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A
CHRISTIAN
CATECHISM
BY
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
PRICE
SIXPENCE
London :
THE PIONEER PRESS, 2 NEWCASTLE STREET,
I903
E.C.
�WORKS BY COL. R. G. INGERSOLL
Ant and Morality. 2d.
Christ and Miracles. Id.
Christian Catechism, A. 6d.
Creeds and Spirituality. Id.
Crimes against Criminals. 3d.
Do I Blaspheme ? 2d.
Ernest Renan. 2d.
Faith and Fact. Reply to Rev. Dr. Field. 2d.
God and Man. Second Reply to Dr. Field. 2d.
God and the State. 2d.
House of Death. . Being Funeral Oration and Ad
dresses on various occasions. Is.
Is Suicide a Sin ? 2d.
Live Topics. Id.
Love the Reedeemer. A Reply to Count Tolstoy’s
“ Kreutzer Sonata.” 2d.
Marriage and Divorce.
An Agnostic’s View. 2d.
Id.
Myth and Miracle.
3d.
Oration on Lincoln.
Oration on the Gods.
Oration on Voltaire.
Paine the Pioneer.
Real Blasphemy.
6d.
3d.
2d.
Id.
Reply to Gladstone.
With Biography by J. M.
Wheeler. 4d.
Rome or Reason P
A Reply to Cardinal Manning.
3d.
Shakespeare.
Skulls.
2d.
A Lecture.
6d.
�N 22-4-
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
A
CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
BY
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
London :
The Pioneer Press, 2 Newcastle Street, E.C.
1903
�PRINTED BY THE PIONEER PRESS
AT
2 NEWCASTLE-STREET, FARRINGDON-STREET, LONDON, E.C.
�INTRODUCTION.
Many of the late Colonel Ingersoll’s productions have been
published in England during the past twenty years, but this
Catechism has been overlooked, although it is one of the most
brilliant and useful things he ever did. It originated in this way.
Twenty years ago, when Ingersoll was at the top of his powers, he
was replied to in six sermons by the famous Dr. Talmage. The
Presbyterian preacher was not worth troubling about except for
his position in the religious world, and Ingersoll’s friends advised
him to treat the “ great divine ” with silent contempt. But the
“ great infidel ” saw an opportunity of doing a good turn to
Freethought. Talmage was strictly orthodox, and his view of the
Bible was old-fashioned. He gave himself away on every side.
To answer him was easy. Ingersoll, however, did more than
that; he broke Talmage to pieces and ground him to dust, dialec
tically ; and left him, personally, a laughing-stock to American
readers. This was done in “ Six Interviews ” stenographically
reported by I. Newton Baker and published by C. P. Farrell. At
the end of these Interviews there was printed “ The Talmagean
Catechism,” written with Ingersoll’s own hand. It was facetiously
intended for “ the young ” and for “ use in Sunday-schools,” and
to set forth the pith and marrow of what Talmage had been
pleased to say. in the form of a Shorter Catechism. Now I have
ventured to have this exquisite document reprinted as “ A
Christian Catechism.” Talmage was only the occasion of the
moment, and he may be dropped now. The Catechism is of far
broader scope and application ; and, to make it obviously so, only
two strokes of the pen were necessary. The first Ansiver read
“ Jehovah, the original Presbyterian.” I have let it read simply
11 Jehovah.” I have also substituted “Christian” for “Presby
terian ” before the word “ God ” at the bottom of page 39. These
are the only alterations I have made; and they leave the
Catechism a splendid undenominational exposure of Chris
tianity, in a form at once instructive and entertaining. In
this form I trust it will enjoy a wide circulation in England ; and,
to that end, I beg all Freethinkers into whose hands it may come
to pass it (or other copies) into the hands of their friends and
acquaintances, and especially to bring it to the attention of young
enquiring minds.
G. W. FOOTE.
October, 1903,
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
As Mr. Talmage delivered the series of sermons referred to in these
interviews for the purpose of furnishing arguments to the
young, so that they might not be misled by the sophistry of
modern infidelity, I have thought it best to set forth, for use
in Sunday-schools, the pith and marrow of what he has been
pleased to say in the form of a Shorter Catechism.
-------- ♦---------
Question. Who made you ?
Answer. Jehovah.
What else did he make ?
Answer. He made the world and all things.
Question. Did he make the world out of nothing ?
Answer. No.
Question. What did he make it out of ?
Answer. Out of his “ omnipotence.” Many infidels
have pretended that if God made the universe, and if
there was nothing until he did make it, he had nothing
to make it out of. Of course this is perfectly absurd
when we remember that he always had his “ omnipo
tence ” ; and that is, undoubtedly, the material used.
Question. Did he create his own “ omnipotence ” ?
A nswer. Certainly not, he was always omnipotent.
Question. Then if he always had “ omnipotence,” he
did not “ create ” the material of which the universe is
made ; he simply took a portion of his “ omnipotence ”
and changed it to “ universe ” ?
Answer. Certainly, that is the way I understand it.
Question. Is he still omnipotent, and has he as much
“ omnipotence ” now as he ever had ?
Answer. Well, I suppose he has.
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
5
Question. How long did it take God to make the universe ?
Answer. Six “ good-whiles.”
Question. How long is a “ good-while ” ?
Answer. That will depend upon the future discoveries
of geologists. “ Good-whiles ” are of such a nature that
they can be pulled out, or pushed up ; and it is utterly
impossible for any infidel, or scientific geologist, to make
any period that a “ good-while ” won’t fit.
Question. What do you understand by “the morning
and evening of a “ good while ” ?
_
Answer. Of course the words “ morning and evening”
are used figuratively, and mean simply the beginning
and the ending of each “ good-while.”
Question. On what day did God make vegetation ?
Answer. On the third day.
Question. Was that before the sun was made ?
Answer. Yes ; a “ good while ” before.
Question. How did vegetation grow without sunlight ?
Answer. My own opinion is that it was either “nou
rished by the glare of volcanoes in the moon ”; or “ it
may have gotten sufficient light from rivers of molten
granite
or “ sufficient light might have been emitted
by the crystallisation of rocks.” It has been suggested
that light might have been furnished by fireflies and
phosphorescent bugs and worms, but this I regard as
going too far.
Question. Do you think that light emitted by rocks
would be sufficient to produce trees ?
Answer. Yes, with the assistance of the “Aurora
Borealis, or even the Aurora Australis”; but with both,
most assuredly.
Question. If the light of which you speak was sufficient,
why was the sun made ?
Answer. To keep time with.
Question. What did God make man of ?
Answer. He made man of dust and “ omnipotence.”
Question. Did he make a woman at the same time that
he made a man ?
Answer. No; he thought at one time to avoid the
necessity of making a woman, and he caused all the
animals to pass before Adam, to see what he would call
them, and to see whether a fit companion could be found
for him. Among them all, not one suited Adam, and
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Jehovah immediately saw that he would have to make a
help-meet on purpose.
Question. What was woman made of?
. Answer. She was made out of “man’s side, out of his
right side,” and some more “ omnipotence.” Infidels
say that she was made out of a rib, or a bone, but that
is because they do not understand Hebrew.
Question. What was the object of making woman out
of man’s side ?
Answer. So that a young man would think more of a
neighbor’s girl than of his own uncle or grandfather.
Question. What did God do with Adam and Eve after
he got them done ?
A nswer. He put them in a garden to see what they
would do.
Question. Do we know where the Garden of Eden was,
and have we ever found any place where a “ river parted
and became into four heads ?”
Answer. We are not certain where this garden was,
and the river that parted into four heads cannot at
present be found. Infidels have had a great deal to say
about these four rivers, but they will wish they had even
one, one of these days.
Question. What happened to Adam and Eve in the
garden ?
Answer. They were tempted by a snake who was an
exceedingly good talker, and who probably came in
walking on the end of his tail. This supposition is
based upon the fact that, as a punishment, he was con
demned to crawl on his belly. Before that time, of
course, he walked upright.
Question. What happened then ?
. Answer. Our first parents gave way, ate of the for
bidden fruit, and, in consequence, disease and death
entered the world. Had it not been for this, there
would have been no death and no disease. Suicide
would have been impossible, and a man could have been
blown into a thousand atoms by dynamite, and the pieces
would immediately have come together again. Fire
would have refused to burn, and water to drown ; there
could have been no hunger, no thirst ; all things would
have been equally healthy.
Question. Do you mean to say that there would have
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
7
been no death in the world, either of animals, insects, or
persons ?
Answer. Of course.
Question. Do you also think that all briers and thorns
sprang from the same source, and that, had the apple
not been eaten, no bush in the world would have had a
thorn, and brambles and thistles would have been un
known ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Would there have been no poisonous plants,
no poisonous reptiles ?
Answer. No, sir ; there would have been none; there
would have been no evil in the world if Adam and Eve
had not partaken of the forbidden fruit.
Question. Was the snake, who tempted them to eat,
evil ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Was he in the world before the forbidden
fruit was eaten ?
• Answer. Of course he was ; he tempted them to eat
it.
Question. How, then, do you account for the.fact that,
before the forbidden fruit was eaten, an evil serpent
was in the world ?
Answer. Perhaps apples had been eaten in other
worlds.
Question. Is it not wonderful that such awful con
sequences flowed from so small an act ?
Answer. It is not for you to reason about it; you
should simply remember that God is omnipotent. There
is but one way to answer these things, and that is to
admit their truth. Nothing so puts the Infinite out of
temper as to see a human being impudent enough to
rely upon his reason. The moment we rely upon our
reason, we abandon God, and try to take care of our
selves. Whoever relies entirely upon God, has no need
of reason, and reason has no need of him.
Question. Were our first parents under the immediate
protection of an infinite God ?
Awsw/. They were.
Question. Why did he not protect them ? Why did
he not warn them of this snake ? Why did he not put
them on their guard ? Why did he not make them so
�g
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
sharp, intellectually, that they could not be deceived ?
Why did he not destroy that snake ; or how did he come
to make him ; what did he make him for ?
Answer. You must remember that, although God
made Adam and Eve perfectly good, still he was very
anxious to test them. He also gave them the power of
choice, knowing at the same time exactly what they
would choose, and knowing that he had made them so
that they must choose in a certain way. A being of
infinite wisdom tries experiments. Knowing exactly
what will happen, he wishes to see if it will.
Question. What punishment did God inflict upon Adam
and Eve for the sin of having eaten the forbidden fruit ?
Awszwr. He pronounced a curse upon the woman,
saying that in sorrow she should bring forth children, and
that her husband should rule over her; that she, having
tempted her husband, was made his slave ; and through
her, all married women have been deprived of their
natural liberty. On account of the sin of Adam and
Eve, God cursed the ground, saying that it should bring
forth thorns and thistles, and that man should eat his
bread in sorrow, and that he should eat the herb of the
field.
Question. Did he turn them out of the garden because
of their sin ?
Answer. No. The reason God gave for turning them
out of the garden was : “ Behold the man is become as
one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put
forth his hand and take of the tree of life and eat and
live forever, therefore, the Lord God sent him forth from
the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he
was taken.”
Question. If the man had eaten of the tree of life, would
he have lived forever ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Was he turned out to prevent his eating ?
Answer. He was.
Question. Then the Old Testament tells us how we
lost immortality, not that we are immortal, does it ?
Answer. Yes ; it tells us how we lost it.
Question. Was God afraid that Adam and Eve might
get back into the garden, and eat of the fruit of the tree
of life ?
�A CHRIS^iAN CATECHISM
9
Answer. I suppose he was, as he placed “ cherubims
and a flaming sword, which turned every way, to guard
the tree of life.”
Question. Has anyone ever seen any of these cheru
bims ?
Answer. Not that I know of.
Question. Where is the flaming sword now ?
Answer. Some angel has it in heaven.
Question. Do you understand that God made coats of
skins, and clothed Adam and Eve when he turned them
out of the garden ?
Answer. Yes, sir.
Question. Do you really believe that the infinite God
killed some animals, took their skins from them, cut out
and sewed up clothes for Adam and Eve ?
Answer. The Bible says so ; we know that he had
patterns for clothes, because he showed some to Moses
on Mount Sinai.
Question. About how long did God continue to pay
particular attention to his children in this world ?
Answer. For about fifteen hundred years ; and some
of the people lived to be nearly a thousand years of age.
Question. Did this God establish any schools or institu
tions of learning ? Did he establish any church ? Did
he ordain any ministers, or did he have any revivals ?
Answer. No; he allowed the world to go on pretty
much in its own way. He did not even keep his own
boys at home. They came down and made love to the
daughters of men, and finally the world got exceedingly
bad.
Question. What did God do then ?
Answer. He made up his mind that he would drown
them all. You see, they were all totally depraved—in
every joint and sinew of their bodies, in every drop of
their blood, and in every thought of their brains.
Question. Did he drown them all ?
Answer. No, he saved eight, to start with again.
Question. Were these eight persons totally depraved ?
Answer. Yes.
Question. Why did he not kill them, and start over
again with a perfect pair ? Would it not have been
better to have had his flood at first, before he made any
body, and drowned the snake ?
�IS
A CHRISTIAN CATECHlSNf
Answer. “ God’s ways are not our ways
and besides,
you must remember that “ a thousand years are as one
day ” with God.
Question. How did God destroy the people ?
Answer. By water; it rained forty days and forty nights,
and “ the fountains of the great deep were broken up.”
How deep was the water ?
Answer. About five miles.
Question. How much did it rain each day ?
Answer. About eight hundred feet; though the better
opinion now is that it was a local flood. Infidels have
raised objections and pressed them to that degree that
most orthodox people admit that the flood was rather
local.
Question. If it was a local flood, why did they put
birds of the air into the ark ? Certainly, birds could
have avoided a local flood ?
Answer. If you take this away from us, what do you
propose to give us in its place ? Some of the best
people of the world have believed this story. Kind
husbands, loving mothers, and earnest patriots have
believed it, and that is sufficient.
Question. At the time God made these people did he
know that he would have to drown them all ?
Answer. Of course he did.
Question. Did he know when he made them that they
would all be failures ?
Answer. Of course.
Question. Why, then, did he make them ?
Answer. He made them for his own glory, and no man
should disgrace his parents by denying it.
Question. Were the people after the flood just as bad
as they were before ?
Answer. About the same.
Question. Did they try to circumvent God ?
Answer. They did.
Question. How ?
Answer. They got together for the purpose of building
a tower, the top of which should reach to heaven, so
that they could laugh at any future floods, and go to
heaven at any time they desired.
Question. Did God hear about this ?
Answer. He did.
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
It
Question. What did he say ?
Answer. He said: “ Go to; let us go down,” and see
what the people are doing; I am satisfied they will
succeed.
Question. How were the people prevented from suc
ceeding ?
Answer. God confounded their language, so that the
mason on top could not cry “mort’! ” to the hod
carrier below ; he could not think of the word to use, to
save his life, and the building stopped.
Question. If it had not been for the confusion of
tongues at Babel, do you really think that all the people
in the world would have spoken just the same language,
and would have pronounced every word precisely the
same ?
Answer. Of course.
Question. If it had not been, then, for the confusion of
languages, spelling books, grammars, and dictionaries,
would have been useless ?
Answer. I suppose so.
Question. Do any two people in the whole world
speak the same language now ?
Answer. Of course they don’t, and this is one of the
great evidences that God introduced confusion into the
languages. Every error in grammar, every mistake in
spelling, every blunder in pronunciation, proves the
truth of the Babel story.
Question. This being so, this miracle is the best
attested of all ?
Answer. I suppose it is.
Question. Do you not think that a confusion of tongues
would bring men together instead of separating them ?
Would not a man unable to converse with his fellow
feel weak instead of strong ; and would not people
whose language had been confounded cling together for
mutual support ?
Answer. According to nature, yes ; according to
theology, no ; and these questions must be answered
according to theology. And right here, it may be well
enough to state, that in theology the unnatural is the
probable, and the impossible is what has always
happened. If theology were simply natural, anybody
could be a theologian.
�II
À CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Question. Did God ever make any other special efforts
to convert the people, or to reform the world ?
Answer. Yes, he destroyed the cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah with a storm of fire and brimstone.
Question. Do you suppose it was really brimstone ?
Answer. Undoubtedly.
Question. Do you think this brimstone came from the
clouds ?
Answer. Let me tell you that you have no right to
examine the Bible in the light of what people are pleased
to call “science.” The natural has nothing to do with
the supernatural. Naturally there would be no brim
stone in the clouds, but supernaturally there might be.
God could make brimstone out of his “ omnipotence.”
We do not know really what brimstone is, and nobody
knows exactly how brimstone is made. As a matter of
fact, all the brimstone in the world might have fallen at
that time.
Question. Do you think that Lot’s wife was changed
into salt ?
Answer. Of course she was. A miracle was performed.
A few centuries ago, the statue of salt made by changing
Lot’s wife into that article, was standing. Christian
travellers have seen it.
Question. Why do you think she was changed into salt ?
Answer. For the purpose of keeping the event fresh in
the minds of men.
Question. God having failed to keep people innocent in
a garden; having failed to govern them outside of a
garden ; having failed to reform them by water; having
failed to produce any good result by a confusion of
tongues ; having failed to reform them with fire and
brimstone, what did he then do ?
Answer. He concluded that he had no time to waste
on them all, but that he would have to select one tribe,
and turn his attention to just a few folks.
Question. Whom did he select ?
Answer. A man by the name of Abram.
Question. What kind of man was Abram ?
Answer. If you wish to know, read the twelfth chapter
of Genesis ; and if you still have any doubts as to his
character, read the twentieth chapter of the same book,
and you will see that he was a man who made merchan
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
13
dise of his wife’s body. He had had such good fortune
in Egypt, that he tried the experiment again on Abimelech.
Question. Did Abraham show any gratitude ?
Answer. Yes; he offered to sacrifice his son, to show
his confidence in Jehovah.
What became of Abraham and his people ?
Answer. God took such care of them, that in about two
hundred and fifteen years they were all slaves in the land
of Egypt.
gwsAow. How long did they remain in slavery ?
Answer. Two hundred and fifteen years.
Question. Were they the same people that God had
promised to take care of ?
They were.
Question. Was God, at that time, in favor of slavery ?
Answer. Not at that time. He was angry at the
Egyptians for enslaving the Jews, but he afterwards
authorised the Jews to enslave other people.
Question. What means did he take to liberate the Jews ?
He sent his agents to Pharaoh, and demanded
their freedom ; and, upon Pharaoh’s refusing, he afflicted
the people, who had nothing to do with it, with various
plagues—killed children, and tormented and tortured
beasts.
Question. Was such conduct Godlike ?
Answer. Certainly. If you have anything against your
neighbor, it is perfectly proper to torture his horse, or
torment his dog. Nothing can be nobler than this.
You see it is much better to injure his animals than to
injure him. To punish animals for the sins of their
owners must be just, or God would not have done it.
Pharaoh insisted on keeping the people in slavery, and
therefore God covered the bodies of oxen and cows with
boils. He also bruised them to death with hailstones.
From this we infer that ■“ the loving kindness of God is
over all his works.”
Question. Do you consider such treatment of animals
consistent with divine mercy ?
Answer. Certainly. You know that under the Mosaic
dispensation, when a man did a wrong, he could settle
with God by killing an ox, or a sheep, or some doves.
If the man failed to kill them, of course God would kill
them. It was upon this principle that he destroyed the
�14
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
animals of the Egyptians. They had sinned, and he
merely took his pay.
Question. How was it possible, under the old dispen
sation, to please a being of infinite kindness ?
Answer. All you had to do was to take an innocent
animal, bring it to the altar, cut its throat, and sprinkle
the altar with its blood. Certain parts of it were to be
given to the butcher' as his share, and the rest was to be
burnt on the altar. When God saw an animal thus
butchered, and smelt the warm blood mingled with the
odor of burning flesh, he was pacified, and the smile of
forgiveness shed its light upon his face. Of course,
infidels laugh at these things ; but what can you expect
of men who have not been “ born again ? ” “ The
carnal mind is enmity with God.”
Question. What else did God do in order to induce
Pharaoh to liberate the Jews?
Answer. He had his agents throw down a cane in the
presence of Pharaoh and thereupon Jehovah changed
this cane into a serpent.
Question. Did this convince Pharaoh ?
Answer. No ; he sent for his own magicians.
Question. What did they do ?
Answer. They threw down some canes, and they also
were changed into serpents.
Question. Did Jehovah change the canes of the
Egyptian magicians into snakes ?
Answer. I suppose he did, as he is the only one
capable of performing such a miracle.
Question. If the rod of Aaron was changed into a ser
pent in order to convince Pharaoh that God had sent
Aaron and Moses, why did God change the sticks of
the Egyptian magicians into serpents—why did he dis
credit his own agents, and render worthless their only
credentials ?
Answer. Well, we cannot explain the conduct of
Jehovah ; were are perfectly satisfied that it was for the
best. Even in this age of the world God allows infidels
to overwhelm his chosen people with arguments; he
allows them to discover facts that his ministers cannot
answer, and yet we are satisfied that in the end God
will give the victory to us. All these things are tests of
faith. It is upon Ahis principle that God allows geology
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
1$
to laugh at Genesis, that he permits astronomy appar
ently to contradict his holy word.
Question. What did God do with these people after
Pharaoh allowed them to go ?
Answer. Finding that they were not fit to settle a new
country, owing to the fact that when hungry they longed
for food, and sometimes when their lips were cracked
with thirst insisted on having water, God in his infinite
mercy had them marched round and round, back and
forth, through a barren wilderness, until all, with the
exception of two persons, died.
Question. Why did he do this ?
Answer. Because he had promised these people that
he would take them “to a land flowing with milk and
honey.’’
Question. Was God always patient and kind and mer
ciful toward his children while they were in the wilderness ?
Answer. Yes, he always was merciful and kind and
patient. Infidels have taken the ground that he visited
them with plagues and disease and famine ; that he had
them bitten by serpents, and now and then allowed the
ground to swallow a few thousands of them, and in other
ways saw to it that they were kept as comfortable and
happy as was consistent with good government; but all
these things were for their good ; and the fact is, infidels
have no real sense of justice.
Question. How did God happen to treat the Israelites
in this way, when he had promised Abraham that he
would take care of his progeny, and when he had pro-,
mised the same to the poor wretches while they were
slaves in Egypt ?
Answer. Because God is unchangeable in his nature,
and wished to convince them that every being should be
perfectly faithful to his promise.
Question. Was God driven to madness by the conduct
of his chosen people ?
Almost.
Question. Did he know exactly what they would do
when he chose them ?
Araswz. Exactly.
Question. Were the Jews guilty of idolatry?
Answer. They were. They worshipped other gods—•
gods made of wood and stone,
�16
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Question. Is it not wonderful that they were not con
vinced of the power of God by the many miracles
wrought in Egypt and in the wilderness ?
Answer. Yes, it is very wonderful; but the Jews, who
must have seen bread rained down from heaven ; who
saw water gush from the rocks and follow them up hill
and down ; who noticed that their clothes did not wear
out, and did not even get shiny at the knees, while the
elbows defied the ravages of time, and their shoes
remained perfect for forty years ; it is wonderful that
when they saw the ground open and swallow their com
rades ; when they saw God talking face to face with
Moses as a man talks with his friend ; after they saw the
cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night—it is abso
lutely astonishing that they had more faith in a golden
calf that they made themselves, than in Jehovah.
Question. How is it that the Jews had no confidence in
these miracles ?
Answer. Because they were there and saw them.
Question. Do you think that it is necessary for us to
believe all the miracles of the Old Testament in order to
be saved ?
Answer. The Old Testament is the foundation of the
New. If the Old Testament is not inspired, then the
New is of no value. If the Old Testament is inspired,
all the miracles are true ; and we cannot believe that
God would allow any errors, or false statements, to
creep into an inspired volume, and to be perpetuated
through all these years.
Question. Should we believe the miracles, whether they
are reasonable or not ?
Answer. Certainly. If they were reasonable, they
would not be miracles. It is their unreasonableness
that appeals to our credulity and our faith. It is im
possible to have theological faith in anything that can
be demonstrated. It is the office of faith to believe, not
only without evidence, but in spite of evidence. It is
impossible for the carnal mind to believe that Samson’s
muscle depended upon the length of his hair. “ God
has made the wisdom of this world foolishness.”
Neither can the unconverted believe that Elijah stopped
at a hotel kept by ravens. Neither can they believe
that a barrel would in and of itself produce meal, or that
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
17
an earthen pot could create oil. But to a Christian, in
order that a widow might feed a preacher, the truth of
these stories is perfectly apparent.
Question. How should we regard the wonderful stories
of the Old Testament ?
Answer. They should be looked upon as “types”
and “ symbols.” They all have a spiritual significance.
The reason I believe the story of Jonah is, that Jonah is
a type of Christ.
Question. Do you believe the story of Jonah to be a
true account of a literal fact ?
Answer. Certainly. You must remember that Jonah
was not swallowed by a whale. God “ prepared a great
fish ” for that occasion. Neither is it by any means
certain that Jonah was in the belly of this whale. “ He
probably stayed in his mouth.” Even if he was in his
stomach, it was very easy for him to defy the ordinary
action of gastric juice by rapidly walking up and
down.
Question. Do you think that Jonah was really in the
whale’s stomach ?
Answer. My own opinion is that he stayed in his
mouth. The only objection to this theory
that it is
more reasonable than the other and requires less faith.
Nothing could be easier than for God to make a fish
large enough to furnish ample room for one passenger in
his mouth. I throw out this suggestion simply that you
may be able to answer the objections of infidels who are
always laughing at this story.
Question. Do you really believe that Elijah went to
heaven in a chariot of fire, drawn by horses of fire ?
Answer. Of course he did.
What was this miracle performed for ?
Answer. To convince the people of the power of God.
Question. Who saw the miracle ?
Answer. Nobody but Elisha.
Question. Was he convinced before that time ?
Answer. Oh, yes ; he was one of God’s prophets.
Question. Suppose that in these days two men should
leave a town together, and after a while one of them
should come back having on the clothes of the other,
and should account for the fact that he had his friend’s
clothes by saying that while they were going along the
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
road together a chariot of fire came down from heaven
drawn by fiery steeds, and thereupon his friend got into
the carriage, threw him his clothes, and departed—would
you believe it ?
Answer. Of course things like that don’t happen in
these days; God does not have to rely on wonders now.
Do you mean that he performs no miracles
at the present day ?
Answer.
cannot say that he does not perform
miracles now, but we are not in position to call attention
to any particular one. Of course he supervises the
affairs of nations and men, and does whatever in his
judgment is necessary.
Question. Do you think that Samson’s strength depended
on the length of his hair ?
Answer. The Bible so states, and the Bible is true. A
physiologist might say that a man could not use the
muscle in his hair for lifting purposes, but these same
physiologists could not tell you how you move a finger,
nor how you lift a feather; still, actuated by the
pride of intellect, they insist that the length of a
man’s hair could not determine his strength. God says
it did; the physiologist says that it did not; we
cannot hesitate whom to believe. For the purpose of
avoiding eternal agony I am willing to believe anything :
I am willing to say that strength depends upon the
length of hair, or faith upon the length of ears. I am
perfectly willing to believe that a man caught three
hundred foxes, and put fire brands between their tails ;
that he slew thousands with a bone, and that he made
a bee hive out of a lion. I will believe, if necessary,
that when this man’s hair was short he hardly had
strength enough to stand, and that when it was long,
he could carry away the gates of a city, or overthrow a
temple filled with people. If the infidel is right, I will
lose nothing by believing, but if he is wrong, I shall
gain an eternity of joy. If God did not intend that we
should believe these stories, he never would have told
them, and why should a man put his soul in peril by
trying to disprove one of the statements of the Lord ?
Question. Suppose it should turn out that some of
these miracles depend upon mistranslations of the
original Hebrew, should we still believe them ?
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
19
Answer. The safe side is the best side. It is far
better to err on the side of belief, than on the side of
infidelity. God does not threaten anybody with eternal
punishment for believing too much. Danger lies on
the side of investigation, on the side of thought. The
perfectly idiotic are absolutely safe. As they diverge
from that point—as they rise in the intellectual scale, as
the brain develops, as the faculties enlarge, the danger
increases. I know that some Biblical students now take
the ground that Samson caught no foxes—that he only
took sheaves of wheat that had been already cut and
bound, set them on fire, and threw them into the grain
still standing. If this is what he did, of course there is
nothing miraculous about it, and the value of the story
is lost. So, others contend that Elijah was not fed by
the ravens, but by the Arabs. They tell us that the
Hebrew word standing for “ Arab ” also stands for
“ bird,” and that the word really means “ migratory—
going from place to place—homeless.” But I prefer
the old version. It certainly will do no harm to believe
that ravens brought bread and flesh to a prophet of God.
Where they got their bread and flesh is none of my
business; how they knew where the prophet was, and
recognised him; or how God talks to ravens, or how he
gave them directions. I have no right to inquire. I
leave these questions to the scientists, the blasphemers,
and thinkers. There are many people in the Church
anxious to get the miracles out of the Bible, and thou
sands, I have no doubt, would be greatly gratified to
learn that there is, in fact, nothing miraculous in
Scripture ; but when you take away the miraculous,
you take away the supernatural; when you take away
the supernatural, you destroy the ministry ; and when
you take away the ministry, hundreds of thousands of
men will be left without employment.
Question. Is it not wonderful that the Egyptians were
not converted by the miracles wrought in their country ?
Answer. Yes, they all would have been, if God had not
purposely hardened their hearts to prevent it. Jehovah
always took great delight in furnishing the evidence, and
then hardening the man’s heart so that he would not
believe it. After all the miracles that had been per
formed in Egypt—the most wonderful that were ever
�20
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
done in any country—the Egyptians were as unbelieving
as at first; they pursued the Israelites, knowing that
they were protected by an infinite God, and, failing to
overwhelm them, came back and worshipped their own
false gods just as firmly as before. All of which shows
the unreasonableness of a Pagan, and the natural
depravity of human nature.
Question. How did it happen that the Canaanites were
never convinced that the Jews were assisted by Jehovah ?
Answer. They must have been an exceedingly brave
people to contend so many years with the chosen people
of God. Notwithstanding all their cities were burned
time and again ; notwithstanding all the men, women,
and children were put to the edge of the sword ; not
withstanding the taking of all their cattle and sheep, they
went right on fighting just as valiantly and desperately
as ever. Each one lost his life many times, and was
just as ready for the next conflict. My own opinion is
that God kept them alive by raising them from the dead
after each battle, for the purpose of punishing the Jews.
God used his enemies as instruments for the civilisation
of the Jewish people. He did not wish to convert them,
because they would give him much more trouble as Jews
than they did as Canaanites. He had all the Jews he
could conveniently take care of. He found it much easier
to kill a thousand Canaanites than to civilise one Jew.
Question. How do you account for the fact that the
heathen were not surprised at the stopping of the sun
and moon ?
/
Answer. They were so ignorant that they had not the
slightest conception of the real cause of the phenomenon.
Had they known the size of the earth, and the relation
it sustained to the other heavenly bodies ; had they
known the magnitude of the sun, and the motion of the
moon, they would, in all probability, have been as
greatly astonished as the Jews were; but being densely
ignorant of astronomy, it must have produced upon them
not the slightest impression. But we must remember
that the sun and moon were not stopped for the pur
pose of converting these people, but to give Joshua more
time to kill them. As soon as we see clearly the pur
pose of Jehovah, we instantly perceive how admirable
were the means adopted.
I
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
21
Question. Do you not consider the treatment of the
Canaanites to have been cruel and ferocious ?
Answer. To a totally depraved man, it does look cruel;
to a being without any good in him—to one who has
inherited the rascality of many generations, the murder
of innocent women and little children does seem horrible;
to one who is “ contaminated in all his parts,” by
original sin—who was “conceived in sin, and brought
forth in iniquity,” the assassination of men, and the
violation of captive maidens, do not seem consistent
with infinite goodness. But when one has been “born
again,” when “ the love of God has been shed abroad
in his heart,” when he loves all mankind, when he
“overcomes evil with good,” when he “prays for those
who despitefully use him and persecute him —to such
a man the extermination of the Canaanites, the viola
tion of women, the slaughter of babes, and the destruc
tion of countless thousands, is the highest evidence of
the goodness, the mercy, and the long-suffering of God.
When a man has been “ born again,” all the passages
of the Old Testament that appear so horrible and so
unjust to one in his natural state, become the dearest,
the most consoling, and the most beautiful of truths.
The real Christian reads the accounts of these ancient
battles with the greatest possible satisfaction. To one
who really loves his enemies, the groans of men, the
shrieks of women, and the cries of babes, make music
sweeter than the zephyr’s breath.
Question. In your judgment, why did God destroy the
Canaanites ?
To prevent their contaminating the chosen
people. He knew that if the Jews were allowed to
live with such neighbors, they would finally become
as bad as the Canaanites themselves. He wished to
civilise his chosen people, and it was therefore necessary
for him to destroy the heathen.
Question. Did God succeed in civilising the Jews after
he had “ removed ” the Canaanites ?
tItzsw/. Well, not entirely.
He had to allow the
heathen he had not destroyed to overrun the whole land
and make captives of the Jews. This was done for the
good of his chosen people.
Question, Did he then succeed in civilising them ?
�22
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Answer. Not quite.
Question. Did he ever quite succeed in civilising them ?
Answer. Well, we must admit that the experiment never
was a conspicuous success. The Jews were chosen by
the Almighty 430 years before he appeared to Moses on
Mount Sinai. He was their direct Governor. He
attended personally to their religion and politics, and
gave up a great part of his valuable time for about two
thousand years to the management of their affairs; and
yet, such was the condition of the Jewish people, after
they had had all these advantages, that when there arose
among them a perfectly kind, just, generous, and honest
man, these people, with whom God had been laboring
for so many centuries, deliberately put to death that good
and loving man.
Question. Do you think that God really endeavored to
civilise the J ews ?
Answer. This is an exceedingly hard question. If he
had really tried to do it, of course he could have done it.
We must not think of limiting the power- of the infinite.
But you must remember that if he had succeeded in civi
lising the Jews, if he had educated them up to the plane
of intellectual liberty, and made them just and kind and
merciful, like himself, they would not have crucified
Christ, and you can see at once the awful condition in
which we would all be to-day. No atonement could
have been made; and if no atonement had been made,
then, according to the Christian system, the whole world
would have been lost. We must admit that there was
no time in the history of the Jews from Sinai to Jerusalem,
that they would not have put a man like Christ to death.
Question. So you think that, after all, it was not God’s
intention that the Jews should become civilised ?
Answer. We do not know. We can only say that
“ God’s ways are not our ways.” It may be that God
took them in his special charge, for the purpose of
keeping them bad enough to make the necessary sacri
fice. That may have been the divine plan. In any
event, it is safer to believe the explanation that is the
most unreasonable.
Question. Do you think that Christ knew the Jews
would crucify him ?
ztawr. Certainly.
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
23
Question. Do you think that when he chose Judas he
knew that he would betray him ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Did he know when Judas went to the chief
priest and made the bargain for the delivery of Christ ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Why did he allow himself to be betrayed, if
he knew the plot ?
Answer. Infidelity is a very good doctrine to live by,
but you should read the last words of Paine and Voltaire.
Question. If Christ knew that Judas would betray him,
why did he choose him ?
Answer. Nothing can exceed the atrocities of the
French Revolution—when they carried a woman
through the streets and worshipped her as the Goddess
of Reason.
Question. Would not the mission of Christ have been
a failure had no one betrayed him ?
Answer. Thomas Paine was a drunkard, and recanted
on his death-bed, and died a blaspheming infidel besides.
Question. Is it not clear that an atonement was neces
sary; and is it not equally clear that the atonement
could not have been made unless somebody had betrayed
Christ; and unless the Jews had been wicked and
orthodox enough to crucify him ?
Answer. Of course the atonement had to be made.
It was a part of the “ divine plan ” that Christ should
be betrayed, and that the Jews should be wicked enough
to kill him. Otherwise, the world would have been
lost.
Question. Suppose Judas had understood the divine
plan, what ought he to have done ? Should he have
betrayed Christ, or let somebody else do it; or should
he have allowed the world to perish, including his own
soul ?
Answer. If you take the Bible away from the world,
“ how would it be possible to have witnesses sworn in
courts;” how would it be possible to administer justice ?
Question. If Christ had not been betrayed and cruci
fied, is it true that his own mother would be in perdition
to-day ?
Answer. Most assuredly. There was but one way by
which she could be saved, and that was by the death of
�24
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
her son—through the blood of the atonement. She was
totally depraved through the sin of Adam, and deserved
eternal death. Even her love for the infant Christ was,
in the sight of God—that is to say, of her babe—wicked
ness. It cannot be repeated too often that there is only
one way to be saved, and that is, to bgjjeve in the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Question. Could Christ have prevented the Jews from
crucifying him ?
Answer. He could.
Question. If he could have saved his life, and did not,
was he not guilty of suicide ?
Atzsow. No one can understand these questions who
has not read the prophecies of Daniel, and has not a
clear conception of what is meant by “ the fullness of
time.”
Question. What became of all the Canaanites, the
Egyptians, the Hindus, the Greeks and Romans and
Chinese ? What became of the billions who died before
the promise was made to Abraham ; of the billions and
billions who never heard of the Bible, who never heard
the name, even, of Jesus Christ—never knew of “ the
scheme of salvation”? What became of the millions
and billions who lived in this hemisphere, and of whose
existence Jehovah himself seemed perfectly ignoront ?
Qnswer. They were undoubtedly lost. God, having
made them, had a right to do with them as he pleased.
They are probably all in hell to-day, and the fact that
they are damned only adds to the joy of the redeemed.
It is by contrast that we are able to perceive the infinite
kindness with which God has treated us.
Question. Is it not possible that something can be
done for a human soul in another world as well as in
this ?
Answer. No; this is the only world in which God even
attempts to reform anybody. In the other world,
nothing is done for the purpose of making anybody
better. Here in this world, where man lives but a few
days, is the only opportunity for moral improvement.
A minister can do a thousand times more for a soul than
its creator; and this country is much better adapted to
moral growth than heaven itself. A person who lived
on this earth a few years, and died without having been
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
converted, has no hope in another world. The moment
he arrives at the judgment seat, nothing remains but to
damn him. Neither God, nor the Holy Ghost, nor
Jesus Christ, can have the least possible influence with
him there.
When God created each human being, did he
know exactly wlJft would be his eternal fate ?
Qnswer. Most assuredly he did.
Question. Did he know that hundreds and millions and
billions would suffer eternal pain ?
Answer. Certainly. But he gave them freedom of
choice between good and evil.
Question. Did he know exactly how they would use
that freedom ?
Answer. Yes,
Question. Did he know that billions would use it
wrong ?
Answer. Yes.
Question. Was it optional with him whether he should
make such people or not ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Had these people any option as to whether
they would be made or not ?
Answer. No.
Question. Would it not have been far better to leave
them unconscious dust ?
Answer. These questions show how foolish it is to
judge God according to a human standard. What to us
seems just and merciful, God may regard in an exactly
opposite light; and we may hereafter be developed to
such a degree that we will regard the agonies of the
damned as the highest possible evidence of the goodness
and mercy of God.
Question. How do you account for the fact that God
did not make himself known except to Abraham and his
descendants ? Why did he fail to reveal himself to the
other nations—nations that, compared with the Jews,
were learned, cultivated, and powerful? Would you
regard a revelation now made to the Esquimaux as
intended for us; and would it be a revelation of which
we would be obliged to take notice ?
Answer. Of course, God could have revealed himself,
not only to all the great nations, but to each individual,
�26
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
He could have had the Ten Commandments engraved
on every heart and brain ; or he could have raised up
prophets in every land ; but he chose, rather, to allow
countless millions of his children to wander in the dark
ness and blackness of Nature; chose, rather, that they
should redden their hands in each oth^Fs blood ; chose,
rather, that they should live withom light, and die
without hope ; chose, rather, that they should suffer,
not only in this world, but forever in the next. Of
course we have no right to find fault with the choice
of God.
Question. Now you can tell a sinner to “ believe on
the Lord Jesus Christwhat could a sinner have been
told in Egypt, three thousand years ago; and in what
language would you have addressed a Hindu in the
days of Buddha—the “ divine scheme ” at that time
being a secret in the divine breast ?
Answer. It is' not for us to think upon these questions.
The moment we examine the Christian system, we
begin to doubt. In a little while, we will be infidels,
and will lose the respect of those who refuse to
think. It is better to go with the majority. These
doctrines are too sacred to be touched. You should be
satisfied with the religion of your father and your
mother. “ You want some book on the centre-table,”
in the parlour ; it is extremely handy to have a Family
Record; and what book, other than the Bible, could a
mother give a son as he leaves the old homestead ?
Question. Is it not wonderful that all the writers of
the four Gospels do not give an account of the ascension
of Jesus Christ ?
This question has been answered long ago,
time and time again.
Question. Perhaps it has, but would it not be well
enough to answer it once more ? Some may not have
seen the answer ?
Answer. Show me the hospitals that infidels have
built; show me the asylums that infidels -have founded.
Question. I know you have given the usual answer ;
but after all, is it not singular that a miracle so wonder
ful as the bodily ascension of a man should not have
been mentioned by all the writers of that man’s life ?
Is it not wonderful that some of them said that he did
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
27
ascend, and others that he agreed to stay with his
disciples always ?
Answer. People acquainted with the Hebrew can
have no conception of these things. A story in. plain
English, does not sound as it does in Hebrew. Miracles
seem altogether jjjjre credible, when told in a dead
language.
What, in your judgment, became of the
dead who were raised by Christ ? Is it not singular
that they were never mentioned afterward ? Would
not a man who had been raised from the dead naturally
be an object of considerable interest, especially to his
friends and acquaintances ? And is it not also won
derful that Christ, after having wrought. so many
miracles, cured so many lame and halt and blind, fed so
many thousands miraculously, and after having entered
Jerusalem in triumph as a conqueror and king, had to
be pointed out by one of his own disciples who was
bribed for the purpose ?
Answer. Of course, all these things are exceedingly
wonderful, and if found in any other book would be
absolutely incredible ; but we have no right to apply the
same kind of reasoning to the Bible that we apply to the
Koran or to the sacred books of the Hindus. For the
ordinary affairs of this world God has .given us reason,
but in the examination of religious questions we should
depend upon credulity and faith.
Question. If Christ came to offer himself a sacrifice,
for the purpose of making atonement for the sins of
such as might believe on him, why did he not make this
fact known to all of his disciples ?
Answer. He did. This was, and is, the Gospel.
Question. How is it that Matthew says nothing about
“ salvation by faith,” but simply says that God will be
merciful to the merciful, that he will forgive the forgiving,
and says not one word about the necessity of believing
anything ?
Answer. But you will remember that Mark says in the
last chapter of his Gospel that “ whoso believeth not
shall be damned.”
Question. Do you admit that Matthew says nothing on
the subject ?
Answer. Yes, I suppose I must.
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A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
-Question. Is not that passage in Mark generally ad
mitted to be an interpolation ?
ylwswr. Some Biblical scholars say that it is.
Question. Is that portion of the last chapter of Mark
found in the Syriac version of the Bible ?
Answer. It is not.
Question. If it was necessary tj^elieve on Jesus
Christ, in order to be saved, how is it that Matthew
failed to say so ?
Answer. “ There are more copies of the Bible printed
to-day than of any other book in the world, and it is
printed in more languages than any other book.”
Question. Do you consider it necessary to be “ regene
rated ”—to be “ born again ”—in order to be saved ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Did Matthew say anything on the subject of
“ regeneration ” ?
Answer. No.
Question. Did Mark ?
Answer. No.
Question. Did Luke ?
Answer. No.
Question. Is Saint John the only one who speaks of the
necessity of being “ born again ” ?
Answer. He is.
Question. Do you think that Matthew, Mark, and
Luke knew anything about the necessity of “ regene
ration ” ?
Ansiver. Of course they did.
Question. Why did they fail to speak of it ?
Answer. There is no civilisation without the Bible.
The moment you throw away the sacred Scriptures you
are all at sea—you are without an anchor and without a
compass.
Question. You will remember that, according to Mark,
Christ said to his disciples : “ Go ye into all the world,
and preach the Gospel to every creature.” Did he refer
to the Gospel set forth by Mark ?
Answer. Of course he did.
Question. Well, in the Gospel set forth by Mark there
is not a word about “ regeneration,” and no word about
the necessity of believing anything—except in an inter
polated passage, Would it not seem from this that
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
¿9
“ regeneration ” and a “ belief in the Lord Jesus Christ
are no part of the Gospel ?
Answer. Nothing can exceed in horror the last moments
of the infidel; nothing can be more terrible than the
death of the doubter. When the glories of this world
fade from the vision; when ambition becomes an empty
name; when wea’ftR turns to dust in the palsied hand of
death, of what use is philosophy then ? Who cares then
for the pride of intellect ? In that dread moment man
needs something to rely on, whether it is true or not.
Question. Would it not have been more convincing if
Christ, after his resurrection, had shown himself to his
enemies as well as to his friends? Would it not have
greatly strengthened the evidence in the case if he had
visited Pilate; had presented himself before Caiaphas,
the high priest; if he had again entered the temple, and
again walked the streets of Jerusalem ?
Answer. If the evidence had been complete and over
whelming there would have been no praiseworthiness in
belief; even publicans and sinners would have believed
if the evidence had been sufficient. The amount of evi
dence required is the test of the true Christian spirit.
Question. Would it not also have been better had the
ascension taken place in the presence of unbelieving
thousands ? It seems such a pity to have wasted such
a demonstration upon those already convinced.
Answer. These questions are the natural fruit of the
carnal mind, and can be accounted for only by the doctrine
of total depravity. Nothing has given the Church more
trouble than just such questions. Unholy curiosity, a
disposition to pry into the divine mysteries, a desire to
know, to investigate, to explain—in short, to under
stand, are all evidences of a reprobate mind.
Qriestion. How can we account for the fact that Mat
thew alone speaks of the wise men of the East coming
with gifts to the infant Christ; that he alone speaks
of the little babes being killed by Herod ? Is it pos
sible that the other writers never heard of these things ?
Answer. Nobody can get any good out of the Bible
by reading it in a critical spirit. The contradictions
and discrepancies are only apparent, and melt away
before the light of faith. That which in other books
would be absolute and palpable contradiction, is, in the
�30
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Bible, when spiritually discerned, a perfect and beautiful
harmony. . My own opinion is, that seeming contradic
tions are in the Bible for the purpose of testing and
strengthening the faith of Christians, and for the further
purpose of ensnaring infidels, “ that they might believe
a lie and be damned.”
Question. Is it possible that a goad God would take
pains to deceive his children ?
.Answer. The Bible is filled with instances of that
kind, and all orthodox ministers now know that fossil
animals—that is, representations of animals in stone,
were placed in the rocks on purpose to mislead men like
Darwin and Humboldt, Huxley and Tyndall. It is also
now known that God, for the purpose of misleading the
so-called men of science, had hairy elephants preserved
in ice, made stomachs for them, and allowed twigs of
trees to be found in these stomachs, when, as a matter of
fact, no such elephants ever lived or ever died. These
men who are endeavoring to overturn the Scriptures with
the lever of science will find that they have been de
ceived. Through all eternity they will regret their
philosophy. They will wish, in the next world, that
they had thrown away geology and physiology and all
other “ologies” except theology. The time is coming
when Jehovah will “ mock at their fears and laugh at
their calamity.”
■Question. If Joseph was not the father of Christ, why'
was his genealogy given to show that Christ was of the
blood of David ; why would not the genealogy of any
other Jew have done as well ?
Answer. That objection was raised and answered hun
dreds of years ago.
Question. If they wanted to show that Christ was of
the blood of David, why did they not give the genealogy
of his mother if Joseph was not his father ?
Answer. That objection was answered hundreds of
years ago.
Question. How was it answered ?
Answer. When Voltaire was dying, he sent for a priest.
Question. How does it happen that the two genealogies
given do not agree ?
Answer. Perhaps they were written by different
persons.
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
31
Question. Were both these persons inspired by the
same God ?
Of course.
Question. Why were the miracles, recorded in the New
Testament performed ?
Answer. The miracles were the evidence relied on to
prove the supernatural origin and the divine mission of
Jesus Christ.
Question. Aside from the miracles, is there any evidence
to show the supernatural origin or character of Jesus
Christ ?
Answer. Some have considered that his moral pre
cepts are sufficient, of themselves, to show that he was
divine.
Question. Had all of his moral precepts been taught
before he lived ?
Answer. The same things had been said, but they did
not have the same meaning.
Question. Does the fact that Buddha taught the same
tend to show that he was of divine origin ?
Answer. Certainly not. The rules of evidence applic
able to the Bible are not applicable to other books. We
examine other books in the light of reason ; the Bible is
the only exception. So we should not judge of Christ as
we do of any other man.
Question. Do you think that Christ wrought many
of his miracles because he was good, charitable, and
filled with pity?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Has he as much power now as he had when
on earth ?
Qnswer. Most assuredly.
Auestion. Is he as charitable and pitiful now as he was
then ?
Answer. Yes.
Question. Why does he not now cure the lame and the
halt and the blind ?
Answer. It is well known that when Julian the Apos
tate was dying, catching some of his own blood in his
hand, and throwing it into the air, he exclaimed:
“ Galileean, thou hast conquered ! ”
Question. Do you consider it our duty to love our
neighbor ?
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A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Is virtue the same in all worlds ?
Answer. Most assuredly.
Question. Are we under obligation to render good for
evil, and to “pray for those who despitefully use us?”
Answer. Yes.
Question. Will Christians in heaven love their neigh
bors ?
Answer. Yes ; if their neighbors are not in hell.
Do good Christians pity sinners in this
world ?
Answer. Yes.
Question. Why ?
Answer. Because they regard them as being in great
danger of the eternal wrath of God.
Question. After these sinners have died, and been sent
to hell, will the Christians in heaven then pity them ?
Answer. No. Angels have no pity.
Question. If we are under obligation to love our
enemies, is not God under obligation to love his ? If
we forgive our enemies, ought not God to forgive his ?
If we forgive those who injure us, ought not God to
forgive those who have not injured him ?
Answer. God made us, and he has therefore the right
to do with us as he pleases. Justice demands that he
should damn all of us, and the few that he will save will
be saved through mercy and without the slightest
respect to anything they may have done themselves.
Such is the justice of God, and those in hell will have
no right to complain, and those in heaven will have no
right to be there. Hell is justice, and salvation is
charity.
Question. Do you consider it possible for a law to be
justly satisfied by the punishment of an innocent person ?
Answer. Such is the scheme of the atonement. As
man is held responsible for the sin of Adam, so he will
be credited with. the virtues of Christ; and you can
readily see that one is exactly as reasonable as the
other.
Question. Suppose a man honestly reads the New Tes
tament, and honestly concludes that it is not an inspired
book; suppose he honestly makes up his mind that the
miracles are not true ; that the Devil never really carried
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
33
Christ to the pinnacle of the temple; that devils were
really never cast out of a man and allowed to take
refuge in swine—I say, suppose that he is honestly
convinced that these things are not true, what ought he
to say ?
Answer. He ought to say nothing.
Question. Suppose that the same man should read the
Koran, and come to the conclusion that it is not an
inspired book ; what ought he to say ?
Answer. He ought to say that it is not inspired; his
fellow-men are entitled to his honest opinion, and it is
his duty to do what he can do to destroy a pernicious
superstition.
Question. Suppose, then, that a reader of the Bible,
having become convinced that it is not inspired—honestly convinced—says nothing—keeps his conclusion
absolutely to himself, and suppose he dies in that belief,
can he be saved ?
Answer. Certainly not.
Question. Has the honesty of his belief anything to do
with his future condition ?
Answer. Nothing whatever.
Question. Suppose that he tried to believe, that he
hated to disagree with his friends and with his parents,
but that in spite of himself he was forced to the con
clusion that the Bible is not the inspired word of God,
would he then deserve eternal punishment ?
Answer. Certainly he would.
Question. Can a man control his belief ?
Answer. He cannot—except as to the Bible.
Question. Do you consider it just in God to create a
man who cannot believe the Bible, and then damn him
because he does not ?
Answer. Such is my belief.
Question. Is it your candid opinion that a man who
does not believe the Bible should keep his belief a secret
from his fellow-men ?
Answer. It is.
Question. How do I know that you believe the Bible ?
You have told me that if you did not believe it, you would
not tell me ?
Answer. There is no way for you. to ascertain, except
by taking my word for itt
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A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Question. What will be the fate of a man who does not
believe it, and jet pretends to believe it ?
Answer. He will be damned.
Question. Then hypocrisy will not save him ?
Answer. No.
Question. And if he does not believe it, and admits that
he does not believe it, then his honesty will not save
him ?
Answer. No. Honesty on the wrong side is no better
than hypocrisy on the right side.
Question. Do we know who wrote the Gospels ?
Answer. Yes, we do.
Question. Are we absolutely sure who wrote them ?
Answer. Of course; we have the evidence as it has
come to us through the Catholic Church.
Question. Can we rely upon the Catholic Church now ?
Answer. No; assuredly no! But we have the testi
mony of Polycarp and Irenseus and Clement, and others
of the early fathers, together with that of the Christian
historian, Eusebius.
Question. What do we really know about Polycarp ?
Answer. We know that he suffered martyrdom under
Marcus Aurelius, and that for quite a time the fire
refused to burn his body, the flames arching over him,
leaving him in a kind of fiery tent; and we also know
that from his body came a fragrance like frankincense,
and that the Pagans were so exasperated at seeing the
miracle, that one of them thrust a sword through the
body of Polycarp ; that the blood flowed out and extin
guished the flames, and that out of the wound flew the
soul of the martyr in the form of a dove.
Question. Is that all we know about Polycarp ?
Answer. Yes, with the exception of a few more like
incidents.
Question. Do we know that Polycarp ever met St.
John ?
Answer. Yes; Eusebius says so.
Question. Are we absolutely certain that he ever lived ?
Answer. Yes, or Eusebius could not have written about
him.
Question. Do we know anything of the character of
Eusebius ?
Answer. Yes; we know that he was untruthful only
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
35
when he wished to do good. But God can use even
the dishonest. Other books have to be substantiated by
truthful men, but such is the power of God, that he can
establish the inspiration of the Bible by the most un
truthful witnesses. If God’s witnesses were honest,
anybody could believe, and what becomes of faith, one
of the greatest virtues ?
Question. Is the New Testament now the same as it
was in the days of the early fathers ?
Answer. Certainly not. Many books now thrown out,
and not esteemed of Divine origin, were esteemed Divine
by Polycarp and Irenaeus and Clement and many of the
early Churches. These books are now called “apocry
phal.”
Question. Have you not the same witnesses in favor
of their authenticity, that you have in favor of the
Gospels ?
Answer. Precisely the same. Except that they were
thrown out.
Question. Why were they thrown out ?
Answer. Because the Catholic Church did not esteem
them inspired.
Question Did the Catholics decide for us which are
the true Gospels and which are the true Epistles ?
Answer. Yes. The Catholic Church was then the
only Church, and consequently must have- been the true
Church.
Question. How did the Catholic Church select the
true books ?
Answer. Councils were called, and votes were taken,
very much as we now pass resolutions in political
meetings.
Question. Was the Catholic Church infallible then?
Answer. It was then, but it is not now.
Question. If the Catholic Church at that time had
thrown out the Book of Revelation, would it now be our
duty to believe that book to have been inspired ?
Answer. No, I suppose not.
Question. Is it not true that some of these books were
adopted by exceedingly small majorities ?
Answer. It is.
Question. If the Epistle to the Hebrews and to the
Romans and the Book of Revelation had been thrown
�36
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
out, could a man now be saved who honestly believes
the rest of the books ?
Answer. This is doubtful.
Question. Were the men who picked out the inspired
books inspired ?
Answer. "\Nq cannot tell, but the probability is that
they were.
Question. Do we know that they picked out the right
ones ?
Answer. Well, not exactly, but we believe that they did.
(Jwszfow. Are we certain that some of the books that
were thrown out were not inspired ?
Answer. Well, the only way to tell is to read them
carefully.
If upon reading these apocryphal books a
man -concludes that they are not inspired, will he be
damned for that reason ?
Answer. No. Certainly not.
Question. If he concludes that some of them are
inspired, and believes them, will he then be damned for
that belief ?
Awswr. Oh, no! Nobody is ever damned for believing
too much.
Question. Does the fact that the books now comprising
the New Testament were picked out by the Catholic
Church prevent their being examined now by an honest
man, as they were examined at the time they were picked
out ?
Answer. No ; not if the man comes to the conclusion
that they are inspired ?
Question. Does the fact that the Catholic Church
picked them out and declared them to be inspired render
it a crime to examine them precisely as you would
examine the books that the Catholic Church threw out
and declared were not inspired ?
Answer. I think it does.
Question. At the time the Council was held in which it
was determined which of the books of the New Testa
ment are inspired, a respectable minority voted against
some that were finally decided to be inspired. If they
were honest in the vote they gave, and died without
changing their opinions, are they now in hell ?
Answer. Well, they ought to be.
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
37
Question. If those who voted to leave the book of Reve
lation out of the canon, and the Gospel of Saint John
out of the canon, believed honestly that these were not
inspired books, how should they have voted ?
Answer. Well, I suppose a man ought to vote as he
honestly believes—except in matters of religion.
Question. If the Catholic Church was not infallible, is
the question still open as to what books are, and what
are not, inspired ?
Answer. I suppose the question is still open—but it
would be dangerous to decide it.
Question. If, then, I examine all the books again, and
come to the conclusion that some that were thrown out
were inspired, and some that were accepted were not
inspired, ought I to say so ?
Answer. Not if it is contrary to the faith of your father,
or calculated to interfere with your own political pro
spects.
Question. Is it as great a sin to admit into the Bible
books that are uninspired as to reject those that are
inspired ?
Answer. Well, it is a crime to reject an inspired book,
no matter how unsatisfactory the evidence is for its
inspiration, but it is not a crime to receive an uninspired
book. God damns nobody for believing too much. An
excess of credulity is simply to err in the direction of
salvation.
Question. Suppose a man disbelieves in the inspiration
of the New Testament—believes it to be entirely the
work of uninspired men ; and suppose he also believes—
but not from any evidence obtained in the New Testa
ment—that Jesus Christ was the son of God, and that
he made atonement for his soul, can he then be saved
without a belief in the inspiration of the Bible ?
Answer. This has not yet been decided by our Church,
and I do not wish to venture an opinion.
Questeon. Suppose a man denies the inspiration of the
Scriptures ; suppose that he also denies the divinity of
Jesus Christ; and suppose, further, that he acts pre
cisely as Christ is said to have acted; suppose he loves
his enemies, prays for those who despitefully use him,
and does all the good he possibly can, is it your opinion
that such a man will be saved ?
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHlSNf
Answer. No, sir. There is “none other name given
under heaven and among men,” whereby a sinner can
be saved, but the name of Christ.
Question. Then it is your opinion that God would save
a murderer who believed in Christ, and would damn
another man, exactly like Christ, who failed to believe
in him ?
Answer. Yes ; because we have the blessed promise
that, out of Christ, “ our God is a consuming fire.”
Question. Suppose a man read the Bible carefully and
honestly, and was not quite convinced that it was true,
and that, while examining the subject, he died ; what
then ?
Answer. I do not believe that God would allow him to
examine the matter in another world, or to make up his
mind in heaven. Of course, he would eternally perish.
Question. Could Christ now furnish evidence enough
to convince every human being of the truth of the Bible ?
Answer. Of course he could, because he is infinite.
Question. Are any miracles performed now ?
Azzsw/. Oh, no !
Question. Have we any testimony, except human testi
mony, to substantiate any miracle ?
Answer. Only human testimony.
Question. Do all men give the same force to the same
evidence ?
Answer. By no means.
Question. Have all honest men who have examined
the Bible believed it *to be inspired ?
Answer. Of course they have. Infidels are not honest.
Question. Could any additional evidence have been
furnished ?
Answer. With perfect ease.
Question. Would God allow a soul to suffer eternal
agony rather than furnish evidence of the truth of his
Bible ?
Answer. God has furnished plenty of evidence, and
altogether more than was necessary. We should read
the Bible in a believing spirit.
Question. Are all parts of the inspired books equally
true ?
Answer. Necessarily.
Question. According to Saint Matthew, God promises
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
39
to forgive all who will forgive others; not one word is
said about believing in Christ, or believing in the
miracles, or in any Bible; did Matthew tell the truth ? .
Answer. The Bible must be taken as a whole, and if
other conditions are added somewhere else, then you
must comply with those other conditions. Matthew
may not have stated all the conditions.
Question. I find in another part of the New Testa
ment that a young man came to Christ and asked him
what was necessary for him to do in order that he might
inherit eternal life. Christ did not tell him that he must
believe the Bible, or that he must believe in him, or that
he must keep the Sabbath day; was Christ honest with
that young man ?
Answer. Well, I suppose he was.
Question. You will also recollect that Zaccheus said to
Christ that where he had wronged any man he had made
restitution, and further, that half his goods he had given
to the poor ; and you will remember that Christ said to
Zaccheus : “ This day hath salvation come to thy house.”
Why did not Christ tell Zaccheus that he “must be
born again”; that he must “believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ ” ?
Answer. Of course there are mysteries in our holy
religion that only those who have been “ born again
can understand. You must remember that “ the carnal
mind is at enmity with God.
Question. Is it not strange that Christ, in his Sermon
on the Mount, did not speak of “ regeneration,” or of the
“ scheme of salvation ” ?
Answer. Well, it may be.
Question. Can a man be saved now by living exactly
in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount ?
Answer. He cannot.
Question. Would, then, a man,, by following the course
of conduct prescribed by Christ in the Sermon on the
Mount, lose his soul ?
Answer. He most certainly would, because there is not
one word in the Sermon on the Mount about believing
on the Lord Jesus Christ; not one word about believing
in the Bible ; not one word about the “ atonement
not
one word about “regeneration.” So that, if the Chris
tian Church is right, it is absolutely certain that a
�46
A CHRISTIAN. CATECHISM.
man might follow the teachings of the Sermon on the
Mount, and live in accordance with its every word, and
yet deserve and receive the eternal condemnation of
God. But we must remember that the Sermon on the
Mount was preached before Christianity existed. Christ
was talking to Jews.
Question. Did Christ write anything himself in the N ew
Testament ?
Answer. Not a word.
Question. Did he tell any of his disciples to write any
of his words ?
Answer. There is no account of it, if he did.
Question. Do we know whether any of the disciples
wrote anything ?
Answer. Of course they did.
Question. How do you know ?
Answer. Because the Gospels bear their names.
Are you satisfied that Christ was absolutely
God ?
Of course he was. We believe that Christ
and God and the Holy Ghost are all the same, that the
three form one, and that each one is three.
Question. Was Christ the God of the universe at the
time of his birth ?
Answer. He certainly was.
Question. Was he the infinite God, creator, and con
troller of the entire universe, before he was born ?
Answer. Of course he was. This is the mystery of
“ God manifest in the flesh.” The infidels have pre
tended that he was like any other child, and was, in fact,
supported by Nature instead of being the supporter of
Nature. They have insisted that, like other children, he
had to be cared for by his mother. Of course he appeared
to be cared for by his mother. It was a part of the plan
that in all respects he should appear to be like other chil
dren.
Question. Did he know just as much before he was born
as after ?
Answer. If he was God, of course he did.
Question. How do you account for the fact that Saint
Luke tells us, in the last verse of the second chapter
of his gospel, that “ Jesus increased in wisdom and
stature ”?
�A CMRiSTiAN CATECHISM
4i
Answer. That, I presume, is a figure of speech;
because, if he was God, he certainly could not have
increased in wisdom. The physical part of him could
increase in stature, but the intellectual part must have
been infinite all the time.
Question. Do you think that Luke was mistaken ?
Answer. No ; I believe what Luke said. If it appears
lintrue, or impossible, then I know that it is figurative
or symbolical.
Question. Did I understand you to say that Christ was
actually God ?
Answer. Of course he was.
Question. Then why did Luke say, in the same verse
of the same chapter, that “ Jesus increased in favor with
God ”?
Answer. I dare you to go into a room by yourself and
read the fourteenth chapter of Saint John !
Question. Is it necessary to understand the Bible in
order to be saved ?
Answer. Certainly not; it is only necessary that you
believe it.
Question. Is it necessary to believe all the miracles ?
Answer. It may not be necessary, but as it is impossible
to tell which ones can safely be left out, you had better
believe them all.
Question. Then you regard belief as the safe way ?
Answer. Of course it is better to be fooled in this
world than to be damned in the next.
Question. Do you think there are any cruelties on
God’s part recorded in the Bible ?
Answer. At first flush many things done by God him
self, as well as by his prophets, appear to be cruel; but
if we examine them closely, we will find them to be
exactly the opposite.
Question. How do you explain the story of Elisha and
the children—where the two she-bears destroyed fortytwo children on account of their impudence ?
Answer. This miracle, in my judgment, establishes
two things: i. That children should be polite to
ministers; and 2. That God is kind to animals—“giving
them their meat in due season.” These bears have
been great educators—they are the foundation of the
respect entertained by the young for theologians.
�4-2
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
No child ever sees a minister now without thinking of
a bear.
Question. What do you think of the story of Daniel—
you no doubt remember it ? Some men told the king
that Daniel was praying contrary to law, and thereupon
Daniel was cast into a den of lions ; but the lions could
not touch him, their mouths having been shut by angels.
The next morning the king, finding that Daniel wras
intact, had him taken out; and then, for the purpose of
gratifying Daniel’s God, the king had all the men who
had made the complaint against Daniel, and their wives
and their little children, brought and cast into the lions’
den. According to the account, the lions were so
hungry that they caught these wives and children as
they dropped, and broke all their bones to pieces before
they had even touched the ground. Is it not wonderful
that God failed to protect these innocent wives and
children ?
Answer. These wives and children were heathen; they
were totally depraved. And besides, they were used as
witnesses. The fact that they were devoured with such
quickness shows that the lions were hungry. Had it
not been for this, infidels would have accounted for the
safety of Daniel by saying that the lions had been fed.
Question. Do you believe that Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego were cast “ into a burning fiery furnace,
heated one seven times hotter than it was wont to be
heated,” and that they had on “ their coats, their hosen,
and their hats,” and that when they came out “not a
hair of their heads was singed, nor was the smell of fire
upon their garments ? ”
Answer. The evidence of this miracle is exceedingly
satisfactory. It resulted in the conversion of Nebuchad
nezzar.
Question. How do you know he was converted ?
Answer. Because immediately after the miracle the
king issued a decree that “ every people, nation, and
language that spoke anything amiss against the God of
Shadrach and Company should be cut in pieces.” This
decree shows that he had become a true disciple and
worshipper of Jehovah.
Question. If God in those days preserved from the fury
of the fire men who were true to him and would not
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
43
deny bis name, why is it that he has failed to protect
thousands of martyrs since that time ?
Answer. That is one of the Divine mysteries. _ God
has in many instances allowed his enemies to kill his
friends. I suppose this was allowed for the good of his
enemies, that the heroism of the martyrs might convert
them.
Question. Do you believe all the miracles ?
Answer. I believe them all, because I believe the Bible
to be inspired.
Question. What makes you think it is inspired ? .
Answer. I have never seen anybody who knew it was
not; besides, my father and mother believed it.
Question. Have you any other reasons for believing it
to be inspired ?
Answer. Yes ; there are more copies of the Bible printed
than of any other book ; and it is printed in more lan
guages. And besides, it would be impossible to get
along without it.
Question. Why could we not get along without it ?
Answer. We would have nothing to swear witnesses
by ; no book in which to keep the family record ; nothing
for a centre-table, and nothing for a mother to. give her
son. No nation can be civilised without the Bible.
Question. Did God always know that a Bible was
necessary to civilise a country ?
Certainly he did.
Question. Why did he not give a Bible to the Egyptians,
the Hindus, the Greeks, and the Romans ?
Awsw/. It is astonishing what perfect fools infidels are.
Question. Why do you call infidels “ fools ” ?
Answer. Because I find in the fifth chapter of the
Gospel according to Matthew the following: “ Whoso
ever shall say Thou fool! shall be in danger of hell fire.”
Question. Have I the right to read the Bible ?
Answer. Yes. You not only have the right, but it is
your duty.
Question. In reading the Bible, the words make certain
impressions on my mind. These impressions depend
upon my brain—upon my intelligence. Is not this true ?
Answer. Of course, when you read the Bible, impres
sions are made upon your mind.
Question. Can I control these impressions ?
�44
'
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Answer. I do not think you can, as long as you remain
in a sinful state.
Question. How am I to get out of this sinful state ?
Answer. You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and you must read the Bible in a prayerful spirit, and
with a believing heart.
Question. Suppose that doubts force themselves upon
my mind ?
yfwswr. Then you will know that you are a sinner,
and that you are depraved.
Question. If I have the right to read the Bible, have I
the right to try to understand it ?
Answer. Most assuredly.
Question. Do you admit that I have the right to reason
about it and to investigate it ?
Answer. Yes, I admit that. Of course you cannot help
reasoning about what you read.
Question. Does the right to read a book include the
right to give your opinion as to the truth of what the
book contains ?
Answer. Of course—if the book is not inspired.
Infidels hate the Bible because it is inspired, and Chris
tians know that it is inspired because infidels say that it
is not.
Question. Have I the right to decide for myself whether
or not the book is inspired ?
Answer. You have no right to deny the truth of God’s
Holy Word.
Question. Is God the author of all books ?
Answer. Certainly not.
Question. Have I the right to say that God did not
write the Koran ?
Answer. Yes.
Question. Why ?
Answer. Because the Koran was written by an im
postor.
Question. How do you know ?
Answer. My reason tells me so.
Question. Have you the right to be guided by your
reason ?
yBwzwr. I must be.
Question. Have you the same right to follow your
reason after reading the bible ?
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
45
Answer. No. The Bible is the standard of reason.
The Bible is not to be judged or corrected by your
reason. Your reason is to be weighed and measured
by the Bible. The Bible is different from other books
and must not be read in the same critical spirit, nor
judged by the same standard.
Question. What did God give us reason for ?
Answer. So that we might investigate other religions,
and examine other so-called sacred books.
Question. If a man honestly thinks that the Bible is
not inspired, what should he say ?
Answer. He should admit that he is mistaken.
Question. When he thinks he is right ?
Answer. Yes. The Bible is different from other books.
It is the master of reason. You read the Bible, not to
see if that is wrong, but to see whether your reason is
right. It is the only book about which a man has no
right to reason. He must believe. The Bible is ad
dressed, not to the reason, but to the ears : “ He that
hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
Question. Do you think we have the right to tell what
the Bible means—what ideas God intended to convey,
or has conveyed to us, through the medium of the Bible ?
Answer. Well, I suppose you have that right. Yes,
that must be your duty. You certainly ought to tell
others what God has said to you.
Question. Do all men get the same ideas from the
Bible ?
Answer. No.
Question. How do you account for that ?
Answer. Because all men are not alike ; they differ in
intellect, in education, and in experience.
Question. Who has the right to decide as to the real
ideas that God intended to convey ?
Answer. I am a Protestant, and believe in the right of
private judgment. Whoever does not is a Catholic.
Each man must be his own judge, but God will hold
him responsible.
Question. Does God believe in the right of private
judgment ?
Answer. Of course he does.
Question. Is he willing that I should exercise my judg
ment in deciding whether the Bible is inspired or not ?
�46
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Answer. No. He believes in the exercise of private
judgment only in the examination and rejection of other
books than the Bible.
Question. Is he a Catholic ?
Answer. I cannot answer blasphemy ! Let me tell
you that God will “ laugh at your calamity, and will
mock when your fear cometh.” You will be accursed.
Question. Why do you curse infidels ?
Answer. Because I am a Christian.
Question. Did not Christ say that we ought to “ bless
those who curse us,” and that we should “ love our
enemies ” ?
Answer. Yes, but he cursed the Pharisees, and called
them “ hypocrites ” and “ vipers.”
Question. How do you account for that ?
Answer. It simply shows the difference between theory
and practice.
Question. What do you consider the.best way to answer
infidels ?
Answer. The old way is the best. You should say
that their arguments are ancient, and have been answered
over and over again. If this does not satisfy your
hearers, then you should attack the character of the
infidel—then that of his parents—then that of his chil
dren.
Question. Suppose that the infidel is a good man ; how
will you answer him then ?
Answer. But an infidel cannot be a good man. Even
if he is, it is better that he should lose his reputation
than that thousands should lose their souls. We know
that all infidels are vile and infamous. We may not
have the evidence, but we know that it exists.
Question. How should infidels be treated ? Should
Christians try to convert them ?
Answer. Christians should have nothing to do with
infidels. It is not safe even to converse with them.
They are always talking about reason and facts and
experience. They are filled with sophistry, and should
be avoided.
Question. Should Christians pray for the conversion of
infidels ?
dnsrn. Yes ; but such prayers should be made in
public, and the name of the infidel should be given, and
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
47
his vile and hideous heart portrayed, so that the young
may be warned.
.
Question. Whom do you regard as mfidels .
Answer. The scientists—the geologists, the astro
nomers, the naturalists, the philosophers. No one can
overestimate the evil that has been wrought by La Flace,
Humboldt, Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, Renan, Emerson,
Strauss, Buchner, Tyndall, and their wretched followers.
These men pretended to know more than Moses and the
prophets. They were “dogs baying at the moon.”
They were “wolves” and “fools.” They tried to
“assassinate God,” and, worse than all, they actually
laughed at the clergy.
.
Question. Do you think they did, and are doing, great
harm ?
„ ,
•
-r
Answer. Certainly. Of what use are all the sciences it
you lose your own soul ? People in hell will care nothing
about education. The rich man said nothing about
science, he wanted water. Neither will they care about
books and theories in heaven. If a man is perfectly
happy, it makes no difference how ignorant he is.
Question. But how can he answer these scientists ?
Answer. Well, my advice is to let their arguments
alone. Of course, you will deny all their facts, but the
most effective way is to attack their character.
Question. But suppose they are good men—what
then?
Answer. The better they are, the worse they are. We
cannot admit that the infidel is really good. He may
appear to be good, and it is our duty to strip the mask o
appearance from the face of unbelief. If a man is not a
Christian, he is totally depraved, and why should we
hesitate to make a misstatement about a man whom God
is going to make miserable forever ?
Question. Are we not commanded to love our enemies ?
Answer. Yes ; but not the enemies of God.
Question. Do you fear the final triumph of.infidelity ?
Answer. No. We have no fear. We believe that the
Bible can be revised often enough to agree with any
thing that may really be necessary to the preservation of
the Church. We can always rely upon revision. Let
me tell you that the Bible is the most peculiar of books.
At the time God inspired his holy prophets to write it, he
�48
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
knew exactly what the discoveries and demonstrations
of the future would be, and he wrote his Bible in such a
way that the words could always be interpreted in accor
dance with the intelligence of each age, and so that the
words used are capable of several meanings, so that, no
matter what may hereafter be discovered, the Bible will
be found to agree with it—for the reason that the know
ledge of Hebrew will grow in the exact proportion that
discoveries are made in other departments of knowledge.
You will therefore see, that all efforts of infidelity to
destroy the Bible will simply result in giving a better
translation.
Question. What do you consider is the strongest
argument in favor of the inspiration of the Scriptures ?
Answer. The dying words of Christians.
Question. What do you consider the strongest argu
ment against the truth of infidelity ?
Answer. The dying words of infidels. You know how
terrible were the death-bed scenes of Hume, Voltaire,
Paine, and Hobbes, as described by hundreds of persons
who were not present; while all Christians have died
with the utmost serenity, and with their last words have
testified to the sustaining power of faith in the goodness
of God.
Question. What were the last words of Jesus Christ?
Answer. “ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me ?”
THE END.
�WORKS BY COL. R. G. INGERSOLL (continued)
Social Salvation. 2d.
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INGERSOLL
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LIFE.
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soll’s noble Freethought Poem.
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�SOME WORKS BY G. W. FOOTE.
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�
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Title
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A Christian catechism
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 48 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: "...a splendid undenominational exposure of Christianity, in a form at once instructive and entertaining."--Introd. Publisher's lists inside front and back covers, and on back cover. First published in Six interviews with Robert G. Ingersoll on six sermons by the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, to which is added A Talmagian catechism (Washington, DC: C.P. Farrell, 1882). No. 75g in Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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The Pioneer Press
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1903
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Christianity
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Catechisms
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NATIONAL SECuLAR^^^lETY
r .
J &
A
WOODEN GOD
BY
COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL
ONE
PENNY
London:
THE FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, Ltd.
2 Newcastle Street, Farringdon Street, E.C.
1903.
�PRINTED BY
THE FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD.,
2 NEWCASTLE-STREET, FARRINGDON-STREET, LONDON, E.C.
�6 257^2.
N4
INTRODUCTION.
---- 4—- The contents of this pamphlet are reprinted from the complete
• ‘ Dresden Edition ’ ’ of the works of the late Colonel Ingersoll;
and the title there attached has been retained on the present
title-page. “A Wooden God” was written by Colonel Ingersoll
on March 27, 1880, in the form of a letter to the Chicago Times.
It is now published in England for the first time—with just the
omission of the opening words “To the Editor.” The lapse of
t .verity-three years has not impaired its pertinence or its value.
It is still a very useful criticism on the dealings of the Christian
nations with China.
�A WOODEN GOD
—•—♦——-
To-day Messrs. Wright, Dickey, O’Connor, and Murch,
of the select committee on the causes of the present
depression of labor, presented the majority special report
upon Chinese immigration.
These gentlemen are in great fear for the future of
our most holy and perfectly authenticated religion, and
have, like faithful watchmen, from the walls and towers
of Zion, hastened to give the alarm. They have in
formed Congress that “Joss has his temple of worship
in the Chinese quarters, in San Francisco. Within the
walls of a dilapidated structure is exposed to the view
of the faithful the god of the Chinaman, and here are
his altars of worship. Here he tears up his pieces of
paper; here he offers up his prayers; here he receives
his religious consolations, and here is his road to the
celestial land
that “ Joss is located in a long, narrow
room in a building in a back alley, upon a kind of
altar;” that “ he is a wooden image, looking as much
like an alligator as a human being; ” that the Chinese
“think there is such a place as heaven;” that “all
classes of Chinamen worship idols;” that “the temple
is open every day at all hours;” that “the Chinese
�5
have no Sunday;” and this heathen god has “huge
jaws, a big red tongue, large white teeth, a half-dozen
arms, and big, fiery eyeballs. About him are placed
offerings of meat and other eatables —a sacrificial
offering.”
No wonder that these members of the committee were
shocked at such an image of God, knowing as they did
that the only true God was correctly described by the
inspired lunatic of Patmos in the following words “ And there sat in the midst of the seven golden
candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with
a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with
a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like
wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of
fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned
in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of
his mouth went a sharp, two-edged sword: and his
countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.”
Certainly a large mouth filled with white teeth is pre
ferable to one used as the scabbard of a sharp, twoedged sword. Why should these gentlemen object to a
god with big, fiery eyeballs, when their own Deity has
eyes like a flame of fire ?
Is it not a little late in the day to object to peopie
because they sacrifice meat and other eatables to their
•god ? We all know that for thousands of years the
“ real ” God was exceedingly fond of roasted meat; that
he loved the savor of burning flesh, and delighted in the
perfume of fresh, warm blood.
The following account of the manner in which the
living God ” desired that his chosen people should
�6
sacrifice, tends to show the degradation and religious
blindness of the Chinese;—
“ Aaron therefore went unto the altar, and slew the
calf of the sin offering, which was for himself. And the
sons of Aaron brought the blood unto him: and he
dipped his finger in the blood, and put it upon the
horns of the altar, and poured out the blood at the
bottom of the altar: But the fat, and the kidneys, and
the caul above the liver of the sin-offering, he burnt
upon the altar ; as the Lord commanded Moses. And
the flesh and the hide he burnt with fire without the
camp. And he slew the burnt offering; and Aaron’s
sons presented unto him the blood, which he sprinkled
round about upon the altar.......And he brought the
meat offering, and took a handful thereof, and burnt it
upon the altar.......He slew also the bullock and the ram
for a sacrifice of peace offering., which was for the
people: and Aaron’s sons presented unto him the blood,,
which he sprinkled upon the altar round about, and the
fat of the bullock and of the ram, the rump, and that
which covereth the inwards and the kidneys, and the
caul above the liver, and they put the fat upon the
breasts, and he burnt the fat upon the altar. And the
breast and the right shoulder Aaron waved for a wave
offering before the Lord, as Moses commanded.”
If the Chinese only did something like this, we would
know that they worshipped the “ living ” God. The
idea that the supreme head of the “ American system
cf religion” can be placated with a little meat and
“ ordinary eatables ’* is simply preposterous. He has
always asked for blood, and has always asserted that
without the shedding of blood there is no remission of
sin.
The world is also informed by these gentlemen that
“ the idolatry of the Chinese produces a demoralising;
�effect upon our American youth by bringing sacred
things into disrespect, and making religion a theme of
disgust and contempt.”
In San Francisco there are some three hundred thou
sand people. Is it possible that a few Chinese can
bring our “ holy religion ” into disgust and contempt ?
I n that city there are fifty times as many churches as
joss-houses. Scores of sermons are uttered every week;
religious books and papers are plentiful as leaves in
autumn, and somewhat dryer; thousands of Bibles are
within the reach of all. And there, too, is the example
of a Christian City.
Why should we send missionaries to China if we can
not convert the heathen when they come here ? When
missionaries go to a foreign land, the poor, benighted
people have to take their word for the blessings
showered upon a Christian people ; but when the
heathen come here they can see for themselves. What
was simply a story becomes a demonstrated fact. They
come in contact with people who love their enemies.
They see that in a Christian land men tell the truth ;
that they will not take advantage of strangers; that
they are just and patient, kind and tender ; that they
never resort to force; that they have no prejudice on
account of color, race or religion; that they look upon
mankind as brethren; that they speak of God as a
universal Father, and are willing to work, and even to
suffer, for the good not only of their own countrymen,
but of the heathen as well. All this the Chinese see
and know, and why they still cling to the religion of
their country is to me a matter ot amazement.
We all know that the disciples of Jesus do unto
.others as they would that others should do unto them,
�8
and that those of Confucius do not unto others anything
that they would not that others should do unto them.
Surely, such peoples ought to live together in perfect
peace.
Rising with the subject, growing heated with a kind
of holy indignation, these Christian representatives of a
Christian people most solemnly declare that:—
“ Anyone who is really endowed with a correct know
ledge of our religious system, which acknowledges the
existence of a living God and an accountability to him,
and a future state of reward and punishment, who feels
that he has an apology for this abominable pagan
worship is not a fit person to be ranked as a good
citizen of the American Union. It is absurd to make
any apology for its toleration. It must be abolished
and the sooner the decree goes forth by the power of
this Government the better it will be for the interests of
this land.”
I take this, the earliest opportunity, to inform these
gentlemen composing a majority of the committee that
we have in the United States no “religious system;”
that this is a secular Government; that it has no
religious creed; that it does not believe or disbelieve in
a future state of reward and punishment; that it neither
affirms nor denies the existence of a “ living Godand
that the only god, so far as this Government is con
cerned, is the legally expressed will of a majority of the
people. Under our flag the Chinese have the same
right to worship a wooden God that you have to worship
any other.
The Constitution protects equally the
church of Jehovah and the house of Joss. Whatever
their relative positions may be in heaven, they stand
upon a perfect equality in the United States.
This Government is an Infidel Government. We
�9
have a Constitution with man put in and God left out ;
and it is the glory of this country that we have such a
Constitution.
It may be surprising to you that I have an apology
for pagan worship, yet I have. And it is the same one
that I have for the writers of this report. I account for
both by the word superstition. Why should we object
to their worshipping God as they please ? If the
worship is improper, the protestation should come not
from a committee of Congress, but from God himself.
If he is satisfied that is sufficient.
Our religion can only be brought into contempt by
the actions of those who profess to be governed by its
teachings. This report will do more in that direction
than millions of Chinese could do by burning pieces of
paper before a wooden image. If you wish to impress
the Chinese with the value of your religion, of what you
are pleased to call “the American system,” show them
that Christians are better than heathens. Prove to
them that what you are pleased to call the “living God”
teaches higher and holier things, a grander and purer
code of morals than can be found upon pagan pages.
Excel these wretches in industry, in honesty, in rever
ence for parents, in cleanliness, in frugality; and above
all by advocating the absolute liberty of humah thought.
Do not trample upon these people because they have a
different conception of things about which even this
committee knows nothing.
Give them the sariae privilege you enjoy of making a
God after their own fashion. And let them describe
him as they will. Would you be willing to have them
remain, if One of their race, thousands of years ago, had
pretended to have seen God, and had written of him as
follows
�IO
“There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire
out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it,
....... and he rode upon a cherub and did fly.”
"Why should you object to these people on account of
their religion? Your objection has in it the spirit of
hate and intolerance. Of that spirit the Inquisition was
born. That spirit lighted the fagot, made the thumb
screw, put chains upon the limbs, and lashes upon the
backs of men. The same spirit bought and sold,
captured and kidnapped human beings; sold babes, and
justified all the horrors of slavery.
Congress has nothing to do with the religion of the
people. Its members are not responsible to God for the
opinions of their constituents, and it may tend to the
happiness of the constituents for me to state that they
are in no way responsible for the religion of the mem
bers. Religion is an individual, not a national matter.
And where the nation interferes with the right of con
science, the liberties of the people are devoured by the
monster superstition.
If you wish to drive out the Chinese, do not make a
pretext of religion. Do not pretend that you are trying
to do God a favor. Injustice in his name is doubly
detestable. The assassin cannot sanctify his dagger by
falling on his knees, and it does not help a falsehood if
it be uttered as a prayer. Religion, used to intensify
the hatred of men towards men under the pretence of
pleasing God, has cursed this world.
A portion of this most remarkable report is intensely
religious. There is in it almost the odor of sanctity;
and when reading it, one is impressed with the living
piety of its authors. But on the twenty-fifth page there
are a few passages that must pain the hearts of true
�11
Believers. Leaving their religious views, the members
immediately betake themselves to philosophy and pre
diction. Listen:—
“ The Chinese race and the American citizen,
■whether native-born or one who is eligible to our
naturalisation laws and becomes a citizen, are in a state
of antagonism. They cannot, or will not, ever meet
upon common ground, and occupy together the same
social level. This is impossible. The pagan and the
Christian travel different paths. This one believes in a
living God ; and that one in a type of monsters and the
worship of wood and stone. Thus in the religion of the
two races of men they are as wide apart as the poles of
the two hemispheres. They cannot now and never will
approach the same religious altar. The Christian will
not recede to barbarism, nor will the Chinese advance
to the enlightened belt (whatever it is) of civilisation......
He cannot be converted to those modern ideas of
religious worship which have been accepted by Europe
and which crown the American system.”
Christians used to believe that through their religion
all the nations of the earth were finally to be blest. In
accordance with that belief missionaries have been sent
to every land, and untold wealth has been expended for
what has been called the spread of the gospel.
I am almost sure that I have read somewhere that
“ Christ died for all men,” and that “God is no respecter
of persons.” It was once taught that it was the duty
of Christians to tell all people the “ tidings of great
joy.” I have never believed these things myself, but
have always contended that an honest merchant was
the best missionary. Commerce makes friends, religion
makes enemies; the one enriches, and the other im
poverishes ; the one thrives best where the truth is told,
�12
the other where falsehoods are believed. For myself, I
have but little confidence in any business, or enterprise,
or investment that promises dividends only after the
death of the stockholders.
But I am astonished that four Christian statesmen,
four members of Congress, in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, who seriously object to people on
account of their religious convictions, should still assert
that the very religion in which they believe—and the
only religion established by the “ living God,” head of
the American system—is not adapted to the spiritual
needs of one-third of the human race. It is amazing that
these four gentlemen have, in the defence of the Christian
religion, announced the discovery that it is wholly in
adequate for the civilisation of mankind; that the light of
the cross can never penetrate the darkness of China;
“ that all the labors of the missionary, the example of the
good, the exalted character of our civilisation, make no
impression upon the pagan life of the Chinese; ” and
that even the report of this committee will not tend to
elevate, refine, and Christianise the yellow heathen of
the Pacific coast. In the name of religion these gentle
men have denied its power, and mocked at the enthu
siasm of its founder.
Worse than this, they have
predicted for the Chinese a future of ignorance and
idolatry in this world, and, if the “ American system ”
of religion is true, hell-fire in the next.
For the benefit of these four philosophers and prophets
I will give a few extracts from the writings of Con
fucius, that will, in my judgment, compare favorably
with the best passages of their report:—
“ My doctrine is that man must be true to the
�i3
principles of his nature, and the benevolent exercise of
them toward others.
“.With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and
with my bended arm for a pillow, I still have joy.
“ .Riches and honor acquired by injustice are to me
but floating clouds.
“ The man who, in view of gain, thinks of righteous
ness; who, in view of danger, forgets life, and who
remembers an old agreement, however far back it
extends, such a man may be reckoned a complete man.
“ Recompense injury with justice, and kindness with
kindness.
“ There is one word which may serve as a rule of
practice for all one’s life ; Reciprocity is that word.”
When the ancestors of the four Christian Congress
men were barbarians, when they lived in caves, gnawed
bones, and worshipped dried snakes, the infamous
Chinese were reading these sublime sentences of Con
fucius.
When the forefathers of these Christian
statesmen were hunting toads to get the jewels out of
their heads, to be used as charms, the wretched Chinese
were calculating eclipses, and measuring the circum
ference of the earth. When the progenitors of these
representatives of the “ American system of religion ”
were burning women charged with nursing devils, the
people “ incapable of being influenced by the exalted
character of our civilisation ” were building asylums for
the insane.
Neither should it be forgotten that, for thousands of
years the Chinese have honestly practised the great
principle known as Civil Service Reform—a something
that even the administration of Mr. Hayes has reached
only through the proxy of promise.
If we wish to prevent the immigration of the Chinese,
�J4
iet us reform our treaties with the vast empire from
whence they came. For thousands of years the Chinese
secluded themselves from the rest of the world. They
did not deem the Christian nations fit to associate with.
We forced ourselves upon them. We called, not with
cards, but with cannon. The English battered down
the door in the names of opium and Christ. This
infamy was regarded as another triumph for the gospel.
At last, in self-defence, the Chinese allowed Christians to
touch their shores. Their wise men, their philosophers
protested, and prophesied that time would show that
Christians could not be trusted. This report proves
that the wise men were not only philosophers but
prophets.
Treat China as you would England. Keep a treaty
while it is in force. Change it if you will, according to
the laws of nations, but on no account excuse a breach
of national faith by pretending that we are dishonest for
God’s sake.
�WORKS BY THE LATE R. G. INGERSOLL
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Crimes against Criminals
3dOration on Walt Whit
man.
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Oration on Lincoln. 3dPaine the Pioneer. 2d.
Humanity’s
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Ernest Renan and Jesus
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Three Philanthropists.
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What Must We do to be
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Take a Road of Your
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What is Religion ? 2d.
Defence of
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Is Suicide a Sin ? 2d.
Last Words on Suicide.
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God and the State. 2d.
Faith and Fact.
Reply
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God and Man.
Second
reply to Dr. Field. 2d.
The Dying Creed. 2d.
The Limits of Tolera
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A Discussion
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Household of Faith. 2d.
Art and Morality. 2d.
Do I Blaspheme ? 2d.
Social Salvation. 2d.
Marriage & Divorce. 2d.
Skulls. 2d.
Live Topics, id.
Myth and Miracle, id.
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Why am I an Agnostic? 2d.
Christ and Miracles, id.
I Creeds&Spirituality, id.
i The Christian Religion.
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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>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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A wooden god
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 14 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: First published 1880 as a letter to the Chicago Times (27 March) and reprinted from the Dresden edition of Ingersoll's works. No. 96b in Stein checklist.||(WIT) Publisher's advertisements ("Works by the late R.G. Ingersoll") inside back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Please note that this pamphlet contains language and ideas that may be upsetting to readers. These reflect the time in which the pamphlet was written and the ideologies of the author.
Publisher
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Freethought Publishing Company
Date
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1903
Identifier
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N414
Subject
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Missionaries
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 (A wooden god), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
China
Missionaries-China
NSS
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Architecture and Place
Creator
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Humanist Library and Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised items from the Humanist Library and Archives telling the story of buildings and spaces occupied by the Conway Hall Ethical Society (formerly the South Place Ethical Society). Also includes several born digital items.
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Subject
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Architecture
Conway Hall (London, England)
South Place Chapel, Finsbury
Mansford, Frederick Herbert (1871-1946)
Language
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English
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Parchment
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Counterpart lease of 14, 15 and 16 Lambs Conduit Passage, 23 January 1903
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Counterpart lease of 14,15,16 Lambs Conduit Passage, (23 January 1903).</p>
<ul><li>(1) Algernon Augustus de Lisle Strickland of Eccleston Square, Middx, and 37 Fleet St, City of London, banker, tenant for life under will of Henry Eustatius Strickland (see Deeds 19) who died 9 May 1865</li>
<li>(2) James Smith of 7 Finsbury Square, City of London, gent</li>
</ul><p>(1)-(2) 3 messuages nos. 14, 15 and 16 Lambs Conduit Passage.</p>
<p>Term: 21 years</p>
<p>Rent: 120 pa</p>
<p>(2) covenants to insure premises for £3000.</p>
<p>Includes detailed plan of premises and detailed schedule of landlord's fixtures and furniture.</p>
Creator
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Unknown
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1903
Subject
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Leases
Identifier
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SPES/3/1/1/23
Format
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image/jpeg
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Rights
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<p>Licenced for digitisation by the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/copyright-orphan-works" target="_blank">Intellectual Property Office</a> under Orphan Works Licence <a href="https://www.orphanworkslicensing.service.gov.uk/view-register/details?owlsNumber=OWLS000075-29" target="_blank">OWLS000075-29</a>.</p>
Lamb's Conduit Passage, Holborn
Strickland, Algernon Augustus de Lille
Strickland, Henry Eustatius
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37adadd5f6e38ce25339370fb0a908e7
PDF Text
Text
PRICE SIXPENCE
&
EDUCATION:
INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL
BY
,
Herbert Spencer
WATTS & Co.,.
Jr
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
[issued
for the rationalist press association, limited]
R.P. A. CHEAP REPRINTS.—No. 6.
�A A A.
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WHAT THE
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Aduancement of Liberty of Thought,
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THE LITERARY GUIDE
AND RATIONALIST REVIEW.
In addition to reviews of the best books on Religion, Ethics, Science,
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expository of Rationalism, frequently from the pens of prominent writers.
Some Press
The University Magazine says : “ It is no exaggera
tion if we assert that the articles in the Literary Guide
excel in sterling worth those of all its contemporaries; and
Rationalists will be proud to possess an independent and
fearless literary review cf this kind.”
The London Echo states that “anyone who desires to
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The London Star also testifies that “ the Literary
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The whole of the numbers for the past year may be obtained, handsomely bound in cloth,
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Specimen Copy Post Free.
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London: Watts & Co., 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
�^62.0
national secular society
EDUCATION
f
�BY THE SAME AUTHOR
A SYSTEM OF SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY
FIRST PRINCIPLES,
nth Thousand.
6th Thousand, revised
2 vols.
PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY.
and enlarged. 36s.
PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY.
PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY.
Ditto
Ditto
5th Thousand.
2 vols.
Vol. I.
4th Thousand.
Vol. II.
4th Thousand.
Vol. III.
PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.
Vol. I.
Ditto
JUSTICE (separately).
16s.
Vol. II.
2nd Thousand.
2nd Thousand.
2nd Thousand.
36s.
21s.
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2nd Thousand.
12s. 6d.
6s.
OTHER WuRKS
THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
21st Thousand.
EDUCATION.
7th Thousand,
os.
Ditto
Cheap Edition.
41st Thousand.
10s. 6d.
ESSAYS.
3 vols.
6th Thousand.
2s. 6d.
30s.
(Each Volume may be had separately, price 10s.)
SOCIAL STATICS and MAN v. STATE.
THE MAN v. THE STATE (separately).
VARIOUS FRAGMENTS.
FACTS AND COMMENTS.
10s.
14th Thousand.
Enlarged Edition.
4th Thousand.
REASONS FOR DISSENTING FROM
OF M. COMTE. 6d.
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is.
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A detailed Catalogue of the above may be obtained gratis from the
publishers, Messrs. Williams & Norgate, 14, Henrietta Street,
London, IV. C.
�EDUCATION:
INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL
HERBERT SPENCER
If this book is returned to
w. A. FOYLE, 65, GRAND PAR'D.
harringay, n.
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1903
��PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE
In the preface to the cheap edition of this work, issued
in 1878, the author says :—•
The growing demand for the original edition of these Chapters
on Education has suggested to me the propriety of issuing an
edition that shall come within easy reach of a larger public.
That the work has had considerable currency in the United
States, and that there have been made translations of it into
the French, German, Italian, Russian, Hungarian, Dutch, and
Danish languages, are facts which have further encouraged me to
believe that at home an edition fitted by lower price for wider
circulation is called for.
No alterations have been made in the text.
In the absence
of more pressing occupations I should have subjected it to a
careful revision; but rather than postpone tasks of greater
importance I have refrained.
Since then the work has been translated into Spanish,
Swedish, Bohemian, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Sanskrit,
Arabic, and Bulgarian.
By the consent of Mr. Spencer, the Rationalist
Press Association are now able, by issuing this
■verbatim reprint at a still lower price, to extend the
circulation of these essays yet further.
��J
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
•
9
CHAPTER II.
INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
-
40
-
69
CHAPTER III.
MORAL EDUCATION
....
CHAPTER IV.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
92
i
J
1
1
1
�EDUCATION AT ETON, 1842-5
“ Balston, our tutor, was a good scholar after the fashion of the day,
and famous for Latin verse; but he was essentially a commonplace
don. ‘ Stephen major,’ he once said to my brother, 1 if you do not
take more pains, how can you ever expect to write good longs and
shorts ? If you do not write good longs and shorts, how can you
ever be a man of taste? If you are not a man of taste, how can
you ever hope to be of use in the world ?’ ”
( The Life of Sir Tames Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., by his brother, Leslie Stephen,
pp. 80-1.)
�EDUCATION
CHAPTER I.
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH ?
It has been truly remarked that, in
order of time, decoration precedes dress.
Among people who submit to great physi
cal suffering that they may have themselves
handsomely tattooed, extremes of tempera
ture are borne with but little attempt at
mitigation. Humboldt tells us that an
Orinoco Indian, though quite regardless
of bodily comfort, will yet labour for a
fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith
to make himself admired; and that the
same woman who would not hesitate to
leave her hut without a fragment of
clothing on, would not dare to commit
such a breach of decorum as to go out
unpainted. Voyagers find that coloured
beads and trinkets are much more prized
by wild tribes, than are calicoes or
broadcloths. And the anecdotes we have
of the ways in which, when shirts and
coats are given, savages turn them to
some ludicrous display, show how com
pletely the idea of ornament predominates
over that of use. Nay, there are still
more extreme illustrations : witness the
fact narrated by Capt. Speke of his
African attendants, who strutted about
in their goat-skin mantles when the
weather was fine, but when it was wet,
took them off, folded them up, and went
about naked, shivering in the rain!
Indeed, the facts of aboriginal life seem
to indicate that dress is developed out
of decorations. And when we remember
that even among ourselves most think
more about the fineness of the fabric
than its warmth, and more about the cut
than the convenience—when we see that
the function is still in great measure
subordinated to the appearance — we
have further reason for inferring such an
origin.
It is curious that the like relations
hold with the mind. Among mental
as among bodily acquisitions, the orna
mental comes before the useful. Not
only in times past, but almost as much
in our own era, that knowledge which
conduces to personal well-being has been
postponed to that which brings applause.
In the Greek schools, music, poetry,
rhetoric, and a philosophy which, until
Socrates taught, had but little bearing
upon action, were the dominant subjects ;
while knowledge aiding the arts of life
had a very subordinate place. And in
our own universities and schools at the
present moment, the like antithesis holds.
We are guilty of something like a plati
tude when we say that throughout his
after-career, a boy, in nine cases out of
ten, applies his Latin and Greek to no
practical purposes. The remark is trite
that in his shop, or his office, in managing
- his estate or his family, in playing his
part as director of a bank or a railway,
he is very little aided by this knowledge
he took so many years to acquire—so
�IO
EDUCATION
little, that generally the greater part of it
drops out of his memory; and if he
occasionally vents a Latin quotation, or
alludes to some Greek myth, it is less to
throw light on the topic in hand than
for the sake of effect. If we inquire
what is the real motive for giving boys a
classical education, we find it to be
simply conformity to public opinion.
Men dress their children’s minds as they
do their bodies, in the prevailing fashion.
As the Orinoco Indian puts on paint
before leaving his hut, not with a view
to any direct benefit, but because he
would be ashamed to be seen without
it; so, a boy’s drilling in Latin and
Greek is insisted on, not because of
their intrinsic value, but that he may not
be disgraced by being found ignorant of
them—that he may have “the education
of a gentleman ”—the badge marking a
certain social position, and bringing a
consequent respect.
This parallel is still more clearly
displayed in the case of the other sex.
In the treatment of both mind and body,
the decorative element has continued to
predominate in a greater degree among
women than among men. Originally,
personal adornment occupied the atten
tion of both sexes equally. In these
latter days of civilisation, however, we
see that in the dress of men the regard
for appearance has in a considerable
degree yielded to the regard for comfort;
while in their education the useful has
of late been trenching on the ornamental.
In neither direction has this change
gone so far with women. The wearing
of ear-rings, finger-rings, bracelets; the
elaborate dressings of the hair; the
still occasional use of paint; the
immense labour bestowed in making
habiliments sufficiently attractive; and
the great discomfort that will be sub
mitted to for the sake of conformity;
show how greatly, in the attiring of
women, the desire of approbation over
rides the desire for warmth and con
venience. And similarly in their educa
tion, the immense preponderance of
“ accomplishments ” proves how here,
too, use is subordinated to display.
Dancing, deportment, the piano, singing,
drawing—what a large space do these
occupy 1 If you ask why Italian and
German are learnt, you will find that,
under all the sham reasons given, the
real reason is, that a knowledge of those
tongues is thought ladylike. It is not
that the books written in them may be
utilised, which they scarcely ever are ;
but that Italian and German songs may
be sung, and that the extent of attainment
may bring whispered admiration. The
births, deaths, and marriages of kings,
and other like historic trivialities, are
committed to memory, not because of
any direct benefits that can possibly
result from knowing them ; but because
society considers them parts of a good
education—because the absence of such
knowledge may bring the contempt of
others. When we have named reading,
writing, spelling, grammar, arithmetic,
and sewing, we have named about all
the things a girl is taught with a view
to their actual uses in life; and even
some of these have more reference to
the good opinion of others than to
immediate personal welfare.
Thoroughly to realise the truth that
with the mind as with the body the
ornamental precedes the useful, it is
requisite to glance at its rationale. This
lies in the fact that, from the far past
down even to the present, social needs
have subordinated individual needs,
and that the chief social need has been
the control of individuals. It is not, as
we commonly suppose, that there are no
governments but those of monarchs, and
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
parliaments, and constituted authorities.
These acknowledged governments are
supplemented by other unacknowledged
ones, that grow up in all circles, in which
every man or woman strives to be king
or queen or lesser dignitary. To get
above some and be reverenced by them,
and to propitiate those who are above
us, is the universal struggle in which the
chief energies of life are expended. By
the accumulation of wealth, by style of
living, by beauty of dress, by display of
knowledge of intellect, each tries to
subjugate others; and so aids in weaving
that ramified network of restraints by
which society is kept in order. It is not
the savage chief only, who, in formidable
war-paint, with scalps at his belt, aims
to strike awe into his inferiors; it is not
only the belle who, by elaborate toilet,
polished manners, and numerous accom
plishments, strives to “make conquests ”;
but the scholar, the historian, the philo
sopher, use their acquirements to the
same end. We are none of us content
with quietly unfolding our own indivi
dualities to the full in all directions; but
have a restless craving to impress our
individualities upon others, and in some
way subordinate them. And this it is
which determines the character of our
education. Not what knowledge is of
most real worth, is the consideration;
but what will bring most applause,
honour, respect—what will most conduce
to social position and influence—what
will be most imposing. As, throughout
life, not what we are, but what we shall
be thought, is the question; so in
education, the question is, not the
intrinsic value of knowledge, so much
as its extrinsic effects on others. And
this being our dominant idea, direct
utility is scarcely more regarded than by
the barbarian when filing his teeth and
staining his nails.
ii
If there requires further evidence of
the rude, undeveloped character of
our education, we have it in the fact
that the comparative worths of different
kinds of knowledge have been as yet
scarcely even discussed — much less
discussed in a methodic way with
definite results. Not only is it that no
standard of relative values has yet been
agreed upon; but the existence of any
such standard has not been conceived in
a clear manner. And not only is it
that the existence of such a standard
has not been clearly conceived : but the
need for it seems to have been scarcely
even felt. Men read books on this topic,
and attend lectures on that; decide that
their children shall be instructed in
these branches of knowledge, and shall
not be instructed in those; and all under
the guidance of mere custom, or liking,
or prejudice; without ever considering
the enormous importance of determining
in some rational way what things are
really most worth learning. It is true
that in all circles we hear occasional
remarks on the importance of this or the
other order of information. But whether
the degree of its importance justifies
the expenditure of the time needed to
acquire it; and whether there are not
things of more importance to which
such time might be better devoted; are
queries which, if raised at all, are dis
posed of quite summarily, according to
personal predilections. It is true also,
that now and then, we hear revived the
standing controversy respecting the com
parative merits of classics and mathe
matics. This controversy, however, is
carried on in an empirical manner, with
no reference to an ascertained criterion;
and the question at issue is insignificant
when compared with the general question
of which it is part. To suppose that
�12
EDUCATION
deciding whether a mathematical or a
classical education is the best, is deciding
what is the proper curriculum, is much the
same thing as to suppose that the whole
of dietetics lies in ascertaining whether or
not bread is more nutritive than potatoes!
The question which we contend is of
such transcendent moment, is, not
whether such or such knowledge is of
worth, but what is its relative worth?
When they have named certain advan
tages which a given course of study has
secured them, persons are apt to assume
that they have justified themselves :
quite forgetting that the adequateness
of the advantages is the point to be
judged. There is, perhaps, not a subject
to which men devote attention that has
not some value. A year diligently spent
in getting up heraldry, would very
possibly give a little further insight into
ancient manners and morals. Any one
who should learn the distances between
all the towns in England, might, in the
course of his life, find one or two of the
thousand facts he had acquired of some
slight service when arranging a journey.
Gathering together all the small gossip
of a county, profitless occupation as it
would be, might yet occasionally help to
establish some useful fact—say, a good
example of hereditary transmission. But
in these cases, every one would admit
that there was no proportion between
the required labour and the probable
benefit.
No one would tolerate the
proposal to devote some years of a boy’s
time to getting such information, at the
cost of much more valuable information
which he might else have got. And if
here the test of relative value is appealed
to and held conclusive, then should it be
appealed to and held conclusive through
out. Had we time to master all subjects
we need not be particular. To quote
the old song
Could a man be secure
That his days would endure
As of old, for a thousand long years,
What things might he know !
What deeds might he do !
And all without hurry or care.
“But we that have but span-long lives”
must ever bear in mind our limited time
for acquisition. And remembering how
narrowly this time is limited, not only
by the shortness of life, but also still
more by the business of life, we ought
to be especially solicitous to employ what
time we have to the greatest advantage.
Before devoting years to some subject
which fashion or fancy suggests, it is
surely wise to weigh with great care the
worth of the results, as compared with
the worth of various alternative results
which the same years might bring if
otherwise applied.
In education, then, this is the question
of questions, which it is high time we
discussed in some methodic way. The
first in importance, though the last to be
considered, is the problem—how to
decide among the conflicting claims of
various subjects on our attention. Before
there can be a rational curriculum, we
must settle which things it most concerns
us to know; or, to use a word of Bacon’s,
now unfortunately obsolete—we must
determine the relative values of know
ledges.
To this end, a measure of value is the
first requisite. And happily, respecting
the true measure of value, as expressed
in general terms, there can be no dispute.
Everyone, in contending for the worth of
any particular order of information, does
so by showing its bearing upon some part
of life. In reply to the question—“ Of
what use is it ?” the mathematician,
linguist, naturalist, or philosopher, ex
plains the way in which his learning
beneficially influences action—saves from
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
evil or secures good—conduces to happi
ness. When the teacher of writing has
pointed out how great an aid writing is
to success in business—that is, to the
obtainment of sustenance—that is, to
satisfactory living; he is held to have
proved his case. And when the collector
of dead facts (say a numismatist) fails to
make clear any appreciable effects which
these facts can produce on human
welfare, he is obliged to admit that they
are comparatively valueless. All then,
either directly or by implication, appeal
to this as the ultimate test.
How to live ?—that is the essential
question for us. Not how to live in the
mere material sense only, but in the
widest sense. The general problem
which comprehends every special problem
is—the right ruling of conduct in all
directions under all circumstances. In
what way to treat the body; in what
way to treat the mind; in what way to
manage our affairs ; in what way to bring
up a family; in what way to behave as
a citizen; in what way to utilise those
sources of happiness which nature
supplies—how to use all our faculties
to the greatest advantage of ourselves
and others—how to live completely ?
And this being the great thing needful
for us to learn, is, by consequence, the
great thing which education has to teach.
To prepare us for complete living is the
function which education has to dis
charge ; and the only rational mode of
judging of an educational course is, to
judge in what degree it discharges such
function.
• This test, never used in its entirety,
but rarely even partially used, and used
then in a vague, half conscious way, has
to be applied consciously, methodically,
and throughout all cases. It behoves us
to set before ourselves, and ever to keep
clearly in view, complete living as the
13
end to be achieved; so that in bringing
up our children we may choose subjects
and methods of instruction, with deli
berate reference to this end. Not only
ought we to cease from the mere unthink
ing adoption of the current fashion in
education, which has no better warrant
than any other fashion; but we must
also rise above that rude, empirical style
of judging displayed by those more intel
ligent people who do bestow some care
in overseeing the cultivation of their
children’s minds. It must not suffice
simply to think that such or such infor
mation will be useful in after life, or that
this kind of knowledge is of more prac
tical value than that; but we must seek
out some process of estimating their
respective values, so that as far as possible
we may positively know which are most
deserving of attention.
Doubtless the task is difficult—perhaps
never to be more than approximately
achieved. But, considering the vastness
of the interests at stake, its difficulty is
no reason for pusillanimously passing it
by; but rather for devoting every energy
to its mastery. And if we only proceed
systematically, we may very soon get at
results of no small moment.
Our first step must obviously be to
classify, in the order of their importance,
the leading kinds of activity which con
stitute human life. They may be naturally
arranged into :—1. those activities which
directly minister to self-preservation; 2.
those activities which, by securing the
necessaries of life, indirectly minister to
self-preservation; 3. those activities which
have for their end the rearing and dis
cipline of offspring; 4. those activities
which are involved in the maintenance
of proper social and political relations;
5. those miscellaneous activities which
fill up the leisure part of life, devoted to
the gratification of the tastes and feelings.
�14
EDUCATION
That these stand in something like
their true order of subordination, it needs
no long consideration to show. The
actions and precautions by which, from
moment to moment, we secure personal
safety, must clearly take precedence of all
others. Could there be a man, ignorant
as an infant of surrounding objects and
movements, or how to guide himself
among them, he would pretty certainly
lose his life the first time he went into
the street; notwithstanding any amount
of learning he might have on other
matters. And as entire ignorance in all
other directions would be less promptly
fatal than entire ignorance in this direc
tion, it must be admitted that knowledge
immediately conducive to self-preserva
tion is of primary importance.
That next after direct self-preservation
comes the indirect self-preservation which
consists in acquiring the means of living,
none will question. That a man’s indus
trial functions must be considered before
his parental ones, is manifest from the
fact that, speaking generally, the dis
charge of the parental functions is made
possible only by the previous discharge
of the industrial ones. The power of
self-maintenance necessarily preceding
the power of maintaining offspring, it
follows that knowledge needful for self
maintenance has stronger claims than
knowledge needful for family welfare—
is second in value to none save know
ledge needful for immediate self-preser
vation.
As the family comes before the State
in order of time—as the bringing up of
children is possible before the State
exists, or when it has ceased to be,
whereas the State is rendered possible
only by the bringing up of children; it
follows that the duties of the parent
demanti closer attention than those of
the citizen. Or, to use a further argu
ment—since the goodness of a society
ultimately depends on the nature of its
citizens; and since the nature of its
citizens is more modifiable by early train
ing than by anything else; we must
conclude that the welfare of the family
underlies the welfare of society. And
hence knowledge directly conducing to
the first, must take precedence of know
ledge directly conducing to the last.
Those various forms of pleasurable
occupation which fill up the leisure left
by graver occupations—the enjoyments
of music, poetry, painting, etc.—mani
festly imply a pre-existing society. Not
only is a considerable development of
them impossible without a long-estab
lished social union; but their very sub
ject-matter consists in great part of social
sentiments and sympathies. Not only
does society supply the conditions to
their growth; but also the ideas and
sentiments they express. And, conse
quently, that part of human conduct
which constitutes good citizenship, is of
more moment than that which goes out
in accomplishments or exercise of the
tastes; and, in education, preparation
for the one must rank before preparation
for the other.
Such then, we repeat, is something
like the rational order of subordination:—
That education which prepares for direct
self-preservation; that which prepares for
indirect self-preservation; that which
prepares for parenthood; that which pre
pares for citizenship ; that which prepares
for the miscellaneous refinements of life.
We do not mean to say that these
divisions are definitely separable. We
do not deny that they are intricately
entangled with each other, in such way
that there can be no training for any that
is not in some measure a training for all.
Nor do we question that of each division
there are portions more important than
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
certain portions of the preceding divi
sions : that, for instance, a man of much
skill in business but little other faculty,
may fall further below the standard of
complete living than one of but moderate
ability in money-getting but great judg
ment as a parent; or that exhaustive
information bearing on right social
action, joined with entire want of general
culture in literature and the fine arts, is
less desirable than a more moderate
share of the one joined with some of the
other. But, after making due qualifica
tions, there still remain these broadlymarked divisions; and it still continues
substantially true that these divisions
subordinate one another in the foregoing
order, because the corresponding divi
sions of life make one another possible in
that order.
Of course the ideal of education is—
complete preparation in all these divi
sions. But failing this ideal, as in our
phase of civilisation every one must do
more or less, the aim should be to main
tain a due proportion between the degrees
of preparation in each. Not exhaustive
cultivation in any one, supremely impor
tant though it may be—not even an ex
clusive attention to the two, three, or
four divisions of greatest importance;
but an attention to all;—greatest where
the value is greatest; less where the
value is less; least where the value is
least.
For the average man (not to
forget the cases in which peculiar apti
tude for some one department of know
ledge, rightly makes pursuit of that one
the bread-winning occupation)—for the
average man, we say, the desideratum is,
a training that approaches nearest to
perfection in the things which most sub
serve complete living, and falls more and
more below perfection in the things that
have more and more remote bearings on
complete living.
15
In regulating education by this stan
dard, there are some general considera
tions that should be ever present to us.
The worth of any kind of culture, as
aiding complete living, may be ‘either
necessary or more or less contingent.
There is knowledge of intrinsic value;
knowledge of quasi-intrinsic value ; and
knowledge of conventional value. Such
facts as that sensations of numbness and
tingling commonly precede paralysis,
that the resistance of water to a body
moving through it varies as the square of
the velocity, that chlorine is a disinfec
tant—these, and the truths of Science in
general, are of intrinsic value; they will
bear on human conduct ten thousand
years hence as they do now. The extra
knowledge of our own language, which
is given by an acquaintance with Latin
and Greek, may be considered to have a
value that is quasi-intrinsic: it must exist
for us and for other races whose lan
guages owe much to these sources; but
will last only as long as our languages
last. While that kind of information
which, in our schools, usurps the name
History—the mere tissue ci names and
dates and dead unmeaning events—has
a conventional value only : it has not
the remotest bearing on any of our
actions; and is of use only for the avoid
ance of those unpleasant criticisms
which current opinion passes upon its
absence. Of course, as those facts which
concern all mankind throughout all time
must be held of greater moment than
those which concern only a portion of
them during a limited era, and of far
greater moment than those which con
cern only a portion of them during the
continuance of a fashion; it follows that in
a rational estimate, knowledge of intrinsic
worth must, other things equal, take pre
cedence of knowledge, that is of quasiintrinsic or conventional worth.
�i6
EDUCATION
One further preliminary. Acquirement
of every kind has two values—value as
knowledge and value as discipline. Besides
its use for guiding conduct, the acqui
sition of each order of facts has also its
use as mental exercise; and its effects as
a preparative for complete living have to
be considered under both these heads.
These, then, are the general ideas with
which we must set out in discussing a
curriculum:—Life as divided into several
kinds of activity of successively decreas
ing importance; the worth of each order
of facts as regulating these several kinds
of activity, intrinsically, quasi-intrinsically,
and conventionally ; and their regulative
influences estimated both as knowledge
and discipline.
these, and various other pieces of infor
mation needful for the avoidance of
death or accident, it is ever learning.
And when, a few years later, the energies
go out in running, climbing, and jump
ing, in games of strength and games of
skill, we see in all these actions by which
the muscles are developed, the percep
tions sharpened, and the judgment
quickened, a preparation for the safe
conduct of the body among surrounding
objects and movements; and for meeting
those greater dangers that occasionally
occur in the lives of all. Being thus,
as we say, so well cared for by Nature,
this fundamental education needs com
paratively little care from us. What we are
chiefly called upon to see, is, that there
shall be free scope for gaining this
Happily, that all-important part of experience and receiving this discipline
education "which goes to secure direct —that there shall be no such thwarting
self-preservation, is in great part already of Nature as that by which stupid school
provided for. Too momentous to be left mistresses commonly prevent the girls in
to our blundering, Nature takes it into their charge from the spontaneous physi
her own hands. While yet in its nurse’s cal activities they would indulge in; and
arms, the infant, by hiding its face and so render them comparatively incapable
crying at the sight of a stranger, shows of taking care of themselves in circum
the dawning instinct to attain safety by stances of peril.
flying from that which is unknown and
This, however, is by no means all that
may be dangerous; and when it can is comprehended in the education that
walk, the terror it manifests if an un prepares for direct self-preservation.
familiar dog comes near, or the screams Besides guarding the body against
with which it runs to its mother, after mechanical damage or destruction, it
any startling sight or sound, shows this has to be guarded against injury from
instinct further developed. Moreover,
other causes—against the disease and
knowledge subserving direct self-preser death that follow breaches of physiologic
vation is that which it is chiefly busied law. For complete living it is necessary,
in acquiring from hour to hour. How not only that sudden annihilations of
to balance its body; how to control its life shall be warded off; but also that
movements so as to avoid collisions : there shall be escaped the incapacities
what objects are hard, and will hurt if and the slow annihilation which unwise
struck; what objects are heavy, and in habits entail. As, without health and
jure if they fall on the limbs; which energy, the industrial, the parental, the
things will bear the weight of the body,
social, and all other activities become
and which not; the pains inflicted by more or less impossible ; it is clear
fire, by missiles, by sharp instruments— that this secondary kind of direct self
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
preservation is only less important than
the primary kind; and that knowledge
tending to secure it should rank very
high.
It is true that here, too, guidance is
in some measure ready supplied. By
our various physical sensations and
desires, Nature has insured a tolerable
conformity to the chief requirements.
Fortunately for us, want of food, great
heat, extreme cold, produce promptings
too peremptory to be disregarded. And
would men habitually obey these and all
like promptings when less strong, com
paratively few evils would arise. If
fatigue of body or brain were in every
case followed by desistance; if the
oppression produced by a close atmos
phere always led to ventilation ; if there
were no eating without hunger, or drink
ing without thirst; then would the
system be but seldom out of working
order. But so profound an ignorance is
there of the laws of life, that men do not
even know that their sensations are their
natural guides, and (when not rendered
morbid by long-continued disobedience)
their trustworthy guides. So that though,
to speak teleologically, Nature has pro
vided efficient safeguards to health, lack
of knowledge makes them in a great
measure useless.
If any one doubts the importance of
an acquaintance with the principles of
physiology,as a means to complete living,
let him look around and see how many
men and women he can find in middle
or later life who are thoroughly well.
Only occasionally do we meet with an
example of vigorous health continued
to old age; hourly we meet with
examples of acute disorder, chronic
ailment, general debility, premature
‘decrepitude. Scarcely is there one to
whom you put the question, who has
not, in the course of his life, brought
17
upon himself illnesses which a little in
formation would have saved him from.
Here is a case of heart-disease consequent
on a rheumatic fever that followed reck
less exposure. There is a case of eyes
spoiled for life by over-study. Yesterday
the account was of one whose longenduring lameness was brought on by
continuing, spite of the pain, to use a
knee after it had been slightly injured.
And to-day we are told of another who
has had to lie by for years, because he
did not know that the palpitation he
suffered under resulted from overtaxed
brain. Now we hear of an irremediable
injury which followed some silly feat of
strength; and, again, of a constitution
that has never recovered from the effects
of excessive work needlessly undertaken.
While on every side we see the perpetual
minor ailments which accompany feeble
ness. Not to dwell on the pain, the
weariness, the gloom, the waste of time
and money thus entailed, only consider
how greatly ill-health hinders the dis
charge of all duties—makes business
often impossible, and always more diffi
cult ; produces an irritability fatal to the
right management of children; puts the
functions of citizenship out of the
question; and makes amusement a bore.
Is it not clear that the physical sins—
partly our forefathers’ and partly our own
—which produce this ill-health, deduct
more from complete living than anything
else ? and to a great extent make life a
failure and a burden instead of a bene
faction and a pleasure ?
Nor is this all. Life, besides being
thus immensely deteriorated, is also cut
short. It is not true, as we commonly
suppose, that after a disorder or disease
from which we have recovered, we are
as before. No disturbance of the normal
course of the functions can pass away
and leave things exactly as they were.
�ï8
EDUCATION
A permanent damage is done—not
immediately appreciable, it may be, but
still there; and along with other such
items which Nature in her strict account
keeping never drops, it will tell against
us to the inevitable shortening of our
days.
Through the accumulation of
small injuries it is that constitutions are
commonly undermined, and break down,
long before their time. And if we call
to mind how far the average .duration of
life falls below the possible duration, we
see how immense is the loss. When,
to the numerous partial deductions which
bad health entails, we add this great
final deduction, it results that ordinarily
one-half of life is thrown away.
Hence, knowledge which subserves
direct self-preservation by preventing
this loss of health, is of primary import
ance. We do not contend that possession
of such knowledge would by any means
wholly remedy the evil. It is clear that
in our present phase of civilisation, men’s
necessities often compel them to trans
gress. And it is further clear that, even
in the absence of such compulsion, their
inclinations would frequently lead them,
spite of their convictions, to sacrifice
future good to present gratification. But
we do contend that the right knowledge
impressed in the right way would effect
much ; and we further contend that as
the laws of health must be recognised
before they can be fully conformed to,
the imparting of such knowledge must
precede a more rational living—come
when that may. We infer that as vigorous
health and its accompanying high spirits
are larger elements of happiness than any
other things whatever, the teaching how to
maintain them is a teaching that yields
in moment to no other whatever. And
therefore we assert that such a course of
physiology as is needful for the compre
hension of its general truths, and their
bearings on daily conduct, is an all
essential part of a rational education.
Strange that the assertion should need
making! Stranger still that it should
need defending! Yet are there not a
few by whom such a proposition will be
received with something approaching to
derision.
Men who would blush if
caught saying Iphigenia instead of
Iphigenia, or would resent as an insult
any imputation of ignorance respecting
the fabled labours of a fabled demi-god,
show not the slightest shame in confess
ing that they do not know where the
Eustachian tubes are, what are the
actions of the spinal cord, what is
the normal rate of pulsation, or how the
lungs are inflated. While anxious that
their sons should be well up in the
superstitions of two thousand years ago,
they care not that they should be taught
anything about the structure and func
tions of their own bodies—nay, even wish
them not to be so taught. So overwhelm
ing is the influence of established routine !
So terribly in our education does the
ornamental over-ride the useful 1
We need not insist on the value of
that knowledge which aids indirect self
preservation by facilitating the gaining
of a livelihood. This is admitted by all;
and, indeed, by the mass is perhaps too
exclusively regarded as the end of
education. But while every one is ready
to endorse the abstract proposition that
instruction fitting youths for the bus'ness
of life is of high importance, or even
to consider it of supreme importance;
yet scarcely any inquire what instruction
will so fit them. It is true that reading,
writing, and arithmetic are taught with
an intelligent appreciation of their uses.
But when we have said this we have said
nearly all. While the great bulk of what
else is acquired has no bearing on the
industrial activities, an immensity of
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OE MOST WORTH?
information that has a direct bearing on
the industrial activities is entirely passed
over.
For, leaving out only some very small
classes, what are all men employed in ?
They are employed in the production,
preparation and distribution of com
modities. And on what does efficiency
in the production, preparation, and dis
tribution of commodities depend ? It
depends on the use of methods fitted to
the respective natures of these com
modities ; it depends on an adequate
acquaintance with their physical, chemi
cal, and vital properties, as the case may
be ; that is, it depends on Science. This
order of knowledge which is in great
part ignored in our school-courses, is the
order of knowledge underlying the right
performance of those processes by which
civilised life is made possible. Undeni
able as is this truth, there seems to be
no living consciousness of it: its very
familiarity makes it unregarded. To
give due weight to our argument, we
must, therefore, realise this truth to the
reader by a rapid review of the facts.
Passing over the most abstract science,
Logic, on the due guidance by which,
however, the large producer or distributor
depends, knowingly or unknowingly, for
success in his business-forecasts, we come
first to Mathematics. Of this, the most
general division, dealing with number,
guides all industrial activities : be they
those by which processes are adjusted,
or estimates framed, or commodities
bought and sold, or accounts kept. No
one needs to have the value of this
division of abstract science insisted upon.
For the higher arts of construction,
some acquaintance with the more special
division of Mathematics is indispensable.
The village carpenter, who lays out his
work by empirical rules, equally with the
builder of a Britannia Bridge, makes
I?
hourly reference to the laws of space
relations. The surveyor who measures
the land purchased; the architect in
designing a mansion to be built on it;
the builder when laying out the founda
tions ; the masons in cutting the stones ;
and the various artizans who put up the
fittings ; are all guided by geometrical
truths. Railway-making is regulated from
beginning to end by geometry ; alike in
the preparation of plans and sections ; in
staking out the line ; in the mensuration
of cuttings and embankments ; in the
designing and building of bridges,
culverts, viaducts, tunnels, stations.
Similarly with the harbours, docks,
piers, and various engineering and
architectural works that fringe the coasts
and overspread the country, as -well as
the mines that run underneath it. And
now-a-days, even the farmer, for the
correct laying-out of his drains, has
recourse to the level—that is, to
geometrical principles.
Turn next to the Abstract-Concrete
sciences. On the application of the
simplest of these, Mechanics, depends
the success of modem manufactures.
The properties of the lever, the wheeland-axle, etc., are recognised in every
machine, and to machinery in these
times we owe all production. Trace the
history of the breakfast-roll. The soil
out of which it came was drained with
machine-made tiles; the surface was
turned over by a machine ; the wheat
was reaped, thrashed, and winnowed by
machines ; by machinery it was ground
and bolted ; and had the flour been sent
to Gosport, it might have been made
into biscuits by a machine. Look round
the room in which you sit. If modern,
probably the bricks in its walls were
machine-made ; and by machinery the
flooring was sawn and planed, the
mantel-shelf sawn and polished, the
�2Cf
EDUCATION
paper-hangings made and printed. The
veneer on the table, the turned legs of
the chairs, the carpet, the curtains, are
all products of machinery. Your clothing
—plain, figured, or printed—is it not
wholly woven, nay, perhaps even sewed,
by machinery ? And the volume you
are reading—are not its leaves fabricated
by one machine and covered with these
words by another ? Add to which that
for the means of distribution over both
land and sea, we are similarly indebted.
And then observe that according as
knowledge of mechanics is well or ill
applied to these ends, comes success or
failure. The engineer who miscalculates
the strength of materials, builds a bridge
that breaks down. The manufacturer
who uses a bad machine cannot compete
with another whose machine wastes less
in friction and inertia. The ship-builder
adhering to the old model, is outsailed
by one who builds on the mechanicallyjustified wave-line principle. And as the
ability of a nation to hold its own against
other nations, depends on the skilled
activity of its units, we see that on
mechanical knowledge may turn the
national fate.
On ascending from the divisions of
Abstract-Concrete science dealing with
molar forces, to those divisions of it
which deal with molecular forces, we
come to another vast series of applica
tions. To this group of sciences joined
with the preceding groups we owe the
steam-engine, which does the work
of millions of labourers. That section
of physics which formulates the laws of
heat, has taught us how to economise
fuel in various industries : how to increase
the produce of smelting furnaces by
substituting the hot for the cold blast ;
how to ventilate mines ; how to prevent
explosions by using the safety-lamp ; and,
through the thermometer, how to regulate
innumerable processes. That section
which has the phenomena of light for its
subject, gives eyes to the old and the
myopic; aids through the microscope in
detecting diseases and adulterations;
and, by improved lighthouses, prevents
shipwrecks. Researches in electricity
and magnetism have saved innumerable
lives and incalculable property through
the compass ; have subserved many arts
by the electrotype; and now, in the
telegraph, have supplied us with an
agency by which, for the future, mercan
tile transactions will be regulated and
political intercourse carried on. While
in the details of indoor life, from the
improved kitchen-range up to the stereo
scope on the drawing-room table, the
applications of advanced physics under
lie our comforts and gratifications.
Still more numerous are the applica
tions of Chemistry. The bleacher, the
dyer, the calico-printer, are severally
occupied in processes that are well or ill
done according as they do or do not
conform to chemical laws. Smelting of
copper, tin, zinc, lead, silver, iron, must
be guided by chemistry. Sugar-refining,
gas-making, soap-boiling, gunpowder
manufacture, are operations all partly
chemical, as are likewise those which
produce glass and porcelain. Whether
the distiller’s wort stops at the alcoholic
fermentation or passes into the acetous,
is a chemical question on which hangs
his profit or loss; and the brewer, if his
business is extensive, finds it pay to keep
a chemist on his premises. Indeed, there
is now scarcely any manufacture over
some part of which chemistry does not
preside. Nay, in these times even agri
culture, to be profitably carried on, must
have like guidance. The analysis of
manures and soils; the disclosure of
their respective adaptations; the use of
gypsum or other substances for fixing
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
ammonia; the utilisation of coprolites;
the production of artificial manures—all
these are boons of chemistry which it
behoves the farmer to acquaint himself
with. Be it in the lucifer match, or in
disinfected sewage, or in photographs—
in bread made without fermentation, or
perfumes extracted from refuse, we may
perceive that chemistry affects all our
industries; and that, therefore, knowledge
of it concerns every one who is directly or
indirectly connected with our industries.
Of the Concrete sciences, we come first
to Astronomy. Out of this has grown
that art of navigation which has made
possible the enormous foreign commerce
that supports a large part of our popula
tion, while supplying us with many neces
saries and most of our luxuries.
Geology, again, is a science knowledge
of which greatly aids industrial success.
Now that iron ores are so large a source
of wealth ; now that the duration of our
coal-supply has become a question of
great interest; now that we have a College
of Mines and a Geological Survey , it is
scarcely needful to enlarge on the truth
that the study of the Earth’s crust is
important to our material welfare.
And then the science of life—Biology:
does not this, too, bear fundamentally on
these processes of indirect self-preserva
tion ? With what we ordinarily call
manufactures, it has, indeed, little con
nection ; but with the all-essential manu
facture—that of food—it is inseparably
connected. As agriculture must conform
its methods to the phenomena of vegetal
and animal life, it follows that the science
of these phenomena is the rational basis
of agriculture. Various biological truths
have indeed been empirically established
and acted upon by farmers, while yet
there has been no conception of them as
science; such as that particular manures
are suited to particular plants; that crops
21
of certain kinds unfit the soil for other
crops ; that horses cannot do good work
on poor food ; that such and such diseases
of cattle and sheep are caused by such
and such conditions. These, and the
every-day knowledge which the agri
culturist gains by experience respecting
the management of plants and animals,
constitute his stock of biological facts ;
on the largeness of which greatly depends
his success. And as these biological
facts, scanty, indefinite, rudimentary,
though they are, aid him so essentially ;
judge what must be the value to him of
such facts when they become positive,
definite, and exhaustive. Indeed, even
now we may see the benefits that rational
biology is conferring on him. The truth
that the production of animal heat implies
waste of substance, and that, therefore,
preventing loss of heat prevents the need
for extra food—a purely theoretical con
clusion—now guides the fattening of
cattle : it is found that by keeping cattle
warm, fodder is saved. Similarly with
respect to variety of food. The experi
ments of physiologists have shown that
not only is change of diet beneficial, but
that digestion is facilitated by a mixture
of ingredients in each meal. The dis
covery that a disorder known as “ the
staggers,” of which many thousands of
sheep have died annually, is caused by
an entozoon which presses on the brain,
and that if the creature is extracted
through the softened place in the skull
which marks its position, the sheep
usually recovers, is another debt which
agriculture owes to biology.
Yet one more science have we to note
as bearing directly on industrial success
—the Science of Society. Men who
daily look at the state of the moneymarket ; glance over prices current ; dis
cuss the probable crops of corn, cotton,
sugar, wool, silk ; weigh the chances of
�22
EDUCATION
war; and from these data decide on
their mercantile operations; are students
of social science ; empirical and blunder
ing students it may be; but still, students
who gain the prizes or are plucked of
their profits, according as they do or do
not reach the right conclusion. Not only
the manufacturer and the merchant must
guide their transactions by calculations
of supply and demand, based on numerous
facts, and tacitly recognising sundry
general principles of social action ; but
even the retailer must do the like; his
prosperity very greatly depending upon
the correctness of his judgments respect
ing the future wholesale prices and the
future rates of consumption. Manifestly,
whoever takes part in the entangled
commercial activities of a community, is
vitally interested in understanding the
laws according to which those activities
vary.
Thus, to all such as are occupied in
the production, exchange, or distribution
of commodities, acquaintance with
Science in some of its departments, is of
fundamental importance.
Each man
who is immediately or remotely impli
cated in any form of industry, (and few
are not,) has in some way to deal with
the mathematical, physical, and chemical
properties of things; perhaps, also, has
a direct interest in biology ; and certainly
has in sociology. Whether he does or
does not succeed well in that indirect
self-preservation which we call getting a
good livelihood, depends in a great
degree on his knowledge of one or more
of these sciences: not, it may be, a
rational knowledge; but still a know
ledge, though empirical. For what we
call learning a business, really implies
learning the science involved in it;
though not perhaps under the name of
science. And hence a grounding in
science is of great importance, both
because it prepares for all this, and
because rational knowledge has an im
mense superiority over empirical know
ledge. Moreover, not only is scientific
culture requisite for each, that he may
understand the how and the why of the
things and processes with which he is
concerned as maker or distributor; but
it is often of much moment that he
should understand the how and the why
of various other things and processes.
In this age of joint-stock undertakings,
nearly every man above the labourer is
interested as capitalist in some other
occupation than his own ; and, as thus
interested, his profit or loss depends on
his knowledge of the sciences bearing on
this other occupation. Here is a mine,
in the sinking of which many shareholders
ruined themselves, from not knowing that
a certain fossil belonged to the old red
sand stone, below which no coal is found.
Numerous attempts have been made to
construct perpetual-motion engines in the
hope of superseding steam ; but had
those who supplied the money, under
stood the general law of the conservation
and equivalence of forces, they might
have had better balances at their bankers.
Daily are men induced to aid in carrying
Out inventions which a mere tyro in
science could show to be futile. Scarcely
a locality but has its history of fortunes
thrown away over some impossible pro
ject.
And if already the loss from want of
science is so frequent and so great, still
greater and more frequent will it be to
those who hereafter lack science. Just
as fast as productive processes become
more scientific, which competition will
inevitably make them do; and just as
fast as joint-stock undertakings spread,
which they certainly will; so fast must
scientific knowledge grow necessary to
every one. That which our school-courses
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
leave almost entirely out, we thus find to
be that which most nearly concerns the
business of life. Our industries would
cease, were it not for the information which
men begin to acquire, as they best may,
after their education is said to be
finished. And were it not for the infor
mation, from age to age accumulated
and spread by unofficial means, these
industries would never have existed.
Had there been no teaching but such as
goes on in our public schools, England
would now be what it was in feudal
times.
That increasing acquaintance
with the laws of phenomena, which has
through successive ages enabled us to
subjugate Nature to our needs, and in
these days gives the common labourer
comforts which a few centuries ago kings
could not purchase, is scarcely in any
degree owed to the appointed means of
instructing our youth. The vital know
ledge—that by which we have grown as
a nation to what we are, and which now
underlies our whole existence, is a know
ledge that has got itself taught in nooks
and corners; while the ordained agencies
for teaching have been mumbling little
else but dead formulas.
We come now to the third great divi
sion of human activities—a division for
which no preparation whatever is made.
If by some strange chance not a vestige
of us descended to the remote future
save a pile of our school-books or some
college examination-papers, we may
imagine how puzzled an antiquary of the
period would be on finding in them no
sign that the learners were ever likely
to be parents. “ This must have been
the curriculum for their celibates,” we
may fancy him concluding. “ I perceive
here an elaborate preparation for many
things; especially for reading the books
of extinct nations and of co-existing
23
nations (from which indeed it seems
clear that these people had very little
worth reading in their own tongue); but
I find no reference whatever to the
bringing up of children. They could
not have been so absurd as to omit all
training for this gravest of responsibilities.
Evidently then, this was the school
course of one of their monastic orders.”
Seriously, is it not an astonishing fact,
that though on the treatment of offspring
depend their lives or deaths, and their
moral welfare or ruin ; yet not one word
of instruction on the treatment of off
spring is ever given to those who will by
and by be parents ? Is it not monstrous
that the fate of a new generation should
be left to the chances of unreasoning
custom, impulse, fancy—joined with the
suggestions of ignorant nurses and the
prejudiced counsel of grandmothers ?
If a merchant commenced business with
out any knowledge of arithmetic and
book-keeping, we should exclaim at his
folly, and look for disastrous conse
quences. Or if, before studying anatomy,
a man set up as a surgical operator, we
should wonder at his audacity and pity
his patients. But that parents should
begin the difficult task of rearing children
without ever having given a thought to
the principles—physical, moral, or in
tellectual—which ought to guide them,
excites neither surprise at the actors nor
pity for their victims.
To tens of thousands that are killed,
add hundreds of thousands that survive
with feeble constitutions, and millions
that grow up with constitutions not so
strong as they should be; and you will
have some idea of the curse inflicted on
their offspring by parents ignorant of the
laws of life. Do but consider for a
moment that the regimen to which
children are subject, is hourly telling
upon them to their life-long injury or
�24
EDUCATION
benefit; and that there are twenty ways
of going wrong to one way of going
right; and you will get some idea of the
enormous mischief that is almost every
where inflicted by the thoughtless, hap
hazard system in common use. Is it
decided that a boy shall be clothed in
some flimsy short dress, and be allowed
to go playing about with limbs reddened
by cold ? The decision will tell on his
whole future existence—either in ill
nesses ; or in stunted growth; or in
deficient energy; or in a maturity less
vigorous than it ought to have been,
and in consequent hindrances to success
and happiness. Are children doomed
to a monotonous dietary, or a dietary
that is deficient in nutritiveness ?
Their ultimate physical power and their
efficiency as men and women, will in
evitably be more or less diminished by
it. Are they forbidden vociferous play,
or (being too ill-clothed to bear exposure)
are they kept in-doors in cold weather ?
They are certain to fall below that
measure of health and strength to which
they would else have attained. When
sons and daughters grow up sickly and
feeble, parents commonly regard the
event as a misfortune—as a visitation of
Providence. Thinking after the prevalent
chaotic fashion, they assume that these
evils come without causes; or that the
causes are supernatural. Nothing of the
kind. In some cases the causes are
doubtless inherited; but in most cases
foolish regulations are the causes. Very
generally, parents themselves are respon
sible for all this pain, this debility, this
depression, this misery. They have
undertaken to control the lives of their
offspring from hour to hour; with cruel
carelessness they have neglected to learn
anything about these vital processes
which they are unceasingly affecting by
their commands and prohibitions; in
utter ignorance of the simplest physiologic
laws, they have been year by year under
mining the constitutions of their children;
and have so inflicted disease and pre
mature death, not only on them but on
their descendants.
Equally great are the ignorance and
the consequent injury, when we turn
from physical training to moral training.
Consider the young mother and her
nursery-legislation. But a few years ago
she was at school, where her memory
was crammed with words, and names,
and dates, and her reflective faculties
scarcely in the slightest degree exercised
—where not one idea was given her
respecting the methods of dealing with
the opening mind of childhood; and
where her discipline did not in the least
fit her for thinking out methods of her
own. The intervening years have been
passed in practising music, in fancy-work,
in novel-reading, and in party-going : no
thought having yet been given to the
grave responsibilities of maternity; and
scarcely any of that solid intellectual
culture obtained which would be some
preparation for such responsibilities. And
now see her with an unfolding human
character committed to her charge—see
her profoundly ignorant of the pheno
mena with which she has to deal, under
taking to do that which can be done but
imperfectly even with the aid of the
profoundest knowledge.
She knows
nothing about the nature of the emotions,
their order of evolution, their functions,
or where use ends and abuse begins.
