has in our Astronomy.
By reference to the first volume of Grote’s Greece,
we find that Socrates treated Physics and Astronomy
as departments reserved by the gods for their own
actions, and not subject to ascertainable laws, and that
human research was even impious. “ In China at the
present day,” says Eitel, “ the Chinese sages see a golden
chain of spiritual life running through every form of
existence, and binding together as in one living body
everything that subsists in heaven above, or in earth
below. But this truth is with them a mere hypothesis,
not a generalization from observed facts. Experimental
philosophy is unknown in China. They invented no
instruments to aid them in the observation of the
heavenly bodies, they never took to hunting beetles
and stuffing birds, they shrank from the idea of dissect
ing animal bodies, nor did they chemically analyse in
organic substances, but with very little actual know
ledge of nature they evolved a whole system of natural
science from their own inner consciousness, and ex
panded it according to the dogmatic formulae of ancient
tradition.” This is precisely the condition of our
clerical sages at the present time in the department,
not of physics, but of mental science. Things may or
may not happen, not according to any known or calcul
able law or order, but according to the free will of the
actor, which is supposed to obey no law. And this
free will is the key-stone of both their morality and
religion.
Mr Herbert Spencer truly says, “ There can be no
complete acceptance of sociology as a science, so long
as the belief in a social order not conforming to natural
�8
The Reign of Law
law, survives. Hence, as already said, considerations
touching the study of sociology, not very influential
even over the few who recognise a social science, can
have scarcely any effects on the great mass to whom a
social science is an incredibility.”
“I do not mean,” he says, “that this prevailing imper
viousness to scientific conceptions of social phenomena
is to be regretted. . . . The desirable thing is, that a
growth of ideas and feelings tending to produce modi
fication, shall be joined with a continuance of ideas
and feelings tending to preserve stability . . . That in
our day, one in Mr Gladstone’s position should think
as he does, seems to me very desirable. That we
should have for our working-king one in whom a
purely scientific conception of things had become
dominant, and who was thus out of harmony with our
present social state, would probably be detrimental,
and might be disastrous.” * Mr Gladstone has, how
ever, since explained (Contemporary, December 1873),
that he was misunderstood; that he does not either
affirm or deny either evolution or unchangeable law,
but that what he wished to imply was, that, be they
either true or false, certain persons have made an un
warrantable use of them. That a law-maker should
not be much in advance of his age may be true enough,
but that the “ prevailing imperviousness ” to the great
truth, that law and order equally prevail in mind as in
matter, is, I think, much to be regretted. The induc
tive philosophy applied to mind will work as great a
revolution as its application to physics has done since
Bacon’s time.
I shall first consider, then, what this great truth is,
and then its application both as to what it would de
stroy, and what it would build up. The great truth
is, that there is no such thing as freedom of will.
Men formerly believed that the sun went round the
earth : they saw and felt that it did. The supposed
freedom of will is equally an illusion and delusion.
* The Study of Sociology, p. 365.
�in Mind as in Matter.
9
J. S. Mill tells us that ££ The conviction that pheno
mena have invariable laws, and follow with regularity
certain antecedent phenomena, was only acquired gra
dually, and extended itself as knowledge advanced,
from one order of phenomena to another, beginning
with those whose laws were most accessible to observa
tion. This progress has not yet attained its ultimate
point; there being still one class of phenomena
(human volitions) the subjection of which to invariable
laws is not yet recognised. ... At length we are fully
warranted in considering that law, as applied to all
phenomena within the range of human observation,
stands on an equal footing in respect to evidence with
the axioms of geometry itself.” Such, I believe, is the
conviction of all the great leaders in science—certainly
in mental science—of the present day. I need quote
only a few. Let us first go back a generation. Jona
than Edwards, in his work on the freedom of the will,
has always been considered as unanswerable, but
having proved the certainty of all events by reason, he
accepts free-will from Scripture. Now, that any
thing can be certain but at the same time contingent
is a contradiction. He says, “ Nothing comes to pass
without a cause. What is self-existent must be from
eternity, and must be unchangeable; but as to all
things that begin to be, they are not self-existent, and
therefore must have some foundation for their exist
ence without themselves.” ££ In no mind,” says
Spinoza, ££ is there an absolute or free volition ; but it
is determined to choose this or that by a cause,
which likewise has been fixed by another, and this
again by a third, and so on for ever.” He also says,
££ Human liberty, of which all boast, consists solely in
this, that man is conscious of his will, and unconscious
of the causes by which it is determined.” That is, he
is often unconscious of the motives that govern the
will, and still more so of the causes that govern his
motives—the same action that always accompanies and
B
�]o
The Reign of Law
precedes every feeling and volition always goes on un
consciously, and the conscious volitions tell him nothing
of it.
Consciousness thus deludes us into the conviction
that our volitions originate in ourselves, we being un
conscious of the train of physical forces in which they
originate; hy ourselves meaning the aggregate of our
mental powers, and if there is no impediment to their
action that is what we call “ freedom.” Locke used to
say, “ That we should not ask whether the will is free,
hut whether we are free to follow its dictates,” for this
is really all that men mean hy their boasted freedom.
A free action, as to an accomplished result, can only
mean that the agent was not externally forced to do it.
This is probably all that Lord Houghton means by
freedom, hut he confounds this freedom of action with
freedom of will. He says, as president of his section
on Social Economy (1862), “I think we shall see that
there enters into this question an element which is
almost contradictory of strict scientific principle. That
element is human liberty, the free-will of mankind.
Without that free-will no man can have individual
power of action, no man can call himself a man,” &c.
It is this confounding the freedom from physical con
straint which enables us to act in accordance with the
will, with the freedom of the will itself, which dictates
the action, that produces the confusion on the subject.
When it is said freedom of will is a fact, that we feel
we are free to do as we please, &c., all that is meant is
this freedom from the constraint that would oblige us
to do, or leave undone, one thing rather another, and
not that the mind, or will, or what we please to do, is
free or independent of causation.
Professor Mansel, however, believed differently; he
says (Prolegomena Logica, p. 152), “ In every act of
volition I am fully conscious that I can at this moment
act in either of two ways, and that, all the antecedent
phenomena being precisely the same, I may determine
�in Mind as in Matter.
11
one way to-day and another to-morrow.” That is, the
same causes (all the antecedent phenomena) may pro
duce one effect to-day and another to-morrow, and all
who believe in the freedom of the will are obliged
logically to accept this conclusion. Choice, or to “ act
in either of two ways,” implies a preference or motive
for choosing one rather than the other ; if, as is almost
impossible, the mind is equally balanced, then somephysical cause, not within the field of consciousness,
dictates the choice. That the action has no cause is
impossible. This power of choice that we feel we pos
sess is simply that, when freed from physical constraint,
we can do as we please, but what we please to do de
pends upon our nature, which, in both mind and body,
is governed by its own laws.
It is upon this freedom from external constraint by
which we can do as we please, i.e., act in accordance
with our will, that the intuition, which with the many
is stronger than reason, is founded. Kant says, “ No
beginning which occurs of itself is possible,” and yet he
believed in the freedom of the will, thinking that the
intuition, based upon a delusive experience, was more
reliable than the reason.
Dr Laycock (Mind and Brain) says, “ There is, in
fact, no more a spontaneous act of will than there is
spontaneous generation. Strictly, such an act is a
creation, and belongs only to creative power.” There
are those who think that the creative power of God is,
or may be, exercised without cause or motive, and that
He has bestowed upon man, in a minor degree, the
same power, and that this is man’s distinguishing cha
racteristic from the brutes; but if so, this dignified
attribute is only that of a madman, who alone is sup
posed to act without cause or motive.
Lewes, in his new work, “ Problems of Life and
Mind,” p. 128, also gives his testimony in favour of ne
cessity ; thus, he says, “ The moralist will be found pas
sionately arguing that the conduct of men, which is
�12
The Reign of Law
simply the expression of their impulses and habits, can
be at once altered by giving them new ideas of right
conduct. The psychologist, accustomed to consider the
mind as something apart from the organism, individual
and collective, is peculiarly liable to this error of over
looking the fact that all mental manifestations are
simply the resultants of the conditions external and in
ternal.”
Professor Huxley’s utterances are a little more ob
scure. He is represented by C. B. Upton, B.A., as
“ rejecting almost contemptuously the freedom of the
will,” and he himself says (On the Physical Basis of
Life), “ Matter and law have devoured spirit and spon
taneity. And as sure as every future grows out of
every past and present, so will the physiology of the
future gradually extend the realm of matter and law
until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling,
and with action.” But he elsewhere says (Fortnightly
Review), “ philosophers gird themselves for battle
upon the last and greatest of all speculative problems.
Does human nature possess any free volition or truly
anthropomorphic element, or is it only the cunningest
of all nature’s clocks ? Some, among whom I count
myself, think that the battle will for ever remain a
drawn one, and that, for all practical purposes, this
result is as good as anthropomorphism winning the
day.” Would not “ sometimes one and sometimes the
other,” do quite as well as a drawn battle ? The Doc
tor evidently agrees with Kant, that “ no beginning
that occurs of itself is possible he appears to be also
of opinion :—
“ That what’s unpossible can’t be,
And never, never conies to pass.”
Colman’s “ Broad Grins.”
that is, very seldom, comes to pass !
There is nothing perhaps more remarkable in the
whole history of thought, than the intellectual shuffling
of all our great thinkers, to avoid meeting this fact of
�in Mind as in Matter.
*3
“ certainty ” face to face. I hope, however, to be able
to show that for all practical purposes it is most impor
tant that “ the realm of law should be co-extensive
with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.” But
the comparative recent discovery of the persistence of
force or the conservation of energy, furnishes the
modern practical proof that law is present everywhere;
as Herbert Spencer concisely puts it, “Force can
neither come into existence nor cease to exist. Each
manifestation of force can be interpreted only as the
effect of some antecedent force ; no matter whether it
be an inorganic action, or animal movement, a thought,
or a feeling. Either this must be conceded, or else it
must be asserted that our successive states of consci
ousness are self-created.” Which, of course, they must
be if the will is free : to determine is to use force,
which can “ be interpreted only as the effect of some
antecedent force.” Mr Spencer also says, “ If such co
existences and sequences as those of biology and socio
logy, are not yet reduced to .law, the presumption is,
not that they are irreducible to law, but that their laws
elude our present means of analysis for as Buckle
shows, “ the actions of man have the same uniformity
of connection which physical events have ; and the
law or laws of these uniformities can be inductively
ascertained in the same way as the laws of the material
world.”
The causational theory of the Will has hitherto been
called Philosophical Necessity, but just exception has
been taken to this, as we know of no necessity, we
know only of certainty. Mr J. S. Mill says, “ A voli
tion is a moral effect, which follows the corresponding
moral causes as certainly and invariably as physical
effects follow their physical causes. Whether it 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 it always does." For myself,
�14
The Reign of Law
I regard all power or cause as will-power, and every
cause and effect as at one time consciously and volun
tarily established to serve a set purpose ; this mental
relation has passed in the ages into what we call
physical laws, that is, the unconscious or automatic
mental state, but the connection is not necessary, and
might be dissolved when the purpose was no longer
served. We have some curious illustrations, however,
of the habit being continued where the purpose is no
longer served; where organs that were useful lower down
in the scale are passed on to higher grades when they
are no longer of any use,—Nature, for instance, having
got into the habit of making teeth, makes them some
times—as in the guinea pig, who sheds them before it
is born—when they are not wanted. These apparent
exceptions to design are made the most of for atheist
ical purposes.
This view of things at present, I suppose, may be
said to be exclusively my own, but I do not see why
we may not fairly infer that what takes place at present
in man on a small scale, has previously been the law
of mind in Nature. If an action serves its purpose we
repeat it, and the action becomes habitual, then struc
tural, and is transmitted and becomes what we call
instinct, and what is instinct in men and animals
becomes invariable law in nature. We know of no
mind in the universe unconnected with body, and
therefore not liable to follow the same law. As Pope
well expresses it:—
“ All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul.”
That the order of nature was originally voluntary
to serve a purpose, and that its uniformity and invari
ability is consequent upon its being the nature of all
mind connected with structure to become automatic, I
think we may regard as highly probable. The prin
cipal purpose that this invariability now serves is that
�in Mind as in Matter.
*5
it enables men and animals to regulate their actions
and to adapt their conduct to the fact that what has
been will be. Of course, if the will, or anything, were
free, this invariability would not exist, and men could
not look forward or reason at all.
This certainty is very different to the iron-bound
necessity of the mere physicist and positivist, and
leaves room for special intervention if such should be
required j and as animal instincts adapt themselves to
new conditions, so according, at least, to our present
knowledge, there appears to be many a gap in evolu
tion, and many a space in Natural Selection and the
'Origin of Species to be filled up, that do so require it.
The missing link, after all, may be found in the direct
will-power of conscious intelligence, which has been
called' special providence. There is a whole field of
mesmerism, of clairvoyance, and of animal instinct at
present altogether inexplicable on what is known of
the natural laws of mind. It is said God cannot inter
fere with his own laws, but as their permanence—the
present connection between cause and effect—depends
entirely upon its utility, I do not regard this as a rule
without exception.
But this great truth of the philosophical certainty of
human volitions is at present a mere abstraction,
existing only in the brains of mental philosophers,
thought to be impractical and even dangerous by those
who acknowledge its truth; but is it for ever thus to
lie buried, and is it altogether at present incapable of
a practical application ? Popular prejudice and clamour
may be expected for some time to be against it, but is
it not a truth that even now ought to form the basis of
our legislation? There are two writers and lecturers
who have lately taken up this subject on the orthodox
religious side: the Rev. Daniel Moore on the part of
the Christian Evidence Committee of the Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the Rev. Dr Irons.
The first, one of the clearest writers and reasoners on
�16
The Reign of Law
■ the orthodox side, and the other, as it seems to me,,
with the especial gift of “ darkening counsel by words
without knowledge.” The Rev. D. Moore says, “■ Take
the theory of philosophical necessity. As an abstract
truth we accept it. As a fact of life-experience we
ignore it altogether.” {The Credibility of Mysteries,
p. 14.) Again he says, “ The will, of course, is deter
mined by motives, and so far the will is not free. But,
then, what governs the motives ? Why, the life, the
habits, the cherished states of mind and feeling, all
that enters into the liberty and spontaneity of the
personal man.” Of course, those things were as much
determined by motives as the present, so that it only
throws the difficulty, if there be one, a few stages back,
and there is evidently no more freedom or spontaneity
in one case than the other. He says, “ With the free
dom of the will, therefore, we have nothing to do.
We have only to do with the liberty of acting accord
ing to the determination of the will, — a liberty
which, as Hume observes, is universally allowed to
belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in chains.”
{Man's Accountableness for his Religious Belief, p. 15.)
It is evident that in theory there is no difference
between Mr Moore and ourselves,—freedom from ex
ternal constraint is all he contends for, and this is all
that people generally mean by freedom of will—the
freedom, for instance, to walk which way they choose
when their legs are not tied.
Dr Irons says {Analysis of Human Responsibility,
p. 11, in a paper read before the Victoria Institute) :
“ The position supposed in the Duke of Argyll’s
thoughtful and popular book, The. Reign of Law,—
viz., ‘ that all human actions are calculable beforehand^
may indicate a point now reached in England by the
prevailing ethics; and it may well arouse our attention,
though it would be wrong to conclude at once that the
calculable may not be contingent, a priori, as the doc
trine of chances may show.
�in Mind as in Matter.
*7
“ That this doctrine of the ‘ Reign of Law ’ is by no
means peculiar to a Scottish philosophy, will be felt
indeed by all who mark the ethical assumptions of our
best-known literature. The writings of Mr Buckle,
Mr Lewes, Mr Tyndall, Mr Mill, and others, are per
vaded by a kind of fatalistic tone, which society inclines
to accept as ‘ scientific,’ though an open denial of
responsibility is of course rarely ventured upon.
What is absolutely needed now is that men should he
compelled to say carefully and distinctly that which
they have been assuming vaguely, so that the prin
ciples may be known and judged.”
I quite agree with Dr Irons; it is quite time that
men did speak out, and I intend to do so, “ carefully
and distinctly,” and, I trust, truthfully and intelligibly.
Sir Wm. Hamilton is of opinion that the study of
philosophy, or mental science, operates to establish that
assurance of human liberty, which is necessary to a
rational belief in the dogmas of the church. Free-will
was a truth to him, mainly, if not solely, because it is
a necessary foundation for theology, i.e., for orthodox
theology.
The Rev. Baden Powell is obliged to admit (Chris
tianity without Judaism, p. 257) that 11 nothing in
geology bears the smallest resemblance to any part of
the Mosaic cosmogony, torture the interpretation to
whatever extent we may,” and we may say, with equal
truth, that “ The Reign of Law,” or the causational or
scientific view of human nature, is equally irreconcil
able with the Pauline cosmogony of the New Testa
ment, that is, with the popular or orthodox religion.
For although it brings us nearer to God, making it a
reality “ that in Him we live and move and have our
being,” yet it completely cuts up by the root the com
monly-received religious creed. Science and Religion
are here altogether irreconcileable.
Let us translate the scientific truth into more popular
language, and say exactly what it means, and then w&
�18
The Reign of Law
shall see better how to apply it. It means that no act
under the circumstances—the then present conditions
—could possibly have been other than it was. That
the same causes must always again produce the same
results, and that, consequently, if you wish to alter the
effect, you must alter the cause.
God, therefore, in placing our first parents in the
garden of Eden, must have known perfectly well what
would happen; and if He had wished things to have
happened differently, He must have altered the condi
tions. Either the “ forbidden fruit ” would not have
been forbidden, or He would have made Eve stronger,
or He would have kept out the serpent. Knowing
perfectly well what must happen, elaborately to prepare
a beautiful paradise, from which our parents were
immediately to get themselves turned out, was a mere
“ mockery, delusion, and a snare.” What could Eve
know of the consequences, which were death, never
having known death ? “ In the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die,”—this was the threat,
but it was never kept. If it had been, we should have
had either another mother, or no race of men, a thing
comparatively of little consequence. But the conse
quences to Eve were to be, not death to herself on that
day, but death and damnation to all her posterity. I
should not think it worth while to mention this libel
upon our Creator, if this alleged fact of the Eall of
Man, now looked upon by intelligent people as a mere
allegory,* were not made the foundation of a libel
against our Creator still more atrocious. But it is
* “ Immediately after the return of the Jews from captivity we
find them re-editing their literature, and prefacing their own book
•of early traditions (Genesis) with the myths of the Persian cosmo
gony. . . The first chapter of Genesis, which relates the story
of Eve’s temptation and of Adam’s fall, is a plain and unmistakeable reproduction of one of the myths or legends of this ancient
(Pagan) faith. It is a copy of a tradition, or rather of a poetic
allegory, that belonged to the earlier world. But on this narrative
all the doctrinal systems of our modern churches depend,— it is the
•common foundation upon which they have all been built. The
�in Mind as in Matter.
*9
said Eve was free, and might have done otherwise. If
the will was free, what she would do was uncertain,
■contingent, dependent upon chance, upon her sponta
neous action, and not upon any rule or law : any speci
fied action might be, or might not be, and therefore
God himself could not tell what she would do : for how
nan that be foreseen which is uncertain and may not
-come to pass ? Dr Irons, however, thinks that it would
he wrong to conclude at once that the calculable may
not be contingent. I should also say, and I think
with more reason, that it would be wrong to conclude
at once that God would have left the beginning of a
new world and such awful contingencies to mere chance
.as to how a woman would act whose will was governed
by no motive and no law. This awful gift of free-will,
if it were possible to bestow it, which I deny, as every
thing or agent must act in accordance with its nature,
—the power to use this attribute to damn herself and
all her posterity no wise and benevolent being could
possibly bestow upon another.
This supposed fact of the Eall of Man is not only
opposed to reason and common sense, and all the
higher feelings of our nature, but it is equally opposed
to all history and experience. Geology, ethnology,
anthropology, all show man to have been very gradu
ally rising from the savage to a civilized state. Pro
gress, not retrogression, has been the law. It is true
people and states die like individuals, but it is only
fall of man is the only basis on which the doctrine of the atonement
can rest. If there was no fall, the atonement is a manifest super
fluity, and it could not then have been the mission of Jesus of Na
zareth to have made one. Our knowledge of the ‘ Tree and Serpent
worship’ of the ancient heathen world proves that the Jewish nar
rative of Adam and Eve, and the forbidden fruit, is but an old
heathen fancy—a fable, and not a fact—and, being so, there is but
one opinion at which reasonable men can arrive with regard to the
doctrine of the atonement which rests so exclusively upon it, and
which, apart from it, has no possible basis.” (Tree and Serpent
Worship, by J. W. Lake.)
�20
*
The Reign of Law
that, as with individuals, new and increased life and
vigour may spring up elsewhere.
If, then, there has been no fall of man; if, also, man
could in no case have acted otherwise than he did act,
the elaborate theological system, based upon the oppo
site suppositions, must fall to the ground.
Nothing has taken place contrary to the will of Om
nipotence, and it would be a contradiction even to
suppose that it could ever have done so; for if it were
really His will nothing could prevent it.
Neither is God expected to know that which may not
take place,—that is, is contingent or free,—that is,
may happen or may not happen.
Neither have we to reconcile God as Supreme Euler,
or as governing all things, with man’s freedom: also
God does not require to be reconciled to a world which
He himself has created.
God’s justice does not require to be satisfied by the
sacrifice of an innocent person for a guilty one, nor that
one “ who knew no sin should be made sin for us, that
we might be made the righteousness of God in Him,”
—if any one knows what this means, or how it is
possible.
God is not wroth with that which He has ordained,
and which could not have been otherwise ; neither are
His anger and vengeance to be feared, for they would
be unjust.
Atonement is not required, and vicarious atonement
is unjust. Neither are we required to believe that an
infinitely benevolent God is the creator of hell.
Those things, which are palpable contradictions to all
who dare to use their reason, are, in the Christian
scheme, only mysteries to be cleared up in another
world. This will be evident if we proceed to examine
what the orthodox creed requires us to believe about
them.
Justification by faith is the fundamental doctrine of
the Church; belief in the atonement—that Christ’s
�in Mind as in Matter.
21
-death was necessary as a satisfaction of God’s offended
justice. But let me, as far as possible, use the words
of the creeds themselves, lest I be accused of miscon
ception and misrepresentation. The Athanasian Creed,
which the English Church has recently resolved to
retain, as truly and clearly expressing the meaning of
Scripture, says, among other things—
“ Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is
necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.
“ Which faith, except every one do keep whole and
undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
“ The Son is of the Father alone; not made nor
created, but begotten (and therefore, I suppose, began
to be, and yet)
“ The whole three persons are co-eternal together,
and co-equal. He therefore that will be saved must
thus think of the Trinity, . . . who suffered for our
salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day
from the dead.
“ He ascended into heaven, He sitteth on the right
hand of the Father, God Almighty; from whence He
shall come to judge the quick and the dead (His dis
ciples saw Him taken up, bodily into heaven; and a
cloud received Him out of their sight, and afterwards
St Stephen, looking up steadfastly into heaven, saw
the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand
of God).
“ At whose coming all men shall rise again with
their bodies, and shall give account of their own work.
(The hour is coming, Jesus said, when they that are
in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man,
and they that hear shall live).
“ And they that have done good shall go into life
■everlasting; and they that have done evil into ever
lasting fire.
“ This is the Catholic faith : which, except a man
believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.
“ Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the
Holy Ghost.
�'ll
The Reign of Law
“ As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
be, world without end. Amen.”
Perhaps no single error has produced more misery
in the world than the supposition that a man is “free”
to believe what he pleases. It is this that lighted the
fires of the Inquisition ■ and yet a man can only believe
what appears to him to be true j he could not believe
black to be white, even although he was to be damned
for not doing so ; and it is the same of all minor
degrees of belief. We can only believe what is credible,
and love what is loveable. It is true a man may play
the hypocrite, and profess to believe what it is made to
appear to be his own interest to believe ; he may de
ceive himself; he may hide the truth by refusing to
examine, and to this extent only is belief in his
own power. And yet salvation depends upon faith,
and in the early days of the Church “ in every prison
the crucifix and the rack stood side by side,” and good
men in their “ sweet reasonableness ” burnt their fel
low-men alive by a slow fire, to give them more time
to believe what appeared to them to be incredible, and
to repent that they had not done so. “That the
Church of Rome,” Lecky tells us, “ has shed more inno
centblood than any other institution that has everexisted
among mankind, will be questioned by no Protestant
who has a competent knowledge of history. . . . The
victims who died for heresy were not, like those who
died for witchcraft, solitary and doting old women, but
were usually men in the midst of active life, and often
in the first flush of active enthusiasm, and those who
loved them best were firmly convinced that their
agonies upon earth were but the prelude of eternal
agonies hereafter.”
“ What,” said St Augustine, “ is more deadly to the
soul than the liberty of error,” that is, the liberty
which we must all take, whether we will or no, of be
lieving what appears to us to be true. The error was
in the system and not in the persecutions which were
�in Mind as in Matter.
^3
only its logical and humane result, for what was the
burning here to an eternal burning. Consequently,
when Protestants got the upper hand, they did just the
same things ; Catholics are tortured and hung, and as
Lecky shows us, “ the Presbyterians, through a long suc
cession of reigns, were imprisoned, branded, mutilated,
scourged, and exposed in the pillory/’
These efforts to make men profess a religion they
could not believe, were of course attended with the
fruits that might have been expected. The fathers laid
down the distinct proposition, that pious frauds were
justifiable and even laudable, till the sense of truth
and the love of truth were completely obliterated, so
far at least as their influence extended. God was re
presented as He is now in the Athanasian Creed, as
inflicting eternal punishment for religious error; as
“ confining his affection to a small section of his crea
tures, and inflicting upon all others the most horrible and
eternal suffering j ” the fathers felt with St Augustine
that “ the end of religion is to become like the object
of worship,” and, as Lecky shows, “ the sense of divine
goodness being thus destroyed, the whole fabric of
natural religion crumbled in the dust.”
But it is not he that believeth, but he only that helieveth and is baptized that shall be saved, consequently
the belief of the Church is, that infants that have not
been baptized cannot be saved, but “ be punished, as
St Pulgentius says, by the eternal torture of undying
fire; for, although they have committed no sin by
their own will, they have, nevertheless drawn unto
them the condemnation of original sin, by their carnal
conception and nativity.” As some other equally
pious saint expressed it, “ he doubted not there ■were
infants not a span long crawling about the floor of hell.”
The Gorham controversy with the late Bishop of Exeter
must remind us that Baptismal Regeneration, or the
necessity for infant baptism, is still the doctrine of the
Church of England. St Thomas Aquinas suggested
the possibility of the infant being saved who died
�.24
The Reign of Law
within the womb. “ God,” he said, “ may have ways
of saving it for ought we know,” a heresy, for which,
doubtless, in his time, he would have been burned if
he had not been a saint. In the English Church,
Chillingworth and Jeremy Taylor have also thought it
possible infants might be saved. The opposite, how
ever, has generally been deemed a mere truism, con
sequent on original sin and transmitted guilt.
Tertullian was of opinion that the Almighty can
never pardon an actor, who, in defiance of the evan
gelical assertion, endeavours, by high-heeled boots, to
add a cubit to his stature (De Spectaculis, cap. 23). But
as the late Professor Mansel and other eminent theolo
gians believe in “ complete fore-knowledge co-existing
with human freedom,” or, in other words, that God has
some means of foreseeing that which is contingent, or
may happen, or may not happen, let us hope that he
may find some way even of saving poor actors.
The Scotch Calvinists, following Jonathan Edwards,
are more logical than the Anglicans. They are quite
aware that what has been foreknown must come to
pass, with as much certainty as if it had already hap
pened. They, therefore, see clearly, that as God is
Almighty, and has created all things with a full know
ledge of all that would take place, that what is fore
known must have been also foreordained.
The Westminster Confession of Eaith, upon which
the Scotch creed is based, tells us here :—
“ By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his
glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto
everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting
death.
“ These angels and men, thus predestinated and
foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably de
signed ; and their number is so certain and definite,
that it cannot be either increased or diminished.
“ Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectu
ally called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but
the elect only.
�in Mind as in Matter.
25
“ The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according
to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby
he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for
the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to
pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath
for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.”
“ To the praise of his glorious justice,” is not meant
ironically, as may be seen from the sermon of Jonathan
Edwards “ On the justice of God in the damnation of
sinners,” and from the diary of Mr Carey, which tells
us of the “pleasure ” and “ sweetness ” he had expe
rienced in reading that sermon. We are told some
must be saved, others cannot, still it is their own fault.
There we have free-will and necessity, and as all things
seem to have been fixed beforehand, it does not seem
to matter much, if, as Huxley says, it should always be
a drawn battle between them !
We must not suppose that this belief has become
obsolete as some would have us believe. The Rev.
Fergus Ferguson, of Dalkeith, in May 1871, was
brought to book by the U. P. Church, when, among
others, the following proposition was submitted to
him :—
“ That notwithstanding the inability of the will
through sin, as taught in our Confession, unbelievers
are fully answerable for their rejection of the offer of
salvation which the gospel makes to them.”
Or, as I lately heard it put in a good evangelical
-discourse in an English Church, “We are all dead in
trespasses and sins, with literally no more power to
help ourselves than a dead man, yet, if we would but
get up and go to Christ, he would save us.”
Mr Ferguson intimated his unqualified assent to the
proposition submitted to him, and Dr Cairns “ offered
thanks to God for the harmonious and happy result.”
Thus, here also as in the Garden of Eden, we have
another “ mockery, delusion, and a snare.”
We are called upon to believe, that God, “for the
�26
The Reign of Law
manifestation of His glory,” and “ for the glory of His
sovereign power over His creatures,” and “ to the praise
of His glorious justice,” doomed the great majority of
mankind from eternity to damnation, and then sent
His Son into the world to mock them with the false
promise of redemption He had previously decreed for
them should never be. Here we have the logical
outcome of the “ drawn battle ” between free-will and
necessity, or rather of accepting both doctrines, but is
there any one who really believes it, whatever they
may profess ? If any one tells me that I must believe
it, and “ without apology,” that I shall be damned if
I don’t, all I can say is, I’ll be damned if I do.
Surely, as Lord Bacon says, “It were*better to have
no opinion of G-od at all, than such an opinion as is
unworthy of Him.”
And yet this is the religion which a large party think
it necessary to have taught at the public expense in
our public schools. For instance in the New Board
Schools in Scotland, supported by a public rate, on
December 8th, 1873, a motion by Dr Buchanan, that
instruction in the Bible and Catechism should be given,
was carried by nine votes to six. The Catechism is
the Shorter Catechism, and contains all the above
soothing and salutary doctrine.
Neither are we much behind this in England. The
chairman of the London School Board, Mr Charles
Heed, M.P., speaking recently at the annual soiree of
the Leeds Young Men’s Christian Association, says he
does not see “ how it is possible to separate entirely
the secular and religious.” “ How, for instance, he
says, could I teach my child geology without referring
to Him who, having made all things, pronounced them
good ? How could I teach my child astronomy without
referring to Him of whom the Psalmist says, £ When
I consider Thy Heavens, the work of Thy hands, and
the moon and the stars which Thou hast created?’ I
cannot understand why it should be necessary, even if
�in Mind as in Matter.
it were possible, that these things which are so closely
and inseparably united should be disunited by any act
of man in the instruction of those who are under his
care.”
But surely Mr Reed would not teach geology and
astronomy from the old Jewish Traditions. He must
know that “ nothing in geology bears the smallest
resemblance to any part of the Mosaic Cosmogony,
and the astronomy which makes our little world the
centre of the universe, is worse than the geology.
“ Pronounced them good,”—good for what 1 If Adam
was to be immediately turned out of paradise, the
earth was to be cursed for his sake, and he and his
posterity damned from all eternity to all eternity, I can
not see the good of this, neither could the children, I
should think.
“ A salvation ordained before the foundation of the
world ” means, also, according to the popular creed, a
damnation equally ordained, and that, too, for the great
majority, and yet Diderot is accused of blasphemy for
saying, “ il n’y a point de bon pere qui voulut resembler
a notre Pere celeste.” And this creed that makes evil
absolute, and God the ordainer of it, is to be taught in
the common schools and at the public expense. No
doubt all is good, if men will but see things rightly.
The largest amount of enjoyment possible for all God’s
creatures is provided ; the greatest happiness of the
greatest number is secured. To the Necessitarian good
and evil are purely subjective, the mere record of our
own pleasures and pains—the pains the stimulant to,
and the guardian of, the pleasures.
I recollect, when a young man, being very much
impressed by John Foster’s Essay “ On some of the
Causes by which Evangelical Religion has been
rendered unacceptable to persons of cultivated taste.”
Polite literature was proclaimed to be hostile to that
religion, and Pope’s Essay on Man, which I had
for years carried about with me in my pocket, was
�28
The Reign of Law
peculiarly anti-Christian. I am not now surprised at
the distaste, as it is, and as it was by Foster stated to
be, opposed to the natural man, that is, to all the
higher instincts of our nature. A man must indeed
be born again to accept it. Vicarious suffering is
opposed to the moral sense, and every gentleman would
at once object to allow another to suffer for his sins,
and we cannot be surprised, therefore, at the exclama
tion and commentary of the old Scotchwoman, who,
bedridden, and living on the borders of a large parish,
had never before been visited by a parson, and had the
mysteries of redemption explained to her. When she
was told how Christ was crucified, not for any fault of
his, but to save sinners, that is, the few who were of the
elect, she replied, “ Eh, Sir ! but it is so far off, and so
long sin’ that we’ll e’en hope it is not true.” *
The Edinburgh Review, October 1873, accuses Dr
Strauss of “ ignorant blasphemy or hypocritical sarcasm”
for professing to understand these things literally, and
says that he had better go to school once more and
learn “what that really is which he blasphemes,
and what those precious truths really are which lie
enshrined in ‘ Oriental Metaphor,’ and mediaeval
•dogma.” . . . “What,” the writer asks, “has
been discovered, that should really justify any honest
* If the reader wishes to see the opposite view to this well put,
let him read the article in the January Contemporary .Review,
“ Motives to Righteousness from an Evangelical Point of View,”
by the Rev. F. R. Wynne. Of course, the elect regard the dam
nation, from which they are exempt, very differently, but how
any one can be so joyous and grateful over his own salvation, when
only one, much more the great majority, were left to an eternity
of misery, I cannot understand, and therefore cannot appreciate.
It appears to me to be the very essence of selfishness. The Evan
gelical creed is only possible by our completely ignoring the fact
that God is the author and disposer of all things—the evil (as it is
called) as well as the good. If it is to be regarded as a fight
between God and the Devil, in which the devil, in spite of all
God’s efforts, gets by far the best of it, then it is just possible to
understand the thankfulness and the enthusiasm of the reverend
gentleman that “a crown of glory” has been reserved for him
through his Saviour’s merits. Still we might wonder why it should
�in Mind as in Matter.
man in breaking -with the church as it is presented
in England ? ” I think we might ask him that ques
tion, and also whether the English Church admits, as
he affirms, that its “precious truths lie enshrined,
in Oriental Metaphor and mediaeval dogma,” or
whether it is yet willing to throw over the Old Testa
ment altogether, which he recommends. “We are
not Jews,” he says, “and there is no reason in the
world why we should be weighted with this burden of
understanding, and defending at all risks, the Jewish.
Scriptures.” Certainly there is increasing difficulty in
“ reconciling” the Old Testament either with science or
the modern conscience, but what becomes of the fall of
man and the whole scheme of redemption if we give it
up ? He also says, “ Is it right, is it truthful, is it any
longer possible in the face of all that is now known
upon the subject, to pretend that legendary matter has
not intruded itself into the New Testament, as well as
into the Old.” I should think not, but will the church
admit as much ? Dr Strauss is accused of having been
“so long absent from his place in church that he is
unaware of the great change which has come over the
minds of our ‘ pious folk ’ during the last twenty years.”
The Doctor is evidently unacquainted with the new
truth dug out of “ Oriental Metaphor and mediaeval"
dogma,” but, no doubt, great progress has been made
be laid up for him in particular, as he admits it was from no merit,
on his part. Mr Wynne says, “ What can bring hope for time and
eternity to the saddened heart, what can touch it with the sense
of God’s loving-kindness, like the simple faith that God forgives
all sin the moment the sinner takes refuge in Jesus Christ ? ” But
what of those who are left out and who do not take refuge ? And
how are we to reconcile God’s loving-kindness with his omnipotence
if any are left out ? Surely the fact that all punishment is for our
good, to warn us from evil and to effect our reformation, and that
forgiveness, therefore, would be an injury, and to show this direct
connection between sin and suffering, would be far higher and
more salutary doctrine. I do not doubt, however, all that is said
of the effect of Evangelical teaching among the lower class of'
minds, for I have often witnessed it, but it is not “the pure and
noble feeling that is fanned into a flame,” but the selfish fear of
punishment or hope of reward—the fires of hell or the crown of ’
glory. ”
t
�jo
The Reign of Law
in reconciling the spirit of the age to theological
doctrines. “ They may not,” as the writer in the
Edinburgh says, “ hitherto have been quite rightly
explained, they may not yet have been wholly divested
of their graceful drapery of fancy.”
Principal Tulloch, in an article in this month’s
Contemporary Review (January 3, 1874), entitled
“ Dogmatic Extremes,” seems to De little less angry
with Mr James Mill than the Edinburgh is with
Strauss. He complains of a “passionate and conten
tious dogmatism on the side of unbelief,” that literary
and philosophic unbelievers do not do justice to
Christian dogmas. They state them “ in their harshest
and most vulgar form,” instead of looking at them from
the spiritually appreciative point of view. J. S. Mill,
for instance, reports his father as speaking with great
moral indignation of “ a being who would make a hell,
who would create the human race with the in fallible
fore-knowledge, and, therefore, with the intention, that
the great majority of them were to be consigned to
horrible and everlasting torment.” “ Surely we are
■entitled,” he says, “ in the case of such men as James
Mill, to look for some wider thoughtfulness and power of
discrimination than such a passage implies.” Principal
Tulloch tells us that “ all creeds and confessions, from
the apostles downwards, are nothing else than men’s
thoughts about the Christian religion. . . . Tn so
far, as it is supposed possible or right to bind men’s
faith in the present age absolutely to the form of
Christian thought of the seventeenth century, or the
fourth century—in so far such a church is opposing
itself to an inevitable law of human life and history. .
. . . Creed subscription, in so far as it interferes
with this freedom, is a wrong at once to the people and
the clergy. . . . The question which is really
interesting and pressing is not how to get outside of
the church, but how to enlarge and make room inside
it for varieties of Christian intelligence and culture.
. . . To call in (with our scientific dogmatists) the
•
�in Mind as in Matter.
31
"Coarser conceptions of popular religion, those forms of
thought as to heaven or hell, or any other aspect of the
spiritual world, to which the religious mind naturally
falls, from sheer inability in most cases to preserve any
ideal of thought—to call in such coarser types of the
religious imagination as the normal dogmas of Chris
tianity, entering into its very life and substance, is as
poor and unworthy a device of controversy as was ever
attempted. Popular Christianity is no product of
religious thought. It is a mere accretion of religious
tradition. And “ the whole function of thought is to
purify and idealize inherited traditions here as in
every other region of knowledge.”
Consequently, any allusion to “ the naughty place ”
and its occupants is never made now in the week
days; it is thought coarse and vulgar, and only a
“ purified and idealized ” version of it is hinted at
on Sundays, while devils “with darkness, fire, and
chains” are only kept to frighten children within
our common schools, and without which religious
instruction, it is thought, it would never do to trust
them with secular knowledge.
The fact is, the tendency of a large party in the
church is to judge al] doctrines by their intuitive
sense of right, and when Bible doctrines do not accord,
they re-translate them to make them fit. Still admitting
to the full the usefulness of the church and the pre
sent necessity for its continued existence, the question
will recur to every honest man, as it has done to Dr
Strauss and to others, Are we Christians ? The
ethics of the New Testament we must reject as not
based on science, as we have already done the physics
of the Old, and the question is, Is it true, as a critic
affirms, that the religion which calls itself revealed,
contains, in the way of what is good, nothing which is
not the incoherent and ill-digested residue of the
wisdom of the ancients ? Still it is affirmed, and very
generally believed, that the difference between the
Caucasian and the inferior races of men is entirely
�32
The Reign of Law.
owing to Christianity, as also is the whole difference
between civilization and barbarism. Our progress, it
is said, is not owing to science and induction, but to
the Christian religion.
The tendency of the age, of the Broad Church party
especially, is not now to insist on dogma, but to fall
back on the morality of the New Testament. But the
Rev. J. M. Capes says that even “ The Sermon on the
Mount altogether must be interpreted by what people
popularly call common sense, or else it becomes imprac
ticable or even mischievous, and what is common sense
but the application of the test of general utility ?
{Contemporary, December 1873).
Barrington {On the Statutes, p. 461) proves the
superiority of Englishmen, because, as he says, more
men were hanged in England in one year than in
Erance in seven, and writers on the “Evidences” show
that the discrepancies and contradictions in the gospels
prove their inspiration a.nd genuineness, and Butler isof opinion that even the doubting about religion
implies that it may be true; but if the creed of either
the Catholic or Protestant Churches is really to be
found in Scripture, then we must agree with Matthew
Arnold “that the more we convince ourselves of the
liability of the New Testament writers to mistake, the
more we really bring out the greatness and worth of
the New Testament. . . . That Jesus himself may, at
the same time have had quite other notions as to what
he was doing and intending .... That he was far
above the heads of his reporters, still farther above the
head of our popular theology, which has added its own
misunderstanding of the reporters to the reporters’ mis
understanding of Jesus.” {Literature and Dogma, pp.
149, 150, 160).
With these admissions, which are becoming more
common every day, much may yet be made of the
Bible by way of popular instruction, and which may
help to carry us on to the general acceptance of the
Reign of Law in Mind as in Matter.
�
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"The reign of law" in mind as in matter, and its bearing upon Christian dogma and moral responsibility. Part I
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Bray, Charles [1811-1884]
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Collation: 32 p. ; 18 cm.
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Thomas Scott
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^^1874.]
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1X.U
( AxJ^u-^gm^
-4-^ Earn&sh Sowing of Wild Oats*
67
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
AN EARNEST SOWING OF WILD OATS.
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
It is forty-five years since Frances
Wright and I established in the city of
New York a weekly paper of eight large
quarto pages, called The Free Enquirer.
This paper was continued for four years;
namely, throughout 1829, 1830, 1831,
and 1832. It was conducted, during a
portion of that time, with Miss Wright’s
editorial aid, and also with other assist
ance; but it was chiefly managed and
edited by myself.1
Looking back through nearly half a
century on these stirring times, I seem
to be reviewing, not my own doings, but
those of some enthusiastic young propa
gandist in whom I still take an interest,
and whom I think I am able to see pretty
much as he was in those early days of
hope and anticipation; upright but hare
brained, with a much larger stock of
boldness and force than of ballast and
prudence, but withal neither mean nor
arrogant nor selfish. I had failings and
short-comings enough, very certainly, —
among them lack of due meekness and
of a wholesome sense of my own inex
perience and ignorance and liability to
error, — but the time never has been
when I paltered with conscience, or
withheld the expression of whatever I
felt to be true or believed important to
be said, from fear of man or dread of
forfeiting popular favor. I have some
times doubted since whether this zeal
with insufficient knowledge resulted in
much practical good; yet perhaps Her
bert Spencer’s view of cases like mine is
the true one, when he says: —
‘ ‘ On the part of men eager to rectify
* During the first year Frances Wright and I
edited the paper, aided, chiefly in the business de
partment, by Robert L. Jennings, whom I have al
ready mentioned as one of the Nashoba trustees;
then we severed connection with him. In the au
tumn of 1829 Miss Wright left for six months, re
turning in May, 1830; to remain, however, only two
■months, then crossing to Europe and not returning
Until after our paper was discontinued. From July,
1830, to J uly, 1831, I conducted the Free Enquirer
'entirely alone, aided only by occasional communica
tions from Miss Wright; then I engaged the services
of Amos Gilbert, a member of the society of Friends
(Hicksite), one of the most painstaking, upright, and
liberal men I ever knew, but a somewhat heavy
writer, who remained until the paper closed, man
aging it as sole resident editor for the last five
months, when I was in Europe ; but I left him a
dozen editorials, and sent him a regular weekly arti
cle throughout that time.
Orestes A. Brownson, well known since, especially
in the Catholic world, then living at Auburn, New
York (where he had been editing a Universalist
paper), was agent and corresponding editor of our
paper for six months (from November, 1829, to May,
1830), but he sent us only two or three articles. In
one of these he thus defines his creed: " I am no
longer to appear as the advocate of any sect nor of
any religious faith. . . . Bidding adieu to the re
gions where the religionist must ramble, casting
aside the speculations with which he must amuse
himself, I wish to be simply an observer of nature
for my creed, and a benefactor of my brethren foi;
my religion.” — Free Enquirer, vol. ii. p. 38.
In taking temporary leave, last November, of my Atlantic readers, I told
them that, at the age of twenty-seven,
I engaged in a somewhat Quixotic en
terprise, adding: “I saw what seemed
to me grievous errors and abuses, and
mast needs intermeddle, hoping to set
things right. Up to what point I suc
ceeded, and how far, for lack of experi
ence^ I failed, or fell short of my views,
some of those who have followed me
thus far may wish to know.”
It was in one sense, though not in the
popular one, a “ sowing of wild oats; ”
for many of the thoughts and schemes
Which in those days I deemed it a duty
to scatter broadcast were crude and
immature enough. Yet the records of
such errors and efforts — if the errors
be honest and the efforts well-meant —
serve a useful purpose. It is so much
easier to intend good than to do it!
Young and rash reformers need to be
reminded that age and sober thought
must bring chastening influence, before
we make the discovery how little we
know, and how much we have still to
learn.
�68
An Earnest Sowing of Wild Oats.
[July,
wrongs and expel errors, there is still, in which we proposed to conduct it may
as there ever has been, so absorbing a be traced through a few brief extracts
consciousness of the evils caused by old from its prospectus. After premising
forms and old ideas, as to permit no that we had not found, even in this land
consciousness of the benefits these old of freedom, “ a single periodical de-,
forms and old ideas have yielded. This voted — without fear, without; reserves,
partiality of view is, in a sense, neces without pledge to men, parties, sects, or
sary. There must be division of labor systems — to free, unbiased, and univer-1
here as elsewhere: some who have the sal inquiry,” we added: —
“We shall be governed in our choice
function of attacking, and who, that
they may attack effectually, must feel of subjects by their importance, and
strongly the viciousness of that which guided in our estimation of their impor
they attack; some who have the function tance by the influence each shall appear
of defending, and who, that they may to exert on the welfare of mankind.
be good defenders, must over-value the We will discuss all opinions with a ref
erence to human practice, and all prac
things they defend.”1
Some of the leading opinions which tice with a reference to human happi
I put forth in our paper were with ness. Religion, morality, human econ
out foundation. I made assertions, for omy, — those master-principles which
example, touching man’s inability to determine the color of our lives, — shall
obtain knowledge in spiritual matters obtain a prominent place in our columns.
which I now know to be erroneous. Yet ... We exact from our correspondents
perhaps the frank expression even of what we promise for ourselves, courtesy
such errors was not without its use; it and moderation. While there is no
has taught me charity to those who opinion so sacred that we shall approach
make similar mistakes; and I have its discussion with apprehension, there
since taken pains to correct these false is none so extravagant that we shall
conceptions in as public a manner as I -treat its expression with contempt. . . f
expressed them. Then again, there is To the believer as to the heretic we say:
wisdom in what a thoughtful clergyman ‘ He who will tolerate others shall him*
of the Anglican church (holding to the self be tolerated; exclusive pretension,
Oxford Essayist school, however) has only shall be, with us, cause of exclu
sion.’ ”
well said: —
Of ourselves we said:,, “We neither
“It is necessary that absurd and
harmful ideas should be expressed, in dread public censure, nor court public
order that they may be seen to be what applause. We need not popular favor
they are, and that time and conflict may to put bread into our mouths, and w®
destroy them. Hidden, repressed, they care not to put money into our pockets.
exist as an inward disease: freely ex We search truth alone and for itself .
pressed, they are seen and burnt away. We think meanly of man’s present con
. . . Whether any new phase of na dition, and nobly of his capabilities.
tional thought be good or evil, the very Are we wrong ? we want others to proves
fact of its being new will be a good in us so. Are we right? it shall be our
the end; for it will disturb the waters endeavor to convince them of error. . . .
and provoke conflict: if evil, it will We trust that many are wiser and we
throw the opposite idea, which is good, know that many are more gifted than
into sharper outline; and if good, it ourselves; but we have yet to see —
will make its converts and subvert some would that we could see! — those who
existing evil. The only unmixt evil is are as earnest in the work and as fear
less in its execution. ’ ’
to silence it by intolerance. ’ ’ 2
Somewhat boastful, certainly! Not
The scope of our paper and the spirit
at all what I should write to-day! But
1 Study of Sooiology ; concluding chapter.
so it is, in this world. Experience and
2 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, Freedom in the
Church of England : London, 1871; pp. 5, 6.
enthusiasm are much like the two buck
�1874.]
An Earnest Sowing of Wild Oats.
ets of a well; as the one rises the other
sinks, and they are found only for a
moment together. While the heart is
fresh and the spirits untiring, they lack
prudence for a guide; and when at last
prudence comes to our aid, she too often
finds the heart cold and the spirits slug
gish. Ah, if to the free and buoyant
ardor of youth we could but unite the
deliberate sagacity of age! In the life
to come, perhaps—if, there, old and
young are meaningless terms — some
such dream may be realized.
As regards theology, which during
the first two.years Was our chief topic,
my views touching a First Cause were
substantially identical with those re
cently put forth, in succinct and lucid
terms, by Herbert Spencer. Our con
sciousness, he tells us, which is our sole
guide to any knowledge of mind, does
not enable us to conceive the character
or attributes of an “ originating mind.”
This, he says, is not materialism. It is
not “ an assertion that the world con
tains no mode of existence higher in
nature than that which is present to us
in consciousness.” It is simply “ a
confession of incompetence to grasp in
thought the cause of all things.” It is a
“belief that the ultimate poweris.no
more representable in terms of human
consciousness than human consciousness
is representable in terms of a plant’s
functions.” 1
Such an avowal of inability to com
prehend a first cause called forth, in
those days, a' storm of abuse quite be
yond any with which Spencer and his
co-believers are visited now. Press and
pulpit assailed us as atheists. The mail
brought us daily missives of wrath.
Some of these I consigned to the waste
basket; a few I answered. One of the
last — a fair sample of the rest — in
closed a tract which depicted the horrors
of an unbeliever’s death-bed, and an
anonymous letter in which the writer
said: “ If you feel inclined to make any
remarks in your infidel paper, you are
at liberty to do so; but remember, there
will be a day when you will regret that
1 Herbert Spencer on Evolution, in Popular
Science Monthly for July, 1872.
69
you ever turned a deaf ear to those
warnings that are contained in that
blessed book, the Bible.” I inserted
his letter, and, after stating that I had
most earnestly sought religious truth,
replied: —
If such a day indeed arrive, when I
shall stand before the judgment-seat of
a great immaterial Spirit, to answer for
the deeds done in the body, then and
there will I defend my honest skepticism.
Then — when the secrets of all hearts
shall be known; there — before that Be
ing who will see and approve sincerity,
will I say, as I say now, that for my
heresies I am blameless. e If my corre
spondent be there to accuse me, how
shall he make out his case ? Let us im
agine the scene: —
Accuser. — During thy mortal life,
thou didst turn a deaf ear to holy ex
hortations.
Mortal. — Nay, I heard them, but be
lieved them not.
Accuser.— Thou hast not known on
earth the great Judge before whom thou
now standest in heaven.
Mortal. — True. There I knew him
not, for he concealed his being from me.
Here I know him, for he reveals to me
his existence.
Accuser. ~~ I warned thee of his ex
istence.
Mortal. — But I did not believe the
warning.
Accuser. —Dost thou confess thy sin?
Mortal. — I have no sin to confess in
this; but I confess my human ignorance.
Accuser. — Thy ignorance was sinful.
Mortal. — To thee! hitherto unknown
Spirit, I appeal. I knew thee not on
earth, for thou hiddest thy existence
from me. I thought not of thee, nor of
this day of judgment; I thought only of
the earth and of my fellow-mortals. The
time which others employed in imagining
thy attributes, I spent in seeking to im
prove the talents thou hadst given me,
in striving to add to the happiness of the
companions thou hadst placed around
me, and in endeavors to improve the
abode in which thou hadst caused me
to dwell. I spoke of that which I knew.
�70
An Earnest Sowing of Wild Oats.
I never spoke of thee, because I knew
thee not. To thee I appeal from this
my accusers
Judge. — Thou hast well spoken. I
placed thee on earth, not to dream of
my being, but to improve thine own. I
made thee a man that thou mightest give
and receive happiness among thy fel
lows, not that thou shouldst imagine the
ways and the wishes of gods. Even as
thou condemnedst not the worm that
crawled at thy feet, so neither do I con
demn thy worldly ignorance of me.1
*
An illustration more forcible than
well-judged; yet it will be conceded
that it involves the assertion of a sacred
privilege long and strangely denied to
man — his right freely to express sin
cere convictions, especially in religious
matters. That my creed was simply a
confession of ignorance was due to the
fact that, at that time, I had found no
evidence which seemed to me trust
worthy, of the spiritual or its phe
nomena.
My present opinions as to the evi
dence for a supreme intelligence, in
some way personal, whose directing will
is the equivalent of cosmical law, are at
variance with Herbert Spencer’s, and
may be thus stated: I admit, to modern
science, that force, aggregating atoms
and acting on and through them, is the
immediate cause of all the material ob
jects that are presented to the senses.
But if we go back of force, seeking its
motive-power, can our consciousness sup
ply no aid in the search ? It informs us
that, as regards that class of appear
ances which we call the handiwork of
man, the originating cause is, in a cer
tain sense, our human will. Beyond
this we cannot go; for the materialist
has utterly failed to prove that the will
is the result of molecular changes in the
brain. Whatever the cerebral mech
anism may be, it is the spiritual princi
ple within us which wills, and which,
availing itself of that mechanism and
acting in accordance with cosmical law,
produces the thousand results of human
skill and of human mind.
i Free Enquirer, vol. i. p. 326.
We speak familiarly, in these days, of
motion, when it is arrested, being con
vertible into heat. May not will, when
it is excited, be converted into force?
or may not will be the original form of
force? The spiritual part of man is the
man — is, and will be, in another and a
better phase of life than this; all else is
only earthly induing. Is it not a rea
sonable belief that the entire phenome
nal world, as manifest to sense, is but an
outer investment — the epiphany of a
deeper reality, and traceable to a spirit
ual force?
Certain it is that we reach, as ulti
mate, so far as our consciousness goes,
human will-power; in other words, we
detect what, within the range of its
influence, may be termed originating
mind. Within the petty range of its
influence only, it is true, and subject,
be it remembered, to forces which exist
and operate independently of man. As
to the myriads of phenomena that occur
outside of human agency, or of similar
limited influence, are we not justified, by
strictest rule of analogy, in concluding
that they, too, are due to will-force?
And does not our consciousness thus
enable us to conceive the overruling
will-force of an originating mind, in
finitely higher, wiser, more potent than
ours ?
I may here add that, in some of the
recent developments of science, con
nected with the doctrine of evolution,
and thought by many to be of atheistic
tendency, I find, on the Contrary, pro
vided they are interpreted with en
lightened limitations, proofs confirma
tory of the views which I have here
given touching a supreme intelligence
controlling and directing the universe.
The great principle of natural selec
tion, which in the main explains so
strictly the mode of gradual progress in
the vegetable and animal kingdoms,
seems to me only partially applicable,
as an element of advancement, to man.
The origin of man’s highest mental fac
ulties cannot be logically traced to the
preservation of useful variations. Some
other principle intervenes. The degree
of the human intellect, at any given time,
�18M]
An Earnest Sowing of Wild Oats.
is not so much the result of past selec
tion as the earnest of needs to be satis
fied only in ages to come. The oldest
Jiuman skulls yet found (some of them
equal in size to the average of modern
skulls and all quite disproportioned, in
capacity of brain, to the requirements
of their savage owners) were evident
ly. constituted with prophetic reference
to the distant future. So the human
hands and voice, organs eminently deli
cate and sensitive, were, in the rudest
ages, capable of being trained for ele
vated uses and refined enjoyment which
for tens or hundreds of centuries were
not to be attained.
But if, as from these and similar facts
it appears, savage man’s endowments
(being of proleptic character and look
ing to far-off triumphs in intellectual and
spiritual fields) have been due to some
cause other than natural selection,1 does
not our human consciousness lead us to
conceive that cause as a supreme being,
forecasting the future, foreseeing what
the needs of our race will be when
.generation after generation shall have
passed away, and expressly preparing
man for a high destiny to come —- pre
paring him even in the dim beginnings
of his existence on earth, when the in
stincts of the brute almost sufficed to
provide for his rude wants and to satis
fy his vague longings ? I think we may
rationally rest in such a belief.
71
The opinions which I held in those
days touching a future state are con
densed in this extract:2 “From all
assertions, affirmative or negative, re
garding other worlds than this, I ab
stain. They exist, pr they exist not,
independently of our conceptions of
them. Our belief cannot create, our
unbelief cannot destroy them. Here
after we shall enjoy, or we shall not
enjoy them, whether we have antici
pated such enjoyment, or whether we
have had no such anticipation.”
Mistaking that of which I knew noth
ing for the unknowable, I was, in com
mon with my co-editors, what is now
called a Secularist, and having adopted
from Pope and Southwood Smith 3 the
maxim that “ Whatever is, is right,” I
sought to persuade myself that our hori
zon was wisely bounded by the world we
live in; and that our earthly duties are
better performed because of such a re
striction. I have since had occasion to
express my conviction that evidence,
manifest to the senses, which assures
man of a life to come, is one of the most
cogent among civilizing influences; and
that the human race will never attain
that wisdom and virtue of which its nat
ure is capable, until the masses shall
have reached, not a vague belief, but
a living, ever-present assurance, that
character and conduct in this world de
termine our state of being in the next.
But at that time, in the absence of
such evidence, I not only rejected, as I
hope all men will, some day, reject the
doctrine of plenary inspiration, but I
lacked faith also in any inspiration other
than that of geniusj quite ignoring what
Swedenborg calls influx from the spirit
ual world. My present views on that
subject are given in a recent work: —
st It would be out of place here to follow up in de
tail the argument that primeval man, supplied with
attributes beyond his early needs, could not have
obtained these merely by the persistent survival of
those individuals of his race who were the fittest to
protect and support themselves in ages of barbarism.
For full details on this subject, I refer the reader to
a recent work by a distinguished English scientist,
Alfred Wallace ; the first who put forth, in outline,
the principle of natural selection, and one who has
made special study of that subject. In his Contribu
tions to the Theory of Natural Selection (London,
1870) there is a chapter on The Limits of Natural
Selection as applied to Man (pp. 232-271), which mer
its careful perusal. On that subject his deductions
are, in the main, similar to mine. From the class of
phenomena which he describes, his inference is (p.
359), " that a superior intelligence has guided the
development of man in a definite direction and for a
special purpose, just as man guides the development
of many animal and vegetable forms.”. He does not
regard the human will as " but one link in the chain
of events,” and concludes: " If we have traced one
force, however minute, to an origin in our own will,
while we have no knowledge of any other primary
cause of force, it does not seem an improbable con
clusion that all force may be will-force; and thus
that the whole universe is not merely dependent on,
but actually is, the will of higher intelligences, or
of one supreme intelligence ” (p. 368).
2 From a manuscript lecture now before me,
which I delivered, on various occasions, in the years
1831 and 1832.
8 In his Divine Government, a volume in which
the author advocates earnestly, and (so far as I re
member) logically, the principle of optimism.
�72
An Earnest Sowing of T7z7cZ Oats.
“ Inspiration is a mental or physical
phenomenon, strictly law-governed; oc
casional, but not exceptional or exclu
sive ; sometimes of a spiritual and ultra
mundane character, but never mirac
ulous ; often imparting to us invaluable
knowledge, but never infallible teach
ings; one of the most precious of all
God’s gifts to man, but in no case in
volving a direct message from him — a
message to be accepted, unquestioned
by reason or conscience, as divine truth
unmixed with human error. . . . In
spiration, in phase more or less pure, is
the source of all religions that have held
persistent sway over any considerable
portion of mankind. And just in pro
portion to the relative purity of that
source, welling up in each system of
faith respectively, is the larger or small
er admixture of the Good and the True
which, modern candor is learning to
admit, is to be found in certain meas
ure even in the rudest creed.” 1
But while in those days neither Fran
ces Wright nor I regarded Christ as an
Inspired Teacher, both of us expressed
in strong terms our respect for his ex
alted character. She wrote thus : “The
real history of Jesus, if known, will
probably be found to be that of every
reformer whose views and virtues are
ahead of his generation. By his igno
rant friends his superior natural pow
ers were mistaken for inspiration, and
by his ignorant enemies for witchcraft.
. . . Jesus appears to have been far
too wise and too gentle to have con
ceived the scheme now attached to his
name.” 2
This called forth, from a correspond
ent, one or two articles in opposition,
speaking of Jesus as possibly a myth;
at all events as “ a miracle-monger, a
magician,” and as “wanting in filial
affection and respect,” etc. To these
I replied after this wise: “I think of
Jesus as one of the wise and good . . .
who pleaded the poor man’s cause and
was called the friend of publicans and
sinners; who spoke against hypocritical
forms and idle ceremonies, and was de1 The Debatable Land between this World and
the Next: New York, 1872 ; pp. 242, 243.
[July,
nounced as a Sabbath-breaker setting at
naught the law; who exposed the self
ishness of the rich and the powerful^
and thus incurred their hatred; who at^
tacked the priesthood of the day and by
their machinations lost his life. This is
a picture too strictly verified by all his
tory to be refused credit, merely be
cause its outlines are awkwardly filled
up. There is, mixed with the mystery
which beclouds Jesus’ biography, too
much of gentle, tolerant, high-minded
principle to warrant the supposition that
it was all the biographers’ invention.
Ignorant men do not invent tolerant
democratic principles, nor imagine un
pretending deeds of mercy, nor paint
gentle reformers. . . . And if, speaking
in parables, Jesus kept back much that
might more distinctly have marked the
character of his heresy, let us recollect
that he spoke with his fife in his hand,
and that it is hard to blame him for
having ventured so .little, who suffered
death, probably, for having ventured so
much.” 3
Expressions of sentiment so plain as
these did not save us, however, from
bitter abuse; for instance by a cer
tain Dr. Gibbons, a Quaker preacher
with orthodox proclivities, who, quoting
against us in an abusive pamphlet the
words employed by our anti-christian
correspondent, accused us of treating
with indignity Christ and his teachings;
and also of holding that “ what is vice
in one country is virtue in another.”
To him I replied: —
“No, Dr. Gibbons. You yourself
know that we never expressed any such
doctrine. Virtue is virtue in itself, in-»(
dependently of time, of name, and of
country; honesty, for instance, and can
dor. You know, too, that the quota
tions touching Jesus given by you were
not from our pens. Not one word of
them was approved by us. You know
that; and, knowing it, you suppress our
words, impute to us our very opponents’
arguments as our own, and thereupon
(with a degree of assurance which to be
credited must be seen) you found your
2 Free Enquirer, vol. i. p. 199.
3 Free Enquirer, vol. i. p. 256, and vol. ii. p. 190.
�1874.]
An Earnest Sowing of Wild Oats.
73
assertions that we have ‘ railed against right of every man to testify in a court
Jesus Christ,’ and ‘reviled the author of justice without inquiry made as to
of Christianity.’
his religious creed. Above all, we
S‘“In no country, Dr. Gibbons, will urged the importance of a national sys
this pass for virtue. In no country will tem of education, free from sectarian
it be approved by any one whose ap teachings, with industrial schools where
proval is worth having. No end can the children of the pool’ might be taught
justify such means; no cause sanction .farming or a trade, and obtain, without
such weapons.” 1
charge, support as well as education.
Dr. Gibbons made no answer. This
This last brought upon us the imputa
is but a specimen of a hundred similar tion of favoring communism and holding
attacks, to which I replied after the agrarian views; quite unjustly, however,
same fashion; gradually fighting my for I had taken pains to say: “We
way, I think, to considerable respect. propose no equalization but that which
At all events, after the first two years, an equal system of national education
we were treated with much more con will gradually effect.” As to the prov
sideration than at the outset, by the ince of the general government as dis
press and by the pulpit of the . more tinct from that of the States, I had
liberal sects, Unitarian and Universalist, then, like most foreigners, no very ex
and more especially by the Hicksite act idea of the distinction.
Financially our enterprise was so far
Quakers.
Some of the New York dailies were a success that it ultimately paid all ex
bitter enough, refusing even our paid penses, including those of our house
advertisements; others, hitting us from hold, with a trifle over. This was due
time to time, did it good-naturedly: to very strict economy, for we had .but
among these last, M. M. Noah, then a thousand paying subscribers, at three
conducting the Inquirer. Major Noah dollars a year: in those early days,
(as he was usually called) was a man of however, deemed a fair subscription
infinite humor, and I used to enjoy his list. We leased, at four hundred and
jokes even when made at my expense. forty dollars a year, from Richard
He said of my father, commencing oper Riker, then recorder of the city, a
ations in Indiana: “ Robert Owen, the commodious mansion and grounds on
Scotch philanthropist, has been putting the banks of the East River, some half
his property at New Harmony into com mile southeast of Yorkville. There we
mon stock; he ought to be put into the lived and there our paper was hand
stocks himself for his folly.” When somely printed by three lads who had
some country editor came out against been trained in the New Harmony
him thus: “ We can’t endure Noah for printing-office. They boarded with us,
two reasons: first, we hate his politics; and we paid them a dollar a week each.2
secondly, he spells Enquirer with an We bought a small church in Broome
I”—the major replied: “Any man Street, near the Bowery, for seven thou
who would put out his neighbor’s H’s sand dollars, and converted it into what
(eyes) ought to forfeit all ee’s (ease) we (somewhat ambitiously) called ‘ ‘ The
for the rest of his life.”
Hall of Science;” adding business of
We had other heresies which brought fices in front. In this hall we had lect
us reproach, aside from those of a theo ures and debates every Sunday, and
logical character. We advocated the sometimes on week-days; admission, ten
abolition of imprisonment for debt and cents. It paid interest and expenses,
of capital punishment; equality for leaving the offices free of rent. We
women, social, pecuniary, and political; carried on also a small business in lib
equality of civil rights for all persons eral books; our sales reaching two thou
without distinction of color, and the sand dollars a year.
1 Free Enquirer, vol. ii. pp. 134, 135.
2 They got out the paper in five days of the week,
and we paid them for extra work, when they did
any.
�74
An Earnest Sowing of Wild Oats.
[July,
We lived in the most frugal manner, life f quite different from any which I
giving up tea and coffee, and using little take now in old age. Can a skeptic,
animal food; were supplied with milk with vision restricted to this world and
from a couple of good cows, and vege regarding our existence here as a final
tables from our garden. We kept two ity, not as a novitiate, ever obtain as
horses and a light city carriage; had surance (except perhaps during the
two female servants, and a stout boy heyday of a prosperous youth) that life,
who attended to the stable and garden. with its lights so often overshadowed,
I have now before me a minute account is a gift worth having at all ? 2
which I kept of our expenses.1 In
I think that Frances Wright, less
cluding paper (upwards of five hundred light-hearted than I, took a still gloom
a year), printing, expenses of house, ier view of the world as it is. Our
stable, and office, rent, etc., our total deepest feelings are wont to crop out
expenditure was but three thousand one in genuine poetry; and Miss Wright,
hundred a year when Miss Wright and though it is not generally known, was a
her sister were with us, and after they poet. I have read many of her fugitive
went, twenty-seven hundred dollars pieces in manuscript, but she was never
only. I was my own proof-reader, rode willing to have them issued in a volume.
on horseback to and from the city (ten Some of these possessed, I think, con
miles) daily, and my only assistant in siderable merit; as witness the follow
the office was an excellent young man ing lines: —
of fifteen, Augustus Matsell, to whom
TO GENIUS.
we paid two dollars a week. I was oc
cupied fully twelve hours a day; and,
i.
having a vigorous constitution, my health
Yes ! it is quenched, the spark of heavenly fire
was unimpaired.
Which Genius kindled in my infant mind:
Though it was a somewhat hard and Fled is my fancy, damped the fond desire
Of fame immortal — all my dreams resigned.
self-denying life, my recollections would
All, all are gone !
ne’er
prompt me to say that I was bright Like pilgrim wendingYet turn Inative behind,
from his
land ?
and cheerful through it all, but for a let
Shall I in other paths such beauties find
ter of mine which recently came to my As spring beneath Imagination’s hand,
As bloom on wild Enthusiasm’s visionary strand ?
hands, written to a European friend
n.
in the autumn of 1830, in which, al
luding to the death of my sister Anne, Celestial Genius ! dangerous gift of Heaven !
I wrote: —
How many a heart and mind hast thou o’er
thrown !
“ It is customary to lament the dead;
Broken the first, the last to frenzy driven,
I lament the survivors. If, indeed, the
Or jarred of both for aye the even tone !
Once, once I thought such fate would be my own,
world were what it ought to be, we
looked
an
might sorrow for those who go; for And onlyas I hadto find my early grave;
To die
lived,
powers unknown ;
from how much of enjoyment would they Content, so reason might her empire save,
be cutoff! But as it is, one must be Unseen to sink beneath oblivion’s rayless wave.
very favorably and independently situ
nr.
ated, to render it certain that death is a
with
thou
charm
loss and not a gain. I myself am thus But oh !noughtall thy pains withinhast avale below•
That
may match
this
situated, so that these reflections have E’en for the pangs thou giv’st thou hast a balm,
And renderest sweet the bitterness of woe :
no special application in my own case.
Thy breath ethereal, thy kindling glow,
From nature or education, or both, I Thy visions bright, thy raptures wild and high,
He that has felt, oh, would he e'er forego ?
derived a lightness of heart which few
No ! in thy glistening tear, thy bursting sigh.
circumstances can depress.”
Though fraught with woe, there is a thrill of ec
These are cheerless views of human
stasy.
1 Some of the items sound strangely to-day:
Flour five dollars a barrel, horse feed two dollars
a week each, butter sixteen cents a pound, and
so on.
2 John Stuart Mill, in his Autobiography, says
of his father, James Mill, who was a skeptic in re
ligion but a man of the strictest moral principle :
" He thought human life a poor thing at best, after
the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity
had gone by.” — Amer. Ed. p. 48.
�1874.]
An Earnest Sowing of Wild Oats.
TV.
And art thou flown, thou high, celestial Power ?
Forever flown ? Ah ! turn thee yet again !
Ah ! yet be with me in the lonely hour !
Yet stoop to guide my wildered fancy’s reign I
Turn thee once more, and wake thy ancient
strain !
No joys that earth can yield I love like thine ;
Nay, more than earth’s best joys I love thy pain.
And could I say I would thy smile resign ?
No; while this bosom beats, oh still, great gift, be
mine !
These verses indicate the writer’s
ambitious aspirations, her self-estimate,
and the restless and desponding moods
to which, though not habitually sad, she
was subject. In middle life, however,
Frances Wright’s ambition took the
form of zealous endeavor to aid her suf
fering fellow-creatures. When the ex
periment at Nashoba proved a failure,
and it became evident that the slaves
there, instead of working out their free
dom, were bringing the institution, year
by year, into debt, she still resolved
that the hopes with which she had in
spired them should not be disappointed.
She left New York for her Tennessee
plantation in the autumn of 1829, and
was absent six months, engaged in car
rying out her final intentions regarding
them.