She is under the impression that some
of the feelings are wholly bad, which is
not true of any one of them; and that
others are good however far they may be
carried, which is also not true of any one
of them. And then, ignorant as she is
of the structure she has to deal with, she
is equally ignorant of the effects produced
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
on it by this or that treatment. What
ran be more inevitable than the disas
trous results we see hourly arising ?
lacking knowledge of mental pheno
mena, with their cause and consequences,
her interference is frequently more
mischievous than absolute passivity would
have been. This and that kind of action,
which are quite normal and beneficial,
she perpetually thwarts; and so dimin
ishes the child’s happiness and profit,
injures its temper and her own, and pro
duces estrangement. Deeds which she
thinks it desirable to encourage, she gets
performed by threats and bribes, or by
exciting a desire for applause : consider
ing little what the inward motive may
be, so long as the outward conduct con
forms ; and thus cultivating hypocrisy,
and fear, and selfishness, in place of good
feeling. While insisting on truthfulness,
she constantly sets an example of untruth,
by threatening penalties which she does
not inflict. While inculcating self-con
trol, she hourly visits on her little ones,
angry scoldings for acts undeserving of
them. She has not the remotest idea
that in the nursery, as in the world, that
alone is the truly salutary discipline
which visits on all conduct, good and
bad, the natural consequences—the con
sequences, pleasurable or painful, which
in the nature of things such conduct
tends to bring.
Being thus without
theoretic guidance, and quite incapable
of guiding herself by tracing the mental
processes going on in her children, her
rule is impulsive, inconsistent, mis
chievous ; and would indeed be generally
ruinous, were it not that the overwhelm
ing tendency of the growing mind to
assume the moral type of the race,
usually subordinates all minor influences.
And then the culture of the intellect—
is not this, too, mismanaged in a similar
manner ? Grant that the phenomena of
25
intelligence conform to laws; grant that
the evolution of intelligence in a child
also conforms to laws; and it follows
inevitably that education cannot be
rightly guided without a knowledge of
these laws. To suppose that you can
properly regulate this process of forming
and accumulating ideas, without under
standing the nature of the process, is
absurd. How widely, then, must teach
ing as it is, differ from teaching as it
should be; when hardly any parents,
and but few tutors, know anything about
psychology. As might be expected,
the established system is grievously at
fault, alike in matter and in manner.
While the right class of facts is withheld,
the wrong class is forcibly administered
in the wrong way and in the wrong order.
Under that common limited idea of
education which confines it to knowledge
gained from books, parents thrust primers
into the hands of their little ones years
too soon, to their great injury.. Not
recognising the truth that the function of
books is supplementary—that they form
an indirect means to knowledge when
direct means fail—a means of seeing
through other men what you cannot see for
yourself; teachers are eager to give second
hand facts in place of first-hand facts.
Not perceiving the enormous value of
that spontaneous education which goes
on in early years—not perceiving that a
child’s restless observation, instead of
being ignored or checked, should be
diligently ministered to, and made as
accurate and complete as possible;
they insist on occupying its eyes and
thoughts with things that are, for the
time being, incomprehensible and
repugnant. Possessed by a superstition
which worships the symbols of know
ledge instead of knowledge itself, they
do not see that only when his acquain
tance with the objects and processes of
�26
EDUCATION
the household, the streets, and the fields,
is becoming tolerably exhaustive—only
then should a child be introduced to the
new sources of information which books
supply: and this, not only because
immediate cognition is of far greater
value than mediate cognition; but also,
because the words contained in books
can be rightly interpreted into ideas,
only in proportion to the antecedent
experience of things.
Observe next,
that this formal instruction, far too soon
commenced, is carried on with but little
reference to the laws of mental develop
ment. Intellectual progress is of necessity
from the concrete to the abstract. But
regardless of this, highly abstract studies,
such as grammar, which should come
quite late, are begun quite early. Political
geography, dead and uninteresting to a
child, and which should be an appendage
of sociological studies, is commenced
betimes; while physical geography, com
prehensible and comparatively attractive
to a child, is in great part passed over.
Nearly every subject dealt with is arranged
in abnormal order : definitions and rules
and principles being put first, instead of
being disclosed, as they are in the order
of nature, through the study of cases.
And then, pervading the whole, is .the
vicious system of rote learning—a system
of sacrificing the spirit to the letter. See
the results. What with perceptions
unnaturally dulled by early thwarting,
and a coerced attention to books—what
with the mental confusion produced by
teaching subjects before they can be
understood, and in each of them giving
generalisations before the facts of which
they are the generalisations—what with
making the pupil a mere passive recipient
of others’ ideas, and not in the least
leading him to be an active inquirer or
self-instructor—and what with taxing the
faculties to excess ; there are very few
minds that become as efficient as they
might be.
Examinations being once
passed, books are laid aside ; the greater
part of what has been acquired, being
unorganised, soon drops out of recollec
tion ; what remains is mostly inert—the
art of applying knowledge not having
been cultivated; and there is but little
power either of accurate observation or
independent thinking. To all which
add, that while much of the information
gained is of relatively small value, an
immense mass of information of trans
cendent value is entirely passed over.
Thus we find the facts to be such as
might have been inferred a priori. The
training of children—physical, moral,
and intellectual—is dreadfully defective.
And in great measure it is so, because
parents are devoid of that knowledge
by which this training can alone be
rightly guided. What is to be expected
when one of the most intricate of
problems is undertaken by those who
have given scarcely a thought to the
principles on which its solution depends?
For shoe-making or house-building, for
the management of a ship or a loco
motive engine, a long apprenticeship is
needful. Is it, then, that the unfolding
of a human being in body and mind, is
so comparatively simple a process, that
any one may superintend and regulate
it with no preparation whatever ? If not
—if the process is, with one exception,
more complex than any in Nature, and
the task of ministering to it one of
surpassing difficulty; is it not madness
to make no provision for such a task ?
Better sacrifice accomplishments than
omit this all-essential instruction. When
a father, acting on false dogmas adopted
without examination, has alienated his
sons, driven them into rebellion by his
harsh treatment, ruined them, and made
himself miserable ; he might reflect that
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
the study of Ethology would have been
worth pursuing, even at the cost of
knowing nothing about Asschylus. When
a mother is mourning over a first-born
that has sunk under the sequelae of
scarlet-fever—when perhaps a candid
medical man has confirmed her suspicion
that her child would have recovered had
not its system been enfeebled by over
study—when she is prostrate under the
pangs of combined grief and remorse;
it is but small consolation that she can
read Dante in the original.
Thus we see that for regulating the
third great division of human activities,
a knowledge of the laws of life is the one
thing needful. Some acquaintance with
the first principles of physiology and the
elementary truths of psychology, is indis
pensable for the right bringing up of
children.; We doubt not that many
will read this assertion with a smile.
That parents in general should be ex
pected to acquire a knowledge of subjects
so abstruse, will seem to them an absur
dity. And if we proposed that an
exhaustive knowledge of these subjects
should be obtained by all fathers and
mothers, the absurdity would indeed be
glaring enough. But we do not. General
principles only, accompanied by such
illustrations as may be needed to make
them understood, would suffice. And
these might be readily taught—if not
rationally, then dogmatically. Be this
as it may, however, here are the indispu
table facts:—that the development of
children in mind and body follows
certain laws; that unless these laws are
in some degree conformed to by parents,
death is inevitable; that unless they are
in a great degree conformed to, there
must result serious physical and mental
defects; and that only when they are
completely conformed to, can a perfect
maturity he reached.
Judge, then,
27
whether all who may one day be parents,
should not strive with some anxiety to
learn what these laws are.
From the parental functions let us
pass now to the functions of the citizen.
We have here to inquire what knowledge
fits a man for the discharge of these
functions. It cannot be alleged that the
need of knowledge fitting him for these
functions is wholly overlooked; for our
school-courses contain certain studies
which, nominally at least, bear upon
political and social duties. Of these
the only one that occupies a prominent
place is History.
But, as already hinted, the information
commonly given under this head, is
almost valueless for purposes of gui
dance. Scarcely any of the facts set down
in our school-histories, and very few of
those contained in the more elaborate
works written for adults, illustrate the
right principles of political action.
The biographies of monarchs (and our
children learn little else) throw scarcely
any light upon the science of society.
Familiarity with court intrigues, plots,
usurpations, or the like, and with all the
personalities accompanying them, aids
very little in elucidating the causes of
national progress. We read of some
squabble for power, that it led to a
pitched battle ; that such and such were
the names of the generals and their
leading subordinates; that they had
each so many thousand infantry and
cavalry, and so many cannon : that they
arranged their forces in this and that
order; that they manoeuvred, attacked,
and fell back in certain ways; that at
this part of the day such disasters were
sustained, and at that such advantages
gained ; that in one particular movement
some leading officer fell, while in another
a certain regiment was decimated; that
�28
EDUCATION
after all the changing fortunes of the
fight, the victory was gained by this or
that army ; and that so many were killed
and wounded on each side, and so many
captured by the conquerors. And now,
out of the accumulated details making
up the narrative, say which it is that
helps you in deciding on your conduct
as a citizen. Supposing even that you
diligently read, not only “The Fifteen
Decisive Battles of the World,” but
accounts of all other battles that history
mentions; how much more judicious
would your vote be at the next election ?
“But these are facts—interesting facts,”
you say. Without doubt they are facts
(such, at least, as are not wholly or
partially fictions); and to many they
may be interesting facts. But this by
no means implies that they are valuable.
Factitious or morbid opinion often gives
seeming value to things that have scarcely
any. A tulipomaniac will not part with
a choice bulb for its weight in gold.
To another man an ugly piece of cracked
old china seems his most desirable
possession. And there are those who
give high prices for relics of celebrated
murderers. Will it be contended that
these tastes are any measure of value in
the things that gratify them ? If not,
then it must be admitted that the liking
felt for certain classes of historical facts
is no proof of their worth; and that we
must test their worth, as we test the
worth of other facts, by asking to what
uses they are applicable. Were some
one to tell you that your neighbour’s cat
kittened yesterday, you would say the
information was valueless. Fact though
it may be, you would call it an utterly
useless fact—a fact that could in no way
influence your actions in life—a fact that
would not help you in learning how to
live completely. Well, apply the same
test to the great mass of historical facts,
and you will get the same result. They
are facts from which no conclusions can
be drawn — unorganisable facts; and
therefore facts of no service in establishing
principles of conduct, which is the chief
use of facts. Read them, if you like,
for amusement; but do not flatter
yourself they are instructive.
That which constitutes History,
properly so called, is in great part
omitted from works on the subject.
Only of late years have historians com
menced giving us, in any considerable
quantity, the truly valuable information.
As in past ages the king was everything
and the people nothing; so, in past
histories the doings of the king fill the
entire picture, to which the national life
forms but an obscure background.
While only now, when the welfare of
nations rather than the rulers is becoming
the dominant idea, are historians beginning
to occupy themselves with the phenomena
of social progress. The thing it really
concerns us to know, is the natural
history of society. We want all facts
which help us to understand how a
nation has grown and organised itself.
Among these, let us of course have an
account of its government; with as little
as may be of gossip about the men who
officered it, and as much as possible
about the structure, principles, methods,
prejudices, corruptions, etc., which it
exhibited; and let this account include
not only the nature and actions of the
central government, but also those of
local governments, down to their minutest
ramifications. Let us of course also have
a parallel description of the ecclesiastical
government—its organisation, its con
duct, its power, its relations to the State;
and accompanying this, the ceremonial,
creed, and religious ideas—not only
those nominally believed, but those
really believed and acted upon. Let us
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
at the same time be informed of the
Control exercised by class over class, as
displayed in social observances—in titles,
¡Salutations, and forms of address. Let
us know, too, what were all the other
customs which regulated the popular life
out of doors and in-doors ; including
those concerning the relations of the
sexes, and the relations of parents to
children. The superstitions, also, from
the more important myths down to the
charms in common use, should be
indicated. Next should cornea delinea
tion of the industrial system : showing to
what extent the division of labour was
carried ; how trades were regulated,
whether by caste, guilds, or otherwise;
what was the connection between
employers and employed; what were
the agencies for distributing commo
dities; what were the means of com
munication ; what was the circulating
medium. Accompanying all which should
be given an account of the industrial
arts technically considered : stating the
processes in use, and the quality of the
products. Further, the intellectual con
dition of the nation in its various grades
should be depicted ; not only with
respect to the kind and amount of
education, but with respect to the
progress made in science, and the pre
vailing manner of thinking. The degree
of æsthetic culture, as displayed in
architecture, sculpture, painting, dress,
music, poetry, and fiction, should be
described. Nor should there be omitted
a sketch of the daily lives of the people—
their food, their homes, and their amuse
ments. And lastly, to connect the whole,
should be exhibited the morals, theo
retical and practical, of all classes : as
indicated in their laws, habits, proverbs,
deeds. * hese facts, given with as much
T
brevity as consists with clearness and
accuracy, should be so grouped and
29
arranged that they may be comprehended
in their ensemble, and contemplated as
mutually-dependent parts of one great
whole. The aim should be so to present
them that men may readily trace the
consensus subsisting among them; with
the view of learning what social
phenomena co-exist with what others.
And then the corresponding delineations
of succeeding ages should be so managed
as to show how each belief, institution,
custom, and arrangement was modified;
and how the consensus of preceding
structures and functions was developed
into the consensus of succeeding ones.
Such alone is the kind of information
respecting past times, which can be of
service to the citizen for the regulation
of his conduct. The only history that
is of practical value, is what may be
called Descriptive Sociology. And the
highest office which the historian can
discharge, is that of so narrating the lives
of nations, as to furnish materials for a
Comparative Sociology; and for the
subsequent determination of the ultimate
laws to which social phenomena con
form.
But now mark, that even supposing
an adequate stock of this truly valuable
historical knowledge has been acquired,
it is of comparatively little use without
the key. And the key is to be found
only in Science. In the absence of the
generalisations of biology and psychology,
rational interpretation of social pheno
mena is impossible. Only in proportion
as men draw certain rude, empirical
inferences respecting human nature, are
they enabled to understand even the
simplest facts of social life: as, for
instance, the relation between supply and
demand. And if the most elementary
truths of sociology cannot be reached
until some knowledge is obtained of how
men generally think, feel, and act under
�3©
EDUCATION
given circumstances; then it is manifest
that there can oe nothing like a wide
comprehension of sociology, unless
through a competent acquaintance with
man in all his faculties, bodily and
mental.
Consider the matter in the
. abstract, and this conclusion is selfevident. Thus :—Society is made up of
individuals; ail that is done in society is
done by the combined actions of indi
viduals ; and therefore, in individual
actions only can be found the solutions
of social phenomena. But the actions
of individuals depend on the laws of
their natures; and their actions cannot
be understood until these laws are under
stood.
These laws, however, when
reduced to their simplest expressions,
prove to be corollaries from the laws of
body and mind in general. Hence it
follows, that biology and psychology are
indispensable as interpreters of sociology.
Or, to state the conclusions still more
simply : — all social phenomena are
phenomena of life—are the most com
plex manifestations of life—must con
form to the laws of life—and can be
understood only when the laws of life
are understood. Thus, then, for the
regulation of this fourth division of
human activities, »we are, as before,
dependent on Science. Of the know
ledge commonly imparted in educational
courses, very little is of service for guiding
a man in his conduct as a citizen. Only
a small part of the history he reads is of
practical value; and of this small part he
is not prepared to make proper use. He
lacks not only the materials for, but the
very conception of, descriptive sociology;
and he also lacks those generalisations
of the organic sciences, without which
even descriptive sociology can give him
but small aid.
And now we come to that remaining
division of human life which includes the
relaxations and amusements filling leisure
hours. After considering what training
best fits for self-preservation, for the
obtainment of sustenance, for the dis
charge of parental duties, and for the
regulation of social and political conduct;
we have now to consider what training
best fits for the miscellaneous ends n6t
included in these—for the enjoyments of
Nature, of Literature, and of the Fine
Arts, in all their forms. Postponing
them as we do to things that bear more
vitally upon human welfare; and bringing
everything, as we have, to the test of
actual value ; it will perhaps be inferred
that we are inclined to slight these less
essential things. No greater mistake
could be made, however. We yield to
none in the value we attach to aesthetic
culture and its pleasures.
Without
painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and
the emotions produced by natural beauty
of every kind, life would lose half its
charm. So far from regarding the
training and gratification of the tastes
as unimportant, we believe that in time to
come they will occupy a much larger share
of human life than now. When the forces
of Nature have been fully cojiquered to
man’s use—when the means of produc
tion have been brought to perfection—
when labour has been economised to
the highest degree—when education has
been so systematised that a preparation
for the more essential activities may be
made with comparative rapidity—and
when, consequently, there is a great
increase of spare time; then will the
beautiful, both in Art and Nature, rightly
fill a large space in the minds of all.
But it is one thing to approve of
aesthetic culture as largely conducive to
human happiness; and another thing to
admit that it is a fundamental requisite
to human happiness. However important
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
it may be, it must yield precedence
to those kinds of culture which bear
directly upon daily duties. As before
hinted, literature and the fine arts are
made possible by those activities which
make individual and social life possible ;
and manifestly, that which is made
possible, must be postponed to that
which makes it possible. A florist
cultivates a plant for the sake of its
flower ; and regards the roots and leaves
as of value, chiefly because they are
instrumental in producing the flower.
But while, as an ultimate product, the
flower is the thing to which everything
else is subordinate, the florist has learnt
that the root and leaves ase intrinsically
of greater importance ; because on them
the evolution of the flower depends. He
bestows every care in rearing a healthy
plant; and knows it would be folly if,
in his anxiety to obtain the flower, he
were to neglect the plant. Similarly
in thé case before us.
Architecture,
sculpture, painting, music, and poetry,
may truly be called the efflorescence of
civilised life. But even supposing they
are of such transcendent worth as to
subordinatethe civilised life out of which
they grow^vhich can hardly be asserted),
it will still be admitted that the produc
tion of a healthy civilised life must be
the first condition ; and that culture
subserving this must occupy the highest
place.
And here we see most distinctly the
vice of our educational system.
It
neglects the plant for the sake of the
flower. In anxiety for elegance, it
forgets substance. While it gives no
knowledge conducive to self-preservation
—while of knowledge that facilitates
gaining a livelihood it gives but the
rudiments, and leaves the greater part
to be picked up any how in after life—
while for the discharge'of parental func
31
tions it makes not the slightest provision
—and while for the duties of citizenship
it prepares by imparting a mass of facts,
most of which are irrelevant, and the rest
without a key; it is diligent in teaching
whatever adds to refinement, polish,
éclat. Fully as we may admit that ex
tensive acquaintance with modern lan
guages is a valuable accomplishment,
which, through reading, conversation,
and travel, aids in giving a certain finish;
it by no means follows that this result
is rightly purchased at the cost of the
vitally important knowledge sacrificed to
it. Supposing it true that classical edu
cation conduces to elegance and correct
ness of style; it cannot be said that
elegance and correctness of style are
comparable in importance to a familiarity
with the principles that should guide the
rearing of children. Grant that the
taste may be improved by reading the
poetry written in extinct languages; yet
it is not to be inferred that such im
provement of taste is equivalent in value
to an acquaintance with the laws of
health. Accomplishments, the fine arts,
belles-lettres, and all those things which,
as we say, constitute the efflorescence of
civilisation, should be wholly subordi
nate to that instruction and discipline on
which civilisation rests. As they occupy
the leisure part of life, so should they
occupy the leisure part of education.
Recognising thus the true position of
aesthetics, and holding that while the
cultivation of them should form a part
of education from its commencement,
such cultivation should be subsidiary;
we have now to inquire what knowledge
is of most use to this end—what know
ledge best fits for this remaining sphere
of activity ? To this question the answer
is still the same as heretofore. Unex
pected though the assertion may be, it is
nevertheless true, that the highest Art of
�32
EDUCATION
every kind is based on Science—that
without Science there can be neither
perfect production nor full appreciation.
Science, in that limited acceptation
current in society, may not have been
possessed by various artists of high
repute; but acute observers as such
artists have been, they have always
possessed a stock of those empirical
generalisations which constitute science
in its lowest phase; and they have
habitually fallen far below perfection,
partly because their generalisations were
comparatively few and inaccurate. That
science necessarily underlies the fine arts,
becomes manifest, a priori, when we
remember that art products are all more
or less representative of objective or sub
jective phenomena; that they can be
good only in proportion as they conform
to the laws of these phenomena; and
that before they can thus conform, the
artist must know what these laws are.
That this a priori conclusion tallies with
experience, we shall soon see.
Youths preparing for the practice of
sculpture, have to acquaint themselves
with the bones and muscles of the human
frame in their distribution, attachments,
and movements. This is a portion of
science; and it has been found needful
to impart it for the prevention of those
many errors which sculptors who do not
possess it commit.
A knowledge of
mechanical principles is also requisite;
and such knowledge not being usually
possessed, grave mechanical mistakes
are frequently made. Take an instance.
For the stability of a figure it is needful
that the perpendicular from the centre
of gravity—“ the line of direction,” as it
is called—should fall within the base of
support; and hence it happens, that
when a man assumes the attitude known
as “ standing at ease,” in which one leg
is straightened and the other relaxed, the
line of direction falls within the foot of
the straightened leg. But sculptors un- I
familiar with the theory of equilibrium,
not uncommonly so represent this atti- i
tude, that the line of direction falls mid- 1
way between the feet. Ignorance of the
law of momentum leads to analogous
blunders : as witness the admired Dis- |
cobolus, which, as it is posed, must inevit
ably fall forward the moment the quoit
is delivered.
In painting, the necessity for scientific
information, empirical if not rational, is
still more conspicuous. What gives the
grotesqueness to Chinese pictures, unless
their utter disregard of the laws of
appearances^|heir absurd linear per
spective, and their want of aerial per
spective ? In what are the drawings of
a child so faulty, if not in a similar
absence of truth—an absence arising, in
great part, from ignorance of the way in f
which the aspects of things vary with the
conditions? Do but remember the books 2
and lectures by which students are in
structed; or consider the criticisms of If
Ruskin; or look at the doings of the Pre- £
Raffaelites; and you will see that pro
gress in painting implies ¡increasing
knowledge of how effects in Mture are a:
produced. The most diligent observa
tion, if unaided by science, fails to pre
serve from error. Every painter will I Hi
endorse the assertion that unless it is
known what appearances must exist
under given circumstances, they often 03
will not be perceived; and to know what
appearances must exist is, in so far, to if
understand the science of appearances. : .236
From want of science Mr. J. Lewis,
careful painter as he is, casts the shadow
of a lattice-window in sharply-defined baii
lines upon an opposite wall; which he
would not have done, had he been
familiar with the phenomena of penum -friii
brae. From want of science, Mr. Rosetti,
1
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
catching sight of a peculiar iridescence
displayed by certain hairy surfaces under
particular lights (an iridescence caused
by the diffraction of light in passing the
hairs), commits the error of showing this
iridescence on surfaces and in positions
where it could not occur.
To say that music, too, has need of
scientific aid will cause still more sur
prise. Yet it may be shown that music
is but an idealisation of the natural lan
guage of emotion; and that consequently,
music must be good or bad according as
it conforms to the laws of this natural
language.
The various inflections of
voice which accompany feelings of dif
ferent kinds and intensities, are the
germs out of which music is developed.
It is demonstrable that these inflections
and cadences are not accidental or arbi
trary ; but that they are determined by
certain general principles of vital action;
and that their expressiveness depends on
this. Whence it follows that musical
phrases and the melodies built of them,
can be effective only when they are in
harmony with these general principles. It
is difficult here properly to illustrate this
position. But perhaps it will suffice to
instance the swarms of worthless ballads
that infest arawing-rooms, as composi
tions which science would forbid. They
sin against science by setting to music,
ideas that are not emotional enough to
prompt musical expression; and they
also sin against science by using musical
phrases that have no natural relations to
the ideas expressed : even where these
are emotional. They are bad because
they are untrue. And to say they are
untrue, is to say they are unscientific.
Even in poetry the same thing holds.
Like music, poetry has its root in those
natural modes of expression which
accompany deep feeling. Its rhythm,
its strong and numerous metaphors, its
33
hyperboles, its violent inversions, are
simply exaggerations of the traits of
excited speech. To be good, therefore,
poetry must pay attention to those laws
of nervous action which excited speech
obeys. In intensifying and combining
the traits of excited speech, it must have
due regard to proportion—must not use
its appliances without restriction ; but,
where the ideas are least emotional,
must use the forms of poetical expression
sparingly ; must use them more freely as
the emotion rises ; and must carry them
to their greatest extent, only where the
emotion reaches a climax. The entire
contravention of these principles results
in bombast or doggerel. The insufficient
respect for them is seen in didactic
poetry. And it is because they are
rarely fully obeyed, that so much poetry
is inartistic.
Not only is it that the artist, of what
ever kind, cannot produce a truthful
work without he understands the laws
of the phenomena he represents ; but it
is that he must also understand how the
minds of spectators or listeners will be
affected by the several peculiarities of his
work—a question in psychology. What
impression any art-product generates,
manifestly depends upon the mental
natures of those to whom it is presented;
and as all mental natures have certain
characteristics in common, there must
result certain corresponding general prin
ciples on which alone art-products can
be successfully framed. These general
principles cannot be fully understood
and applied, unless the artist sees how
they follow from the laws of mind. To
ask whether the composition of a picture
is good, is really to ask how the percep
tions and feelkjgs of observers will be:
affected by it. To ask whether a drama,
is well constructed, is to ask whether its
situations are so arranged as duly to»
�34
ÉDUCATION
consult the power of attention of an audi
ence and duly to avoid overtaxing any
one class of feelings. Equally in arrang
ing the leading divisions of a poem or
fiction, and in combining the words of
a single sentence, the goodness of the
effect depends upon the skill with which
the mental energies and susceptibilities
of the reader are economised. Every
artist, in the course of his education and
after-life, accumulates a stock of maxims
by which his practice is regulated. Trace
such maxims to their roots, and they
inevitably lead you down to psychological
principles. And only when the artist
understands these psychological principles
and their various corollaries, can he work
in harmony with them.
We do not for a moment believe that
science will make an artist. While we
contend that the leading laws both of
objective and subjective phenomena
must be understood by him, we by no
means contend that knowledge of such
laws will serve in place of natural per
ception. Not the poet only, but the
artist of every type, is born, not made.
What we assert is, that innate faculty
cannot dispense with the aid of organised
knowledge. Intuition will do much, but
it will not do all. Only when Genius is
married to Science can the highest
results be produced.
As we have above asserted, Science is
necessary not only for the most success
ful production, but also for the full
appreciation, of the fine arts. In what
consists the greater ability of a man than
of a child to perceive the beauties of a
picture; unless it is in his more extended
knowledge of those truths in nature or
life which the picture renders? How
happens the cultivated gentleman to
enjoy a fine poem so much more than a
boor does; if it is not because his wider
acquaintance with objects and actions
enables him to see in the poem much
that the boor cannot see ? And if, as is
here so obvious, there must be some
familiarity with the things represented,
before the representation can be appre
ciated ; then the representation can
be completely appreciated, only when
the things represented are completely
understood.
The fact is, that every
additional truth which a work of art
expresses, gives an additional pleasure
to the percipient mind—a pleasure that
is missed by those ignorant of this truth.
The more realities an artist indicates in
any given amount of work, the more
faculties does he appeal to; the more
numerous ideas does he suggest; the
more gratification does he afford. But
to receive this gratification the spectator,
listener, or reader, must know the realities
which the artist has indicated; and to
know these realities is to have that much
science.
And now let us not overlook the
further great fact, that not only does
science underlie sculpture, painting,
music, poetry, but that science is itself
poetic. The current opinion that science
and poetry are opposed, is it delusion.
It is doubtless true that as states of
consciousness, cognition and emotion
tend to exclude each other. And it is
doubtless also true that an extreme
activity of the reflective powers tends
to deaden the feelings; while an
extreme activity of the feelings tends to
deaden the reflective powers: in which
sense, indeed, all orders of activity are
antagonistic to each other. But it is
not true that the facts of science are
unpoetical; or that the cultivation of
science is necessarily unfriendly to the
exercise of imagination and the love of
the beautiful. On the contrary, science
opens up realms of poetry where to
the unscientific all is a blank. Those
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
engaged in scientific researches constantly
show us that they realise not less vividly,
but more vividly, than others, the poetry
of their subjects. Whoso will dip into
Hugh Miller’s works on geology, or read
Mr. Lewes’s Seaside Studies, will per
ceive that science excites poetry rather
than extinguishes it. And he who con
templates the life of Goethe, must see
that the poet and the man of science
can co-exist in equal activity. Is it not,
indeed, an absurd and almost a sacri
legious belief, that the more a man studies
Nature the less he reveres it? Think
you that a drop of water, which to the
vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses
anything in the eye of the physicist who
knows that its elements are held together
by a force which, if suddenly liberated,
would produce a flash of lightning ?
Think you that what is carelessly looked
upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow
flake, does not suggest higher associations
to one who has seen through a micro
scope the wondrously-varied and elegant
forms of snow-crystals ? Think you that
the rounded rock marked with parallel
scratches, calls up as much poetry in an
ignorant mind as in the mind of a geolo
gist who knows that over this rock a
glacier slid a million years ago ? The
truth is, that those who have never
entered upon scientific pursuits are blind
to most of the poetry by which they are
surrounded. Whoever has not in youth
collected plants and insects, knows not
half the halo of interest which lanes and
hedge-rows can assume. Whoever has
not sought for fossils, has little idea of
the poetical associations that surround the
places where imbedded treasures were
found. Whoever at the seaside has not
had a microscope and aquarium, has yet
to learn what the highest pleasures of
the seaside are. Sad, indeed, is it to
see how men occupy themselves with
35
trivialities, and are indifferent to the
grandest phenomena—care not to under
stand the architecture of the Heavens,
but are deeply interested in some con
temptible controversy about the intrigues
of Mary Queen of Scots !—are learnedly
critical over a Greek ode, and pass by
without a glance that grand epic written
by the finger of God upon the strata of
the Earth !
We find, then, that even for this
remaining division of human activities,
scientific culture is the proper prepara
tion. We find that aesthetics in general
are necessarily based upon scientific
principles; and can be pursued with com
plete success only through an acquain
tance with these principles. We find
that for the criticism and due apprecia
tion of works of art, a knowledge of
the constitution of things, or in other
words, a knowledge of science, is requi
site. And we not only find that science
is the handmaid to all forms of art and
poetry, but that, rightly regarded, science
is itself poetic.
Thus far our question has been, the
worth of knowledge of this or that kind
for purposes of guidance. We have now
to judge the relative values of different
kinds of knowledge for purposes of
discipline. This division of our subject
we are obliged to treat with comparative
brevity; and happily, no very lengthened
treatment of it is needed. Having found
what is best for the one end, we have by
implication found what is best for the
other. We may be quite sure that the
acquirement of those classes of facts
which are most useful for regulating
conduct, involves a mental exercise best
fitted for strengthening the faculties. It
would be utterly contrary to the beautiful
economy of Nature, if one kind of culture
were needed for the gaining of information
�36
EDUCATION
and another kind were needed as a
mental gymnastic. Everywhere through
out creation we find faculties developed
through the performance of those func
tions which it is their office to perform;
not through the performance of artificial
exercises devised to fit them for those
functions.
The Red Indian acquires
the swiftness and agility which make him
a successful hunter, by the actual pursuit
of animals; and through the miscel
laneous activities of his life, he gains a
better balance of physical powers than
gymnastics ever give.
That skill in
tracking enemies and prey which he has
reached after long practice, implies a
subtlety of perception far exceeding any
thing produced by artificial training.
And similarly in all cases. From the
Bushman whose eye, habitually employed
in identifying distant objects that are to
be pursued or fled from, has acquired a
telescopic range, to the accountant whose
daily practice enables him to add up
several columns of figures simultaneously;
we find that the highest power of a faculty
results from the discharge of those duties
which the conditions of life require it to
discharge. And we may be certain,
a priori, that the same law holds through
out education. The education of most
value for guidance, must at the same
time be the education of most value for
discipline. Let us consider the evidence.
One advantage claimed for that devo
tion to language-learning which forms
so prominent a feature in the ordinary
curriculum, is, that the memory is thereby
strengthened. This is assumed to be
an advantage peculiar to the study of
words. But the truth is, that the sciences
afford far wider fields for the exercise of
memory. It is no slight task to remember
everything about our solar system; much
more to remember all that is known
concerning the structure of our galaxy.
The number of compound substances,
to which chemistry daily adds, is so
great that few, save professors, can
enumerate them; and to recollect the
atomic constitutions and affinities of all
these compounds, is scarcely possible
without making chemistry the occupation
of life.
In the enormous mass of
phenomena presented by the Earth’s
crust, and in the still more enormous
mass of phenomena presented by the
fossils it contains, there is matter which
it takes the geological student years of
application to master.
Each leading
division of physics—sound, heat, light,
electricity — includes facts numerous
enough to alarm any one proposing to
learn them all. And when we pass to
the organic sciences, the effort of memory
required becomes still greater. In human
anatomy alone, the quantity of detail is
so great, that the young surgeon has
commonly to get it up half-a-dozen
times before he can permanently retain
it. The number of species of plants
which botanists distinguish, amounts to
some 320,000; while the varied forms
of animal life with which the zoologist
deals, are estimated at some 2,000,000.
So vast is the accumulation of facts
which men of science have before them,
that only by dividing and subdividing
their labours can they deal with it. To
a detailed knowledge of his own division,
each adds but a general knowledge of
the allied ones ; joined perhaps to a rudi
mentary acquaintance with some others.
Surely, then, science, cultivated even to
a very moderate extent, affords adequate
exercise for memory. To say the very
least, it involves quite as good a dis
cipline for this faculty as language does.
But now mark that while, for the
training of mere memory, science is as
good as, if not better than, language,
it has an immense superiority in the kind
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
of memory it trains. In the acquire
ment of a language, the connections of
ideas to be established in the mind
correspond to facts that are in great
measure accidental ; whereas, in the
acquirement of science, the connections
of ideas to be established in the mind
correspond to facts that are mostly
necessary. It is true that the relations
of words to their meanings are in one
sense natural; that the genesis of these
relations may be traced back a certain
distance, though rarely to the beginning;
and that the laws of this genesis form a
branch of mental science—the science
of philology. But since it will not be
contended that in the acquisition of
languages, as ordinarily carried on, these
natural relations between words and
their meanings are habitually traced,
and their laws explained; it must be
admitted that they are commonly learned
as fortuitous relations. On the other
hand, the relations which science pre
sents are causal relations; and, when
properly taught, are understood as such.
While language familiarises with nonrational relations, science familiarises
with rational relations. While the one
exercises memory only, the other exer
cises both memory and understanding.
Observe next, that a great superiority
of science over language as a means of
discipline, is, that it cultivates the judg
ment. As, in a lecture on mental edu
cation delivered at the Royal Institution,
Professor Faraday well remarks, the most
common intellectual fault is deficiency of
judgment. “Society, speaking generally,”
he says, “ is not only ignorant as respects
education of the judgment, but it is also
ignorant of its ignorance.” And the
cause to which he ascribes this state, is
want of scientific culture. The truth of
his conclusion is obvious. Correct judg
ment with regard to surrounding objects,
37
events, and consequences, becomes pos
sible only through knowledge of the way
in which surrounding phenomena depend
on each other. No extent of acquain
tance with the meanings of words, will
guarantee correct inferences respecting
causes and effects. The habit of drawing
conclusions from data, and then of verify
ing those conclusions by observation
and experiment, can alone give the
power of judging correctly. And that it
necessitates this habit is one of the
immense advantages of science.
Not only, however, for intellectual
discipline is science the best; but also
for moral discipline. The learning of
languages tends, if anything, further to
increase the already undue respect for
authority.
Such and such are the
meanings of these words, says the teacher
or the dictionary. So and so is the rule
in this case, says the grammar. By the
pupil these dicta are received as un
questionable. His constant attitude of
mind is that of submission to dogmatic
teaching. And a necessary result is a
tendency to accept without inquiry what
ever is established. Quite opposite is
the mental tone generated by the culti
vation of science. Science makes con
stant appeal to individual reason. Its
truths are not accepted on authority
alone; but all are at liberty to test them
—nay, in many cases, the pupil is
required to think out his own conclu
sions. Every step in a scientific investi
gation is submitted to his judgment.
He is not asked to admit it without
seeing it to be true. And the trust in
his own powers thus produced, is further
increased by the uniformity with which
Nature justifies his inferences when they
are correctly drawn. From all which
there flows that independence which is
a most valuable element in character.
Nor is this the only moral benefit
�38
EDUCATION
bequeathed by scientific culture. When
carried on, as it should always be, as
much as possible under the form of
original research, it exercises perseverance
and sincerity. As says Professor Tyndall
of inductive inquiry, “it requires patient
industry, and an humble and conscien
tious acceptance of what Nature reveals.
The first condition of success is an
honest receptivity and a willingness to
abandon all preconceived notions, how
ever cherished, if they be found to con
tradict the truth. Believe me, a selfrenunciation which has something noble
in it, and of which the world never hears,
is often enacted in the private experience
of the true votary of science.”
Lastly we have to assert—and the
assertion will, we doubt not, cause extreme
surprise—that the discipline of science
is superior to that of our ordinary
education, because of the religious culture
that it gives. Of course we do not here
use the words scientific and religious in
their ordinary limited acceptations ; but
in their widest and highest acceptations.
Doubtless, to the superstitions that pass
under the name of religion, science is
antagonistic; but not to the essential
religion which these superstitions merely
hide. Doubtless, too, in much of the
science that is current, there is a pervad
ing spirit of irreligion; but not in that
true science which has passed beyond
the superficial into the profound.
“ True science and true religion,” says Pro
fessor Huxley at the close of a recent course of
lectures, “ are twin-sisters, and the separation
of either from the other is sure to prove the
death of both. Science prospers exactly in pro
portion as it is religious ; and religion flourishes
in exact proportion to the scientific depth and
firmness of its basis. The great deeds of
philosophers have been less the fruit of their
intellect than of the direction of that intellect by
an eminently religious tone of mind. Truth has
yielded herself rather to their patience, their
love, their single-heartedness and their self
denial, than to their logical acumen.”
So far from science being irreligious,
as many think, it is the neglect of science
that is irreligious—it is the refusal to
study the surrounding creation that is
irreligious.
Take a humble simile.
Suppose, a writer were daily saluted with
praises couched in superlative language.
Suppose the wisdom, the grandeur, the
beauty of his works, were the constant
topics of the eulogies addressed to him.
Suppose those who unceasingly uttered
these eulogies on his works were content
with looking at the outsides of them; and
had never opened them, much less tried
to understand them. What value should
we put upon their praises ? What should
we think of their sincerity ? Yet, com
paring small things to great, such is the
conduct of mankind in general, in
reference to the Universe and its Cause.
Nay, it is worse. Not only do they pass
by without study, these things which
they daily proclaim to be so wonderful;
but very frequently they condemn as
mere triflers those who give time to the
observation of Nature—they actually
scorn those who show any active interest
in these marvels. We repeat, then, that
not science, but the neglect of science,
is irreligious. Devotion to science, is a
tacit worship—a tacit recognition of
worth in the things studied; and by
implication in their Cause. It is not a
mere lip-homage, but a homage expressed
in actions—not a mere professed respect,
but a respect proved by the sacrifice of
time, thought, and labour.
Nor is it thus only that true science is
essentially religious. It is religious, too,
inasmuch as it generates a profound
respect for, and an implicit faith in,
those uniformities of action which all
things disclose. By accumulated experi
ences the man of science acquires a
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
thorough belief in the unchanging rela
tions of phenomena—in the invariable
connection of cause and consequence—
in the necessity of good or evil results.
Instead of the rewards and punishments
of traditional belief, which people vaguely
hope they may gain, or escape, spite of
their disobedience ; he finds that there
are rewards and punishments in the
ordained constitution of things ; and
that the evil results of disobedience are
inevitable. He sees that the laws to
which we must submit are both inexor
able and beneficent. He sees that in
conforming to them, the process of
things is ever towards a greater perfec
tion and a higher happiness. Hence he
is led constantly to insist on them, and
is indignant when they are disregarded.
And thus does he, by asserting the
eternal principles of things and the
necessity of obeying them, prove himself
intrinsically religious.
And lastly the further religious aspect
of science, that it alone, can give us true
conceptions of ourselves and our rela
tion to the mysteries of existence. At
the same time that it shows us all which
can be known, it shows us the limits
beyond which we can know nothing.
Not by dogmatic assertion, does it teach
the impossibility of comprehending the
Ultimate Cause of things ; but it leads
us clearly to recognise this impossibility
by bringing us in. every direction to
boundaries we cannot cross. It realises
to us in a way which nothing else can,
the littleness of human intelligence in
the face of that which transcends human
intelligence. While towards the tradi
tions and authorities of men its attitude
may be proud, before the impenetrable
veil which hides the Absolute its attitude
is humble—a true pride and a true
humility. Only the sincere man of
science (and by this title we do not
39
mean the mere calculator of distances,
or analyser of compounds, or labeller of
species; but him who through lower
truths seeks higher, and eventually the
highest)—only the genuine man of
science, we say, can truly know how
utterly beyond, not only human know
ledge but human conception, is the
Universal Power of which Nature, and
Life, and Thought are manifestations.
We conclude, then, that for discipline,
as well as for guidance, science is of
chiefest value. In all its effects, learning
the meanings of things, is better than
learning the meanings of words. Whether
for intellectual, moral, or religious train
ing, the study of surrounding phenomena
is immensely superior to the study of
grammars and lexicons.
Thus to the question we set out with
—What knowledge is of most worth ?—
the uniform reply is—Science. This is
the verdict on all the counts. For direct
self-preservation, or the maintenance of
life and health, the all-important know
ledge is—Science. For that indirect
self-preservation which we call gaining
a livelihood, the knowledge of greatest
value is—Science. For the due dis
charge of parental functions, the proper
guidance is to be found only in—Science.
For that interpretation of national life,
past and present, without which the
citizen cannot rightly regulate his con
duct, the indispensable key is—Science.
Alike for the most perfect production
and present enjoyment of art in all its
forms, the needful preparation is still—
Science, and for purposes of discipline
—intellectual, moral, religious—the most
efficient study is, once more—Science.
The question which at first seemed so
perplexed, has become, in the course of
our inquiry, comparatively simple. We
have not to estimate the degrees of
�40
EDUCATION
importance of different orders of human conceived, or could have believed, yet is
activity, and different studies as severally this kind of knowledge only now receiving
fitting us for them; since we find that a grudging recognition in our highest
the study of Science, in its most com educational institutions. To the slowly
prehensive meaning, is the best prepara growing acquaintance with the uniform
tion for all these orders of activity. We co-existences and sequences of phe
have not to decide between the claims nomena—to the establishment of invari
of knowledge of great though conven able laws, we owe our emancipation from
tional value, and knowledge of less the grossest superstitions.
But for
though intrinsic value; seeing that the science we should be still worshipping
knowledge which proves to be of most fetishes ; or, with hecatombs of victims,
value in all other respects, is intrinsically propitiating diabolical deities. And yet
most valuable: its worth is not dependent this science, which, in place of the most
upon opinion, but is as fixed as is the degrading conceptions of things, has
relation of man to the surrounding world. given us some insight into the grandeurs
Necessary and eternal as are its truths,
of creation, is written against in our theo
all Science concerns all mankind for all logies and frowned upon from our pulpits.
time. Equally at present and in the
Paraphrasing an Eastern fable, we
remotest future, must it be of incalculable may say that in the family of knowledges,
importance for the regulation of their Science is the household drudge, who, in
conduct, that men should understand obscurity, hides unrecognised perfections.
the science of life, physical, mental, and To her has been committed all the work ;
social; and that they should understand by her skill, intelligence, and devotion,
all other science as a key to the science have all conveniences and gratifications
of life.
been obtained ; and while ceaselessly
And yet this study immensely tran ministering to the rest, she has been
scending all other in importance, is that kept in the background, that her haughty
which, in an age of boasted education, sisters might flaunt their fripperies in the
receives the least attention. While what eyes of the world. The parallel holds
we call civilisation could never have yet further. For we are fast coming to
arisen had it not been for science; the dénouement, when the positions will
science forms scarcely an appreciable be changed ; and while these haughty
element in our so-called civilised training. sisters sink into merited neglect, Science,
Though to the progress of science we proclaimed as highest alike in worth and
owe it, that millions find support where beauty, will reign supreme.
once there was food only for thousands;
yet of these millions but a few thousands
pay any respect to that which has made
their existence possible. Though in
creasing knowledge of the properties
CHAPTER II.
and relations of things has not only
enabled wandering tribes to grow into
INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
populous nations, but has given to the
There cannot fail to be a relationship
countless members of these populous
between the successive systems of edu
nations, comforts and pleasures which
their few naked ancestors never even cation, and the successive social states
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
with which they have co-existed. Having
a common origin in the national mind,
the institutions of each epoch, whatever
be their special functions, must have a
family likeness. When men received
.
their creed and its interpretations from
' an infallible authority deigning no expla
nations, it was natural that the teaching
of children should be purely dogmatic.
While “believe and ask no questions ”
was the maxim of the Church, it was
fitly the maxim of the school. Conversely,
/now that Protestantism has gained for
adults a right of private judgment and
established the practice of appealing to
reason, there is harmony in the change
that has made juvenile instruction a
process of exposition addressed to the
A. understanding.
Along with political
despotism, stern in its commands, ruling
by force of terror, visiting trifling crimes
with death, and implacableinits vengeance
on the disloyal, there necessarily grew up
academic discipline similarly harsh—a
discipline of multiplied injunctions and
blows for every breach of them — a
discipline of unlimited autocracy upheld
by rods, and ferules, and the black-hole.
On the other hand, the increase of
political liberty, the abolition of laws
restricting individual action, and the
amelioration of the criminal code, have
been accompanied by a kindred progress
towards non-coercive education: the pupil
is hampered by fewer restraints, and other
means than punishments are used to
govern him.
In those ascetic days
when men, acting on the greatest-misery
principle, held that the more gratifications
they denied themselves the more virtuous
they were, they, as a matter of course,
considered that the best education which
most thwarted the wishes of their children,
and cut short all spontaneous activity
with—“You mustn’t do so.” While,
on the contrary, now that happiness is
41
coming to be regarded as a legitimate
aim—now that hours of labour are beine;
shortened and popular recreations pro
vided; parents and teachers are beginning
to see that most childish desires may
rightly be gratified, that childish sports
should be encouraged, and that the
tendencies of the growing mind are not
altogether so diabolical as was supposed.
The age in which all believed that trades
must be established by bounties and
prohibitions ; that manufacturers needed
their materials and qualities and prices
to be prescribed ; and that the value of
money could be determined by law;
was an age which unavoidably cherished
the notions that a child’s mind could be
made to order ; that its powers were to
be imparted by the schoolmaster; that
it was a receptacle into which knowledge
was to be put, and there built up after
the teacher’s ideal. In this free-trade
era, however, when we are learning that
there is much more self-regulation ' in
things than was supposed ; that labour,
and commerce, and agriculture, and
navigation, can do better without manage
ment than with it ; that political govern
ments, to be efficient, must grow up from
within and not be imposed from without ;
we are also being taught that there is a
natural process of mental evolution which
is not to be disturbed without injury;
that we may not force on the unfolding
mind our artificial forms ; but that
psychology, also, discloses to us a law
of supply and demand, to which, if we
would not do harm, we must conform.
Thus, alike in its oracular dogmatism, in
its harsh discipline, in its multiplied
restrictions, in its professed asceticism,
and in its faith in the devices of men,
the old educational regime was akin to
the social systems with which it was
contemporaneous ; and similarly in the
reverse of these characteristics, our modern
�42
EDUCATION
Erodes of culture correspond to our more
liberal religious and political institutions.
But there remain further parallelisms
to which we have not yet adverted : that,
namely, between the processes by which
these respective changes have been
wrought out; and that between the
several states of heterogeneous opinion
to which they have led. Some centuries
ago there was uniformity of belief —religious, political, and educational.
All men were Romanists, all were
Monarchists, all were disciples of
Aristotle; and no one thought of calling
in question that grammar-school routine
under which all were brought up. The
same agency has in each case replaced
this uniformity by a constantly-increasing
diversity. That tendency towards asser
tion of the individuality, which, after
contributing to produce the great Pro
testant movement, has since gone on to
produce an ever-increasing number of
sects — that tendency which initiated
political parties, and out of the two
primary ones has, in these modern days,
evolved a multiplicity to which every
year adds—that tendency which led to
the Baconian rebellion against the schools,
and has since originated here and abroad,
sundry new systems of thought—is a
tendency which, in education also, has
caused divisions and the accumulation
of methods. As external consequences
of the same internal change, these
processes have necessarily been more
or less simultaneous. The decline of
authority, whether papal, philosophic,
kingly, or tutoral, is essentially one
phenomenon; in each of its aspects a
leaning towards free action is seen alike
in the working out of the change itself,
and in the new forms of theory and prac
tice to which the change has given birth.
While many will regret this multiplica
tion of schemes of juvenile culture, the
catholic observer will discern in it a
means of ensuring the final establishment
of a rational system. Whatever may be
thought of theological dissent, it is clear
that dissent in education results in
facilitating inquiry by the division in
labour. Were we in possession of the
true method, divergence from it would,
of course, be prejudicial; but the
true method having to be found, the
efforts of numerous independent seekers
carrying out their researches in different
directions, constitute a better agency for
finding it than any that could be devised.
Each of them struck by some new thought
which probably contains more or less of
basis in facts—each of them zealous on
behalf of his plan, fertile in expedients
to test its correctness, and untiring in
his efforts to make known its success—
each of them merciless in his criticism
on the rest; there cannot fail, by compo
sition of forces, to be a gradual approxi
mation of all towards the right course.
Whatever portion of the normal method
any one has discovered, must, by the
constant exhibition of its results, force
itself into adoption; whatever wrong
practices he has joined with it must, by
repeated experiment and failure, be
exploded. And by this aggregation of
truths and elimination of errors, there
must eventually be developed a correct
and complete body of doctrine. Of the
three phases through which human
opinion passes—the unanimity of the
ignorant, the disagreement of the in
quiring, and the unanimity of the wise—
it is manifest that the second is the
parent of the third. They are not se
quences in time only, they are sequences
in causation.
However impatiently,
therefore, we may witness the present
conflict of educational systems, and how
ever much we may regret its accompany
ing evils, we must recognise it as a
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION '
transition stage needful to be passed
through, and beneficent in its ultimate
effects.
Meanwhile, may we not advantageously
take stock of our progress ? After fifty
years of discussion, experiment, and
comparison of results, may we not expect
a few steps towards the goal to be already
made good? Some old methods must
by this time have fallen out of use; some
new ones must have become established;
and many others must be in process
of general abandonment' or adoption.
Probably we may see in these various
changes, when put side by side, similar
characteristics—may find in them a
common tendency; and so, by inference,
may get a clue to the direction in which
experience is leading us, and gather
hints how we may achieve yet further
improvements. Let us then, as a pre
liminary to a deeper consideration of the
matter, glance at the leading contrasts
between the education of the past and
that of the present.
The suppression of every error is
commonly followed by a temporary
ascendency of the contrary one ; and so
it happened, that after the ages when
physical development alone was aimed
at, there came an age when culture of
the mind was the sole solicitude—when
children had lesson-books put before
them at between two and three years
old, and the getting of knowledge was
thought the one thing needful. As,
further, it usually happens that after one
of these reactions the next advance is
achieved by co-ordinating the antagonist
errors, and perceiving that they are
opposite sides of one truth; so, we are
now coming to the conviction that body
and mind must both be cared for, and
the whole being unfolded. The forcing
system has been by many given up; and
43
precocity is discouraged.
People are
beginning to see that the first requisite
to success in life is to be a good animal.
The best brain is found of little service,
if there be not enough vital energy to
work it; and hence to obtain the one
by sacrificing the source of the other, is
now considered a folly—a folly which
the eventual failure of juvenile prodigies
constantly illustrates.
Thus we are
discovering the wisdom of the saying,
that one secret in education is “ to know
how wisely to lose time.”
The once universal practice of learning
by rote is daily falling into discredit.
All modern authorities condemn the
old mechanical way of teaching the
alphabet. The multiplication table is
now frequently taught experimentally.
In the acquirement of languages, the
grammar-school plan is being superseded
by plans based on the spontaneous
process followed by the child in gaining
its mother tongue.
Describing the
methods there used, the Reports on the
Training School at Battersea say :—
“The instruction in the whole pre
paratory course is chiefly oral, and is
illustrated as much as possible by
appeals to nature.” And so throughout.
The rote-system, like all other systems
of its age, made more of the forms and
symbols than of the things symbolised.
To repeat the words correctly was every
thing ; to understand their meaning,
nothing; and thus the spirit was sacrificed
to the letter. It is at length perceived
that, in this case as in others, such a
result is not accidental but necessary—
that in proportion as there is attention
to the signs, there must be inattention
to the things signified; or that, as
Montaigne long ago said—S^avoir par
coeur n’est pas s^avoir.
Along with rote-teaching, is declining
also the nearly-allied teaching by rules.
�44
EDUCATION
The particulars first, and then the
generalisations, is the new method—a
method, as the Battersea School Reports
remark, which, though “the reverse of
the method usually followed, which con
sists in giving the pupil the rule first,” is
yet proved by experience to be the right
one. Rule-teaching is now condemned
as imparting a merely empirical know
ledge—as producing an appearance of
understanding without the reality. To
give the net product of inquiry, without
the inquiry that leads to it, is found to
be both enervating and inefficient.
General truths to be of due and per
manent use, must be earned. “ Easy
come easy go,” is a saying as applicable
to knowledge as to wealth. While rules,
lying isolated in the mind—not joined to
its other contents as out-growths from
them—are continually forgotten; the
principles which those rules express
piecemeal, become, when once reached
by the understanding, enduring posses
sions. While the rule-taught youth is at
sea when beyond his rules, the youth
instructed in principles solves a new
case as readily as an old one. Between
a mind of rules and a mind of principles,
there exists a difference such as that
between a confused heap of materials,
and the same materials organised into a
complete whole, with all its parts bound
together. Of which types this last has
not only the advantage that its con
stituent parts are better retained, but the
much greater advantage that it forms an
efficient agent for inquiry, for indepen
dent thought, for discovery—ends for
which the first is useless. Nor let it be
supposed that this is a simile only : it is
the literal truth. The union of facts
into generalisations is the organisation
of knowledge, whether considered as an
objective phenomenon or a subjective
one; and the mental grasp may be
measured by the extent to which this
organisation is carried.
From the substitution of principles for
rules, and the necessarily co-ordinate
practice of leaving abstractions untaught
till the mind has been familiarised with
the facts from which they are abstracted,
has resulted the postponement of some
once early studies to a late period. This
is exemplified in the abandonment of
that intensely stupid custom, the teach
ing of grammar to children. As M.
Marcel says :—“ It may without hesita
tion be affirmed that grammar is not
the stepping-stone, but the finishing
instrument.” As Mr. Wyse argues:—
“Grammar and Syntax are a collection
of laws and rules. Rules are gathered
from practice; they are the results of
induction to which we come by long
observation and comparison of facts. It
is, in fine, the science, the philosophy of
language. In following the process of
nature, neither individuals nor nations
ever arrive at the science first. A
language is spoken, and poetry written,
many years before either a grammar or
prosody is even thought of. Men did
not wait till Aristotle had constructed
his logic, to reason.” In short, as
grammar was made after language, so
ought it to be taught after language : an
inference which all who recognise the
relationship between the evolution of the
race and that of the individual, will see
to be unavoidable.
Of new practices that have grown up
during the decline of these old ones, the
most important is the systematic culture
of the powers of observation. After long
ages of blindness, men are at last seeing
that the spontaneous activity of the
observing faculties in children, has a
meaning and a use. What was once
thought mere purposeless action, or play,
or mischief, as the case might be, is now
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
recognised as the process of acquiring a
knowledge on which all after-knowledge
is based. Hence the well-conceived but
ill-conducted system of object-lessons.
The saying of Bacon, that physics is the
mother of the sciences, has come to have
a meaning in education. Without an
accurate acquaintance with the visible
and tangible properties of things, our
conceptions must be erroneous, our
inferences fallacious, and our operations
unsuccessful. “ The education of the
senses neglected, all after education
partakes of a drowsiness, a haziness, an
insufficiency which it is impossible to
cure.” Indeed, if we consider it, we
shall find that exhaustive observation is
an element in all great success. It is
not to artists, naturalists, and men of
science only, that it is needful; it is not
only that the physician depends on it for
the correctness of his diagnosis, and that
to the engineer it is so important that
some years in the workshop are pre
scribed to him ; but we may see that the
philosopher, also, is fundamentally one
who observes relationships of things which
others had overlooked, and that the
poet, too, is one who sees the fine facts
in nature which all recognise when
pointed out, but did not before remark.
Nothing requires more to be insisted on
than that vivid and complete impressions
are all-essential. No sound fabric of
wisdom can be woven out of a rotten
raw material.
While the old method of presenting •
truths in the abstract has been falling
out of use, there has been a correspond
ing adoption of the new method of
presenting them in the concrete. The
rudimentary facts of exact science are
now being learnt by direct intuition, as
textures, and tastes, and colours are
learnt. Employing the ball-frame for
first lessons in arithmetic, exemplifies
45
this. It is well illustrated, too, in Pro
fessor De Morgan’s mode of explaining
the decimal notation. M. Marcel, rightly
repudiating the old system of tables,
teaches weights and measures by refer
ring to the actual yard and foot, pound
and ounce, gallon and quart; and lets
the discovery of their relationships be
experimental. The use of geographical
models and models of the regular bodies,
etc., as introductory to geography and
geometry respectively, are facts of the
same class. Manifestly, a common trait
of these methods is, that they carry each
child’s mind through a process like that
which the mind of humanity at large has
gone through. The truths of number, of
form, of relationship in position, were all
originally drawn from objects; and to
present these truths to the child in the
concrete, is to let him learn them as the
race learnt them. By and by, perhaps,
it will be seen that he cannot possibly
learn them in any other way; for that if
he is made to repeat them as abstrac
tions, the abstractions can have no
meaning for him, until he finds that they
are simply statements of what he intui
tively discerns.
But of all the changes taking place,
the most significant is the growing desire
to make the acquirement of knowledge
pleasurable rather than painful—a desire
based on the more or less distinct per
ception, that at each age the intellectual
action which a child likes is a healthy
one for it; and conversely. There is a
spreading opinion that the rise of an
appetite for any kind of information,
implies that the unfolding mind has
become fit to assimilate it, and needs it
for purposes of growth ; and that, on the
other hand, the disgust felt towards such
information is a sign either that it is
prematurely presented, or that it is pre
sented in an indigestible form. Hence
�46
EDUCATION
the efforts to make early education
amusing, and all education interesting.
Hence the lectures on the value of play.
Hence the defence of nursery rhymes
and fairy tales. Daily we more and
more conform our plans to juvenile
opinion. Does the child like this or
that kind kind of teaching?—does he
take to it ? we constantly ask. “ His
natural desire of variety should be in
dulged,” says M. Marcel; “and the grati
fication of his curiosity should be com
bined with his improvement.” “Lessons,”
he again remarks, “should cease before
the child evinces symptoms of weariness.”
And so with later education.
Short
breaks during school-hours, excursions
into the country, amusing lectures, choral
songs—in these and many like traits,
the change may be discerned. Asceti
cism is disappearing out of education as
out of life; and the usual test of political
legislation—its tendency to promote
happiness—is beginning to be, in a great
degree, the test of legislation for the
school and the nursery. What now is
the common characteristic of these
several changes ? Is it not an increas
ing conformity to the methods of
Nature ? The relinquishment of early
forcing, against which Nature rebels, and
the leaving of the first years for exercise
of the limbs and senses, show this.
The superseding of rote-learnt lessons
by lessons orally and experimentally
given, like those of the field and play
ground, shows this. The disuse of rule
teaching, and the adoption of teaching
by principles—that is, the leaving of
generalisations until there are particulars
to base them on—show this. The sys
tem of object-lessons shows this. The
teaching of the rudiments of science in
the concrete instead of the abstract,
shows this. And above all, this ten
dency is shown in the variously-directed
efforts to present knowledge in attractive
forms, and so to make the acquirement
of it pleasurable. For, as it is the order
of Nature in all creatures that the grati
fication accompanying the fulfilment of
needful functions serves as a stimulus to
their fulfilment—as, during the self-edu
cation of the young child, the delight
taken in the biting of corals and the
pulling to pieces of toys, becomes the
prompter to actions which teach it the
properties of matter; it follows that, in
choosing the succession of subjects and
the modes of instruction which most
interest the pupil, we are fulfilling
Nature’s behests, adjusting our proceed
ings to the laws of life.
Thus, then, we are on the highway
towards the doctrine long ago enunciated
by Pestalozzi, that alike in its order and
its methods, education must conform to
the natural process of mental evolution
—that there is a certain sequence in
which the faculties spontaneously develop,
and a certain kind of knowledge which
each requires during its development;
and that it is for us to ascertain this
sequence, and supply this knowledge.
All the improvements above alluded to
are partial applications of this general
principle. A nebulous perception of it
now prevails among teachers; and it is
daily more insisted on in educational
works. “ The method of nature is the
archetype of all methods,” says M.
Marcel. “ The vital principle in the
pursuit is to enable the pupil rightly to
instruct himself,” writes Mr. Wyse. The
more science familiarises us with the
constitution of things, the more do we
see in them an inherent self-sufficingness.
A higher knowledge tends continually to
limit our interference with the processes
of life. As in medicine the old “ heroic
treatment ” has given place to mild treat
ment, and often no treatment save a
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
normal regimen—as we have found that
it is not needful to mould bodies of
babes by bandaging them in papoosefashiun or otherwise—as in gaols it is
being discovered that no cunninglydevised discipline of ours is so efficient
in producing reformation as the natural
discipline of self-maintenance by produc
tive labour ; so in education, we are
finding that success is to be achieved
only by making our measures subservient
to that spontaneous unfolding which all
minds go through in their progress to
maturity.
Of course, this fundamental principle
of tuition, that the arrangement of matter
and method must correspond with the
order of evolution and mode of activity
of the faculties—a principle so obviously
true, that once stated it seems almost
self-evident—has never been wholly dis
regarded. Teachers have unavoidably
made their school-courses coincide with
it in some degree, for the simple reason
that education is possible only on that
condition. Boys were never taught the
rule-of-three until they had learnt addi
tion. They were not set to write
exercises before they had got into their
copy-books. Conic sections have always
been preceded by Euclid. But the error
of the old methods consists in this, that
they do not recognise in detail what they
are obliged to recognise in general.
Yet the principle applies throughout.
If from the time when a child is able
to conceive two things as related in
position, years must elapse before it can
form a true concept of the Earth, as a
sphere made up of land and sea, covered
with mountains, forests, rivers, and cities,
revolving on its axis, and sweeping round
the Sun—if it gets from the one concept
to the other by degrees—if the inter
mediate concepts which it forms are
consecutively larger and more compli
47
cated ; is it not manifest that there is a
general succession through which alone
it can pass; that each larger concept is
made by the combination of smaller
ones, and presupposes them ; and that
to present any of these compound con
cepts before the child is in possession of
its constituent ones, is only less absurd
than to present the final concept of the
series before the initial one. In the
mastering of every subject some course
of increasingly complex ideas has to be
gone through. The evolution of the
corresponding faculties consists in the
assimilation of these; which, in any
true sense, is impossible without they
are put into the mind in the normal
order. And when this order is not
followed, the result is, that they are
received with apathy or disgust; and
that unless the pupil is intelligent enough
eventually to fill up the gaps himself,
they lie in his memory as dead facts,
capable of being turned to little or no
use.
“ But why trouble ourselves about any
curriculum at all ?” it may be asked. “ If
it be true that the mind like the body
has a predetermined course of evolution
—if it unfolds spontaneously—if its
successive desires for this or that kind
of information arise when these are
severally required for its nutrition—if
there thus exists in itself a prompter to
the right species of activity at the right
time; why interfere in any way ? Why
not leave children wholly to the discipline
of nature?—why not remain quite pas
sive and let them get knowledge as they
best can ?—why not be consistent
throughout ?” This is an awkwardlooking question. Plausibly implying
as it does, that a system of complete
laissez-faire is the logical outcome of the
doctrines set forth, it seems to furnish a
disproof of them by reductio ad absurdum.
�48
EDUCATION
In truth, however, they do not, when
rightly understood, commit us to any
such untenable position. A glance at
the physical analogies will clearly show
this. It is a general law of life tha the
t
*
more complex the organism to be pro
duced, the longer the period during
which it is dependent on a parent
organism for food and protection. The
difference between the minute, rapidlyformed, and self-moving spore of a
conferva, and the slowly-developed seed
of a tree, with its multiplied envelopes
and large stock of nutriment laid by to
nourish the germ during its first stages
of growth, illustrates this law in its
application to the vegetal world. Among
anirrials we may trace it in a series of
contrasts from the monad whose spon
taneously-divided halves are as selfsufficing the moment after their separa
tion as was the original whole; up to
man, whose offspring not only passes
through a protracted gestation, and
subsequently long depends on the breast
for sustenance; but after that must have
its food artificially administered; must,
when it has learned to feed itself, con
tinue to have bread, clothing, and shelter
provided; and does not acquire the
power of complete self-support until a
time varying from fifteen to twenty years
after its birth. Now this law applies to
the mind as to the body. For mental
pabulum also, every higher creature, and
especially man, is at first dependent on
adult aid. Lacking the ability to move
about, the babe is almost as powerless
to get materials on which to exercise its
perceptions as it is to get supplies for its
stomach. Unable to prepare its own
food, it is in like manner unable to reduce
many kinds of knowledge to a fit form
for assimilation. The language through
which all higher truths are to be gained,
it wholly derives from those surrounding
it. And we see in such an example as
the Wild Boy of Aveyron, the arrest of
development that results when no help
is received from parents and nurses.
Thus, in providing from day to day the
right kind of facts, prepared in the right
manner, and giving them in due abun
dance at appropriate intervals, there is
as much scope for active ministration to
a child’s mind as to its body. In either
case, it is the chief function of parents
to see that the conditions requisite to
growth are maintained. And as, in
supplying aliment, and clothing, and
shelter, they may fulfil this function
without at all interfering with the spon
taneous development of the limbs and
viscera, either in their order or mode;
so, they may supply sounds for imitation,
objects for examination, books for read
ing, problems for solution, and, if they
use neither direct nor indirect coercion,
may do this without in any way disturbing
the normal process of mental evolution;
or rather, may greatly facilitate that
process. Hence the admission of the
doctrines enunciated does not, as some
might argue, involve the abandonment
of teaching; but leaves ample room
for an active and elabcrate course of
culture.
Passing from generalities to special
considerations, it is to be remarked that
in practice, the Pestalozzian system
seems scarcely to have fulfilled the
promise of its theory. We hear of
children not at all interested in its
lessons,—disgusted with them rather ;
and, so far as we can gather, the Pesta
lozzian schools have not turned out any
unusual proportion of distinguished men:
if even they have reached the average.
We are not surprised at this. The
success of every appliance depends
mainly upon the intelligence with which
�INTELLECTUAL ED UCA TION
it is used, it is a trite remark that,
having the choicest tools, an unskilled
artisan will botch his work; and bad
teachers will fail even with the best
methods. Indeed, the goodness of the
method becomes in such case a cause
of failure; as, to continue the simile,
the perfection of the tool becomes in
undisciplined hands a source of imper
fection in results. A simple, unchanging,
almost mechanical routine of tuition,
may be carried out by the commonest
intellects, with such small beneficial
effect as it is capable of producing; but
a complete system—a system as hetero
geneous in its appliances as the mind in
its faculties—a system proposing a special
means for each special end, demands
for its right employment powers such as
few teachers possess. The mistress of
a dame-school can hear spelling-lessons ;
and any hedge-schoolmaster can drill
boys in the multiplication table. But to
teach spelling rightly, by using the
powers of the letters instead of their
names, or to instruct in numerical com
binations by experimental synthesis, a
modicum of understanding is needful;
and to pursue a like rational course
throughout the entire range of studies,
asks an amount of judgment, of invention,
of intellectual sympathy, of analytical
faculty, which we shall never see applied
to it while the tutorial office is held in
such small esteem. Tjue education is
practicable only by a true philosopher.
J udge then, what prospect a philosophical
method now has of being acted out!
Knowing so little as we yet do of psycho
logy, and ignorant as our teachers are of
that little, what chance has a system
which requires psychology for its basis ?
Further hindrance and discouragement
has arisen from confounding the Pestalozzian principle with the forms in which
it has been embodied. Because particular
49
plans have not answered expectation,
discredit has been cast upon the doctrine
associated with them : no inquiry being
made whether these plans truly conform
to the doctrine. Judging as usual by
the concrete rather than the abstract,
men have blamed the theory for the
bunglings of the practice. It is as though
the first futile attempt to construct a
steam-engine had been held to prove
that steam could not be used as a motive
power. Let it be constantly borne in
mind that while right in his fundamental
ideas, Pestalozzi was not therefore right
in all his applications of them. As
described even by his admirers, Pesta
lozzi was a man of partial intuitions—a
man who had occasional flashes of
insight; rather than a man of systematic
thought.
His first great success at
Stantz was achieved when he had no
books or appliances of ordinary teaching,
and when “ the only object of his atten
tion was to find out at each moment
what instruction his children stood pecu
liarly in need of, and what was the best
manner of connecting it with the know
ledge they already possessed.” Much
of his power was due, not to calmly
reasoned-out plans of culture, but to his
profound sympathy, which gave him a
quick perception of childish needs and
difficulties. He lacked the ability
logically to co-ordinate and develop the
truths which he thus from time to time
laid hold of; and had in great measure
to leave this to his assistants, Kruesi,
Tobler, Buss, Niederer, and Schmid.
The result is, that in their details his
own plans, and those vicariously devised,
contain numerous crudities and incon
sistencies. His nursery-method, described
in The Mother’s Manual, beginning as
it does with a nomenclature of the
different parts of the body, and pro
ceeding next to specify their relative
�50
EDUCATION
positions, and next their connections,
. may be proved not at all in accordance
with the initial stages of mental evolu
tion.
His process of teaching the
mother-tongue by formal exercises in
the meanings of words in the construc
tion of sentences, is quite needless, and
must entail on the pupil loss of time,
labour and happiness. His proposed
lessons in geography are utterly unpesta$ lozzian. And often where his plans are
essentially sound, they are either incom
plete or vitiated by some remnant of
the old regime. While, therefore, we
would defend in its entire extent the
general doctrine which Pestalozzi inaugu
rated, we think great evil likely to result
from an uncritical reception of his
specific methods. That tendency, con
stantly exhibited by mankind, to canonise
the forms and practices along with which
any great truth has been bequeathed to
them—their liability to prostrate their
intellects before the prophet, and swear
by his every word—their proneness to
mistake the clothing of the idea for the
idea itself ; renders it ne'edful to insist
strongly upon the distinction between
the fundamental principle of the Pestalozzian system, and the set of expedients
devised for its practice ; and to suggest
that while the one may be considered as
established, the other is probably nothing
but an adumbration of the normal
course. Indeed, on looking at the state
of our knowledge, we may be quite sure
that this is the case. Before educational
methods can be made to harmonise in
character and arrangement with the
faculties in their mode and order of
unfolding, it is first needful that we
ascertain with some completeness how
the faculties do unfold. At present we
have acquired, on this point, only a few
general notions. These general notions
must be developed in detail—must be
transformed into a multitude of specific
propositions, before we can be said to
possess that science on which the art of
education must be based. And then,
when we have definitely made out in
what succession and in what combina
tions the mental powers become active,
it remains to choose out of the many
possible- ways of exercising each of
them, that which best conforms to its
natural mode of action.
Evidently,
therefore, it is not to be supposed that
even our most advanced modes of
teaching are the right ones, or nearly the
right ones.
Bearing in mind then this distinction
between the principle and the practice
of Pestalozzi, and inferring from the
grounds assigned that the last must
necessarily be very defective, the reader
will rate at its true worth the dissatisfac
tion with the system which some have
expressed; and will see that the realisa
tion of the Pestalozzian idea remains to
be achieved. Should he argue, however,
from what has just been said, that no
such realisation is at present practicable,
and that all effort ought to be devoted
to the preliminary inquiry; we reply,
that though it is not possible for a
scheme of culture to be perfected either
in matter or form until a rational psycho
logy has been established, it is possible,
with the aid of certain guiding prin
ciples, to make empirical approximations
towards a perfect scheme. To prepare
the way for further research we will now
specify these principles. Some of them
have been more or less distinctly implied
in the foregoing pages; but it will be
well here to state them all in logical
order.
i. That in education we should pro
ceed from the simple to the complex, is
a truth which has always been to some
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
extent acted upon : not professedly,
indeed, nor by any means consistently.
The mind develops. Like all things
that develop it progresses from the
homogeneous to the heterogeneous ; and
a normal training system, being an
objective counterpart of this subjective
process, must exhibit a like progression.
Moreover thus interpreting it, we may
see that this formula has much wider
applications than at first appears. For
its rationale involves, not only that we
should proceed from the single to the
combined in the teaching of each branch
of knowledge; but that we should do
the like with knowledge as a whole. As
the mind, consisting at first of but few
active faculties, has its later-completed
faculties successively brought into play,
and ultimately comes to have all its
faculties in simultaneous action; it
follows that our teaching should begin
with but few subjects at once, and suc
cessively adding to these, should finally
carry on all subjects abreast. Not only
in its details should education proceed
from the simple to the complex, but in
its ensemble also.
2.The development of the mind, as
all other development, is an advance
from the indefinite to the definite. In
common with the rest of the organism,
the brain reaches its finished structure
only at maturity; and in proportion as
its structure is unfinished, its actions are
wanting in precision. Hence like the
first movements and the first attempts
at speech, the first perceptions and
thoughts are extremely vague. As from
a rudimentary eye, discerning only the
difference between light and darkness,
the progress is to an eye that distinguishes
kinds and gradations of colour, and
details of form, with the greatest exact
ness ; so, the intellect as a whole and in
each faculty, beginning with the rudest
discriminations among objects and
actions, advances towards discrimina
tions of increasing nicety and distinct
ness. To this general law our educa
tional course and methods must conform.
It is not practicable, nor would it be
desirable if practicable, to put precise
ideas into the undeveloped mind. We
may indeed at an early age communicate
the verbal forms in which such ideas are
wrapped up; and teachers, who habitually
do this, suppose that when the verbal
forms have been correctly learnt, the
ideas which should fill them have been
acquired. But a brief cross-examination
of the pupil proves the contrary. It
turns out either that the words have
been committed to memory with little
or no thought about their meaning, or
else that the perception of their meaning
which has been gained is a very cloudy
one. Only as the multiplication of
experiences gives materials for definite
conceptions—only as observation year
by year discloses the less conspicuous
attributes which distinguish things and
processes previously confounded together
—only as each class of co-enstences
and sequences becomes familiar through
the recurrence of cases coming under it
—only as the various classes of relations
get accurately marked off from each
other by mutual limitation; can the
exact definitions of advanced knowledge
become truly comprehensible. Thus in
education we must be content to set out
with crude notions. These we must aim
to make gradually clearer by facilitating
the acquisition of experiences such as
will correct, first their greatest errors,
and afterwards their successively less
marked errors. And the scientific
formulae must be given only as fast as
the conceptions are perfected.
3. To say that our lessons ought to
start from the concrete and end in the
�52
EDUCATION
abstract, may be considered as in part a
repetition of the first of the foregoing
principles. Nevertheless it is a maxim
that must be stated: if with no other
view, then with the view of showing in
certain cases what are truly the simple
and the complex. For unfortunately
there has been much misunderstanding
on this point. General formulas which
men have devised to express groups of
details, and which have severally simpli
fied their conceptions by uniting many
facts into one fact, they have supposed
must simplify the conceptions of a child
also. They have forgotten that a
generalisation is simple only in com
parison with the whole mass of particular
truths it comprehends—that it is more
complex than any one of these truths
taken singly—that only after many of
these single truths have been acquired,
does the generalisation ease the memory
and help the reason—and that to a mind
not possessing these single truths it is
necessarily a mystery. Thus confounding
two kinds of simplification, teachers
have constantly erred by setting out
with “first principles”: a proceeding
essentially, though not apparently, at
variance with the primary rule; which
implies that the mind should be intro
duced to principles through the medium
of examples, and so should be led from
the particular to the general—from the
concrete to the abstract.
4. The education of the child must
accord both in mode and arrangement
with the education of mankind, con
sidered historically. In other words, the
genesis of knowledge in the individual,
must follow the same course as the
genesis of knowledge in the race. In
strictness, this principle may be con
sidered as already expressed by implica
tion ; since both being processes of
evolution, must conform to those same
general laws of evolution above insisted
on, and must therefore agree with each
other.
Nevertheless this particular
parallelism is of value for the specific
guidance it affords. To M. Comte we
believe society owes the enunciation of
it; and we may accept this item of his
philosophy without at all committing
ourselves to the rest. This doctrine
may be upheld by two reasons, quite
independent of any abstract theory;
and either of them sufficient to establish
it. One is deducible from the law of
hereditary transmission as considered in
its wider consequences. For if it be
true that men exhibit likeness to
ancestry, both in aspect and character—
if it be true that certain mental mani
festations, as insanity, occur in successive
members of the same family at the same
age—if, passing from individual cases in
which the traits of many dead ancestors
mixing with those of a few living ones
greatly obscure the law, we turn to
national types, and remark how the con
trasts between them are persistent from
age to age—if we remember that these
respective types came from a common
stock, and that hence the present marked
differences between them must have
arisen from the action of modifying
circumstances upon successive genera
tions who severally transmitted the
accumulated effects to their descendants
—if we find the differences to be now
organic, so that a French child grows
into a French man even when brought
up among strangers—and if the general
fact thus illustrated is true of the whole
nature, intellect inclusive; then it follows
that if there be an order in which the
human race has mastered its various
kinds of knowledge, there will arise in
every child an aptitude to acquire these
kinds of knowledge in the same order.
So that even were the order intrinsically
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
indifferent, it would facilitate education
to lead the individual mind through the
steps traversed by the general mind. But
the order is not intrinsically indifferent;
and hence the fundamental reason why
education should be a repetition of
civilisation in little. It is provable both
that the historical sequence was, in its
main outlines, a necessary one; and that
the causes which determined it apply to
the child as to. the race. Not to specify
these causes in detail, it will suffice here
to point out that as the mind of humanity
placed in the midst of phenomena and
striving to comprehend them, has, after
endless comparisons, speculations, experi
ments, and theories, reached its present
knowledge of each subject by a specific
route; it may rationally be inferred that
the relationship between mind and phe
nomena is such as to prevent this know
ledge from being reached by any other
route; and that as each child’s mind
stands in this same relationship to phe
nomena, they can be accessible to it
oply through the same route. Hence in
deciding upon the right method of edu
cation, an inquiry into the method of
civilisation will help to guide us.
5. One of the conclusions to which
such an inquiry leads, is, that in each
branch of instruction we should proceed
from the empirical to the rational.
During human progress, every science
is evolved out of its corresponding art.
It results from the necessity we are
under, both individually and as a race,
of reaching the abstract by way of the
concrete, that there must be practice
and an accruing experience with its
empirical generalisations, before there
can be science. Science is organised
knowledge; and before knowledge can
be organised, some of it must be pos
sessed. Every study, therefore, should
have a purely experimental introduction ;
53
and only after an ample fund of observa
tions has been accumulated, should
reasoning begin. As illustrative appli
cations of this rule, we may instance the
modern course of placing grammar, not
before language, but after it; or the
ordinary custom of prefacing perspec
tive by practical drawing. By and by
further applications of it will be indi
cated.
6. A second corollary from the fore
going general principle, and one which
cannot be too strenuously insisted on, is,
that in education the process of self
development should be encouraged to
the uttermost. Children should be led
to make their own investigations, and to
draw their own inferences. They should
be told as little as possible, and induced
to discover as much as possible.
Humanity has progressed solely by self
instruction ; and that to achieve the
best results, each mind must progress
somewhat after the same fashion, is con
tinually proved by the marked success
of self-made men. Those who have
been brought up under the ordinary
school-drill, and have carried away with
them the idea that education is prac
ticable only in that style, will think it
hopeless to make children their own
teachers. If, however, they will consider
that the all-important knowledge of sur
rounding objects which a child gets in
its early years, is got without help—if
they will remember that the child is selftaught in the use of its mother tongue—
if they will estimate the amount of that
experience of life, that out-of-school
wisdom, which every boy gathers for
himself—if they will mark the unusual
intelligence of the uncared-for London
gamin, as shown in whatever directions
his faculties have been tasked—if, further,
they will think how many minds have
struggled up unaided, not only through
�54
■ EDUCATION
the mysteries of our irrationally-planned
curriculum, but through hosts of other
obstacles besides; they will find it a not
unreasonable conclusion, that if the
subjects be put before him in right
order and right form, any pupil of
ordinary capacity will surmount his suc
cessive difficulties with but little assis
tance. Who indeed can watch the cease
less observation, and inquiry, and infer
ence going on in a child’s mind, or listen
to its acute remarks on matters within the
range of its faculties, without perceiving
that these powers it manifests, if brought
to bear systematically upon studies within
the same range, would readily master
them without help ? This need for per
petual telling results from our stupidity,
not from the child’s. We drag it away
from the facts in which it is interested,
and which it is actively assimilating of
itself. We put before it facts far too
complex for it to understand; and there
fore distasteful to it. Finding that it
will not voluntarily acquire these facts,
we thrust them into its mind by force
of threats and punishment. By thus
denying the knowledge it craves, and
cramming it with knowledge it cannot
digest, we produce a morbid state of its
faculties; and a consequent disgust for
knowledge in general. And when, as a
result partly of the stolid indolence we
have brought on, and partly of stillcontinued unfitness in its studies, the
child can understand nothing without
explanation, and becomes a mere passive
recipient of our instruction, we infer
that education must necessarily be
carried on thus. Having by our method
induced helplessness, we make the help
lessness a reason for our method. Clearly
then, the experience of pedagogues
cannot rationally be quoted against the
system we are advocating. And who
ever sees this, will see that we may safely
follow the discipline of Nature through
out may, by a skilful ministration,
make the mind as self-developing in its
latter stages as it is in its earlier ones ;
and that only by doing this can we pro
duce the highest power and activity.
7. As a final test by which to judge
any plan of culture, should come the
question,—Does it create a pleasurable
excitement in the pupils ? When in
doubt whether a particular mode or
arrangement is or is not more in harmony
with the foregoing principles than some
other, we may safely abide by this cri
terion.
Even when, as considered
theoretically, the proposed course seems
the best, yet if it produces no interest,
or less interest than some other course,
we should relinquish it; for a child’s
intellectual instincts are more trustworthy
than our reasonings. In respect to the
knowing-faculties, we may confidently
trust in the general law, that under
normal conditions, healthful action is
pleasurable, while action which gives
pain is not healthful. Though at present
very incompletely conformed to by the
emotional nature, yet by the intellectual
nature, or at least by those parts of it
which the child exhibits, this law is
almost wholly conformed to. The re
pugnances to this and that study which
vex the ordinary teacher, are not innate,
but result from his unwise system.
Fellenberg says, “ Experience has taught
me that indolence in young persons is so
directly opposite to their natural dispo
sition to activity, that unless it is the
consequence of bad education, it is
almost invariably connected with some
constitutional defect.” And the spon
taneous activity to which children are
thus prone, is simply the pursuit of those
pleasures which the healthful exercise of
the faculties gives. It is true that some
of the higher mental powers, as yet but
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
little developed in the race, and congeni
tally possessed in any considerable degree
only by the most advanced, are indis
posed to the amount of exertion required
of them.. But these, in virtue of their
very complexity, will, in a normal course
of culture, come last into exercise ; and
will therefore have no demands made on
them until the pupil has arrived at an
age when ulterior motives can be brought
into play, and an indirect pleasure made
to counterbalance a direct displeasure.
With all faculties lower than these, how
ever, the immediate gratification conse
quent on activity, is the normal stimulus ;
and under good management the only
needful stimulus. When we have to fall
back on some other, we must take the
fact as evidence that we are on the wrong
track. Experience is daily showing with
greater clearness, that there is always a
method to be found productive of interest
—even of delight; and it ever turns out
that this is the method proved by all
other tests to be the right one.
With most, these guiding principles
will weigh but'little if left in this abstract
form. Partly, therefore, to exemplify
their application, and partly with a view
of making sundry specific suggestions,
we propose now to pass from the theory
of education to the practice of it.
55
of unseen planets, the invention of calcu
lating engines, the production of great
paintings, or the composition of sym
phonies and operas. This activity of
the faculties from the very first, being
spontaneous and inevitable, the question
is whether we shall supply in due variety
the materials on which they may exer
cise themselves; and to the question so
put, none but an affirmative answer can
be given. As before said, however,
agreement with Pestalozzi’s theory does
not involve agreement with his practice ;
and here occurs a case in point. Treating
of instruction in spelling he says :
The spelling-book ought, therefore, to con
tain all the sounds of the language, and these
ought to be taught in every family from the
earliest infancy. The child who learns his
spelling-book ought to repeat them to the infant
in the cradle, before it is able to pronounce even
one of them, so that they may be deeply im
pressed upon its mind by frequent repetition.
Joining this with the suggestions for
“ a nursery method,” set down in his
Mother’s Manual, in which he makes the
names, positions, connections, numbers,
properties, and uses of the limbs and
body his first lessons, it becomes clear
that Pestalozzi’s notions on early mental
development were too crude to enable
him to devise judicious plans. Let us
consider the course which Psychology
dictates.
The earliest impressions which the
It was the opinion of Pestalozzi, and
one which has ever since his day been mind can assimilate, are the undecomgaining ground, that education of some posable sensations produced by resis
kind should begin from the cradle. tance, light, sound, etc. Manifestly,
Whoever has watched with any discern decomposable states of consciousness
ment, the wide-eyed gaze of the infant at cannot exist before the states of con
surrounding objects, knows very well that sciousness out of which they are com
education does begin thus early, whether posed. There can be no idea of form
we intend it or not; and that these until some familiarity with light in its
fingerings and suckings of everything it gradations and qualities, or resistance in
can lay hold of, these open-mouthed its different intensities, has been acquired;
listenings to every sound, are first steps for, as has been long known, we recognise
in the series which ends in the discovery visible form by means of varieties of light,
�56
EDUCATION
and tangible form by means of varieties of Nor let us omit the fact, that both
resistance. Similarly, no articulate sound
temper and health will be improved
is cognisable until the inarticulate sounds by the continual gratification resulting
which go to make it up have been learned. from a due supply of these impressions
And thus must it be in every other case. which every child so greedily assimilates.
Following, therefore, the necessary law Space, could it be spared, might here be
of progression from the simple to the well filled by some suggestions towards
complex, we should provide for the a more systematic ministration to those
infant a sufficiency of objects presenting simplest of the perceptions.
But it
different degrees and kinds of resistance,
must suffice to point out that any such
a sufficiency of objects reflecting different ministration, recognising the general law
amounts and qualities of light, and a of evolution from the indefinite to the
sufficiency of sounds contrasted in their definite, should proceed upon the corol
loudness, their pitch and their timbre. lary that in the development of every
How fully this à priori conclusion is faculty, markedly contrasted impressions
confirmed by infantile instincts, all will are the first to be distinguished; that
see on being reminded of the delight hence sounds greatly differing in loud
which every young child has in biting its ness and pitch, colours very remote from
toys, in feeling its brother’s bright jacket each other, and substances widely unlike
buttons, and pulling papa’s whiskers— in hardness or texture, should be the first
how absorbed it becomes in gazing at supplied; and that in each case the
any gaudily-painted object, to which it progression must be by slow degrees to
applies the word “ pretty,” when it can impressions more nearly allied.
pronounce it, wholly because of the bright
Passing on to object-lessons, which
colours and how its face broadens into manifestly form a natural continuation
a laugh at the tattlings of its nurse, the of this primary culture of the senses, it
snapping of a visitor’s fingers, or any is to be remarked, that the system com
- sound which it has not before heard. monly pursued is wholly at variance with
Fortunately, the ordinary practices of the the method of Nature, as exhibited alike
nursery fulfil these early requirements in infancy, in adult life, and in the course
. of education to a considerable degree. of civilisation. “The child,” says M.
Much, however, remains to be done; Marcel, “ must be shown how all the
and it is of more importance that it parts of an object are connected, etc.”;
should be done than at first appears. and the various manuals of these objectEvery faculty during that spontaneous lessons severally contain lists of the facts
activity which accompanies its evolution, which the child is to be told respecting
is capable of receiving more vivid im each of the things put before it. Now it
pressions than at any other period. needs but a glance at the daily life of the
Moreover, as these simplest elements infant to see that all the knowledge of
have to be mastered, and as the mastery things which is gained before the acquire
of them whenever achieved must take ment of speech, is self-gained—that the
time, it becomes an economy of time to qualities of hardness and weight asso
occupy this first stage of childhood,
ciated with certain appearances, the pos
during which no other intellectual action session of particular forms and colours
is possible, in gaining a complete famili by particular persons, the production of
arity with them in all their modifications.
special sounds by animals of special
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
aspects, are phenomena which it observes
for itself. In manhood too, when there
are no longer teachers at hand, the obser
vations and inferences hourly required
for guidance, must be made unhelped ;
and success in life depends upon the
accuracy and completeness with which
they are made. Is it probable then, that
while the process displayed in the evolu
tion of humanity at large, is repeated
alike by the infant and the man, a
reverse process must be followed during
the period between infancy and man
hood ? and that too, even in so simple a
thing as learning the properties of objects?
Is it not obvious, on the contrary, that one
method must be pursued throughout ?
And is not Nature perpetually thrusting
this method upon us, if we had but the
wit to see it, and the humility to adopt
it? What can be more manifest than
the desire of children for intellectual
sympathy ? Mark how the infant sitting
on your knee thrusts into your face the
toy it holds, that you may look at it.
See when it makes a creak with its wet
finger on the table, how it turns and
looks at you ; does it again, and again
looks at you ; thus saying as clearly as it
can'—“ Hear this new sound.” Watch
the elder children coming into the
room exclaiming—“ Mamma, see what a
curious thing,” “ Mamma, look at this,”
“ Mamma, look at that ” : a habit which
they would continue, did not the silly
mamma tell them not to tease her.
Observe that, when out with the nursemaid, each little one runs up to her with
the new flower it has gathered, to show
her how pretty it is, and to get her also,
to say it is pretty. Listen to the eager
volubility with which every urchin
describes any novelty he has been to
see ; if only he can find some one who
will attend with any interest. Does not
the induction lie on the surface ? Is it
57
not clear that we must conform our
course to these intellectual instincts—that we must just systematise the natural
process—that we must listen to all the
child has to tell us about each object ;
must induce it to say everything it can
think of about suchobject; must occasion
ally draw its attention to facts it has not
yet observed, with the view of leading it to
notice them itself whenever they recur;
and must go on by and by to indicate or
supply new series of things for a like
exhaustive examination ? Note the way
in which, on this method, the intelligent
mother conducts her lessons. Step by
step she familiarises her little boy with
the names of the simpler attributes,
hardness, softness, colour, taste, size :
in doing which she finds him eagerly
help by bringing this to show her that it
is red, and the other to make her feel
that it is hard, as fast as she gives him
words for these properties. Each addi
tional property, as she draws his atten
tion to it in some fresh thing which he
brings her, she takes care to mention
in connection with those he already
knows ; so that by the natural tendency
to imitate, he may get into the habit of
repeating them one after another. Grad
ually as there occur cases in which he
omits to name one or more of the pro
perties he has become acquainted with,
she introduces the practice of asking him
whether there is not something more
that he can tell her about the thing he
has got. Probably he does not under
stand.
After letting him puzzle a
while she tells him ; perhaps laughing
at him a little for his failure. A few
recurrences of this and he perceives
what is to be done. When next she says
she knows something more about the
object than he has told her, his pride is
roused ; he looks at it intently ; he
thinks over all that he has heard ; and
�58
EDUCATION
the problem being easy, presently finds it with the intellectual appetites their
out. He is full of glee at his success, natural adjuncts—amour propre and the
and she sympathises with him.
In desire for sympathy; to induce by the
common with every child, he delights in union of all these an intensity of atten
the discovery of his powers. He wishes tion which insures perceptions both vivid
for more victories, and goes in quest of and complete; and to habituate the
more things about which to tell her. As mind from the beginning to that practice
his faculties unfold she adds quality after of self-help which it must ultimately
quality to his list: progressing from follow.
hardness and softness to roughness and
Object-lessons should not only be
smoothness, from colour to polish, from carried on after quite a different fashion
simple bodies to composite ones—thus
from that commonly pursued, but should
constantly complicating the problem as be extended to a range of things far
he gains competence, constantly taxing wider, and continued to a period far
his attention and memory to a greater later, than now. They should not be
extent, constantly maintaining his inte limited to the contents of the house;
rest by supplying him with new impres but should include those of the fields
sions such as his mind can assimilate,
and the hedges, the quarry and the sea
and constantly gratifying him by con shore. They should not cease with early
quests over such small difficulties as he childhood; but should be so kept up
can master. In doing this she is mani during youth, as insensibly to merge into
festly but following out that spontaneous the investigations of the naturalist and
process which was going on during a still the man of science. Here again we
earlier period—simply aiding self-evolu have but to follow Nature’s leadings.
tion; and is aiding it in the mode Where can be seen an intenser delight
suggested by the boy’s instinctive be than that of children picking up new
haviour to her.
Manifestly, too, the flowers and watching new insects; or
course she is adopting is the one best hoarding pebbles and shells ? And who
calculated to establish a habit of exhaus is there but perceives that by sympa
tive observation ; which is the professed thising with them they may be led on to
aim of these lessons. To tell a child any extent of inquiry into the qualities
this and to show it the other, is not and structures of these things? Every
to teach it how to observe, but to make botanist who has had children with him
it a mere recipient of another’s obser in the woods and lanes must have
vations : a proceeding which weakens noticed how eagerly they joined in his
rather than strengthens its powers of pursuits, how keenly they searched out
self-instruction—which deprives it of the plants for him, how intently they watched
pleasures resulting from successful activity while he examined them, how they over
—which presents this all-attractive know whelmed him with questions. The con-.
ledge under the aspect of formal tuition sistent follower of Bacon—the “servant
—and which thus generates that indif and interpreter of nature,” will see that
ference and even disgust not unfrequently we ought modestly to adopt the course
Having
felt towards these object-lessons. On of culture thus indicated.
the other hand, to pursue the course become familiar with the simpler pro
above described is simply tc guide the perties of inorganic objects, the child
should by the same process be led on to
intellect to its appropriate food; to join
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCA TION
an exhaustive examination of the things
it picks up in its daily walks—the less
complex facts they present being alone
noticed at first: in plants, the colours,
numbers, and forms of the petals, and
shapes of the stalks and leaves; in
Insects, the numbers of the wings, legs,
and antennae, and their colours. As
these become fully appreciated and
invariably observed, further facts may be
successively introduced : in the one case,
the numbers of stamens and pistils, the
forms of the flowers, whether radial or
bilateral in symmetry, the arrangement
and character of the leaves, whether
opposite or alternate, stalked or sessile,
smooth or hairy, serrated, toothed, or
crenate; in the other, the divisions of
the body, the segments of the abdomen,
the markings of the wings, the number
of joints in the legs, and the forms of
the smaller organs—the system pursued
throughout, being that of making it the
child’s ambition to say respecting every
thing it finds, all that can be said. Then
when a fit age has been reached, the
means of preserving these plants, which
have become so interesting in virtue of
the knowledge obtained of them, may
as a great favour be supplied; and
eventually, as a still greater favour, may
also be supplied the apparatus needful
for keeping the larvae of our common
butterflies and moths through their trans
formations—a practice which, as we
can personally testify, yields the highest
gratification; is continued with ardour
for years; when joined with the entomo
logical collection, adds immense interest
to Saturday-afternoon rambles; and
forms an admirable introduction to the
study of physiology.
We are quite prepared to hear from
many that all this is throwing away time
and energy ; and that children would be
much better occupied in writing their
59
copies or learning their pence-tables, and
so fitting themselves for the business of
life. We regret that such crude ideas of
what constitutes education, and such a
narrow conception of utility, should still
be prevalent. Saying nothing on the
need for a systematic culture of the per
ceptions and the value of the practices
above inculcated as subserving that need,
we are prepared to defend them even on
the score of the knowledge gained. If
men are to be mere cits, mere porers
over ledgers, with no ideas beyond their
trades—if it is well that they should be
as the cockney whose conception of rural
pleasures extends no further than sitting
in a tea-garden smoking pipes and
drinking porter; or as the squire who
thinks of woods as places for shooting
in, of uncultivated plants as nothing but
weeds, and who classifies animals into
game, vermin, and stock—then indeed
it is needless to learn any thing that does
not directly help to replenish the till and
fill the larder. But if there is a more
worthy aim for us than to be drudges—
if there are other uses in the things
around us than their power to bring
money—if there are higher faculties to
be exercised than acquisitive and sensual
ones—if the pleasures which poetry and
art and science and philosophy can bring
are of any moment; then is it desirable
that the instinctive inclination which
every child shows to observe natural
beauties and investigate natural phe
nomena, should be encouraged. But
this gross utilitarianism which is content
to come into the world and quit it again
without knowing what kind of a world it
is or what it contains, may be met on its
own ground. It will by and by be found
that a knowledge of the laws of life
is more important than any other know
ledge whatever—that the laws of life
underlie not only all bodily and mental
�6o
EDUCATION
processes, but by implication all the
transactions of the house and the street,
all commerce, all politics, all morals—
and that therefore without a comprehen
sion of them, neither personal nor social
conduct can be rightly regulated. It
will eventually be seen to, that the laws
of life are essentially the same through
out the whole organic creation; and
further, that they cannot be properly
understood in their complex manifesta
tions until they have been studied in
their simpler ones. And when this is
seen, it will be also seen that in aiding
the child to acquire the out-of-door
information for which it shows so great
an avidity, and in encouraging the
acquisition of such information through
out youth, we are simply inducing it to
store up the raw material of future
organisation—the facts that will one
day bring home to it with due force,
those great generalisations of science by
which actions may be rightly guided.
The spreading recognition of drawing
as an element of education, is one
among many signs of the more rational
views on mental culture now beginning
to prevail.
Once more it may be
remarked that teachers are at length
adopting the course which Nature has
perpetually been pressing on their
notice.
The spontaneous attempts
made by children to represent the men,
houses, trees, and animals around them
—on a slate if they can get nothing
better, or with lead-pencil on paper if
they can beg them—are familiar to all.
To be shown through a picture-book is
one of their highest gratifications; and
as usual, their strong imitative tendency
presently generates in them the ambition
to make pictures themselves also. This
effort to depict the striking things they
see, is a further instinctive exercise of
the perceptions—a means whereby still
greater accuracy and completeness of
observation are induced. And alike by
trying to interest us in their discoveries
of the sensible properties of things, and
by their endeavours to draw, they solicit
from us just that kind of culture which
they most need.
Had teachers been guided by Nature’s
hints, not only in making drawing a part
of education but in choosing modes of
teaching it, they would have done still
better than they have done. What is
that the child first tries to represent ?
Things that are large, things that are
attractive in colour, things round which
its pleasurable associations most cluster
—human beings from whom it has
received so many emotions; cows and
dogs which interest by the many phe
nomena they present; houses that are
hourly visible and strike by their size
and contrast of parts. And which of
the processes of representation gives it
most delight? Colouring. Paper and
pencil are good in default of something
better; but a box of paints and a brush
—these are the treasures. The drawing
of outlines immediately becomes sec
ondary to colouring—-is gone through
mainly with a view to the colouring;
and if leave can be got to colour a book
of prints, how great is the favour!
Now, ridiculous as such a position will
seem to drawing-masters, who postpone
colouring and who teach form by a dreary
discipline of copying lines, we believe
that the course of culture thus indicated
is the right one. The priority of colour
to form, which, as already pointed out,
has a psychological basis, should be
recognised from the beginning; and
from the beginning also, the things
imitated should be real. That greater
delight m colour which is not only
conspicuous in children but persists in
most persons throughout life, should be
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
continuously employed as the natural
stimulus to the mastery of the com
paratively difficult and unattractive form :
the pleasure of the subsequent tinting,
should be the prospective reward for the
labour of delineation. And these efforts
to represent interesting actualities, should
be encouraged; in the conviction that
as, by a widening experience, simpler
and more practicable objects become
interesting, they too will be attempted;
and that so a gradual approximation
will be made towards imitations having
some resemblance to the realities. The
extreme indeiiniteness which, in con
formity with the law of evolution, these
first attempts exhibit, is anything but
a reason for ignoring them. No matter
how grotesque the shapes produced;
no matter how daubed and glaring the
colours. The question is not whether
the child is producing good drawings.
The question is, whether it is developing
its faculties. It has first to gain some
command over its fingers, some crude
notions of likeness; and this practice is
better than any other for these ends,
since it is the spontaneous and interest
ing one. During early childhood no
formal drawing-lessons are possible.
Shall we therefore repress, or neglect to
aid, these efforts of self-culture ? or shall
we encourage and guide them as normal
exercises of the perceptions and the
powers of manipulation ? If by furnish
ing cheap woodcuts to be painted, and
simple contour-maps to have their boun
dary lines tinted, we can not only plea
surably draw out the faculty of colour,
but can incidentally produce some fami
liarity with the outlines of things and
countries, and some ability to move the
brush steadily; and if by the supply of
tempting objects we can keep up the
instinctive practice of making repre
sentations, however rough; it must hap
6j
pen that when the age for lessons in
drawing is reached, there will exist a
facility that would else have been absent.
Time will have been gained ; and trouble
both to teacher and pupil, saved.
From what has been said, it may be
readily inferred that we condemn the
practice of drawing from copies; and
still more so that formal discipline in
making straight lines and curved lines
and compound lines, with which it is the
fashion of some teachers to begin. We
regret that the Society of Arts has re
cently, in its series of manuals on “ Ru
dimentary Art-Instruction,” given its
countenance to an elementary drawing
book, which is the most vicious in prin
ciple that we have seen. We refer to
the “ Outline from Outline, or from the
Flat,” by John Bell, sculptor. As ex
plained in the prefatory note, this pub
lication proposes “ to place before the
student a simple, yet logical mode of
instruction”; and to this end sets out
with a number of definitions thus :—
“ A simple line in drawing is a thin mark
drawn from one point to another.
“ Lines may be divided, as to their nature in
drawing, into two classes:
“ i. Straight, which are marks that go the
shortest road between two points, as A B.
“ 2. Or Curved, which are marks which do
not go the shortest road between two points, as
C D.”
And so the introduction progresses to
horizontal lines, perpendicular lines,
oblique lines, angles of the several kinds,
and the various figures which lines and
angles make up. The work is, in short,
a grammar of form, with exercises. And
thus the system of commencing with a
dry analysis of elements, which, in the
teaching of language, has been exploded,
is to be re-instituted in the teaching of
drawing. We are to set out with the
definite, instead of with the indefinite.
The abstract is to be preliminary to the
�62
EDUCATION
concrete. Scientific conceptions are to
precede empirical experiences. That
this is an inversion of the normal order,
we need scarcely repeat. It has been
well said concerning the custom of pre
facing the art of speaking any tongue by
a drilling in the parts of speech and their
functions, that it is about as reasonable
as prefacing the art of walking by a
course of lessons on the bones, muscles,
and nerves of the legs; and much the
same thing may be said of the proposal
to preface the art of representing objects,
by a nomenclature and definitions of the
lines which they yield on analysis. These
technicalities are alike repulsive and
needless. They render the study dis
tasteful at the very outset; and all with
the view of teaching that which, in the
course of practice, will be learnt uncon
sciously. Just as the child incidentally
gathers the meanings of ordinary words
from the conversations going on around
it, without the help of dictionaries; so,
from the remarks on objects, pictures,
and its own drawings, will it presently
acquire, not only without effort but even
pleasurably, those same scientific terms
which, when taught at first, are a mystery
and a weariness.
If any dependence is to be placed on
the general principles of education that
have been laid down, the process of
learning to draw should be throughout
continuous with those efforts of early
childhood, described above as so worthy
of encouragement. By the time that the
voluntary practice thus initiated has
given some steadiness of hand, and some
tolerable ideas of proportion, there will
have arisen a vague notion of body as
presenting its three dimensions in per
spective. And when, after sundry abor
tive, Chinese-like attempts to render this
appearance on paper, there has grown up
a pretty clear perception of the thing to
be done, and a desire to do it, a first
lesson in empirical perspective may be
given by means of the apparatus occa
sionally used in explaining perspective as
a science. This sounds alarming; but
the experiment is both comprehensible
and interesting to any boy or girl of
ordinary intelligence. A.plate of glass
so framed as to stand vertically on the
table, being placed before the pupil, and
a book or like simple object laid on the
other side of it, he is requested, while
keeping the eye in one position, to make
ink-dots on the glass, so that they may
coincide with, or hide, the comers of
this object. He is next told to join
these dots by lines; on doing which he
perceives that the lines he makes hide,
or coincide with, the outlines of the
object. And then by putting a sheet
of paper on the other side of the glass,
it is made manifest to him that the lines
he has thus drawn represent the object
as he saw it. They not only look like it,
but he perceives that they must be like
it, because he made them agree with its
outlines; and by removing the paper he
can convince himself that they do agree
with its outlines. The fact is new and
striking; and serves him as an experi
mental demonstration, that lines of
certain lengths, placed in certain direc
tions on a plane, can represent lines of
other lengths, and having other direc
tions, in space. By gradually changing
the position of the object, he may be
led to observe how some lines shorten
and disappear, while others come into
sight and lengthen. The convergence
of parallel lines, and, indeed, all the
leading facts of perspective, may, from
time to time, be similarly illustrated
to him. If he has been duly accustomed
to self-help, he will gladly, when it is
suggested, attempt to draw one of these
outlines on paper, by the eye only; and
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
it may soon be made an exciting aim to
produce unas^sted, a representation as
like as he can to one subsequently
sketched on the glass. Thus without
the unintelligent, mechanical practice of
copying other drawings, but by a method
at once simple and attractive—rational,
yet not abstract,—a familiarity with the
linear appearances of things, and a faculty
of rendering them, may be step by step
acquired. To which advantages add
these :—that even thus early the pupil
learns, almost unconsciously, the true
theory of a picture (namely, that it is a
delineation of objects as they appear
when projected on a plane placed between
them and the eye); and that when he
reaches a fit age for commencing scientific
perspective, he is already thoroughly
acquainted with the facts which form its
logical basis.
As exhibiting a rational mode of con
veying primary conceptions in geometry,
we cannot do better than quote the
following passage from Mr. Wyse :—
A child has been in the habit of using cubes
for arithmetic; let him use them also for the
elements of geometry. I would begin with
solids, the reverse of the usual plan. It saves
all the difficulty of absurd definitions, and bad
explanations on points, lines, and surfaces,
which are nothing but abstractions....... A cube
presents many of the principal elements of
geometry; it at once exhibits points, straight
lines, parallel lines, angels, parallelograms, &c.,
&c. These cubes are divisible into various parts.
The pupil has already been familiarised with
such divisions in numeration, and he now pro
ceeds to a comparison of their several parts,
and of the relation of these parts to each other.
....... From thence he advances to globes, which
furnish him with elementary notions of the circle,
of curves generally, &c., &c.
Being tolerably familiar with solids, he may
now substitute planes. The transition may be
made very easy. Let the cube, for instance, be
cut into thin divisions, and placed on paper ; he
will then see as many plane rectangles as he has
divisions ; so with all the others. Globes may
be treated in the same manner ; he will thus see
6.3
how surfaces really are generated, and be enabled
to abstract them with facility in every solid.
He has thus acquired the alphabet and reading
of geometry. He now proceeds to write it.
The simplest operation, and therefore the firstj
is merely to place these planes on a piece of
paper, and pass the pencil round them. When
this has been frequently done, the plane may be
put at a little distance, and the child required to
copy it, and so on.
*
A stock of geometrical conceptions
having been obtained, in some such
manner as this recommended by Mr.
Wyse, a further step may be taken, by
introducing the practice of testing the
correctness of figures drawn by eye:
thus both exciting an ambition to make
them exact, and continually illustrating
the difficulty of fulfilling that ambition.
There can be little doubt that geometry
had its origin (as, indeed, the word
implies) in the methods discovered by
artizans and others, of making accurate
measurements for the foundations of
buildings, areas of enclosures, and the
like; and that its truths came to be
treacured up, merely with a view to their
immediate utility. They should be im
troduced to the pupil under analogous
relationships. In cutting out pieces for
his card-houses, in drawing ornamental
diagrams for colouring, and in those
various instructive occupations which an
inventive teacher will lead him into, he
may for a length of time be advantage
ously left, like the primitive builder, to
tentative processes; and so will learn
through experience the difficulty of
achieving his aims by the unaided senses.
When, having meanwhile undergone a
valuable discipline of the perceptions,
he has reached a fit age for using a pair
of compasses, he will, while duly appre
ciating these as enabling him to verify
his ocular guesses, be still hindered by
the imperfections of the approximative
method. In this stage he may be left
�64
EDUCATION
for a further period : partly as being yet of these triangles may be drawn with
too young for anything higher; partly perfect correctness and without guessing;
because it is desirable that he should be and after his failure he will value the
made to feel still more strongly the want information. Having thus helped him
of systematic contrivances. If the acqui to the solution of the first problem, with
sition of knowledge is to be made con the view of illustrating the nature of
tinuously interesting; and if, in the early geometrical methods, he is in future to
civilisation of the child, as in the early be left to solve the questions put to him
civilisation of the race, science is valued as best he can. To bisect a line, to
only as ministering to art; it is manifest erect a perpendicular, to describe a
that the proper preliminary to geometry,
square, to bisect an angle, to draw a line
is a long practice in those constructive parallel to a given line, to describe a
processes, which geometry will facilitate.
hexagon, are problems which a little
Observe that here, too, Nature points patience will enable him to find out.
the way. Children show a strong pro And from these he may be led on step
pensity to cut out things in paper, to
by step to more complex questions : all
make, to build—a propensity which, if of which, under judicious management,
encouraged and directed, will not only he will puzzle through unhelped. Doubt
prepare the way for scientific conceptions,
less, many of those brought up under
but will develop those powers of mani the old régime, will look upon this
pulation in which most people are so assertion sceptically. We speak from
deficient.
facts, however; and those neither few
When the observing and inventive nor special. We have seen a class of
faculties have attained the requisite boys become so interested in making
power, the pupil may be introduced to out solutions to such problems, as to
empirical geometry; that is—geometry look forward to their geometry-lesson as
dealing with methodical solutions, but a chief event of the week. Within the
not with the demonstrations of them. last month, we have heard of one girls’
Like all other transitions in education,
school, in which some of the young
this should be made not formally but ladies voluntarily occupy themselves with
incidentally; and the relationship to geometrical questions out of schoolconstructive art should still be main hours ; and of another, where they not
tained. To make, out of cardboard, a only do this, but where one of them is
tetrahedron like one given to him, is a begging for problems to find out during
problem which will interest the pupil,
the holidays : both which facts we state
and serve as a convenient starting-point.
on the authority of the teacher. Strong
In attempting this, he finds it needful to proofs, these, of the practicability and
draw four equilateral triangles arranged the immense advantage of self-develop
in special positions. Being unable in ment ! A branch of knowledge which,the absence of an exact method to do as commonly taught, is dry and even
this accurately, he discovers on putting repulsive, is thus, by following the
the triangles into their respective posi method of Nature, made extremely
tions, that he cannot make their sides interesting and profoundly beneficial.fit; and that their angles do not meet at We say profoundly beneficial, because
the apex. He may now be shown how,
the effects are riot confined to the gain
by describing a couple of circles, each ing of geometrical facts, but often
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
65
revolutionise the whole state of mind. It
has repeatedly occurred that those who
have been stupefied by the ordinary
school-drill—by its abstract formulas, its
wearisome tasks, its cramming—have
suddenly had their intellects roused by
thus ceasing to make them passive
recipients, and inducing them to become
active discoverers. The discouragement
caused by bad teaching having been
diminished by a little sympathy, and
sufficient perseverance excited to achieve
a first success, there arises a revulsion of
feeling affecting the whole nature. They
no longer find themselves incompetent;
they, too, can do something. And
gradually as success follows success, the
incubus of despair disappears, and they
attack the difficulties of their other
studies with a courage insuring conquest.
A few weeks after the foregoing re
marks were originally published, Pro
fessor Tyndall, in a lecture at the Royal
Institution “ On the Importance of the
study of Physics as a Branch of Educa
tion,” gave some conclusive evidence to
the same effect. His testimony, based
on personal observation, is of such great
value that we cannot refrain from
quoting it. Here it is.
stated something to be impossible, never to use
that stupid word again. Thus cheered, he has
returned to his task with a smile, which perhaps
had something of doubt in it, but which, never
theless, evinced a resolution to try again. I
have seen the boy’s eye brighten, and at length,
with a pleasure of which the ecstasy of Archi
medes was but a simple expansion, heard him
exclaim, “ I have it, sir.” The consciousness
of self-power, thus awakened, was of immense
value; and animated by it the progress of the
class was truly astonishing. It was often my
custom to give the boys their choice of pursuing
their propositions in the book, or of trying their
strength at others not to be found there. Never
in a single instance have I known the book to
be chosen. I was ever ready to assist when I
deemed help needful, but my offers of assistance
were habitually declined. The boys had tasted
the sweets of intellectual conquest and demanded
victories of their own. I have seen their
diagrams scratched on the walls, cut into the
beams upon their play-ground, and numberless
other illustrations of the living interest they took
in the subject. For my own part, as far as
experience in teaching goes, I was a mere
fledgling: I knew nothing of the rules of
pedagogics, as the Germans name it; but I
adhered to the spirit indicated at the commence
ment of this discourse, and endeavoured to make
geometry a means and not a branch of education.
The experiment was successful, and some of the
most delightful hours of my existence have been
spent in marking the vigorous and cheerful
expansion of mental power, when appealed to in
the manner I have described.
One of the duties which fell to my share,
during the period to which I have referred, was
the instruction of a class in mathematics, and I
usually found that Euclid and the ancient
geometry generally, when addressed to the
understanding, formed a very attractive study
for youth. But it was my habitual practice to
withdraw the boys from the routine of the book,
and to appeal to their self-power in the treat
ment of questions not comprehended in that
routine. At first, the change from the beaten
track usually excited a little aversion : the youth
felt like a child amid strangers ; but in no single
instance have I found this aversion to continue.
When utterly disheartened, I have encouraged
the boy by that anecdote of Newton, where he
attributes the difference between him and other
men, mainly to his own patience ; or of Mira
beau, when he ordered his servant, who had |
This empirical geometry which pre
sents an endless series of problems,
should be continued along with other
studies for years; and may throughout
be advantageously accompanied by those
concrete applications of its principles
which serve as its preliminary. After
the cube, the octahedron, and the vari
ous forms of pyramid and prism have
been mastered, may come the more
complex regular bodies—the dodecahe
dron and icosahedron—to construct
which out of single pieces of cardboard,
requires considerable ingenuity. From
these, the transition may naturally be
made to such modified forms of the
c
�66
EDUCATION
regular bodies as are met with in
crystals—the truncated cube, the cube
with its dihedral as well as its solid
angles truncated, the octahedron and
the various prisms as similarly modified :
in imitating which numerous forms
assumed by different metals and salts, an
acquaintance with the leading facts of
mineralogy will be incidentally gained.
*
After long continuance in exercises of
this kind, rational geometry, as may be
supposed, presents no obstacles. Habit
uated to contemplate relationships of
form and quantity, and vaguely per
ceiving from time to time the necessity
of certain results as reached by certain
means, the pupil comes to regard the
demonstrations of Euclid as the missing
supplemeuts to his familiar problems.
His well-disciplined faculties enable him
easily to master its successive proposi
tions, and to appreciate their value; and
he has the occasional gratification of
finding some of his own methods proved
to be true. Thus he enjoys what is to
the unprepared a dreary task. It only
remains to add, that his mind will pre
sently arrive at a fit condition for that
most valuable of all exercises for the
reflective faculties—the making of origi
nal demonstrations. Such theorems as
those appended to the successive books
of the Messrs. Chambers’s Euclid, will
soon become practicable to him; and in
proving them, the process of self-develop
ment will be not intellectual only, but
moral.
To continue these suggestions much
further, would be to write a detailed
treatise on education, which we do not
purpose. The foregoing outlines of plans
for exercising the perceptions in early
* Those who seek aid in carrying out the
system of culture above described, will find in it
a little work entitled “Inventional Geometry”;
published by Messrs. Williams & Norgate.
childhood, for conducting object-lessons,
for teaching drawing and geometry, must
be considered simply as illustrations of
the method dictated by the general
principles previously specified. We
believe that on examination they will be
found not only to progress from the
simple to the complex, from the indefinite
to the definite, from the concrete to the
abstract, from the empirical to the
rational; but to satisfy the further
requirements, that education shall be a
repetition of civilisation in little, that it
shall be as much as possible a process
of self-evolution, and that it shall be as
pleasurable. The fulfilment of all these
conditions by one type of method, tends
alike to verify the conditions, and to
prove that type of method the right one.
Mark too, that this method is the logical
outcome of the tendency characterising
all modern improvements in tuition—•
that it is but an adoption in full of the
natural system which they adopt partially
—that it displays this complete adoption
of the natural system, both by conform
ing to the above principles, and by
following the suggestions which the
unfolding mind itself gives : facilitating
its spontaneous activities, and so aiding
the developments which Nature is busy
with. Thus there seems abundant reason
to conclude, that the mode of procedure
above exemplified, closely approximates
to the true one.
A few paragraphs must be added in
further inculcation of the two general
principles, that are alike the most impor
tant and the least attended to : namely,
the principle that throughout youth, as
in early childhood and in maturity, the
process shall be one of self-instruction;
and the obverse principle, that the mental
action induced shall be throughout in
trinsically grateful. If progression from
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
simple to complex, from indefinite to
definite, and from concrete to abstract, be
considered the essential requirements as
dictated by abstract psychology ; then do
the requirements that knowledge shall be
self-mastered, and pleasurably mastered,
become tests by which we may judge
whether the dictates of abstract psycho
logy are being obeyed. If the first embody
the leading generalisations of the science
of mental growth, the last are the chief
canons of the art of fostering mental
growth. For manifestly, if the steps in
our curriculum are so arranged that they
can be successively ascended by the
pupil himself with little or no help, they
must correspond with the stages of
evolution in his faculties ; and manifestly,
if the successive achievements of these
steps are intrinsically gratifying to him,
it follows that they require no more than
a normal exercise of his powers.
But making education a process of
self-evolution, has other advantages than
this of keeping our lessons in the right
order. In the first place, it guarantees
a vividness and permanency of impression
which the usual methods can never pro
duce. Any piece of knowledge which
the pupil has himself acquired — any
problem which he has himself solved,
becomes, by virtue of the conquest, much
more thoroughly his than it could else
be. The preliminary activity of mind
which his success implies, the concentra
tion of thought necessary to it, and the
excitement consequent on his triumph,
conspire to register the facts in his
memory in a way that no mere informa
tion heard from a teacher, or read in a
school-book, can be registered. Even if
he fails, the tension to which his faculties
have been wound up, insures his remem
brance of the solution when given to
him, better than half-a-dozen repetitions
would. Observe, again, that this disci
67
pline necessitates a continuous organisa
tion of the knowledge he acquires. It
is in the very nature of facts and inferences
assimilated in this normal manner, that
they successively become the premises
of further conclusions—the means of
solving further questions. The solution
of yesterday’s problem helps the pupil in
mastering to-day’s. Thus the knowledge
is turned into faculty as soon as it is
taken in, and forthwith aids in the
general function of thinking—does not
lie merely written on the pages of an
internal library, as when rote-learnt.
Mark further, the moral culture which
this constant self-help involves. Courage
in attacking difficulties, patient concen
tration of the attention, perseverance
through failures—these are characteristics
which after-life specially requires; and
these are characteristics which this system
of making the mind work for ’ts food
specially produces. That it is thoroughly
practicable to carry out instruction after
this fashion, we can ourselves testify;
having been in youth thus led to solve
the comparatively complex problems of
perspective. And that leading teachers
have been tending in this direction, is
indicated alike in the saying of Fellenberg,
that “the individual, independent activity
of the pupil is of much greater importance
than the ordinary busy officiousness of
many who assume the office of educators”;
in the opinion of Horace Mann, that
“ unfortunately education amongst us at
present consists too much in telling, not
in training”; and in the remark of M.
Marcel, that “ what the learner discovers
by mental exertion is better known than
what is told to him.”
Similarly with the correlative require
ment, that the method of culture pursued
shall be one productive of an intrinsically
happy activity,—an activity not happy
because of intrinsic rewards to be obtained,
�68
EDUCATION
but because of its own healthfulness.
Conformity to this requirement, besides
preventing us from thwarting the normal
process of evolution, incidentally secures
positive benefits of importance. Unless
we are to return to an ascetic morality
(or rather /¡w-morality) the maintenance
of youthful happiness must be considered
as in itself a worthy aim. Not to dwell
upon this, however, we go on to remark
that a pleasurable state of feeling is far
more favourable to intellectual action
than a state of indifference or disgust.
Every one knows that things read, heard,
or seen with interest, are better remem
bered than things read, heard, or seen
with apathy. In the one case the facul
ties appealed to are actively occupied
with the subject presented; in the other
they are inactively occupied with it, and
the attention is continually drawn away
by more attractive thoughts. Hence the
impressions are respectively strong and
weak.
Moreover, to the intellectual
listlessness which a pupil’s lack of interest
in any study involves, must be added the
paralysing fear of consequences. This,
by distracting his attention, increases the
difficulty he finds in bringing his faculties
to bear upon facts that are repugnant to
them. Clearly, therefore, the efficiency
of tuition will, other things equal, be
proportionate to the gratification with
which tasks are performed.
It should be considered also, that grave
moral consequences depend upon the
habitual pleasure or pain which daily
lessons produce. No one.can compare
the faces and manners of two boys—theone made happy by mastering interesting
subjects, and the other made miserable
by disgust with his studies, by consequent
inability, by cold looks, by threats, by
punishment — without seeing that the
disposition of the one is being benefited,
and that of the other injured. Whoever
has marked the effects of success and
failure upon the mind, and the power of
the mind over the body; will see that in
the one case both temper and health are
favourably affected, while in the other
there is danger of permanent moroseness,
of permanent timidity, and even of per
manent constitutional depression. There
remains yet another indirect result of no
small moment. The relationship between
teachers and their pupils is, other things
equal, rendered friendly and influential,
or antagonistic and powerless, according
as the system of culture produces happi
ness or misery. Human beings are at
the mercy of their associated ideas. A
daily minister of pain cannot fail to be
regarded with secret dislike; and if he
causes no emotions but painful ones, will
inevitably be hated. Conversely, he who
constantly aids children to their ends,
hourly provides them with the satisfac
tions of conquest, hourly encourages
them through their difficulties and sympa
thises in their successes, will be liked;
nay, if his behaviour is consistent
throughout, must be loved. And when
we remember how efficient and benign
is the control of a master who is felt to
be a friend, when compared with the
control of one who is looked upon with
aversion, or at best indifference, we may
infer that the indirect advantages of
conducting education on the happiness
principle do not fall far short of the
direct ones. To all who question the
possibility of acting out the system here
advocated, we reply as before, that not
only does theory point to it, but experience
commends it. To the many verdicts of
distinguished teachers who since Pestalozzi’s time have testified this, may be
here added that of Professor Pillans,
who asserts that “ where young, people
are taught as they ought to be, they are
quite as happy in school as at play,
�MORAL EDUCATION
seldom less delighted, nay, often more,
with the well-directed exercise of their
mental energies, than with that of their
muscular powers.”
As suggesting a final reason for making
education a process of self-instruction,
and by consequence a process of pleasur
able instruction, we may advert to the
fact that, in proportion as it is made so,
is there a probability that it will not
cease when school-days end. As long
as the acquisition of knowledge is
rendered habitually repugnant, so long
will there be a prevailing tendency to
discontinue it when free from the coer
cion of parents and masters. And when
the acquisition of knowledge has been
rendered habitually gratifying, then there
will be as prevailing a tendency to con
tinue, without superintendence, that self
culture previously carried on under super
intendence. These results are inevitable.
While the laws of mental association
remain true—while men dislike the
things and places that suggest painful
recollections, and delight in those which
call to mind by-gone pleasures—painful
lessons will make knowledge repulsive,
and pleasurable lessons will make it
attractive. The men to whom in boyhood information came m dreary tasks
along with threats of punishment, and
who were never led into habits of inde
pendent inquiry, are unlikely to be
students in after years ; while those to
whom it came in the natural forms, at
the proper times, and who remember its
facts as not only interesting in them
selves, but as the occasions of a long
series of gratifying successes, are likely
to continue through life that self
instruction commenced in youth.
CHAPTER III.
MORAL EDUCATION
The greatest defect in our programmes
of education is entirely overlooked.
While much is being done in the
detailed improvement of our systems in
respect both of matter and manner, the
most pressing desideratum- has not yet
been even recognised as a desideratum.
To prepare the young for the duties of
life, is tacitly admitted to be the end
which parents and schoolmasters should
have in view; and happily, the value of
the things taught, and the goodness of
the methods followed in teaching them,
are now ostensibly judged by their fitness
to this end. The propriety of substi
tuting for an exclusively classical training,
a training in which the modern languages
shall have a share, is argued on this
ground. The necessity of increasing the
amount of science is urged for like
reasons. But though some care is taken
to fit youth of both sexes for society and
citizenship, no care whatever is taken to
fit them for the position of parents.
While it is seen that for the purpose of
gaining a livelihood, an elaborate pre
paration is needed, it appears to be
thought that for the bringing up of
children, no preparation whatever is
needed. While many years are spent
by a boy in gaining knowledge of which
the chief value is that it constitutes “ the
education of a gentleman”; and while
many years are spent by a girl in those
decorative acquirements which fit her for
evening parties ; not an hour is spent by
either in preparation for that gravest of
all responsibilities—the management of
a family. Is it that this responsibility
is but a remote contingency? On the
contrary, it is sure to devolve on nine
�7o
EDUCATION
out of ten. Is it that the discharge of
it is easy? Certainly not: of all functions
which the adult has to fulfil, this is the
most difficult. Is it that each may be
trusted by self-instruction to fit himself,
or herself, for the office of parent ? No :
not only is the need for such self-instruc
tion unrecognised, but the complexity of
the subject renders it the one of all
others in which self-instruction is least
likely to succeed. No rational plea can
be put forward for leaving the Art of
Education out of our curriculum.
Whether as bearing on the happiness
of parents themselves, or whether as
affecting the characters and lives of their
children and remote descendants, we
must admit that a knowledge of the right
methods of juvenile culture, physical,
intellectual, and moral, is a knowledge
of extreme importance.
This topic
should be the final one in the course
of instruction passed through by each
man and woman. As physical maturity
is marked by the ability to produce
offspring; so, mental maturity is marked
by the ability to train those offspring.
The subject which involves all other
subjects, and therefore the subject in which
education should culminate, is the Theory
and Practice of Education.
In the absence of this preparation, the
management of children, and more espe
cially the moral management, is lament
ably bad. Parents either never think
about the matter at all, or else their con
clusions are crude and inconsistent. In
most cases, and especially on the part of
mothers, the treatment adopted on every
occasion is that which the impulse of the
moment prompts : it springs not from
any reasoned-out conviction as to what
will most benefit the child, but merely
expresses the dominant parental feelings,
whether good or ill; and varies from
hour to hour as these feelings vary. Or
if the dictates of passion are supple
mented by any definite doctrines and
methods, they are those handed down
from the past, or those suggested by the
remembrances of childhood, or those
adopted from nurses and servants—
methods devised not by the enlighten
ment, but by the ignorance, of the time.
Commenting on the chaotic state oí
opinion and practice relative to selfgovernment, Richter writes:—
If the secret variances of a large class of
ordinary fathers were brought to light, and laid
down as a plan of studies and reading, cata
logued for a moral education, they would run
somewhat after this fashion :—In the first hour
“pure morality must be read to the child, either
by myself or the tutor ”; in the second “mixed
morality, or that which may be applied to one’s
own advantage
in the third, “ do you not see
that your father does so and so?”; in the fourth,
“you are little, and this is only fit for grown-up
people ”; in the fifth, “ the chief matter is that
you should succeed in the world, and become
something in the state”; in the sixth, “not the
temporary, but the eternal, determines the worth
of a man”; in the seventh, “therefore rather
suffer injustice, and be kind ”; in the eighth, “ but
defend yourself bravely if any one attack you ”;
in the ninth, “ do not make a noise, dear child ”;
in the tenth, “a boy must not sit so quiet”; in
the eleventh, “you must obey your parents
better”; in the twelfth, “and educate yourself.”
So by the hourly change of his principles, the
father conceals their untenableness and onesided
ness. As for his wife, she is neither like him,
nor yet like that harlequin who came on to the
stage with a bundle of papers under each arm,
and answered to the inquiry, what he had under
his right arm, “orders,” and to what he had
under his left arm, “ counter-orders.” But the
mother might be much better compared to a
giant Briareus, who had a hundred arms, and a
bundle of papers under each.
This state of things is not to be readily
changed. Generations must pass before
a great amelioration of it can be expected.
Like political institutions, educational
systems are not made, but grow; and
within brief periods growth is insensible.
Slow, however, as must be any improve
�MORAL EDUCATION
ment, even that improvement implies the
use of means ; and among the means is
discussion.
We are not among those who believe
in Lord Palmerston’s dogma, that “ all
children are born good.” On the whole,
the opposite dogma, untenable as it is,
seems to us less wide of the truth. Nor do
we agree with those who think that, by
skilful discipline, children may be made
altogether what they should be. Con
trariwise, we are satisfied that, though
imperfections of nature may be dimin
ished by wise management, they cannot
be removed by it. The notion that an
ideal humanity might be forthwith pro
duced by a perfect system of education,,
is near akin to that implied in the poems
of Shelley, that would mankind give up
their old institutions and prejudices, all
the evils in the world would at once
disappear : neither notion being accep
table to such as have dispassionately
studied human affairs.
Nevertheless, we may fitly sympathise
with those who entertain these too
sanguine hopes. Enthusiasm, pushed
even to fanaticism, is a useful motive
power—perhaps an indispensable one.
It is clear that the ardent politician
would never undergo the labours and
make the sacrifices he does, did he not
believe that the reform he fights for is
the one thing needful. But for his con
viction that drunkenness is the root of
■all social evils, the teetotaller would
•agitate far less energetically. In philan
thropy, as in other things, great advan
tage results from division of labour; and
that there may be division of labour,
each class of philanthropists must be
more or less subordinated to its function
—must have an exaggerated faith in its
work. Hence, of those who regard
■education, intellectual or moral, as the
7i
panacea, we may say that their undue
expectations are not without use ; and
that perhaps it is part of the beneficent
order of things that their confidence
cannot be shaken.
Even were it true, however, that by
some possible system of moral control,
children could be moulded into the
desired form, and even could every
parent be indoctrinated with this system;
we should still be far from achieving the
object in view. It is forgotten that the
carrying out of any such system pre
supposes, on the part of adults, a degree
of intelligence, of goodness, of self
control, possessed by no one. The
error made by those who discuss ques
tions of domestic discipline, lies in
ascribing all the faults and difficulties to
the children, and none to the parents.
The current assumption respecting
family government, as respecting na
tional government, is, that the virtues
are with the rulers and the vices with the
ruled. Judging by educational theories,
men and women are entirely transfigured
in their relations to offspring. The
citizens we do business with, the people
we meet in the world, we know to be
very imperfect creatures. In the daily
scandals, in the quarrels of friends, in
bankruptcy disclosures, in lawsuits, in
police reports, we have constantly thrust
before us the pervading selfishness, dis
honesty, brutality. Yet when we criti
cise nursery-management and canvass
the misbehaviour of juveniles, we habitu
ally take for granted that these culpable
persons are free from moral delinquency
in the treatment of their boys and girls !
So far is this from the truth, that we do
not hesitate to blame parental miscon
duct for a great part of the domestic
disorder commonly ascribed to the per
versity of children. We do not assert
this of the more sympathetic and self
�72
EDUCATION
restrained, among whom we hope most
of our readers may be classed; but we
assert it of the mass. What kind of
moral culture is to be expected from a
mother who, time after time, angrily
shakes her infant because it will not
suck ; which we once saw a mother do ?
How much sense of justice is likely to
be instilled by a father who, on having
his attention drawn by a scream to the
fact that his child’s finger is jammed
between the window-sash and the sill,
begins to beat the child instead of re
leasing it ? Yet that there are such
fathers is testified to us by an eye
witness. Or, to take a still stronger
case, also vouched for by direct testi
mony—what are the educational pros
pects of the boy who, on being taken
home with a dislocated thigh, is saluted
with a castigation ? It is true that these
are extreme instances—instances exhibit
ing in human beings that blind instinct
which impels brutes to destroy the
weakly and injured of their own race.
But extreme though they are, they
typify feelings and conduct daily observ
able in many families. Who has not
repeatedly seen a child slapped by nurse
or parent for a fretfulness probably re
sulting from bodily derangement ? Who,
when watching a mother snatch up a
fallen little one, has not often traced,
both in the rough manner and in the
sharply - uttered exclamation — “ You
stupid little thing 1”—an irascibility fore
telling endless future squabbles ? Is
there not in the harsh tones in which a
father bids his children be quiet, evi
dence of a deficient fellow-feeling with
them ? Are not the constant, and often
quite needless, thwartings that the young
experience—the injunctions to sit still,
which an active child cannot obey with
out suffering great nervous irritation, the
commands not to look out of the window
when travelling by railway, which on
a child of any intelligence entails serious
deprivation—are not these thwartings,
we ask, signs of a terrible lack of sym
pathy ? The truth is, that the difficulties
of moral education are necessarily of
dual origin—necessarily result from the
combined faults of parents and children.
If hereditary transmission is a law of
nature, as every naturalist knows it to
be, and as our daily remarks and current
proverbs admit it to be; then, on the
average of cases, the defects of children
mirror the defects of their parents ; —on
the average of cases, we say, because,
complicated as the results are by the
transmitted traits of remoter ancestors,
the correspondence is not special but
only general. And if, on the average of
cases, this inheritance of defects exists,
then the evil passions which parents
have to check in their children, imply
like evil passions in themselves : hidden,
it may be, from the public eye; or per
haps obscured by other feelings; but
still there.
Evidently, therefore, the
general practice of any ideal system of
discipline is hopeless: parents are not
good enough.
Moreover, even were there methods
by which the desired end could be at
once effected ; and even had fathers and
mothers sufficient insight, sympathy, and
self-command to employ these methods
consistently; it might still be contended
that it would be of no use to reform
family-government faster than other
things are reformed. What is it that
we aim to do ? Is it not that education
of whatever kind, has for its proximate
end to prepare a child for the business
of life—to produce a citizen who, while
he is well conducted, is also able to make
his way in the world ? And does not
making his way in the world (by which
we mean, not the acquirement of wealth,
�MORAL EDUCATION
but of the funds requisite for bringing
up a family)—does not this imply a
- certain fitness for the world as it now is ?
And if by any system of culture an ideal
human being could be produced, is it
not doubtful whether he would be fit for
the world as it now is? May we not,
on the contrary, suspect that his too
keen sense of rectitude, and too elevated
standard of conduct, would make life
intolerable or even impossible ? And how
ever admirable the result might be, con
sidered individually, would it not be selfdefeating in so far as society and posterity
are concerned ? There is much reason
for thinking that as in a nation so in a
family, the kind of government is, on
the whole, about as good as the general
state of human nature permits it to be.
We may argue that in the one case, as
in the other, the average character of the
people determines the quality of the
control exercised. In both cases it may
be inferred that amelioration of the
average character leads to an ameliora
tion of system ; and further, that were
it possible to ameliorate the system with
out the average character being first
ameliorated, evil rather than good would
follow. Such degree of harshness as
children now experience from their
parents and teachers, may be regarded
as but a preparation for that greater
harshness which they will meet with on
entering the world. And it may be
urged that were it possible for parents
and teachers to treat them with perfect
equity and entire sympathy, it would
but intensify the sufferings which the
selfishness of men must, in after life,
inflict on them.1
1 Of this nature is the plea put in by some for
the rough treatment experienced by boys at our
public schools; where, as it is said, they are
introduced to a miniature world whose hardships
prepare them for those of the real world. It
73
“But does not this prove too much?”
some one will ask. “ If no system of
moral training can forthwith make
children what they should be; if, even
were there a system that would do this,
existing parents are too imperfect to
carry it out; and if even could such a
system be successfully carried out, its
results would be disastrously incongruous
with the present state of society; does it
not follow that to reform the system now
in use, is neither practicable nor desir
able?” No. It merely follows that
reform in domestic government must go
on, pari passu, with other reforms. It
merely follows that methods of discipline
neither can be nor should be ameliorated,
except by instalments. It merely follows
that the dictates of abstract rectitude
will, in practice, inevitably be subordi
nated by the present state of human
nature—by the imperfections alike of
children, of parents, and of society; and
can only be better fulfilled as the general
character becomes better.
“At any rate, then,” may rejoin our
critic, “it is clearly useless to set up
any ideal standard of family discipline.
There can be no advantage in elabora
ting and recommending methods that
are in advance of the time.” Again we
must be admitted that the plea has some force ;
but it is a very insufficient plea. For whereas
domestic and school discipline, though they
should not be much better than the discipline of
adult life, should be somewhat better ; the disci
pline which boys meet with at Eton, Winchester,
Harrow, etc., is worse than that adult life—more
unjust and cruel. Instead of being an aid to
human progress which all culture should be,
the culture of our public schools, by accustoming
boys to a despotic form of government and an
intercourse regulated by brute force, tends to fit
them for a lower state of society than that which
exists. And chiefly recruited as our legislature
is from among those who are brought up at such
schools, this barbarising influence becomes a
hindrance to national progress.
�74
EDUCATION
contend for the contrary. Just as
in the case of political government,
though pure rectitude may be at
present impracticable, it is requisite
to know where the right lies, in
order that the changes we make may be
iowards the right instead of away from
it; so, in the case of domestic govern
ment, an ideal must be upheld, that
there may be gradual approximations to
it. We need fear no evil consequences
from the maintenance of such an ideal.
On the average the constitutional con
servatism of mankind is strong enough
to prevent too rapid a change. Things
are so organised that until men have
grown up to the level of a higher belief,
they cannot receive it: nominally, they
may hold it, but not virtually. And
even when the truth gets recognised, the
obstacles to conformity with it are so
persistent as to outlive the patience of
philanthropists and even of philosophers.
We may be sure, therefore, that the
difficulties in the way of a normal
government of children, will always put
an adequate check upon the efforts to
realise it.
With these preliminary explanations,
let us go on to consider the true aims
and methods of moral education. After
a few pages devoted to the settlement of
general principles, during the perusal of
which we bespeak the reader’s patience,
we shall aim by illustrations to make
clear the right methods of parental
behaviour in the hourly occurring
difficulties of family government.
When a child falls, or runs its head
against the table, it suffers a pain, the
remembrance of which tends to make it
more careful; and by repetition of such
experiences, it is eventually disciplined
into proper guidance of its movements.
If it lays hold of the fire-bars, thrusts its
hand into a candle-flame, or spills boiling
water on any part of its skin, the result
ing burn or scald is a lesson not easily
forgotten. So deep an impression is
produced by one or two events of this
kind, that no persuasion will afterwards
induce it thus to disregard the laws of
its constitution.
Now in these cases, Nature illustrates
to us in the simplest way, the true theory
and practice of moral discipline—a
theory and practice which, however
much they may seem to the superficial
like those commonly received, we shall
find on examination to differ from them
very widely.
Observe, first, that in bodily injuries
and their penalties we have misconduct
and its consequences reduced to their
simplest forms. Though, according to
their popular acceptations, right and
wrong are words scarcely applicable to
actions that have none but direct bodily
effects j yet whoever considers the matter
will see that such actions must be as
much classifiable under these heads as
any other actions. From whatever
assumption they start, all theories of
morality agree that conduct whose total
results, immediate and remote, are
beneficial, is good conduct; while
conduct whose total results, immediate
and remote, are injurious, is bad
conduct. The ultimate standards by
which all men judge of behaviour,
are the resulting happiness or misery.
We consider drunkenness wrong because
of the physical degeneracy and accom
panying moral evils entailed on the
drunkard and his dependents.
Did
theft give pleasure both to taker and
loser, we should not find it in our cata
logue of sins. Were it conceivable that
kind actions multiplied human sufferings,
we should condemn them—should not
consider them kind. It needs but to
�MokAl education
read the first newspaper-leader, or listen
to any conversation on social affairs, to
see that acts of parliament, political
movements, philanthropic agitations, in
common with the doings of individuals
are judged by their anticipated results in
augmenting the pleasures or pains of
men. And if on analysing all secondary,
superinduced ideas, we find these to be
our final tests of right and wrong, we
cannot refuse to class bodily conduct as
right or wrong according to the bene
ficial or detrimental results produced.
Note, in the second place, the char
acter of the punishments by which these
physical transgressions are prevented.
Punishments, we call them, in the
absence of a better word: for they are
not punishments in the literal sense.
They are not artificial and unnecessary
inflictions of pain; but are simply the
beneficent checks to actions that are
essentially at variance with bodily wel
fare—checks in the absence of which
life would be quickly destroyed by bodily
injuries. It is the peculiarity of these
penalties, if we must so call them, that
they are simply the unavoidable conse
quences of the deeds which they follow :
they are nothing more than the inevitable
reactions entailed by the child’s actions.
Let it be further borne in mind that
these painful reactions are proportionate
to the transgressions. A slight accident
brings a slight pain ; a more serious one,
a severer pain. It is not ordained that
the urchin who tumbles over the door
step, shall suffer in excess of the amount
necessary; with the view of making it
still more cautious than the necessary
suffering will make it. But from its daily
experience it is left to learn the greater
or less errors; and to behave accord
ingly.
And then mark, lastly, that these
natural reactions which follow the child’s
wrong actions, are constant, direct,
unhesitating, and not to be escaped.
No threats; but a silent, rigorous per
formance. If a child runs a pin into
its finger, pain follows. If it does it
again, there is again the same result:
and so on perpetually. In all its dealings
with inorganic Nature it finds this un
swerving persistence, which listens to no
excuse, and from which there is no
appeal; and very soon recognising this
stern though beneficent discipline, it
becomes extremely careful not to trans
gress.