I have in my possession the manifest
of the brig — appropriately enough it
was the John Quincy Adams, of Boston
— in which the little colony was con
veyed to Hayti. It shows that by that
act, thirteen adults and eighteen chil
dren, — thirty-one souls in all, —liber
ated from slavery, were transported to
a land of freedom. I have also the
letter of the President of Hayti (Boyer),
dated June 15, 1829, in which, after
eulogizing Miss Wright’s philanthropic
intentions, he offers, to all persons of
African blood whom she may bring to
the island, an assured asylum; adding
that they will be placed, as “cultiva
tors,” on land belonging to kind and
trustworthy persons, where they will
find homes, and receive what the law
in such cases guarantees to all Haytien citizens, half the proceeds of their
i " Comme cultivateurs, ils seront places sur les
habitations, dont les propridtaires, connus sous des
rapports de sagesse et de justice, leur prodigueront
tcus les soins que necessiteront leur situation, et
75
labor ;1 ■ all which he faithfully carried
out.
Miss Wright herself accompanied
these people and saw them satisfactorily
settled. The experiment thus brought
to a close cost hex* some sixteen thou
sand dollars; more than half her prop
erty.
M. Phiquepal d’Arusmont, of whom
I have already spoken as a teacher at
New Harmony, escorted Miss Wright to
Hayti; and when she returned, T learned
that they were engaged to be married.
Soon after, she left for France accom
panied by her younger sister: and there,
next year, two misfortunes happened to
her: the one her marriage, the other
her sister’s death. That lady, inferior
in talent to Frances, but unassuming,
amiable, and temperate in her views,
exercised a most salutary influence over
her. The sisters, early left orphans
and without near relatives, had spent
their lives together and were devoted to
each other. When I heard of the death
of the younger, Mrs. Hemans’s touching
fines rushed to my mind: —
" Ye were but two; and, when thy spirit passed,
Woe to the one — the last! ”
In that sister Miss Wright lost her
good angel. In her husband (gifted
with a certain enthusiasm which had its
attraction) she found, from the first, an
unwise, hasty, fanciful counselor, and
ultimately a suspicious and headstrong
man. His influence was of injurious ef
fect, alike on her character and on her
happiness; and certain claims made by
him on her property finally brought
about a separation. Whether there ever
was a legal divorce I do not know. I
saw but little of Madame d’Arusmont
after her marriage, and lost sight of
her altogether in the latter years of her
life.
The “ Fanny Wright ” of Free En
quirer days — her self-sacrificing phi
lanthropy overlooked, or reproached as
rank abolitionism — attained notoriety
not only in virtue of her theological
leur accorderont, suivant la loi qui guarantit et
protfege tous les citoyens, la moitid du produit de
leur travaux.”
�76
An Earnest Sowing of Wild Oats.
[Wy,
heresy, verging nearer to materialism
than mine, but also because of her expressed opinion that, in a wiser and
purer future, men and women would
need no laws to restrict and make con
stant their affections. I shared this
opinion, as a theory; but I think she
was not sufficiently careful explicitly to
declare, as I did: “ I have never recom
mended, and am not prepared to defend,
any sudden abolition of the marriage
law in the present depraved state of
society. That great and immediate
benefit would result from giving to mar
ried women independent rights of prop
erty, I am convinced; and I think such
a change in the old Gothic antiquated
statutes regarding baron and feme will
soon be made in this country. ’ ’ 1
We were both strongly opposed to
indissoluble marriage; favoring divorce
for cruel treatment and for hopeless un
suitability; 2 and adducing, in proof that
this merciful provision was of virtuous
tendency, the domestic morals of Cath
olic France and Spain and Italy, where
marriage was a sacrament binding for
life, which no secular law could reach.
My present opinions remain the same as
those expressed, in detail, on that sub
ject in a correspondence with Horace
Greeley (comprised in five letters each),
originally published in March and April
of 1860, in The New York Daily Trib
une; afterwards in a pamphlet which
had a very wide circulation. Greeley
undoubtedly persisted in holding to his
opinion then expressed, that marriage
was no marriage if it could be severed
by divorce; for, several years after
wards, he called on me, in his hurried
way, one morning before early break
fast, earnestly asking me if I could not
possibly supply him with a copy of that
pamphlet,, to be reprinted in the appen
dix to his Recollections of a Busy Life.
I told him I had no copy remaining, but
should do my very best to get one for
him. I did so, and it appeared as he
proposed; as much, I am quite sure, to
my satisfaction as to his.
An additional cause of the harsh fee
ing toward Miss Wright which was felt,
especially by the orthodox public, wa$
the somewhat bitter manner in which
she was wont to speak of what, like my
father, she used to call the “priest
hood.” Her public lectures, of which
she gave many throughout the country,
East and West, usually attracted large
crowds, thousands sometimes going away
unable to find even standing-room. In
one of these, she spoke of the clergy as
‘ ‘ a class of men whom no one, not ab
solutely bent on self-martyrdom, would
wish to have for enemies; but whom no
honest man ever had — ever could have
—- for friends.”
So sweeping a censure would place
me, with all my heresies, in the cate
gory of the dishonest; seeing that I
have found, throughout my life, nearly
as fair a proportion of friends in the
clerical profession as in any other call
ing.
I myself lectured, not only statedly aft
our hall on Sundays, but also in many
of the principal towns and cities of the
northern and northwestern States. I
met, during my travels, with many
amusing incidents, one of which occurs
to me.
The stage-coach was then the usual
mode of transit even on the chief routes^
and familiar conversation with chance
companions was more common there
than it is now in rail-cars. On one oc
casion I sat next to an old lady of grave
1 Free Enquirer, vol. ii. p. 200.
2 Here is a specimen of the arguments by which
then fortified my position : —
" The household sovereign little thinks, when he
issues capricious commands, exacts grievous service,
or employs tyrannical language, that George Wash
ington’s example will justify domestic disobedience.
Yet are not all women ' endowed with unalienable
rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pur
suit of happiness ’ ? Are not governments (matri
monial and national) ' instituted among men to se
cure these rights ’ ? Do not marriages as well as
governments ' derive their just powers from the con-
sent’ of the contracting parties? Whenever any
marriage (be it of a king to his subjects or a hus
band to his wife)' becomes destructive of these ends,’
is it not right that it should be dissolved ? Has
not ' all experience shown ’ that women (and sub
jects) ' are more disposed to suffer, while evils are
suflerable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed ? ’ And
is not the abolition of these forms often right, de
sirable, a virtuous wish ? Is not divorce, is not
revolution, a virtuous act, when kings and hus
bands play the despot ? ” — Free Enquirer, vol. iv.
p. 141.
Ji
■4
�1874.]
An Earnest Sowing of Wild Oats.
77
and anxious aspect. She expressed collection of natural curiosities and sci
great interest in the state of my soul. entific specimens. But I was suffered
Then she asked me : “ Are you going to close what. I had to say without in
terruption, except that, while I was
to our great city of Boston ? ’ ’
speaking, a stone, thrown from without,
“ Yes. ’ ’
"Great cities,” she added, " offer crashed through the casement of a win
great temptations; and there are many dow near by, and fell pretty close to
heretics in Boston. Are your religious where I stood.
Next morning I visited the museum;
opinions made up? ”
Unwilling to offend, I replied, in gen and Mr. Dorfeuil showed me, among his
eral terms, that I was a searcher after geological specimens, one a little larger
than a man’s fist, which a friend of his
truth.
‘ ‘ What church do you propose to had picked up in the court house the
evening before, and which now bore the
attend ? ”
" I shall probably visit more than quaint and pithy label: —
one.”
"But you have a preference, I sup
This Argument
pose? ”
was introduced through a window of the
Thus pressed to the wall, I confessed Cincinnati court house, in an attempt to
that I hoped to hear Dr. Channing.
put down Robert Dale Owen, while deliv
“Dr. Channing! ” she repeated, " Dr. ering there an address on Religion, March
Channing! I fear — I greatly fear, young 6, 1832.
sir, that you are one of the moral sort
In addition to lecturing and the ed
of men! ’ ’
"I hope so, madam,” I answered itorship of the' Free Enquirer, I con
quietly. " I should be sorry to believe trived, within the four years during
which that paper appeared, to do a
that I was not.”
Some of the passengers smiled, but good deal of extra work.
I wrote and published a duodecimo
my reply evidently horrified the good
dame. She lifted up her eyes, to heav volume of seventy or eighty pages, enti
en; and, probably regarding the case as tled: Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and
Plain Treatise on the Population Ques
hopeless, relapsed into silence.
My lectures were well attended, com tion. In this little work I took ground
monly listened to with deep attention; against the theory of Malthus that the
in the case of a few audiences, inter checks of vice and misery are necessary
rupted by applause. On one occasion to prevent the world from being over
only did I meet with anything like vio peopled. It had a circulation, in this
lent opposition. It was at Cincinnati, country and in England, of fifty or sixty
where the authorities had granted me thousand copies.
I also engaged in a debate touching
the use of the court house. I lectured
there twice. During the first lecture, The Existence of God and the Au
a member of an orthodox church rose, thenticity of the Bible, with the Rev.
indignantly denied some statement I Origen Bacheler. This extended to ten
had made, and called on the audience •papers each; which were published, first
to put me down. The audience re in the Free Enquirer, and afterwards
sented the interruption by loud cries of in two volumes, which had a fail’ circu
‘ ‘ Out with him! ’ ’ and I had to inter lation.
But the heaviest work I undertook
fere, to prevent his expulsion. Next
day the court house could not contain was in connection with an evening pa
half the crowd that assembled, for op per, called The New York Daily Sen-'
position was expected. I took the pre tinel, commenced in February, 1830, by
caution to obtain two moderators, Mr. a few enterprising journeymen printers,
Gazlay and Mi’. Dorfeuil, proprietor of in the interest of what was called the
a large museum containing an elaborate “ Working Men’s Party.” They were
�78
Dreams.
[July*
disappointed in an editor whom they
had engaged; and, at their request, I
agreed to supply his place for a few
weeks, till they could find another.
The few weeks stretched into months;
find finally to more than a year, during
which time I wrote for them, on the
average, upwards of a column of edito
rial matter daily. This I did partly be*
cause, after a time, I got interested in
editorial skirmishing, and partly to help
the young fellows in their undertak
ing; not charging them, nor receiving
from them, a dollar for my pains. I
concealed my name, always leaving
my articles with a friend, Mr. Samuel
Humphreys; and many were the spec
ulations as to “ who the devil it was
that was running the Workies’ paper.”
I wrote as one of the industrial classes;
and certainly had a good right so to do,
G9asidering my regular twelve hours’
daily labor.
ft was during the years 1828 ,and
1829 that I made the acquaintance of
that young English lady of whom I have
spoken, in one of my works on Spiritu
alism,1 under the name of Violet. Her
early death was a great grief to me.
But I have received a communication
(as to which the attendant circumstances
forbid me to doubt that it was truly
from her) to the effect that she has
been able to aid and guide me from her
home in the other world, more effectu
ally than if she had remained to cheer
and help me in this.
The readers of The Atlantic will be
better able to judge the cogency of evi
dence that forces on me belief in such
phenomena, when they shall have read
my next chapter.
Robert Dale Owen.
1 In The Debatable Land between this World
and the Next: New York and London, 1873; book
iv. chap, Hi., entitled, A Beautiful Spirit manifest
ing Herself.
,
•
' <
’
•-
DREAMS.
■-
'
'L*
f
j,
What do we call them ? Idle, airy things
Broken by stir or sigh,
Or else sweet slumber’s golden, gauzy wings
That into heaven can fly.
s
,
What may we call them? Miracles of might.
For such they are to us
When the grave bursts and yields us for a night
.■
Some risen Lazarus.
r
.
■
■
■;
i l'J-, ..
’■ . < /.
:• ,
■
1^ so- if .
'
\...
<
And if no trace or memory of death
Cling to the throbbing form,
And in a dream we feel the very breath
Coming so fast and warm,—
Then all is real; we know life’s waking thrill
While precious things are told,
ty, such a dream is even stranger still
' Than miracles of old.
Charlotte F. Bates.
�
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An earnest sowing of wild oats : a chapter of autobiography
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Owen, Robert Dale [1801-1877]
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Text
ANCIENT SACRIFICE.
BY
PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD
LONDON, S.E.
1874.
Price Threepence.
�London:
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, 16 LITTLE PDLTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, W-
�ANCIENT SACRIFICE.
O our modern intellects all killing of brute or
man, for the pleasure of the most High, seems so
absurd, that perhaps we wonder how such a notion
arose. Nor is the topic very simple. To compose
the idea of Sacrifice, or Sacred Act, or Act'of Faith
(Auto da Fe), streams have flowed together from
many sources.
A first primitive notion is this : that if for human
food we take the life of some tame animal, which is
in our power and under our protection, it befits to
ask permission from the Author of life. He gave
that precious gift alike to sheep and oxen, as to man ;
therefore we must not slay lightly and causelessly,
but only when we can ask bis blessing on the deed.
In the case of wild animals, the hurry and tumult of
hunting did not permit formalities of slaughter. All
that could then be done beforehand, was to offer some
preliminary prayer, that should sanctify the hunting.
But from the primary recognition of God as Lord
and centre of life, other things followed. In some
nations, the blood, as seat of life, was accounted
sacred. It then might not be used for food, but was
poured out religiously. Mystery being thus added
to the blood, a wild and base fancy was liable to
arise, that God, or some God, had pleasure in the
blood. Again, the man who had skill in slaughtering
easily added the religious character to his art, and
nothing was more natural than to remunerate his
services of butchery and prayer by a portion of the
slain beast. Hereby the original Popa (or cook?')
became identified with the Sacerdos; and expected
T
�4
Ancient Sacrifice.
to feed his household by perquisites from the altar.
Thus slaughter became a sacred act, performed by a
priest when possible. It next became the interest of
priesthood to urge sacrifice as a religious duty, that
is, the sacrifice of such animals as were approved for
human food. Moreover, vulgar fantasy conspired to
give currency to the belief, that the god himself
partook in the sacrifice, especially by its smell. On
this the Greek poets are often explicit, and in Genesis
we read, “ Jehovah smelled a sweet savour,” as
denoting his acceptance of Noah’s sacrifice (viii. 21.)
Human sacrifice undoubtedly had one of its sources
in the fantastic picture of a future world, where the
departed soul would need various human aids. In
the grave of a chieftain were buried not only his
armour and his weapons of war, but perhaps his war
horse too, slain to accompany him in the other world.
This we know to have been a modern practice among
North American Indians. But a great Scythian or
Tartar emperor required nobler victims. In the world
of spirits he must have, not a single war-horse, but a
body-guard of mounted youths: these must be slain
for his service; nay, according to Herodotus, to
accompany a king of the Scythians (the Scolotai in
Southern Russia) they ordinarily strangled one of his
concubines, his cup-bearer, his cook, his groom, his
page, his errand-bearer (or adjutant?), and a stud of
horses. We cannot doubt that the same fundamental
ideas suggested the slaughters in Dahomey, on the
death of a king. Cruel as we must deem these acts,
they were not malignant, and did not imply peculiar
atrocity in the agents. No life was regarded as of
any value, if the convenience of the king required its
sacrifice. As, at his command, a dutiful subject
rushed into certain death against a formidable enemy,
bo to accompany a king in the other world was an
ordinary duty of loyalty: nor had any one a conscience
against killing innocent brethren for this purpose.
�Ancient Sacrifice.
S
Perhaps, if we could know it, the slain were consi
dered blessed, and even thought themselves so.
Those killed religiously in Thibet by the arrows of
the boy called Buth, were accounted holy and
peculiarly fortunate, according to the testimony of
the Jesuit missionaries of 1661. Not very unlike is
the moral complexion of a practice among the ancient
Get®, or Goths of the Danube. A belief in immor
tality did but make human life cheaper to them.
Every fifth year they sent a messenger to their deity,
Zalmolxis, to inform him of their needs, and the
mode of dispatch was as follows:—He was tossed
into the air, and received on the points of three
spears. If he died forthwith, the god was accounted
propitious; but if the victim or messenger continued
alive, he was reviled as wicked, and another was sent
in his place. These accounts show how easily,
among men accustomed to slaughter in battle,
poetical fantasy may lead straight to human sacrifice.
The phenomena known to us concerning the Greeks
are rather peculiar. In their historical era, they
utterly repudiated human sacrifice, yet they unani
mously supposed it to have been practised by their
ancestral heroes on various occasions; and their
poets abound in moralisings about Agamemnon
slaying his daughter—the most signal case, but not
at all solitary. Yet the earliest poets show total
unacquaintance with such tales, which (with abund
ance of other sensational horrors) are mere after
invention, suggested probably by the practices of
other nations. Some of their neighbours had wild
fantasies of their own, as in the drowning of horses
to a river god. One may conjecture that, as in the
passage of an army both horses and men were apt
to be drowned, it was imagined that by a voluntary
sacrifice of &few horses to the honour of the god, his
jealousy would be satisfied, and a favourable passage
secured.
�6
Ancient Sacrifice.
This opens a new topic. Greeks and Hebrews
alike attributed to Superior Powers a certain jealousy
of anything pre-eminent in man or in terrestrial
things. Thus Polycrates, according to Herodotus,
being too prosperous, attempted (but in vain) to pro
pitiate divine jealousy by voluntary sacrifices. But
among the Greeks, this never reached to the point of
human victims.
The solemn religious sacrifice of select prisoners
of war was apparently normal to the Mexican races,
and may have been practised by some nations of the
Old World. It is imputed to the Carthaginians ; but
many circumstances lessen the credit of the charge.
Nevertheless, it is easy to see, liow in the interests of
humanity any priest or general might devise the
scheme of a formal sacrifice, in order to stop indis
criminate massacre of prisoners. Perhaps not enough
is known of the facts, to justify any definite theory.
That human sacrifice occasionally arose out of vows,
is more certain. The vow of a sacred spring (yer
sacrum), as recorded in Livy (xxii. 10), was limited
to the births among pigs, sheep, goats, and oxen, all
of which were ceded to the god under certain con
ditions : but it is too evident in Leviticus xxvii. 28,
29, that the Hebrew vow might legitimately include
human children or slaves; in which case the law (as
we now read it) expressly forbids the redemption of
a human being, but commands that he be put to
death, if he have been devoted to Jehovah. The
only practical illustration of this which we find in
the history is the case of Jephthah’s daughter; which
suffices to show that this was really the currently
received law of early Israel, however rare in practice
so extreme and rash a vow. But (what is here to be
observed) not the remotest idea appears, in any of the
cases of sacrifices hitherto adduced, of its being an
expiation or atonement for sin. No doubt, whatever
happened, was readily interpreted as eutailing some
�Ancient Sacrifice.
7
“ gift to the altar,” which was generally a gift to the
priest’s table. Thus the birth of a child in a Hebrew
family required the offering of a lamb, or at least two
young pigeons; not as atoning for any moral sin, but
(according to the notion of the early Hebrews) as
removing ceremonial uncleanness. The offering is
in itself analogous to a baptismal fee paid by a
Christian parent to the clergyman. So among the
Greeks there was sacrifice preliminary to marriage—
TrpnreXeta.
The same remark applies to the other Hebrew
sacrifices, which are spoken of as expiatory. They
never are supposed to remove moral sin, crime, or its
punishment. A thief was ordered to restore the
double ; but his offence having nothing of ceremonial
pollution, no ceremonial expiation was imagined.
Nor was it dissimiliar among the Romans. If any
thing iZZ-omenecZ occurred, such as a monstrous birth,
or a shower of stones, or a cow walking upstairs,
or a Vestal virgin being unchaste, the consul might
be ordered to “ allay the omens ” by a propitiatory
sacrifice; but only external mischief or ceremonial
indecorum was contemplated as thus removable.
The great day of Atonement among the Hebrews
was expiatory of accidental ceremonial neglects alone
(dyrovjuara, Heb. ix. 7). I believe that there is no
standing ground at all for an argument which should
impute to Hebrews, Greeks, or Romans—the ancient
nations best known to us—that any slaying of victims
could atone for conscious wilful sin or crime. When
ever misfortune came, they were liable to be tor
mented by the fear that they had unawares neglected
some honour to a god or goddess, some ceremonial
duty; as Meleager after the Calydonian boarhunt did
homage to other gods, but forgot Artemis: and whereever there was a complex ceremonial law, such forget
fulness might always be suspected. Hence there was
no end of such propitiations ; but in Greece and
�8
Ancient Sacrifice.
Rome they died out with superstitious fears. Temples
received endowments, and priests became too respect
able to propagate any self-invented follies for the sake
of increasing the sacrifices. Besides, contributions
to the treasury of temples had also become an esta
blished form of piety.
One other ground of sacrifice has to be named—
that which accompanied the making of a covenant.
The sacrifice was supposed to add force and security
to the promise or oath. How this should be, is
perhaps most clearly explained by the ancient Roman
practice recorded by Polybius (iii. 35), of swearing
“per Jovenn Lapidem,” as the vulgar called it. He who
was to swear, took a stone in his hand, and said : “ If
I intend or practise anything against this engage
ment, I pray that while all other men remain safe in
their own countries, under their own laws, with their
own modes of life, their temples, and their sepulchres,
I alone may be tossed out, as this stone is now.”
With these words he flings the stone out of his hand.
In the third book of the Iliad, when a treaty is to be
made, a sacrifice and libation of wine is essential.
Agamemnon slays the lambs, and the chieftains pour
wine on the earth. The people around pray,—
“Whoever shall first transgress the treaty, as this
wine is spilt on the ground, so may his brains be
spilt! ” We can hardly doubt that the same was
the meaning of the sacrifice: “ As these murdered
lambs fall helpless, so may he who breaks the treaty
be murdered.” In the Hebrew Pentateuch, Moses is
represented (Exod. xxiv. 8) as sprinkling the people
with “ the blood of the covenant.” But it can hardly
be too often repeated, that neither here or in the
sprinkling of the door-posts with blood of the Paschal
Lamb, does the remotest idea show itself of atone
ment for sin.
The modern Jews, I believe, unanimously uphold
that interpretation of their law, which alone is sug
�Ancient Sacrifice.
9
gested by intelligent criticism : moreover, the learned
and eloquent writer of the Christian “ Epistle to the
Hebrews ” appears fully to admit all that is said
above. He is indeed guilty of one great confusion,
occasioned by the ambiguous sense of the Greek
word biadf)KTi, which, primarily meaning a disposi
tion of affairs, is used either for any special arrange
ment, i.e., covenant, or for a man’s Last Will and
Testament, which is to take effect after his death.
It is undeniable that in Heb. ix. 16, 17, 20, the
writer has argued illogically by confounding Covenant
and Testament—and has bequeathed to Christendom
the absurd phrases, Old and New Testament. But he
is consistent in his declaration that the legal cere
monies, whether gifts or sacrifices, did not touch
“ the conscience ” (ix. 9) of the worshipper, and
could only, “ purify the flesh ” (ix. 13) ; and that it
is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take
away sins (x. 4, 11) ; nor does it anywhere appear
that he mistook the slaughter of the Paschal Lamb
for a sin-atonement, as perhaps we must admit that
Paul does, on comparing 1 Cor. x. 16,18, with 1 Cor.
v. 7. It is therefore the more astonishing that the
writer to the Hebrews or any of his Christian con
temporaries learned in the Hebrew law could have
dreamed of finding there a weight of analogy for the
wild idea, that the violent death of a righteous being
by the hands of wicked men can be construed as a
sacrifice pleasing to God, which purifies the conscience
of believers. Had he argued as follows: “ If the
blood of bulls, offered by a priest in the performance
of his duty, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh,
how much more shall the blood of a hol/y prophet,
wickedly shed, purify your consciences from a sense of
sin,” his words would not have been plausible. The
argument is visibly monstrous. But by throwing
into the back ground the fact that the murder of
Jesus was an odious crime, and of course, in every
�IO
Ancient Sacrifice,
Christian estimate, horrible to God, and converting
it into a voluntary offering of himself, he seeks to
glorify the event. “ Christ (says he) through the
Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God ”
(ix. 14) : and again, 25, 26, “ Nor yet that he should
offer himself often, . . . but once, ... to put away
sin by the sacrifice of himself.” It is notable how
such a writer becomes a victim to other men’s
blunders, error attracting error. Thus he quotes
from the Greek Septuagint, “ a body hast thou pre
pared me,” as the translation of Psalm xl. 6 of our
Version, which, on the contrary, agrees with the
Hebrew, “ mine ears hast thou pierced.” Out of this
spurious word “ body ” (x. 5, 10) he actually makes
an argument which reverses the obvious sense of the
Psalm. The Psalmist insists, “ God does not want
sacrifice, but scorns it: he wants obedience” but this
writer makes out that the Psalmist means, “ God does
not want the sacrifice of bulls and goats, but the
sacrifice of a spotless prophet.” The Psalm says
nothing about bulls and goats, but about sacrifice
and sin-offering absolutely. Now let us concede that
we have a right to forget the part which wicked men
took in the death of Jesus, and to treat it as his own
voluntary act; imagine for a moment that it had been
strictly so—(which ought to make this argument better,
as well as clearer)—and what will be the position of
things ? Jesus will be made out to have slain him
self “for the sins of many,” in order to “sanctify”
his disciples, and “ purify them from an evil con
science” by his “ one sacrifice for sins ” (Heb. x. 12,
14, 22). Would not every Christian shudder at
having such a historical fact put before him, as a
mode of salvation ? One is apt to seem slanderous
and blasphemous, in naming the possibility as a
hypothesis ; yet I repeat, it ought to make the argu
ment of the writer to the Hebrews a fortiori valid,
if there is any validity in what he has written. It does
�Ancient Sacrifice,
ii
appear most marvellous, that in protesting against the
Hebrew ceremonies as carnal and weak, because they
dealt only with impurities of the flesh, the Christian
teachers should have (for the first time perhaps in
the world’s history) propounded so very carnal and
revolting an idea, that the blood of a holy prophet
(whether shed violently or voluntarily) can justly
remove from our consciences a sense of sin and
sanctify us to God. We need not press the extreme
weakness of mind which could dwell upon his “ suffer
ing without the gate ” (Heb. xiii. 12). Nothing but
artificial inculcation of this doctrine (“ the blood of
Jesus ”) can sustain it among us. Every intelligent
English child is shocked when he first hears of
“ hoping pardon through his blood,” and wonders
how “ blood ” is concerned in the matter. The doc
trine, in fact, is lower by far in carnality than any
thing in the Jewish ceremonial; lower, perhaps, than
anything that we have a right to impute to Greeks
or Romans. Animal sacrifice is discarded, to esta
blish a Human sacrifice as cardinal to divine religion !
It is a sufficiently mean idea, that the gods love
the steam and smell of animal slaughter; but it is
still more shocking to imagine that the bloodshed of
a holy person is in any sense “ a sacrifice for sin,”
“ a propitiation ” (or mercy seat ? Rom. iii. 25), “ an
offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling
savour ” (Eph. v. 1), and that by a belief in it, or
by a trust and reliance upon it, we become delivered
from an evil conscience, that is, from a sense of God’s
displeasure for our sins. Are we really to believe,
that the most High was pleased by the crucifixion of
Jesus ? If it be said, “ No, he reprobated the deed,
but he was pleased that Jesus so meekly submitted to
an inevitable fate,” this is mere evasion; for, all com
parison of it to a legitimate sacrifice then vanishes.
If not death, but mere torture had been inflicted,
the “ meek submission ” remains as praiseworthy as
�12
Ancient Sacrifice.
before ; but, except as an example of conduct, nothing
here (be it death, or be it torture,) has any relation
to our consciences, or has the least tendency to
deliver us from a sense of guilt, if the remembrance
of past sins trouble us.
Unitarian Christians are in general unwilling to
admit that the “ atoning blood of Christ ” is taught
in the New Testament. It is not taught exactly as
Archbishop Anselm is said first to have defined it, as
“ compensation ” paid to God for remitting the punish
ment of man ; but that Paul, John the apostle in the
Revelations, the writer to the Hebrews, and the First
Epistle of Peter, inculcate purification by the sacrifice
of Christ, it seems useless to deny. That the Epistle
of James is wholly silent on this and other matters,
is true : and I think, it instructively shows, how
rapidly. James was isolated in holding fast to the
original doctrine of the Jerusalem Church. When
that Church perished corporately with Jerusalem in
the war of Titus, no authoritative protest remained
among Jewish Christians against the notions which
prevailed with the Gentile churches.
It is a remarkable fact, that in the modern Evan
gelical Creed this most untenable and most unspiritual
doctrine of Human Sacrifice is made paramount.
The Divinity of Christ is chiefly valued, because
without it “ the Atonement ” cannot be sustained.
But nothing can sustain “ the Atonement.” It must
be thrown over, equally with Eternal Punishment
and Vicarious Sin, to make Christian doctrines even
plausible to deliberate and impartial thought.
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Victorian Blogging
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Ancient sacrifice
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Newman, Francis William [1805-1897]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 12, vi, [2] p. ; 19 cm
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Publisher's list on numbered pages at the end.
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Thomas Scott
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1874
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Morris Tracts
Sacrifices
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COLONEL ‘ FORNEY’S
LETTER.
-r
V- £
REPRINTED FROM “ THE PRESS,” PHILADELPHIA, DEC. 2ND.
.1.
��n.
COLONEL FORNEY’S LETTER.
London, November 17, 1874.
Cosmopolitan London is in nothing more interesting
than in the variety of its numerous religious organizations. While the Church of England dominates
everything, so large is the population and so varied
the institutions of learning and benevolence, that
there is room for an infinite variety of thought and
organization. The Catholics of London are an im
mense body, and their edifices are numerous and
imposing.
I have often been impressed by the
earnestness with which, in passing through the ancient
churches and cathedrals, now in possession of the
Church of England, the followers of Rome denounce
the meanness which wrested from them these splendid
triumphs of architecture and placed them in charge of
the present reigning religion. In fact, the choicest
treasures of the widespread and absorbing Church of
England were originally the property of the Catholics,
•
�4
and it is difficult to deny to the latter their claim to
the credit of having founded these gorgeous structures!
Mr. Gladstone’s last pamphlet seems to have aroused]
the animosities of both sides, and it is curious to
notice that while he touches the sensitive nerve alike
of Catholics and Protestants, he has not yet received
that measure of Episcopal support which, in view of the
growing hostility in England to the Catholic religion,'
might have reasonably been expected.
He arraigns
the Church of Rome, upon authority sufficient to
himself, as claiming superiority over the civil system of
every government; and while this estimate or argument!
call it what you please, is differently answered by the
Catholics, the Church of England leaders accept it as
a substantial reinforcement of their own position,
while challenging the sincerity of Mr. Gladstone, whom
they accuse of intending ultimately to overthrow their
own establishment. The Catholics, including such
eminent prelates as Archbishop Manning and Mon-1
signor Capel, attack him with an acrimony which
shows the strength of his position.
Archbishop
Manning, in his letter to the New York Herald (by the
way, published in all the London papers the next day,
by the consent of Mr. Bennett), dated November io,
carries his reply to the late Liberal Premier to the
extent of declaring that the differences between them
have overcast a friendship of forty-five years. The
stoutest champion of Mr. Gladstone in this mel'ee will
be the German Protestant Empire, led by the
•
�A
5
dogmatic Bismarck, and there can be little question
that as the war of words increases it will crystallize into
a formidable conflict, both sides armed cap-a-pie.
However the present difficulty may end, it is easy to
■predict that all the Protestant elements will gradually
take sides against the Catholics, so that, although
Mr. Gladstone may be set aside, he will at least have
given coherence to elements long discordant. In
stating this case, I desire, without taking part in what
is evidently the beginning of a long and terrible
Struggle, and what may end in another great European
war, to be regarded as making a plain statement of
current history.
Another character seems to stand in a curious
relation to this bitter controversy between the
theologians. That is the strangely-gifted and wholly
original Moncure D. Conway, the head of the Material
istic congregation at South Place Chapel, Finsbury,
the temple in which for many years preached the
^celebrated W. J. Fox, some time member of Parliament
for a large manufacturing town, Oldham, and known
as the champion of the principles of Radical
Democracy. Mr. Conway is a Virginian, who came
here first as an advanced advocate of the Union cause
seven years ago. Having been previously well known
in our country for the great ability with which he
resisted the productions of slavery and took issue with
■he peculiar doctrines of the politicians in his native
State, the prominence with which he identified himself
�6
with the North in London soon gave him a large hold
among certain advanced thinkers who have always
sympathized with America. In this way he was called
to the pulpit at South Place, where he still continues
to preside, attracting large numbers every Sunday
morning by the peculiarities of his opinions and his
style. His ability is conceded to be of the highest
order, and when I sat under him last Sunday I could
not restrain my admiration of his genius. A tall,
spare man of about forty, with a most intellectual yet
ascetic face, closely resembling J ohn A. Kasson of
Iowa, member of the present Congress, his oratory is
quite unpretending, rarely rising to declamation, and
only when presenting his strongest point expressing
intensity. He is of the materialistic school, in fact a
bow-shot beyond John Stuart Mill in his Theism,
rejecting a personal Deity and insisting that what we
call God is within us—our inner conception, manifested
by our aspirations after truth. It was a novel sensation
to follow this brilliant student and scholar through his
intricate reasonings in support of this position, and to
mark the effect of his rhetoric upon his large and
thoughtful audience, most of whom belonged to the
better classes.
They accept his platform with
enthusiasm, and as most of them are people of rare
culture, their number is rapidly increasing. The
singing was exquisite, and the hymns, of which I here
transcribe two, were given with unusual sweetness and
power :
�7'
ANTHEM.
"We never, never will bow down
To the rude stock or sculptured stone.
We worship God, and God alone.
.
HYMN.
Everlasting ! changing never I
Of one strength, no more, no less,
Thine almightiness for ever,
Ever one Thy holiness ;
Thee eternal,
Thee all glorious, we possess.
■■■
.
.
Shall things withered, fashions olden.
Keep us from life’s flowing spring?
Waits for us the promise golden,
Waits each new diviner thing.
Onward! onward !
Why this hopeless tarrying ?
i
r
'<
•
-
Nearer to Thee would we venture,
Of Thy truth more largely take;
Upon life diviner enter,
Into day more glorious break ?
To the ages
Fair bequests and costly make.
By the old aspirants glorious,
By each soul heroical,
By the strivers half-victorious,
By thy Jesus and thy Paul,
Truth’s own martyrs,
We are summoned one and all.
'
'
‘‘‘
- -.. ’
.
»" "*
�8
By each saving word unspoken,
By Thy truth, as yet half-won,
By each idol still unbroken,
By Thy will, yet poorly done,
O Almighty!
We are borne resistlesson.
Mr. Conway receives ^250, or $1,250, a year for
preaching once on Sunday morning at South Place
Church, and probably almost as much for his
discourses on Sunday evening at Camden Town. He
is also the correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial,
and his letters are as peculiar as his spoken essays.
He is also a contributor on theological subjects to
several of the London scientific reviews, and a great]
favorite in society. Very naturally, he will be found
foremost in the attack upon the Catholics, yet he could
not be more trenchant than in his various criticisms
upon the Church of England. He admires Bismarck
immensely, and prefers the German to the French
example, having sympathized with the former in the
late war. He is a welcome visitor in many houses, is
a charming companion, and outside his philosophical
ideas is one of the most agreeable talkers. South
Place Chapel is 11 Liberty Hall ” in the freedom with
which all creeds and opinions are discussed within its
walls. Robert Collier, of Chicago, filled his pulpit
several times a few years ago, and the Indian reformer,
“ Chunder Sen,” there set forth his views. Next
Thursday Miss Downing, a Catholic, is to discuss in
�9
the debating society of the chapel, from her point of
view, “ Conventual Institutions, their use, &c.” I
could not help smiling on Sunday, after Conway had
denied the existence of a devil, and proclaimed his
doubt as to a personal Deity, insisting that every man
had his own God in his better actions, when among
the announcements of the proceedings of the coming
week he read a notice of a lecture to be delivered at
St. George’s Hall, by Dr. Zerffi, of the South
Kensington Museum, on the “ Concrete and Abstract
Nature of the Devil.” An American gentleman at
my side, who had been repeatedly startled by the
extraordinary positions of Mr. Conway, quietly re
marked, “ What is the use of lecturing about the devil,
when he has just been trying to convince us that he
has no existence ? ” My friend left the chapel a
great deal terrified at what he had heard, and doubtless
went into quarantine, to get rid of the contagion, in
the nearest Calvinistic church he could find.
J. W. F.
[Note.—Colonel Forney’s letter has been reproduced without
corrections; although some of his statements, especially as regards
money matters, are not correct.]
����
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Colonel Forney's letter
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Forney, John W. [1861-1868]
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 9 p. ; 17 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Reprinted from 'The Press', Philadelphia, December 2nd. Letter dated November 17,1874
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South Place Chapel
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1874
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Religion
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Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
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388
[September
CONTRASTS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY,
HE whole interest of history broadly what contrasts can be traced
depends on the eternal likeness between ancient and modern times,
of human nature to itself, and on leaving it to be inquired how far
the similarities or analogies which these may happen to affect any case
we in consequence perpetually dis in hand.
cover between that which has been
The very expressions, Ancient and
and that which is. Were it other Modern History, need a preliminary
wise, all the narratives of the past caution. Some nations may seem
would be an enigma to our under to be in nearly the same state in
standings ; for we should be with ancient and in modern times : as
out that sympathy which kindles the roving Arabs and Tartars ; per
imagination and gives insight; nor haps even the inhabitants of China
would the experience of the ancient and its neighbouring Archipelago.
world afford instruction or warning All such people are tacitly excluded
to him who is trying to anticipate from this discussion ; roving tribes,
futurity. With good reason, there because they have no history worth
fore, the greatest stress is ordinarily the name ; the Chinese nations, be
laid on this side of the question— cause their culture notoriously has
the similarities to be detected be become stationary, and, as we have
tween the past and the present. In no history of their earlier times, we
the world of Greece or Rome, of cannot detect such contrasts as may
Egypt or Judaea, Carthage or really exist between their present
Babylon, the same never-ending and former state. By modern
struggles of opposite principles were history we must chiefly mean
at work, with which we are so well Christian history, yet not so as to
acquainted in modern times. The exclude the Mohammedan nations.
contests between high birth and They too have their strong points
wealth, between rich and poor, be of contrast to the ancient military
tween conservatives and progres monarchies, and will be treated in
sists, to say nothing of the purely their turn; but their history is
moral conflicts of patriotism and certainly monotonous. One form
selfishness, justice and oppression, of government only—military des
mercy and cruelty, all show them potism—has arisen among them ;
selves in every highly developed and, owing to this meagreness,
community, in proportion to the there is less to say about them.
fulness of information which we The Mohammedan empires, as in
enjoy concerning it. The names chronology they more properly be
and the form often differ, when the long to the middle age, so in their
substance was the same as now. actual development appear to be
Nevertheless, it is equally needful midway between their prototypes in
to be aware of the points at which the ancient and their representatives
similarity ceases and contrast in the modern Christian world.
begins ; otherwise, our application Generally speaking, it is only be
of history to practical uses will be tween things in important senses
mere delusive pedantry. This, no alike that it is worth while to insist
doubt, is the difficulty, through on unlikeness. To contrast things
which no golden rule can avail to different in kind, is seldom needed;
help us. We are thrown back upon but where similarity is close, to
good sense to judge of each question point out dissimilarity is instructive.
I. The first topic which we may
as it occurs, and all that the writer
of history or the philosopher can do make prominent is contained in the
for the aid of readers, is, to state word slavery. In modern Christen-
�1874]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
dom slavery is ail anomaly. It liad
pined away and vanished in Europe
in proportion to civilisation. When
first it was established in the
American colonies, no one foresaw
the magnitude it would assume.
When the great Republican Union
arose, its founders would not admit
the word slave or any equivalent
into the Federal constitution. Be
lieving that slavery must soon die
out of itself, they declined any direct
controversy about it, and veiled
its actual existence under a general
term thafwould include apprentices,
criminals under sentence, or even
minors ; alas I not foreseeing that
the invention of the cotton-gin
would give a new money-value to
slaves, and generate a fanatical
theory which glorified slavery as a
precious institution. Hence without
a terrible civil war the proud ambi
tion of slave owners could not be
crushed. But the mighty price was
paid. Slavery in the Spanish and
Portuguese colonies all now seems
to be doomed. Simultaneously the
Russian dynasty has reversed its
policy. Having for several centuries
by a gradual succession of imperial
edicts depressed the peasants, first
into serfs and next into slaves, it
has raised them into free labourers
who have legal rights in the soil
and a status which the English
peasant may envy. The most en
lightened of the Mussulmans now
glorify their Prophet as a promoter
of freedom, a panegyrist of emanci
pation. In the judgment now of
all highly cultivated men, slavery is
an unnatural, unjust, dangerous
institution, doomed by the voice of
conscience, and suffrage of reason, to
total extinction ; though we grieve
to know the perpetual effort which
freebooters make, and will make, to
renew it; not least, the degenerate
offspring of Europeans, whenever
they get beyond the reach of
European law. But in the ancient
world neither law nor philosophy
nor religion forbade slavery; slightly
to regulate its worst enormities,
389
was all that religion or law at
tempted. Slavery was with them
not the exception, but the rule. No
philosopher theorised against it, no
philanthropist (if such we may call
any Greek or Roman) was ashamed
of it, no statesman dreamed of taking
measures to destroy it. The savage
who wandered over the steppes of
southern Russia needed a slave to
milk his mares, and blinded him
lest he should escape. The Lacedae
monian warrior, proud of freedom,
regarded public slaves as essential
to his existence, important alike in
the camp, on the field of battle, and
in his own city. Even the simple
and comparatively virtuous German,
in his forest hut, coveted and often
attained the attendance of slaves,
whose status perhaps was rather
that of a serf. To the leading
commercial states, Tyre, Corinth,
2Egina, slaves were a staple article
of merchandise. Chattels they were,
yet not in these clays mere cattle,
useful for their brute force and
for little beside. They were often
persons of greater accomplishment
than their masters, and this accom
plishment enhanced their price.
Some persons kept schools of slaves,
in which they learned music and
other elegant arts, or arithmetic
and bookkeeping, cooking and
domestic service, or agriculture and
its kindred branches ; or some other
trade ; of course, not for the slaves’
benefit, but to raise their market
able value.
Through the ferocities of war,
the ancient slave trade raged most
cruelly against civilised man. All
captives from an enemy, however
seized, became the booty of the
captor and liable to personal slavery.
Pirates even in peace prowled along
the coasts, and often carried off as
prey any promising children, hand
some women, or stout men, on whom
they could lay hands. In many
cases, the same ship played the part
of merchant and kidnapper, as occa
sion might serve. After the suc
cessful siege of an opulent town, it
�390
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
was not uncommon for the entire
population, young and old, of both,
sexes and of all ranks, to be sold
into bondage : whereby sometimes
the slave market was so glutted
that they might be had for a trifle.
It thus not seldom happened, that
the well educated and delicately
nurtured were degraded beneath
humanity ; and, dreadful as was the
personal suffering to individuals,
the result was in one sense more
favourable to slaves collectively,
than the very different state of
modern colonial bondage. Slaves,
as such, were less despised, and
there was not so great a chasm as
to moral feeling between them and
the free community. The freeborn
and instructed were probably better
treated in slavery than others ; aud
certainly were often set free by
benevolent persons or by grate
ful masters. There was no pre
judice against colour. In no two
countries was the actual or legal
state of slaves quite the same, and
in some places and times the transi
tion from slavery to unprivileged
freedom was not very great. This
may have been among the reasons
which blinded thoughtful persons
to the essential immorality of the
system, however modified ; yet it is
wonderful that Aristotle should de
fine a slave to be ‘ a living tool ’ (a
phrase which one might expect
rather from an indignant aboli
tionist), and not draw any inference
against the system as inhuman.
Nay, he says, that nature by giving
to the Greeks minds so superior,
marked out slavery to the Greeks
as the natural status for barbarians.
Barbarian Romans could not assent
to this doctrine ; yet no voice in all
antiquity uttered an indignant pro
test against slavery as such. In
one country only of the ancient
world—a part, or some reported, the
whole of India—was slave-labour
said to be unknown. A species of
slavery, serving some of the pur
poses of apprenticeship, may have
existed then, as recently, without
[September
being particularly noticed ; so too
may the practice of selling beautiful
maidens to supply the harems of
chieftains.
That Egypt, as well as India,
should have dispensed with an or
dinary slave class, was perhaps a
natural result of the system of
caste. Where a Pariah caste exists
there is no want of men for any
sort of rude or unpleasant labour,
such as the Greeks believed none
but slaves would undertake. The
strength of domestic animals, aided
by good roads, and, still more,
modern machinery, relieves man
kind from a thousand hard tasks,
which the ancients exacted from the
sinews of bondsmen. It is interest
ing here to observe by what pro
cess those oppressions are removed
which weigh direfully on the lowest
class of a civilised community.
Even when Solomon built his cele
brated little temple (about as large
as an English parish church), for
which cedars were cut in Mount
Lebanon by aid of the skilful
Tyrians, it was believed that he
used 70,000 bondsmen that bare
burdens, and 80,000 hewers of tim
ber. No mention is made of mules
or ponies to carry down the loads;
even asses might better have borne
the toil, if it had been matter of
simple carrying on a clear path.
Egyptian pictures represent vast
weights as drawn by the hands of
men, who tug simultaneously when
the conductor sings or waves his
wand.
Shall we suppose that
brutes, though stronger, could not
be trained to the co-operation re
quisite ? Be this as it may, the
strain fell on human sinews. Hewers
of wood and drawers of water are
phrases often conjoined to express
the suffering of bondsmen from
causes which in the present day in
volve no kind of distressing toil.
With us, if enormous masses of
granite are to be moved along a
prepared road, not even bullocks or
horses are often thought in place,
but the engineer supersedes them
�1874]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
by a steam-engine and one or more
chains.
It is recorded that, when the
Spaniards first learned the wealth
of the American mines, their ava
rice pressed the unhappy natives so
severely as to kill them in great
numbers by the toil of ascending
and descending the mines with
heavy burdens. Of course, our
most rudimental machinery im
mensely relieves or supersedes this.
Yet, even to this day, a miner’s life
is so revolting to one who has not
been, as it were, born and bred in
it, that we cannot wonder at the
ancient doubt whether any but a
slave would work in a mine. For
this purpose, criminals and prisoners
of war were used by the Egyptians,
which would seem to be the only
form of slavery in that kingdom ;
and their labour is described as of
the most galling cruelty. Whether
the Indians had slaves in their
mines, perhaps the Greeks were not
well informed enough to ascertain.
To labour in the dark, and under
ground, may appear to most of us
an unbearable infliction, but modern
experience proves that, by aid of
machinery, it may be so lightened
as to be chosen voluntarily for gain.
To a thoughtful Athenian or Roman
it may have seemed doubtful whe
ther civilization was not purchased
too dearly, for its maintenance was
thought to require the permanent
degradation of, perhaps, the majo
rity of a nation into the unmanly
and demoralising state of bondage.
But this was an exaggeration, true
only of a brilliant but luxurious and
unsound state of society. In the
simpler and earlier order of things,
the labours of the field and work
shop were performed by freemen;
but, with the development of the
military spirit, and owing to the
small extent of a homogeneous na
tive population, the freemen were
drafted off for soldiers, and their
place was supplied by captives of
war. This undue predominance of
military institutions, especially in
391
the Roman world, engendered and
fostered preedial slavery. Under the
Emperors, through the comparative
cessation of wars and piracy, the
slave-trade became far less active,
and imperial legislation, in many
ways, regulated the state of slavery,
so that very great cruelties became
rarer, and some exceptional forms
of cruelty impossible ; nevertheless,
so much the more was a general
grinding degradation riveted upon
the masses of the country people.
Such an idea as the common Rights
of Men was nowhere sounded forth.
What then was never heard is now
an axiom, that all men, of every
class, of every nation, of every
complexion and climate, have some
indefeasible rights, which neither
conquest nor legislation, nor sale by
parents can take away. Herein lies
an enormous difference between the
past and future. Whatever the
origin of human races, wenow recog
nise all menas morally homogeneous,
and, in a just state, subject to a
single code of law. On the con
trary, antiquity admitted the prin
ciple of favoured races, even among
freemen. This may deserve a few
detailed remarks.
II. The first step upward from
slavery is into serfdom. Indeed
the former always tends to merge
itself into the latter, when the
slave trade is inactive. If slaves
can only be had from the natural
home supply, the value of the
workman immediately rises. It
becomes fit once the interest of the
master, and the duty of the law
giver, to secure the due increase
of the working population, and the
maintenance of their full strength.
In a tranquil society, developed only
from within, this would secure the
transition to serfdom, which is com
plete when families of labourers are
inseparable from an estate. But
besides the slaves and serfs, many
ancient nations, great and small,
recognised ranks very diverse, sub
ject even to different systems of
law. A ruling race was sure to be
�392
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
a privileged order, whose liberties
with the property or persons of
others were ill repressed by law ; and
of the rest, some were able to rise,
others not; some without political
lights, but endowed with full social
rights ; others treated as foreigners.
The principle may be seen alike
in despotic Persia, in oligarchical
Lacedamion and Rome; in part, also,
in democratic Athens. In some
sense it was superseded by a system
of caste, where that existed, which
by no means implied necessarily a
primitive difference of race. But
where an empire was founded by
conquest of numerous cities and
tribes, diverse in race and language,
the distinction of race and race
arose naturally, and was unblameable while the revolution was still
recent. But meddling and jealous
legislation endeavours to enact as a
law for ever that which ought only
to be a temporary caution of the
executive government—a caution
which the timidity of newly-seized
power is never apt to neglect.
Since our renewal of the East
India Company’s Charter in 1833,
the natives of India are by law put
on a perfect equality with the Bri
tish born, and were declared admis
sible to every office of power except
free; that of Governor-General, and
Commander-in-Chief. Yet every
one knows how little danger there
is that the executive will be too
eager to fill up its appointments
with born Indians. If, for security
against this imaginary danger, it
were forbidden by express laws, this
would forbid the barriers which
separate the conquered from the
conquering race to decay with time ;
and if to this were added a law
against intermarriage, it would ex
hibit anew the mischievous prin
ciples of exclusion, which have so
often sustained the galling iniqui
ties of conquest. It is a fallacy to
insist that because some races of
men have greater talents for go
vernment than others—even if the
fact be conceded—therefore they
[September
are entitled to award to themselves
peculiar legal privileges and rights.
A dominant race is never liable to
think too highly of its subjects and
too meanly of itself; the opposite
error is uniformly that from which
mankind has suffered. If the race
which is in power has greater capa
cities, it will outstrip the rest in a
fair field, without advantage from
the law. Each individual has ad
vantage already in the very name
of his nation. But jealousies and
pride in general prevailed. Most
ancient empires split up societies
into sharply distinguished orders
of men ; and as there was no
sudden chasm, they were the less
startled at the depth to which hu
manity was sunk in the unfortunate
slave.
We have less reason for boasting
than for mourning and contrition;
for our practice is by no means
commensurate with our theory ; but
European theory is now far more
humane than that of the ancients.
No high executive officer, no judge,
no member of a high council, no
authority in jurisprudence, will
justify giving to the members of a
ruling race any indefinite claims for
service, facilities foi’ oppression, or for
evading rightful obligations. What
ever our difficulties in administering
justice where a population is hetero
geneous, we loudly and unshrink
ingly avow our duty of abiding by
and enforcing equal law. This, wo
may feel confident, will henceforth
be the received principle of the
modern world, wherever European
influence has once been dominant.
Those powers who fail of enforcing
their own principle will not the less
successfully indoctrinate the sub
ject population with it, perhaps to
their own overthrow; for to the
enthroning of the idea of Equal
Rights to all races, events are sure
to gravitate, when the rulers them
selves enunciate it; nor can men
in power recede from a principle
which all the intellect of their own
nation proclaims and glorifies. This
�1874]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
is a great contrast between us and
antiquity.
III. One may not pass by a topic
closely akin to the last, although
prudence forbids any great confi
dence of tone concerning a move
ment which, is but in embryo. A
cry arises, not only against depres
sion of any Races, but also against
the depression of one Sex. Every
imperial power uses lavishly the
lives of its young men as soldiers.
Imperial England lavishes them also
in emigration and in nautical dan
gers. Hence women have the toil
of self-support, and, perhaps, the
double toil of family support, thrown
upon them; and in nearly every
market it is discovered by themthat their male rivals have unfair
advantage. Hitherto women have
suffered in silence, and with little
interchange of thought. The novel
fact is now, that in the freest coun
tries the sex is the most loudly
avowing discontent with its poli
tical depression. The movement
already belongs to so many coun
tries of Christendom, as to indicate
that it is no transient phenomenon,
but has deep causes. Partial suc
cess in so many places (as in the
municipal franchise of England) is
a promise that the movement must
expand into greater force. Hitherto
women of the higher ranks have
often held executive power, directly
as queens, or indirectly as mis
tresses of kings ; or, again, as vice
regents, or representatives of barons
and squires, their husbands; but
women from the families of private
citizens, who are the mass of every
nation, have hitherto been utterly
without political power, and rarely
hold any subordinate public posi
tion, except the worst paid. In
the American Union they have
rebelled against this state of things
for a full quarter of a century.
The force of mind and grasp of
knowledge which many women dis
play in various spheres of thought,
and not least in politics, are a fact
which cannot count for nothing ;
393
so that one who shuns to be rash
may yet forebode that the countries
which allow a political vote to un
educated men will not long refuse
it to the mass of educated women.
In this prospect we most surely see
a remarkable and hopeful contrast
of the Future to the Past, when
it is considered how large a part of
the miseries of history have arisen
from the sensualities and cruelties
of the male sex. Of course, we
know that, women, equally with
men, can be corrupted by the pos
session of power, and can be ex
quisitely cruel; but this is rare,
and somewhat abnormal. In gene
ral the sex is more tender-hearted
and refined; and their collective
exercise of power would forbid
many a war, and be generally fa
vourable to the side of humanity.
But wishing here to speak rather
of what is positively attained and
recognisable by all minds, than of
that which is only probable, I stay
my pen from further remark on
this topic.
IV. There is a signal contrast of
external circumstances between the
older and newer state of things
herein; that nearly every ancient
civilised state looked out upon a
barbarism immeasurable in mass
and power; barbarism, on which it
could never hope to make a per
manent impression, and by which
it might well fear io be swallowed
up. Tartary was the mightiest
realm of Barbaria. Gibbon has elo
quently and instructively detailed
the causes which made the Tartars
pre-eminently familiar with the art
of campaigning and guiding the
marches of immense hosts. At no
time known to us can the Tartar
nations have been so low in the
scale of civilisation as numerous
tribes whom we call savages. They
always had an abundance of sheep
and goats, and an extraordinary
number of horses. They always
had the art of mining for iron, and
forging swords. Even the inven
tion of steel was ascribed to north-
�394
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
ern people, otherwise backward in
civilisation. Waggons were brought
to a high state of perfection, and
over vast steppes of Tartary were
able to traverse the open country
without roads. This implies suffi
ciently good carpentry, and no lack
of needful tools. The whole nation
being moveable, it was hard to
limit the magnitude of a Tartar
army. The northern region could
not be coveted by the southerners,
and was practically unconquerable
by them. It fell under their sway
only -when some Tartar dynasty
conquered a southern people, and
still retained the homage of its na
tive realm. This has happened
again and again with Tartar con
querors of China. At the earliest
era of which we have notice of
Persia from Greeks or Romans, it
is manifest how powerful were the
Tartar sovereigns who interfered
in Persian domestic politics, when
they did not affect direct con
quest. This eternal conflict of the
Tartars and the Persians is sym
bolised in the mythical Turan and
Iran. In our mediaeval period a
Mogul dynasty seated itself in India,
two successive dynasties of Turks,
the Seljuks and the Ottomans, over
whelmed Asia Minor, and the exist
ing dynasty of Persia is esteemed
Tartar. Such is the peculiarity of
Asiatic geography, that it may seem
difficult to boast of civilisation
being ever there safe from bar
barism. Nevertheless the Tartar
power is virtually broken by the
wonderful development of Russian
empire. Mistress of the Amoor,
and. exercising control over Khiva,
Russia shuts the Tartars in on both
sides, and teaches them the su
premacy of civilised force in ways
so intelligible, that no future sove
reign of Tartary (if all were united
under one chief) could fancy him
self the chief potentate on earth.
Southern nations are no longer
palsied by the idea that their north
ern invaders are innumerable. Geo
graphy discloses their weakness as
[September
■well as their strength ; even China
has less to fear from Tartary than
in ancient times.
But when we approach Western
Asia and Europe, the contrast is
far more marked and important.
The Gauls, who temporarily over
whelmed Italy, and a century later,
Greece, are described as an ex
tremely rude people; so are the
Scythians, whose cavalry was gene
rally formidable to Persia, and to
Rome. Even Germany, Hungary,
and the regions south of the
Danube, often threatened overthrow
to the civilisation of their southern
neighbours. Imperial Rome for
several centuries stood at bay
against the Germans, but could do
little more; and when her best-in
formed men had begun to learn the
intractable character and vast ex
tent of the more or less closely
related tribes, despair for civilisa
tion was apt to seize them. Even
under the splendid military reign
of Trajan, conqueror of Dacia, the
historian Tacitus, relating a war in
which Germans slew one another,
earnestly hopes that the gods will
increase this fratricidal spirit, since
‘ the vates of the Empire pressing
us hard ’ there is no better prayer
to offer. Apparently he regarded it
as inevitable that the savage would
break the barriers of the Roman
provinces and sweep away all
culture before him ; which, in
deed, is the very thing which hap
pened, through the essential error
of Roman policy and the disorgani
zations incident to mere military
rule.
If a civilised power can entirely
subdue a barbarian neighbour, it
may, at considerable expense, per
haps civilise him ; but when the
nature of the country forbids this,
it is unwise in the more civilised to
admit a common frontier. Augustus
aspired to conquer Germany, and
actually pushed the frontier of the
empire to the Elbe, but the insur
rection under Arminius drove him
back to the Rhine ; then at last he
�1874]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
learned that, through her swamps
and forests and the wild nature of
her people, Germany was not worth
having, and that moderation is an
imperial virtue. But Germany and
the Empire were still conterminous,
though the frontier was pushed
back. The thing to be desired was
to sustain between them—as a sort
of buffer that should break German
assault — a half-civilised highspirited people, intelligent enough
to estimate Roman power, proud of
alliance and honours, but aware of
its essential inferiority to the mighty
Empire. Such a people, well armed
and -well supported by Roman re
sources, and taught all the arts of
Roman war, would have been worth
half-a-dozen armies; but to main
tain in them a free spirit was essen
tial to success, and this free spirit
was dreaded by the Romans as
contagious. Agricola planned to
conquer Ireland (says Tacitus, who
seems to approve the policy) lest
the knowledge that the Irish were
free should make the Britons less
contented in vassalage. It was
because the Romans systematically
broke the spirit of every nation
whom they conquered, and allowed
of none but imperial armies, that
the neighbour barbarians found no
resistance in the provinces, when
(from whatever cause) imperial
troops were not at hand. Thus
little good resulted to the world’s
history from the Roman conquest
of the ruder populations of Gaul,
or from the complete conquest of
Britain and of Dacia. Even wild
animals (says the Caledonian orator
in Tacitus), if you keep them caged
up, forget their courage. The
Britons and the Dacians were not
merely tamed; they were cowed
and unmanned. To have subdued
all Germany in this way would
have been useless. Charlemagne at
length undertook the problem,
which had been too hard for Trajan
and Marcus Antoninus ; but he was
already as much German as
VOL. X .----NO. LVII,
NEW SERIES.
395
Gaulish, and his chief struggle was
against Saxony. The next great
gain to civilisation was in Poland—
in Hungary — and in Southern
Russia. When Herodotus wrote,
the whole region to the north of
the Black Sea acknowledged the
sovereignty of roving equestrian
tribes ;only agriculturists of foreign
origin were settled among them in
Podolia and in the Crimea, who
paid them tribute. These, it may
be conjectured, were the nucleus of
the Ostrogoths, who afterwards
appeared in great strength in that
region, and from it migrated into
the Roman empire. Other tribes
filled the vacuum, but became agri
culturists like the Goths ; so that
the Russians easily retained them
under settled institutions. To Peter
the Great, in the last century, we
owe the establishment of the whole
of European Russia as industrious
people under well organised Go
vernments. Even Siberia, along
the high-roads which have been
reclaimed from the interminable
forests, has a settled population
attached to its own soil and proud
of its name. In the course of the
last thousand years, in Mongolia
itself, the same process has gone on,
of restricting the limits of the rov
ing tribes. In numbers they must
now be ever inferior to the settled
populations, and every development
of the art of war throws them
farther and farther behind. Much
more is Europe secure from all
alarms of the barbarian from with
out. Our dangers are solely w’hen,
by bad national institutions and
selfish neglect of our home popula
tion, we allow barbarism to grow up
from within.
V. Another contrast to be ob
served between the ancients and the
moderns lies in the number of great
states which have simultaneously
attained a robust civilisation, no one
of which is able to establish a uni
versal dominion. This was for two
or three centuries a cause of turbuE E
�39 G
('out easts of Ancient and Modern History,
lent yet thriving progress in Greece;
bnt all the Powers were there on
too small a scale to be able to resist
the great monarchies. No doubt
in China, in India, in Persia, civi
lised states on a grand scale existed
simultaneously; but each was a
separate world. Possibly in China
and in India at an early time there
was a complex internal struggle
similar to those of which we know
in Greece and in Europe ; but as far
as is recorded, the history of each
great country went on independently
of the other countries ; just as the
Roman and the Persian Empires,
though conterminous, were little
affected in their internal concerns,
each by the other. Ancient free
dom was generally on a small scale.
According to Aristotle, no Polity
could consist of so many as a hun
dred thousand citizens. A state
with only so many, may be con
quered by foreign force, in spite of
wise policy and the utmost bravery;
but to a homogeneous people of
twenty or thirty millions this can
only happen through the gravest
domestic errors. In ancient times
the attempt at widespread conquest
was unhappily more and more pros
perous as time went on. A succes
sion of great empires is displayed
before us, Assyrian, Median, Per
sian, Macedonian, Roman, each
larger than the preceding. The
last swallowed up into itself the
whole cultivation of the West and
much of its barbarism : each empire
in its turn was practically isolated,
independent and wholly self-willed,
aware of no earthly equal. A victim
of Roman tyranny scarcely had a
hope of escaping into the remote
Persia, any more than into the bar
barous populations which girt the
empire north and south. Under
despotism thus uncontrolled, all that
was manly and noble, all genius and
all the highest art, with love of
country, died away: the resources
of civilisation were crumbling and
sensibly declining, even during the
century which produced the very
[September
best Roman Emperors, Vespasian,
Titus, Trajan, Hadrian and the two
Antonines, before any Gothic in
road ; hence, when the barbarian
triumphed, what remained of the
precious fabric fell as in a mass.
But the rivalry of great powers in
Europe effectively sustains all vital
principles. Despotic and wilful as
Russia may seem, she is really so
anxious to secure the good opinion
of Europe, that she does not disdain
to subsidize foreign newspapers as
her advocates. The dynasties col
lectively form a sort of European
Commonwealth, which displays
great jealousy if one make encroach
ments on another. Thus in their
external action they encounter muoh
criticism, remonstrance, or severer
checks, and nevei’ think that they
are irresponsible. Even as to their
internal concerns, in which none
■will endure that another should in
terfere with diplomatic suggestion
or advice, they cannot be exempt
from the criticism of European
literature. For in this greater
Commonwealth there is in some
sense a common literature. Modern
languages more and more assume a
form in which it becomes a deter
minate problem, and not an ardu
ous one, to translate from one into
the other. Through travellers, fixed
embassies, and newspaper corre
spondents, an atmosphere of common
knowledge is maintained, largely
pervaded by a common sentiment,
which, in proportion to the extent
of education, inevitably affects the
minds of public men. Moreover,
in all the foremost states, and
especially those in which despotism
and bureaucracy predominate, a
severe cultivation is thought neces
sary to high office. A despotism
like that of Turkey, recent Naples
or recent Spain, which accounts
education to be needless for its
functionaries, is understood to be
decaying, and is despised by the
other powers. So large a moral
and mental action of state on state
was unknown to antiquity. In it
�1*74]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
we have a valuable guarantee for
the maintenance and preservation
of anything good which has been
earned by civilised effort. In this
connection we ought not to pass
over the joint cultivation of science
by all the leading nations of Chris
tendom. The material sciences have
emphatically become ‘ sinews of
war ’ as well as means of wealth ;
so that no imperial power can de
spise them. Each great country has
its peculiar objects or facilities of
study, and what is discovered in
one is studied and must be learned
by others. Science is notoriously
cosmopolitan, and steadily aids the
diffusion of common thought and
common knowledge upon which
common sentiment may reasonably
establish itself.
VI. We have not at all abandoned,
scarcely have we relaxed, the rigid
formalities by which imperial power
seeks to elevate its high personages
and maintain the steadiness of its
ordinances. Nevertheless, with the
stability of freedom under law, and
the growth of a scientific spirit,
criticism of national institutions
becomes more and more fundamen
tal, in a country so free as England.
Hence it is scarcely credible that
we can long continue to be, what
we are, a marked exception to the
rest of Christendom in regard to
the tenure of land. So far as we
know of antiquity, conquest and
conquest alone, unmodified by con
siderations of moral right, enacted
the landed institutions. Out of
unequal rights in the soil, more than
out of any other single cause, springs
social depression to the excluded,
and often a wide pauperism. In all
Europe like causes produced like
results, and nearly everywhere the
actual cultivators of the soil were
oppressed in various degrees ; but
time has in most countries largely
altered their position for the better.
In less than a hundred years an
immense change has passed over
the Continent. In Italy, Switzer
land, and Spain, things were never
397
so bad as elsewhere, nor perhaps in
Holland and parts of Germany.
Norway retains a state of equality
unbroken by conquest. France and
Prussia, Hungary and Austria,
Poland, Sweden, and Russia, have
all endowed the peasantry with de
finite rights in the soil. Over the
entire breadth of the Continent the
principle has now established itself,
which permits of arguing politically,
as all will argue morally, that land,
water, and air are gifts of God
to collective man, necessary to life,
and therefore not natural possessions
of individuals, except as actual cul
tivators. Small states of antiquity,
sometimes in favour of their own
citizens (generally at the expense
of another nation), avowed a doc
trine of each family having a right
to land: even this was exceptional.
No doctrine concerning land was
propounded by moral philosophy ;
no practical recognition of right in
the cultivator, as such, was ever
dreamed of by great imperial
powers; no dogma concerning it was
put forth by a hierarchy, even
after a Christian apostle had writ
ten, that the cry of those who sow
and reap the fields, whose hire the
powerful keep back by fraud, had
entered the ears of the Lord of
Hosts. When moral philosophy
deals with the question of property
in land, as it already deals with
that of property in human bodies,
the effect on all civilised nations
will be immense; and it is now
pretty clear that such a develop
ment must come, and that shortly.
The English aristocracy will shriek
and storm, as did the American
slaveholders. A Marquis lately
spoke of certain landed property as
sacred, because it had been sanc
tioned by Parliament. Just so, it
was pleaded that slaves were A
sacred property because they had
been bought, and because slave
owners had passed laws to sanction
it.
Such arguments are good
enough for those who hold on by
the law of might, but are contemp-
�398
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
tible to all who appeal to the law of
right. They avail to show that it
is prudent and equitable in the
state to give an ample consideration
whenever it dispossesses an indi
vidual ; but never can establish that
it is right to keep a whole nation
of cultivators living from hand to
mouth, without any fixed tenure of
the soil, without roof or hearth of
their own, or increased profit from
increased diligence in culture. If
England were in this matter at the
head of Europe, existing inequali
ties might last for centuries longer.
But since she lingers ignominiously
behind all the best known powers,
—and while Ireland is her old
scandal, the Scottish and English
peasants have no better security
whatever in their tenure, and are ac
cidentally superior, chiefly through
manufacturing and commercial
wealth—since, moreover, the Eng
lish colonies entirely renounce that
doctrine of land which English
landlords have set up, — finally,
since in India the supreme power
avows and enforces a widely dif
ferent doctrine ; the existing system
is destined to a fundamental change.
Precisely because those who claim
reform feel towards the landlord
class as tenderly as abolitionists felt
towards slave-owners—making all
allowance for their false position
blamelessly inherited,—desiring to
make the change as gentle to them
as public justice will permit; there
fore the more decisive and unhesi
tating is the appeal to moral prin
ciple in the political argument. In
this resolute appeal to morals is
involved a great contrast to the
state of things possible in any
ancient power, where slavery, serf
dom, or caste existed. A claim of
landholders which rests on the
enactments of a Parliament from
which all but landholders were
systematically excluded for cen
turies, is signally destitute of moral
weight. They who use it do not
know that they are courting conmpt. Unless they will undertake
[September
to establish that the claim is morally
just, they effect nothing but to show
that, having stepped into legislative
power, they have used it for their
private benefit; while, by excluding
all but their own order, they be
trayed their own consciousness of
malversation. This, in part, relates
to past generations, but, of course,
the alleged rights are hereditary
only. The evil deeds of predeces
sors have wrongfully enriched the
present holders. In every case, it
is by moral argument that they will
have to be established, if established
they can be, against the consensus of
all Europe, tlie American Union,
the other British colonies, and the
Anglo-Indian empire.
VII. Last, perhaps not least, of
the general moral contrasts which
will make a signal difference be
tween the ancients and the moderns,
is the elementary education of the
masses of every community. This
education, no doubt, is as yet chiefly
in the future. In the late American
civil war the ‘ mean whites ’ of the
South were so ignorant that only by
seeing and feeling the force of Nor
thern armies could they learn that
there was any greater power in the
world than their own State. Germany
and the American Union having de
clared for, and vigorously carried out,
the education of the lowest people, it
is morally certain that first England,
next Austria and France, will follow.
Partial interests, religious animosi
ties, old prejudices, timid forebod
ings, will impede, but can only de
lay, the movement; though a century
may be needed before it is strictly
European. When it is established
that there are to be no slaves, no
serfs, no dangerous class of citizens,
the problem cannot be worked out
with the vast masses of ignorant
freemen. Hence general national
education is one of the certainties
of the future. It is the last con
trast of modern and ancient times
which it is expedient to treat in
one article.
Francis W. Newman.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Contrasts of ancient and modern history. [Part 1].
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Newman, Francis William
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 388-398 ; 22 cm.
Notes: Printed in double columns. Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country was a general and literary journal published in London from 1830 to 1882, which initially took a strong Tory line in politics. From Fasier's Magazine 10, no. 57 (September 1874]. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. First of a 4-part article deploys contrasts in terms of periodisation, slavery, serfdom, gender, the contrast between barbarity and civilization, the application of science and land tenure.
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[s.n.]
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1874
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C223
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
CRUELTY AND CHRISTIANITY:
A LECTURE,
DELIVERED BY
ALLEN D. GRAHAM, Esq., M.A.,
UNDER THE AUSPICES OR THE
“SUNDAY EVENINGS FOR THE PEOPLE,”
AT THE
FREEMASONS’. HALL, LONDON,
On SUNDAY, NOV. 9th, 1873.
PUBLISHED
NO.
BY
THOMAS
SCOTT,
II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD.
LONDON, S.E.
1874.
Price Sixpence.
�SUMMARY.
INTRODUCTORY.---- MEDIEVAL CRUELTY.—TO A GREAT EX
TENT DUE
TO
THE
CORRUPTION
OF CHRISTIANITY.----
THIS CORRUPTION TO BE SEEN IN THE DEVELOPMENT
OF
THREE
IDEAS,
WHICH
DIRECTLY
OR
INDIRECTLY
FOSTERED A CRUEL SPIRIT.—THESE IDEAS IRRATIONAL.
—THE CHRISTIANITY OF CHRIST.