Still more significant will these general
truths appear, when we remember that
they hold throughout adult life as well
as throughout infantine life. It is by an
experimentally-gained knowledge of the
natural consequences, that men and
women are checked when they go wrong.
After home education has ceased, and
when there are no longer parents and
teachers to forbid this or that kind of
conduct, there comes into play a disci
pline like that by which the young child
is trained to self-guidance. If the youth ~
entering on the business of life idles
away his time and fulfils slowly or unskil
fully the duties entrusted to him, there
by-and-by follows the natural penalty :
he is discharged, and left to suffer for
awhile the evils of a relative poverty,
On the unpunctual man, ever missing his
appointments of business and pleasure,
there continually fall the consequent
inconveniences, losses, and deprivations.
The tradesman who charges too high a
rate of profit, loses his customers, and so
is checked in his greediness. Diminish
ing practice teaches the inattentive
doctor to bestow more trouble on his
patients. The too credulous creditor
and the over-sanguine speculator, alike
learn by the difficulties which rashness
entails on them, the necessity of being
�76
EDUCATION
more cautious in their engagements.
And so throughout the life of every
citizen. In the quotation so often made
apropos of such cases—“The burnt child
dreads the fire ”—we see not only that
the analogy between this social discipline
and Nature’s early discipline of infants
is universally recognised; but we also
see an implied conviction that this disci
pline is of the most efficient kind. Nay
indeed, this conviction is more than
implied ; it is distinctly stated. Every
one has heard others confess that only
by “ dearly bought experience ” had they
been induced to give up some bad or
foolish course of conduct formerly
pursued. Every one has heard, in the
criticisms passed on the doings of this
spendthrift or the other schemer, the
remark that advice was useless, and that
nothing but “bitter experience ” would
produce any effect : nothing, that is, but
suffering the unavoidable consequences.
And if further proof be needed that the
natural reaction is not only the most
efficient penalty, but that no humanlydevised penalty can replace it, we have
such further proof in the notorious illsuccess of our various penal systems.
Out of the many methods of criminal
discipline that have been proposed and
legally enforced, none have answered the
expectations of their advocates. Artificial
punishments have failed to produce
reformation ; and have in many cases
increased the criminality. The only suc
cessful reformatories are those privatelyestablished ones which approximate their
régime to the method of Nature—which
do little more than administer the natural
consequences of criminal conduct :
diminishing the criminal’s liberty of
action as much as is needful for the
safety of society, and requiring him to
maintain himself while living under this
restraint. Thus we see, both that the
discipline by which the young child is
taught to regulate its movements is the
discipline by which the great mass of
adults are kept in order, and more or
less improved; and that the discipline
humanly-devised for the worst adults,
fails when it diverges from this divinelyordained discipline, and begins to succeed
on approximating to it.
Have we not here, then, the guiding
principle of moral education ? Must we
not infer that the system so beneficent
in its effects during infancy and maturity,
will be equally beneficent throughout
youth? Can any one believe that the
method which answers so well in the
first and the last divisions of life, will
not answer in the intermediate division ?
Is it not manifest that as “ ministers and
interpreters of Nature ” it is the function
of parents to see that their children
habitually experience the true conse
quences of their conduct—the natural
reactions; neither warding them off, nor
intensifying them, nor putting artificial
consequences in place of them? No
unprejudiced reader will hesitate in his
assent.
Probably, however, not a few will con
tend that already most parents do this—
that the punishments they inflict are, in
the majority of cases, the true conse
quences of ill-conduct—that parental
anger, venting itself in harsh words and
deeds, is the result of a child’s transgres
sion—and that, in the suffering, physical
or moral, which the child is subject to,
it experiences the natural reaction of its
misbehaviour. Along with much error
this assertion contains some truth. It is
unquestionable that the displeasure of
fathers and mothers is a true conse
quence of juvenile delinquency; and that
the manifestation of it is a normal check
upon such delinquency. The scoldings,
�MORAL EDUCATION
and threats, and blows, which a passionate
parent visits on offending little ones, are
doubtless effects actually drawn from
such a parent by their offences ; and so
are, in some sort, to be considered as
among the natural reactions of their
wrong actions. Nor are we prepared to
say that these modes of treatment are
not relatively right—right, that is, in
relation to the uncontrollable children of
ill-controlled adults; and right in relation
to a state of society in which such illcontrolled adults make up the mass of
the, people.
As already suggested,
educational systems, like political and
other institutions, are generally as good
as the state of human nature permits.
The barbarous children of barbarous
parents are probably only to be re
strained by the barbarous methods which
such parents spontaneously employ;
while submission to these barbarous
methods is perhaps the best preparation
such children can have for the barbarous
society in which they are presently to
play a part. Conversely, the civilised
members of a civilised society will spon
taneously manifest their displeasure in
less violent ways—will spontaneously
use milder measures: measures strong
enough for their better-natured children.
Thus it is true that, in so far as the
expression of parental feeling is con
cerned, the principle of the natural
reaction is always more or less followed.
The system of domestic government
gravitates towards its right form.
But now observe two important facts.
The first fact is that, in states of rapid
transition like ours, which witness a
continuous battle between old and new
theories and old and new practices, the
educational methods in use are apt to
be considerably out of harmony with the
times. In deference to dogmas fit only
for the ages that uttered them, many
77
parents inflict punishments that do
violence to their own feelings, and so
visit on their children unnatural reactions;
while other parents, enthusiastic in their
hopes of immediate perfection, rush to
the opposite extreme. The second fact
is, that the discipline of chief value is
not the experience of parental approba
tion or disapprobation; but it is the
experience of those results which would
ultimately flow from the conduct in the
absence of parental opinion or interfer
ence. The truly instructive and salutary
consequences are not those inflicted by
parents when they take upon themselves
to be Nature’s proxies; but they are
those inflicted by Nature herself. We
will endeavour to make this distinction
clear by a few illustrations, which, while
they show what we mean by natural
reactions as contrasted with artificial
ones, will afford some practical sugges
tions.
In every family where there are young
children there daily occur cases of what
mothers and servants call “making a
litter.” A child has had out its box of
toys, and leaves them scattered about the
floor. Or a handful of flowers, brought
in from a morning walk, is presently
seen dispersed over tables and chairs.
Or, a little girl, making doll’s clothes,
disfigures the room with shreds. In
most cases the trouble of rectifying this
disorder falls anywhere but where it
should. Occurring in the nursery, the
nurse herself, with many grumblings
about “ tiresome little things,” under
takes the task; if below-stairs, the task
usually devolves either on one of the
elder children or on the housemaid : the
transgressor being visited with nothing
more than a scolding. In this very
simple case, however, there are many
parents wise enough to follow out, more
or less consistently, the normal course—
�78
EDUCATION
that of making the child itself collect the
toys or shreds. The labour of putting
things in order, is the true consequence
of having put them in disorder. Every
trader in his office, every wife in her
household, has daily experience of this
fact. And if education be a preparation
for the business of life, then every
child should also, from the begin
ning, have daily experience of this
fact. If the natural penalty be met by
refractory behaviour (which it may per
haps be where the system of moral disci
pline previously pursued has been bad),
then the proper course is to let the child
feel the ulterior reaction caused by its
disobedience. Having refused or neg
lected to pick up and put away the
things it has scattered about, and having
thereby entailed the trouble of doing
this on some one else, the child should,
on subsequent occasions, be denied the
means of giving this trouble. When
next it petitions for its toy-box, the
reply of its mamma should be—“ The
last time you had your toys you left
them lying on the floor, and Jane had to
pick them up. Jane is too busy to pick
up every day the things you leave about;
and I cannot do it myself. So that, as
you will not put away your toys when
you have done with them, I cannot let
you have them.” This is obviously a
natural consequence, neither increased
nor lessened ; and must be so recognised
by a child. The penalty comes, too, at
the moment when it is most keenly felt.
A new-born desire is balked at the
moment of anticipated gratification ; and
the strong impression so produced can
scarcely fail to have an effect on the
future conduct: an effect which, by
consistent repetition, will do whatever
can be done in curing the fault. Add
to which, that, by this method, a child
is early taught the lesson which cannot
be learnt too soon, that in this world of
ours pleasures are rightly to be obtained
only by labour.
Take another case. Not long since
we had frequently to hear the repri
mands visited on a little girl who was
scarcely ever ready in time for the daily
walk. Of eager disposition, and apt to
become absorbed in the occupation of
the moment, Constance never thought
of putting on her things till the rest were
ready. The governess and the other
children had almost invariably to wait;
and from the mamma there almost
invariably came the same scolding.
Utterly as this system failed, it never
occurred to the mamma to let Constance
experience the natural penalty. Nor,
indeed, would she try it when it was
suggested to her. In the world, un
readiness entails the loss of some
advantage that would else have been
gained : the train is gone ; or the steam
boat is just leaving its moorings ; or the
best things in the market are sold; or all
the good seats in the concert-room are
filled. And every one, in cases per
petually occurring, may see that it is the
prospective deprivations which prevent
people from being too late. Is not the
inference obvious ? Should not the pro
spective deprivations control a child’s
conduct also ? If Constance is not
ready at the appointed time, the natural
result is that of being left behind, and
losing her walk. And after having once
or twice remained at home while the rest
were enjoying themselves in the fields—
after having felt that this loss of a muchprized gratification was solely due to
want of promptitude; amendment would
in all probability take place. At any
rate, the measure would be more effective
than that perpetual scolding which ends
only in producing callousness.
Again, when children, with more than
�MORAL EDUCATION
usual carelessness, break or lose the
things given to them, the natural penalty
—the penalty which makes grown-up
persons more careful—is the consequent
inconvenience. The lack of the lost or
damaged article, and the cost of re
placing it, are the experiences by which
men and women are disciplined in these
matters; and the experiences of children
should be as much as possible assimilated
to theirs. We do not refer to that early
period at which toys are pulled to pieces
in the process of learning their physical
properties, and at which the results of
carelessness cannot be understood; but
to a later period, when the meaning and
advantages of property are perceived.
When a boy, old enough to possess a
penknife, uses it so roughly as to snap
the blade, or leaves it in the grass by
some hedge-side where he was cutting a
stick, a thoughtless parent, or some in
dulgent relative, will commonly forthwith
buy him another ; not seeing that, by
doing this, a valuable lesson is prevented.
In such a case, a father may properly
explain that penknives cost money, and
that to get money requires labour; that
ne cannot afford to purchase new pen
knives for one who loses or breaks them ;
and that until he sees evidence of greater
carefulness he must decline to make
good the loss. A parallel discipline will
serve to check extravagance.
These few familiar instances, here
chosen because of the simplicity with
which they illustrate our point, will
make clear to every one the distinction
between those natural penalties which
we contend are the truly efficient ones,
and those artificial penalties commonly
substituted for them. Before going on
to exhibit the higher and subtler applica
tions of the principle exemplified, let us
note its many and great superiorities over
the principle, or rather the empirical
79
practice, which prevails in most families.
One superiority is that the pursuance
of it generates right conceptions of cause
and effect; which by frequent and con
sistent experience are eventually rendered
definite and complete. Proper conduct
in life is much better guaranteed when
the good and evil consequences of actions
are understood, than when they are
merely believed on authority. A child
who finds that disordliness entails the
trouble of putting things in order, or
who misses a gratification from dilatori
ness, or whose carelessness is followed
by the want of some much-prized posses
sion, not only suffers a keenly-felt con
sequence, but gains a knowledge of
causation: both the one and the other
being just like those which adult life will
bring. Whereas a child who in such
cases receives a reprimand, or some
factitious penalty, not only experiences
a consequence for which it often cares
very little, but misses that instruction
respecting the essential natures of good
and evil conduct, which it would else
have gathered. It is a vice of the
common system of artificial rewards and
punishments, long since noticed by the
clear-sighted, that by substituting for the
natural results of misbehaviour certain
tasks or castigations, it produces a
radically wrong moral standard. Having
throughout infancy and boyhood always
regarded parental or tutorial displeasure
as the chief result of a forbidden action,
the youth has gained an established
association of ideas between such action
and such displeasure, as cause and effect.
Hence when parents and tutors have
abdicated, and their displeasure is not
to be feared, the restraints on forbidden
actions are in great measure removed:
the true restraints, the natural reactions,
having yet to be learnt by sad experience.
As writes one who has had personal
�8o
EDUCATION
knowledge of this short-sighted system :—
“Young men let loose from school, par
ticularly those whose parents have
neglected to exert their influence, plunge
into every description of extravagance;
they know no rule of action—they are
ignorant of the reasons for moral conduct
—they have no foundation to rest upon
—and until they have been severely
disciplined by the world are extremely
dangerous members of society.”
Another great advantage of this natural
discipline is, that it is a discipline of
pure justice; and will be recognised as
such by every child. Whoso suffers
nothing more than the evil which in
the order of nature results from his
own misbehaviour, is much less likely to
think himself wrongly treated than if he
suffers an artificially inflicted evil; and
this will hold of children as of men.
Take the case of a boy who is habitually
reckless of his clothes—scrambles
through hedges without caution, or is
utterly regardless of mud. If he is
beaten, or sent to bed, he is apt to con
sider himself ill-used; and is more likely
to brood over his injuries than to repent
of his transgressions. But suppose he
is required to rectify as far as possible
the harm he has done—to clean off the
mud with which he has covered himself,
or to mend the tear as well as he can.
Will he not feel that the evil is one of
his own producing ? Will he not while
paying this penalty be continuously
conscious of the connection between
it and its cause ? And will he not,
spite of his irritation, recognise
more or less clearly the justice of the
arrangement ? If several lessons of this
kind fail to produce amendment—if suits
ff clothes are prematurely spoiled—if
the father, pursuing this same system of
discipline, declines to spend money for
new ones until the ordinary time has
elapsed—and if meanwhile, there occur
occasions on which, having no decent
clothes to go in, the boy is debarred
from joining the rest of the family on
holiday excursions and fete days, it is
manifest that while he will keenly feel
the punishment, he can scarcely fail to
trace the chain of causation, and to
perceive that his own carelessness is the
origin of it. And seeing this he will not
have any such sense of injustice as if
there were no obvious connection
between the transgression and its
penalty.
Again, the tempers both of parents
and children are much less liable to be
ruffled under this system than under the
ordinary system. When, instead of
letting children experience the painful
results which naturally follow from wrong
conduct, parents themselves inflict cer
tain other painful results, they produce
double mischief. Making, as they do,
multiplied family laws; and identifying
their own supremacy and dignity with the
maintenance of these laws; every trans
gression is regarded as an offence against
themselves, and a cause of anger on their
part. And then come the further vexa
tions which result from taking upon
themselves, in the shape of extra labour
or cost, those evil consequences which
should have been allowed to fall on the
wrong-doers. Similarly with the children.
Penalties which the necessary reaction
of things brings round upon them—
penalties which are inflicted by imper
sonal agency, produce an irritation that
is comparatively slight and transient;
whereas penalties voluntarily inflicted by
a parent, and afterwards thought of as
caused by him or her, produce an irrita
tion both greater and more continued.
Just consider how disastrous would be
the result if this empirical method wrere
pursued from the beginning. Suppose
�MORAL EDUCATION
it were possible for parents to take upon
themselves the physical sufferings en
tailed on their children by ignorance and
awkwardness; and that while bearing
these evil consequences they visited on
their children certain other evil conse
quences, with the view of teaching them
the impropriety of their conduct. Sup
pose that when a child, who had been
forbidden to meddle with the kettle,
spilt boiling water on its foot, the mother
vicariously assumed the scald and gave
a blow in place of it; and similarly in
all other cases. Would not the daily
mishaps be sources of far more anger
than now ? Would there not be chronic
ill-temper on both sides ? Yet an
exactly parallel policy is pursued in after
years. A father who beats his boy for
carelessly or wilfully breaking a sister’s
toy, and then himself pays for a new
toy, does substantially the same thing—
inflicts an artificial penalty on the trans
gressor, and takes the natural penalty on
himself: his own feelings and those of
the transgressor being alike needlessly
irritated. Did he simply require restitu
tion to be made, he would produce far
less heart-burning. If he told the boy
that a new toy must be bought at his,
the boy’s cost; and that his supply of
pocket-money must be withheld to the
needful extent; there would be much
less disturbance of temper on either side :
while in the deprivation afterwards felt,
the boy would experience the equitable
and salutary consequence. In brief, the
system of discipline by natural reactions
is less injurious to temper, both because
it is perceived to be nothing more than
pure justice, and because it in great
part substitutes the impersonal agency of
Nature for the personal agency of
parents.
Whence also follows the manifest corol
lary, that under this system the parental
81
and filial relation, being a more friendly,
will be a more influential one. Whether
in parent or child, anger, however
caused, and to whomsoever directed, is
detrimental. But anger in a parent
towards a child, and in a child towards
a parent, is especially detrimental;
because it weakens that bond of sym
pathy which is essential to beneficent
control. From the law of association of
ideas, it inevitably results, both in young
and old, that dislike is contracted
towards things which in experience are
habitually connected with disagreeable
feelings. Or where attachment originally
existed, it is diminished, or turned into
repugnance, according to the quantity of
painful impressions received. Parental
wrath, venting itself in reprimands and
castigations, cannot fail, if often repeated,
to produce filial alienation; while the
resentment and sulkiness of children
cannot fail to weaken the affection felt
for them, and may even end in destroy
ing it. Hence the numerous cases in
which parents (and especially fathers,
who are commonly deputed to inflict the
punishment) are regarded with indiffer
ence, if not with aversion; and hence
the equally numerous cases in which
children are looked upon as inflictions.
Seeing then, as all must do, that
estrangement of this kind is fatal to a
salutary moral culture, it follows that
parents cannot be too solicitous in
avoiding occasions of direct antagonism
with their children. And therefore they
cannot too anxiously avail themselves of
this discipline of natural consequences;
which, by relieving them from penal
functions, prevents mutual exasperations
and estrangements.
The method of moral culture by
experience of the normal reactions,
which is the divinely-ordained method
alike for infancy and for adult life, we thus
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EDUCATION
find to be equally applicable during the
intermediate childhood and youth.
Among the advantages of this method
we see:—First; that it gives that
rational knowledge of right and wrong
conduct which results from personal
experience of their good and bad con
sequences.
Second; that the child,
suffering nothing more than the painful
effects of its own wrong actions, must
recognise more or less clearly the justice
of the penalties. Third; that recognising
the justice of the penalties, and receiving
them through the working of things
rather than at the hands of an individual,
its temper is less disturbed; while the
parent, fulfilling the comparatively passive
duty of letting the natural penalties be
felt, preserves a comparative equanimity.
Fourth ; that mutual exasperations being
thus prevented, a much happier, and a
more influential relation, will exist
between parent and child.
“ But what is to be done in cases of
more serious misconduct ?” some will
ask. “ How is this plan to be carried
out when a petty theft has been com
mitted ? or when a lie has been told ?
or when some younger brother or sister
has been ill-used ?”
Before replying to these questions, let
us consider the bearings of a few illus
trative facts.
Living in the family of his brother-inlaw, a friend of ours had undertaken the
education of his little nephew and niece.
This he had conducted, more perhaps
from natural sympathy than from
reasoned-out conclusions, in the spirit
of the method above set forth. The
two children were in-doors his pupils
and out-of-doors his companions. They
daily joined him in walks and botanising
excursions, eagerly sought plants for
him, looked on while he examined and
identified them, and in this and other
ways were ever gaining pleasure and
instruction in his society. In short,
morally considered, he stood to them
much more in the position of parent
than either their father or mother did.
Describing to us the results of this policy,
he gave, among other instances, the
following. One evening, having need
for some article lying in another part of
the house, he asked his nephew to fetch
it. Interested as the boy was in some
amusement of the moment, he, contrary
to his wont, either exhibited great reluc
tance or refused, we forget which. His
uncle, disapproving of a coercive course,
went himself for that which he wanted :
merely exhibiting by his manner the
annoyance this ill-behaviour gave him.
And when, later in the evening, the boy
made overtures for the usual play, they
were gravely repelled—the uncle mani
fested just that coldness naturally pro
duced in him; and so let the boy feel
the necessary consequences of his con
duct. Next morning at the usual time
for rising, our friend heard a new voice
at the door, and in walked his little
nephew with the hot water. Peering
about the room to see what else could
be done, the boy then exclaimed, “ Oh !
you want your boots
and forthwith
rushed down-stairs to fetch them. In
this and other ways he showed a true
penitence for his misconduct. He
endeavoured by unusual services to make
up for the service he had refused. His
better feelings had made a real conquest
over his lower ones; and acquired
strength by the victory. And having
felt what it was to be without it, he
valued more than before the friendship
he thus regained.
This gentleman is now himself a father;
acts on the same system; and finds it
answer completely. He makes himself
�MORAL EDUCATION
thoroughly his children’s friend. The
evening is longed for by them because
he will be at home; and they especially
enjoy Sunday because he is with them
all day. Thus possessing their perfect
confidence and affection, he finds that
the simple display of his approbation or
disapprobation gives him abundant power
of control. If, on his return home, he
hears that one of his boys has been
naughty, he behaves towards him with
that coolness which the consciousness of
the boy’s misconduct naturally produces ;
and he finds this a most efficient punish
ment. The mere withholding of the
usual caresses, is a source of much
distress—produces a more prolonged fit
of crying than a beating would do. And
the dread of this purely moral penalty is,
he says, ever present during his absence :
so much so, that frequently during the
day his children ask their mamma how
they have behaved, and whether the
report will be good. Recently the
eldest, an active urchin of five, in one of
those bursts of animal spirits common
in healthy children, committed sundry
extravagances during his mamma’s
absence—cut off part of his brother’s
hair and wounded himself with a razor
taken from his father’s dressing-case.
Hearing of these occurrences on his
return, the father did not speak to the
boy either that night or next morning.
Besides the immediate tribulation the
effect was, that when, a few days after,
the mamma was about to go out, she
was entreated by the boy not to do so;
and on inquiry, it appeared his fear was
that he might again transgress in her
absence.
We have introduced these facts before
replying to the question—“ What is to
be done with the graver offences ?” for
the purpose of first exhibiting the rela
tion that may and ought to be estab
83
lished between parents and children;
for on the existence of this relation
depends the successful treatment of these
graver offences. And as a further pre
liminary, we must now point out that the
establishment of this relation will result
from adopting the system here advocated.
Already we have shown that by simply
letting a child experience the painful
reactions of its own wrong actions, a
parent avoids antagonism and escapes
being regarded as an enemy; but it
remains to be shown that where this
course has been consistently pursued
from the beginning, a feeling of active
friendship will be generated.
At present, mothers and fathers are
mostly considered by their offspring as
friend-enemies. Determined as the im
pressions of children inevitably are by
the treatment they receive; and oscil
lating as that treatment does between
bribery and thwarting, between petting
and scolding, between gentleness and
castigation ; they necessarily acquire con
flicting beliefs respecting the parental
character. A mother commonly thinks
it sufficient to tell her little boy that she
is his best friend; and assuming that he
ought to believe her, concludes that he
will do so. “ It is all for your good ”;
“ I know what is proper for you better
than you do yourself”; “You are not old
enough to understand it now, but when
you grow up you will thank me for
doing what I do”;—these, and like
assertions, are daily reiterated. Mean
while the boy is daily suffering positive
penalties; and is hourly forbidden to
do this, that, and the other, which he
wishes to do. By words he hears that
his happiness is the end in view; but
from the accompanying deeds he habitu
ally receives more or less pain. Incom
petent as he is to understand that future
which his mother has in view, or how
�84
EDUCATION
this treatment conduces to the happiness
of that future, he judges by the results he
feels; and finding such results anything
but pleasurable, he becomes sceptical
respecting her professions of friendship.
And is it not folly to expect any other
issue ? Must not the child reason from
the evidence he has got ? and does not
this evidence seem to warrant his con
clusion ? The mother would reason in
just the same way if similarly placed.
If, among her acquaintance, she found
some one who was constantly thwarting
her wishes, uttering sharp reprimands,
and occasionally inflicting actual penal
ties on her, she would pay small atten
tion to any professions of anxiety for her
welfare which accompanied these acts.
Why, then, does she suppose that her
boy will do otherwise ?
But now observe how different will be
the results if the system we contend for
be consistently pursued—if the mother
not only avoids becoming the instru
ment of punishment, but plays' the part
of a friend, by warning her boy of the
pun.’shment which Nature will inflict.
Take a case; and that it may illustrate
the mode in which this policy is to be
early initiated, let it be one of the
simplest cases. Suppose that, prompted
by the experimental spirit so conspicuous
in children, whose proceedings instinc
tively conform to the inductive method
of inquiry—suppose that so prompted,
the boy is amusing himself by lighting
pieces of paper in the candle and watch
ing them burn. A mother of the
ordinary unreflective stamp, will either,
on the plea of keeping him “ out of
mischief,” or from fear that he will burn
himself, command him to desist; and in
case of non-compliance will snatch the
paper from him. But should he be fortu
nate enough to have a mother of some
rationality, who knows that this interest
with which he is watching the paper burn,
results from a healthy inquisitiveness, and
who has also the wisdom to consider
the results of interference, she will
reason thus:—“If I put a stop to this
I shall prevent the acquirement of a
certain amount of knowledge.
It is
true that I may save the child from a
burn but what then ? He is sure to
burn himself some time; and it is quite
essential to his safety in life that he
should learn by experience the properties
of flame. If I forbid him from running
this present risk, he will certainly here
after run the same or a greater risk when
no one is present toprevent him; whereas,
should he have an accident now that
I am by, I can save him from any great
injury. Moreover, were I to make him
desist, I should thwart him in the pursuit
of what is in itself a purely harmless, and
indeed, instructive gratification; and he
would regard me with more or less illfeeling. Ignorant as he is of the pain
from which I would save him, and feeling
only the pain of a baulked desire, he
could not fail to look on me as the
cause of that pain. To save him from a
hurt which he cannot conceive, and
which has therefore no existence for
him, I hurt him in a way which he feels
keenly enough; and so become, from
his point of view, a minister of evil. My
best course, then, is simply to warn him
of the danger, and to be ready to prevent
any serious damage.” And following
out this conclusion, she says to the child
—“ I fear you will hurt yourself if you
do that.” Suppose, now, that the boy,
persevering as he will probably do, ends
by burning his hand. What are the
results ? In the first place he has gained
an experience which he must gain
eventually, and which, for his own safety,
he cannot gain too soon. And in the
second place, he has found that his
�MORAL EDUCATION
mother’s disapproval or warning was
meant for his welfare : he has a further
positive experience of her benevolence
a further reason for placing confidence
in her judgment and kindness—a further
reason for loving her.
Of course, in those occasional hazards
where there is a risk of broken limbs or
other serious injury, forcible prevention
is called for. But leaving out extreme
cases, the system pursued should be, not
that of guarding a child from the small
risks which it daily runs, but that of
advising and warning it against them.
And by pursuing this course, a much
stronger filial affection will be generated
than commonly exists. If here, as else
where, the discipline of the natural
reactions is allowed to come into play
if in those out-door scrambling and in
door experiments, by which children are
liable to injure themselves, they are
allowed to persist, subject only to dis
suasion more or less earnest according
to the danger, there cannot fail to arise
an ever-increasing faith in the parental
friendship and guidance. Not only, as
before shown, does the adoption of this
course enable fathers and mothers to
avoid the odium which attaches to the
infliction of positive punishment; but,
as we here see, it enables them to avoid
the odium which attaches to constant
thwartings j and even to turn those
incidents that commonly cause squabbles
into a means of strengthening the mutual
good feeling. Instead of being told in
words, which deeds seem to contradict,
that their parents are their best friends,
children will learn this truth by a con
sistent daily experience; and so learning
it, will acquire a degree of trust and
attachment which nothing else can give.
And now, having indicated the more
sympathetic relation which must result
from the habitual use of this method,
85
let us return to the question above put
—How is this method to be applied to
the graver offences ?
Note, in the first place, that these
graver offences are likely to be both less
frequent and less grave under the régime
we have described than under the ordi
nary régime. The ill-behaviour of many
children is in itself a consequence of
that chronic irritation in which they are
kept by bad management. The state of
isolation and antagonism produced by
frequent punishment, necessarily deadens
the sympathies ; necessarily, therefore,
opens the way to those transgressions
which the sympathies check.
That
harsh treatment which children of the
same family inflict on each other is often,
in great measure, a reflex of the harsh
treatment they receive from adults
partly suggested by direct example, and
partly generated by the ill-temper and
the tendency to vicarious retaliation,
which follow chastisements and scoldings.
It cannot be questioned that the greater
activity of the affections and happier
state of feeling, maintained in children
by the discipline we have described,
must prevent them from sinning against
each other so gravely and so frequently.
The still more reprehensible offences, as
lies and petty thefts, will, by the same
causes, be diminished. Domestic estrange
ment is a fruitful source of such trans
gressions. It is a law of human nature,
visible enough to all who observe, that
those who are debarred the higher grati
fications fall back upon the lower ; those
who have no sympathetic pleasures seek
selfish ones ; and hence, conversely, the
maintenance of happier relations between
parents and children is calculated to
diminish the number of those offences
of which selfishness is the origin.
When, however, such offences are
committed, as they will occasionally be
�86
EDUCATION
even under the best system, the discipline
of consequences may still be resorted to;
and if there exists that bond of con
fidence and affection above described,
this discipline will be efficient. For
what are the natural consequences, say,
of a theft ? They are of two kinds—
direct and indirect. The direct conse
quence, as dictated by pure equity, is
that of making restitution. A just ruler
(and every parent should aim to be one)
will demand that, when possible, a wrong
act shall be undone by a right one; and
in the case of theft this implies either
the restoration of the thing stolen, or, if
it is consumed, the giving of an equiva
lent : which, in the case of a child, may
be effected out of its pocket-money.
The indirect and more serious conse
quence is the grave displeasure of parents
—a consequence which inevitably follows
among all peoples civilised enough to
regard theft as a crime. “ But,” it will'
be said, “ the manifestation of parental
displeasure, either in words or blows, is
the ordinary course in these cases : the
method leads here to nothing new.”
Very true. Already we have admitted
that, in some directions, this method is
spontaneously pursued.
Already we
have shown that there is a tendency for
educational systems to gravitate towards
the true system. And here we may
remark, as before, that the intensity of
this natural reaction will, in the beneficent
order of things, adjust itself to the
requirements—that this parental dis
pleasure will vent itself in violent
measures during comparatively barbarous
times, when children are also compara
tively barbarous; and will express itself
less cruelly in those more advanced
social states in which, by implication,
the children are amenable to milder
treatment. But what it chiefly concerns
us here to observe is, that the manifesta
tion of strong parental displeasure, pro
duced by one of these graver offences,
will be potent for good, just in proportion
to the warmth of the attachment existing
between parent and child. Just in pro
portion as the discipline of natural con
sequences has been consistently pursued
in other cases, will it be efficient in this
case. Proof is within the experience of
all, if they will look for it.
For does not every one know that
when he has offended another, the
amount of regret he feels (of course,
leaving worldly considerations out of the
question) varies with the degree of
sympathy he has for that other ? Is he
not conscious that when the person
offended is an enemy, the having given
him annoyance is apt to be a source
rather of secret satisfaction than of
sorrow ? Does he not remember that
where umbrage has been taken by some
total stranger, he has felt much less con
cern than he would have done had such
umbrage been taken by one with whom
he was intimate ? While, conversely,
has not the anger of an admired and
cherished friend been regarded by him
as a serious misfortune, long and keenly
regretted ? Well, the effects of parental
displeasure on children must similarly
vary with the pre-existing relationship.
Where there is an established alienation,
the feeling of a child who has trans
gressed is a purely selfish fear of the
impending physical penalties or depriva
tions ; and after these have been inflicted,
the injurious antagonism and dislike
which result, add to the alienation. On
the contrary, where there exists a warm
filial affection produced by a consistent
parental friendship, the state of mind
caused by parental displeasure is not
only a salutary check to future miscon
duct of like kind, but is intrinsically
salutary. The moral pain consequent
�MORAL EDUCATION
on having, for the time being, lost so
loved a friend, stands in place of the
physical pain usually inflicted, and
proves equally, if not more, efficient.
While instead of the fear and vindictive
ness excited by the one course, there are
excited by the other a sympathy with
parental sorrow, a genuine regret for
having caused it, and a desire, by some
atonement, to re-establish the friendly
relationship. Instead of bringing into
play those egotistic feelings whose pre
dominance is the cause of criminal acts,
there are brought into play those altruistic
feelings which check criminal acts, fl hus
the discipline of natural consequences
is applicable to grave as well as trivial
faults; and the practice of it conduces
not simply to the repression, but to the
eradication of such faults.
In brief, the truth is that savageness
begets savageness, and gentleness begets
gentleness. Children who are unsympa
thetically treated become unsympathetic;
whereas treating them with due fellowfeeling is a means of cultivating their
fellow-feeling. With family governments
as with political ones, a harsh despotism
itself generates a great part of the crimes
it has to repress; while on the other
hand a mild and liberal rule both avoids
many causes of dissension, and so
ameliorates the tone of feeling as to
diminish the tendency to transgression.
As John Locke long since remarked,
“Great severity of punishment does but
very little good, nay, great harm, in
education; and I believe it will be found
that, cceteris paribus, those children who
have been most chastised seldom make
the best men.” In confirmation of which
opinion we may cite the fact not long
since made public by Mr. Rogers,
Chaplain of the Pentonville Prison, that
those juvenile criminals who have been
whipped are those who most frequently
87
return to prison. Conversely, the bene
ficial effects of a kinder treatment, are
well illustrated in a fact stated to us by
a French lady, in whose house we recently
stayed in Paris. Apologising for the dis
turbance daily caused by a little boy who
was unmanageable both at home and at
school, she expressed her fear that there
was no remedy save that which had
succeeded in the case of an elder brother;
namely, sending him to an English school.
She explained that at various schools in
Paris this elder brother had proved
utterly untractable; that in despair they
had followed the advice to send him to
England; and that on his return home
he was as good as he had before been
bad.
This remarkable change she
ascribed entirely to the comparative
mildness of the English discipline.
After the foregoing exposition of
principles, our remaining space may best
be occupied by a few of the chief maxims
and rules deducible from them; and
with a view to brevity we will put these
in a hortatory form.
Do not expect from a child any great
amount of moral goodness.
During
early years every civilised man passes
through that phase of character exhibited
by the barbarous race from which he is
descended. As the child’s features—
flat nose, forward-opening nostrils, large
lips, wide-apart eyes, absent frontal sinus,
&c.—resemble for a time those of the
savage, so, too, do his instincts. Hence
the tendencies to cruelty, to thieving,
to lying, so general among children—
tendencies which, even without the aid
of discipline, will become more or less
modified just as the features do. The
popular idea that children are “innocent,”
while it is true with respect to evil know
ledge, is totally false with respect to evil
impulses; as half an hour’s observation
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EDUCATION
in the nursery will prove to any one.
Boys when left to themselves, as at
public schools, treat each other more
brutally than men do; and were they
left to themselves at an earlier age
their brutality would be still more con
spicuous.
Not only is it unwise to set up a high
standard of good conduct for children,
but it is even unwise to use very urgent
incitements to good conduct. Already
most people recognise the detrimental
results of intellectual precocity; but there
remains to be recognised the fact that
moral precocity also has detrimental
results. Our higher moral faculties, like
our higher intellectual ones, are com
paratively complex.
By consequence
both are comparatively late in their
evolution. And with the one as with
the other, an early activity produced by
stimulation will be at the expense of the
future character. Hence the not un
common anomaly that those who during
childhood were models of juvenile good
ness, by-and-by undergo a seemingly
inexplicable change for the worse, and
end by being not above but below par;
while relatively exemplary men are often
the issue of a childhood by no means
promising.
Be content, therefore, with moderate
measures and moderate results. Bear
in mind that a higher morality, like a
higher intelligence, must be reached by
slow growth; and you will then have
patience with those imperfections which
your child hourly displays. You will be
less prone to that constant scolding, and
threatening, and forbidding, by which
many parents induce a chronic domestic
irritation, in the foolish hope that they
will thus make their children what they
should be.
This liberal form of domestic govern
ment, which does not seek despotically
to regulate all the details of a child’s
conduct, necessarily results from the
system we advocate. Satisfy yourself
with seeing that your child always
suffers the natural consequences of his
actions, and you will avoid that excess
of control in which so many parents err.
Leave him wherever you can to the
discipline of experience, and you will
save him from that hot-house virtue
which over-regulation produces in
yielding natures, or that demoralising
antagonism which it produces in inde
pendent ones.
By aiming in all cases to insure the
natural reactions to your child’s actions,
you will put an advantageous check on
your own temper. The method of
moral education pursued by many, we
fear by most, parents, is little else than
that of venting their anger in the way
that first suggests itself. The slaps, and
rough shakings, and sharp words, with
which a mother commonly visits her
offspring’s small offences (many of them
not offences considered intrinsically), are
generally but the manifestations of her
ill-controlled feelings—result much more
from the promptings of those feelings
than from a wish to benefit the offenders.
But by pausing in each case of trans
gression to consider what is the normal
consequence, and how it may best be
brought home to the transgressor, some
little time is obtained for the mastery of
yourself; the mere blind anger first
aroused settles down into a less vehement
feeling, and one not so likely to mislead
you.
Do not, however, seek to behave as a
passionless instrument. Remember that
besides the natural reactions to your
child’s actions which the working of
things tends to bring round on him, your
own approbation or disapprobation is
also a natural reaction, and one of the
�MORAL EDUCATION
ordained agencies for guiding him. The
error we have been combating is that of
substituting parental displeasure and its
artificial penalties for the penalties which
Nature has established. But while it
should not be substituted for these
natural penalties, we by no means argue
that it should not accompany them.
Though the secondary kind of punish
ment should not usurp the place of the
primary kind; it may, in moderation,
rightly supplement the primary kind.
Such amount of sorrow or indignation as
you feel, should be expressed in words
or manner : subject, of course, to the
approval of your judgment. The kind
and degree of feeling produced in you,
will necessarily depend on your own
character; and it is therefore useless to
say it should be this or that. Neverthe
less you may endeavour to modify the
feeling into that which you believe
ought to be entertained. Beware, how
ever, of the two extremes ; not only in
respect of the intensity, but in respect of
the duration, of your displeasure. On
the one hand, avoid that weak impul
siveness, so general among mothers,
which scolds and forgives almost in the
same breath. On the other hand, do
not unduly continue to show estrange
ment of feeling, lest you accustom your
child to do without your friendship, and
so lose your influence over him. The
moral reactions called forth from you by
your child’s actions, you should as much
as possible assimilate to those which you
conceive would be called forth from a
parent of perfect nature.
Be sparing of commands. Command
only when other means are inexplicable,
or have failed. “ In frequent orders the
parents’ advantage is more considered
than the child’s,” says Richter. As in
primitive societies a breach of law is
punished, not so much because it is
89
intrinsically wrong as because it is a
disregard of the king’s authority—a
rebellion against him; so in many
families, the penalty visited on a trans
gressor is prompted less by reprobation
of the offence than by anger at the dis
obedience. Listen to the ordinary
speeches—“ How dare you disobey me ?”
“ I tell you I’ll make you do it, sir
“ I’ll soon teach you who is master ”—
and then consider what the words, the
tone, and the manner imply. A deter
mination to subjugate is far more con
spicuous in them than anxiety for the
child’s welfare. For the time being the
attitude of mind differs but little from
that of a despot bent on punishing a
recalcitrant subject. The right-feeling
parent, however, like the philanthropic
legislator, will rejoice not in coercion,
but in dispensing with coercion. He
will do without law wherever other
modes of regulating conduct can be
successfully employed; and he will
regret the having recourse to law when
law is necessary. As Richter remarks—
“ The best rule in politics is said to be
1 pas trop gouverner’: it is also true in
education.” And in spontaneous con
formity with this maxim, parents whose
lust of dominion is restrained by a true
sense of duty, will aim to make their
children control themselves as much as
possible, and will fall back upon abso
lutism only as a last resort.
But whenever you do command, com
mand with decision and consistency. If
the case is one which really cannot be
otherwise dealt with, then issue your fiat,
and having issued it, never afterwards
swerve from it. Consider well what you
are going to do; weigh all the conse
quences ; think whether you have
adequate firmness of purpose; and then,
if you finally make the law, enforce
obedience at whatever cost. Let your
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EDUCATION
penalties be like the penalties inflicted
by inanimate Nature—inevitable. The
hot cinder burns a child the first time he
seizes it; it burns him the second time ;
it burns him the third time; it burns him
every time; and he very soon learns not
to touch the hot cinder. If you are
equally consistent—if the consequences
which you tell your child will follow
specified acts, follow with like uniformity,
he will soon come to respect your laws
as he does those of Nature. And this
respect once established, will prevent
endless domestic evils. Of errors in
education one of the worst is incon
sistency. As in a community, crimes
multiply when there is no certain
administration of justice; so in a family,
an immense increase of transgressions
results from a hesitating or irregular
infliction of punishments. A weak
mother, who perpetually threatens and
rarely performs—who makes rules in
haste and repents of them at leisure—
who treats the same offence now with
severity and now with leniency, as the
passing humour dictates, is laying up
miseries for herself and her children.
She is making herself contemptible in
their eyes; she is setting them an
example of uncontrolled feelipgs; she
is encouraging them to transgress by the
prospect of probable impunity; she is
entailing endless squabbles and accom
panying damage to her own temper and
the tempers of her little ones; she is
reducing their minds to a moral chaos,
which after-years of bitter experience
will with difficulty bring into order.
Better even a barbarous form of domestic
government carried out consistently than
a humane one inconsistently carried out.
Again we say, avoid coercive measures
wherever it is possible to do so; but
when you find despotism really neces
sary, be despotic in good earnest.
Remember that the aim of your
discipline should be to produce a selfgoverning being; not to produce a being
to be governed by others. Were your
children fated to pass their lives as
slaves, you could not too much accustom
them to slavery during their childhood;
but as they are by-and-by to be free men,
with no one to control their daily con
duct, you cannot too much accustom
them to self-control while they are still
under your eye. This it is which makes
the system of discipline by natural con
sequences, so especially appropriate tothe social state which we in England
have now reached. In feudal times,,
when one of the chief evils the citizen
had to fear was the anger of his superiors,
it was well that during childhood, parental
vengeance should be a chief means of
government. But now that the citizen
has little to fear from any one—now that
the good or evil which he experiences is
mainly that which in the order of things
results from his own conduct, he should
from his first years begin to learn, experi
mentally, the good or evil consequences
which naturally follow this or that con
duct. Aim, therefore, to diminish the
parental government, as fast as you can
substitute for it in your child’s mind that
self-government arising from a foresight
of results. During infancy a considerable
amount of absolutism is necessary. A
three-year old urchin playing with an
open razor, cannot be allowed to learn
by this discipline of consequences; for
the consequences may be too serious.
But as intelligence increases, the number
of peremptory interferences may be, and
should be, diminished; with the view
of gradually ending them as maturity
is approached.
All transitions aredangerous ; and the most dangerousis the transition from the restraint of
the family circle to the non-restraint of
�MORAL EDUCATION
the world. Hence the importance of
pursuing the policy we advocate; which,
by cultivating a boy’s faculty of self
restraint, by continually increasing the
degree in which he is left to his self
restraint, and by so bringing him, step
by step, to a state of unaided self-restraint,
obliterates the ordinary sudden and
hazardous change from externallygoverned youth to internally-governed
maturity.
Let the history of your
domestic rule typify, in little, the history
of our political rule: at the outset,
autocratic control, where control is really
needful; by-and-by an incipient consti
tutionalism, in which the liberty of the
subject gains some express recognition;
successive extensions of this liberty of
the subject; gradually ending in parental
abdication.
Do not regret the display of consider
able self-will on the part of your children.
It is the correlative of that diminished
coerciveness so conspicuous in modern
education. The greater tendency to
assert freedom of action on the one side,
corresponds to the smaller tendency to
tyrannise on the other. They both
indicate an approach to the system of
discipline we contend for, under which
children will be more and more led to
rule themselves by the experience of
natural consequences; and they are both
accompaniments of our more advanced
social state. The independent English
boy is the father of the independent
English man; and you cannot have the
last without the first. German teachers
say that they had rather manage a dozen
German boys than one English one.
Shall we, therefore, wish that our boys
had the manageableness of German
ones, and with it the submissiveness and
political serfdom of adult Germans ?
Or shall we not rather tolerate in our
boys those feelings which make them
free men, and modify our methods
accordingly ?
Lastly, always recollect that to edu
cate rightly is not a simple and easy
thing, but a complex and extremely
difficult thing, the hardest task which
devolves on adult life. The rough and
ready style of domestic government is
indeed practicable by the meanest and
most uncultivated intellects. Slaps and
sharp words are penalties that suggest
themselves alike to the least reclaimed
barbarian and the stolidest peasant.
Even brutes can use this method of
discipline; as you may see in the growl
and half-bite with which a bitch will
check a too-exigeant puppy- But if you
would carry out with success a rational'
and civilised system, you must be pre
pared for considerable mental exertion—■
for some study, some ingenuity, some
patience, some self-control. You will
have habitually to consider what are the
results which in adult life follow certain
kinds of acts; and you must then devise
methods by which parallel results shall
be entailed on the parallel acts of your
children. It will daily be needful to
analyse the motives of juvenile conduct
—to distinguish between acts that are
really good and those which, though
simulating them, proceed from inferior
impulses; while you will have to be ever
on your guard against the cruel mistake
not unfrequently made, of translating
neutral acts into transgressions, or
ascribing worse feelings than were enter
tained. You must more or less modify
your method to suit the disposition of
each child; and must be prepared to
make further modifications as each
child’s disposition enters on a new phase.
Your faith will often be taxed to main
tain the requisite perseverance in a
course which seems to produce little or
no effect. Especially if you are dealing
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EDUCATION
with children who have been wrongly
treated, you must be prepared for a
lengthened trial of patience before suc
ceeding with better methods; since that
which is not easy even where a right
state of feeling has been established
from the beginning, becomes doubly
difficult when a wrong state of feeling
has to be set right. Not only will you
have constantly to analyse the motives
of your children, but you will have to
analyse your own motives—to discrimi
nate between those internal suggestions
springing from a true parental solicitude
and those which spring from your own
selfishness, your love of ease, your lust of
dominion. And then, more trying still,
you will have not only to detect, but to
curb these baser impulses. In brief,
you will have to carry on your own
higher education at the same time that
you are educating your children. Intel
lectually you must cultivate to good
purpose that most complex of subjects—
human nature and its laws, as exhibited
in your children, in yourself, and in the
world. Morally, you must keep in con
stant exercise your higher feelings, and
restrain your lower. It is a truth yet
remaining to be recognised, that the last
stage in the mental development of each
man and woman is to be reached only
through a proper discharge of the
parental duties. And when this truth is
recognised, it will be seen how admirable
is the arrangement through which human
beings are led by their strongest affec
tions to subject themselves to a discipline
that they would else elude.
While some will regard this concep
tion of education as it should be, with
doubt and discouragement, others will,
we think, perceive in the exalted ideal
which it involves, evidence of its truth.
That it cannot be realised by the impul
sive, the unsympathetic, and the short
sighted, but demands the higher attri
butes of human nature, they will see to
be evidence of its fitness for the more
advanced state of humanity. Though it
calls for much labour and self-sacrifice,
they will see that it promises an abundant
return of happiness, immediate and
remote. They will see that while in its
injurious effects on both parent and
child a bad system is twice cursed, a
good system is twice blessed—it blesses
him that trains and him that’s trained.
CHAPTER IV.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Equally at the squire’s table after the
withdrawal of the ladies, at the farmers’
market ordinary, and at the village ale
house, the topic which, after the political
question of the day, excites the most
general interest, is the management of
animals. Riding home from hunting,
the conversation usually gravitates towards
horse-breeding, and pedigrees, and com
ments on this or that “good point”;
while a day on the moors is very unlikely
to end without something being said on
the treatment of dogs. When crossing
the fields together from church, the
tenants of adjacent farms are apt to pass
from criticisms on the sermon to criticisms
on the weather, the crops, and the stock;
and thence to slide into discussions on
the various kinds of fodder and their
feeding qualities. Hodge and Giles,
after comparing notes over their respective
pig-styes, show by their remarks that
they have been observant of their masters’
beasts and sheep ; and of the effects
produced on them by this or that kind
of treatment. Nor is it only among the
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
rural population that the regulations of
the kennel, the stable, the cow-shed, and
the sheep-pen, are favourite subjects.
In towns, too, the numerous artizans
who keep dogs, the young men who are
rich enough to now and then indulge
their sporting tendencies, and their more
staid seniors who talk over agricultural
progress or read Mr. Mechi’s annual
reports and Mr. Caird’s letters to the
Times, form, when added together, a
large portion of the inhabitants. Take
the adult males throughout the kingdom,
and a great majority will be found to
show some interest in the breeding,
rearing, or training of animals of one
kind or other.
But, during after-dinner conversations,
or at other times of like intercourse, who
hears anything said about the rearing of
children ? When the country gentleman
has paid his daily visit to the stable,
and personally inspected the condition
and treatment of his horses ; when he
has glanced at his minor live stock,
and given directions about them; how
often does he go up to the nursery and
examine into its dietary, its hours, its
ventilation ? On his library-shelves may
be found White’s Farriery, Stephens’s
Book of the Farm, Nimrod On the
Condition of Hunters-, and with the con
tents of these he is more or less familiar;
but how many books has he read on the
management of infancy and childhood ?
The fattening properties of oil-cake, the
relative values of hay and chopped straw,
the dangers of unlimited clover, are points
bn which every landlord, farmer, and
peasant has some knowledge ; but what
percentage of them inquire whether the
food they give their children is adapted
to the constitutional needs of growing
boys and girls ? Perhaps the business
interests of these classes will be assigned
as accounting for this anomaly. The
93
explanation is inadequate, however;
seeing that the same contrast holds
among other classes. Of a score of
townspeople, few, if any, would prove
ignorant of the fact that it is undesirable
to work a horse soon after it has eaten ;
and yet, of this same score, supposing
them all to be fathers, probably not one
would be found who had considered
whether the time elapsing between his
children’s dinner and their resumption
of lessons was sufficient. Indeed, on
cross-examination, nearly every man
would disclose the latent opinion that
the regimen of the nursery was no concern
of his. “ Oh, I leave all those things to
the women,” would probably be the reply.
And in most cases the tone of this reply
would convey the implication, that such
cares are not consistent with masculine
dignity.
Regarded from any but a conventional
point of view, the fact seems strange that
while the raising of first-rate bullocks is
an occupation on which educated men
willingly bestow much time and thought,
the bringing up of fine human beings is
an occupation tacitly voted unworthy of
their attention. Mammas who have been
taught little but languages, music, and
accomplishments, aided by nurses full of
antiquated prejudices, are held competent
regulators of the food, clothing, and
exercise of children. Meanwhile the
fathers read books and periodicals, attend
agricultural meetings, try experiments,
and engage in discussions, all with the
view of discovering how to fatten prize
pigs ! We see infinite pains taken to
produce a racer that shall win the Derby :
none to produce a modern athlete. Had
Gulliver narrated of the Laputans that
the men vied with each other in learning
how best to rear the offspring of other
creatures, and were careless of learning
how best to rear their own offspring, he
�94
EDUCATION
would have paralleled any of the other
absurdities he ascribes to them.
The matter is a serious one, however.
Ludicrous as is the antithesis, the fact
it expresses is not less disastrous. As
remarks a suggestive writer, the first
requisite to success in life is “to be a
good animal and to be a nation of
good animals is the first condition to
national prosperity. Not only is it that
the event of a war often turns on the
strength and hardiness of soldiers; but
it is that the contests of commerce are
in part determined by the bodily endu
rance of producers. Thus far we have
found no reason to fear trials of strength
with other races in either of these fields.
But there are not wanting signs that our
powers will presently be taxed to the
uttermost. The competition of modern
life is so keen, that few can bear the
required application without injury.
Already thousands break down under
the high pressure they are subject to. If
this pressure continues to increase, as it
seems likely to do, it will try severely
even the soundest constitutions. Hence
it is becoming of especial importance
that the training of children should be
so carried on, as not only to fit
them mentally for the struggle before
them, but also to make them physi
cally fit to bear its excessive wear and
tear.
Happily the matter is beginning to
attract attention. The writings of Mr.
Kingsley indicate a reaction against over
culture ; carried perhaps, as reactions
usually are, somewhat too far. Occasional
letters and leaders in the newspapers
have shown an awakening interest in
physical training. And the formation
of a school, significantly nicknamed
that of “ muscular Christianity,” implies
a growing opinion that our present
methods of bringing up children do
not sufficiently regard the welfare of
the body. The topic is evidently ripe
for discussion.
To conform the regimen of the nursery
and the school to the established truths of
modern science —this is the desideratum.
It is time that the benefits which our
sheep and oxen are deriving from the
investigations of the laboratory, should
be participated in by our children.
Without calling in question the great
importance of horse-training and pig
feeding, we would suggest that, as the
rearing of well-grown men and women
is also of some moment, these conclusions
which theory indicates and practice
indorses, ought to be acted on in the
last case as in the first. Probably not
a few will be startled—perhaps offended
—by this collocation of ideas. But it
is a fact not to be disputed, and to which
we must reconcile ourselves, that man
is subject to the same organic laws as
inferior creatures. No anatomist, no
physiologist, no chemist, will for a
moment hesitate to assert, that the
general principles which are true of
the vital processes in animals are equally
true of the vital processes in man. And
a candid admission of this fact is not
without its reward: namely, that the
generalisations established by observation
and experiment on brutes, become avail
able for human guidance. Rudimentary
as is the Science of Life, it has already
attained to certain fundamental principles
underlying the development of all
organisms, the human included. That
which has now to be done, and that
which we shall endeavour in some measure
to do, is to trace the bearings of these
fundamental principles on the physical
training of childhood and youth.
The rhythmical tendency which is
traceable in all departments of social
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
95
life—which is illustrated in the access of easily corrected, that those of inanition.”1
despotism after revolution, or, among Besides, where there has been no
ourselves, in the alternation of reforming injudicious interference, repletion seldom
epochs and conservative epochs—which, occurs. “ Excess is the vice rather of
after a dissolute age, brings an age of adults than of the young, who are rarely
asceticism, and conversely,—which, in either gourmands or epicures, unless
commerce, produces the recurring infla through the fault of those who rear
tions and panics—which carries the them.”2 This system of restriction
devotees of fashion from one absurd which many parents think so necessary,
extreme to the opposite one :— this is based upon inadequate observation,
rhythmical tendency affects also our and erroneous reasoning. There is an
table-habits, and by implication, the over-legislation in the nursery, as well as
dietary of the young. After a period an over-legislation in the State ; and one
distinguished by hard drinking and hard of the most injurious forms of it is this
eating, has come a period of comparative limitation in the quantity of food.
“ But are children to be allowed to
sobriety, which, in teetotalism and
vegetarianism, exhibits extreme forms surfeit themselves ? Shall they be suffere d
of protest against the riotous living of to take their fill of dainties and make
the past. And along with this change themselves ill, as they certainly will do ?”
in the regimen of adults, has come a As thus put, the question admits of but
parallel change in the regimen for boys one reply. But as thus put, it assumes
and girls. In past generations the the point at issue. We contend that,
belief was, that the more a child could as appetite is a good guide to all the
be induced to eat the better; and even lower creation—as it is a good guide to
now, among farmers and in remote the infant—as it is a good guide to the
districts, where traditional ideas most invalid—as it is a good guide to the
linger, parents may be found who tempt differently-placed races of men—and as
their children into repletion. But among it is a good guide for every adult who
the educated classes, who chiefly display leads a healthful life ; it may safely be
this reaction towards abstemiousness, inferred that it is a good guide for child
there may be seen a decided leaning hood. It would be strange indeed were
to the under-feeding, rather than the it here alone untrustworthy.
Perhaps some will read this reply with
over-feeding of children. Indeed their
disgust for by-gone animalism, is more impatience; being able, as they think,
clearly shown in the treatment of their to cite facts totally at variance with it.
offspring than in the treatment of them It may appear absurd if we deny the
selves; for while their disguised asceticism relevancy of these facts. And yet the
is, in so far as their personal conduct is paradox is quite defensible. The truth
concerned, kept in check by their appe is, that the instances of excess which
tites, it has full play in legislating for such persons have in mind, are usually
the consequences of the restrictive system
juveniles.
That over-feeding and under-feeding they seem to justify. They are the
are both bad, is a truism. Of the two, sensual reactions caused by an ascetic
They illustrate on a small
however, the last is the worst. As writes regimen.
a high authority, “ the effects of casual
1 Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine.
3 lb.
repletion are less prejudicial, and more
�96
EDUCATION
scale that commonly-remarked truth,
that those who during youth have been
subject to the most, rigorous discipline,
are apt afterwards to rush into the wildest
extravagances. They are analogous to
those frightful phenomena, once not
uncommon in convents, where nuns
suddenly lapsed from the extremest
austerities into an almost demoniac
wickedness.
They simply exhibit the
uncontrollable vehemence of long-denied
desires.
Consider the ordinary tastes
and the ordinary treatment of children.
The love of sweets is conspicuous and
almost universal among them. Probably
ninety-nine people in a hundred presume
that there is nothing more in this than
gratification of the palate; and that, in
common with other sensual desires, it
should be discouraged. The physiolo
gist, however, whose discoveries lead
him to an ever-increasing reverence for
the arrangements of things, suspects
something more in this love of sweets
than is currently supposed ; and inquiry
confirms the suspicion. He finds that
sugar plays an important part in the
vital processes. Both saccharine and
fatty matters are eventually oxidised in
the body; and there is an accompanying
evolution of heat. Sugar is the form to
which sundry other compounds have to
be reduced before they are available as
heat-making food; and this formation
of sugar is carried on in the body. Not
only is starch changed into sugar in the
course of digestion, but it has been
proved by M. Claude Bernard that the
liver is a factory in which other con
stituents of food are transformed into
sugar: the need for sugar being so
imperative that it is even thus produced
from nitrogenous substances when no
others are given. Now, when to the
fact that children have a marked desire
for this valuable heat-food, we join the
fact that they have usually a marked
dislike to that food which gives out the
greatest amount of heat during oxidation
(namely, fat), we have reason for think
ing that excess of the one compensates
for defect of the other—that the organism
demands more sugar because it cannot
deal with much fat. Again, children are
fond of vegetable acids. Fruits of all
kinds are their delight; and, in the
absence of anything better, they will
devour unripe gooseberries and the
sourest of crabs. Now not only are
vegetable acids, in common with mineral
ones, very good tonics, and beneficial
as such when taken in moderation, but
they have, when administered in their
natural forms, other advantages. “ Ripe
fruit,” says Dr. Andrew Combe, “ is
more freely given on the Continent than
in this country; and, particularly when
the bowels act imperfectly, it is often
very useful.” See, then, the discord
between the instinctive wants of children
and their habitual treatment.
Here
are two dominant desires, which in
all probability express certain needs
of the child’s constitution ; and not only
are they ignored in the nursery-regimen,
but there is a general tendency to forbid
the gratification of them. Bread-andmilk in the morning, tea and bread-andbutter at night, or some dietary equally
insipid, is rigidly adhered to ; and any
ministration to the palate is thought
needless, or rather, wrong. What is the
consequence ?
When, on fête-days,
there is unlimited access to good things
—when a gift of pocket-money brings
the contents of the confectioner’s window
within reach, or when by some accident
the free run of a fruit-garden is obtained;
then the long-denied, and therefore
intense, desires lead to great excesses.
There is an impromptu carnival, due
partly to release from past restraints, and
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
partly to the consciousness that a long
Lent will begin on the morrow. And
then, when the evils of repletion display
themselves, it is argued that children
must not be left to the guidance of their
appetites ! These disastrous results of
artificial restrictions, are themselves cited
as proving the need for further restric
tions ! We contend therefore, that the
reasoning used to justify this system of
interference is vicious. We contend
that, were children allowed daily to
partake of these more sapid edibles,
for which there is a physiological require
ment, they would rarely exceed, as they
now mostly do when they have the
opportunity: were fruit, as Dr. Combe
recommends, “ to constitute a part of
the regular food ” (given, as he advises,
not between meals, but along with them),
there would be none of that craving
which prompts the devouring of crabs
and sloes. And similarly in other cases.
Not only is it that the a priori reasons
for trusting the appetites of children are
strong; and that the reasons assigned
for distrusting them are invalid; but it
is that no other guidance is worthy of
confidence. What is the value of this
parental judgment, set up as an alterna
tive regulator ? When to “ Oliver asking
for more,” the mamma or governess says
“ No,” on what data does she proceed ?
She thinks he has had enough. But
where are her grounds for so thinking?
Has she some secret understanding with
the boy’s stomach—some clairvoyant
power enabling her to discern the needs
of his body ? If not, how can she safely
decide ? Does she not know that the
demand of the system for food is deter
mined by numerous and involved causes
•—varies with the temperature, with the
hygrometric state of the air, with the
electric state of the air—varies also
according to the exercise taken, accord
97
ing to the kind and quantity of food
eaten at the last meal, and according to
the rapidity with which the last meal was
digested? How can she calculate the
result of such a combination of causes ?
As we heard said by the father of a fiveyears-old boy, who stands a head taller
than most of his age, and is propor
tionately robust, rosy, and active :—“ I
can see no artificial standard by which
to mete out his food. If I say, ‘ this
much is enough,’ it is a mere guess ;
and the guess is as likely to be wrong as
right. Consequently, having no faith in
guesses, I let him eat his fill.” And,
certainly, any one judging of his policy
by its effects, would be constrained to
admit its wisdom. In truth, this con
fidence, with which most persons legislate
for the stomachs of their children, proves
their unacquaintance with physiology:
if they knew more, they would be more
modest.
“The pride of science is
humble when compared with the pride
of ignorance.” If any one would learn
how little faith is to be placed, in human
judgments, and how much in the preestablished arrangement of things, let
him compare the rashness of the inex
perienced physician with the caution of
the most advanced; or let him dip into
Sir John Forbes’s work, On Nature and
Art in the Cure of Disease ; and he will
see that, in proportion as men gain
knowledge of the laws of life, they come
to have less confidence in themselves, and
more in Nature.
Turning from the question of quantity
of food to that of quality, we may discern
the same ascetic tendency. Not simply
a restricted diet, but a comparatively low
diet, is thought proper for children. The
current opinion is, that they should have
but little animal food. Among the less
wealthy classes, economy seems to have
dictated this opinion—the wish has been
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EDUCATION
father to the thought. Parents not
affording to buy much meat, answer the
petitions of juveniles with—“Meat is
not good for little boys and girls ”; and
this, at first probably nothing but a con
venient excuse, has by repetition grown
into an article of faith. While the classes
with whom cost is no consideration, have
been swayed partly by the example of
the majority, partly by the influence of
nurses drawn from thp lower classes, and
in some measure by the reaction against
past animalism.
If, however, we inquire for the basis
of this opinion, we find little or none.
It is a dogma repeated and received
without proof, like that which, for thou
sands of years, insisted on swaddlingclothes. Very probably for the infant’s
stomach, not yet endowed with much
muscular power, meat, which requires
considerable trituration before it can be
made into chyme, is an unfit aliment.
But this objection does not tell against
animal food from which the fibrous part
has been extracted; nor does it apply
when, after the lapse of two or three
years, considerable muscular vigour has
been acquired. And while the evidence
in support of this dogma, partially valid
in the case of very young children, is not
valid in the case of older children, who
are, nevertheless, ordinarily treated in
conformity with it, the adverse evidence
is abundant and conclusive. The verdict
of science is exactly opposite to the
popular opinion.
We have put the
question to two of our leading physicians,
and to several of the most distinguished
physiologists, and they uniformly agree
in the conclusion, that children should
have a diet not less nutritive, but, if
anything, more nutritive than that of
adults.
I
The grounds for this conclusion are j
obvious, and the reasoning simple. It |
needs but to compare the vital processes
of a man with those of a boy, to see
that the demand for sustenance is rela
tively greater in the boy than in the
man. What are the ends for which a
man requires food ? Each day his body
undergoes more or less wear—wear
through muscular exertion, wear of the
nervous system through mental actions,
wear of the viscera in carrying on the
functions of life; and the tissue thuswasted has to be renewed. Each day,
too, by radiation, his body loses a large
amount of heat; and as, for the continu
ance of the vital actions, the temperature
of the body must be maintained, this loss
has to be compensated by a constant
production of heat: to which end certain
constituents of the body are ever under
going oxidation. To make up for the
day’s waste, and to supply fuel for the
day’s expenditure of heat, are, then, the
sole purposes for which the adult requires
food. Consider now, the case of the
boy. He, too, wastes the substance of
his body by action; and it needs but to
note his restless activity to see that, in
proportion to his bulk, he probably
wastes as much as a man. He, too,
loses heat by radiation; and, as his
body exposes a greater surface in pro
portion to its mass than does that of
a man, and therefore loses heat more
rapidly, the quantity of heat-food he
requires is, bulk for bulk, greater than
that required by a man. So that even
had the boy no other vital processes to
carry on than the man has, he would
need, relatively to his size, a somewhat
larger supply of nutriment. But, besides
repairing his body and maintaining its
heat, the boy has to make new tissue—
to grow. After waste and thermal loss
have been provided for, such surplus of
nutriment as remains, goes to the further
building up of the frame; and only in
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
virtue of this surplus is normal growth
possible j the growth that sometimes
takes place in the absence of it, causing
a manifest prostration consequent upon
defective repair. It is true that because
of a certain mechanical law which can
not be here explained, a small organism
has an advantage over a large one in
the ratio between the sustaining and
destroying forces—an advantage, indeed,
to which the very possibility of growth
is owing.
But this admission only
makes it the more obvious that though
much adverse treatment may be borne
without this excess of vitality being quite
out-balanced; yet any adverse treatment,
by diminishing it, must diminish the
size or structural perfection reached.
How peremptory is the demand of the
unfolding organism for materials, is seen
alike in that “ school-boy hunger,” which
after-life rarely parallels in intensity, and
in the comparatively quick return of
appetite. And if there needs further
evidence of this extra necessity for
nutriment, we have it in the fact that,
during the famines following shipwrecks
and other disasters, the children are the
first to die.
This relatively greater need for nutri
ment being admitted, as it must be, the
question that remains is—shall we meet
it by giving an excessive quantity of what
may be called dilute food, or a more
moderate quantity of concentrated food ?
The nutriment obtainable from a given
weight of meat is obtainable only from
a larger weight of bread, or from a still
larger weight of potatoes, and so on.
To fulfil the requirement, the quantity
must be increased as the nutritiveness
is diminished. Shall we, then, respond
to the extra wants of the growing child
by giving an adequate quantity of food
as good as that of adults ? Or, regardless
of the fact that its stomach has to dispose
99
of a relatively larger quantity even of
this good food, shall we further tax it
By giving an inferior food in still greater
quantity?
The answer is tolerably obvious. The
more the labour of digestion is econo
mised, the more energy is left for the
purpose of growth and action. The
functions of the stomach and intestines
cannot be performed without a large
supply of blood and nervous power ; and
in the comparative lassitude that follows
a hearty meal, every adult has proof that
this supply of blood and nervous power
is at the expense of the system at large.
If the requisite nutriment is obtained
from a great quantity of innutritious
food, more work is entailed on the
viscera than when it is obtained from
a moderate quantity of nutritous food.
This extra work is so much loss—a
loss which in children shows itself
either in diminished energy, or in smaller
growth, or in both. The inference is,
then, that they should have a diet which
combines, as much as possible, nutritive
ness and digestibility.
It is doubtless true that boys and girls
may be reared upon an exclusively,
or almost exclusively, vegetable diet.
Among the upper classes are to be
found children to whom comparatively
little meat is given; and who, neverthe
less, grow and appear in good health.
Animal food is scarcely tasted by the
offspring of labouring people, and yet
they reach a healthy maturity.
But
these seemingly adverse facts have by no
means the weight commonly supposed.
In the first place, it does not follow that
those who in early years flourish on
bread and potatoes, will eventually reach
a fine development; and a comparison
between the agricultural labourers and
the gentry, in England, or between the
middle and lower classes in France,
�•TOO
EDUCATION
is by no means in favour of vegetable locomotive energy and considerable
feeders. In the second place, the ques vivacity.
If, again, we contrast the
tion is not simply a question of bulk, but stolid inactivity of the graminivorous
also a question of quality. A soft, flabby sheep with the liveliness of the dog,
flesh makes as good a show as a firm subsisting on flesh or farinaceous matters,
one; but though to the careless eye, a
or a mixture of the two, we see a differ
child of full, flaccid tissue may appear
ence similar in kind, but still greater in
the equal of one whose fibres are well degree. And after walking through the
toned, a trial of strength will prove the Zoological Gardens, and noting the rest
difference. Obesity in adults is often a lessness with which the carnivorous
sign of feebleness. Men lose weight in animals pace up and down their cages, it
training. Hence the appearance of these
needs but to remember that none of the
low-fed children is far from conclusive. herbivorous animals habitually display
In the third place, besides size we have
this superfluous energy, to see how clear
to consider energy. Between children of is the relation between concentration of
the meat-eating classes and those of the
food and degree of activity.
bread-and-potato-eating classes, there is
That these differences are not directly
a marked contrast in this respect. Both
consequent on differences of constitu
in mental and physical vivacity the
tion, as some may argue; but are directly
peasant-boy is greatly inferior to the consequent on differences in the food
son of a gentleman.
which the creatures are constituted to
If we compare different kinds of subsist on; is proved by the fact, that
animals, or different races of men, or
they are observable between different
the same animals or men when differently divisions of the same species.
The
fed, we find still more distinct proof that varieties of the horse furnish an illustra
the degree of energy essentially depends on tion. Compare the big-bellied, inactive,
the nutritiveness of the food.
spiritless cart-horse with a racer or
In a cow, subsisting on so innutritive hunter, small in the flanks and full of
a food as grass, we see that the immense energy; and then call to mind how
quantity required necessitates an enor much less nutritive is the diet of the one
mous digestive system ; that the limbs,
than that of the other. Or take the
small in comparison with the body, are case of mankind. Australians, Bushmen,
burdened by its weight; that in carrying '
and others of the lowest savages who
about this heavy body and digesting this live on roots and berries, varied by
excessive quantity of food, much force is . larvae of insects and the like meagre
expended; and that, having but little i fare, are comparatively puny in stature,
remaining, the creature is sluggish.
have large abdomens, soft and unde
Compare with the cow a horse — an !
veloped muscles, and are quite unable to
animal of nearly allied structure, but i cope with Europeans, either in a struggle
habituated to a more concentrated diet, j. or in prolonged exertion. Count up the
Here the body, and more especially its I wild races who are well grown, strong
abdominal region, bears a smaller ratio i and active, as the Kaffirs, North-Amerito the limbs; the powers are not taxed j can Indians, and Patagonians, and you
by the support of such massive viscera ' find them large consumers of flesh. The
nor the digestion of so bulky a food; ' ill-fed Hindoo goes down before the
and, as a consequence, there is greater ' Englishman fed on more nutritive food,
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
to whom he is as inferior in mental as
in physical energy. And generally, we
think, the history of the world shows
that the well-fed races have been the
energetic and dominant races.
Still stronger, however, becomes the
argument, when we find that the same
individual animal is capable of more or
less exertion according as its food is
more or less nutritious. This has been
demonstrated in the case of the horse.
Though flesh may be gained by a grazing
horse, strength is lost; as putting him to
hard work proves. “The consequence
of turning horses out to grass is relaxa
tion of the muscular system.” “Grass
is a very good preparation for a bullock
for Smithfield market, but a very bad
one for a hunter.” It was well known
of old that, after passing the summer in
the fields, hunters required some months
of stable-feeding before becoming able
to follow the hounds; and that they
did not get into good condition till the
beginning of the next spring. And the
modern practice is that insisted on by
Mr. Apperley—“Never to give a hunter
what is called ‘ a summer’s run at grass,’
and, except under particular and very
favourable circumstances, never to turn
him out at all.” That is to say, never
give him poor food: great energy and
endurance are to be obtained only by
the continued use of nutritive food. So
true is this that, as proved by Mr.
Apperley, prolonged high-feeding enables
a middling horse to equal, in his per
formances, a first-rate horse fed in the
ordinary way. To which various evidences
add the familiar fact that, when a horse
is required to do double duty, it is the
practice to give him beans—a food con
taining a larger proportion of nitrogenous,
or flesh-making material, than his habitual
Oats.
Once more, in the case of individual
IOI
men the truth has been illustrated with
equal, or still greater, clearness. We do
not refer to men in training for feats
of strength, whose regimen, however,
thoroughly conforms to the doctrine.
We refer to the experience of railway
contractors and their labourers. It has
been for years a well-established fact
that an English navvy, eating largely of
flesh, is far more efficient than a Conti
nental navvy living on farinaceous food ;
so much more efficient, that English
contractors for Continental railways found
it pay to take their labourers with them.
That difference of diet and not difference
of race caused this superiority, has been
of late distinctly shown. For it has
turned out, that when the Continental
navvies live in the same style as their
English competitors, they presently rise,
more or less nearly, to a par with them
in efficiency. And to this fact, let us here
add the converse one, to which we can
give personal testimony based upon six
months’ experience of vegetarianism, that
abstinence from meat entails diminished
energy of both body and mind.
Do not these various evidences endorse
our argument respecting the feeding of
children ? Do they not imply that, even
supposing the same stature and bulk to
be attained on an innutritive as on a
nutritive diet, the quantity of tissue is
greatly inferior ? Do they not establish
the position that, where energy as well
as growth has to be maintained, it can
only be done by high feeding ? Do they
not confirm the a priori conclusion that,
though a child of whom little is expected
in the way of bodily or mental activity,
may thrive tolerably well on farinaceous
substances, a child who is daily required,
not only to form the due amount of new
tissue, but to supply the waste consequent
on great muscular action, and the further
waste consequent on hard exercise of
�102
EDUCATION
brain, must live on substances containing
a larger ratio of nutritive matter ? And
is it not an obvious corollary, that denial
of this better food will be at the expense
either of growth, or of bodily activity, or
of mental activity; as constitution and
circumstances determine? We believe
no logical intellect will question it. To
think otherwise is to entertain in a
disguised form the old fallacy of the
perpetual-motion schemers—that it is
possible to get power out of nothing.
Before leaving the question of food,
■a few words must be said on another
requisite—variety. In this respect the
dietary of the young is very faulty. If
not, like our soldiers, condemned to
“ twenty years of boiled beef,” our
children have mostly to bear a monotony
which, though less extreme and less
lasting, is quite as clearly at variance
with the laws of health. At dinner, it is
true, they usually have food that is more
or less mixed, and that is changed day
by day. But week after week, month
after month, year after year, comes the
same breakfast of bread-and-milk, or, it
may be, oatmeal-porridge. And with
like persistence the day is closed, perhaps
with a second edition of the bread-andmilk, perhaps with tea and bread-andbutter.
This practice is opposed to the dictates
of physiology. The satiety produced by
an oft-repeated dish, and the gratification
caused by one long a stranger to the
palate, are not meaningless, as people
carelessly assume; but they are the
incentives to a wholesome diversity of
diet. It is a fact, established by numerous
experiments, that there is scarcely any
one food, however good, which supplies
in due proportions or right forms all the
elements required for carrying on the
vital processes in a normal manner •
whence it follows that frequent change
of food is desirable to balance the
supplies of all the elements. It is a
further fact, known to physiologists, that
the enjoyment given by a much-liked
food is a nervous stimulus, which, by
increasing the action of the heart and
so propelling the blood with increased
vigour, aids in the subsequent digestion.
And these truths are in harmony with
the maxims of modern cattle-feeding,
which dictate a rotation of diet.
Not only, however, is periodic change
of food very desirable; but, for the
same reasons, it is very desirable that a
mixture of food should be taken at each
meal. The better balance of ingredients,
and the greater nervous stimulation, are
advantages which hold here as before.
If facts are asked for, we may name as
one, the comparative ease with which
the stomach disposes of a French dinner,
enormous in quantity but extremely varied
in materials. Few will contend that an
equal weight of one kind of food, how
ever well cooked, could be digested with
as much facility. If any desire further
facts, they may find them in every
modern book on the management of
animals. Animals thrive best when each
meal is made up of several things. The
experiments of Goss and Stark “afford
the most decisive proof of the advantage,
or rather the necessity, of a mixture of
substances, in order to produce the com
pound which is the best adapted for the
action of the stomach.”1
Should any object, as probably many
will, that a rotating dietary for children,
and one which also requires a mixture
of food at each meal, would entail too
much trouble; we reply, that no trouble
is thought too great which conduces to
the mental development of children, and
that for their future welfare, good bodily
1 Cyclopedia of Anatomy and Physiology.
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
103
There is a current theory, vaguely enter
tained if not put into a definite formula,
that the sensations are to be disregarded.
They do not exist for our guidance, but
to mislead us, seems to be the prevalent
belief reduced to its naked form. It is
a grave error: we are much more bene
ficently constituted. It is not obedience
to the sensations, but disobedience to
them, which is the habitual cause of
bodily evils. It is not the eating when
hungry, but the eating in the absence of
hunger, which is bad. It is not drinking
when thirsty, but continuing to drink
when thirst has ceased, that is the vice.
Harm does not result from breathing
that fresh air which every healthy person
enjoys ; but from breathing foul air, spite
of the-protest of the lungs. Harm does
not result from taking that active exercise
which, as every child shows us, Nature
strongly prompts ; but from a persistent
disregard of Nature’s promptings. Not
that mental activity which is spontaneous
and enjoyable does the mischief; but
that which is preserved in after a hot
or aching head commands desistance.
Not that bodily exertion which is pleasant
or indifferent, does injury; but that which
is continued when exhaustion forbids.
It is true that, in those who have long
led unhealthy lives, the sensations are
not trustworthy guides. People who
have for years been almost constantly
in-doors, who have exercised their brains
very much and their bodies scarcely at
all, who in eating have obeyed their
clocks without consulting their stomachs,
may very likely be misled by their vitiated
feelings. But their abnormal state is
itself the result of transgressing their
With clothing as with food, the usual feelings. Had they from childhood
tendency is towards an improper scanti never disobeyed what we may term the
ness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. physical conscience, it would not have
been seared, but would have remained
a faithful monitor.
1 Morton’s Cyclopedia of Agriculture.
development is of still higher importance.
Moreover, it seems alike sad and strange
that a trouble which is cheerfully taken
in the fattening of pigs, should be thought
too great in the rearing of children.
One more paragraph, with the view of
warning those who may propose to adopt
the regimen indicated. The change
must not be made suddenly ; for con
tinued low-feeding so enfeebles the
system, as to disable it from at once
dealing with a high diet. Deficient
nutrition is itself a cause of dyspepsia.
This is true even of animals. “When
calves are fed with skimmed milk, or
whey, or other poor food, they are liable
to indigestion.”1 Hence, therefore, where
the energies are low, the transition to a
generous diet must be gradual: each
increment of strength gained, justifying
a fresh addition of nutriment. Further,
it should be borne in mind that the con
centration of nutriment may be carried
too far. A bulk sufficient to fill the
stomach is one requisite of a proper
meal; and this requisite negatives a diet
deficient in those matters which give
adequate mass. Though the size of the
digestive organs is less in the well-fed
civilised races than in the ill-fed savage
ones ; and though their size may even
tually diminish still further; yet, for the
time being, the bulk of the ingesta must
be determined by the existing capacity.
But, paying due regard to these two
qualifications, our conclusions are—that
the food of children should be highly
nutritive; that it should be varied at
each meal and at successive meals ; and
that it should be abundant.
�104
EDUCATION
Among the sensations serving for our
guidance are those of heat and cold:
and a clothing for children which does
not carefully consult these sensations, is
to be condemned. The common notion
about “ hardening ” is a grievous delusion.
Not a few children are “hardened” out
of the world ; and those who survive,
permanently suffer either in growth or
constitution. “Their delicate appear
ance furnishes ample indication of the
mischief thus produced, and their
frequent attacks of illness might prove
a warning even to unreflecting parents,”
says Dr. Combe. The reasoning on
which this hardening theory rests is
extremely superficial. Wealthy parents,
seeing little peasant boys and girls
playing about in the open-air only half
clothed, and joining with this fact the
general healthiness of labouring people,
draw the unwarrantable conclusion that
the healthiness is the result of the
exposure, and resolve to keep their
own offspring scantily covered! It is
forgotten that these urchins who gambol
upon village-greens are in many respects
favourably circumstanced — that their
lives are spent in almost perpetual play;
that they are all day breathing fresh air;
and that their systems are not disturbed
by over-taxed brains. For aught that
appears to the contrary, their good health
may be maintained, not in consequence
of, but in spite of, their deficient clothing.
This alternative conclusion we believe to
be the true one; and that an inevitable
detriment results from the loss of animal
heat to which they are subject.
For when, the constitution being
sound enough to bear it, the exposure
does produce hardness, it does so at
the expense of growth. This truth is
displayed alike in animals and in man.
Shetland ponies bear greater inclemencies
than the horses of the south, but are
dwarfed. Highland sheep and cattle,
living in a colder climate, are stunted
in comparison with English breeds. In
both the arctic and antarctic regions
the human race falls much below its
ordinary height: the Laplander and
Esquimaux are very short; and the
Terra del Fuegians, who go naked in a
wintry land, are described by Darwin as
so stunted and hideous, that “ one can
hardly make one’s-self believe they are
fellow-creatures. ”
Science explains this dwarfishness pro
duced by great abstraction of heat;
showing that, food and other things
being equal, it unavoidably results. For
as before pointed out, to make up for
that cooling by radiation which the body
is ever undergoing, there must be a
constant oxidation of certain matters
forming part of the food. And in pro
portion as the thermal loss is great, must
the quantity of these matters required
for oxidation be great. But the power
of the digestive organs is limited. Con
sequently, when they have to prepare a
large quantity of this material needful
for maintaining the temperature, they
can prepare but a small quantity of
the material which goes to build up the
frame. Excessive expenditure for fuel
entails diminished means for other
purposes. Wherefore there necessarily
results a body small in size, or inferior
in texture, or both.
Hence the great importance of clothing.
As Liebig says :—“ Our clothing is, in
reference to the temperature of the body,
merely an equivalent for a certain amount
of food.” By diminishing the loss of
heat, it diminishes the amount of fuel
needful for maintaining the heat; and
when the stomach has less to do in
preparing fuel, it can do more in
preparing other materials. This deduc
tion is confirmed by the experience
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
io5
of those who manage animals. Cold acid given off varies with tolerable
can be borne by animals only at an accuracy as the quantity of heat pro
expense of fat, or muscle, or growth, as duced. And thus we see that in children
the case may be. “If fattening cattle are the system, even when not placed at a
exposed to a low temperature, either disadvantage, is called upon to provide
their progress must be retarded or a nearly double the proportion of material
great additional expenditure of food for generating heat.
See, then, the extreme folly of clothing
incurred.”1 Mr. Apperley insists strongly
that, to bring hunters into good con the young scantily. What father, fulldition, it is necessary that the stable grown though he is, losing heat less
should be kept warm.
And among rapidly as he does, and having no
those who rear racers, it is an established physiological necessity but to supply the
waste of each day—what father, we ask,
doctrine that exposure is to be avoided.
The scientific truth thus illustrated by would think it salutary to go about with
ethnology, and recognised by agricul bare legs, bare arms, and bare neck?
turists and sportsmen, applies with Yet this tax on the system, from which
double force to children. In proportion he would shrink, he inflicts on his little
to their smallness and the rapidity of ones, who are so much less able to bear
their growth is the injury from cold it! or, if he does not inflict it, sees
great. In France, new-born infants often it inflicted without protest. Let him
die in winter from being carried to the remember that every ounce of nutriment
office of the maire for registration. needlessly expended for the maintenance
“M. Quetelet has pointed out, that in of temperature, is so much deducted from
Belgium two infants die in January for the nutriment going to build up the
one that dies in July.” And in Russia frame; and that even when colds, con
the infant mortality is something enor gestions, or other consequent disorders
mous. Even when near maturity, the are escaped, diminished growth or less
undeveloped frame is comparatively perfect structure is inevitable.
“The rule is, therefore, not to dress
unable to bear exposure : as witness the
in an invariable way in all cases, but to
quickness with which young soldiers
succumb in a trying campaign. The put on clothing in kind and quantity
rationale is obvious. We have already sufficient in the individual case to protect
adverted to the fact that, in consequence the body effectually from an abiding
of the varying relation between surface sensation of cold, however slight! This
and bulk, a child loses a relatively larger rule, the importance cf which Dr. Combe
amount of heat than an adult; and here indicates by the italics, is one in which
we must point out that the disadvantage men of science and practitioners agree.
under which the child thus labours is We have met with none competent to
very great. Lehmann says:—“If the form a judgment on the matter, who do
carbonic acid excreted by children or not strongly condemn the exposure of
young animals is calculated for an equal children’s limbs. If there is one point
bodily weight, it results that children above others in which “pestilent custom”
produce nearly twice as much acid as should be ignored, it is this.
Lamentable, indeed, is it to see mothers
adults.” Now the quantity of carbonic
seriously damaging the constitutions of
their children out of compliance with an
1 Morton’s Cyclopedia of Agriculture.
�EDUCATION
irrational fashion. It is bad enough that
they should themselves conform to every
folly which our Gallic neighbours please
to initiate ; but that they should clothe
their children in any mountebank dress
which Le petit Courrier des Dames indi
cates, regardless of its insufficiency and
unfitness, is monstrous.
Discomfort,
more or less great, is inflicted; frequent
disorders are entailed; growth is checked
or stamina undermined; premature death
not uncommonly caused; and all because
it is thought needful to make frocks of a
size and material dictated by French
caprice. Not only is it that for the sake
of conformity, mothers thus punish and
injure their little ones by scantiness of
covering; but it is that from an allied
motive they impose a style of dress which
forbids healthful activity. To please the
eye, colours and fabrics are chosen totally
unfit to bear that rough usage which
unrestrained play involves : and then to
prevent damage the unrestrained play is
interdicted.
“ Get up this moment:
you will soil your clean frock,” is the
mandate issued to some urchin creeping
about on the floor. “ Come back : you
will dirty your stockings,” calls out the
governess to one of her charges, who has
left the footpath to scramble up a bank.
Thus is the evil doubled. That they
may come up to their mamma’s standard
of prettiness, and be admired by her
visitors, children must have habiliments
deficient in quantity and unfit in texture;
and that these easily-damaged habiliments
may be kept clean and uninjured, the
restless activity so natural and needful
for the young, is restrained. The exercise
which becomes doubly requisite when
the clothing is insufficient, is cut short,
lest it should deface the clothing. Would
that the terrible cruelty of this system
could be seen by those who maintain it!
We do not hesitate to say that, through
enfeebled health, defective energies, and
consequent non-success in life, thousands
are annually doomed to unhappiness by
this unscrupulous regard for appearances :
even when they are not, by early death,
literally sacrificed to the Moloch of
maternal vanity. We are reluctant to
counsel strong measures, but really the
evils are so great as to justify, or even to
demand, a peremptory interference on
the part of fathers.
Our conclusions are, then—that, while
the clothing of children should never be
in such excess as to create oppressive
warmth, it should always be sufficient to
prevent any general feeling of cold;
*
that instead of the flimsy cotton, linen,
or mixed fabrics commonly used, it
should be made of some good non
conductor, such as coarse woollen cloth ;
that it should be so strong as to receive
little damage from the hard wear and
tear which childish sports will give it;
and that its colours should be such as
will not soon suffer from use and expo
sure.
To the importance of bodily exercise
most people are in some degree awake.
Perhaps less needs saying on this requisite
of physical education than on most
others : at any rate, in so far as boys are
concerned. Public schools and private
schools alike furnish tolerably adequate
playgrounds; and there is usually a fair
1 It is needful to remark that children whose
legs and arms have been from the beginning
habitually without covering, cease to be conscious
that the exposed surfaces are cold ; just as by use
we have all ceased to be conscious that our faces
are cold, even when out of doors. But though
in such children the sensations no longer protest,
it does not follow that the system escapes injury;
any more than it follows that the Fuegian is
undamaged by exposure, because he bears with
indifference the melting of the falling snow on
his naked body.
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
share of time for out-door games, and a
recognition of them as needful. In this,
if in no other direction, it seems admitted
that the promptings of boyish instinct
may advantageously be followed; and,
indeed, in the modern practice of breaking
the prolonged morning’s and afternoon’s
lessons by a few minutes’ open-air recrea
tion, we see an increasing tendency to
conform school-regulations to the bodily
sensations of the pupils. Here, then,
little need be said in the way of expostu
lation or suggestion.
But we have been obliged to qualify
this admission by inserting the clause
“in so far as boys are concerned.” Un
fortunately, the fact is quite otherwise
with girls. It chances, somewhat
strangely, that we have daily opportunity
of drawing a comparison. We have
both a boys’ school and a girls’ school
within view; and the contrast between
them is remarkable. In the one case,
nearly the whole of a large garden is
turned into an open, gravelled space,
affording ample scope for games, and
supplied with poles and horizontal bars
for gymnastic exercises. Every day
before breakfast, again towards eleven
o’clock, again at mid-day, again in the
afternoon, and once more after school is
over, the neighbourhood is awakened by
a chorus of shouts and laughter as the
boys rush out to play; and for as long
as they remain, both eyes and ears give
proof that they are absorbed in that
enjoyable activity which makes the pulse
bound and ensures the healthful activity
of every organ. How unlike is the
picture offered by the “ Establishment
for Young Ladies”! Until the fact was
pointed out, we actually did not know
that we had a girls’ school as close to us
as the school for boys. The garden,
equally large with the other, affords no
sign whatever of any provision for juvenile
107
recreation; but is entirely laid out with
prim grass-plots, gravel-walks, shrubs, and
flowers, after the usual suburban style.
During five months we ha.ve not once
had our attention drawn to the premises
by a shout or a laugh. Occasionally
girls may be observed sauntering along
the paths with their lesson-books in their
hands, or else walking arm-in-arm. Once,
indeed, we saw one chase another round
the garden; but, with this exception,
nothing like vigorous exertion has been
visible.
Why this astonishing difference? Is
it that the constitution of a girl differs
so entirely from that of a boy as not to
need these active exercises ? Is it that
a girl has none of the promptings to
vociferous play by which boys are
impelled ? Or is it that, while in boys
these promptings are to be regarded as
stimuli to a bodily activity without which
there cannot be adequate development,
to their sisters, Nature has given them
for no purpose whatever—unless it be
for the vexation of school-mistresses ?
Perhaps, however, we mistake the aim
of those who train the gentler sex. We
have a vague suspicion that to produce
a robust physique is thought undesirable ;
that rude health and abundant vigour
are considered somewhat plebeian; that
a certain delicacy, a strength not com
petent to more than a mile or two’s walk,
an appetite fastidious and easily satisfied,
joined with that timidity which commonly
accompanies feebleness, are held more
lady-like. We do not expect that any
would distinctly avow this; but we fancy
the governess-mind is haunted by an
ideal young lady bearing not a little
resemblance to this type. If so, it must
be admitted that the established system
is admirably calculated to realise this
ideal. But to suppose that such is the
ideal of the opposite sex is a profound
�108
EDUCATION
mistake. That men are not commonly
drawn towards masculine women, is
doubtless true.
That such relative
weakness as asks the protection of
superior strength, is an element of
attraction, we quite admit. But the
difference thus responded to by the
feelings of men, is the natural, preestablished difference, which will assert
itself without artificial appliances. And
when, by artificial appliances, the degree
of this difference is increased, it becomes
an element of repulsion rather than of
attraction.
“Then girls should be allowed to run
wild—to become as rude as boys, and
grow up into romps and hoydens !”
exclaims some defender of the pro
prieties. This, we presume, is the ever
present dread of school-mistresses. It
appears, on inquiry, that at “ Establish
ments for Young Ladies ” noisy play like
that daily indulged in by boys, is a
punishable offence; and we infer that it
is forbidden, lest unlady-like habits should
be formed. The fear is quite groundless,
however. For if the sportive activity
allowed to boys does not prevent them
from growing up into gentlemen; why
should a like sportive activity prevent
girls from growing up into ladies ?
Rough as may have been their play
ground frolics, youths who have left
school do not indulge in leap-frog in the
street, or marbles in the drawing-room.
Abandoning their jackets, they abandon
at the same time boyish games; and
display an anxiety—often a ludicrous
anxiety—to avoid whatever is not manly.
If now, on arriving at the due age, this
feeling of masculine dignity puts so
efficient a restraint on the sports of boy
hood, will not the feeling of feminine
modesty, gradually strengthening as
maturity is approached, put an efficient
restraint on the like snorts of girlhood ?
Have not women even a greater regard
for appearances than men ? and will there
not consequently arise in them even a
stronger check to whatever is rough or
boisterous ? How absurd is the supposi
tion that the womanly instincts would
not assert themselves but for the rigorous
discipline of school-mistresses!
In this, as in other cases, to remedy
the evils of one artificiality, another
artificiality has been introduced. The
natural, spontaneous exercise having
been forbidden, and the bad conse
quences of no exercise having become
conspicuous, there has been adopted a
system of factitious exercise—gymnastics.
That this is better than nothing we
admit; but that it is an adequate sub
stitute for play we deny. The defects
are both positive and negative. In the
first place, these formal, muscular
motions, necessarily less varied than
those accompanying juvenile sports, do
not secure so equable a distribution of
action to all parts of the body; whence
it results that the exertion, falling on
special parts, produces fatigue sooner
than it would else have done: to which,
in passing, let us add, that if constantly
repeated, this exertion of special parts
leads to a disproportionate development.
Again, the quantity of exercise thus taken
will be deficient, not only in consequence
of uneven distribution; but there will be
a further deficiency in consequence of
lack of interest. Even when not made
repulsive, as they sometimes are, by
assuming the shape of appointed lessons,
these monotonous movements are sure
to become wearisome from the absence
of amusement. Competition, it is true,
serves as a stimulus; but it is not a
lasting stimulus, like that enjoyment
which accompanies varied play. The
weightiest objection, however, still
remains.
Besides being inferior in
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
respect of the quantity of muscular
exertion which they secure, gymnastics
are still more inferior in respect of the
quality., This comparative want of
enjoyment which we have named as a
cause of early desistance from artificial
exercises, is also a cause of inferiority
in the effects they produce on the system.
The common assumption that, so long
as the amount of bodily action is the
same, it matters not whether it be
pleasurable or otherwise, is a grave
mistake. An agreeable mental excite
ment has a highly invigorating influence.
See the effect produced upon an invalid
by good news, or by the visit of an old
friend. Mark how careful medical men
are to recommend lively society to
debilitated patients. Remember how
beneficial to health is the gratification
produced by change of scene. The
truth is that happiness is the most
powerful of tonics. By accelerating the
circulation of the blood, it facilitates the
performance of every function; and so
tends alike to increase health when it
exists, and to restore it when it has been
lost. Hence the intrinsic superiority of
play to gymnastics. The extreme interest
felt by children in their games, and the
riotous glee with which they carry on
their rougher frolics, are of as much
importance as the accompanying exertion.
And as not supplying these mental
stimuli, gymnastics must be radically
defective.
Granting then, as we do, that formal
exercises of the limbs are better than
nothing—granting, further, that they may
be used with advantage as supplementary
aids; we yet contend that they can never
serve in place of the exercises prompted
by Nature. For girls, as well as boys,
the sportive activities to which the
instincts impel, are essential to bodily
welfare. Whoever forbids them, forbids
109
the divinely-appointed means to physical
development.
A topic still remains—one perhaps
more urgently demanding consideration
than any of the foregoing. It is asserted
by not a few, that among the educated
classes the younger adults and those
who are verging on maturity, are neither
so well grown nor so strong as their
seniors. On first hearing this assertion,
we were inclined to class it as one of
the many manifestations of the old
tendency to exalt the past at the expense
of the present. Calling to mind the
facts that, as measured by ancient
armour, modern men are proved to be
larger than ancient men; and that the
tables of mortality show no diminution,
but rather an increase, in the duration
of life; we paid little attention to what
seemed a groundless belief. Detailed
observation, however, has shaken our
opinion. Omitting from the comparison
the labouring classes, we have noticed a
majority of cases in which the children
do not reach the stature of their parents;
and, in massiveness, making due allow
ance for difference of age, there seems a
like inferiority. Medical men say that
now-a-days people cannot bear nearly so
much depletion as in times gone by.
Premature baldness is far more common
than it used to be. And an early decay
of teeth occurs in the rising generation
with startling frequency.
In general
vigour the contrast appears equally strik
ing. Men of past generations, living
riotously as they did, could bear more
than men of the present generation, who
live soberly, can bear. Though they
drank hard, kept irregular hours, were
regardless of fresh air, and thought little
of cleanliness, our recent ancestors were
capable of prolonged application without
injury, even to a ripe old age: witness
�I IO
EDUCATION
the annals of the bench and the bar.
Yet we who think much about our bodily
welfare; who eat with moderation, and
do not drink to excess; who attend to
ventilation, and use frequent ablutions
who make annual excursions, and have
the benefit of greater medical knowledge;
—we are continually breaking down
under our work. Paying considerable
attention to the laws of health, we seem
to be weaker than our grandfathers, who,
in many respects, defied the laws of
health. And, judging from the appear
ance and frequent ailments of the rising
generation, they are likely to be even
less robust than ourselves.
What is the meaning of this ? Is it
that past over-feeding, alike of adults and
children, was less injurious than the
under-feeding to which we have adverted
as now so general? Is it that the
deficient clothing which this delusive
hardening-theory has encouraged, is to
blame ? Is it that the greater or less
discouragement of juvenile sports, in
deference to a false refinement, is the
cause ? From our reasonings it may be
inferred that each of these has probably
had a share in producing the evil.1 But
there has been yet another detrimental
influence at work, perhaps more potent
1 We are not certain that the propagation of
subdued forms of constitutional disease through
the agency of vaccination is not a part-cause.
Sundry facts in pathology suggest the inference,
that when the system of a vaccinated child is
excreting the vaccine virus by means of pustules,
it will tend also to excrete through such pustules
other morbific matters; especially if these
morbific matters are of a kind ordinarily got rid
of by the skin, as are some of the worst of
them. Hence it is very possible—probable even
-—that a child with a constitutional taint, too
slight to show itself in visible disease, may,
through the medium of vitiated vaccine lymph
taken from it, convey a like constitutional taint
to other children, and these to others.
than any of the others : we mean—excess
of mental application.
On old and young, the pressure of
modern life puts a still-increasing strain.
In all businesses and professions, intenser
competition taxes the energies and
abilities of every adult; and to fit the
young to hold their places under this
intenser competition, they are subject to
severer discipline than heretofore. The
damage is thus doubled. Fathers, who
find themselves run hard by their multi
plying competitors, and, while labouring
under this disadvantage, have to maintain
a more expensive style of living, are all
the year round obliged to work early and
late, taking little exercise and getting but
short holidays. The constitutions shaken
by this continued over-application, they
bequeath to their children. And then
these comparatively feeble children, pre
disposed to break down even under
ordinary strains on their energies, are
required to go through a curriculum
much more extended than that prescribed
for the unenfeebled children of past
generations.
The disastrous consequences that
might be anticipated, are everywhere
visible. Go where you will, and before
long there come under your notice cases
of children or youths, of either sex,
more or less injured by undue study.
Here, to recover from a state of debility
thus produced, a year’s rustication has
been found necessary. There you find
a chronic congestion of the brain, that
has already lasted many months, and
threatens to last much longer. Now you
hear of a fever that resulted from the
over-excitement in some way brought on
at school. And again, the instance is
that of a youth who has already had
once to desist from his studies, and who,
since his return to them, is frequently
taken out of his class in a fainting fit.
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
11 î
We state facts—facts not sought for, but | is unobtrusive and slowly accumulating
which have been thrust on our observa —cases where there is frequent derange
ment of the functions, attributed to this
tion during the last two years ; and that,
too, within a very limited range. Nor or that special cause, or to constitutional
have we by any means exhausted the delicacy; cases where there is retarda
tion and premature arrest of bodily
list. Quite recently we had the oppor
tunity of marking how the evil becomes growth ; cases where a latent tendency
hereditary : the case being that of a lady to consumption is brought out and
of robust parentage, whose system was established; cases where a predisposition
so injured by the régime of a Scotch is given to that now common cerebral
boarding-school, where she was under disorder brought on by the labour oi
adult life. How commonly health is
fed and over-worked, that she invariably
suffers from vertigo on rising in the thus undermined, will be clear to all
morning ; and whose children, inheriting who, after noting the frequent ailments
this enfeebled brain, are several of them of hard-worked professional and mercan
unable to bear even a moderate amount tile men, will reflect on the much worse
of study without headache or giddiness. effects which undue application must
produce on the undeveloped systems of
At the present time we have daily under
children. The young can bear neither
our eyes a young lady whose system
so much hardship, nor so much physical
has been damaged for life by the college
exertion, nor so much mental exertion,
course through which she has passed.
as the full grown. Judge then, if the
Taxed as she was to such an extent that
she had no energy left for exercise, she is, full grown manifestly suffer from the
excessive mental exertion required of
now that she has finished her education,
a constant complainant. Appetite small them, how great must be the damage
which a mental exertion, often equally
and very capricious, mostly refusing meat;
extremities perpetually cold, even when excessive, inflicts on the young 1
Indeed, when we examine the merciless
the weather is warm ; a feebleness which
forbids anything but the slowest walking, school drill frequently enforced, the
and that only for a short time ; palpita wonder is, not that it does extreme
injury, but that it can be borne at all.
tion on going upstairs ; greatly impaired
vision—these, joined with checked Take the instance given by Sir John
Forbes, from personal knowledge; and
growth and lax tissue, are among the
which he asserts, after much inquiry, to
results entailed. And to her case we
may add that of her friend and fellow be an average sample of the middle
class girls’-school system throughout
student ; who is similarly weak ; who is
England. Omitting detailed divisions
liable to faint even under the excitement
of time, we quote the summary of the
of a quiet party of friends ; and who has
at length been obliged by her medical twenty-four hours.
hours
attendant to desist from study entirely.
........................................
•••
9
If injuries so conspicuous are thus In bed
(the younger io hours)
frequent, how very general must be the
In school, at their studies and tasks
...
9
smaller and inconspicuous injuries ! To In school, or in the house, the elder at
one case where positive illness is trace
optional studies or work, the younger
able to over-application, there are probably
at play ...
...
...
•••
•••
3$
(the younger 2^ hours)
at least half-a-dozen cases where the evil
�IT2
At meals........................................
Exercise in the open air, in the shape of
a formal walk, often with lesson-books
in hand, and even this only when the
weather is fine at the appointed time ...
EDUCATION
hours
i
24
And what are the results of this
“astounding regimen,” as Sir John
Forbes terms it? Of course, feebleness,
pallor, want of spirits, general ill-health.
But he describes something more. This
utter disregard of physical welfare, out
of extreme anxiety to cultivate the mind
this prolonged exercise of brain and
deficient exercise of limbs,—he found
to be habitually followed, not only by
disordered functions but by malformation.
He says :—“ We lately visited, in a large
town, a boarding-school containing forty
girls; and we learnt, on close and
accurate inquiry, that there was not one
of the girls who had been at the school
two years (and the majority had been
as long) that was not more or less
crooked 1 ”1
It may be that since 1833, when this
was written, some improvement has taken
place. We hope it has. But that the
system is still common—nay, that it is
in some cases carried to a greater extreme
than ever; we can personally testify. We
recently went over a training-college for
young men: one of those instituted of
late years for the purpose of supplying
schools with well-disciplined teachers.
Here, under official supervision, where
something better than the judgment of
private school-mistresses might have
been looked for, we found the daily
routine to be as follows :—
At 6 o’clock the students are called,
,, 7 to 8 studies,
’ Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine, vol. i.,
pp. 697, 698.
At 8 to 9 scripture-reading, prayers, and break
fast,
,, 9 to 12 studies,
” 12 to
leisure, nominally devoted to walk
ing or other exercise, but often spent ia
study,
” Ii to 2 dinner, the meal commonly occupying
twenty-minutes,
j, 2 to 5 studies,
,, 5 to 6 tea and relaxation,
,, 6 to 8J studies,
,, 8J to 9J private studies in preparing lessons
for the next day,
J, 10 to bed.
Thus, out of the twenty-four hours,
eight are devoted to sleep; four and a
quarter are occupied in dressing, prayers,
meals, and the brief periods of rest
accompanying them; ten and a half are
given to study; and one and a quarter
to exercise, which is optional and often
avoided. Not only, however, are the
ten-and-a-half hours of recognised study
frequently increased to eleven-and-a-half
by devoting to books the time set apart
for exercise; but some of the students
get up at four o’clock in the morning to
prepare their lessons; and are actually
encouraged by their teachers to do this !
The course to be passed through in a
given time is so extensive; and the
teachers, whose credit is at stake in
getting their pupils well through the
examinations, are so urgent; that pupils
are not uncommonly induced to spend
twelve and thirteen hours a day in mental
labour 1
It needs no prophet to see that the
bodily injury inflicted must be great.
As we were told by one of the inmates,
those who arrive with fresh complexions
quickly become blanched. Illness is
frequent: there are always some on the
sick-list. Failure of appetite and indiges
tion are very common. Diarrhoea is a
prevalent disorder: not uncommonly a
third of the whole number of students
suffering under it at the same time.
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Headache is generally complained of;
and by some is borne almost daily for
months. While a certain percentage
break down entirely and go away.
That this should be the regimen of
•what is in some sort a model institution,
established and superintended by the
embodied enlightenment of the age, is a
startling fact. That the severe examina
tions, joined with the short period
assigned for preparation, should compel
recourse to a system which inevitably
undermines the health of all who pass
through it, is proof, if not of cruelty,
then of woful ignorance.
The case is no doubt in a great degree
exceptional—perhaps to be paralleled
only in other institutions of the same
class. But that cases so extreme should
exist at all, goes far to show that the
minds of the rising generation are greatly
over-taxed. Expressing as they do the
ideas of the educated community, the
requirements of these training colleges,
even in the absence of other evidence,
would imply a prevailing tendency to an
unduly urgent system of culture.
It seems strange that there should be
so little consciousness of the dangers of
over-education during youth, when there
is so general a consciousness of the
dangers of over-education during child
hood. Most parents are partially aware
of the evil consequences that follow
infant-precocity. In every society may
t>6 heard reprobation of those who too
early stimulate the minds of their little
ones. And the dread of this early
Stimulation is great in proportion as there
h adequate knowledge of the effects;
witness the implied opinion of one of
our most distinguished professors of
physiology, who told us that he did not
intend his little boy to learn any lessons
until he was eight years old. But while
to all it is a familiar truth that a forced
«3
development of intelligence in childhood}
entails either physical feebleness, or ulti
mate stupidity, or early death; it appears
not to be perceived that throughout
youth the same truth holds. Yet it
unquestionably does so. There is a
given order in which, and a given rate
at which, the faculties unfold. If the
course of education conforms itself to
that order and rate, well. If not—if
the higher faculties are early taxed by
presenting an order of knowledge more
complex and abstract than can be readily
assimilated; or if, by excess of culture,
the intellect in general is developed to a
degree beyond that which is natural to
its age; the abnormal advantage gained
will inevitably be accompanied by some
equivalent, or more than equivalent, evil.
For Nature is a strict accountant;
and if you demand of her in one direc
tion more than she is prepared to lay
out, she balances the account by making
a deduction elsewhere. If you will let
her follow her own course, taking care
to supply, in right quantities and kinds,
the raw materials of bodily and mental
growth required at each age, she will
eventually produce an individual more
or less evenly developed. If, however,
you insist on premature or undue growth
of any one part, she will, with more or
less protest, concede the point; but that
she may do your extra work, she must leave
some of her more important work undone.
Let it never be forgotten that the amount
of vital energy which the body at any
moment possesses, is limited; and that,
being limited, it is impossible to get
from it more than a fixed quantity of
results. In a child or youth the demands
upon this vital energy are various and
urgent. As before pointed out, the waste
consequent on the day’s bodily exercise
has to be met; the wear of brain entailed
by the day’s study has to be made good;
�114
EDUCATION
a certain additional growth of body has in mental labour exceeds that which
to be provided for; and also a certain Nature has provided for; the expendi
additional growth of brain: to which ture for other purposes falls below what
must be added the amount of energy it should have been; and evils of one
absorbed in digesting the large quantity kind or other are inevitably entailed.
of food required for meeting these many Let us briefly consider these evils.
Supposing the over-activity of brain to
demands.
Now, that to divert an
excess of energy into any one of these exceed the normal activity only in a
channels is to abstract it from the others, moderate degree, there will be nothing
is both manifest a priori, and proved a more than some slight reaction on the
posteriori, by the experience of every development of the body: the stature
one. Every one knows, for instance, falling a little below that which it would
that the digestion of a heavy meal else have reached; or the bulk being
makes such a demand on the system less than it would have been; or the
as to produce lassitude of mind and body, quality of tissue not being so good. One
frequently ending in sleep. Every one or more of these effects must necessarily
knows, too, that excess of bodily exercise occur. The extra quantity of blood
diminishes the power of thought—that supplied to the brain during mental
the temporary prostration following any exertion, and during the subsequent
sudden exertion, or the fatigue produced period in which the waste of cerebral
by a thirty miles’ walk, is accompanied substance is being made good, is blood
by a disinclination to mental effort; that, that would else have been circulating
after a month’s pedestrian tour, the through the limbs and viscera ; and the
mental inertia is such that some days are growth or repair for which that blood
required to overcome it; and that in would have supplied materials, is lost.
peasants who spend their lives in This physical reaction being certain, the
muscular labour the activity of mind is question is, whether the gain resulting
very small. Again, it is a familiar truth from the extra culture is equivalent to
that during those fits of rapid growth the loss ? — whether defect of bodily
which sometimes occur in childhood, the growth, or the want of that structural
great abstraction of energy is shown in an perfection which gives vigour and endu
attendant prostration, bodily and mental. rance, is compensated by the additional
Once more, the facts that violent muscular knowledge acquired ?
When the excess of mental exertion is
exertion after eating, will stop digestion;
greater, there follow results far more
and that children who are early put to
hard labour become stunted; similarly serious; telling not only against bodily
exhibit the antagonism—similarly imply perfection, but against the perfection of
that excess of activity in one direction the brain itself. It is a physiological
involves deficiency of it in other direc law, first pointed out by M Isidor St.
tions. Now, the law which is thus Hilaire, and to which attention has been
manifest in extreme cases, holds in all drawn by Mr. Lewes in his essay on
cases. These injurious abstractions of “ Dwarfs and Giants,” that there is an
energy as certainly take place when the antagonism between growth and develop
undue demands are slight and constant, ment. By growth, as used in this anti
as when they are great and sudden. thetical sense, is to be understood
Hence, if during youth the expenditure increase of size; by development, increase
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
of structure. And the law is, that great
activity in either of these processes
involves retardation or arrest of the other.
A familiar example is furnished by the
cases of the caterpillar and the chrysalis.
In the caterpillar there is extremely rapid
augmentation of bulk ; but the structure
is scarcely at all more complex when the
caterpillar is full-grown than when it is
small. In the chrysalis the bulk does
not increase; on the contrary, weight is
lost during this stage of the creature’s
life ; but the elaboration of a more com
plex structure goes on with great activity.
The antagonism, here so clear, is less
traceable in higher creatures, because
the two processes are carried on together.
But we see it pretty well illustrated among
ourselves when we contrast the sexes.
A girl developes in body and mind
rapidly, and ceases to grow compara
tively early. A boy’s bodily and mental
development is slower, and his growth
greater. At the age when the one is
mature, finished, and having all faculties
in full play, the other, whose vital energies
have been more directed towards increase
of size, is relatively incomplete in struc
ture ; and shows it in a comparative
awkwardness, bodily and mental. Now
this law is true of each separate part of
the organism, as well as of the whole.
The abnormally rapid advance of any
organ in respect of structure, involves
premature arrest of its growth; and this
happens with the organ of the mind as
certainly as with any other organ. The
brain, which during early years is rela
tively large in mass but imperfect in
structure, will, if required to perform its
functions with undue activity, undergo
a structural advance greater than is
appropriate to its age; but the ultimate
effect will be a falling short of the size
and power that would else have been
attained. And this is a part-cause—
115
probably the chief cause—why precocious
children, and youths who up to a certain
time were carrying all before them, so
often stop short and disappoint the high
hopes of their parents.
But these results of over-education,
disastrous as they are, are perhaps less
disastrous than the effects produced on
the health—the undermined constitu
tion, the enfeebled energies, the morbid
feelings. Recent discoveries in physiology
have shown how immense is the influence
of the brain over the functions of the
body. Digestion, circulation, and through
these all the organic processes, are
profoundly affected by cerebral excite
ment. Whoever has seen repeated, as
we have, the experiment first performed
by Weber, showing the consequence of
irritating the vagus nerve, which connects
the brain with the viscera—whoever has
seen the action of the heart suddenly
arrested by irritating this nerve; slowly
recommencing when the irritation is
suspended; and again arrested the
moment it is renewed; will have a vivid
conception of the depressing influence
which an overwrought brain exercises
on the body. The effects thus physio
logically explained, are indeed exemplified
in ordinary experience. There is no one
but has felt the palpitation accompanying
hope, fear, anger, joy—no one but has
observed how laboured becomes the
action of the heart when these feelings
are violent. And though there are many
who have never suffered that extreme
emotional excitement which is followed
by arrest of the heart’s action and fainting;
yet every one knows these to be cause
and effect. It is a familiar fact, too,
that disturbance of the stomach results
from mental excitement exceeding a
certain intensity. Loss of appetite is a
common consequence alike of very
pleasurable and very painful states of
�EDUCATION
mind. When the event producing a
pleasurable or painful state of mind
occurs shortly after a meal, it not unfrequently happens either that the stomach
rejects what has been eaten, or digests
it with great difficulty and under protest.
And as every one who taxes his brain
much can testify, even purely intellectual
action will, when excessive, produce
analogous effects. Now the relation
between brain and body which is so
manifest in these extreme cases, holds
equally in ordinary, less-marked cases.
Just as these violent but temporary
cerebral excitements produce violent but
temporary disturbances of the viscera;
so do the less violent but chronic cerebral
excitements produce less violent but
chronic visceral disturbances. This is
not simply an inference:—it is a truth
to which every medical man can bear
witness; .and it is one to which a long
and sad experience enables us to give
personal testimony. Various degrees and
forms of bodily derangement, often taking
years of enforced idleness to set partially
right, result from this prolonged over
exertion of mind. Sometimes the heart
is chiefly affected : habitual palpitations;
a pulse much enfeebled; and very
generally a diminution in the number of
beats from seventy-two to sixty, or
even fewer. Sometimes the conspicuous
disorder is of the stomach: a dyspepsia
which makes life a burden, and is
amenable to no remedy but time. In
many cases both heart and stomach are
implicated. Mostly the sleep is short
and broken. And very generally there
is more or less mental depression.
Consider, then, how great must be the
damage inflicted by undue mental excite
ment on children and youths. More or
less of this constitutional disturbance will
inevitably follow an exertion of brain
beyond the normal amount; and when not
so excessive as to produce absolute illness,
is sure to entail a slowly accumulating
degeneracy of physique. With a small
and fastidious appetite, an imperfect
digestion, and an enfeebled circulation,
how can the developing body flourish?
The due performance of every vital
process depends on an adequate supply
of good blood. Without enough good
blood, no gland can secrete properly, no
viscus can fully discharge its office.
Without enough good blood, no nerve,
muscle, membrane, or other tissue can
be efficiently repaired. Without enough
good blood, growth will be neither sound
nor ■ sufficient. Judge, then, how bad
must be the consequences when to a
growing body the weakened stomach
supplies blood that is deficient in quantity
and poor in quality; while the debilitated
heart propels this poor and scanty blood
with unnatural slowness.
And if, as all who investigate the
matter must admit, physical degeneracy
is a consequence of excessive study, how
grave is the condemnation to be passed
on this cramming-system above exempli
fied. It is a terrible mistake, from
whatever point of view regarded. It is
a mistake in so far as the mere acquire
ment of knowledge is concerned. For
the mind, like the body, cannot assimilate
beyond a certain rate; and if you ply it
with facts faster than it can assimilate
them, they are soon rejected again:
instead of being built into the intellectual
fabric, they fall out of recollection after
the passing of the examination for which
they were got up. It is a mistake, too,
because it tends to make study distasteful.
Either through the painful associations
produced by ceaseless mental toil, or
through the abnormal state of brain it
leaves behind, it often generates an
aversion to books; and, instead of
that subsequent self-culture induced by
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
rational education, there comes continued
retrogression. It is a mistake, also,
inasmuch as it assumes that the acquisi
tion of knowledge is everything; and
forgets that a much more important
thing is the organisation of knowledge,
for which time and spontaneous thinking
are requisite. As Humboldt remarks
respecting the progress of intelligence in
general, that “ the interpretation of
Nature is obscured when the description
languishes under too great an accumula
tion of insulated facts ”; so, it may be
remarked respecting the progress of indi
vidual intelligence, that the mind is over
burdened and hampered by an excess of
ill-digested information. It is not the
knowledge stored up as intellectual fat
which is of value; but that which is
turned into intellectual muscle. The
mistake goes still deeper however. Even
were the system good as producing
intellectual efficiency, which it is not; it
would still be bad, because, as we have
shown, it is fatal to that vigour of physique
needful to make intellectual training
available in the struggle of life. Those
who, in eagerness to cultivate their pupils’
minds, are reckless of their bodies, do
not remember that success in the world
depends more on energy than on infor
mation ; and that a policy which in
cramming with information undermines
energy, is self-defeating. The strong will
and untiring activity due to abundant
animal vigour, go far to compensate even
great defects of education; and when
joined with that quite adequate education
which may be obtained without sacrificing
health, they ensure an easy victory over
competitors enfeebled by excessive study :
prodigies of learning though they may be.
A comparatively small and ill-made
engine, worked at high pressure, will do
more than a large and well-finished one
worked at low pressure. What folly is
117
it, then, while finishing the engine, so to
damage the boiler that it will not generate
steam ! Once more, the system is a
mistake, as involving a false estimate of
welfare in life. Even supposing it were
a means to worldly success, instead of a
means to worldly failure, yet, in the
entailed ill-health, it would inflict a more
than equivalent curse. What boots it to
have attained wealth, if the wealth is
accompanied by ceaseless ailments ?
What is the worth of distinction, if it has
brought hypochondria with it ? Surely
no one needs telling that a good digestion,
a bounding pulse, and high spirits, are
elements of happiness which no external
advantages can out-balance. Chronic
bodily disorder casts a gloom over the
brightest prospects ; while the vivacity of
strong health gilds even misfortune. We
contend, then, that this over-education is
vicious in every way—vicious, as giving
knowledge that will soon be forgotten ;
vicious, as producing a disgust for
knowledge; vicious, as neglecting that
organisation of knowledge which is more
important than its acquisition; vicious,
as weakening or destroying that energy
without which a trained intellect is
useless; vicious, as entailing that illhealth for which even success would not
compensate, and which makes failure
doubly bitter.
On women the effects of this forcing
system are, if possible, even more injurious
than on men. Being in great measure
debarred from those vigorous and en
joyable exercises of body by which boys
mitigate the evils of excessive study,
girls feel these evils in their full intensity.
Hence, the much smaller proportion of
them who grow up well-made and healthy.
In the pale, angular, flat-chested young
ladies, so abundant in London drawing
rooms, we see the effect of merciless
application, unrelieved by youthful sports ;
�EDUCATION
and this physical degeneracy hinders
their welfare far more than their many
accomplishments aid it. Mammas anxious
to make their daughters attractive, could
scarcely choose a course more fatal than
this, which sacrifices the body to the
mind. Either they disregard the tastes
of the opposite sex, or else their concep
tion of those tastes is erroneous. Men
care little for erudition in women; but
very much for physical beauty, good
nature, and sound sense. How many
conquests does the blue-stocking * ake
m
through her extensive knowledge of
history ? What man ever fell in love
with a woman because she understood
Italian ? Where is the Edwin who was
brought to Angelina’s feet by her German?
But rosy cheeks and laughing eyes are
great attractions. A finely-rounded figure
draws admiring glances. The liveliness
and good humour that overflowing health
produces, go a great way towards estab
lishing attachments. Every one knows
cases where bodily perfections, in the
absence of all other recommendations,
have incited a passion that carried all
before it; but scarcely any one can point
to a case where intellectual acquirements,
apart from moral or physical attributes,
have aroused such a feeling. The truth
is, that out of the many elements uniting
in various proportions to produce in a
man’s breast the complex emotion we
call love, the strongest are those produced
by physical attractions; the next in order
of strength are those produced by moral
attractions; the weakest are those pro
duced by intellectual attractions; and
even these are dependent less on acquired
knowledge than on natural faculty —
quickness, wit, insight. If any think the
assertion a derogatory one, and inveigh
against the masculine character for being
thus swayed; we reply that they little
know what they say when they thus call
in question the Divine ordinations. Even
were there no obvious meaning in the
arrangement, we might be sure that some
important end was subserved. But the
meaning is quite obvious to those who
examine. When we remember that one
of Nature’s ends, or rather her supreme
end, is the welfare of posterity; further
that, in so far as posterity are concerned,
a cultivated intelligence based on a bad
physique is of little worth, since its descen
dants will die out in a generation or two ;
and conversely that a good physique,
however poor the accompanying mental
endowments, is worth preserving, because,
throughout future generations, the mental
endowments may be indefinitely de
veloped ; we perceive how important is
the balance of instincts above described.
But, advantage apart, the instincts being
thus balanced, it is folly to persist in a
system which undermines a girl’s constitu
tion that it may overload her memory.
Educate as highly as possible—the higher
the better—provided no bodily injury is
entailed (and we may remark, in passing,
that a sufficiently high standard might be
reached were the parrot-faculty cultivated
less, and the human faculty more, and
were the discipline extended over that
now wasted period between leaving school
and being married). But to educate in
such manner, or to such extent, as to
produce physical degeneracy, is to defeat
the chief end for which the toil and cost
and anxiety are submitted to. By sub
jecting their daughters to this highpressure system, parents frequently ruin
their prospects in life. Besides inflicting
on them enfeebled health, with all its
pains and disabilities and gloom ; they
not unfrequently doom them to celibacy.
The physical education of children is
thus, in various ways, seriously faulty.
It errs in deficient feeding ; in deficient
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
clothing ; in deficient exercise (among
girls at least); and in excessive mental
application. Considering the régime as
a whole, its tendency is too exacting : it
asks too much and gives too little. In
the extent to which it taxes the vital
energies, it makes the juvenile life far
more like the adult life than it should be.
It overlooks the truth that, as in the
foetus the entire vitality is expended in
growth—as in the infant, the expenditure
of vitality in growth is so great as to leave
extremely little for either physical or
mental action ; so throughout childhood
and youth, growth is the dominant
requirement to which all others must
be subordinated : a requirement which
dictates the giving of much and the taking
away of little — a requirement which,
therefore, restricts the exertion of body
and mind in proportion to the rapidity
of growth—a requirement which permits
the mental and physical activities to
increase only as fast as the rate of growth
diminishes.
The rationale of this high-pressure
education is that it results from our
passing phase of civilisation. In primitive
times, when aggression and defence were
the leading social activities, bodily vigour
with its accompanying courage were the
desiderata ; and then education was
almost wholly physical: mental cultivation
was little cared for, and indeed, as in
feudal ages, was often treated with con
tempt. But now that our state is relatively
peaceful—now that muscular power is of
use for little else than manual labour,
while social success of nearly every kind
119
depends very much on mental power;
our education has become almost exclu
sively mental. Instead of respecting the
body and ignoring the mind, we now
respect the mind and ignore the body.
Both these attitudes are wrong. We do
not yet realise the truth that as, in this
life of ours, the physical underlies the
mental, the mental must not be developed
at the expense of the physical. The
ancient and modem conceptions must
be combined.
Perhaps nothing will so much hasten
the time when body and mind will both
be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of
the belief that the preservation of health
is a duty. Few seem conscious that
there is such a thing as physical morality.
Men’s habitual words and acts imply the
idea that they are at liberty to treat their
bodies as they please. Disorders entailed
by disobedience to Nature’s dictates, they
regard simply as grievances : not as the
effects of a conduct more or less flagitious.
Though the evil consequences inflicted
on their dependents, and on future
generations, are often as great as those
caused by crime; yet they do not think
themselves in any degree criminal. It
is true that, in the case of drunkenness,
the viciousness of a bodily transgression
is recognised : but none appear to infer
that, if this bodily transgression is vicious,
so too is every bodily transgression.
The fact is, that all breaches of the laws
of health are physical sins. When this is
generally seen, then, and perhaps not till
then, will the physical training of the
young receive the attention it deserves.
THE END.
�INDEX
[For this Index the author is indebted to F. H. Collins, Esq., of Edgbaston,
Birmingham, who very kindly volunteered to prepare it for him.]
A.
Abstract-Sciences and their industrial appli
cations, 19 ; those of the abstract-concrete, 19
“ Accomplishments, the,” in a lady’s education,
10
Accountant, the facility acquired by one, 36 ;
Nature, a strict, 113-115
Activities, classification of the, 13
Æsthetic culture, the value of, 30-31
Agriculture, aided by Chemistry, 20, and by
Biology, 21
Amusements and Relaxations, the knowledge
aiding the, 30-35 .
Anatomy and Botany as cultivating the memory,
36
Ancestors, their vigour compared with our own,
no
“ Animal, a good,” the necessity to be, 43, 94
Animals, their rearing studied more than that
of children, 93 ; their vital processes allied to
man’s, 94 ; their energies dependent upon
their kinds of food, 100
Apperley, Mr., on hunters, 101-105
Applause, the general desire for, 11
Arithmetical Truths should be taught in the
concrete, 45
Asceticism and its Relation to Educational
Systems, 41
Astronomy, its industrial application, 21
Aveyron, the Wild Boy of, 48
B.
Bacon—“ The relative values ofknowledges,” 12
Battles, history is largely composed of their
descriptions, 27-28
Beauty, physical, in women is more attractive
than erudition, 18
Beliefs, the growing diversity in, 42
Bernard, M. Claude, on the functions of the
liver, 96
Biology, its application to agriculture, 21
Bodily Exercise, as needful for girls as boys,
106-109 ! in excess, diminishes thought, 114
Body, the cost of mental achievement to the,
114-117.
Books, their educational value over-rated, 25
Botany, its interest to Children, 58
Bread and Butter ; its too great frequency, 96, 103
Brain reacts upon the body, the, 114-117
Breakfast Roll, its history, 19
Burns, the lesson taught by, 84-90
Butterflies, their collection and keeping cultivate
the powers of observation, 59
C.
Candle, the penalty for playing with a lighted,
84
Cardboard, figures cut in, 64
Carelessness ; its natural penalty, 78-80
Caterpillar as an example of growth, 115
Centre of gravity in Sculpture, 32
Chemistry; its industrial value, 20
Children, prevalent ignorance concerning the
rearing of, 23-27 ; is harshness to children a
preparation for their after-life ? 73 ; moral
precocity equally detrimental with intellectual,
88; their love of fruits and sweets justified,
95-97
Chrysalis, as an example of Development, 115
Citizen, the knowledge which aids the functions
of the, 27-30
Civilisation ; its order, and that of education
should be similar, 52, 53
Classics, Public Opinion the motive for teaching
them, 9 ; and Mathematics form an insignifi
cant part of a proper Curriculum, 11-12
Clothing is a development of decoration, 9-11 ;
the natural penalty for its reckless treatment,
80; should suffice to prevent an abiding
sensation of cold, 103-106
Coal-mining, its Failure, from lack of geological
knowledge, 22
Cold, its ill-effects on the development of
children, 24, 103-106
Colours ; children’s delight in painting, 60
Combe, Dr. Andrew, on the advantages of Fruit
in Diet, 96, 97; on the importance of sufficient
Clothing, 105
Commands, Parents should give few, 89 ; but
when given they should be decisive and con
sistent, 89
Comte, M.—The Education of the Child should
accord with th it of mankind, considered
historically, 52
�INDEX
Concrete Sciences, and their industrial applica
tions, the, 19
Conduct, the right ruling of, in all divisions, the
aim of education, 13 ; of Society, Parents, and
Children relatively considered, 71-74 ; the
definitions of good and bad, 74
“Could a Man be Secure,” 12
Cramming Systems, their mischievous results,
HÔ-118
Culture, the desirableness of general, 15 ; the
present value of the Æsthetic, and its probable
future increase, 30-32
D.
HANTS, a knowledge of, a small consolation in
trouble, 27
Decision should be used by Parents in commands, 89
Decoration in Primitive Societies precedes dress,
9-11
Degenerating, are we ? no
Despotism in the State induces Despotism in
Education, 41
Development ; its long duration in Children, 48;
of the mind, 50-55 > an increase of structure
retards increase of size, 115
Discobolus, illustrates ignorance of the law of
momentum, the, 32
Diet. {See Food.)
Digestion, chemical changes in, 96 ; the organs
of, smaller in civilised than in savage races,
103, productive of lassitudes 114
Discipline ; Science superior to language for
cultivating the judgment and for moral dis.dpline, 35-39 ; of nature not wholly sufficient
for education, 47 ; of unavoidable consequences
or the penalties of Nature, 74-87 ; failure of
artificial criminal codes, 76 ; English school
discipline less severe than the French, 87 ;
the aim of, should be to produce a selfgoverning being, 90
Disease, the permanent damage done by, 17
■Drawing, when and how to teach, 60-63 >
apparatus for teaching perspective, 62
Dress. {See Clothing. )
Drinking without Thirst, its evils, 17, 103
Drunkenness, accompanied by physical de
generacy, 74, 119
E.
Eating without hunger, its evils, 17, 103
Education at the present time a matter of custom
and prejudice, 11. The ideal, a training in
each subject proportionate to its value, 15.
The omissions and vices of our present system,
31 ; and its relation to the contemporary social
. state, 40-43, 72-74- The past and present
systems compared, 43-48. It should conform
with the evolution of the faculties, 47-48.
Should be a repetition in little of civilisation,
53, 66 : and should commence in infancy with
object lessons, 55
Electricity and its industrial applications, 20
Emotions, the prevailing ignorance of their
nature» 24
121
Empirical should precede the rational in educa
tion, 53
Employers and employed ; their relations should
be noted in history, 29
Energy in well-fed races is greater than that in
ill-fed, 99-101
English and German Boys ; their relative charac
ters, 91
English and Foreign Labourers compared, 101
Error, suppression of one, followed by the
ascendency of another, 43
Euclid, an attractive study when addressed to
the understanding, 65
Evolution of the faculties should be the basis of
education, the, 47-48. The laws of mental
evolution, 50-55
Examinations cause the acquirement ot un
organised knowledge, which is soon forgotten,
26
Exercise, bodily, as needful for girls as boys,
106-109 > in excess diminishes thought, 114
Eye, an instance of faculty developed through
function, 36
,F.
Faculties are developed by the performance of
their functions, 36
Family, prevalent ignorance concerning the
rearing of a, 23-27 ; and its management, 69
Family _ Government, Richter on the present
chaotic state in, 70
Faraday, Professor, on the deficiency of judg
ment in society, 37
&
Fatigue of body or brain should be followed by
desistance, 17
Features of young children resemble those of a
savage, 87
Feelings react upon the reflective powers, the,
34
Fellenberg—Indolence is not natural to children,
54 J the importance of individual activity in
children, 67
Food, to be beneficial should be varied, 21,
103 ; sufficient in quantity--appetite being a
natural guide, 95-97 ; and for children highly
nutritious, 97-103 ; the easy digestibility of a
French dinner, 102 ; food as well as clothing
is necessary for maintaining the heat of the
body, 104-106.
Forbes, Sir John, on the present division of time
in girls’ schools, III
Fruit, children’s love for, also its digestibility, 96
Friendship, between parents and children, should
be cultivated, 83-87
G.
Games of children develop the system and pre
pare it for after life, 16
Genius as well as science necessary to attain the
highest results, 34
Geography, in teaching, physical, should precede
political, 26
Geology : its industrial applications, 21 ; a
knowledge of increases the poetry of nature,
34
Geometry: its industrial uses, 19 ; its lessons
�INDEX
122
should commence empirically with models,
and afterwards proceed to the rational with
Euclid, 63-66 ; Inventional Geometry, 66;
Professor Tyndall, on rendering it attractive,
65
Grammar coming after language historically,
should be taught after it, 44
Growth is affected by the food consumed, 97100; and by the temperature experienced,
104; an increase of size retards increase of
structure, 115
H.
Happiness, regarded as a legitimate aim, 41 ;
favourable to physical and mental action, 54,
66-68, 109
Hardening Theory, its ill effects on children’s
health, 104
Health, its importance for all activities, 17-18,
109, 117 ; some causes and effects of ill-health,
17, 104, no; affected by over-study, 110-118;
its preservation a duty, 119
Heart, influences affecting its action, 115
Heat, its science and industrial applications, 20
Heredity and the transmission of defects, 52, 72;
likewise of those caused by over-study, 111
History, considered part of a good education,
10 ; its worthlessness as now taught, 15, 27 ;
as it should be taught, 28-30
Huxley, Professor, on true science and religion,
38
I.
Ignorance, the various effects produced by
parental, 23
Impulsiveness should be avoided by parents,
89
Indefinite in education should precede the defi
nite, the, 51
Indolence in children is unnatural—Fellenberg,
54
■
•
, ■
Insects, their collection and keeping cultivate
the powers of observation, 58
Instincts of an infant, self-preservative, 16. They
show that progression should be from the
simple to the complex, 56
Interest, the advantages of doing work with, 67
Inventional Geometry, 66
K.
Kingsley, Mr., his writings against over
culture, 94
Knowledge, the importance of knowing its rela
tive value, 12; and Discipline form the two
values of an acquirement, 16; Rational
superior to Empirical, 22 ; it should be orga
nised, and not merely acquired, 116
L.
Labourers, English and Foreign compared, 101
Language inferior to Science for cultivating the
judgment and the memory, 36
Learning by rote inferior to Self-instruction, 26 ;
and now falling into disuse, 43
Lehman, on the quantity of Carbonic Acid
excreted by Children and Adults, 105
Leisure, the occupations of, 12, 30
Liebig—Clothing is an equivalent for a certain
amount of food, 104
Life, its present, falls below its possible dura
tion, 17 ; the Tables of Mortality show its in
creased length, 109
Light, the science of, and its industrial applica
tions, 20
Livelihood, gaining a (indirect self-preservation),
the knowledge which best aids, 19-23
Locke, John, on the futility of very severe
punishment, 87
M.
Machinery, its all-prevailing use, 19
Mann, Horace—“ Education consists too much
at present in telling, and not training” 67
Marcel, M.—“ Grammar is not a stepping-stone,
but the finishing instrument,” 44 ; Weights and
Measures should be taught by the use of
models, 45 ; the Child should be shown the
relation of the parts of an object, 56 ; for the
Mind, it is better to discover than be told, 67
Mathematics indispensable for the arts of con
struction, 19; and Classics form an insignificant
part of a proper curriculum, 11-12
Maxims, of Art are related to psychologic prin
ciples, 34; and Rules for parental guidance,
87-92
Memory and Judgment cultivated by science,
the, 36-37
Mirabeau and the word “ impossible,” 65
Modern life, its increasing strain necessitates a
sound constitution, 94, no
Moderation to be used and moderate results
expected, 88
Montaigne—Sqavoir par cceurn'estpas st;avoir, 43
Mortality, and the effects of cold on infants
abroad, 105; Tables of, show an increased
length of life, 109
Multiplication Table should be taught experi
mentally, 43
Music based on science, 33
N.
Natural History trains the powers of observa
tion in children, and should be encouraged,
58, 82
. .
r
Navigation an industrial application of astro
nomy, 21
Neatness inculcated by the natural penalties for
untidiness, 77-78
Nerve, the effects on the heart of irritating the
vagus, 115
Newton, an example of patience, 65
Nursery, one of the evils of over legislation in
the, 95
O.
Object Lessons, their importance in commenc
ing education, 45, 56-66
Observation, important tocultivate the powers of,
44
�INDEX
Opinions, the various revolutions affecting, 4043
Ornament in dress predominates over use
among savages, 9-11
Over-study, some instances of, and injuries
brought on by, 110-118
P.
Painting, based on science, 32 ; children’s
delight in should be made an incentive to
drawing, 60
Palmerston’s, Lord, “All Children are born
Good,” 71
Paper, children’s powers of manipulation increase
by cutting objects in, 64
Parents, their duties precede those of the citizen,
14; the knowledge which aids them in rearing
children, 23-27 ; their conduct and children’s
relatively considered, 71-74, 76, 80-82 ; their
conduct, and not children’s perversity, a fre
quent cause of disorder, 71; mostly considered
as “friend-enemies,” 83; maxims and rules
for their guidance, 87-92
Particulars in education should precede the
generalisation, 44, 52
Penalties, the natural, considered for the lighter
offences, 74-82 J and for the more serious,
82-87
Perspective, when and how to teach it, 62 ; its
practicability, 67
Pestalozzi—Education should conform to mental
evolution, 46; his practice did not conform to
the principles of his system, 48-50 ; education
should begin in infancy, 55
Physiology, ignorance of its principles is pro
ductive of ill-health, 17-18 ; a knowledge of
it is necessary for bringing up children, 26
Picture, its true theory is that of objects projected
on a plane, 63
Pillans, Professor — Children when properly
taught as happy as wh- n at play, 68
Poetry, scientific principles necessary to true, 33;
science is itself poetic, 34
Precocity, intellectual should be discouraged, 43 ;
likewise moral precocity, 88; its ultimate
effect is a falling short in size and power, 114
Promptings of nature should be obeyed, 17
Psychology, its guidance needed by parents and
teachers, 25, 26, 49 ; its principles underlie
the maxims of art, 34
Public Schools and their Teaching, 23 ; their
discipline, 73, 87
Punctuality, to be instilled by the use of its
natural penalty, 79
R.
Railway making regulated by Geometry, 19;
children’s restlessness in travelling by, 72
Relaxations and Amusements, the knowledge
which aids the, 30-35
Religion and Science, Professor Huxley on,
.38-9
Richter, his description of the chaotic state of
moral education, 70; Pas trop gouverner, 89
123
S.
Sçavoir par cœur n‘est pas sçavoir—Montaigne,
43
Schools, the Public and their teaching, 23 ; their
discipline, 73, 87 ; English and Foreign com
pared, 91 ; the division of time in various,
111-112
Sculpture based on the principles of science, 32.
Science, its truths are of intrinsic value, 15 ; of
society and its industrial uses, 21 ; underlies
art> 3r—35 î is poetic, 34; cultivates the
memory and the judgment, 36-37 ; and fosters
religion, 38-39 ; the universal need for, 39 ;
the Cinderella of knowledge, 40 ; evolves
from its corresponding art, 53
Self-control, needful to parents, 89
Self-governed, the aim of education is to produce
a being, 90
Self-instruction to be encouraged, 53, 66 ; its
lasting advantages, 67-9
Self-preservation is primarily important, 13 ; the
knowledge which aids Direct, 16-18 ; and
Indirect, or gaining a livelihood, 18-23
Self-renunciation necessary to scientific men,
Professor Tyndall on the, 38
Self-will in Children not to be regretted, 91
Simple in Education should precede the com
plex, the, 50
Social Observances should be noted in History,
28 ; Social Phenomena are the phenomena of
life, 30
Society, its goodness is dependent on the nature
of its citizens, 14, 30; “Is ignorant of its own
ignorance”—Professor Faraday, 37
Species, their number in Botany and in Zoology,
36 . .
Sugar, its importance as Food, 96
Sympathy, children’s desire for, 55-58 ; the
regret for offending varies with the amount of,
86
T.
Theft, why catalogued as a sin, 74 ; its natural
penalty, 86
Time, Systematised Education will increase the
amount of Leisure, 30 ; its division at various
schools, Hi-112
Tyndall, Professor, on Inductive Inquiry, 38 ;
on teaching Geometry attractively, 65
V.
Vaccination, a possible cause of degeneration,
110
Vegetarianism entails diminished energy, 99-102
W.
Whipping Juvenile Criminals not preventive of
crime, 87
Wyse, Mr., On the rational method of teaching
geometry, 63
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X /A ITih A IT
Al ORAL NERVE
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By FURNEAUX JORDAN, F.R.C.S.,
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Spencer, Herbert [1820-1903]
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Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Index compiled by F.H. Collins of Edgbaston [and it's very good - cataloguer's note]. Bust of Spencer on front cover. Publisher's advertisements on last two numbered pages and unnumbered pages at the end. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited. First published London: Williams & Norgate, 1861. The cheap edition of the work first published 1878. Stamp on title page "2d given. If this book is returned to W.A. Foyle, 65 Grand Parade, Harringay". Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Text
FROM
Christian Pulpit
Secular Platform
BY
JOHN
LLOYD
PRICE SIXPENCE
London:
THE PIONEER PRESS, 2 NEWCASTLE ST., E.C.
1903
�Some Popular Books Issued by the Freethought
Publishing Company.
(2 Newcastie-street, London, E.C.)
BACON, LORD
Pagan Mythology: or, the Wisdom of the
Ancients. 6d., postage l|d.
BENTHAM, JEREMY
Church
of
England Catechism Examined,
a
Wi”Ch narrowly escaped prosecu
tion. With Introduction by J. M. Wheeler. Is
postage 2d.
’
Utilitarianism. 3d, postage id.
COHEN, C.
Outline
of Evolutionary Ethics.
A plain
exposition of the nature of Morality from the stand
point of the doctrine of Evolution. 6d., postage Id.
Foreign Missions ; Their Dangers and Delusions.
A complete exposure of the Missionary movement,
rull of figures from the Societies’ own reports
showing how the money is spent, where it is spent,
and what are the results. 9d., postage, Id.
COLLINS, ANTHONY
Free Will
and Necessity.
Reprinted from
1715 edition, with Biography by J. M. Wheeler, and
Freiace and Annotations by G. W. Foote. Is.
p. 2d.; superior edition, on superfine paper, cloth
2s., postage 3d.