�MW
CRUELTY AND CHRISTIANITY.
AN’S cruelty to man ! It is not a pleasant
subject. You will say, perhaps, “ Why take
it ? ” My answer is, because there is a great deal
to be learnt from it. The facts about which I propose
to speak to you are some of the most instructive
facts in history; facts, that is, from which we may
draw very important inferences. Many persons read
history without being instructed. They take the
facts and the dates and pack them away in their
brains on the shelf called memory, labelled and
arranged like pots of jam in a cupboard, and they
are proud to bring them out occasionally at a
moment’s notice to show to company : but they don’t
use their facts, they never eat their jam ; they don’t
compare their facts together so as to draw conclusions
from them; they have a two here and a two there,
but they never put two and two together and so
arrive at four. But he who wishes that his know
ledge should become wisdom, that instead of being
sterile and barren it should be the fruitful mother of
useful lessons, he treats his facts as children treat their
toy letters, that is, as having no particular interest
in themselves, but as capable of being so sorted and
arranged as to produce words full of meaning and
value. And this is my apology. If I were going to
talk of facts only I would choose pleasant ones, if we
were not going beyond letters you should have pretty
ones ; but I hope to put my letters together, and
then, although I confess that taken singly they are
M
A
�4
Cruelty and Christianity.
black and ugly, I expect that we shall be able to
spell out from them many beautiful words—such as
these, Tolerance, Love, Christianity.
But first of all I will tell you in two or three
sentences what is the general scope and purpose of
this lecture. I want to give you what I take to be
the explanation of one of the strangest facts in
history. This fact, one of the strangest facts in all
history, is the cruelty of the Christian world a few
years ago. Please to notice exactly the expression,
the Christian world a few years ago; that is to say, we
are not going to think about barbarous savages upon
whom the light of religion and civilisation has never
shone, or of tyrants whom the intoxication of abso
lute power has brutalised to insanity ; we are not
going to think of Europe in the Dark Ages, when, it
might be objected, the voice of humanity was drowned
in violence, and the voice of Christianity as yet
but faintly heard ; but we are to think of a world that
knew something of order and culture, a world that
for a thousand years had professed the Christian
faith, a world in which the Christian Church was
the chief institution—Christian Europe two and three
centuries ago. And the cruelty of Christian Europe
at that time was so gross, the indifference to human
suffering so complete, that my great difficulty in
preparing this lecture has been to give you an
adequately suggestive account without distressing
you beyond endurance by horrible and disgusting
details.
Surely I am justified in calling this a remarkably
strange fact when we remember that the cruel world
before us made its boast of a religion which was
emphatically a religion of love. Is it not passing
strange that cruelty should have been for a time the
chief characteristic of a Church which represented
Christianity, when gentleness, mercy, and a forgiving
spirit were chief characteristics of him who founded
�Cruelty and Christianity,
$
Christianity ? My object this evening is to explain
how this curious anomaly came to be.
We must take a hurried look at our facts, at the
-cruelties of the age. I shall confine myself to the
treatment of criminals, and I do so not only because
it would take too long to bring forward a great
variety of facts, but also because the treatment of
criminals illustrates most fairly the temper of the
times. Excesses committed in war, or in riot, or by
tyrants, or by men of unusual brutality, although
they have their significance, do not necessarily reflect
the public conscience ; but in the treatment of
criminals by legal tribunals we have a deliberate
expression of that conscience, perturbed it is true
very frequently by panic and passion, but yet reveal
ing on the whole with tolerable accuracy the ideas of
justice and mercy entertained by the community at
large.
See how the times have changed. How careful
we are with our criminals. We caution them not to
commit themselves, if there is a doubt of their guilt
they get the benefit of it, if convicted of the grossest
violence we hesitate as to flogging them, we differ as
to the expediency in any case of capital punishment.
In the Reformation age, on the contrary, everywhere
I believe but in this country—and even here, as we
shall see, the exception did not invariably prevail—
prisoners were tortured during and after trial;
during their trial that they might confess to their
own guilt or to that of their supposed accomplices,
and after trial for the sake of aggravating the horrors
of death. Old writers give us fourteen kinds of
torture and thirteen methods of inflicting capital
punishment.
[The next few paragraphs were illustrated by sketches, and,
as these cannot here be referred to, this portion of the lecture
has received a slight alteration.]
�6
Cruelty and Christianity.
The four principal sorts of torture were by the
rack, cords, water, and the pulley.
The sketch represents the racking of Cuthbert
Simson in the Tower, here in London, a little more
than three hundred years ago. He was the minister
of a Protestant congregation, and was racked that he
might be made to betray the names of his supporters.
He was afterwards burnt in Smithfield. The rack
was again used in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
The instrument was an oblong frame, placed hori
zontally upon the ground, with a windlass at each
end. The hands and feet of the prisoner as he lay
within the frame were made fast to cords which
passed round the windlasses, so that when these were
turned his limbs were strained to dislocation. Ima
gine delicate women being subjected to this agony,
these indignities ! Yet we read of such horrors in
histories of the Inquisition. You all know, I daresay,
that the Inquisition was the tribunal set up by the
Church of Rome for the discovery and punishment
of heretics, or, as Mr Motley puts it, “a machine for
inquiring into a man’s thoughts, and for burning
him if the result was not satisfactory.” On the
Zucws a non lucendo principle, it was called the
Holy Office. Its process was simple and effective.
“ It arrested on suspicion, tortured till confession,
and then punished by fire.” A Dr Rule, who is I
believe a well-known Wesleyan minister, published
a History of the Inquisition about five years ago
which seems to have been written with care and
candour, and in it you will see an account of the
atrocities perpetrated upon women as well as men in
the dungeons of the Inquisition. I will quote two
of the many cases he records, by way of illustrating
the torture by cords and by water. In the first of
these tortures cords were bound round the limbs,
and then by means of some mechanism, which appears
to have varied in different prisons, they were suddenly
tightened until they cut into the flesh.
�Cruelty and Christianity,
7
A certain lady of Seville in the year 1559 was
suspected of heresy. “To be suspected, in . the
meaning of the Holy Office, is to be guilty;
and this lady was instantly seized, and thrown
into the castle of Triana. As they found that she
was soon to become a mother they allowed her to
remain in an upper apartment until the birth of
a male child, which was taken from her at the end
of eight days; and after the lapse of seven more
she was sent down into a dungeon. Then began
the trial. Charges were made which she could np^
acknowledge with truth, and they were not slow
in applying torture. But how could friends be ex
pected to pity this young mother ? To bind her
arms and legs with cords, and to gash the limbs with
successive strainings by the levers, or to dislocate
her joints by swinging her from pulleys, yet sparing
vital parts, would have been the usual course of
torment, and from all that she might have recovered.
But anguish brought no confession: and as one of
their authorities afterwards wrote in the Cartilla of
that same Holy House, “ there are other parts.” The
savages in their fury, passed a cord over her breast,
thinking to add new pangs; and by an additional
outrage of decency, as well as humanity, extort some
cry that might serve to criminate husband or friend.
But when the tormentor weighed down the bar, her
frame gave way, the ribs crushed inwards. Blood
flowed from her mouth and nostrils, and she was
carried to her cell, where life just lingered for another
week, and then the God of pity took her to himself.”
The following will sufficiently describe the torture
by water. “ A physician, Juan de Salas, was accused
of having used a profane expression, twelve months
before, in the heat of a dispute. He denied the
charge, and brought several witnesses in support of
the denial. But the Inquisitor Moriz at Valladolid,
where the information was laid, caused De Salas to
�8
Cruelty and Christianity.
be brought again into his presence in the torment
chamber, stripped to his shirt, and laid on the ladder
or donkey, an instrument resembling a wooden trough,
just large enough to receive the body, with no bottom,
but having a bar, or bars, so placed that the body
bent by its own weight into an exquisitely painful
position. The poor man, so laid, was bound round
the arms and legs with hempen cords, each of them
encircling the limb eleven times. During this part of
the operation they admonished him to confess the
blasphemy; but he only answered that he had never
spoken a sentence of such a kind, and then, resigning
himself to suffer, repeated the Athanasian Creed, and
prayed “ to God and Our Lady many times.” Being
still bound, they raised his head, covered his face
with a piece of fine linen, and, forcing open the mouth,
caused water to drip into it from an earthern jar,
slightly perforated at the bottom, producing, in addi
tion to his sufferings from distension, a horrid sensa
tion of choking. But again, when they removed the
jar for a moment, he declared that he had never
uttered such a sentence : and this was repeated often.
They then pulled the cords on his right leg, cutting
into the flesh, replaced the linen on his face, dropped
the water as before, and tightened the cords on his
right leg the second time; but still he maintained
that he had never spoken such a thing; and, in
answer to the questions of his tormentors, still con
stantly reiterated that he had never spoken such a
thing. Moriz then pronounced that the torture
should be regarded as begun, but not finished; and
De Salas was released, to live, if he could survive, in
the incessant apprehension that if he gave the least
umbrage to a familiar or to an informer, he would be
carried again into the same chamber, and be racked
in every limb. This was one case of thousands. Tor
tures and deaths were of every-day occurrence.”
The torture in which the pulley was a principal
�Cruelty and Christianity.
9
feature consisted in raising the victim to a height by
means of a cord fastened to his wrists or thumbs,
with a weight attached to his feet. Sometimes he
would be made to drop suddenly to within a short
distance of the floor, the usual result being that he
was crippled for life.
These were the more moderate tortures—tortures
which, since they were employed by the officials of
the Church, may be deemed to have been respectable.
There were others, resorted to by local tribunals,
ingeniously horrible, but too painful to be described.
We may pass on to the methods used for putting.crimi
nals to death. I will mention two out of the thirteen.
A punishment, called hrealving on the wheel, became
common in France about 350 years ago. The name
more properly belongs to a very ancient punishment
in which a huge wheel was the instrument actually
used. The modern process was this: the criminal
was stretched out flat upon two pieces of timber fixed
together in the form of a St Andrew s cross, these
being deeply notched in eight places underneath the
principal limbs. The executioner with an iron bar
then broke the arms and legs at these points, and
finally, by two or three blows upon the chest, resigned
his victim to the welcome mercy of death.
A still more horrible fate was reserved for those
who had attempted the life of the Sovereign. Horses
were harnessed to their feet and hands, and made to
pull gently for an hour or two, until vengeance had
been quenched in agony. Then, and not till then,
the animals were allowed to put out all their strength,
and the memberless trunk remained upon the scaffold,
a bloody and startling commentary upon those famous
words—“ A new commandment I give unto you, that
ye love one another.” Jean Chatel, who wounded
Henry the Fourth of France in 1595 ; Ravaillac, whd
assassinated him fifteen years later; and Damiens,
who tried but failed to murder Louis the Fifteenth
�IO
Cruelty and Christianity.
in 1757, were all executed in this manner. Now,
just imagine such a punishment as this being inflicted
in a Christian country 116 years ago, and for a crime
that was not consummated. We read of Damiens—
11 The hand by which he attempted the murder was
burned at a slow fire ; the fleshy parts of his body
were then torn off by pincers; and, finally, he was
dragged about for an hour by four strong horses,
while into his numerous wounds were poured molten
lead, resin, oil, and boiling wax.” Where could such
infernal atrocities have come from ? Surely AeZZ /
And, strange to say, this, the answer that seems
instinctively to leap to our lips, has in it a real
element of literal truth.
Those who have not looked into the subject have
little idea how slowly the horrors we have been
dwelling upon ceased to be. Torture was not aban
doned by Continental nations until about a century
ago. France is indebted for her emancipation to
her great revolution. When our George the Third
was king the most brutal punishments were being
inflicted in France and Spain, and it is stated in
“ Chambers’s Encyclopaedia ” that breaking on the
wheel “ has been occasionally inflicted during the
present century in Germany on persons convicted of
treason and parricide.”
You might be tempted to ask why the Church was
unable to check the barbarities of the civil power.
The answer lies in the fact that example is stronger
than precept; and the example set by the Church
during the Reformation age is seen in the torment
rooms of the Inquisition. Protestants, however,
must take care not to make the mistake of supposing
that the Church was cruel because it was Catholic.
The Reformed Churches have nothing to boast of on
the score of humanity. They did not set up an In
quisition, because this would have been impossible
among peoples who had exercised independence
�Cruelty and Christianity.
11
to the extent of separating themselves from Rome;
but the Inquisitor spirit was strong in them, and
they lacked the power rather than the will to perse
cute. Knox, in Scotland, declares that all idolaters,
that is, all Roman Catholics, should be put to death;
Calvin, at Geneva, burns Servetus; and Queen Eliza
beth, in London, sends two Anabaptists to the flames,
where they perish, in the words of one who was living
at the time, “in great horror, crying and roaring.”
This cruelty of the Christian world, a few years
ago, is it not a remarkable fact ? People have said
to me, “ It was the times.” It is odd they do not
Bee that this is a sham answer ; that they have only
put the question a step further back; that the very
point we are puzzled about is why the times were so
cruel. Civilisation was not recent; religion was not
a new thing. To what, then, are we to attribute the
inhumanity of Christian nations ? To Christianity ?
No I But to the corruption of Christianity.
You see it is not for nothing that I rake up the
cruelties of the past. I do not call our forefathers
from the tomb merely to abuse and scold them. My
object is to discover the causes that led them astray.
When men make mistakes upon such a large scale,
when the action of society in any particular is so long
and so widely perverted, it must be because the springs
of action are poisoned, and in the age we have been
considering, the springs of action, that is, the princi
ples and opinions of men, were poisoned bv a corrupt
Christianity. Now in what did the corruption of
Christianity consist, and how had it come about ? I
will make an attempt to give you some account of
the matter, but it is difficult to tell such a story in a
few words.
By Ghristianity, I mean the ideas of Jesus Christ.
By corrupt Ghristianity, I mean the adulterated article
which the Church has circulated as the Christianity
of Christ. I shall say a little more about the Chris-
�12
Cruelty and Christianity,
tianity of Christ at the end of my lecture, but now I
will only say that I believe it to have been, as simple
and beautiful a religion as has ever been offered to
mankind. In fact, too good for mankind. The
mantle that fell from the dying Master—who, dying,
said, “ Father, forgive them; for they know not what
they do ’ ’—that mantle was too large for men, and
men, instead of waiting and hoping to grow to it,
tried to improve upon it, poor creatures ! They put
a patch here and a patch there, they stretched some
parts and took in others, and thus endeavoured to.
bring it down to the level of their own stunted
statures. You understand me ; they distorted the
teaching of Christ, exaggerating the side they fancied,
neglecting the side they did not like, and now and
then, no doubt, attributing to him things he never
said. I will give you instances of each kind of per
version, and the consequences.
Jesus appears to have used some rather strong and
startling language about future punishment. There
is so much metaphor in it that we cannot tell pre
cisely what he meant; but if he intended his words
to bear the construction posterity has put upon them
he contradicted himself, for at other times and far
more frequently he spoke of God as a good God, a
loving Father, an example of forbearance and gentle-,
ness to his children, ideas utterly incompatible with
the doctrine of eternal woe. But these milder ideas
imposed on men reciprocal obligations of love to the
Father, and of gentleness and goodwill towards the
other members of the family, and this was irksome
to poor human nature. A man who would be
honest in respect to his spiritual life, must ever
remember that the law of love, being the highest
law, is so difficult to fulfil that his heart is sure
to cast about for some means of evading it without
incurring its own condemnation. Thus it is that
zeal for the Lord has been more popular than love
�Cruelty and Christianity.
ij
for the Lord, and men have ever been prone to
impute guilt to their brethren in respect to their
religious opinions, only because it is thus easier for
them to hide from themselves the far greater guilt
of their own vanity, jealousy and illwill. We must
keep this truth before us if we would understand how
it was that the early Church neglected the more
tender side of Christ’s teaching and fastened upon its
harsher aspects. The result was the doctrine of
Eternal Punishment, a doctrine which, as developed
by theologians, embodies the most ghastly and blas
phemous idea ever presented to the human mind.
According to this doctrine, the destiny of a large
portion of our race is Hell ; a perpetual Auto-da-Fe ;
a torture-house on a scale commensurate with infinite
power, when guided by infinite skill and impelled by
infinite malice. I use this language with no irreve
rence of mind; I desire to repudiate the horrible
doctrine with all the emphasis I can. I do so for
truth’s sake, believing it to be a lie; for the sake of
man, to whom it has been a curse; and, if I may
humbly say so, for God s sake, because it makes
Atheism preferable to Faith. This doctrine sanc
tioned human cruelty. It represented God—herein
lay the blasphemy—as “ a murderer from the
beginning,” and cruelty being enthroned in heaven
could scarcely be regarded as a crime on earth. It
was not reasonable that men should strive to be
better than their God. He, being of infinite power,
tormented his enemies for ever ; they being limited
in power, tormented their enemies as long as they
could. The imitation was as perfect as the circum
stances would permit.
I said that besides distorting the teaching of Jesus,
men attributed to him words which in all probability
he never used. For instance, in the Gospel of St
Mark, he is made to say, “ He that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved, and he thatbelieveth not shall
�14
Cruelty and Christianity.
be damned.” There is reason for supposing that he
never said anything of the kind ; the passage in which
these words occur is considered by many scholars to
have been added to the Gospel by a later hand. A
most unfortunate addition ! For it asserts the prin
ciple that unbelief is sinful, a principle which has been
a perpetual plague to Christendom, and which even
now disturbs the peace of many an honest man. It
suited the Church to make much of this text. She
assumed that not to agree with her was equivalent to
unbelief, and thus heresy came to be mortal sin. The
heretic, the man who thought for himself and did not
think with the Church, was seen to be a destroyer of
souls. The inquisitor, the man who hunted up the
heretic and put him to death, was seen to be a saviour
of souls. Philip of Spain ordered that every Pro
testant in the Netherlands should be put to death.
If impenitent, they were to be burned. If they re
turned to the Church a milder punishment was
allowed; the men were to be beheaded, the women
buried alive. And from the Church’s point of view
Philip of Spain was right. If heresy was mortal sin
and mortal sin entailed eternal death, it was better
that a nation of heretics should be stamped out than
that they should live to propagate their kind, making
earth, in fact, a mere nursery for hell.
These particular ideas, then, the sinfulness of heresy
and the eternal punishment of sin, tended directly to
foster cruelty; but they also united to give birth to a
third idea, which, although not formulated as a dogma,
had a very real existence, and a very disastrous
influence upon the character of the time. This idea
may be described as a belief in the primary importance
of the theological side of Christianity. Christianity
is first and foremost a way of living, not a way of
believing; but men reversed this, the true aspect
of it, and came to think that Creed was every
thing, Conduct comparatively nothing. Of course
�Cruelty and Christianity,
15
when people held such views as these they lost
all sense of proportion in morality, they had no
true criterion. When orthodoxy went far towards
atoning for every crime, but no degree of virtue could
atone for heresy, the loyal churchman could give him
self up to fraud, or violence, or cruelty, or sensuality,
with but little sense of guilt, and still thank God he
was not so badly off as the blameless heretic.
I have attributed mediaeval cruelty mainly to the
corruption of Christianity, and I have described that
corruption as consisting mainly in the prominence
given to three ideas. Let us now consider for a
moment how irrational those ideas are.
Is it not irrational to suppose that God will visit
the sins of finite mortals, who owe to Him their frail
and fallible natures, with infinite pain ? The idea is
incompatible with any notion of goodness that we are
capable of forming, and if we cannot think of God
as good we had better not think of Him at all. It is
enough to send men mad to think of God as bad. A
good God and an eternal Hell are conceptions
destructive of each other; we must choose which
we will keep; we cannot keep both ; better part with
Hell than with God.
Is it not irrational to suppose that heresy, or dis
belief of theological dogmas, is sinful ? Theology
deals with facts and doctrines. The facts are. so
marvellous that it would be difficult to substantiate
them eVen if they had happened only last week ; but
they happened, it is said, ages ago, and therefore it
is almost impossible for any unprejudiced person to
feel certain that they took place. The doctrines
relate, for the most part, to matters outside the range of
our faculties, so that no man can say he believes them
in the sense in which he believes intelligible proposi
tions. Is it not then irrational to suppose that it can
be sinful for us to differ about facts which are doubt
ful, and about doctrines which are unintelligible?
�16
Cruelty and Christianity.
Difference and doubt are inevitable if men use the
reason God has given them, and the inevitable in
such a case can scarcely be a crime 1
. And is it not irrational to suppose that our theolo
gical belief is more important than character and
conduct ? Our character or what we are, our conduct
or what we do, our dispositions and tempers, and the
words and acts that flow from them are of vital importance, pregnant with misery or happiness to
ourselves and all around us. But our theological
opinions, except in so far as they make us better or
worse, do not signify to anybody. Moreover whilst,
Creeds are, as I said, uncertain and unintelligible,
character and conduct can be studied and under
stood. It is comparatively easy to diseover the laws
of the Religion which is a Life; comparatively easy
to see what “ makes for righteousness ” and to see
how righteousness makes for bliss. I would not on
any account be thought to mean that theology should
be treated with levity, much less with scorn. For to
theology belong those most stupendous problems
which at once provoke and defy the scrutiny of man.
What are we ? Why are we ? Whence do we come ?
W hither are we bound ? The theologies of man repre
sent for the most part his efforts to find an answer to
these questionings, and though we may deem the efforts
unsuccessful they yet deserve our sympathy and our
respect. What I maintain is that the conclusions
to which we may come on matters beyond the reach
of knowledge cannot be regarded as vitally important.
Patience, reverence, carefulness, in forming our
opinions—these are important, but the opinions
themselves—herein is that pearl of great price, the
secret of true toleration—the opinions themselves
have not necessarily any moral character whatsoever,
cannot properly be made a pretext for praise or blame.
You may consider your neighbour foolish or illinformed for holding a certain theological opinion,
�Cruelty and Christianity.
but you have no right to think him a bad man for
doing so. It is silly to blame him because he
believes in a future state or because he disbelieves
in it. A man is not good because he believes
that Christ rose from the dead, but neither is he bad
because he does not believe it. It is not wrong to
believe in God, but neither is it right. These things
are obscure, almost if not quite beyond us ; they de
serve patient, reverent consideration; but that
granted, the actual conclusions we may come to
respecting them are neither meritorious nor blame
worthy. Why do I insist so much upon this ? Why
am I so careful to be plain ? Because in this short
and simple formula—theological opinions have no in
trinsic value—there is great virtue. It represents a
truth which is essential to the progress of the world,
essential to its growth in goodness and in happiness.
Christian Love, once a great reality, fairest of all
flowers that have blossomed in the Earthly Paradise,
the only heal-all of humanity, Christian Love cannot
flourish until men have ceased to quarrel about Chris
tian Creeds. This quarrelling has come of the cor
ruption of Christianity; true Christianity, that is,
Christ’s Christianity, is not responsible for it. I will
not keep you much longer; let me only show you in
a few last words that this corruption of Christianity
which made the Creed of great importance, the Life
of little importance, which put believing before loving;
a corruption which bore fruit in tortures and strife,
and which still finds expression in the Athanasian
Creed of the Church of England, this corrupt phase
is a parody of Christianity, a libel upon the life that
closed on Calvary.
He that died on Calvary, what did he teach ?
There is great uncertainty about him. I have even
heard it questioned whether such a person as Jesus
Christ ever existed; but I don’t think that doubt
need go as far as that. The first three Gospels pro
�18
Cruelty and Christianity.
bably give a fairly accurate account of the teaching
of Jesus. At all events, we have nothing more au
thoritative to appeal to; and therefore, taking my
stand upon them, I am safe in saying that, if we
know anything about Christ’s teaching at all, we
know that he taught—what ? Abstruse doctrines ?
No. Did he make known something new; reveal
something about the supernatural world which had
not been in men’s minds before ? No. Did he pre
scribe some elaborate form of worship ? No. He
taught that men should live lives of love. This was
his great point, his “happy thought.” The theology
of Jesus was of the simplest possible kind. God, the
good father. Prayer, the child’s talk to his father.
Heaven, the child at home with his father. On these
three points he dwelt with the fervour natural to a
religious genius of that day. For these ideas were
not new. They had got dry, that was all, as ideas
do dry up in this world. Dry, withered and un
sightly, like sea-weeds out of water. Steeped in the
fresh enthusiasm of Jesus, these ideas revived again
and recovered grace and brilliancy. But Jesus had
another enthusiasm, an enthusiasm for Love; for
that gentle Sexless Spirit of Love which alone is
needed to make earth a heaven.
For a brief moment the enthusiasm of Love sur
vived in the Church, and the spectacle converted the
world. Marvellous is the transforming power of
Love. It is the source to which we must look for
individual happiness and for the regeneration of the
world. Don’t you feel you want something ? You,
for such no doubt are here, you whose minds have
drifted from the old faiths, don’t you feel sometimes
that we want something not ourselves to live for ?
That our lives need to be warmed by a passion, puri
fied and elevated by an enthusiasm, that the mill in
which we grind is in itself a monotonous sort of place,
that the toil and struggle of life tend somewhat to
�Cruelty and Christianity.
J9
lower and harden us, to make our minds small and
our hearts cold ? Would it not be pleasant to have
an enthusiasm which should take the sting out of
sorrow, the edge off temptation, the chill out of life,
and the gloom away from death ? I think so, I
should like it, and men have for the most part the
same wants. Well—Love is enough, Love is suffi
cient for these things. Live loveful lives—this is
Christianity.
If the Church had been faithful to this Christianity
there would have been by this time little poverty,
little suffering, little sorrow, little sin; little, I mean,
in comparison with the plagues with which the world
is now afflicted. These plagues are not incurable; it
is late, not too late to mend. From time to time in
the world’s history humanity receives a call to rise,
like Lazarus, to a new life. And now, on every side
is heard the sound of many voices calling it to come
forth from the tomb of ignorance and superstition, to
shake off the icy grasp of bigotry and intolerance, to
drop the mouldering cerements of a Church-made
Christianity, and to clothe itself in the simple raiment
of Love, which alone, like the garment for which men
once cast lots, is “without seam, woven from the top
throughout.”
I repeat once more the point I care for most.
There is a religion which does not signify, a religion
which has deluged Europe with blood, and which, if
power be given to it, may so deluge it again; a reli
gion which once inspired its chief representative to
strike a medal in honour of one of the most
atrocious massacres of history; a religion, the forces
of which are even now raving like chained hounds
eager to destroy the growing liberties of the nation^
—this religion which does not signify is a religion
of theologies, a religion, that is, made up of beliefs
about one who is far away and about one who lived
long ago. God—it has pleased infinite wisdom that
�20
Cruelty and Christianity.
this should be—God is far away, far, I mean, from
our understandings. To have clear views about Him
we must wait for other conditions, other faculties,
“ to know more we must be more.” Christ lived long
ago, in the first century, this is the nineteenth; we
cannot, cotemporary history being silent, know cer
tainly what happened so long ago. But there is a
religion which does signify, a religion which may
indeed draw warmth and strength from simple faith
in God and simple love for Christ, but which has no
necessary connection with theologies; a religion
which no change of times shall ever shock, because
its foundations are firmly rooted in the facts of
human nature and human circumstance; a religion
which I Call Christianity because it was, I believe,
taught by Christ; a religion which is not a theology
but a life—the Life of Love.
C. W. REYNELL, PRINTER, BITTLE PULTBNEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�INDEX
TO
THOMAS SCOTT’S
PUBLICATIONS.
ALPHABETICAL!.-! ARRANGED.
The following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on addressing
a letter enclosing the price in postage stamps to Mr Thomas
Scott, 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
London, S.N.
Price.
Post-free.
ABBOT, FRANCIS E., Editor of ‘Index,’ Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A.
The Impeachment
of Christianity. With Letters from Miss Frances
P. Cobbe and Professor F. W. Newman, giving their Reasons for not
calling themselves Christians
o 3
Truths for the Times
.
-03
ANONYMOUS.
A.I. Conversations. Recorded by a Woman, for Women. Parts I., II.,
and III. 6d. each Part
-16
A Few Self-Contradictions of the Bible
- 1 0
Modern Orthodoxy and Modern Liberalism
- 0 6
Modern Protestantism. By the Author of “ The Philosophy of
Necessity”
.
-06
On Public Worship
- 0 3
Our First Century
-06
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
The Twelve Apostles
.
-06
Via Catholica; or, Passages from the Autobiography of a Country
Parson. Complete in III. Parts. Is. 3d. each Part - 3 9
Woman’s Letter
.
.
-03
BARRISTER, A.
Notes on Bishop Magee’s Pleadings for Christ
-
-
-
-
•
- 0
0 6
BASTARD, THOMAS HORLOOK.
Scepticism and Social Justice
•
:
3
�ii
Index to Thomas Scotfs Publications.
Price.
Post-free.
BENEFICED CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
The Chronological Weakness of Prophetic Interpretation -11
The Evangelist and the Divine - 1 o
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 J acob
-
-
-
-
-10
BESANT, Mrs A.
On
ths
Deity of Jesus
of
Nazareth. Parts I. and II. 6d. each Part 1 0
BRAY, CHARLES.
Illusion and Delusion
-
-
-
Reason versus Authority -
-
-
-
.
-06
BROOK, W. 0. CARR.
- 0 3
BROWN, GAMALIEL.
An Appeal to the Preachers
Sunday Lyrics
The New Doxology
-
of all the
Creeds -
-
.
-
-
• -
- 0 3
-03
-03
CANTAB, A.
Jesus versus Christianity
-
-
-
-
- 0
6
CARROLL, Rev. W. G., Rector of St Bride’s, Dublin.
The Collapse
of the
by the Orthodox
Faiths 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
-.06
- 0 3
COBBE, Miss F. P.
Letter
on
Christian Name. (See Abbot) -
CONWAY, MONCURE D.
The Spiritual Serfdom
The Voysey Case -.
of the
Laity. With Portrait
-
-
-
.
.
- 0 6
-06
COUNTRY PARSON, A.
The Thirty-Nine Articles and
Non-Sense.
Creeds,—Their Sense and their
6d. each Part
- 1
the
Parts L, II., and III.
6
COUNTRY VICAR, A.
Criticism the Restoration
Paper by Dr Lang
-
of
Christianity, being a Review of a
-
-
The Bible for Man, not Man for the Bible
-
-
- 0 6
- 0 6
�Index to Thomas Scott’s Publications.
CRANBROOK, The late Rev. JAMES.
0 3
0«3
- 0 3
On the Formation of Religious Opinions On the Hindrances to Progress in Theology
The Tendencies of Modern Religious Thought
DUPUIS, from the French of.
-
Christianity a Form of the great Solar Myth -
F. H. I.
Spiritual Pantheism
0 9
- 0 6
.....
FOREIGN CHAPLAIN.
0 6
0 3
Everlasting Punishment. A Letter to Thomas Scott
The Efficacy of Prayer. A Letter to Thomas Scott
FORMER ELDER IN A SCOTCH CHURCH.
On Religion
- 0
6
0
......
3
FROM “ THE INDEX,” published at Boston, U.S.A.
...
Talk Kindly, but Avoid Argument
GELDART, Rev. E. M.
The Living God
-
-
-
.
-, 0 3
-
GRAHAM, A. D., and F. H.
On Faith
0
-------
3
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
0
6
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
2
0
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
KALISGH, M., Ph.D.
Theology of the Past and the Future. Reprinted from Part I. of
his Commentary on Leviticus.
With Portrait
-
-
-
1
0
�Index to Thomas Scott's Publications.
1V
Price.
Post-free.
KIRKMAN, The Rev. THOMAS P., Rector of Oroft, Warrington.
d'
Church Cursing and Atheism
_
- 1 o
On Church Pedigrees. Parts I. and IE With Portrait. 6d. each Part f 0
On the Infidelity of Orthodoxy. In Three Parts. 6d. each Part -16
Orthodoxy from the Hebrew Point of View
- 0 6
LAKE, J. W.
The Mythos
of the
-
Ark
-
-
_
.
-06
LA TOUCHE, J. D., Vicar of Stokesay, Salop.
The Judgment
Mr Voysey
of the
Committee of Council
-
Case
in the
.
.
-
of
.
.
-0 3
.
-
.
.
- 0 6
- 0 6
LAYMAN, A, and M.A. of Trinity College, Dublin.
Law and the Creeds
Thoughts on Religion and
the
-
Bible
M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge.
Pleas
for
Free Inquiry. Parts I., II., and III. 6d. each Part
- 1
6
MAOFIE, MATT.
Religion Viewed as Devout Obedience to the Laws of the
Universe
_
_
.
-06
The Religious Faculty.- Its Relation to the other Faculties, and its
Perils
-
-
-
.
.
.06
.
.
MACKAY, CHARLES, LL.D
-
-
-
- .
..
Religion : its Place in Human Culture -
-
-
- 0
6
The Souls
of the
Children
-
MACLEOD, JOHN.
MAITLAND, EDWARD.
Jewish Literature and Modern Education; or, the Use and Abuse
of the Bible in the Schoolroom
How to Complete the Reformation.
The Utilisation
of the
With Portrait
-
- 1 6
- 0 6
- 0 6
-
Church Establishment
- 0 6
M.P., Letter by.
The Dean
of
Canterbury
on
Science and Revelation
MUIR, J., D.C.L.
Three Notices of “ The Speaker’s Commentary,” Translated from
the Dutch of Dr A. Kuenen
-
-
-
.
- 0 6
NEALE, EDWARD VANSITTART.
Does Morality depend on Longevity?
.
-06
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
James and Paul
.
_
_
.
Letter on Name Christian. (See Abbot) On ti-ie Causes of Atheism. With Portrait
On the Historical Depravation of Christianity
On the Relations of Theism to Pantheism; and On
Religion
.
.
.
_
.
- o
- o
6
6
- 0 6
- 0 3
the
_
Galla
.or
�v
Index to ’Thomas Scott's Publications.
Price.
Post-free.
s d
NEWMAN, Professor F. W.—continued.
Reply to a Letter from an Evangelical Lay Preacher
The Bigot and the Sceptic
The Controversy about Prayer The Divergence of Calvinism from Pauline Doctrines
The Religious Weakness of Protestantism
The True Temptation of Jesus. With Portrait
. Thoughts on the Existence of Evil
-
-
0
0
0
0
o
- 0
- 0
3
6
3
3
7
6
3
- 0
6
OLD GRADUATE.
Remarks on Paley’s Evidences
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
OXLEE, the Rev. JOHN.
A Confutation of the Diabolarchy
- 0 6
PADRE OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH.
The Unity of
the
Faith among
all
Nations
-
-
- 0
-
-
- 0 6
6
PARENT AND TEACHER, A.
Is Death the end of all things for Man ?
PHYSICIAN, A.
by way of Catechism,—Religious, Moral, and
Philosophical. Parts I. and II. 6d. each Part - 1 0
The Pentateuch, in Contrast with the Science and Moral Sense of
A Dialogue
.
our Age.
Part I.—Genesis Part II.—Exodus. Two Sections.
PartlH.—Leviticus
-
_
6d. each Section
-
-16
- 1 0
- 1 0
PRESBYTER ANGLIOANUS.
Eternal Punishment.
An Examination of the Doctrines held by the
Clergy of the Church of England
._
- 0 6
of Immortality in its Bearing on Education
0 6
The Doctrine
ROBERTSON, JOHN, Coupar-Angus.
Intellectual Liberty
The Finding of the Book -
-
.
-
.
-
.
_
- 0 6
-20
ROW, A. JYRAM.
Christianity and Education in India.
St George’s Hall, Loudon, Nov. 12,1871
-
A Lecture delivered at
- 0
6
SCOTT, THOMAS.
Basis of a New Reformation
.
.
- o 9
Commentators and Hierophants; or, The Honesty of Christian
Commentators.
In Two Parts.
-
6d. each Part
-
Miracles and Prophecies Original Sin
.
_
.
Practical Remarks on “The Lord’s Prayer”
The Dean of Ripon on the Physical Resurrection of Jesus,
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The English Life of Jesus. A New Edition
The Tactics and Defeat of the Christian Evidence Society
- 1 0
-06
-06
-06
in
- 0 6
-44
- 0 6
STATHAM, F. REGINALD.
Rational Theology. A Lecture
-
-
.
_
- 0
3
Garden of Eden
-
-
-
- 0
3
STONE, WILLIAM.
The Story
of the
�vi
Index to Thomas Scott's Publications.
Price.
Post-free.
s. d.
STRANGE, T. LUMISDEN, late Judge of the High Court of Madras.
A Critical Catechism. Criticised by a Doctor of Divinity, and
Defended by T. L. Strange
An Address to all Earnest Christians .
.
Clerical Integrity
....
Communion with God
.
.
.
The Bennett Judgment
-----The Bible ; Is it “ The Word of God ? ”
'The Christian Evidence Society
The Exercise of Prayer ----The Speaker’s Commentary Reviewed
-
o
6
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
3
3
3
6
3
3
6
SUFFIELD, the Rev. ROBERT RODOLPH.
Five Letters on a Roman Catholic Conversion 0 3
Is Jesus God?
------- 0 3
The Resurrection
0 3
SYMONDS, J. ADDINGTON.
The Renaissance
of
Modern Europe
-
’
-
0 3
TAYLOR, P. A., M.P.
Realities
-
VOYSEY, The Rev. CHARLES.
On Moral Evil
0
&
W. E. B.
An Examination of Some Recent Writings about Immortality - 0 6
The Province of Prayer ------ 0 6
WHEELWRIGHT,, the Rev. GEORGE.
Three Letters on the Voysey Judgment and the Christian
Evidence Society’s Lectures -
o
WILD, GEO. J., LL.D.
Sacerdotalism
-------
o
6
WORTHINGTON, The Rev. W. R.
On
the
Efficacy of Opinion in Matters of Religion
-
Two Essays : On the Interpretation of the Language of The
Testament, and Believing without Understanding
-
- © 6
Old
- o 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.
BESANT, Mrs A.
On
the
Religious Education of Children
-
WHEELWRIGHT, the Rev. GEORGE.
The Edinburgh Review
Dr Strauss
-
-
-
- 0 3
Christianity. A Lecture
-
-
-
- 0 6
and
GRAHAM, ALLEN D., M.A.
Cruelty
and
DEAN, Rev. PETER, Minister of Olerkenwell Unitarian Church.
The Impossibility of Knotting what is Christianity
-
- 0 6
C. W, REYKELL, PBINTEB, LITTLE FDLTENEY-STREET, HAYMARKET, LONDON, W.
�SCOTT’S 'ENGLISH LIFE OF JESUS.’
In One Volume, 8w, bound in cloth, post free, 4s. 4d.,
SECOND EDITION
OF
THE ENGLISH LIFE OF JESUS.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR,
THOMAS SCOTT,
Il THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
Notice.—Post Office Orders to be made payable to Thomas
Scott, Westow Hill Office, Upper Norwood, S.E.
�
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Cruelty and Christianity : a lecture [...]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 20, vi p. ; 17 cm.
Notes: Lecture delivered at the Freemasons' Hall, London, on 9 Nov. 1873, under the auspices of "Sunday evenings for the people." Publisher's list at the end, pages detached. Advertisement for Scott's "English life of Jesus", 2nd ed., on back cover. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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DE
DES FEMMES
EN ANGLETERRE
PAR
MME C. COIGNET
PARIS
LIBRAIRIE GERMER BAILLlfiRE
RUE DE L’EC0LE-DE-m£DEC1NE, 17
1874
*
�Extrait de la Revue politique et litteraire
Numdros 44, 45. — 2 et 9 mai 1874
�DE
HmWHISSHMT POLITIQUE
DES FEMMES
Un des spectacles les plus interessants pt les plus curieux
de l’ordre politique est celui que nous presente aujourd’hui
TAngleterre.
En voyant ee peuple abandonner de plus en plus sa pre
ponderance en Europe et faire aux nations une sorts de
declaration da paix a tout prix, on a prononce parfois le
mot de decadence. L’exces du bien-Mre et des richesses,
a-t-on dit, et les satisfactions egoistes qui en ddrivent produisent, la commo partout ailleurs, leur effet d’atonie et d’engourdissement. Encore quelques annees, l’Angleterre sera
devenue une nouvelie Hollande. Mais ceux qui suivent d’un
mil plus attentif et plus penetrant la politique anglaise a l’interieur en appelleront de ce jugement,
Il est bien vrai que les traditions orgueilleuses qui ont
porU pendant des siecles le Royaume-Uni a s’arroger la
souverainetd des mers et la suprematie sur le continent, s’affaiblissent de plus en plus, ~ et la classe qui les avail si hardiment proclamdes et si hardiment soutenues perd cheque jour
de son prestige. La bourgeoisie est aujourd’hui preponde
rate en Angleterre, Or, les classes travailleuses ne sent ja
mais guerrieres; connaissant le prix des richesses acquires
�- Zl —
par leurs propres efforts, elles tiennent a la paix qui les con
serve, a la liberte qui leur permet d’en jouir, et preferent au
bruit du champ de bataille les luttes fecondes de la vie civile
et les joies du foyer. Peut-dtre la classe moyenne en Angleterre manque-t-elle encore de la culture superieure, des tra
ditions diplomatiques et des larges visees de la vieille aristocratie. Aussi, sous sa direction, le pays a trouve jusqu’a
present moins d’eclat exterieur que sous ses anciens chefs (1).
Mais cette meme classe peut acquerir ce qui lui manque, et
si d’ailleurs elle mtme a bonne fin 1’oeuvre qu’elle a entre
prise, — la reforme liberate des institutions, — l’Angleterre y
trouvera plus de vraie gloire que dans toutes les conqudtes.
Qu’on ne parle done pas de decadence. La vitalite de cette
forte race n’a nullement diminue; jamais, au contraire, son
energie et son activite n’ont ete aussi intenses; seulement
elles se concentrent a l’interieur.
Les questions politiques et sociales qu’on debat aujourd’hui
en Angleterre sont celles qui agitent 1’Europe moderne tout
entiere. Elles peuvent se ramener a une seule : la lutte d’un
monde nouveau fonde sur le droit humain, la liberte et l’egalite des individus, contre un vieux monde fonde sur le droit
divin, les privileges de classes et les pouvoirs ecclesiastiques.
Les diverses reformes obtenues dans le cours de ce siecle
en Angleterre (2), et celles qu’on v reclame encore aujour
d’hui (3), ne sont que les manifestations de cette lutte, et le
progres social s’y rattache en entier. Ddgager la societe mo-
(1) L’Angleterre peut remplir en Europe un grand role, sans viser
a la conquete. Nous esperons qu’elle le comprendra. L’abstention systematique et absolue serait trop aisement taxee d’egoisme, d’etroitesse
et d’impuissance. Un peuple ne saurait s’isoler du groupe auquel il
appartient et se desinteresser de la politique exterieure, sans voir diminuer, non-seulement son influence, mais sa valeur morale.
(2) Le mafiage civil, le libre echange, la suppression des brevets
achetes dans l’armee, la suppression du serment religieux a l’entree
du parlement et des universites, la reforme electorale, etc.
(3) La separation de l’Eglise et de l’Etat, l’enseignement public et
laique generalise, l’extension du suffrage, la libre possession et la libre
transmission de la terre, etc., etc.
�derne, laique et democratique, de la societe theologique et
aristocratique du moyen age : telle est la question dans tous
les pays. Mais il y a bien des manures de la resoudre, et ici
nous allons reconnaitre un des traits les plus caracteristiques
de l’esprit anglo-saxon.
Le progrds social en Angleterre n’apparait jamais comme
le fruit d’une revolution violente qu’un parti peut obtenir par
surprise et imposer par force. 11 est le resultat d’une trans
formation lente et reguli&re accomplie par la nation ellemfime. Chaque nouvelle reforme doit 6tre soumise a l’opinion; avant d’arriver au Parlement, elle doit avoir ete debattue
et acceptee par le peuple.
Or, chez cette race positive et fortement attachee a ses tra
ditions, il ne suftit pas qu’une reforme soit juste et conforme
a l’interfit du pays pour devenir populaire ; il faut encore
qu’elle ait un fondement dans la legislation, un precedent
dans l’histoire, qu’elle rentre en un mot dans le d6veloppement regulier des institutions.
Ce respect de la volonte nationale aussi bien dans les tra
ditions du passe que dans les tendances du present fait la force
morale de l’Anglelerre. Il eleve le patriotisme au-dessus de
toutes les divisions de classes et de partis, et, en donnant a
l’action politique la resistance, la force et la duree, il lui
donne une incomparable grandeur. L’esprit tradition'nel, si
puissant d’ailleurs en Angleterre, peut retarder parfois la reali
sation des reformes, mais neles fait pas 6chouer; il ne leur
presente jamais un obstacle qu’on ne puisse tourner ou
vaincre.
Dans un pays oil aucune loi n’a jamais ete abolie, aucun
code revise, et ou la jurisprudence se puise aussi bien dans
la coutume et l’equite que dans la loi ecrite, il ne saurait fitre
difficile au reformateur de maintenir un lien entre les temps.
La question qui va nous occuper aujourd’hui en est un
saisissant exemple.
�dertes, s’il est une reforme importante, une reforme qui
doive atteindre la societe dans ses ptofondeurs, c’est celle qui
consisterait a supprimer toute distinction l&gale entre les
sexes, et s’il est un pays ou une telle reforme semble devoir
rencontrer une opposition invincible, c’est celui de tous ou la
legislation a etabli dans le mariage le plus d’inegalites. C’est
pourtant dans celui-la, c’est en Angleterre que la question
est aujourd’hui posee et publiquement debattue, et qu’elle
gagne du terrain chaque jour.
Quand nous parions de supprimer toute distinction legale
entre les sexes, nous indiquons la question dans sa veritable
portee philosophique (t), non point telle que l’ont formulee
devant le public la masse de ceux qui la defendent. Fidfeles a
l’esprit et aux habitudes de leur contree, ils se sent places, au
contraire, sur un terrain essentiellement pratique : ils ont
restraint leur reclamation a un point precis et bien deter
mine, -sachant que c’est le meilleur moyen pour obtenir peu
a peu tout le reste.
Ce point est le droit politique.
Peut-6tre, en France, s’etonnera-t-on du choix; mais ils’explique en Angleterre, d’une part, par les habitudes du self
government, de l’autre, par les conditions speciales du droit
politique, qui v rendent le vote bien plus accessible aux fem
mes qu’il ne le serait chez nous.
Voici comment la question s’est determinee d’elle-mfime :
De nombreuses reformes etaient demandees touchant la
condition sociale des femmes en Angleterre, et la conve-
(1) M. Mill, un des principaux promoteurs du mouvement, l’a
posee ainsi dans son remarquable ouvrage sur VAssujettissement des
femmes.
�- 7 nance, la justice de CertainCs d’entre elles etaient gOtteralement reconnues. Les reformateufs alors ont dit :
« Si l’on doit reviser la legislation qui regie la condition de
la femme, n’est-il pas juste et dans l’esprit meme de notre
lol nationale que les femmes participent a cette revision ?
Ghacun est pouf Soi le meilleuf juge, et I’on rtd saurait chan
ger le sort de la moitie des membres de la commlihaute sanS
les consulter suf ce changement. t
Or, la seule maniore de consulter Idgalement les femmes,
c*est ’de leur accorder une part a la legislation au moyen du
vote.
Sans doute, s’il s’dtait agi d’ouvrir inopihement la vie po
litique a une nouvelle masse d’electeurs, on aurait pu recm
ler deVant un changemeht auSsl considerable, mais la ques*
tion ne se prdsentait point ainsi.
Le suffrage universel n’existe pas en Angleteffe. Le vote
y est eonsidPrd conime un privilege tenant a la propriety
bon comme un droit personnel attache A l’iftdividu. Toutes
les libertes publiques Oht Une origine traditionnelle; elles se
rattachent a ce vieil adage que ceux qui payent 1’impdt ont
un droit de controle suf ceux qui le levent et qui l’appliquent.
S’appuyant done sur le droit public ainsi determine, les
femmes ont demande le suffrage, non pas en tant que pefsonnes morales et civiles, be qui aufait pu btre sujet k con
testation, mais en tant que propriCtairos titulalresj pavant
rimpOt. La reclamation sous cette forme avalt le ddttble
avantage de restrelndre le hombre des nouveaux electeurs
aux feme sole (1) (demoiselles majeufos, et veuves), et de s’appuyer suf ie droit historique le plus ancidh.
(1) Expression de la loi normande pour designer les femmes qui
ne sunt nl en puissance de pefe, ni en puissance de marl. Il
faut remarqiier toutefois que, par le fait da Immigration, cette
eategorie est en Angleterre beaucoup plus nombreuse que chez
nous. Dans ce pays, le nombre des femmes depasse celui des hommes
d’un million environ, et on y trouve deux a trois millions de femmes
non mariees ou veuves. On a calcule que le jour ou la lol paSSetalt
elle augmenterait d’un septieme le nombre des dlecteilfs, Gette pro
portion est relativement considerable.,
�— 8 —
La loi salique, en effet, qui, dans notre pays et des l’epoque des Francs, excluait la femme de l’heritage paternel
comme incapable de le defendre, n’a jamais existe en Angle
terre. Les plus vieux souvenirs de cette contree nous montrent les filles heritant de leurs p&res a defaut des descen
dants males, et jouissant dans ce cas des mfimes droits que
ces derniers.
Avant mfime l’invasion normande, et sans cesse depuis,
les femmes possesseurs titulaires de fiefs prenaient part au
gouvernement de leur pays, tantOt par mandataires et tantot
d’une faqon directe.
Thomas Hughes, dans la Vie d'Alfred le Grand, nous dit
que les nobles dames, mfimes mariees, conservaient leurs proprietes personnelles, qu’elles pouvaient en disposer, et a ce
titre siegeaient dans le Wittenagamott, conseil national des
Saxons; elles siegeaient aussi dans les assemblees provin
ciates, les comites de paroisse, et elles etaient protegees par
des lois speciales alors que, dans ces temps de violence, la
faiblesse de leur corps les plagait en etat de peril,
Gurdon, dans ses Considerations sur les antiquites du parlement, parle aussi des femmes de naissance et de quality
qui siegeaient au conseil avec les chefs saxons.
L’abbesse Wilde, dit encore Bede, presida un synode-eccl6siastique.
Sous Henri VIII, dans-la salle Booth de Glocester, lady Anne
Berkeley tint une cour de justice comme juge-president. Elie
avait en cette qualite une commission du roi, et Fosbrook,
l’historien de Glocester, raconte comment elle vint, s’assit sur
le banc dans la salle des sessions publiques, presida le jury,
re§ut les temoignages, declara les accuses coupables de com
plot et de desordre public, et les condamna comme ennemis
du genre humain.
Sous Henri III, quatre abbesses furent convoquees au Parlement. Sous Edouard III, plusieurs dames nobles y comparurent par leurs mandataires. On cite encore mistress Copley,
sous le regne de Marie, et lady Packington, sous le regne
d’Elisabeth.
La derni&re manifestation publique que nous ayons de ce
droit date de I6Z1O; mais on peut voir que l’usage commence
�— 9 —
deja a s’affaiblir, carle sheriff fait alors cetteremarque qu’il
est honteux pour un homme d’etre elu par des femmes.
Dans le si£cle suivant, les juges le reconnaissent encore,
mais on n’en reclame presque plus l’application.
En 1739, la douzieme annee du regne de Georges II, devant
la cour du roi (kings' bench), sir William Lee etant premier
juge (chief justice) et sir Francis Page etant second juge, on
posa la question de savoir si une feme sole pouvait voter pour
les officiers de la paroisse, les sacristains, et si elle pouvait
elle-mtaie exercer ces fonctions. Dans le cours du proems, sir
William Lee d&clara que le droit etait incontestable, et qu’en
nombre de cas les feme sole avaient mdme vote pour les
membresdu Parlement, mais que, lorsqu’elles etaient marines,
leur mari devait voter pour elles. Le juge Page s’exprime
de la m6me faQon dans un cas analogue, et lord Coke, qui est
une autorite en ces matures, confirme ces dires.
Il nous reste d’ailleurs un temoignage vivant et plus ecla
tant que tous les autres de cette interpretation du droit feodal:
e’est la royaute qui en derive. Les femmes occupent le trdne
en Angleterre, et chaque terme de la loi qui en regie les
conditions est applicable a un sexe comme & l’autre. La reine
regnante remplit toutes les fonctions du roi; elle a les memes
prerogatives, les memes obligations. Bien plusj elle est en
Angleterre la seule epouse qui conserve la libertd de la feme
sole. Aprds comme avant le mariage, elle peut acheter,
vendre, recevoir des dons et des heritages, tester, et enfin
prendre toute sorte d’engagements.
Le droit traditionnel est done incontestable, et si l’usage
s’est perdu, il faut en accuser l’indifference des femmes, qui
n ont point ete assez jalouses de maintenir ce droit en l’exerqant. Toutefois, eten depit d’une telle negligence, le principe
n’en demeure pas moins comme un element de la constitu
tion et del’histoire du Royaume-Uni, et, en le relevant de nos
jours, en demandant a le remetlre en vigueur, les femmes
n’innovent pas, elles retournent ala tradition; ce point a
une grande importance.
Voici dans quels termes miss Mary Dowling (1), secretaire
(1) Miss Dowling, femme aussi distinguee par le caractere et par
�— 10 —
generale de 1’AsSociation en faveur du Suffrage des femmes,
determinait, au mois d’aofit 1873, l’objet de cette Association.
S’adressant att principal journaliste de la ville de Ramsgate,
ou devait se tenir un meeting sur cette question, elle s’exprimait en ces termes:
«Nous ne demandons pas, comtne quelques personnes se
l’imaginent vaguement, que chaque femme ait un vote. Mais
la proprfete, la rente et l’impdt etant la base des droits poll-*
1
tiques en Angleterre, nous disotts qtt’il est tres-injuste d’en
exclure les femmes qui sont proprietalres, rentieres, et qui
payent 1’impOt. Nous ne demandons nullement le droit de
vote pour les jeunes titles et les fipottses chargdes des devoirs
de la vie domestique, mais settlement pour les femmes dont
la situation civile peut 6tre assimifee it Celle des hottimes.
Nous demandons que les femmes non mariees et 16s Veuves
appelees a partager la charge de 1’impdt participent au privi
lege qui y est attache qttand le contribuable eSt un homme.
La question en litige n'est done point la question abstralte
des droits de la femme, sur laquelle les niembreS memes de
notre Association peuVent differer d’opinions, mais la ques
tion de savoir si la quality du sexe peut destituef du droit
politique tin membra quelconque de la communaute.
a J’ajouterai que nous avons sur ce point en notre faveur la
plus haute autorite legale du pays. Notre avocat general ltiimeme, sir John Coleridge, areconrtu en plelnParlement qtt’il
dtait difficile & uti Anglais de denier ttil tel droit (1). »
Nous ne pouvons qu’admlrer la sageSse et la moderation
d’un tel langage. La fermete dont les femmes anglaises
font preuve,en limitant leur reclamation au strict principe du
droit positif, est a nos yeux un gage certain de succes. On
verra d’ailleurs, en continuant cette etude, quelle matche regulfere et progressive la question a suivie. Nous la feprendrons au debut, stir le terrain legislatif.
le coeur que par les facultes de l’intelligence, a ete pCettiaturement
enlevee a sa tache et a 1’affection de ses amis, au mois de Janvier
4874. La cause a laquelle elle s’etait entierement Vouee a fait, par
cette mort, une grande perte.
(1) SPatice du le» tnal 1872.7 *'
�Le registre parlementaire d’Hansard nous donne, a la date
du 3 aoflt 4832, la premiere mention qui ait ete faite a la
Chambre des Communes du droit des femmes au vote poli
tique.
M. Hunt (1) se l&ve et dit qu’il a une petition a presenter,
laquelle sera peut-6tre un sujet de gaite pour les honorables
gentlemen, mais qui lui parait neanmoins meriter quelque
attention. Cette petition vient d’une dame de haut rang,
Mary Smith de Stanmore, du comte d’York. La petitionnaire
etablit que, possedant de grands biens, elle paye des taxes
considerables, et elle demande, selon le principe de la con
stitution anglaise, a participer al’election de ceux qui reprdsentent lapropriete. Elle ajoute que les femmes etant sujettes
a tous les chatiments de la loi, sans excepter la mort, il lui
parait juste qu’elles ne demeurent pas etrangeres a la legis
lation. Et pourtant, ajoute-t-elle, non-seulement elles en sont
exclues, mais quand elles ont a subir un jugement, elles ne
reconnaissent personne de leur sexe parmi les jures et les
juges. La petitionnaire ne voit aucune bonne raison pour
refuser aux femmes les droits sociaux, em Angleterre surtout oil la plus haute fonction de l’Etat, celle de la royautb,
peut dtre exercee par une femme, et elle termine en deman
dant que toutes les femmes non mariees ou veuves se trouvant d’ailleurs dans les conditions legales, puissent voter
pour les membres du parlement.
M. Hunt ne se mdprenait pas en prevoyant le peu de succes de cette petition. Elle fut ecartee sans discussion, mais
non sans quelques sourires des-honorablesgentlemen.—
A cette dpoque, d’ailleurs, l’opinion n’avait point encore
(1) Miiiistre de la marine dans ie cabinet actufel.
�— 12 —
ete saisie, et cet acte isole passa pour une excentricit6 sans
valeur et sans consequence.
C’est seulement treize ans apres que la question apparait
dans le public avec un certain eclat, relevee et soutenue par
deux noms populaires : M. Richard Cobden et M. Stuart Mill.
Dans un discours ala date du 15 janvier 18Zt5, a CoventGarden, M. Cobden se prononce en faveur du suffrage des
femmes (1), et l’annee suivante, M. Stuart Mill, dans un ouvrage politique sur la nature du gouvernement, se prononce
a son tour avec non moins de fermete dans le mdme sens.
Des cette epoque, on peut prevoir 1’attitude resolue que
M. Mill prendra plus tard dans la lutte.
L’appui de noms aussi estimes et aussi populaires com
mence a donner a la question une importance nouvelle.
Cependant le progres est lent, et c’est seulement douze ans
apres qu’un incident la remet en lumiere, sans amener encore
de resultats positifs.
En 1858, les ouvriers de Newcastle, avant forme une asso
ciation en faveur du suffrage universel, demanderent a un
groupe de femmes distinguees et liberates de se joindre a
eux et d’appuver leurs reclamations.
Celles-ci proposerent alors d’unir la question du vote des
femmes a celle du suffrage universel. Mais les ouvriers, tout
en admettant le principe, craignirent de compromettre leur
cause par cette union, et les pourparlers n’eurent pas de
suite.
En 1865 seulement, a l’epoque des elections, la question
revint devant le public avec un eclat nouveau. Les electeurs
de Westminster avaient propose la candidature a M. Mill.
« J’ecrivis en reponse, nous dit-il dans ses Memoires, une
lettre destinee a la publicite. Au sujet des droits electoraux,
je leur declarai peremptoirement que dans ma conviction,
conviction a laquelle je conformerais mes actes, les femmes
(1) « C’est un fait singulier a mes yeux, dit M. Cobden, et une
grande anomalie, que les femmes ne puissent pas voter elles-memes
quand, en nombre de cas, elles peuvent conferer le vote. Je souhaite
pour mon compte que leur droit finisse par etre reconnu. »
�avaient le droit d’etre representees dans le parlement sur le
meme pied que les hommes. C’etait sans doute la premiere
fois que cette doctrine s’afflrmait devant des electeurs an
glais. Aussi le succes de ma candidature, apres cette decla
ration de principe, a-t-elle donne l’impulsion au mouvement,
devenu depuis si vigoureux, en faveur du suffrage des
femmes » (1).
On remarque, en effet, que l’annee suivante, en 1866,
M. Mill put deja presenter, a la chambre des Communes une
petition de 1500 femmes pour demander le suffrage.
Dans cette curieuse seance, M. Disraeli, chef du parti conservateur,serailie a l’idee generale contenue dans la petition.
Il s’exprime en ces termes :
« Dans un pays gouverne par une femme, alors que nous
reconnaissons aux femmes le droit de former une partie de
l’Etat en qualite de pairesses de leur propre chef, alors que
nous admettons, non-seulement qu’elles possedent la terre,
mais qu’elles soient dames de manoir (Lady of the manor} et
tiennent des cours de justice, quand elles peuvent Otre gardiennes de l’Eglise etsurveillantesdespauvres, je ne saurais
voir par quelle raison on les exclurait du droit de vote. »
(Hansard’s Parliamentary debates.}
En 1867, M. Mill presenta une seconde petition de 12 2Zi7
personnes, hommes et femmes, et, de plus, un bill ou projet
de loi, en faveur de la reforme. Voici dans quels termes il
posa alors la question:
« Je me l&ve, messieurs, pour proposer une extension du
suffrage qui ne saurait exciter aucun sentiment de classe
ou de parti, qui ne peut pas plus donner'd’ombrage aux par
tisans les plus absolus des droits de la propriety qu’aux defenseurs les plus ardents des droits du nombre ; une exten
sion qui ne troublera pas dans la moindre mesure ce qu’on
appelait derni&rement la balance des pouvoirs politiqu.es, qui
(1) Histoire de ma vie, par Mill, p. 269.
�n'alarmera ni les adverspires leg plus craintifs de la revolu
tion, ni leg ddmocrates les plus jalouxdes droits populates,,,
La question que je yous adresse est celle-ci; Est-il juste de
refuser a une moitie des membres de la communaute, nonseulement l’exercice, mais la capacite d’exercer jamais les
droits politiques, alors que ces membres se trouvent dans
toutes les conditions legales et constitutionnelles qui suffiseut
auxautresmembres?.., La justice, qui represente a mes yeux
un groupe particulier d'intdrdts, n'exige pas sans doute qu’on
confere les fonctions politiques a chacun, mais elle exige
qu’on n’en destitue arbitrairement personne. Or, peut-on
prdtendre que des femmes qui administrent leurs biens per
sonnels, possfcdent et exploitent la terre, conduisent des
fermes, des maisons d’affaires et des dtablissements d’dducation, sont chefs de famille et paient des impots conside
rables, restent incapables de remplir une fonction a l’exer
cice de laquelle tout homme, quel qu’il soil, peut fitre ap’
pele?.,.Etce n’est pas seulement le principede la justice qui
est violepar cette exclusion des femmes,entant que femmes,
c’estnotre constitution m£me. La vieille doctrine sur laquelle
elle est fondee, doctrine chere a tousles liberauxetreconnue
par tous les conservateurs, n’est-elle pas contenue dans cette
maxime que I'impdt et la representation sont coeioistants ?
Or, cette maxime est violee par 1’exclusion des femmes. »
M. Mill examine ensuite tous les arguments eontraires au
projet de loi, arguments qu’on tire des obligations de la
femme dans la vie privee, et il ajoute : « Qu’est-ce done que la
liberty politique, sinon le controle de ceux qui exercent
directement les. fonctions publiques par ceux qui ne les exer
cent pas? Ce contrble est-il done de nature h absorber
l’existence, pour qu’on le declare incompatible avec les soins
de la famille et ses obligations ? Si Ton est sincere, on ponrra
peut-dtre rdduire cos arguments h un sentiment obsenr et
honteux de lui-mdme, que nous traduirons ainsi: — Une
femme n'a pas le droit d’etre autre chose que la servante la
plus utile et la plus devouee d’un homme. — J’ajouterai que,
dans ma conviction, il n’y a pas un seul mernbre de cette
Chambre capable d’un sentiment si bas. »
A la suite de ce discours, le bill obtint 82 voix: la plupart
�appartenaient au parti radical (1). Quglques conservateurs
cependant suivirent l’exemple de M. Disraeli, au nona de la
tradition constitutionnelle, et voterent comme
pour le
bill.
Ainsi, chose curieuse 1 la question du drbit politique des
femmes est entrde sur le terrain legislatif appuyde par les
chefs des deux partis les plus opposes da la Chambre, at grace
a I’honorable minority qu’elle obtint, on peut dire qu’elle y
conquit ce jour-la sa place offlcielle. On pouvait encore la
combattre, mais on ne pouvait plus la traiter de chimeyique
et d’absurde.
Cette meme annbe, un incident se prhsenta qui permit de
faire en sa faveur, et sous une autre forme, une tentative
nouvelle,
La loi ecrite, en Angleterre, se sert du terme person
(personne) pour designer quiconque possede certains droits,
ou est sujet a certaines obligations. Or, dans un eas
particulier, un juge ayant decide que le mot person ntetait
point applicable aux femmes (2), on avait senti le danger
d’une jurisprudence qni aurait flni par dispenser les femmes
de tous les impbts si on l’avait ghnhralishe, et, pour parer M
la possibility d’un tel abus, lord Romilly avait presente une
loi, votee sans discussion par la chambre des Communes,
qui decidait que le terme legislatif de person etait egalement
applicable aux deux sexes, a moins que l’intention contraire
n’ait ete clairement exprimee par le legislateur.
L’annee suivante nbanmoins, en 1867, quand on vota la
re forme electorale, entraine par l’usage, on employe encore
(1) Les radicaux representent la partie la plus avancee du parti
liberal, Ce terme, toutefois, n’iniplique aucune signification revolutionnaire. Tous les partis politiques, a la chambre des Communes,
sont constitutionnels.
(2) Voici quel etait ce cas: Le dernier due de Buckingham avait
cite quelques chasseurs devant la justice pour fait de braconnage a
Stowe. Ceux-ci furent condamnes a Tamende, et, par vengeance, ils
attaquerent de la meme facon la duchesse pour avoir chasse le faisan
sans permis. Les magistrats decidferent que pour les permis de chasse,
la loi, employant le mot de person et le pronom he (il), n’etait pas
applicable aux femmes.
�le terme person pour designer les votants, sans deter
miner le sexe. Les partisans du suffrage des femmes ne devaient pas manquer de se prevaloir de cette inadvertance;
voici comment ils procederent:
Les listes electorales, en Angleterre, sont dressees par les
municipalites et revisees par un avocat de la couronne qui,
dans le cas ou les inscriptions ne lui paraissent pas conformes a la loi, peut effacer d’office les noms inscrits. Ses
decisions toutefois ne sont pas souveraines; il y a une cour
d’appel.
En 1868, l’annee qui suivit la reforme, quand les nouvelles
listes furent dressees, nombre de femmes se presentdrent
pour etre inscrites comme electeurs. Il y eut des cas ou les
officiers municipaux consentirent a cette inscription, d’autres oil ils la refuserent, et il y eut aussi des cas ou les avocats de la couronne ratifierent l’inscription municipale, d’autres ou ils effacdrent d’office les noms de femmes.
Dans tous les districts oil les noms furent maintenus sur
la liste, les femmes purent voter ; et de fait, elles voterent.
On cite entre autres le district de Finsbury, a Londres, ou
cinq femmes voterent. A Worcester, il y en eut une ; a Ash
ford, dans le comte de Kent, il y en eut vingt; il y en eut
dans beaucoup d’autres. La validite de ces votes n’a jamais
ete contestee.
La question neanmoins restait pendante. Il fallait la resoudre sur le terrain legal. On s’entendit a cet effet.
A Manchester, cinq mille femmes enregistrees comme elec
teurs avaient vu leurs noms rayes d’office par l’avocat de la
couronne; elles en appelerent, et leurs reclamations furent
portees devant la Cour.
Malheureusement pour la cause, il se trouva dans la faqon
dont les reclamations furent presentees un incident qui la
compromit.
On se rappelle que l’objet des deux dernidres reformes
electorales, celle de 1832 et celle de 1867, avaient ete d’etendre le droit de vote de la propriete a la rente. Il y avait dans
le principe de cette reforme un element qui paraissait une
derogation a la pure tradition constitutionnelle, etle parti
conservateur ne l’avait acceptee qu’avec repugnance, contraint
�17 —
par l'opinion publique. Or, le corps de la magistrature, ©n
Angleterre, y compris les avocats et les avoues, appartenant exclusivement au parti conservateur, on pense que
si les reclamations avaient ete presentees a la Cour au nom
des femmes proprietaries "conformement a l’ancienne loi,
elles avaient chance d’etre accueillies.
Malheureusement, la premiere petition inscrite venail
d’une femme rentiere, et on dut statuer en se plagant au
point de vue de la reforme. Les juges etaient naturellement peu enclins a etendre les applications d’une loi dont
ils n’approuvaient pas le principe; ils rejeterent done la
requfite et decidbrent que le mot person, employe fortuitement par le legislateur, ne comprenait pas dans son esprit
les deux sexes, mais les hommes seulement.
Ce jugement, qui enveloppait en masse toutes les reclama
tions, avait force de loi, et c’est la premiere decision legale
qui ait exclu les femmes du vote politique en Angleterre.
Malgre cet echec, le mouvement ne fut pas arrdte, car
les annees suivantes un nombre de petitions comprenant, en
1868, Zt9 780 signatures, en 1869, 56A75, puis 13Z| 561, puis
186 976, puis 355 806, furent successivement presentees a la
Chambre.
En 1869, M. Mill n’avait pas ete reelu, mais M. Jacob
Bright, frere de John Bright quaker et membre du ministbre, avait repris au Parlementla defense de la meme cause,
et, en attendant qu’il presentat un nouveau bill, il obtenait
de la Chambre, en faveur de l’intervention des femmes dans
la vie publique, les decisions les plus importantes. Il obte
nait le droit de vote dans les elections municipales, dans
l’election des officiers de police, des comites d’hygiene, des
gardiens des pauvres et, l’annee d’apres, en 1870, quand on
discula la loi de l’inslruction primaire, l’election et l’eligibilite dans les school-boards (1).
(i) Les school-boards sont des comites locaux qui organisent, administrent et gouvernent l’enseignement primaire dans chaque district.
Ce ne sont pas seulement des comites scolaires, mais de veritables
pouvoirs qui decident de la creation des 6coles et forcent les conseils
municipaux a lever les taxes necessaires a ce sujet. Ils decident, en
2
�— 18 —
En outre, la m6me annee, 11 presenta un nouveau bill qui,
apres avoir dte renvoye devant une commission par une majorite de circonstance (la Chambre n’etait pas en nombre),
fut ensuite rejete par un autre vote de surprise (1). La dis
cussion parlementaire se trouvait ainsi close jusqu’a la fin
de 1’annee ; mais la semaine suivante un grand meeting fut
tenu a Londres, dans lequel on decida avec enthousiasme de
continuer la lutte jusqu’au jour du succes.
En 1871, en effet, la question, qu’on n’avait pas cesse d’agiter devant le pays, revient devant le Parlement, et on peul
encore constater ses progres de deux manieres : d’abord par
le nombre des votes, qui s’elevent de 9Zi ou de 124 a 151; puis
par l’attitude tres-differente du cabinet. M. Gladstone, au lieu
de s’opposer personnellement au bill, laisse entendre, dans
un langage toutefois assez obscur, qu’il n’est pas loin d’en
admettre le principe. Il croit.le moment premature, car le
vote a bulletin ouvert donne lieu a de telles scenes de vio
lence que la presence des femmes ne pourrait y £tre
supportee. Mais une fois le vote secret adopte, la situa
tion sera tres-differente (2). «Les adversaires du bill,
dit M. Gladstone, lui opposent cette grande loi de la race
humaine en vertu de laquelle les travaux et les devoirs
de la vie domestique incombent ala femme, etles travaux et
les devoirs exterieurs incombent a l’homme; mais ils oublient que cette loi se modifie chaque jour sous l’empire des
faits. Le nombre de femmes independantes vivant soil de
outre, si l’enseignement sera obligatoire dans le district et s’il sera
la'ique ou religieux. Les femmes peuvent y etre elues, alors meme
qu’elles ne paient pas de cote personnelle et sont mariees. La pre
miere election qui s’est faite apres le vote de la loi a introduit sept
femmes dans les school-boards ; la seconde, qui a eu lieu a la fin de
1873, huit pour l’Angleterre et vingt-quatre pour l’Ecosse.