’
Huxley says that “ Collins writes with wonderful power
and closeness of reasoning.”
*
FEUERBACH, LUDWIG
The Essence of Religion. God the Image of
Ma.n. Man’s Dependence upon Nature the Last and
.< xrU y Source of Religion. Is., postage l|d.
No one has demonstrated and explained the purely
human origin of the idea of God better than Ludwig .
Feuerbach.”—Buchner.
8 1
�NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
FROM
CHRISTIAN PULPIT
TO
SECULAR PLATFORM
BY
JOHN
LLOYD
London:
The Pioneer Press, 2 Newcastle Street, E.C,
1903
�PRINTED BY THE PIONEER PRESS
AT
2 NEWCASTLE-STREET, FARRINGDON-STREET, LONDON, E.C
�( Reprinted from
the
“ Freethinker.” )
I.—INTRODUCTORY.
It is a stupendous leap from the high and lonely
prison of the preacher to the low, wide, and free ros
trum of the Atheist, and such are the risks connected
with it that no one should ever take it except in
obedience to the stern voice of duty.
Recently, it
fell to my lot to be solemnly called upon to take such
a perilous jump, and to turn such a bewildering
somersault; and I am now obliged to testify that the
event formed the most serious and unforgettable
crisis of my life.
I can honestly state that it was
my supreme crisis, and that I feel it to be my duty,
as well as privilege, to furnish the reader with a minute
description of the various circumstances which com
bined to render it absolutely inevitable. I think I would
be justified in characterising it, further, as a typical
experience, through which hosts of others, ere long, will
be necessitated to pass. Be it known, therefore, that for
upwards of twenty years I occupied the Christian pulpit,
and won a moderate amount of notoriety in it. I was
what is called “a popular preacher,” a fact which was
both pleasing and inspiring to me.
I trust I shall not
lay myself open to the charge of egotism when I affirm
that, during the last fifteen years of my professional
career, the churches in which I officiated were too small
to accommodate the eager crowds. Of course, it often
happens^ that popularity is no proof of superior excel
lence. The most notorious person in Great Britain at
�4
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
the present moment is Samuel Herbert Dougal, the
brutal murderer and clever forger. Let a man leave
the ruts in which the wheels of society have been
accustomed to run, and become eccentric in his ways,
and he will soon become an object of public curiosity.
Everybody will be anxious to catch a glimpse of him,
and, if possible, to hear him speak. In my own case, I
am afraid that the chief element whieh contributed to
my popularity was a lurking suspicion, on the part of
the people, that I was not quite sound in the faith. To
myself, however, the most painfully conscious fact was
the knowledge that the faith was not sufficiently sound
in me. I was theologically eccentric.
I must emphasise this point. It has always been my
devoutest wish to hold the Christian faith unhesitatingly,
firmly, and in its orthodox completeness ; but, unfortu
nately for my peace of mind, the wish never blossomed
into serene fulfilment. It had been carefully handed
down to me, as a sacred legacy, through a long line of
ancestors, and I had been trained to believe that to
doubt it, or to cherish it languidly and falteringly,
would have been a heinous sin against God. During
childhood and youth, and for at least one year of my
ministerial career, I did hold it with tightest grip, and
was prepared to defend it against all opponents. I
must here explain that, in the school of theology in
which I was brought up, the Christian Faith was
synonymous with Calvinism, and that the only enemies
of it, with whom I was familiar, were Socinians or
Arminians. To me, Calvinism was the only true faith,
and all who denied it were outside the pale of the
Church of God, and would be damned for ever.
I
shuddered as I thought of the awful doom that awaited
benighted Wesleyans and Unitarians in the next world.
I placed John Calvin on the same level as the apostle
Paul, and pitied all who had the audacity to differ from
these two giants. Of atheistical teachers, who rejected
even Christianity and the Bible, I at first knew nothing.
Arminians were bad-enough, in all conscience, and their
chance of entering heaven at death was infinitesimally
�TO SECULAR PLATFORM
5
small; but infidels and Atheists were too-deep sunk in
moral filth even to be mentioned in respectable society.
They were black emissaries from the Bottomless Pit,
whom the Devil had succeeded in making as desperately
wicked as himself.
With my up-bringing, I would
rather have faced a thousand deaths than ventured to
peruse the diabolical writings of such reprobates as
Voltaire and Tom Paine! But soon after my ordination,
my intellectual grasp of Calvinistic theology slackened,
and ere long gave way altogether. My precious inheri
tance crumbled into white dust about my feet, and was
blown to the four winds before my very eyes; and I
discovered, to my unutterable horror, that I was doomed
to be an unbeliever. In my awful misery I went into
retirement, there to examine the very roots of the old
beliefs. Had I been wise, or wisely advised, I would
have there and then abandoned the Christian ministry,
and qualified for some other profession. But I fought
my doubts, and in some measure overcame them.
Then, unfortunately, I resumed my former work, but
necessarily without the former intellectual assurance. I
persuaded myself to believe that there were still two
sovereign truths to which I could passionately cling—
namely, the Fatherhood of God at one extreme, and, at
the other, the Brotherhood of Man.
During the
remainder of my professional career, I proclaimed these
two doctrines with considerable fervor, and as vehemently
denounced Calvinism, my first love. Intellectually, I
could not demonstrate and fully justify the Divine
Fatherhood, but emotionally it was a source of incalculable
satisfaction to me. Whenever difficult questions arose
(such as, If God be a Father, all-wise and all-good, how
is it that the world is the habitation of so much cruelty,
injustice, and suffering ? If God is infinity or the Abso
lute, how can He be a person ? and, if He is not a
person, how can He be our Father <*), I intellectually
ignored, while emotionally triumphing over them. In
calm, meditative moments, I was often inexpressibly
distressed by the puzzling problems that crowded upon
me ; but my feelings always came to my rescue, enabling
�6
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
me to sail pleasantly on the ocean of maudlin sentiment.
This was a state of things that could not possibly con
tinue. No man can be, for any length of time, intel
lectually a thorough Agnostic, and emotionally an ardent
believer.
As I now look back upon it all, it is an
insoluble mystery to me how I managed to occupy so
anomalous a position for so long a time. In part, the
explanation is, that I honestly and strenuously en
deavored to believe that the spiritual faculty in man is
infinitely superior to the intellectual. But the attempt
turned out a miserable failure. At last, the intellect
won a glorious victory over mere emotionalism, and, in
consequence, my sentimental adherence to, and enjoy
ment of, Christianity and the Bible began gradually to
diminish. Then I was necessarily obliged to abandon
my profession, and to adopt Secularism, based on
Atheism, as my only possible creed.
Another explanation is to be found in a circumstance
which, to some extent at any rate, extenuates my mis
take. You are doubtless aware that noteven a conscious
hypocrite can be serenely and uniformly happy. He
lives a double'life, and is in constant dread lest people
should perceive that he is wearing a mask, and playing
a part. But, surely, inconceivably greater is the misery
of a simple, honest man who is striving to act honorably
in a totally impossible position.
He is perpetually
running up and bruising his knuckles against a dead
wall, in entire ignorance of the fact that there is a way
of preventing so useless and disastrous a performance.
I hat is an accurate description of my experience for
many years. I had been most assiduously trained, from
earliest childhood, in the narrowest of creeds, and
dogmatically taught to look upon it as the only true
creed ; my parents had been similarly trained and
taught in their childhood; for many generations before
my birth, my ancestors had successively occupied high
and prominent positions in the ecclesiastical life of their
country ; and, as an inevitable consequence, even the
idea of renouncing for ever, not merely the old orthodox
Calvinism, but also Christianity itself, was intolerably
�TO SECULAR PLATFORM
7
repugnant to me. Indeed, during the earlier years, such
an idea never once suggested itself to my imagination.
I was, rather, dominated by the depressing conviction
that the intellectual collapse of my faith was the out
come of some unknown but serious spiritual defect or
fault, or, perhaps, the penalty of some hidden but most
real sin against God. Hence, I multiplied and itensified
my devotions, and knocked persistently at heaven’s door,
passionately pleading for pardon and the restoration of
my vanished treasure. The laws of heredity and environ
ment rendered it impossible for me to contemplate a life
of Atheism except with indescribable aversion and
horror.
The object of the following articles will be to explain,
on the one hand, how I was literally forced into the
Christian ministry, and, on the other, how I was, with
equal literalness, forcibly, though gradually, driven out
of it.
�FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
II.—CHILD-LIFE IN A PURITAN HOME.
Surely no man in his senses would ever dream of
pronouncing an unqualified and extravagant eulogium
on Puritanism. That it possessed several wholly admir
able and fascinating qualities cannot be denied ; but it
is equally clear that, as a scheme and philosophy of
human life, it was deplorably one-sided and utterly mis
leading. Thinking only of its courageous insistence on,
and inflexible adherence to, Righteousness, Carlyle and
Ruskin deeply loved and loudly praised it, declaring
with mournful pride that they were the last surviving
exponents of it in England; but, thinking chiefly of its
unlovely and repellent attributes, I am tempted to
denounce it in the bitterest and most vehement terms at
my command. My blood boils and rushes furiously
through my veins, as I look back upon my childhood
and youth, and realise how sadly and completely they
were darkened and blighted by the grim, black shadow
and; cruel; tyranny^ of Puritanism. I thankfully admit,
that in my parents^ were abundantly exemplified the
brighter and nobler features of the darksome system.
My father and mother were living incarnations of honor,
honesty, truth, and righteousness, and their love for their
children knew no bounds. In my references to them, I
hope I shall not employ a single disrespectful or disloyal
word. I am convinced that their affection for me never
wavered, and_that, to secure what they believed to be
my highest good, they would have cheerfully made all
necessary sacrifices. But, while fully admitting the
integrity and.sublimityofwtheir_character, as well as the
purity and nobleness of their motives, I cannot close my
eyes to the mournful .fact, that they were the means of
�TO SECULAR PLATFORM
9
Utterly spoiling my child-life, and of wofully handicap
ping my whole future. Their conception of life and
character was fundamentally mistaken. They looked
upon the world through colored spectacles, and never
saw it in its true light and beauty.
The first formative heresy instilled into my impres
sionable mind was, that life on earth is a series of disci
plinary experiences, the sole object of which is to prepare
us for the perfect life in heaven. Heaven was an in
effably happy realm, in which the inhabitants incessantly
sang psalms and hymns, to the accompaniment of golden
harps, while earth was the abode of griefs and groans,
with interludes of heart-breaking and spirit-crushing
dirges and threnodies. All amusement was said to be
of the devil, and should be forcibly suppressed. All
music had to be severely in the minor key. Laughter
deserved hottest denunciation, while, on Sunday, not
even a smile could be tolerated. Pleasure of all kinds
was ruthlessly excluded. Once I laughed out over some
humorous passage in the Bible, for which I received
such an emphatic castigation from my father, that I
have not been able to forget it to this day. At this
moment, I can still see the old man’s grandly wrathful
face, and hear his stern rebuke: “Your stupid levity
over God’s own Book, my boy, is rank blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost, for which the Great Judge may,
any minute, strike you down dead.” I trembled with
fear, and repressed my merriment, but failed to under
stand why it was wrong for a little boy to laugh at
ludicrous things. People of the world could eat and
drink and be merry, singing bright, joyous songs ; but
they were on the high road to hell, in which they would
have to weep and gnash their teeth to all eternity. And
yet, I remember that whenever I passed an inn or tavern,
and heard light-hearted, merry singing, I would stand
still, strangely thrilled and attracted : there was some
thing in me which, in spite of all my training and strong
convictions, irresistibly responded to the stirring strains.
But I was quickly brought to my senses byfcthe reflec
tion, that my enjoyment of such things was another
�IO
FROM CHRiSTIAN PULPIT
proof of the existence of original sin in my soul, and of
the fact that as yet I had not been born again.
Because of the same misconception of the nature and
meaning of human life, play, even in its mildest forms,
was regarded as being of the world worldly, in which
only the unregenerate indulged. Even little children
played marbles and span tops under severe parental
protest. Sometimes a lot of us would steal away into a
distant field, in order to have a clandestine turn at foot
ball ; but one of our number had to act as sentinel, that
no one might come upon us unawares. During my
childhood, I never saw an adult taking part in any sport
whatever. Even as recently as twenty years ago, the
Principal of a College, who was an ordained minister,
was solemnly reprimanded by his Presbytery for giving
encouragement to the sinful sporting spirit of the age, by
allowing himself to be elected President of the College
Cricket Club ; and had some of the pious brethren had
their way, he would have been deposed from the ministry.
I shall never forget the funereal tones in which children
were exhorted, at class-meetings, to abstain from all
irreverence and frivolity, and give themselves to prayer
and Bible-reading. Our parents, too, kept dinning the
same lesson in our ears: “ Remember, children,” they
used to say, “ that you are always in the presence of
holy God, and that in his sight seriousness is the most
becoming grace.”
And this brings me to the sole cause and root of the
whole matter, namely, the Puritanical conception of God,
which can only be characterised as pagan, cruel, monstrous.
The Puritan’s Deity was a heartless tyrant, who would
not permit little children to give free and full vent to the
very nature which he himself had bestowed upon them.
How persistently I was reminded that God was watching
me, and that every lie I told, and every wrong I did,
were recorded in his Books, and would be read out
against me at the Day of Judgment. To please him, it
was necessary to think about him all the time, read the
Bible with diligence, pray without ceasing, and go to
church three or four times on Sunday, and ever so
�TO SECULAR PLATFORM
11
many times during the week. God’s eye was ever upon
me, so that there was no possibility of saying or doing
anything without his knowing about it.
On one occasion, I joined a number of boys in a
nutting expedition, thereby flatly disobeying my mother.
O how sweet was that stolen pleasure, while it lasted,
and how my whole being was thrilled, to its core, with
delight; but it was a short-lived bliss, for on my return
I had administered to me a never-to-be-forgotten punish
ment. Moreover, within a few hours after this motherly
chastisement, a fierce thunderstorm burst upon the com
munity, which was construed into a visible token of
heaven’s displeasure at my sinful behavior ; and after
almost every vivid flash, I was thus comforted : “ What
a mercy it did not strike you, my boy ; how good God
is thus to spare you.”
God’s tyranny cast its black and all-withering shadow
upon everything. I deliberately affirm that life was
not worth living; but, then, it was infinitely better to
live sadly and mournfully for a few years on earth, and
after death be endlessly happy in heaven, than to enjoy
a sinful life on earth, and afterwards grill and burn for
ever and forever in hell. Consequently, the better a
man became the more miserable he was. Lugubrious
ness was a sign of superior saintliness. It was openly
stated that a well-known and pre-eminent man of God,
who was a brilliant scholar, being able to speak with
fluency seven different languages, a profound theo
logian, and an authoritative interpreter of the eternal
decrees, had never been known to laugh. He was one
of the holiest men that ever lived, being so like him of
whom it is recorded that he wept bitteriy on several
occasions, but not that he laughed even once ; and chil
dren, especially, were advised to aim at a similarly
exalted type of piety.
This unrelieved lugubriousness of temper was always
in strong evidence at the public services of the church.
At such times everybody looked tremendously solemn, as
if thermal universal conflagration were about to begin,
and every two or three minutes all the best people
�i2
FROAf CHRlStlAff PUtPlT
vigorously sighed, moaned, grunted, groaned, or cried
“ Amen.” I can see them now, those elders and deacons
of enviable holiness, with their hair brushed down their
foreheads, arrayed in badly-fitted garments of home
made cloth, seated in the Big Pew immediately in front
of the Pulpit, and staring with fixed eyes upon the
preacher, who was vehemently shouting out God’s
gracious message in Christ. O what eloquent croakers
those superior men of God were, and how some of the
children wondered whether they would ever be old and
pious enough to be allowed a like high privilege!
In those days, to be a member of the Church was
identical with being saved. Every church member held
a certificate for heaven.
Hence, to be cut oft from
church membership was the most awful calamity that
could befall a person. Outside was the big world, lying
under the wrath of the Great Judge because of its sins,
and doomed to spend all eternity in the flames of hell;
and to be flung back into such a wretched world was the
greatest curse conceivable. Within my recollection, a
young woman was so thrust out for allowing a man of
the world to fall in love with, and be married to, her.
In excommunicating her, the officiating minister brutally
assured her that, were she to die before she repented and
was readmitted to membership, she would undoubtedly
be committed to the unquenchable flames of Gehenna.
Poor soul, she was frightened almost out of her wits ; and
yet her only crime consisted in marrying a thoroughly
honest, upright, and good man, who did not happen to
be within the pale of the Church.
Children’s meetings were frequently held, at which
the youngsters were drilled in Bible history and the
catechisms. • In all such gatherings, the dominant note
was that God sat on his throne, night and day, watching
the behavior of children on earth, and that, unless their
conduct was in harmony with the teaching of the Church
and their parents, he would most certainly cast them
into the outer darkness, where they would wail and
shudder in infinite torment for ever.
Such was the training of a child in a Puritan home
�TO SECULAR PLATFORM
13
thirty or forty years ago, and naturally the consequences
were most disastrous. During all my childhood days I
never knew what it was to be spontaneously happy, or
genuinely and unreservedly young. I always had an
old head, filled with fears and forebodings, on my young
shoulders.
Of necessity, therefore, mv nature was
warped, and my character became wofully one-sided.
There was a whole realm of delightful and educative
experiences to which I was a total stranger, and to this
day I have suffered infinite loss in consequence. A
friend, similarly trained in childhood, told me the other
day that he never knew what it was to be young until
he was fifty years of age.
When will parents learn that childhood should be a
period of natural, spontaneous, and ebullient happiness,
and that any training that robs it of that desirable
quality, however well-intentioned, is in the highest
degree iniquitous ? At the bar of justice and common
sense Puritanism stands utterly, absolutely, and eternally
condemned.
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
III.—LOOKING TOWARDS THE PULPIT.
Nothing was more natural than that a boy, carefully
brought up in . a strictly Puritan home, should be
resolutely ambitious to enter the ministry of the
gospel.
Consider, for a moment, the theological
atmosphere in which the training would naturally be
conducted.
Many of my readers are fully aware
that the philosophy of the plan of salvation, as ex
pounded on the hearth-stone, from the pulpit, and
at most of the ordinary meetings of the church,
would be arrestingly realistic. By eating the for
bidden apple, Adam incurred the righteous wrath of
heaven, and in consequence of that one sinful act all
his descendants were involved in the same inexorable
doom. We have all inherited original sin; or, in
other words, we are all held and accounted guilty
of a sin we have never committed, or, more accurately,
of a sin we have committed in him as our divinely
appointed head. God hates the whole human race,
and has created a lake of fire and brimstone in which
to consume it for ever. Every one of us is justly
doomed to eternal shame and suffering. Such is the
immutable decree of heaven, and there is absolutely
no escape from it. Ours is a doomed world, and
there is not a single ray of hope for it. In this
stern, dark dogma I was most scrupulously indoctri
nated. But, fortunately, there are three persons in
the blessed Trinity, and we were assured that one
of them has always had a tender, compassionate
heart. Although the Father is, and always was, in
himself utterly implacable, and violently determined to
inflict an all-crushing punishment upon the objects of
his well-deserved indignation, the Son cherished feelings
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i5
of yearning pity and forgiving sympathy towards them,
and passionately besought the P atherly heart to graci
ously spare them. The Supreme Ruler of the Universe,
however, showed himself relentlessly unpropitious, and
emphatically disinclined either to withdraw or to modify
the high claims of his justice. Said the Son: . “ My
heart bleeds with compassion for the condemned sinners
of the earth, and I am prepared to do all within my
power to deliver them from thy fierce wrath. Wilt thou
not punish me, and acquit them ? Wilt thou not empty
the vials of thine anger into my soul, and bestow upon
them thy free and full forgiveness ?” In response to so
moving an appeal, the Father entered into a solemn
covenant with his Son, known in theology as the
Covenant of Grace, according to which the Son was to be
accepted as a substitute for a chosen number of man
kind, and to endure, in his own innocent person, the
awful punishment due to them on account of their sins.
Hence, in order to secure the complete deliverance of
the Elect, the second person in the blessed Trinity came
down to earth, was born as a man, lived, toiled,
suffered, died on the Cross, rose from the dead, and
returned to heaven as the perfect Redeemer of his
people.
I know how utterly absurd all this will appear to all
who were not brought up to believe it, and even to me
now its most prominent feature is its absolute un
believability.
But the most extraordinary and in
credible teaching of theology is yet to be described.
We were told that the three persons in the glorious
Trinity had each his own peculiar share in the grand
work of redemption. The work of the Son consisted
in offering himself up as an infinite atonement for the
sins of the Elect, which he did on the Cross of Calvary,
and the Father’s work was, partly, to accept the offered
atonement as all-sufficient, and, partly, to arrange for
the actual administration of the Covenant of Grace.
Now, this administration of the Covenant was entrusted
to the Holy Ghost, the third member of the Trinity, as
his special share of the sublime work. He was there-
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fore commissioned to descend into the world in order to
discharge his administrative duties.
But as the Holy Ghost did not become incarnate, he
was obliged to work through mediums and agents. As
a pure ghost he had to enter into chosen vessels, and fill
them to overflowing, before anything could be accom
plished. The chosen vessels were the apostles and their
duly ordained successors, who are usually known now
as clergymen, ministers of the gospel, or men in Holy
Orders, whom I was instructed to regard as the repre
sentatives of the Holy Ghost, commissioned by him to
explain the Covenant of Grace to their fellow-beings,
and to urge all to believe the gospel. Of course, the
non-elect had no chance whatever of being saved ; but,
as no one knew who the elect were, it was necessary
to preach the gospel to all without distinction. In every
congregation some of heaven’s chosen ones would surely
be found, and on hearing the word of life they would
savingly receive it, and be snatched as brands from the
•burning. Thus the extending of the offer of salvation
to all alike was only a trick to get at the elect, and
gather them into the gospel net.
Such was the creed on which I was nourished in my
childhood, and having inherited from my ancestors an
ardent temperament, and being from a child abnormally
sensitive and sympathetic, I was naturally most power
fully affected by it. My heart melted into tears of pity
for the miserable sinners round about me. I burned
with the desire to make known to them what God, for
Christ’s sake, had agreed to do for them. Of course,
there was the possibility that I did not happen to be one
of the elect myself, although I had fervently swallowed
the whole creed, and accepted Christ as my Redeemer.
Indeed, nobody could be absolutely sure of his election.
Even the brightest and most confident faith had a back
ground of fear and trembling. But I passionately
yearned to tell all within my reach that Christ had
offered himself up as an all-meritorious sacrifice for the
sins of his sheep, whom God, for his sake, was prepared
to forgive, justify, and sanctify, that at death they might
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17
ascend and occupy splendid mansions in the sky. And
thus I resolved to become a minister.
My father was the senior deacon of the church, and
the most prominent member of society in the community,
in consequence of which fact I enjoyed several high
privileges that did not fall to the lot of ordinary children.
For example, most of the itinerant preachers who
visited our little Bethel were my father’s guests during
their stay. Ah, how well I remember those holy men of
God. What an infinite honor it was to entertain them,
and with what deep, rich joy my parents waited on them,
and offered them the choicest fare that love could
procure! With what tremulous reverence I used to
regard them, and with what grateful avidity I treasured
up all their precious sayings ! They were not made of
common clay. They were the mouthpieces of Jehovah,
and their sermons came down to them as sacred gifts
from heaven. As I thought of them my soul was on
fire with envy, and O how fervently I prayed God to
appoint me to the same exalted vocation. Sometimes
one of these semi-divine beings would condescend to
speak to me, and at once my whole being quivered with
proud delight. “ What would you like to be when you
grow up, my boy ?” he would ask, and tremblingly I
would answer, “ A preacher, sir.” “ That is a good boy,”
he would add, gently stroking my hair; “ I hope God
has called you, for without his special call no one has a
right to enter the pulpit.” I felt the truth of his words,
and gave myself more than ever to prayer, assuring the
Supreme Being that if he permitted me to become a
preacher, I would do my best to be an honor to him.
At times, I almost fancied I could hear his welcome
voice distinctly calling me to the sacred profession.
But when, at fifteen, failing to restrain myself any
longer, I appealed to the church for permission to
exercise my preaching gifts, my request was firmly
refused, the church being evidently sceptical as to my
possessing such gifts to exercise. Still, the fire burned
in my bones, and preach I must, at whatever cost,
used to go up to the mountain top, and deliver eloquent
�IS
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT*
and all-convincing discourses to a congregation of sheep,
lambs, and lapwings. The sheep were somewhat dense,
and responded but slowly to my passionate appeals, but
the lapwings rewarded me with inspiring applause. I
little thought, at the time, that the lovely birds were only
trying to decoy me away from the vicinity of their muchcherished.’ nests.
Eventually, however, the church
accepted me as an accredited candidate for the sacred
profession, and started me on the preparatory course. I
was then the proudest and happiest young man in all the
land. For weeks I walked on air and partook of angels’
food. To keep down my pride a messenger of Satan
occasionally came to buffet me with this hateful insinu
ation : “ What if thou art not one of God’s elect, after
all ? What if thou art thyself, by heaven’s decree, a
miserable castaway ?” But to prevent my sinking into
utter despair, a messenger of God would breathe into
me the consolation that arose from the fact that the
church had chosen me, and that it was through the
church God was accustomed to reveal his will.
O blind, misguided, and superstition-ridden fool that I
was, and knew it not.
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*9
IV.—AT THE DIVINITY HALL.
Soon after my enrolment as a ministerial candidate
I entered the University, at which I was privileged to
spend four laborious years. At the conclusion of this
purely academic course, I was admitted to the Divinity
Hall, wherein three interesting and revealing years were
passed. A Divinity Hall, or Theological Seminary, is
one of the most wonderful and unique institutions on
earth. The curriculum includes the Hebrew Language,
Biblical Exegesis, Homiletics, Ecclesiastical History,
and Systematic Theology. In my youthful estimation,
the Professors were demi-gods. How delightfully omni
scient and authoritative they were ! They knew every
thing, could answer every question, solve every problem,
penetrate every mystery, and annihilate every difficulty.
They talked about God with as much familiarity as if
they had stood behind his back and peeped over his
shoulders while he was framing his Eternal Decrees.
They could supply us with all sorts of exact information
about Election, the Incarnation, and the Unseen World.
They were all more or less rigid Calvinists, and each
lecture they delivered stated a doctrine, presented irre
futable proofs of its truth, and triumphantly demolished
all objections to it. All who held different views from
those expressed by them were denounced as dangerous
heresiarchs. Indeed, our Professors were to be regarded,
not as vendors of mere views or opinions, but as divinelyappointed proclaimers of sovereign truths revealed in the
Bible.
Arminians were hopelessly, if not judicially,,
blind, because they deliberately refused to use their
spiritual eyes. All “ isms,” other than Augustinism or
Calvinism, were of the Devil, and destined to pass
away. Charles Hodge, of Princeton, America, one of
the most illustrious champions of the Old School Calvin
ism, was said to have refused to shake hands with
�20
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
William Ellery Channing, the renowned Unitarian,
because he verily believed that Unitarianism had not a
single Scriptural leg on which to stand, and that Uni
tarians could not be recognised as genuine members of
the household of God.
At our Hall, a cold and narrow literalism reigned
with sublime dignity. The fable of the Fall in Genesis,
with its Adam and Eve, garden, apple, and serpent, was
treated as a unique historical fact. The doctrine of the
Trinity was explained in the most painfully mechanical
style. The Professor of Dogmatic Theology assured us,
with calm confidence, that it w7as the simplest, as -well as
the most important, doctrine contained in the Word of
God. He told us what distinctions and resemblances
there were between the three persons, in what exact
relations they stood to one another, and what distinctive
work each of them did. The fact of the incarnation of
God in Christ, according to him, involved the Immacu
late and Miraculous Conception. He explained to us
that it was just as easy for Omnipotence to create the
body and soul of Christ in Mary’s womb as it had been
to form the first man out of the dust of the ground, and
the first woman out of a male rib. Christ was Humiliated
Deity—Deity punishing himself for the sins of man.
The Incarnation was, therefore, the Supreme Miracle.
I smile as I think of it all now; but then I solemnly
believed it. To-day I regard it as a puerile superstition;
but then it impressed me as a truth revealed to us by the
Holy Spirit. All other dogmas were dealt with in pre
cisely the same way ; but space does not allow me to
give any further examples.
Occasionally the Professors were targets at which
thoughtful and sceptically-inclined young men fired
awkward and staggering questions; but not one of the
shots ever proved fatal. The theological skin was so
thick and hard that nothing could have penetrated it.
Here are a few samples of the type of question asked,
and answer given :—
Student : Professor, what real sin was there in
Adam’s act of eating the forbidden fruit ?
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21
Professor : No sin at all, except in the sense that it
was a violation of a Divine commandment. The com
mandment was a positive, not a moral, one ; and surely
the Supreme Being has a perfect right to impose what
commandments he pleases on the creatures of his hand.
Student : AVas it right of God to elect some to
eternal life, and leave all others to their doom ?
Professor: Yes, certainly; because the exercise of
mercy is purely optional with the Deity. It was an act
of stupendous condescension, on his part, to choose a
certain number to be saved through the atoning death of
his only begotten Son. Justice demanded that the whole
human family should be consigned to endless torment in
hell-fire. The damned arc only inheriting what they
richly deserve, and cannot fairly blame the Judge. But
salvation is of grace alone.
Student : Is it right to punish a person for ever after
death for a limited number of sins committed during a
limited number of years on earth ?
Professor : Yes ; because every sin, however small it
may appear, is yet infinite, and deserves infinite and end
less punishment.
Student : How do we know that Christ rose from
the grave on the third day, and ultimately ascended to
heaven ?
Professor : Simply because the Bible says so. What
ever the Bible says is of necessity true, because it is the
utterance of God himself. One miracle demands another.
You must always bear in mind that the miraculous birth
necessitated the miraculous uprise from the tomb.
I cannot tell whether the young men who asked such
questions were satisfied with the dogmatic answers given
or not; but I can give my word of honor that I was more
than satisfied. To me the appeal to Holy Writ was
absolutely conclusive, and to question it would have
been a sign of incorrigible depravity.
Of course,
etiquette did not permit students to argue with their
Professors, who were more infallible than the Pope of
Rome. My conviction was that the Bible was the final
court of appeal, the verdict of whic^i should settle alj
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
disputes.
Some people stumbled at miracles, for
example, and irreverently asked: “ In the name of
common sense, how can you believe that the whale
swallowed Jonah, and flung him out again unharmed ?”
Vehemently I answered: “Common sense has nothing
whatever to do with the matter. Had the Bible affirmed
that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would have believed
it quite as readily.” To me, then, the Bible was the
Word of the living God, and could not err. The
doctrines of the Christian Religion, as interpreted by
our Professors, was clearly revealed in the Scriptures,
and he was doubly blind and an unmitigated fool who
was impertinent enough, either to doubt them, or to
accept the Arminian interpretation of them.
That was the way in which I was trained and equipped
for my profession. My ancestors, my child-life at home,
the church in which I was brought up, and the Pro
fessors at the Seminary, all contributed to the develop
ment within me of an astonishingly firm adhesion to
what was called genuine orthodoxy. I left the hall a
gigantic believer. The supernatural was far more real
to me than the natural. Everything between the two
covers of the Old Book was God’s revealed truth. If
people told me that miracles were violations of natural
laws, I frankly admitted it, well knowing that in order
to facilitate the fulfilment of the noble purposes of
heaven, a higher law had a perfect right to make in
roads upon and subjugate a lower. If some weak-minded
friends experienced great difficulty, in believing in a
special Divine Revelation, I could astonish them with
the bold assertion that my only difficulty would have
been not to believe in it. My appetite for believing
knew no bounds, and was never entirely satisfied. And
this infinite appetite and capacity for blindly believing
constituted my stock-in-trade when I stood on the
threshold of the active ministry. Ah me, the pity and
the misery of it all! It lies on my memory like a horrid
nightmare.
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23
V.—THE FIRST YEAR OF PROFESSIONAL
LIFE.
The day of my ordination to the ministry of the glorious
Gospel of the blessed God was the greatest, grandest,
and gladdest in my whole history. At last, the harvest
of my ambition was fully ripe, and about to be gathered
into the barn of enjoyment. My wildest dreams and
brightest hopes were on the eve of veritable fulfilment.
Unanimously invited to the pastorate of a large city
church, possessing the entire confidence of a congrega
tion that had had experience of me as a preacher for
several months prior to the tendering of the invitation,
and having just listened to extravagant encomiums pro
nounced upon me by famous ministers who took part in
the ordination service, I was elated with joy unspeakable
and full of glory. I scarcely knew whether I was in
heaven or on earth. I felt as if I were automatically
floating on an ocean of holy peace. As I looked back
upon the past, I was confident that exceptionally high
and fruitful privileges had been lavishly showered upon
me in childhood and youth. While comparing notes
wTith my chums at the Divinity Hall I discovered that,
even at sixteen years of age, not one of them knew the
meaning of the word “ theology,” while I was a distin
guished champion of the faith at ten. I had drunk
theology with my mother’s milk, and had been, during
all my teens, systematically drilled in the art of contro
versy. Had I no excuse for cherishing a little pride and
self-complacency ? And as I looked forward to the
future, bright stars of hope shone upon and illuminated
the far-stretching pathway.
There never had been such a preacher as I was fully
determined to become. The Celtic fire, sanctified by
the grace of God, blazed away in all my veins. I was
deeply sensible of the reason why the majority of
churches were empty, and entertained no doubt that
�24
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
mine would soon be full. My sermons would aim at
converting two predominant classes of people, namely,
the open, reckless sinners who were rushing on to hell
at express speed, and those characterised by St. Paul as
natural or psychical men, who neither cared for nor
believed in the higher and nobler realities. In the faces
of shameless sinners I would vigorously shake hell,
painted in the most lurid colors, and I would drive the
natural man out of every stronghold in his possession,
and force him to surrender, openly confessing that his
case was utterly hopeless. Certainly, my part of the
city would be completely transformed within a few
months. I would frighten sinners and argue naturalists
right into the kingdom of God. Such was my program.
I little dreamed that the Fates were all the time laughing
in their sleeves at my ineffable stupidity.
For a time I did, undoubtedly, occasion not a little
sensation in my own immediate neighborhood. My out
spoken denunciation of everything I believed to be sin
soon attracted attention. Crowds flocked to hear me
preach. I had invincible energy and boundless enthu
siasm ; and I spared nobody. A text from which I
frequently discoursed was this : “ Ye serpents, ye offspring
of vipers, how shall ye escape the damnation of hell ?” The
sufferings of the damned were never more vividly and
realistically portrayed than in those crude addresses of
my early ministry. I could not have depicted them
better had I actually seen and experienced them for a
thousand years. I remember once taking a Sunday
afternoon service at a neighboring church, and speaking
on this my then favorite theme. At the close the
minister intervened, and said: “I thank God for this
afternoon’s message. It is so refreshing and reassuring
to hear God’s own truths so boldly and uncompromisingly
proclaimed. Alas, not all ministers in this city (with an
obvious reference to a popular preacher who did not
believe in endless punishment) preach the Gospel on this
awful subject. But woe be to us if we withhold this
revealed truth from our people.” In the extra-orthodox
churches I was immensely popular, People admired my
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courage in putting so much fire and brimstone into my
sermons. Not one of my discourses was a sugar-coated
pill. But I was not nearly so successful with St. Paul’s
natural man. I soon perceived that he had a mind of
his own, and was astonishingly difficult to move. I
brought out my heavy artillery, and vigorously bom
barded the castle of his naturalism, but failed to make
the least impression upon it. I had fondly hoped that
he would have quickly surrendered, readily acknow
ledging the superior cogency of my arguments; but
instead of that coveted result, I found my own armor
sadly riddled with his shot, while he remained untouched
in his strongly fortified position. My signal failure with
him gave me a painful sense of disappointment, but I
comforted myself with the soothing reflection that, had
it not been for his intellectual stupidity and spiritual
obstinacy, I would have gained a magnificent victory
over him.
On the whole, however, my first year of professional
life was fairly satisfactory. My faith in the Divine
Verities continued unfaltering and undimmed for many
months. My acceptance of the Bible was complete,
without even a shadow of reservation; and I was
joyously loyal to all the doctrinal standards. I was a
firm believer in the efficacy of prayer ; and, when the
late Professor Tyndall issued his famous Prayer-Test, I
was horrified at the blasphemous audacity of his pro
posal. I pitied the poor scientist as an unregenerate
natural man.
Bye-and-bye, however, dark, ominous
clouds began to gather in my hitherto clear ecclesiastical
sky.
In the middle of each week a well-attended
Prayer-meeting was held in a large hall adjoining the
church. It was my custom to deliver a short address
on some religious topic, and then to call upon several
people to engage in prayer. Among those who usually
responded were two of the office-bearers. They were
both exceedingly fluent, and people always liked to hear
them.
They were well-read, intelligent, and devout
men ; but, unfortunately, it was softly whispered that
their unctuous rectitude was only a thin coat of veneer,
�26
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
covering and hiding a character that was radically
putrid. The one was said to be living continually in
grossest immorality, and the other to be the biggest
scoundrel out of prison. By degrees, the half-smothered
whisper grew into a loud rumor, behind which it was
evident there was too much truth. It was an insoluble
mystery to me how these men could offer up such fervent,
heart-stirring prayers, while pursuing such iniquitous
and God-defying practices. Thus two of my right-hand
men were consummate hypocrites. Was it possible that
they really believed in a holy, truthful, and loving God,
or were they simply playing at religion ?
I was
staggered and bewildered, and knew not what to think.
In course of time, I came to the mournful conviction
that, in the world, Christians were generally looked upon
with suspicion, that in business circles they were not
always trusted, and that many of them were openly
denounced as cunning and heartless swindlers. I found
out that because of their commercial crookedness and
social insincerity the members of a particular sect were
universally loathed, and the more I mingled with men
the more deeply convinced I became that such aspersions
were only too well founded. People who professed to be
better were really worse than their neighbors, and shielded
themselves under the cloak of religion. To-day I am
bound sorrowfully to admit that the tendency of adhesion
to the popular type of religion is to make people hypo
critical and immoral. Their professed peace with God,
the fact of their regeneration, their dream of eternal
blessedness in heaven, and their comforting conviction
that they shall never see hell except at a safe distance,
are dependent, not in any sense or degree on their char
acter, but on their faith in Christ, for whose sake and in
whose merits alone they are accepted in the Divine
sight. Their faith is reckoned or imputed to them for
righteousness, and their religious exercises—their praying,
hymn-singing, church-going, Bible-reading, alms-giving
—are substituted for upright living. Christ fulfilled the
moral law in their stead, and the moment they believed
in him they were released from all moral obligation. I
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27
remember a dear, deluded old saint saying, with
grateful tears in her eyes: “I deserve to go to hell,
and therein to burn for ever; but, blessed be his
name, my beloved Redeemer deserves that I should
go to heaven and sing his praises without end, and
I am sure God cannot say Nay to his only begotten
Son.” If there were a God of truth and love, such a
belief would be rank blasphemy; and in any case, he
who lives up to such a faith is guilty of high treason
against his own nature. I have no hesitation whatever,
therefore, in laying to the charge of all so-called Evan
gelical Churches the stupendous crime of being direct
and fruitful sources and encouragers of commercial dis
honesty, social hypocrisy, and moral stupor. In illustra
tion of the truth of this charge, John Ruskin tells us,
with burning indignation, of a wicked merchant in the
City of London who was a prominent and active member
in a suburban church. In the City he was a man that
required special watching, and one day he was guilty of
a specially tricky and fraudulent transaction. On the
following Sunday, one who knew of this dishonest
bargain, happened to attend that suburban church, and
therein saw the self-same merchant engaged in a most
solemn act of worship. At the close of the service, he
went up to him, and, with a significant look in his eye
and withering scorn in his voice, said : “You here ?”
The great man felt most uncomfortable, but after a
moment’s pause, answered: “ Here, you know, we all
assume the attitude of the poor publican, in the parable,
who smote upon his breast and tremblingly praye’d,
‘ Crod be merciful to me a sinner.' "
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
VI.—THE INTELLECT IN REVOLT.
Why was I such an ardent and militant believer in the
Calvinistic Version of the Christian Religion ? Was it
because it commended itself to my reason as essentially
and eternally true ? Was it because I could prove its
divinity by a long and elaborate train of irrefragable
reasoning ? Or was it simply because I had been
diligently taught from the cradle to believe and cherish
it ? The fact is, that I was a Christian solely because I
accepted the Bible as the inspired and infallible Word
of God, and that I accepted the Bible as the only
authoritative revelation from above, because, primarily,
my parents, and all the other people I knew, so regarded,
and trained me so to regard, it, and, secondarily, because
such was the doctrine of the Church into which I had
been born. Had I beeen born and bred in a Moham
medan country, I would have been a Mohammedan on
precisely the same ground. My belief in the Bible and
Christianity came down to me as an inheritance from
my ancestors: it ran in the blood, and I was not con
sulted as to whether I would take it or not. It was a
purely mechanical, traditional, and superstitious belief,
endowed with no inherent vitality with which to fight
fop its own existence. But such is the force of the law
of heredity, and of the influence of early training, that
this dead faith remained with me to the close of the first
year of my clerical career. When anybody asked me
why I believed such-and-such a dogma, the only answer
I could make was, “ Because I find it in the Bible.”
When pressed further for the ground of my faith in the
Bible, I could only cite the teaching of the great doctors
of the Church. For the faith that was in me this was a
flimsy, fragile, and worthless reason ; but it was the only
one I had to offer.
Just at that time a most remarkable theological book
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fell into my hands, entitled The. Limits of Religious
Thought, by the late Dean Mransel. That well-known
dignitary of the Anglican Church was an exceptionally
keen and subtle metaphysician of the school of Kant
and Sir William Hamilton.
One of the distinctive
tenets of this school crystalised into the apt phrase,
Relativity of Human Knowledge, which figured so
largely in the Lectures of Sir William Hamilton. This
is the tenet that underlies Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Syn
thetic Philosophy, and of which he makes such splendid
applications in his First Principles. M'ansel adopted this
doctrine in its entirety, and applied it to theology. His
main contention is that we cannot know the Infinite
and Eternal, all knowledge being confined to visible,
tangible, and finite objects. Hence, to our purely in
tellectual faculties, the Christian Creed is at once un
believable and unthinkable.
God is of necessity
unknown and unknowable, uncomprehended and incom
prehensible. Wre believe in him alone on the testimony
of Scripture. Our reason, acting within its own legiti
mate limits, pronounces all our theological dogmas
absurd and self-contradictory. As Christians, we are
not thinkers or reasoners, but blind believers. It was
under the influence of this monstrous teaching that
Tennyson sang, in his In Memoriam,
We have but faith : we cannot know ;
For knowledge is of things we see.
The Limits of Religious Thought is now a dead book ;
but it was marked by much logical -ingenuity and intel
lectual force, and a careful perusal of it compelled me
to pause and think. I had been instructed to regard
Calvinism as in the highest degree reasonable, although
in its nature and origin immeasurably above reason.
Times without number, as I imagined, I had success
fully championed it along purely intellectual lines. But
now I perceived, for the first time, that I had been
laboring under a fatal delusion. In reality my reason
had never had the opportunity of critically examining
the Christian Faith, and of ascertaining whether it was
in itself believable or not. I had begun life firmly
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Fkofvi CKRiSTiAN PULPIT
believing it, and I had taken for granted that hiy reason
gave it full support. But Dean Mansei’s book opened
my mind’s eyes, and for the first time in my life I began
to think for myself. But no sooner did I begin to think
for myself, than the foundations of my faith commenced
to tremble and crumble beneath my feet, and I realised
how completely I had been the slave of superstition and
traditionalism. The house of my faith tumbled into
awful rum, and I was flung headlong into an unfathom
able pit of pain and misery. I walked about in the
dark dungeon as one demented, weepingly bemoaning
my infinite loss. The discovery that the so-called truths
of the Bible were, not only above, but also in utter con
travention of reason brought with it a most disagreeable
sense of deprivation and impoverishment.
To be
actually. without God and without hope in the world was
a calamity too dreadful to contemplate. So deep and
poignant was my grief that I sank into utter despair.
I grew so tired of my life that I was strongly tempted
to put a violent end to it. At last a voice cried out of
the central deeps of my being, “ Thou coward ! ” and
thereupon I determined to fight my battle through to the
bitter end. But the end was not reached for several
years. Fierce in the extreme was the soul-wrestling
with Giant Doubt. What sunless days and starless
nights I wept my way through ! How incessantly and
confidently 1 prayed lor guidance to a deaf, unheeding
Deity! In my eagerness I consulted innumerable
standard books on the Evidences, wended my weary
way through ponderous Bodies of Divinity, and gave
whole nights as well as days to a prayerful study of the
Bible, yearning unspeakably all the while for the return
of my faith.
In this crisis books of science were conscientiously
eschewed as positively dangerous, because in the circles
in which I turned science was violently denounced as
irreligious and atheistical. Although I had lost my
faith in God, and Christ, and the spiritual world, I still
regarded Darwin and Tyndall as enemies of mankind.
I had not read a line of their works ; but it was my
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31
strong conviction that Evolution was a hellish theory.
When Dr. Charles Hodge, the renowned orthodox
divine, published his little volume against it, I was
transported with delight, and contributed an impassioned
eulogy of the production to a religious magazine. It
never occurred to me to suggest that the learned divine
did not understand what the word “ Darwinism ” meant,
and was not competent to pronounce judgment against
it with such dogmatic assurance. But while thus rashly
taking sides with the theologian against the naturalist, I
was myself in an entirely atheistical frame of mind. I
was afraid of science, because I knew it could not help
me back to faith. Nor could I take any of my friends
into my confidence, for they were all such orthodox
believers that they had no patience with doubt and
doubters. Thus, in a loneliness that lacerated the very
soul, I had to wage ceaseless war, singlehanded, against
my cruel foe. How much I suffered neither tongue nor
pen can ever tell.
But the long night came to an end, the welcome light
began to dawn upon my desolate heart, and slowly two
great truths, like twin suns, appeared on the horizon,
and offered me their kindly service. As I have already
stated, these truths were the Fatherhood of God and the
Brotherhood of Man, and to them I tendered the full
homage of my being. Of course, my acceptance of the
Divine Fatherhood necessitated the reconstruction of
Christ. The deposition of the Despot and the enthrone
ment of the Father involved the overthrow of the
Calvinistic conception of the Savior. In my search for
a consistent interpretation of Jesus and his work I fell
on a most ingenious and suggestive book, entitled
Wcan'pws Sacrifice, by the late Horace Bushnell, a very
profound but shockingly heterodox theologian. In this
luminous volume, the great man maintained that we are
to regard Christ as the last and absolutely perfect reve
lation of God, and that his work consisted, not in
conciliating or propitiating a vindictive Tyrant, but in
making known the all-holy, all-merciful, and all-re
deeming Father. This was a new evangel towards
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PROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
which my hungry heart leaped with boundless gratitude.
Surely this was a genuine return to the simple teaching
of the Apostolic Church. And with this new-found
gospel, I returned to the pulpit, aglow with zeal, jubilantly
triumphant, and resolutely bent on scathingly denouncing
the. very theology on which I had been brought up, and
which I had previously preached with such confidence.
On the Calvinism that was once so dear and precious
in my sight I now poured scalding streams of scorn.
The exhibition of such iconoclastic vehemence filled
the church to overflowing with interested hearers, the
great majority of whom enthusiastically approved and
applauded my deliverances. A few of the older and
narrower thinkers frowned, and raved, and threatened,
and denounced, it is true; but the bulk of the people
rejoiced, and wished me God-speed in the fulfilment of
what they styled my beneficent mission.
This was my second theological house, and O with what
ardor I thanked God for having inspired me to erect it!
It was such a lovely structure, and in it I hoped to spend
the remainder of my life. Alas, little did I then think
that this house also was built upon the sand, and that, like
the foolish man of the parable, I should soon find it
tumbling disastrously about my ears.
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VII.—THE INTELLECT IN BONDS.
Dogmatic theology no longer wielded its bewildering
fascination over me, but was scornfully trampled under
my feet. With those who regarded precision and defi
niteness of thought in religion as of supreme importance
I was completely out of touch. Like Dr. Bushnell, I
was firmly of the opinion that an adequate dogmatic
theology cannot exist, because spiritual facts can only
be expressed in approximative and poetical language.
This was also the contention so cleverly defended by
Matthew Arnold in his epoch-making book entitled
Literature and Dogma. His central proposition is that
Bible terms, like grace, new birth, justification, are not to
be “ taken in a fixed and rigid manner, as if they were
symbols with as definite and fully-grasped a meaning as
the names line or angle, but in a fluid and passing way,
as men use terms in common discourse, or in eloquence
and poetry, to describe approximately, but only approxi
mately, what they have present before their mind, but
do not profess that their mind does, or can, grasp exactly
or adequately.”
Such teaching suited my mood to
perfection, and with riotous joy I revelled in the two
sparkling gems, Literature and Dogma and St. Paul and
Protestantism. In these books Matthew Arnold goes so
far as to formally reject the Supernatural and the Mira
culous. “ God,” he says, “ is used in most cases as by
no means a term of science or exact knowledge, but a
term of poetry and eloquence—a term thrown out, so to
speak, at a not fully-grasped object of the speaker’s
consciousness; a literary term, in short; and mankind
mean different things by it as their consciousness differs.”
This idea was a key that opened most of the locks of the
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
Bible, and I used it continually with great prolit. But
I had not the courage to mention Arnold’s name, or
even Bushnell’s, in any of my public pronouncements,
because in deeply-religious circles both were highly
suspected and execrated names.
In this way it became fashionable to decry the
intellect as an inferior faculty, a calculating machine, a
logic-grinder, which deals only with mundane and
temporal realities, but cannot even touch the higher
things of the spirit. It is doubtless extremely useful to
the scientist, or the low-grade philosopher ; but to the
preacher it has no real value. Of course, this position
was tenable only to those who believed in the existence
and possible activity, within the human soul, of a
superior faculty, “ a subjective faculty,” as Max Muller
calls it, “ for the apprehension of the infinite.” In his
Hibbert Lectures the same scholar describes it more fully
as “ a mental faculty which, independent of, nay in
spite of, sense and reason, enables man to appre
hend the infinite under different names and under vary
ing disguises.” This faculty is intuitive, inborn, and
belongs to all alike, at least potentially. It is the gift of
insight, vision, and realisation. Now, my contention
was that by the exercise of this spiritual organ we could
clearly see God and Christ, realise the spiritual world
and immortality, and become blessedly assured of our
salvation through the risen and ascended Lord. Vision,
it seemed to me, was infinitely nobler and more ennobling
than ordinary knowledge.
Many of my comrades in
the new school used to wax irresistibly eloquent in
praise and commendation of this inward eye. To the
intellect God was unknowable and inconceivable ; but
through the soul’s eye and to the heart’s need he was
most gloriously and savingly visible.
At this time I had the unspeakable privilege of an
introduction to six luminous and illuminating poets,
namely, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth,
Browning, and Tennyson, all of whom confirmed and
advanced my theological liberalism. It was to Browning,
perhaps, that I -was most deeply indebted, and I habi-
�1*0 sfecULAk PtAti'Okfvi
35
tually quoted him in my sermons. How shocked I was
when I discovered that Mrs. Sutherland Orr and others
were impertinent enough to claim him as an Agnostic.
Among prose-writers my chief instructors were Emerson,
Carlyle, and Ruskin. Of theologians, the most inspiring
by far was Dr. George Matheson, the poet-preacher of
Scotland, whose able book, Can the Old Faith live with
the New ? gave me a firmer grip of what people call the
fundamental verities of the Gospel than all other books
put together. He made a magnificent use of the intellect
in the vilification of itself. The maligned faculty glowed
and sparkled, in the most charming manner, as it sang
the praises of its rival and so-called supplanter.
What makes me dwell so long on this point is the
knowledge that there are thousands of clergymen among
us at present, who loudly glory in their alleged posses
sion and enjoyment of the spiritual faculty. They say :
“ We cannot prove the existence of God on merely intel
lectual lines ; but we know that he is because our inward
eye sees him.” “ We cannot prove the Divinity of Jesus
Christ in any outward, formal way ; but to us his
Divinity is an irresistible inference from what we have
seen and experienced of his saving grace.” Not long
ago, the Rev. R. J. Campbell, the oracle of the City
Temple, stated that he had no fear of the Higher Critics.
“ Even if they w’ere to succeed in destroying the authority
of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation,” he said, “ yet
my own experience of its gracious efficacy would enable
me to cling to Christianity as confidently and tenaciously
as ever.” On another occasion he said : “ Our faith in
Christianity is dependent, not on the inspiration and
infallibility of the Bible, but on our direct vision and
knowledge of Christ.” I am not at all surprised at his
making such an assertion, because I often made it
myself; but it is an impotent attitude, and dates no
further back than the date of the Higher Criticism.
Fifty years ago it was well-nigh the universal teaching
of the Pulpit that no one could be a Christian without
believing in the full inspiration of the Scriptures; and
even at present there are a few, such as Dr. Robertson
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
Nicoll, who declare that if the Bible were discredited on
critical grounds, Christianity would have to be given up.
The truth, undoubtedly, is that the advanced theologians
of the present day are standing on the brink of the
chasm of scepticism, because, in the absence of an infal
lible Book, which claims to be a direct revelation from
God, Supernatural Religion must speedily collapse. In his
Literature and Dogma, Matthew Arnold’s mam object
was to make it possible for educated people who rejected
the miraculous still to believe in the Bible and Chris
tianity. What he said, in effect, was this : “ Miracles
do not happen, the belief in the personality of God is
groundless, and the hope of immortality is illusive; but,
on the whole, the Bible’s chief concern is with conduct,
which is three-fourths of human life, and, on this account,
the Bible should be retained, and we can still call our
selves Christians.” But, for once, one of the finest of
literary critics was utterly mistaken. Divest Chris
tianity of its miraculous element, and what will there be
left that is not common to all great religions ? Banish
the Supernatural from the Bible, and what will it contain
worth preserving ? Indeed, I am convinced that Arnold’s
argument inevitably leads to Atheism, not to the recovery
of faith. I am prepared to go one step further and
affirm that, at heart, the great apostle of culture was
himself a genuine Atheist.
The God in whom he
believed was only a projection or externalisation of him
self. In proof of this assertion I need give only the
following characteristic quotation : “ Bishop Wilson
says, ‘ Look up to God (by which he means just this,
consult your conscience) at all times, and you will, as in
a glass, discover what is fit to be done.’ ” To a cer
tainty we know that Bishop Wilson meant just exactly
what he said ; but to Matthew Arnold God and con
science, or God and himself, were convertible terms.
It took me many years, however, to perceive how
utterly unsound and illogical the position I occupied
really was, and how inevitable would be the alternative
between a return to the simple, blind, unreasoning, but
strong faith of my childhood, and an advance to open
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37
and unadulterated Atheism. There is no safe and per
manent half-way house between emphatic, unequivocal,
and old-fashioned Supernaturalism and plain, unadorned
Secularism. Mr. Campbell, though by no means an
orator, is yet a most magnetic speaker, and will always
have a large following of non-thinkers ; but I am certain
that his theological attitude and style of reasoning, if
reasoning it can be called, are calculated, in the long
run, to make more infidels than believers. Without one
definite seat of authority, to which to refer all debateable
points, religion cannot survive.
During the Middle
Ages it was the Church that settled all disputes. All its
official findings were infallible and universally binding.
The Reformation shifted the seat of authority from the
Church to the Bible; and for many generations Pro
testants worshipped the Book with as complete a homage
as Catholics did the Pope. The Protestant Reformation
did nothing more than exchange one seat of authority
for another. But in our day the only authoritative voice,
acknowledged by the leaders of British Free Churchism,
is that of individual experience; and the people who
decline to listen to, and follow, it, are declared to be
destitute of the spiritual organ. Every preacher is now
an infallible pope in his own society. The result is that
we have a million popes instead of one ; and it is a very
significant fact that no two of them agree on a single
subject. Each has a different kind of spiritual faculty
from all the others ; and the consequence is that all of
them deliver different and conflicting spiritual judgments.
The intellect is in bonds, but this very multiplicity of
contradictory voices is a sure sign that the day of its
glorious emancipation is hastening on. The Church is
slowly committing suicide at the instigation of its own
rulers, and the time is not far off when its tomb will be
adorned with green grass and lovely flowers. This is a
prophecy which is already in the process of fulfilment, as
every careful student of the signs of the times is bound
to admit.
�3§
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
VIII.—THE REIGN OF EMOTIONALISM.
When a man of an ardent temperament discovers that
the position he occupies is intellectually weak and in
defensible, he is almost sure to fall back on emotional
ism. That was the temptation that came to me, and to
which I readily yielded. With what infinite relish I
kept repeating to myself Matthew Arnold’s famous
saying : “ The true meaning of religion is, not simply
morality, but morality touched by emotion.''' During this
second period of my religious history, my theology
assumed a purely sentimental form, and pretended to
deal with facts as distinguished from theories. Dogmas
no longer appealed to me as true, although I had not the
temerity to reject them as false; but the great facts
which the dogmas endeavored to imprison within the
stone walls of scientific definitions appeared more vital
and precious than ever to me, and I hugged them with
kindling affection. There were doctrines which it was
my delight to hold up to ridicule and scorn; but there
were others on which I was silent, because I did not
understand them. Among these was the doctrine of
the Trinity. It was wholly inexplicable to me that
three infinite persons constituted but one God. Indeed,
there was something positively repulsive in the idea,
calmly held and seriously championed by many learned
doctors, that the second infinite person was eternally
born of the first, and that the third eternally proceeded,
without either birth or creation, from the other two.
Face-to-face with such inscrutable mysteries, I emotion
ally clung to the sweet Bible-verse, “ God is love." 1
was equally incapable of comprehending the Immaculate
Conception and Virgin Birth of Christ, or the mystical
union of the Divine and Human Natures in the con
stitution of his theanthropic person, which was no
longer merely the second person in the Trinity, but a
kind of new person miraculously brought into existence
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39
through the Incarnation. No theologian on earth ever
pretended to understand that strange doctrine; and yet
it found a place in every standard work on theology.
Not one of the twenty different theories of the Atone
ment commended itself to my reason, although some
of them were more acceptable than others ; and so I
contented myself with proclaiming the living fact that
lay behind them all. To me Christ was. the visible
image of the living God, and his only mission in the
world was to reveal the Divine love.
Towards miracles, as such, I maintained a sceptical
attitude. With Huxley, I fully admitted their possibility,
but was not clearly convinced that a single genuine
miracle had ever happened; nor could I appreciate the
ground on which Christian apologists rejected all miracles
except those recorded in the Bible. Consequently, I
never preached on the subject, nor did anxious inquirers
privately press me to give an opinion on it. I knew what
evidential value the majority of theologians attached to
the miraculous, and what emphasis was laid on the
assertion that the proof from miracles was the only
proof on which we could absolutely rely in the refutation
of the arguments of unbelief. Archbishop Whately was
confident that all Catholic miracles would turn out to be
impostures, or capable of a natural explanation, “ but
that Bible-miracles would stand sifting by a London
special jury, or by a committee of scientific men.”
Dean Mansel argued that “ if the reality of miracles as
facts is denied, the whole system of Christian belief with
its evidences, all Christianity, in short, so far as it has
any title to that name, so far as it has any special relation
to the person or the teaching of Christ, is overthrown at
the same time.” Mozley, Westcott, and Farrar ex
pressed themselves to the same effect. But while fully
aware of the theological contention that “ miracles and
the supernatural contents of Christianity must stand or
fall together,” still I somehow felt that it was a fallacy
and could not stand. But what was I to do with the
Resurrection of Christ, which was universally regarded
as the corner stone of the Christian Religion ? If J
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
denied the miraculous, how could I believe that Christ
rose from the dead ? Must I not exclaim, in the poet’s
mournful words,—.
Far hence he lies
In the lorn Syrian town,
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down ?
But if I denied that Christ rose again, how could I, for
a moment longer, be a Christian minister ? Well, I
must confess that I took refuge in a mean and cowardly
subterfuge. I contended, with a few others, that Christ’s
Resurrection was to be understood poetically and
spiritually, not literally and mechanically. I deluded
myself into believing that the Apostle Paul, also,
accepted and interpreted the doctrine in precisely the
same way. I think it was Clough, in his exquisite
poem, in two parts, entitled Easter Day, who first sug
gested the subterfuge to me. What a spiritual resur
rection signified, it would have been most difficult to
explain ; but the belief in it was emotional, and conse
quently did not require to have its contents too minutely
described.
I was satisfied with merely feeling that
somehow and somewhere Christ still lived. It was a
degrading, soul-killing subterfuge, though I knew it not
at the time ; but it enabled me to imagine and feel that
I was a believer when in reality I was not.
To the more thoughtful and intelligent people such
preaching lacked precision, definiteness, and clearness,
and the preacher was severely censured by them. But
with the people as a whole I never lost touch. I was
capable of rising to such an exceptionally high pitch
of fervor that I never failed to secure the sympathy
and support of the crowd. Besides, the presence of a
crowd had such a magical and transforming effect upon
me that my natural enthusiasm more than doubled its
power. The dormant fire in my constitution was fanned
into white and furioufe heat ; and if ever I spoke with
convincing effect it was because I so deeply felt what I
said. Argumentatively I may have been deplorably
weak and vulnerable ; but emotionally I was gloriously
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41
strong and unassailable. And it is incontrovertible that a
miscellaneous, popular assembly responds much more
quickly and heartily to sentiment or feeling than to logic.
Earnestness, accompanied by kindling eloquence, is
infinitely more convincing to a multitude than the most
perfect and lucid argument ever framed.
Towards the close of the period under consideration, I
was, to all intents and purposes, nothing but an emo
tional and superficial expounder of the Christian
Religion. To my intellect, Christianity was almost
painfully false, but to my heart, it was irresistibly true.
On week days I was frequently a rampant Agnostic or
Atheist, but on Sundays and in the pulpit always a redhot believer. It was a pitiable condition, in the extreme,
to be in; but there was then absolutely no help for it.
I did my utmost to keep under and silence the intellect,
in which endeavor I occasionly succeeded ; and I did it
in the name and for the sake of what I verily believed to
be a higher and nobler faculty. Words can never tell
what soul-agonies I endured, what cruel crises I passed
through, and to what self-loathing I more than once
subjected myself. What kept me going was the con
viction that somehow the highest and best in my nature
still witnessed to the blessed reality of Revealed Religion;
and on Sundays, as I stood face-to-face with crowded
congregations, this conviction completely swayed my
whole being.
But the worst has yet to come, and must have a whole
chapter to itself. Arnoldism will never work, except
disastrously. The public has never been able to appre
ciate the fine distinction between literature and dogma.
On the contrary, the public is perpetually reducing
poetry to prose, and treating literature itself as if it were
dogma. A follower of Arnold in the pulpit cannot fail
sooner or later to commit suicide. He puts one meaning
into a word, a literary and poetical one, and his hearers,
another ; and he cannot but be aware of the fact. The
consequence is that he degenerates into a miserable
play-actor, a process I shall describe in the next
chapter,
�7
42
FROM CHRISTIAN PURPIT
IX.—PLAY-ACTING IN THE PULPIT.
In theory, Arnoldism is exquisitely beautiful and
irresistibly fascinating; but, in practice, it proves
wofully complicating and confusing. It leads to all
sorts of insincerities and hypocrisies.
A long time
ago a famous actor, on being asked by a clergyman,
“ Why is play-acting so much more successful than
preaching ?” answered, “ Because we treat fiction as
if it were truth, and you present truth as if it were
fiction.” It was a witty, apt, and, if both preacher and
actor believed the Bible to be the Word of God, emi
nently true answer. In numerous instances, it must be
confessed, the pulpit is such a signal failure because the
fire of enthusiasm does not burn in it, or because so
many preachers are empty-headed and empty-hearted
triflers. They do not doubt, because they are too lazy
to think. To them, the ministry is solely a “ living,”
an easy and respectable “ billet,” and they would forsake
it to-morrow did it not allow them to spend their days
in luxurious indolence. But there are other ministers
to whom laziness is not a besetting sin, and who cannot
complain of non-success in their work. The chief source
of their weakness is that they proclaim fiction as if it
were truth, thoroughly believing it, for the time being,
to be truth. We are assured that, while on the stage,
first-rate actors verily feel as if they were the characters
they represent, which, for the time, they doubtless are.
Judging by my own experience, and by observation of
other cases, pulpit play-acting reveals itself in various
ways.
In the first place, no sooner had I adopted Arnoldism,
and commenced to treat the Bible as literature, than I
discovered that I dared not preach all I knew. In
course of time, I came into possession of a large body of
esoteric truths, which were of too dangerous a character
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43
to be communicated to a mixed congregation. I was
positively certain that the Pentateuch was not written,
even the earlier and simpler portions of it, for many
centuries after Moses’ time. I knew well enough that
the Mosaic Economy was a late and gradual develop
ment, and that from the time it began to assume a
definite shape the prophets and the priests became
sworn enemies, proofs of which fact abound in the
prophetical writings themselves.
It was as clear . as
noonday to me that Genesis is a collection of interesting
legends, traditions, and myths; that Adam, Noah,
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are by no means historical,
but purely fabulous, symbolical, or eponymous char
acters, and that the stories of Creation, the Fall, and the
Flood are fables, borrowed from Babylonian and other
sources.
It was not hidden from my eyes that the
Historical Books were extremely crude and imperfect,
full of contradictions and discrepancies ; that the two
Chronicles, in particular, were written with the object
of representing the priesthood of the later Jewish
Church as an institution that had existed continuously,
and in its entirety, from the time of Moses, and that of
history in the modern sense they contained none.
Dr. Torrey boldly asserts that there are no mistakes
of any kind in the Bible—an assertion that makes
one wonder whether the popular evangelist can be
even an honest man.
From the time I began to
treat the Bible as literature, I have not been able to
shut my eyes to the fact that it contains innumerable
mistakes—historical, chronological, numerical, and
moral. But although I had full knowledge of all these
things, I had to be silent about them in the pulpit,
because of the danger that any public reference to
them might disturb the people’s simple faith in the
inspiration of the Book.
If I ever mentioned the
Higher Criticism at all, it was merely for the purpose
of emphasising the fact that if the Bible is inspired
no criticism, however hostile in spirit and aim, can
inflict any permanent injury upon it.
It was also
undeniable that as yet the Critics themselves were
�44
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
not quite sure of their ground, inasmuch as they hotly
disagreed with, and contradicted, one another.
Nor
could it be forgotten that some of the most advanced
and iconoclastic among them were yet firm advocates
of the moral and spiritual supremacy of the Volume,
and stood in the front rank of evangelical preachers.
On these grounds, as far as I possibly could, I kept my
congregation in the dark as to what was being done by
Biblical scholars, and continued to treat the Bible as
the supreme seat of authority in religion. Its history
might be glaringly inaccurate; its geology, hopelessly
chaotic, and its astronomy, ludicrously antiquated;
but then it was not written to teach these lower,
earthly sciences, but to be an infallible guide in all
matters affecting the destiny of the soul. Such was
the attitude taken up by theologians as soon as they
realised the impossibility of retaining the exploded
theory of verbal inspiration and inerrancy; and we
preachers feebly followed their example.
But, after
all, preachers have no moral right to withhold im
portant knowledge from their congregation, nor can
they do it without seriously weakening their position
and doing themselves irreparable harm.
In the second place, I found that, having adopted
the literary and poetical method of interpreting
Scripture, I attached other and, as I fondly fancied,
larger and worthier meanings to the great theological
terms than those which they popularly bore.
This
was an excessively risky game to play, but it was
played in the sincere hope that genuine good might
be the result.
For instance, the generality of the
people believed God to be an infinite and eternal
person, clothed with so many natural and moral
attributes of absolute perfection, with whom, through
the merits of Christ, they professed to be in intimate
and soul-making communion.
They told him all
their troubles, confessed to him all their sins, implored
him to pardon and release them, and besought him to
grant them sundry little favors. To me, on the other
hand, God was the name loosely given to the sum-total
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45
of ideal virtues and. moral excellencies, communion with
whom signified active admiration for and an ardent
desire and effort to possess and exhibit, such noble
qualities. I spoke of him as if he were a person ; but I
did so in a loose, poetical, or literary sense. I addressed
him as Father, Friend, Savior, meaning just this : that
at the core or heart of things is constructive, healing,
saving Love.
In maintaining this attitude I was
enormously helped and comforted by Henry Drummond’s
exquisitely beautiful book, entitled The Ascent of Man.
Its teaching was nebulous, vague, poetical, almost
fantastical ; but to me, at that time, irresistible. The
law of the Universe was Love, and only that which
opposed the glorious purposes of love could be called
sinful.
There were numerous other terms, such as
atonement, regeneration, justification, immortality, which I
treated in the same ambiguous and passing way. The
object I had in view was the gradual conversion of the
people to my way of looking at things.
But my success in the realisation of that object was
most discouragingly small. It is cocksure dogmatism
that always moves the multitude ; and even I, in my
most Arnoldian mood, was supposed to be speaking
dogmatically. There were but few who took me in my
own sense, and those few soon lost all interest in the
popular religion and ceased to attend its various meet
ings. I was all the time on the high road to Secularism,
though at that time I had not the least suspicion of it.
Some of those who joined me in the strange pilgrimage
soon outstripped me in speed, and arrived at the inevitable
destination years before I did. One of these was a man
of exceptional intellectual brilliancy, dowered with a fine,
lively imagination, and privileged, above most, to live
close to Nature’s heart. What deep joy was mine when
I had succeeded in winning him to my side ; but his
stay with me was wonderfully brief. He perceived,
almost at once, that the position I occupied was illogical,
irrational, and impossible, and his sense of perspective
drove him at a furious pace straight on to Naturalism or
Monism, in which he found intellectual peace and heart-
�46
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
rest. We are both together again now, sharing each
other’s joy, as well as responsibility.
When will ministers learn that theological liberalism
is only a stage in the journey either to Rome or to
Atheism ? Many of us remember how Newman, in a
book of startling novelty, assigned that fact as the chief
reason why he was obliged to become a Catholic—to
bow in lowliest reverence to a corporate authority—in
order to preserve his faith in religion. At one time he
and his younger brother, Francis William, stood on
practically the same platform ; but one day they parted
company, John Henry going down to Rome and
becoming a Cardinal, while Francis William climbed
towards, and almost reached, the domain of pure
Naturalism.
Theology cannot be liberal, and live.
Based on an infallible revelation from heaven, it must
remain stationary for ever, or die. No progress is
possible, except the progress out of it. Newman was
philosopher enough to perceive this; and he made his
escape in time.
The next chapter will explain how my deliverance
came.
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47
X.—THE EMANCIPATION OF THE
INTELLECT.
Everybody knows that play-acting is a species of
hypocrisy, this Greek word being the term originally
employed to describe the theatrical profession ; and it
would be equally a truism to say that play-acting, how
ever acceptable and successful on the stage, always
destroys the legitimate power of the pulpit. Above
everything else the preacher needs sincerity. At all
costs he must say what he means, and, to the deepest
roots of his being, mean what he says. If he speaks
hesitatingly, falteringlv, apologetically, or with numerous
reservations, explanations, and comments, he thereby
robs himself of more than half his natural power, and
completely cripples the influence of his ministry. He
occupies a lower platform than Samson did when he
made sport for the people.
Besides, although the
intellect may not be the strongest and noblest of our
mental faculties, it is anything but safe and wise to per
manently ignore and snub it. Sooner or later the day
of its revenge will come, which to the play-acting
preacher will be a dreadful day of swift judgment. In
my case the terrible day arrived much later than it would
have done had I been of a cooler, calmer, and more
reflective temperament.
Let me, now set down in order some of the causes
that led up to my emancipation, or indicate a few of the
stages in my journey from Supernaturalism to Secu
larism. They are these :—
1. Loss of faith in the infallibility and Divine authority
of the Bible.
2. The consequent relegation of Religion to the sphere
of faith, feeling, and individual experience.
�48
FROM CHRISTIAN PULRlt
3. Realisation of the forced nature of all devotional
exercises, in the cultivation of which the Closet
and the Church are but forcing-pits.
1. In connection with the passing of the Bible it is a
highly significant fact that the most effective agents in
the process have been professional theologians, trained
exegetes, accredited representatives of the Church. The
Bible has been mortally wounded in the house of its
nominal friends. The Faith has been stabbed to the
heart by its own official champions. Prominent among
these, at the present time, are Canons Driver and Cheyne,
of the Etablished Church of England, and Professor
George Adam Smith, of the United Free Church of
Scotland. I utterly fail to see how any honest, unbiassed
person can carefully study and understand Canon Driver’s
famous Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament,
and his lucid Commentaries on several Old Testament
Books; Canon Cheyne’s Introduction to the Booh of Isaiah,
together with his numerous Commentaries, critical articles
in theological and expository magazines, and the great
and scholastic Encyclopedia Biblica, of which he is chief
editor; and, in particular, Professor George Adam
Smith’s startling book entitled Modern Criticism and the
Preaching of the Old Testament, without being unavoidably
driven to the conclusion that the Bible is not, in any
superior or special sense, the word of God, and must be
subjected to the same canons of criticism as all other
books. At any rate, that was the inevitable effect the
study of such works had upon me.
2. But how can Supernaturalism stand without the
support of a specially inspired and infallible Book ?
There are still a few simple-minded and honest-hearted
people who, in spite of all the discoveries of modern
criticism, dogmatically maintain that, if the Bible is
fallible and bristles with blunders, there can be no escape
from the hateful inference that Christianity is overthrown.
Such people are the only consistent Christians extant.
But the bulk of present-day apologists refer for authority,
not to the Bible, but to the experience of living believers.
They eloquently exclaim : “ Religion does not live in a
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49
book, but in the hearts and lives of its devotees. As
plants and flowers are grandly independent of the very
best Botanical text-books, so is Christianity of the Bible.”
The first great divine that formulated this argument in
England was the late Dr. Dale, of Birmingham, in a
book of immense interest, entitled The Living Christ and
the Four Gospels. He firmly believed in the authenticity
and inspiration of these documents ; but his argument
was that as Christianity came into healthy and vigorous
existence before a single line of the Four Gospels was
written, so it could likewise survive their utter destruc
tion. According to this argument, in its latest develop
ment, the Christian Religion, in its present sublimated
and etherealised form, is not vitally associated with the
miraculous birth, benevolent life, peerless teaching,
redemptive work, sacrificial death, and triumphant resur
rection of a historical Christ, but roots itself, rather, in
the personal experience of every genuine Christian, and
refers to the same source for its supreme and final
evidence. Consequently, Christ is not so much a his
torical person as a spiritual force in the souls of believers;
—that is to say, he is an unseen and omnipotent Being,
who in some mystic, inexplicable sense really dwells, as
a seed or germ, in every human soul ; in that of the
Mohammedan, the Confucian, or the Buddhist no less
than in that of the professing believer in Christendom.
Now, if this universally indwelling spiritual Christ gets
fair play, whether the gospel be heard and accepted or
not, he will certainly grow and develop into the ideal
stature. In those who make a spontaneous surrender to
him, he soon comes to conscious life ; and they worship
him with glowing devotion. They enjoy full communion
with him, as if he still actually existed somewhere, or as
if he were a person with a unique history lying behind
him. And yet, in spite of all this, they coolly assure us
that “ Christianity is not a system of intellectual truths,
but a practical and vital experience of the heart,” and
that “ Christ is not a fiction of the theologians, not a
prophet of Galilee, but an indwelling power whereby we
are evolved upward to the perfect spiritual stature of
�5°
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
man.” Quite recently, I heard the Rev. R. J. Campbell,
at the City Temple when'he affirmed, with his own pecu
liarly quiet and infectious’fervor, that this spiritual Christ
is now germinally present in the lowest and worst char
acter on earth. To those who venture to cast suspicion
on such an assertion, these modern apologists say : —■
“ You are blind, and there are whole regions of spiritual
apprehension of which you know nothing. Intellectually
you may, perhaps, be our equals or superiors; but
spiritually we are immeasurably above you, and possess a
faculty which enables and entitles us to judge you,
although you cannot judge us. We have allowed the
indwelling spiritual Christ to have his way with us to
such an extent that we already know all things.” They
affect a sublime indifference to all historical, critical, and
theological problems, saying : “ You may. smash up the
historical and intellectual setting to smithereens , but
when you have done that, you have not yet touched real
Christianity.” What, then, in the name of all the
wonders, is real Christianity ? Is it only the. creation of
the sanctified imagination of a few duly ordained clergy
men ? And is the same thing true of Christ himself ?
The late Professor Bruce, who wielded such an enormous
influence in his day, regarded the historicity of the Four
Gospels as absolutely essential. All the Epistles might
utterly disappear, without our suffering any radical loss,
for at best they were but human interpretations and
commentaries; but the moment we abandoned the
Gospels, Christianity would be entirely undermined.
And is it not true that Professor Bruce was literally and
profoundly right ? If it is or can be proved that Christ
never lived at all, or never lived as reported in the docu
ments, does not his spiritual existence in the souls of
believers become an empty dream? Surely a nonhistoric lesus cannot be in any sense a real person, nor
can a religion founded on an imaginary being possess
any objective reality, whatever the experience of its
devotees may say. The moment we give up our faith m
the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, the moment
we admit that miracles do not happen, and have not
�TO SECULAR PLATFORM
51
happened, that same moment we strip Christianity of all
its distinctive features as a Revealed Religion, and bring
it down to the level of all the great ethnic religions.
With this discovery came my emancipation (from all
superstitious slavery, and the full redemption of my soul.
A necessity was laid upon me to renounce, the Super
natural, and to find all I needed within the limits of the
natural. I substituted conscience for God, reason for
faith, common sense for prayer ; and for the first time in
my life I found mental rest and joy. •
3. But there was a third element that contributed to
my deliverance, namely, the conviction that all religious
exercises are artificially forced. Let us take prayer as an
example. As a child, I was systematically taught to
regard praying as an imperative duty, which everyone
should piously endeavor to discharge. I was also con
tinually reminded of the sorrowful fact that, ever since
the Fall in Eden, mankind had been sinfully disinclined
to bend their knees before the God of Heaven. Hence,
even to those who were born again through faith in
Christ, prayer did not come naturally. There was an
old man within them still who violently rebelled against
it; so that, in order to become proficient and find enjoy
ment in it, a necessity was laid upon them to crucify the
indwelling villain, and extend to his rightful successor,
created within them by the Holy Ghost, a firmer and
more welcome lodgment. But, in spite of all my des
perate efforts to bring about the death and ejectment of
the ancient Adam, in spite of all my passionate appeals
to God to come to my assistance in the matter, prayer
was never a joyous and strengthening exercise to me.
It continued to the end to be a hard, difficult, and un
illumined duty, which only my sense of loyalty to Christ
enabled me to perform at all. This constitutional dis
inclination to pray I then attributed to a fundamental
lack of spirituality, to some incompleteness of surrender
to God in Christ, or to some abnormal activity of the
persistent old scamp in my heart; and I tried to pray all
the more. After a while, I noticed that there was nothing
extraordinary or peculiar about my experience, but that
�52
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
the experience of all other children and adults was prac
tically the same. Of course, as long as I believed in
the Edenic Catastrophe, and the consequent imputation
of guilt and transmission of depravity to the whole race,
it was easy enough to account for the innate disinclina
tion to pray : it was a sign, proof, and direct consequence
of that hideous and hell-creating event. But as soon as
it became imperative to repudiate that damnable dogma,
because it flatly contradicted both reason and history,
there was no possibility of avoiding the atheistic con
clusion that religion, in the form of belief in and com
munion with an infinite and eternal Person, is un
natural, irrational, and injurious, and that for Christ,
with the whole paraphernalia of Atonement, Sacrifice,
and Salvation from hell, there is absolutely no need.
This is why adults are never religious unless they have
had religion forced down their throats in their youth.
This is why ministers and their assistants have to be so
busy attending to the religious education of the children ;
and it is to this incontrovertible fact that we owe SundaySchools, Bands of Hope, Societies of Christian Endeavor,
and even the regular services of the Churches. The
idea that underlies all ecclesiastical institutions, con
sciously or unconsciously, is that man is not by nature a
religious being, and that all religious convictions, beliefs,
and practices must be drilled into him by a long and
most laborious course of teaching. All religion originates
in superstition ; and it is a statement capable of amplest
verification that in proportion as superstition loses its
hold upon the common people, religion becomes a dead
letter. If the churches were to suspend operations from
next Sunday, in less than a hundred years Christianity
would be a thing of the past. We know that during the
last fifty or sixty years theology has been steadily aban
doning, one by one, positions that used to be regarded as
vitally essential. The renaissance of physical science in
the nineteenth century was accompanied by a corres
ponding decadence of religion. The acceptance of
Evolution meant the consequent rejection of the Bible
and Christianity.
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53
XI.—THE INDESTRUCTIBLE REMAINDER.
Now that we have eliminated the Bible as a specially
inspired and authoritative book, and Christianity as a
miraculously revealed religion, both from our minds and
from our lives, is there anything that remains and cannot
be swept away? Yes, all that has ever had any
real and verifiable existence. We have merely rid
ourselves of unnatural and morbid developments, of
troublesome and hurtful incumbrances, or, in other
words, we have only lopped off a few injurious excres
cences. We ourselves, and Nature, of which we are an
important part, still endure. I can find no more in
external objects than is already, either active or dormant,
in myself. Man is an epitome of the Universe.
Nothing transcends the soul, because it is the sum-total
of all things in miniature. Hence, neither poet nor
philosopher ever uttered a thought that did not awaken
echoes in all minds. That which is in itself true appeals
more or less forcibly to all alike, because it is germinally
present and regnant in all natural souls. I know how
customary it is, in certain quarters, to accuse Atheists of
contradicting, in the most wilful manner, the testimony
of their own nature, and to call them liars and hypocrites.
“ At heart,” we are confidently assured, “ no man is or
can be an Atheist.” The obvious retort is that, at
heart, no man either is or can be anything else. Even
according to the teaching of orthodox theology, ever
since the Fall in Eden Atheism has been the natural
fruit of unregenerate hearts. Now that science has dis
proved the Story of the Fall it is undeniable that, by
nature, all men are Atheists. Everybody knows now
how the belief in Supernatural Beings first arose, and
how it was gradually evolved into its present forms. As
�54
l’kO'M CHRISTIAN PULPIT
I have already said, we are not naurally religious. Even
to-day children have to be diligently and painfully
trained and coaxed, often very much against their wills,
into religious beliefs and exercises, and many of them, as
soon as they arrive at years of discretion and indepen
dence, shake them off again. We do not take to religion
as naturally as we do to our food. Furthermore, un
believers are frequently taunted with their inability to
supply the world with a worthy substitute for the Christian
Religion. “ What have you to offer us in place of Chris
tianity ?” they are excitedly asked. “You must not rob
us of our religion until you can provide us with another
and better one.” We cheerfully accept the challenge ;
and our answer to it is, that the world would be im
mensely better off without its Supernatural Religions,
because they are more or less artificial and of a bedwarfing tendency.
As illustrations of the truth of this contention let us
consider a few of the great, central words of the Bible,
such as God, Christ, Sin, and Immortality. Is not the
merest tyro in theology fully aware that no two divines
are in entire agreement as to the meaning of a single
one of these terms ? It may be alleged that all theo
logians speak of God as an infinite, eternal, invisible,
and absolute Being ; and yet hosts of them admit, on
metaphysical grounds, that an infinite and absolute
Being is unthinkable. “ But,” some simple-minded
person will say, “ I must believe in God because he is
revealed in the Bible.” But several different and con
flicting gods are revealed in the Bible—in which of them
do you believe; the god who commanded human
sacrifice, or the one who forbade it : the god of war or
the god of peace: the god of vengeance or the god of
love ? These are all in the Book, and you must make
your choice between them.
“ My God,” another
exclaims, “ is the embodiment of all high and noble
qualities, and whenever I worship him it is really to
such attributes that I am paying homage.” Then your
God cannot be an infinite and self-conscious person, but
merely an idealisation, a poetic fancy, a product of your
�*ro SECULAR RLaTFoRM
55
own imagination. The only sound advice to such a
believer is this : By all means, retain and adore the
qualities, in so far as they are high and noble, rbut, or
all sakes, drop the fanciful person. The term C/mst,
also, is open to the same objection. As to who or
what Christ is there is an endless diversity of opinion.
To one disciple, he is the Son of the living God, the
only begotten; to another, the completest revelation o
the Highest ; to another, the all-sufficient expiatory
sacrifice for sin; to another, a teacher of remarkable
originality and power ; and to another still, man at his
highest and best, the supreme miracle of history. These
typical disciples represent different and contradictory
schools of Christology, which have always stood at
daggers drawn in relation to one another. In the
Middle Ages the Church sanctioned the Christology of
the Augustinian school, and tried to stamp out the other
schools by imprisoning, torturing, and burning their
representatives. But at no time was the. Church com
petent to exercise absolute authority in matters of
doctrine, because it has been repeatedly proved that she
put men to death for holding and teaching opinions
which riper knowledge has established as incontestably
true. Her character as an infallible teacher has been
completely and irretrievably shattered. Convicted, in
open court, as a false witness on many important points,
the validity of her evidence on all other subjects has
been hopelessly destroyed. If therefore we listen to our
own reason, unterrorised by any superstition, we shall
have to let the theological Christ go, with all the theories
concerning him, or put him in the same category as
Buddha, and Confucius, and Zoroaster.
The same remarks apply to the words Stn and Immor
tality. What is sin ? No two people agree. According
to some there are sins specially against God, trans
gressions against positive commands, similar to * the
Edenic one about the forbidden apple, aftd so far as one
can make out these are exclusively sins of omission.
We sin against God when we neglect to pray, to read
the Bible, to attend church, or to contribute towards the
�5^
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT’
clue maintenance of the priesthood. Then there are sins
against ourselves and sins against our neighbor, which
are variously defined according to the theological stand
point- Again, according to the ripest and most reliable
Biblical scholars, immortality is not taught in the Old
Testament at all, so that in reality the Jewish Church
concerned itself solely with the affairs of the life that
now is. Dr. George Adam Smith informs us, further,
that there are excellent Christians in present-day
Churches to whom the doctrine of a future life does not
appeal, and who have accepted Christianity merely on
the. ground of the unique exaltation and purity of its
ethical teaching. But is it not indisputable that if we
eliminate the Supernatural,^with its heaven and hell,
from the Christian Religion^nothing of distinctive value,
nothing that is not common to all great Religions,
remains ? All that is peculiar to it is purely mythical,
while all that is of real value in it is common property.
Now, face-to-face with such significant facts, my
argument is that we do not need a substitute for
Christianity, but would be much better off, in every
respect, with no Supernatural Religion whatever. But
what remains to us after we have discarded God, Christ,
and . Immortality, with all the absurd dogmas con
cerning them ?
Nature, in all the plenitude of her
glory and power. She is our kind, loving, all-sustaining
mother, in whom we live, and move, and have our
being.
She answers all our anxious questions and
solves all our vexing problems. We never appeal to
her in vain. How speedily she responds to our varying
moods, comforting us in sorrow, cheering us in des
pondency, inspiring us in weakness, weeping with us
when we are sad, and laughing with us when we are
merry. Our one business in life is to observe her laws,
and to be in perfect tune with her sweet harmonies ;
and the only sin possible to us is to be in a state of
rebellion against her wise orderings. There is only one
thing we should dread, not the wrath and punishment
of a Supernatural Being, supposed to be seated on a
glittering throne no one knows where, but the ominous
�TO SECULAR PLATFORM
57
frown of our mother when we have wilfully disregarded
her beneficent injunctions. No, my friends, we do not
need another Supernatural Religion, but we do need to
return to the worship of reason, the adoration of Nature,
and the practical fulfilment of the laws of truth, and
honor, and honesty, and pity, and service. This is the
the divinest religion on earth, and yet the one most
culpably neglected. Christians are too busy preparing
for heaven to pay the slightest attention to the socfal
duties of earth. “ But,” someone cries, “ I cannot give
up my hope of heaven, and you have no right to try
to rob me of it.” Well, cherish it to your heart’s
content, so far as I am concerned ; but will you be good
enough to consider, with due seriousness, the following
practical questfons ?—
“ Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the
Time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime ?”
Is it well that—
“ There among the glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied
feet,
Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the
street ?”
Is it well that—
“ There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted
floor,
And the crowded couch of incest in the warrens of the poor ?”
Is it well, is it right, is it just that these and a thousand
other anomalies, sufferings, and cruelties should be per
mitted to continue in countries which call themselves
Christian ?
Is it well, is it consistent that you, a
professed follower of Christ, should be rapidly amassing
a colossal fortune, and faring sumptuously every day, at
the expense of the poverty and misery of your work
people ? If that is what your hope of heaven enables or
allows or leads you to do, the sooner you part with it
the better it will be for all concerned. In your sane
moments, do you not agree ? It is most lamentable to
think how Christian churches seek to win and retain the
rich by wheedling flatteries and infamous cajoleries, and
�58
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
then dole out a little charity to the poor, accom
panied by the assurance that though poor on earth
they shall be rich in heaven. In their hearts the
poor scorn charity, and cry bitterly for justice, fair
play, and the recognition of their humanity. If the
churches were true to Christ, whom they call their
Head, they would tell the rich that they cannot possibly
enter the Kingdom of Heaven until they learn, not to
bequeath their riches to good causes when they die, or
devote them to ecclesiastical purposes while they live,
and be made famous, but so to conduct their business
affairs from day to day as to preclude the possibility of
ever becoming rich. Instead of that, they are doing
their utmost to perpetuate and accentuate the terrible
injustices, inequalities, and artificial distinctions that
now obtain in Society. Our reason tells us how iniquitous
the present condition of things is, and our reason, guided
by our heart, dictates the only true remedy ; and if we
only had the courage to apply the remedy all would soon
be well. Christianity has been in the world for nineteen
hundred years, but has ignominiously failed to set it
right. Indeed, it has often succeeded in setting it quite
wrong. The reason is that it is pre-eminently the
religion of the world to come, and, consequently, concerns
itself but little with the affairs of this. When we have
detached ourselves from it we shall have time to fulfil
the common duties of the common day, and, as a result,
to restore our relations to ourselves and to one another
to their normal and healthy condition.
My story is told, and I am at rest, and can face the
future without dread. I know whence I came and
whither I am going, and I greet the unseen, whatever it
may be, with a cheer. I take my stand with Ernst
Haeckel in the tabernacle of wonder and admiration,
and I join the great Goethe in the sanctuary of sorrow
and sympathy, reconsecrating myself to the service of
the huge army of the wronged and sinned against, the
suffering and the sad. Great and honorable is the work
that lies before us, and I call upon the reader and myself
�TO SECULAR PLATfoRM
59
to awake from sloth and begin with glowing hearts to do
it. Let us unite in a grandly altruistic mission to rid
the world of debasing superstitions, to dethrone all
existing evils, to establish right relations between man
and man, to promote good will and genuine brotherhood
all round, and to fill the days and hours of this earthly
life, the only life of which we are sure, with merry
laughter- and songful joy. Such is the beneficent ministry
of the only true gospel.
�DON’T
MISS
IT
THE
FREETHINKER
One of the liveliest and most outspoken Journals in
the World.
ITS EDITOR, MR. G. W. FOOTE,
“DID” Twelve Months for “BLASPHEMY,” and has
conducted it on the same lines ever since.
Mr. C. COHEN and Mr. JOHN LLOYD
are among the regular weekly contributors.
The FREETHINKER is the only journal in England that
gives b reethought news, and attends to Freethought organi
zation, as well as advocating Freethought principles. The
FREETHINKER attacks superstition and priestcraft, which
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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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From Christian pulpit to secular platform
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Lloyd, John
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 59 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's advertisements on 5 pages at end, also inside covers and on back cover. Reprinted from The Free Thinker. John Lloyd was the Rector of Llanvapley.
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The Pioneer Press
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1903
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Secularism
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Atheism
Christianity-Controversial Literature
Free Thought
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Secularism
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FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT
BY MONSIGNOR W. CROKE ROBINSON, M.A.1
It is difficult to know where to start in a subject so large
and profound as the change of one’s faith, and the
process by which that change came about. I will
endeavour to trace the beginnings from which were
evolved eventually five conclusions which led me to the
Catholic Church.
I must premise that I was brought up as a Low
Church Anglican, but that a very little serious thought
brought me to what is known as Tractarianism, as dis
tinguished from Evangelicanism on the one side and
Ritualism on the other, with neither of which I had any
sympathy. I thought the one narrow - minded and
illogical, and the other illogical and dishonest; and I
think so now. I very soon began to be disturbed and
unsettled by the confusion worse confounded of Angli
canism. I asked myself, “Can Almighty God be the
author of this confusion ?
Can our Divine Saviour’s
promise be fulfilled ‘ that the gates of hell shall not pre1 Reprinted, by permission of the publishers, from Roads to
Rome (Longmans).
�2
From Darkness to Light
vail against His Church,’ or His prayer be answered,
‘ that they may be all one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and
I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us; that the
world may believe that Thou hast sent Me’ ? ” 1 I
could neither explain the difficulty nor get it explained.
As yet the Catholic and Roman Church, for whatever
reason, never entered into my thoughts. These early
troubles were the beginning of what I may truly call my
ten years’ agony. For it took me all that time—that is,
from 1862 to 1872—to find my way from darkness to
light.
It was not very long before it dawned upon me that
every Anglican, of whatever school, was in reality a law
to himself, and that he acted on his own authority: and
then it was that the question of authority became to me
the c<articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesicu” and ever
afterwards. I asked every one I met, “ By what authority
dost thou believe, and doest thou these things ? ” Some
times, on my inquiry of this or that divine, I was
referred to the Prayer-book as my authority, sometimes
to the bathers of the Church, sometimes to the Primitive
Church. It took me some years to discover the fallacy
of such appeals to authority; why, I cannot think. But
that is always the way when one becomes a Catholic.
One is sure to feel and say, “ How could it have taken
so long to discover what a moment’s serious thought and
the exercise of a little common sense ought to have
revealed ? How is it that every Anglican cannot see
it ? ” The answer, of course, is that they have not the
gift of faith. They even might see it—that is to say,
might be intellectually convinced of the fallacy of such
1 St. John xvii. 21.
�From Darkness to Light
3
^appeals, and moreover of the logical standpoint of the
Catholic Church; and yet, for all that, they will not,
and cannot become Catholics. For—and here I must
be pardoned for making a considerable digression—in
tellectual conviction is not faith. It cannot be too
strongly insisted upon at this present moment (January,
1901). There are thousands and tens of thousands to-day
who are intellectually convinced that of all bodies of men
calling themselves Christians, the Catholic Church alone
is logical and unassailable in its credentials. But they
do not, and will not, ever become Catholics because they
have not faith.
Let me give an illustration of the difference between
intellectual conviction and faith. For several years
the astronomers Adams and Leverrier were intellectually
convinced of the existence of the planet Neptune. It
was not till 1846 that M. Galle, of Berlin, actually saw
it. This similitude explains itself.
God alone can give the faculty of seeing as well
in the order of grace as in that of nature; and until
He gives it, no man can attain to it by any process
of scientific inference. And here, let me observe,
many of the so-called apostasies of our days are to be
explained. They are not really apostasies. It is simply
this, that certain men have reasoned themselves into the
•Church and then have reasoned themselves out again.
They were merely intellectually convinced, and were
received on the strength of this conviction by priests who
possibly took too much for granted, and who neglected
to satisfy themselves about che faith of their neophytes,
accounting such precautions as superfluous in the case of
educated men or members of the Universities. But these
�4
From Darkness to Light
people are not apostates, for they never had the faith.
When a man has once the real gift of faith—that is to say,
the gift of God’s grace, which elevates his reason above
his natural powers and attainments, so that it rises and
passes from intellectual conviction into faith, which is an
act of the reason but different in kind as well as degree
from intellectual consent—when, I say, a man once has
this great gift of God, it is impossible for him, so I think,
to lose it, and to relapse into any form of Protestantism.
He may lose it by wilfully and persistently sinning
against the faith, and, being punished by judicial blind
ness, become an infidel. This, of course, is true in the
abstract. But, in the concrete, it may well be doubted
whether this or that person among the exceedingly few
apostates of to-day has really lost the faith. For myself,,
I do not believe they have.
But to return to my subject. At length I saw through
the fallacy of any appeal to the Prayer-book, or the Fathers,,
or the Primitive Church, or the Church of the Ritualists.
To begin with the last. A Ritualist has always seemed:
to me to be one who forms for himself his own theory of”
the Church, and then religiously obeys, not the Church,
but his own theory of it. He is as much a law to himself
as the extremest Evangelical.
His is merely a case of
obedience to self once removed. All Anglicans likewiseform their own theory of the Prayer-book, their owa
commentary on the Fathers of the Church, their own
account of the Primitive Church. They are simply a law
to themselves, and the slaves of a self-imposed obedience.
This conviction of my mind was, I know not why, very
slow in its growth, but it came at last, and was indeed a
disillusionment! But, besides this, it occurred to me to-
�From Darkness to Light
5
inquire of what practical use is the dead letter of any
book, whether Prayer-book, or Patristic writings, or even
the Bible itself. For any practical purpose, what is wanted
is the living voice of authority to determine infallibly what
the book means or does not mean in the cause of Holy
Writ; and what is true or false doctrine in the pages of all
other writers, even those of the Fathers of the Church,
all of whom—with the solitary exception of St. Gregory
Nazianzen—we as Catholics know have more or less
•committed themselves, here and there, to false doctrine.
Where is the living voice among Anglicans ? Echo
answers, “ Where ? ” It is quite past my comprehension
how such men as Lord Halifax fail to see what is so
obvious, and keep on appealing with wearisome monotony
to what the Prayer - book teaches, or the Church of
England teaches, when the fact must be patent to him,
as it is to all the world, that there is no living authorized
interpreter of either, and never can be, unless it be the
Crown, which of course they repudiate. Here I find
I must relinquish the continuous narrative of the
process of my conversion for want of space. I will
proceed to notice one or two of the chief difficulties
which occurred to me on the march to the Catholic
Church, and the solution of them which satisfied
me, but may not, I am perfectly aware, satisfy
everybody.
The first difficulty occurred to me in the condemnation
of Private Judgement by the Catholic Church. Catholic
teaching on this point seemed to me inconsistent with
itself; because at one moment it insists on the use of
Private Judgement, and in the next it absolutely forbids
it. The answer, however, is very simple ; though it was
�6
From Darkness to Light
some time in coming home to me. Of course, a man
must use his reason to examine the credentials of the
Catholic Church. When he is satisfied with them, and
has found the true Church, he gives up his Private
Judgement and submits to the judgement of the Church.
As Cardinal Newman writes, in his own inimitable style,.
“Those who are external to the Church must begin with
Private Judgement: they use it in order to ultimately
supersede it; as a man out of doors uses a lamp on a
dark night, and puts it out when he gets home. What
would be thought of his bringing it into the drawing
room ? ” 1
I was puzzled for a time with another plausible con
tention. It occurred to me that it might be said, “ Yoh
admit that by Private Judgement a man finds out the
Catholic Church. Well, then, although he subsequently
lays it aside, yet what was Private Judgement in the first
instance must always be Private Judgement. By Private
Judgement he began; Private Judgement, therefore, is the
real foundation of his subsequent belief.” But I saw
before long that this objection proves a great deal too
much. It seems to imply, at least to me, that, in the
last resort, truth is nothing more to a man than what
seems to him to be truth. A most dangerous doctrine,
'truly, as well as utterly false! It spells Idealism in
Philosophy, Licentiousness in Morals, and Anarchy in
Politics. Surely truth is not dependent for its being on
Private Judgement. By Private Judgement we attain ta
it, but the truth was there before we discovered it, and
no matter what we think about it; and, the moment we
arrive at it, we lest upon the truth, not upon the Private
1 Loss and Gain, p. 203.
�From Darkness to Light
7
Judgement which brought us to it. By Private Judge
ment, at some time of my life, I apprehended the
authority of the English Crown; the moment I did
so, I gave my intelligent allegiance to it. Hence
forth, I rested upon the authority of the Crown, not
upon my mental apprehension of it. I am now a
British subject, not because mentally I have come to
that conclusion, but because of the /ar/. Or, to adopt
another illustration: by means of a ladder I mount a
platform; I am then standing on the platform, and not
on the ladder which is left down below. By Private
Judgement, then, a man must find out the Catholic
Church. When he finds it, it is a huge objective fact.
All men must be agreed about it as a gigantic organiza
tion, which has existed these nineteen hundred years.
For all that time—the name and date of every Pope
being historical facts—it has become a chief factor in
the history of Europe. All that time it has taught with
the living voice, and ruled with an incomparable dis
cipline. There it is to-day, as of old, independent
altogether of what men may think about it, a stub
born, undeniable, unmistakable fact. Whether it
be true or false in its doctrine is beside the mark :
there it is, and there it will be; that is all we are
maintaining.
Well, then, a man discovers this Church; he makes his
allegiance to it, and is formally accepted by it. Hence
forth he rests upon the authority of the Catholic Church,
not upon his mental apprehension of it. He is a
Catholic, not because he thinks he is, but because of
the fact of his formal reception into the Catholic
Church : whereas an Anglican rests, not in facts, but
�8
From Darkness to Light
in his theory of facts. Not one of the objects of his
religious allegiance really exists except in his imagina
tion. He will say, “Surely the Prayer-book is a fact.”
To which I reply, “ Well, of course it is; but not the
Catholic interpretation of it; for all men are not agreed
about that; indeed, the great majority are violently
opposed to it. As long as there is a Broad Church
interpretation of it, or an Evangelical, so long the High
Church interpretation of it must be a theory and not a
fact.” The same with the Fathers of the Church or
the Primitive Church. These things are, of course,
facts in themselves, but not to the Anglican, only the
Anglican interpretation of them, which is a very different
thing. From beginning to end, therefore, the Anglican
is a creature of Private Judgement, not a child of
faith; and from the extremest Ritualist down to the
most rabid Evangelical, he is a Protestant pure and
simple.
But all this is reasoning in the mere natural order of
things. Let us go to the supernatural. By Private
Judgement, then, aided by grace—for without that he
can do nothing—a man finds out the Catholic Church ;
then Private Judgement is superseded by Faith, which,
as has been already said, elevates and sustains the reason
above the level of its own natural powers. It is on
that platform that he stands ever afterwards, and Private
Judgement is the ladder by which he reached it and is
of no further use.
Upon this, another objection occurred to me, which
may be worded thus: “ That is a convenient way of
getting out of a difficulty by appealing to faith which is
not cognizable by any human sense. It may be or it
�From Darkness to Light
9
■may not be as you say, but that is not argument after
all.” To this I reply: “ Quite so ; to every one but a
Catholic it is, I grant, inconclusive. But, then, must it
not of its very nature be so ? I cannot show anybody
my faith, as I can show him a bunch of keys taken from
my pocket. All I know is that I have it, and that the
non-Catholic has it not. and that that great gift of God
is my foundation, and no longer Private Judgement,
which is, ipso facto, driven out by faith just as darkness
is by light.”
I do not remember any other serious intellectual
difficulty, or one that detained me for long. Bad popes
and bad priests never troubled me for a moment. The
office and the man are so obviously distinct, that the
mind must be addled that does not see it at a glance.
A policeman may be an immoral man, but the ’bus
drivers and the cabmen will obey him, and rein in
their horses at his bidding, because he is a police
man. The sentence of an immoral judge will avail
to hang a guilty murderer, because it is the official
act of a judge; it is not invalid because the judge is a
bad man.
But, before I formulate my five conclusions, I must
here declare my greatest obstacle to my conversion,
which was not intellectual but moral. I loved the
English Church intensely. It was associated with
everybody and everything dear to me from the first
■dawn of consciousness. From a worldly point of view,
to change my faith was to lose everything dear to me
and to gain nothing. It meant the wreck of one’s life,
shattered nerves, and, for all I knew, absolute destitu
tion. Can it be wondered that I felt reluctant to take
�io
From Darkness to Light
the step ? Whilst I cannot accuse myself positively of
bad faith, yet I must own that the terrible prospect
before me made me dilatory in the work of finding out
the truth. I have always accounted it as nothing short
of a signal miracle of God’s grace by which a conver
sion such as mine was brought about. For ever and
for ever blessed be His Holy Name, and the inter
cession of His Blessed Mother!
I come then, finally, to the five conclusions already
alluded to, which pointed, unmistakably—in the reputed
language of Lord Macaulay after one of Cardinal
Wiseman’s famous lectures—to “ either the Catholic
Church or Babel.”
Point I.—If my soul is to be saved, God must show me
the way. It is not for me to choose my own way, and
offer that to God. These words may seem a truism,
but they are not really so; on the contrary, they are
most useful as hitting off the Catholic and Protestant
position exactly. The Ritualist, the High Churchman,
the Broad Churchman, the Evangelical, the Noncon
formist, all alike formulate their own views of religion,,
and offer them for God’s acceptance as their account
of salvation. The Catholic calls that putting the cart
before the horse. The Catholic standpoint is this : that
it is for God to reveal His own way of salvation, and
all that man has to do is to find out where that, is and
to obey it. Further, that God has revealed it, and has
committed this revelation to a competent authority
upon earth, to guard it from error and to enforce
its observance. It is the duty of man to find out
where this oracle of truth is, and submit mind and
heart to it.
�From Darkness to Light
11
Point II.— When God does reveal the way of salva
tion, it will and must be one—
(1) One in number.
(2) One in unity.
(1) One in number, i.e., “One Lord, One Faith,
One Baptism” (Eph. iv. 5). Nowhere does Scripture
give a hint as to more than one Church. When St. John
writes to the Seven Churches of Asia, he is, of course,
writing to seven hierarchies of the one only Church.
And so historians sometimes speak of the English
Church or French Church, meaning the Catholic Church
in England or France. But mere common sense postu
lates oneness in number. It is impossible to imagine
more than one way of salvation. Of course, it is
conceivable that Almighty God could make many Ways
of salvation, because He can do all things; but it is not
conceivable how confusion worse confounded would be
avoided if He did. Supposing there was one way for
Europe, another for Asia, another for Africa, another for
America, a man would have to change his religion four
times in a voyage round the world; and where could he
tell where his good ship passed from one way of salvation
into that of another? Some spiritual Trinity House
would have to mark the supremely important boundaries
of buoys. I know this is fooling ; but then, the theory
I am trying to gibbet is fooling too.
(2) Next, if the revelation is one in number it will be
one in unity too; that is to say, the earthly teachers of
it will be one, and the taught will be one. Why?
Because it is the truth. Truth is one: one in the
teacher, and one in the taught of its very nature.
For instance, London is a city on the Thames. That
�12
From Darkness to Light
is truth; and so all schoolmasters are one in teaching it,
and all scholars one in learning it. Why ? Because it
is true. About God’s way of salvation, then, wherever
located on the earth—and located it must be somewhere
—there will be unity in the teacher and unity in the
taught. If I do not find unity in the teacher and unity
in the taught, then I shall know that the truth is not
there, from the very fact that there is not unity about it.
Let us be quite sure about this. The following proposi
tion is undeniable. Wherever the truth is, there must
be unity of the teacher and unity of the taught about it,
because it is true. But the proposition, “ Wherever there
is unity in the teacher and unity in the taught there is
truth,” cannot, of course, be maintained as it stands;
because teachers and scholars may conceivably be agreed
upon what is false. Yet, observe, in religious argument,
even this last proposition is undeniable. For, as a matter
of fact, no religious system of human opinion has ever
succeeded in maintaining unity, and for this reason :
because the moment you depart from the Divine rule of
faith, wherever it may be, you are landed, ipso facto, in
human opinion. There is no intermediate position
possible. Now, human opinion must of its very nature
be variable, because the human mind has been created
by God as variable as the human face. When Dr.
Benson, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, ordered
prayers for unity of belief among his flock, I remember
saying that he might just as usefully pray for unity of
countenance among them. Therefore, in point of fact,
though not perhaps in logic, the religious inquirer may
be quite sure that where there is not unity in the teacher
-and unity in the taught, there cannot be truth ; and that,
�'
From Darkness to Light
13,
conversely, wherever there is unity in the teacher and
unity in the taught, there, ipso facto, is Divine truth.
Point III.—If God does make a revelation of the way
by which the soul is to be saved, that revelation will be
infallible.
A. Infallible in its Subject Matter—
(1) Because Almighty God delivers it. How can it
be otherwise ?
(2) Because my soul wants nothing less. I cannot
trifle with eternity. I cannot afford to make a mistake
about it, which it is impossible to put right after death.
B. Infallible in its Earthly Mouthpiece—
(1) For of what practical use would be infallible truth
with a fallible mouthpiece ?
(2) How can Almighty God punish me for ever, if I
refuse to believe a teacher who may mislead me? It is
my solemn duty to refuse belief in such an one. Re
member, we have to give an account of our faith as well
as of our morals, and of faith before morals. “ He that
believeth and is baptized shall be saved : he that
believeth not shall be condemned” (St. Mark xvi. 16).
How can God punish me eternally for want of faith,
unless he gives me an infallible teacher, whereby I can
secure infallible truth ? An infallible teacher of salva
tion is the most pressing of all the needs of the soul, and
yet the very mention of an infallible teacher makes the
average Englishman shiver in his shoes. This is indeed
astounding. Well, then, somewhere on earth, and in.
some authoritative body of men, or in the office of one
man, must be placed by Almighty God the infallible
oracle of truth. The way of salvation, then, is reduced
to great simplicity by this time. All a man has to do is-
�14
From Darkness to Light
to find out where the oracle is, and then believe what it
teaches, and do what it commands.
Point IV.—This way of salvation will be exclusive.
That is to say, it will be the only one ; and every other
way of salvation will be false. This means that the true
Church, wherever it is, will not only be the best of all
Churches, but the only one. This point seems to require
no further remark; and yet I remember a catechumen
once saying to me when teaching it, “ Oh, Father, that
is a tall order and no mistake ! ”
Point V.—To accept when once seen or wilfully to reject
this way of salvation is a matter of life or death eternal.
This seems obvious from the words of Scripture already
quoted. To see it not, by a man’s own fault, is likewise
to be lost. Once the solid conviction has crossed a
man’s brain, that if he inquired honestly into the cre
dentials of the Catholic Church he would be convinced
of the truth of it, and bound to submit to it in mind and
will—that man must go on in his inquiry, otherwise he
will be lost. To see it not, not by a man’s fault—that is
to say, in a case where it has never occurred to a man’s
mind that his own religion is false or that any other
religion can be true—then, not to believe in the Catholic
Church will not, of course, entail eternal loss on that
account. All this was self-evident to me, but it may
not be so to others. With that I have nothing to do.
My task is nearly done. Only a few words are needed
-to show that the Catholic and Roman Church alone can
satisfy these five points or conclusions. Let the reli
gious inquirer examine any system of religion other than
that of the Catholic Church, he will find that it breaks
-down on one or more of these five points. Ask the
�From Darkness to Light
15
Ritualist first, who is in many ways nearer to the truth
(and yet of him I say, “thou art so near and yet so
far”), is he one with his brother Anglicans in faith?
And what must he answer if he speaks the truth ? Is
he infallible, or the Church of his invention ? Is the
Church Times infallible? No; he breaks down hope
lessly, and all his fellow-Protestants when submitted to
the test of my five points. But ask next the Catholic
Church if it can satisfy these same points, and you will
soon see how perfectly she can stand the test.
Point I.—This point, as we have already seen, is the
■Catholic standpoint par excellence.
Point II.—Is the Catholic and Roman Church one ?
Yes; absolutely one in number and in unity all over
the world, in every climate, in every race of men:
-one in the teachers and one in the taught. It is this
marvellous fact that in point of fact converted me. I
have always considered this unity of nineteen hundred
years as God’s greatest miracle.
Point III.—Is the Catholic Church infallible? Yes;
and it has always claimed to be, and has acted as the
infallible Divine teacher of truth from the time of Christ.
The Catholic Church alone of all religious bodies claims
infallibility. The very claim sufficiently proved its truth
to me.
Point IV.—Is the Catholic Church exclusive ? Yes
it says, “I, and I only am the one true religion. All
others are false, and not to be accounted religions at
all.”
»
Point V.—Is it a matter of life or death eternal to
accept when seen or wilfully reject the Catholic Church ?
The Catholic Church replies “ Yes.” She alone teaches
�16
From Darkness to Light
this; no other system of Christianity has dared toteach it.
Here I conclude the history of my conversion. I do
not pretend to do anything more than show what led me
to the Catholic Church. I do not lay down any law for
others. All I know is that I have the faith, and in the
profession and peace of it I have lived twenty-nine years.
Not a shadow of a doubt in it has ever crossed my mind
during that long time. In this faith I still live, and inthis faith I hope to die. Amen.
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY
THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.
u
�
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From darkness to light
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Robinson, W. Croke
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
GOD SAVE THE KING
AND OTHER
Coronation Articles
AN
ENGLISH
REPUBLICAN
( G. W. FOOTE)
“ God save the King ! ” It is a large economy
In God to save the like ; but if he will
Be saving, all the better ; for not one am I
Of those who think damnation better still.
Byron, Vision of Judgment.
PBIGE
TWOPENCE
London:
THE PIONEER PRESS,
2
Newcastle Street, Farringdon Street, E,C,
1903
�PRINTED BY THE PIONEER PRESS
AT
3 NEWCASTLE-STREET, FARRINGDON-STREET, LONDON, E.C,
�And, when you hear historians talk of thrones,
And those that sate upon them, let it be
As we now gaze upon the mammoth’s bones,
And wonder what old world such things could see,
Or hieroglyphics on Egyptian stones,
The pleasant riddles of futurity—
Guessing at what shall happily be hid,
As the real purpose of a pyramid.
—Byron, Don Juan.
Where kings first leagued against the rights of men,
And priests first traded with the name of God.
—Shelley, Queen Mab.
And thou, whom sea-walls sever
From lands unwalled with seas,
Wilt thou endure for ever,
O Milton’s England, these?
Thou that wast his Republic, wilt thou clasp their knees ?
These royalties rust eaten,
These worm-corroded lies,
That keep thine head stornubeaten
And sunlike strength of eyes
From the open heaven and air of intercepted skies ;
These princelets with gauze winglets
That buzz in the air unfurled,
These summer-swarming kinglets,
These thin worms crowned and curled,
That bask and blink and warm themselves about the world.
—Swinburne, A Marehing Song (“ Songs Before Sunrise ”/
�INTRODUCTION.
The articles in this little collection were all written between
June and October, 1902, and were published in a journal which
I have the honor and pleasure to edit. They all relate in some
way or other to the illness and Coronation of Edward VII.
Whatever else they lack, there is one merit I am sure they
possess. They are honest. Probably these are the only honest
articles that were penned and printed on their subject matter.
For that reason alone, if for no other, it is well that they should
be republished in a more permanent form. Generations or ages
hence—for who knows what will float down the stream of time ?
—this little pamphlet may assure the historian that all did not
bend the knee to the Baal of monarchy in England at the
beginning of the twentieth century ; that one voice, at any rate,
was raised, not only in protest, but in mockery, against a most
contemptible superstition.
When I call this superstition “contemptible” I am not speaking
in temper or haste, but calmly and deliberately. There is some
thing to be said for the worship of Mumbo Jumbo; he is
supposed to be able to make it very hot for those who offend him.
There is something to be said for the worship of the Sun; it is
an undoubted benefactor. But what is to be said for the worship
of the “ hereditary nothing ” who happens at any time to sit upon
the constitutional throne of Great Britain and Ireland ? A passion
for genius, for moral excellence,or personal beauty, is intelligible ;
but how is one to explain a passion for the incarnation of
mediocrity to which this nation has long been accustomed in its
sovereigns ? It is not merely a case of inherited folly, for the
loyal fever was less acute in the early years of Queen Victoria.
It seems, in truth, that loyalism is a form of religion ; and it has
all the common characteristics of religion—blind faith, headlong
zeal, and a hatred of heresy.
�V,
When I walked home after the Jubilee procession in London
in 1897, I remarked to a friend who was with me that 'we had
not seen the last of that incomparable circus-show. It was
designed to dazzle the multitude, and it succeeded. It was a
huge “imperialism” advertisement. It appealed to the fighting
and dominating instincts of the people. It was an evocation of
barbaric sentiment. And as the plain little stout old ladybrought up the rear the shouts that acclaimed her had a peculiar
ring. It was the applause of deification. . What the mob saw in
that royal carriage was not the real person who occupied it, but
a fictitious creature of their own imaginations.
On the death of Queen Victoria, Albert Edward Prince of
Wales became King Edward VII. He was just the same man as
before, but the mob (of all classes) felt there was a change.
Jocularities at his expense had been common; from that moment
they became blasphemies. It was another case of deification.
One saw a new divinity created under one’s very nose. And
now when the King speaks “ it is the voice of a god I ”
There is no need to blame the King for the superstition of
which he is the symbol. He probably smiles at it in private.
He was born to his lot like the rest of us ; and one may feel
contempt for the institution without ill-will for the man. One
may even be pleased to see from his jolly countenance that he
does not take his absurd position too seriously.
Having, avowed myself a Republican, I have also to warn the
reader that I am an Atheist. He must expect to find both earthly
and celestial superstitions laughed at in the following pages. My
ideal includes Reason and Humanity; it has no room for the
Ridiculous and the Barbaric.
April, 1903.
�God Save the King.
Believers in Special Providence—and there is no other
kind of Providence either honest or really conceivable—are
naturally concerned about the King’s illness and the post
ponement of the Coronation. What does it all mean ? What
is God particularly angry about ? What lesson does he intend
to convey ? Surely there is something more than meets the
eye in this startling calamity. See how Providence worked
up to it, like a cunning and well-practised dramatist. For a
long time it was feared that the cold damp weather would
be prolonged, and the Coronation be spoiled in that manner.
But the weather improved just in the nick of time. The
three Coronation days—Thursday, Friday, and Saturday—
were simply splendid. The sun shone gloriously in a grand
blue sky, yet the sudden great heat was tempered by a
delicious breeze. Yes, the weather was all right, but the
King was all wrong. Only a few hours (so to speak) before
the great event which all his life led up to, he was cast down
on a bed of sickness, the doctors were cutting him open and
operating on his internals, his very existence was imperilled,
and his subjects dreaded that the next bulletin would sound
the sad note of preparation, not for his crowning, but for his
funeral.
Fortunately the King seems likely to weather this worst
storm of his life. To use an American phrase, we take no
�7
stock in kings; but as Edward the Seventh is a man, and
we happen to know of his illness, we hope he will recover.
We extend the same sympathy to every sick person in this
metropolis. As the Queen is a wife and a mother, we respect
her sorrow, and wish her a happy issue out of this affliction.
Death is so great a fact that when it comes it dwarfs all
surroundings into insignificance. Whether it be in a cottage
or in a palace, the first cry of a widow’s grief has the same
tragic note, and the anguish of bereavement scorns the com
forts that money can purchase. But afterwards how much
harder it is for the poor widow 1 To the grief of the wife is
added the grief of the mother as the children pine for the
lack of bread, and a nameless horror broods on every day’shorizon, and the dear young faces lose their gladness, and
the dear little feet go wearily, as though walking to th’eir
graves.
But to return to the King. One would think that, as he is
the principal sufferer in this visitation of Providence, he is
also the principal offender. Has the Lord heard the voice
of the Nonconformist! Conscience protesting against King Edward’s visit to Epsom racecourse ? Have all the sins of
his younger days made so big a heap that the Lord cannot
overlook it ? Has he gazed too much upon the wine when
it was red? Have pretty women thrown themselves too
much in his way ? Has he smoked too many cigars ?—for
even smoking is a sin with the Salvation Army. Anyhow,
this illness seems a direct challenge to his Majesty; and,
indeed, the pious folk who got up the first big prayer-meeting
at St. Paul’s Cathedral were pretty much of that opinion, for
they hoped the King would be spared, and that the residue
of his life might be devoted to the Lord’s service—which was
a plain hint that so much of his life as had already expired
had been devoted to the service of some other personage.
Cardinal Vaughan is too much of a courtier to point in the
Lord’s name at the King. Still, he sees in this calamity the
finger of God. He should have said the hand of God. The
finger of God is an unfortunate expression. It is associated
�8
with the most disgusting miracle in the annals of supersti
tion. When the magicians of Egypt saw all the dust of their
country turned into lice, they declined to compete any further
with Moses and Aaron. They felt that one miracle of that
sort was quite sufficient. “ This,” they said, “ is the finger
of God.”
“ The finger of God,” Cardinal Vaughan says to his clergy,
“ has appeared in the midst of national rejoicing, and on the
eve of what promised to be one of the most splendid
pageants in English history. This is in order to call the
thoughts of all men to Himself.” King Edward, therefore,
is a sort of vicarious sacrifice. He is laid low and tortured
in order that careless people might be made to think of the
Lord.
Danton said in the French National Assembly, “ The
coalesced kings threaten us, and as our gage of battle we
fling before them the head of a king.” And poor, stupid
Louis the Sixteenth’s head was cut off by the guillotine.'
Cardinal Vaughan makes the Lord throw the hacked and
bleeding body of a King before the British people as his
(the Lord’s) challenge to their attention.
“ May it not be ?” all the men of God were asking on
Sunday. Every one of them had his “ tip ” with respect to
the Lord’s meaning in the King’s illness. The Bishop of
Winchester came up to London to let out his secret. “ May
it not be,” he said, “ that just because as a people we were
too light-hearted, too superficial, too formal about it all, God
solemnly laid his hand upon us and bade us stop ?” Of course
it may have been, and of course it may have been otherwise.
The Bishop of Winchester is only guessing. He is in the
guessing business.
The Bishop of Stepney gave his “tip” at St Paul’s
Cathedral. His idea was that we were too much excited
by outward show to discern the deeper lessons ; so the Lord
tripped up the King’s heels and set us all thinking. Still
more professional was the view of that burning and shining
Nonconformist light, the Rev. F. B. Meyer. “ God wanted
�9
the British nation to know,” he said, “' that when next he
gives it victory over its enemies, and grants peace from a war
that tried its resources, it should not celebrate it by the blow
ing of fog-horns and whistles, but by thronging the temples
of God and singing his praises.” Dr. Meyer keeps one of
these “temples”—and it keepshim. No wonder he wants
the “ temples ” to be thronged.
Pastor Spurgeon, of the famous Tabernacle, said the
nation had passed through a wonderful week, an awful
week. God’s hand had been stretched out—“ He had made
the nation to understand that he was supreme.” It does not
seem to have occurred to the preacher that this method of
proving the Lord is boss was rather rough on poor King
Edward.
We expected to find Mr. Sims (of the Referee) in fine form
over the Coronation postponement, and we were not dis
appointed. “We are suddenly hurled,” he said, “ from the
highest pinnacle of joy to the deepest abyss of gloom.”
How the great “ Dagonet ” must have thrust his tongue in
his cheek as he penned that sentence! The London crowd
has been enjoying itself as well as looked civil in the circum
stances ; “ Dagonet ” has also been doing the same thing,
judging from the later parts of “ Mustard and Cress.” But
when the royal bulletin is stuck up he says, “ Let us all look
unhappy ”—And as soon as he is round the corner he dances
a jig and makes all the bells ring in his jester’s cap.
“ Perhaps God put it off because the seats were so damp.”
So said a little girl who heard some groWn-up people discuss
ing what Providence meant by arresting the Coronation.
Mr. Sims, who tells the story, does not appear to think that
Providence had anything to do with the matter. “ Yet it is
quite within the bounds of reasonable argument,” he says,
“that the postponement of the Coronation has saved thou
sands of people from the evils that would have resulted from
sitting for many hours on saturated wood.” Probably there
is truth in this. It is as good a justification of the ways of
God to men as we have seen lately. King Edward had to
�10
undergo an operation for appendicitis in order to save crowds
of his subjects from stricture. We understand it now.
A very different explanation is given in a Radical news
paper :—
“It seems as if some calamitous Destiny overhung this
nation since our quarrel with the Boer States. That war
killed the Queen ; its anxieties, no doubt, fostered the illness
of the present monarch. The mills of God grind slowly, but
they grind exceeding small.”
Now if God is angry with this nation for quarrelling with
the Boer States, why did he not give them the victory?
What sense is there in letting us beat them and take away
their independence, and then killing members of our royal
family to punish us for our sin ? How did the war kill
Queen Victoria ? Is it the last straw that breaks the camel’s
back ? Very old people must die of something. And why
should God go for poor King Edward on account of the South
African war ? He had no more to do with it than any infant
in arms. It is commonly reported that he played the part of
a pacificator, and helped to bring about a settlement of that
unhappy quarrel. Thus the God of the Radical journal is no
wiser than the God of the clergy. Instead of going for King
Edward he should have gone for (say) Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. What justice is there in carving the King’s stomach
with operating knives, while the Colonial Secretary wears a
monocle in one eye and a smile in the other ?
And now for a few words on the “ intercession ” business.
When the present King was Prince of Wales he nearly lost
his life by typhoid fever. The nation prayed for his recovery,
and afterwards held a great thanksgiving service in St. Paul’s
Cathedral. God Almighty was publicly thanked for his kind
ness in saving the Prince’s life. But the doctors were not
forgotten ; two of them were knighted, and all were hand
somely rewarded. Now the Prince has become King, and is
again in danger, the doctors are judiciously associated with
the Lord in the work of his recovery. To leave his life in
the hands of the Lord exclusively would be too perilous ; the
doctors are there to supplement his efforts, and see that
�11
nothing is neglected. They keep an eye on Providence; and
everybody, including the King, feels that their vigilance is
requisite. With six doctors and one God all may yet
be well.
The Next Move.
The daily bulletins concerning the King’s health continue to
be so favorable that sanguine persons are already prophe
sying that the Coronation will take place very shortly. But
the case is one of great uncertainty. There is many a slip
twixt the cup and the lip, and there may be yet another slip
twixt the King and the Coronation. Not that we wish for
it; we are only reproving a certain rashness on the part of
the public vaticinators.
Whether the Coronation comes early or late, the clergy
will surely not let it be taken without a preparatory Thanks
giving. That is the next item on the program. King Edward
will have to go to St. Paul’s Cathedral and participate in a
service of thanks to God for his recovery. Nothing will be
said on that occasion about the doctors. They will have
done their work and received their rewards. It will then be
the Lord’s turn, and the clergy will see that he gets all the
credit. For his reputation, like their existence, is parasitical.
He takes all the glory of other persons’ successes. The
failures he leaves to their own account. It is, indeed, on this
very plan that Christianity is constructed. Man is left to
share all his sins with the Devil; but all the good in him is
�12
ascribed to the grace of God. Every time it is heads poor
man loses and tails the Deity wins.
We expect to find the clergy working that Thanksgiving
for all it is worth. It will give a much-needed lift to their
profession. They will receive a certificate of the efficacy of
prayer, signed by the King, and countersigned by the British
nation. And if they cannot trade profitably for a good while
on that basis, they must be very degenerate representatives
of the clerical interest.
Religion is worship, and worship is prayer. Piety is a
lively sense of favors to come. All over the world, and under
every form of faith, this is the everlasting verity. The old
story fold by Dr. Tylor goes to the root of the matter. A
missionary in Africa set up a little iron chapel, with a little
bell on the top. One day he was ringing the bell for the
morning service, and one of his “ converts ” came by at that
moment. “ Aren’t you coming in ?” asked the missionary.
“No,” said the convert, “ I don’t want anything just now.”
Someone has sent us a copy of a Roman Catholic organ,
the Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart. It contains a
department headed “ Petitions,” and another headed “ Thanks
givings.” These are described as “ only a few ” out of the
“ thousands ” that reach the Editor. Not one of them is
accompanied by a name and address. The only place men
tioned is “ Tipperary,” and the petitioners and thanksgivers
sign themselves, “A Grateful Child of Mary,” “A Hopeful
One,” “ Hannah,” “ Three Orphans,” and so forth. We
suppose the registry of their names and addresses, with other
particulars, is kept in the beautiful land above. They pray
to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for some favor—a good situa
tion, or the recovery of a sick relative; and if their prayer
is answered they drop a “ thanksgiving ”—together, we sup
pose, with something more substantial—to the Messenger.
If their prayer is not answered they say nothing. And thus
the game goes on to the comfort of the faithful and the profit
of the Church.
Such victims as these are an easy prey. Even the King is
�13
not a difficult one. He cannot help himself. If he were to
pooh-pooh the clergy, and refuse to take part in a Thanks
giving, he would only be fighting against the common interests
of imposture and privilege—in which his own interest is
included. But there is nobler game to be run down. We
may instance Mr. Chamberlain. He meets with a cab
accident, and spends his sixty-sixth birthday in hospital.
Now the accident might have been a good deal worse; it
might even have been fatal. We may look upon it as a
“ mercy ” that the Colonial Secretary is still alive. True,
his wound is described as “ not dangerous,” but who can be
sure of such things ? There is clearly room for prayer; yea,
and for thanksgiving afterwards. We suggest, then, that the
clergy should try to tackle Mr. Chamberlain. He would be a
splendid catch if they could only land him. And now that
he has lost a lot of blood he may be amenable. Perhaps the
Archbishop of Canterbury is too old for an enterprise like
this, but the Bishop of London is younger and more
ambitious. He might take Mr. Chamberlain in hand, induce
him to show at least a little connivance, get up a special
service of prayer for his perfect recovery, and, finally, drive
him in triumph to the Cathedral. It would be a splendid
stroke for dear old Mother Church, and it should really be
attempted.
Mr. Chamberlain’s thanksgiving service should precede the
King’s. It would serve as a rehearsal. The royal affair
might then go through without a hitch.
Meanwhile it is to be noted that illnesses and calamities
are a golden harvest for the clergy. They live upon other
men’s misfortunes. The happy do not need them. That is
why they preach the religion of sorrow. Every man’s misery
is their opportunity. They work upon man’s mortality, and
trade upon his fear of death. Were he immortal he would
laugh at them. As it is they can afford to laugh at him.
The King’s illness, in particular, has been a god-send to
the soul-savers of every denomination, though especially to
the parsons of the State Church. By voicing the general
�14
desire for his recovery, by battering the ears of the Almighty
•with their loud petitions, by representing every improvement
in his condition as the result of divine intervention, and,
finally, by securing that he shall publicly return thanks to
God in one of their joss-houses, they have shown themselves
what we always said they were—past-masters in the art of
deception^and imposture.
The King’s Dinner.
We do not wish to depreciate the King’s generous intention
in providing a Coronation dinner for half a million poor
people. It is something that he thinks of the destitute in
the midst of his plenty. But it is very certain that the
money—some ^£30,000—could be more profitably invested.
A dinner is eaten, digested, and assimilated; and when the
force it gives is expended it disappears for ever. What
advantage has been gained if there is no dinner on the
morrow ? If a man has to die of hunger, he may as well
die one day as the next. Evidently, then, the King’s Dinner
—however well meant—is like a dab of ointment on a running
ulcer, springing from a chronic corruption of the blood. What
is wanted is the prevention of poverty—in the sense of desti
tution of the necessaries and decencies of life. Giving dinners
will not promote that object. On the contrary, the very fact
that one person is able to pay for thirty thousand dinners,
while another person is unable to pay for one, is in itself a
sufficient proof that our civilisation rests upon an absurd and
precarious basis. Luxury at one extreme balances poverty
at the other. The too-much involves the too-little. The
�15
pride of the prince is the other side of the wretchedness of
the pauper.
Fancy half a million people in the richest city in the
world, the capital of the greatest empire on earth, to whom
a dinner is an event 1 Something to be looked forward to,
schemed for, and almost fought for. What a satire on our
boasted civilisation 1 What a scandal to Christianity ! Was
it to this end that Christ brought salvation ? After nearly
two thousand years of the gospel of redemption the world is
still so unredeemed ! Myriads who have the “ bread of life ’'
offered to them by rich soul-saving societies look around in
despair for a crust to appease their bodily hunger; and little
children cry for food, though “ of such is the kingdom of
heaven.”
But if a dinner is an event to half a million people in one
city, how many more are there to whom a dinner is an un
certainty ? And what kind of civilisation is it when the
cravings of animal appetite bar the road to intellectual and
moral progress ?
But for all the homilies of social science the King’s Dinner
will be eaten by ravenous thousands. Well-fed people are
interesting themselves in the matter. Some of them have
the ethical and religious interests of the King’s Dinner
eaters so much at heart that they insist on the meal being a
dry one. No drinks, not even a mug^of small beer. And
this in the name of Jesus Christ, who turned seventy-five
gallons of water into wine to keep a spree going ! Was there
ever greater hypocrisy ? Surely ^in the case of these poor
wretches, the square meal of a lifetime might be washed
down with something palatable. Surely, in their case, the
Bible text might be quoted, “ Let him drink and forget his
poverty, and remember his misery no more.”
It is a pity, for their own sake, that the clergy did not
squash the proposal of a Coronation Dinner. It was a grave
mistake, from their own point of view, to emphasize the con
trasting luxury and poverty of London. Nor is it reasonable
to suppose that the poor will feel grateful. They will feel
�16
nothing of the kind. They know very well that there is
“ something rotten in the state of Denmark,” though they
don’t exactly know how to set it right, and dread jumping
out of the frying-pan into the fire.
Christianity has no message for the poor except that of
kingdom-come. It contemplates the perpetual existence of
poverty. “ The poor ye have always with you.” Its gospel
is not justice, but charity. Private charity there may well
be over and beyond justice. But the one is no substitute for
the other.
It is the boast of the New Testament that “ the poor have
the gospel preached unto them.” This is all they can ever
expect from Christianity. “ Blessed be ye poor,” said Jesus
Christ, “for yours is the kingdom of heaven.” A poor
kingdom! like Sancho Panza’s governorship of that
imaginary island. It is the kingdom of earth that really
matters. The wealthy and privileged classes keep it to
themselves, and they pay a lot of tragi-comic fellows in black
to preach the kingdom of heaven to the disinherited masses.
This is the moral of the King’s Dinner.
�17
Coronation Day.
Coronation Day has come and gone at last. - It was fixed for
the end of June, but “ Providence ” played the deuce with the
arrangements. Splendid weather was turned on, and the King
knocked over. It was a nasty sarcasm on the part of that said
<c
Providence,” and a postponement was inevitable. Fortu
nately the King was taken in hand by a strong detachment
of the best doctors in the nation. Everything that skill and
care could do was done for him ; everything that money could
command was available. It is not miraculous, therefore, that
His Majesty pulled through the worst of the trouble with more
than usual celerity ; nor is it quite astonishing that his con
valescence has been remarkably rapid, for a magnificent yacht
in the Solent is certainly an ideal hospital. Science has saved
the King. But it would never do for him to say so. He has
to play his part as head of the Church as well as head of the
' State. Accordingly, in his message “ To My People ” he
gives Science the go by. Not so much as an allusion is
made to the doctors or the nurses. They will get their
rewards, of course; but they must not be thanked publicly.
Thanks have to be rendered elsewhere. The clergy must be
recognised. They got up prayers for the King’s recovery,
and they expect to receive all the credit. They are so exact
ing in these matters that the King was obliged to humor
them. “ The prayers of my people for my recovery,” he
says, “ were heard, and I now offer up my deepest gratitude
to Divine Providence.” Perhaps the King half believes this ;
he can hardly be such a fool as to believe it altogether. It is
a discreet mixture; a big sop to the clergy, and a little blague
on his own account.
We have asked this question before, and we ask it again:
Why should God save the King more than any other man in
this nation ? Monarchs are no longer indispensable. Queen
Victoria’s loss was “ irreparable,” but it was found that the
�18
earth still turned on its axis. After the lapse of a year and
a-half she is almost forgotten. King Edward’s death would
equally have left no unfillable void. The Prince of Wales
would have mounted the throne, and the loyalists would have
worshipped a new God. For loyalism is really a form of
religion. When the Prince of Wales becomes King we can
see a deity created under our very eyes. He is sanctified by
“ the divinity that doth hedge a king.” He becomes a totally
new being in the twinkling of an eye. Before, he could even
be chaffed ; now, to speak lightly of him is a species of blas
phemy. This is all nonsense, however, to the eye of reason.
Klings are but men. However high your seat, as old Mon
taigne says, you actually sit on your own posteriors. Nor,
we repeat, are kings in any way indispensable. One king
disappears—and another takes his place—“ The King is
dead—Long live the King.” And what difference is there,
from the point of view of the Infinite, between the greatest
king and the meanest of his subjects ? A dead lord, as Gray
said, ranks with commoners ; and a dead king ranks with the
mob of “ the illustrious obscure.” Unless, indeed, he is some
thing more than a king. But how few monarchs have been
able to claim the title of great men; Most of them are small
enough—except in their own estimation, or in the flattery of
their parasites. It was this truth that made Byron exclaim,
in reference to “ God save the King ” in connection with
George the Third, that it was “ a great economy in God to
save the like.” Poor men, working men, breadwinners of
families, die every day, and many of them prematurely.
They have no troop of doctors round their sick beds, no
crowd of nurses to attend to all their wants. They have to
fight death alone, and they succumb. Why does not God
save them ? Why save the father of princes and princesses,
and not the father whose death leaves his children to penury
or destitution ?
Whatever be the reason of the King’s recovery, he has
recovered, and gone through his Coronation. The Arch
bishop of Canterbury has dabbed His Majesty’s bald head>
�19
his breast, and the palms of his hands with holy oil, and
thus “ consecrated ” him in the name of the Lord. He is
now a full-blown sovereign, King in the sight of God, as well
as in the sight of men. The one thing wanting is added.
Edward the Seventh was King de facto already, but the
Church has made him King by the grace of God. He is now
both crowned and anointed—and much good may it do him !
The men and women who “assisted” at the Coronation in
Westminster Abbey were not the British nation. Neither did
they represent the British nation. Most of them were drones
or parasites. Some of them had attained to their positions by
hard work, of a kind, but these were a very small minority.
As for the idle crowd outside, one need not speak of it with
the slightest respect. There is more loyalism—perhaps we
should say royalism—to-day than ever. There is also, more
rowdyism. Forty years ago it was not common to hear lads
swearing in the streets ; it is common enough now ; and these
lads doff their hats with grotesque reverence at the sound of
“the King!” Various “odes” have appeared in the more
“ respectable ” papers. Mr. John Davidson even has joined
in the melancholy chorus. But the popular Coronation poet
laureate is the author of a tipsy song which has been shouted
on the music-hall stages, and shouted still more lustily in the
public thoroughfares :—
Drinking whisky, wine, and sherry,
We’ll all be merry
On Coronation Day.
The sentiment and poetry of these lines are worthy of the
occasion; the humbug at one end is matched by the vulgarity
at the other; and one is tempted to say that to be King over
such a mob is not an honor for which any man should thank
God too vigorously.
Humbug and vulgarity! These are the chief characteristics
of present-day loyalism. There is not a note of sincerity in
it. Journalists who should know better, and do know better,
are swept along by the popular flood. The Daily News, the
organ of the Nonconformist Conscience, put on one of its best
�20
homilectic scribes to write on “ The King’s Thanksgiving.”
There were many blunders in his article, but nothing quite
so bad as the reference to that great and noble Emperor
whose very name is music to the students of humanity.
“ The burden of Marcus Aurelius,” the Writer said, “ was not
so heavy as the burden of the ruler who presides over the
destinies of the British Empire.” - What a prostitution of
scholarship on the altar of political superstition ! Marcus
Aurelius was not a sham ruler, but a real one; the actual
burden of empire rested upon his shoulders. He governed in
fact, notin theory ; lie wielded power and bore responsibility ;•
and in all serious fighting he went through the oampaign at
the head of its army, sharing its hardships no less than, its
dangers. Such a man needed no hocus-pocus of anointing to
make him a true Emperor. The finest head and the noblest
heart in the Roman Empire, resting on the bare ground of
the tented field, wrapped in a cloak whose only distinction
was that its color was the imperial purple, and thinking out.
some point in moral philosophy before falling off into a sleep
well earned by the day-long cares of a mighty rulership,
ought not to be mentioned in the same breath with a common
place “ constitutional ” monarch, who is not the helm, but the
gilded figure-head, of the ship of State. Christendom has
never produced such rulers as the great Pagan Emperors.
The throne shed no lustre on them : they shed lustre on the
throne. They were eminent and conspicuous not only by
station, but by intellect, and character, and public ’ service.
And now, after the lapse of nearly two thousand years, and
all the pretended uplifting influence of Christianity upon the
Western world, we have nothing but “ Edward, R. and I.” to
set beside Marcus Aurelius 1 It is really too absurd. We
drop our pen in amazement at human folly.
�21
The King’s Chaplain.
This title is an Hibernicism. It should really be “the
King’s no chaplain.” But that looks and sounds odd, and
we have sacrificed strict accuracy to appearance and euphony.
The case is this. A gentleman—probably in the soul-saving
business himself—has been writing to the newspapers, com
plaining that King- Edward does not keep a chaplain on
board the royal yacht. There is a doctor to look after the
crew’s bodies, if anything goes wrong with them, but no
priest, minister, preacher, or man of God of any description,
to look after the salvation of their immortal souls. The
result is that Captain Lambton actually takes charge of
divine service when it has to be celebrated. No doubt he
gets through the job with all the proverbial dexterity of a
“handy man.” Yet he is only an amateur, after all; and
the -job requires the services of a professional. Captain
Lambton has never been consecrated. He is not endowed
with the Holy Ghost. Probably, being a sailor, he swears as
often as he prays—perhaps oftener. There is something in
the salt water, or the open sea, or the atmosphere of a ship,
or whatever it is, that encourages the use of superlative
epithets and other striking forms of expression. All the
greater, therefore, is the need of a tame Christian on board,
to dilute the nautical language down to the proper strength
for a set interview with the Almighty. Besides, a parson is
as necessary as a doctor. Not only is he required as a soul
saver, but he has his living to get, and an opening should be
made for him somewhere. It is a sad. spectacle to see a lean
curate looking longingly at the royal yacht from a distance,
when he might be pursuing his trade on board of her, and
enjoying a fine opportunity of becoming both fat and useful.