(-1) La majorite lors du premier vote etait de 124 contre 94. Lorsque }e bill revint pour la seconde fois devant la Chambre, M. Glad11
chef du gouvernement, s’y opposa ouvertement et le fit rejeter
en provoquant un vote subit a une heure du matin, auquel prirent
part tous les deputes faisant partie du gouvernement. On remarqua
que 58 deputes qui avaient vote pour le bill la premiere fois etaient
alors absents.
(2) Depuis cette. epoque le vote secret a ete adopte.
�— 19 —
leur propre fortune, soit de leur propre travail, augmente
chaque annee, surtout dans les grandes grilles. Or, on ne
saurait contester que ces femmes, en assumant la responsamlite de leur propre existence, assument en mdme temps
ioutes les charges qui appartiennent d’ordinaire exclusive*
ment aux hommes, et elles les assument dans des conditions
plus difficiles que leurs puissants competiteurs. Il y a dans
ce fait une inegalite et une injustice qu’aucun de nous ne
peut contester. Il est done certain qu’il y a des rdformes h
faire. »
En 1872 et en!873,le bill revient au Parlement et obtient
la dernidre annee un gain de Z|, voix (155). C’est un faible
progrSs, niais on se trouve en face de la mCme Chambre.
C’est M. Jacob Bright, M. Eastwick et M. Fawcett qui ont
remplacd M. Stuart Mill dans la defense de la cause.
« On discute, dit M. Fawcett, la question de savoir si les
femmes sont plus ou moins capables que les hommes de
prendre part a un gouvernement representatif: je repondrai
que nous n’en savons tien, que nous ne pouvons rien en
savoir avant l’experience. Mais je dis qu’il est contraire aux
principes de ce gouvernement et contraire a la justice d’imposer des lois a certains membres de la communautd sans
leur donner en mfime temps le pouvoir de contrdler ces lois.
Un grand nombre de mes amis me disent qu’ils ne voteront
pas pour le bill parce qu’ils pensent que l’intervention des
femmes augmentera la force du parti conservateur et celle
de 1 Eglise. Je n admets pas mdme qu’on pose cette question.
Si les femmes sont favorables a l’Eglise, elles en ont le droit,
et nous devons prendre leur opinion en consideration,
quelles que soient nos sympathies. »
« On a donne le vote aux femmes dans les conseils municipaux et les school-boards, dit M. Jacob Bright, parce que, a-t-on
dit, elles sont interessees autant que les hommes aux ques
tions d’education et aux questions d’administration locale.
Mais ne pouvons-nous pas employer le mdme argument
quand il s’agit de la representation generale du pays? Est-il
une seule de nos lois qui ne les interesse d’une fa§on directe
ou indirecte? On nous demande d’etendre le vote dans les
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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De l'affranchissement politique des femmes en Angleterre
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Coignet, C. (Clarisse)
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Place of publication: Paris
Collation: 46 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From La Revue Politique et Litteraire, vol. 10 44-45: 2, 9 May 1894. Includes bibliographical reference.
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Librairie Germer Bailliere
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1874
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G405
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Women's rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (De l'affranchissement politique des femmes en Angleterre), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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French
Conway Tracts
Women-Suffrage
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^A/b/2-
DR CARPENTER AT SION COLLEGE;
OR, THE
VIEW OF MIRACLES
TAKEN BY
MEN OF SCIENCE.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SOOTT,
NO. II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E. ■
1874.
Price. Sixpence.
�7
�DE CAEPENTEE AT SION COLLEGE ;
OR,
THE VIEW OF MIRACLES
TAKEN BY
MEN OF SCIENCE.
HE following correspondence originated from the
sending to Divinity
the
Tnotice which aappeared ProfessorIndex, copy of atime
in The
a short
since, of a lecture delivered by Dr Carpenter at Sion
College, on “The Reign of Law,” particularly in
relation to the efficacy of prayer, before an audience
two-thirds of which consisted of clergymen. As
exception has been taken to the notice referred to by
some who were present at the meeting, on the ground
that it was not strictly accurate, it may be well to
give the reader an authoritative summary of the
Doctor’s line of thought, by way of introduction to
the general discussion of the subject which succeeds.
No report of the lecture appeared in the English press
at the time, and no formal minutes were kept of the
proceedings by the officials of Sion College. It may
just be premised, further, that while the lecture went
to show that there was no proof of the uniformity of
law observable in the physical universe being in the
least altered by prayer, Dr Carpenter left his hearers
to infer, by natural sequence, that no evidence exists
of the course of physical nature ever having been
interrupted preternaturally from any cause whatso
ever. This latter principle underlies the whole argu
�4
On the View of Miracles
ment of the lecture, and interlaces Dr Carpenter’s
thought throughout. It may be otherwise defined
thus. The structure of the Universe seems, from all
that can be known of it, to be incompatible with the
occurrence of physical miracle ; and the investigation
of this principle will be chiefly kept in view by the
present writer.
Dr Carpenter began by expressing his entire
agreement with Dr Chalmers and other theologians
who have known what science means in regarding
“ the laws of nature ” as simply our expressions of
the uniformities observable in the phenomena of the
universe. The lecturer referred specially to Dr
Chalmers’s sermon, entitled “The Constancy of Nature:
a Testimony to the Faithfulness of God.” He showed
that the whole of our action in the world proceeds
upon the assumption of this uniformity; and whilst
he did not question that the Deity could depart from
it if he so determined, he did emphatically question
whether we had any ground to expect that he ever
would, in accordance with human entreaty.
“If the whole scheme of creation,” argued Dr
Carpenter, “ has been devised with a view to the
highest happiness and welfare of God’s creatures, any
departure from that scheme must be for the worse.
And so, if I ask God for something that I think would
be better for me, it must be at the expense (even
supposing that I should really be the better for it) of
some one else. But any one who really believes in the
infinite paternity of God would shrink from impor
tunity for any change that he may desire for himself;
just as much as a child who trusts implicitly in the
wisdom and affection of an earthly father will abstain
from importuning him, when told that what he asks
would be bad for him.”
“To importune God for any departure from his
uniform course of action seems to me tantamount to
saying either that we know better than he does what
�Taken by Men of Science.
$
is good for us, or that, knowing that his way is best
in the end, we prefer the immediate gratification of
our own selfish desires.”
“ In earlier times pestilences were supposed to be
punishments inflicted by the vengeance of an offended
Deity, who was to be propitiated by prayers and
sacrifices. Now, we regard them as the result of
habitual violations of the laws which God enables us
to read in the course of nature ; and when such occur,
we set ourselves to find out the misdoing and endea
vour to correct it.”
The Doctor then narrated a very remarkable case,
which occurred at Baltimore in the Cholera Epidemic
of 1849. “Though the Poor-House,” he said, “was
supposed to have been free from any special liability
to its attack, and there was no prevalence of cholera
in the town, yet at two or three miles distance from
Baltimore, and in an open salubrious situation, there
was a most fearful outbreak in this Poor-House,
thirty dying in a day out of about eight hundred.
This was traced to a defect of drainage, which was
at once rectified, and immediately the plague was
stayed.” With reference to this Dr Carpenter
asked:—“ Does any gentleman in this room believe
that, if all Baltimore had gone down on its knees for
a week, God would have been moved to avert the
visitation ? ” His argument was that, “ in regard to
the course of nature, it is for the man of science to
study the uniformities of the Divine action, and to
bring down his own into accordance with it.” He
drew, however, “a broad line between the action of
Deity in the physical universe and his spiritual agency
on the mind of man.” “ The religious experience of
ages,” he said, “sanctions the idea that prayer for
enlightenment to know the will of God, and for
strength to enable us to do or bear it, has an effect—■
how or
we cannot tell; and to this view he gave
his entire assent. “ Such prayer,” he maintained,
�6
On the View of Miracles
“ is in accordance with the deepest religious instincts,
and is expressed in the noblest passages of sacred
literature.” “ But, in regard to the work of life,” he
contended “ that laborare (on the highest principles of
action) est orare. ”
One clergyman said, at the close of the lecture,
that if Dr Carpenter’s position were correct he might
as well shut up his church. He said : “ I ask God
for things I want, and I expect to get them.” But
this did not seem the general impression, which was,
that “ prayer does not change the course of nature,
but that, in the ordination of Divine Providence,
Prayer is a condition of our obtaining what we ask.”
In a letter written afterwards by Dr Carpenter to
a friend, containing comments on this latter view of
prayer, he says: “ This is as much as to say that if
we did not ask we should not receive (yet we are told
that material blessings are bestowed alike on the just
and the unjust, on the thankful and the unthankful).
I should call this the mechanical theory of Prayer.
It puts us in the condition of children just learning to
talk, who are made to say ‘ Ta! ’ for a cake or a
sweetie; and it seems to me to lower the spiritual
value of prayer to the material, instead of raising the
material to the spiritual—or, as Miss Cobbe said to
me, to bring God down to us, instead of trying to lift
ourselves to God.”
“ Mr Llewellyn Davies expressed his general ac
cordance with me; and I had subsequent communi
cations from other clergymen to the same effect. I
believe that liberal and thoughtful men generally
would accept these conclusions, if not trammelled by
the letter of Scripture. Many have revolted at the
parables of the Unjust Judge and the Importunate
Widow, and of the Friend who yields to importunity
what he will not give to friendship; as conveying a
low idea of the Divine Fatherhood. Their best inter
pretation has, I think, been given by Robert Collyer
�Taken by Men of Science.
7
(of Chicago), in an admirable sermon entitled “ Knock
ing at the Gate of Heaven,”—their lesson being that
nothing good or great can be got without persevering
effort.”
Letter from the Lev. Dr ----- , Professor of Theology, to
Mr M---- .
----- College, 14 March, 1874.
My dear Mr M----- ,
If the report [from The Index] of which you have kindly
sent me a copy be correct . . . there must have been a most
melancholy exhibition of bigotry, narrowness and fanaticism.
. . . What a god in knowledge Dr Carpenter must be to
be able to use such words as:—“Nature represents a
kingdom of orderly evolution which has never been invaded
by anything preternatural or supernatural, and all liturgies,
litanies, collects, and prayers that were ever uttered never
had influenced—never could influence—the course of this
universe, nor mankind, nor a single individual in the slightest
degree.”*
Do you really think Dr Carpenter knows the entire history of
nature and humanity from the beginning down to this time,
so exactly as to be able of knowledge to affirm that ? If he
do not, such a statement, scientifically considered, is the pro
duct either of ignorance or fanaticism. If this be what is
called “Truth, whatever be the consequences,” the so-called
scientists are as self-deluded as they are fanatical—viewed
from the point of view of sober science. The paper you have
sent has supplied me with another proof that there are no
men more narrow and incapable of reasoning outside their own
limited department than the “scientists.” They are con
stantly protesting against metaphysics, philosophy, faith, &c.,
and yet they are perpetually making a system of the
universe out of the wee bit of earth to which they have
devoted special attention. Speaking solely from a scientific
point of view, I maintain that statements like Dr Carpenter’s
are as unscientific and fanatical as the crudest assertions ever
enunciated by a preacher. There is now far more real
scientific sobriety and caution in believing than in unbelieving
circles. Fanaticism is fast becoming—as has been foretold—
the specialty of those who do not believe. Excuse me
expressing myself plainly. I do so as a thinking man, not as
* These words are cited from the notice in The Index.
�8
On the View of Miracles
a Christian teacher. Wishing that you yourself may soon
again pass from darkness to the true light of life in Christ,
I am, &c.,
---------- .
Letter from Mr M---- to Dr------ .
B----- , 19 March, 1874.
My dear Dr----- ,
. . . The report of the proceedings at Sion College, which
I forwarded you, is substantially correct on the main points,
though faulty in omitting to record that one-third of the
audience was composed of laymen, in erroneously stating that
bishops were present, and in making too much of the protests
uttered by the clergy. Moreover, it puts the argument
of Dr Carpenter too baldly, and without due qualification.
The lecturer did not deny the possibility of Deity effecting a
physical miracle or acting discordantly with the uniform
operation of material law, though he asserted that there was
no ground to expect that the Deity ever would depart from that
uniformity in accordance with human entreaty. Again, in justice
to the Doctor it should have been stated in the report, that
he admitted prayer to be efficacious in the spiritual sphere as
far as to enable us to obtain “enlightenment ” respecting “the
will of God” and “ strength to do or bear it.”
Now one point is clear. Dr Carpenter practically recog
nises interference with the uniform operation of the laws of
nature as a conception at variance with the perfect wisdom
and beneficence he would attribute to the Deity; for he says
in his own account of the lecture written to a correspondent:
“If the whole scheme of creation has been devised with a
view to the highest welfare of God’s creatures, any departure
from that scheme must be for the worse.” In this view I entirely
concur, notwithstanding the epithets with which you gratui
tously bespatter the lecturer and the scientific laymen present
who shared his opinions. As for some of the worthy clergy
men present, their uneasiness under the statements to which
they listened is far from unaccountable. They are not accus
tomed to be contradicted by their people, and perhaps many
of them had not imagined that it was possible for their fond
traditions and devout faith in the miraculous, to receive so
rude a shock from the inexorable conclusions of science. Such
conclusions tended to disturb their faith, which is usually felt
by them to be consoling and strong in proportion as it is not
subjected to the test of historic criticism and to the antisupernatural analyses of science.
�Taken by Men of Science.
9
While virtually at one with Dr Carpenter on this head, I
should be disposed to define my position without his qualifying
considerations. He admits that whatever the Deity may have
the power to will, there is no proof that he has ever performed
a miracle in answer to human entreaty,—and I would venture
to add that there is no real proof that he ever performed a
miracle under any other condition. I believe nature to be a
system of orderly evolution, and in the very essence of the
constitution of the universe, the possibility of what is popu
larly understood as supernatural or miraculous interference
with its laws is necessarily precluded. Nature would cease
to be nature, and the universe to be the universe, on any
other supposition. This is the inductive view of the matter,
which one, unsophisticated by theological bias, instinctively
arrives at, as the result of intelligently observing the struc
ture, phenomena, and laws of the universe. And in this view
we are impregnably supported by the experience of the greatest
thinkers of modern days and by the testimony of all verifiable
history, as distinguished from incoherent, contradictory, and
half-mythical records which belong to unscientific and super
stitious times, and which relate, for the most part, to com
munities notoriously credulous and unacquainted with the
simplest facts of natural science. Niebuhr has played con
siderable havoc with some pleasant stories in the early history
of Rome; and, much to the dismay of those who have been
indulging similarly happy illusions affecting the professed
biographies of Jesus and his apostles, Strauss, Bauer, Schenkel, Meredith, Scott, and others have demonstrated many
historical statements in the four Gospels to be not only irreconcileable with each other, but incapable of proof. The
authenticity of these Gospels touches the very core of the
question of miracles, for they are claimed to be an inspired
history of a supernatural revelation from God; and for this
reason I must ask your permission to submit a few remarks
on these venerated documents in connection with this
subject.
Pagan, Jewish, and Christian writers alike, nearest to the
days of Jesus and his apostles knew nothing of the four
gospels. Moreover, as to the writing spoken of in the alleged
works of a certain Christian Bather, under the title of
‘ Memorials of the Apostles,’ there is no proof that these
‘ Memorials ’ ever existed; no trace of them can be found; and
it is quite possible that the single reference to them in early
Christian literature may be spurious. But even granting that
such ‘ Memorials ’ were genuine and authentic, there is nothing
to show that they were identical with the Gospels in the main,
or that they substantiate the claims of the latter. In no
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On the View of Miracles
instance do the Fathers for the first 150 years mention
Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, or quote words which can,
beyond dispute, be verified as of the authorship of the
“Evangelists.” There is no proof that the Gospels, in their
present shape, or in any real shape, were known to the
Fathers during the period above stated. Not till the time of
Irenceus (A.D. 180) does the doctrine of the Divine origin of the
Gospels begin to be propounded and believed, and even then Christians
were greatly divided as to which Gospels, and how many, were worthy
their acceptance. Nor can it be denied that the second
century was pre-eminent in Christendom for “pious frauds”
in connection with the “ sacred” records of the church,—these frauds being shamelessly practised and justified because
calculated to advance the material and external interests
of the Christian faith. A hundred years from the death of
the oldest apostle was surely a sufficiently long space,—
under such lax ideas of honesty as then prevailed among
Christian writers,—to bring to maturity a considerable
crop of fictitious narratives; and it is well known that tales
of this kind abounded in those times, respecting Jesus and
his immediate followers. A distinguished Church of England
theologian writes:—“Books, countless in number, were
written [in post-apostolic times], professing to give a history
of Jesus and his apostles. The authorship of these was attri
buted to Christ himself, or to some of his apostles and their
companions : our four Gospels were selected from this countless
number.” By.whom were they selected? When were they
selected? Why were they selected? Let Mosheim answer
these questions. “ As to the time when, and the persons by
whom, the books of the New Testament were collected into
one body, there are various opinions, or rather conjectures, of
the learned ; for the subject is attended with great and inexplicable
difficulties to us of these latter times.'’*
What then can really be known of how and by whom these
selected gospels were composed ? Is there no unmistakeable
source of information open to us as to when and how they
came into existence, and when and how the original autographs
of them were lost ? Such autographs are unknown to history.
The very earliest MS. of the gospels the world has, as yet,
had access to, is dated no further back than the beginning of
the fourth century.
Even orthodox theologians of repute saw away the branch
to which they cling, by the admissions which facts compel
them to make concerning the impenetrable obscurity and, I
might add, the strong doubtfulness in which the origin of the
gospels is shrouded. The late Dean Alford, in his ‘ Critical
* Eccles. Hist., vol. i., p. 93.
�Taken by Men of Science.
II
Introduction to the Greek text of the New Testament,
writes: “The Christian world is left in uncertainty
what its Scriptures are as long as the sacred text is full of
Various readings. Some one MS. must be pointed out to us which
carries the weight of verbal inspiration or some text whose authority
shall be undoubted, must be promulgated. But manifestly neither
'of these things can ever happen. To the latest age the reading of
■some important passages will be matter of doubt in the church,
and there is hardly a sentence in the whole of the
FOUR GOSPELS IN WHICH THERE ARE NOT VARIETIES OF
DICTION IN OUR PRINCIPAL MSS., BAFFLING ALL ATTEMPTS
to decide which was its original form.” A frank con
cession truly for a learned exegetical theologian who,
notwithstanding, strangely adhered to the notion that the
gospels were miraculously inspired!
Canon Westcott, who has bestowed, if possible, even more
attention upon the question of New Testament canonieity,
speaks in yet more decisive terms on this point. “It is cer
tainly remarkable,” he says, “that in the controversies of the
second century, which often turned upon disputed readings of
the Scripture, no appeal was made to the apostolic originals; the
few passages in which it has been supposed that they are referred to,
will not bear examination.”* Orthodox critics themselves being
witnesses, therefore, there is no evidence that the gospels
were written by those whose names they bear; there is a total
absence of contemporary testimony in their favour, and no
proof whatever in the next two generations, that the books
were veracious, or written by the persons to whom they are
ascribed. Canon Westcott himself admits that clear quota
tions from the gospels do not occur till the time of Ireneeus
(a.d. 180), Clement of Alexandria (a.d. 220), and Origen
(a.d. 250).
The accepted doctrine of the New Testament, as containing
a supernatural revelation, then, seems simply “to have had
its origin in tradition for at least the first hundred and
seventy years of the Christian era; for the following one
hundred and thirty years it was a matter of speculation, among
men whose ignorance was only equalled by their superstitious
credulity; and, finally, it was decreed to be a divine truth by
a majority of votes in one of those turbulent assemblies of
bishops, which too often had to be dispersed by military force,
after terrible rioting, which was sometimes attended with
bloodshed.”
Until the third Council of Carthage (A.D. 397) numerous
gospels and epistles were in circulation and use among the
Christians, all claiming equally to be of inspired authority.
* Art. Smith’s Diet, of the Bible,vol. ii., p. 506.
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On the View of Miracles
By the bishops assembled at that Council a catalogue of the
books to be chosen and recognised as canonical, was drawn
up and passed, because found to serve best the ends of the
theological party then in power. All other books that
seemed to clash with the dogmas of this ruling party were
promptly burned. After much episcopal wrangling at the
*
Council on the subject, the number of gospels to be included
in the Canon was limited to four, with the consent of the
majority of the bishops, for the following ingenious reason,
which proved to be irresistibly conclusive to their orthodox
minds! Irenaeus was reported to have said, two centuries before :
“ It is impossible that there could have been more or less than
four. For there are four climates, and four cardinal winds,
and the church is spread over the whole earth ; but the gospel
is the pillar and foundation of the church, and its breath of
life. The church, therefore, was to have four pillars, blowing
immortality from every quarter, and giving life to men.”
Hence we happen to have inherited four gospels instead of
forty or fourscore I
Yet on the foundation of this arbitrary, conflicting, and
unproveable collection of narratives, you and your orthodox
friends expect Dr Carpenter to believe in the miracles ascribed
to Jesus and his colleagues, and you charge the Doctor with
“ narrowness, bigotry, and fanaticism ” because he rejects all
past accounts of miracles as improbable. We, who are called
rationalists, disbelieve in miracles (1) because it is of the
nature of supernatural interposition, were such to occur, to
introduce confusion and ruin into the whole indissolubly
connected chain of causes and effects throughout the Uni
verse ; and (2) because there does not exist in support of
religious miracles, or any other sort of miracles, any proof to
satisfy a mind free from traditional or sentimental fetters, and
bent on reaching fact by the only legitimate method—the
inductive method. I should be willing to leave it to any
twelve unprejudiced men of thought and judgment to decide
whether fanaticism lies in believing in miracles on the sandy
foundation of “pious frauds,” obscure superstitions, and con
flicting statements, pertaining to an age and a people remark
able for credulity and ignorance; or whether it lies in
rejecting tales of the miraculous, and trusting to the uniform
“Reign of Law” as essential to the well-being of the Uni
verse at all times and in all regions. If the question be
which side lays itself open to the imputation of fanaticism, I
should imagine the charge would most apply to those who
are satisfied to believe in stories of miracles which are said to
Draper’s Hist, of the Intel. Devpt. of Europe, vol. i., pp. 301-302.
�Taken by Men of Science.
T3
have happened nearly 2,000 years ago, on the authority of very
remote, incoherent, and unverifiable hearsays, coming down
from peasants living in ignorant times. The real fanatics are
surely those who, while so readily taking in those crude
narratives of far-off days, could not be convinced of the
supernatural occurring now, by almost any amount or kind
of testimony. How shall we characterise so singular a mode
of reasoning, except as fanatical ? Proof for an alleged miracle
in the nineteenth century, before it could be received by the
orthodox, must be indisputable; but the most hazy, mythwoven, and incongruous evidence is quite sufficient in their
view to support the affirmation of many miracles having taken
place among illiterate enthusiasts in the first century.
“Dq you really think Dr Carpenter knows the entire history
of nature and humanity from the beginning down to this
time so exactly as to be able of knowledge to affirm that ?
[viz., that a miracle never happened.] ” Such is your
question ; and it contains an intended quietus for the ration
alist which won some Evangelical fame for John Poster sixty
years ago, and the reply has been already given. There is no
proof that the regular course of nature has ever been departed
from, and yet the proof ought to be demonstrable in pro
portion to the extraordinary phenomena to which you invite
our credence. Nay, your question can be matched by another.
Do you really think that the planet Jupiter has the alterna
tion of day and night like our Earth ? Do you really think
that Neptune is influenced by the law of gravitation like this
“ wee bit of earth ” ? Can you say you know such to be the
case ? Have you personally been close enough to these stars,
and had such opportunities of studying their movements, that
you can demonstrate the assertion, of your knowledge, respecting
them ? Have you seen day and night on Jupiter ? Do you
possess tangible evidence that the laws of gravitation extend
to Neptune ? You know you cannot point to the clear evi
dence of your senses in proof of these things; and yet you are
prepared to assert emphatically that the phenomena I have
described belong as much to other planets as to our own.
You have the analogy of material law within the range of
your personal observation to guide you, and the tested con
clusions of science deepen your sense of the universality and
uniformity of law in its operations. But suppose I were to
hurl at you, for your supposed assertions about Jupiter and
Neptune, the ecclesiastical thunderbolt you aim at Dr
Carpenter and other men of science—whose pure, life-long and
successful devotion to the study of nature merits for them the
profoundest respect—for their denial of miracles, what then ?
And yet men of science have simply reached their conclusions as
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On the View of Miracles
to the order of nature excluding the occurrence of miracles
by the same inferential kind of reasoning which might lead you
to venture statements about something going on hundreds of
millions of miles away. There is, however, this difference. While
theologians and men of science in the case supposed would
equally base their reasonings on their convictions of an universal Cosmos, Dr Carpenter and his friends have had much
more experience than professors of theology in observing
the processes of nature, a higher scientific culture and a more
extensive and subtle apparatus for conducting scientific
research. _ Consequently I should feel quite as much justified
in accepting the statement of Dr Carpenter in his challenging
the proof of miracles, as I should in accepting your version of
certain natural events happening in very distant parts of the
universe. What think you now of the severe judgment you
have passed on scientific men as applied to yourself, mutatis
mutandis? “If he do not [i.e., know, by a personal inspection,
all departments of the Universe from the beginning, &c.] such
a statement [i.e., as the one the Doctor makes against
the occurrence of miracles], scientifically considered, is the
product either of ignorance or fanaticism. . . . The socalled scientists are as self-deluded as they are fanatical.
. . . No men more narrow and incapable of reasoning out
side their own limited department.”
Of course theologians (I suppose on Paul’s principle of him
that is spiritual being at liberty to judge all things) are
eminently capable of estimating accurately the profound
analysis of science, their “department” being so proverbially
expansive—especially where creeds, like high walls, attract
their, gaze to the vast range of metaphysico-theological
inscriptions written in these creeds—and shut out the region
beyond! A Pisgah-like prospect certainly, compared with
the “limited ” vista of science which has the grave disadvan
tage of beihg encompassed by no stereotyped creeds—
inventions so admirably adapted to enlarge human thought
and inspire a bold and wholesome love of ‘ ‘ truth, regardless
of consequences !! ”
I have seen, in my time, a good deal of philosophico-theological gymnastics performed round that word ‘ ‘ experience,”
as used by Hume tn relation to the subject of miracles. But
I have yet to find the dilemma in which that philosopher
put his supernaturalist critics, effectually answered by them.
■“ It is more probable (said he) that human testimony should
be false than that a miracle should be true; ” or as Paley
repeats Hume’s objection:—“It is contrary to experience
that a miracle should be true, but not contrary to experience
that testimony should be false.” This objection to miracles
�Taken by Men of Science.
i5
advanced by Hume before science had so completely disclosed
to us the uniform orderly development of nature as it has
since done—I say again has never been really confuted by
theology, but, on the other hand, has been confirmed by the
ever-accumulating verities of science.
Both on the principles, then, of true philosophy—the
philosophy of scientific fact — and on the principles of
scholarly historical criticism, the fairly intelligent mind of
our day, apart from traditional prejudices, cannot but have a
predisposition to trust the order of the universe as an uniform
whole, and as all-sufficient for every need of our race, and to
disbelieve in the aberglaube of supernaturalism.
When any class of men take it upon them to assert that
something miraculous took place somewhat frequently, 2,000
years ago in Palestine among a few obscure Jewish peasants,
of whom contemporary history says nothing, and of whom
trustworthy history takes no account for more than a century
afterwards ; when any class of men insist on our faith in this
preternatural interference on the authority of the most
unsatisfactory evidence ever produced—evidence which never
can be verified; when any class of men maintain that our
escape from eternal misery or eternal annihilation, as the case
may be, depends on our reception of vague and unverifiable
allegations about events avowedly contrary to the known laws
of nature and to the sum of trustworthy human experience,
and more particularly in the most enlightened ages and
countries, then unquestionably a very grave onus of proof
rests upon these believers in miracles. For my part I
unhesitatingly own that I regard miracles as impossible,
unnecessary, and superstitious, and while I see startling
presumption in any party proclaiming the necessity of
believing in them on a basis so frail—not to say illusory—as
the authority on which they are made to stand, I find every
thing harmonious with reason and with accredited and sober
human experience in the position of those of an inductive
habit of mind who disbelieve them.
Your mode of treating the subject calls to one’s mind the
legal exigency in which the policy is resorted to of abusing the
plaintiff’s attorney. You denounce the honest truth-seeking
“scientists,” as you call them, who have no creed to main
tain for pay, and who have consequently vastly less tempta
tion than theologians in the Christian sects have, to stick to a
dogma because it is the shibboleth of a party. We have had
enough of denunciation and reproach from orthodoxy. What
we want is honest and earnest discussion from your side; not
elaborate metaphysical dialectics or effusions of pious senti
ment, which are quite irrelevant, but calm, logical statements
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On the View of Miracles
offact in reply to the historical and scientific statements of fact
put forth by learned sceptics. Yet if we invite you to answer
Dr Carpenter and Professor Tyndall with science for science,
you choose either to evade the real point at issue or to assume
a scornful attitude and refuse our reasonable demand as if it
were malicious and profane. If we ask you to reply to
Spinoza’s ‘Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,’ or Strauss’s ‘‘T/ife
of Jesus,’ or Colenso’s ‘Pentateuch,’ you simply point us to
Neander’s ‘Life of Christ,’ or ‘Aids to Faith,’ or to the
paltering lectures of the “Christian Evidence Society,” and
you go your way, reminding us that our “stale objections”
have been “answered over and over again.” But we will
continue to proclaim our dissatisfaction till the whole question
of the Christian miracles is dealt with by you in a purely
inductive fashion, and the scorn or pity you affect towards
“ scientists ” and “unbelievers” we will only regard as marks
of a weak cause. I recommend to your attention the reply
of Herder, in his ‘ Survey of Spinozism, ’ to the habitual
carping of priests at science in all ages. He argues truly
that just in proportion as physical science has progressed,
men’s ideas of God and nature have been purified and raised,
and the old fancies of “the faithful” respecting the universe
as subject to blind and arbitrary control, have been dispelled.
“The forces of nature,” he says, “are eternal as the God
head in which they inhere. All is, was, and ever will be in
conformity with beneficent, beautiful, necessary law, twin
sister of eternal power, mother of all order, security, and
happiness.”
How different this view from the persistent attempts of the
guardians of ecclesiastical interests everywhere, who can with
difficulty be got to speak kindly of the most disinterested and
reverent attempts to unveil the operation of natural law, unless
the. scientific student happen to profess unquestioning belief in
their metaphysical speculations at the same time. It has rather
been the habit of orthodoxy to refer to the framework of life
around us as God-forsaken, or as containing, at best, a cold,
marred, distant, and unsatisfying revelation of the First Cause;
and this disposition of priests to undervalue revelations of
universal law through science has usually been associated with
a tendency on their part to be most dogmatic and earnest
about things that are most inscrutable—most confident in
their hair-splitting definitions of what is most indefinable.
One of your ablest theological colleagues, I remember some
time ago, charged disbelievers in his view of the supernatural
with ‘ ‘ imprisoning God within a vast and immoveable system
of natural laws.” A strange and, I fear I must say, an
ungrateful conception for any man to have of the system of
�Taken by Men of Science.
*7
the Universe as based upon law,—so constant, progressive, and
infinite in its evolutions. Might we not, with some propriety,
reply: “Orthodox theologians have imprisoned God in a
narrow creed, and represented him as if he were a mere
impersonation of dogmatic theology, or a President of an
Ecclesiastical Assembly ?” Any one who considers the move
ments of the Almighty as unnaturally restrained. because
directed by invariable laws, indicates a state of mind very
becoming, perhaps, a retained counsel defending a cape in
which he has some substantial interest; but, in my . judg
ment, neither philosophical nor religious. The very principle
of undeviating uniformity which you and your friends oppose,
the loftiest scientific minds unite in acknowledging to be the
highest mark of infinite wisdom and goodness. Without it
prudent forethought in the conduct of human affairs would be
impossible. Have you ever been conscious of any experience
material, intellectual, or spiritual that can be proved to be
above and beyond the direction of fixed natural law ? Your
birth, your education, your physical and mental growth, the
formation of your religious convictions, the influences you
have exerted and received in your intercourse with your
fellow creatures ; your work as a Christian teacher—have not
all these things been under the dominion of natural law?
And have you felt the more on that account your legitimate
freedom and happiness limited ? Well, then, you have but
to project your finite experience, in these respects, upon an
infinite scale, to form some idea (remote, I admit, but suf
ficiently clear for the purpose of the present argument) of how
compatible the control of eternal and fixed law is with the
freest movements of the First Cause.
If English Church and Chapel-goers were to trouble them
selves less about what is beyond the sphere of rational proof,
and were to occupy themselves more with the study of
natural law, upon co-operation, with which the true regene
ration of humanity depends ; if the principles of natural
morality had always held sway as the religion of churchism
has done; if science and philanthropy had always wielded
among the masses as wide an influence as theology and priest
craft have done, there would now be immensely less social
vice, physical misery, and intellectual and moral degradation ;
better sanitary regulations; a nobler bodily and mental
organisation in our fellow creatures ; a keener appreciation of
aesthetics; a livelier sense of mutual obligations between
capital and labour, between the governing and the governed,
and between parents and children; a wider diffusion of useful
knowledge, and a worthier conception of religion.
I shoidd like to refer, in concluding my remarks on the
�18
On the View of Miracles
chief theme of Dr Carpenter’s lecture, to a concession which
he makes to orthodoxy, and to which I am obliged to take
exception. The Doctor admits that prayer is efficacious in the
spiritual sphere, as far as to enable us “to obtain enlighten
ment ” as to “the will of God and strength to do or bear it.”
This concession is remarkable as showing wherein the lecturer
is illogical and unscientific in the application of his principle
of natural law. He thinks that there is “ a spiritual action
of Deity on the mind of the devout petitioner.” He accepts
the testimony of “the Religious Experience of ages” in
support of this supposed direct operation of God on the devout
mind, and he writes in the letter quoted from at the beginning
of this paper, as if he held this direct operation of God as
outside the realm of law ; and yet, while finding it convenient
to bow to the authority of “the Religious Experience of
ages” on this head, he inconsistently rejects the very
same testimony in past times, where physical miracle is
concerned. To be logical, he ought to yield to the “sanc
tion” of the “Religious Experience of ages” equally for
both kinds of preternatural interference, or for neither; for
the testimony is equally weak or strong,—just as we may
please to regard it—for both. If “the Religious Experience
of ages ” may not be trusted by a scientific man when fer
vently adduced in support of the disturbance of physical law,
why should it be trusted when it asserts the influence of
prayer, in modifying the application of law in spiritual
matters? I venture to believe that neither in “Sacred
Literature ” nor in Ecclesiastical History can there be found
a single instance in which “Enlightenment” or “strength”
was ever realised by Saints—Catholic or Protestant,—as a
preternatural result of prayer, and which could not be
realised without it. Intense religious susceptibility will
readily catch fire, in certain moods of the mind, under any
pious act, whether secluded meditation or the strain of a
farm'liar hymn or an impressive sermon ; and the glow of the
feeling, thus excited, will communicate itself to the intellect
and the will, and create a spiritual atmosphere in which
spiritual objects will be vividly realised and spiritual pur
poses vigorously executed. The reflex influence of religious
enthusiasm when directed by pure desire to know and do what
is deemed right, will always be great upon the mind. But
for Dr Carpenter to admit ‘ ‘ the spiritual agency of Deity in
the mind of man,” as he expresses it, as if it were beyond law,
while “the action of Deity in the physical universe” as
according to law, is plainly a begging of the . question.
The
mind of man,”—whatever that may be—is a part of the
Universe, and if the Universe throughout be “a system of
�Taken by Men of Science.
19
orderly evolution,” the harmony of the Universe is broken if
we allow the spiritual department to be independent of law
and the physical to be under law; and surely such a conclusion
is quite contrary to the tendency and teaching of science.
The simple fact seems to be that Dr Carpenter has studied
law as evinced in physical science ; but with the characteristic
modesty of one who knows his own class of subjects well, but
who has not, perhaps, paid the same attention to the quality
of evidence furnished by ecclesiastical history in favour of
the efficacy of prayer for spiritual guidance, he excusably
hesitates, and especially with the solemn array of “the
Religious Experience of ages ” before him, to affirm, that pre
ternatural events may not have occurred in that experience.
It is not improbable, however, that had his analysis of
Ecclesiastical testimony been as thorough as it has been of
physical phenomena, he would not have been so timid in extend
ing the application of uniform law to the spiritual sphere, and
in excluding therefrom the efficacy of prayer as an agent
capable of inducing the direct action of the Deity. The early
history of all religions, it is now well understood, should be
received with extreme caution ; first, because sound modern
criticism has demonstrated that many of the narratives in the
so-called “Sacred Literature” of nations are incapable of
positive authentication both as to authorship and contents •
secondly, because the “sacred ” and “profane ” literature alike
which details “ the Religious Experience of ages,’’pertains, in
variably, to times, places, and societies, in which imagination has
played a mightier part than reason, and in which credulity
and priestcraft, with their attendant fanaticisms, have been
signally rampant. Indeed, one might safely add, without the
least disparagement of any existing sect of religionists, that
those who profess to rely on prayer in our time, as influencing
the Deity, to impart “enlightenment” and “strength” in
the spiritual sphere, are not, as a rule, persons the Doctor
would think pre-eminently distinguished for historic and
scientific attainment, or for the judicious management of their
faculties.
I must add a word on the concluding sentence in your
letter : ‘ ‘ Wishing that you yourself may soon again pass from
darkness to the true light of life in Christ.” The wish I
cannot doubt is sincere, but it surely is one of the marks of
an arrogant system to assume, as orthodoxy always does, that
one is only in a state to have a long face pulled at him, and to
be sighed over if his theory of the Universe be not according
to the Thirty-nine Articles, the Confession of Faith, or some
other sectarian creed. Again, I affirm that in this world of
varying religious ideas, where so-called “believers” are more
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On the View of Miracles
affected, I make bold to say, by sentimental associations than
by deep and rational convictions, and where it is not easy
for most men to find time and ability to struggle through the
stumbling blocks theologians have placed between them and
simple religious truth, it would be a slur on eternal justice
that men should be judged in relation to their moral state or
their future destiny, by their intellectual apprehension of the
things they hold to be religious. I have said elsewhere in this
series, and I make no apology for repeating the declaration
that I know no infidelity but treachery to conscience, and no
orthodoxy but loyalty to conscience. I have felt honoured
and privileged at home and abroad by the intimate friendship
of men of all the principal sects of Europe and America, and
of men standing very sincerely aloof from all, and the im
pression has been forced upon me by my study of character
generally, that in few cases is the ordinary moral conduct of
men influenced by their theological theories and Church prac
tices ; that while it is the tendency of exciting religious dogmas
and ceremonies to spoil the class who yield themselves up
absorbedly to them, the mass of well-meaning people happily
let creeds and churches sit very lightly on them, and depend
most for guidance on those principles of common sense and
human morality which imbue well-governed minds in all
countries.
You wish that I “ may soon pass out of darkness." If my
own consciousness may be allowed to attest the nature of my
changed theological perceptions (unless you suspect “the
natural man”—that much abused Pauline phrase—now rules
within me!) I can assure you that the very opposite of dark
ness would more fitly describe my condition. I have indeed
realised, most fully, in my experience, that description in the
Epistle in a sense not intended by the author: I have “passed
from darkness to marvellous light,” and the light shines
brighter and brighter every day. “ Life in Christ ?” What
is it ? Where shall I find it ? How shall I be sure that in
accepting it according to Evangelicals. I ought not rather to
have sought it among High Churchmen, or Broad Churchmen,
or Unitarians? All these sections of Christians invite us
“unbelievers” to share this life in Christ, and at the same
time involve us in a maze of bitter controversy as to which
party has the genuine thing to offer. You tell me to accept
the Christ of the New Testament. But is it to be the Christ
of the Gospels, the miracle-worker, or the Christ of the
Epistles—the atoning sacrifice for human sin? Am I to
follow the Christology of the Synoptic gospels or that of the
fourth gospel ? The Christology of Paul or of Peter ? Perhaps
you reply that I am mainly to follow the teachings of Christ.
�Taken by Men of Science.
21
But it cannot be proved that the words ascribed to Jesus
were ever used by him, and even if they were, some of his
precepts are for our age utterly impracticable. What Christian
citizen in our day pretends to follow carefully the mode of
life laid down by Christ? Who “takes no thought for the
morrow?” It is only by taking thought that the progress of
the world can be advanced. Who, among even the most
ardent of Christian enthusiasts are willing now “to make
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake?”
Perhaps you intend by “life in Christ” moral likeness to
Christ. But the question arises, in what are we to be like
Christ ? Are we to be like Christ in all that he clid or only in
those things we ourselves think good and excellent ? Does
the Christianity of Christlikeness include cursing fig-trees for
not having fruit on them out of their season? Does it
include whipping those we think impious with a whip of
small cords ? Does it include denouncing the inconsistent
as “whited sepulchres,” “hypocrites” and a “generation of
vipers ?” Does it include saying to one’s mother, when she
has failed to appreciate him, “Woman, what have I to do
with thee, mine hour is not yet come ?” Does it mean that
we are to tell women of other districts, when they ask for our
benevolence, “ it is not meet to take the meat of the children
and cast it to the dogs ? ” Does it include that we are to
exercise our powers to destroy 200 swine belonging to an
unoffending man ? Or does it mean that. we are to be so
little the friends of temperance as to produce 200 gallons of
good wine for our guests after they have already well drunk?”*
Whatever view, therefore, we take of “life in Christ,” we
shall meet with grave difficulties in forming a clear and defi
nite idea of what it means, and that consideration, if there
were no other, is sufficient to show that a religion so exten
sively the subject of dispute, and open to such conflicting
interpretations, was never intended to be as an organised and
a stereotyped system, the supreme, final, and exhaustive
revelation of moral and religious truth to mankind. Let it
not be understood that I undervalue the elevated tone of
spirituality and consecration attributed to Jesus in the gospels.
He, at all events, seems, above most, to have lived up to his
lights. Human life is incalculably enriched by many of the
sayings and doings ascribed to him in the New Testament.
But as far as these sayings are wise and good they contain
nothing original, and as far as the doings are noble and
historically true they are not without parallel. There is
something even broacler and more in harmony with the devout
* ‘ The Impossibility of Knowing what is Christianity,’ p. 12.
�22
On the View of Miracles, &c.
and cultured aspirations of humanity as a whole, than “life
in Christ.” I accept Jesus only as one of many prophets and
teachers necessary to the full discipline and development of
my intellect, conscience, heart, and will; but while pro
foundly grateful for the instructions of all great and good
men, I bind myself to accept implicitly and without qualifica
tion the teaching of none. Under the guidance of the best
judgment and sense I can command, I strive to discriminate
and arrive at a just conviction. The higher lights of the
nineteenth century enable me to see defects in the utterances
and conduct of the greatest sages of antiquity which their
standard of things—necessarily vague—-precluded them from
detecting. I believe in the gradual evolution of knowledge
and the gradual uplifting of the race in every department,
through human agency and in harmony with fixed law.
Owing to the natural limitation of men’s faculties, right views
in one direction will be mixed up with wrong views in another
direction, in the most valuable contributions to human
enlightenment and progress. But assertion, hypothesis and
theory in the advancement of knowledge, are sifted and
improved upon by successive great minds from age to age, and
thus the revelation of law, in its manifold applications, goes
on; man’s recognition of the vital importance of law is
quickened and deepened, and the general improvement of
mankind is the result. Life, according to the most philoso
phical understanding and practice of law in its varied relations
and bearings, is a far more healthful, rational, and useful
kind of life than the “life” which is limited by what was
thought, said, or done by “Christ,” or by any other single
man, be he ever so great or good.
Yours, &c.,
M. M.
PRINTED BY C. TV. KEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Dr. Carpenter at Sion College; or, the view of miracles taken by men of science
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 22 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Remarks and a correspondence on a lecture given at Sion College by W. B. Carpenter on "The Reign of Law." Includes bibliographical references. The piece is signed 'M.M'. KVK gives the author as William Benjamin Carpenter.
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M., M.
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1874
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Thomas Scott
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Miracles
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Dr. Carpenter at Sion College; or, the view of miracles taken by men of science), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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RA1612
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Text
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Miracles
Science
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Text
1874]
899
FRAU RATH.1
HE relations between the in Dr. Bohmer, August Wilhelm
tellectual world and dis Schlegel, and Schelling, affection
ately known to the literary public
tinguished women in Germany are
quite exceptional, and if, on first con as simple ‘ Caroline,’ if she has left
sideration of them, the foreigner is work behind her at all, has left it
amused by a tinge of somewhat fan in writings which pass under
tastic sentimentality, in the end he Schlegel’s name.
But of all gifted women, creative
becomes very favourably impressed
with the earnestness, sincerity, and or only appreciative, none has ever
been more nationally beloved than
amiability which pervade them.
A female artist, be the art she the lady whose name is prefixed to
professes what it may, is pursued this paper—the mother of Goethe,
by the public interest into all the called in her lifetime Frau Aja,
circumstances of her private life and now freshly remembered as Frau
and through all the processes of her Rath. During the year 1871 there
individual culture, and certainly appeared at Leipsic a collection of
receives from the spiritually edu letters to and from Frau Rath,
cated section of the country at edited by Herr Robert Keil; and as
large ample compensation, in en this contained no less than thirtycouragement and affection, for the four new letters from Frau Rath,
domestic sacrifices or social isolation and fifty-three new ones to her, it
the pursuit of art may involve. may be conceived that the interest
Nor is the interest confined only to created by it was considerable. It
those who have succeeded in mani does not, however, appear to have
festing their inner conceptions of life attracted any general attention in
and the world by distinct works or this country; and for readers outside
representations ; others find a warm of that circle which keeps a close
place in the national heart who have eye on German literature a notice
only exhibited an appreciation of of it may contain some novelty.
Katharina Elizabeth Goethe was,
the higher culture, and whose direct
influence has been confined to the as is well known, the daughter of
circles to which their conversation the SchultheissTextor of Frankfurt,
or correspondence extended. The of whom Goethe has related many
memory of Meta (known to us, pleasing traits in the Diclitung uncl
indeed, by hei’ exchange of sen Wahrheit, and whose portrait he
timents with Richardson, the has so prettily sketched as he re
novelist) is chiefly cherished across membered him in the still garden
the Rhine because she so valued at the back of Friedberg Street—
Klopstock and was by him deemed wrapt in his loose dressing-gown
so worthy of love in return ; and the and with a folded velvet cap on
great issues said to be attributable his head, wandering slowly to
to Rahel Levin, wife of Varnhagen and fro, and ministering to the
von Ense, must have had their wants of his pinks, tulips, and
source in her celebrity as an accom hyacinths. Elizabeth (as she more
plished talker, and in the letters commonly called herself) was born
which, with an easy hand, she in 1731, and was therefore only 18
distributed amongst all classes of when the great poet was born. Heri’
society. The intellectual daughter Keil, in the interesting introduction
of the Free Theologian, Michaelis, to his book, has pointed out that in
who was successively the wife of three of his works Goethe has en-
T
1 Frau Rath. Briefwechsel von K. E. Goethe nach den Originalen mitgetheilt von
Robert Keil. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1871.
�400
Frau Fath.
deavoured to depict his mother: in
Goetz von Berlichingen, in Wilhelm,
Meister, and in Hermann und Doro
thea. In looking over the extracts
he has adduced in proof, it strikes
one that the features, few as they are,
of Goetz’s wife, are by far the most
applicable to Frau Rath, as she has
drawn herself in the correspondence
under review. The cheerfulness, the
constancy, the shiftful household
habits, above all, the trust in God,
are each introduced; and, though the
strokes that bring out these traits
are slight, they are drawn with a
firm and masterly hand. How nobly
she shows in this little scene I—
4th Act.—Inn at Heilbronn.
Goetz.—What news, Elizabeth, of my
beloved adherents ?
Elizabeth.—Nothing certain. Some are
killed; some lie in the ToWer. No one can
or will give me closer particulars.
Goetz.—Is this the recompense of fide
lity— of childlike obedience? What be
comes of That it may be well with thee, and
thou mayst live long on the carthl
Elizabeth.—Bear husband! blame not our
heavenly Father. They have their reward:
it was born with them—an independent,
noble heart. In prison—they are free.
The allusion to his own mother,
in what Goethe says about the mo
ther of Wilhelm Meister and the
puppet-show, is very slight; but in
Hermann und Dorothea the love for
and pride in her son, as shown by
Lieschen—-her kind heart, thrift,
and humour—answer to qualities in
Frau Rath, and Herr Keil is con
vinced that the portrait is finished
from affectionate remembrances.
We are content to take his opinion;
but although fully recognising, as
we do, the similar traits, this charac
ter, as a whole, seems to owe some
of its attributes to other sources.
It appears that after the death of
Frau Rath, Goethe had contemplated
a direct poetical representation of
her, and even so late as the autumn
of 1831 he mentioned it to Riemer
as a work in posse and to be called
Aristeia. It was never, however,
accomplished, and Eckermann does
not appear to have even heard of
[September
the project. It is a curious thing
that, good critics as the Germans
are, it was a long time before the
literary imposture conceived by the
celebrated ‘child,’BettinaBrentano,
was fully unmasked ; and even then
the public seemed unwilling to dis
believe what they had once eagerly
accepted. Amongst the letters in
the book called Goethe's Correspond
ence with a Child are several pur
porting to have been written by the
Frau Rath to Bettina; but hardly
any of them answer in character,
tone, orthography, syntax, or any
thing else, to those in this collection.
Considering that Bettina was under
many obligations to Frau Rath, it
is hard to understand how she could
have brought herself to forge these
letters, which are so vapid and
colourless by the side of the genuine
ones ; and, what is worse, invent so
very malicious a scene as the sup
posed interview with Madame de
Stael at Bethmann-Schaaf. It can
not be called less than malicious,
because it was the outcome of a
deliberate attempt to turn the old
lady into ridicule, and to exhibit her
in a contemptible light. Now that
the narrative is known to be false,
it reads so like a caricature that
wonder arises at its long vitality
as a graphic anecdote. But it
would be presumptuous in any
one not German to say he should
have had suspicions from the first.
As it is now relegated to the
regions of ill-natured fiction, an
outline of it may be found curious,
and even instructive, as affording,
by a picture of what the original
was not, some idea of what she was.
Frau Hath (says Bettina) had adorned
herself in a wonderful way: certainly more
in accordance with German eccentricity
than French taste. Three waving feathers
floated from different sides of her head : a
red one, a white one, and a blue—the
French national colours—and had for a
groundwork a field of sunflowers! She
was painted with much art; her large
black eyes discharged flashes of artillery !
Round her neck was twisted the golden
ornament given her by the Queen of Prussia.
Old-fashioned lace of extraordinary richness
�1874]
Frau Rath,.
concealed her bosom. And thus she stood
with her white glace gloves, waving an
elegant fan in one hand, and with the other,
which was uncovered and be-ringed with
glittering stones,—taking an occasional
pinch from her gold snuff-box, on which
was a miniature of Goethe. At length
Madame de Stael arrived, conducted by
Benjamin Constant. As she stepped by
Frau Rath, whose astounding habiliments
were well calculated to disgust her, the
latter stretched out her dress with her left
hand and saluted with her fan, and whilst
thus continuously bowing with great con
descension, said in a loud, clear voice:
‘Je suis la Mere de Goethe.’ On which
the authoress replied, ‘Ah, je suis charmec; ’
and a dead silence fell on everybody.
Bettina professes to have wit
nessed this scene, but it is known
now that she was not in Frankfurt
when Madame de Stael visited that
city. Herr Keil is not disposed to
let Frau von Arnim go scot-free
after this imposture, and quotes
with great approval a satire of long
standing against her, in which the
contrarieties of her character are
depicted, at first with some point,
but afterwards with much tedious
ness. ‘ Half witch, half angel; half
priestess, half bayadere; half cat,
half dove ; half bird, half snake; half
lizard, half butterfly! ’ and so on
to lengths whither English faculties
of being entertained are unable to
follow.
Although the great interest which
Frau Rath created was mainly due,
of course, to her connection with
the national poet, yet, when people
had once made her acquaintance on
this account, they soon became
desirous of increasing it to a friend
ship with her for her own sake.
She was not literary; she had no
gifts of authorship. ‘ I have never,’
she says in a letter to her son,
‘ written even an A. B. C. book, and
my genius will in future guard me
against any possibility of the sort.’
In another place she repudiates,
with great vivacity, the idea of
writing a diary. ‘The good God
will not let me sink so low, that I
should reach the depth of keeping a
iournal. Forbid it, Heaven ! ’ Nor
401
does she seem to have read much;
but she was quite able to appreciate
anything that was put before her,
and could give sensible reasons
for admiring their works, both
to her son and Wieland who was
especially fond of her, and always
supplied her with the new number
of his h/L&rlmr. She delighted
also in the society of intellectual
people; was interested in drawings,
fond of music, and passionately
attached to the theatre. But the
traits in her character which
had such a charm for all who came
within her influence, were her love
of innocent pleasures, her cheer
fulness, her healthy philosophy in
clining always to the hopeful side of
things, and her dread of unrest
which led her to avoid all un
necessary emotions of a painful and
agitating sort, associating them in
her mind rather with, sins than with
the natural sorrows of life. Add to
this that she was, above all, the ‘ gute
Gattin und Deutsche Hausfrau: ’
great in her roasted venison and
fatted capons, and glorious in her
flagons of ‘ tyrants’ blood ’—a Rhine
wine which the Grand Duke, Karl
August, said pulled him through a
severe attack of illness.
In the early part of this collection
of letters, the old Herr Rath Goethe
himself is found, still moving about
that house his son has made so
familiar to everybody, but subdued
and silent, and greatly changed
from the meddlesome, but wellintentioned, father of the first books
of the Dichtung und Wahrheit. He
died in 1782, and for some years
after Frau Rath continued in the
family mansion ; but she sold it in
1795, and a^ a later period took up
her quarters in the Rossmarkt.
She was, of course, after his death
more free to shape her course in her
own fashion, and she has left more
than one charming vignette of her
daily life.
The following is from a letter to
the Grand Duchess Amalie (March
i783) :
�402
Frau Fath.
In the morning I attend to my little
housekeeping and other business matters,
and then my letters get themselves written.
No one ever had such a droll correspond
ence. Every month I clear my desk out,
and I never can do so without laughing.
Inside the scene is that of heaven—all
class distinctions done away with, and
high and low, saints, publicans, and sin
ners, in a heap together! A letter from
the pious Lavater lies, without animosity,
by the side of one from the actor, Gross
mann. In the afternoon my friends have
the right to visit me ; but they all have to
clear out by four o’clock, for then I dress
myself, and either go to the play or else
pay calls. At nine I am back again home.
On Saturdays she used to assemble
around her a party of girls (Samstagmiidel). Frau Rath was a rare
hand at games, and had an extraor
dinary gift for relating stories in
an effective way. In Goethe’s poet
ical account of the hereditary origin
of the different elements in his own
character and person, the lines
Von Miitterchen die Frohnatur,
Die Lust zu fabuliren—
From mother dear the frolic soul, ’
The love of spinning fiction—
is strictly true.
Another aptitude Frau RatlTpossessed—one which perhaps more
than aDy other tends to make a
genial companion—was her ready
talent for jumping with the humour
of any of her friends. The witty
hunchback, Fraulein von Gochliausen, who was lady in waiting to
the Duchess Dowager Amalie, and
whose astounding adventure with
her bedroom door is told with much
humour by Mr. Lewes in his Life of
Goetlie, had a fancy for writing
doggerel, or what is called in
Germany ‘ Kniittel-vers,’ and often
indited letters to Frau Rath, con
ceived in this form. Not to be
behindhand, Frau Rath always
answered in the same false gallop,
and acquitted herself at least as well
as the Fraulein; both, it must be
confessed, often trembling on. the
verge of gibberish. I our lines,
however, by Frau Rath, Herr Keil
lias prefixed to his book, for the
sake of the motherly pride and
[September
tenderness which, in their rough
way, they express :—
In Versemachen habe nicht viel gethan,
Das sieht man diesen wahrlich an,
Docli habe ich geboren ein Knabelein schon,
Das thut das alles gar trefflich verstehn.
No great things have I done in rhyme,
As you may judge, at any time ;
But I a handsome lad can claim
Who knows full well the tuneful game.
In selecting a few extracts from
different letters, the choice will be
guided chiefly by the light they
seem to throw on Frau Rath’s
character and circumstances; but,
before these are given, a letter to
her of Goethe himself seems to claim
to be translated, as illustrating a
point of great interest in his history.
It is new, we believe, to the general
English public, and puts strongly
and clearly the view he took of his
situation at Weimar, and how he
was convinced, notwithstanding the
fears of his friends lest the work of
the Artist should suffer from the
position of the Minister, that the
freedom from pettiness and con
striction, and the insight into the
world, his increased rank gave him,
were essential to his culture, and
would end in his complete develop
ment. Events showed he was
triumphantly right.
August ii, 1781.
The Devin du Village arrived yesterday
with Melchior’s work. I have up to this
had neither time nor quiet to answer your
last dear letter. And yet it was a great
joy to see expressed once more tho old
familiar sentiments, and to read them in
your own handwriting. I entreat you not
to be troubled on my account, nor to let
anything mislead you. My health is far
better than I could have expected or hoped
in former days ; and if it but last me for
at least the bulk of my work still remain
ing, I sHall by no means have reason to be
dissatisfied with it. As for my position
itself, notwithstanding considerable draw
backs, it has much that is most desirable
for me; and the best proof of this is. that
I cannot think of any other with which I
could at present manage at all. No one
can conceive that it would be becoming in
me to be wishing, out of mere hypochon
driacal uneasiness, to be otherwise situated
than I am. Merck and others judge my
position quite wrongly : they see only what
�Frau Fath.
1874]
403
I sacrifice, not what I gain ; and they can
not understand that I become daily richer,
whilst I daily give up so much. You re
member the last time I was with you,
before I accomplished the move here, and
the conditions then existing: had they
continued, I should certainly have come to
misfortune. The disproportion between
the narrow and slowly-moved citizen
circle and the breadth and activity of
my being would have driven me mad.
With all my lively imagining and fore
casts of human affairs I should have con
tinued unacquainted with the world, and in
a state of perpetual childhood, and this
state, through self-conceit and cognate
faults, would have grown unbearable to
itself and every one around. How much
more fortunate it was to find myself in
relations, for which indeed I was no match,
but where I had the opportunity, through
inany errors of misunderstanding and hasti
ness, of learning to know myself and others,
and where, left to fate and my own resources,
I had to go through many trials, not in the
least necessary for hundreds of men, but of
which, for the completion of my culture, I
was sorely in need! And now, to be in my
element, how can I wish for a happier posi
tion than one which has for me something
of infinity about it ? For not only do new
capacities develop themselves in me daily
■—my notions grow clearer, my power in
creases—my acquirements are extended—
my discernment corrected, and my mind
rendered more active—but I find daily
opportunity of directing my endowments—
it may be towards great objects, or it may
be towards small.
affectionate interest. It is very
pleasing to observe the way in
which she and, indeed, many other
correspondents introduce trifling
matters about Goethe, as if quite
casually, but purposely so intro
ducing them doubtless to delight
the mother’s heart. Goethe does
not seem to have written directly
to the Frau Rath very often, and
therefore these side views of him
were especially welcome. The
Duchess calls him all sorts of nick
names ; at one time Dr. Wolff, at
another friend Wolff; but perhaps
the choicest title is ‘ Hatschelhans,’
which may be translated by any
fond, nonsensical word; ‘ sweet
poppet ’ will do as well as another.
In replying, Frau Rath, at the be
ginnings and endings, makes use of
those profound expressions of respect
for rank which were then universal
in Germany in intercourse between
citizens and the nobility; but in the
body of the letter she lets loose her
high spirits, and is completely her
self. Amidst all her fun and satire
she seldom omits some aphorism of
her homely philosophy, and in times
of any trouble she expresses herself
as being entirely supported by it.
In the first gloom of her widow
Then, after dwelling on the folly hood she thus writes to the
it would be to throw up a post so Duchess:—
suited in many respects to him, the
All future joys must be sought for
writer adds:—
amongst strangers, and out of my own
Meanwhile believe me that a large
measure of the good heart with which
I endure and work, proceeds from the
thought that all my sacrifices are voluntary,
and that I have only to put the posthorses to, and to find with you again a
competency and a pleasant life in which
the repose would be absolute. And with
out this outlook, to regard myself, as in
hours of distress I cannot but do, as a
bondsman and day labourer to my own
necessities, would be a far more painful
task.
Fare thee well.
good old friends.
Weimar.
liemember me to my
house, for there—all is still and vacant as
in the churchyard. It was far otherwise
once!
But since, throughout nature,
nothing remains in its own place, but whirls
into the eternal rolling circle, how can I
suppose I am to be an exception ? Frau
Aja expects nothing so absurd. . Who
would distress himself because it is not
always full moon, or because the sun now
(October) is not so warm as in July ? If
the present is only well used, and. no
thoughts entertained of how things might
be otherwise, one gets fairly through the
world, and the getting through is—all said
and done—the main thing.
Frau Aja, she says, is determined
to keep her good temper and spirits,
The Dowager Duchess Amalie and to drive away the foul fiend as
figures frequently in this volume, he was driven away in the time of
and always writes in a strain of King Saul. Then she adds :—
VOL. X.—NO. LVII.
G-.
NEW SERIES.
F F
�404
Frau Rath.
Herr Tabor (your Highness will re
member the name at least) has provided
splendidly for our amusement. The whole
winter we are to have the play! Won’t
there just be fiddling and trumpeting!
Ha! I should like to. see the evil spirit
who dare trouble me with melancholy!
Just one Sir John Falstaff would put him
to the rout. We had such a gaudium with
the old dog.
This ‘ gaudium ’ is a very favourite
word with Frau Rath, and other
pet phrases are ‘ Summa summarum,’ ‘ per ssecula saeculorum,’
‘ lirum larum,’ &c. They quite
give the hall-mark to her letters,
and the absence of it from Bettina’s
imitations is a blemish—viewing
forgery as one of the mimetic arts.
We have glimpses of an interchange
of presents. Frau Rath, with many
apologies for the liberty, sends the
Duchess some biscuits, and the
Duchess works a pair of garters for
her dear old friend. The garter
letter is one of the new ones; but
Mr. Lewes had seen it at Weimar,
and mentions it in his biography.
There are fourteen letters from
Wieland to Frau Rath, but only
one reply; that however, though
not new, is characteristic. Merck
had been staying with her, and she
had found, after his departure, a
letter to Wieland, which he had
written but never posted. She sent
it on, and writes herself:—
Dear Son,—Merck was three days with
us. When he was gone, I searched in his
room and cleared it out, which in the case
of poets is a very necessary task, as you can
sufficiently judge by the letter which preceded
this. For that poor letter would have lain
where it was, and never have reached its place
and destination, had Frau Aja had less in
sight into the poet-nature. But, thank
God, she is not yet out of practice, though
for these three years Herr Wolfgang
Goethe has no longer gladdened her house,
but allowed the light of his countenance to
shine at Weimar.
Wieland appears in a very amiable
aspect. His genuine pride in and
affection for Goethe, his entire
freedom from literary self-compla
cency, his cheerfulness, openness,
and affection are all delightful at
tributes. He is very funny about
[September
his little son. He married late in
life; and when the baby came, of
course, as is usual in such cases,
there never was such a baby ! He
begs Frau Rath to kindly overlook
his own thin body and spindle legs,
as he belongs, he says, to an age
when it was usual for poets to
dispense as much as possible with
the physical, and concentrate their
powers in their heads. Taking
this into consideration, and re
membering also the amount of
Agathons, Idris, Amadis, Biri
binkers, Gerons, &c., he had already
produced, he must say he thinks
the baby in every way creditable
to him. We like to have Goethe
called by him ‘ Brother Merlin, the
magician.’ It is not always easy
to take the second place, after you
have held the first, even although
your good sense may tell you it is
your place; but Wieland does it
with infinite grace. To one of the
Fraulein von Gochhausen’s letters
he adds a postscript to his ‘ liebes
Miitterchen ’ to say they were all at
Ettersburg, and that a little pastoral
piece by brother Wolf (Goethe)
had made him twenty-five years
younger. He sends his best com
pliments ‘an den guten lieben Papa,’
which means the old Rath. There
is yet another postscript to this
same epistle by the old Duchess :
‘ Dear Mother, I and my donkey
are here too.—Amalie.’
Goethe had taken with him to
Weimar from his home at Frank
fort a man named Philipp Seidel,
who was employed both as secre
tary and servant. Frau Rath en
deavours to get side glimpses of
her son every now and then through
this intelligent domestic, and there
is a letter from him describing the
performance of the West Indian, in
which Goethe (or, as Philipp has it,
the Geheime Legations Rath) played
Belcour, dressed in a white coat,
with blue silk waistcoat and
breeches; and when painted and
surmounted by a white dress wig,
looked in Philipp’s eyes very hand-
�1874]
Frau Fath.
some. Indeed, one can well imagine
he looked so in everybody’s eyes.
All were amateurs except two. The
Duke took the part of O'Flaherty,
and Musaeus that of the Lawyer;
Eckhof, the actor of whom Lessing
had so high an opinion, was Stockwell, and Madame Wolf, a profes
sional singer, also played. As we
have mentioned Philipp, we must
introduce the name of Elizabeth
Hoch — ‘ Lieschen ’ — a favourite
maid-servant of Frau Rath. To
her Goethe was never anything
more than ‘our young master,’ but
she lived to see the statue put up
to him at Frankfurt. To so genial
a person as Frau Rath it came
natural to make the relations of
mistress and servant very pleasant,
so that Lieschen stayed with her to
the last; and marrying when the
old lady was gone, though then
nearly fifty years old, she lived on
to the spring of 1846.
In January, 1784, Frau Rath
opened communications with Fried
rich von Stein, the son of the Baron
ess von Stein, with whom Goethe
exchanged tender sentiments and
savoury sausages, in the droll fashion
of the day, and whose correspond
ence with the poet is so well known.
The boy was only eleven, but he
served admirably the purpose to
which Frau Rath was desirousof put
ting him—that of chronicling little
events in which Goethe took apart.
‘ Don’t you think, now, you might
manage to keep a little diary, and
just pop down things that happen
before you, and then send it to me
once a month ? A few words would
do : “ Goethe was at the play last
night;” “ to-day we had company;”
and so on.’ Such was the'purport of
her first letter, and the lad seems to
have caught at the idea, and writ
ten regularly, and to have felt an
extraordinary interest in telling all
particulars about Goethe, to whom
he was greatly attached. Some of
the letters of Frau Rath to this boy
are truly charming, and convey hn
idea of the peculiar fascination she
405
exercised over the young. In send
ing him two silhouettes of herself,
she writes:—
In person I am reasonably tall and
reasonably stout; have brown hair and
eyes, and could represent tolerably well
the mother of Prince Hamlet. Many per
sons—amongst them the Princess of Dessau
—declare there could be no mistake about
Goethe being my son. I do not find it so;
but there must be something in it, it has
been said so often.
In another letter she gives an
account of a fire at the theatre,
which caused great loss to the
director, Grossmann. A subsequent
curious scene is described, which
could scarcely have happened
out of Germany. They soon got
the theatre open again, and played
‘ Der Teutsche FLausvater,' in which
the manager took the part of
the painter; but before it began,
the curtain drew up and discovered
Grossmann in his half-burnt coat,
and with his head and hands tied
up in rags. He then came forward,
surrounded by his six children, all
weeping bitterly, and delivered a
speech. The audience wept sympa
thetically, and the manager with
drew amidst thunders of applause.
The young Stein paid Frau Rath
a visit in the autumn of 1785, and
Goethe, writing to Knebel, says
‘ Fritz is in Frankfurt, and will
most likely see Blanchard go up this
week.’ Blanchard was a French
man who earned a great reputation
by going up in fire balloons—an
excessively dangerous feat, to which
our modern ascents in gas balloons
are mere child’s play. Fritz, how
ever, did not see him, as the very
common occurrence of the balloon
being burnt took place. Room must
be found for an amusing remini
scence of his visit, which Frau
Rath calls up in answering a letter
that announced the boy’s safe
arrival at home. Everything, she
says, reminds her of him—the pears
he used to eat while she had her
tea, and then the fun they had
dressing up fine, and getting them
selves powdered and puffed.
�406
Frau Bath.
And then the vis-a-vis at table, and how
at two o’clock (I must admit, often very
rudely) I hunted my cherub into the
Fair; and how we met again at the play
house and came back home together, and,
lastly, the drama for two characters in the
hall, where fat Katherine attended to the
lighting, and Greineld and Marie repre
sented the audience—that was sport in
deed!
This Friedrich, in later life,
entered the Prussian political ser
vice, and died in 1844, holding a
high appointment at Breslau.
In August, 1797, Goethe took
Christiane Vulpius and his son
August to visit Frau Rath, who re
ceived them, most kindly. She
always alluded to Christiane as her
dear daughter, and sometimes wrote
to her in terms of sincere affection.
She lived to see Goethe married to
her. August had a great attach
ment to his grandmother, and ex
pressed himself very feelingly at
her death,
The only letters in this collection
which are disappointing are those
to the actor, Unzelmann. For
once, Frau Rath seems a little to
lose her simplicity and freshness;
there is an extravagance in the ex
pressions—the sentiment is pitched
too high, and a flavour of passion
ate affectation is perceptible to
which 4 beautiful souls ’ and other
fantastic beings were at that time
sadly addicted. Sometimes she
rallies and is her own healthy self
again, but the mere fact of writing
to Unzelmann seems sooner or later
to necessitate a bit of overstrained
writing.
As the book wears to its close the
reader becomes aware that Frau Rath
has changed with the cbangingyears,
and has lost some of the vivacity
so conspicuous in the earlier pages.
The jolly housewife who used to
sing hep son’s song of 4 The King
and his Flea,’ and call on the guests
for a chorus ; who poured out her
choice wine, and enjoyed nothing so
much as 4 ein lierzliches gaudium,’
and in her yearly feast could cater
nobly for forty friends, tones down
[September 1874
gradually to a calm and unexcitable
old lady, retaining, however, to the
last her easily-amused temperament,
and enjoying great peace of mind
from her belief that God could
safely be trusted. And so, with no
regrets for the past, and no feverish
curiosity about the future, her wellordered life drew to its end. She
had read the flower of Goethe’s com
positions, and had had the pride of
knowing that Germany recognised
him as its greatest man ; and with
this proud thought she might well
sing Nunc
Her death
seems at last to have been some
what sudden, as we gather from a
letter in which August announced
the event to his mother; but faith
ful Lieschen was with her, tenderly
caring for her. And she had inti
mation at least that her hour was
near, for, with characteristic calm
ness and foresight, she had made
every arrangement for the funeral,
descending so far into details as to
order wine and biscuits for the at
tendants. The date of death was
September 13, 1808 ; and on the
15th the remains were laid in the
old Frankfurt Friedhof, where, on
the right hand as you enter, a recent
gravestone now marks the spot.
Herr Keil has performed his task
as editor with much completeness.
He has selected from other pub
lished sources several interesting
letters, and has so pieced them in
with his original matter that shape
and proportion are given to the
volume as a whole. Those who are
conversant with German publica
tions—a largely increasing section
of the public—will know that the
days of botanical drying-paper and
half-impressed black letter have
passed away, and that Leipsic and,
perhaps still more, Berlin now vie
in beauty of typography and ele
gance of finish with Paris. Herr
Keil’s book is quite up to the
standard of the day in its clear
type and excellent paper, and is fur
nished, moreover, with convenient
indices.
J. W. Sherer.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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Frau Rath
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sherer, J.W.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 399-406 ; 22 cm.
Notes: Printed in double columns. Includes bibliographical references. A review of Frau Rath, Briefwechsel von K.E. Goethe nach den Originalen von Robert Keil. Lepizig: Brockhaus, 1871. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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1874
Identifier
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CT36
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Book reviews
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Frau Rath), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Katharina Elizabeth Goethe
Women