It is clear, therefore, at least from the clerical point of view,
that the King is acting improperly in sailing about without
the company of a clergyman. Nevertheless, it is conceivable
�22
that the King is acting quite properly from his own point of
view. Not that we have any right to speak for him ; only
we think that something could be said if we had the right
to say it.
Let us venture to suggest a few considerations. It will be
conceded, we imagine, that after all that Coronation ceremony
(or tomfoolery) in Westminster Abbey, following so soon upon
his severe and well-nigh fatal illness, the King is very much
in need of rest. Now a doctor is more conducive to his rest
than a clergyman. The former would say “ Take your ease,
eat and drink well, keep on deck all you can, and sleep sound
at nights.” The latter would say, “ Prepare to meet thy
God.” But we may be sure that the King is not at all
anxious to meet his God, or to spend a superfluous amount
of time in getting ready for the encounter. He was quite
near enough to meeting his God a couple of months ago. A
very distant acquaintance will do for the next ten years.
Any man, even a king, who has just narrowly escaped death,
will object to being pestered with reminders of his mortality.
In the next place, it must be admitted that the King has
been to church a good many times already, that he has
listened to a lot of sermons, and that he has heard plenty of
lessons, prayers, and hymns. He has had enough to last him
for a while. What he wants now is a holiday. He should
leave his land-life entirely behind him; and, as the parson is
a part of it, the parson is rightly told to stop on shore. When
a man is seeking new health and strength, after a very trying
illness, he does not want a soul-worrier constantly at his
elbow; but may very well say, with the gentleman in the
Acts of the Apostles, I will hear thee at a more convenient
season.
In the third place, it can hardly be assumed that the King
is in love with clergymen. As a man of the world, he must
be pretty well aware of what they are driving at. He must
know that they pursue their profession (or “ calling ”) for
ordinary business reasons. He must recognise that they
preach heaven in order to live on earth. He must have a
�23
poor opinion of them as a class, and in all probability he
loves them so that he dotes upon their very absence.
Why, in the fourth place, should the King have a chaplain
on the royal yacht for the sake of the crew ? Sailors are
seldom enamored of clergymen. They think it unlucky to
have a clergyman on board. They have an idea that it
means bad weather. We do not know why, but such is the
fact. Perhaps it is a tradition that has come down from the
days of Jonah. There was no peace till the prophet was
thrown overboard. And it may be that sailors are still of
opinion that the proper place for a chaplain is the belly of
any fish that will entertain him.
The advocates of the clergy may object that the King has
shown himself in other respects a friend of religion. Did
he not declare that it was to his people’s prayers that he
owed his recovery ? Did he not express his gratitude in con
sequence to Almighty God? Did he not “hurry up” his
Coronation, and give the clergy a chance of signalising their
services to the throne and the nation ? Did he not show his
opinion that he was only half a king until he had received
the Church’s blessing ? Yes, he did so; but it must be
remembered that he has a part to play as head of the Church
as well as head of the State. It is a very rash assumption
that his heart speaks every time he goes through a bit of
public hocus-pocus with the clergy. They play the panto
mime, and so does he ; it is a part of the “ business ” of both
their professions. They dispense the grace of God, and he
reigns by the grace of God; but when the pantomime is over
it is not surprising that he prefers their room to their company.
For our part, we commend the King’s common sense in
taking his sea-trip without a ghostly companion—a person
who habitually wears black to suggest a funeral, and occa
sionally puts on a cassock to suggest a shroud. It will be
time enough to resume touch with the mystery-mongers
when his holiday is over. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof.
�24
The Thanksgiving Comedy.
The great Coronation farce is drawing to a close. Soon
after this article meets the readers’ eyes the curtain will be
rung down, the .performers will be disrobing, and the spec
tators will be streaming home. What the performers think
of the spectators, and what the spectators think of the
performers, will not appear in the newspapers. The con
ventional platitudes and unctuosities will be printed. No
body will talk sense or truth. It will be all fireworks and
“ God save the King.”
On Saturday the King and Queen will drive into the City
and home again by way of South London. Those who wish
to bask in the sunshine of the royal countenance will enjoy
their opportunity. They will find it cheap this time. Seats
can now be had for the price of an old song. The first fine
careless rapture is gone. It is impossible to bring back the
loyal ecstacy of June. The psychological moment went by,
and the psychological moment never returns.
On Sunday the King will take another drive. Accom
panied by the Queen and other members of the Royal
Family (capitals, please), he will attend a Thanksgiving
Service (more capitals, please) at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
There is to be a “ small procession,” but nothing very “loud.”
For did not “ Providence ” humble the King’s or the nation’s
pride in June ? And is it safe to offer another provocation ?
His Majesty, however, will be met at the west door, at the
top of the great flight of steps, by the Bishop, the Dean, and
the Canons Residentiary; a procession will then be formed
by the Lord Mayor, bearing the pearl sword, immediately
preceding the King and Queen; and the whole troupe will
appear before the Lord in a highly distinguished and effective
manner.
The two Psalms selected for the service are the thirtieth
and the hundred and eighth. The former opens as follows:—
�25
“ I will extol thee, 0 Lord ; for thou hast lifted me up, and
hast not made my foes to rejoice over me. 0 Lord, my God,
I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me. 0 Lord, thou
hast brought up my soul from the grave : thou hast kept me
alive, that I should not go down to the pit.”
We presume this will be regarded as the King’s address
Jehovah. Certainly he has been spared from the “ grave ”
and the “ pit,” which mean precisely the same thing. In
other words, he has had his trip to heaven postponed. He
would rather not take it while the royal yacht holds out for
better excursions. He has a good taste in personal enjoy
ment. “ If you want a good thing keep near me,” might be
his motto. But he is obliged to adopt something more
“respectable.” So absurd is the divinity that doth hedge a
King.
It must be admitted that the Lord has let a good many go
down into the pit since he reprieved King Edward. Some of
them, too, were of much more importance to the world.
Zola, for instance—a great writer and a noble man—might
have been saved from that absurd death by suffocation, and
allowed to complete the work of his genius. Nor should
humbler instances be overlooked. How many a bread
winner’s life has been cut short disastrously since the month
of June. How many widows and orphans have been cast
amongst the wreckage of society. Why, O why, should the
Lord be careful of kings and careless of poor working men ?
We thought he was no respecter of persons. Yes, that is
the text; and the flunkey Thanksgiving Service is the com
mentary.
The Bishop of London is to bo the preacher at this
Thanksgiving Service. He was done—by “ Providence ”—
out of the five minutes that he was to have had for a sermon
at the Coronation. But now he is to have his revenge.
“ Providence ” will have to put up with it, and the King will
have to listen. It is to be presumed, however, that Dr.
Ingram is courtier enough to “ cut it short.” God will think
twice, a French lady said, before he damns a gentleman of
�26
quality; and the Bishop of London will think twice before
he inflicts a long sermon upon his King.
We read of provision to be made at St. Paul’s Cathedral
for all sorts of persons, including pressmen, who are all sorts
in themselves. But we see nothing about provision for the
King’s doctors. It was they, and not the ghost behind the
curtain, who kept him out of the “ pit.” Everybody with a
grain of common sense knows that if it had not been for
their skill and attention, backed up by the finest nursing and
other adjuncts that could be had for love or money, all the
prayers in the world would never have saved King Edward
from becoming a corpse. An operation was absolutely
necessary, and that particular operation has only been prac
tised for a few years. Not so long ago, even the doctors and
the parsons together could not have saved the King’s life.
And prayer was just as efficacious then as it is now. It is
science that has improved.
Probably the King himself knows why he is still alive.
But his position is an awkward one. He must satisfy the
clergy or make them his implacable enemies. The per
formance at St. Paul’s Cathedral must therefore be gone
through. But we dare say no one will be happier than him
self when it is all over.
�27
The “ D.T.’s.”
The Daily Telegraph was once said to be run by a Jew in
the interest of Christianity. The original Hebrew of the
tribe of Levi who got hold of it traded a good deal on the
eheap, shallow, popular writing of George Augustus Sala.
And thereby hangs a tale. Mr. Sala (it is said) in the early
days of the connection was instructed to write a rousing
article on the Crucifixion. It was to appear the day before
Good Friday, and the great G. A. S. wrote it at home, and
took it down to Fleet-street himself—which was the cause of
all the trouble. For on the way down Mr. Sala, who was
not, a teetotaller, met several friends, and the journey was
broken by the usual adjournments. When he arrived at the
D. T. office he was eagerly received by the aforesaid Hebrew
gentleman of the tribe of Levi, who had begun to despair of
that particular contribution. “Ah, Mr. Sala,” he said, “I’m
very glad to see you. Have you brought the article ? ”
f Yes,” replied the welcome contributor, and he held it out.
But just at that moment he was seized with a fit of maudlin
compunction. “You sha’n’t have it,” he stammered; “it
was you----- Jews who crucified the Savior. You shan’t
have it! You shan’t have it I ” And he reeled over and
dropped the article into the fire. There was consternation
in the editorial office, and weeping and wailing and gnashing
of teeth on the part of the self-disgusted contributor, when
he was able to realise the terrible sacrifice he had made on
the altar of a too-well stimulated piety.
Many, many years have rolled by since the probable,
possible, or mythical date of that touching incident. But the
Daily Telegrph still maintains its pious reputation. Was it
not the D. I7., in the early seventies of last century, when
Albert Edward Prince of Wales was down with typhoid
fever,, that invited us all to watch the great national wave
of prayer surging against the throne of Grace ? Was it not
�28
the D. T. that almost told God he would forget himself if he
let the Prince die ? And was it not the D. T., when the
Prince recovered, that sang the loudest in the Thanksgiving
Chorus ? The D. T. “ caught on ” to British piety on that
occasion, and it has held on ever since.
Our Jew-Christian or Christian-Jew contemporary came
out on Monday with a magnificent article on the Thanks
giving Service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was written in
the fine bold style that Matthew Arnold so much admired,
and so celebrated in the Dedicatory Letter of Friendship's
Garland. Yes, Adolescens Leo, Esq., is still the same.
Time has not impaired his youthful vigor. It has not even
mellowed him. He roars with the same robust music. He
displays the same unction in his moments of piety. The
voice breaks, the tears fall; and a large admiring public
gazes spellbound at the pathetic spectacle.
“ If the King’s life,” our contemporary said, “ was pre
cious to his people before his grave illness, it is doubly so
now, in that his subjects throughout the world devoutly
believe that he was restored to health in direct answer to
their supplications and intercessions.”
We doubt if the writer believes a word of this. Probably
he had his tongue in his cheek from the beginning to the
end of the sentence. Anyhow it is not true that all the
King’s subjects “ devoutly believe ” in the supernatural
character of his recovery. Many of them believe they could
have recovered themselves—with or without prayer—in the
same circumstances. With a number of the first doctors in
the land, with the best nursing skill obtainable for love or
money, and with every other conceivable advantage that
ample wealth and lofty position could afford, it is very diffi
cult to see much room for divine assistance in the King’s
case. When there are six doctors and one God, will some
one tell us how the celestial share in the patient’s treatment
is to be calculated ?
According to the Bible, the doctors are a sort of interlopers
in any kind of illness. But upon this point our contemporary
�29
is discreetly silent. There is no reason, however, why we
should practise the same hypocrisy. We beg to observe,
therefore, that the Bible persistently sneers at doctors. In
.the Old Testament we read that things went wrong with
King Asa because in his sickness he sought unto the physi
cians instead of unto the Lord. In the New Testament we
read of the woman who had “ suffered much of many physi
cians,” and was made worse rather than better, until at last
she was healed by the power of faith. Definite directions
also are given about what should be done by believers in
time of sickness. There is the calling in of elders, the
anointing of the sick, and the praying over them ; but there
is no reference to calling in a doctor. Indeed, it is expressly
said that “the prayer of faith shall recover the sick,” so that
all the other proceedings are purely formal. Such is the
teaching of the Bible-—the book which both Church and
Chapel force into the hands of the children in our public
schools ; yet no one has the honesty to admit it except Free
thinkers and a handful of Peculiar People—so called, per
haps, beeause they have the peculiarity of squaring their
practice with their profession.
Let us ask- our, contemporary a question. If it be true
•that the King’s restoration to health is owing to the prayers
of his people, is it honest to send poor parents to prison for
■relying upon prayer to save their sick children? If the
doctrine of the efficacy of prayer be true at Buckingham
Palace, how does it become false at Barking ? And if it be
right to thank God in a Cathedral for saving the life of a
King, how is it wrong to trust the same God to save the life
of a little child in a poor man’s cottage ?
So much for the Daily Telegraph. And now a few words
on the Bishop of London. This right reverend Father-inthe-Lord was allowed five minutes for his Thanksgiving
Sermon. That was all the King could spare him. But the
Bishop made good use of the time. Never was there a worse
exhibition of flunkeyism. Dr. Ingram expressed no end of
astonishment that King Edward had twice—yes, actually,
�30
twice—been near death. Such things, of course, are never
heard of in the case of ordinary men. God meant some
thing by saving the King’s life a second time; yes, it
was to be thought that “ God had some plan for that life
of special service and usefulness and strength.” Altogether,
if we may judge by the rest of the preacher’s observations
on this head, the Almighty has been thinking of little else of
late but the respectable, though not very brilliant, gentleman
who happens to occupy the throne of Great Britain and
Ireland. All the rest of the world has presumably to look
on and wonder—and wait for its share of divine attention.
Dr. Ingram thought it necessary to refer to “ the instru
ments God used.” Courtier-like he mentioned first “the noble
lady who was constantly by the patient’s side ”—just as
though it were an uncommon thing for wives to tend their
husbands. Then came “the surgeons and physicians, whose
untiring skill and care were of so great avail,” and last “ the
nurses who were so faithful in their service.” Yet the
object of the Thanksgiving Service was not to sing their
praises, but to “ honor God.” For without his spoken word
“ all skill and all nursing is unavailing.” Now what is the
legitimate inference from these expressions ? Why, this.
Doctors and nurses must attend the sick; it is not safe to
leave a patient entirely in the Lord’s hands; God can do
nothing without instruments; but, on the other hand, if the
doctors and nurses pull the patient through his trouble, it is
really not their doing, for all their skill and attention is
useless if God does not give the word for the patient’s
recovery. Such is the mental muddle in which we find a
Bishop and a most “ distinguished ” congregation at the
beginning of the twentieth contury.
�SOME WORKS BY G. W. FOOTE
A Defence of Free Speech. Three Hours’ Address
to the Jury before Lord Coleridge.
4d._
Bible Handbook for Freethinkers and Inquiring
Christians. New edition, revised. Cloth, 2s. 6d.; paper,
Is. 6d.
Bible Heroes. New edition. Cloth, 2s. 6d.
Bible Romances. New edition, revised. Cloth, 2s.
Book of God in the Light of the Higher Criticism.
Cloth, 2s. ; paper, Is.
Christianity and Secularism. Four Nights’ Public
Debate with the Rev. Dr. James McCann. Cloth Is. 6d.
paper, Is.
Crimes of Christianity. Cloth, 2s. 6d.
Flowers of Freethought. First series, cloth, 2s. 6d. ;
Second series, cloth, 2s. 6d.
Grand Old Book, The.
A Reply to the Grand Old
Cloth, Is. 6d.; paper, Is.
Is Socialism Sound ? Four Nights’ Public Debate
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Man.
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Foote and the Rev. W. T. Lee. Neatly bound, Is.
Letters to Jesus Christ. 4d.
Peculiar People. An Open Letter to Mr. Justice
Wills.
Id.
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Royal Paupers. 2d.
Sign of the Cross, The. A Candid Criticism of Mr
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Id.
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Darwin on God. 6d.
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The Passing of Jesus. 2d.
What is Agnosticism ? 3d,
�Progressive People should read
THE FREETHINKER
(EDITED BY G. W. FOOTE )
The Oldest and Liveliest Freethought Paper in England
Established in 1881
PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY.
PRICE TWOPENCE
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�
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God save the king, and other coronation articles, by an English Republican (G.W. Foote)
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Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
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Republicanism
Monarchy
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Republicanism-England
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PNo. 2,-R.P.A. EXTRA SERIES.
The "Riddle” Vindicated
......... ......... .
........... —. . ............. *"*5^
Haeckel’s Critics
Answered
JOSEPH McCABE
(FORMERLY THE VERY REV. FATHER ANTONY, O.S.F., PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AT ST. ANTONY'S, FOREST GATE)
Author of “Twelve Years in a Monastery, ” “ Peter Abelard," “St. Augustine and
li is Age" etc.
WATTS & CO.,
;
|^> tx
17, TOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
[issued
6
for the rationalist press association, limited]
No. 3 of this Series will be “ SCIENCE AND SPECULATION,” being the
Prolegomena to “The History of Philosophy,” by 0. H. LEWES.
�THE
Rationalist Press Association,
LIMITED.
Registered Office—V], Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
Chairman:
Mr. George Jacob Holyoake.
Honorary Associates:
Sir Leslie Stephen
Professor Ernst Haeckel
Professor Edward Westermarck
Mr. Edward Clodd
Mr. Leonard Huxley
Dr. Paul Carus
Mr. John M. Robertson
Dr. W. C. Coupland
Mr. F. J. Gould
Dr. Stanton Coit
Dr. W, R. Washington Sullivan
Major-General J. G. R. Forlong
A pamphlet fully describing the aims and methods of the Association and the conditions
of membership will be forwarded gratis on application to the Secretary at the above address. The
last Annual Report and Balance-Sheet, the Memorandum and Articles of Association, and a Form
of Bequest, can also be had on request.
THE
Union of Ethical Societies.
Headquarters-. 19, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, W.C.
Secretary: Miss Florence Winterbottom.
The General Aims of the Union are :—(a) By purely natural and human means to help men
to love, know, and do the right. (5) To emphasise the moral factor in all personal, social,
political, national, and international relations, (ij To affirm that moral/ ideas and the
moral life are independent of beliefs as to the ultimate nature of things and as to a life
after death, (d) To assist in developing the science of ethics.
For particulars of Leetures, Classes, and Circulating Library at 19, Bucking
ham Street, address the Secretary.
THE
Moral Instruction League.
Headquarters: 19, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, W.C.
Chairman of Committee:
I
Hon. Treasurer :
Stanton Coit, 30, Hyde Park Gate, S.W. | G. A. Smith, Dartmouth Park Lodge, N.W.
Hon. Secretary.
Harrold Johnson, “ Launceston,” Lindsey Road, Worcester Park, Surrey.
The Object of the League is “ To introduce systematic non-theological moral instruction into all
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Monthly 2d., by post 2j£d., or with Supplement
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And Rationalist Review.
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In addition to reviews of the best books on
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each number of the Literary Guide
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�B1SH0PSGATE INSTITUIE
REFERENCE LIBRARY
Not to be taken away
HAECKEL’S CRITICS ANSWERED
�By JOSEPH McCABE.
Twelve Years in a Monastery.
A New Edition, Revised and Enlarged.
The first large edition was exhausted soon after publication, and it is now
issued, with additions, including an examination of Mr. Wells’s position on
the future of Catholicism, at the reduced price of 35-. 6d. net; by post, 3-f. io<Z.
By PROFESSOR HAECKEL.
The Riddle of the Universe.
Cheap Popular Edition.
Cloth il, by post il 2d. ; paper 6d., by post 3d.
By WINWOOD READE.
The Martyrdom of Man.
Cheap Edition.
3l 6d., Post Free.
A very fine work, being a concise history of the world, written from a
Rationalistic point of view, and in a graphic and picturesque style.
By S. LAING.
A Modern Zoroastrian.
New Edition.
Cloth, 2s. net ;
by
Post, 2s. $d.
Price 6d. ; by post, 7|</.
The Agnostic Annual for 1904.
Contents : The Cult of the Unknown God, by Joseph McCabe ; The
Master-Builder, by Eden Phillpotts; Historic Christianity, by Charles T.
Gorham; The Position of Freethinkers in the Church, by John M. Robertson;
Towards Freedom, by Lady Florence Dixie ; A Rose, A Life (a poem),
by Henry Allsopp ; The Philosophy of the Human Mind, by Charles Watts 5
Can Man Know God ? by the Author of Mr. Balfour1 s Apologetics ; The
Poets and Rationalism, by Mimnermus; The Labour Movement and
Christian Orthodoxy, by F. J. Gould.
London : WATTS & CO., 17 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
�NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
HAECKEL’S
CRITICS ANSWERED •
BY
JOSEPH McCABE
(FORMERLY THE VERY REV. F. ANTONY, O.S.F., PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
at st.
Antony’s,
forest gate)
AUTHOR OF “ TWELVE YEARS IN A MONASTERY," “ PETER ABELARD,”
“ST. AUGUSTINE AND HIS AGE,” ETC.
\Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited.}
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1903
�BISHSPSGATE INSTITUTE
REFERENCE LIBRARY
y.. 1 9 MAY 1987
k Ciassiflcat i&n .. H. hi?. §•
�CONTENTS
PAGE
I.
II.
Some General Criticisms, and
The Unity
of the
a
Lessonin Modesty........................................ 7
World, and the Lawof Substance
.
.
.
.18
III.
The Evolution of the Inorganic World....................................................... 29
IV.
The Origin of Life................................................................................................. 39
V.
The Ascent
of
Man................................................................................................ 49
VI.
The Immortality of the Soul...............................................................................61
VII.
God........................................................................................................................ 68
VIII.
IX.
X.
Science
and
Christianity....................................................................................... 80
The Ethic and Religion of Monism.............................................................. 91
Dr. Wallace and
his
Critics............................................................................... 99
XI.
Lord Kelvin Intervenes...................................................................................... 108
XII.
Mr. Mallock’s Olive Branch..............................................................................114
XIII.
Conclusion............................................................................................................... 123
Index........................................................................................................................127
�PREFATORY NOTE
WHILST these pages were in the press an interview with Mr.
F. Ballard, written by Mr. Raymond Blathwayt, has appeared in Great
Thoughts. The interviewer introduces his subject with the following
passage :—
“ None can deny Haeckel’s sincerity; few can deny a certain wistful eager
ness ; all must stand saddened at his pessimism. He himself, if report be true,
is shaken to the very core as to his own position. A friend of his, entering his
study a few weeks ago, found him in a somewhat mournful condition. ‘ What is
the matter ? ’ said he, and the great philosopher replied, ‘ I cannot feel certain of
my own position ,■ suppose all my theories should turn out to be false? So that
even Haeckel, whom most people regard as a blank materialist, is overshadowed
now and again by the spirit world which surrounds us all, and to him also come the
doubts and craven fears to which the strongest of humanity is liable now and again.”
I at once submitted this passage to Professor Haeckel, and he
replied :—
“The anecdote about the wavering of my Monistic position is a pure invention.
My views are firm as a rockj but they may, naturally, be only partly correct.
The reader will find from the following pages that this—whoever
was the “ inventor
is only one of a long series of untruths and mis
representations with which the distant Professor has been cowardly
assailed.
J. M.
�•ii'-il tbb:»w
• • J
f:>? iTiOtl ’ .•'M.oeL''. i? <
til jnt»
ifiiBik.-.
■
’
.
t_ <>.t \ nd jnjw jcH.'n
.,»..., fftr, hr. r
HAECKEL’S CRITICS ANSWERED
■ '
,• ••
■
. < . . J1I&' '
bXz?
Hi
J .
1881 L,* imL
Chapter 1
SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN
MODESTY
Some forty-four years ago a young
German medical man was spending
laborious hours in an effort to penetrate
the secret of the living organism. From
his earliest years he had been powerfully
attracted to the study of life. He had
written a small work on botany whilst
he- was yet a boy at the gymnasium. He
had then had the advantage of a train
ing for the medical profession under
such masters as Kolliker and Johannes
Muller. He had published an essay on
crabs in 1857, and in 1859 he was pur
suing a most important inquiry into the
microscopic life that fills the blue waters
of the Italian coast. But his many lines
of research had not as yet led to any
large conclusions. He stood perplexed
between the discarded views of the older
biologists and the dim vision that was
slowly breaking upon the scientific mind
of the time. His own revered master
had insisted on the fixity of the various
species of organisms, but it was an age
when every note of the time-spirit whis
pered “advance” in the ears of the
younger men. The despotism of Genesis
had been broken by the new criticism,
and the Mosaic barrier to research was
being trampled under foot. The young
scientist, then in his twenty-seventh year,
returned to Berlin in 1861, and heard
that during his absence an English
naturalist had published a startlingly
revolutionary view of the whole kingdom
of life.
He obtained a copy of The
Origin of Sfecies, and saw at a glance
that a great truth had been discovered.
In the light of the new theory of evolu
tion, fulfilling the intuitions of Goethe
and the speculations of Lamarck, the
vast realm of animals and plants began
to exhibit the order and rationality he
had so long sought.
The very valuable and brilliant work
he had done in Italy secured for him a
professorship at the University of Jena,
and he at once devoted himself to the
creation of the new biology. In 1863
(his twenty-ninth year) he gave an able
address on the new theory before a
congress at Stettin, where all the most
distinguished scientists of Germany were
assembled. It was his baptism of fire
in a life-long campaign against error and
prejudice.
The vast majority of the
scientists present scoffed at Darwin’s
idea, and said it was not a matter for
serious discussion.
“The harmless
dream of an after-dinner nap,” said one
distinguished zoologist; and another
said they might as well discuss “ tableturning.”
A famous botanist present
said there was not a single fact of
science in its favour; though Darwin’s
book alone contains an overwhelming
mass of evidence. In France the great
Cuvier was crushing the young theory
with the weight of his authority. From
the pulpit of Notre Dame the brilliant
Lacordaire was assuring men that “its
father was pride, its mother lust, and
�8
SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
its offspring revolutions.” The young
naturalist went back to Jena with a
stem and grim resolve to pursue truth
through fire and water, and, as Huxley
was putting it after a like experience,
to “smite all humbugs” that lent their
authority to error. Five years later he
published his Generelle Morphologie,
which Huxley calls “ one of the greatest
scientific works ever published,” and
which considerably advanced the libera
tion of Germany from the old error.
Two years afterwards he published his
Natural History of Creation, of which
Darwin said that, had he read it earlier,
the Descent of Man would probably
never have been written.
With phe
nomenal industry, with brilliant success,
and with a moral idealism of the highest
order, he continued his research into the
nature of life and the nature of man,
and long before the close of the century
he was in the foremost rank of men of
science.
His progress was impeded by the
usual conservative hostility. For years
the ecclesiastical party strove to drive
him from the university, and enforced
a boycott of him and his family. One
day a prelate approached the Grand
Duke of Weimar, and urged him to put
an end to the scandal of the heretical
professor. “ Do you mean to say,” asked
the Grand-Duke—for the spirit of Goethe
still lingered in the court of Weimar,
“ that the professor really believes these
things he teaches?”
“He certainly
does,” assured the cleric.
“Then the
man is only doing what you are doing
yourself,” was the amiable retort. At
another time the professor himself ap
proached the head of the university,
Dr. Seebeck, an orthodox thinker, and
offered to resign his chair, to end the
trouble, as he would never swerve one
inch from the path of integrity and
faithfulness to what he considered to
be the truth. Dr. Seebeck bade him
remain; and his name has, in return,
taken the name of Jena to the ends of
the earth. His books have been trans
lated into twelve languages. Flis name
will rise first to the lips of any informed
student in the civilised world, from
Yokohama to St. Petersburg, from San
Francisco to Calcutta, if you speak of
zoology or embryology. He holds four
gold medals for research, and more
than seventy diplomas from so many
academies and learned bodies all over
the world, who have desired to have his
name on their roll of members or asso
ciates. When, in 1881, the Asiatic Society
of Bengal resolved to nominate six special
“ centenary honorary members,” he was
the one chosen for Germany. On the
occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ten
years ago, the elite of the scientific
world sent their greeting to the man
“who has devoted his life in unselfish
devotion to science and to truth, who
has opened new paths and inaugurated
fresh knowledge wherever he has turned,
and who has ever given his best for the
moral welfare of humanity.”
That is the real Ernst Haeckel.
That is the man whom our ecclesias
tical M.A.’s and our D.D.’s have lately
been accusing of “scientific humbug”
and “insolent dogmatism” and “child
ish credulity” and “mendacities” and
“rhodomontade,” of being “an essen
tially ignorant guide,” “an atrophied
soul,” and “ a rude, ill-mannered, igno
rant child,” of “ poisoning the minds ”
of the people and leading them “back
into barbarism,” of “prostituting him
self,” of making “misrepresentations so
gross and glaring as to make it extremely
difficult to credit him at once with
mental ability and sincerity,” of “ having
forfeited all right to speak as a serious
scientific man,” and of being “so fla
grantly prejudiced, so false to fact, and
so insolent in tone, as to require much
self-control to keep one from flinging
the book away in disgust.” I am not
quoting itinerant Christian Evidence
lecturers, but the deliberately published
observations of Dr. Horton, Dr. Loofs,
and the Rev. Mr. Ballard.
We need not tender our sympathy to
Professor Haeckel. He has been listen
ing to language of this kind ever since
�SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
he published his famous General Mor
phology in 1866. He may have by this
time a kindly theory that it comes
naturally to a mind that breathes a
mediaeval atmosphere, and that still holds
the general principles on which the
Holy Inquisition was founded. But it
is worth while investigating how all this
lurid language is reconciled with the
culture and scholarship and tolerance
which are claimed for the modern
clergyman. The writers of these pic
turesque phrases would indignantly re
pudiate the notion that they were angry
merely because Haeckel’s views of the
nature of man and the constitution of
the universe contradict their own, and
tend to diminish the number of their
followers. They do, indeed, reject the
substance of his speculations, but their
quarrel is with the manner in which he
pursues and expounds them. A few
years ago he published a summary of
the opinions he had arrived at on a vast
number of problems of science, philo
sophy, history, and religion. As he saw
his great colleagues pass on one by one
to join “ the choir invisible,” he decided
to draw up this “last will and testa
ment ”; to look back over the sombre
fields of half-a-century of warfare, and
sum up the issues of the conflict. In
Germany his Riddle of the Universe
sold 9,000 copies in two months, and
has led to an appalling outpouring of
controversial ink. In England it was
eagerly and extensively welcomed in the
more expensive edition, and in the cheap
form it is circulating to the extent of
nearly 80,000 copies. I have waded
through the turgid flood of criticisms it
has called forth, and will deal first with
those charges which tend to palliate the
outrageous phrases I have quoted before
I proceed to the criticisms of its sub
stance. These ponderous names are
not flung out, we are told, from a secret
consciousness that sober criticism would
have little force. They are reluctantly
penned out of regard for the ethic
and aesthetic of controversy. Professor
Haeckel, whom Mr. Mallock has saluted
9
in the Fortnightly Review (September,
1901) as “one of the most eminent and
most thoughtful men of science in
Europe,” whom an antagonistic reviewer
in Knowledge describes as “ impelled by
no motive but a love of truth,” and says
that “ to know him is to love him,” and
“ there are few who have worked harder
and, at the same time, more brilliantly,
for their day and generation,” whom the
Westminster Review regards as “a great
biologist and thinker,” and whom even
Dr. Dallinger calls “a man of large
scientific attainments, a biologist of the
highest repute, and possessed of the
keenest acumen” (fThe Creator, p. 18)
—this Professor Haeckel has, it seems,
greatly violated the good taste and the
ordinary morality of literary work in his
Riddle of the Universe. Mr. Ballard
epitomises the charge very neatly in the
British Weekly. The book, he says,
“ teems with exhibitions of bitter pre
judice, arrant dogmatism, unwarranted
assumption, uncalled-for insult, logical
failure, and self-contradictions ”; and
the misguided British public calls for
five editions of it, in spite of all the
abuse that is heaped on it and all the
secret and public manoeuvres that are
directed against its circulation.
A desperate champion might ask the
reader to reflect on the atmosphere of
invective in which Haeckel has lived for
the last fifty years—from Lacordaire’s
tracing of the parentage of evolution to
Dr. Talmage’s sermons on the subject
only four years 'ago—and might recall
that even dainty prelates like Bishop
Wilberforce could utter bitter insults in
that charmed region. He might argue
that a Haeckel was not pledged to turn
the other cheek to the smiter. He might
point out that it is not soothing to have
had to spend half a life in overcoming
what is now acknowledged to be a foolish
resistance, yet see the same theological
forces arrayed at a more advanced
position to-day. But, in truth, we shall
do better to ask, what is the aesthetic
and ethical standard of controversy
cherished by Dr. Haeckel’s critics, and
B
�IO
SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
how: far does he really fall below their
shining example ?
There is Dr. Horton, for instance,
whose sensitive nature is outraged by
Haeckel’s rude comments on some of the
Christian beliefs. Now, I have been a
priest and I know how largely rhetorical
this kind of indignation is, and how
effective it is sometimes in preventing a
book from being read. As a fact, one
who was present when Dr. Horton
delivered his philippic tells how, when the
preacher read out in tremulous tones
the famous mother-in-law passage (and the
like) from the Riddle, his audience was
really shaking with suppressed laughter.
However, let us examine Dr. Horton’s
discourse,1 and learn the better manners
which he desiderates in Haeckel. He
opens with a reference to “ the depths of
degradation and despair into which the
teaching of Haeckel will plunge man
kind ; ” though, of course, to speak
of Dr. Horton’s views as degrading
would be considered insulting. Then,
though “ there has been no more diligent
and successful investigator of the facts of
nature than Ernst Haeckel during the
century that has passed,” he is a child
at moral and religious reasoning, “ a rude,
ill-mannered, ignorant child ; ” he is “ an
atrophied soul, a being that is blind on
the spiritual side.” The “ spiritual side ”
being a blend of moral and intellectual
faculty (if it is anything more than
imagination), this is grave; but Dr.
Horton says it <£in the interest of souls
and truth.” Presently he finds Haeckel
an ££ utterly unsatisfactory and essentially
ignorant guide,” an “ unthinking mind ”
with -whose “ obvious weakness and igno
rance ” and “ childish credulity ” “ the
rationalist press gulls the ignorance of
the public.” Dr. Horton admits that
modern science “ must gradually affect
the view of man, even the view of God,
which we drew from the matchless
revelation of the first chapters of
Genesis” [this in Hampstead, in the
1 It is published in the Christian World
Pulpit, June loth, 1903.
year of grace 1903 !], and must modify
“ the naive, but essentially correct, con
ceptions of our ancestors ”; but Haeckel
asks too much. I will touch in the
proper place Dr. Horton’s brief argu
mentation on the origin of life and the
origin of the mind,1 and will only admire
here the delicacy with which he points
out the spiritual consequences of monism.
“ Men who have no belief in God and
immortality sink to the level of the
brutes,” and Haeckel is “ anxious to
sweep us back into this barbarism under
the name of progress.”
Haeckel is not
conscious of the degradation that has
passed upon his spirit ” through rejecting
the particular solution of the world-riddle
which Dr. Horton recommends, but in
any one who does so “ the soul is shrunk,
the mind is warped, the very body must
carry its marks of degradation.” It is
true that the preacher’s sense of humour
awakes at one point, and he disavows
any intention of imputing these “ bestial
levels ” to Haeckel himself, but he seems
to forget the reservation, and ends in a
most ludicrous strain of commiseration.
There is nothing half so insulting and
offensive in Haeckel.
Passing by Dr. Loofs (whose little work
is one of the most spiteful and painful
diatribes that has issued from a modern
university), as he does not claim to be an
English gentleman, we may turn to the
Rev. F. Ballard for an exhibition of those
manners which Haeckel has neglected to
cultivate.
Mr. Ballard is said in the
religious press to have proved that
“ Haeckel doesn’t count,” and it will be
expected from the precision and force of
his indictment of Haeckel’s manner
(which I have quoted above) that this
1 Dr. Horton’s knowledge of the controversy
may be tested very well by his statement that
Bois-Reymond, Vogt, Buchner, and Baer, “per
haps four of the greatest men of science in the
nineteenth century in Germany,” came to “ the
recognition of spirit as the author of conscious
ness.” Not one of the four ever recognised any
thing of the kind, as we shall see. Bois-Reymond
and Baer remained agnostic, whilst Buchner and
Vogt were actually the leaders of German
materialism up to the moment of death.
�SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
scientific clergyman will be quite the
Beau Brummel of religious controversy.
He has written a chapter on The
Riddle of the Universe in his Miracles
of Unbelief, but this has been swallowed
up in his great attack in the columns of
the British Weekly. The later articles
of this series refer to the able editor of
the Clarion,, and Mr. Blatchford has
shown a sufficient command of appro
priate language to dispense with my
services. I confine myself to the first
three articles (July 23rd, 30th, and Aug.
6th). It proves, on examination, that
twelve columns out of the thirteen are
mainly preliminary comments on Haec
kel’s morals. I will deal with the thir
teenth column (which will turn out to be
very largely a question of Mr. Ballard's
morals) in its proper place, and will
here briefly examine the general criti
cisms.
Dogmatism and dishonesty are the
chief points Mr. Ballard charges, with an
infinite variety of phrasing, against the
absent Professor. Now, one would
really’ be disposed to see something in
the first point, since it is so persistently
urged by Haeckel’s critics. Unfortun
ately, when one looks closely into the
grounds of the charge it begins to totter ;
and when one compares Haeckel’s words
with those of his critics, one wonders
what dogmatism really is. There is, for
instance, that admirable writer of the
Christian World, Mr. J. Brierley (“J. B.”),
who stooped in some unguarded hour to
attack Haeckel. The Riddle is “ one of
the most amusing books this generation
has seen” because “its dogmatism is so
naive.” “ Professor Haeckel has found
everything out,” says Mr. Brierley. “ He
has exploded the old mystery, and found
it a bag stuffed with sawdust. There is
nothing to wonder at in suns and sys
tems. They are just matter and force,
and there is an end.” Now, the Chris
tian World is a fine paper, and “ J. B.”
is one of its sanest contributors, yet this
passage is astounding. Whence did a
hostile reviewer in the Sheffield Daily
Telegraph get the opposite impression
n
that Haeckel “is modest and unassum
ing in the claims he makes for his
system”? How came the Westminster
Review to call it “ a careful and conscien
tious endeavour to construct a theory of
the universe in harmony with the teach
ings of modern science”? Read the
second page of the preface to the Riddle.
“ The studies of these world-riddles which
I offer in the present work,” you read,
“ cannot reasonably claim to give a
perfect solution of them; they merely
offer to a wide circle of readers a critical
inquiry into the problem, and seek to
answer the question as to how nearly we
have approached that solution at the
present day. What stage in the attain
ment of truth have we actually arrived
at in this closing year of the nineteenth
century ? What progress have we really
made during its course towards that
immeasurably distant goal ? ”
Those
words—and you will vainly seek their
equal in modesty in any religious riddle
solver in the world—meet the eye at the
very opening of the book, and they are
substantially repeated at its close (p.
134).1 “The answer which I give to
these great questions,” Haeckel con
tinues, “ must naturally be merely sub
jective and only partly correct.” Was
there ever so singular a “ dogmatist ” ?
“ The one point that I can claim is that
my Monistic Philosophy is sincere from
beginning to end.” “ My own command
of the various branches of science is
uneven and defective, so that I can
attempt no more than to sketch the
general plan of such a world-picture,
and point out the pervading unity of its
parts, however imperfect be the execu
tion.” “ In taking leave of my readers,
I venture the hope that, through my
sincere and conscientious work—in spite
of its faults, of which I am not uncon
scious-—I have contributed a little to
wards the solution of the great enigma.”
If that is dogmatism, and the average
theological pronouncement is fragrant
1 I quote throughout from the cheap edition
of the Riddle.
�12
SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
with modesty, we shall need to recon
sider our moral terminology.1
But Mr. Ballard would tell us there
are other passages in which “ the most
arrogant dogmatism ” breaks out. Well,
Haeckel has told us the book is uneven
and sketchy, that its parts were written
at different times, in different moods;
and, knowing there was no inconsistency
of thought, he may have trusted to the
intelligence of his readers to adjust any
mere inconsistency of expression. But
the truth is, that Mr. Ballard’s choice
examples (given in his third article) of
“ unmitigated dogmatism ” are little short
of ridiculous. “ Thus we have got rid of
the transcendental design of the philo
sophy of the schools ” and “ The unpre
judiced study of natural phenomena
reveals the futility of the theistic idea ”
are two of the shorter quotations. Clearly,
Mr. Ballard must mean that Haeckel
should have interposed “ in my opinion ”
in these sentences. Does Mr. Ballard
do that? Does any sane and literary
writer do it who expects to have intelli
gent readers ? Professor Haeckel is by
no means a Social Democrat, but he
does credit “ the general reader ” with
intelligence enough to relieve him from
saying “ this is my opinion ” at every
third line. He has gone out of his way
to warn the reader from the beginning
that his conclusions are “ merely subjec
tive.” In not one of these cases does he re
present a conclusion as being unanimously
accepted. On the contrary, Mr. Ballard
and his friends are never tired of point
ing out how Haeckel, on his own showing,
1 An amusing feature of this delinquency of
Mr. J. Brierley’s—which I sincerely regret to
have to notice—is that it follows upon a fine
article on ‘ ‘ Candour in the Pulpit ’’—that is to
say, on the lack of candour in the pulpit and of
honesty in apologetic literature. So that, almost
side by side with this unhappy passage, one
reads : “A foremost modern theologian, by no
means of the radical school, has recorded his
significant judgment that one of the main charac
teristics of apologetic literature is its lack of
honesty; and no one who has studied theology can
doubt that it has suffered more than any other
science from equivocal phraseology” {Christian
World, August 20th, 1903 ; p. 10).
is contradicted by his own colleagues in
Germany. The whole matter is too ab
surd to prolong. Haeckel’s “dogma
tisms ” are the ordinary ways of expres
sion in adult literature. They shine with
modesty in comparison with theological
utterances, and they are guarded from
misinterpretation on the part of the unin
formed by a most rare and conscientious
warning in the preface.
Finally let us consider the charge of
misinterpretation, trickery (“jugglery,”
the Rev. Rhondda Williams says), and
general dishonesty of method. To deal
with this fully would be to anticipate my
whole book here; the reader will be
amply informed for judgment in the
sequel. But we may, in the meantime,
profitably run our eye over Mr. Ballard’s
twelve columns of moral censorship. In
the last chapter of Miracles of Unbelief,
Mr. Ballard says “ we find misrepresen
tations so gross and glaring as to make it
extremely difficult to credit the writer at
once with mental ability and sincerity ”
(p. 35°)- 1° immediate justification of
this, Mr. Ballard quotes Haeckel’s state
ment (p. 46 of the Riddle) that even
some Christian theologians deny the
liberty of the will. This Bachelor of
Divinity seems unaware for the moment
that the Calvinists notoriously denied
freedom on the very ground indicated
by Haeckel, and that the greater part of
the Catholic theologians (the Thomists
and Augustinians) are accused by their
colleagues of being, logically, in the same
predicament. A more paltry justifica
tion for so grave a charge it would be
hard to conceive. The only other point
in the chapter worth noting is the com
ment on abiogenesis, and this will be met
at a later stage.1 I turn to the pages of
the British Weekly, and their blush of
righteous indignation.
The only point that concerns us in
1 But the many admirers of Mr. Ballard who
wish to know the worst at once may refer now
to p. 40, and see how their apologist garbles
his quotation from Haeckel, misrepresents his
position, misstates the attitude of science, and
so wins a glorious victory—over the Decalogue.
�SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
the first article is a curiously spirited
attack on my opinion that the Riddle is
“unanswered because it is unanswer
able,” and it is instructive to consider
this. Take down your copy of the
Riddle—do not contract the slovenly
and expensive habit of trusting. a con
troversial writer; and I will give you
pages throughout, which Mr. Ballard
never does—and notice that I wrote this
in November, 1902. Mr. Rhondda
Williams had not then written his
pamphlet, Dr. Horton had not preached
his sermon, and Dr. Loofs’s book was
unknown in England.
The only
“ reply ” in the field was a hastily added
chapter to Mr. Ballard’s Miracles of
Unbelief, which one may be pardoned
for not having discovered by 1902.
Further, I wrote with pointed reference
to Dr. Beale’s pathetic promise of a
reply in the agony column of the Times,
Oct. 1st, 1900; a promise which he
withdrew by referring later (Dec. 19th)
to a tiresome collection of letters from
the Lancet which he had published in
1898. Moreover, I pointedly wanted
an answer to the most important thesis
of the book, the evolution of mind,
which, I find, even Mr. Ballard had not
met. Mr. Ballard’s selection of spon
taneous generation as the chief point —
whereas Haeckel only offers it as “a
pure hypothesis,” and it is only an
incidental (though necessary) conse
quence of his system—is unworthy of a
serious scientific man. So, brushing
aside criticisms of Haeckel’s views on
Christ and the Immaculate Conception,
which have nothing to do with the
integrity of his system, I deplored “ the
silence or triviality of his opponents.”
But note how Mr. Ballard manipulates
this innocent observation. Premising
that I am “ doubtless honest,” and that
“ the apostles of free-thought, of all
men, might leave others free to think
for themselves,” and so on, he tells me
it was answered by himself (in an
obscure corner of an obscure book) and
—by anticipation! That encourages
him to call my statement an “ untruth.”
13
In the second article my enormity
grows. Readers are told that I assert
the “ monistic mechanism ‘ has been for
ever established ’ as the all-sufficient
origin, means, and end of everything ”;
whereas I most clearly said only that
“ the case for the evolution of mind ”
had been “ for ever established.” Later
we have a reference to “ the reactionary
assurances of an ex-ecclesiastic to the
effect ‘ that all Christian faith is ship
wrecked and all Christian convictions
amongst the breakers.’ ” The unsophis
ticated reader will learn with surprise (in
spite of “ to the effect ”) that this, whether
reactionary or not, is not a quotation from
me. And finally the growth is complete,
and I am made to “sneer at the triviality
or the silence of the opponents of the
mechanical theory of the universe.” Mr.
Ballard, F.R.M.S., clearly makes a very
improper use of his microscope at
times.
So it is with my innocent remark that
in the Riddle we have a “ masterly treat
ment of the question of the evolution of
mind.” “ Masterly ” soon grows into
“ more masterly,” and Mr. Ballard airily
asks : “ I really want to know why, for
some of us who make no profession to
be experts, Dr. Haeckel’s treatment
should be more ‘ masterly ’ than that of,
say, Dr. Wallace ” ; and in the end :
“ May we not then ask Mr. McCabe, or
Mr. Blatchford, why, or by what
authority, they proclaim that Prof.
Haeckel’s treatment is so much more
masterly than that of all others as to
foreclose the question ? ” The perver
sion of my phrase into a comparison
and the implication that I fail in respect
for Dr. Wallace or any other dis
tinguished thinker come very oddly
from the pen of this literary censor
morum.
Yet this is a fair sample of Mr.
Ballard’s procedure—and is in fact a
great part of his procedure, or I should
not have dwelt on it. The only other
important element in Mr. Ballard’s
preliminary twelve columns is his
industrious collection of authorities to
�14
SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
oppose to Dr. Haeckel. I shall speak
presently of the proper merit of this, but
must touch a few points of it here to
finish the consideration of Mr. Ballard’s
standard of controversy. He constantly
affirms that Haeckel is opposed by the
majority of scientific authorities. We
shall see what this really amounts to,
but let us consider it here in the light of
the more important question whether
they support Christianity. I have care
fully examined the list of writers quoted
against Haeckel by Mr. Ballard, and
this is the result. In the front rank
are the three eminent scientists, Lord
Kelvin, Sir O. Lodge, and Dr. A. R.
Wallace. Their convictions every man
will respect who respects himself, but—
two of them are Spiritists (having there
fore, an alien and empirical source of
faith, and holding views on the future state
which Christian teaching rejects), and
Lord Kelvin gives a very slender support,
as we shall see. Then there are Dr.
Beale (who confesses in his latest book
that he is fighting a vast majority), Dr.
Croll (who denies the liberty of the
will), Dr. Stirling (whose contribution is
the same as Dr. Beale’s), Dr. Winchell
and Sir J. W. Dawson (geologists of a
past generation, who defend the literal
interpretation of i. Genesis : Sir J. W.
Dawson thinks geology only claims
7000 years for the life of man, and
that “ the deluge is one of the most
important events both in human history
and the study of the later geological
periods ”), Professor Flower (with ten
lines of qualifications, but whose only
contribution to the subject seems to be
an address at a Church Congress, in which
he sharply tells the clergy they have
done mischief enough in the past, and had
better leave evolution to men of science ;
two short phrases about an “ eternal
power ” and the “ Divine govern
ment of the world ” seem to constitute
his slender theology), Dr. A. Macalister,
Professor Le Conte and Mr. Fiske
(American evolutionists and Pantheists),
Mr. Row (the Christian Evidence
lecturer), Dr. Cook (the American
Christian evidence lecturer), and Lord
Grimthorpe (the Vicar-general of York,
whose “legal and scientific mind” may
be seen at work in his Letters on Dr.
Todd's Discourses on the Prophecies}. The
rest of Mr. Ballard’s list consists of pro
fessional theologians. “ Dr.” This, and
“ Professor ” That, usually turn out to be
graduates in divinity. I am not for a
moment slighting the scientific acquire
ments of men like Dr. Dallinger, Mr.
Newman Smyth (one of the few
apologists who retain the character of a
gentleman amidst polemical work), Dr.
Iverach, Mr. Ballard, Mr. Profeit, and
Mr. Kennedy; I am not so unintelligent.
But it would be absurd to say that the
publications of these professors of
apologetics and doctors of divinity have
the same value, as replies to Haeckel, as
those of scientific laymen. The result is
that Mr. Ballard’s list is totally and
gravely misleading to the uninformed.
Rubbish like the “ Present Day Tracts ”
and antiquated work like Winchell’s and
Dawson’s and Stirling’s and Wainwright’s
are mixed up with the good work of
Newman Smyth and Dallinger and
Kennedy.
Evolutionists and non
evolutionists, theists and pantheists,
Christians and non-Christians, are hastily
thrown together. He drags in Prof.
W. James to rebuke Haeckel; the
average reader will have little suspicion
that James rejects the title of theist,
speaks scornfully of Mr. Ballard’s God,
and is not sure of the immortality of the
soul. All this is gravely misleading.
Clearly, Mr. Ballard’s ideal of con
troversy is not much superior to that
of Dr. Horton. Yet this budding con
troversialist has the effrontery to tell
Haeckel that “if he has no sense of
shame, then we have a sufficient object
lesson as to the failure of ‘ monistic
religion ’ to develop even an elementary
degree of morality.” This is provoked
by statements which Haeckel quotes
with transparent honesty from writers
named in his book. We have seen
how an equally coarse outburst was
prompted by a statement (as to the free-
�SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
dom of the will) which is literally correct.
The only other specific criticisms offered
by Mr. Ballard relate to the nature of
matter and the origin of life. In both
cases he gives a mere travesty of
Haeckel’s position. We shall take them
in detail later (though the reader may
find them at once by means of the index,
if he desires). For the present we take
our leave of these graceful guardians of
the taste and ethic of controversy.
“ What sort of an age do we live in ? ”
asked the Prager Tageblatt, when it saw
the clerical and scientific Lilliputians
of Germany shooting their insults at the
distinguished scientist. We are living,
still, in an age when religion is made to
consist essentially in certain speculations
about the nature of the universe, which
were framed, in substance, thousands of
years ago ; an age when any independent
speculator on the nature of things must
expect to arouse a bitter antagonism if
his conclusions differ from those of
religious tradition. Religion is, in a most
important aspect, “ a cosmic doctrine,”
to quote the words of Mr. Mallock.
“Religion and science,”he says, “touch
and oppose each other primarily as rival
methods of explaining the .... universe
taken as a whole, man forming part of
it.” Until a short time ago theologians
held that their particular cosmic specula
tions had the distinction of a super
natural origin, and they damned people
-who called them into question. To-day
the gilt is wearing off the legends of
Genesis, but the hereditary spirit of
intellectual arrogance goes more slowly.
To-day there are many theologians who
call themselves truth-seekers, and there
are a few who write and speak as if
they were truth-seekers, and not truthfulminators. But the sad truth is that
the majority are morally hampered by a
conviction of the sacredness and the
exclusive truth of certain speculations,
about God and the soul, which they
have a corporate charge to defend.
Every man who opposes them is con
structed into a hater of their religion and
a menace to human progress. The
15
diminution of their followers seems
only to increase their violence. “Al
ready,” says Mr. Rhondda Williams, “ it
is the fact that the cultured laity on the
one hand and the bulk of the democracy
on the other are outside the Churches.”1
Yes, people are seeking the truth, out in
the light of day, and they distrust a
tradition that has broken down section
by section as the century advanced.
Haeckel, starting from a most compre
hensive knowledge of living nature, has
reached out to certain conclusions on the
cosmic mystery. It will not avail to
Caricature his conclusions and vilify his
person and motives and method. Neither
he, nor his translator, nor his publishers,
dreamed of thrusting his zoological
authority down people’s throats, except
in so far as his book deals with zoology.
His further conclusions must be met on
their argumentative merits. His whole
system must be judged by rational
evidence.
Dust-throwing and mud
throwing are not the methods of truth
seekers ; they are the devices of timid
or foolish partisans.
But before I enter upon a systematic
examination of Haeckel’s system and the
criticisms it has provoked, I wish to ex
pose one further misrepresentation of a
general character. Almost all the critics
endeavour to make us distrust Flaeckel
by attributing to him a solitary and
isolated position in the scientific ■world.
Even if this were the case, it would only
be an incentive to examine his views
with the greater care. Copernicus stood
alone throughout life. Darwin was op
posed by most of the scientists of his
time. Wolff enunciated a profound
truth which was not accepted until long
after his death. Robert Owen preached
a whole series of social truths that we
all accept to-day. Further, all writers
do not regard Haeckel as isolated. Mr.
Mallock, in his Religion as a Credible
Doctrine, not only takes him to be the
supreme living representative of scientific
philosophy, but says that he and his
1 Does Science Destroy Religion ? p. 29.
�16
SOME GENERAL CRITICISMS, AND A LESSON IN MODESTY
colleagues “ are correct in their methods
and arguments—that the attempts of
contemporary theologians to find flaws
in the case of their opponents, or to
convert the discoveries of science into
proofs of their own theism, are exercises
of an ingenuity wholly and hopelessly
misapplied, and exhibit too often an
unreasoning or a feverish haste which
merely exposes to. ridicule the cause
which they are anxious to defend.”1 Dr.
Lionel Beale speaks throughout his
Vitality of the majority being on
Haeckel’s side in that controversy. Dr.
Iverach speaks in his Theism of “ scien
tists,” in a general way, as refusing to go
with him. But the misconception it is
particularly needful to clear up is as to
the relation of Haeckel’s Monism to
Agnosticism. When Mr. Ballard speaks
crudely of the majority of modern scien
tists being opposed to Haeckel, the
uninformed will conclude that they are,
therefore, more or less with Mr. Ballard.
We have corrected that impression by
giving the list of all the scientific laymen
of England and the United States, of
recent years, that Mr. Ballard has been
able to get under one very broad religious
umbrella. It bears only a small propor
tion to the whole, even when we have
added Professor Henslow and a few
more later on. On the other hand, the
average educated man would say that
Haeckel is a materialist and atheist, and
the great bulk of our men of science
reject both names. Haeckel, it is true,
equally rejects the name materialist, but
we may defer that point to the next
chapter. Our average educated man
has no illusion as to Huxley, Tyndall,
Clifford, Darwin, Bain, Sully, Maudsley,
Spencer, Ray Lankester, Karl Pearson,
and scientists of that type (or those
types) favouring what Mr. Ballard would
call religion. These have professed
Agnosticism; and the silence on the
religious question of the vast majority of
our scientific men must—especially in
1 The Fortnightly Review, September, 1901 ;
p. 400.
view of the feverish alertness of the
Churches to drag them on to platforms
when they are known to be in the least
favourable—I should say, be construed
in the same sense.
Now, Agnosticism is held to be more
or less respectable. Mr. Ballard quotes
Huxley and Darwin and Tyndall with a
light heart and without the least recburse
to his red ink. Haeckel is abused be
cause of his “dogmatism.” But let us
refrain from raising dust, and see what
the difference really comes to. I might
quote Lord Grimthorpe, whose “legal
and scientific mind ” Mr. Ballard has
warmly recommended to us : “ As for
professing to believe neither alternative,
atheism or theism, . . . that is not only
probably but certainly wrong, and, in
deed, is so impossible that any man who
thinks he has come to that conclusion is
mistaken, and is at present an atheist.” 1
But I think a writer of that type ought
to be left in his grave. Listen, however,
to what one of the ablest living thinkers
of England says on the matter : “ The
Neutral or Agnostic Monism now in
vogue amongst scientific men ... is
scientifically popular mainly because it
is still essentially naturalistic, and dis
parages the so-called psychical aspect as
epistemologically subordinate to the
physical. . . This monism escapes the
absurdities of the old materialism more
in seeming than in fact . . it is material
ism without matter. . . In this monism
the mechanical theory is still regarded
as furnishing a concrete and complete
presentment of the objective world. . .
If dualism is unsound, there seems to
be no agnostic resting-place between
materialism and spiritualism.”2 I do
not subscribe to all this, but the high
authority of the writer encourages me
to say that the custom of opposing our
1 At the close of The Origin of the Laws of
Nature.
2 Professor J. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosti
cism, p. 207, vol. ii. So Professor Case, in the
article on Metaphysics in the tenth edition of the
Encyc. Brit, says Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer,
only escape materialism by being inconsistent.
�'some general criticisms, and a lesson IN MODESTY
Agnostic scientists to Haeckel—especi
ally when fairly ancient quotations are
dug out of their works in support of it—
is totally misleading.
The difference between them is this
(setting aside for the manner the question
of idealism): Haeckel’s system is a
comprehensive theory covering the uni
verse, whilst they remain on ground
which they feel to be very solid. They
affirm the evolution of all things, of
matter, of solar systems, of species from
lower species, of man, of religion and
ethics. But they decline to skate at all
on thin ice. Whether the universe had
a beginning, whether evolution has been
purposively guided, whether or how life
arose out of non-life, whether conscious
ness is of the same texture as physical
force, whether death makes an end of it
—all these things they prefer to leave to
a later generation. Where they do
affirm, they agree with Haeckel; but
they consider his further affirmations
premature, to say the least. They
agree with him that the religious theory
is quite uncalled-for by the facts of
science ; but they think it too early to
frame counter-theories. This is the real
significance of those famous conversions
of German scientists of which every
critic of Haeckel has made so much.
Du Bois-Reymond, Virchow, Baer, and
Wundt spread their affirmations over
the universe in their younger days. At
a later period they restricted themselves,
like Huxley or Darwin, to positions
which seemed impregnable. They re
treated to Agnosticism on the more ad
vanced questions. It. is absurd to find
Haeckel’s critics representing them as
having gone over to theism or Christian
ity.1 Like Huxley and Tyndall (in his
1 Haeckel is read a ferocious lesson in
manners by all his critics for putting a certain
construction on their change. Let it stand. I
am chiefly concerned with the truth or untruth
of his ideas. I see, therefore, a far more griev
ous sin in the almost general misrepresentation
of the nature of these “conversions.” Dr.
Horton, we saw, slipped in Vogt and Buchner,
the most advanced materialists of Germany, as
converts to spiritualism. Mr, Ballard inserts
17
agnostic mood) they only decline to
follow Haeckel in a constructive theory
of the origin of life and the relation of
consciousness to brain, and the strenuous
denial of God and immortality; but they
shrink just as severely from the con
structive theories and the dogmas of
Haeckel’s critics.
In that sense Haeckel stands apart,
though far from alone. Is he justified
in leaping the abysses from which his
colleagues shrink ? Would it be wiser to
keep to the solid ground ? To put no
rounded system before the world ? We
can judge best when we have covered
the whole ground over which his system
extends. Meantime, remember three
things which are lost sight of in the dust
of this controversy. Firstly, Dr. Haeckel
does not claim anything like equal value
for his views on all points. He knows
perfectly well how the evidence differs,
and how at times he must bridge a chasm
with “a pure hypothesis,”as he calls his
theory of abiogenesis; though he does
not even put out a hypothesis without
sober ground.
His system is an
elaborate structure of demonstrated
truths, convincing theories, and rational
hypotheses of all grades of strength. The
critic who confuses the latter with the
former, and thinks he has destroyed
“ the fundamental axiom,” when he has
only shown that some outlying hypothesis
A only a hypothesis, does not evince
much discernment or a scrupulous desire
to let truth prevail. Secondly, dualism,
or theism, may not logically rush in if one
Romanes, of whose conversion Haeckel was
totally unaware when he wrote the book, and
whose change of views differs toto co:lo from that
of Virchow or Wundt. All essentially misstate
the real “ metamorphosis.” It was merely from
dogmatic monism to what Dr. Ward calls
“agnostic monism.” It lends no support to
theism or spiritualism. Prof. Haeckel assures me
that “even to-day these men are styled atheists
by German ecclesiastical writers.” Read Mr.
Kennedy’s attack on Du Bois-Reymond’s hetero
doxy, after his “ Ignorabimus-Rede,” in his
Natural Theology and Modern Thought, pp.
42-65. Darwin used stronger language about
Virchow than is to be found in the Riddle.
�18
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
of Haeckel’s particular hypotheses breaks
down. Between Haeckel and Martineau
or Fiske lies the broad region of neutral
or agnostic monism. And thirdly, this
is the ordinary procedure of science. It
throws out the light bridges of its hypo
theses far in advance of its solid march.
They may be withdrawn later. More
probably they will gather strength as the
years roll on, and be at length absorbed
in the growth of the impregnable
structure of scientific truth.
Chapter II
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW
OF SUBSTANCE
What, then, is this monism which
has aroused so much bitterness and an
tagonism ? Once more, before we can pro
ceed to a sober and patient study of the
position of Dr. Haeckel, we find it
necessary to lay the dust which his
critics have raised. There is the defini
tion given by the Rev. Ambrose Pope,
who seems to have led the opposition
to Haeckel in the Clarion controversy.
Mr. Pope disposes of the system —
which it has taken Dr. Haeckel a
laborious life-time to construct—-with
a marvellous and quite papal facility.
It was made, he thinks, during three “half
day excursions” out of Haeckel’s own
province. From these he returned with
certain “assumptions” which contain,
with almost ludicrous clearness, the con
clusions he wanted to reach. We will
have a word on these “ assumptions ”
(which are really the conclusions of years
of observation and reflection) when the
time comes. But incidentally Mr. Pope
defines monism, or, as he calls it for
some occult reason, “ physiological
monism.”_ “Briefly,” he says, “the
universe is not dual in its ultimate
nature, viz., spirit (or soul) and matter;
but single (monistic), viz., matter (or
substance).” Mr. Pope goes on to say
airily that "this is another of those inno
cent-looking hypotheses” from which
Haeckel derives his atheism, &c. How
any man can fail to see that this is
not an assumption, but the most
laboured conclusion of Haeckel’s sys
tem—not the base but the apex of his
pyramid—passes comprehension. Mean
time, it is formulated in utter defiance
of Haeckel’s words, and one might think
Haeckel would be consulted on the
matter. He says (p. 8) that monism
does “ not deny the existence of spirit,
and dissolve the world into a heap of
dead atoms ” and that “ matter cannot
exist and be operative without spirit, or
spirit without matter.” Dr. Horton and
many others have the same confusion.
The Rev. Rhondda Williams says : “ He
recognises that there is something which
is not material (spatial) which we may
call mind, or soul, or spirit. But if this
spiritual something is treated as the
mere, product of matter, or the mere
function of the material organism, its
reality is denied, i.e., it has no real
spiritual nature.” But Haeckel has no
where said that spirit (or force) is a
product of matter. There are scientists
who resolve matter into force, but no one
ever attempted the reverse, except in
�THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
the sense of reducing force to motion,
which Haeckel certainly does not.
Monism is so clearly defined at the
very commencement of Haeckel’s book
(p. 8) that these gentlemen must have
convinced themselves he gave an im
proper definition in order to escape the
odious label “materialist.” Before we
proceed, let us be perfectly clear why
this odium does attach to the word
“materialism.” It is well worthwhile,
for here is one of the strangest and most
common sophisms
of the
hour.
Materialism is the name for two totally
different things, which are constantly
confused. There is, in the first place,
materialism as a theory of the universe—
the theory that matter is the source
and the substance of all things. That is
(if you associate “ force ” or “ energy ”
or “motion” with your “matter,” as
every materialist does) a perfectly
arguable theory. It has not the remotest
connection with the amount of wine a
man drinks or the integrity of his life.
But we also give the name of materialism
to a certain disposition of the sentiments,
which few of us admire, and which
would kill the root of progress if it
became general. It is the disposition to
despise ideals and higher thought, to
confine one’s desires to selfish and
sensual pleasure and material advance
ment. There is no connection between
this materialism of the heart and that of
the head.
For whole centuries of
Christian history whole nations believed
abundantly in spirits without it having
the least influence on their morals;
and, on the other hand, materialists like
Ludwig Buchner, or Vogt, or Moleschott,
were idealists (in the moral sense) of the
highest order.1 Look around you and
see whether the belief or non-belief (for
the Agnostic is in the same predicament
here) in spirit is a dividing-line in conduct.
There is no ground in fact for the con
fusion, and it has wrought infinite
mischief; while it has rendered, and
1 See sketches of their lives in Last Words on
Materialism,
19
still renders, incalculable service to con
servative religion.
In his Natural History of Creation
Professor Haeckel admitted that his
monism was not far removed, from
scientific materialism. But there is still
so gross a confusion on the subject
that it is very natural for him to refuse
the name.
Indeed, he could not
logically accept it, and no one who is well
informed in recent physics will accept it,
unless he is allowed to interpret it in his
own way; a right which seems to be
denied to men like Dr. Haeckel. Glance
at any scientific work, and you will
find that it speaks as much, if not
more, about force than about matter.
Hence if critics insist on calling
materialism a belief in “dead atoms”
and “ hard atoms,” and “ solid atoms,”
and nothing else, there
are no
materialists to-day, if ever there were?
We shall see more presently about
modern notions of matter and force, but
may take it that Haeckel, in proper
scientific spirit, attaches as much im
portance to force as to matter, and does
not make any absurd attempt to derive
force from matter.1 Further, he identi
fies “ soul ” or “ spirit ” with force. Mr.
Williams says this is a polite way of
denying its existence, and Mr. Pope
would say it is an assumption.
It is
neither one nor 'the other, but a most
serious and characteristic conclusion of
Haeckel’s researches.
I am now
stating his position, not the grounds for
it (which will come in due time). He
concludes that the thinking and willing
force in man—what we call his mind or
spirit—is identical with the force that
reveals itself in light and heat. In
other words, he is forced to think that
spirit and energy are one and the same
thing, and so he uses the names in
discriminately. But he is further con
vinced, on grounds we shall see
presently, that matter and spirit (or
1 Yet even the writer of the article on Meta
physics in the 10th edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica, who devotes two columns to the
Riddle, joins in this general misrepresentation,
�20
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
force) are not two distinct entities or
natures, but two forms or two aspects of
one single reality, which he calls the
fundamental substance.
This
one
entity with the two attributes, this
matter-force substance, is the sole
reality that exists—to use a Greek word,
the motion—the one nature that presents
itself to our contemplation in the
infinitely varied panorama of the
universe.
This position is logically, as I said,
the culmination of Haeckel’s system.
For the convenience of this brief de
scription I take it as the starting point
of that network of explanations, theories,
and hypotheses which constitutes the
monistic philosophy. There is a most
important school of philosophers who
will challenge even the existence of this
matter-force substance, as we shall see
presently, but for the vast majority of
men of science, as well as of ordinary
folk, this matter-force element is the one
obvious reality. In this Haeckel’s cri
tics are at one with him. It is when
Haeckel goes on to say it is the sole —
mon-on—reality that the conflict begins.
The view which Haeckel opposes is that
there is another element in existence,
totally distinct from this matter-force
reality : that the mind of man cannot be
an evolution from the matter-force sub
stance, and that this substance itself
could not have evolved into the orderly
universe about us except under the guid
ance of a still higher intelligent principle,.
God. Now, it would be quite legitimate
to say that we are as yet so imperfectly
acquainted with this matter-force reality
that it is premature to say what it can o<cannot do. That is the Agnostic posi
tion, rejecting alike the dualist theory of
Mr. Ballard and the monistic explana
tions of Dr. Haeckel.1 But monism is
more ambitious.
Science has now
1 But I must repeat—so persistent is the mis
representation—that this agnostic position is as
antagonistic to Christianity as monism is. Its
quarrel with what it calls the premature theories
of the monist is a purely scientific or philosophical
matter, and is totally unconnected with religion.
amassed enormous quantities of facts
concerning every part and aspect of the
universe. The monist believes we can
already, with this material, sketch in
broad outline, at least, the upward
growth of the great world-substance
until it is transfigured in the beauty of
the living organism, and becomes selfconscious in the mind of man. Every
body admits to-day, says Mr. Mallock,
that the inorganic world is “an absolute
monism.”
The monist proceeds to
bring the realms of life and conscious
ness into this matter-force unity, and to
show that we are not warranted in claim
ing that its growth needs a designer or a
controller. He will go on until he has
embraced the whole life of humanity,
science, art, religion, and ethics, in his
single formula.
Do not misunderstand me to the
extent of supposing, as so many strangely
do, that the monist is bound to have a
theory ready for every phenomenon
under heaven. We find even the ablest
of Haeckel’s critics claiming that monism
breaks down here, or fails to explain
there, and then with a chant of praise
fluttering the banner of dualism in the
breach. Such a course is absurd. If
the monistic theory fails anywhere, the
next attitude that logic enforces is agnos
ticism, or reserve of judgment.
If
Haeckel’s theory of the origin of life, or
of heredity, or of consciousness, or of
morality, or of Christ, will not stand the
strain of rational examination, this does
not impair the general system of monism.
The heart of the system is (i) the affir
mation that a great matter-force sub
stance (or nature) is unrolling its poten
tialities in the universe about us
(which no one denies), and (2) that we
have no rational evidence that there exists
any other substance (or super-nature).
To say that Haeckel is bound to explain
everything or die, is a grotesque assump
tion.
He has plainly disavowed so
foolish an ambition. It may be that
before the last red rays of our dying sun
fall upon the eyes of the last of our race,
some millions of years hence, the mon-
�THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE 21
bundle of sense-impressions which he
istic philosophy will be complete. That
quite gratuitously supposes to be caused
is the “ infinitely remote goal ” he spoke
by a material object, and his stomach.is
of. But, as I said, science has already
accumulated so vast a library of know a fiction. So with the whole of material
life. It is a kinematoscopic display in
ledge that we may venture even now to
draw the outline of an extensive view of the mind—not, as far as we know, taken
from life. Berkeley opined that God
the universe in the monistic sense. That
was the operator of the instrument.
is what Dr. Haeckel does in the Riddle,
Idealists generally have dispensed with
of the Universe. He has spent half a
the operator now. The show unwinds
century in seeking truth. He has fought
itself by some occult law of the mind.
side by side with the finest scientific
thinkers of the last century in overcom In either case “ this too, too solid flesh ”
ing an historic resistance on the part of does melt, and thaw into something
the Churches. No one who is not con thinner than “an everlasting dew,”
Matter is a mental construction, force
vinced that humanity has already, at the
very beginning of its higher life, reached is the same, the world they make up
cannot be otherwise.
There is, of
the final truth, will be diverted by the
course, the agnostic position, that we
sneers and gibes of heated partisans
do not know whether this kinematoscopic
from a patient study of his conclusions.
No one who believes that truth is a panorama is a photograph, or a diagram,
of a real world, or no. But all idealists,
sacred possession, and the first condition
and they are the vast majority in philo
of lasting progress—no one who feels
sophy to-day, sternly insist that the
that dignity and sincerity are the first
matter and force which the scientist
qualities required in its pursuit—will
manipulates are mental counters; that
allow himself to be turned from the true
he is dealing with his idea of matter and
and vital issues by a petty and frivolous
force, whether or no an eternal reality
criticism of irrelevant details.
corresponds to these. Hence it is that
The plan I have adopted is to state
so many cultivated reviewers set aside
first the almost undisputed unity of the
inorganic world, then proceed to con Haeckel’s system with polite disdain.
sider its evolution, and pursue the pro His realism—his habit of talking of
cess of development through the suc matter and force as familiar objective
cessive stages of life, consciousness, and realities—is too naive.
Now this philosophy so obviously cuts
reason. But I have already said that
an important group of philosophers chal out the root of Haeckel’s system that
some of his clerical critics have put on
lenge our right even to the inorganic
superior airs and borrowed phrases from
world as a base of operations. Age
it. If the very existence of matter and
after age philosophy has rung the changes
on the familiar bells—materialism, ideal force is doubtful, clearly monism is in a
parlous state. They forget one thing.
ism, spiritualism, realism. To-day the
system in favour in the schools is ideal If idealism excludes, or throws doubt on,
the objective reality of matter, it in the
ism. According to the idealists the
same proportion destroys the Christian
naive belief of the average man that he
position. What is the meaning of the
lives in a material universe, which lay
Incarnation, or the death of Christ, or
here in space before humanity began to
the whole historic foundation of Chris
furrow its soil, and will lie there still
tianity, if the material world and its
when the last man has dropped into his
eternal tomb, is a delusion. The arch history are subjective ? Dr. Iverach sees
this very well, and warns his impetuous
sophist, Berkeley, comes along, and
colleagues. “In truth,’’ he says, “we
explains that the orange he thinks he
must arrive at a conception which leaves
is vulgarly injecting into a material
cavity he calls a stomach, is only a room for real individuality; that will
�22
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
recognise the uniqueness of every person,
and yet place every person in relation to
every other person and thing that is, has
been, or will be. It must allow reality
to history, and permit a real progress
and real events in it. It must recognise
human activity as a factor in the world’s
history, and recognise somehow that
good and evil, happiness and misery,
righteousness and sin, are not appear
ance, but stern realities, which philo
sophy and theology must deal with.”1
There are, of course, important divines
amongst the idealists, such as Dr. Caird,
but they are neither consistent nor likely
ever to be literally adopted.
The
Catholic Church is intensely realistic.
Its philosophers, Dr. Ward, Dr. Mivart,
Father Maher, Father Clark, etc., have
never yielded a step to the reigning
fashion of idealism. In a word, the
defenders of religion whom Haeckel
opposes are as “ naive realists ” as he is.
It is only the more short-sighted who
meddle with the edged tools of the
modern metaphysician.
But the philosophers themselves, the
aristocracy of the intellectual world!
Are we to go on with our construction
in total disregard of their protest ? I
believe Haeckel is quite right in doing
so. As Mr. Mallock says, these idealist
dreams are not “ the mere raving
which at first sight they seem to be.”
On the other hand, the common fashion
idealists have of saying that the man
who refuses to take them seriously must
be altogether ignorant of their philo
sophy—a species of arrogance peculiar
to idealists and Roman Catholics—is
absurd. Few cultivated men are ignorant
of their arguments.
But the average
man of science, the average historian,
and the average man of affairs, sweep
away their theory as, in the words of
Mr. Mallock, “a fantastic, though in
genious and learned, dream.2 “ If phi1 Theism in the Light of Present Science and
Philosophy, p. 305.
2 Religion as a Credible Doctrine, p. 202.
Mr. Mallock gives an admirable summary of the
system, as presented by its latest and ablest
expositor, Professor James Ward.
losophers,” he says again, “instead of
confining themselves to the solemn alti
tudes of existence . . . would conde
scend to take their examples from the
common events of life, they would avoid
many of the mistakes which expose
them to the just ridicule of the vulgar.”
The historian is hardly likely to admit
that the stupendous drama he is engaged
in reconstructing is not the real play of
living passion. The astronomer is not
prepared to see in the vast expanse of
the heavens only the unreal mirage
of his ideas.
The physicist contemp
tuously repudiates the idealist’s interpre
tation of his matter and force.
The
question is raised, said Sir A. Rucker, in
his presidential address to the British
Association in 1901, “whether our basic
conceptions are to be regarded as accu
rate descriptions of the constitution of the
universe around us, or merely convenient
fictions,” and he gave an emphatic adhe
sion to the former. His speech ended
with a claim that ether and the atom are
not mere mental fictions, not mere “ work
ing hypotheses,” but “objective realities.”
His successor in the presidency, Pro
fessor Dewar, no less strongly repudiated
“ the ancient mystifications by which a
certain school shatter the objective reality
of matter and energy.” Indeed, signs
are not wanting of a coming change
amongst the metaphysicians themselves.
The immense difficulty of explaining how
we can perceive an external world is
familiar enough to every thinking man.
But philosophy must try again.
The
material world is more convincing than
all their difficulties.
The article on
“ Metaphysics,” by Professor Case, in the
latest edition of our greatest Encyclopaedia
is one long warning that the reign, or the
nightmare, of idealism is over, and that
we shall shortly return through “the
anarchy of modern metaphysics ” (as he
says), to a normal belief in the reality of
a material world, the reality of war and
disease and poverty and ignorance, and
the rationality and validity of social
enthusiasm and scientific investigation.
With Professor Haeckel, then, we pass
�THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LA W OF SUBSTANCE
by our perplexed metaphysicians, and
smile at their supercilious comments.
We turn to the spreading panorama of
inorganic nature as the first embodiment
of the monistic substance.1
There
should be no criticism for us to meet
here, but the eagerness to deny and to
discredit and to score a point—as if we
were conducting a mimic Parliament in
some dull provincial town, instead of
being sober searchers for truth—has
been so feverish that we shall find it
breaking out into all kinds of frivolous
criticisms.
When you look up at night into the
heavens you see some three or four
thousand stars scattered through space.
Each is an incandescent sphere, rarely
less than three million miles in circum
ference, and usually separated from its
fellows by billions of miles of space. It
would take some 175,000 years to count
the distance in miles to the nearest of
them. Some of them can be proved to
be at least 1,500,000,000,000,000 miles
away. With the use of a good telescope
the number of these world-masses runs
up to more than a hundred millions.
Yet even then we seem to be only at the
fringe of the question of the magnitude
of our universe. When a telescope
containing a highly sensitive photo
graphic plate is directed to what seem to
be dark and empty parts of space, and
is kept in that position for eight or ten
hours, the plate is found to bear the
faint imprint of a fresh myriad of worlds.
They are so far distant that, though they
are 150 times more luminous than lime
light, and though the waves of light they
send us have been falling on the plate—
1 A certain school would have us admit that,
because our conviction of the reality of the
external world is incapable of demonstrative sup
port, we should grant the same privilege to the
belief in God. There is no analogy whatever.
We cannot get away from our belief in the real
world. The idealists themselves assume it in
their arguments—as when they take the physi
cist’s analysis of sound or light, to throw doubt on
our hearing or sight. There is not a particle of
this irresistibility about the idea of God. We
can trace its roots and reject it without the
slightest inconsistency.
23
a plate that would take a picture in the
merest fraction of a second in day-time
— at the rate of 700,000,000,000,000
per second, many of them fail to make the
least impression after six or eight hours’
exposure. We have no ground for sup
posing our most powerful instruments
bring us to anything like a limit to the
universe.
Is the universe infinite? Dr. Haeckel
speaks of it as infinite and eternal, and
this is just one of those typical cases
where the monist outruns the agnostic.
The criticisms which have been passed
on the phrase “ infinite ” (we shall speak
of eternity later), as applied to the
material universe, are not very dis
cerning. There are critics who imagine
that Haeckel must advance no statement
for which he cannot furnish empirical
proof; whereas he has told us from the
first page that, as a sensible thinker, he
employs his faculty of speculation
(taking care that it starts from facts) as
well as his power of observation. Then
there are critics who insist on thinking—
it is very convenient for their purpose—
that he lays the same stress on every line
of his system, and so cry “ dogmatism ”
wherever the evidence is slender. We
must approach the subject more reason
ably. The question is, does the evidence
of astronomy point in the direction of
limits or of illimitableness ? Philosophy
has nothing to say against the infinity of
the cosmos. “We have no evidence,”
says Dr. Ward, “of definite space and
time limits; quite the contrary. ... we
certainly cannot prove that the universe
as a whole is measurable and therefore
finite. And when we pass to more
purely a priori considerations, the case
against a universe with fixed and finite
limits is equally strong.”1 The idea of
a limit is in fact unthinkable, and the
evidence of astronomy is far from sug
gesting it. “Is the universe infinite?
Who can say ? ” asks Dr. Dallinger.
He refers to the fairly definite scheme of
1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, vol. i. p. 195.
Dr. Ward does not, of course, say the cosmos is
infinite.
�24
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LA W OF SUBSTANCE
our milky way, but says 11 it may be but
a complex particle in a universe of
universes, stretching on for ever and
ever over the bourneless immensity of
the unknown.”1 Briefly, what evidence
we have is totally against the idea of a
limit, and that idea is so unimaginable
that it would never have been suggested
but for theological considerations. Dr.
Haeckel prefers to rely on the scientific
indications. I reserve for a separate
chapter the discussion of Prof. Wallace’s
curious views on the subject.
The next step that science takes is to
establish the unity of this immeasurable
universe. There is no question to-day
about the identity of the matter which
composes these innumerable and widely
distant worlds. The spectroscope is a
more delicate analyst than the apparatus
of the chemist. It has detected poison
and convicted criminals where chemistry
has been mute. And the spectroscope
will tell us the chemical constituents of
Arcturus, 1,500,000,000,000,000 miles
away, as confidently as it ■will analyse
the matter in the laboratory. It needs
for its operation only a ray of light from
the matter in question. We have thus
learned that the material of the stars is
the same as that of our earth. We may
find different elements here and there;
we may find matter in states we cannot
detect or produce on earth. But the
ancient idea that the heavens were made
of a superior substance is totally dis
credited. From end to end of the
known universe matter is one. It is
also established that a more subtle form
of matter, called ether, fills the inter
stellar spaces and penetrates into the
very heart of the most solid substances.
Even the apparently rigid particles of a
1 The Creator, p. 14. Strange to say, Dr.
Dallinger immediately continues: “If that be
so, we can make no useful inference from our
finite universe ” : and shortly after actually infers
that the world was created on the ground that it
is “finite”! “What is finite begins to be,
must have been caused to be” (p. 14). If
Haeckel had proceeded in this slovenly fashion,
what an outcry there would have been.
block of iron are really swimming in
miniature oceans of ether.
But this is not unity, it is a wonderful
variety, some of the critics exclaim; you
give us ether on the one hand and some
seventy-four different kinds of ponderable
matter on the other. The latter part of
the objection is not now seriously urged.
For years the indications in chemistry
pointed towards a real unity of the chemi
cal elements, and to-day no one has any
doubt whatever that they are all multi
ples of some simpler form of atom. The
unity of oxygen, hydrogen, iron, gold, and
so on, is completely accepted. Astrono
mers have observed in some of the stars
matter which seems to be actually in a
transition stage; and physics, which has
made gigantic strides of late, seems to
have detected the same phenomenon in
its laboratories, as Sir O. Lodge points
out in his brilliant Romanes Lecture for
1903. The elements have been built
up by evolution from some simpler and
homogeneous substance. That is the
belief of all physicists and chemists, and
it is based on a mass of facts. Mr.
Ballard thinks it useful, or wise, to raise
the dust even here. He says (third
article—not the one in which he charges
Haeckel with dogmatism) that Haeckel
frankly confesses—as he does—his lack
of expert knowledge of physics, and adds
that these “ ultimate questions of mole
cular physics of necessity determine our
conceptions of the constitution of matter,
and so are fundamental to the whole of
his monistic theory.” This is mere dust
throwing. The unity of matter is a
necessary part of the monistic theory,
but this is given in the commonest and
the finest manuals of physics as an
established and accepted truth; how the
various elements arose from one form of
matter is a subject of merely speculative
interest to Dr. Haeckel, and is not yet
settled. But Mr. Ballard plunges deeper,
and says Haeckel’s confession of weak
ness in physics “ does not prevent his
recommending ‘ the brilliant pyknotic
theory ’ of J. C. Vogt to the acceptance
of every biologist.” Then he begs the
�THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE 25
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND
reader to study the stale criticisms of
Mr. Stallo “before accepting the VogtHaeckel theory as final,” and later says
Haeckel “decides that the conception
which best suits his purpose is the one
to be generally received.”
He then
reads a lesson on the impropriety of
misleading people, and, finally, after a
bewilderingly tortuous run, appeals to
the expert physicists Stewart and Tait
and Lord Kelvin to prove—quite irrele
vantly—that there is a Supreme Being.
The whole passage is too ludicrous to
analyse in detail, but I must point out
two things. Firstly, Mr. Ballard has no
more doubt than I have of the unity, of
matter, which is the only serious point
in question; Haeckel can fit into his
system any theory of the. evolution of
matter that physicists decide to adopt.
Secondly, Mr. Ballard quite misrepre
sents Haeckel’s attitude towards the
“pyknotic theory.” He does not say
“it is the one to be generally received,”
but says (p. 78) he “thinks it will prove
more acceptable to every biologist who
believes in the unity of nature” than
the other theory. The foolishness of
the whole episode is seen when one
reflects that this somewhat old (1891)
theory of Vogt’s is infinitely nearer to
the theories which are being discussed
to-day than the “ kinetic ” theory which
he dislikes.
The unity of all ponderable matter is,
then, an accepted doctrine, but we meet
fresh difficulties when we turn to ask if
there is a unity of ponderable and im
ponderable matter (or ether). . Here, in
deed, we meet a critic of a friendly dis
position whom it is courteous to hear. A
writer in the Reformer says, “ it will be
news to most of us that the ether is. the
original and fundamental matter, since
it is in its properties, so far as known,
pretty nearly the antithesis of all we
understand by material ”; and he
describes ether as “a material substance
which has none of the properties of
matter, and has most of those usually
associated with spirit.” Whether ether
has the properties of spirit or no depends
on what we mean by spirit. Theologians
mean nothing like ether, but spiritists
(who seem to be generally materialists
unconsciously) frequently do.
In any
case both Sir O. Lodge and Sir A.
Rucker meet the objection for us. Sir O.
Lodge, in his Romanes Lecture (1903),
says some physicists admit two kinds of
inertia, and he himself boldly advocates
the unity of electricity and ponderable
matter. “ An electric charge,” he says
(p. 4), “ possesses the most fundamental
and characteristic properties of matter,
viz., mass or inertia.” Sir A. Rucker, in
his presidential speech (1901), sweeps
the objection away as unphilosophical.
“ We cannot,” he says, “ explain things by
the things themselves.
If it be true
that the properties of matter are the
product of an underlying machinery,
that machinery cannot itself have the
properties which it produces, and must,
to that extent at all events, differ from
matter in bulk as it is directly presented
to the senses.”1 The affinity of ether
and ponderable matter is not questioned
in science, whatever the actual degree
of affinity may prove to be. And the
proof is advancing rapidly. I have said
that the astro-physicist finds a . transi
tional matter in the heavenly bodies, and
now the terrestrial physicist announces 2
that in his experiments with the new
element, radium, he witnesses the actual
break-down of the ponderable atom into
a form of matter he associates with
electricity. In fact, every modern theory
1 These principles also dispose of the critic in
Light who finds Haeckel “very uneasy” at
having to fit ether into his scheme, and thinks
his “ annexing ” it is “desperate work at this
hour of the day.” Seeing that the whole trend
of physics has been ever since in the direction
which Haeckel follows, I should say the criticism
is “ desperate work.” Light thinks ether is
“ending the old materialism ” and making for
spiritist monism. As I said, it depends what
you mean by spirit. Religious philosophy has
always meant “ unextended substance.
Ether
is just as quantitative as the most ponderable of
the elements.
2 See Sir O. Lodge’s Romanes Lecture, 1903,
and the discussion at the recent British Associa
tion meeting.
�26
™E miTY 0F ™E WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
of the atom implies its origin from ether,
’
what does Haeckel mean by making this
or their common origin.
’
reality, or substance, of which they are
Haeckel is, therefore, fully justified in
the . manifestations, the central mystery
taking from physics and chemistry his
of life at one moment, and doubting its
thesis of the unity of matter. No man
very existence the next ? A patient ex
of science disputes it, and it is a purely
amination of what Haeckel says, and a
scientific question. With regard to the
little less eagerness to score rhetorical
unity of force, there is even less difficulty.
It is now notorious that the forces of the points, would have enabled Mr. Rhondda
Williams and other critics to see what
universe are interchangeable, and are
he meant. He warned them that the
regarded in physics as so many varieties Riddle'^ a sort of “sketch-book,” and
(chiefly differentiated by wave-movements
they might have expected a lack of com
of different lengths) of one fundamental
plete harmony of expression. Haeckel
energy. I am not, of course, including says (p. 134): “We must even grant that
here the disputed “ vital force ” and the
this essence of substance [more cor
human soul, which later chapters will
rectly, the essence of this substance]
discuss. But the unity of the forces with becomes more mysterious and enigmatic
which the physical sciences deal is beyond the deeper we penetrate into the know
dispute. We have thus so far simplified
ledge of its attributes, matter and energy,
the visible universe as to detect beneath and the more thoroughly we study its
its kaleidoscopic variety the operation of
countless phenomenal forms and their
one form of force and one form of matter evolution. We do not know the ‘thing
from end to end of the universe. The
in itself’ that lies behind these know
next and final step as far as the unity of able phenomena. But why trouble about
the material universe is concerned is to
this enigmatic ‘thing in itself’ when
bring together this matter and force
we have no means of investigating it,
themselves.
when we do not even clearly know
Dr. Haeckel has done this by saying whether it exists or no ? ” The Greeks
that matter and force (or spirit) are “ the long ago started the notion that the
two fundamental attributes, or principal properties or attributes of a thing were
properties, of the all-embracing divine
really distinct from its substance. The
essence of the world, the universal sub mediaeval philosophers made them as
stance.” He further admits that “ the distinct as the skin is from a potato, and
innermost character ” of this substance so it became a general custom to speak
is still totally unexplored; and in the end
of the essence or substance of a thing as
seems to question its existence altogether being hidden within or underneath a
(P- I34)- Here, of course, the critics
shell of properties. The senses stopped
are active. In the first place let us
short at the shell, but the intellect some
examine the alleged arbitrariness of this
how penetrated to the kernel. Kant’s
conjunction of matter and force. It is
critical philosophy destroyed this sup
a perfectly sound scientific and philo posed privilege of the intellect, but
sophic procedure. We not only know substituted for the substance-and-prono form of matter without force, but we perties idea the equally false and arbi
cannot imagine it. It could not act on trary notion of phenomena (qualities or
our organs of perception. On the other attributes that reach the senses) and
hand, we know no force apart from matter noumena (or “ things-in-themselves,”
(or ether). Force seems to be always which would be food for the intellect, if
embodied or substantiated in matter.
it could reach them). In both cases
Each is an incomplete reality; or, rather,
there is the veil of phenomena, or pro
they are two sides, or two different mani perties (colour, sound, shape, etc.), and
festations, of one reality.
That is in the veiled and inaccessible substance,
full accord with scientific teaching. But j <or essence, or noumenon. Now, many
�THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE
of us deny to-day that there is any solid
ground for the distinction at all, and that
is what Haeckel means. You say, he
argues, that matter and force are only
phenomena, and that there is an under
lying “thing-in-itself.” If there is, he
says, it is as mysterious as ever; but I
see no good reason at all for thinking
that matter and force are a screen or
veil hiding something else. They are
the one eternal substance or reality. It
is a pure fallacy to say tnat in oidinary
experience we are dealing with a shell, of
properties or phenomena, and not with
the realities themselves.
Therefore—
logic sternly enjoining us never to multi
ply entities without necessity—I take it
that matter and force are the world-sub
stance breaking upon our perception in
two different ways.1
To illustrate the point , further, and to
meet a further class of critics, let us hear
what science says about these properties
or phenomena of things. Let us take
the familiar ones, sound and colour,
Are you unaware, we are severely asked,
that science has shown these to be
totally subjective ? Yes, I am quite un
aware ", though I know perfectly well
what science has done. I am writing
over a green table-cloth. Science tells
me that this really means that the
material covering my table, is of such a
molecular texture that it absorbs. a
number of the waves of sun-light which
fall upon it, and only reflects the blue
and yellow waves. These it sends to my
retina at the rate of some hundred
billion per second: they cause a
peculiar movement in my optic nerve,
and finally in my brain, and—I see green.
So, as I write, the clock strikes twelve.
That is to say, the metal molecules of
the bell are thrown into a violent
oscillation; they cause waves in the
surrounding atmosphere; and the in
tricate mechanism of the ear turns these
into a modification of my auscultory
nerve and brain. And all this elaborate
description of objective movements and
objective agencies is supposed, to.have
made colour and sound “subjective.!
In point of fact, it has done away, with
the old shell of properties (though, it is a
question how far people ever did say
their sensations of colour and sound
were objective) and brought us into
direct touch with realities. And as all
the unnumbered objects about us con
stitute, fundamentally, one matter and
one force, we are face to face with the
one fundamental reality. We do not
“ know all about it.”
That is the
grossest perversion of Haeckel’s words.
To borrow the fine metaphor of Sir A.
Rucker, we see it in a light that is still
dim, but we see it. It is for the future
to complete the outline and fill in the
detail, as the light grows.1
Thus we have given in terms of
science the world substance, the matter
force reality, which is the constructive
starting point of Monism. The res^
our work consists in eliminating the
additional substances or forces which
theists, spiritualists, or supernaturalists
would compel us to add to it. It only
remains here to say a word of what
Haeckel calls the fundamental “law of
substance.” And first as to Haeckels
idea of a “law.” A fair-minded re
viewer in the Inquirer (March 9, 1901)
says: “The distinguished author seems
to have failed to see that to imagine a
law as an active power is every whit as
‘ anthropomorphic ’ as to imagine a God
of manlike form as feeling.” A writer in
Knowledge (January 30, 1901)—from
whom the Inquirer probably borrowed—
1 From these principles the reader can answer
for himself the often-heard criticism : You build
up the universe by matter and force, but what
do you really know about matter and force themselves ? The answer is : Go to a good library,
and ask for a few recent manuals of astronomy,
geology, chemistry, physics, and physiology. If
they do not deal with matter and force,, they
deal with fictions. The fallacy of the criticism
1 And that is not only the literal, but the only
is, of course, that science deals with this lmposrational, meaning of “phenomenon.”
Prof.
I torly shell of “ phenomena,” and does not reach
Haeckel readily endorses my explanation of his
I the “ essence ” or the “ underlying reality.”
position.
�28
THE UNITY OF THE WORLD, AND THE LA W OF SUBSTANCE
puts it as strongly : “ To scientific minds
tion of energy—which are, said the
who regard laws of nature as merely con Manchester Guardian critic, “precisely
ceptual formulae summing up certain
the oldest of all man’s discoveries in
sequences of experience, it may seem
the cosmological field.”
No particle
that to replace a deliberate architect and
of matter is ever annihilated or created ;
ruler of the world by 1 the eternal iron
that is the first axiom. Recent experi
laws of nature ’ is to be guilty of an
ments have actually seen the break
anthropomorphism precisely analogous to down of what has been called the
those on which the illustrious author
atom, and have seen particles chipped
pours contempt,” and he says, “ evolution off it; but only another form of matter
travels through the book like a creator is produced. The observations have
in disguise.” It would be rather curious
been so broad that physicists have felt
if one of the ablest living scientists did justified in concluding that indestructi
not know what science means by “ a law.”
bility or permanence is a property of
I .say science, because there is here no
matter. The same has been experi
discrepancy of views. That “ law ” only mentally demonstrated of force.1 Both
means “a summing-up of experience,” a are constant in quantity, though ever
uniform mode of action of this or that changing in form and distribution.
force, is a platitude of natural science.
Since we have seen reason for associat
Said Professor Dewar in his Presidential ing matter and force so closely, it is
Speech: “ When the scientist speaks of necessary to combine the two axioms
‘ a law of nature ’ he simply indicates a likewise. The great fundamental reality
sequence of events, which, so far as his
is constant or permanent amidst all its
experience goes, is invariable, and which qualitative changes. That is the first
therefore enables him to predict.” But and firmest law or feature of the monistic
the “law,” or mode of operation, of an
substance.
agency is so closely connected in our
We have now seen that Professor
minds with the agency itself that we fre Haeckel is in full accord with the latest
quently substitute the one for the other.
scientific teaching in his doctrine of the
It is strange to hear that this deceives
unity of the visible world. We have
any one.1 When a scientist speaks of the
seen(i) that matter and force are
law of gravitation, or the law of evolution,
realities; (2) that there is at bottom one
producing or compelling certain results,’
supreme form of each; (3) that there is
he invariably means the force of gravita no reason for holding them to be
tion or the agencies of evolution.
distinct realities, and so we unite them
We come, finally, to what Mr. Ballard as aspects of one substance or reality;
strangely calls Haeckel’s “ irrational law and (4) that this substance is, as far as
of substance.” The law of substance is extended observation goes, constant and
one of the most undoubted truths of indestructible in its quantity. We may
modern science. It is merely the union
now proceed to consider the evolution of
in one sentence of two of the proudest this matter-force reality into the infinite
results of modern physics, the inde complexity of the visible universe.
structibility of matter and the conserva{( 1 Does any one quarrel with us for saying that
“the law” compels us to pay taxes, and so
forth ?
1.'^s 10 t^le difficulty alleged to rise from
radio-action, Sir O. Lodge says there was
“never any ground” for concern about the
theory.
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
29
Chapter III
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
Dr. Iverach says, or it may have been one
hundred or more, as others think—the
part of space we occupy was filled with
a cloud (not necessarily a “ fire-mist ”) of
infinitely attenuated matter. By the
action of its inherent and natural forces
this nebular matter entered upon a pro
cess of condensation and disruption.
Portions of it—whether or no they were
cast off in the form of rings, which
broke into irregular masses—condensed
into the several planets of our system,
and were set in revolution round the
central mass. This central mass, the
sun, is still condensing and pouring out
the heat which its compression causes.
The smaller masses, such as the earth,
cooled in time and formed a solid crust
at their surface. This outline is
accepted by all educated people to-day.
Quibbles about the details of the pro
cess are best left to expert astronomers
to deal with.
Our solar system is as a single snow
flake in a shower, but we have already
seen that it in every verifiable way
resembles its fellow flakes. It is of the
same stuff as they, and is ruled by the
same laws or forces. We have un
deniable ground to extend our nebular
theory to other worlds than ours, and
take it as the key to the formation of
all the stars that fill the immeasurable
heavens.
Indeed, we find worlds in
every stage of development, as required
by the theory, when we sweep the sky
at night.
We find nebulse stretching
sometimes over billions of miles (as
the nebula in Orion), and patches cut
out of them, as it were, to form stars.
We find clusters of thousands of stars
(as the Pleiades) with the remnants
still clinging to them of the gigantic
nebula they were developed from. We
1 Theism in the Light of Present Science and
find nebulse and stars illustrating almost
Philosophy, p. 35.
Where shall we begin in a descrip
tion of the growth of the universe?
Can we go back' to a stage beyond
which the imagination cannot penetrate
with its ceaseless questioning? It is
impossible for us to hope ever to do
this. Wherever we start in our con
struction, we shall start with positive
building material, and the imagination,
if not reason, will ask endless questions
about its previous history. All that we
can do is to set out from a definite and
recognised point, the nebula from which
our particular solar system has been
formed. From this, once we have
traced the broad lines of the evolution
of our sun and planets, we may, in. the
light of the discoveries and speculations
of modern science, look back into the
appalling abysses of past time and out
over the boundless panorama of the
universe.
With what is known as the nebular
hypothesis we need not linger. Haeckel
has sketched the outline of the theory,
and there is no relevant criticism of it.
“ There is no doubt,” says Dr. Iverach,
“ that some form of the nebular theory
is true.”1 There are clerical writers
who seem to think it profitable in some
obscure way to point out defects in the
theory, or to prove that the evidence for
it is not overwhelming. What they
gain by such efforts is not clear. The
question has long since passed beyond
the sphere of theology. Catholic
astronomers like Miss Agnes Clerke
accept it as eagerly as atheists. No
man of science entertains the smallest
doubt to-day that it correctly describes
in outline the formation of our solar
system. Once upon a time—it may
have been fifty million years ago, as
�3o
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
every step of the process.
We find
dark stars, extinct suns, which point
to the complete accomplishment of
such a process.
Astronomers are of
late years disposed to think the number
of these extinct suns is enormous.
Moreover, at times a new star flames out
in the sky, announcing the recommence
ment somewhere of the familiar drama
of world-formation.
In a word, the evidence of astronomy
forbids us to look upon the evolution
of the material universe as a continuous
process in a straight line of which we
might picture a definite beginning
and for which we might anticipate a
definite end.
The life-force of the
great substance only dies down in one
corner of space to be relit in another.
The dark stars which indubitably have
run their million-year long course are
only waiting to be reanimated by collision
or some other cosmic accident.
The
nebulae are embryonic worlds before our
own eyes. The blue-white stars are in
the prime of life. The red stars (with
certain peculiarities) are slowly dying,
but may rise again any day from their
tombs. Science, as Dr. Mivart said in
Truth, “ points to no beginning.” Nor
does it help us to approach the subject
from another point of view. We have
not only the evolution of cosmic masses
to explain, but the evolution of the
chemical elements themselves, or of
ponderable matter, from the finer
medium from which all physicists
believe it has been developed. If we
had any scientific evidence which
justified us in going back to a stage
when ether (or whatever the “ prothyl ”
may turn out to be) alone existed; and
could then show how atoms of ponder
able matter arose by condensation of it,
or by the formation of vortices in it;
and could see these atoms being
grouped into the complex atoms of
oxygen, gold, sulphur, &c.; and could
further, trace their aggregation into
meteorites, and the meteorites into
nebulae, and the nebulae into solar
systems—even then we should in
reality be no nearer the beginning.
The “ prothyl ” (or “ first matter,” a
name which does very well to designate
the much-sought elementary substance)
might very well be only the last term of
a previous universe-drama. The cyclic
process may have gone on for ever as
far as science can tell. But in point of
fact the universe does not as yet give
indications of any such continuous
process.
The universe is developed
piecemeal, star by star. The hundred
millions that we see shining to-day are
by no means “the universe.”
We have here a drama of life and
death on an almost inconceivable scale,
but the point I want to bring out is that
even the most daring speculations of
science bring us no nearer to a begin
ning than we are to-day. Dr. Haeckel
has been roundly abused for speaking of
the universe as eternal. I think it is
quite clear that, if we confine ourselves
to scientific considerations, he is using a
very proper kind of language. Here is
a matter-force reality which is constant
and indestructible in its ultimate quan
tity ; and though we can go back millions
of years on solid evidence, and billions
of years on fair speculation, we find no
more suggestion of a limit in time than
we did in regard to space. Certainly,
the greatest number of billions of years
we could imagine would not be nearer
to eternity than a day is. I merely say
that if any one suggests a limit in time
for the cosmic process he will not find
the shadow of a justification in science.
Critics seem at times to employ a curious
logic in dealing with this question.
“Finiteness” and “infinity” are words
with a strong odour of metaphysics about
them. Let us take it that it is a question
simply whether the universe had a be
ginning.
Now, some critics naively
assume that it is our place to prove that
the universe, or matter, or force, or
motion, never had a beginning. That
is a novel kind of logic. Here is the
universe given, and if any one makes the
very pregnant and formidable assertion
that there was a time when it did not
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
exist, and that it came into existence
out of nothing, he must have. a very
positive and firm ground for his asser
tion. As far as scientific experience of
matter and force (or motion) goes, they
are not entities that slip in and out of
existence, but are constant. Yet we
have Mr. Rhondda Williams talking of
“ the mystery of the primitive push ” as
having always been the great difficulty
of mechanism. He tries at first to make
a scientific difficulty of it: “ Galileo,
the founder of physical science, laid it
down as the first principle of dynamics,
that every movement of matter could
only be explained by another movement
of matter, and that has been a recognised
principle of science ever since.” 1 Well,
that looks like a very strong confirma
tion of Haeckel’s thesis that matter and
motion must be eternal. But Mr. Wil
liams goes on : “ The difficulty was to
explain how matter began to move, what
caused the first movement, what gave
the primitive push ? ” But science, we
have seen, knows nothing whatever about
any “ primitive push.” It is a purely
gratuitous assumption. Dr. Horton might
refer us to “ the matchless revelation of
Genesis,” and we might suggest that the
Babylonian astronomers of 6,000 years
ago are not very safe guides. Mr. Wil
liams is content to assume the fact of
this “primitive push” without saying
why he thinks there was one. More
than that, he is greatly excited because
Haeckel declines to attempt to explain
it until some good reason has been
shown for thinking there ever was such
a thing. He tell his admiring audience
that Haeckel says “ the origin of move
ment is no difficulty because it never did
originate, he explains by simply denying !
What evidence does he adduce ? Abso
lutely none.” Dr. Haeckel, one would
think, can hardly be expected to spend
time in finding scientific proofs for the
first chapter of Genesis. His position is
negative. Eternity is a negative concept.
We do not prove negations in logic, or
1 Does Science Destroy Religion? (p. 13).
31
in real life. Mr. Williams further says
he has no objection to Haeckel holding
this “as a belief,” but he “does object
to his contention that this type of monism
is based upon empirical investigation.”
This is an unfortunate confusion. The
essence of Haeckel’s position is negative.
But he goes beyond the agnostic chiefly
on the ground of (1) the astronomical
evidence, and (2) the constancy of
matter; and those constitute empirical
evidence.
But to take them as more
than suggestions, and to ask empirical
proof that the world is eternal is rather
funny.
Finally, Mr. Williams says
Haeckel is equally unsatisfactory, about
the origin of consciousness. This just
illustrates Mr. Williams’s essential con
fusion. We know that consciousness
had a beginning, so there is no analogy ;
and in point of fact Haeckel, as we shall
see, devotes whole chapters to the origin
of consciousness.
Now this is a fair illustration of the
dreadful confusion which rules in the
minds of the people who put on very
superior airs about Haeckel’s “ dog
matic ” affirmation that the universe is
infinite and eternal. They almost al
ways assume, often in sweet unconscious
ness, this most important thesis that
there was a time when matter or motion
was not. It is one of the largest asser
tions that was ever made on the poorest
of sophisms. The scientific evidence,
such as it is, favours Haeckel’s negative
attitude.1 Philosophy is equally mute.
1 It is true that Mr. Mallock thinks one might
plausibly infer from what is called the entropy of
the universe that it had a beginning. This is the
only case where Mr. Mallock allows that scientific
evidence even seems to help theism. But we
shall soon see that the theory of entropy is totally
unable to bear the strain of such an inference.
Sir J. W. Dawson, one of the scientists Mr. Bal
lard raises from the dead to answer the Riddle,
says science does not regard the universe as
eternal “because, when we interrogate it as to
the particular things known to constitute the
heavens and the earth, it appears that we can
trace all of them to beginnings at more or less
definite points of past time.” Even at the time
this was written it was false in fact and unsound
in logic.
�32
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
The Greeks held that matter was eternal.
“It is not more difficult,” says Mr.
Mallock, “to suppose an eternal, self
existing and self-energising substance
than it is to suppose an eternal and
self-energising God.” But Christian
scholars have, in the interest of dogma,
tried to prove that the universe must
have had a beginning. We have seen
how Dr. Dallinger skipped from “ bourne
less immensity ” to “ finiteness,” and
concluded that “ what is finite begins to
be.” The last link of his curious chain
is hardly better than the others. Dr.
Iverach suggests the argument, but
abandons it (Ch. I., Christianity and
Evolution}. Dr. W. N. Clarke says:
“The things that we behold, mutable
though magnificent, bear the marks, not
of original, but of dependent existence.
Somehow existence has been caused.”1
Such an argument could only be
elaborated with the aid of a mediseval
metaphysic which we do not take to-day
as a measure of things. Dr. Clarke,
indeed, retreats to the position that even
if it were eternal we should need a
“ character-giving Spirit ” along with it;
a point we shall discuss later.
To sum up: neither philosophy nor
science points to a beginning of the
scheme of things. In view of the con
stancy of matter and the inconceivability
of a creation out of nothing, very strong
evidence would have been required to
make us accept this beginning. As it is,
the only source of the assertion is the
first line of Genesis and a concern for
theistic evidence. Professor Haeckel
has preferred to be guided by the sug
gestions or indications afforded by
scientific evidence. “ Science points to
no beginning,” as Mivart wrote. “We
have no evidence of definite space and
time limits; quite the contrary. . . .
And when we pass to more purely
a priori considerations, the case against
a universe with fixed and finite limits is
equally strong.” 2 Every effort to assign
1 An Outline of Christian Theology, p. 109.
2 l’rof J. Ward, quoted previously.
a beginning fails. We should never have
heard of it but for “ the matchless reve
lation of Genesis.”
Let us now turn to consider whether
science has anything to say with regard
to the end of the universe. As far as
our solar system is concerned, the
teaching of science is firm. Our sun
can only sustain his terrible vitality by
shrinking a certain number of feet every
century. He is doomed, as far as
astronomy can see, to die, like the dark
stars that already lie in the vast cemetery
of space. The air and water will dis
appear from the surface of our planet,
and for a time the heat of the sun will
beat upon the white tomb of all the
hopes and all the achievements of
humanity. The moon is the skeleton
at our feast. Its yawning sepulchre
points out the fate that awaits us.
Thou too, oh earth—thine empires, lands, and
seas—
Least, with thy stars, of all the galaxies,
Globed from the drift like these, like these
thou too
Shalt go. Thou art going, hour by hour, like
these.1
Perhaps Jupiter and Saturn will even
then teem with life, and their astronomers
study nightly the scarred and silent face
of the planet we enliven to-day.2 But
from planet to planet the hand of death
will travel. Then one by one, astrono
mers believe, the planets will fall into
the shrinking bosom of the sun and eke
out its failing vitality. At last the
blood-red sun will die out, and continue
to speed through space at twelve miles
a second, a dark, solid, silent, and
gigantic sepulchre. Physicists talk of
ten million years. It is an hour in
eternity.
1 Mr. Mallock’s Lucretius.
2 When Prof. Lionel Beale says (Vitality,
p. 4) that “ the more recent discoveries as to the
constitution of our sun and the planets as well
as the fixed stars, render it most improbable that
life exists in these or other orbs,” one can only
gasp with astonishment. There is no truth
whatever in it; and the mere idea of people
living in the stars—at a temperature of several
thousand degrees—makes one uncomfortable.
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
For this is only a relative end. The
whole hundred-million-year drama of our
history will be, in our present cosmical
perspective, only the subsidence of a
tiny ripple on the bosom of an illimitable
ocean. Millions of similar dramas had
been played out before ours began; and
when silence shall have fallen succes
sively on the planets of our system, the
great nebulae that lie against the back
ground of space will be but waking into
existence. Moreover, the dark stars, and
the new stars that appear at times in the
heavens, point to an indefinite prolonga
tion of the process. The colliding of two
of these extinct suns—two globes of per
haps 800,000 miles diameter (like the dark
companion of Algol)-—would generate
heat enough to reduce them to a nebu
lous mass, pouring out for millions, if not
billions, of miles ; and the force of gravi
tation would ensure a further condensa
tion and world-formation. Actual collision
is, indeed, net believed to be necessary ;
in cases an approach within a few million
miles is believed to have led to a stellar
conflagration. Moreover, there are stars
so stupendous (take Arcturus, for in
stance), and moving at such inconceivable
speed through the universe, that we can
only look upon them as destructive
anarchists.
The universe, taken as a
whole, has all the appearance and promise
of “ perpetual motion.”
Recent writers have, however, appealed
to the theory of entropy as a scientific
indication of an end of the process.
Briefly, all energy can be (and is daily)
converted into heat, but heat is not all
reconverted into electricity, &c. This
seems to forecast a time when all the
working energy of the universe will be
dissipated, or lost in a generally diffused
heat.
Mr. Mallock has pointed out
(though Lord Grimthorpe and others had
done so years ago) that if this were true
the universe cannot have been eternal.
We should have reached the final stage
long ago. Haeckel has described and re
jected the theory. It only remains for me
to show how the very latest pronounce
ments of science quite confirm his posi
33
tion. Physicists generally are by no means
disposed to allow that, because in our
laboratories a certain quantity of the heat
force cannot be reconverted, we may
jump to a cosmic conclusion on the
matter. Mr. Mallock admits that many
physicists reject it altogether, “ but
since others equally eminent maintain
that there is no escape from it—so far at
least as our present knowledge extends
—it is necessary to consider how it may
bear on the point at issue.”
The
parenthetic clause contains the essential
weakness of the theory. It assumes an
acquaintance with cosmic processes
which science is very far from possessing.
Sir O. Lodge deals with the point
incidentally in his recent Romanes
Lecture. “ So long,” he says, “ as there
is only a force of one sign at work it
would seem that ultimately the regenera
tive process must come to an end. The
repellent force exerted by light upon
small particles, however, must not be
forgotten ; and there are other possibili
ties.”
These possibilities have been
emphasised by the most recent discoveries
in physics, in connection with radio
action, so that Haeckel was more than
justified in declining to accept the hasty
and unwarranted conclusions of the
entropists.
Sir O. Lodge suggests an analogous
theory with regard to matter—a kind of
entropy of matter—but he suggests only
to reject it. He and many distinguished
physicists see in the phenomena of
radium, which have so greatly agitated
the world of physicists of late, an actual
breakdown of the atom. Electrons (units
of electricity) are detached from matter
at an electrode, and it is believed that
these electrons are really “ bits chipped
off” the .Acr'0 It is a “reasonable
hypothesis ” that an atom of ponderable
matter is made up of these electrons.
An atom of hydrogen is something like
the hundred-millionth of a centimetre in
diameter; yet an electron has only about
one-thousandth the mass of an atom of
hydrogen.
It is calculated that 700
electrons would go to make the hydrogen
c
�34
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
atom, 11,200 to make the atom of oxy
gen, and so on with the other elements.
Not that these electrons are to be pic
tured as locked in each other’s embraces
to form a solid atom. If the atom were
magnified to the size of the Sheldonian
Theatre, its constituent electrons would
be “ like full-stops flying about the
room.” They occupy the atom by their
forceful activity, not by bulk. These
electrons are thought to be the ultimate
units of which the atoms of ponderable
elements are built—though no doubt Sir
Oliver would allow that there remains
the question of the formation of these
electrons themselves from a continuous
medium.
But the most curious fact
is that in the experiments on radium
the atoms seem to disintegrate and give
rise to other forms of matter, which break
up in their turn. This seems to point to
a dissipation of matter into electrons cor
responding to the dissipation of force into
heat. But Sir O. Lodge reminds us at
once of the impropriety of founding such
large cosmic theories on our laboratory
experiments. ‘'‘There may be regenera
tion as well as degeneration,” he urges,
and he points to the analogy of the
collision of stars.1 Theoretical physics
is making rapid pace to-day—too rapid,
some physicists say. But the whole of
its recent discoveries and speculations go
to confirm those physical theorems which
Professor Haeckel took from the physics
of the time when he wrote (1890-5), and
built into the structure of his system—viz., the unity of matter and force, the
indestructibility of matter and conserva
tion of energy, and the evolution of the
ponderable out of imponderable matter
and its natural aggregation, by gravita
tion, into nebulae and solar systems.
Monism can easily acccrr.modace itself to
any rectifications of the details of these
theorems.
1 On the whole question see the Romanes
Lecture for 1903—which recalls the brilliant
expository work of Professor Tyndall—and the
proceedings of the Physical and Mathematical
Section at the meeting of the British Association,
September, 1903.
We are thus made acquainted with the
second great law of the universal matter
force reality—evolution. Avoiding meta
physical and abstract formulas, and keep
ing as closely as possible to the facts of
science, we learn from the study of in
animate nature that the life of this
great reality stretches as far behind and
before us in time as its substance
stretches over the abysses of space. We
find it in a condition of orderly and con
tinuous development. Chronologically,
we cannot reach back to any stage of the
process where we discover a continuous
and homogeneous form of matter and
force diffused through space.
But phy
sical analysis brings us almost within
sight of such a “ prothyl ” (first-matter)
and of the connecting link between
ponderable and imponderable matter.
If we can to-day witness the disintegra
tion of the atom, we are completely
justified in forming theories of its inte
gration ; and the theories find strong
empirical confirmation in the astro-phy
sical observations. We can trace the
upward growth of our “ prothyl ” into
the familiar chemical elements with their
immense variety of properties—and it
may be noted, in face of the recru
descence of old metaphysical theories
as to these new properties, that the new
elements (formed in radio-action, for
instance) sometimes only acquire their
distinctive qualities with very sensible
gradations. The titanic forces of the
universe—already differentiated into
heat, electricity, gravitation, &c.—mould
the new-formed matter into meteorites,
nebulae, stars, and solar systems. Man
looks about him on a vast and restless
ocean of being, on the surface of which
the life of his whole race is no more
than a momentary bubble.
There are two points to be considered
before we follow Dr. Haeckel into the
more contentious field of biological evo
lution in which he possesses an almost
unique authority.
We have to meet
the charge that Haeckel tries to bully
and depress us with the magnitude of
this “ cosmological perspective,” and we
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
must see how far his opponents accept
this teaching of modern science. Mr.
Ballard declares that this “ latest pseudo
gospel from Jena is as miserably be
littling and depressing as it is intellec
tually invalid and practically unwork
able.” A^critic in the Daily Chronicle
expresses the same sentiment (as to
depression), and it has been repeated
by many of the reviewers. There is an
excellent English proverb about the
proof of a pudding which might have
saved these writers if they had heeded
it. Haeckel himself is by no means
depressed by his “ cosmological perspec
tive,” if he is saddened at times by the
slow progress of truth. No Rationalist
is ever heard to complain of or to betray
the faintest depression at his position.
Sometimes, indeed, with that marvellous
alacrity of his, the theologian flies to
the other extreme, and says the Ration
alist must infallibly come to the practical
conclusion to eat and drink and be
merry. It is curious that we, who are
credited at times with making too much
use of reason, should be held to make
so little use of it in the ordering of our
lives. Quite certainly one effect of this
perception of our infinite littleness in
the universe at large, with its yawning
cosmic sepulchres on every side, is to
make us eager to enjoy our present life.
Quite certainly we say to ourselves, in
the words of Omar,
“ Ah ! make the most of what we yet may spend
Before we too into the dust descend.
Dust into dust, and under dust to lie,
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and sans
end.”
«Ve have not the remotest idea of
being depressed or bullied by the im
mensity of the universe or its sepulchral
aspect. That would be folly, not ra
tionalism. Moreover, it would be equal
folly to plunge into those sensual depths
which are so strangely said to be the
alternative to depression. Life is too
precious a thing to be squandered on
every impulse. Its potentialities must
be reasoned out. The promise and the
35
prospect of developing its higher gifts
must be pondered. Science, art, litera
ture, social and political activity, refined
intercourse, and sweet homes—those are
the most precious gifts life offers to us.
We are rationalistic enough to prefer the
higher to the lower, to prefer gladness to
depression.
The objection is, in fact, a purely
captious one. Haeckel’s belittlement of
man is relative. It aims at discrediting
the traditional and arrogant doctrine of
man’s uniqueness, which has done so
much to obstruct the advance of truth
in the nineteenth century. Even if it
were depressing to learn that we are not
compacted of a special material, and that
the universe is not a toy-theatre for us to
play our parts on before the angels, we
should welcome the truth and speak it.
The code of morals that consults our
likes and dislikes does not find favour
amongst Rationalists. But depressing
the truth certainly is not; and it is only
belittling in a narrow, comparative sense.
One of Haeckel’s critics proceeds to
show that, “ if we look at evolution from
above downwards, man is still the chief
thing in the universe.” With a passing
reminder that we do not know the whole
of evolution—we do not know what the
process may have produced in other
planets—we need only say that here is,
of course, another aspect of the question.
But to suppose that it has been over
looked, and that the belittlement is other
than comparative, is quite gratuitous.
The last point we have to deal with
here is: What is the attitude of the
opponents of Monism on the teaching
we have seen thus far ? As far as the
inorganic universe is concerned, they
accept the teaching of science, and are
usually content to add to it a theistic
supplement. They generally deny, as
we saw, the infinity and eternity of the
universe; and we have discussed the
grounds of their denial. The more
impetuous and less informed of them
have some vague notion of rendering
service to religion by criticising (for the
edification of their followers) every
�36
*
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
advance of scientific theory. Even Dr.
Dallinger protests that the nebular
hypothesis is not “an undisputed and
established fact of modern science.”
Others, like Mr. Ballard, recommend the
study of sceptical writers like Stallo.
All these petty criticisms might profitably
be left out of religious controversy.
They tend to no conclusion now. There
was a time when theistic evidence meant
the detection of gaps in the scientific
view of the world, and a rush to fill up the
gap with supernatural action. It is be
ginning to dawn on the more enlightened
of our theists that this is weak in logic,
and dangerous in practice. Who could
number the gaps they have occupied
during the last two centuries—and
deserted ? They are beginning to see
at length—what they were begged to
consider from the beginning—that a gap
in scientific construction may only mean
our temporary (or even permanent)
ignorance, and does not necessarily
imply a real breach or defect in the
action of natural agencies. We shall
see more of this later. Meantime Mr.
Mallock says: “ If we compare the
evidences in favour of the monistic
doctrine generally with the objections
urged by religious dualists against it, the
great difference between the two is this :
that whilst the objections of the latter
are isolated, disconnected, casual, the ex
isting evidences of the former cohere and
dovetail into one another like numbered
stones designed for some vast edifice:
and whilst the missing evidences of the
monist are one by one being found, the
objections of the dualists are in daily
process of being discredited.” 1 Hence,
he says, “ educated apologists of all
schools accept evolution to-day,” and he
quotes Professor Ward as saying that, if
there has been any interference in the
cosmic process, it “ took place before the
process began, not during it.” And
Professor Le Conte, whom Mr. Ballard
recommends us to read, and who accepts
evolution from the atom to the human
mind, says: “ Evolution is no longer a
school of thought. The words evolu
tionism and evolutionist ought not any
longer to be used, any more than
gravitcitionism or grcivitationist; for the
law of evolution is as certain as the law
of gravitation.” 1
So theistic writers are beginning to
repudiate the theology of gaps. “ How
slow of spirit we have been to learn
that the Divine Spirit does not work
through gaps,” says Mr. Newman Smyth.2
Already we see a tendency to prove on
theological principles that the world
must have been evolved, from the
primary matter (and there is a disposition
to let this be eternal) up to the human
mind j that evolution is the one divine
process, and that the old idea of succes
sive interferences in the work is too
undignified altogether. This language
will be heard from every village pulpit in
fifty years’ time. We need not be spite
ful about it; but, on the other hand,
these advanced theologians, who know
it, might understand the irony and
humour of a great scientist who has
lived through the struggles of the last
fifty years. At present the spectacle we
witness is not unlike that of the competi
tors in a walking-match. In front are
a few laymen like Professor Le Conte
and Mr. Fiske (who have nearly
dropped their theism for greater lightness
on the way). Mr. Rhondda Williams
and Mr. Newman Smyth are not far
behind. Canon Aubrey Moore and Dr.
W. N. Clarke would be well in the
running if they were still here. Mr.
Ballard, who thinks “ Christian thinkers
have every reason for accepting evolution
as the general method of world-growth ”
(but makes a tremendous pother when
it comes to the evolution of life), and
Dr. Iverach, who is not anxious to
quarrel with evolutionary terms “ except
in so far as they become the symbols of a
mechanical evolution ” (but
raise much
dust as he goes along), are at a third
stage. Mr. Ambrose Pope, who thinks
*• Religion as a Credible Doctrine., p. 78.
1 Evolution and Religious Thought, p. 66.
2 Through Science to Faith, p. 20.
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
“ the theory of evolution is a scientific
hypothesis, true only in the sense that it
explains all the facts to hand at present,
true in exactly the same sense in which
the theory of creation, as found
in Genesis, was at the time it was
written,” comes a bad fourth—in line,
however, with the average “ cultured ”
preacher and the leader-writers and
reviewers of the Tablet, Guardian, and
Church Times.
Then we have a
straggling line of Christian Evidence
Lecturers, tract-writers, preachers, and
leader-writers in the Methodist Luminary,
&c.; ending in bunches of suburban
curates and rural vicars, who are still
handicapped with heavy old copies of
the Bible.
All this puts a peculiar difficulty in
the way of the Rationalist. If he
attacks the attitude of the advanced
minority, Christianity at large repudiates
his criticism; if he tilts at the con
ventional beliefs, the little band of the
intellectuals use excited
language.
There is hardly a single question on
which we have anything like a solid
front to meet. This will be clearer as
we proceed. As regards the inorganic
universe, we may say that no Christian
scholar of any serious influence ques
tions its unity, its actual constancy (or
its first law—the law of substance), or
its formation by gradual development
(its second law—the law of evolution)
from a primitive matter. They rest their
dualism, as far as visible nature is con
cerned, on (i) the need for a creator of
matter and force, and (2) the need for a
directive intelligence. With the first
point—or with its groundwork—we have
already dealt, and will deal again in the
chapter on God. The second point
must be very clearly grasped. It is the
last conceivable quasi-scientific argu
ment for the existence of God. It will
confront us throughout the next three
chapters, and it will before long be the
only argument of “physical theology.”
In its general formula it runs:
Although science can assign the efficient
or physical causes of the complex
37
phenomena about us, it cannot say why
they produced just these phenomena and
not different ones ; and the more clearly
science shows that an elaborate pheno
menon—say, thought, or life—is only
the outcome of a long and intricate
evolutionary process, the more pressing
is the need to admit that the evolutionary
agencies were guided and controlled by
intelligence from the first. The argu
ment is not a new one, of course, but the
best-informed theistic apologists are
warning their colleagues to fall back on
it at once, and to abandon the defence
of temporary gaps and petty criticisms
of science. “We are not,” says Dr.
Iverach (though he will forget it later),
“of those who are constantly looking
about for imperfections in a mechanical
or other theory in order to find a chink
through which the theistic argument
may enter. If that were our position,
the argument for theism would soon be
a fugitive and a vagabond on the face of
the earth; each advance of science, each
discovery of law, would simply drive the
theistic argument to find a new refuge.” 1
So Mr. Newman Smyth says : “ The
assurance of faith cannot be maintained
from a fortified critical position outside
the province
of the evolutionary
science.” And
Mr.
R.
Williams
declares : “ I do not worship a God
who only fills gaps, nor hold a religion
whose validity depends on missing
links.” Teleology is the word. The
scientist will show you everywhere
certain forces co-operating to produce
certain complex results. Point out that
these “ blind ” erratic forces must have
been guided in their co-operation,
especially if the result is beautiful [or
orderly or beneficial or admirably adapted
to produce a certain further result.
The advantage of “ the new teleology ”
1 Christianity and Evolution, p. 26. Observe
the excellent description of what the theistic
argument has been for some time and the naive
proposal of this as a mere contingency. We
shall find, too, that the old Adam is still strong in
Dr. Iverach, and he is still keen on gaps in
practice.
Bishopsgate Institute*
�38
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INORGANIC WORLD
—which is the “old teleology” re
enamelled—is obvious. Science may
now strain its mechanical causes as it
pleases to explain the origin of life and
consciousness. The more stupendous
the results it claims for physical agencies,
the clearer will it be that there were
design, guidance, and control. More
over, the argument comes into play from
the very first step that evolutionary
science takes. The best illustrations of
its application will be found in Dr.
Iverach and Mr. Profeit.1 They follow
step by step the teaching of physics and
chemistry, and pause at the end of each
paragraph to admire the wisdom of the
creator with Paleyesque devotion. Be
hold the primitive matter mould itself
into electrons and atoms. Whence did
it get the power? How came a blind
force to put together the electrons in
such an orderly series of atoms with such
wonderful chemical adaptations to each
other? Behold the ponderable matter
grow into nebulae and solar systems.
Who distributed the elements so nicely
amongst the various nebulae ? Who
distributed the elements
the nebula,
and broke off the whirling rings at the
proper moment, and set the planets
going at the requisite speed, that a
system of perfect order resulted, and
was found to be just suited for the
sustenance of life ?
Now let us be perfectly clear. This
argument is to be the great reply to
Haeckel, and it will recur all through.
It thinks it differs from the old Paleyism
in this : it can grant science the power,
either now or in the future, to give a
complete explanation on physical lines of
the up-building of an atom or a world.
1 The Creation of Matter. Mr. Ballard tells
us this may count as a reply to the Riddle. It
has been published since the Riddle, but does
not seem to mention Haeckel’s book.
As it says, science may explain how
these things were done. It adds that
every thoughtful man must ask also
why—why the process took place at all,
and why it took this particular line, with
such a lucky termination for us, rather
than any one of a thousand others.
They say: Let Haeckel explain the
whole world-growth on mechanical
principles, from the formation of the
first atoms of hydrogen to the solidifica
tion of the last planet. That only tells
how natural forces built up the world :
we want to know why. So we can
allow the naturalist or mechanical view
to be complete in itself, yet leaving full
room for us. ■
In order to avoid the repetitions and
the confusion which this design
argument leads to, I propose to take the
hint offered and keep quite separate the
questions how the world was made and
why it was so made. In this and the
following three chapters we shall see
how the world was made ; in the seventh
chapter we shall discuss the teleological
argument in its principle. We shall see
that the theistic evolutionists are by no
means prepared in practice to allow that
science can explain how all things were
made, or to assign adequate efficient
causes
for
the
more
complex
phenomena. The first line of defence
had better hold as long as it can, in
case the second should be not quite
impregnable. As to inorganic nature,
however, there is no serious hesitation.
The inherent or native qualities of the
matter-force reality (I am not shirking,
but deferring, the question why it has
these qualities at all) are generally
admitted to be the adequate efficient
explanation of the formation of atoms
and stars. The first serious challenge
rings out when we come to the frontiers
of living nature.
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
39
Chapter IV
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
No sooner do we pass from the con
sideration of inorganic nature to a
discussion of the origin of life than we
encounter in a severe form the per
plexity I have previously indicated. Do
theists or dualists deny that Haeckel
may legitimately extend the monistic
interpretation to the problem of life ?
At once we have to deal with a straggling
line of contradictory thinkers, instead of
the fairly solid front which we desire
to face.
A large number of the
authorities recommended to us as cor
rectives of Haeckel’s philosophy entirely
agree with him in his theory of the
spontaneous generation of life, and are
content to add, as before, the teleo
logical consideration. A large number
severely criticise his position—and
therefore that of their own advanced
colleagues—even from the point of view
of physical or efficient causation ; and
there is every grade of vacillation
between the two.
It will be interest
ing to see first how far the doctrine
of the first appearance of life by
abiogenesis is accepted by theistic
writers,
It is well known that Dr. Mivart
defended the doctrine with great ability
for the twenty years preceding his death.
To-day Father Zahm and other Catholic
scientists are no less willing to admit it.
That Professor Le Conte and Mr. Fiske
accept it goes without saying. Dr. W.
N. Clarke is disposed to grant it:
“Life, when its time came, may have
come in by direct creation; so may
human life or the life of other species;
or the whole process of unfolding may
have been continuous, impelled by only
one kind of divine movement from first
to last. Whether God has performed
specific acts of creation from time to
time is a question for evidence, which
lies outside the field of theology.”1
Mr. Newman Smyth admits that it is now
irresistible: “ While the fact is now
universally admitted that non-living
matter cannot now be organised into a
living form except through the prior
agency of life, on the other hand the
momentum of all our scientific know
ledge of the continuities of nature leads
modern biology to the assumption that
the organic substance at some time has
been raised and quickened from the
deadness of the inorganic world.” 2 Mr.
Profeit also is willing to admit the
evolution of protoplasm, though only
“as the result of working intelligence.” 3
Dr. Iverach, who is also anxious to
stress the teleological aspect, never
theless admits that life was “ implicit in
the whole ”; though we shall find him
raising superfluous difficulties later.
Thus in his allegation of the fact that
life was evolved out of non-life Professor
Haeckel finds himself in quite respect
able company. The sonorous philo
sopher of one of our dramatic and
sporting papers (the Referee} delivered
himself as follows some months ago
(March ist, 1903): “At the very
threshold of this great theme we
encounter the eternal question as to
how life began at all, and here the
scientist cannot help us.” It would be
1 Outlines of Christian Theology, p. 132.
2 Through Science to Faith, p. 17.
3 The Creation of Matter, p. 96 ; his proviso
is, of course, shared by all these evolutionists.
We are for the present concerned only with
efficient causation. When Mr. Profeit goes on
to tell us that when protoplasm appeared “the
stars clapped their hands for joy,” we can hear
the rustle of his surplice. The evolution must
have taken millennia, if not millions of years.
There was no psychological moment for applause.
�40
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
interesting, and not a little enlighten
ing, for “Merlin” to investigate this—
under the circumstances—remarkable
phenomenon of a group of ardent
religious apologists subscribing to the
doctrine of abiogenesis. But “ Merlin ”
might quote a number of scientific men
(of ecclesiastical standing) who make
the same affirmation in yet stronger
language, and who denounce Haeckel
with some vigour for representing
abiogenesis as a scientific theorem.
There is Dr. Horton, the admirer of
Vogt and Buchner, who assures us
that “ no leading man of science treats
it [Haeckel’s theory of the origin of life]
seriously.” But the leading opponent
is Mr. Ballard, and we will treat his
criticism at respectful length. It will
lead us, sooner or later, into the heart
of the difficulty.
It will be remembered that in his
attack in the British Weekly, in which
he emulates the spirited Dr. Loofs in
literary manner, he devotes the bulk
of his articles (about twelve columns
out of thirteen) to preliminary obser
vations, and then turns, “ for sheer relief,”
to criticise Haeckel from the scientific
point of view. I will strike off super
fluous errors as I go along, and deal with
the essence of his objection afterwards.
“To begin with,” he says, “its funda
mental thesis is utterly unscientific, viz.,
the assumption of the actuality of spon
taneous generation.” To begin with, I
may repeat, this sentence contains three
grave and essential misrepresentations.
Spontaneous generation is very far from
being the “fundamental thesis ” (or the
“fundamental axiom” and “crucial
proof ” he elsewhere calls it) of the
Riddle, or of Haeckel’s system ; it is not
an “assumption,” but a serious conclu
sion ; and Haeckel does not claim that
spontaneous generation takes place to
day. It is preposterous to suppose that
Haeckel’s fundamental thesis should be
one that many Christian scholars accept,
and the reader will already understand
that, though it is necessarily involved in
Monism, it is no more “ fundamental ”
than ten other propositions. But Mr.
Ballard proceeds to make good his state
ment. He says Haeckel “frankly ac
knowledges that spontaneous generation
is ‘ an indispensable thesis in any natural
theory of evolution. I entirely agree
with the assertion that to reject abio
genesis is to admit a miracle.’ ” “ An,”
one may observe, is different from “the,”
and “ indispensable ” from “ fundamen-'
tai ” ; but that is a comparative trifle. No
page is given, but if you do look up the
passage (page 91) you find that Haeckel
is saying that Professor Naegeli represents
it as “an indispensable thesis,” and that
“the assertion” should be “his asser
tion.” It would not do, I suppose, to
let readers of the British Weekly know
that Haeckel does not stand alone, so
the quotation is manipulated. More
over, the phrase, “to reject abiogenesis
is to admit a miracle,” is quoted by
Haeckel from Naegeli, but the quotation
marks are omitted by Mr. Ballard. The
reader may judge if the fact of Haeckel’s
agreeing with Naegeli justifies this. I
know that Mr. Ballard quotes the passage
fairly in his Miracles of Unbelief My
second point, that it is not an “assump
tion,” will be clear when I come to resume
the evidence for it. The third point is
that if Mr. Ballard uses “actuality” in
the ordinary sense of the word, as the
ordinary reader will suppose, he gravely
misstates Haeckel’s position. That he
does imply that Haeckel claims spon
taneous generation to be “ actually ”
occurring is clear from his appeal to
those scientists (Tyndall, Pasteur, &c.)
who disprove no more than this. As a
fact Haeckel says (p. 91) : “ I restrict the
idea of spontaneous generation—also
called abiogenesis or archigony—to the
first development of living protoplasm
out of inorganic carbonates.” Further,
Haeckel refers the reader to his earlier
work for details, and Mr. Ballard himself
quotes therefrom that Haeckel only offers
the doctrine as “a pure hypothesis”
without experimental support.
Haeckel’s position is, then, properly
stated, that we have no evidence that
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
living things now arise by spontaneous
generation; that the monistic view of
the universe, which other scientific
evidence commends, requires the birth
of living things from non-living in the
beginning; that he finds no peculiar
qualities in the vital force which forbid
the extension of the law of evolution to
it; and that he therefore sketches a
purely hypothetical suggestion of the
mode of transition on broad lines. A
really careful and impartial inquirer
would see that the essential part of this
position, from the logical point of view,
is the third part of it—the conviction
that there is no peculiar feature of the
vital force which forbids us to assume
its evolution. Evolution is a known
law of the cosmos—or “ the general
method of world-growth,” as Mr.
Ballard says. We apply it until we are
pulled up by some phenomenon of a
specific nature that seems impossible to
have been evolved. But Mr. Ballard
utterly disregards this chief strength of
Haeckel’s position (supported by the
whole of this chapter of the Riddle),
proceeds to flourish weapons which do
not reach that position at all, and con
cludes that Haeckel is “ utterly without
scientific warrant,” or, as he has previously
said, he “ sets at defiance the latest and
most exact findings of science, and cuts
the Gordian knot by sheer assertion of
that which is essential to his hypothesis,
but is itself undemonstrated, and, we
may venture to add, on good authority,
undemonstrable.” His procedure is
so typical of the usual confused dis
cussion of the subject that we may
follow him to the end.
After saying that Haeckel offers no
proof—which we will discuss presently—
he goes on to overwhelm him with the
“ conclusions of experts.” G Between
the inorganic and the organic, there is,
according to all the facts now known
and the consensus of modern science
concerning them, a stage in which, to
quote Mr. Wallace, ‘ some new cause or
power must necessarily have come into
action.’ ” We are defending a gap after
4i
all, you see; though Mr. Ballard says it
is not essential to do so. Further, it is
not only “utterly without scientific
warrant,” but “ emphatically ” contra
dicted by “the conclusions of such
experts as Tyndall, Pasteur, Drysdale,
Dallinger, Roscoe, Kelvin, Beale, &c. ” ;
and “for modern science, speaking
generally and carefully, spontaneous
generation is as dead as Huxley’s
Bathybius.” One’s mind goes back
involuntarily to those clerical spontane
ous generationists and the horrible
levity with which they have deserted the
gap. The truth is, as those who know
anything of the controversy will have
seen long ago, Mr. Ballard is throwing
dust. He knows perfectly well that the
only point on which scientists are
agreed—and Haeckel is quite with them
—is that abiogenesis does not take place
to-day; that is a thesis which Haeckel
has explicitly disavowed. The experi
ments of Pasteur never purported to
prove anything else, and never could.
His favourite Professor Beale admits his
own solitude : “ Physicists and chemists
look forward with confidence ” to further
experiments, and “think to acquire a
knowledge of the manner in which the
first particle of living matter originated.”1
He cannot quote a single biologist to
say that his science is against Haeckel’s
“ hypothesis ” of abiogenesis in the past.
I will presently quote more than one in
favour of it, in the sense of endorsing
Haeckel’s most important point—that
there is no essential difference between
vital force and non-vital force. He, a
bachelor of science, has blurred the
distinction between actual abiogenesis
and archigony, which is essential, and
which has been pointed out for twenty
years by men of science. And this is
the culmination of his attack on Dr.
Haeckel, and, I suppose, the chief justi
fication for the gross epithets he has
showered on one of the most venerable
figures in the scientific world.
Mr. Mallock says : “ It was formerly
1 Vitality, p. 7.
D
�42
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
supposed that they [life and manj were Mr. Ballard and others so confusedly
produced by isolated creative acts; but represent as opposed to Haeckel.
we now know that they are the results of Science draws no inference, and logic
an orderly process of evolution. The can draw no inference, with regard to the
theist of to-day admits this as fully as primeval origin of life from this negative
anybody.” Unfortunately, we see that evidence. This has been pointed out
there are theists, who are held to be men time after time, as it was by Sir W.
of scientific culture and liberality, who do Turner in his Presidential Address in
not admit it, and we must discuss the 1900.
subject patiently. This is largely the
Haeckel’s second point (in my analysis
result of people like Mr. Ballard, in their of his position) is that we have ample
eagerness to draw up a long list of reason to regard evolution as a law of
“ sound ” literature, recommending all substance, or a law of nature. We
kinds of antiquated works. For instance, have seen how completely scientific
one of the authors he urges us to read this thesis is.
“ Evolution,” said
on this question, “ Principal Chapman,” Canon A. L. Moore, sixteen years ago,
assures his readers that Buchner and “may fairly claim to be an established
Haeckel assert “life now can be repro doctrine.”1 And we have quoted the
duced out of inorganic conditions,” and Rev. Newman Smyth’s opinion that “ the
attacks the “asserted possibility of arti momentum of all our scientific know
ficially producing organic compounds” ledge of the continuities of nature leads
—which are produced artificially by the modern biology to the assumption that
score to-day ; whilst his general culture the organic substance at some time has
may be measured by his giving the been raised and quickened from the
motto of the Buchner school as : “ Ohne deadness of the inorganic world.” As a
Phosphor ohne Gedank.” This does matter of scientific procedure, then, we
not tend to the advancement of truth. are bound to assume that life arose by
Let us have a clear idea what the real evolution until it has been proved that
position of Haeckel’s theory is in the vital force is something specifically
science.
distinct from physical force, and could
I have stated it in four theses, and not have been derived from it. That is
will deal with these separately. In the both the scientific and the logical way of
first place, scientists of all schools are looking at the question. The scientist
agreed that we do not know a single case does not depart from his ordinary
of abiogenesis taking place to-day. methods without grave reason; nor does
Curiously enough, religious philosophers nature. Nature evolves, wherever evolu
in the Middle Ages believed that any tion is not impossible. The really im
number of highly organised forms of life portant point is, then, this question
(such as bees) were produced daily by whether there is something so peculiar
spontaneous generation. It was science about vital force that we cannot suppose
that first opposed them. However, a it to have been evolved; and we find
few decades ago a group of materialistic accordingly that Haeckel devotes several
scientists made a stand for abiogenesis as pages to the point. I will not repeat,
an actual occurrence, and there was a but only supplement these from other
fierce controversy. It was a purely scientists; though, as we will discuss the
scientific quarrel, Tyndall opposing them question of the nature of life more fully
as firmly as the semi-vitalist Pasteur. It later (in the chapter on Lord Kelvin’s
was abundantly proved that no living intervention), I will not say more than is
thing we are acquainted with to-day is necessary for our purpose here.
developed without living parentage.
This is that “ teaching of science ” (to
1 Science and the Faith, p. 162: one of the
which Haeckel fully subscribes) which works Mr. Ballard recommends to us.
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
Let me begin by quoting this admir
able warning to those who affirm that
nature could not have evolved life with
out a divine interference : “ In spite of all
present-day scientific generalisations, and
these based on the widest inductions
possible to us, we have no warrant what
ever for the assumption that the possi
bilities of the universe end where our
human apprehension of nature has
reached its ne plus ultra! Does Mr.
Ballard recognise the words ? They are
taken from his own preface to his
Miracles of Unbelief. A theistic phi
losopher, Professor J. Ward, also says:
“ Of the origin of life, if it ever did
originate, we have absolutely no know
ledge. But, on the one hand, there is
no definite limit to the possible com
plexity of mechanical processes, nor any
definite limit on the other, to the possible
simplicity of life.”1 These are timely
warnings to the theist not to build on
gaps in biology. Yet Dr. Horton tells
his trustful congregation that science has
“ not discovered what is that vast bridge
which spans the regions which, to the
eye, appear so near.” And a reviewer in
the Church of England Pulpit says the
gap between the living and the non-living
is “now wider than ever.” If you seek
the authority for these assertions, you are
generally met with a reference to Pro
fessor Lionel Beale. Now, Prof. Beale
is an able scientist and original worker,
and we will examine his claims about
protoplasm in a later chapter. Mean
time, we may recall that it was he who
so pathetically protested in the agony
column of the Times that Haeckel’s as
severations in this chapter were not in
accord with the teaching of science, and
later referred the anxious world to his
little work on Vitality. Now, when we
peruse Vitality we are given to under
stand almost from first page to last that
1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii, 262. Pro
fessor Ward, therefore, assumes life was evolved.
The Words, “if it ever did originate,” must be
understood in the idealist sense ; and the em
phatic denial of knowledge is grounded rather
confusedly on the Pasteur experiments.
43
Professor Beale is nearly contra mundum.
“ It must be admitted,” he says (p. v),
“ that few scientific men are quite satis
fied that vital phenomena may not yet
be otherwise explained ”; and we have
already quoted his admission (p. 7) that
“ physicists and chemists ” look forward
to a mechanical explanation of the origin
of life.
And in point of fact one can quote a
string of the ablest authorities against the
claim that vital force has so specific a
character that it could not have been
evolved. Says the theistic (or pantheistic)
evolutionist, Professor Le Conte, one of
Mr. Ballard’s chief authorities: “ Vital
forces are also transmutable into and
derivable from physical and chemical
forces . . . Vital force may now be re
garded as so much force withdrawn from
the general fund of chemical and physi
cal forces ... If vital force falls into the
same category as other natural forces,
there is no reason why living forms
should not fall into the same category in
this regard as other natural forms.”1
Says Professor J. Ward, another of Mr.
Ballard’s authorities : “ The old theory of
a special vital force, according to which
physiological processes were at the most
analogous to—not identical with—•
physical processes, has for the most part
been abandoned as superfluous. Step
by step within the last fifty years the
identity of the two processes has been
so far established that an eminent
physiologist does not hesitate to say
‘that for the future the word vital, as
distinctive of physiological processes,
might be abandoned altogether.’ ” 2 The
“ eminent physiologist ” is Sir J.
Burdon Sanderson, another able author
ity. In the article on zoology in the
Encyclopcedia Britannica, Professor Ray
Lankester says : “ It is the aim or busi1 Evolution and Religious Thought, p. 36.
2 Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii, p. 9. Ward
and Le Conte, while admitting the mechanical
theory as the explanation of “ efficient ” causa
tion, claim the action of a guiding intelligence.
That is a point we have reserved, and it does
not affect the present question.
�44
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
ness of those occupied with biology to
assign living things, in all their variety
of form and activity, to the one set of
forces recognised by the physicist and
the chemist,” On the physical side Sir
A. Rucker, in his presidential speech of
1901, spoke of the recent rise of Neo
Vitalism as merely the result of “some
outstanding difficulties ” in biology, and
he protested that “the action of physical
and chemical forces in living bodies can
never be understood, if at every diffi
culty and at every check in our investi
gations we desist from further attempts
in the belief that the laws of physics
and chemistry have been interfered with
by an incomprehensible vital force.” His
successor in the presidential chair also
protested that science was “ not debarred
from speculating on the mode in which
life may have originated,” and he quoted
this splendid expression from Lord
Kelvin’s (then Sir W. Thomson) presi
dential speech in 1871: “Science is
bound, by the everlasting law of honour,
to face fearlessly every problem which
can fairly be presented to it.
If a
probable solution, consistent with the
ordinary course of nature, can be found,
we must not invoke an act of Creative
Power.” And, finally, when Lord Kelvin
recently declared that he understood
biologists were coming again to entertain
the notion of a specific vital force, he
was, as we shall see (or the reader may
see now in Chap. XI.), emphatically
contradicted by the representative biolo
gists of this country.
The authority of Dr. Haeckel himself
on this point is paramount.
He has
made a life-long study of it. But I have
shown that his conclusion is in accord
with the general scientific attitude to-day,
and that he is not giving us the “ science
of yesterday,” as the dilettanti of the
Pall Mall Gazette express it. I will
only add here a few further considera
tions that tend to make clearer the ques
tion of the primitive origin of life, and
will reserve the discussion of Neo-Vitalism until we come to deal with Lord
Kelvin and his critics.
It is a matter of some importance to
remember that we do not know the nature
of the earliest organisms. Living things
had to proceed very far in their develop
ment before it was possible for their
remains to be fossilised and preserved.
Palaeontology can give us no aid what
ever. It is generally assumed that the
monera and such simple forms—mere
tiny globules of protoplasm—were the
earliest in point of time. That they
must have been the earliest of existing
forms is obvious, but, as Professor Ward
suggests, it is conceivable that there were
many simpler forms of life before the
moneron. We had to wait for the
microscope to discover the protists. We
may make other discoveries yet; or there
may have been earlier forms too un
stable to persist. These are “ may be’s,”
but remember Lord Kelvin’s advice that
we must exhaust the possibilities of
nature before we invoke “ an abnormal
act of Creative Power.” Canon Aubrey
Moore said long ago in connection with
the evolution of species : “ In this pro
cess of evolution there are things which
puzzle us, though it would be quite true
to say there is nothing half so puzzling
as there was, if we had only thought
more about it, in the old theory of
special creation.” .That is peculiarly
applicable to the question of the origin
of life. The notion of a “ creative
act ”—the notion that, at the mere ex
pression of a wish on the part of some
infinite being, particles of “ dead ”
matter scrape themselves together with
out any physical impulse, and, though
they are incompetent to see the design
they are to execute or the end of their
individual movements, build themselves
up into the intricate structure of living
protoplasm—is a perfect world of mys
teries, instead of being an “explana
tion.” We can only have recourse to it
when every conceivable effort has been
made to explain the phenomenon by
the physical impulsion of the atoms by
natural forces and by a very slow and
gradual development; and science, we
saw, is by no means inclined to admit
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
that its possibilities have been exhausted
yet.
But if we cannot get any nearer to the
origin on the biological side, it may be
possible to do something on the chemical
side; and from this side, in point of
fact, the “gulf,” as preachers call it
(compare Huxley’s article on Biology in
the Encyclopedia, Britannica}, between
the organic and the inorganic is being
bridged. If you take down one of the
apologetic works of the last generation
(even some of those Mr. Ballard recom
mends to-day), you will find that the
writers lay great stress on the inability of
the chemist to produce artificially certain
compound substances which were then
only made by the living organism. To
day a large number of these are produced
by the chemist in his laboratory. This
branch of chemistry is advancing every
year, and last year was able to announce
the artificial synthesis of so complex an
organic substance as albumen. The
“gulf” is narrowing; it is very far from
being “wider than ever.” Dr. Iverach,
one of those hesitating teachers who are
continually criticising scientific results
with some vague notion of serving
religion, says these chemists only “ac
complish at great cost and labour and
with many appliances what life is doing
easily every moment.” Very true ; but,
pray, how long was nature in fitting up
her laboratory and making her appli
ances ? Possibly millions of years in
making the protoplasm of the first
moneron; certainly many millions of
years in evolving those higher organisms
which the scientist is set to emulate.
One does not see what liberal-minded
and scientific men gain by strewing the
path with little obstacles of this kind.
There are other writers who say che
mistry may produce organic substances
without number, but it cannot produce
an organism. Well, on the theisticevolution hypothesis, which the abler
apologists adopt to-day, it took God
hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
of years to make an amoeba, with all the
resources of nature completely known to
45
him. And man, with his dim knowledge
of natural forces, is to make one in a
few weeks, or years! Science is ad
vancing. Let us be patient.
We are now in a position, then, to
estimate the criticisms that have been
directed against this section of Dr.
Haeckel’s system. There are two aspects
of his position. On the one hand there
is the negative side, that we are not
justified in rushing into the present gap
(such as it is) of scientific knowledge
with a “ vital force ” or a “ creative
power,” which are specifically distinct
from the natural forces we have hitherto
studied; and there is, further, the posi
tive attempt to sketch a theory of the
way in which protoplasm was evolved.
The first part is essential to monism ;
the second is not, and may vary with
the progress of science. Both parts
are scientifically justified. How widely
Haeckel’s first position is shared by men
of science, and how it is forced on us by
the axioms of men so different as Lord
Kelvin and Canon A. L. . Moore, we
have already seen. It is the only logical
attitude. When science assures us that
it has acquired a perfect knowledge of
vital force on the one hand and physical
force on the other, and that the two are
so widely separated that it cannot con
ceive the one to have been evolved from
the other; then there will be time enough
to talk of gaps and gulfs and creative
power. In the meantime logic forbids
us to multiply agencies without need.
There is a plausible kind of critic—
usually a preacher—who says: Well,
Haeckel may enjoy his opinion as long
as he likes, and the agnostic may wait
eternally for the last word of science, but
I find this creator-idea very satisfying,
and you may keep your logic for the
school. That is the practical man—the
man who would think you a fool if you
reasoned like that in business. It must
be remembered that we are not playing
a parlour game with conventional rules.
It is a question of truth or untruth,
reality or unreality. It is a huge asser
tion, this of creative action, It at once
�46
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
brings a new element into our cosmos.
We see that the material universe exists.
We must not recklessly affirm the exist
ence of anything beyond it; or if we do,
we have no guarantee of the truth of our
statements.
Now, until science has
shown that physical force and vital force
are not transmutable, and that no exten
sion of the former, even into the most
elaborate complication, could produce
the latter, you cannot extract from the
appearance of life a particle of evidence
fo,r an interfering cause other than
nature.
But Haeckel does not cease to speak
as a scientific man when he goes on to
offer a positive suggestion as to the
origin of life. Science advances com
monly by projecting hypotheses in
advance of its solid and established
positions, and if ever we are to under
stand the mode of the origin of life it
will be by such a procedure. No living
scientist is better acquainted with the
conditions of the problem than Haeckel,
and it would be preposterous to suppose
that he has not framed a theory con
sistent with the known facts. His theory
is directly grounded on the established
facts of the chemistry of protoplasm.
The only possible justification for the
criticism offered by scientists like Dr.
Horton would be if Haeckel had put it
before us as a sort of photographic
description of the primeval dawn of life.
As Mr. Ballard reminds us, Haeckel
only offers it as “a pure hypothesis,”
consistent with the facts as we know
them, and capable of any modification
new discoveries may entail.
Thus, when we have shaken off this
group of not very enlightened critics,
we see that we have advanced a step
in the evolution of the monistic uni
verse.
We had already followed the
great matter-force reality in its develop
ment as far as the formation of planets
with firm crusts, with heated oceans
and an enveloping atmosphere, and
provided by a shrinking central luminary
with a powerful flood of heat, light,
and electricity. Some time in the pre
Cambrian epoch living things appeared
in the primeval oceans. This was not
a sudden and dramatic entrance on the
stage of time, at which the morning
stars might clap their incandescent
hands ; it was the final issue of a long
course of evolution. It was the matter
force reality slowly groping upwards
through more and more elaborate com
binations of the
formed chemical
elements until a stage was reached
when a substance sufficiently plastic to
exchange elements with the environing
fluid and sufficiently stable to maintain
its integrity was formed. To-day this
substance (living protoplasm) is marked
off by several remarkable properties
from inorganic matter. Professor Beale
talks much of its “ structureless ” cha
racter. In view of the known extreme
complexity of its molecular structure, it
would be a miracle if it did not exhibit
functions widely removed from those of
simpler compounds. But the finding of an
actual divergence to-day is no obstacle
to our entertaining a theory of evolu
tion. No serious scientist questions to
day the evolution of the human body
from that of a lower animal species.
Yet the connecting links have disap
peared. It is a scientific truth that
intermediate forms do tend to disappear.
We see here, then, only another phase
in the unfolding of the cosmic substance,
or nature. Neither scientific evidence
nor logic compels us yet to admit a
fresh reality, a new form of being. We
are still monists. Whether nature has
needed the guidance of intelligence in
this evolution we need not consider
yet. First let us establish the fact that
nature evolves, from the first union of
electrons into an atom to the develop
ment of man, by means of its inherent
forces, and then we will consider
“ whence ” it got these forces and
whether they must have been guided.
Now, given the first tiny globule of
living protoplasm, there is no further gap
for the theologian to defend until we
come to the human mind. For the fifty
million years which extend from the
�THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
Laurentian epoch to the early Pleisto
cene we witness the natural evolution of
the cosmic substance without any plau
sible interference. Naturalists “ have
accepted Darwin’s idea,” Sir W. Turner
tells us in his presidential speech; and
he speaks with respect of Haeckel’s
great share in constructing our ancestral
tree. Huxley said a long time ago that
he “ refused to run the risk of insulting
any sane man by supposing that he
seriously holds such a notion as special
creation.” Canon Aubrey Moore wrote
sixteen years ago that “ every competent
man of science believes in the origin of
species by progressive variations.”1 “All
living nature is of one descent and con
stitutes one relationship,” says Mr.
Newman Smyth. “ Evolution as a law
of derivation of forms from previous
forms ... is not only certain, it is axio
matic,” says Professor Le Conte. “ The
immutability and separate creation of
species . . . are doctrines now no longer
defensible,” says Professor Ward. And
Professor Flower (to whose qualifications
Mr. Ballard devotes ten lines—much
more than Professor Flower ever devoted
to theology) told the Reading Church
Congress twenty years ago (1883) that
the doctrine of the evolution of species
was even then “almost, if not quite,
universal among skilled and thoughtful
naturalists of all countries,” and advised
the clergy not to burn their fingers again
with it.2 We might fill a book with such
quotations.
Happily, there is no longer the need
to do so. Darwin lies in Westminster
Abbey, and episcopal lips utter his name
without a tremor. No one now questions
the fact that the species have been
formed by evolution; but there are still
ecclesiastics who take this occasion to
show that they are of a critical rather
than a credulous temper. They quarrel
with the agencies which science assigns
to the task of the formation of species,
or with the mode in which science con
ceives those agencies to have acted.
1 Science and the Faith, p. 165.
2 Recent Advances in Natural Science.
47
They express an opinion that natural
selection and sexual selection could
not do this or the other; that the
question of the transmission of acquired
characters is very unsettled, and so
forth. Now, it is in itself a healthy sign
of the times that our theologians take an
interest in these scientific questions, and
as scientific men. But the cause of
truth and progress, and the placidity of
scientific workers, would be best con
sulted by keeping these criticisms out
of Christian evidence treatises, with
which, logically, they have 'nothing to
do. Thus Dr. Iverach discusses the
question at great length in his Theism in
the Light ofPresent Science and Philosophy.
He thinks that natural selection may
act on variations, but cannot initiate
them, and cannot show why some
organisms remain unicellular and others
become multicellular.
Biologists do
not, he urges, prove the indefinite ex
pansiveness of species, and do not
explain the special causes which check
expansion. In strict logic this has nothing
to do with “Theism.” If biologists
have not adequately explained the pro
cess of evolution, we must wait until
they have further knowledge.
His
point is, of course, that the triumph of
evolution only means “ to transfer the
cause from a mere external influence
working from without to an immanent
rational principle.”
He is pleading
again for that “ incomprehensible vital
force,” as Sir A. Rucker calls it, which
we have already discussed and will dis
cuss later.
If it is sufficient to admit natural
(physical and chemical) forces in the
first formation of protoplasm, we meet
nothing to turn us aside from these with
any plausibility until we come to con
sciousness, which I will treat in the
next chapter. With that reservation
Haeckel’s mechanical explanation of the
derivation of species is accepted. Pro
fessor Ray Lankester says, in the article
on zoology in the Encyclopedia Britan
nica : “ It was reserved for Charles
Darwin in the year 1859 to place the
�48
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
whole theory of organic evolution on a
new footing, and by his discovery of a
mechanical cause actually existing and
demonstrable, by which organic evolution
must be brought about, to entirely
change the. attitude in regard to it of
even the most rigid exponents of scientific
method.” The recent letters of Pro
fessor Ray Lankester to the Times,
which I will quote later (Chap. XII.),
show that he has not departed from this
position. Dr. Croll also admits of the
derivation of species: “ At present
[1890] most evolutionists regard the
process as purely mechanical and physi
cal, the results of matter, motion, and
force alone.”1 And Mr. Fiske says:
“The natural selection of physical
variations will go far towards explaining
the characters of all the plants and all
the beasts in the world.” 2
But do not let us lose our way amidst
conflicting authorities. Two objections
are formulated, more or less vaguely,
against this phase of Haeckel’s position ;
or the two objections may be combined
into the general statement that the
mechanical explanation leaves some
aspects of the derivation of species
unaccounted for; and so we must admit,
besides the evolving matter-force reality,
a telic or purposive principle in the
organism and a general controlling in
telligence, or at least the latter (Fiske,
Ward, Le Conte, &c.). The second
opinion does not really conflict with our
present purpose, because it assumes that
this directing intelligence never takes the
place of physical agencies. It always
acts through mechanical causes, so that
science is quite right in expecting to
build up a perfect mechanical scheme of
the development of the world-substance.
With its further contention that this
mechanical scheme points to an initial
designer, we will deal later. It is only
the first opinion—that which postulates
a purposive principle in the organism—
which conflicts with the monistic view
at this stage. And this second opinion
1 The Philosophical Basis of Evolution, p. 2.
2 Through Nature to God, p. 81.
is, frankly, a philosophy or a theology
of gaps. It lodges in the breaches, or
supposed breaches, in our knowledge of
the evolutionary processes, and naively
takes these to be breaches in the cosmic
scheme itself. Remember Mr. Ballard’s
wise injunction that “we have no
warrant whatever for the assumption
that the possibilities of the universe end
where our human apprehension of
nature has reached its ne plus ultra ”—
for the time being, let me venture to
add. Which attitude is the more logical
and scientific, and the best accredited
by experience—this defence of gaps, or
the resolution to admit no aquosities or
vitalities, or other immaterial entities
until science has given a definite and
fully-informed decision ?
Professor Haeckel adopts the latter
attitude, and proceeds to reconstruct the
wonderful paths that nature has followed
in her journey from those ancient
Laurentian waters to the achievements
of man. We have three convergent and
consonant lines of evidence : the docu
ments of palaeontology, or the science of
fossils, the documents of zoology (to
speak of animals only), and the docu
ments of embryology. From them, as
from three synoptic gospels, we retrace
the upward growth of living nature.
The simplest organisms we can definitely
picture to ourselves are simple granules
of protoplasm, or structureless morsels
of an albuminous matter. In time some
of these are formed which live on their
fellow-protists, and the distinction of the
animal from the plant is adumbrated.
Later, some of them develop a nucleus
and form definite cells ; the cells cling
together in colonies and form multi
cellular organisms; these cells are dis
posed in a layer or skin with a central
cavity, and develop fine hair-like pro
cesses by which they can travel through
the water. As the ages advance some
of these beings fold their cell-layer in
wards and form the primitive gut. From
these, probably, the flat worms are
developed, with a primitive nervous
system and reproductive apparatus.
�THE ASCENT OF MAN
Higher worms arise with primitive
vascular and excretory systems, and at
length with a rude kind of breathing
apparatus. At the next stage the rudi
ment of a spinal cord appears, and
continues to develop until the lowest
vertebrates (such as the lampreys) are
seen, with their primitive crania, suctorial
mouths, and advancing ears. Then
comes a great development of fishes
with strong dermal armour and in
creasingly acute organs of sense. _ Am
phibious animals link the fishes with the
reptiles, which soon prowl over the
us
49
earth in huge and terrible forms.
Mammals,
or
warm,
red-blooded
animals, next appear in the Jurassic
strata, and slowly advance through the
forms of marsupials and placentals until
the lowest lemures, in the lower Eocene
strata (computed to be 3,000,000 years
old), bring us within dim and distant
vision of the human form. The man
like apes appear in the Miocene period
(about 850,000 years ago).
Some
600,000 years later the pithecanthropus,
or erect man-ape, is found to herald the
approach of our own race.
Chapter V
THE ASCENT OF MAN
When the third International Zoo
logical Congress met at Leyden in 1895
a Dutch military physician produced two
or three bones that he had discovered in
Java the previous year, which created a
lively sensation amongst the assembled
anthropologists. They were merely the
skull-cap, a femur, and two teeth of some
animal form that had been buried in the
upper Pliocene strata nearly 300,000 years
ago. The modern zoologist can recon
struct a skeleton almost from a single
bone, and the complete outline of the
being to which these scanty remains had
belonged was quickly restored. Science
found itself confronted with the long
sought missing link between man and his
pithecoid ancestors. The powerful form,
standing five feet and a half high when
erect, yet still much bent with the curve
of its prone ancestors : the great cranial
capacity (about 1,000 cubic centimetres),
much greater than that of the largest ape,
yet lower than that of man, and associ
ated with prominent eye-brow ridges and
heavy jaws; in a word, all its features
pointed very emphatically to a stage half
way between man and the earlier species
from which he and the apes had
descended. A loud and long discus
sion followed Dr. Dubois’ address. The
celebrated Dr. Virchow stubbornly op
posed the conclusion of Haeckel and his
colleagues, and was driven from point to
point by his opponents.1 In the end
twelve experts of the Congress gave a
decision on the remains. Three of them
held that they belonged to a member of
a low race of man ; three held that they
1 See the account of Virchow’s pitiful and
transparently prejudiced resistance to evolution
in Buchner’s Last Words on Materialism, p. 97.
At a scientific congress in the preceding year,
one of Virchow’s colleagues observed that his
behaviour was “quite enough to justify us in
paying serious attention no longer to the great
pathologist on this question.” In effect, Vir
chow’s opinions on the matter have died with
him.
�so
the ascent of man
had belonged to a huge man-like ape;
and six were convinced that they be
longed to an intermediate form, which
was rightly called the pithecanthropus
erectus (erect ape-man). The opinion of
the majority has now become the general
opinion in anthropology.
This was a dramatic intervention in
the standing controversy with regard to
the origin of man. Ever since Darwin
had, as Professor Dewar says, “ illumined
the long unsettled horizon of human
thought” with his theory of selection
and descent, anthropologists had foreseen
the extension of the doctrine of evolution
to man. Haeckel and Darwin had soon
effected that extension in theory. Now
the discovery of the pithecanthropus came
as a remarkable crown to the enormous
structure of evidence in its favour. But
a distinction had already been drawn
between the evolution of body and the
evolution of mind. Thinkers like Dr.
Wallace and Dr. Mivart offered no re
sistance, or, indeed, strongly defended,
the doctrine that man had inherited his
bodily form from a lower animal species,
but affected to see a gulf in mental
faculty which forbade us to derive man’s
mind from that of any animal. Since
those days the evidence for the evolution
of the mind has accumulated until it is
at least equivalent to that for the evolu
tion of the body. In the Riddle of the
Universe Professor Haeckel gives a mag
nificent summary of the evidence for
both theses, for the development of man,
mind and body, from an animal ancestor,
through which he is closely related to
the apes. The subject is one that be
longs to the science of which Haeckel is
one of the acknowledged masters. It was
thought that all serious criticism of the
work—all criticism that had the moral and
constructive aim of ensuring the triumph
of truth—would centre upon these first
ten chapters dealing with evolution. The
critics have acted otherwise, and we shall
see that there is little serious resistance
to our extension of the principle of
natural evolution to man, and bringing
him within the unity of the cosmos.
Let us see first, however, what is the
attitude of cultivated thought generally
on the subject. We have seen how the
defenders of gaps have surrendered the
inorganic world to the monist, how a
mere handful remain to defend the
dualistic theory of the origin of life, and
how they have fled before the advance
of the Darwinians. We shall now find
that they are fast deserting this last
breach in the evolutionary scheme. A
quarter of a century ago Tyndall shook
the world with his famous : “ We claim,
and we will wrest from theology, the
whole domain of cosmological theory.”
‘‘ His successors,” said Professor Dewar,
in the same city, last year, “have no
longer any need to repeat those signifi
cant words . . . The claim has been
practically, though often unconsciously,
conceded.”
Canon Aubrey Moore,
whose work Mr. Ballard recommends
us to read, urged his colleagues to
admit the claim nearly twenty years
ago. Wallace’s idea, he said, “has a
strangely unorthodox look.
If, as a
Christian believes, the higher intellect
who used these laws for the creation of
man, was the same God who worked in
and by these same laws in creating the
lower forms of life, Mr. Wallace’s dis
tinction of cause disappears.” Again :
“We have probably as much to learn
about the soul from comparative psychology, a science which as yet scarcely
exists, as we have learned about the
body from comparative biology.”1 He
concludes that the question has nothing
to do with religion. Dr. W. N. Clarke
is no less clear. “The time has come,”
he says, “ when theology should remand
the investigation of the time and manner
of the origin of man to the science or
anthropology with its kindred sciences,
just as it now remands the time and'
manner of the origin of the earth to
astronomy and geology . . . anthropo
logy and its kindred sciences will give
an evolutionary answer.” Again : “ But
though there is no reason against
1 Science and the Faith, pp. 203 and 211.
�THE ASCENT OF MAN
5i
an infirmary in travelling by rail across
admitting it if it is supported by facts,
special creation, whether of the spirit of Switzerland. Observations on the beauty
man or of other new elements of the of the mountains led to a discussion of
advancing order, may come to appear their natural growth, and the nun—little
improbable. The larger the sweep of suspecting his identity—informed him
one great progressive method, the more that she had obtained her sensible and
probable does it become that the method modern views from Haeckel’s Natural
is universal. The idea of unity in God’s History of Creation / We shall see in
the end that the religious opposition to
work and method is an idea that tends,
Haeckel’s teaching—his real teaching—
when once it has been admitted, to
is crumbling year by year. On our pre
extend over the whole field.”1
Dr.
Iverach and Mr. Newman Smyth desert sent question of the evolution of the
the gap, and refer us to science for the human mind, one may gather from this
solution; though, as before, we shall very general agreement of the cultured
find Dr. Iverach raising subsequent and defenders of Christianity that scientific
irrelevant difficulties.
Professor Le and expert opinion can be little short of
Conte and Mr. Fiske, whom we are unanimous. Dr. Wallace, with whose
views we shall deal separately, does in
told to read, are emphatic evolutionists.
Says Le Conte : “ I believe the spirit of deed stand out with a strange obstinacy
man was developed out of the anima or in the world of science—stands out as
conscious principle of animals, and that Virchow so long did in Germany, as
this again was developed out of the Cuvier did in France—but the doctrine
of the evolution of mind is now
lower forms of life-force, and this in its
turn out of the chemical and physical generally accepted by psychologists.
Professor J. Ward says “ the unanimity
forces of nature.” 2 Mr. Fiske sketches
with which this conclusion is now
a theory of natural evolution in his
accepted by biologists of every school
Through Nature to God (p. 94). Dr.
Dallinger allows it is “ not by any means seems to justify Darwin’s confidence a
other than conceivable that science may quarter of a century ago.”1 Another
psychologist, Professor
be able to demonstrate the actual distinguished
Miinsterberg, is equally scornful of those
physical line of man’s origin” (quoted
by Mr. Ballard). Even Mr. Rhondda who still linger in this breach.2 Sir W.
Williams believes “ evolution is com Turner closed his Presidential address
plete from the jelly-fish up to Shake to the British Association in 1900 with a
confident assumption of the general
speare” (p. 26), and says (p. 40):
“When evolution reached man she acceptance of the doctrine3—so far,
seemed not to be content with making indeed, as to evoke from a conservative
writer in the Athenceum a lament that
bodies, and devoted herself to the
development of intelligence and the he “ carried the evolutionary idea to its
logical conclusion with a most uncom
noblest feelings.”
Haeckel is, therefore, once more in promising materialism.” In fact, a cul
tivated and hostile reviewer in the Man
excellent and edifying company. He
chester Guardian dismisses the first and
tells in his latest work (Aus Insulinde)
how he found himself a few years ago
1 Naturalism and
p. 7face to face with the religious director of Ward is speaking ofAgnosticism, ii, doctrineDr.
the complete
of
1 An Outline of Christian Theology, p. 225.
2 Evolution and Religious Thought, p. 313.
And elsewhere he says that until recently “ the
grounds of our belief in immortality were based
largely on a supposed separateness of man from
the brutes—his complete uniqueness in the whole
scheme of nature. This is now no longer
possible” (The Conception of God, p. 75).
development.
2 Psychology and Life, p. 91.
3 I shall quote his words presently to show
that he held not only evolution, but evolution in
the same sense as Haeckel. I shall also quote
similar language from the speech of the President
of the Anthropological section at the Congress of
1901.
�52
THE ASCENT OF MAN
chief part of Haeckel’s book with an
assurance that “ nowadays you cannot
startle even the man in the street by tell
ing him the soul has been continuously
evolved from the souls of unicellular
protists.” For my part, I am not pre
pared to assign Dr. Wallace, or even
Dr. Horton, to a lower level of culture
than that of the man in the street. But
it would be difficult to draw up to-day
even a slender list of capable biologists
or anthropologists who deny the ascent
of man from the rest of the animal
world.
. This very general agreement of scien
tific men, accepted, as it is, by the ablest
theistic writers of the day, has a formid
able support in the facts and the justified
assumptions of science. Once it has
been proved that the whole development
of nature, from the formation of atoms
up to the formation of species, has pro
ceeded in a continuous manner; and
when it is known, as we do know to
day, that this law of natural evolution
applies also to the most elaborate of our
thoughts and institutions, to our art, our
language, and our civilisation; it becomes
clear that there is so strong a presump
tion for the natural evolution of man
that only the most explicit proof of
man’s uniqueness could prevent us from
applying the law to explain his origin.
When we find further that man is akin
to the lower species in a score of ways
which point to derivation, and are quite
unintelligible on any other theory, the
onus of proof lies heavier than ever on
those who resist. We should be scien
tifically and logically justified in assuming
the evolution of man, unless and until
some grave hindrance is pointed out
in. the nature of man’s structure or
spiritual powers. . But, as I said, the
positive evidence is enormous. As far
as structure is concerned we have no
reply to meet.
The proofs which
Haeckel has marshalled so ably in
Chapters II.-V. of the Riddle have
passed unchallenged; nor is there any
serious “answer by anticipation” which
we should be expected to consider. The
analogy of man’s structure and his phy
siological functions with those of other
mammals, the significant course of his
embryological development, and the
atrophied organs and muscles that are
still transmitted from mother to child,
have convinced a stubborn world at
length. . That gap has been deserted.
It is still thought by some that a gulf
remains between the mind of man and
that of the other animals, and that here
at least they still find their treasured in
tervention of an external power in the
orderly development of the universe.
They think that man’s mental powers,
and what he has achieved with those
powers, mark him off too sharply
from the psychology of the lower
animals for us to admit evolution.
Let us see first what distinctions are
alleged in support of this assertion,
and then we may study the force
of. the psychological evidence for evo
lution.
Now, when we turn to the critics of
the Riddle—either explicit critics or
critics “ by anticipation ”—we find we
have to deal with a very meagre group
of. not very clear or well-informed
thinkers. Such phrases as those which
Mr. Blatchford quotes from a sermon
delivered by Dr. Talmage as late as
1898, that the evolution of man is “con
trary to the facts of science,” and that
“natural evolution is not upward but
always downward ’’—only show the kind
of stuff that can be safely delivered
in tabernacles. Dr. Horton, another
preacher, complains that Haeckel “has
not been able to explain the origin of
consciousness,” or “how the rational
life we call spirit has been produced by
the physical ”; which is a complete
ignoring—probably ignorance—of" the
mass of evidence Haeckel has presented,
as we shall see.
Mr. Ballard hides
behind the respectable figure of Dr.
A. R. Wallace, though at other times he
seems indesirous to press the objection.
We are, in fact, left to face a medley of
small points made by the Rev. Rhondda
Williams (who admits the evolution of
�THE ASCENT OF MAN
the mind), Dr. Iverach, and the Rev.
Ambrose Pope.
Mr. Pope, you will remember, holds
that Haeckel collected the basic material
for his system during three “half-day
excursions.”
He himself admits the
sufficiency of evolution until we come
to the human mind, and then says:
“This is psychology, and, like all psy
chologists, Haeckel starts with certain
metaphysical hypotheses.
His hypo
thesis is that mental phenomena are the
effects of physical phenomena.” This,
he says, “ looks like an innocent assump
tion ”—to whom, we are not told—but
it contains the fatal conclusion, and is
“ opposed by nearly every psychologist of
repute in the world.” These men are
“ expert psychologists,” whereas Haeckel
is only making a “ half-day excursion ”
from his own province into “ another
subject entirely.” One really begins to
suspect that it was during “ a half-day
excursion ” that Mr. Pope studied
Haeckel.
A grosser travesty of his
system it would be difficult to conceive.
Serious students will not expect an
analysis of it, but I will briefly point
out its absurdities. This subject is as
much within the province of compara
tive zoology, of which Haeckel is one of
the greatest living masters, as it is in
the field of psychology. It is a border
question. There was, therefore, no ex
cursion.
Indeed, it is not too much
to say that this tracing of the upward
growth of mind has been one of
Haeckel’s most absorbing studies ; and
now his conclusion, based on a long
life of study and research, is to be
flippantly represented as an “assumption”
ignorantly and hastily stolen from a
province “ entirely ” different from his
own—a province, moreover, where we
are assured it did not exist. Further,
of the seven “ psychologists of repute ”
whom Mr. Pope quotes—Windt (Wundt),
Hoffding, Ward, Sully, Stout, Dewy,
and James—six at least admit the evo
lution of mind by purely natural pro
cesses. I have already quoted the ablest
ot them, Professor Ward, as a witness
53
to the unanimity of this conclu
sion.1
With the difficulties alleged by Dr.
Iverach we will not linger. He seems
not to insist on the impossibility of
evolution, but urges that man is actually
separated from the animals by several
marked prerogatives. One of these is
language; but as Dr. Iverach admits this
is “ manifestly a social product ”—that is
to say, evolved—one wonders why it is
adduced at all. Another difference is
in his relation to his environment, which
he can modify and turn to service ; that
also is clearly an acquired or evolved
faculty. Finally, Dr. Iverach urges man’s
distinction in the way of science,
religion, morality, civilisation, and so on.
Experts are agreed, and many theo
logians are with them, that these are all
evolutionary products. They did not
exist 300,000 years ago. Nor does Dr.
Iverach seriously urge them as objections
to the theory of evolution. On the other
hand, Mr. Rhondda Williams, who
“ believes ”—though it is “not proved
that man was evolved, soul and body,
makes a prolonged onslaught on
Haeckel’s position. Before we follow
him into his storm-cloud of rhetoric, let
us make clear what he hopes to gain by
it. He admits the fact of evolution.
He claims, of course, that the evolution
ary process was divinely or pantheistically
guided; a point we discuss later. The
only practical question is : Does he, or
does he not, admit that the agencies at
work in the uplifting of the human
species are the same agencies which we
have hitherto dealt with ? If he does, it
is of no real consequence to us that he
finds Haeckel’s theory of consciousness
or of memory at fault. The main point is
the exclusion of the new kind of force
which was supposed to enter the world
with the human mind. It is important
to remember—he seems to forget it
himself sometimes—that Mr. Williams
does not postulate the entrance of a new
1 In so far as Mr. Pope means that they differ
from Haeckel as to the actual relation of brain
and mind we shall meet the point presently.
�54
THE ASCENT OF MAN
force into the cosmos, but, like Le Conte to “ psychoplasm ” for more “conjuring.”
and Fiske, sees only a further unfolding
Haeckel is represented as “calling in
of the universal spirit. At the bottom
psychoplasm to account for what proto
his quarrel with Haeckel is not about the plasm could not do”—which is false;
evolution of the human soul, or the
psychoplasm being the same thing as
agencies which evolved it, but as to the protoplasm, but in a different relation,
relation of all soul to brain.
just as Dr. Lionel Beale speaks of
He promises us, then, that he is going
“bioplasm”—and then as saying that
to convict the distinguished scientist
“ what springs from it is declared to be
of “jugglery,” and to find him in only a name for what protoplasm does.”
“a perfect muddle,” and so on. The Mr. Williams foists on Haeckel a
first “conjuring trick” is produced by fictitious distinction, and then invites
a little conjuring on the preacher’s his admiring audience to make merry
own part. He cuts in two Haeckel’s over the confusion it involves. Any
reference (p. 94) to “ the transcendental student with a desire to understand,
design of the teleological philosophy of rather than to score rhetorical points,
the schools,” inserts a full-stop after will see at a glance that Haeckel’s termin
“design,” and then asks us to admire ology is perfectly consistent with itself
the stupidity or desperateness of a man and the facts.
Protoplasm is the
who first excludes purpose from the material substratum of all life; but
universe—“in order to shut out God” when it takes on the form of nerve
—and then finds it in the organic world tissue and becomes the base of nerveand calls it “ mechanical teleology.” If,
life (which we all agree to call psychic
moreover, Mr. Williams cannot see that life) it is described as psychoplasm.
the word “design” or “purpose” is Just as Mr. Williams’s procedure would
used only in a figurative sense in the be called clever from the intellectual
second application, he would do well to point of view, but by a different name
re-study the passage. A similar con from the moral standpoint.
fusion is found in his criticism of
As a last instance of this poor
Haeckel’s treatment of consciousness
“jugglery” I will quote one more
and memory. He labours to prove that passage. Haeckel, he says, “speaks of
Haeckel must take the word memory
certain parts of the brain as ‘the real
figuratively in its lower stages—which organs of mental life; they are those
is precisely what Haeckel obviously highest instruments of psychic activity
means. But the justification of apply that produce thought and conscious
ing the word “ memory ” to the function
ness ! ’ Look at the contradiction in
of a cell and to the human faculty lies
that statement. Certain parts of the
in the whole mass of proof Haeckel has brain are said to be at once the instru
accumulated to show that they are the ments and the producers of conscious
same function, and that the one passes
ness 1 Talk about a doctor using
gradually, as the nervous system develops,
instruments if you like, but do not talk
into the other. That is one of the
of the instruments producing the doctor;
most superficial truths of comparative and especially do not speak as if both
statements could be true at the same
psychology.1 Then Mr. Williams turns
time.” This is a bewildering sort of
1 We may compare Mr. Ballard’s eagerness to
point out that, whereas Haeckel grants zis no
souls or wills, he ascribes these even to the cells
and atoms. It is the same curious and wilful
misconstruction. Haeckel maintains that the
force associated with the atom or the cell is the
same fundamentally as that which reveals itself
in our consciousness. That is the logical con
clusion of all his proofs of continuous, natural
development. He is, therefore, logically correct
in speaking of the “soul” of the atom if we
insist on speaking of the “soul” of man. The
sensation and will he attributes to atoms are
obviously figurative, and merely reminders of his
doctrine of the unity of all force or spirit—a
unity which Le Conte and Fiske and even Mr.
Williams (when he is consistent) also admit.
�THE ASCENT OF MAN
criticism.
Organs, instruments, and
producers are clearly used by Haeckel
in much the same sense. None but a
pedant, or a desperate critic, would
abuse us for saying that the stomach
was the instrument and producer of
digestion; certainly no one would
misunderstand us. Thought is not a
substantial entity like a doctor. The
simile is totally misleading.
Happily, Mr. Williams finds we have
arrived at last at the crucial point, and
he says that it is : “ Does the mind use
the brain as an instrument, or does the
brain really produce the mind ? Haeckel’s
position is the latter. But do not sup
pose for a moment that he has any
scientific proof of it.” Anyone who is
acquainted with modern psychology is
aware that neither of the positions Mr.
Williams puts is held by anybody of
consequence nowadays.
Spiritualist
philosophers do not speak of the mind
using the brain; and Haeckel, when
you pay serious attention to all he says,
does not hold that the brain produces
the mind. Matter, he has said from the
beginning, never produces force or spirit.
They are two aspects of one reality, as
Mr. Williams himself holds (p. 8). The
sole question with Haeckel is whether
this force we call the human mind is one
with the force revealed in the animal
mind and also in inorganic nature. That
is naturally the first concern of a monist.
Force, it is a truism in science, varies with
its material substratum. When hydrogen
and oxygen are united the resultant force
has vastly different properties from what
it had before. When water unites with
fresh chemical substances, force takes on
again a wholly new set of properties ;
and the more elaborate the material
compound, the more elaborate the force.
Protoplasm is a most highly elaborate
chemical compound with a most intri
cate molecular structure. It is quite
natural to expect the force-side of it to
be very distinctive and peculiar; so we
agree to connect life with the lower
forces. But when protoplasm becomes
psychoplasm, the complication greatly
55
increases; the force varies in the same
proportion. The psychoplasm or proto
plasm of the higher animal brain ad
vances still further in complexity, and,
moreover, organic structure of the most
intricate kind is added. Hence in the
human brain, on physical principles, we
must expect a manifestation of force
vastly different from all that we find else
where. We find mind.
Haeckel, on
the strength of this very clear and
scientific reasoning, and of all the facts
as to the intimate dependence of mind
on nerve-tissue which he gathers into
several chapters, and all the facts as to
the gradual unfolding of this force we
call mind in exact correspondence to the
growth in complexity of the nervous
system, concludes that he sees no reason
for thinking that the mind-force is
specifically different from any other kind
of force. I will return to this very im
portant point presently. Meantime we
see what there is in Mr. Williams’s state
ment of Haeckel’s position and his
assertion that it is an idle assumption.1
1 I dare not risk fatiguing the reader with a
further analysis of Mr. Williams’s criticisms under
this head. I have treated them at some length,
because this is the chief section of his criticism
of Haeckel, and because, though this is the chief
section of Haeckel’s book, no other critic devotes
more than a paragraph to it. But I will briefly
point out some further instances of Mr. Williams’
peculiar method. He says that, “ as far as science
goes,” we are “quite free” to conceive the rela
tion of mind to brain as that of “ the musician
and his instrument.” That is gravely misleading.
Science permits no such substantial independence
of each other as there is between musician and
organ. The only proper metaphor science would
allow is the relation of music to the instrument;
which is by no means so accommodating to the
dualist. With the petty quibble about “ truth
I will not delay. But on the next page (23) you
will note how Mr. Williams quotes Haeckel’s,
saying that ‘ ‘ man sinks to the level of a placental
mammal ” (which no one questions, in substance),,
and in the next paragraph turns this into the
grotesque doctrine ‘ ‘ that human nature sinks to.
the level of tie lowest placental mammal ” (a,
very lowly beast)! Then he grumbles that
Haeckel is “ inconsistent in his estimates of
man ” ; though he must know that Haeckel only’
belittles man relatively to the old theology.
Then (p. 24), after a pedantic effort to make
Haeckel say the mind of Shakespeare may have:
rivals in the animal world, he credits him with.
Bishops gate Institnta?
�56
THE ASCENT OF MAN
Mr. Williams and his colleagues may
be advised to take to heart the words of
one of the ablest American psycho
logists, Professor Miinsterberg, who is
by no means a materialist. “ The
philosopher,” he says, “ who bases the
hope of immortality on a theory of brain
functions and enjoys the facts which
cannot be physiologically explained,
stands, it seems to me, on the same
ground with the astronomer who seeks
with his telescope for a place in the
universe where no space exists, and
where there would be undisturbed room
for God and eternal bodiless souls.”1
All this criticism is neither more nor less
than an attempt to defend gaps. If Mr.
Williams replies that it is rather an
attempt to point out gaps in Haeckel’s
system, the reply is obvious. The
essence of Haeckel’s system is monistic
or negative. Any positive theories he
may advance as to the relation of brain
to memory or cell to consciousness are
scientific theories, grounded on the best
available evidence, but not final and
unchangeable. If they prove inade
quate, or if fresh facts discountenance
them, they will be modified. But the
essential part of his position remains.
“The whole momentum of our know
ledge of biological continuities,” as
Mr. Newman Smyth says, the whole
momentum of our knowledge of cosmic
processes, indeed, impels us to suppose
the human mind was evolved. Where
are the obstacles to such an assump
tion ?
Where are the specifically
different—not merely very different, but
the opinion that the difference between the mind
of Plato and the animal is “slighter in every
respect than that between the anthropoid ape
and a bird”; whereas Plaeckel had said “be
tween the higher and the lower animal souls,”
which may mean the gorilla and the amoeba.
Then he finds a difference between the animal
and the human embryo in the fact that the
embryo will become a man and ‘1 the highest
animal never will ” ; which is begging the whole
question whether the highest animal has not
actually done so. Such is the farrago of rhetoric
opposed to us as the only and adequate reply to
the most important section of the Riddle.
1 Psychology and Life, p. 91.
different in kind—contents of the
human mind which forbid us to suppose
it ? They are disappearing one by one
as the sciences of comparative psycho
logy and comparative philology and
comparative sociology and comparative
ethics and religion unfold their several
stories. Everything has been evolved.
To talk blandly of the “vast difference ”
between mind and matter is “ an appeal to
the imagination ” and “ an insult to the
understanding,” says Mr. Mallock. He
goes on to censure the dishonest
practice of contrasting the mind of the
highest man with that of the lower
animals. That is not truth-seeking.
The truth-seeker will take the highest
animal intelligence (as discovered by
the observations of Darwin, Romanes,
Lloyd-Morgan, Lubbock, and so many
others) and the lowest human intelli
gence (as seen in the Veddahs or
Hottentots, or as indicated by pre
historic human skulls) and ask himself
whether he finds here a gulf which
evolution could not be supposed to
have bridged in something like 500,000
years. But if animals have the germ,
ask some, why can you not raise one to
a higher level ? Setting aside the actual
results of training, let us ask : Did it,
on the theistic-evolution theory of man’s
origin, take God 300,000 years or more
to raise the highest animal species to the
miserable level man occupied 50,000 or
100,000 years ago ? And do you ask
man to do more than this in a year or
two ?
But, though it is well to remember
that the essence of Haeckel’s position is
the reasoned exclusion of any new force,
we are bound to give serious attention to
the positive evidence he has accumu
lated.
The verbal quibbles of Mr.
Williams have not touched the structure
of evidence given in Chaps. VII.-X.
of the Riddle, and no other critic is in the
field. To resume it briefly, we have a
fourfold gradation of psychic force, or a
fourfold exhibition of the growth of
mind. In the first place, we may arrange
J all known organisms, from the moneron
�THE ASCENT OF MAN
to man, in a scale of mental faculty, or
vital faculty leading up to mental, and we
find a sensibly graduated development
of mind, corresponding rigidly. to the
growth of structure in complexity. In
the second place, we study the growth
of the individual human mind from the
impregnated ovum, and we find the
same gradual formation of nerve and
brain and the. same proportionate
unfolding of consciousness. In the
third place, we learn from palseontology
that living things have been developed
from each other in the order in which
the zoologist arranges his subjects, and
which is confidently anticipated by the
embryologist. In the fourth place, if we
arrange the brains of all known men in
a similar hierarchic scale, we find the
same rigid correspondence of function
and structure, or of mind-action and
brain. Then there are supplementary
and complementary lines of research.
There is the life of the sub-conscious
self, which Professor James says is a
great world we are only just beginning
to explore. Already the explorations
show conscious action to be only a
small area of mental action ; the larger
area is mostly mechanical, and the
conscious area passes gradually into it
and out of it. As Mr. Mallock says:
“ The human mind, like an iceberg
which floats with most of its bulk sub
merged, from its first day to its last, has
more of itself below the level of con
sciousness than ever appears above it.”
There are the facts of double and
abnormal consciousness, the. various
kinds of mental paralysis resulting from
lesion of the brain, the phenomena of
somnambulism and narcotic action and
artificial unconsciousness. There are
the voluminous determinations
of
psycho-physics as to the exact correspon
dence between purely physical and
chemical changes in the brain and
changes in thought or emotion. There
are the zealous investigations of the
modern students of child-life and child
brain, showing the same exact relation
of development. And there are the
57
most recent and largely successful
efforts to localise mental functions in
different parts of the brain.
Now, let us be perfectly clear what
this enormous mass of convergent
evidence really means. When we study
the stomach or the lungs in comparative
zoology, and perceive the close cor
respondence, from the lowest to the
highest forms, of structure and function,
we do not dream of concluding only
that the two have a very close con
nection : we say at once that they are
in the relation of organ and its function :
we say that the digestive force or the
respiratory-force is the same throughout,
and we can at the lowest end of the
scale connect it with ordinary natural
forces. Yet when we have this stupen
dous mass of evidence converging along
a dozen lines to the conclusion that the
mind-force is continuous throughout the
animal kingdom, and is rigidly and
absolutely bound up, as far as every
particle of scientific evidence goes, with
the nerve-structure., and is, at the lower
end, continuous with the ordinary force
of the universe, we are told we must
draw no conclusion whatever. We are
asked to believe that this mass of
scientific evidence is quite consistent
with a belief that some extraneous force,
distinct in kind from the ordinary force
of the cosmos, is “ using ” the nerve
tissue to manifest itself; and that the
highly complex force which must result
from the intricate molecular texture of
the human brain is nowhere discoverable.
On scientific principles “these facts,” as
Mr. Mallock says, “totally destroy the
foundation of the theist’s arguments.”
They teach us that, as he says again,
“each mother who has watched with
pride, as something peculiar and original,
the growth of her child’s mind, from the
days of the cradle to the days of the
first lesson-book, has really been watch
ing, compressed into a few brief years,
i the stupendous process which began in
the darkest abyss of time and connects
our thoughts, like our bodies, with the
primary living substance—whether this
�58
THE ASCENT OF MAN
be wholly identical with what we call
matter or no.”1 If it were not for the
presence amongst us of certain religious
traditions about the nature of man’s
“ soul,” or mind-force, no scientist would
ever hesitate for a moment to draw a
conclusion which would be justified by
every canon of logic and science—the
conclusion that in this vast hierarchy of
facts we see the world-force ascending
upwards until it grows self-conscious in
the human brain. Haeckel’s attitude is
the strictly and purely scientific attitude.
But, it is further urged, this is only a
description of the manner of growth, not
of the causes. “ Thus,” says Professor
Case, “ in presence of the problem which
is the crux of materialism, the origin of
consciousness, he first propounds a
gratuitous hypothesis that everything has
mind, and then gives up the origin of
conscious mind after all.” I have ex
plained in what sense Haeckel attributes
mind to “ everything ”—though a skilled
metaphysician might be expected to see
that. To the second point I reply that
the whole of this evidence is an explana
tion of the origin of mind. The whole
evidence points to the conclusion that
conscious mind is an outgrowth of un
conscious, and that this is the generally
diffused cosmic force. But you cannot
derive the conscious from the uncon
scious, say several critics. The objection
is childish. If we are to explain any
thing, as Sir A. Rucker said, we cannot
explain it in terms of itself: the conscious
must be derived from the unconscious.
And as a fact, Mr. Mallock points out,
you do get consciousness out of the
unconscious every day—in the growth of
the infant; or, as Lloyd Morgan puts it,
in the development of the chicken from
the egg. In any case, the critics plead,
you are only saying how and not why
mind was evolved. Now, in so far as
this is a plea for teleology, we remand it,
1 Religion as a Credible Doctrine, p. 77. The
last phrase is superfluous. No one “wholly
identifies ” the primary living substance with
“ matter.” Matter and force are two aspects of
it, as brain and mind are.
as before. If it is anything more than
this, it is a plea for gaps and breaches in
the mechanical scheme of the universe,
building. fallaciously (as usual) on the
present imperfection of science. Take
the development of the embryo. We
certainly can do little more as yet than
describe its stages. But no one now
doubts it is a mechanical process. The
assumption that some non-mechanical
force was grouping and marshalling the
molecules of protoplasm, according to a
design of which it was itself totally un
conscious, only plunges us in deeper
mysteries than ever. Moreover, the facts
of heredity, the transmission of bodily
marks and features and peculiarities,
point wholly to a mechanical or bodily
action. The development of the mind
on a cosmic scale is still more clearly
mechanical. There is not a single fact
that compels us to go outside of the range
of familiar cosmic forces to seek an
explanation.
I will add one or two illustrations from
recent science to show how its progress
tends more and more to confirm Haec
kel’s position. Sir W. Turner closed his
presidential address to the British Asso
ciation three years ago with these words
(which were duly censured as “ material
ism ”): “ At last man came into exist
ence. His nerve-energy, in addition to
regulating the processes in his economy
which he possesses in common with
animals, was endowed with higher
powers. When translated into psychical
activity, it has enabled him throughout
the ages to progress from the condition
of a rude savage to an advanced stage
of civilisation.” Thus is the very lan
guage of Haeckel used on our supreme
scientific solemnity. The following year
Professor D. J. Cunningham (M.D.,
D.Sc., LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S.) was the
president of the Anthropological Section
of the Congress, and his presidential
address was devoted to “ the part which
the human brain has played in the evo
lution of man.” The whole speech was
a vindication of the purely mechanical ex
! planation of the rise of man. Instead of
�THE ASCENT OF MAN
seeking the influence of external powers,
Professor Cunningham looks for more
prosaic changes that may have led to the
segregation of man. The reader who is
only accustomed to rhetorical and
spiritualistic treatment of the theme will
learn with a shock that the mere forma
tion of a habit of setting the hands free
for other purposes than locomotion pro
bably had a profound effect on the brain
and intelligence. “ So important is the
part played by the human hand as an
agent of the mind, and so perfectly is
it adjusted with reference to this office,
that there are many who think that the
first great start which man obtained on
the path which has led to his higher
development was given by the setting
of the upper limb free from the duty or
acting as an organ of support and loco
motion.” It hardly needed divine inter
vention or guidance to suggest this
change. The hand-centre in the brain
is located in such a region that its de
velopment must react on the cortex.
Further it is “ the acquisition of speech
which has been a dominant factor in
determining the high development of the
human brain.” The centre for facial
expression is contiguous to that of the
hand, and, as communication began to
grow between the primitive men, much
facial expression would be used, giving a
still further stimulus to the brain. In
fine, not only is language shown by the
philologist to be an evolutionary product,
but the physiologist finds that the dis
tinctive structures in the human brain
(though they may occasionally be fairly
traced in the brain of the anthropoid
ape) which are connected with speech
are the outcome of “a slow evolu
tionary growth.” Thus is science coming
to determine the physiological line of
evolution which gave the first distinction
of brain-power, on which natural selec
tion has fastened so effectively.1
1 Let me quote Professor Cunningham’s con
clusion : “ Assuming that the acquisition of
speech has afforded the chief stimulus to the
general development of the brain, therebygiving it a rank high above any other factor
59
Thus are the mechanical methods of
science bridging the supposed gulf.
There is no longer serious ground for
claiming a unique position for man, and
it is not surprising to find the leading
theologians sounding the retreat once
more. We are, in fact, beginning to
realise that the dualist theory of man
never did afford any “ explanation ” of
anything. The connection of soul and
body was always incomprehensible;1
nor is there the slightest intellectual satis
faction in covering up the whole mystery
of the mind with a label bearing the
word “ spirit.” Psychology has deserted
its old ways and become a science.. The
theologians will do well not to wait until
they are again ignominiously splashed
by the advancing tide of scientific re
search. Their efforts to “ show cause ”
why we should not apply the mechanical
process of evolution (whether divinely
guided or not) to the growth of man
have hopelessly failed.
But before we leave the question it
is necessary to consider for a moment
the question of the liberty of the will.
Here Haeckel’s opponents are content
to appeal to what Emerson calls “the
cowardly doctrine of consequences.”
We shall consider the moral outlook of
a monistic world in a later chapter, but
which has operated in the evolution of man, it
would be wrong to lose sight of the fact that
the first step in this upward movement must have
been taken by the brain itself. Some cerebral
variation—probably trifling and insignificant at
the start, and yet pregnant with the most farreaching possibilities—has in . the stem-form of
man contributed that condition which has
rendered speech possible.
This variation,
strengthened and fostered by natural selection,
has in the end led to the great double result.of
a large brain with wide and extensive associa
tion-areas and articulate speech, the two results
being brought about by the mutual reaction of
the one process on the other.”
1 Compare Professor Herbert’s desperate pre
dicament in his Modern Realism Examined,
which we are urged to read : “We may regard
the material world as real, but if we do we must
deny the existence of all but Creative Intelligence.
... If the material world is as it seems, it
contains no minds” (p. 148). Mr. Mallock
points all this out to Father Maher.very forcibly
in his Religion as a Credible Doctrine.
�6o
THE ASCENT OF MAN
may observe in passing that all this kind
of reasoning is futile and insincere. It
will not make the least practical differ
ence to life whether psychologists do
or do not agree to leave unimpaired the
old formula of “ the liberty of the will.”
A man can control his actions to a great
extent, and will to that extent be re
sponsible for them. On that we have
the witness of consciousness. How this
apparent power of choice arises in a
mechanism like the mind we can hardly
expect to understand until the new
psychology has made some progress.
But the old idea of a “ self-determining
power of the will ” is now “ an unthink
able conception,” as Dr. Croll (who
is on the list of the sound scientists)
emphatically says. Mr. Mallock also
thinks that “every attempt to escape
from the determinism of science by
analysis or by observation is fruitless.”
No sooner do we begin to look closely
into our free-will than we find the sup
posed area of its action shrinking
rapidly : we find ourselves in a perfect
network of determining influences.
Our will is the slave to our desire; we
cannot will what we do not desire, nor
what we desire the least or the less.
Our desire can always be traced to
our circumstances, our education, our
character and temperament. And our
character and
temperament — here
modern science has had a great deal
to say—are determined by heredity and
environment. The attempt to break
through this network with a cry of alarm
about consequences is futile. There
will be no practical consequences of an
evil character; and the consequences
for good of the scientific attack on the
old doctrine, from the days of Robert
Owen down, have been incalculable.
The community is a self-conscious
determinism. Now that it knows how
much heredity and environment have to
do with character and desire, and with
the healthy balancing of desires, it will
take action. The whole of education
and social reform have benefited enor
mously by the overthrow of the old
scholastic notion of the will. Such
“ freedom ” as we now find we have—if
we may still use the word—is not differ
ent in kind from that which a cat or a
dog evinces every day.
We conclude, then, that Haeckel’s
opponents have shown no plausible
reason why evolution should not extend
to the origin of man. The great achieve
ments which distinguish man to-day from
the animal world—art, science, philo
sophy, religion, civilisation, language—•
are known to have been formed, from
very rudimentary beginnings, by a long
process of evolution. At their root, in
the men whose skulls and bones and
rude implements are unearthed to-day,
we find only a somewhat more elaborate
brain, with deeper furrows and more con
volutions, a somewhat higher grade of
intelligence and emotion, than in the
higher animals about us. There is no
gulf, no gap: but there is a period of
some 300,000 years for natural selection
to work in. Comparative anatomy is
beginning to trace the steps—quite
natural, if not at first casual, steps—by
which man ascended in this direction. A
chance variation in the use of the limbs
could, it seems, greatly stimulate the
most important part of the brain. Any
increase of brain-power would prove of
enormous advantage, and would be
“ selected ” and emphasised at once. In
any case the momentum of continuity
and the mass of evidence for actual con
tinuity are enormous. It is no less
scientific than philosophical to see in the
growth of the human mind a further ex
tension of the life-force of the cosmos, a
further embodiment of the great matter
force reality which unfolds itself in the
universe about us and in the wonderful
self-conscious mechanism of the mind.
�THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
Chapter
61
VI
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
Until a few centuries ago a belief in have the same fate. Man now sees in
the immortality of the soul harmonised the universe at large no shadow of
so well with the prevailing conception support for that promise of unending
of the world at large that men were life he has entertained so long.
content with but slender rational proof “What! shall the dateless worlds in dust be
of it. Even then, it is true, the tragedy
blown
Back to the unremembered and unknown,
of death seemed to the eye so final—And this frail Thou—the flame of yesterday—
the curtain seemed to be rung down so
Burn on forlorn, immortal, and unknown ? ”
inexorably on the conscious soul—that
sceptics were not wanting. The Sad
Death is the law of all things. It is
ducees amongst the Hebrews, the true that the great reality that shapes'
Epicureans amongst the Greeks, and itself in a million forms never dies.
the materiarii of early Christian times, That is its first law. But of every
rejected the belief entirely. Some of single embodiment of its restless energy,
the ablest of the mediaeval schoolmen of every individual being that pours out
(such as Duns Scotus) went so far as to of its womb, the path is measured and
deny that any rational proof could be the fate is written.
devised in support of the belief. But ‘
“ Life lives on.
for most men the belief was credible
It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.”
enough, and not unwelcome. Immor
So rhe position of the belief in per
tality was a familiar idea to them. Not
only God and the angels had that sonal immortality has changed. The
prerogative, but the very stars they pretty thoughts that supported it, or
looked on night by night were believed accompanied it, in the mind of a Plato
to be of immortal texture. In a world or an Augustine, crumble beneath the
where the immortal outnumbered the burden some would lay on them to-day.
mortal, man could well convince him The cosmic odds are against it. It is
self that the tradition of his own immor now the assumption of a stupendous
privilege on the part of one inhabitant
tality was true.
But the world has grown into a of the universe, who flatters himself he
universe to-day, and from end to end of is exempted from the general law of
it comes only the whisper of death. death. We look up now to no immortal
The stars, that had been regarded as ■i stars for reassurance as we turn sadly
fragments of immortal fire, are known from the truthful face of the dead. The
to be hastening to a sure extinction. angels have retreated far from the ways
The moon stands close to us always of humanity. God has shrunk into an
as a calm prophet of death. Such as it intangible cosmic principle. If belief
is, the corpse of a world, will our earth in immortality is to be anything more
one day be. Such will our sun finally than a despairing trust, it must appeal to
become; and after him, or with him, the presence in man of some unique
the hundred millions of his fellows in power and promise. But we have seen
the firmament. Countless dead worlds that modern science completely dis
already lie on the paths of heaven ; and credits the “ supposed separateness of
the millions that are yet unborn will man from the brutes,” to use the words
�62
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
of Le Conte. The thinking force in him
is the same force that reveals itself in
the industry and ingenuity of the ant or
the affection of the dog. Why shall it
survive the corruption of the brain
in this case, yet in their case die
away as surely as the light dies when
the sun sets ? It would seem that it is
not so much a question of examining
Haeckel’s disproofs, as of asking where
we are to look for the ground of this
stupendous claim.
We shall fully consider both points in
the light of the criticisms passed on
Haeckel’s chapter on immortality and
the works on the subject which are
opposed to him. The actual criticisms
will detain us very little, for an obvious
reason. Haeckel has already destroyed
the ground for any claim of a unique
character of the human mind. We have
seen with how little success his oppo
nents have tried to impede or retard his
progress from point to point of the
evolutionary scheme. The very latest
researches of science confirm his theses.
The ablest Christian apologists yield
their arms and desert the long defended
breaches. We have been borne along
by the flood of scientific evidence,
philosophically considered, as far as the
closing thesis of our last chapter. Man
is the latest and highest embodiment of
the universal matter-force reality.
It
would seem that the acceptance of this
thesis is equivalent to an abandonment
of the belief in immortality, but we shall
see that evolutionists like Fiske, and Le
Conte, and Mr. Newman Smyth still
erect feeble barriers. Meantime, let us
dispose of the less advanced critics;
those who reflect the ideas of the average
church-goer and strive to offer some
defence of them.
There is Dr. Horton, for instance,
who pleads much for “ the naive, but
essentially correct, conceptions of our
ancestors.” Dr. Horton seems to think
it most effective to urge that men who
do not share the belief in God and im I
mortality live on “ bestial levels,” and [
are “ shrunk in soul, warped in mind, i
and degraded in body.” The “intel
lectual strain ” of Haeckel’s scientific
work is kindly said to relieve him
personally from these consequences, but
one gathers that we who are not great
scientists fall under Dr. Horton’s merci
less logic. “Accustom yourselves,” he
says, “ to believe that God and freedom
and immortality are hallucinations;
accustom yourselves to the idea that
this stupendous order of being in which
we live is not a rational order at all, but
the mere fortuitous concourse of atoms
[! ], and by an inevitable logic, as our
anarchist friends see, when you have got
rid of the first lie, which is God, you
quickly get rid of the second lie, which
is righteousness, and then you get rid of
all the other lies, which are love, and
truth, and peace, and joy, and civilisa
tion and progress generally, and poetry,
and life.” We will not stay here to
discuss this insincere rhetoric. It is too
great a libel on Dr. Horton himself, if
we take it seriously, and too insulting to
the intelligence of his readers—who,
one may assume, happen to know a few
agnostics. Nor need -we be detained
with the various criticisms in Light.
The chief of these articles states that
Haeckel relies on “physics ” to disprove
the immortality of the soul; more curi
ously still, a second writer in Light (Jan.
19th, 1901) does rely on physics (the
conservation of energy) to rehabilitate
the belief. The second writer, more
over, completely ignoring Haeckel’s de
liberate words, assures his readers that he
“is terrified at the thought of life beyond
the grave,” and adopts the grotesque
title of “ A Frightened Philosopher.”
We shall not get much light from that
side.
Most of the critics we have already
passed, attempting loyally to defend one
or other of the supposed breaches in the
evolutionary doctrine, so that they make
little resistance here. When, in the
course of the next ten years, they have
fallen back on this last position—probably discovering that, on theological
principles, man must have been evolved
�THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
—they will begin to repeat the argu
ments of Fiske and Le Conte, which we
shall presently consider. But there are
several critics who, setting aside the
question of evolution as not essential to
defend, formulate their objection thus.
Science proves up to the hilt that brain
and mind are correlative. As brain
develops, the mind opens—and in strict
est proportion. Lesion or other affection
of the brain proportionately mars the
mental or emotional life.
Psycho
physical observations show that the in
tensity of brain-action quite corresponds
to the intensity of mind-action. Let us
grant all this. But, they say, all this
throws no light whatever on the question
whether the mind may not outlive the
brain.
“ It’s logic! ” exclaims Mr.
Brierley, contemptuously, when he
comes to this part of Haeckel’s scheme.
Mr. Williams and Dr. Horton, and
others, make the same reply. Indeed,
as accomplished rhetoricians, they offer
Haeckel a pretty figurative way of con
ceiving the relation, which may help his
sluggish imagination and correct his
logic. Mind-action is like the music a
master evokes from the piano or violin.
A musical instrument maker would, like
the psycho-physicist, find an exact cor
respondence between the ailments and
defects of the violin and the disorders of
the music, or between the violence of
the molecules of string and wood and
the intensity and tone of the music.
But—Haeckel has forgotten the player !
Brain and thought are instrument and
music. Where, in Haeckel’s philosophy,
is the instrumentalist?
A very singular omission on the part
of one of the keenest observers in the
world! Let us examine the matter.
We have seen in the preceding chapter
the immense mass of scientific evidence
which goes to show that there is an
exact correspondence between brain
action and soul-life. The correspondence
is just the same in man as in the ape or
the dog. As the shadow varies with the
object which projects it, so does thought
vary with the quality and action of the
63
brain. There is no dispute about this.
No induction is based on a wider and
more varied range of observations.
This correspondence is the same as we
find in the case of the heart and its
function, the stomach and digestion, or
the lungs and respiration. Now, in all
these analogous cases we do not seek an
instrumentalist.
The instrument is
automatic. For its formation we look
back along a process of natural evolution
which stretches over 50,000,000 years.
Whether the evolutionary agencies were
divinely guided or no will be considered
presently, but at all events in the heart
and lungs we have automatic instruments,
and we never dream of looking for a
present instrumentalist. It is the same
with the brain of the dog. When the
dog dies, we do not ask what has become
of the instrumentalist now that the
instrument (brain) is broken and the
music (thought) is silent. We never
dream of there being a third element.
But the mind of man is the same mind
more fully developed.
In a sense there is a third factor—
both in the stomach, the canine life, and
the human life—and this is the only
truth there really is in this very mislead
ing figure of rhetoric. I have already
mentioned a critic who endeavours to
deduce the immortality of the soul from
the conservation of energy, and this
gives us the clue. Critics very stupidly,
or very wilfully, represent Haeckel as
saying that thought is a movement of
the molecules of the brain, just as they
say he resolves all things into matter.
They ignore the fact that he lays as
much, if not more, stress on force than
on matter. He holds, of course, that
there is fundamentally only one reality,
but it is most improper to call that by
the name of one of its attributes (exten
sion). Thus we have, in a sense, three
elements : the instrument, the music, and
the soul or energy associated with the
brain. When Haeckel speaks of thought
as “ a function of the brain,” he means
the living brain—the incomparably intri
cate structure of material elements and
�64
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
the natural forces associated with them,
in which thought arises. We have no
scientific or philosophical ground what
ever for . postulating any further element
to explain the music. Is it scientific to
make an exception of this living brain,
and say it is the only non-automatic organ
in the body ? Does its relation to the
rest of the body give the least support
to the notion ? Is it scientific to say the
living brain is automatic in the whole
animal world, but cannot be so in man
because the music is finer and more diffi
cult ? Does embryology favour the idea ?
Does philosophy step in, and bid us sus
pend the scientific method and admit a
breach in the scientific continuity ?
Probably it is to philosophy they will
appeal. These ideas, Dr. Horton says,
“rest on the region of thought and con
sciousness ” to which Haeckel “ studi
ously closes his eyes.” By all means let
us go to philosophy. Kant will tell us
that these psychological proofs of immor
tality are quite discredited. Schelling
and Hegel and Schopenhauer will give us
the consolation of disappearing in the
world-process. Hume and Mill and Spen
cer will prove more than sceptical. Most
modern philosophers will tell us, as
Miinsterberg does, that “ the philosopher
who bases his hope of immortality on a
theory of brain-functions . . . stands
on the same ground as the astronomer
who seeks with his telescope for a place
in the universe where no space exists,
and where there would be undisturbed
room for God and eternal bodiless souls.”
Certainly one can quote thinkers who
wish mind and brain movements to be
left parallel, with the relation of the two
undetermined. But they advance no
reasons which arrest the application of
scientific method. Here in the mind
life are phenomena that we can examine
from two sides—from without and from
within. This may seem at first to give
a certain uniqueness to the soul-life.
But the only soul-life we can examine
from within is our own individual experi
ence. Every other man’s soul is a
matter of objective examination to us;
and by much of the same evidence which
convinces us of his similar experiences,
we are forced to extend conscious mental
action to the brutes. So the uniqueness
once more disappears. Philosophy will
not help or hinder us. Referring to the
work of Professor Royce, a distinguished
American philosopher and Gifford Lec
turer, Professor Le Conte says: “He
gives up the question of immortality as
insoluble by philosophy. Well—perhaps
it is.” i
Thus (reserving some further philo
sophic arguments for the moment) we
return unembarrassed to our scientific
procedure ; and “ science,” Prof. Miinsterberg says, “ opposes to any doctrine
of individual immortality an unbroken
and impregnable barrier.”2 The rigid
relation determined by psycho-physics,
the rigid relation observed in the evolu
tion of the thinking animal, the rigid
relation that is recorded by pathology
and ethnology, and that lies on the
very surface of life, means something
more than parallelism.
It is easy to
quote Huxley and Tyndall in opposition
to Haeckel’s formula. The one was an
idealist in metaphysics: the other has
said much more in the monistic sense
than he ever said in the agnostic. Pro
ceeding on realistic and scientific lines,
we are driven by the rules of induction
to regard thought as wholly bound up
with brain, and to look for no third
element beyond the matter and force of
which the brain is so intricately con
structed. The mysteries that still linger
about consciousness and memory, just as
about embryonic development, for in
stance, are scientific mysteries. To build
on them would be to repeat the discre
dited old tactics.
If the theories of
them which Haeckel offers are unsatis
factory, wait for better ones. They are
the light bridges of the monistic system,
forecasting the scientific advance. But
that, in whatever way, mind-force is an
evolution of the general cosmic-force,
1 The Conception of God, p. 752 Psychology and Life, p. 85.
�THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
and that it therefore affords no more
promise of immortality in the individual
human mind than it does in the indi
vidual motor-car, is a scientific induction
resting on a mass of evidence and drawn
up in observance of the most rigid
rules.
Let us now consider the arguments
brought forward in favour of the belief
in immortality by 'those who have not
lingered to defend any evolutionary gap,
but who freely admit the evolution of
the human mind. These are the “ replies
by anticipation” which, we are told,
should have withheld Professor Haeckel
from his extreme conclusions. Let us
see how puny and fruitless are the efforts
they make to overleap the “ unbroken
and impregnable barrier ” that Professor
Miinsterberg speaks of. Miinsterberg
himself offers a curious example of the
way modern philosophers, especially
idealist philosophers, lend a nominal
support to religious doctrines, yet are
found to mean something totally different
from what the world at large understands
by those doctrines. As the words I
have quoted show, he is as hostile as
Haeckel to any belief in personal im
mortality. “ Only to a cheap curiosity,”
he says again, “ can it appear desirable
that the inner life, viewed as a series of
psychological facts shall go on and on ”;
and again : “ The claim that the deceased
spirits go on with psychological existence
is a violation of the ethical belief in
immortality.”1 Thus he rejects the only
notion of immortality which is in any
plausible way connected with those
moral consequences that are so much
urged upon us. However, he speaks of
an “ ethical belief in immortality,” and
so is gathered by controversialists into
the imposing category of “scientists
opposed to Haeckel.” The immortality
he promises us is no more consoling
than that offered by Comte or by
Haeckel himself. “Life lives on.” It
is a natural expression of his idealism.
“ For the philosophic mind,” he says,
1 Psychology and Life, p. 280.
65
“ which sees the difference between
reality and psychological transformation,
immortality is certain; for him the denial
of immortality would be even quite
meaningless.
Death is a biological
phenomenon in the world of objects in
time; how then can death reach a reality
which is not an object but an attitude,
and therefore neither in time nor space ? ”
He meets the scientific evidence by
getting rid of the body and death, and
the material world altogether.
Professor W. James, another able
American psychologist whom
Mr.
Ballard and Mr. Williams and several
ecclesiastical papers urge us to read, has
made his profession of faith at the close
of his recent Gifford Lectures, pub
lished under the title of Varieties of
Religious Experience. We shall see that
it does not include a belief in God.
On our present question it is little more
helpful to the Christian. Professor
James is convinced as a spiritist that
there are non-human intelligences in
existence, but he is not yet convinced
that these external intelligences are the
souls of men and women who have
“ passed beyond.” So far he lends no
real support to the doctrine of immor
tality. Professor J. Royce, another
distinguished American thinker whom
the Gifford Trust has invited amongst
us, “givesup the question of immortality
as insoluble by philosophy ”; so
Professor Le Conte assures us.
Mr. Le Conte himself, we saw,
follows this statement with a candid
admission that “perhaps it is.” But
he is not disposed to yield entirely as
yet. Where does so thorough an
evolutionist find ground for ascribing
this unique prerogative to the human
soul ? He professes to find it precisely
in the “evolutionary view of man’s
origin.” If that view of the world
process which we have hitherto sustained
is correct, it follows, he says, that the
human mind-force is “a spark of the
Divine Energy ” and a “ part of God.”
So is the force of a motor car, on his
principles. But, he says, the universal
E
�66
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
spirit (Haeckel’s universal substance on
its force side) has worked its way
upward through the hierarchy of evolu
tion, so that it (or God) “ may have, in
man, something not only to contem
plate, but also to love and to be loved
by ” ; and in view of that project, which
is not supposed to be a temporary pro
ject, man must be immortal.1 The
frailty of the position is obvious. It
assumes that the “ Divine Energy ”
(which is Haeckel’s substance) was
intelligent and had “designs” from the
beginning.
We shall consider the
grounds of this assumption in the
next chapter. But, granting it for the
sake of the argument, we are asked to
conceive this eternally intelligent prin
ciple going through a laborious process of
evolution in order to reach consciousness
in the human mind and admire itself,
and love and be loved by itself, in that
form; for the mind zs God, on these
pantheistic principles. Moreover, sup
posing that we could gather this remark
able project, it contains no promise
whatever of immortality for the in
dividual ; the “ Divine Energy ” is
incarnated in so many forms, and will
be throughout the eternal world-process,
that the perishing of one form or of one
world will hardly diminish its contempla
tion or its admiration. Further, if man
z's God, how comes he to be ignorant of
the project ?
What becomes (theo
retically) of moral distinctions ? But
this fantastic theory bristles with diffi
culties.
Mr. Fiske’s conclusion is very similar
to Professor Le Conte’s, as will be
expected from the similarity of his
premises. The doctrine of evolution,
he says, does not destroy our hope of
immortality. “ Haeckel’s opinion was
never reached through a scientific study
of evolution, and it is nothing but an
echo from the French speculation of the
eighteenth century ” ; and “ he takes his
opinion on such matters ready-made
from Ludwig Buchner, who is simply an
echo of the eighteenth century atheist
La Mettrie.”1 How Fiske could ever
pen such an egregious statement about
either Haeckel or Buchner is one of the
mysteries of religious controversy. After
our review of Haeckel’s arguments it
may very well be ignored. And when
Fiske has come to the end of this petty
and petulant criticism of Haeckel we
find him presenting a conclusion almost
less satisfactory than that of Le Conte.
The substance of his argument is that
“ there is in man a psychic ele
ment identical in nature with that
which is eternal” (p. 170). On the face
of it, that is just what Haeckel says.
Man’s mind-force is a little eddy or
focus in the eternal cosmic force.
There is no ground whatever for assum
ing that as such it will be eternal, and
will not simply sink back into the
eternal stream, like all other temporary
concentrations. The only difference is
that Fiske takes the eternal principle to
be conscious and intelligent from the
first—a point we discuss in the next
chapter.
There remains only the argumentation
of Mr. Newman Smyth in his able but
pathetic attempt to reconstruct Christian
belief on a scientific base.2 The argu
ment itself is an old one, but it is put
with some freshness.
He points out
that the evolutionary process has just
reached an important stage. Evolving
nature has at length passed beyond mere
animal life and reached the threshold of
the spiritual life. Since, then, we dis
cern an upward purpose in evolution, it
is impossible to suppose that the process
will end now that so promising a stage
has been reached. To this we need
only reply that, whether or no “ purpose ”
is discernible in nature (which we shall
deny), this further evolution will take
place in the race taken collectively. This
is so clear that Mr. Smyth makes a des
perate effort to apply his argument to the
individual. He says the “ last word of
organic development is the individual
1 The Conception of God, p. 77-
1 Through Nature to God, p. 144.
2 'Through Science to Faith, p. 265 and foil.
�THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
and his worth,” and he appeals to
“nature’s increasing estimate of indi
viduality in comparison with the species.”
Now, if we take this in the only sense
in which it could be conceived to help a
belief in personal immortality, it is totally
opposed to the scientific evidence. The
only way in which nature seems more
concerned about the individual is in the
perfection which she gives to the indi
viduals of the later species; but this is
absolutely necessary if the species itself
is to advance. In all other respects
nature, as ever, is indifferent to the indi
vidual—or, for the matter of that, if we
take a long enough perspective, to the
species itself.
The
supplementary
consideration
which Mr. Smyth submits is still feebler.
He contends that, though evolution is
generally continuous, it shows what he
calls “critical periods.” He instances
the changes which take place in a drop
of water as it sinks to freezing-point or
rises to the point of evaporation. He
thinks science does not preclude the
possibility of some analogous “ critical
period ” for the human soul. Nay, he
says, getting bolder, biology favours such
a view.
Look how “very slight and
easily changed” is the connection be
tween mind and organism at certain
times—at conception, in sleep, and when
we near death. Biology, he says, shows
that “ the mind does not need for its
birth and its coming to its inheritance a
whole body, a complete brain, a fullyformed organ of sense, or so much as a
single nerve ; a few microscopic threads
of chromatin matter in the egg are
enough.” Hence, if at both ends of
life the bond that links mind and body
can wear so thin, it is conceivable that
it may be dispensed with altogether.
Now, this is a most perverse piece of
reasoning. At conception, and long after
conception, we have no right to say that
the mind is there at all. It appears and
grows with the brain—that is all the
evidence says.
The facts point to a
conclusion diametrically opposed to that
of Mr. Smyth.
They show complete J
67
and slavish dependence. As to heredity,
it is gratuitous to say it is the mind, and
not the body, that inherits. Even Dr.
W. N. Clarke (who, with many modern
theologians, does not believe that the
“soul” is transmitted from parent to
child) says the facts of heredity point to
the mechanical, not the spiritual, theory.
At death we see the same rigid depend
ence of mind on organism, instead of
finding anything like a token of an in
dependent mind. The mind flickers and
goes out—as far as evidence goes—in
exact proportion to the last spluttering
and extinction of the physical life of the
body. At both ends of life, as through
out its course, the correlation of mind
action and brain-action is rigid and ab
solute. And, finally, what Mr. Smyth
unfortunately calls “ critical periods ” in
nature have not the least analogy to the
notion of the mind-force existing apart
from its material substratum. A differ
ent grouping of the water-molecules
naturally gives rise to different properties ;
so does a different grouping of brain
molecules (in fever, under opium, &c.)
give rise to different mental qualities.
When we find a case of the properties
or forces of a substance parting company
from, or changing independently of, the
material substratum, we shall have found
some ground in nature for the conception
of a disembodied soul; but not until
then.
Such are the feeble defences which
are to-day set up by the apologists
who have scientific attainments in the
Christian body. On the strength of
these ethereal speculations we are asked
to resist the weight of the scientific
evidence as to the relation of body and
soul, and to admit for man a privilege
that is unknown from end to end of the
universe. We are asked to believe that
with the aid of a fantastic and desperate
philosophy such as this we can overleap
science’s “unbroken and impregnable
barrier.” We are asked to call Haeckel
“an atrophied soul” and “a child in
spiritual reasoning ” because he will not
abdicate his scientific method and
�68
GOD
procedure in the face of such specula
tions as these. I have not, it is true,
examined the argument for a future
life from the alleged exigencies of the
moral order; but this is little urged
to-day, and we shall see, when we come
to deal with the monistic ethics, that
it rests on a false conception of moral
’trw.1
I have sought, in particular, and
stated with perfect fidelity, the argu
ments of those modern scholars who
are opposed to him as being equally in
formed in science and equally convinced
of evolution. The reader may judge
whether he or they are the more
philosophic, logical, and scientific in
procedure.
Chapter VII
GOD
We now enter upon a new and almost
the final stage of our direct vindication
of monism. If we have succeeded so
far in warding off the objections which
have been urged against Haeckel’s
position, if we have shown that the very
latest scientific research increasingly
confirms his position, it is clear that we
have covered considerable ground. We
have discerned in the stupendous process
of cosmic evolution the growth or the
unfolding of one great reality that lies
across the immeasurable space of the
universe. An illimitable substance, re
vealing itself to us as matter and force
(or spirit), is dimly perceived at the root
1 Neither have I, it will be noted, referred to
the empirical or spiritistic evidence for the per
sistence of mind, which gains increasing favour
to-day. This is not due to any lack of respect
for the distinguished scientists who have admitted
such evidence, or for the sobriety and judgment
of so many about us to-day who receive it. It is
due to the utter futility of discussing evidence of
this kind. It is of such a nature, resting so
largely on delicate moral considerations, that it
must in my opinion be left entirely to personal
examination in the concrete. But that Haeckel
is right in saying the subject is obscured with
much fraud and triviality is admitted, not only
by life-long students like Mr. Podmore, but by
many earnest spiritists.
of this evolution as a simple and homo
geneous medium (prothyl), associated with
an equally homogeneous force. Then the
continuous prothyl, by a process not yet
determined, forms into what are virtually
or really discrete and separate particles
—electrons: the electrons unite to
build atoms of various sizes and
structures, and the rich variety of the
chemical elements is given, the base of
an incalculable number of combinations
and forms of matter. Meantime the
more concentrated (ponderable) elements
gather into cosmic masses under the
influence of the force associated with
them : the force evolving and differen
tiating at equal pace with the matter (with
which it is one in reality). Nebulse
are formed: solar systems grow like
crystals from them: planets take on
solid crusts, with enveloping oceans
and atmospheres. Presently a more
elaborate
combination of material
elements, protoplasm, with—naturally—■
a more elaborate force-side, makes its
appearance, and organic evolution sets
in. The little cellules cling together
and form tissue-animals, which increase
in complexity and organisation and
centralisation until the human frame is
�GOD
produced, the life-force growing more
elaborate with the structure, until it
issues in the remarkable properties of
the human mind.
The tracing of this picture is the ideal
that science set itself a quarter of a
century ago.
The success has been
swift and astounding. We are still, as
Sir A. Riicker said, living in the twilight;
but no man of science now doubts that
what we do see is the real outline of the
universe and its growth. But other and
different cosmic speculations held the
field, and these were ultimately con
nected with the powerful corporations
and the intense emotions of religion.
As science advanced theology began a
long process of adaptation to the new
thought. The ambition of science was
to cover the whole ground with a scheme
of mechanical and orderly explanation,
because the instinct of science felt that
the universe was an orderly and con
tinuous structure. The ambition of the
theologian was to detect and exult over
gaps and breaches in this mechanical
scheme, and introduce his supernatural
agencies by means of them. We have
seen that many of the ablest theistic
apologists of our day (Ward, Smyth, Le
Conte, Fiske, Clarke, &c.)—almost all,
indeed, of those who have scientific
equipment—grant the ability of science,
now or in the near future, to cover “ the
whole cosmological domain ” with its
network of mechanical causation. We
have seen that there is a general dis
avowal of “ a theology of gaps ” or of the
desire to build on the temporary igno
rance of science.
But a few heroic
souls still linger in the familiar trenches,
and we have fully considered what they
have to say. With Smyth, Le Conte,
and Fiske, we have been forced to con
clude that so far we have seen in the
cosmic process the orderly unfolding of
one sole all-diffused matter-force reality,
which we commonly call Nature.
But we have throughout, for the sake
of clearer procedure, reserved one con
sideration that these advanced evolution
ists have been urging on us at every
69
step—that is to say, the claim that the
evolutionary process must have been in
telligently set going and intelligently
directed. Haeckel is quite right, they
say, in claiming that science can give or
adumbrate a mechanical interpretation
of the whole process. Quibbles about
his particular way of conceiving the first
formation of life, or of consciousness,
and so on, are irrelevant and distressing
to the serious thinkers, as is the diver
sion of the issue by discussing his taste,
or his knowledge of history, or his
optimism or pessimism. The important
point is that he has proved his case so
far in its essentials. But he must now
meet this last position of his opponents.
Was this monistic cosmic process con
ceived and designed from the beginning,
and guided throughout, by an intelligent
being, or no ? 1 This is the question of
the hour, and especially of the coming
hour, in apologetics.
As I write a
journal reaches me containing an inter
view with Mr. Ballard. Asked whether
he thinks “the rehabilitation of religion
would come from the scientists,” he
replies: " I think that the theistic basis
of Christianity will have scientific support
more than ever.
Modern science is
pledged to evolution, and Christianity
can only be justified scientifically on
evolutionary lines.” And Professor Le
Conte says: “ Here is the last line of
defence to the supporters of supernatu
ralism in the realm of Nature ... it is
evident that a yielding here implies not
a mere shifting of line, but a change of
base: not a readjustment of details
only, but a reconstruction of Christian
theology.
This, I believe, is indeed
necessary.”2
And we have already
seen passages from Ward and others to
the same effect.
Here is a dramatic simplification of
the controversy, which every thinker
1 Let us note in passing that this is not neces
sarily a question of monism or dualism. Mr. R.
Williams and others expressly state they are
monists, that God is not distinct from Nature.
More about this presently.
2 Evolution and Religiozis Thought, p. 295.
�7o
GOD
will welcome. Theology will, as before,
spread itself over the whole cosmos, but
it will be with the repetition of a single
formula. There will no longer be cease
less quarrels as to whether science can
explain this or that phenomenon with
its natural or mechanical causes. The
new attitude. is that this mechanical
explanation is precisely the work of
science, and if it cannot give a mechani
cal explanation of a thing—say, con
sciousness—to-day, we will wait patiently
till to-morrow.
But, the new theolo
gians say, we want to know in addition
how these mechanical causes came to
co-operate in producing such remarkable
structures.
With this science has
nothing to do, so we close our thirty
years’ war and sign an eternal truce.
Nay, if we look at the matter rightly,
these theologians of the twentieth cen
tury say it is very desirable that science
should complete its mechanical interpre
tation of the cosmos.
An automatic
universe, evolving by inherent forces
from electrons to minds, would be the
most marvellous mechanism ever con
ceived. The mind would be forced to
look for the engineer. Those ancient
theologians who scoffed at Tyndall for
his Belfast address were too hasty; so
were those who caused Huxley to com
pare their dread of the mechanical
scheme to the terror of savages during
an eclipse of the sun; so are those who
beat their wings in vain against Haeckel’s
structure to-day. The materialist will be
the truest auxiliary of the theist. If he
can only show that the universe is the
unfolding of one form of matter and one
force (or one matter-force reality), he
has put before us one of the most
stupendous machines that ever bore the
mark of intelligence.
We are then, it seems, approaching
the psychological moment in the great
drama of the conflict of science and
religion. That I am indicating a true I
tendency will be perfectly clear from the •
preceding chapters.
We have rarely |
found men of ability or of complete i
scientific equipment defending the old !
trenches that barred the advance of the
mechanical system of science. We have
constantly heard impatient denials of a
love for “ gaps.” But before I proceed
to show how Haeckel has met this teleo
logical position, let me quote a few
recent writers, both to show that the
formula is as simple as I said, and that
concentration on this position is the
order of the day.1 I have quoted Pro
fessor Ward’s opinion that, “ if there has
been any interference in the cosmic pro
cess, it must have been before the process
began.’( Dr. Croll, in his Basis of Evolu
tion, distinguishes between producing
(mechanical) and determining (directive)
forces, and tells the theologian of the
future to confine his attention to the
latter : “ The grand, the difficult, though
as yet unanswered, question is this:
What guides the molecule to its proper
position in relation to the end which it
has to serve ? ” With Mr. Newman
Smyth the supreme question is: “ Is
evolution without guidance or with guid
ance ?” Mr. Fiske says: “There is in
every earnest thinker a craving after a
final cause . . . and this craving can no
more be extinguished than our belief in
objective reality.” 2 Dr. Dallinger says
that, if the mechanical philosophy is
true we have “ a more majestic design
than all the thinkers of the past had
ever dreamed.”
And the sermon
preached on the last Association Sun
day at Southport by the Bishop of Ripon
points unmistakably to the same tendency
—even to a pantheistic identification of
God with the forces at work in Nature.
1 There may be a few fond and admiring
souls who are looking out for a reference to Mr.
Ambrose Pope’s third criticism. Briefly, he
finds that Haeckel has got rid of God by a third
“half-day excursion,” in the course of which he
discovered a system of “ physiological monism,”
which, as before, contains the fatal germ under
an innocent exterior. The joke may be given
for what it is worth, but it gets stale. Mr. Pope
goes on to say that when you ask Haeckel about
the substance he puts instead of God, he says he
is not sure whether it exists. Tableau, and
exeunt omnes, of course. We have met this
point in the second chapter.
2 The Idea of God, p. 137.
�7i
GOD
The new teleology flatters itself it
differs very scientifically from the old;
for “ teleology ” had fallen into disrepute
during the period of “ gap ” theology
which followed the break-up of Paleyism.
It is true that there are differences.
Aubrey Moore points out that we now
do not forget the past (the evolution) of
the organ. Dr. Iverach observes that
the new teleologist. does not think so
much of an “ external artificer ” as of an
immanent directive principle, and that
we do not now attempt to deduce scien
tific knowledge from the “ purpose ” of
a thing. These differences, however, do
not alter the essential structure of the
argument, which remains the same as
when Kant rejected it and Paley drove
it to death. We may state it briefly in
abstract form to this effect: Wherever in
Nature we find several agencies co
operating in the production of a certain
result which is orderly or beautiful, we
see the guidance of mind. The under
lying assumption is that the unconscious
forces of the universe will only produce
chaos unless they are guided. Pre-con
ceived design followed up by directive
control, or else a “ fortuitous clash of
atoms,” is the alternative put before us.
The process of evolution taken as a
whole has been so orderly, and had such
marvellous results, that we must admit
the agencies at work in the process were
intelligently guided. To suppose that
this process should chance to culminate
in the appearance of man is said to be
incredible. So throughout the whole
process we find co-operations, adapta
tions, orderly and beautiful operations,
which speak eloquently of design and
control. From the very first step, the
making of the atom, to the last, the
making of man’s brain, we see the finger
of God.
A few extracts and references will
show that this is a correct summary. As
regards the inorganic universe a little
work recently published by the Rev. W.
Profeit well illustrates the argument.
The author starts with the principle that
“every form of being must act according
to its nature,” and goes on to say that
“ the particles of matter have not in them
conscious intelligence, and consequently
have not of themselves the power of
arranging, and so of producing complex
order.”1 He then reviews the teaching
of modern physics at length, pausing at
every few paces, in the familiar manner,
to admire the ways of the Creator.
“ To deal with every particle of matter
in the universe, so as to make it of a
special type, to order all, so that they
might come under types so few and
compact, demanded an amount . of
thought and work of overwhelming
greatness, and could not be the result of
chance.” Chemistry is “crowded with
adjustments, packed with adaptations.”
The moulding of matter into solar
systems of such marvellous symmetry
and adaptability to life occasions another
outburst. In short, theology can easily
run to volumes by repeating “ Great are
thy works” at every forward step in
evolution. Chance is out of the ques
tion. “ Ah ! what foolery it is to deem
that a mighty world has been produced
by chance.” Happily, there are no fools
of that particular type amongst us. But
“necessity” is equally impotent. “No
sane mind ’’—the young theology keeps
up the literary tradition, you see, which
made even Fiske exclaim against “the
intellectual arrogance which the argu
ments of theologians show lurking
beneath their expressions of humility ” 2
—“no sane mind can for a moment
imagine that from the nature of things it
was an eternal necessity that the seventy,
or thereby, different kinds of atoms
should all exist, or be formed in the
numbers and proportions of numbers, in
which they help to form our great system
obeying the orb of day.” So it is to be
either “ fortuitous concourse ” or mind ;
and as the universe is not a chaotic
mess, -we must admit it was presided
over by intelligence from the first.
Dr. Dallinger offers us the same
1 The Creation of Matter, p. 6.
2 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, p. 451.
�72
GOD
dilemma of chance or control, and urges
that to adopt chance “ is surely to trifle
with the fundamental principles of our
reasoning powers.” Rationalists, we
may say in passing, had a concern for
our “ reasoning powers ” in days when
doctors of divinity looked upon them as
mischievous.
Dr. Croll argues in the
same .way. Some principle, he says,
must determine why a natural force
takes direction A instead of direction B
or C. The determination of planetary
orbits is not so much due to gravitation
as to the way in which gravitation acted.
So in the formation of crystals or
organisms. “ Out of the infinite number
of different paths, what is it that directs
the force to select the right path ? ”
Dr. Croll seems to fancy that in this he
has suggested a new idea to the world.
Dr. Iverach, both in Christianity and
Evolution and in Theism, follows the
same line. For the pre-atomic mass to
be made atomic, and to produce the
orderly and periodic system of elements
with their affinities, the forces at work
must have been guided.
The argument does not differ in sub
stance when we pass to the organic
world, but, naturally, the notes of ex
clamation and edifying observations
increase. Biological science, says Dr.
Iverach, “must admit purpose in the
magnificent adjustments it points out.”
Mr. Newman Smyth gives an admirable
sketch of the evolution of the eye, and
pleads that the forces which have
gradually constructed it did not any the
less need guidance and control because
they took millions of years to do it.
Mr. Ballard takes the evolution of the
eye in the foetus, and says that if a child
were to repeat “ that God caused it so
to do, it is utterly beyond the power of
all modern science to contradict.”1
Embryology is, it is true, as yet very
imperfect.
However, other passages
make it clear that, though Mr. Ballard
may here be building on a “gap,” he
generally offers us the usual dilemma,
1 Miracles of Unbelief, p. 51.
design or “fortuitous concourse of
atoms,” and characteristically tells us
the latter is “fatuous.” In fact Mr.
Ballard tells even the agnostic, who
thinks there is not enough evidence
either for or against teleology, that his
hesitation is mere “childish fatuity.”
The Rev. R. Williams—not to neglect
him—tells his weaver-admirers that “the
solar system is really more wonderful
than a loom,” which is obviously de
signed, and that organisms are more
wonderful still. And Dr. W. N. Clarke
says “it is not probable that the most
significant elements in a world came
into it without having been entertained
during the process as character-giving
ideals.” He says Darwinism has modi
fied, but not destroyed, teleology. We
now know that needs, and contrivances
to supply them, “ grow up within the
universe,” but this power of adaptation
must have been given to organisms by a
purposive intelligence.1
The argument, therefore, on which
the fate of theism is finally to be deter
mined is now tolerably clear. Leave
Haeckel free to perfect his mechanical
monism ; when he has completed it, we
shall point out to the astonished pro
fessor that he has been proving the
existence of God all the time. If this
force which he traces for us in its
marvellous ascent through the atom, the
nebula, the cell, and the organism, was
unconscious from the start, and if it has
achieved all this progress in so orderly
and determined a fashion, it must have
been guided. Well, let us see whether
Haeckel is quite so naive and antiquated
as these good people assure the world.
To begin with, the flavour of antiquity
is quite clearly on the other side.
“ Chance ” and “ fortuitous concourse
of atoms ” are phrases which you will
not find outside theological schools for
the last 2,000 years. The early Greeks
used them. The constant reiteration of
them in our time is a grave piece of
insincerity, or else ignorance. How Mr.
1 Outlines of Christian 1'heology, p. 116.
�GOD
Profeit and Mr. Ballard come to use
these phrases in the year of grace 1903
is best known to themselves. Professor
Haeckel deals clearly with the point
(p. 97), and explains—as has been ex
plained innumerable times—the only
sense in which science admits “ chance ”
events. Mr. Profeit rightly indicates a
third alternative, necessity; and Dr.
Dallinger somewhat vaguely suggests it.
Haeckel and his colleagues hold that
the direction which the evolutionary
agencies take is not “ fortuitous ” : that
they never could take but the one
direction which they have actually taken.
A stone has not a dozen possible paths
to travel by when you drop it from your
hand. You do not seek any reason why
it follows direction A instead of direction
B or C. So it is, says the monist, with
all the forces in the universe. Some
day science will be able to trace a set of
forces working for ages at the con
struction of a solar system, or at the
making of an eye. The theist says the
ultimate object must have been foreseen
and the forces must have been guided,
or they would never have worked
steadily in this definite direction. The
monist says that these forces no more
needed guiding than a tramcar does;
there was only one direction possible for
them. Here is a clear issue, and in the
present state of apologetics, an important
one. It is useless to talk, as Fiske does,
of the “ teleological instinct.” “ The
teleological instinct in man,” he says,
“ cannot be suppressed or ignored. The
human soul shrinks from the thought
that it is without kith or kin in all this
wide universe.” This is not only “an
appeal to the imagination ”: it is utterly
opposed to the facts of life. Mr. Fiske
ascribes his own peculiar temperament
to the universe. The matter must be
reasoned out.
Now, it seems clear that if a man
asserts that the forces of the universe are
naturally erratic, and may go in any one
of a dozen directions unless they are
guided, he must show cause for his
Opinion. The man of science has never
73
discovered an erratic force yet. Force
always acts uniformly, always takes the
same direction. If you say this is only
because the natural forces are guided
and controlled, and is not their proper
and inherent nature, the man of science
naturally asks: How do you know ?
Science sees nothing in nature to suggest
such an idea. “ When we consider the
movements of the starry heavens to-day,”
says Mr. Mallock, “instead of feeling
it to be wonderful that they are ab
solutely regular, we should feel it to be
wonderful if they were ever anything
else . . . We realise that order, instead
of being the marvel of the universe, is
the indispensable condition of its
existence—that it is a physical platitude,
not a divine paradox, ”1 That is certainly
the feeling the universe inspires in men
of science. What is the ground for this
notion of the essentially erratic character
of natural forces ? One seeks it quite in
vain. Dr. Croll says : “ Though our
acquaintance with the forces of nature
were absolutely perfect, the question as
to how particles or molecules arrange
themselves into organic forms would
probably still remain as deep a mystery
as ever, unless we knew something more
than force.” 2 But he does not offer us a
single consideration to convince us of
this “ probability.” When Mr. Profeit
tries to bully us into admitting that “ no
sane mind can for a moment imagine
that from the nature of things it was an
eternal necessity that the seventy, or
thereby, different kinds of atoms should
all exist,” we timidly venture to inquire :
Why not ? Force, as far as our ex
perience goes, acts necessarily, inevitably,
infallibly. There could be no science if
it did not.
The only attempt made to escape this
initial difficulty of the teleologist is to
appeal to a number of totally false
analogies. The favourite is that vener
able and imposing sophism, that if you
cast to the ground an infinite (or a finite)
number of letters, they might after
1 Religion as a Credible Doctrine, p. 162.
a The Basis of Evolution, p. 24.
F
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GOD
infinite gyrations make a word here and
there, but we should think the man an
enthusiast who expected even a short
sentence, and a fool if he expected
them ever to make a poem. It is
absurd to offer us this as an analogy
to-day; or else it is begging the
whole question.
Take the case of
the eye. Quite certainly this is an
evolutionary product. Forces acting on
matter during millions of years have
evolved it. Each step in the process is
perfectly complete and intelligible in
itself. It is wholly arbitrary to suppose
the eye was in view when protoplasm
was first formed: or when the first
sensitive cells appeared on the surface of
the primitive animal body: or when
pigment-cells were developed at the fore
most part of the body : or when a sensi
tive nerve was formed under the skin;
and so on. Each structure was useful
in its turn ; and on that very account
natural selection fastened on it. It is
sheer imagination to suppose that the
ultimate form was foreseen: and it is sheer
scientific untruth to say the ultimate
form must have been foreseen or else the
earlier structures would be unintelligible.
Here is a plexus of natural forces acting
on matter, without, as far as we can see,
the possibility of their acting otherwise;
only one result was possible. And we
are asked to regard this as curious,
because, in the case of the imaginary
throw of type, natural forces will not lose
their uniform character and act miracu
lously. Finally, it is a colossal petitio
principii, because the question is pre
cisely whether Virgil’s Aeneid or Shake
speare’s Hamlet is not an evolutionary
product.
It seems, then, that the initial diffi
culty of the teleologist is insuperable.
He cannot give us a shadow of proof of
his assertion that natural forces are erra
tic. Haeckel is completely within the
right of science in speaking of the uni
verse as, in Goethe’s phrase, “ ruled by
eternal, iron laws ” (or forces). They
have wrought out a certain result—the
world we form part of. Until some good
reason is shown for thinking they could
have acted otherwise, we see no need for
designer, or guide, or engineer. Let us
put it another way. To an extent the
teleologists are playing on the present im
perfection of science, as Dr. Croll
innocently betrayed. Let us take them
at their word, and suppose science will in
time give a complete mechanical expla
nation of everything, for the good reason
that God, as they say, created a machine
that needed no mending or re-starting.
And let us suppose that he designed the
ultimate form of the cosmos. Is this
design communicated to the unconscious
atoms and their forces ? Clearly not; no
one would say that. Are these forces
which build up and impel the atoms
supernaturally inflected or modulated at
each step ? Again, no one would say
this. The only possible conception of
telic action on a cosmic scale is, when
we descend from grandiose phrases to
practical ideas, that from the start the
matter-force reality was of such a
nature that it would infallibly evolve into
the cosmos we form part of to-day. Any
other conception of “ guidance ” and
“control” is totally unthinkable. And
as a fact theists are settling down to
formulate their position in that way.
The interference, as Ward says, took
place before the process began.
But before we take up this last point
it is necessary to glance at another side
of the question. Haeckel has pointed
out that, not only do we see no ground
for believing in the presence of some
primitive design, but we see very con
siderable reasons for rejecting it. The
world is crowded with features which
forbid us lightly to admit a controlling
supreme intelligence. There is no an
swer to this. “ The fact stands inex
orably before us,” says Mr. Fiske, “ that
a Supreme Will, enlightened by perfect
intelligence and possessed of infinite
power, might differently have fashioned
the universe, though in ways inconceiv
able by us, so that the suffering and the
waste of life which characterise nature’s
process of evolution might have been
�GOD
avoided.”1 As to the waste, Dr. Iverach
ventures to say that “infinite precision
at one point is inconsistent with bad
shooting ”; but the infinite precision is,
we have seen, an assumption, whereas
the bad shooting is ubiquitous. At
every sex-act millions of spermatozoa are
wasted. Others say the glorious final
issue puts all right. But as Mr. Mallock
says, “ Whatever may be God’s future,
there will still remain His past.” Most
ideologists retreat into mystery. One
might unkindly remind them of their
great disinclination to let the monist
leave anything unexplained, but it is
better to say that when all the tangible
evidence is on one side and none on the
other, we do not regard it as a fair
dilemma. Listen to the impression of
a cultured defender of religion after a
study of the evolutionary process in
nature : “ We must divest ourselves of
all foregone conclusions, of;all question
begging reverences, and look the facts
of the universe steadily in the face. If
theists will but do this, what they will
see will astonish them. They will see
that if there is anything at the back of
this vast process with a consciousness
and a purpose in any way resembling our
own—a Being who knows what He
wants and is doing his best to get it—
he is, instead of a holy and all-wise God,
a scatter-brained, semi-powerful, semi
impotent monster. They will recognise
as clearly as they ever did the old familiar
facts which seemed to them evidences of
God’s wisdom, love, and goodness; but
they will find that these facts, when taken
in connection with the others, only sup
ply us with a standard in the nature of
this Being himself by which most of his
acts are exhibited to us as those of a
criminal madman. If he had been blind,
he had not had sin; but if we maintain
that he can see, then his sin remains.
Habitually a bungler as he is, and callous
when not actively cruel, we are forced to
regard him, when he seems to exhibit
benevolence, as, not divinely benevolent,
1 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, p. 462.
75
but merely weak and capricious, like a
boy who fondles a kitten, and the next
moment sets a dog at it. And not only
does his moral character fall from him
bit by bit, but his dignity disappears
also. The orderly processes of the stars
and the larger phenomena of nature are
suggestive of nothing so much as a
wearisome Court ceremonial surrounding
a king who is unable to understand or
to break away from it; whilst the thunder
and whirlwind, which have from time
immemorial been accepted as special
•revelations of his awful power and ma
jesty, suggest, if they suggest anything of
a personal character at all, merely some
blackguardly larrikin kicking up his heels
in the clouds, not perhaps bent on mis
chief, but indifferent to the fact that he
is causing it. . . . A God who could
have been deliberately guilty of them
[the evolutionary processes] would be a
God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad
to be credible.” 1
No one who has studied biological
evolution can fail to recognise these
facts. They make it impossible for us
to see a divine presence and guidance at
least during the process. The only
plausible theory is that God set the
machine going and left it to itself. If
we hold that he is guiding molecules to
“their proper place ” in the construction
of the tiger’s eye, we must hold that he
has some control of the molecules in the
cruelty-centre of the tiger’s brain. A
universe without carnivora is conceivable
enough. Professor Kennedy and others
would divert us from a consideration of
these facts to contemplate the beauty and
sublimity the universe exhibits. But the
beauty of the starry heavens is only the
effect of distance and position; the
beauty of the Bay of Naples could be
1 Mr. W. H. Mallock, Religion as a Credible
Doctrine, p. 177. Mr. Mallock has throughout
life been one of the ablest opponents of agnosti
cism, and he has been nothing less than scornful
of a profession of atheism. Does he not see
how natural and logical atheism seems when one
sweeps aside all theistic proof on the one hand,
and recognises these dark features of the uni
verse on the other ?
Bishopsgate InstitutSi-
�76
*
GOD
shown by science to be a purely acci
dental outcome of the action of natural
agencies. The beauty of the diatoms
that are brought from the lowest depths
of the ocean, the beauty of the radiolaria
that swarm about the coast, and the beauty
of a thousand minute animal structures,
are obviously not designed and purposed
beauties. They were unknown until the
microscope was invented : the polariscope
reveals yet further beauties : the tele
scope yet more. The idea of these
things being designed for our, or for
God’s, entertainment belongs, as Mr.
Mallock says, “ to a pre-scientific age
. . . an age which had realised the
spectacular unity of the cosmos, but had
very imperfectly realised the nature of
its mechanical unity : and which, more
over, had never grasped the fact that the
forces in virtue of which material things
move, such as energy, attraction, repul
sion, and chemical affinity, are as much
a part of the material things themselves,
and as much amenable to scientific ex
periment, as extension, or shape, or mass,
or softness, or hardness, or visibility.”
Once more we are thrown back on the
efficient, mechanical, producing causes.
The point we have reached, then, is
this: the notion that molecules are
“ guided ” to their “ proper position ” by
any other than a mechanical force—'the
notion of “guidance ” or “control ” dur
ing the cosmic process is unproved, is
unthinkable when examined in detail,
and is opposed by an appalling mass of
facts (waste, cruelty, suffering, &c.). It
starts from an assumption—the assump
tion that natural forces are erratic in
action—for which it does not offer any
justification, and which is directly op
posed to scientific experience. It rests
on a number of fallacious analogies and
poetical expressions, on a fallacious
application of the term “ blind ” to
natural forces, and on the as yet imper
fect condition of our scientific knowledge
of the construction of organisms. All
that remains, then, is to examine the
position of the really consistent evolu
tionary theist, who does not build his
belief on the temporary ignorance of the
scientist. This position, to which all
apologists are tending, is that “ the only
interference was before the cosmic pro
cess began ”: that God created a matter
force reality in the beginning of such a
nature that it should evolve spontane
ously into the universe we know and of
which we are a part. This is the ideal
and final position of the apologist.
Science will drive him back pitilessly
decade by decade until he adopts it.
Many of the best-informed apologists
already adopt it.
Let us see, then, where Haeckel and
what remains of his opponents are now.
Both admit that the universe is a
mechanical system, a great machine that
has worked from the first without control,
in virtue of its inherent character. But
the dualists say such a machine must
have been most skilfully designed and
constructed : it is, in Dallinger’s words,
“a more majestic design than all the
thinkers of the past had ever dreamed ”
—and therefore it will commend itself
more and more to theists.
The
position is—it is very important to
understand clearly—that God only
creates any particular content of the
universe—say Plato’s mind—in the
sense that he imparted to the primitive
nebula, or ultimate prothyl, a natural
force to evolve it.
The germ of
everything, the capacity to evolve every
thing, is in the great matter-force
reality.
Now, we have seen in the
third chapter that “ science points to no
beginning.” It is perfectly consistent
with the scientific evidence to say that
the universe is eternal. We saw that
those who attack Haeckel’s ascription of
infinity and eternity 1 to the basic sub
stance show no cause why he should not
proceed candidly on the astronomical
evidence. No better evidence is forth1 Note the remarkably different treatment of
Haeckel and Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer’s First
Cause cannot be distinguished from Haeckel’s.
Yet when he speaks of it With capital letters, as
an Infinite and Eternal Power, we hear nothing
but admiration.
�GOD
coming here. Dr. Croll says : “ If any
man should affirm that the succession of
events had no beginning, but has been
in operation from all eternity, it would
be difficult indeed to prove him to be in
the wrong; but, on the other hand, it
would be far more difficult, nay, utterly
impossible, for him to prove his as
sertion.” 1 But, as we saw, the scientific
evidence and the rules of logic and truth
seeking put the burden of proof dis
tinctly on the man who asserts there was
a beginning. Professor Ward attempts
to infer a beginning from the theory of
entropy; but we saw that this is dis
credited by the latest pronouncements of
physicists. “Our experience,” as Pro
fessor Ward says himself elsewhere,
“certainly does not embrace the totality of
things; is, in fact, ridiculously far from
it”; and so entropy is a “ridiculously”
hasty conclusion.
No, there is no proof whatever that
the machine ever began to exist at all.
As far as we can see, it has eternally
possessed those forces and properties
with which we have agreed to credit it,
and has been eternally evolving them.
And, as a fact, apologists are rapidly
moving on to the identification of God
with Nature, which means an abandon
ment of the idea of creation. A curious
symptom falls under my notice as I
write. An editorial article in the Daily
News, the distinguished organ of the
Nonconformist Churches, commenting
on the Bishop of Ripon’s sermon at
Southport, endeavours to reconcile
science and religion.
The laws of
science, it says, reveal the working of
force, and it goes on to ask: •“ What is
that power ? May it not be the syn
thesis of all the various forces and
vitalities which the universe contains;
and may not that synthesis be God ? ”
That is precisely what Haeckel says ; in
fact, in a late German edition of the
Riddle he calls his system “ the purest
monotheism.” So close are we to
“ reunion ” ! Take, again, the Anticipa1 The Basis of Evolution, p. 167.
77
lions of Mr. H. G. Wells. Looking
about on the cultured thought of our
time, he says that before the end of this
century educated men will have ceased
to believe in “ an omniscient mind ”—
“ the last vestige of that barbaric theology
which regarded God as a vigorous but
uncertain old gentleman with a beard
and an inordinate lust for praise and
propitiation ”—and a supreme “ moral
ist ” and prayer ; and will know God
only as “a general atmosphere of im
perfectly apprehended purpose.” Mr.
Rhondda Williams assures us that “it
is not for dualism I am arguing. I
believe in the unity of the world, and a
kind of monism is probably the truest
solution of the riddle ; but I must find
the unity in spirit, not in matter.” That
means, if it means anything, not only a
complete misconception of Haeckel,
but an identification of God with Nature.
Professor Le Conte says : “ God may be
conceived as self-sundering his energy,
and setting over against Himself a part
as Nature. A part of this part, by a
process of evolution, individuates itself
more and more, and finally completes
its individuation and self-activity in the
soul of man. . . . Thus an effluence
from the Divine Person flows downward
through Nature to rise again by evolution
to recognition of, and communion with,
its own source. . . . And the sole
purpose of this progressive individuation
of the Divine Energy by evolution is
finally to have, in man, something not
only to contemplate, but also to love
and be loved by.” 1 In another place
he says : “ The forces of Nature are
naught else than different forms of one
omnipresent Divine energy or will,” and
“ In a word, according to this view,
there is no real efficient force but spirit,
and no real independent existence but
God.”2 We have seen how Mr. Fiske
1 The Conception of God, p. 77. Le Conte
tells us, moreover, that he is almost using the
language of another “theistic” writer, Mr.
Upton, the Hibbert lecturer.
2 Evolution and Religious Thought, p. 301.
He frankly allows that he is here close to the
opinions of Berkeley, and even Swedenborg.
�78
GOD
claims immortality on the ground that
“ there is in man a psychic element
identical in nature with that which is
eternal ” ; and man’s psychic element is,
he allows, an evolutionary outcome of
natural force. Professor Royce, a recent
Gilford lecturer and distinguished Ameri
can thinker, says, when he comes to
distinguish man from God : “ We there
fore need not conceive the eternal
Ethical Individual, however partial he
may be, as in any sense less in the grade
of complication of his activity or in the
multitude of his acts of will than is the
Absolute. ... It may be conceived as
a Part equal to the whole, and finally
united, as such equal, to the Whole
wherein it dwells.”1 Professor W.
James, another Gifford lecturer, rejects
the title of theist altogether, and says
“we must bid a definite good-bye to
dogmatic theology.” The metaphysical
attributes of God (omnipotence, omnis
cience, omnipresence, eternity, &c.)
are, he thinks, “ destitute of all intelligible
significance,” and “ the metaphysical
monster they offer to our mind is an
absolutely worthless invention of the
scholarly mind.”2
We are advancing rapidly. To this
does a knowledge of science bring the
theologian. It is true that some of
these evolutionary theists, like Mr.
Rhondda Williams, regard it as a great
gain that science has destroyed the idea
of a “ transcendent ” God and forced
theology to recognise his “ immanence ”
in nature. This is very misleading.
The “ immanence ” of God in nature
has been consistently taught in Roman
Catholic theology for the last thousand
years. You will not find a single Roman
Catholic theologian who locates God
outside the universe. It is a common
place with them that God is more closely
present in every part of nature than
ether is, for instance. Nor do the great
1 The World and the Individual, vol. ii,
P-451Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 445-8.
He adds that the “ moral attributes ” are just as
indefensible.
Anglican divines speak differently.
What, then is the new feature ? It is
that these modern apologists have been
driven to deny that there is any real
distinction between God and nature.
They talk of God “ sundering ” himself
and of nature being “ part ” of his sub
stance— which has a strange resemblance
to various ancient and mouldy Oriental
speculations (Brahmanic, Gnostic, and
Manichean)—but the gist of their posi
tion is that God and nature are one.
God is the “ pervading spirit ” and the
“ unifying force ” of the cosmos, or the
“Eternal and Infinite Energy” behind
phenomena, as Sir Henry Thompson
puts it. This is the kind of theology
which generally lies at the back of the
few theistic utterances which our anxious
bishops can wring out of men of science
to-day. It is the last page of a remark
able history. Man’s first idea of deity
was animistic and pantheistic, according
to one school of hierologists. In the
course of ages the shape of God was
disentangled from visible nature and
dramatically set against it. Now God
slowly sinks again into the life of nature.
Great Pan is alive once more.
How does this position compare with
that of Haeckel? We will not be so
rude as to suggest that if Haeckel used
capital letters, like Mr. Spencer, they
would greet him as a brother. Nor, on
the other hand, can we admit that, as
Mr. Williams claims, they find the unity
of the universe in spirit, while Haeckel
bases it on matter. We saw that
Haeckel does nothing of the kind.
Matter and spirit are to him two aspects
of one reality, and the unity of the
cosmos is the unity of that reality.
Spirit-force or energy emerging finally
as human thought-force is admitted by
Haeckel as freely as by Mr. Williams.
An idealist like Ward would very
naturally say that the unity of the world
consists in spirit, but we assume Mr.
Williams admits the existence of matter
and corporeal fellow-creatures. But
there is one further sense in which the
unity of the world could be said to
�GOD
consist in spirit, and in this lies the
final difference between Haeckel and
his critics on these cosmic speculations.
These theistic, or rather pantheistic,
monists hold that the cosmic energy is
essentially and from the beginning, or
from eternity, conscious and intelligent.
Haeckel holds that consciousness only
arises when a certain stage of nerve
formation appears. What evidence do
they offer for this? We may note in
passing that, when the real difference
between Haeckel and those scientific
writers who are the most zealously
pitted against him is so small, it would
have been better for his critics to say so
outright.
The average reader who
wades through the surging flood of
rhetoric will probably learn with aston
ishment that the chief champions of
reasoned Christianity to-day stand so
close to Haeckel’s position that only
one frail npetaphysical bridge divides
them.
Let us examine this last
division.
It is clear, in the first place, that the
evidence for the position of these evolu
tionary theists is not of a scientific
nature. Science does not find intelli
gence in the cosmos until a fairly
advanced stage of animal organisation is
reached. In fact, science finds conscious
ness so completely and rigidly bound
up with nerve-structure that it can only
listen with astonishment to the theory
of a vast consciousness existing apart
from nerve-structure and before it was
developed. One wonders, therefore,
what Mr. Ballard means when he
assured his anxious interviewer that
“the theistic basis of Christianity will
have scientific support more than ever.”
The reasons alleged for postulating this
intelligence at the “ beginning ” of
things are metaphysical. Mr. Rhondda
Williams formulates them more or less
clearly, as they are invented by
Dr. W. N. Clarke and Dr. Ward and
Le Conte. He says first—and this, I
believe, is an original contribution—that
science finds “ law ” in the cosmos ; but
“ law ” is a mental concept: ergo, science
79
finds mind in the cosmos. We will over
look that little weakness, and come to
the plausible arguments he has borrowed.
He says (after Ward) that the universe
must be the work of intelligence
because it is intelligible. The axiom
he rests on is that “ what is intelligible
must either be intelligent or have in
telligence behind it.” Now, on idealist
principles this is quite time; there being
no material world at all, if anything
exists, mind clearly exists. But, apart
from this denial of' a real ’world, the
axiom has no sense whatever; it is
simply an audacious assertion. Dr
Iverach {Theism) uses much the same
argument, and tries to give it a respect
able realistic air. “ A system,” he says,
“ which at this end needs an intelligence
to understand it must have something
to do with intelligence at the other.”
Many other writers say the same. To
show the inanity of the assertion, one
has only to ask Dr. Iverach whether
even a chaotic and disorderly uni
verse would not need “ an intelli
gence to understand it.” If he
means by “ intelligible ” that it is
orderly and systematic, he is simply
begging the whole question, and asking
us to swallow his position in the form of
an axiom, because he cannot prove it.
He says elsewhere {Christianity and
Evolution) that “ if thought has come out
of the universe, if the universe is a uni
verse that can be thought, then thought
has had something to do with it from
the outset.” That is the favourite form
of argument that “you cannot get out of
a sack what is not in it.” It is a longdiscredited fallacy. We have seen how
out of a simple matter and force have
come an immense variety of things.
These things were only implicitly in the
primitive prothyl. Similarly, the evolu
tion of thought only shows that thought
was implicitly in the first cosmic princi
ples. Moreover, consciousness evolves
out of the unconscious every day—in
embryonic development. Mr. Williams
finally urges that a thing which has not
been made by intelligence should be
�8o
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
reversible, and says : “ But it is the
essential principle of science that things
are not reversible; that they must be
where they are, as they are; the order
of nature is the greatest scientific dis
covery.” This is a curious confusion.
It is difficult to see why a thing con
structed by mechanical forces should be
immediately reversible, in any sense
which does not apply to an intelligent
construction; and in the long run the
cosmic process will be reversed, and
begun again, if the scientific evidence
counts for anything.
It is on the strength of such verbiage
and sophistry as this that Haeckel’s
critics assume airs of spiritual superior
ity and spatter his “ godless ” system with
contempt. He has followed up the
scientific evidence with a close fidelity.
He has not forgotten for a moment that
the unseen may be gathered from the
seen by valid reasoning (as he himself
has gathered many truths by inference
from the facts observed); he has not ex
cluded the sober and accredited use of
the speculative imagination. Professor
Henslow has recently, in a letter to the
daily Press, suggested that Rationalists
deny the existence of God because
it does not fall under observation or
experiment.
The
writer
Professor
Henslow quoted has himself repudiated
this interpretation of his words; and
certainly Haeckel has repeatedly en
dorsed the procedure of passing beyond
observation, when the inference is firmly
based on the facts and is logical in form.
Whether he is not justified in rejecting
as unsound these pseudo-metaphysical
arguments we have been considering,
the reader may judge for himself.
Whether his procedure is not more
scientific, more logical, and more philo
sophical than that of his opponents—
whose arguments I have, as far as possi
ble, given in their own words—may now
be determined. And if his procedure
so far is correct, and the objections of
his critics futile, we have established the
bases of monism. We have followed
the great matter-force reality through its
cosmic development until it breaks out
in the glory of the human mind and
emotions. And we have seen no reason
for suspecting the existence of any prin
ciple or agency distinct from it, or for as
cribing to Nature itself any feature that
would justify us in transferring to it the
title or prerogatives of the dying God.
Chapter VIII
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
As we have previously seen, the
cosmic speculations of the Monist find
themselves in antagonism with a set of
cosmic speculations
which
already
occupy, not merely the mind, but the
heart of a large number of people.
Whilst older religions, such as Confucian
ism and, to an extent, Buddhism, have
succeeded in effecting a separation
between ancient cosmological notions
and religion proper, so that the educated
Japanese, for instance, does not confound
theistic controversy with religion, Chris
tianity has retained the belief that man
is immortal, and that the universe has a
supreme controller as essential parts of
its framework.
Naturally, Christian
thinkers who are alert and informed are
�SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
ity ; as if his critics were somehow
beginning to deny this. .Mr. R. J.
unable to understand a pure love of
Campbell, for instance, insists. that
truth or regard for its moral and social
Christianity is “not dogma, but life a
stimulus. However, it is on this
life lived in conscious union with a
chapter of his work that critics have
Divine Person.” But that is somewhat
fastened most eagerly and most ardently.
bewildering. In one phrase dogma is
Now, one cannot but protest in pass
disavowed, and in the next a dogma of an
appallingly metaphysical character is ing against the foolishness of such a
made essential to the definition.
A procedure. All the world knows that
Professor Haeckel is not an expert in
similar inconsistency is found in almost
every other ecclesiastic who speaks of ecclesiastical history. If he felt himself
constrained to warn his readers that he
removing the emphasis from dogma.
had no expert acquaintance with physics,
The two dogmas of God and the future
life are still essential to Christianity, and lest he might innocently induce the
it is precisely these dogmas which uninformed to attach undue weight to
conflict with the monistic conception of his judgment in that department, he
the universe. The few advanced think might in return expect from, them a
ers we have encountered represent, on reasonable sense of the proportion of his
book.
His authority lies chiefly in
the whole, only a small cultured minority.
The great bulk of the faithful cling to zoology. We saw that he built some of
the most important parts of his system
the old ideas in the old form. And it. is
because this mass of conventional belief on the facts of zoology, or biology, and
still exists that preachers find it possible it is to these that the honest critic will
and advisable to bespatter the reputa mainly address himself. We saw how
few of the critics did so. But the book was
tions of fearless and sincere speculators,
who seek to spread their views amongst intended, as he says, to stand in some
measure for the complete system of his
the people.
Such a thinker as Haeckel, who has thought, which he feared he could now
never give to the world. It, therefoie,
found his faith obstructed throughout
life in the supposed interest of Christian contained an expression of his opinion
ity, naturally turns to consider that great on a multitude of topics which it is not
religion when the solid frame of his essential for a Monist, as such, to pass
In this he naturally
monistic system is compacted. He judgment on.
challenges the criticism of his opinions,
finds four dogmas chiefly responsible for
and must meet it. But he had a right
that strong attachment to Christianity,
to expect that his book and his system
which seems to him to prolong the life
of the errors he has criticised and the of thought should be judged essentially
diversion of men’s interest to another by their essential positions; he had a
world. These are, briefly— a belief in the right to expect that no one who would
supernatural character of the Bible; a be likely to read ten pages of such a
book would be so unintelligent as to
belief in the divinity, or . the unique
extend his zoological authority into the
character, of Christ; a belief that there
domain of ecclesiastical history.
is something preterhuman about the
Further, no one who takes the trouble
historical progress and moral power of the
to understand Haeckel’s system of
Christian religion; and a belief in the
infallibility of the Pope. He therefore thought would expect him to devote very
considerable time to an examination of
seeks to discredit those beliefs, in order
to prepare the way for an impartial con the dogmas I have enumerated. If his
previous conclusions are true, these
sideration of the new conception of life
dogmas must be false. That is a logical
which he regards as true and valuable.
At once, of course, he is credited, with and proper attitude. The man who has
some mysterious “ hatred” of Christian ) spent a life in deciphering the message
�82
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
of the cosmos, and has been compelled
characteristic portion of his work. But
to. interpret it in a monistic sense, and it has been sought to bring the full
reject entirely the dogmas of God and
weight of expert, historical scholarship to
immortality, has reached a conclusion bear on this episodic chapter on Chris
which he may apply to Christianity with
as strict and full a right as the historian tianity, and to make any defect dis
who has devoted his life to the direct covered in it the occasion of a bitter
and violent attack on Haeckel’s general
study of it.. Theistic writers are too apt authority. The. trained thinker sweeps
to forget this. When a man has reached
aside such tactics as an impertinence.
a conviction that God is a myth, he is But the untrained and uninformed
neither logically, nor morally expected to
millions of the Churches are assured
ask . himself seriously whether Christ or that. Haeckel’s authority has been dis
Christianity is divine. And it is per credited. They are taught that his
fectly obvious to any one who reads this
rejection of Christian beliefs is traceable
seventeenth chapter of the Riddle that
to a “childish credulity” (Dr. Horton)
this has been Haeckel’s attitude. He
and is supported by “mendacities”
merely skims the surface of a vast his (Mr. Ballard). However, let us examine
torical subject. He abandons the rigid the allegations on which the grossest
method of the earlier part, with its diatribes against Haeckel have been
accumulations of evidence. He hesitates supported.
to “devote a special chapter to the sub
The Achilles of the critics in this
ject,” and refers to other works. He then department is Dr. Loofs, professor of
decides to “ cast a critical glance ” at it, ecclesiastical history at the University of
protesting that it is only the hostility of Halle, and from his Anti-Haeckel we
the Churches which provokes him to do
gather the most formidable censures.1
so. He is mindful of “ the high ethical This work I have already qualified as
value ”. of pure Christianity and “ its
one of the coarsest and most painful
ennobling influence on the history of publications that have issued from a
civilisation.”
But it still clings to modern university. The story of its
beliefs which Haeckel (and large num writing runs thus. Dr. Loofs tells us
bers of its own theologians) believe to
St. Bernard has the same artistic
have no more than a legendary founda exordium to his attack on Abe'lard—
tion, and which nevertheless give it an that he was dragged into the arena by
incalculable influence on the minds of friends and colleagues in Germany. He
millions. Haeckel, therefore, gathers read the seventeenth chapter of the
from a group of German works or trans Riddle, and at once wrote an “ open
lations (all of which are indicated in the letter ” to Dr. Haeckel on the errors it
German edition) points of criticism in contains. This “ open letter ” first saw
regard to these dogmas, and briefly, with the light in the pages of an Evangelical
a light satire that evinces the absence of weekly, Die Christliche Welt, which circu
prolonged research in this department, lates amongst some 5,000 pious readers
fires them at the popular beliefs.
in Germany, and is hardly likely to
These considerations, which will penetrate into a university. Its tone
readily occur to the impartial student, was bitter and scurrilous. However, it
are prompted by the tactics which have was copied by other periodicals, and
been largely employed in the criticism of Haeckel wrote a brief reply in a
the Riddle. What value there is in the scientific and serious review, the editor
attack on its main position we have of the review, Dr. E. Bischoff, supportalready seen. The epithets that have
1 An English translation is promised, but has
been showered on the distinguished
scientist recoil on their authors where not appeared at the time of writing. It will, no
i
doubt, temper the extreme coarseness and ugli
there is question of the essential and ness of the German original.
�SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
ing Haeckel with his expert knowledge
and with a very plain but dignified
comment on Loofs’s procedure. At this
Dr. Loots seems to have lost all sense
of either humour or dignity, and
included these documents with his
reply in the brochure we are about to
examine. Its pages sparkle with in
candescent phrases, which are, more
over, usually italicised. “ Incredible
ignorance,” “crass stupidity,” “pure
folly,” etc., are amongst the milder
of these phrases. When, towards the
close, he looks back on his virulent
italics (or that larger type that serves
for italics in German), he says de
liberately: “It is not the ‘point of
view,’ not the ‘system,’ of Professor
Haeckel, but his scientific honour, that I
have attacked; and I have done it so
unmistakably that any court will convict
me of libelling my colleague of Jena, if
I cannot support my charges.” In a
word, he tells us (3rd edit., p. 52) that
the Press has ignored his precious
diatribe, and that a libel action.(though
he declines to “ provoke ” it) will bring
his grievance before the public. Such
is the famous rejoinder to Haeckel
which our ecclesiastical journals have
praised so highly.
After all this the reader will expect to
find that Haeckel has been convicted of
one of the most remarkable series of
controversial frauds and literary delin
quencies that a university professor to
say nothing of a man with four gold
medals and seventy honorary diplomas —ever stooped to. The reality would be
amusing if it were not for the vulgarity
and coarseness in which it is enveloped.
Leaving aside the pedantic discussion of
minor points (the date of the Council of
Nicaea, the authorship of the Synodicon,
and so on), and granting that Dr. .Loofs
abundantly proves that Haeckel is not
an expert in ecclesiastical history (if
there be any who did not know it),
we find that the two chief points are the
criticism of Haeckel’s observations on
the formation of the canon and on the
birth of Christ,
83
Haeckel, it will be remembered, states
that the canonical gospels were, selected
from the apocryphal by a miraculous
leap on to the altar at the Council of
Nicaea. At this the indignation of our
professor of church-history flashes forth.
Mr. J. Brierley alludes to this, saying :
“ He gives the story as though it were
the accepted Christian account of the
admission of the four gospels to the
canon. It is difficult to chaiacterise this
statement.” Well, it is foitunate that
some rationalistic Dr. Loofs does not have
to characterise this statement. Haeckel
does exactly the reverse of this. He
gives the “ leap ” story as a correction of
the “ accepted Christian account.” “ We
now know,” he says, in introducing his
version. Further, he gives the state
ment candidly on the authority of the
Synodicon j though he should have said
this was only edited by Pappus. His
own honesty in the matter is perfectly
transparent ; if his acquaintance with
ecclesiastical history is very far from
complete. The story in the Synodicon
is not to be taken seriously. The canon
of the gospels was substantially settled
long before the Council of Nicaea. It
is true that Dr. Loofs is himself accused
of error by Dr. Bischoff for stating that
the Nicene Council did not discuss the
canon, but we will keep to the main
issue. The story taken from the
Synodicon is not worthy of consideration
as an account of the forming of the
canon.
The reader will remember Haeckels
pointed warning in his preface that, not
only are his conclusions on all matters
“subjective and only partly.corrrect,
but his book contains “studies of un
equal value,” and his knowledge, of some
branches of science is “ defective.
In
the face of those repeated expressions it
is ludicrous to suppose that Haeckel
wished to employ his great authority as.a
man of science to enforce opinions in
ecclesiastical history. Here is, on the
face of it, a department of thought where
no one will suspect him to have spent
much of his valuable time, and the di§-
�84
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
covery of defects in this chapter was value of the Gospels.
He will learn
almost a matter of course. He has
with surprise that Dr. Loofs by no
acknowledged those defects, and has in
means shares the conventional rever
serted in the cheap German edition of his
ence for the New Testament.
The
work a notification that the authority he synoptic Gospels were written, he
followed on this and the following thinks, between the years 65 and 100,
question was unsound. That authority and the Gospel of “ St. John ” before
was an English writer, who had had a
I?5;
That is the general opinion of
theological training, and whose work had
biblical scholars to-day; but it is by no
been translated into German. Haeckel
means the general opinion of the readers
had been, wholly misinformed as to his
of Die Christliche Welt, or of religious
standing in this country, and thus had people in this country. What is more
been betrayed into a reliance on what he important, Dr. Loofs, as we shall pre
understood to be his expert knowledge.
sently see, rejects as worthless, if not
In the case of a writer who claimed dishonest, interpolations some of the
infallibility, or at least a uniform weight,
most treasured and familiar passages of
for the whole of his book, such a defect the New Testament. Let us remember
would be more or less serious. Whether what is really at stake in these con
it was in point of fact one-tenth as
troversies.
serious as some of the procedure of his
To come, then, to the cardinal offence
critics which we have reviewed, whether of Haeckel’s book—we will take a few
it is a matter for violent discussion at all,
detailed criticisms later—we find it in
and not one that might have been the statement that Jesus was the son
pointed out by a colleague without loss of a Greek officer of the name of
of dignity—I leave it to the reader to Pandera. Now let us approach the sub
say. The section in which the passage ject with some sense of proportion. For
occurs shows a fair average acquaintance
Haeckel it is (legitimately) a foregone
with its subject, but it is clear from the
conclusion that Jesus was a human being,
authorities explicitly mentioned in it
born in a normal manner. The conclusions
(Strauss, Feuerbach, Baur, and Renan)
he has already so laboriously reached
that it was written, or prepared, years
compel him to assume this. If there is
ago. Any modern expert would find it no God, Jesus was a man—a “noble
defective. Whether this defect is a prophet and enthusiast, so full of the
fitting.ground for Dr/Loofs’s structure of love of humanity,” Haeckel generously
rhetoric and scholarship may be called
describes him.. This is a standpoint
into question. But whether it is either which Haeckel is by no means alone in
sensible or honourable to seek to dis taking to-day.
The vast majority of
credit Haeckel’s earlier positions in
the cultured writers of every civilised
science, which we have reviewed, by a
country share it with him. It is very
microscopic examination of such a
largely held within the ranks of the
section as this, cannot long remain un Christian clergy themselves. Mr. Rhondda
decided.
Williams preaches it openly. The posi
Before we pass to a consideration of tion of our own Broad Church theolo
the second chief charge, there is one
gians is known.
Even Dr. Loofs—
more point that it is highly expedient
remember well—holds as frankly as
to make clear.
The average inexpert
Haeckel does the natural human parent
reader, about whom our ecclesiastical
age of Jesus, and has formulated his
writers have suddenly grown so con opinion, as the opinion of the average
cerned, will be apt to suppose that this
cultured theologian, in a German theo
deadly attack by the spirited theologian
logical encyclopaedia. He angrily resents
of Halle is prompted by a devotion
the imputation that he believes in the
to the current belief in the unique
virgin-birth, and says no historian of
�SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
dogma can entertain it.
He affirms
that the birth-story in Matthew and
Luke is a late interpolation in the
Gospel, and is quite discredited.
What then is the great difference
between the two ? It is that Loofs
awards the paternity of Christ to Joseph,
and Haeckel assigns it to the Greek
officer of a Roman legion. Our average
Christian neighbour will probably feel
that in substance it is a case of the devil
and the deep sea.
Further, it is easy to see in what
frame of mind a scientist like Haeckel
would approach such a matter. . The
birth of a Saviour-God from a virgin is a
legend that we find in all kinds of
religions anterior to Christianity.
We
know that in all these cases the prophet,
or god—supposing his historical reality
—was awarded this distinction by later
admirers to enhance the repute of his
divinity. When, therefore, Haeckel is
commenting on the dogma of the Im
maculate Conception,1 he turns aside for
a moment to discuss the question of
paternity. Not attaching an overwhelm
ing importance to the question, Who was
Christ’s father? he does not make a pro
found inquiry into it. But in one of his
authorities—the English writer whom I
have mentioned—he finds the curious
statement that the father was a Greek
officer, and it seems to harmonise with
the other statements. He finds that the
Gospels emphatically exclude the notion
that Mary was at that time married to
Joseph, or that Joseph was the father.
He finds, too, that as a matter of history
these miraculously born children were
generally illegitimate. In fact, the intro
duction of a Greek strain would help not
1 Which he misunderstands. The dogma of
the Immaculate Conception does not refer to the
conception of Christ by Maty, but to the concep
tion of Mary by her mother. Dr. Horton is
astonished at Haeckel’s ignorance. For my part
I am astonished at Dr. Horton’s knowledge.
The version Haeckel follows is quite the ordinary
non-Catholic version of the dogma. You will
find it even in Balzac (£<z messe de PathPe}.
Nay, even Mr. Ballard, B.D., thinks it is
correct {Miracles of Unbelief, p. 348).
85
a little to interpret the scriptural figure
of Christ, if it is taken to be historical.
It has long been an argument for the
divinity of Christ that the figure de
picted in the New Testament is so very
un-Hebraic in many of its features. We
who know the composition of the Gospels
understand this Greek element, But the
supposition that Christ had a Greek
father is not a little attractive in the cir
cumstances. When, therefore, Haeckel
learns from his authority, or supposed
authority, that in one of the apocryphal
gospels (the Gospel of Nicodemus)
Jesus was said to be the illegitimate son
of a Greek officer, and that this is con
firmed by the Sepher Toldoth Jeschua, he
at once embraces it as the most plausible
explanation of the “ high and noble
personality” of the Galilean.
These
apocryphal Gospels are, he tells the
reader, no less and no more reliable in
themselves than the canonical Gospels,
but this version of the birth seems to
accord best with the general situation.
Now this is a perfectly honest pro
cedure for a man who makes no pre
tension to expert knowledge or research.
Haeckel has again been misled by his
authority, it is true. The sentence, he
quotes from “ an apocryphal gospel ” is
not found in any of those books in that
form. The Gospel of Nicodemus merely
states that the Jews declared Christ to be
illegitimate. The Sepher ToldothJeschua,
which gives the story, is an early
mediaeval Jewish work of no authority.
The story can, indeed, be traced back
well into the second century (to about
130 a.d.), since Origen gives it as being
told to his opponent Celsus by the Jews,
in his Contra Celsum (I, 32); but this
was unknown at the time to Haeckel
and his authority. Further, it is mis
leading to say “the official theologian”
burks the story. It is perfectly true that
the Sepher Toldoth Jeschua is little com
mented on, but it is a worthless docu
ment; and Strauss, the author of the
Zz/e ofJesus, had contemptuously rejected
the story. These are undoubted errors
on Haeckel’s part. But, after all, the
�86
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
radical error is that he took a superficial
and unreliable author as his authority.
To have been misinformed as to the
weight and qualifications of a foreign
writer on a subject completely outside
his own territory, and to have neglected
to verify his information, is the full
extent of Haeckel’s delinquency. Dr.
Horton, who gives Vogt and Buchner as
shining lights in the spiritualist firma
ment, pompously tells us this was
“childish credulity.” Mr. Ballard, who
deals in such a remarkable fashion with
Haeckel’s observations on the pyknotic
theory and abiogenesis and determinism,
says he is “ ashamed to put such men
dacities into print,” and that if Haeckel
is not ashamed of himself he has not
developed “ an elementary degree of
morality.” Dr. Loofs calmly pours out
such a stream of invective that he thinks
it well to remind Haeckel of the text and
section of the German law which covers
the case ! He is afraid, he says, that
Haeckel will not be stung into dragging
the matter into court, and so he
continues to the end to dredge up
the. strong sediment of the German
dictionary.
A more ludicrous situation it would be
difficult to conceive. Haeckel frankly
states that in his opinion this is a subject
on which none of the evidence is worth
much. But he finds one legend more
plausible than that given in the canonical
gospels, and he points out that it seems
to be the most plausible. There is not
the slightest deception, as he openly
relies on the intrinsic plausibility of the
story, and openly states the immediate
and the ultimate sources from which he
takes it. No doubt he should have
examined more closely into the subject,
and should have looked into more
weighty and more recent literature. He
would then have found that the pas
sages which deny Joseph’s paternity
“belong to the least credible of New
Testament traditions,” as Dr. Loofs
says.1 But that his opponents should
1 American Journal oj Theology, July, 1899.
attack him with this virulence and
viciousness on that account is one of
the most disgraceful episodes of this
dreary controversy.
. The other defects which Dr. Loofs
discovers with his microscopic eye in
this chapter of the Riddle are mostly
pedantic rectifications of minor state
ments, or corrections with which only an
expert would concern himself, and as to
which opinions sometimes differ. Many
of them are quite paralleled by Dr.
Bischoff’s examination of Loofs’s own
statements. The year of the Council of
Nicfca and the number of bishops
present are incorrect; the number of
apocryphal gospels and of the genuine
Pauline epistles is not according to the
latest vagary of the critics; the statistics
of religion are not up to date; the
Immaculate Conception and Immaculate
Oath are improperly described. These
are the other points of the indictment.
The reader may judge for himself
whether there is anything more than a
lack of expert knowledge in these things;
and whether Haeckel ever claimed, and
did not rather disclaim from the outset,
such expert knowledge.
But we now turn to another aspect of
the matter. Haeckel, I said, set out to
discredit four dogmas which he found
hindering the progress of scientific know
ledge amongst the people at large. The
serious reader, impatient of all this dust
throwing and mud-throwing, will ask
how far the substance of Haeckel’s
attack on these dogmas survives this
scrutiny, and how far it is supported by
sound historical research. The dogma
of the infallibility of the Pope does not
appeal to the sympathies of these
Protestant critics, so that Haeckel’s
attack on the papacy is allowed to stand.
Let us consider his position with regard
to the other points—the uniqueness of
the Bible, of Christ, and of the history
of Christianity. Whether Haeckel is
infallible or not is hardly a subject for
prolonged discussion, provided his
“ scientific honour ” and “ scientific
conscience ” are not involved in the
�SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
manner that Dr. Loots would have the
readers of Die Chnstliche Welt to be
lieve. The serious question is : Can we
sustain his attack on these dogmas,
apart from the incidental errors into
which his unfortunate reliance . on
“ Saladin ” has betrayed him ? This is
a study in Church History, in the full
sense in which that science is under
stood to-day.1 We shall see that the
substance of Haeckel’s position is com
pletely supported by our present know
ledge of the subject.
In the first place, that implicit reli
ance on the statements found in the
Bible, which Haeckel set out to impugn,
is now wholly discredited. We need
not consider the Old Testament, and
Haeckel does not discuss it. _ The
cosmological speculations of Genesis are
now known to have been borrowed from
earlier religions : the historical books
are so full of error that we can only
trust them when we have independent
verification; whole books (Daniel, Es
ther, Tobit, etc.) are given up as wholly
unhistorical. This can be learned from
the works of Christian scholars to-day.
The Old Testament remains a work of
surpassing interest, containing some fine
literature and some of the highest moral
teaching of the ancient world. But it
no longer obstructs the path of the
scientist or the historian. As to the
New Testament, the work of recon
struction is not equally advanced.
Writers like Archdeacon Wilson confuse
the issue by taking “verbal inspiration ”
to be the butt of the rationalist attack.
No doubt one will still find many simple
believers in verbal inspiration, but that
is not the serious difficulty. The
opinion that the rationalist seeks to dis1 As a fact, the real secret of Dr. Loofs’s
bitterness and animosity seems to be that
Haeckel has laid a strong charge against Church
History. Apart from one historian, whom he
mentions by name, there was no reason for
thinking he included advanced writers like
Harnack and Loofs. But that his charge
against conventional Church History was solidly
grounded is well known to every student of
history, and will presently be fairly established.
87
credit—the opinion of the majority of
Christians to-day (solemnly propounded
to the world only a few years ago by
the official head of the Church of Rome)
—is the belief that the Bible contains
no error. Once the infallibility of the
Bible is abandoned, it ceases to be a
barrier to progress. The infallibility of
the Old Testament is not now held by
any Christian scholar; and the infalli
bility of the New Testament is rapidly
being expelled from the cultured Chris
tian mind. We have seen how Dr.
Loofs himself rejects the account of the
virgin-birth (Matt, i., Luke ii.) which
had worn itself into the very heart of
Christianity. “No well-informed, and
at the same time honest and conscien
tious theologian, can deny that he who
asserts these things as indisputable facts
affirms what is open to grave doubts,”
he says, significantly enough, in his
article in the American Journal of
Theology. In his article (“ Christologie
Kirchenlehre ”) in the Real-Encyclopadie filer Protestantische Theologie he
talks freely of “layers of biblical tradi
tion ” and their relative trustworthiness.
This statement, which has been taken
throughout the Christian era to be the
most characteristic and one of the most
important statements of the New Testa
ment, is now relegated to “ one of the
latest and least reliable ” of these
“layers.” The article on the Gospels
in the Encyclopedia Biblica, which re
flects the condition of cultured biblical
thought in England, is written entirely
in the same spirit; the author finds only
nine texts in the Gospels which are
“ entirely credible,” and without which
“ it would be impossible to prove to a
sceptic that any historical value what
ever was to be assigned to the Gospels.”
The inexpert reader is often misled by
statements to the effect that the critics
are returning on their traces, and are
denying the late dates assigned by the
Tubingen school to the Gospels and the
fewness of the genuine epistles of St.
Paul. The second point is not important
for our purpose, but the first statement is
�88
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
gravely misleading. When an ecclesias
tical journal or a tactical apologist re
produces Harnack’s saying that recent
criticism is vindicating “the essential
truth of tradition” about the Gospels,
one can only regret that one is incom
petent to borrow some of the phrases of
Dr. Loofs. The simple believer is en
couraged to think that the miraculous
life of Jesus is being fully rehabilitated.
The composition of the Gospels is being
put back to the period 65-125 : that is
to say, 65-70 for Mark, 70-75 for
Matthew, 78-93 for Luke, and 80-120
for John. It is not thought proper to
explain that the critics by no means
refer to the Gospels as we have them
to-day, and that these Gospels consist
of earlier and later “layers”—in plain
English, interpolations. It is not con
sidered necessary to explain that the
return to the Gospels only means, in
the words of Loofs, “ a return to the
sayings of Jesus in the synoptic gospels,”
and that the miraculous legends may be
sorted out as unprovable and incredible.
Well may the Christian World com
plain of “the lack of honesty” in
theological literature ! The truth is that
the historical value of the New Testa
ment is shattered, and Christian scholars
are, as in the case of the Old Testament,
retreating upon its ethical value. Thus
the putting back of the composition of
the synoptic Gospels into the first cen
tury does not save that popular reliance
on their legends which Haeckel solely
regarded.
This brings us to our second point,
the consideration of the person of Christ.
In this, as a matter of fact, Haeckel takes
up an exceedingly moderate position, and
falls far short of the advanced position
of many of the ablest recent Rationalist
writers. He assumes not only the his
torical character of Christ, but also that
we know enough about him to speak of
“ his high and noble personality ” and
to describe him as “ a noble prophet
and enthusiast.” He denies the divinity
of Christ, the miraculous powers that
are assigned to him in the Gospels, and j
the. originality of some of the chief
ethical sayings attributed to him. This
is not merely a position that will readily
be endorsed by numbers of Christian
theologians, but it is one that many theo
logians, to say nothing of non-Christian
writers, will regard as granting too much
to the religious tradition. How widely
the divinity of Christ is rejected to-day
few can be ignorant. The vague and
fluid phrases in which even the belief in
it is expressed very commonly now mis
lead only the inexpert. The older
Rationalistic attitude as to Jesus—that
we might omit the supernatural portions
of the Gospel narrative and take the
rest as historical—is giving way to a more
scientific procedure, and the figure of
Christ is dissolving into a hundred
elements. Comparative religion traces
numbers of the Gospel legends, such as
the virgin-birth, if not all the features of
the birth-story, to pre-Christian religions.
The death and burial, many incidents of
the life, and very much of the teaching,
are not more difficult to trace. Whilst
Christian scholars are separating the
Gospel-story into “layers of tradition”
(thus explaining the obvious contradic
tions), the study of the Greek, Egyptian,
Mithraist, and other religions, which
prevailed at the time and in the place
where the Gospels were written, is assign
ing their proper sources to the “ later
layers.” 1 The virgin-birth, which has
been so prominently brought before the
mind of English readers through the
famous denial on the part of a dignitary
of the Church of England, is only an
illustration of the process of dissolution
that is going on. When that process is
complete we shall see how little will be
left of the figure of the Crucified that
has been graven on the heart of Europe
for nearly 1500 years. Most assuredly
Haeckel’s position is a modest one. And
1 Read the able and learned efforts to trace
many of the gospel-elements in Mr. J. M.
Robertson’s Pagan Christs and Christianity and
Mythology. For the analysis of the Gospels read
especially Dr. Schmiedel’s article in the Encyclo-.
padia Biblica.
�SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
to conceal the strength of his position (as
opposed to the conventional position) by
the dust of a heated conflict as to
whether Christ’s father was Joseph the
carpenter or Pantheras the Greek is only
another specimen of “the lack of honesty
in apologetic literature.”
The third point to which Haeckel ad
dresses himself is the belief that there
has been anything unique about the
history or power of the Christian religion.
Here not only is Haeckel’s position very
moderately expressed, but the belief he
attacks is dissolving more rapidly than
the preceding beliefs. The term “unique ”
is—people so often forget—a relative or
comparative term; yet nine-tenths of
the ordinarily educated Christians who
talk of the uniqueness of the Bible have
never read a line of the Babylonian,
Persian, Egyptian, Hindoo, or Chinese
religious literatures; nine-tenths of those
who talk of the unique character of
Christ are totally ignorant of the work
and (traditional) character of Zoroaster,
Buddha, Lao-Tse, Kung-Tse, Apollonius,
or the Bab ; and nine-tenths of those
who think the history of Christianity is
“ unique ” have never studied, even in
the most general way, the growth and
work of Buddhism, or Confucianism, or
Parseeism, or Manicheeism, or Moham
medanism, or Babiism.
They have
trusted their ecclesiastical historians—
not men like Loofs and Harnack, but
the “ popular ” writers and the apologetic
writers of the Churches. Through this
literature most of us have waded at one
time or other; we can appreciate the
justice of the heaviest censure that can
be passed on it. It is one of the most
questionable implements in the employ
ment of the modern Churches. Com
plaint is frequently heard that rationalist
writers are ever seeking to belittle and
besmirch a religion which, with all its
defects, has had, in Haeckel’s words,
“ an ennobling influence on the history
of civilisation ” (p. 117). The reason is
found in the gross mis-statement and
perversion of the moral and religious
life in Europe during the last 1500 years
89
which the ecclesiastical historians have
been guilty of.
I will take in illustration one of . the
most characteristic and interesting periods
of this history of which I chance to have
expert knowledge—the fourth century.
Not many years ago I taught in a semi
nary, and preached from a Catholic
pulpit, the conventional theory of a
spiritual conquest of the Roman world
by Christianity—of “Rome, oppressed
by the weight of its vices, tottering to
embrace the foot of the crucifix.” That
is the historical theory you will hear from
almost every pulpit in this land to-day,
and will find, not merely in Christian
Evidence and S.P.C.K. and R.T.S.
Tracts, but in Sheppard and Milman
and Villemain and Dollinger and other
standard authorities. It is a ridiculously
false picture. Schultze has shown1 that
in some of the most important provinces
of the Empire not more than two and a
half per cent, were Christian at the
beginning of the fourth century. The
old religion had almost lost all serious
influence, and a number of Oriental re
ligions were pervading the Empire with
an ascetic and spiritual gospel. Of these
religions Christianity was one—not the
most ethical or spiritual or most success
ful. When the persecutions ceased, and
the Christians came out into the light of
day, their spiritual poverty was—with few
exceptions—a notable feature. Until 323
they proceeded quietly with their proselytic work, like the Mithraists and the
Manicheans, whom they closely re
sembled, when the conversion of Con
stantine to Christianity suddenly gave
them an immense advantage.
The
emperor’s “ conversion ” is not claimed
to have been important either as an in
tellectual or a spiritual phenomenon, but
it was supremely important in the poli
tical sense. Courtly senators followed
his example. It became, as Symmachus,
one of the last of the great pagans, says,
“ a new form of ambition to desert the
altars ” of the gods. Successive Christian
1 Geschichie des Untergangs des Heidenlhums.
�90
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
emperors sat on the Western throne, but
preserved a political neutrality, so that
Christianity advanced slowly. The short
reign of Julian showed how far Chris
tianity was from a triumph, and his suc
cessors, though Christian, still declined
to interfere politically in the rivalry of
religions.
By the year 380 the overwhelming
majority of the people and “ nearly the
whole of the nobility ” (St. Augustine
says) were still Pagan ; and the letters
of St. Jerome show that the Christians
were less spiritual than ever. But in 382
the “ triumph of Christianity ” began ;
within twenty years it became the
religion of the Empire. How ? From
the accession of Gratian (aged sixteen)
and Valentinian II. (aged four) there was
a succession of youthful, weak, and
religious emperors in the West. The
court was at Milan; its spiritual director
was St. Ambrose, one of the finest,
strongest, and most ambitious (for the
Church) of the fathers. He used his
influence, threatened the boy-emperor
with excommunication, and soon decree
after decree went out in favour of
Christianity. The pagan revenues were
confiscated: then the pagan temples
were destroyed or sealed up : finally any
who dared to cultivate any other than the
Christian religion were fined, imprisoned,
and threatened with death. At the same
time the Christian Churches adopted, or
had already adopted, all the attractions'
of the temples. They had gorgeous
vestments and ceremonies and pro
cessions, aspersion with water, incense,
banquets and dancing in the Church on
feast-days (generally ending in drunken
revelry), and all that the Roman cared
for in “religion.” The pagan merely
walked over to the Christian temple,
when he found his own barred by soldiers
or razed to the ground, and took
with him his music and flowers and in
cense and wine and statues. There was
no great moral reform, no great spiritual
conversion, except in a few distinguished
cases like that of St. Augustine.1
This gross misrepresentation of his
torical truth by ecclesiastical writers is
the sole reason for the Rationalist’s
playing “ the devil’s advocate.” Almost
the whole period of Christian history has
been treated with similar untruthfulness.
The good has been greatly exaggerated :
the evil suppressed or denied. The
belief in the uniqueness of the growth
of Christianity and of its moral and
civilising influence rests on a mass of
untruth and of calumny of other religions
and sects. Christianity and its sacred
books take their place in the great world
process. We see them growing naturally
out of the older religions and literatures,
and linking us with thoughts of other
ages. When theological literature has
ceased to offend us and to mislead the
people with its “ lack of honesty,” we
will study them with impartial interest,
and seek to establish their influence for
good as well as their share in the de
gradation of Europe from the first
century to the twelfth. Until then the
work of the Rationalist historian is
bound to seem destructive and one
sided.
1 Fuller details may be found in the author’s
St. Augustine and His Age: or in Boissier’s
Fin du Paganisme, Beugnot’s Histoire de la
Destruction dit Paganisme, or Schultze’s Geschichte des Untergangs des Heidenthums.
�THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
9i
Chapter XI
THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
Mr. H. G. Wells, the accredited
prophet of these latter days, predicts in
his well-known Anticipations that by the
end of the present century Christianity
will have been wholly abandoned
by people of culture. There will be,
he thinks, “a steady decay in the
various
Protestant
congregations,”
whilst Catholicism will increase for a
time, but only amongst “ the function
less wealthy, the half-educated, in
dependent women of the middle class,
and the people of the Abyss.” Another
recent writer, Sir Henry Thompson,
says in his essay on The Unknown
God\ “The religion of Nature must
eventually become the faith of the
future; its reception is a question for
each man’s personal convictions. It is
one in which a priestly hierarchy has no
place, nor are there any specified
formularies of worship. For ‘ Religion
[in the words of Huxley] ought to mean
simply reverence and love for the
Ethical ideal, and the desire to realise
that ideal in life. ’ ” Recently, too, Mr.
J. Brierley wrote one of his widely-read
articles in the Christian World on the
theme that there is impending “ a more
radical and more effective attack on
Christianity” than any that have pre
ceded. Mr. Rhondda Williams says that
“ already it is the fact that the cultured
laity on the one hand, and the great
bulk of the democracy on the other, are
outside the Churches.” It is true that
Mr. Ballard wrote in the British Weekly,
in July of this year, that Christianity “ is
at all events larger in quantity and
better in quality than ever before, and has
a brighter promise than in any previous
period of its history.” But within two
months we find him expressing himself
as follows : “ The outlook is a serious
one ; but I am not a pessimist, although
too many of my colleagues regard me as
such. I am only sensitive to the danger
of the day. What they call pessimism
I call open-eyed honesty. We are enter
ing on a very grave and probably pro
longed struggle, as Dr. Flint has recently
stated. The modern atmosphere is in
general tending away from rather than
towards all that is distinctive of Chris
tianity.” 1
Many things happened during the
course of the last summer to elicit or to
confirm these vaticinations. Haeckel’s
Riddle of the Universe was circulating to
the extent of some eighty thousand
copies in this country alone. Ecclesi
astics affected to believe that it was only
ignorant and thoughtless workers and
clerks who were deluded by its show of
learning, but they must have known
that it was being eagerly read by tens of
thousands of thoughtful artisans and
middle-class readers.2 Letters began to
trickle into the religious Press, telling of
increasing secessions and expressing ex
treme alarm. Within twelve months the
Rationalist Press Association, labouring
under the usual disadvantages of an
heretical publisher, put into circulation
nearly half a million of its publications ;
1 See interview by Mr. Raymond Blathwayt
in Great Thoughts.
2 So much pity is expressed in this connection
for the poor artisan that I must make this
observation. I have had intimate knowledge of
the clergy—Roman Catholic clergy, who, as a
rule, have had more definite philosophical instruc
tion than their Protestant colleagues—and have
lately, in the course of lecturing and wandering,
made a fair acquaintance with the working and
lower middle-class readers, who so largely pur
chase sixpenny editions. I do not hesitate to
say that there are tens of thousands of the latter
in England who can read Haeckel more intelli
gently than the majority of the Catholic clergy.
�92
THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
and almost every journal in England was
disturbing the peace of the faithful with
a reminder that there was a riddle of the
universe.
A Socialist journal, the
Clarion, made a drastic and sustained
attack on Christianity, in spite of threats
and jeers, and immediately found itself
in touch with the predominant sentiment
of its readers.
Other working-class
organs found it equally safe to open fire
on the Churches.
Two independent
and rigorous inquiries were conducted
into the religious condition of London,
where the Churches display incalculable
wealth. Both inquiries—that conducted
by Mr. C. Booth and that conducted by
Mr. Mudie-Smith for the Daily News—
proved that the Christian Churches in
London do not attach to themselves
more than a quarter of the population,
and that the great majority of their
adherents are women. A census taken
in Liverpool was equally depressing;
and observations made in several small
provincial towns showed that the con
dition was very general in the country.
At the Trade Union Congress at
Leicester the representatives of several
million workers declared for the ex
clusion of religious instruction from the
schools. A superficial inquiry at New
York discovered the same condition in
America, and the latest Australian
census also showed a decay of the
Churches, especially the Catholic Church
and the Salvation Army. M. Guyau dis
covered that in Paris not one in sixteen
of the population attended church, and
Protestant ministers have reported that
scarcely 8,000,000 of the population of
France remain under the obedience of
the Roman Church. The Belgian elec
tions show that half the population of
that “Catholic” country has definitely
ranged itself against the Church. The
success of the Social-Democrats in
Germany, and the reports from Spain
and Italy, point to the same general
defection of the people from Church
influence.1
1 One of the points in which Dr. Loofs joins
issue with Haeckel is in relation to religious
With the various sources of consola
tion which the clergy point out to each
other we are not concerned. The chief
of these seems to be hope; and a com
plete ignorance of the grounds on which
it rests prevents me from discussing it.
We know that the Churches have enor
mous wealth; one secondary denomination
having recently collected a sum of a mil
lion guineas, and another having erected
a cathedral at a cost of a quarter of a
million.
We know that no odium
attaches to the defence of Christianity, if
a scientist or historian be disposed to
defend it. We know that no intrigue
or menace is directed against the pub
lication or circulation of Christian litera
ture.
We know that the wealthier
journals of this country and the general
cultured sentiment is averse to attacking
even when it does not believe. We know
that the clergy have made enormous
concessions to the secular spirit of the
age, until in places their definite reli
gious ministration can only be timidly
and apologetically slipped in between a
cornet solo and a phonographic entertain
ment. Yet “ the outlook is serious,”
and “the cultured laity and the great
bulk of the democracy are outside the
Churches.”
Mr. Ballard has made
merry over the fact that Haeckel opens
his work in a despondent strain, and
yet his translator prefaces this with “a
paean of triumph.” He forgets that
there is an interval of several years
(not two months, as in his own case)
between the two passages.
The
twentieth century opened with—most
Rationalists considered—a brighter pros
pect for the Churches. Already this
statistics. Haeckel had given (from another
writer) the number of Christians as 410,000,000.
Dr. Loofs quotes two recent authorities who give
the figures as 535,000,000 and 556,000,000,
respectively. This is a fair illustration of the
“ victories ” of our apologists. Everyone knows
that these figures are obtained by lumping
together the populations of what are called
“Christian countries.” So France and England
are each credited with about 40,000,000 Chris
tians instead of 10,000,000. Belgium and Italy
and other countries are similarly treated. The
figures are totally worthless.
�THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
has wholly faded, and it seems impos
sible for the Churches ever to regain a
foot of the lost territory.1
This is not a “ paean of triumph,” but
a statement of fact. In the days when
a profession of unbelief involved social
ostracism and malignant calumny, when
men were thrown into prison with the
dregs of society for selling critical litera
ture or uttering critical sentiments, when
nearly every advance of science was
opposed by ignorant clergymen, when
women were bade to see their husbands
and sons in Hell for refusing to fre
quent the church, and the mind of
England was enslaved to dogmas that
all abhor to-day, the attack on Chris
tianity was necessarily predominantly
negative and destructive. Growth was
impossible until the iron bonds were
broken. To-day Rationalism, still rightly
militant and critical, has a conspicuous
constructive side. It has a sociological
outlook and an idealist gospel. After
all, the life of Europe has rested on
doctrinal foundations so long, and has
grown so accustomed to the stimulus of
religious thought, that some idea must
be substituted for the sources of inspira
tion that are rapidly exhausting. Haeckel
turns, therefore, at the close of his
cosmic speculations and his historical
glance at the Christian Church to con
sider this question of the successor of
Christianity.
Years ago he offered
Monism as “ a connecting link between
science and religion ”; as a system that
could unite harmoniously the finest
ethical truths of the Christian religion
1 Mr. Campbell makes a rhetorical point by
challenging a comparison between the census of
church-goers and a census of “ all the professedly
atheistic assemblies in London, all the Hyde
Park atheistic platforms, and the people who
are listening to atheistic propaganda.” Such a
quibble is unworthy of a serious speaker. 1 lie
limitation to “professedly atheistic” gatherings
makes the comparison ludicrous and unmeaning.
Let me in turn issue a challenge. Let the
figures of the circulation of the sixpenny Chris
tian publications be honestly compared with an
equal number, in an equal time, of the Rational
ist sixpenny works. Rationalism, Mr. Campbell
knows quite well, is almost entirely unorganised.
93
with the unshakable truths of modern
science. Even the believer in Christianity
must at times contemplate with misgiving
the practice of grounding the moral life
on beliefs which are to-day disputed and
attacked in every workshop in the land.
The child who has been trained to
honesty and sobriety on the ground
of supernatural reward or punishment,
or on the mere ground of giving offence
to an injured deity, must be of a singu
larly robust character to withstand
entirely the sneers at Hell and Heaven
and the open disbelief in God that
will presently assail his ears. If it be
desirable to have a humane, temperate,
and honourable community, it behoves
every thoughtful man to cast about for
some other ground for the commenda
tion of these moral qualities than an
enfeebled and disputed dogma. In
creasing stress is, therefore, laid on the
ethical and religious aspect of Monism.
One result of this is that, although the
Churches of our day profess a tolerance
which would have outraged the feelings
of their earlier leaders, their apologists
have by no means ceased to gird at the
alleged disastrous consequences of ma
terialism and agnosticism. Mr. Ballard,
who is supposed to have studied “un
belief” and “unbelievers,” introduces
his study (Miracles of Unbelief} with this
amiable quotation:
“ Hold thou the good : define it well:
For fear divine philosophy
Should push beyond her mark and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.”
Mr. Rhondda Williams says “ ideal has
no place in Haeckel’s philosophy ”; and
that on his principles “ over the crimes
of a Csesar Borgia you must write a great
‘Can’t help it.’ . . . The sweater who
grinds the faces of the poor can’t help
it.” Dr. Horton says that “men who
have no belief in God and immortality
sink to the level of the brutes,” and
“ come down to the level of the stocks
and the stones ”; that their “ soul is
shrunk, the mind is warped, and the
very body must carry its marks of degra-
Bishopsgat® InfititutaJ
�94
THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
dation.” Mr. R. J. Campbell says that
if the soul is not immortal, then the
right philosophy is to “eat and drink
and be merry ”; that the real obstacles
to Christianity are the thirst for money,
sensual pleasure and entertainment; and
that atheism is “ the gospel of destruc
tion, disease, and death.”1 This senti
ment is repeated weelily from scores of
pulpits all over the country; it is a
commonplace of ecclesiastical literature
and of a certain type of fiction.
Such tactics are malignant and dis
honourable.
I remember reading an
article in the Daily News some months
ago by Mr. Quiller Couch—a religious
author writing in a journal with a pre
ponderantly religious following.
He
touched on the current calumny of the
man without belief in God and immor
tality, and he urged that his readers
knew as well as he that when they
wanted a man of honour and humanity
to confide in they most probably looked
to an agnostic. Without claiming so
much as this, without enumerating the
Stephens and Morleys and Harrisons
that for years have adorned our letters
and our public life, one asks oneself
whether these cultivated clergymen can
have had an experience of their fellows
so different from that of this candid
novelist and essayist that we can at least
credit them with sincerity. It is impos
sible. The statement is an argument, a
stratagem, a flimsy piece of theorising.
It overrides for the moment every gentle
manly impulse, and closes its eyes to the
pain and the heart-burn that many a
gentle Christian mother will suffer as
she broods over it and thinks of her
wandering son. It is a mighty palliative
—I will not say justification—of the
violent language which often returns to
these gentlemen. Did you ever meet a
Christian who felt a moment’s anxiety
about his own character in the event of
his ceasing to believe in Christian teach1 Sermon in -the Christian Commonwealth,
July 30, 1903. This was Mr. Campbell’s first
sermon in the City Temple, and must be regarded
as an exceptionally deliberate utterance.
ing ? I never did. They could not face
their fellows with an avowal that they
were humane (when not defending the
faith) and honourable only or chiefly
because of reward hereafter, or because
God willed it. They are proud of their
own manliness. Their anxiety is ever
for the welfare of others, for “the
people.”
What, then, is the ethic of Monism
which these rhetoricians so completely
ignore ? One does not need a profound
or prolonged research to find it. It
rises out of the very ground on which
they base their ignoble appeal. They
would have us retain the outworn creed
of Christianity because it has been an
inspiration to character-forming, and
because character and a quick sense of
honour are amongst the most valuable
qualities of life. They do not see that
if honour, and sobriety, and high aims
are of value in and for themselves,
humanity will not lightly part with them,
whether or no it reject the miraculous
setting of them which the preacher com
mends. If “ to eat and drink and be
merry,” to extinguish all ambition of
spirit, to forego the visions of an Emerson
or a Mazzini, to pour one’s whole energy
into money-making and sensual pleasure
—if all these are social dangers and
personal misfortunes, humanity will see
to it that they are restrained. The issue
is plain. If moral qualities may dis
appear without the faculties of man being
stunted and the grace and glory of life
being endangered, they will disappear.
No power on earth will prevent it, now
that man has begun to reflect. But if
justice, and honour, and truthfulness,
and self-control, and kindness are
qualities that enrich and gladden the
personal and the social life, they will be
cultivated on that account. And as a
fact, if we take a broad and true survey,
the world was never richer in those
qualities, yet the influence of dogma was
never less. What does the humanitarian
movement mean ? What the movement
for the extinction of the flames of war,
the increase in philanthropic effort, the
�THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
growing social service of the rich, and a
score of other movements ? What has
shattered the barbaric doctrine of hell,
and extinguished for ever the fires of
persecution? A development of men’s
moral and humane feeling, which has
proceeded simultaneously with a decay
of belief.
But, we are told, you are still so near
to the age of universal belief that the
Christian ethic is in your blood in spite
of you. You are severed twigs that are
still green with the sap of the tree. I
reply, firstly, that it is the modern
rationalist and humanitarian movement
that has reformed Christianity. Compare
the degraded condition of Spain, where
the Church has been able to stifle criti
cism, with England and Germany, where
a century of criticism has been directed
upon Christianity from the otitside. And
I reply, secondly, that we are perfectly
conscious that the sap of Christianity is
in our moral fibres. 11 We firmly adhere
to the best part of Christian morality,”
says Haeckel (p. 120): and “ the idea of
the good in our monistic religion co
incides for the most part with the
Christian idea of virtue.” Why should
we be so foolish as to set aside the moral
experience of the last 2000 years ? It is
the heritage of the race. We have been
lifted above that petty sectarian attitude
that distinguishes the church-member.
We survey the whole moral and religious
life of humanity as one broad stream.
Christianity is a stage, a phase, in the
continuous history of the world.
It
borrowed its ethic from Judaea, from
Greece, and from Egypt. It was made
in Alexandria, the centre at that time of
the civilised world, and the converging
point of three great spiritual streams.
There is not a single ethical element in
primitive Christianity that cannot be
traced to its predecessors. Moreover,
the notion that the Hebrews had a
“genius for morality” has no longer
even the semblance of plausibility.
Read the 125th chapter of confessions
or protestations in the Egyptian Bible,
and you will find, a great Egyptologist
95
(Budge) says, a system of morality
“second to none among those which
have been developed by the greatest
nations of the world.” And this chapter
was compiled, from very much earlier
teaching, fifteen centuries before Christ
appeared, and at a time when the
Hebrews were yet uncivilised. The
Book of the Dead, as Dr. Washington
Sullivan says, is so lofty that “ if every
vestige of Christianity were obliterated
from the earth, it would provide an ad
mirable ethical outfit for the reorganisa
tion of morality in Europe.” Further, we
have within the last two years discovered
the very source of that lofty morality with
which the Hebrew prophets lifted their
nation from its barbaric level. At a date
when the Hebrews were sacrificing
human victims to their idols, two thousand
years before the decalogue in the Old
Testament was written, the Babylonians
(from whom the Hebrews obtained their
wisdom and civilisation) were living at a
very high level of moral idealism. The
Code of Laws of Khammurabi—laws
promulgated between 2285 and 2242 B.c.
—is seen to be the foundation of the
“ Mosaic legislation.” We now know,
Dr. Washington Sullivan says, that the
Hebrews “ were positively the last of all
the peoples of remote antiquity to dis
cover those high truths of the moral life
which constitute the unchanging founda
tion of society.”1
But, while, in taking over from
Christianity the moral heritage of
humanity, we owe it gratitude for new
development in some directions, we
must with Haeckel acknowledge that it
has overlaid moral truth with false ideals
that must be set aside. I am not
speaking merely of those mediaeval
horrors which all Christians avoid and
evade to-day. I am thinking of some of
the most distinctive features of the
composite Christ-ideal. When Mr.
1 Ancient Morality. The reader will find in
this admirable booklet a fuller account of this
and the preceding point. It can be obtained at
a moderate price from “ The Ethical Religion
Society,” Steinway Hall.
�96
THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
Campbell
says that Christ “ has
manufactured more nobleness than all
the moral codes in all the world put to
gether,” we see at a glance how little he
knows of “all the moral codes” and
what they have done. We who watch
the advance of comparative religion and
ethics, and of the criticism of the New
Testament, know what will eventually
become of this kind of Christianity
which stakes its existence on the
historical truth of the Gospels. Christ
is dissolving year by year. But even
when apologists have removed the stress
from the (largely, at least) legendary
person of Christ to that moral teaching
which appears in the first century as
“primitive Christianity,” we still join
issue with them. Haeckel has indicated
several features of the Christian ethic
which we cannot receive. Some of
these features are already abandoned
by our Christian neighbours. There is
the ascetic principle, one of the most
prominent elements of the Christ-teaching, which even the Catholic Church is
quietly dropping. There is the Gospel
of opposing violence by submission and
Hooliganism by emptying your pockets,
which one honest Anglican bishop has
pronounced “ impracticable.” There is
the contempt of art and nature, which
follows from the ascetic principle. There
is the commendation of virginity, which
no one regards to-day, with its implica
tion of the inferiority of marriage, so ex
pressly preached by the Church fathers.
There is the suppression of woman, in
spired by the Old Testament teaching,
which, as Mr. Lecky has shown, put
back her emancipation (which the
Romans were initiating) for more than a
thousand years. All these were errors
of the enthusiastic but ignorant com
pilers of the Christ-ideal, and the modern
world agrees to abandon them.
We claim, further, that this moral
teaching must be set once for all on a
purely humanist ground.
“ With eyes
fixed on the future,” says the great
Mazzini, “ we must break the last links of
the chain which holds us in bondage to
the past, and with deliberate stages move
on. We have freed ourelves from the
abuses of the old world; we must now
free ourselves from its glories. . . To-day
we have to found the polity of the nine
teenth century—to climb through philo
sophy to faith ; to define and organise
association, proclaim humanity, initiate
the New Age.” The doctrine of Hell
and Heaven is no longer a fitting founda
tion for moral conduct, as most edu
cated Christians recognise to-day. But
the personality of God or the personality
of Christ is just as little fitted. Have
you ever seen how the little-minded
villagers, along those parts of our coast
where the sea is steadily invading the
land, build time after time close to the
edge of the cliff? “ My grandfather lived
there,” some old man will tell you, point
ing his lean finger out into the sea. And
he knows that in twenty years more the
cottage he has himself built will be un
dermined and swept away. That is
the procedure of those theologians who
base their ethic on the successively dis
solving dogmas of Christianity. Their
grandfathers staked the moral condition
of the community on a belief in Hell;
their fathers grounded it on faith in the
supernatural character of the Bible.
They are basing it to-day on belief in
God and the historical reality of Christ.
And year by year the waves of criticism
and the tunnels of research are under
mining their position. Let us retreat
once for all from the land of dogma.
Morality is too important a matter to be
left at the mercy of scientific or historical
controversies. Cling to your beliefs if
you must—if you can ; but in view of the
controversy that surrounds them, and
will soon thicken about them a hundred
fold, do not seek to bind up the moral
tone of the community with so frail a
speculation.
People who imagine that this pro
posal to transfer the moral interest
from the care of the Churches has a
violent and unnatural character are
little acquainted with the history of the
subject. The leading writers on com-
�THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
parative religion assure us that, in the
words of Professor Tiele, “ in the be
ginning religion had little or no con
nection with morality.” In other words,
morality had a quite different and inde
pendent origin from theology. It was
only at a fairly advanced stage in the
development of priesthood that the
notion was advanced of the gods being
the authors and the priests the guardians
of the moral law. We have seen how
Babylon had the decalogue and an
elaborate moral code centuries before the
supposed giving of the tables to Moses
on Mount Sinai. The existence of a fullydeveloped moral sentiment can thus be
discovered ages before the first claim of
a revelation. If, further, we study the
moral feeling of the lowliest tribes, and
ascend gradually through the semibarbaric peoples known to history, such
as the ancient Mexicans or our own
forefathers, we can trace clearly enough
the growth of the moral ideal. When
men began to live in community they
discovered that certain restraints must
be placed on individual impulses. They
saw the enormous advantages to each of
a communal life, of co-operation and the
division of labour, of mutual help and
service, of substituting trial or arbitration
for bloody combats, and of being able to
trust each other. In other words, they
discovered that, if they were to advance
in the construction of social life, which
promised so many advantages, certain
new habits or rules or qualities were
necessary.
Justice, kindness, respect
for age, care of youth, truthfulness,
sobriety, and self-control were necessary.
In proportion as they acquired these
qualities their social life was healthy and
effective.
The individual gained far
more than he had relinquished in the
occasional restraint of his impulses.
And in proportion as they fell away from
this ideal their social life was enfeebled
and disturbed. Thus there grew up a
sense of the importance of the moral
ideal—such a sense as we find, for
instance, amongst the ancient Germans
long before their contact with Chris
97
tianity. In this way the decalogue came
to be written. Man was its author.
The experience of 200,000 years was
his inspiration. And to-day, when we
see how vitally necessary moral fibre
is for progress in the exacting race of
our national and international life, it is
hardly likely that we shall return to the
lawlessness of prehistoric life. There came
a stage in the evolution of the moral ideal
when men considered it so wonderful
a thought that they hailed it as a gift of
the gods, just as the Hebrews did when
they composed, or borrowed, the legend
of the giving of the law on Sinai. In
this way morality became intimately
associated with theology. It is probable
that, whilst this association has hindered
moral development in some ways—com
pare the stagnancy of the “ages of
faith ” with the great ethical advance of
this “ age of unbelief ”—it has in other
ways greatly promoted it.
However that may be, the time has
come for humanity to claim its own from
the gods. There is an obvious danger
that, as the theological structure with
which morality has so long been asso
ciated breaks up, morality may suffer for
a time. Scepticism about the one natur
ally leads to scepticism about the other.
To say that we should on that account
refrain from hastening the dissolution of
theology is the very reverse of wisdom or
statesmanship. We must insist on the
formation of a purely humanitarian ethic.
We must jealously remove this deeply
important interest from the arena of
controversy. Our children must not be
taught, as they are still taught, to restrain
their impulses to lying, stealing, and
unhealthy practices, merely on the ground
of certain religious beliefs. In a few years
they will hear those beliefs ridiculed and
torn to shreds on every side, and it may
be that the whole structure of their
moral habits will be shaken to the ground.
This is a grave social and humanitarian
problem.
Our educational authorities
insist that moral training shall be given
by the teacher only in connection with
' the legends of the Old Testament, which
G
�98
THE ETHIC AND RELIGION OF MONISM
are not taken to Be historical by clerical
Scholars themselves to-day, or with the
stories of the New Testament that are
being rapidly reduced to myths. The
child is too unsophisticated to see what
is called a “symbolic truth” in these,
and it is well known that the teachers in
our schools, often with great repugnance
to their own feelings, have to treat these
stories as historical, or leave them to be
considered historical.
It is a pitiful
situation, and ought not to be tolerated
even by those who still adhere to
religious beliefs.
An organisation has been created to
meet this situation; to agitate for the
introduction of purely humanitarian
moral instruction for the children in our
elementary schools, and to formulate
schemes of such teaching and provide
model-lessons and expert teachers to
show its practicability. Already several
local educational authorities have adopted
the ideas of this organisation. But over
the country at large the moral instruction
of our children is still totally bound up
with that teaching of the Bible which is
to-day so seriously controverted. Every
man, and especially every woman, who
is alive to the folly and the danger of
our present system should consider the
aim and work of this organisation.1
A more difficult question arises when
we turn to consider moral culture
amongst the adult portion of the
community. Dr. Haeckel is of opinion,
as are very many rationalist writers, that
we need look forward to no substitute
for the Churches in this respect, except
for a certain minority of the community.
“The modern man,” he says, “who has
‘ science and art,’ and therefore ‘ re
ligion,’ needs no special church, no
narrow, enclosed portion of space. For
through the length and breadth of free
nature, wherever he turns his gaze, to
1 I am referring to the Moral Instruction
League. Its central office is at 19 Buckingham
Street, Strand, Loudon, W.C. ; any inquiries
addressed there will be promptly answered by
the secretary. Branches of the League have
been formed in various parts of the country.
the whole universe or to any single
part of it, be finds indeed the grim
struggle for life, but by its side are ever
1 the good, the true, and the beautiful ’
his church is commensurate with the
whole of glorious nature. Still, there
will always be men of special tem
perament who will desire to have
decorated temples or churches as places
of devotion, to which they may with
draw.” No doubt, - 'when we have
introduced an adequate scheme of
purely natural moral instruction into our
primary and secondary- schools instead
of leaving this most important section
of the child’s education to the casual
observations of a reluctant and untrained
teacher in the course of a Bible lesson,
there will not be the same need for
church-assemblies in later life. But it
would seem that the tendency to form
new groups and organisations for moral
and humanitarian culture is on the
increase. Already there is in the field
an important “ Ethical movement,” with
branches in America,' England, France,
and Germany, and with an international
organ (The International Journal of
Ethics) and international congresses.
The English branch includes some
fifteen societies in London and the
provinces, most of which are gathered
into a Union of Ethical Societies,1 and
is spreading rapidly. It has an organ
of its own (Ethics, one penny weekly),
and takes an active part in all social and
humanitarian work. There is also the
Positivist Movement; and there are num
bers of Humanitarian, Tolstoyan, and
other societies with similar aims. Even
churches and chapels are slowly casting
off their raiment of dogma and specula
tion, and restricting their aim to moral
culture. In many parts of England
this transformation has already com
pletely taken place. The tendency
everywhere is in the direction of an
abandonment of dogma, and a relin
quishment of cosmic speculation to the
philosopher and the scientist. Some
1 Central office at 19 Buckingham Street,
London, W.C.
J
�THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
day our Churches will perceive at length
that the belief in God is itself a cosmic
speculation, exposed: to a hundred
hazards of discovery and controversy.
Then, in the words of. Emerson, “there
will be a new Church, founded on moral
science ; at first cold and naked, a babe
in a manger again, the algebra and
mathematics of ethical law, the
Church of men to come, without
shawms, or psaltery, or sackbut, but it
will have heaven and earth for its beams
and rafters, science for symbol and
illustration; it will fast enough gather
beauty, music, picture, and poetry.”
That Haeckel is right in this, his final
judgment and expectation, none will
question who have long observed the
development of religious thought and
church life. Strong and eloquent voices
plead already within the Churches for
the elimination of dogma, for an ex
clusive concern for moral culture. If the
modem art of anticipation have any
validity, it is certain that theological
speculation and moral culture are
severing their long association. We are
taking the step that some of the great
religions of the world took ages ago.
Buddha, wiser in this than the founders
of Christianity, pleaded solely for moral
reform, and coldly discountenanced
theological speculation.
Enlightened
Buddhists hold to the spirit of his
teaching, though Buddhism has, as a
j
'
■ .i . J
99
whole, been unfaithful to his spirit. But
another great Oriental religion, Con
fucianism, the religion of the cultured
Chinese and Japanese, had taken the
step we are taking to-day centuries before
Christ was born. The followers of
Kung-Tse have for ages maintained
moral culture without dogma. Their
Bible, the Bushido, is the model
Bible of the world. It is the turn of
Christianity to make religion “ the service
of man ” instead of “ the service of God.”
If there be a God, he needs not the
sacrifices, and he must disdain the flattery
and adoration, of' a poverty-stricken
humanity. We must turn at length from
the land of shadows, where the super
natural lurks, and pour the whole intense
stream of religious emotion into the task
of uplifting ourselves and our fellows.
We must free the religious and moral
ideal from every entanglement of contro
verted dogma, and set it on a natural
base. Then will cease the long anxiety
and the foolish resistance to every ad
vance of thought. Then each new
discovery will shed new light on our
ideal, and science will be. eagerly
pursued.
“ Oh Science, lift aloud thy voice that stills
The pulse of fear, and through the conscience
thrills—
Thrills through the conscience with the
news of peace—
How beautiful thy feet are on the hills ! ”
Ji
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Chapter X
THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
The reader will probably remember
a famous passage in one of Huxley’s
essays where the anxiety that theologians
betray, as the mechanical interpretation
of the universe advances, is compared to
the terror which savages exhibit during
an eclipse of the sun. Whether Huxley
had had a rude experience of that
D 2
�IOO
THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
ecclesiastical rhetoric, of which we have
seen so much under the name of
“ criticism ” of Haeckel, and had yielded
to a malicious impulse in his choice of
an analogy, we need not inquire. We
have seen that the apologists are still
eager to. throw every obstacle they can
suggest in the way of the advance, or of
the acceptance, of the mechanical view.
We have encountered them at every step
in our course. Sometimes, indeed, we
have found ecclesiastics with scientific
qualifications desperately recommending
us to read criticisms that aim at dis
crediting scientific procedure; as when
Mr. Ballard tells his readers to study
Stallo s Concepts of Modern Physics, a
work “the.most of which,” says Sir O.
Lodge, “is occupied in demolishing
constructions of straw.” But these
tactics have long ago ceased to be
effective. Science has won too solid a
position in modern life to be shaken by
the ill-informed criticism of Stallo or the
academic subtleties of Professor Ward.
Nor is the general reader greatly moved
by the efforts of our modern theologians
to sit in judgment on science in its own
domain. The obvious plan for the
Churches to adopt with the largest hope
of success was to obtain, and give a wide
publicity to, utterances by prominent
scientists that tend to rehabilitate
theology. I am not suggesting that
these distinguished scientists only speak
out under a strong pressure from the
clergy. On the part of Sir O. Lodge, for
instance, and Dr. A. R. Wallace, there
is a very clear concern for religion,
which is entitled to our full respect.
But it cannot be denied that the use
which is made by the clergy of these
occasional utterances is gravely mislead
ing.
We have already seen this in
the case of those German scientists to
whom Haeckel refers as having changed
their views. The only statement that
Haeckel makes is that they have ceased
to defend the positive views which he
expounds in the Riddle • yet almost
every clerical writer represents them as
having, to use Dr. Plorton’s words,
“ come to recognise spirit as the author
of consciousness ”—this in spite of the
fact that Haeckel expressly mentions
Du Bois-Reymond’s agnosticism on this
point (p. 6). Dr. Horton, with his
inclusion amongst the elect of the most
notorious materialists that ever lived,
has a title to leniency, in a sense, because
of his obvious ignorance of the entire
subject. The position of those apologists
who have some scientific culture is more
serious. These German scientists—
Wundt, Baer, Virchow, and Du BoisReymond — are
agnostics. Professor
Haeckel assures me that in Germany the
clerical writers call them “atheists.”
They lend no support whatever to even
the. most advanced and liberal form of
theism.
Writers who so thoroughly
mi-lead the English public as to their
position have little right to discuss
the taste of Haeckel’s analysis of
his. colleagues’ views.
The oriental
saying about straining at the gnat
and. swallowing the camel is painfully
pertinent.
We have now to examine those utter
ances on the part of English men of
science which are so much quoted of
late, and we shall find how little support
they really give to the religious position.
Of the later views of G. J. Romanes I will
speak later, when we come to deal with
the somewhat similar ideas of Mr. W.
Mallock. Romanes saw to the end the
terrible strength of the scientific position.
It was only by an appeal to “extrarational ” and unscientific testimony
that he sought to evade it. With Sir O.
Lodge we need not deal in detail. His
chief line of argument is of a teleological
nature, and is exposed to the difficulties
we have already indicated. Nor do I
propose to deal with the spiritist convic
tions of Sir O. Lodge or Dr. Wallace, or
(if they still exist) Sir W. Crookes, or
(in a degree) Professor James. Spiritist
evidence is a subject for personal investi
gation. We may also hold ourselves
dispensed from dealing in detail with
the views of the late Dr. St. George
Mivart. They are not urged upon us to-
�THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
day.1 But there have lately been published
two remarkable pronouncements by dis
tinguished English scientists, Dr. Wallace
and Lord Kelvin, and these it is incum
bent on us to examine. It is chiefly on
the strength of these utterances, that
clerical apologists talk of a reconciliation
of science and religion, if not of “a
rehabilitation of religion. by science.”
These utterances have, in their bald
and misleading outline, been published
throughout the country. We shall see,
in this and the following chapter, how
wholly ineffectual they were, how swiftly
they were torn to shreds by the proper
experts on the subjects involved, and
how clearly the episodes show that the
science of to-day is overwhelmingly
favourable to the positions we have
defended against Haeckel’s critics.
Dr. A. R. Wallace, one of the most
distinguished naturalists of our time, has
long been famous for his opposition to
the doctrine of the evolution of the
human mind. This opposition, main
tained in face of a remarkable and
increasing consensus of scientists and
scientific theologians, is ceasing to im
press inquirers as it once did. The
opinions of a man of such ability, expert
knowledge, and candour, must always be
examined with respect. But we have
seen that the problem is very different
to-day from what it was thirty years ago.
To-day we all admit that evolution is a
cosmic law: Haeckel says it is “ the
second law of substance,” and the theo
logians say it is God’s way of making
things. We all admit the evolution of
matter and the evolution of solar
systems; and most of us admit the
evolution of life and the evolution of
species. On the other hand, we trace
back the distinctive human institutions
of to-day—art, civilisation, science, phi1 Had Mivart lived, the public would have seen
a sensational development in the exposition of
his later opinions. He told me, some years
before his death, that he intended to speak out
fully before he quitted the stage, and he frankly
admitted that his scepticism was deep and his
concern for religion little more than a belief in
its moral efficacy.
IOI
losophy, religion, moral codes, and lan
guage—along a line of evolution to very
primitive beginnings. Grant a glimmer
of intelligence and reason in early man,
and we can very well conceive the natural
development of these institutions in the
course of the last 200,000 years. We
must, indeed; because we know that the
prehistoric man, whose remains we un
earth to-day, had not these things. We
have, therefore, only to bridge the interval
between the brain of the Neanderthal
man and that of the anthropoid ape,
between the mind of the highest animal
and that of the lowest man. The dif
ference is one of degree, not of kind.
Comparative psychology finds in animals
the same emotions and reasoning power
as in man, only less highly developed.
Further, we have a period of at least
600,000 years in which the advance
might be effected. The anthropoid apes
appear in the Miocene period (about
900,000 years ago). Man is not held
to be developed from them, but from a
common ancestor with them; so that
from that period to the time when we
find unmistakable trace of man (250,000
to 220,000 years ago) natural selection
must have been at work.
Finally, we
have lately discovered a most important
link in the chain of development (the
pithecanthropus), and the study of the
brain is, as we saw, suggesting some very
remarkable and illuminating possibilities.
If Canon Aubrey Moore could say that
Mr. Wallace’s view “ had a strangely un
orthodox look ” sixteen years ago, it has
certainly not lost its singularity in our
day. When Dr. Haeckel went to Java,
two years ago, on a scientific expedition,
the Press assured us that he had gone to
search for more bones of the pithecan
thropus. As a fact, though his researches
and travels took him within a hundred
miles of the spot where Dubois found
the famous remains in 1894, he did not
go there. The evidence for the complete
natural development of man is so great
that such discoveries are unnecessary.
But Dr. Wallace has very recently
I entrenched his position with a very
�102
THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
remarkable attack on current scientific
conceptions. He purports to undo a
large and important section of the scien
tific procedure of our earlier chapters,
and we must enter upon a thorough
examination of his statements.1
He
says that the “ new astronomy ” entirely
disciedits that “ cosmological perspec
tive ” which we have taken from Haeckel
and supported with recent evidence.
Instead of finding indications of infinity,
he says, modern astronomers have dis
covered very definite limits to the
material universe. Instead of our sun
being a . neglected and unimportant
element in the stellar universe, it is the
very centre, or near the centre, of the
whole system. Instead of our earth
being a very ordinary fragment of matter,
torn, in some way, from the central mass,
and forming a casual crust at its cooled
surface, it. is a unique body in the uni
verse ; it is fitted to support life in a way
that no other planet of our system is,
and that most probably no other planet
in the universe is. Thus, instead of
man being a mere casual product of
natural development, he is the very
centre and culmination of its processes,
a unique creation, for whose production
the whole universe seems to be one vast
and orderly mechanism, set up for that
purpose by a Supreme Intelligence.
If this is true, it is one of the most
startling and dramatic discoveries ever
made. Let me point out at once that if
all this (except the last line) were estab
lished to-morrow it would not add one
grain of evidence to the religious position,
and would not break a line in the essen
tial structure of Monism. The universe
would still be a mechanism, with no
indication of ever having begun to exist;
and Dr. Wallace’s teleological plea for a
guiding intelligence would be as illogical
as we have seen that argument to be.
This new discovery would greatly impress
(because it would greatly unsettle) the
1 The book he announces is not published as
I write, so that I follow the two articles he wrote
in the Fortnightly Review (March and Sep
tember, 1903).
imagination, but would have no philo
sophical significance. Dr. Wallace says
we could no longer attribute the appear
ance of life to chance ; but we do not
attribute it now to “chance.”
We
attribute it to a mechanism which is not
erratic, but fixed, in its action. Setting
aside the imagination and the emotions,
there is no more philosophic significance
in the fact of the materials and conditions
of life being found in just one cosmic
body than in a million. Dr. Wallace
seem(> to make much of the “ re markable: coincidence” of these curious
privileges of our planet with the actual
appearance of life on it. Most people
will think there would be some reason
to use the word remarkable if the con
ditions were here and the life was not
forthcoming.
There is no religious
significance in all that Dr. Wallace urges.
But it is- in direct opposition to much
that we have established in the earlier
stages of .Haeckel’s position, and we
must examine the evidence adduced in
support of it. If it is true, Monism can
assimilate, it without strain. We shall
see that it is not only not proved, but
the attempt to prove it only shows again
the correctness of even Haeckel’s minor
positions, r
It is, naturally, to astronomy that Dr.
Wallace turns for evidence. He is not
an expert, in that science, but, of course,
every philosophic thinker must borrow
material from many different sciences.
The truth is, however, that no sooner
were Dr. Wallace’s views published than
there was immediately a loud and unani
mous condemnation of them on the part
of astronomers. The astronomers of
France and Germany were frankly cynical
about, them, two of the leading French
astronomers writing to combat them in
Knowledge. Our chief English astrono
mers, of all schools, at once repudiated
the alleged evidence. Professor Turner,
the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at
Oxford, said that Dr. Wallace had “ not
suggested, anything new which was in
the least likely to be true. He seems to
me to have unconsciously got his facts
�THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
distorted, and to indicate practically
nothing wherewith to link them to his
conclusion.” Dr. Maunder pronounced
the new theory “a myth,” and was not
sure if Dr. Wallace intended the article
to be taken as “a serious one.” A
number of other astronomers joined in
the discussion, and, apart from one or
two details in his evidence,,not a single
expert undertook to defend him. But
we must examine his several positions in
succession, so as to bring out once more
the fact that Haeckel is supported by
the most recent science.
The first point, and the most interest
ing for our purpose, is the contention
that the new astronomy discovers the
universe to have a d.efinite limit. We
have urged that Haeckel was in harmony
with the evidence when he spoke of the
universe as “ infinite,” so that here is a
clear contradiction. It need not be said
that the validity of Monism is not at
stake in the matter. Whether the uni
verse is limited or unlimited, it remains
a Monistic universe. The question is
whether Haeckel has misread the evi
dence of astronomy on this incidental
question of limit or no limit. It is well
to remember that “ infinity ” is a nega
tive idea. It merely denies that there is
a limit to the scheme of things. What
we have to see, then, is whether the most
recent investigations of astronomy point
to the existence of such a limit or not.
The evidence for a limit on which Dr.
Wallace lays most stress is, instead of
being a study in “ the new astronomy,”
a very old and threadbare fallacy.
Flammarion says1 it was “ the subject of
long and learned discussions during the
course of the eighteenth century and up
to the middle of the nineteenth,” and he
adds that “ it would not be difficult to
settle it to-day.” The argument is that
if the number of luminous stars were
infinite the sky would be at night as
bright as it is at noonday. The infinite
number would compensate for the dis
tance. But the actual star-light is only
1 Knowledge, June, 1903.
103
about one-fortieth the light of themoon,
and that is only a five-thousandth of the
intensity of the light of the sun. Dr.
Wallace has taken this specious calcula
tion from Professor Newcomb, but has,
as Dr. Maunder points out, omitted two
conditions which Newcomb carefully
gives, and which make the speculation
totally inapplicable to the actual uni
verse. Newcomb’s calculation assumed
that no star-light was lost in transmission,
and that “ every region of space of some
great but finite extent is, on the average,
occupied by at least one star.” Neither
of these conditions is found in our uni
verse. Light is absorbed in its passage
to us; and the stars are distributed with
nothing approaching the uniformity
which the speculation demands. The
second point needs no proof.
The
irregular structure of our stellar system
is familiar enough; and there is not the
slightest scientific difficulty about sup
posing that other stellar worlds may be
separated from ours by immeasurable
deserts of space. As to the absorption
of light, a number of causes are pointed
out. In the first place, we now know that
there are dark as well as luminous stars.
No astronomer supposes that these are
less numerous than the light stars. Sir
Robert Ball thinks they are so much
more numerous that to count the stars
by the light and visible spheres would be
like estimating the number of horse
shoes in England by the number of
those which are red-hot at a given
moment. These dark stars must inter
cept the light of their incandescent
fellows.1 Dr. Maunder says that if we
take them as a basis of our calculation
1 In his second article Dr. Wallace replies
that Mr. Monckhas shown that, even if the dark
stars were 150,000 times more numerous than
the light ones, the sky would, if these were in
finite, be as bright as moonlight. Once more
Dr. Wallace omits a condition stipulated by his
authority, who says this would be so- if they
“were distributed in anything approaching a
similar density.” For that we have no assurance
whatever. Moreover, Dr. Wallace almost ignore
the other and more important sources of absorp
tion.
�104
THE POSITION OF' DR. A. R. WALLACE
we could prove that “we are shut in by
a veil wnich no light from an infinite
distance could pierce.”
But in addition to these incalculable
dark stars there are other sources of
absorption. The astronomer to whom
Dr. Wallace appeals, Mr. Monck, holds
that ether itself absorbs light. At any
rate we know that space is full of cosmic
dust—meteorites, etc.—and that this
must be an important source of ab
sorption. Mr. Monck says that, “ if
sufficiently remote, the star would thus
for all practical purposes be blotted out.”
And Sir N. Lockyer also emphasises this
factor. Moreover, we have just learned
a further source. Before Newcomb’s
latest work was published, in February,
1901, a new cosmic element was dis
covered in the shape of a dark nebula.
Certain peculiarities of a new star led to
the discovery that it was surrounded by
a nebula that reflected its light. Thus,
we have the presence in space of another
and powerful screen in the shape of dark
nebulae, the number and distribution of
which we are unable to conjecture. Our
universe is something infinitely removed
from that theoretical system to which
Professor Newcomb’s calculations might
apply. Ihus, once more, does the very
latest science come to our assistance.
We may add that, even apart from the
absorption of light and the irregular dis
tribution of the stars, the calculation is
enfeebled by another possibility. We
have no proof that ether is continuous
throughout infinite space. There may
be several galaxies or stellar systems,
unconnected by ether, so that one would
not be visible to another. Assuming
that (according to a calculation of Lord
Kelvin’s) there are a thousand million
stars in our system, “there may be,”
says Flammarion, “ a second thousand
beyond an immense void, or a third, or
fourth or more.” And, finally, Professor
Pickering has shown that, even with a
continuous infinite ether, our present
star-light is quite consistent with the
existence of an infinite number of
luminous stars, “ if the distance between
the stars becomes (on the average)
greater the farther we go from the solar
system,” if we assume this to be central.
Thus the most emphatic of Dr.
Wallace s proofs has been absolutely
riddled by expert astronomical opinion.
It is “ founded,” says Dr. Maunder, “ on
a careless reading of Professor New
comb s book,” and cannot be sustained
for a moment.1 Nor is his other line of
argument more capable of defence. He
urges that, although up to a certain point
an increase in the power of the telescope
reveals new worlds in greater number,
this increase is not sustained in the case
of our largest telescopes; and, in the
case of photographs of the stars, an
exposure beyond three or four hours does
not bring us into touch with an increas
ing number of worlds. From this he
would infer that the powerful instru
ments we use to-day have exhausted the
universe and brought us to its extremities.
If the number of stars were infinite, an
increase of power or exposure should
always reveal new worlds. Once more,
Dr. Wallace has drawn his conclusion
too precipitately. In the first place, as I
said, there is the possibility of other
systems being cut off from ours by
empty space. But there is a simpler
and readier answer to his argument. The
fact to which he appeals—in so far as it
is fact; a study of the long-exposure
photographs of Dr. Isaacs by no means
sustains it 2—really means that we are
approaching the limit of the effective
range of the telescope, not the limit of
objective reality. Every increase in the
aperture of a refracting telescope means
1 Nor is Professor Newcomb’s book itself above
dispute, great as is the authority of the writer.
Mr. R. A. Gregory, reviewing it in Nature
(March, 1902), says that “ the outlook described
is not only limited, but imperfect,” and points
out a number of errors in it.
2 In his second article Dr. Wallace appeals to
these photographs, but makes it clear that he
has in mind photographs of nebulae and star
clusters. It is obvious that there must be a limit
to the number of stars in a given cluster or
nebula; but the eight-hour exposure photo
graphs of other parts of the heavens read
differently.
�105
THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
an increase in the absorption of light by
the lens itself. We are, Dr. Maunder
says, approaching the limit beyond which
the absorption will neutralise the advan
tage of a large objective. So in the case
of stellar photography, it is only when
we deal with “ medium luminosities ”
that a longer exposure avails. Thus Dr.
Wallace not only exaggerates the fact—
Mr. Monck, for instance, speaks of
“ the constant detection of additional
stars by more powerful instruments ”—
but he misinterprets its significance. He
has not, says M. Moye, “brought any
convincing proof against the universe
being infinite.”
“ Space cannot be
otherwise than infinite,” says M. Flammarion; a limit to either space or time
is unthinkable. The latest researches
of astronomers bring us no nearer than
ever to a limit of the material universe.
Dr. Wallace’s second point, that our
planet occupies a significant central
position in the universe, collapses of
itself when he fails to prove that that
universe is finite. There is no centre
in infinity. But, as Dr. Wallace has
committed the radical error of “ reason
ing from the area we see to the infinite,”
it is at least interesting to examine how
far our sun may be described as occupy
ing a central position in the vast stellar
combination we call the Milky Way.
Now, it has long been obvious that our
sun is roughly in the centre of this huge
system. We have only to glance at the
great belt of light the system forms around
us in the heavens to see this.
But
astronomers once more totally reject the
expression of this fact which Dr. Wallace
presents.
The system is so irregular
in structure that we could not with pro
priety assign a definite centre to it if our
knowledge were greater than it is. You
may talk of the centre of a bowl, says
Professor Turner, but you cannot talk of
the centre of a saucepan ; and there is
a projection of the system visible in the
southern heavens which answers to the
“handle” in this figure. Flammarion
believes there are clusters in the heavens
that do not belong to our system at all.
Moreover, even if we consent to speak
of a “ centre ” of this irregular structure,
with its clefts and projections, it is wholly
inaccurate to say that our sun is awarded
that position by astronomy. Mr. Monck
doubts “ if any astronomer could go
within one thousand light years of the
centre of the star system as at present
known ” ; that is to say, in non-technical
language, no astronomer would venture
to assign a centre within the broad limit
of 6000 billion miles ! Other astronomers
think it clear that we are nearer one side
of the system than its opposite, and
point out that if the motion of our sun
(about ten miles a second) is in a curve
determined by gravitation (as it surely is)
round the centre of gravity of the solar
system, it must be at an enormous dis
tance from that centre, as we can learn
from the analogy of motion in a globular
cluster.
All agree that we have no
greater right to consider ourselves in a
central position than are fifty other suns,
the nearest of which is twenty-five billion
miles away from us.
Thus Dr. Wallace has once more
considerably strained the evidence in
order to vindicate a central position for us.
But there is a further consideration
which must be taken into account.
Our sun is calculated by astronomers to
be travelling through space at about ten
miles per second. Dr. Wallace seeks to
enfeeble this doctrine of astronomy,
when it is turned against him, by urging
that the motion is relative; it may be
the stars that move while we remain
stationary. That is to say, he would
suggest an anomalous character for our
sun without a shadow of proof and
in direct opposition to the law of gravita
tion, which he himself invokes at other
times. The idea of a vast central sun,
round which all the stars in the Milky
Way would revolve, as planets do round
a sun, has been long since rejected by
astronomers. Its mass would have to
be incalculable; and the mass of our
sun is small compared with that of its
measurable neighbours. To save itself
) _ from being sucked in (or impelled
H
�106
THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
towards) its gigantic double and triple
neighbours it must move. It is probable
that it follows a curved path round the
common centre of gravity of our system
(not a central mass). In any case the
curve of its path is so great that
astronomers can as yet detect no curve
at all. It follows that, if to-day we
happen to occupy a central position, it is
only a temporary occupation. Many of
Dr. Wallace’s critics argued on the sup
position that our path lay in a straight
line through the universe, but others
pointed out the probable curve, so that
Dr. Wallace does not escape the point
by rejecting rectilinear motion. He had
argued that the special advantages which
this supposed central position gave to
our sun had been enjoyed by it during
the whole period of the evolution of
life. Astronomy wholly discredits that
assumption even when we bear in mind
all that he urges as to the relativity of
cosmic movements.
Let us next examine the advantages
which our planet is supposed by Dr.
Wallace to possess in the way of habita
bility. The conditions of life which he
enumerates are the usual conditions of a
certain temperature (say, between o° C.
and 75° C.), a circulation of water, and
an atmosphere of proper density and
extent to effect this. Our own distance
from the sun, with an atmosphere and
tidal movements to equalise the distri
bution of heat and cold, ensures a
moderate temperature. Our deep, per
manent oceans hold a supply of water,
which is admirably circulated by the
heat of the sun, controlled by the atmo
sphere, and assisted by the dust which
our deserts and volcanoes largely con
tribute.. Thus we have, he thinks, in
the position of our planet, its distribution
of land and water, its atmosphere, its
satellite, and its physical features, a com
bination of favourable circumstances
that is not likely to be found elsewhere,
The distance of the other planets from
the sun is either too great or too little.
Atmosphere is largely determined by
mass, and so Mars is in this respect dis
qualified. Venus has no moon, and
this “ may alone render it quite incapable
of developing high forms of life.” We
know, he says, with “ almost complete
certainty” that this combination of
favourable conditions is not found on
any other.planet in our solar system.
To this series of affirmations the
expert astronomical critics oppose a very
decided series of negatives. “In our
solar system,” says Flammarion, “this
little earth has not obtained any special
privileges from Nature.” M. Moye re
gards our earth and sun as “ very or
dinary orbs, having no special character
istics, and as no more suitable for life
than innumerable other suns and
planets.” Mr. Mo.nck has “sufficient
faith in the principle of evolution to
think that man might accommodate
himself to the conditions of life on
almost any of the planets, provided that
the change were sufficiently gradual, and
a sufficient time were allowed to elapse ”
It is true that Miss Clerke says, “ Dr.
Wallace’s contention, that our earth is
unique as being the abode of intellectual
life, corresponds in a measure with the
recent trend of astronomical research.”
Miss Clerke, it is not impertinent to
observe, approaches the subject with the
same prejudice as Dr. Wallace about the
uniqueness of man, but the phrase “ in
a measure ” saves the passage from in
accuracy.; and she later makes an ex
ception in favour of Mars. But the
whole, idea of seeking identical condi
tions in other planets is erroneous. “ To
limit the work of Nature to the sphere of
our knowledge is,” says Flammarion,
“to reason with singular childishness.”
They are of the same material as earth,
and have been evolved by the same
forces; there is likely to be a general
likeness of features, and that is enough
for our purpose, when we remember the
infinite adaptability of the life force.
M. Moye examines in detail the condi
tions Dr. Wallace lays down, and points
out many errors. To say that Mars is
disqualified on account of its smaller
mass than the earth is “ a purely
�THE POSITION OF DR. A. R. WALLACE
gratuitous assumption.” Aqueous va
pour has been detected by the spectro
scope in the atmospheres of at least
Venus and Jupiter. Tidal motion is
caused by the sun as well as the moon,
and may be so caused in Venus ; nor is
it essential to life. “ The distance from
the sun to the earth in the general, plan
of Our solar system is not peculiar or
extraordinary in any way.”
While,
as to deserts, each of the other planets
must, on Wallace’s theory, be one
vast desert; nor have we any ground
for thinking that deep, permanent
oceans are a peculiar feature of our
planet.
It would, of course, be no more than
an interesting discovery, of no grave
consequence to Monism, if our planet
were proved to be the only habitable
body in our solar system; but astronomers
utterly discountenance-the idea. “Life
is universal and eternal,” says Flammarion, almost in the words of Haeckel.
“ Yesterday the moon, to-day the earth,
to-morrow Jupiter . . . Let us open the
eyes of our understanding, and. let us
look beyond ourselves in the infinite
expanse at life and intelligence in all its
degrees in endless evolution.”
Professor Turner points out that Dr.
Wallace has completely failed to show,
after all his laborious proof of our central
position, that this would give our earth
any advantage in the way of habitability.
He says that Dr. Wallace, “with the
deftness of a conjurer,” has substituted
for this question a discussion of the
impossibility of there being life at the con
fines of the universe. It is true that Dr.
Wallace has since admitted that he had
no proof to offer at the time, but will
present one in his forthcoming work.
However, we may profitably close with a
glance at his attempt to prove that, life
is impossible towards the imagined
limits of our system. Even his fellow
io7
spiritualist, Miss A. Clerke, protests that
“ it cannot be reasonably supposed that
the conditions of vitality deteriorate with
remoteness from the centre ; and Dr.
Wallace has been forced to admit that
the reasons he suggested were ill-con
sidered and erroneous. He surmised
that gravitation might be less at the
verge of the system; which is not only
“ a pure assumption,” but is opposed by
our knowledge of the most distant
double stars. He compares the move
ments of the stars with the molecules of
a gas, and is eventually compelled to
acknowledge that “ there is probably no
justification for the idea.” And he quite
gratuitously supposes that. the action of
electric and similar rays is different at
the edge of our stellar system than it is
elsewhere.
■
We may conclude, then, that Dr.
Wallace’s excursion into astronomy has
been singularly and painfully disastrous.
In general and in detail his theory is
shattered to fragments by the criticisms
of all the experts who join in the discus
sion. The idea of man’s spiritual unique
ness obtains no support whatever from
the great cosmic investigations of ‘ the
new astronomy.” On the contrary, the
most recent discoveries and speculations
confirm the “ cosmological perspective
which Haeckel urges in his Riddle of the
Universe. We have no ground in
scientific evidence for assigning limits of
time or space to the material universe,
we have no ground for believing that
man is a unique outcome of natural
evolution, and that “ the supreme end
and purpose of the vast universe was
the production and development of the
living soul in the perishable body of
man”; and we have no. ground for
thinking there is so peculiar a combina
tion of circumstances in our planet as
to force us to appeal to a Supreme
Intelligence.
�LORD KELVIN INTERVENES
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Chapter
XI
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LORD KELVIN INTERVENES
Whilst this storm of astronomical
indignation was beating about the luck
less pronouncement of Dr. A. R. Wallace,
the second intervention on behalf of
religion, of which I spoke, took place.
Once more, it is important to observe,
the intervention consisted of a declara
tion by a distinguished scientist that
some science other than his own tended
to support conventional religion by its
recent investigations. Dr. Wallace, the
naturalist, purported to speak for as
tronomy ; and we have seen what the
astronomers themselves made of his
declarations. Lord Kelvin, the most
distinguished living physicist, assured
the world that biology was coming to
recognise a field of phenomena with
which it was so incompetent to deal that
it was retreating to the old notion of a
“vital principle” and the action of
“Creative Power.” We have now to
see what our biologists had to say about
this statement of their attitude.
The circumstances of Lord Kelvin’s
pronouncement will be easily recalled.
Certain of the students of the University
College, London, have formed them
selves, or been formed, into a “ Christian
Association,” and have lately set about
“ converting ” their less religious fellows
to the belief in their particular cosmic
speculations. A series of lectures was
arranged for the spring of this year, the
Botanical Theatre of the University
College was somehow secured, and a
certain show of scientific names was
scattered over the programme. The
first lecture was by the Rev. Professor
Henslow (M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S.), and
a vote of thanks was accorded to the
lecturer by Lord Kelvin for his “ examina
tion of Darwinism.” The second lecture,
on “ The Book of Genesis,” was given by
the Dean of Canterbury, and the chair
was taken by Sir Robert Anderson
(K.C.B., LL.D.). The Rev. Professor
Margoliouth gave the third lecture, on
“The Synoptic Gospels,” and was sup
ported by a distinguished physician (Sir
Dyce Duckworth) and a military man.
The other two lectures were also given
by reverend lecturers, and were supported
by Sir T. Barlow, M.D., and Mr.
Augustine Birrell. Lord Kelvin was the
lion of the display, and his few closing
words were at once published from end
to end of England. He claimed that
“modern biologists were coming once
.more to the acceptance of something,
and that was a vital principle.” He
asked : “ Was there anything so absurd
as to believe that a number of atoms by
falling together of their own accord
could make a crystal, a sprig of moss, a
microbe, a living animal?” And he
concluded that this was an appeal to
“creative power.” On the following day
he re-affirmed his opinion, with a distinc
tion, in a letter to the Times. He wrote :
“ I desire to point out that while ‘ fortui
tous concourse of atoms ’ is not an inap
propriate description of the formation of
a crystal, it is utterly absurd in respect
to the coming into existence, or the
growth, or the continuation of the
molecular combinations presented in the
bodies of living things. Here scientific
thought is compelled to accept the idea
of Creative Power. Forty years ago I
asked Liebig, walking somewhere in the
country, if he believed that the grass
and flowers which we saw around us
grew by mere mechanical forces. He
answered, ‘No, no more than I could
believe that a book of botany describing
them could grow by mere chemical
forces.’ ”
�LORD KELVIN INTERVENES
The echo of this sturdy utterance is
still reverberating through the provinces,
soothing the anxious feelings of thou
sands of believers, and being triumph
antly quoted against the unbeliever. In
London its echo was quickly drowned in
a chorus of condemnation.
Lord
Kelvin’s letter was at once followed in
the Times by letters from three of our
most eminent experts on the subject he
had ventured to touch, as well as by
letters from Mr. W. H. Mallock, Profes
sor Karl Pearson, and Sir O. Lodge.
The three experts unanimously con
demned Lord Kelvin’s statement, as did
also Mr. Mallock and Professor Pearson ;
and even Sir O. Lodge said that “ his
wording was more appropriate to a
speech than a philosophical essay,” it
had a “subjective interest,” but he
“ would not use the phrase himself.” Sir
W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, our most dis
tinguished botanist, complained that
Lord Kelvin “ wiped out by a stroke of
the pen the whole position won for us
by Darwin,” said that the reference to a
fortuitous concourse of atoms was
“ scarcely worthy of Lord Kelvin,” and
“ denied the fact ” that “ modern biolo
gists were coming to accept the vital
principle.” Sir J. Burdon-Sanderson,
the Regius Professor of Medicine at
Oxford, while resenting the strong terms
of Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer’s censure of
Lord Kelvin’s personal procedure, said
that it had been demonstrated to the
satisfaction of physiologists that “ the
natural laws which had been established
in the inorganic world govern no less
absolutely the processes of animal and
plant life, thus giving the death-blow to
the previously prevalent vitalistic doctrine
that these operations of life are domi
nated by law$ which are special to them
selves.” Professor Karl Pearson was
astonished that an institution with
accredited professors in biology “ should
open its doors to irresponsible lecturers
on ‘ directivity,’ ” and said that “ if Lord
Kelvin wishes to attack Darwinism, let
him leave the field of emotional theo
logical belief and descend into the plane
109
where straightforward biological argu
ment meets like argument.”
'
Professor E. Ray Lankester, from the
side of zoology, said : “ I do not myself
know of anyone of admitted leadership
among modern biologists who is showing
signs of ‘ coming to a belief in the exist
ence of a vital principle,’ ” and that “we
biologists, knowing the paralysing in
fluence of such hypotheses in the past,
are unwilling to have anything to do
with a ‘ vital principle,’ even though
Lord Kelvin erroneously thinks we are
coming to it,” and “ we take no stock in
these mysterious entities.” Sir O. Lodge,
drawn by an allusion to his belief in
telepathy, took occasion to disclaim and
deprecate Lord Kelvin’s use of the
phrases “ creative power ” and “ fortui
tous concourse of atoms.”
With these weighty and emphatic
pronouncements from some of the ablest
biologists in this country—without. a
single line in defence of Lord Kelvin,
either by himself or by any known ex
pert—we might dismiss Lord Kelvin’s
intervention as the most unfortunate
episode of his career, and as a pitiful
failure to give the slenderest support to
the reverend lecturers of the Christian
Association. But an appeal to authori
ties is a fallacious and unsatisfactory
settlement. We shall better vindicate
the strength of Haeckel’s position by a
brief analysis of this most recent attempt
to demolish it.
Let us see, then, first what truth there
is in the statement that “ modern biolo
gists are coming once more to a firm
acceptance of the vital principle.”
This three of our most representative
biologists, Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, Pro
fessor Ray Lankester, and Sir J. BurdonSanderson, flatly deny. Clearly Lord
Kelvin was guilty of the gravest impro
priety in saying that “ modern biologists
are coming,” &c., and “scientific thought
is compelled,” &c. The implication of
these phrases is obvious, and it is totally
untrue. When Professor Ray Lankester,
one of the most distinguished biologists,
tells us he does “ not know of anyone
�IIO
LORD KELVIN INTERVENES
of admitted leadership among modern
biologists” who is accepting the vital
principle, it is clear that the statement
was gravely misleading. That there is
a certain revival of vitalistic ideas is
another matter. The clergy need not
have waited for Lord Kelvin’s assurance
to that effect. In the fourteenth chapter
of the Riddle of the Universe Professor
Haeckel long since informed us of that
revival. It would not be surprising—
ironic as the circumstance would be—to
learn that Lord Kelvin obtained the grain
of fact which underlay his assertion
from Haeckel’s book. In all countries
there have been of late years a few
scientific men of secondary rank who
have urged the acceptance of something
more or less resembling the old vital
force. Professor Lionel Beale and Dr.
Mivart are well-known advocates of
“ vitality” in this country; several French
biologists still speak of the vague idee
directrice which Pasteur imagined to
control the growth of the organism; in
America, Cope and Asa Gray advocate a
form of vitalism ; in Germany it is urged
by Nageli, Bunge, Rindfieisch, Dreisch,
and Benedikt, in Italy (more or less) by
Gallardi, in Denmark by the botanist
Reinke. The ideas of these writers
differ considerably, but they agree in
holding that some directive or “domi
nant ” principle must be superadded to
the physical and chemical forces of the
organism.
We have seen in an earlier chapter
how “modern biologists” as a class,
and “ scientific thought ” as a whole,
wholly reject the vitalistic hypothesis,
and maintain that we have no reason to
go beyond ordinary natural forces. We
have seen what Professor Le Conte,
Professor Ward, Sir A. Riicker, Sir J.
Burdon-Sanderson, Professor Dewar, and
others, say of the condition of “scientific
thought.” “For the future the word
vital, as distinctive of physiological pro
cesses, might be abandoned altogether,”
said Sir J. Burdon-Sanderson, and our
recent authorities fully concur with him.
Professor Beale is one of those scientists
who would sing a joyful Nunc Dimittis
if he saw any important sign of the
revival of vitalism. But if Lord Kelvin
consults his most recent publications
he will find only a deepening of the
pessimism which Professor Beale has
expressed on the matter for the last
twenty years. In Vitality— V, published
two years ago, he tells us the very
reverse of the assurance of Lord Kelvin.
“Probably no hypotheses or doctrines
known to philosophy or science,” he
says in his preface, “have been so
generally favoured, and more persistently
forced on the public by ‘Authority,’ and
therefore widely accepted and taught by
educated and intelligent persons, than
doctrines of physical life and its origin
in non-living matter ” (p. vii); and later
he says: “Purely mechanical views of
life are again, possibly for the last time,
becoming very popular” (p. 5). Further
on he quotes Professor Dolbear as say
ing (in his Matter, Ether, and Motion)
that “ there is little reason to doubt that
when chemists shall be able to form the
substance Protoplasm it will possess all
the properties it is now known to have,
including what is called life; and one
ought not to be surprised at its announce
ment any day”; and he refers us to the
appendix of Professor Dolbear’s book
for a long list of weighty pronounce
ments in favour of the mechanical hypo
thesis. We may, therefore, dismiss once
for all the attempt to commit “ modern
biologists,” as a class, to a belief in vital
principles and creative powers as a
serious, though unintentional, misstate
ment—one that it is painful to find over
the name of Lord Kelvin.
Haeckel was perfectly right. He
awarded a larger proportion to Neo
Vitalism than any of our own biologists
(even Dr. Beale) are prepared to do, but
he rightly claimed that the mechanical
view of life was the predominant one in
biology to-day. Sir W. T. ThiseltonDyer, writing of Huxley {Nature, June
5th, 1902), said: “Huxley was firmly
imbued with what is ordinarily called a
‘ materialistic conception’ of the universe.
�LORD KELVIN INTERVENES
I think myself that this is probably a
true view.” The representation that
Haeckel is alone, or almost alone, in his
view of life is a gross and audacious misrepresentation.
And when we come to examine on its
merits this revival of vitalism—such as
it is—we find it has no promise what
ever of gaining wide scientific recogni
tion, because it rests essentially on a
familiar fallacy. The reader who wishes
to study the grounds of it may consult
Professor Beale’s various editions of his
Vitality, or Reinke’s Welt als That, or
Dreisch’s Die organischen Regulationen,
where all the evidence of the NeoVitalists is ably mastered. Happily it is
not necessary for us to cover the whole
ground of this evidence even superfi
cially. As we saw in the case of teleology,
the principle of the argument is one,
however infinite may be its applications;
and it is the principle itself that lacks
logical validity. There are, the NeoVitalist urges, scores of features of the
life of the animal or plant that the
biologist cannot explain by chemical and
physical forces ; therefore we must have
recourse to a non-mechanical or new kind
of force—an idee directrice, a “ domi
nant,” a “ vital power,” and so forth.
What these inexplicable phenomena are
we need not consider at any length;
they are such phenomena as—the pro
cesses of segmentation and differentia
tion in the growth of the embryo, the
selection of food from the blood or sur
rounding media, the replacing of tissues
or organs that have been cut away (in the
hydra, the newt, and even higher
animals), the formation by an animal of
a protective anti-toxin, the acquisition of
protective mimicry, the power of adapta
tion in organs to changes in environ
ment, and so on.
There are, every
biologist admits, scores of phenomena
which are not as yet capable of ex
planation by mechanical forces ; and the
new vitalist urges that these point to the
presence of a specific principle in the
animal or plant. “ Up to this day,”
says Professor Beale, “ no cause, no ex
in
planation, can be found, and therefore
we attribute those vital phenomena to
Power—to Power which is special and
peculiar to life only, power which we
know cannot be derived from matter.
Is it not, therefore, perfectly reasonable
to believe that all vital power has come
direct from God?”1
The reader will at once recognise the
principle of the argument. It is that
familiar sophism which has made the the
istic doctrine “ a fugitive and vagabond”
(to borrow the words of Dr. Iverach) in
scientific territory for the last century or
more. It is the sophism that Laplace
expelled from astronomy, Lyell from
geology, Darwin from phylogeny, and
that we have found desperately clinging
to every little imperfection of our scien
tific knowledge of the universe. It is a
philosophy of “ gaps.” It is the familiar
procedure of taking advantage of the
temporary imperfectness of science. It
is an argument that has been wholly
discredited by the advance of science,
sweeping it from position after position;
it is as superficial philosophically as it
is unsound in logic and prejudicial in
science. “The action of physical and
chemical forces in living bodies can
never be understood,” said Sir A. Rucker,
“ if at every difficulty and at every check
in our investigations we desist from
further attempts in the belief that the
laws of physics and chemistry have been
interfered with by an incomprehensible
vital force.” “ The revival of the vitalistic conception in physiological work,”
said the president of the physiological
section (Prof. Halliburton, M.D., F.R.S.)
at the British Association meeting of
1902, “appears to me a retrograde step.
To explain anything we are not fully
able to understand in the light of physics
and chemistry by labelling it as vital, or
something we can never hope to under. )
1 Dr. Beale’s last conclusion is not, of course^
shared by the continental Neo-Vitalists. Even
if we were forced to admit a specific vital prin
ciple, it would not “come from God” any more
than other natural forces. But the analogy with
I Lord Kelvin’s vague phraseology is noticeable.
�112
lord kelvin intervenes
stand, is a confession of ignorance, and,
what is still more harmful, a bar to
progress. ... I am hopeful that the
scientific workers of the future will
discover that this so-called vital force
is due to certain physical or chemical
properties of living matter, which have
not yet been brought into line with the
known chemical and physical laws that
operate in the inorganic world. . . .
When a scientific man says this or that
vital phenomenon cannot be explained
by the laws of chemistry and physics, and
therefore must be regulated by laws of
some other nature, he most unjustifiably
assumes that the laws of chemistry and
physics have all been discovered.” “We
think,” says Prof. Ray Lankester, “ it is
a more hopeful method to be patient
and to seek by observation of, and ex
periment with, the phenomena of growth
and development to trace the evolution
of life and of living things without
the facile and sterile hypothesis of a
vital principle.” If we accepted it,
says Weismann, “we should at once
cut ourselves off from all possible
mechanical explanation of organic
nature.”
It is very difficult to reconcile Lord
Kelvin’s present attitude with the prin
ciple he laid down in 1871, and pre
sumably still holds. . “Science,” he said,
“is bound by the everlasting law of
honour to face fearlessly every problem
which is presented to it. If a probable
solution, consistent with the ordinary
course of nature, can be found, we must
not invoke an abnormal act of Creative
Power.” Prof. Dewar reproduced this
passage in this very application in his
presidential speech of last year; and
within a few months we find Lord Kelvin
approving the attitude of those few
biologists who depart from that principle
to-day, and, impatient at the slow growth
of our knowledge, rush to the conclusion
that science must abandon this portion
of the cosmological domain to the
theologian once more. Lord Kelvin
quotes Liebig, who was not a biologist,
and who lived in an earlier scientific
period.1 But immense progress has been
made since Liebig’s day in the mechani
cal interpretation of life.2 Lord Kelvin
also would have us think that the only
alternative to the “vital principle” is “the
fortuitous concourse of atoms.” Even
Sir O. Lodge is stirred to protest against
this descent from the level of science to
the level of Christian Evidence lecturing.
We have seen that science discovers
only the work of fixed, determinate
forces, not erratic and confused agencies.
“The whole order of nature,” says Prof.
Ray Lankester, “ including living and
lifeless matter—man, animal, and gas —
is a network of mechanism.” There is
nothing “fortuitous” whatever in the
concourse of atoms.”
We have, then, to set aside the un
fortunate and undefended utterance of
Lord Kelvin, and the claims of old3 It is not a little amusing to find that this
famous German chemist, whom Lord Kelvin
introduces as a friend to Christian Associations
in England, was regarded as an atheist by similar
bodies in Germany in his own time. When
Bishop Ketteler urged the Grand-Duke of Hesse
to take restrictive measures against materialists,
the Grand-Duke pointed out that Liebig had
recently undertaken to refute them. “ Don’t
make too much of that, your highness,” said
Ketteler; “ Liebig is a materialist himself at
the bottom of his heart.” (Buchner’s Last Words
on Materialism, p. 42.)
2 Dr. Horton assures us, about Haeckel’s
carbon-theory, that “ no leading man of science
treats it seriously, and it only has its whimsical
and uncertain place in the rationalist Press which
gulls the ignorance of the public.” One wonders
what it is not possible to say from a pulpit.
Compare the words of the expert reviewer of
Professor Ver worn’s Biogen-hypothese in Nature
(February 26, 1902): “ It seems quite clear from
the results of numerous investigators that, what
ever the nature of the sequence of chemical
events, the carbohydrates are proximately the
substances that are most intimately affected.”
Let me add here also a reference to a letter from
Sir O. Lodge to Nature (December 4, 1902)
in which he points out the possibility of germs
being preserved intact in the cold of space. It
was thereupon shown, not only that Lord Kel
vin’s old hypothesis of the origin of life assumed
a new importance, but that, as W. J. Calder
said, “if it is proved that vitality can survive
for a protracted period in such circumstances,
the conclusion that it is a molecular function
seems inevitable.” The most recent experiments
of life at very low temperatures confirm this.
�LORD KELVIN INTERVENES
11.3
those laws.” Thus life becomes “ some
thing the full significance of which lies
in another scheme of things, but which
touches and interacts with the material
universe in a certain way, building its
particles into notable configurations for
a time—oak, eagle, man—and then
evaporating whence it came.”
The objections to Sir O. Lodges
theory (which seems to be not unlike
that vaguely suggested by Pasteur.) may
be well indicated by following his own
words. He will not admit that life is a
form of energy (thus rejecting both the
old Vitalist and the Monistic theories)
because “ energy can transform itself
into other forces, remaining constant in
quantity, whereas life does not transmute
itself into any form of energy, nor does
death affect the sum of energy m any
way.” The sentence is hardly consis
tent. If death has not affected the sum
of energy it must have transmuted it, for
most certainly the energies in the dead
body differ from those of the living. To
assume that the energies are the same,
but that which differs is not. energy, looks
like a begging of the question. Indeed,
it is impossible to conceive life otherwise
than as energy. We might regard the
structure as a static force in. Sir Oliver’s
sense, but there must be a living energy
in addition. The death of the animal is
like the death of the motor-car. The
energy has been transmuted, or has re
turned into the elemental forms belong
ing to the several parts of the now irre
parable structure. Then,.as a later writer
in Nature points out, it is the place and
the ambition of science to explain the
direction or determination of working
energy as well as the origin of the energy.
Sir Oliver gives the illustration of a stone
falling over the cliff; it may make a
harmless dent in the sand, or it may be
guided to the firing of a charge of
1 At the eleventh hour I discover a lengthy
dynamite. So with the passage of a pen
reference to the Riddle of the Universe in an
over paper ; it may make a series of un-,
obscure corner (p. 65) of Dr. Beale’s Vitality ■ V.,
meaning daubs (if it rolls mechanically)
so that the announcement in the I'imes was not
or it may be guided in the signing of a
wholly in vain. But as the notice does not con
tain a line of definite and tangible refutation of
treaty of war or peace. But it is in each
any statement in the Riddle I am compelled to
one of these cases the function of scien-
fashioned Vitalists like Dr. Beale1 and
Neo-Vitalists like Reinke. Our knowledge
of vital phenomena, and of chemical
and physical forces, is as yet.very imper
fect. The vitalist hypothesis supposes
that our knowledge is complete, and that
we clearly see certain features of life to
be beyond the range of mechanical
explanation.
We see ourselves how
illogical and temporary such a position
is, and we are not surprised to find the
leading biologists standing solid with
Prof. Haeckel for a mechanical interpre
tation and mechanical origin.
Sir O. Lodge, the persuasive and able
and ever courteous leader of the
Birmingham University, offers another
version of Neo-Vitalism which it is
proper to consider. In a paper which
he read to the Synthetic Society at
London on February 20 of this year
(published in Nature, April 23) he
observes that “ if guidance or control
can be admitted into the scheme by no
means short of refuting or modifying the
laws of motion, there may be. every
expectation that the attitude of scientific
men will be perennially hostile to the
idea of guidance or control.” He there
fore proposes a theory of guidance (to
apply to the divine guidance of the
world, the human will, and the vital
principle) without interference. He dis
tinguishes between force and energy—or
static and dynamic power. A column
supporting a building, or a channel guid
ing a stream, is a force, but does not
produce energy. The action of life is to
be conceived as that, “of a groove, or
slot, or channel, or guide.” “ Guidance
and control are not forms of energy,
and their superposition upon the scheme
of physics perturbs physical, and
mechanical laws no whit, though it may
profoundly affect the consequences of
forego the pleasure of dealing with it.
Bishopsgate InstitntOo
�ii4
MR. MALLOCICS OLIVE-BRANCH
tific explanation to trace the energies
which determine the line of motion as
well as to trace their origin and proper
motion. We cannot conceive of energies
being directed except by energies. In
the case of the upbuilding of an organism
it is impossible to conceive the particles
being guided to their several places, or
the energies being impelled to put them
in their several places, by something
that is not an energy. In the parallelism
which Sir Oliver suggests we can only
see “ life ” as a superfluous partner. If
the mechanical scheme is complete, as
he seems to suggest it will be, it must
contain an explanation of the direction
of energy. To say otherwise is to declare
again the inadequacy of mechanical
theory (solely because its ever-growing
material is as yet comparatively scanty)
and to court the “perennial hostility”
of men of science.
Thus the second attempt to prove that
Haeckel’s views rest on “ the science of
yesterday,” and are contradicted by the
science of to-day, fails as ignominiously
as did that of Dr. Wallace. Our leading
biologists declare emphatically that they
and their science accept the mechanical,
if not (as Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer says)
the materialistic view of life. This inter
pretation of life must for some time to
come leave unexplained considerable
tracts of vital phenomena. Haeckel has
never pretended that he “ has explained
everything.” But so far as our know
ledge goes, we find only ordinary natural
forces at work in the living organism,
and we should be wholly unjustified in
the present condition of science in
assuming that they are incompetent to
explain the whole of life. We gain no
thing whatever philosophically by simply
sticking the label “vital” on these
mysterious phenomena, and we are
forbidden by the elementary laws of
logic and scientific procedure to bring
in such entities as “creative power”
and “vital principles” as long as
“a solution consistent with the or
dinary course of Nature ” can be
suggested.
:
• fl!
Chapter XII
MR. MALLOCK’S OLIVE-BRANCH
The last critic of Haeckel’s position
last, that is to say, in the logical order
which it seems expedient to follow—is
the distinguished essayist, Mr. W. H.
Mallock. Professor Haeckel, it will be
remembered, intended his work to be,
not only a comprehensive statement of
his views, but a summary of the issues
of the. many conflicts between religion
and science in which he had played so
conspicuous a part during the nineteenth
century. Mr. Mallock, declaring that
neither theologian nor scientist was
competent to analyse those issues quite
impartially, undertook, as a neutral
observer, to balance the controversial
ledgers of the departed century on his
own account. It may be granted that
Mr. Mallock occupies a position of some
advantage for the discharge of this
function. . He is adequately informed,
philosophic in temper, and neutral in
the sense that he clearly does not
believe in theology, yet strongly opposes
the final conclusions of the scientists.
To use an expressive colloquial phrase,
�MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
he has sat on the fence throughout the
last forty years, and shot his sharp
criticisms at the combatants on both
sides with a certain impartiality. . But
those who are acquainted with his at
tractive writings know that he has really
only riddled the theologians for their
ultimate advantage ; whilst he has at
tacked the Agnostics in the interest of
religion. However, an analysis of his
last publication, Religion as a Credible
Doctrine, will serve not only to clear up
the popular mystery about his position,
but to show us an interesting plea for
the retention of theology, even admitting
that we have fully established the theses
of the preceding chapter.
Mr. Mallock emphatically rejects the
idea of hampering scientists on their
own territory, and he fully admits that
H the whole cosmological domain ” is
their territory. ? He would have no
sympathy with efforts, like those of
Dr. Wallace and Lord Kelvin, to restrict
the ambition of the mechanical theory,
Or to try to wrest some shred of evi
dence for theism out of the teaching of
science. We shall see that he falls away
from his ideal here and there, but in his
deliberate mood he fully accepts the
conclusion that, on scientific and philo
sophic evidence, “the whole world”—
in the words of Huxley—“living and
non-living, is the result of the mutual
interaction, according to definite laws,
of the powers possessed' by the mole
cules of which the primitive nebulosity
was composed.” I have, in fact, freely
drawn upon Mr. Mallock s excellent
book for support in the vindication of
Professor Haeckel. He takes the Riddle
of the Universe as the finest summary of
the scientific hostility to religion. He
accepts Haeckel’s statement that the
three essential propositions in religion
are the belief in a personal God, the
liberty of the will, and the immortality
of the soul; and he assures Haeckel’s
critics, often in more vigorous language
than Haeckel presumes to use, that their
arguments are utterly fruitless and their
positions untenable.
After devoting
115
eight chapters to the struggle over these
doctrines, he concludes (p. 217): “The
entire intellectual scheme of religion—
the doctrines of immortality, of freedom,
and a God who is, in his relation to our
selves, separable from this [cosmic]
process—is not only a system which is
unsupported by any single scientific fact,
but is also a system for which, amongst
the facts of science, it is utterly im
possible for the intellect to find a place.
Yet Mr. Mallock has announced that he
is going to prove that these fundamental
doctrines of religion are “worthy of a
reasonable man’s acceptance.” How
will he accomplish this?
In the first place he does not intend
to evade the difficulties by an appeal to
the “ religious feelings ” or “ religious
instinct
at all events, not primarily ;
he is going to appeal to us “ as perfectly
reasonable beings.” He quite realises
that the growing habit of taking refuge
in the emotions is little more sensible
than the fabled practice of the ostrich.
He devotes three chapters to a closely
reasoned plea for the retention of the
doctrines, as to which he has so far
cordially endorsed Haeckel’s arguments.
Before entering on a careful analysis of
his reasoning I will state his.argument as
concisely as is compatible with justice to
it. These beliefs are to be retained on
the ground of their moral and spiritual
value to humanity. They are the chief
source of all higher aspiration and
effort, and are essential for the mainte
nance of our mental, moral, and social
progress. So far the argument is more
familiar than Mr. Mallock imagines.
The peculiarity of his position is that he
says they may be true, although they are
flatly and most properly contradicted by
science.
And he justifies this by
attempting to show that our accepted
doctrines, even in science, freely contra
dict each other, and that such contradic
tion is not at all an indication of falsity.
We may, and must, accept all that
Haeckel says, and then add to it all that
Dr. Horton says, without his “ worthless
and hopeless arguments.”
■!•.<
�MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
In an age of scepticism like ours such
peculiar evasions of the advancing
criticism are not infrequent.
Mr.
Balfour’s famous attempt to show the
rest of the world an escape from Ag
nosticism is still fresh in the memory,
though already too antiquated to detain
us. The later thoughts of G. J. Romanes
we will consider presently, as they are
much quoted in opposition to Haeckel.
Other singular attempts at pacification,
of a less distinguished order, are met
almost monthly. There is somehow a
conviction abroad that Agnostics are
languishing for some rehabilitation of
their old beliefs, or that humanity at
large always excluding the peace
makers themselves—cannot maintain
its advance without religious belief.
Hence arises the singular spectacle of
sceptical writers constructing elaborate
defences of the conventional beliefs,
which they do not share. The reception
of Mr. Mallock’s book hardly suggests
the belief that his olive-branch will be
respected by either group of combatants ;
but its ability and interest, and its indi
cation of a possible ground for religion
when all we have advanced has been
fully established, compel us to examine
it with respect.
Mr. Mallock begins with his proof
that all our knowledge ends in contradic
tions when we analyse it, so that we
may reconcile ourselves to Haeckel’s
disproofs. He first shows this in the
teaching of theology, where, as he
observes, the Monist will cordially agree
with him. But he goes on to say that
Haeckel’s “substance” is no less con
tradictory, yet we accept it. The ele
mentary substance (ether or prothyl)
either consists of minute separate par
ticles, or it is continuous. If ether
consists of disjointed atoms, separated
by empty spaces, all action must be an
“action at a distance,” which science
rejects as absurd and impossible. If
ether is continuous, yet the atoms of
ponderable matter arise from it by con
densation, then we are postulating
condensation and rarefaction in a sub
stance which has no particles to be
pushed closer together or thrust wider
asunder. But the elementary substance
must be either one or the other, so that
in either case we accept a contradictory
proposition. Further, when we say that
the nebula with its varied elements was
evolved out of a homogeneous ether by
a rigidly determined process, we are at
once saying the ether was simple and
homogeneous, yet was of so specific a
structure as to grow into an elaborately
varied cosmos. Again, we say time is
infinite, yet an addition is made to
it every moment; and we say space
is infinite, yet it is divisible, and each
part must be infinite (and so equal
to the whole), or else we make up infinity
from a finite number of finite quantities.
Thus our scientific doctrines hold innu
merable contradictions. Therefore, the
contradiction between religious and
scientific teaching need not deter us
from accepting both.
Now, in the first of these illustrations
Mr. Mallock has devised a fictitious
contradiction ; in the second he is fol
lowing the vulgar fashion of building an
argument on the imperfect condition of
scientific knowledge; and in the third he
is giving us some familiar metaphysical
quibbling. Dr. Haeckel inserted in his
work the theory of ether which was in
favour amongst physicists at the time he
wrote. Physics is changing yearly as to
such theories; all is as yet tentative and
provisional. But this is certain ; physi
cists will never adopt any theory of
matter that is self-contradictory. If the
pyknotic theory, or the vortex-theory, or
the strain-theory, of the atom reveals any
such contradiction, it has no chance of
acceptance. It is thus quite false to say
we here complacently accept contradic
tories. It is, moreover, clear that Mr.
Mallock’s dilemma is “lame in one
horn,” at least. It supposes that these
discrete particles are at rest. Science
on the contrary supposes them to be
eternally in motion, so that the empty
space only facilitates their impact and
mutual interaction. In the second case,
�MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
Mr. Mallock is, as I said, merely drawing
our attention to the acknowledged fact
that we have as yet nothing more than
vague conjectures about the origin of
atoms ; but we embrace no contradic
tion whatever, and no theory will be
received that contains such.
The
prothyl is conceived by scientists (apart
from philosophers) to be just as simple
and homogeneous as the scientific
evidence will allow it to be. There is
no disposition whatever to credit it
with contradictory attributes.
In the
third case, Mr. Mallock is serving up to
us metaphysical arguments, for theism
from those very theologians whose
methods he has so severely denounced.
Almost any recent Catholic apologist
gives these subtleties of word-play. The
contradiction is fictitious. When we say
that, as far as the astronomic evidence
goes, the universe is unlimited, we . do
not expose ourselves to this metaphysical
antithesis of finite and infinite. Both
as to space and time (in the concrete)
the argument makes us say far more
than we do.
Mr. Mallock thus entirely fails to
show that we accept contradictory
propositions as true. On the contrary,
in scientific procedure the emergence of
a contradiction is at once greeted as an
indication of falseness, and is forthwith
acted upon by the rejection of one of
the contradictory theses. The ground
work and most essential and novel part
of his structure of reasoning is invalid.
He proceeds, however, to show (ch. xii)
that science is not the only source, or
the only test, of our convictions. There
are as good grounds for accepting these
particular contradictions as for admitting
those of science.
It is at once apparent that we have in
fact a large number of convictions which it
is not the function of science to establish
or examine. Our comparative judgment
of conduct, of beauty, of spiritual values
generally, is not tested by standards that
the scientific reason sets up. Our belief
in “ the sanctity of human life ” does not
rest on scientific grounds; and the
117
influence of religious ideas—the truth of
which science criticises—is also a
subject for non-scientific . judgment.
We might, indeed, complain at once
that Mr. Mallock has here com
pletely lost his accustomed lucidity.
If he means by “ science ” the dis
ciplines
which
to-day bear
that
name, it is true that many of our
judgments lie outside them. But what
will lie outside the range of the
science of to-morrow it would be
difficult to say. The science of aesthe
tics and the science of ethics are
obviously creeping over much of that
territory which Mr. Mallock holds to be
extra-scientific. As a matter of fact the
very question he is leading us to—the
question of the mental and moral
influence of religious ideas—is mainly a
question for ethics and sociology to
determine by objective and scientific
standards. If Mr. Mallock means that
the ethical standard is not scientifically
determinable, he is begging an important
question. However, let us hasten to
examine the vital part of his eleventh
chapter.
He says that it “ has never occurred
to Haeckel ” to ask himself whether the
ethic of Christianity, which he accepts,
may not chance to be inseparable from
its dogmas. In face of the nineteenth
chapter of the Riddle this is a hard
saying. Haeckel cuts away most of the
ethic which is at all peculiar to
Christianity, and finds that the valuable
remainder is a purely humanitarian ethic.
We have already seen this. But Mr.
Mallock is thinking of that great
problem of his whole career—the
problem of free will or determinism—
and he holds emphatically that on
Haeckel’s principles morality is abso
lutely impossible. Suppose, he says,
that we in theory set up a world with
a general belief in the determinism of
the will. From such a world all moral
condemnation and all moral . appre
ciation must disappear ; in it vice and
virtue are indistinguishable ; men and
women are no more responsible for
�118
MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
their characteristics than the apple is
for its colour or shape. Now one of
the most effective parts of Mr. Mallock’s
book is that in which he shows that
scientific determinism is absolutely
irresistible. The contradiction he would
ask us to accept is therefore the
sharpest conceivable.
He asks us
to accept
this
contradiction—this
irrefutable proof that the will is not
free and this equally irrefutable proof
that it must be free—on account of the
moral importance of the belief in
freedom. On the same ground we are
to admit the beliefs in God and immor
tality which the scientific evidence has
wholly disproved; the effect of our
rejecting them would be “a shrinkage
in the importance, interest, and signifi
cance which we are able to attribute to
human life in general, and to the part
played in it by ourselves in particular;
and with the growth of scientific know
ledge, and the habit of completely
assimilating it, the shrinkage would
become more marked, and its moral
results more desolating.” . Hence, since
we are prepared in other cases to
swallow contradictories, we must yield
to these grave reasons and embrace the
contradictory theses of science and
religion.
The second fallacy in Mr. Mallock’s
procedure seems to be worse than the
first. Let us grant, for argument’s sake,
that these religious beliefs had all the
efficacy Mr. Mallock claims for them
whilst they were uncontradicted by
science and philosophy, were sincerely
and serenely held, and were thought to
be based on tangible cosmic evidence.
It is surely a monstrous fallacy to suppose
they will retain that power when their
position is so seriously changed; when
men are assured that, in Mr. Mallock’s
own words, “ it is utterly impossible for
the intellect to find a place for them
amongst the facts of science.” We are,
in fact, invited to regard these beliefs as
efficacious because they are really held,
and then to hold them because they are
efficacious. To say that these considera
tions—if they are correct—should dis
suade us from promulgating or defending
Haeckel’s views is an arguable, though a
mistaken, position.
But Mr. Mallock
has just concluded one of the most
vigorous and skilful attacks on the
evidence for these doctrines that has
appeared of late years. Does he imagine
that people who read that attack will be
disposed to cling to these beliefs because
it would be morally beneficial to hold
them ? that people are so simple as to
accept moral efficacy as the guarantee of
the truth of doctrines which can only be
morally efficacious when they are believed
to be true ? It reminds one of the
American critic who said that J. S. Mill
negotiated a certain difficulty by getting
under himself and carrying himself across.
Surely the simplest and the only possible
procedure is to fasten on this very im
portance of moral idealism as a humani
tarian gospel, and to show the world
that it will taste a very real hell, here on
earth, if it allows moral culture to be
swept away along with the cosmic specu
lations with which it has so long been
associated.
The difficulty about the
freedom of the will may turn out to be
largely due to our slavery to language.
That which formerly went by the name
of freedom is disproved by science. But
the fact remains—and it is a scientific, a
psychological, fact—that we are con
scious of being able to influence our
character and our actions, and so
we cannot deny our responsibility
within limits.
It is for ethics and
psychology to determine those limits
and to re-adjust our terms and con
ceptions.
I have only granted for the sake of
the argument that these doctrines have
all that moral importance which Mr.
Mallock claims for them. He says this
is clear from the attempts of Agnostic
thinkers to find a substitute for them.
Their ethical reasoning is irreproachable,
but they recognise that they must also
make “an appeal to the moral and
spiritual imagination of the individual.”
Prof. Huxley does this with a plea for
�MR. MALLOCPCS OLIVE-BRANCH
■lreverence and love for the ethical ideal,”
and Mr. Spencer urges reverence for
the Unknowable and recognition of
our unity with it. Mr. Mallock is very
scornful about both, and he may be right
that reverence of this cosmic order will
pass away with the passing of theology.
Haeckel has not appealed to such rever
ence, so that he may contemplate its
disappearance without undue concern.
He has urged us to find the practical
ground for moral culture in the future in
the recognition of its value to humanity.
No one recognises this value more clearly
than Mr. Mallock. It is the chief support
of his whole argument. The loss of the
higher aspiration would, he says, spell
ruin to a nation, and the “ belief in
human nature is as essential to civilisation
as is a good circulation to the healthy
body.” Now, if all this is true, as it is,
it seems perfectly obvious that, when
men have got over the confusion and
reaction caused by the decay of ethical
theology, they will turn to moral culture
for its own sake. It is inconceivable
how a subtle thinker, who believes men
are capable of continuing to worship
God and dream of immortality because
it is useful to do so, though contradicted
by the most solid evidence, cannot see
the possibility of setting up moral culture
on a sociological base. Confucians have
done it for ages, and with quite as great
success, to say the least, as Christianity.
The bulk of cultured people, like Mr.
Mallock, have done so for several
generations.
Theoretically, we should expect that
the transition from a divine to a humani
tarian ethic will be attended with a
certain amount of moral disorder. But
as a fact, the change is taking place
without any such disorder. The working
class, which is irreligious to the extent of
nine-tenths to-day, is no worse than it was
a century or five centuries ago; it is, in fact,
far nearer to “a belief in human nature.”
The middle-class, still largely religious,
is hardly likely to deteriorate. The
educated class—to ignore the money-line
—is almost wholly without those beliefs
119
in a personal God and personal im
mortality which Mr. Mallock thinks
essential, yet will compare very favour
ably with its class in almost any former
age. In a word, if we consult the facts
of ‘life instead of theory, we find no
ground for supposing that moral culture
—not to speak of intellectual, artistic,
and social aspiration—is bound up with
certain “cosmic speculations.” Under
neath all the transcendental imagery
with which the Churches have clothed
morality, there has always been an in
stinctive feeling that it was a very human
affair, and this feeling asserts itself as the
theological imagery passes away. There
will be changes, of course. The proud in
tolerance and arrogance of the old moral
ists, with the horrible persecutions they
inspired, have gone for ever; the ascetic
contempt of “the flesh” is going and
must wholly disappear; humility and
meekness have no sociological value;
virginity is a matter of taste, but marriage
is a more virtuous condition; the stress
on chastity (in a transcendental sense)
has led to an appalling amount of real
immorality in every age, because few
were prepared to respect it; the old
classification of virtues and vices, as so
many rigid moral boxes to put other
people’s conduct in, must go; the old
antithesis of selfishness and altruism
will be replaced by an organic conception
of man’s relation to his fellows; the
relation of the sexes will be subject only
to a purely rational ethic, grounded on
justice, not sentiment, and so there may
be at length some hope of putting an
end to hypocrisy and vice. When
writers like Mr. Wells, or Mr. G. B.
Shaw, or Mr. Karl Pearson, talk of the
disappearance of ethics, they are thinking,
of one or other of these changes. But.
ethics will only gain by such changes.
“ Many are called, but few are chosen,”
said the founder of Christianity. It was
a profound anticipation of the influence
of Christian morality throughout. the
ages. Apart from certain special periods,
apart from the relatively small areas that
could be reached. by a St. Bernard, or a;
�120
MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
St. Francis, Christian morality has been
a stupendous failure. It was too trans
cendental, too false to the natural moral
sense of the ordinary individual, to be
otherwise. The cultivation of a kindly and
humane disposition, of a sense of justice
and honour, of tolerance and broad
mindedness, of concern for health of
body and mind, of temperance and self
control, of honesty and truthfulness, is
what humanity really needs; and all this
it can and will have for its own inherent
worth.
Thus Mr. Mallock has failed to prove
that we anywhere complacently accept
contradictions in our beliefs; and that,
even if we did (to the utter confusion of
any notion of truth), there is any special
reason for retaining these theological
doctrines ; or that, if we did retain them
in the teeth of scientific teaching to the
contrary, they would be of the slightest
value. There are, however, one or two
confirmatory thoughts in his last chapter
which we may still consider. It follows,
he says, that our judgment deals with
two worlds, the cosmic and the moral,
the world of objective facts and the
world of subjective values. One is the
world of science, the other is reached by
some other faculty of mind. It would
be equally absurd to question the validity
of our judgment as to either. In fact,
there is, in the long run, a similarity in
the ground of judgment in both cases.
It is a mistake to suppose that in the
scientific world everything is “ proved.”
The fundamental belief, the conviction
that there is a material world at all, is
quite unprovable. If it is an inference
from our sensations, reason refuses to
ratify it. It is the outcome of “ an
original instinct”; and it is just such an
instinct that is at the root of our judg
ment of moral values. Science must
study the objective world; “ analytic
reason and a study of human character ”
must investigate the moral world. They
find these three beliefs essential to
progress, and their decision is as valid
as that of science in its own sphere.
The contradiction between the two need
not trouble us. The mind is limited,
and can “ grasp the existence of nothing
in its totality.” “We must learn, in
short,” is his closing sentence, “ that the
fact of our adoption of a creed which
involves an assent to contradictories is
not a sign that our creed is useless or
absurd, but that the ultimate nature of
things is for our minds inscrutable.”
. This reasoning is only a new formula
tion of the argument of his preceding
chapters, but one or two points call for
notice. In the first place, it is perfectly
true that all our convictions are not
capable of “proof,” because they cannot
all be inferences. Our knowledge must
ultimately be grounded on facts which
are directly intued. These are gathered
into general laws and principles, and
from these inferences are drawn. And
it is true that our perception of the
external world is—in its rudiments—
intuitive. It is not an inference from
our states of consciousness; it would
not be valid if it were. When meta
physics has grown tired of the current
idealism, it will probably tell us more
about this intuition. But Mr. Mallock’s
attempt to set up a number of little
oracles in the mind in the shape of
“ primitive instincts ” must be carefully
watched. Further, what he calls the
subjective or moral world is by no means
wholly subjective. It is useful for his
purpose to lead us on from sesthetic
judgments to moral. We may, fortu
nately, leave out of consideration the
difficulty of our sesthetic judgments,
because our moral judgment is purely
objective. The effects which Mr. Mal
lock anticipates from a Monistic ethic
are emphatically objective; and so are
the effects he claims for the Christian
ethic.
The determination of those
effects, and so of the relative value of
the two systems, is a study in objective
reality. “The sanctity of human life”
has nothing to do with it. The “ belief
in human nature ” is a conviction that,
of the various phases of life which
humanity has experienced—virtue and
vice, strength and enervation, social
�MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
order and anarchy, mental culture and
sensual dissipation—the former alter
natives are the most conducive to peace
and happiness, which we happen to
desire. That conviction is, therefore,
wholly based on an objective inquiry.
Hence the antithesis of the subjective
and objective worlds does not help Mr.
Mallock. And in point of fact the
sooner we apply scientific methods to
his second world, to the determination
of moral values, the better it will be for
us.
Finally, there is in Mr. Mallock’s closing
observations an important confusion of
ideas. That the mind is limited, that
we can only focus it on successive spots
in the great panorama of reality, is a
familiar truth. It is further true that
we may not be able to see the con
nection between our little areas of
knowledge, as they are often separated
by leagues of ignorance. In this passive
sense we may say we are unable to
reconcile ” them. But to admit two or
more statements that are clearly con
tradictory is quite another matter. To
do so in one single instance is to admit
the most radical and irreparable scepti
cism. Even the Catholic Church has
strongly denounced the principle that
“ a thing may be true in theology yet
false in philosophy.” If contradictories
may be true, we cannot rely on a single
affirmation of the mind. Some primi
tive instinct ” may yet find out that it is
also false. We should disci edit our
knowledge in its very source. Mr.
Mallock is likely to remain to the end a
Peri at the gate of Eden. Theology is
not more likely than science to give ear
to such a proposal.
I have said that Mr. Mallock’s theory
in some respects recalls the later
thoughts of Mr. Romanes, and as these
are much quoted in correction of
Haeckel’s procedure we may glance at
them in conclusion. In his later years
Mr. Romanes, once a thorough Monist,
jotted down some of his “ thoughts on
religion,” and they were published after
his ° death by Bishop Gore.
This
121
solitary “ conversion ” amongst the
scientific men of the last century has
naturally attracted some interest, but it
is not usually properly understood. In
the first place the works of both Mrs.
Romanes and Bishop Gore repel the
Rationalist inquirer by the offensive and
insulting insinuation that character had
anything to do with ■ the matter.
“ Blessed are the pure in heart for they
shall see God,” they both constantly
exclaim. The inference as to those
who do not see God is obvious. In the
second place, Mr. Romanes, though he
died in the communion of the Anglican
Church, seems to have reached a
theology of a very slender character.
His God is pantheistically immanent in
nature. All causation, he suggests, may
be Divine action, so that God melts into
the forces of the universe. The dis
tinction between the natural and super
natural he wholly rejects j and he thinks
the determinism of the will, established
by science, is consistent with the belief
that all causation is an act of Divine will.
And thirdly, without discussing the
illness which overcast the later years of
Mr. Romanes, these “thoughts, on
religion” contain some sorry sayings.
“ The nature of man without God is
thoroughly miserable,” he. says, pro
jecting his morbid condition on the
world at large; and “ there is a vacuum
in the soul which nothing can fill but
God.” Again, “ Unbelief is usually due
to indolence, often to prejudice, and
never a thing to be proud of.”. How
ever, let us examine his position in itself.
It may be said in a word that he
appeals to a religious instinct or intui
tion, which is independent of reason.
“If there be a God, he must be a.first
principle—-the first of all first piinciples
—-hence knowable by intuition and not
by reason.” Of the two temperaments
—the scientific or rational and the
“ spiritual ” or mystic—he says “ there is
nothing to choose between the two in
point of trustworthiness. Indeed, if
choice has to be made, the mystic
might claim higher authority for his
�122
MR. MALLOCK'S OLIVE-BRANCH
direct intuitions.” “ No one can believe
in God, or a 'fortiori in Christ, without
a severe act of will.” He shows how
often belief , is influenced by desire in
politics and is by no means an outcome
of reasoning, and adds: “ This may be
all deplorable enough in politics and in
all other beliefs secular; but who.shall
say it is not exactly as it ought to *be in
the matter of belief religious ? ” And,
speaking of “the continual sacrifices
which Christianity entails,” he says
“ the hardest of these sacrifices to an in
telligent .man is that of his own intellect.”
We will not do Romanes the injustice
of analysing in detail these sad reflec
tions of a suffering and diseased con
dition. . It is with reluctance that a
Rationalist approaches the question at
all, but it is forced on us. Just as I
write, an American correspondent sends
me a copy of the Literary Digest for
September 26.
It appears that Pro
fessor J. Orr, of the Glasgow Free
Church College, has been telling the
Americans that there is in England a
strong current from scepticism to faith.
He “claims to speak as an expert,” and
“ has in his possession a list of some
twenty-eight Secularist leaders in England
and Scotland who have become Chris
tians.” The truthfulness of this assertion
may be judged from the fact that he
only gives three names—Joseph Barker,
Thomas Cooper, and G. J. Romanes. The
former two were, I learn, men who were
associated with the Secularist activity
years ago, but were of no intellectual
standing and are hardly to be termed
“ leaders.” Romanes, he says, “ bit by bit
came under the power of the gospel, and
died a Christian in full communion with
the Church of England, avowing the
faith of Jesus, his deity and his atone
ment, and the resurrection of the dead,
and every other great article of our
faith.”1 We are thus forced to set in its
1 To finish with this miserable effusion—
quoted by the Digest from Zion's Herald—I
must add that he then goes on to speak of
Germany, where Haeckel’s Riddle “ has been
discarded for fully a quarter of a century” (the
true light the death-bed communion of
Romanes. As he says, it was by the
sacrifice of his intellect, by ignoring his
scientific temperament, by an effort of
will, that he succeeded in assenting to
what he calls “pure Agnosticism.”
In a sense, however, his idea of a
“ religious intuition ” is widely accepted
in the decaying Churches. Many dis
pense themselves on the ground of this
intuition or instinct from examining the
criticisms that are urged. We need only
make two observations on this last resort
of the theist. Firstly, this “ intuition ”
has, in the course of the last few thou
sand years, given men the most contra
dictory messages, and it is to-day sup
porting a hundred divergent beliefs
about. God and the future life. Its own
vagaries sternly condemn it as a channel
of truth. Secondly, modern psycholo
gists agree to regard instinct as an
inherited tendency or disposition.1 It
follows that if we have an “ original
instinct ” impelling us to accept religious
doctrines—I say if, because I am con
scious of no such instinct, nor is any
other person of whom I have inquired—
this is only the disposition towards them
which we have inherited, and has nothing
whatever to do with their truth or un
truth. It means, at the most, that our
fathers have accepted these beliefs for
many generations. We were aware of
that already.
first edition appeared a very few years ago).
Professor Orr says that “nearly all the great
scientific authorities that Haeckel quotes changed
their views some thirty or forty or twenty-five
years ago.” He will give “ the names of one or
two of them,” and out come the inevitable Vir
chow, Wundt, and Du Bois-Reymond. The
last-named “has reaffirmed the soul of man, re
affirmed the spiritual principle in man, and re
affirmed the supernatural element in man”—
compare what Haeckel does say of this Agnostic
writer on p. 6 of the Riddle. If these things are
not untruths, one wonders what is. One thinks
of poor Romanes’s awful statement that “ this
may be all deplorable enough in politics, but
who shall say it is not exactly as it ought to be
in religion ? ”
1 See Villa’s Contemporary Psychology, p. 292;
Sully’s Human Mind, I, 137 ; and Lloyd Mor
gan, Wundt, Ribot, and Masci.
�123
CONCLUSION
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CONCLUSION
We find, then, that the recent efforts
to evade the onward march of Monistic
science do not promise. any great
measure of success. Neither the specu
lations of Dr. Wallace, nor the assurances
of Lord Kelvin, nor the suggestions of
Mr. Mallock, provide a safe path of
retreat, if the positions of our earlier
chapters have been established.
As
long as scientists were willing to remain
silent on these cosmic speculations, it
was possible for ecclesiastical writers to
assume that they were not hostile, even
to assume that they were friendly, and so
to represent Professor Haeckel as a
Quixotic and isolated defender of an
extreme position which mature science
had deserted. It is certainly not pos
sible to do so with any regard for ac
curacy to-day. I have throughout sup
ported his positions with the most recent
utterances of scientific leaders, and the
excursions of Dr. Wallace and Lord
Kelvin have only served to show how
far science is to-day from lending sup
port to theology.
It may not be without interest, in conV eluding, to resume my work from the
point of view and in the order which one
finds in the Riddle itself. Chaps. II. to
V. are devoted to the proof that man is
descended, as regards his bodily frame,
from some earlier animal species. This
position is not now challenged by a
single anthropologist of the first or
second rank, and it is almost universally
admitted by cultivated theologians.
Chaps. VI. to X. are occupied with the
proof that the mind of man has been
developed from the mind of an animal
of an earlier species.
Dr. A. R.
Wallace is almost the only anthropolo
gist (if we may describe him as such) of
high rank who still questions that this
fact has been established, and we have
seen that theologians acquainted with
the facts began twenty years ago to
acquiesce in this truth. The majority of
the scientifically cultured apologists of
our day admit it. We have noticed the
overwhelming mass of evidence in favour
of it, and the fact that the most recent
researches of anthropologists tend to
elucidate it more and more. We have
seen that so critical a theist as Professor
J. Ward speaks of the doctrine of the
evolution of man, mind and body, being
“accepted with unanimity by biologists
of every school.”
When, however,
Haeckel goes on (Chap. . X.) to con
clude, in the purely scientific spirit, that
mind-force is therefore only an upward
and more elaborate extension of the
world-force that gradually advances from
the inorganic to the organic universe,
we find him denounced as “ crude ” and
“ unscientific.”
We have seen how
wholly logical and scientific his proce
dure is. When, further, he goes on to
say that this explanation of the origin of
the human soul leaves no room for those
claims of unique prerogatives on which
man once based his hope of immortality,
we again find the advanced company of
apologists at variance. Some think the
question is “ insoluble by philosophy ” ;
others elaborate novel speculations about
the aim of the cosmic process which we
have patiently considered.
The very
latest scientific researches, we saw, do
no tend to ascribe any peculiar signifi
cance to human life or to the planet we
inhabit.
Thus, in the first half of the book,
which deals with man, we find that all
Haeckel’s scientific assertions are sup
ported, almost without exception, by his
colleaguesin the anthropological sciences,
�124
CONCLUSION
and are admitted by most of the apolo
gists. . His conclusions from these facts,
touching the nature and the destiny of
the soul, are not denied by his colleagues
(who do not now, as a rule, trouble
themselves about the relation of their
knowledge to religious belief), but are
contested in the name of religion by the
theologians.. They appeal to philosophy,
and by philosophy we have judged
them.
The second half of the work deals with
a number of problems. Chaps. XII. to
XV. are occupied with the nature of the
cosmic substance, its unity, and its
evolution, through the inorganic world,
to the forms of living organisms. On
the nature of matter and force Haeckel
correctly gives the theories of the time
he wrote, and his system readily as
similates any modification of these which
the advance of physics may entail. The
unity he claims for inorganic nature is
undisputed, as is its evolution. When he
proceeds to unify the inorganic and the
organic worlds—to assume that life arose
by evolution, and that the life-force is not
of a specific or isolated character—he
has all the leading biologists and most
of the leading theists with him. We
have seen what befel Lord Kelvin when
he questioned this. He then (Chap. XV.)
attacks the question of the existence of
God. Here, save for a vague allusion to
a “creative power” or a “directive
principle” on the part of a few great
scientists and the fuller theology of a
small number of other Veil-known men of
science, he again advances beyond his
colleagues. Most of the scientists of our
day (including those German scientists
who are so much quoted) are Agnostics,
and do not concern themselves about
religion. Haeckel here speaks as a
philosopher. He is confronted with
certain metaphysical considerations which
purport to prove the existence of God.
We saw that for most of the cultured
apologists this merely means a principle
immanent in nature, and not distinguish
able from it.
In other words, the
ultimate question is : Is the evolution of
this Monistic universe of such a nature
that we are compelled to suppose there
was an intelligence guiding it from the
outset ? That is the problem on which
all forces are concentrating. The de
fence of gaps is falling into disrepute,
and, as a policy, is disdained by the very
men who practise it. We saw that the
forces which have evolved the world are
not erratic in their action, and so needed
no control; that science points to no
beginning of the scheme of things, and
so we need no creator; and that, on the
other hand, the cosmic process shows
many features which are inconsistent
with the existence of a supreme designer
and controller.
When Haeckel passes on to the moral
sciences, we saw that he is substantially
borne out by the latest research. Biblical
criticism and comparative mythology
have thoroughly shaken the belief in the
miraculous life of Christ; and whether
Haeckel has or has not the right version
of his paternity is not an important
matter. His judgment on the natural
growth and the limited influence of
Christianity is that of most historians.
His theory of a humanitarian ethic is in
harmony with the whole trend of ethical
discussion to-day.
We have seen, on the other hand,
how scattered and mutually conflicting
are the critics of Haeckel’s position.
We have been able, during quite twothirds. of our course, to silence the
majority of these critics with the weapons
of the minority. The majority of those
amongst them who have a wide scientific
culture are warning their smaller-minded
or less-informed colleagues to desert the
defence of gaps.
Almost the whole
library of apologetics up to within the
last ten years is useless to-day. The
apologists of yesterday mistook gaps in
scientific knowledge for gaps in the
course of natural development. A few
not very clear-minded theologians do so
still; and the old instinct is so strong,
and the fallacy appeals so strongly to the
imagination, that we have found even
the most advanced critics occasionally
�CONCLUSION
falling from grace. The tendency is,
however, to-day to allow that science
may build up a complete mechanical in
terpretation of the universe and all its
contents; the apologist is content to
hope that he may enter at the close with
his transcendental speculations on the sup
posed origin of the cosmic elements and
the alleged purpose of the cosmic process.
We have seen that already cultured and
sympathetic observers like Mr. Mallock
are telling them that this last position
will be no better than the first, and that
science allows them no foothold what
ever in the objective world.
That it is the ambition of science to
give a mechanical explanation of the
whole contents of the universe has been
made clear.
The dream of Tyndall
and Huxley is by no means abandoned.
For the inorganic universe no one
seriously doubts that this is only a ques
tion of time. And the angry resentment
by our leading biologists at Lord Kelvin’s
interference in their domain amply.shows
how little they are disposed to give up
the ideal of a mechanical interpretation
of life. So far the vast majority of the
leading scientists of the world are with
Haeckel. I do not say that they endorse
all his suggestions on points of detail.
His system, we saw, is not a rigidly
uniform structure, for all parts of which
he claims equal weight. He throws out
theories, and hypotheses, and suggestions,
in advance of the demonstrated conclu
sions. These are temporary and pro
visional.
That scientists reject or
dispute about any of these detailed
suggestions—whether it be on the evo
lution of ether, or the first formation of
protoplasm, or the fatherhood of Jesus—
does not affect his main position, or his
attitude towards religion. He frankly
says he may very well be wrong in these
details, and that he merely suggests that
the evidence so far seems to point in
this or that direction.
Whether the
advance of science proves or disproves
these suggestions does not affect the
main issue. The main issue is the unity
and evolution of nature. So far, as I
125
said, scientists in general are with him.
When he goes on to deal with conscious
ness, creation, design, and religion, it
cannot be said that they are with him.
But it is a gross deception to represent
that they are with his opponents. They
are Agnostics, as a rule. They prefer
not to concern themselves with these
subjects. They are Monists in the sense
that they accept the unity and evolution
of the cosmos, and refuse to see any
positive breach in the continuity of
nature. But they are, as Dr. Ward says,
“Agnostic Monists,” in the sense that
they are content with a negative attitude
on these later problems. The number
of great scientists who give a positive
and explicit support to personal theism
may be counted on one’s fingers.
In conclusion, I would respectfully
submit to these Agnostic men of science,
and the vast cultured following they
have in every educated country to
day, two considerations. The first is a
request that they will reflect on the spirit
and procedure of the apologists for con
ventional religion, as these are exhibited
in the attack on Dr. Haeckel, one of the
most distinguished and most honourable
of living scientists. If he cares to invade
every department of thought in search
of anti-theological arguments, and to
throw out scores of positive explanations
in the teeth of the theologians, he must,
of course, expect battle. It is just what
he desires. But he desires honourable
warfare. Truth is a frail spirit that must
be sought with patient and calm investi
gation. Its pursuit should be conducted
with dignity and especially with a scru
pulous honesty. We have seen that,
on the contrary, this campaign against
Haeckel’s views has been marked by
malignant abuse and persistent misrepre
sentation, by statements which cannot be
conceived as other than untruths, by
gross perversion of the teaching of modern
science, and by a score of devices and
stratagems that would disgrace the con
duct of a heated political campaign. It
is by these means that one-fourth of the
people are held attached to the old
�126
CONCLUSION
beliefs—people who, to a great extent,
would carry into the new humanitarian
religion a humane and proper spirit that
would enormously facilitate the transition
to a new inspiration. Is it conducive to
the interest of truth, or of science, or of
human welfare, that this corporation of
the clergy should continue in the twen
tieth century that mistaken conceit about
the truth of their cosmic views which
inspires them with such dishonourable
tactics ?
Secondly, I would ask whether it is
not too late in the history of the world
to be inventing fanciful theories for the
detention of the people in the Churches.
Three-fourths of the people are wholly
beyond the influence of the clergy, and
as these controversial devices become
known the defection is bound to increase.
It is too late to speak of the welfare of
the race depending on a religion which
the great majority have for ever aban
doned. Scepticism is in the atmosphere
of the world to-day.
The more we
educate the more we extend its influence.
If this is so the true humanitarian will
desire the change to be effected as
speedily as possible, and the moral ideal
to be swiftly disentangled from its decay
ing frame of dogma. In one respect the
world is in a pitiful plight to-day. Thou
sands of the clergy of all denominations
are only too eager to disavow the old
formulae and to devote themselves
to character-building alone. They are
prevented by the lingering concern of
the majority of church-members for
dogma. They are forced to utter un
truths (“ symbolically ”) at the very
moments when they are pleading for
truth, andhonour, and sincerity. We have
the spectacle of ecclesiastical scholars of
all denominations being forced to1
disavow the convictions which have
crept to their lips, and of Christian
journals complaining that the lack of
honesty is one of the most prominent?
features of theological literature. How
this state of things is held to be conducive
to the social good it is hard to imagine.
One of the great social needs of our
time is to sweep away the whole totter
ing structure of conventional religion and
worship. Whilst we talk of “ continuity ”
the world is deserting it altogether. The
moral tone of the clergy is lowered by
their corporate alliance with cosmic
speculations. The stream of enthusiasm
which has so long flowed through the
religions of the world is being dissipated.
Only one change will infuse new life into
the Churches and rehabilitate religion—
the swift abandonment to metaphysicians
of all these cosmic speculations. When
that revolution has been completed we
shall have given a new meaning to
religion that will change the present
contempt into concern. It will be an
affair of this world, a visibly important
element of this life. Men will turn their
eyes from the clouds to discover new
potencies in earth. That is the socio
logical basis of the work of the Rationalist
Press Association. Behind it are scores
of humanitarian constructive movements
ready to guide and inform the religious
or idealist ardour. Its work is the attack
on unthinking superstition, the war
against hypocritical professions, the
promulgation of a standard of intellec
tual honesty, the cultivation of a virile
and rational attitude on all the problems
of life.
It claims and deserves the sup
port of every man or woman who is sanely
and sincerely concerned for progress.
�INDEX
Christian World, the, 11, 12
Christianity, “triumph” of, 89, 90
Churches, advantages of the, 92 ;
decay of the, 92, 93
Clarke, Dr. W. N., 32, 39, 50, 67, 72 ;
on the origin of man, 50
Clarion, campaign of the, 11, 92
Colour, nature of, 27
Confucianism, 80
Consciousness, 54, 57, 58, 79
Constantine, conversion of, 89
Contradictions, alleged, in our know
ledge, Il6, 117, 121
Conversion of German scientists, 17 ;
Babylon, morality of ancient, 95
G. J. Romanes, 17, 121
Baer, K., 10, 17
Cook, Dr., 14
Bain, Prof., 16
Cooper, Thomas, 122
Balfour, Mr., 116
Creative action, 45, 77, 108, in, 124
Ball, Sir R., on dark stars, 103
Ballard, the Rev. F., criticisms of, 9, Croll, Dr. J., 14; on free-will, 60; on
the evolution of species, 48; on
10-14,16, 35, 36, 38, 46, 69, 79, 82,
teleology, 70, 72
85, 86, 93, 100; on determinism,
12 ; on evolution, 69 ; on physical Cunningham, Prof., on the evolution
of mind, 59
theories, 24, 25 ; on spontaneous
generation, 12, 13, 40, 41 ; on teleo
logy, 72 ; on the outlook of Chris Daily Chronicle, criticism of the, 33
Daily News, census of church-gomg,
tianity, 91
92 ; teaching Pantheism, 77
Barker, Joseph, 122
Beale, Prof. L., 14, 16, 32, 41, 43, 46, Dallinger, the Rev. Dr., 14, 23, 36,
70, 71 ; on Haeckel, 9; on the
iro; advertises in the Times, 13,
finite universe, 23, 32 ; on the origin
43, IX3
of man, 51
Beauty of the world, 75, 76
Beginning of the universe, 30-32, 76, 77 Dark nebulae, 104 ; stars, 30, 33, 103
Dawson, Sir J. W., 14, 31
Belgium, religion in, 92.
Design, 54, 58, 69-74 _
Belittling effect of Monism, 35
Determinism and morality, 117, 118
Berkeley, 21, 77
Bible, supposed uniqueness of the, Dewar, Prof., 28, 44, 50; on Dar
winism, 50 ; on idealism, 22
87, 88
Biologists and the vital principle, 199, Diplomas, Haeckel’s, 8
Dogma a dangerous base for morality,
iro
96 ; dangerous to religion, 15
Bischoff, Dr. E., 82, 83
Dolbear, Prof, (quoted), no
Blatchford, Mr., it, 13, 52
Dreisch, in
Blathwayt, Mr. R., on Haeckel, 6
Booth,Mr. C.,on religion in London, 92 Dualism, 20, 59
Brierley, the Rev. J. B., ri, 12, 63, Dubois, Dr., 49
Du Bois-Reymond, 10, 17
83, 9i
Duns Scotus on immortality, 61
Buchner, L., 10, 17, 19, 42, 49, 66
Buddhism, 80, 99
Ecclesiastical history, character of, 87,
Budge (quoted), 95
89, 9°
Burdon-Sanderson, Sir J., on Lord Egyptian Bible, the, 95
Kelvin, 109 ; on vitalism, 43, 109
Electrons, 33
Bushido, the, 99
Embryo, development of the, 58
Emerson (quoted), 99
Caird, Dr., 22
Encyclopaedia Biblica, the, 87
Campbell, the Rev. R. J., on Chris End of the universe, 32, 33
tianity, 81, 94, 96; on religious Entropy, theory of, 31, 33, 34, 77
statistics, 93
Epicureans, the, 61
Candour in the pulpit, theologians on, Eternity of the universe, 30-34
12
Ether, 24, 25, 30, 104, 116
Carbon-theory of Haeckel, 112
Ethic of Monism, the, 93-96, 117
Case, Prof., on Agnosticism and Ethical Movement, the, 98
Monism? 16 ; on consciousness, 58 ; Ethics, 98
on idealism, 22
Ethics, changes in, 119
Celsus on the fatherhood of Christ, 85 Evolution, 35-37, 41, 42, 101
Central sun, idea of a, 105
Eye, evolution of the, 74
Centre of the universe, 105
Chance, 71, 72-74
Facial expression, relation to mind, 59
Chapman, Principal, on the origin of Fiske, Mr., 14 ; admissions of, 48, 51,
life, 42
77 ; on immortality, 66 ; on teleo
Christian history, supposed uniqueness
logy 70, 73, 74
.
of, 89 ; morality, defects of, 96, 117 ; Flammarion on Dr. Wallace s views,
true conception of, 94, 96
103, 105, 106
Abiogenesis, 39-46
I
Action at a distance, 116, 117
j
Agnostic scientists, 16, 17, 20
_
|
Agnosticism, its relation to Monism,
16, 17, 20, 125
|
Ambrose, St., work of, 20
1
America, religion in, 92
Apes, the, and man, 49, 56, 101
Asceticism, 96
Atheism, 75
Atom, the, 28, 30, J3, 116
Australia, religion in, 92
Flower, Prof., 14 ; on evolution, 47
Force, unity of, 26
France, religion in, 92
Gaps, the theology of, 36, 37, 69, 124
Generelle Morphologic, the, 8
Germany, religion in, 92
Gore, Bishop, 121
Gospels, date of the, 84, 87, 88
Grimthorpe, Baron, 14, 16, 33
Haeckel, alleged dogmatism of, 11,
12, 23 ; pessimism of, 35 ; cardinal
offence of, 84; circulation of his
work, 91 ; early training of, 7 ; on
chance, 73; on Christian dogmas,
81 ; on Christian ethics, 96 ; on
the future of the Churches, 98 ; on
the person of Christ 84, 88; on
the validity of speculation, 80;
system of, 17-19
Halliburton, Prof., on vitalism, 111
Hand, connection of with the brain, 59
Harnack, 87, 88
Hebrews no genius for morality, 95
Henslow, Prof., 80
Herbert, Prof., 59
Heredity, 58, 67
Horton, Dr., criticisms of, 10, 17, 18,
40, 43, 46, 52, 62, 64, 82, 85, 86, 93,
100, 112 ; on Vogt and Buchner, 10,
17
Huxley, Prof., 16, 99
Idealism criticised, 21, 22, 120 ; and
Christianity, 21
Immaculate Conception, the, 85
Immanence of God in Nature, 78
Immortality of the sou , 61-68
Infinity of space and time, 116, 117
Infinity of the universe, 23,103-105, 116
Inquirer, criticism in the, 27
Instinct only hereditary disposition,
122
Intelligibility of the universe, 79
International Journal ofEthics, the,
98
Iverach, the Rev. Dr., criticisms of,
14, n6, 21, 29, 32, 36, 39, 45, 47, 50,
53, ?r, 72> 75> 79 > on idealism, 21
James, Prof. W., 14; on immortality,
65 ; on theism, 78
Kant, 26, 64, 71
Kelvin, Lord, 14, 44, 45 ; on vitalism,
108-114
Kennedy, the Rev. Mr., 14, 17, 75
Khammurabi, laws of, 95
Knowledge, review in, 9, 27
Language, 59
Lankester, Prof. E. Ray, 16, 43 ; on
Darwinism, 47; on Lord Kelvin,
109, in
Law, nature of, 28 ; of substance, 27,
28
Leap of the gospels, the, 83
Le Conte, Prof., 14, 50, 69 ; on evolu
tion, 36; on God and Nature, 77;
on immortality, 65 ; on life-force, 43
Leyden, congress at, 49
�128
Liberty of the will, 12
Liebig, 108, 112
Life, conditions of, 106 ; development
of, 48 ; in other worlds, 32, 106,
107 ; in space, 112 ; the nature of,
41, 42-44, 46; the origin of, 39-46
Light, criticisms of, 25, 62
Limits of the universe, alleged, 23,
103-105
Lodge, Sir O., 14, 24, 25, 28, 33, 100,
109, 112 ; on entropy, 33 ; on life
force, 113, 114 ; on the nature of
matter, 33
Loofs, Dr., criticisms of, 82-86; on
the birth of Christ, 85-87
Macalister, Dr. A., 14
Mallock, Mr. W. H., 9, 15, 20, 22, 31,
33, 4L 5.6, 73, 75 on design, 75, 76 ;
on dualist difficulties, 36; on free
will, 60 ; on Haeckel, 9, 15 ; on
science and religion, 114, 115; on
the credibility of religion, 115-121 ;
on the evolution of mind, 57 ; on
theological arguments, 15
Man, origin of, 50-60
Manchester Guardian, criticism in
the, 28
Manicheans, the, 89
Materialism, real nature of, 19
Materiarii, the, 61
Matter and force, 18, 19, 55; inde
structibility of, 28 ; nature of, 27,
28, 33, 116 ; unity of, 24-26
Maudsley, Dr., 16
Maunder, Dr., on Dr. Wallace’s
views, 103
Mechanism as the ideal of science,
48, 58, 68-70, 76, no, 125
Memory, 54
“ Merlin,” 40
Milky Way, the, 105
Mind and brain, relation of, 55, 5760, 63, 64, 67 ; evolution of, argu
ments for the, 56, 57, 101
Miracles of Unbelief, the, 11-13, 43
Mithraists, the, 89
Mivart, Dr., 32, 39, 50, 100, no
Moleschott, 19
Monera, 45
Monism, 17-20, 93
Moore, Canon A. L., 42, 45, 47, 51, 71 ;
on tbe origin of man, 50
Moral Instruction League, the, 98
Moral training for children, 97, 98
Morality of unbelievers, 93, 94, 118,
119; origin of, 97; real nature of,
94, 117, 118
Miinsterberg, Prof., 51 ; on immor
tality, 56, 64, 65
Music compared to thought, 63
Nageli, Prof., 40, no
Natural History of Creation, the, 8,
W
Natural selection, 47, 59
Nebular hypothesis, the, 28, 116
INDEX
Necessity, 71, 73
Neo-Vitalism, 42-45, 110-113
New Testament, criticism of the, 87, 88
Newcomb, Prof., 103, 104
Nicaea, Council of. 86
Species, origin of, 47-49
Spectroscope, the, 24
Spencer, Mr., 16, 76
Spiritism, 68
Spiritists, 25
Spontaneous generation, 39-46 ; in the
Middle Ages, 42
Old Testament, the, 87
Stallo, views of, 25, xoo
Organic substances produced, 45
Stars, distance of the, 23 ; distribution
Origin of Species, the, 7
of the, 104, 105 ; nature of the, 24,
Orr, Prof., on unbelievers, 122
6r ; number of tbe, 23, 104
Statistics of religion, 86, 92
Paganism and Christianity, 90; de Stettin, Congress at, 7
struction of, 90
Subconscious mind, the, 57
Paleyism, 71
Substance, the universal, 26, 116
Pandera, 84-86
Sully, Prof., 16
Pantheism of modern evolutionary Sun, motion of the, 105, 106
theists, 77, 78
Synodicon, the, 83
Pasteur, 41, 42
Pearson, Prof. Karl, 16; on Lord Tactics of religious apologists, 125
Kelvin, 109
Talmage, Dr., on evolution, 52
Phenomena and substance, 26
Teleology, 37, 38, 48, 69-74
Pithecanthropus erectus, the, 49, 50, Thiselton-Dyer, Sir W. T., on Lord
101
Kelvin, 109; on the materialistic
Planets, habitability of the, 106, 107
view of life, in
Pope, the Rev. A., criticisms of, 18, Thompson, Sir Henry, on God, 78 ;
36, 53, 70; on Monism, 18, 19
on the future of religion, 91
Profeit, the Rev. Mr., 14, 38, 39, 71, Thought as a brain function, 63
73
Turner, Prof., on Dr. Wallace’s
Prothyl, 30, 34, 116
views, 102, 105, 107
Protoplasm, .45, 46, 54, 55, no
Turner, Sir W., on Darwinism, 47 ;
Psycho-physics, 57
on the development of man, 51, 58 ;
Psychoplasm, 54
on life, 42
Pyknotic theory, the, 24, 25, 116
Tyndall, Prof., 16, 42, 50
Quiller-Couch, Mr., on Agnostics, 94
Radium, 33
Rationalist Press Association, 91, 126
Reformer, criticism of the, 25
Reinke, in
Religion, decay of, 93, 119, 126
Religious instinct or intuition, 122
Riddle of the Universe, circulation of
the, 9
Robertson, Mr. J. M., on Christ, 88
Romanes, 17 ; conversion of, 12 r, 122
Row, Mr., 14
Royce, Prof., on God and man, 78 ;
on immortality, 64
Rucker, Sir A., 25, 27 ; on idealism,
22 ; on the nature of matter, 25 ; on
vitalism, 44
Union of Ethical Societies, the, 98
Unity of the Universe, 24, 26, 27
Virchow, 17, 49
Vital force, 41, 42, 43, 109-113
Vogt, 10, 17, 19
Wallace, Dr. A. R., 14, 41, 50, 51,
101-107, 123 ; the recent articles of,
101-107
Ward, Prof. J., 16, 23, 36, 43, 47, 51,
70, 77 ; On Agnosticism and Monism,
16 ; on vital force, 43
Washington Sullivan, Dr. (quoted), 95
Wells, Mr. H. G., on the future of
religion, 77, 91
Westminster Review on Haeckel, 9,
11
Will, freedom of the, 59, 60, 118
Sadducees, the, 61
Williams, the Rev. Rhondda, criti
Schultze, 89
Scientists who support religion, 14
cisms of, 12, 18, 19, 26, 36, 37, 53-56>
69, 72, 78, 79, 93 ; on conscious
Schmiedel, Dr., on the Gospels, 87, 88
ness, 54; on the beginning of the
Sepher Toldoth Jeschua, the, 85
world, 31 ; on the decay of the
Sheffield Daily Telegraph, the, on
Churches, 15 ; on Monism, 18 ; on
Haeckel, 11
the origin of man, 51 ; rejects dualism,
Smyth, the Rev. Newman, 14, 36, 37,
47> 5L 7°, 72 >on immortality, 66, 67 ;
77
Wilson, the Rev. Archdeacon, 87
on tbe origin of life, 39
Soul of the atom or cell, 54
Winchell, Dr., 14
Woman and Christianity, 96
Sound, nature of, 27
Wundt, 17
Spain, condition of, 94
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nationalsecularsociety
HUMAN ORIGINS
�WORKS B y SAMUEL LAING
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
A MODERN ZOROASTRIAN.
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�HUMAN ORIGINS
BY
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��CONTENTS
Introduction -
PART I.—EVIDENCE FROM HISTORY
CHAPTER I.
Egypt -------
9
CHAPTER II.
Chald.la
......
22
CHAPTER III.
Other Historical Records
30
CHAPTER IV.
Ancient Religions
-
43
CHAPTER V.
Ancient Science
and
Art -
-
-
-
52
....
68
CHAPTER VI.
Prehistoric Traditions
CHAPTER VII.
The Historical Element
in the
Old Testament
■
PART II.—EVIDENCE FROM SCIENCE
CHAPTER VIII.
Geology and Palaeontology
94
CHAPTER IX.
Quaternary Man
105
CHAPTER X.
114
Tertiary Man
CHAPTER XI.
Races of Mankind •
132
�*
�INTRODUCTION
The reception which has been given to
ffiy former works leads me to believe
that they have had a certain educa
tional value for those who, not being
specialists, wish to keep themselves
abreast of the culture of the day, and
to understand the leading results and
pending problems of Modern Science.
Of these results the most interesting are
those which bear upon the origin and
evolution of the human race. Thus far, I
have treated this question mainly from the
point of view of geology and palaeontology,
and have hardly touched on the province
which lies nearest to us, that of history
and of prehistoric traditions. In this
province, however, a revolution has been
effected by modern discoveries, which
is no less important than that made by
geological research and by the general
doctrine of Evolution.
Down to the middle of the last
century, and the belief is far from
extinct, the Hebrew Bible was held to
be the sole and sufficient authority as
to the early history of the human race.
It was believed, with a certainty which
made doubt impious, that the first man
Adam was created in the year 4004
B,C., or not quite 6,000 years ago; and
that 1,656 years later all human and
Other life, with the exception of Noah
and his wife, their sons and their wives,
and pairs of all living creatures, by whom
the earth was repeopled from the moun
tain-peak of Ararat as a centre, were
destroyed by a universal Deluge.
The latest researches bring to light
the existence of uninterrupted historical
records, confirmed by contemporary
monuments, carrying history back fully
3,000 years before the supposed Creation
of Man, and showing even then no trace
of a commencement; but populous cities,
celebrated temples, great engineering
works, and a high state of the arts and
of civilisation already existing. This is
of the highest interest, both as bearing
on the dogma of the inspiration of
the Bible, and on the still more im
portant question of the true theory
of man’s origin and relations to the
universe. The so-called conflict between
Religion and Science is at bottom one
between two conflicting theories of
the universe—the first that it is the
creation of a personal God who constantly
interferes by miracles to correct His
original work; the second, that whether
the First Cause be a personal God or some
Power inscrutable to human faculties, the
work was originally so perfect that the
whole succession of subsequent events
has followed by Evolution acting by
invariable laws. The former is the theory
of orthodox believers, the latter that of
men of science, and of liberal theologians
who, like the late Archbishop Temple, find
that the theory of “ original impress ” is
more in accordance with the idea of an
Omnipotent and Omniscient Creator,
to whom “ a thousand years are
as a day,” than the traditional theory
of a Creator who constantly intervenes
�8
INTRODUCTION
to supplement and amend His original
Creation
by supernatural
interfer
ences.
It is evidently important for all who
desire to arrive at truth, and to keep
abreast of the culture of the day, to have
some clear conception of what historical
and geological records really teach, and
what sort of a standard or measur
ing-rod they supply in helping us to
carry back our researches into the
depths of prehistoric and of geological
time.
I have therefore in this work begun
with the historic period, as giving us a
standard of time by which to gauge
the vastly longer periods which lie
behind, and have advanced from this
by successive steps through the Neoli
thic and Palaeolithic ages, and the
Quaternary and Tertiary periods, so far
as the most recent discoveries throw
any light on the mysterious question of
Human Origins.
If I have succeeded in stimulating
some minds, especially those of my
younger readers, and of the working
classes who are striving after culture, to
feel an interest in these subjects, and to
pursue them further, my object will have
been attained. They have been to me
the solace of a long life, the delight of
many quiet days, and the soother of
many troubled ones; and I should be
glad to think that I had been the means,
however humble, of introducing to others
what I have found such a source of
enjoyment, and enlisting, if it were only
a few, in the service of that “ divine
Philosophy ” in which I have ever found,
as Wordsworth did in Nature,
“The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.”
�/
HUMAN ORIGINS
PART I.—EVIDENCE FROM HISTORY
CHAPTER I.
EGYPT
Historical Standard of Time—Short Date incon
sistent with Evolution—Laws of Historical
Evidence—-History begins with Authentic
Records—Records of Egypt—Manetho’s Lists
—Confirmed by Hieroglyphics—Origin of
Writing—The Alphabet—Phonetic Writing—Clue to Hieroglyphics—The Rosetta Stone
—Champoilion—Principles of Hieroglyphic
Writings—Language Coptic—Can be read
with certainty—Confirmed by Monuments
—Old, Middle, and New Empires—Old
Empire to end of Sixth Dynasty—Break be
tween Old and Middle Empires—Works of
Twelfth Dynasty—Fayoum—Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Dynasties—Hyksos Conquests—Duration of Hyksos Rule—Their Expulsion
and Foundation of New Empire—Conquests
in Asia of Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Dynasties—Wars with Hittites and Assyrians
—Persian and Greek Dynasties—Period prior
to Menes—-Horsheshu—Sphinx—Stone Age
—Neolithic and Palaeolithic Remains—Horner,
Haynes, Pitt-Rivers, and Flinders Petrie.
In measuring the dimensions of space we
have to start from some fixed standard,
Such as the foot or yard, taken originally
from the experience of our ordinary senses
and capable of accurate verification. From
this we arrive by successive inductions at
the size of the earth, the distance of the
sun, moon, and planets, and finally at the
parallax of a few of the so-called “ fixed ”
Stars. So in speculations as to the origin
and evolution of the human race, history
affords the standard from which we start,
through the successive stages of pre
historic, neolithic, and palaeolithic man,
until we pass into the wider ranges of geo
logical time.
Any error in theoriginal standard becomes
magnified indefinitely, whether in space or
time, as we extend our researches back
wards into remoter regions.
Thus whether the authentic records of
history extend only for some 4,500 years
backwards from the present time to the
scriptural date of Noah’s flood, as was
universally assumed to be the case until
quite recently ; or whether, as these appear
to warrant, Egyptian and Chaldaean records
carry us back for 9,000 or 10,000 years, and
show us then a highly advanced civilisation
already existing, makes a wonderful differ
ence in the standpoint from which we view
the course of human evolution.
To begin with, a short date necessitates
supernatural interferences. It is quite im
possible that if man and all animal life
were created only about 4,000 years B.C.,
and were then all destroyed save the few
pairs saved in Noah’s ark, and made a
fresh start from a single centre some 1,500
years later, there can be any truth in
Darwin’s theory of evolution. We know
for a certainty, from the concurrent testi
mony of all history, and from Egyptian
monuments, that the different races of men
and animals were in existence certainly
7,000 years ago as they are at the present
day; and that no fresh creations or marked
changes of type have taken place during
that period. If, then, all these types, and
all the different races and nations of men,
sprung up in the interval of less than 1,000
years, which is the longest that can by any
possibility be allowed between the Biblical
date of the Deluge and the clash of the
mighty monarchies of Assyria and Egypt
in Palestine, the date of which is proved
both by the Bible and by profane historians,
it is obviously impossible that such a state
of things could have been brought about by
natural causes.
But if authentic historical records cany
us back not for 3,000 or 4,000, but for 9,000
or 10,000 years, and then show no trace of
a beginning, the case is altered, and we
may assume the lapse of vast periods,
through historical, prehistoric, neolithic,
and palaeolithic ages, during which evolu
tion may have operated. It is of the first
importance, therefore, to inquire what these
records really teach in the light of modem
�IO
HUMAN ORIGINS
research, and what is the evidence for the
longer dates which are now generally ac
cepted.
Furnished with such a measuring-rod, it
becomes easier to attempt to bring into
some sort of co-ordination the vast mass of
facts which have been accumulated in
recent years as to prehistoric, neolithic,
and palaeolithic man ; and also the facts
respecting the origin, antiquity, and early
history of the human race, which have
come in from other sciences, such as astro
nomy, palaeontology, zoology, and philology.
To do this exhaustively would be an en
cyclopaedic task, which I do not pretend to
accomplish; but I am not without hope that
the following chapters, connected as they
are by the one leading idea of tracing
human origins backward to their source,
may assist inquiry, and create an interest
in this most fascinating of all questions,
especially among the young who are
striving after knowledge, and the millions
who, not having the time and opportunity
for reading technical works, desire to keep
themselves abreast of modern thought and
of the advanced culture of the nineteenth
century.
Before examining these records in detail
it is well to begin with the general laws
upon which historical evidence is based.
History begins with writings. All experi
ence shows that what may be transmitted
by memory and word of mouth consists
mainly of hymns and portions of ritual,
such as the Vedas of the Hindoos ; and to
a certain extent of heroic poems and ballads.
Moreover, the capacity of the memory is
limited. Further, the historical element in
these is so overlaid by mythology and
poetry that it is impossible to discriminate
between fact and fancy. Thus the legend
of Hercules is evidently in the main a solar
myth, and his twelve labours are related to
the signs of the zodiac; but it is possible
that there may have been a real Hercules,
the actual or eponymic ancestor of the
tribe of Heraclides. So, at a later period,
the descent of the Romans from the pious
Himeas, and of the Britons from another
Trojan hero Brute, are obviously fabulous ;
and, at a still more recent date, our own
Arthurian legends are evidently a mediaeval
romance, though it is possible that there
may have been a chief of that name of the
Christianised Romano-Britons,whoopposed
a gallant resistance to the flood of Saxon
invasion.
But to make real history we require
somethingvery different; concurrent and un
interrupted testimony of credible historians;
exclusion of impossible and obviously fabui
lous dates and events ; and, above all, con
temporary records, written or engraved on
tombs, temples, and monuments, or preserved in papyri or clay cylinders.
Another remark is, that these authentic
records of early history begin to appear
only when civilisation is so far advanced as
to have established powerful dynasties and
priestly organisations. The history of a
nation is at first the history of its kings,
and its records are enumerations of their
genealogies, successive reigns, foundation
or repair of temples, great industrial works,
and warlike exploits. These are made and
preserved by special castes of priestly
colleges and learned scribes, and they are
to a great extent precise in date and accu
rate in statement. Before the establishment
of such historical dynasties we have nothing
but legends and traditions, which are vague
and mythical, the mythological element
rapidly predominating as we go backwards
in time, until we soon arrive at reigns of gods,
and lives of thousands of years. But as
we approach the period of historical dynas
ties the mythological element diminishes,
and we pass from gods reigning 10,000
years, and patriarchs living to 900, to later
patriarchs living 150 or 200 years, and
finally to mortal men living, and kings
reigning, to natural ages.
In fact, with the first appearance of
authentic records the supernatural dis
appears, the average duration of lives,
reigns, and dynasties, and the general
course of events, are much the same as at
present, and fully confirm the statement of
the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, that
during the long succession of ages of the
345 high priests of Heliopolis, whose statues
they showed him in the great temple of the
sun, there had been, no change in the
length of human life or in the course of
nature, and each one of the 345 had been a
ftiromiS'W. mortal man,the son of a piromis.
The first question is how far back these
authentic historical records can be traced,
and to this, if we except the less precise
evidence from the inscribed tablets un
earthed at Nippur in Northern Babylonia,
Egypt affords the first answer.
The first step in the inquiry as to Egyptian
antiquity is afforded by the history of
Manetho. Ptolemy Philadelphus, whose
reign began 286 B.C., was an enlightened
king. He founded the great Alexandrian
library, and was specially curious in col
lecting everything which bore on the early
�EGYPT
ir
history of his own and other countries. which had reached Ionian Greece of the
With this view he had the Greek trans perhaps over-vaunted splendours of the
lation, known as the Septuagint, made of nineteenth dynasty. Herodotus visited
the sacred books of the Hebrews, and he Egypt about 450 B.C., and wrote a descrip
commissioned Manetho to compile a history tion of it from what he saw and heard. It
of Egypt from the earliest times, from the contains a good deal of valuable informa
most authentic temple records and other tion, for he was a shrewd observer. But
sources of information. Manetho was he was credulous, and not very critical in
eminently qualified for such a task, being a distinguishing between fact and fable ; and
learned and judicious man, and a priest of it is evident that his sources of information
Sebennytus, one of the oldest and most were often not much better than vague
popular traditions, or the tales told by
famous temples.
The history of Manetho is unfortunately guides, while even the more authentic
■lost, being probably the greatest loss the information is so disconnected and mixed
world has sustained by the burning of the with fable that it can hardly be accepted
Alexandrian library; but fragments of it as material for history. As far as it goes,
have been preserved in the works of however, it tends to confirm Manetho, as,
Josephus, Eusebius, Julius Africanus, and for instance, in giving the names correctly
Syncellus, among whom Eusebius and of the kings who built the three great
Africanus profess to give Manetho’s lists pyramids, and in saying that he saw the
and dates of dynasties and kings from the statues of 342 successive high priests of the
first king Menes down to the conquest of great Temple of Heliopolis, which corres
Alexander the Great in 332 B.c. With the pond very well with Manetho’s lists of 370
curious want of critical faculty in almost kings.
Diodorus gives us very much the same
all the Christian fathers, these extracts,
though professing to be quotations from narratives as those of Herodotus ; and, on
the same book, contain many inconsis the whole, we have to fall back on Manetho
tencies, and in several instances they have as the only authority for anything like
obviously been tampered with, especially precise dates and connected history.
Manetho’s dates, however, were so in
by Eusebius, in order to bring their
chronology more in accordance with that consistent with preconceived ideas based
of the Old Testament. But enough remains on the chronology of the Bible that they
to show that Manetho’s lists comprised were universally thought to be fabulous.
thirty-one dynasties and about 370 kings, They were believed either to represent the
whose successive reigns extended over a exaggerations of Egyptian priests desirous
period of about 5,500 years, from the of magnifying the antiquity of their country,
accession of Menes to the conquest of or, if historical, to give in succession the
Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 B.c., names of a number of kings and dynasties
making the date of the first historical king who had really reigned simultaneously in
who united Upper and Lower Egypt, about different provinces. So stood the question
4800 B.C. There may be some doubt as to until the discovery of reading hieroglyphics
the precise dates, for the lists of Manetho enabled us to test the accuracy of
have obviously been tampered with to some
Manetho’s lists by the light of contem
extent by the Christian fathers who quoted porary monuments and manuscripts. This
them ; but there can be no doubt that his discovery is of such supreme importance
■Original work assigned an antiquity to that it may be well to show how it was
Menes of over 5,500 B.c.
made, and the demonstration on which it
The only other documentary information
rests.
a-s to the history of Ancient Egypt was
Reading presupposes writing, as writing
gleaned from references in the works of presupposes speech. Ideas are conveyed
Josephus and of Greek authors, especially
from one mind to another in speech through
Homer, Herodotus, and Diodorus Siculus.
the ear, in writing through the eye. The
Josephus, in his Antiquity of the Jews,
origin of the latter method is doubtless to
quotes passages from Manetho; but they
be found in picture-Writing. The palaeolithic
extend only to the period of the Hyksos
savage who drew a mammoth with the
invasion, the Captivity of the Jews, and
point of a flint on a piece of ivory was
the Exodus, which are all comparatively
attempting to write, in his rude way, a
recent events in Manetho’s annals. Ho record of some memorable chase. And
mer’s account of hundred-gated Thebes
the accounts of the old Empires of Mexico
does not carry us back beyond the echo
and Peru which were extant at the time cf
�12
HUMAN ORIGINS
the Spanish Conquest show that a con
siderable amount of civilisation can be
attained and information conveyed by the
pictorial method. But for the purpose of
historical record more is required. It is
essential to have a system of signs and
symbols which shall be generally under
stood, and by which knowledge shall be
handed down unchanged to successive
generations. All experience shows that,
before knowledge is thus fixed and re
corded, anything that may be transmitted
by memory and word of mouth fades off
into myth, and leaves no certain record of
time, place, and circumstance. A few
religious hymns and prayers like those of
the Vedas, a few heroic ballads like those
of Homer, a few genealogies like those of
Agamemnon or Abraham, may be thus
preserved, but nothing definite or accurate
in the way of fact and date. History,
therefore, is secured by writing, and writing
begins with the invention of fixed signs to
represent words. A system of writing is
possible, like the Chinese, in which each
separate word has its own separate sign ;
but this is extremely cumbrous, and quite
unintelligible to those who have not a
living key to explain the meaning of each
symbol. It is calculated that an educated
Chinese has to learn by heart the meaning
of some 15,000 separate signs before he
can read and write correctly. We have a
trace of this ideographic system in our own
language, as where arbitrary signs such as
1, 2, 3, represent not the sounds of one,
two, and three, but the ideas conveyed by
them. But, for all practical purposes, in
telligible writing has to be phonetic—that
is, representing spoken words, not by the
ideas they convey, but by the sounds of
which they are composed. In other words,
there must be an Alphabet.
The alphabet is the first lesson of child
hood, and it seems such a simple thing that
we are apt to forget that it is one of the
most important and original inventions of
the human intellect. To some genius,
musing on the meaning of spoken words,
there came the wonderful conception
that they might all be resolved, into a
few simple sounds. To make this more
easily intelligible, I will suppose the illus
trations to be taken from our own language.
“Dog” and “dig” express very different
ideas ; but a little reflection will show that
the primary sounds made by the tongue,
teeth, and palate, viz. ‘d’ and ‘g,’ are
the same in each, and that they differonly
by a slight variation in the soft breathing
or vowel, which connects them and renders
them vocal. The next step would be to
see that such words as “ good ” or “ God
consisted of the same root-sounds, only
transposed and connected with a slight
vowel difference. Pursuing the analysis,
it would finally be discovered that the
many thousand words of spoken language
could all be resolved into a very small
number of radical sounds, each of which
might be represented and suggested to the
mind through the eye instead of the ear by
some conventional sign or symbol. Here
is the alphabet, and here the art of writing.
The mysterious and magical character
with which the written signs were invested
was associated with legends that writing
was an invention of some god or culture
hero. Thus in Egypt, Thoth the Second,
known to the Greeks as Hermes Trismegistus, a fabulous demi-god of the period
succeeding the reign of the great gods, is
said to have invented the alphabet and the
art of writing.
The analysis of primary sounds varies, a
little in different times and countries in
order to suit peculiarities in the pronuncia
tion of different races, and convenience in
writing ; but about sixteen primitive sounds,
which is the number of the letters of the first
alphabet brought by Cadmus, so the
tradition runs, from Phoenicia to Greece,
are always its basis. In our own alphabet
it is easy to see that it is not formed on
strictly scientific principles, some of the
letters being redundant. Thus the soft
sound of ‘ c ’ is expressed by. ‘ s,’ and the
hard sound by ‘k’ ; and ‘x’ is an abbre
viation of three other letters, ‘ eks.’ Some
letters also express sounds which run so
closely into one another that in some
alphabets they are not distinguished, as ‘ f ’
and ‘v,’ ‘d’ and ‘t,’ ‘1’ and ‘r.’ Then,
some races have guttural and other sounds,
such as ‘kh’ and ‘ sj,’ which occur so
frequently as to require separate signs,
while they baffle the vocal organs of other
races ; and in some cases syllables which
frequently occur, instead of being spelt out
alphabetically, are represented by single
signs. But these are mere details ; the
question substantially is this—if a collec
tion of unknown signs is phonetic, and we
can get any clue to its alphabet, it can
be read ; if not, it must remain a sealed
book.
.
To apply this to hieroglyphics : it had
been long known that the monuments of
ancient Egypt were carved with.mysterious
figures, representing birds, animals, and
�EGYPT
13
stration, a great deal of ingenuity and
patient research were required.
The
principle upon which all interpretation of
unknown signs rests may be most easily
understood by taking an illustration from
our own language. The first step in the
problem is to know whether these un
known signs are ideographic or phonetic.
Thus, if we have two groups of signs,
one of which, we have reason to know,
stands for “Ptolemy” and the other for
“ Cleopatra,” if they are phonetic, the first
sign in Ptolemy will correspond with the
fifth in Cleopatra ; the second with the
seventh, the third with the fourth, the
fourth with the second,
and the fifth with the
third; and we shall
have established five
letters of the unknown
alphabet, ‘p, t, o, 1,’
and ‘ e.’ Other names
will give other letters,
as if we know “ Arsinoe ” its comparison
with “ Cleopatra ” will
give ‘ a5 and ‘ r,’ and
confirm the former in
duction as to ‘o’ and
‘e.’
And it will be ex
tremely probable that
the two last signs in
Ptolemy represent ‘ m ’
and ‘ y ’; the first in
the Cleopatra ‘c’; and
the third, fourth, and
fifth in Arsinoe, ‘ s, i,’
and ‘ n.’ Suppose now
that we find in an in
TABLET OF SENEFERU AT WADY MAGERAH.
scription on an ancient
(The oldest inscription in the world, probably 6,000 years old. The king conquering temple at Thebes a
an Arabian or Asiatic enemy.)
°
name which begins
with our known sign
army, when the French were driven out of for ‘ r,’ followed by our known ‘ a,’ then
Egypt, and is now lodged at the British by our conjectural ‘ m,’ then by the
Museum. It bears three inscriptions, one sign which we find third in Arsinoe,
in hieroglyphics, the second in the demotic or ‘ s,’ then by our known ‘ e,’ and
Egyptian character employed for popular ending with a repetition of ‘ s,’ we have no
use, and the third in Greek. The Greek difficulty in reading “ Ramses,” and identi
inscription records a meeting of the Priests fying it with one of the kings of that name
at Memphis in honour of Ptolemy V. mentioned by Manetho as reigningat Thebes.
Epiphanes, B.c. 195.
It sets forth the The identification of letters was facilitated
many good deeds of that king, and a by the custom of enclosing the names of
decree that his statue be erected in every kings in what is called a cartouche or oval.
temple of Egypt. It was an obvious con
Seneferu is the name of the king of the
jecture that the two Egyptian inscriptions fourth dynasty, who reigned about 4,000
were to the same effect, and that the Greek B.c., or about a century before the building
was a literal translation of this. To turn of the Great Pyramids. The tablet was found
this conjecture, however, into a demon at the copper mines of Wady Magerah,
Other natural objects ; but all clue to their
meaning had been lost. It seemed more
natural to suppose that they were ideo
graphic ; that a lion, for instance, repre
sented a real lion, or some quality asso
ciated with him, such as fierceness, valour,
and kingly aspect, rather than that his
picture stood simply for our letter- ‘1.’
The long-desired clue was afforded by the
famous Rosetta stone. This is a mutilated
Mock of black basalt, which was dis
covered in 1799 by an engineer officer of the
French expedition, in digging the founda
tions of a fort near Rosetta. It was cap
tured, with other trophies, by the British
�14
HUMAN ORIGINS
in the peninsula of Sinai, and represents
the victory of the king over an Arabian or
Asiatic enemy.
The first step towards the decipherment
of the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta stone
was made in 1819 by Dr. Young, one of the
most ingenious and original thinkers of the
nineteenth century, and also famous as the
first propounder of the undulatory theory
of light. In both cases he indicated the
right path and laid down the correct prin
ciples, but the development of his theories
was reserved for two Frenchmen ; Fresnel
in the case of Light, and Champoilion in
that of Hieroglyphics. The latter task was
one which required immense patience and
ingenuity, for the hieroglyphic alphabet
turned out to be one of great complexity.
Many of the signs were not only phonetic,
but also ideographic or determinative;
some of them stood for syllables, not
letters ; while the letters themselves were
not represented, as in modern languages,
each by a single sign or at most by
two signs, as A and a, but by several dif
ferent signs. The Egyptian alphabet was,
in fact, constructed very much as young
children often learn theirs, by—
A was an apple-pie,
B bit it,
C cut it;
with this difference, that several objects,
whose names begin with A and other
letters, might be used to represent them.
Thus some of the hieroglyphic letters had
as many as twenty-five different signs or
homophones. It is as if we could write for
‘ a ’ the picture either of an apple, or of an
ass, archer, arrow, anchor, or any word
beginning with ‘ a.’
.
However, Champollion, with infinite
difficulty, and aided by the discovery of
fresh inscriptions, notably one on a small
obelisk in the island of P hilus, solved the
problem, and succeeded in producing a
complete alphabet of hieroglyphics com
prising all the various signs, thus enabling
us to translate every hieroglyphic sign into
its corresponding sound or spoken word.
The next question was, What did these
words mean, and could they be recognised
in any known language ? The answer to
this was easy. The Egyptians spoke
Egyptic, or, as it is, abbreviated Coptic, a
modern form of which is almost a living
language, and is preserved in translations
of the Bible still in use and studied by the
aid of Coptic dictionaries and grammars.
This enabled Champoilion to construct a
hieroglyphic dictionary and grammar,
which have been so completed by the
A.
B.
'A'.vS &
‘a'tfJ'W-.
a
A.ATOM
*•
s.
T
SPECIMEN OF HIEROGLYPHIC ALPHABET.
(From Champoilion’s Egypt.)
labours of subsequent Egyptologists that
it is not too much to say that any
inscription or manuscript in hieroglyphics
can be read with nearly as much certainty
as if it had been written in Greek or m
Hebrew.
.
-c- r u
The above illustrations from English
characters are only given as the simplest
way of conveying to the minds of those
who have had no previous acquaintance
with the subject, an idea of the nature of
the process and force of the evidence
upon which the decipherment of hiero
glyphic inscriptions is based. In reality
the process was far from being so simple.
Though many of the hieroglyphics are
phonetics, like our letters of the alphabet,
they are not all so, and many of them are
purely ideographic, as when we write 1, 2,
3, for one, two, and three. All writing began
with picture-writing, and each character
was originally a likeness of the object
which it was wished to represent. lhe
next stage was to use the character not
only for the material object, but as a
symbol for some abstract idea associated
with it. Thus the picture of a lion might
stand either for an actual lion, or for fierce
ness, courage, majesty, or other attribute
of the king of animals. In this way it
became possible to convey meanings to the
mind through the eye; but it involved both
an enormous number of characters and
the use of homophones—z.^., of single
characters standing for a number of
separate ideas. To obviate this, what are
called “determinatives” were invented—t.e.,
special signs affixed to characters or groups
of characters to determine the sense m
which they were to be taken. For instance,
the picture of a star (*) affixed to a group
of hieroglyphics may be used to denote
that they represent the name of a. god, o
some divine or heavenly attribute ; and the
picture of rippling water ~~----- t0„
that the group means something connected
�EGYPT
with water, as a sea or river. Beyond this
the Chinese have hardly gone, and it is
reckoned that it requires some 1,358
separate characters, or conventionalised
pictures, taken in distinct groups, to be
able to read and write correctly the 40,000
words in the Chinese language. Even for
the ordinary purposes of life a Chinaman,
instead of committing to memory twentysix letters of the alphabet, like an English
child, has to learn by heart some 6,000 or
7,000 groups of characters, often distin
guished only by slight dots and dashes.
Such a system is cumbrous in the extreme,
and involves spending many of the best
years of life in acquiring the first rudiments
of knowledge. Indeed, it is only possible
when not only writing but speech has been
arrested at the first stage of its development,
and a nation speaks a language of mono
syllables. In the case of Egypt and other
ancient nations the standpoint of writing
went further, and the symbolic pictures
came to represent phonograms—i.e., sounds
or spoken words instead of ideas or objects;
and these again were further analysed into
syllabaries, or the component articulate
sounds which make up words ; and these
finally into their ultimate elements of a few
simple sounds, or letters of an alphabet,
the various combinations of which will
express all the complex sounds or words of
a spoken language.
Now, in the hieroglyphic writing of
ancient Egypt, along with those pure
phonetics or letters of an alphabet, are
found numerous survivals of the older
systems from which they sprung; and
Champoilion, who first attempted the task
of forming a hieroglyphic dictionary and
grammar, had to contend with all the diffi
culties of ideograms, polyphones, determi
natives, and other obstacles.
Those who wish to pursue this interest
ing subject further will do well to read
Dr. Isaac Taylor’s History of the Alphabet,
and Sayce on the Science of Writing; but
for my present purpose it is sufficient to
establish the scientific certainty of the
process by which hieroglyphic texts are
read. With this key a vast mass of con
stantly accumulating evidence has been
brought to light, illustrating not only the
chronology and history of ancient Egypt,
but also its social and political condition,
its literature and religion, science and art.
The first question naturally was how far
the monuments confirmed or disproved the
lists of Manetho. Manetho was a learned
priest of a celebrated temple, who must
15
have had access to all the temple and royal
records and other literature of Egypt, and
who must have been also conversant with
foreign literature, to have been selected as
the best man to write a complete history
of his native country for the royal library
in Greek. Manetho’s lists of the reigns of
dynasties and kings, when summed up, show
a date of 5,867 B.c. for the foundation of
the united Egyptian Empire by Menes—a
date which is, of course, absolutely incon
sistent with those given by Genesis, not
only for the Deluge, but for 'the original
Creation.
It is evident that the monuments alone
could confirm or contradict these lists, and
give a solid basis for Egyptian chronology
and history. This has now been done to
such an extent that it may fairly be said
that Manetho has been confirmed, and it is
fully established that nearly all his kings
and dynasties are proved by monuments to
have existed, and that successively and not
simultaneously, so that in the case of Menes,
Professor Flinders Petrie is able to fix his
date at 4,777 B.c., “ with a possible error of
a century.”
Egyptian history is divided into three
periods—the Old, the Middle, and the
New Empires, the Old Empire dating
from the reign of Menes. But the result
of Professor Flinder Petrie’s excavations
in the Royal Tombs of the first Dynasties
has revealed the fact that there were kings
before Menes. It was no unimportant con
firmation of Manetho’s tables to have dis
covered the tomb and hieroglyph of that
monarch, but this yields in interest to Pro
fessor Petrie’s discovery of relics of at least
five predecessors. How far the historical
horizon in Egypt may yet be pushed, only
further diggings will show; but meantime
the Professor gives cogent reasons for belief
in the existence of no mean state of culture
many centuries before the time of Menes.
That ruler carried out a great work of
hydraulic engineering, by which the course
of the Nile was diverted, and a site ob
tained on its western banks for the new
capital of Memphis. His immediate suc
cessor is said to have written a celebrated
treatise on medicine; under Den-setui, the
fifth king of the first dynasty, art reached
to an extraordinary perfection ; while the
extremely life-like portrait-statues and
wooden statuettes, which were never
equalled in any subsequent Stage of
Egyptian art, and with which Chaldsea has
nothing to compare, date back to the fourth
dynasty.
�16
HUMAN ORIGINS
It is singular that this extremely ancient
period is the one of which, although the
oldest, we know most, for the monuments,
the papyri, and especially the tombs in the
great cemeteries of Sakkarah and Gizeh,
give us the fullest details of the political
and social life of Egypt during the fourth,
fifth, and sixth dynasties, with sufficient
information as to the first three dynasties
to check and confirm the lists of Manetho.
We really know the life of Memphis 6,000
years ago better than we do that of London
under the Saxon kings, or of Paris under
the descendants of Clovis.
The sixth dynasty was succeeded by a
period which seems to have been one of
civil war and anarchy, during which there
was a complete cessation of monuments.
If they existed, they have not yet been
discovered. The probable duration of this
PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH
eleventh dynasty the seat of empire is ]
established at Thebes, and the state of the
arts, religion, and civilisation is different
and much ruder than it was at the close
of the great Memphite Empire with the
sixth dynasty. Mariette says ? “When
Egypt, with the eleventh dynasty, awoke
from its long sleep, the ancient traditions
were forgotten. The proper names of the
kings and ancient nobility, the titles of the
high functionaries, the style of the hieroglyphic writing, and even the religion, all
seemed new. The monuments are rude,
primitive, and sometimes even barbarous,
and to see them one would be inclined to
think that Egypt under the eleventh dynasty
was beginning again the period of infancy*
which it had already passed through 1,500
years earlier under the third.” The tomb
I of one of these kings of the eleventh
and sphinx.
eclipse of Egyptian records is somewhat
uncertain, as we cannot be sure, in the
absence of monuments, that the four dynas
ties of short reigns assigned to the interval
between the sixth and the eleventh dynas
ties by Manetho, and the numerous names
of unknown kings on the tablets, weie suc
cessive sovereigns who reigned over united
Egypt, or local chiefs who got possession of
power in different parts of the Empire. All
we can see is that the supremacy of Mem
phis declined, and that its last great dynasty
was replaced, either in whole or in part, by
a rebellion in Upper Egypt which intro
duced two dynasties whose seat was at
Heracleopolis on the Middle Nile. In any
case the duration of this period must have
been very long, for the eclipse was veiy
complete, and when we once more find our
selves in the presence of records m the
(From Champollion’s Egypt.)
dynasty, Antef I., is remarkable as show-1
ing on a funeral pillar the sportsman-king ■
surrounded by his four favourite dogs,?
whose names are given. They are of dif
ferent breeds, from a large greyhound to &
small turnspit.
However, the chronology of this eleventh
dynasty is well attested, its kings are known,
and under them Upper and Lower Egypt
were once more consolidated into a single
State, forming what is known as the Middle
Empire. Under the twelfth dynasty, which
succeeded it, this Empire bloomed rapidly
into one of the greatest and most glorious
periods of Egyptian history. The dynasty
only lasted for 213 years, under seven kings,
whose names were all either Amenemna|
or Usertsen ; but during their reigns the
frontiers of Egypt were extended far; to the
south. Nubia was incorporated with thi
�EGYPT
17
Empire, and Egyptian influence extended firm the general accuracy of Manetho’s
over the whole Soudan, and perhaps nearly statements. A colossal statue of the twentyto the equator on the one hand, and over• fourth or twenty-fifth king, Sebekhetep VI.,
I Southern Syria on the other. But the found on the island of Argo near Dongola,
dynasty was still more famous for the arts1 shows that the frontier fixed by the con
of peace.
quests of Amenemhat at Semneh had not
One of the greatest works of hydraulic only been maintained, but extended nearly
j engineering which the world has seen was fifty leagues to the south into the heart of
carried out by Amenemhat III., who took Ethiopia; and another statue found at
advantage of a depression in the desert Tanis shows that the rule of this dynasty
limestone near the basin of Fayoum to was firmly established in Lower Egypt.
I form a large artificial lake connected with But the scarcity of the monuments, and the
L the Nile by canals, tunnelled through rocky inferior execution of the works of art, show
ridges and provided with sluices, so as to that this long dynasty was one of gradual
admit the water when the river rose too decline ; while the rise of the next, or four
high, and let it out when it fell too low, and teenth, dynasty at Xois, transferring the
I thus regulate the inundation of a great part seat of power from Thebes to the Delta,
■of Middle and Lower Egypt, independently points to civil wars and revolutions.
of the seasons. Connected with this Lake
Manetho assigns seventy-five kings and
Moerjs was the famous Labyrinth, which 484 years to the fourteenth dynasty, and it
I Herodotus pronounced to be a greater is to this period that a good deal of uncer
wonder than even the great Pyramid. It tainty attaches, for there are no monuments
was a vast square building erected on a and nothing to confirm Manetho’s lists’
Small plateau on the east side of the lake, except a number of unknown names of
. constructed of blocks of granite which must kings of the dynasty enumerated amon«have been brought from Syene ; it had a the royal ancestors in the Papyrus of Turin5
f facade of white limestone; and contained What is certain is that the Middle Empire
in the interior a vast number of small sank rapidly into a state of anarchy and
Square chambers and vaults—Herodotus impotence, which prepared the way for a
| says 3,000—each roofed with a single large great catastrophe. This catastrophe came
slab of stone, and connected by narrow m the form of an invasion of foreigners
• ’ passages, so intricate that a stranger enter who, about 2000 B.C., broke through the
ing without a clue would be infallibly lost. eastern frontier of the Delta, and apparently
The object Seems to have been to provide without much resistance conquered the
a safe repository for statues of gods and whole of Lower Egypt up to Memphis, and
kings and other precious objects. In the 1 educed the princes of the Upper Provinces
■ centre was a court containing twelve to a state of vassalage. There is consider
hypostyle chapels, six facing the south and able doubt as to what race these invaders
six the north, and at the north angle of the who were known as Hyksos, or Shepherd
- square was a pyramid of brick faced with Kings, belonged. They consisted, so some
f stone forming the tomb of Amenemhat III. conjecture, mainly of nomad tribes of
. In addition to this colossal work, the Canaanites, Arabians, and other Semitic
kings of this dynasty built and restored races ; but the Hittites seem to have been
many of the most famous temples, and associated with them, and the leaders to
erected statues and obelisks, among the have been Mongolian, judging from the
latter the one now standing at Heliopolis. portrait-statues of two of the later kings
It was also an age of great literary activity,' of the Hyksos dynasty which have
i and the biographies of many of the priests,
been recently
nobles, and high officers, inscribed on their Bubastis, and discovered by Naville at
which are unmistakably
tombs and recorded in papyri, give us the of that type. Our information as to
f most minute knowledge of the history and this Hyksos conquest is derived mainly
social life of this remote period.
from fragments of Manetho quoted by
I
The prosperity of Egypt during the Josephus, and from traditions repeated by
Middle Empire was continued under the Herodotus, and is very vague and imper
f thirteenth dynasty of sixty Theban kings, fect. But this much seems certain, that at
to whom Manetho assigns the period of first the Hyskos acted as savage bar
I, 453 years. Less is known of this period barians, burning cities, demolishing temples,
| than of the great twelfth dynasty which massacring part of the population and
I preceded it; but a sufficient number of reducing the rest to slavery. But, as in
monuments have been preserved to con the parallel case of the Tartar conquest of
�18
HUMAN ORIGINS
effaced, and those of later kings chiselled
over them ; but enough remains to show
that they were in the hieroglyphic character,
and the names of two or three Hyksos
kings can still be deciphered, among which
are two Apepis, the second probably the
last of the dynasty. It was perhaps under
one of these Hyksos kings that Joseph
came to Egypt and the tribes of I srael
settled on its eastern frontier. The dura
tion of the Hyksos rule is thus left m some ■
uncertainty; in fact, the history of the whole
period until the rise of the seventeenth
dynasty remains obscure. Manetho, if
correctly quoted by
Cr'
Josephus, says they
ruled over Egypt for
511 years (2098-1587
B.C.), though his lists
show only one dynasty
of 259 years, and then
the Theban dynasty,
which reigned over
Upper Egypt for 260
years contemporane
ously with Hyksos
kings in Lower Egypt.
We regain, however,
firm historical ground
with the rise of the
seventeenth Theban
dynasty of native
Egyptian kings, who
finally expelled the
Hyksos, after a IonJ
war, and founded what
is known as the New
Empire on the basis
of despotic rule. The
date of this event is
fixed by the best au
thorities at about 1587
B.C., and from this
time downwards we
FELLAH WOMAN AND HEAD OF SECOND HYKSOS STATUE.
have an uninterrupted
(From photograph by Naville in HarfieSs Magazine.-)
succession of un
doubted historical records, confirmed by
feature. At Bubastis two . colossal statues
contemporary monuments and by tne
of Hyksos kings, with their heads broken
annals of other nations, down to the
off, but one of them nearly perfect, were
Christian era. The reaction which fol
unexpectedly discovered by Naville m
lowed the expulsion of the Hyksos led
1887, and it was proved that they had
to campaigns in Asia on a great scale,
stood on each side of the entrance to an
in which Egypt came into collision with
addition made by those kings to the
powerful nations, and for a long time; was
ancient and celebrated temple of the the dominant power m Western Asia,
Egyptian goddess Bast, thus proving that
extending its conquests from the Per|ian|
the Hyksos had adopted not only the
Gulf to the Black Sea and Mediterranean,
civilisation, but also the religion of the
and receiving tribute from Babylon and
Egyptian nation. There are but few
Nineveh. Then followed wars,, waged on
inscriptions known of the Hyksos dynasty,
more equal terms, with the Hittites, who
for their cartouches have generally been
China, as time went on they adopted the
superior civilisation of their subjects, and
the later kings were transformed into
genuine Pharaohs, differing but little from
those of the old national dynasties. This
is conclusively proved by the discoveries
recently made at Tams and Bubastis,
which have revealed important monuments
of this dynasty. At Tanis an avenue of
sphinxes was discovered, resembling those
at Thebes and that of the Great Sphinx at
Gizeh, with lion bodies and human heads,
the latter with a different head-dress frorn
the Egyptian, and a different type o
�EGYPT
19
had founded a great empire in Asia Minor “Book of the Dead,” certainly date from
and Syria; and, as their power declined this period, and the great Temple of the
that of Assyria rose, with the long series
Sun at Heliopolis had been founded, for
of warlike Assyrian monarchs, who gradu we are told that certain prehistoric Helioally obtained the ascendancy, and not only politan hymns formed the basis of the
Stopped Egypt of its foreign conquests, sacred books of a later age. At Edfu the
but on more than one occasion invaded its later temple occupies the site of a very
territory and captured its principal cities. ancient structure, traditionally said to date
It is during this period that we find the back to the mythic reign of the gods, and
first of the certain synchronisms between to have been built according to a plan
Egyptian history and the Old Testament,
designed by Nuhotef, the son of Pthah.
(beginning with the capture of Jerusalem At Denderah an inscription found by
by Shishak in the reign of Rehoboam, and
Mariette in one of the crypts of the great
ending with the captivity of the Jews and
temple expressly identifies the earliest
temporary conquest of Egypt by Nebu sanctuary built upon the spot with the timechadrezzar. Then came
the Persian conquest by
Qambyses and alternate
periods of national inde
pendence and of Persian
rule, until the conquest of
Alexander and the estab
lishment of the dynasty of
the Ptolemies, which lasted
until the reign of Cleo
patra, and ended finally in
the annexation of Egypt
as a province of the Roman
Empire.
The history of this long
period is extremely in
teresting, as showing what
may be called the com
mencement of the modern
era of great wars, and of
the rise and fall of civi
lised empires ; but for the
present purpose I only
refer to it as helping to
establish the chrono
logical standard which I
am in search of as a
HYKSOS SPHINX.
measuring-rod to guage
(From photograph by Naville in Harpers Magazine.')
the duration of historical
time.
The glimpses of light into the pre of the Horsheshu. It reads: “There was
historic stages of Egyptian civilisation, found the great fundamental ordinance of
prior to the invasion of the country by the Denderah, written upon goat-skin in
Asiatic founders of the dynasties, are few ancient writing of the time of the Hor
and far between. We are told that before sheshu. It was found in the inside of a'
the consolidation of the Empire by Menes,
brick wall during the reign of King Pepi ”
Egypt was divided into a number of (z>., Pepi-Merira of the sixth dynasty).
separate nomes or provinces, each The name of Chufu or Cheops, the king of
gathered about its own independent city the fourth dynasty, who built the great
and temple, and ruled by the Shesu-Heru pyramid, was found by Naville in a
(or Horsheshu) or “Servants of Horus,” who restoration of part of the famous temple of
were apparently the chief priests of the Bubastis, and its foundation doubtless
respective temples, combining with the dates back to the same prehistoric period.
character of priest that of king, or local
But the most important prehistoric
ruler. Parts of the “Todtenbuch,” or monuments are those connected with the
�20
HUMAN ORIGINS
great Sphinx. An inscription of Chufu,
preserved, in the Museum of Boulak, says
that a temple adjoining the Sphinx, which
had been buried under the sand of the
desert, and forgotten for many generations,
was discovered by chance in his reign.
This temple was uncovered by Mariette,
and found to be constructed of enormous
blocks of granite of Syene and of alabaster,
supported by square pillars, each of a
single block of stone, without any mouldings
or ornaments, and no trace of hiero
glyphics. It is, in fact, a sort of transition
from the rude dolmen to scientific archi
tecture. But the masonry, and still more
the transport of such enormous blocks
from Syene to the plateau of the desert at
Gizeh, show a great advance already
attained in the resources of the country
and the state of the industrial arts. The
origin of the Sphinx is wrapped in mystery,
but it is mentioned on the above-named
inscription as being much older than the
great Pyramids, and as requiring repairs
in the time of Chufu. In addition to the
direct evidence for its prehistoric antiquity,
it is certain that, if such a monument had
'been erected by any of the historical kings,
it would have been inscribed with hiero
glyphics, and the fact recorded in
Manetho’s lists and contemporary records,
whereas all tradition of its origin seems to
have been lost in the night of ages.
It
is a gigantic work, consisting of natural
rock sculptured into the form of a lion’s
body with human head, this being the
incarnation which the Sun god Ra assumed
as protector of his friends and followers.
It is directed towards the east so as to face
the rising sun, and was an image of the
god Hormachis, the Sun of the Lower
World, the victor over darkness, the
approach to whose temple it guarded.
This appears to have been the object in
placing sphinxes before the temple
entrance.
In later centuries they were
placed near tombs for the same purpose.
Although there are no monuments of the
Stone Age in Egypt like those of the Swiss
lake villages and’ Danish kitchen-middens,
which enable us to trace in detail the
progress of arts and civilisation from rude
commencements through the neolithic and
prehistoric ages, there is abundant evi
dence to show that the same stages had
been traversed in the valley of the Nile
long prior to the time of Menes. _ Borings
have been made on various occasions and
at various localities through the alluvial
deposits of the Nile valley, from which
fragments of pottery have been brought up
from depths which show a high antiquity.
Horner sunk ninety-six shafts in four rows
at intervals of eight miles, across the valley
of the Nile, at right angles to the river
near Memphis, and brought up pottery
from various depths, which, at the known
rate of deposit of the Nile mud of about
three inches per century, indicate an
antiquity of at least 11,000 years. In
another boring a copper knife was brought
up from a depth of twenty-four feet, and
pottery from sixty feet below the surface.
This is specially interesting, as making it
probable that here, as in many other
countries, an age of copper preceded that
of bronze ; while a depth of sixty feet at the
normal rate of deposit would imply an
antiquity of 26,000 years.
Borings,
however, are not very conclusive, as it is
always open to contend that they may
have been made at spots where, owing
to some local circumstances, the deposit
was much more rapid than the average.
These objections, however, cannot apply
to the evidence which has been afforded
by the discovery of flint implements, both
of the neolithic and palaeolithic type,
in many localities and by various skilled
observers. Professor Haynes found, a few
miles east of Cairo, not only a number of
flint implements of the types usual in
Europe, but an actual workshop or manu
factory where they had been made, show
ing that they had not been imported, but
produced in the country in the course of
its native development. He also found
multitudes of worked flints of the ordinary
neolithic and palaeolithic types scattered oh
the hills near Thebes.
Lenormant and
Hamy saw the same workshop and remains
of the stone period; and various other finds
have been reported by other observers.
General Pitt-Rivers and Professor Haynes
found well-developed palaeolithic imple
ments of the St. Acheul type, not only on
the surface and in superficial deposits, but
from six and a half to ten feet deep in hard
stratified gravel at Djebel-Assas, near
Thebes, in a terrace on the side of one of
the ravines falling from the Libyan desert
into the Nile valley, which was certainly
deposited in early quaternary ages by a
torrent pouring down from a plateau wheie,
under existing geographical and climatic
conditions, rain seldom or never falls.
These relics, says Mr. Campbell, who
was associated with General Pitt-Rivers in
the discovery, are “beyond calculation
older than the oldest Egyptian temples
�EGYPT
21
and tombs,” and they certainly go far
to prove that the high civilisation of
Egypt at the earliest dawn of history
or tmlitron had been a plant of ex
tremely slow growth from a state of
brOvinciaiSaviigcr)-. Finally, on the
limestone plateau fourteen hundred feet
above the Nile, and situated thirty
iriilcs north of Thebes, Professor
Petrie found numbers of
btatlttfully*worked, and quite
unworn palaeoliths of exactly the same
as those found in the river
gravels K France and England.
The ethnology of Egypt is by no
^b-d, but authorities appear
tCftefipW- that the pre-dynastic race
akm to the Cushites, all of whom
ggWs a flight negro strain, infused at
a very remote date. We see these
ancient Egyptians depicted in wallpaintings as tall, spare, small-headed,
thick-lipped, and with high cheek-bones STATUE OF PRINCE RAHOTEP’s WIFE. (Refined type.)
(Gizeh Museum.—
•
, ,
and almond-shaped eyes: the men Meydoon.—AccordingDiscovered in
to the chronological table of
coloured dark red, and the women is 5,800 years old.-From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo.jj ’
coloured yellow. Then, at a period
whose date is ever being pushed back,
■teftWy by century, appear the invading
T6 b-eing sPelIed’ one bv
founders of the great and famous dynasties one°^nd
one, and their duration brought into harmony with the requirements
comparative chronology.
Phe language and system of
writing, when we first meet with
them, are fully formed and
apparently of native growth, nM
derived from any Semitic, Aryan
or Mongolian speech of any hi^
tori cal nation. It shows some
distant affinities with Scinitid
or rather with what may have
been a proto-Semitic, before it
had been fully formed, and is
perhaps nearer to what may
have been the primitive lan
guage of the Libyans of North'
Africa. But there is nothing in
the language from which we
can infer origin, and the pictures
from which hieroglyphics arederived are those of animals
and objects proper to the Nile
valley, and not like those of the
Akkadians and Chinese, which
point to a prehistoric nomad
existence on elevated plains.
For any further inquiries as to
the origin and. antiquity of
Egyptian civilisation we have to
KilUFV4N'Klt AND HIS SERVANTS—EARLY EGYPTIANS. '
fall back on the state of religion,
(Coarse type.)
science, literature, and art which
�22
HUMAN ORIGINS
inferred, except that it bore some general
resemblance to that of Genesis, until the
complete Chaldman Cosmogony was de
ciphered by Mr. George Smith from tablets
in the British Museum. These record a
mythical period of ten gods or demi-gods,
reigning for 432,000 years, in the middle of
which period the divine fish-man, Ea-Han
or Oannes, was said to have come-up out of
the Persian Gulf, and taught mankind
letters, sciences, laws, and all the arts of
civilisation. 259,000 years after Oannes,
under Xisuthros (the Greek translation of
Hasisastra), the last of the ten kings, a Deluge is said to have occurred, which is
described in terms so similar to the narra
CHAPTER II.
tive of Noah’s deluge in Genesis as to
leave no doubt that they are different
CHALD2EA
versions of the same legend, probably
derived from Akkadian sources.
Chronology—Berosus—His Dates mythical—
Prior to the appearance of Oannes, BeroDates in Genesis—Synchronisms with Egypt
sus relates “ that Chaldsea had been colo
and Assyria—Monuments-—Cuneiform In
nised by a mixed multitude of men of
scriptions—How deciphered -Behistan in
foreign race, who lived without order like
scription—Grotefend and Rawlinson Layard
animals,” thus carrying back the existence
—Library of Koyunjik—How preserved—
of mankind in large numbers to some date
Akkadian Translations and Grammars His
anterior to 259,000 years before the Deluge.
torical Dates — Elamite,. Conquest — Com
There is also a legend resembling that of
mencement of Modern History—-Ur-Ea and
the Tower of Babel and the confusion of
Dungi—Nabonidus—Sargon I., 3800. B.C.—
Ur of the Chaldees—Sharrukin’s Cylinder—
languages, recorded in another fragment
His Library—His son Naram-Sin—Semites
of Berosus. These accounts are all so
and Akkadians—Period before Sargon I.—
obviously mythical that no historical value
Patesi—De Sarzec’s find at Sirgalla—Gud-Ea,
can be attached to them, and they have
4000 to 4500 B.c.—Advance of Delta—
only been preserved because early Christian
Astronomical Records—Chaldaea and Egypt
writers saw in them some sort of distorted
give similar results—Historic Period. 8000 or
confirmation of the corresponding narra
9000 years—and no trace of a beginning.
tives in the Old Testament.
For anything like historical aates, there
■Chald/ean chronology has within the last
fore, the Bible remained the principal
few years been brought into the domain of
authority until the discoveries of monu
history, and carried back to a date as
ments of Chaldeea and Assyria. This
remote as that of Egypt. This has been
authority does not carry us very far back.
effected partly by the decipherment of an
The first event which can advance any
unknown language in inscriptions on
claim—and this is shadowy, because it as
ancient monuments, and partly by esti
sumes that the patriarchs are historical—to
mating the age of the deposits in which
serious attention is that of the migration of
inscribed tablets have been found. Until
Terah from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran,
recently the little that was known of . the
and the further migration of his son Abra
early history of Chaldma was derived
ham from Haran to Palestine. This is
almost entirely from two sources : the
said to have taken place m the ninth
Bible, and the fragments quoted by later
o-eneration after Noah, about 290 years
writers from the lost work of Berosus.
after the Deluge, and it presupposes the
Berosus was a learned priest of Babylon,
existence of a dense population and a num
who lived about 260 B.C., shortly after the
ber of large cities both in Upper and Lower
conquest of Alexander, and wrote in Greek
Mesopotamia. It mentions also an event
a history of the country from the most
as occurring in Abraham’s time—-viz., a
ancient times, compiled from the annals
campaign by Chedorlaomer, King of Elam,
preserved in the temples, and from the
with four allies, one of whom is. a King ot
oldest traditions. Among the fragments
Shinar, against five petty kings m Southein
of his work which have survived there is a
Syria. By some scholars Chedorlaomer
creation legend, from which little could be
we find prevailing in the earliest records
which have come down to us, and which I will
proceed to examine in subsequent chapters.
But before doing so I will endeavour to
exhaust the field of positive history, and
inquire how far the annals of other ancient
nations contradict or confirm the date of
about 4,700 years B.C., which has been
shown to be approximately that of the
accession of Menes,
�CHALDEA
has been identified from inscriptions with
Khuder-lagomer, one of the kings of the
I ^Elamite dynasty, who conquered Chaldaea
about 2300 B.C., and were expelled before
2000 B.C. But that equation has no
fr basis.
A long interval occurs during which the
scattered notices in the Bible relate mainly
to the intercourse of the Hebrews with
Egypt, with the races of Canaan, with the
Philistines, with the Phoenicians of Tyre,
Band with the Syrians of Damascus. Meso
potamia first appears after the rise of the
Assyrian Empire had united nearly the
whole of Western Asia under the warlike
kings who reigned at Nineveh, and when
Palestine had become the battlefield beBhveen them and the declining power of
Egypt, which under the eighteenth and
nineteenth Egyptian dynasties had extended to the Euphrates. The capture of
Jerusalem in the reign of Rehoboam by
fShishak has been referred to already as
■ affording the first certain synchronism
between sacred and profane history. The
date may be fixed within a few years at
! $70 B.C. Assyria first appears on the
scene two hundred years later in the reign
’ of Menahem King of Israel, when Pul,
better known as Tiglath-Pileser III., came
| against the land, and exacted a large
ransom from Menahem, whom he con
firmed as a tributary vassal.
From this time forward the succession of
I Assyrian kings is recorded more or less
accurately in the Bible. Tiglath-Pileser, who
had accepted vassalage and a large tribute
from Ahaz to come to his assistance
against Rezin King of Syria and Pekah
King of Israel, who were besieging
Jerusalem, captured and sacked Damascus.
Shalmaneser came up against Hosea
King of Judah, who submitted, but was
deposed for intriguing with Egypt; and
Shalmaneser then took Samaria and
carried the ten tribes of Israel away into
Assyria, placing them in the cities of the
Medes. Sennacherib, in the fourteenth
year of Hezekiah, took all the fenced cities
of Judah, and his general, Rab-shakeh,
besieged Jerusalem, which was saved by
the repulse of the main army under the
king when marching to invade Egypt.
The murder of Sennacherib by his two
sons and the succession of Esarhaddon
are next mentioned.
Nineveh then disappears from the scene
(about 600 B.c.), and the great Babylonian
Conqueror, Nebuchadrezzar, puts an end to
the kingdom of Judaea, by taking Jerusalem I
23
and carrying the people captive to Babylon.
This historical retrospect carries us back a
very short distance, and little can be
gathered in the way of accurate chronology
from the few vague references prior to this
date. So stood the question until the date
of Chaldaean history and civilisation was
unexpectedly pushed back at least 3,000
years by the discovery of its monuments.
When the first Assyrian sculptures were
found by Botta and Layard not fifty years
ago in the mounds of rubbish which
covered the ruins of Nineveh, and brought
home to Europe, it was seen that they
were covered with inscriptions in an
unknown character.’ It was called the
cuneiform, because it was made up of
combinations of a single sign, resembling
a thin wedge or arrow-head. This sign was
made in three fundamental ways—■/.<?., either
horizontal
vertical |, or angular^,
and all the characters were made up of
combinations of these primary forms,
which were obviously produced by im
pressing a style with a triangular head on
moist clay. They resembled, in fact, very
much the strokes and dashes used in
spelling out the words conveyed by the
electric telegraph, in which letters are
formed by oscillations of the needle.
This mode of writing had apparently
been developed from picture-writing, for
several of the groups of characters bore an
unmistakable resemblance to natural ob
jects. In the very oldest inscriptions
which have been discovered the writing is
hardly yet cuneiform, and the primitive
pictorial character of the signs is appa
rent.
But the bulk of the cuneiform inscrip
tions not being pictorial, there could be
little doubt that they were phonetic, or
represented sounds. The question was,
what sounds these characters signified,
and, when translated into sounds, what
words and what language did the groups
of signs represent ?
The first clue to these questions was, as
in the parallel case of Egypt, afforded by
a trilingual inscription. The kings of the
Persian Empire reigned over subjects of
various races and languages. The three
principal were the Persians, an Aryan race
who spoke an inflectional language which
has been preserved in old Persian and
Zend ; Semites, who spoke Aramaic, a lan
guage closely allied to Hebrew; and
descendants of the older Akkadian races,
whose language belonged to the Mongolic
group. Hence the necessity for the issue
�24
HUMAN ORIGINS
of edicts, and for the recording of inscrip
tions, in the three languages.
It is almost the same at the present day
in the same region,' where edicts or
inscriptions, to be readily intelligible to all
classes of subjects, would require to be
in Persian, Arabic, and Turkish.
In the case of decipherment of the ancient
inscriptions the difficulty was, however,
great, for, though in different languages,
they were all written in the same cuneiform
characters, so that the aid afforded in the
case of the Rosetta stone by a Greek
translation of the hieroglyphic inscription
was not forthcoming.
The ingenuity of a German scholar,
Grotefend, furnished the first clue by dis
covering that certain groups of signs repre
sented the names of known Persian kings,
and thus identifying the component signs
in the Persian inscription as letters of an
alphabet.
A few years later Sir Henry. Rawlinson
copied, and succeeded in deciphering, a
famous inscription, high up in the face of a
precipice forming the.wall of a narrow defile
at Behistun. It was in old Persian, Susian
or Median, and Babylonian, and had been
engraved by order of the great Persian
monarch, Darius the First, the exploits of
whose reign it recorded. The clue thus
afforded was rapidly followed up by a host
of scholars, among whom the names of
Rawlinson, Burnouf, Lassen, and Oppert
were most conspicuous, and before long the
text of inscriptions in Persian and Semitic
could be read with certainty. The task
was one which required a vast amount
of patience and ingenuity, for the cuneiform
writing turned out to be of great complexity.
Though phonetic in the main, the charac
ters did not always represent the simple
elements of sounds, or letters of an alpha
bet, but frequently syllables containing one
or more consonants united by vowels, while
a considerable number were ideographic
or conventional representations of ideas, like
our numerals, i, 2, 3, which, as already re
marked, have no relation to spoken sounds.
Thus the simple vertical wedge J repre
sented “ man,” and was prefixed to proper
names of kings, so as to show that the signs
which followed denoted the name of a man ;
the sign
denoted country, and so on.
The difficulties were, however, surmounted,
and inscriptions in the two known languages
could be read, with considerable certainty.
The third language, however, remained
unknown until the finishing stroke to its
decipherment was given by the discovery
by Layard under the great mound of
Koyunjik near Mosul on the Tigris (the
site of the ancient Nineveh), of the royal
palace of Assurbanipal, or Sardanapalus, ’ 1
the grandson of Sennacherib, and one of
the greatest Assyrian monarchs, who Oved
about 650 B.C. This palace contained a
royal library like that of Alexandria or the
British Museum, the contents of which had •
been carefully collected from the oldest
records of previous libraries and temples,
and almost miraculously preserved. The
secret of the preservation of these Assyrian
and Ch aidman remains is that the district
contains no stone, all the great build
ings being constructed mainly of sun-dried
bricks, and built on mounds or platforms of
the same material to raise them above the
alluvial plain. These, when the cities were
deserted, crumbled, under the action of
the air and rains, which are torrential at
certain seasons, into shapeless rubbish
heaps of fine dry dust and sand, under
which everything of more durable material
was securely buried.
So rapid was the process that when
Xenophon, on the famous retreat of the ten
thousand, traversed the site of Nineveh only
two hundred years after its destruction, he
found nothing but the ruins of a deserted
city, the very name and memory of which
had been lost.
As regards the contents of the library, the
explanation of their perfect preservation is
equally simple. The books were written,,
not on perishable paper or parchment, but'
on cylinders of clay. It is evident that the
cuneiform characters were exceedingly well
adapted for this description of writing, and
probably determined by the nature of the
material. A fine tenacious clay cost nothing,
was readily moulded into cylinders, and
when slightly moist was easily engraved by
a tool or style stamping on it those wedge
like characters, so that when hardened by
a slow fire the book was practically inde
structible. So much so, indeed, that though
the palace, including the library with its
shelves and upper stories, had all fallen to
the ground, and the book-cylinders lay
scattered on the floor, they were mostly in a
state of perfect preservation. Other similar
finds have been made since, notably one of
another great library of the priestly college
at Erech, founded or enlarged as far back
as 2000 B.C. by Sargon II. But far sur
passing these in importance are the 26,000,
tablets unearthed by Mr. Haynes, from the
great mounds of Nuffar, the site of the
�CHALDEEA
sacred city of Nippur, whose foundations
were laid six or seven thousand years B.C.
Among the books recovered there are for
tunately translations of old Akkadian works
ihto the more modern Aramaic or Assyrian,
either interlined or in parallel columns, and
also grammars and dictionaries of the old
language to assist in its study. It appears
that as far back as 2000 years B.C. this old
language had already become obsolete, and
was preserved as Latin or Vedic Sanscrit
is at the present day, in ritual, and as the
language of the sacred books, historical
annals, and astrological and magical for
mulas. The ancient Akkadian writing
can now be read with almost as much
certainty as Egyptian hieroglyphics, and
the records are accumulating rapidly
with every fresh exploration. They
present to us a most interesting picture
of the religion, literature, laws, and
social life of a period long antecedent to
that commonly assigned for the destruction
of the world by Noah’s Deluge, or even to
that of the creation of Adam. To some of
these we shall have occasion subsequently
to refer ; but for the present I confine
myself to the immediate object in view,
that of verifying the earliest historical
dates.
The first certain date is fixed by the
annals of the Assyrian King Assurbanipal,
grandson of Sennacherib, who conquered
Elam and destroyed its capital, Susa, in the
year 645 B.C. The king says that he took
away all the statues from the great temple
of Susa, and, among others, one of the
Chaldasan goddess Nana, which had been
carried away from her own temple in the
city of Erech, by a king of Elam who con
quered the land of Akkad 1,635 years before.
This conquest, and the accession of an
Elamite dynasty which lasted for nearly
300 years, is confirmed from a variety of
other sources, and its date is thus fixed,
beyond the possibility of a doubt, at 2280
B.C.
This Elamite conquest of Chaldeea is a
memorable historical era, for it inaugurates
the period of great wars and of the rise
and fall of empires, w’hich play such a con
spicuous part in the subsequent annals of
nations. Elam was a small province
between the Kurdish mountains and the
Tigris, extending to the Persian Gulf; and
its capital, Susa, was an ancient and famous
city, which afterwards became one of the
principal seats of the Persian monarchs.
The Elamites were originally a race, like
the Akkads, with Mongolian affinities, and
25
spoke a language which was a dialect of
Akkadian; but, as in Chaldsea and Assyria,
the kings and aristocracy appear to have
been Semites from an.early period. It was
apparently an organised and civilised State,
and the conquest was not a passing irrup
tion of barbarians, but the result of a cam
paign by regular troops, who founded a
dynasty which lasted for more than 200
years. It evidently disturbed the equi
librium of Western Asia, and led to a
succession of wars. The invasion of Egypt
by the Hyksos followed closely on it.
Then came the reaction which drove the
Elamites from Chaldsea and the Hyksos
from Egypt. Then the great wars of the
eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, which carried
the arms of Ahmes and Thotmes to the
Euphrates and Black Sea, and established
for a time the supremacy of Egypt over
Western Asia. Then the rise of the Hittite
Empire, which extended over Asia Minor,
and contended on equal terms with Ramses
11, in Syria. Then the rise of the Assyrian
Empire, which crushed the Hittites and all
surrounding nations, and twice conquered
and overran Egypt. Finally, the rise of
the Medes, the fall of Nineveh, the short
supremacy of Babylon, and the establish
ment of the great Persian Empire. From
the Persian we pass to the Greek, then
to the Roman Empire, and find ourselves
on the threshold of modern history. It
may be fairly said, therefore, that modern
history, with its series of greatwars and revo
lutions, commences with this record of the
Elamite conquest of Chaldcea in 2280 B.C.
The next tolerably certain date is that of
Ur-ea and his son Dungi, two kings of
the old Akkadian race, who reigned at
Ur over the united kingdoms of Sumir
and Akkad. They were great builders
and restorers of temples, and have left
numerous traces in the monuments both at
Ur and at Larsam, Sirgalla, Erech, and
other ancient cities. Among other relics
of these kings there is in the British
Museum the signet-cylinder of Ur-ea him
self, on which is engraved the Moon-God,,
the patron deity of Ur, with the king and
priests worshipping him. The date of
Ur-ea is ascertained as follows ; Nabonidus,
the last king of Babylon, 550 B.C., was a
great restorer of the,old temples, and, as
Professor Sayce says, “a zealous anti
quarian who busied himself much with the
disinterment of the memorial cylinders
which their founders and restorers had
buried beneath their foundations.” The
results of his discoveries he recorded on
�26
HUMAN ORIGINS
special cylinders for the information of
posterity, which have fortunately been pre
served. Among others he restored the
Sun-temple at Larsa, in which he found
intact in its chamber under the corner
stone a cylinder of King Hummurabi or
Khammuragas, stating that the temple was
commenced by Ur-ea and finished by his
son Dungi, 700 years before his time.
Hummurabi was a well-known historical
king who expelled the Elamites, and made
Babylon for the first time the capital of
Chaldsea, about 2000 B.c. The date of
Ur-ea cannot, therefore, be far from 2700
B.c.
The royal custom of laying the founda
tion-stone, and of depositing some memento
beneath it, took the shape of placing,
in a secure chamber, a cylinder record
ing the fact. This has given us a still
more ancient date, that of Sharrukin or
Sargon I. The same Nabonidus repaired
the great Sun-temple of Sippar, and he
says “ that, having dug deep in its founda
tions for the cylinders of the founder, the
Sun-god suffered him to behold the founda
tion cylinder of Naram-Sin, son of Sharru
kin or (Sargon I.), which for three thousand
and two hundred years none of the kings
who lived before him had seen.” This
gives 3750 B.C. as the date of Naram-Sin,
or, allowing for the long reign of Sargon I.,
about 3800 B.C. as the date of that
monarch. This discovery revolutionised
the accepted ideas of Chaldsean chro
nology, and carried it back at one stroke
1,000 years before the date of Ur-ea,
making it contemporary with the fourth
Egyptian dynasty, who built the great
Pyramids. The evidence is not so conclu
sive as in the case of Egypt, where the
lists of Manetho give us the whole series
of successive kings and dynasties, a great
majority of which are confirmed by con
temporary records and monuments. The
date of Sargon 1. rests mainly on the
authority of Nabonidus, who lived more than
3,000 years later, and who may have been
mistaken ; but he was in the best position
to consult the oldest records, and had
apparently no motive to make a wilful mis
statement.
Moreover, other documents
have been found in different places con
firming the statement on the cylinder of
Nabonidus ; and the opinion of the best
and latest authorities has come round to
accept the date of about 3800 B.C. as
authentic. Professor Sayce, in his Hibbert
Lectures (1888), gives a detailed account
of the evidence which had overcome his
original scepticism, and forced him to
admit the accuracy of this very distant
date. Since the discovery of the cylinder
of Nabonidus there have been found and
deciphered several tablets containing lists
of kings and dynasties of the same char
acter as the Egyptian lists of Manetho.
One tablet of the kings who reigned at
Babylon takes us back, reign by reign, to
about 2400 B.c. Other tablets, though in
complete, give the names of at least
sixty kings not found in this record
of the Babylonian era, who presumedly
reigned during the interval of about 1,400
years between Khammuragas and Sargon I.
The names are mostly Akkadian, and if
they did not reign during this interval
they must have preceded the foundation
of a Semite dynasty by Sargon I., thus
extending the date of Chaldsean history still
further back. The probability of such a
remote date is enhanced by the certainty
that a high civilisation existed in Egypt
as long ago as 5000 B.c., and there is no
apparent reason why it should not have
existed in the valleys of the Tigris and
Euphrates as soon as in that of the Nile.
Boscawen, in a paper read at the Victoria
Institute in 1886, says that inscriptions
found at Larsa, a neighbouring city to Ur
of the Chaldees, show that from as early a
period as 3750 B.C. there existed in the
latter city a Semitic population speaking a
language akin to Hebrew, carrying on
trade and commerce, and with a religion
which, although not Monotheist, had at
the head of its pantheon a supreme god,
I lu or El, from whose name that of Elohim
and Allah has been inherited as the name
of God by the Hebrews and Arabs. There
can be no doubt that Sharrukin or Sargon
I. is a historical personage. A statue of
him has been found at Agade or Akkad,
and also his cylinder with an inscription
on it giving his name and exploits. It
begins, “ Sharrukin the mighty king am I,”
and goes on to say “ that he knew not his
father, but his mother was a royal princess,
who to conceal his birth placed him in a
basket of rushes closed with bitumen, and
cast him into the river, from which he was
saved by Akki the water-carrier, who
brought him up as his own child.” This
legend reappears in the story of Moses,
the finding of whom by Pharaoh’s daughter
lends romance to the incident. Similar
stories of rescue are told of Cyrus and
other great men, the chronicler thus
seeking to invest his subject with added
wonder. It is probable that Sargon was a
�27
CHALDEEA
military adventurer who rose to the throne;
but there can be no doubt that he was a
great monarch, who united the two
provinces of Sumir and Akkad, or of Lower
tajid Upper Mesopotamia, into one king
dom, as Menes did the Upper and Lower
Egypts, and extended his rule over some
Of the adjoining countries. He says “ that
i he had reigned for forty-five years, and
governed the black-headed (Akkadian)
race. In multitudes of bronze chariots I
Bode ©ver rugged lands. . I governed the
upper countries. Three times to the coast
Ef the sea I advanced.” If there is any
truth in this inscription, it would be very
interesting as showing the existence in
Western Asia of nations to be conquered
in great campaigns, with a force of horsechariots, at this remote period, 2,000 years
i earlier than the campaigns of Ahmes and
well known in the time of Berosus as to be
translated by him into Greek, was also com
piled for him.
Another king of the same name, known
as Sargon II., who reigned about 2000 B.C.,
either founded or enlarged the library of
the priestly college at Erech, which was one
of the oldestand most famous cities of Lower
Chaldma, and known as the “City of Books.”
It was also considered to be a sacred city,
and its necropolis, which extends over a
great part of the adjoining desert, contains
innumerable tombs and graves ranging
over all periods of Chaldaean and Assyrian
history, up to an unknown antiquity.
The exact historical date of Sargon I.
may be a little uncertain ; but, whatever its
antiquity may be, it is evident that it is
already far removed from the beginnings of
Chaldaean civilisation. That Sargon II. is
CYLINDER SEAL OF SARGON I., from agade.
Assyrians.)
Thotmes recorded in the Egyptian monu
ments of the eighteenth dynasty.
[ The reality of these campaigns is, moreover, confirmed by inscriptions and images
of this Sargon having been found in
Cyprus and on the opposite coast of Syria,
and by a Babylonian cylinder of his son
[Karam-Sin, found by Cesnola in the
Cyprian temple of Kurion.
In another
direction he and his son carried their arms
into the peninsula of Sinai, attracted
doubtless by the copper and turquoise
mines of Wady Maghera, which were
worked by the Egyptians under the third
dynasty. Sargon I. is also known to have
been a great patron of literature, and to
have founded the library of Agade, which
was long one of the most famous in Baby
lonia. A work on Astronomy and Astrology, in seventy-two books, which was so
(Hommel, Gesch. Babyloniens u.
historical, his library and the state of the
arts and literature in his reign prove con
clusively. He states in his tablets that 350
kings had reigned before him, and in such
a literary age he could hardly have made
that statement without some foundation.
If anything like this number of kings had
reigned before 2000 B.C., the date of Sar
gon II.’s Chaldaean chronology would have
to be extended to a date preceding that of
Egypt. Moreover, Sargon was a Semite,
who founded a powerful monarchy over a
mixed population, consisting mainly of the
older inhabitants of Mesopotamia, known
as the Akkadians, or, more correctly, the
Akkado-Sumerians, the Akkadians being
settled on the highlands (whence their
name), and the Sumerians on the plains of
that region. The racial affinities of either
are not definitely known, but they belonged
�HUMAN ORIGINS
to the Mongolian division of mankind.
They had immigrated into Chaldsea at an
unknown period, when they had probably
long passed the barbaric stage. For they
knew the use of metals ; they were skilful
architects, and, what was of great impor
tance in the marshy land where canals and
dams were indispensable, good engineers.
.ey were enterprising sailors ; their laws
evidence advanced social organisation; their
writing had become syllabic, and their
hteiature possesses great interest for us
because supplying the key to a religion
which deeply influenced the Babylonians,
through them the Hebrews, ultimately
affecting the whole of Christendom. That
religion was a blend of lower and higher
ideas—Shamanistic, that is, full of animistic
conceptions mixed with sorcery and magic,
and yet with vivid belief in spiritual beings,
to whom psalms and prayers, which equal
some of the finer utterances in the Hebrew
sacred books, were offered. A number of
verbal analogies, and certain correspond
ences in astronomical divisions and chro
nologies, have lent sanction to a theory of
very intimate connection between the Akka
dians and the Chinese in remote times.
But the evidence in support of a very
plausible and interesting hypothesis is at
present far from complete, and it may ulti
mately only prove an active intercourse
along old trading routes, when ideas as
well as merchandise were transported from
Western to Eastern Asia.
When the Semite Sargon I. founded the
united monarchy, the capital of which was
Agade in the upper province, he made no
change in the established state of things,
maintained the old temples, and built new
ones to the same gods. Before his reign
we have, as in the parallel case of Egypt
before Menes, little definite information
from monuments or historical records. We
only know that the country was divided
into a number of small states, each grouped
about a city with a temple dedicated to
some god ; as Eridhu, the sanctuary of
Ea, one of the trinity of supreme gods ;
Larsa, with its Temple of the Sun ; Ur, the
city of the Moon-god; Sirgalla, with
another famous temple. These small
states were ruled by patesi, or priest-kings,
a term corresponding to the Horsheshu of
Egypt > and a fortunate discovery by M.
de Sarzec in 1877 at Tell-loh, the site of
the ancient Sirgalla, has given us valuable
information respecting its patesi. To the
surprise of the scientific world, with whom
it had been a settled belief that no statues
were ever found in Assyrian art, M. de
Sarzec discovered and brought home nine
large statues of diorite, a very hard black
basalt of the same material as that of the
statue of Chephren, the builder of the
second pyramid, and in the same sitting
attitude. The heads had been broken off,
but one head was discovered which was of
unmistakably Mongolian type, beardless,
shaved, and with a turban for head-dress.
With these statues a number of small
works of art were found, of a highly artistic
design and exquisite finish, representing
men and animals, and also several cylinders.
Both these and the backs of the statues are
covered with cuneiform inscriptions in the
old Akkadian characters, which furnish
valuable historical information. The name
of one,of the patesi whose statues were
found was Gud-Ea, and his date is com
puted by some of the best authorities at
HEAD OF ANCIENT CHALD7EAN. FROM TELLLOH (SIRGALLA). SARZEC COLLECTION.
(Perrot and Chipiez.)
from 4000 to 4500 B.C., probably earlier
and certainly not later than 4000 B.c. This
makes the patesi of Sirgalla contemporary
with the earliest Egyptian kings, or even
earlier, and it shows a state of the arts and
civilisation then prevailing in Chaldseavery
similar to those of the fourth dynasty in
Egypt, and in both cases as advanced as
those of 2,000 or 3,000 years later date.
Before such a temple as that of Sirgalla
could have been built and such statues
and works of art made, there must have
been older and smaller temples and ruder
works, just as in Egypt the brick pyramids
of Sakkarah and the oldest temples of
Heliopolis and Denderah preceded the
�CHALDEA
great pyramids of Gizeh, the temple of
Pthah at Memphis, and the diorite statues,
wooden statuettes, and other finished works
of art of the fourth dynasty.
STATUE OF GUD-EA, WITH INSCRIPTION ; FROM
TEtL-LOH (SIRBURLA OR SIRGALLA). SARZEC
COLLECTION. (Hommel.)
r It is important to remark that in those
earliest monuments both the language and
art are primitive Akkadian, which must
have tollg prevailed before Sargon I. could
have established a Semitic dynasty over an
united papulation of Akkads and Semites
living together on friendly terms. The
nomad Semites must have settled gradually
»n Chaldeea, and adopted to a great extent
the higher civilisation of the Akkadians,
JMCh as the Tartars in later times did that
of the Chinese. It is remarkable also that
this pre-Semitic Akkadian people must have
had extensive intercourse with foreign regionSj for the diorite of which the statues of
Sirgalla are formed is exactly similar to
that of the statue of the Egyptian Chephren,
29
and in both cases is found only in the penin
sula of Sinai. In fact, an inscription on
one of the statues tells us that the stone was
brought from the land of Magan, which
was the Akkadian name for that peninsula.
This implies a trade by sea, between
Eridhu, the sea-port of Chaldma in early
times, and the Red Sea, as such blocks of
diorite could hardly have been transported
such a distance over mountains and
deserts by land ; and this is confirmed by
references in old geographical tablets to
Magan as the land of bronze from the
copper mines of Wady-Maghera, and to
“ ships of Magan ” trading from Eridhu.
In any case, it is certain that a very long
period of purely Akkadian civilisation must
have existed prior to the introduction of
Semitic influences, and long before the
foundation of a Semitic dynasty by Sargon I.
Combining these facts with quite recent
discoveries, there appears ample warrant
for assigning to Chaldaean civilisation as
old a date as that of Egypt.
This high antiquity is confirmed by other
deductions. The city of Eridhu, which was
generally considered to be the oldest in
Chaldsea, and was the sanctuary of the
principal god, Ea, appears to have been
a sea-port in those early days, situated
where the Euphrates flowed into the Per
sian Gulf. The ruins now stand far in
land, and Sayce computes that about 6,000
years must have elapsed since the sea
reached up to them.
Astronomy affords a still more definite
confirmation. The earliest records and
traditions show that, before the commence
ment of any historic period, the year had
been divided into twelve months, the
course of the sun mapped out among the
stars, and a zodiac, which has continued
in use to the present day, established of the
twelve constellations. The year began
with the vernal equinox, and the first
month was named after the “ propitious
•Bull,” whose figure constantly appears on
the monuments as opening.the year. The
sun, therefore, was in Taurus at the vernal
equinox when this calendar was formed,
which could be only after long centuries
of astonomical observation; but it has
been in Aries since about 2500 B.C., and
first entered in Taurus about 4700 B.C.
Records of eclipses were also kept in the
time of Sargon I., which imply a long pre
ceding period of accurate observation;
and the Ziggurat, or temple observatory,
built up in successive stages above the
alluvial plain, which gave rise to the
�3°
HUMAN ORIGINS
legend of the Tower of Babel, is found in
connection with the earliest temples. The
diorite statues and engraved gems found
at Sirgalla also testify to a thorough
knowledge of the arts of metallurgy at
this remote period, and to a commercial
intercourse with foreign countries from
which the copper and tin must have been
derived for making bronze tools capable of
cutting such hard materials.
The existence of such a commercial in
tercourse in remote times is confirmed by
the example of Egypt, where bronze im
plements must have been in use long
before the date of Menes ; and although
copper might have been obtained from
Sinai or Cyprus, tin or bronze must have
been imported from distant foreign coun
tries alike in Egypt and in Chaldaea.
Chaldeean chronology, therefore, leads
to almost exactly the same results as that
of Egypt. In each case we have a
standard or measuring-rod of authentic
historical record, of certainly not less than
8,000, and more probably 9,000 or 10,000
years, from the present time ; and in each
case we find ourselves at this remote
date, in presence, not of rude beginnings,
but of a civilisation already ancient and
far advanced. We have populous cities,
celebrated temples, an organised priest
hood, an advanced state of agriculture and
of the industrial and fine arts ; writing and
books so long known that their origin is
lost in myth ; religions in which advanced
philosophical and moral ideas are already
developed ; astronomical systems which
imply a long course of accurate observa
tions. How long this prehistoric age may
have lasted, and how many centuries it
may have taken to develop such a civilisa
tion, from the primitive beginnings of
neolithic and palaeolithic origins, is a
matter of conjecture. All we can infer is,
that it must have required an immense
time, much longer than that embraced by
the subsequent period of historical record.
And we can say with certainty that during
the whole of the historical period of 8,000
or 9,000 years there has been no change
in the established orderofnature. Theearth
has rotated on its axis and revolved round
the sun, the moon and planets have pursued
their courses, the duration of human life
has not varied, and there have been no
destructions of old forms, and creation of
new forms, or any other traces of miracu
lous interference. More than this, we can
affirm with absolute certainty that 6,000
years and more have not been enough to
alter in any perceptible degree the existing
physical types of the different races of men
and animals, or the primary linguistic
types. The Negro, the Mongolian, the
Semite, and the Aryan all stand out as
clearly distinguished in the paintings on
Egyptian monuments as they do at the
present day ; and the agglutinative lan
guages are as distinct from the inflectional,
and the Semite from the Aryan forms of
inflections, in the old Chaldaean cylinders as
they are in the nineteenth century.
For evolution neither implies nor involves
continuous development. Its keynote is
adaptation ; harmony between the race and
its environment; and only when this is dis
turbed does readjustment come into play J
CHAPTER III.
OTHER HISTORICAL RECORDS
China—Oldest existing Civilisation—but Re
cords much later than those of Egypt and
Chaldsea.
Elam—Very Early Civilisation—Susa, an old
City in First Chaldaean Records—Conquered
Chaldaea in 2280 B.c.—Conquered by Assy
rians 645 B.c.—Statue of Nana—Cyrus—
His Cylinder.
Phoenicia—Great influence on Western Civilisa
tion—but date comparatively late—Traditions
of Origin—First distinct mention in Egyptian
Monuments 1600 B.c.—Great Movements of
Maritime Nations—Invasions of Egypt by
Sea and Land, under Menepthah, 1330 B.C.,
and Ramses II., 1250 B.c.—Lists of Nations
—Show advanced Civilisation and Inter
course.
Hittites—Great Empire in Asia Minor and
Syria—Mongolian Race—Great Wars with
Egypt — Battle of Kadesh — Treaty with
' Ramses III. —Power rapidly declined—
but only finally destroyed 717 B.c. by
Sargon II.—Capital Carchemish—Great
Commercial Emporium—Hittite Hieroglyphic
Inscriptions and Monuments—Bilingual key
to them awaited.
Arabia — Recent Discoveries — Inscriptions —
Sabaeans—Minaeans—Thirty-two Kings known
—Ancient Commerce and Trade-routes—In
cense and Spices—Literature—Old Traditions
—Oannes—Punt—Seat of Semites—Arabian
Alphabet—Older than Phoenician—Bearing
on Old Testament Histories.
Troy, Mycena, and Crete—Dr. Schliemann’s
Excavations—Hissarlik — Buried Fortifications, Palaces, and Treasures of Ancient Troy
�3i
OTHER HISTORICAL RECORDS
_ Mycense and Tiryns—Proof of Civilisation
and Commerce—Tombs—Date of Mycenaean
Civilisation—School of Art—Type of Race
Crete—Mr. Arthur Evans’s Excavations—City
of Minos—Cretan Script—Cradleland of Euro
pean Civilisation.
CHINA.
from the mountains and plateaux of Tibet
to the fertile valleys of China.
Reference has been made already to
some remarkable identities in words and
in calendars between the Akkadian and
the Chinese, but,, although these must be
more than coincidences, they as yet form
no sufficient basis for theories of a common
origin. Possible early intercourse explains
much. We must remember that caravans do
travel, and have travelled from time imme
morial, over enormous distances, across
the steppes of Central and Northern Asia,
and that within quite recent historical
times a whole nation of Calmucks migrated
under every conceivable difficulty from
hostile tribes, pursuing armies, and the
extremes of winter cold and summer heat,
first from China to the Volga, and then
back again from the Volga to China. Nor
must we overlook the fact that Ur and
Eridhu were great seaports at a very
remote period, and that the facilities for
pushing their commerce to the far east
were great, owing to the regular monsoons
and the configuration of the coast.
We must be content, however, to take
the facts as we find them, and admit that
China gives us no aid in carrying back
authentic history for anything like the time
for which we have satisfactory evidence
from the monuments and records of Egypt
and Chaldaea.
The first country to which we might
naturally look for independent annals
approaching in antiquity those of Egypt
and Chaldaea is China, Chinese civilisation is in one respect the oldest in the
world; that is, it is the one which has
come down to the present day from a
remote antiquity with the fewest changes.
Its continuity borders on the marvellous.
What China is to-day it was more than
4,000 years ago : a populous empire with a
peaceful and industrial population devoted
to agriculture and skilled in the arts of
irrigation; a literary people acquainted
with reading and writing ; orderly and
obedient, organised under an emperor and
official hierarchy ; paying divine honours
to ancestors, and a religious veneration to
the moral and ceremonial precepts of sages
and philosophers; addicted to childish
superstitions, and yet eminently prosaic,
practical, and utilitarian. Their annals
tell of an epoch of “ Three Rulers,” when
wild and savage conditions prevailed,
corresponding to those of the Ancient
Stone Age in Europe. They tell also of
the epoch of “Five Emperors,” culture
heroes of the race. To these are attributed
the arts and sciences.. They taught the
people (here the utilitarian character of the
Chinese stamps itself) to make nets for
fishing and snares for hunting, to found
markets for the sale of produce, and
bequeathed treatises on the medicinal
virtues of plants, and the sciences of
astrology and astronomy. Fu-Hi, the
reputed founder of the Empire, is credited
with the institution of marriage, an allimportant state among a people where
the family is the social unit. Chinese
annals do not, however, go further back
than about 3000 B.C.—that is, to a period
some three or four thousand years later
than the epigraphic evidence furnished by
Egypt and Chaldaea. The times of the
Three Rulers may survive among the
barbaric hill tribes who are living at this
day in the southern and western border
lands, the remnant of descendants of the
races conquered by the ancient Chinese
who poured down in irresistible numbers I
ELAM.
As regards other nations of antiquity,
their own historical records are either
altogether wanting or comparatively recent,
and our only authentic information respect
ing them in very early times is derived
from Egyptian or Babylonian monuments.
One of the most important of them is Elam,
which was evidently a civilised State at a
remote period, contemporary probably with
the earliest Akkadian civilisation, and
which continued to play a leading part in
history down to the time of Cyrus.
Elam was a small district between the
Zagros mountains and the Tigris, extend
ing to the south along the eastern shore of
the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. Its
capital was Shushan or Susa, an ancient
and renowned city,, the name of which
survives in the Persian province of Shusistan, as that of Persia proper survives in
the mountainous district next to the east of
Elam, known as Farsistan. The original
population had Mongolian affinities, speaking an agglutinative language, akin to,
�32
HUMAN ORIGINS
though not identical with, Akkadian, while
its religion and civilisation were apparently
the same, or closely similar. As in Chaldaea
and Assyria, a Semitic element seems to
have intruded on the Mongolian at an
early date, and to have become the ruling
race, while much later the Aryan Persians
to some extent superseded the Semites.
The name “ Elam ” is said to have the
same significance as “ Akkad,” both mean
ing “ Highland,” and indicating that both
races may have had a common origin in
the mountains and steppes of Central Asia.
The native name was Anshan, and Susa
was “the City of Anshan.” Elam was
always considered an ancient land, and
Susa an ancient city, by the Akkadians,
and there is every reason to believe that
Elamite civilisation must have been at
least as old as Akkadian. This much is
certain, that as far back as 2280 B.c. Elam
was a sufficiently organised and powerful
State to conquer the larger and more popu
lous country of Mesopotamia, and found
an Elamite dynasty which lasted for
nearly 300 years, and carried on campaigns
in districts as far distant as Southern Syria
and the Dead Sea.
The dynasty was subverted and the
Elamites driven back within their own
frontiers ; but there they retained their
independence, and took a leading part in
all the wars waged by Chaldsea and other
surrounding nations against the rising
power of the warlike Assyrian kings of
Nineveh. The statue of the goddess
Nana, which had been taken by the
Elamite conquerors from Erech in 2280
B.c., remained in the temple at Susa
for 1,635 years, until the city was . at
length taken by one of the latest Assyrian
kings, Assurbanipal, in the year 645
B.C.
We have already pointed out the great
historical importance of the Elamite con
quest of Mesopotamia in 2280 B.c. as
inaugurating the era of great wars between
civilised States, and probably giving the
impulse to Western Asia, which hurled the
Hyksos on Egypt, and by its reaction first
brought the Egyptians to Nineveh, and
then the Assyrians to Memphis. A still
more important movement at the very close
of what may be called ancient history
originated from Elam. To the surprise of
all students of history, it has been proved
that the account we have received, from
Herodotus and other Greek sources, of the
great Cyrus is to a large extent fabulous.
A cylinder and tablet of Cyrus himself, in
which he commemorates his conquest of
Babylon, were quite recently discovered by
Mr. Rassam and brought to the British
Museum. He describes himself as “ Cyrus
the great King,, the King of Babylon,
the King of Sumir and Akkad, the King of
the four zones, the son of Cambyses the
great King, the King of Elam ; the grand
son of Cyrus the great King, the King of
Elam ; the great-grandson of Teispes the
great King, the King of Elam ; of the
Ancient Seed-royal, whose rule has been
beloved by Bel and Nebo ”; and he goes on
to say how by the favour of “ Merodach
the great lord, the god who raises the dead
to life, who benefits all men in difficulty
and prayer,” he had conquered the men of
Kurdistan and all the barbarians, and also
the black-headed race (the Akkadians), and
finally entered Babylon in peace and ruled
there righteously, favoured by gods and
men, and receiving homage and tribute
from all the kings who dwelt in the high
places of all regions from the Upper to the
Lower Sea, including Phoenicia. And he
concludes with an invocation to all the gods
whom he had restored to their proper
temples from which they had been taken
by Nabonidus, “ to intercede before Bel and
Nebo to grant me length of days ; may
they bless my projects with prosperity ;
and may they say to Merodach my lord,
that Cyrus the King, thy worshipper, and
Cambyses his son deserve his favour.”
This is confirmed by a cylinder of a few
years earlier date, of Nabonidus the last
King of Babylon, who relates how “ Cyrus
the King of Elam, the young servant of
Merodach,” overthrew the Medes, there
called “Mandan” or barbarians, captured
their King Astyages, and carried the spoil
of the.royal city Ecbatana to the land of
Elam.
How many of our apparently most firmly
established historical dates are annihilated
by these little clay cylinders! It would seem
that Cyrus was not a Persian at all, or an
adventurer who raised himself to power by
a successful revolt, but the legitimate King
of Elam, descended from its ancient royal
race through an unbroken succession of
several generations.
He was a later
and greater Kudur-Na-hangti, like the
early conqueror of that name who founded
the first Elamite empire some 1,800 years
earlier. His religion was Babylonian, and
thus we must dismiss all Jewish traditions
of him as a Zoroastrian Monotheist, the
servant of the most high God, who favoured
the chosen race from sympathy with their
�OTHER HISTORICAL RECORDS
33
religion. On his own showing he was as
devoted a worshipper of Merodach, Bel,
and Nebo, and the whole pantheon of
local gods, as Nebuchadrezzar or TiglathPileser.1
What a lesson does this teach us as to
the untrustworthiness of the scraps of
ancient history which have come down
to us from traditions, but which are not
confirmed by contemporary monuments !
Herodotus wrote within a few generations
of Cyrus, and the relations of Greece to
the Persian Empire had been close and
uninterrupted. His account of its founder
Cyrus is not in itself improbable, and is
full of details which have every appearance
of being historical. It is confirmed to a
considerable extent by the Old Testament,
and by the universal belief of early
classical writers, and yet it is shown by the
testimony of Cyrus himself to be in essential
respects legendary and fabulous.
ancient Akkadians. According to their
own tradition, they came from the Persian
Gulf; and the island of Tyros, now Bahrein,
in that Gulf, is quoted as a proof that it
was the original seat of the people who
founded Tyre. There is no certain date
for the period when they migrated from
the East, and settled in the narrow strip of
land along the coast of the Mediterranean
between the mountain range of Lebanon
and the sea, stretching from the promontory
of Carmel on the south to the Gulf of
Antioch on the north. This little strip of
about 150 miles in length, and ten to
fifteen in breadth, possessed many advan
tages for a maritime people, owing to the
number, of islands close to the coast and
small indented bays, which afforded
excellent harbours and protection from,
enemies, and which were further secured
by the precipitous range of the Lebanon
sending down steep spurs into the Mediter
ranean, thus isolating Phoenicia from the
military route of the great Valley of CceloPHOENICIA.
Syria (between the parallel ranges of the
Phoenicia is another country which Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon), which was
exercised a great influence on the civilisa taken by armies in the wars between
Egypt and Asia. Here the Phoenicians
tion and commerce of the ancient world,
though its history does not go back to the founded nine cities, of which Byblos or
extreme antiquity of the early dynasties of Gebal was reputed to be the most ancient
and first Sidon and then Tyre the most
Egypt and of Chaldma. The Phoenicians
spoke a language which was almost important. They became fishermen,
identical with that of the Hebrews and manufacturers of purple from the dye
Canaanites, and closely resembled that of procured from the shell-fish on their
Assyria and Babylonia, after the Semite shores, and, above all, mariners and mer
language had superseded that of the chants. They established factories along
the coasts, of Asia Minor, Greece, and
Italy, and in all the islands of the ZEgean
1 Sayce, in his Fresh Light from Ancient
and the Cyclades. They founded colonies
Monuments, says: “ Both in his cylinder and in
in Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, and on the
the annalistic tablet, Cyrus, hitherto supposed
mainland of Greece at Boeotian Thebes.
to be a Persian and Zoroastrian Monotheist,
They mined extensively wherever metals
appears as an Elamite and a polytheist.” It is
were to be found, and, as Herodotus states,
pretty certain, however, that, although descended
from Elamite kings, these were kings of Persian
had overturned a whole mountain at
race, who, after the destruction of the old
Thasos by tunnelling it for gold. They
monarchy by Assurbanipal, had established a
even extended their settlements into the
new dynasty at the city of Anshan or Susa.
Black Sea, along the northern coast of
Cyrus.always traces his descent from Achsemenes,
Africa, and somewhat later to Spain, passed
the chief of the leaaing Persian clan of Pasargadae,
the Straits of Gibraltar, and appear to have
and he was buried there in a tomb visited by
finally reached the British Isles in pursuit
Alexander. But as regards religion, it is clear
of tin.
that Cyrus professed himself, and was taken by
. It is reasonably certain that this Phoe
his contemporaries to be, a devoted servant of
nician commerce was, a principal element
Merodach, Nebo, and the other Babylonian
in introducing not only an alphabet, but
deities. Zoroastrian Monotheism came in with
many of the early arts of civilisation,
Darius Hystaspes, the founder of the purely
Persian second dynasty, after that of Cyrus
among the comparatively rude races of
became extinct with his son Cambyses. (It
Greece, Italy, Spain, and Britain. It pro
should be stated that, in the article on “ Cyrus,”
bably dates from the destruction of Tiryns
in the Encyclopedia Biblica, his Persian origin
and Mycenae, about 1200 B.C., when Phoe
% reaffirmed.)
nicia established depots throughout the
©
*
�34
HUMAN ORIGINS
>Egean and secured supremacy in Mediter
ranean waters. But through her lack of
political unity, and her dependence on
mercenary aid when troubles came, she
finally succumbed to the powerful arm of the
re-invigorated Greek. And it was between
their rise and fall that the ingenious
“colossal pedlars” had put the alphabet
into practically its present form, and
secured its adoption by the Greeks.
Compared with Egypt and Chaldsea,
Phoenicia can have claimed no high
antiquity.
. .
The first distinct mention of Phoenician
cities in Egyptian annals is in the enumera
tion of towns captured by Thotmes III.,
B.C. 1600, in his victorious campaigns in
Syria, among which are to be found the
names of Beyrut and Acco ; and two cen-
SEA-FIGHT in the time OF ramses ill.
turies later Seti I., the father of Ramses
II., records the capture of Zor or Tyre,
probably the old city on the mainland.
The first authentic information, however,
as to the movements of the Mediterranean
maritime races is afforded by the Egyptian
annals, which describe two formidable in
vasions by combined land armies and fleets,
which were with difficulty repulsed. The
first took place in the reign of Menepthah,
son of the great Ramses II., of the
eighteenth dynasty, about 1330 B.C.; the
second under Ramses III., of the twen
tieth dynasty, about 1200 B.C. The first
invasion came from the West, and was
headed by the King of the Libyans, a white
race, who have been identified by some with
the Numidians and modern Kabyles. There
was formed a confederacy of nearly all the
Mediterranean races, who sent auxiliary
contingents both of sea and land forces.
Among these appear, along with Dardanians, Teucri and Lycians of Asia Minor,
who were already known as allies of the
Hittites in their wars against Ramses II.,
a new class of auxiliaries from Greece,
Italy, and the islands, whose names have
been identified by some Egyptologists as
Achaeans, Tuscans, Sicilians, and Sar
dinians.
The second and more formidable attack
came from the East, and was made by a
combined fleet and land army, the latter
composed of Hittites and Philistines, with
the same auxiliaries from Asia Minor, and
the fleet of the same confederation of
Maritime States as in the first _ invasions,
except that the Achaeans have disappeared
(From temple of Ammon at Medmet-Abou.)
as leaders of the Greek powers. The
Phoenicians alone of the Maritime States
do not seem to have taken any part
in these invasions, but, on the contrary, to
have lived on terms of friendly vassalage
and close commercial relations with Egypt
ever since the expulsion of the Hyksos,
and the great conquests of Ahmes and
Thotmes III. in Syria and Asia. It is
probably during this period that the early
commerce and navigation of Phoenicia
took such a wide extension.
The details of these two great invasions,
which are fully given _ in the Egyptian
monuments, together with a picture of the
naval combat, in which the invading fleet
was finally defeated by Ramses III., after
having forced an entrance into the eastern
branch of the Nile, are extremely inter-
�OTHER HISTORICAL RECORDS
esting. They show an advanced state of
civilisation already prevailing among
nations whose very names were unknown
or legendary. Centuries before the siege
of Troy it appears that Asia Minor and
the Greek mainland and islands were
already inhabited by nations sufficiently
advanced in civilisation to fit out fleets
which commanded the seas, and to form
political confederations, to undertake dis
tant expeditions, and to wage war on equal
terms with the predominant powers of Asia
and of Egypt.
HITTITES.
35
It is in Egyptian records, however, that
we meet with the first definite historical
data respecting this ancient Hittite ^Empire.
In these they are referred to as “ Kheta,”
and probably formed part of the great
Hyksos invasion ; but the first certain men
tion of them occurs in the reign of Thotmes
I., about 1600 B.c., and they appear as a
leading nation in the time of Thotmes III.,
who defeated a combined army of Canaan
ites and Hittites under the Hittite King of
Kadesh, at Megiddo, and in fourteen vic
torious campaigns carried the Egyptian
arms to the Euphrates and Tigris.
For several subsequent reigns we find the
Hittites enumerated as one of the nations
paying tribute to Egypt, whose extensive
Empire then reckoned Mesopotamia,
The history of another great but more
mysterious Empire, that of the Hittites
has been partially brought
’
to light. It was destroyed
In 717 B.c. by the progress
of Assyrian conquest, after
having lasted more than
1,000 years, and long exerQsing a predominant influ
ence over Western Asia.
The first mention of the
Hittites in the Old Testa
ment appears in Patriarchal
tipies, when we find them
in Southern Syria, mixed
with tribes of the Canaanites
and Amorites, and grouped
principally about Hebron.
They are represented as
on friendly terms with
Abraham, selling him a
piece of land for a sepul
chre, and intermarrying
with his family, Rebecca’s KING of the Hittites. (From photograph by Flinders Petrie,
from Egyptian Temple at Luxor.)
soul being vexed by the
contumacious behaviour of
her daughters-in-law, “the daughters of Assyria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Cyprus, and
Heth.” This, however, was only an out the Soudan among its tributary States.
lying branch of the nation, whose capital
Gradually the power of Egypt declined,
cities, when they appear in history, were
and in the troubled times which followed
further north at Kadesh on the Orontes,
the attempt of the heretic king Ku-en-Aten
and Catchemish on the Upper Euphrates,
to supersede the old religion of Egypt, by
commanding the fords on that river on the the. worship of the solar disc, the conquered
great commercial route between Babylonia nations threw off the yoke, and the frontiers
and the Mediterranean.
of Egypt receded to the old limits. As
The earliest mention of the Hittites is
Egypt declined, the power of the Hittites
found in the tablets which were compiled evidently increased, for when we next meet
for the library of Sargon I, of Akkad, in
with them it is as contending on equal terms
which reference is made to the Khatti,
in Palestine with the revival of the military
Which probably means Hittites, showing
power of Egypt under Ramses III., the
that at this remote period, about 3800 B.c.,
founder of the nineteenth dynasty, and his
they had already moved down from their
son Seti I.
northern home into the valley of the
The contest continued for more than a
Euphrates and Upper Syria.
century with occasional treaties of peace
�3®
HUMAN ORIGINS
and various vicissitudes of fortune, and at
last culminated in the great battle of
Kadesh, commemorated by the Egyptian
epic poem of Pentaur, and followed by the
celebrated treaty of peace between Ramses
II. and Kheta-Sira, “the great King of the
Hittites.” The alliance was on equal
terms, defining the frontier, and providing
for the mutual extradition of refugees, and
it was ratified by the marriage of Ramses
with the daughter of the Hittite King.
The peace lasted for some time ; but in
the reign of Ramses III., of the twentieth
dynasty, we find the Hittites again heading
the great confederacy of the nations of Asia
Minor and of the islands of the Mediterra
nean, who attacked Egypt by sea and land.
The Hittites formed th’e greater part of the
land army, which was defeated with great
slaughter after an obstinate battle at Pelusium, about 1200 B.c. From this time
forward the power both of the Hittites and
of Egypt seems to have steadily declined.
We hear no more of them as a leading
power in Palestine and Syria, where the
kingdoms of Judah, Israel, and Damascus
superseded them, until all were swallowed
up by the Assyrian conquests of the warriorkings of Nineveh. Finally, the Hittites
disappear altogether from history with the
capture of their capital Carchemish by
Sargon III. in 717 B.C.
The wide extent, however, of their
Empire when at its height is proved by the
fact that at the battle of Kadesh the Hittite
army was reinforced by vassals or allies
from nearly the whole of Western Asia.
The Dardanians from the Troad, the
Mysians from their cities of Ilion, the
Colchians from the Caucasus, the Syrians
from the Orontes, and the Phoenicians
from Arvad are enumerated as sending
contingents ; and in the invasion of Egypt
in the reign of Ramses III. the Hittites
headed the great confederacy composed,
with themselves, of Teucrians, Lycians,
Philistines, and other Asiatic nations, who
attacked Egypt by land, in concert with
the great maritime confederacy of Greeks,
Pelasgians, Tuscans, Sicilians, and Sar
dinians, who attacked it by sea.
The mere fact of carrying on such cam
paigns and forming such political alliances
is sufficient to show that the Hittites must
have attained to an advanced state of civili
sation. But there is abundant proof that
this was the case from other sources. They
were a commercial people, and their capital,
Carchemish, was for many centuries the
great emporium of the caravan trade
between the East and West. The products
of the East, probably as far as Bactria and
India, reached it from Babylon and Nine
veh, and were forwarded by two great com
mercial routes, one to the south-west to
Syria and Phoenicia, the other to the north
west through the pass of Karakol, to Sardis
and the Mediterranean. The commercial
importance of Carchemish is attested by
the fact that its silver maneh became the
standard of value at Babylon and through
out the whole of Western Asia. The Hit
tites were also great miners, working the
silver mines of the Taurus on an extensive
scale, and having a plentiful supply of
bronze and other metals, as is shown by the
large number of chariots attached to their
armies from the earliest times. They were
also a literary people, and had invented a
system of hieroglyphic writing of their own,
distinct alike from that of Egypt and from
the cuneiform characters of the Akkadians.
Inscriptions in these peculiar characters,
associated with sculptures in a style of art
different from that of either Egypt or Chaldsea, but representing figures identical in
dress and features with those of Hittites in
the Egyptian monuments, have been found
over a wide extent of Asia Minor, at Hamath
and Aleppo ; Boghaz-Keni and Eyuk in
Cappadocia ; at the pass of Karakol near
Sardis, and at various other places. Several
of those attributed by the Greeks to Sesostris, or to fabulous passages of their own
mythology, are held to be Hittite—as, for
instance, the figure carved on the rocks of
Mount Sipylos, near Ephesus, and said to
be that of Niobe, is held to be a sitting
figure of the great goddess of Carchemish.
Some details in the foregoing brief sketch
may be corrected or expunged as further
research into Hittite history yields more
definite results. For, in truth, although
some portly volumes on that subject have
appeared within recent years, we really
know no more about the Hittites than we
do about the Phoenicians, which means
that we know but little. We have glimpses
of a Hittite kingdom which was a formid
able power for centuries against Egypt and
Assyria, but as to who the Hittites were,
and what was their language, we can speak
with no certainty. Thirty years back not
a monumental remain of an empire whose
high place among ancient nations .is
established by documents had come to
light, and, now that the hieroglyphs which
are indubitably Hittite have been dis
covered, we sorely need the unearthing of
some bilingual relic which shall do for them
�OTHER HISTORICAL RECORDS
what the Rosetta stone did for Egyptian
hieroglyphs, and the inscribed rock at
Behistun for cuneiform writing.
ARABIA.
The best chance of finding records
which may vie in antiquity with those of
Egypt and Chaldaea has come to us quite
recently from an unexpected quarter.
Arabia has been from time immemorial
one of the least known and least accessible
regions of the earth. Especially of recent
years Moslem fanaticism has made it a
dosed country to Christian research, and
it is only quite lately that a few scientific
travellers, taking their lives in their hands,
have succeeded in penetrating into the
interior, discovering the sites of ruined
cities, and copying numerous inscriptions.
Dr. Glaser especially has three times
explored Southern Arabia, and brought
home no less than 1,031 inscriptions, many
of them of the highest historical interest.
By the aid of these and other inscrip
tions we are able to reduce to some sort of
certainty the vague traditions that had
come down to us of ancient nations and
an advanced state of civilisation and
commerce, existing in Arabia in very
ancient times. In the words of Professor
Sayce, “the dark past of the Arabian
peninsula has been suddenly lighted up,
and we find that long before the days of
Mohammed it was a land of culture and
literature, a seat of powerful kingdoms and
wealthy commerce, which cannot fail to
have exercised an influence upon the
general history of the world.”1
The visit of the Queen of Sheba to
Solomon affords one of the first glimpses
into this past history. It is evident that
she either was, or was supposed to be by the
compiler of the Book of Kings who wrote
not many centuries later, the queen of a
well-known, civilised, and powerful country,
which, from the description of her offerings,
could hardly be other than Arabia Felix,
the spice country of Southern Arabia, the
Sabaea or Saba of the ancient world,
and that her kingdom, or commercial
relations, may have extended over the
opposite coast of Abyssinia and Somali
land, and probably far down the east coast
of Africa. Assyrian inscriptions show that
1 The facts of this section are taken mainly
from two articles by Professor Sayce in the
Contemporary Review, entitled “ Ancient
Arabia” and “Results of Oriental Archeology.”
31
Saba was a great kingdom in the eighth
century B.C., when its frontiers extended
so far to the north as to bring it in contact
with those of the Empire of Nineveh
under Tiglath-Pileser and Sargon III. It
was then an ancient kingdom, and, as the
inscriptions show, had long since under
gone the same transformation as Egypt
and. Chaldsea, from the rule of priest-kings
of independent cities into an unified
empire. These priest-kings were called
“ Makarib,” or high-priests of Saba, show
ing that the original State must have been
a theocracy, and the name Saba, like Assur,
that of a god.
But the inscriptions reveal this unex
pected fact that, old as the kingdom of
Saba may be, it was not the oldest in this
district, but rose to power on the decay of
a still older nation, whose name of Ma’in
has come down to us in dim traditions
under the classical form of Minaeans.
We are already acquainted with the
names of thirty-two Sabaean or Minaean
kings, and as yet comparatively few in
scriptions have been discovered. Some
of these show that the authority of the
Minaean kings was not confined to their
original seat in the south, but extended
over all Arabia and up to the frontiers of
Syria and of Egypt. Three names of these
kings have been found at Teima, the Tema
of the Old Testament, on the road to
Damascus and Sinai ; and a votive tablet
from Southern Arabia is inscribed by its
authors, “in gratitude to Athtar (Istar or
Astarte), for their rescue in the war between
the ruler of the South and the ruler of the
North, and in the conflict between Madhi
and Egypt, and for their safe return to
their own city of Quarnu.” The authors of
this inscription describe themselves as
being under the Minaean King “ Abi-yadd.
Yathi,” and being “ governors of Tsar
and Ashur and the further bank of the
river.”
Tsar is often mentioned in the Egyptian
monuments as a frontier fortress on the
Arabian side of what is now the Suez
Canal, while another inscription mentions
Gaza, and shows that the authority of the
Minaean rulers extended to Edom, and
came into close contact with Palestine and
the surrounding tribes. Doubtless the pro
tection of trade-routes was a main cause of
this extension of fortified posts and wealthy
cities over such a wide extent of territory.
From the most ancient times there has
always been a stream of traffic between
East and West, flowing partly by the Red
�HUMAN ORIGINS
discoveries and researches have led to the
Sea and Persian Gulf, and from the ends of
result, which is principally due to Dr.
these Eastern waters to the Mediterranean,
Glaser, that the so-called Himyaritic in
and partly by caravan routes across Asia.
scriptions fell into two groups, one of which
The possession of one of these routes by
is distinctly older than the other, contain
Solomon in alliance with Tyre led to the
ing fuller and more primitive grammatical
ephemeral prosperity of the Jewish king
forms. These are Minsean, while the in
dom at a much later period ; and the wars
scriptions in the later dialect are Sabsean.
waged between Egyptians, Assyrians, and
It is apparent, therefore, that the Mina?an
Hittites were doubtless influenced to a
rule and literature must have preceded
considerable extent by the desire to com
those of Sab sea by a time sufficiently long
mand these great lines of commerce.
to have allowed for considerable changes
Arabia stood in a position oi great
both in words and grammar to have grown
advantage as regards this international
up, not by foreign conquest, but by evolu
commerce, being a half-way house between
tion among the tribes of the same race
East and West, protected from enemies by
within Arabia itself. Now, the Sabsean
impassable deserts, and with inland and
kingdom can be traced back with consider
sheltered seas in every direction. Its
able certainty to the time of Solomon, 1000
southern provinces also had the advantage
years B.C., and had in all probability
of being the chief, and in some cases the
existed many centuries before; while we
sole, producers of commodities of great
have already a list of thirty-two Mmsean
value and in constant request. Frank
kings, which number will probably be en
incense and other spices were indispensable
larged by further discoveries; and the oldest
in temples where bloody sacrifices formed
inscriptions point, as in Egypt, to an ante
part of the religion. The atmosphere of
cedent state of commerce and civilisation.
Solomon’s temple must have been that of a
It is evident, therefore, that Arabia must be
sickening slaughter-house, and the fumes
classed with Egypt and Chaldaea as one of
of incense could alone enable the priests
the countries which point to the existence
and worshippers to support it. This would
of highly civilised communities in an
apply to thousands of other temples
extreme antiquity ; and that it is by no
through Asia, and doubtless the palaces of
means improbable that the records of
kings and nobles suffered from uncleanliness
Southern Arabia may ultimately be carried
and insanitary arrangements, and required
back as far as those of Sargon I., or even
an antidote to evil smells to make them
of Menes.
endurable. The consumption of incense
This is the more likely as several
must therefore have been immense m the
ancient traditions point to Southern Arabia,
ancient world, and it is not easy to see
and possibly to the adjoining coast of
where it could have been derived from
North-eastern Africa, as the source of the
except from the regions which exhaled
earliest civilisations. Thus Oannes is said
to have come up from the Persian Gulf and
“ Sabsean odours from the shores of Araby
taught the Chaldseans . the first arts of
the blest.”
civilisation. The Phoenicians traced their
The next interesting result, however, of
origin to the Bahrein Islands in the same
these Arabian discoveries is that they dis
Gulf The Egyptians looked with rever
close not only a civilised and commercial
ence and respect to Punt, which is gene
kingdom at a remote antiquity, but that
rally believed to have meant Arabia Felix;
they show us a literary people, who had
and Somali-land; and they placed thetheir own alphabet and system of writing at
origin of their letters and civilisation, not
a date comparable to that of Egyptian
in Upper or Lower, but in Middle Egyptz.
hieroglyphics and Chaldman cuneiforms,
at Abydos, where Thoth and Osiris were said
and long prior to the oldest known inscrip
to have reigned, and where the Nile is only
tion in Phoenician characters. The first
separated from the Red Sea by a narrow;
Arabian inscriptions were discovered and
land pass, which was long one of the prin
copied by Seetzen in 1810, and were classed
cipal commercial routes between Arabia,
together as Himyaritic, from Himyar, the
and Egypt.
_
,
country of the classical Homerites. It was
The close connection between Egypt and
soon discovered that the language was
Punt in early times is confirmed by theSemitic, and that the alphabet resembled
terms of respect in which Punt is spoken
that of the Ethiopic or Gheez, and was a
of in Egyptian inscriptions, contrasting^
modification of the Phoenician written
with the epithets of “ barbarian ” and vile,'
vertically instead of horizontally, r urtiier
�OTHER HISTORICAL RECORDS
which are applied to other surrounding
nations such as the Hittites, Libyans, and
Megroes. And the celebrated equipment
of a fleet by the great queen Hatasu of the
nineteenth dynasty, to make a commercial
voyage to Punt, and its return with a rich
freight, the king and queen of that country
accompanying it with offerings, on a visit to
the Pharaoh, reminding one of the visit of
the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, shows that
the two nations were on friendly terms, and
that the Red Sea and opposite coast of
Africa had been navigated from a very
early period. The physical type also of
the chiefs of Punt as depicted on the '
CHIEF OF JUNT AND TWO MEN.
Egyptian monuments is very like that of
the aristocratic type of the earliest known
Egyptian portraits.
Evidence points to the conclusion that the
original seat of the Semites was in SouthWestern Asia, perhaps in Arabia. Every
where else, we can trace them as an immigrating or invading people, who found prior
populations of different race, but in Arabia
they seem to have been aboriginal. Thus,
in Chaldaea and Assyria the Semites are
represented in the earliest traditions
as coming from the South, partly by
the Persian Gulf and partly across the
39
Arabian and Syrian deserts, and by degrees
amalgamating with and superseding the
previous Akkadian population. In Egypt
the Semitic element was a late importation
which never permanently affected the old
Egyptian civilisation. In Syria and Pales
tine the Phoenicians, Canaanites, and
Hebrews were probably all immigrants
from the Persian Gulf or Arabian frontier,
either directly or through the medium of
Egypt and Assyria, who did not even pre
tend to be the earliest inhabitants, but
found other races, as the Amorites and
Hittites, in possession, whose traditions
again went back to barbarous aborigines
of Zammumim, who seemed to them to
stammer their unintelligible language. The
position of Semites in the Moslem world
in Asia and Africa is distinctly due to the
conquests of the Arab Mohammed and the
spread of his religion.
In Arabia alone we find Semitesj and
Semites only,from the very beginning; and
the peculiar language and character of the
race must have been first developed in the
growing civilisation which preceded the
ancient Minaean Empire, probably as the
later stone age was passing into that of
metal, and the primitive state of hunters
and fishers into the higher social level of
agriculturists and traders.
To return from these remote speculations
to a subject of more immediate interest, the
discovery of these Minaean inscriptions
shows the existence of an alphabet older
than that of the earliest known inscriptions
in Phoenician letters. The alphabets of
Greece, Rome, and all modern nations are
more or less directly derived from that of
Phoenicia, the probable varied sources of
which are dealt with in the last section of
this chapter. But the Minman script, re
vealing a more primitive form than the
oldest known Phoenician characters, has
caused some philologists to- ask whether
these may not be derived from Arabia.
The Minaean language and letters are
certainly older forms of Semitic speech and
writing, and it seems more likely that they
should have been adopted, with dialectic
variations, by other Semitic races, with
whom Arabia had a long coterminous
position and constant intercourse by cara
vans, than that these races should have
remained totally ignorant of letters until
Phoenicia borrowed them from Egypt.
Moreover, as Professor Sayce shows, this
theory gives a better explanation of the
names of the Phoenician letters, which in
many cases have no resemblance to the
�40
HUMAN ORIGINS
symbols which denote them.
Thus the
first letter Aleph, “ an ox,” really resembles
the head of that animal in the Minaean
inscription, while no likeness can be traced
to any Egyptian hieroglyph used for “ a.”
Should these speculations be confirmed,
they will considerably modify our concep
tions as to the early history of the Old
Testament. It would seem that Canaan,
before the Israelite invasion, was already
a settled and civilised country, with a dis
tinct alphabet and literature of its own,
older than those of Phoenicia ; and it may
be hoped that further researches in Arabia
and Palestine may disclose records, buried
under the ruins of ancient cities, which
may vie in antiquity with those of Egypt
and Chaldaea.
TROY, MYCEN2E, AND CRETE.
To the enthusiasm of one man—Dr.
Schliemann—is chiefly due the impetus to
exploration in South - Eastern Europe
which has resulted in the verification of a
history long held to be mythical, and in the
demolition of hitherto accepted theories of
the sources of Western civilisation.
Only once in his History of Greece does
Grote refer to the city of Mycenae, and
then in an incidental way as the seat of a
legendary dynasty. The Rev. Sir G. W.
Cox, in his Mythology of the Aryan
Nations, endorses Professor Max Muller’s
theory that “ the siege of Troy is a reflec
tion of the daily siege of the East by the
solar powers that every evening are robbed
of their brightest treasures in the West ”;
and he adds that this theory is “ supported
by a mass of evidence which probably
hereafter will be thought ludicrously
excessive in amount.” The laugh is on
the other side now. The Iliad and Odyssey
are no longer the shuttlecocks of solar and
meteorological battledores. For in 1870
Schliemann, making wise use of money
acquired in trade, went to the Troad to
find the bones of Priam and the cup from
which Nestor drank. His credulity caused
him to discover the relics for which he
looked, but none the less were his achieve
ments momentous.
In the mound of
Hissarlik he uncovered the traces of seven
towns superimposed one above another—
the lowest a settlement of. the late
Neolithic or early bronze period; and,
immediately above this, and most important
of all, the ruins of a fortress-city, the ram
parts of which enclosed the remains of a,
palace, and which had been destroyed by
fire. This, Schliemann believed, was the
veritable Troy of Homer which the
Achaeans had looted and then fired.
Notwithstanding the destruction and
probable plunder of the city, the quantity
of gold and silver found was very con
siderable, chiefly in the vaults of casemates
built into the foundations of the walls,
which were covered up with debris when
the citadel was burnt, and when the roofs and
upper buildings fell in. In one place alone
Dr. Schliemann found the celebrated
treasure (was it Priam’s own ?) containing
sixty articles of gold and silver, which
had evidently been packed together in a
square wooden box, which had disappeared
with the intense heat. The nature of these
citadels shows a high degree of wealth
and luxury, as proved by the skill and taste
of jewellers’ work displayed in the female
ornaments, which comprise three sump
tuous diadems, ear-rings, hairpins, and
bracelets.
There are also numerous vases and cups
of terra-cotta, and a few of gold and silver,
and bars of silver which have every
appearance of being used for money, being
of the same form and weight. The frag
ments of ordinary pottery are innumerable;
the finer and more perfect vases are
often of a graceful form, moulded into
shapes of animals or human heads, and
decorated with spirals, rosettes, and other
ornaments of the type which is more fully
illustrated as that of the pre-Hellenic
civilisation of Mycense.
The jealousy of the Porte, which looked
on Schliemann as a spy, drove him from
Hissarlik to Greek soil, where more
pregnant discoveries awaited his spade.
The result of explorations at Mycenae
showed that a still larger and more wealthy
city existed here, and that its art and
civilisation were widely diffused over the
whole of the eastern coast of Greece and
the adjoining islands. Specimens of that
art have been found on the opposite coasts
of Asia Minor, and in Cyprus and Egypt,
where they were doubtless carried by
commerce. The existence of an extensive
trade is proved by the profusion of gold
which has been found in the vaults and
tombs buried under the debris of the ruined
city, for gold is not a native product, but
must have been obtained from abroad, as
also the bronze, copper, and tin required
for the manufacture of weapons. As to
the Mycenaean religion, no sacred texts
exist as data for ascertaining its character,
but there are monumental remains that tell
us much—e.g., sacrificial pits or altars, tablets
�OTHER HISTORICAL RECORDS
showing acts of sacrifice, human and
animal; rude images of women clasping
children—goddesses of generation—who
are varied manifestations of the great
Earth-Mother, of Aphrodite, with her
dove-emblem, and of gods with the aegis
or the thunderbolt.
From these and
other evidences there may be constructed
a picture, faint at the best, of the old
Mycenaean faith as expressed in the
worship of ancestors and of native deities—
a faith which had correspondences through
out the mainland and isles of ancient
Greece.
The city evidently owed its importance
to its situation on the Isthmus of Corinth,
commanding the trade route between the
Gulfs of Argos and of Corinth, and thus
connecting the Eastern Mediterranean
and Asia with the Western Sea and
Europe.
As a question of dates, we know that the
supremacy of Mycenae and its civilisation
came to an end with the invasion of the
Dorians, which is generally placed some
where near the middle of the twelfth cen
tury B.C.. The invaders, in their southward
march, reached Tiryns and Mycenae, and
sacked and burnt both cities. We know
also that it must have had a long existence,
but for anything approaching to a date we
must refer to the few traces which connect
it with Egypt. Mycenaean vases have been
found in Egypt and Egyptian scarabs in
Mycenaean deposits. They prove an inti
mate intercourse between the two countries
2500 B.C., and there was intercourse further
afield. The imitation of Babylonian cylin
ders, the sculptured palms and lions, the
figures of Astarte and her doves, show that
1,500 years before the date ascribed to the
Homeric poems Assyria and Greece had
come into contact. But these examples of
Oriental art which had found their way to
the soil of Argolis remained more or less
exotic, the independent features of Myce
naean art being retained unaltered.
We are pretty safe, therefore, in suppos
ing this Mycenaean civilisation to have
flourished between the limits of 2500 and
1200 B.C. The still older city of Tiryns, of
which Mycenae was probably an offshoot,
stood nearly on the shore of the eastern
gulf, while Mycenae was in the middle of
the isthmus about eight miles from either
gulf. Tiryns was also explored by Schlie
mann, and showed the same plans of
buildings and fortifications as Troy and
Mycenae, and the same class of relics, only
less extensive and more archaic than those
4i
of Mycenae, which was evidently the more
important city during the golden period of
this great Mycenaean civilisation.
Those who wish to pursue this interesting
subject further will find an admirable account
of it in the English translation of Schlie
mann’s works and essays, with a full descrip
tion of each exploration, and numerous
illustrations of the buildings and articles
found ; while for the results of more recent
explorations in Pre-Homeric Greece,
Tsountas’ and Manatt’s Mycencean Age
and Mr. Hogarth’s chapter on Pre-historic
Greece—A uthority andArcheology—should
be read. For my present object I refer to
it only as an illustration of the position that
Egypt and Chaldaea do not stand alone in
presenting proofs of high antiquity, but that
other nations, such as the Chinese, the
Hittites, the Minaeans of Southern Arabia,
the Mycenmans, Trojans, Lydians, Phry
gians, Cretans, and doubtless many others,
alsp existed as populous, powerful, and
civilised states at a time long antecedent
to the dawn of classical history. If these
ancient empires and civilisations became so
completely forgotten, or survived only in
dim traditions of myths and poetical
legends, the reason seems to be that they
kept no written records, or at any rate
none in the form of enduring inscriptions.
We know ancient Egypt from its hierogly
phics, and from Manetho’shistory; Chaldea
and Assyria from the cuneiform writing on
clay tablets ; China, up to about 3000 B.C.,
from its written histories ; but it is singular
that nearly all the other ancient civilisations
have left few or no inscriptions. This is
the more remarkable in the case of the
Mycenaean cities explored by Dr. Schlie
mann, for their date is not so very remote,
their jewellery, vases, and signet-rings are
profusely decorated, and their dead interred
in stately tombs with large quantities of
gold and silver. Yet, as Tsountas tells us,
of all the finds at Mycenae itself, only three
objects bear inscriptions. These, however,
as will presently appear, are of the highest
importance.
This Mycenaean civilisation had not
sprung, Minerva-like, into sudden efflores
cence and beauty. There were long stages
of development behind it; the eyes of
archaeologists have been opened to new
documents in ALgean lands, whether walls
or tombs, pottery or work in metals, gems,
ivory, sculptured stone or modelled clay,
and it was not long before the revelation,
first made by Schliemann at Hissarlik and
Mycenae, came to be extended far beyond
�42
HUMAN ORIGINS
the point contemplated by him or any one this latter constituting by far the larger
number. In Mr. Evans’s words, these
else in 1876.
The result is that, within the last few tablets “prove that a system of writing
years, further research in the Eastern existed on the soil of Greece at least 600
Mediterranean has brought to light the years before the introduction of the
existence of factors in civilisation very Phoenician alphabet into that country,” and
much older than the Mycenaean—factors that already at that remote date this
which, as already remarked, will revolution indigenous system had attained a most
ise long-accepted theories of the origin of elaborate development, the tablet inscrip
European culture. Egypt and Chaldaea will tions being the work of practised scribes
never lose their fascination for the student following conventional methods and
of the past, because both hold secrets arrangements which indicate traditional
which may never be wrested from their usage. This script is “neither Babylonian
tombs and temples. In each there are nor Egyptian, neither Hittite nor Phoe
numberless sites yet to explore, while in nician ; it is the work on Cretan soil of an
Asia Minor, notably in Elam and Armenia, ^Egean people, the true Eteocretans of the
Odyssey.”
•
undeciphered monuments of antiquity
Our alphabet comes from the Greek
abound. But the influence of these, al
though great and abiding, is less direct through the Latin, and is traceable to a
Semitic source, for to those “colossal
than has been thought ; their history
touches us less closely than that of lands pedlars,” the Phoenicians, belongs the
nearer home. We now know that44 far into credit of having highly perfected it. They
the third millennium B.C. at the very least, did not, as has hitherto been held, derive
and probably much earlier still, there was it from the Egyptian hieroglyphics, but
modified, with consummate
a civilisation in the ZEgean and on the selected andprimarily for commercial pur
shrewdness,
Greek mainland which, while it contracted poses, various characters,from divers sources.
many debts to the East and to .Egypt,
as
was able to assimilate all that it bor of Water is the birthplace of civilisation,the
life itself, and the original home of
rowed, and to reissue it in individual JEgean or Mycaenean civilisation is pro
form.” And, in this matter, interest bably to be found in the island of Crete.
centres round the island of Crete. The
It is crammed with remains of pre-Hellenic
discoveries made there since 1897 by culture. It is a big stepping-stone from
Mr. Arthur Evans establish the facts of an Greece to Asia Minor. It it m the line of
indigenous culture and of an active com communication with Cyprus, Syria, and
merce between Crete and Greece, Egypt,
the
Sicily and
Syria, and other lands, centuries before the Egypt onlines East, and with Mediterra
of the Western
Phoenicians appeared in the Mediterranean. the coast earliest Greek tradition looks
nean. The
The explorations at Cnossus, or Knossos, "back to Crete as “ the home of divinelycity of Minos, “have revolutionised our inspired legislation and the first centre of
knowledge of prehistoric Greece, and to
find even an approach to the results maritime dominion.” have enlarged treat
The subject cannot
obtained we must go back to Schliemann s ment here, but the reader may pursue it in
great discovery of the royal tombs at Mr. Evans’s Cretan Pictographs, published
Mycenae.” There has been disinterred a in 1895, and in subsequent numbers of the
palace beside which those of Tiryns and lournal of Hellenic Studies, while keeping
Mycenae sink in significance. It has great in mind the result of these discoveries in
courts and corridors, innumerable chambers, the ZEgean, which, in Mr. Hogarth’s words,
chief among which is the 44 actual Throne come to. this: That before the epoch at
Rooms and Council Chamber of Homeric which we are used to place the beginning
kings.” This apartment is enriched with of Greek civilisation—that is, the opening
frescoes, beautifully carved friezes, a centuries of the last millennial period B.C.
marble fountain, and an alabaster vase. _ we must allow for an immensely l^pg
But what surpasses all in significance was period of human existence, productivity
the discovery in this same palace, which going back into the neolithic age, and
Mr. Evans speaks of as a sanctuary of the culminating towards the close of the age
Cretan Zeus, of a number of clay tablets, of bronze in a culture more fecund and
somewhat like the Babylonian in form, but more refined than any we are to find again
inscribed with two distinct types of in the same lands till the age of iron was
indigenous prehistoric script, one hiero far advanced. Man in Hellas was more
glyphic or quasi-pictorial, the other linear,
�ANCIENT RELIGIONS
highly civilised before history than when
history begins to record his state, and
there existed society in the Hellenic area,
organised and productive, to a period so
remote that its origins were more distant
from the age of Pericles than that age is
from our own. We have probably to deal
with a total period of civilisation in the
^Egean not much shorter than that in the
Mesopotamian and in the Nile Valleys—
that is to say, some seven thousand years
or more before Christ.
CHAPTER IV.
ANCIENT RELIGIONS
Egypt—Mystery investing its Religion—Book of
the Dead—Origins of Religions—Ghosts—
Animism—Astronomy and Astrology—Moral
ity—Ideas of Future Life and Judgment—
Triads, Solar, and other Gods.
Chaldaean Religion—Oldest Form Akkadian—
Shamanism—Akkadian Trinities—Anu, Mullil, Ea—Bel-Ishtar—Merodach—Assur—Pan
theism—Wordsworth—Magic and Omens—
Penitential Psalms—Conclusions.
As with the Egyptian race, so with its reli
gion, no clear and consecutive account is
possible. The more smoothly the expo
sition runs, the more is it to be sus
pected. We have to be ever on guard
against the danger of reading our own
ideas into ancient records, and the more so
when ignorant of the language, and, there
fore, at the mercy of translators who are
themselves not free from bias. It is. easy
enough to pick out passages here and there
which, detached from their context, have
quite a different meaning from that which
they convey when taken as parts of a creed
or cult; and the defect of most popular ex
positions of the Egyptians and of other reli
gions is the overlooking of this fundamental
principle.
As for the Egyptian, the old and new, the
gross and refined, are hopelessly inter
mixed. The Egyptians were a conservative
people, conservative in the art of which
they were most justly proud, and conserva
tive in their beliefs. Therefore the old,
and, presumably, the lower, was never
wholly superseded by the higher ; hence
the result was an incongruous amalgam, so
that while, as Wiedemann says, we may
-speak of the religious ideas of the Egyptians,
we must not speak of the Egyptian religion.
We cannot label it, or place it in any class,
43
as polytheistic, or monotheistic, or pan
theistic, although it most nearly approaches
this last. We find nature-worship, animal
and plant-worship, ancestor-worship, and
other cults. We find beliefs in sacred bulls
born of virgin cows, on which, as evidence
of the divine offspring they were to bring
forth, a ray of moonlight descended from
the deity ; we find nature-gods with heads
of hawks, jackals, and crocodiles, and, as if
there were not enough animals in the Nile
valley, an addition of fabulous monsters in
the shape of the phoenix and the sphinx ;
we find magic and sorcery, omens from
dreams and other phenomena, in full swing
through all the ages; and, side by side
with these, we have sacred writings rich in
exalting spiritual conceptions, charged with
ethical maxims, whose high, ennobling
features challenge comparison with the
teaching of the Hebrew prophets and of the
Sermon on the Mount. We are probably
near the explanation of such bewildering
materials in seeing in them the representa
tives of the cults that prevailed in the
small states or nomes which ultimately
became fused into one empire. For we
know that each nome had its own god, and
that cities and temples were also dedicated
to specific deities, while each month was
presided over by a special deity. And
each in his own domain was supreme, not
coming into collision with others, although
not excluding them. “ The god of a nome
was within it held to be Ruler of the Gods,
Creator of the World, Giver of all good
things, and it mattered little to his adher
ents that another deity played a precisely
similar part in some adjacent nome where
their own god was relegated to a subordinate
place.” It is in the misinterpretation of
these terms of address to this or that god
that the notions of the Egyptians as mono
theists instead of henotheists have found
currency. There was found at El Amarna,
in the tomb of Ai, a high official, a hymn
to the sun-god Atea (who, by the way, is
always represented under the form of the
solar disc, and never in human shape),
which for sublimity equals the higher
flights of Hebrew poetry. This, isolated
from other hymns to other gods, might
well have warranted the theory that the
Egyptians believed in One Supreme Being.
Of course, with the dominance of any one
nome, with its college of priests eager to
aggrandise their deity, it is obvious that
the deity would come to the front, and
establish a sort of supremacy, as in the
case of Amen-R^, whose prominence dates
�44
HUMAN ORIGINS
only when a high intellectual and moral
from the eighteenth dynasty, when the
standard is reached that the claims of
Hyksos were expelled by the Theban
women to an equality begin to be recog
kings. But the minor deities held their
own, as minor and local deities do else nised. Now, in the earliest records of
domestic and political life in Egypt we find
where, among the people, and the old
this equality more fully recognised than it
cults lost none of their influence among the
is perhaps among ourselves in the nine
uneducated.
Turning to the documents which, out teenth century. Quoting again from Birch:
side the wall-paintings and contents of “ The Egyptian woman appears always as
the equal and companion of her father,
tombs, throw light on the religious ideas
and practices of the Egyptians, the most brethren, and husband. She was never
secluded in a harem, sat at meals with
famous, as it is the most important and
them, had equal rights before the law,
venerable, is that known as tne 4 Chapters
served in the priesthood, and even mounted
of the Coming Forth by Day,” or, more
the throne.”
popularly, <l The Book of the Dead.”
The highly metaphysical nature of some
Its origin and age remain matters of
speculation, but its antiquity is such that features of the Egyptian creed is proof of
the antiquity of the religion, since such
the oldest copies known show that when
elements are among the later products of
they were made, some six thousand years
every theology. Among existing races we
ago, the exact meaning of parts of the text
find similar religions corresponding to
had become obscure to the transcribers. It
similar stages of civilisation. With the very
first existed as oral tradition ; then, set
rudest races, religion consists mainly of
down in writing, became -the subject of a
ghost worship and animism. Mr. Herbert
series of recensions, so that the text,
Spencer has shown how dreams lead to the
embodying the different ideas of different
belief that man consists of two elements, a
periods, typifies the religion which it more
body and a spirit, or shadowy self, which
or less expounds. It contains, among a
wanders forth in sleep, meets with strange
mass of trivialities, or what appear so to
be to us, the hymns, prayers, and magic adventures, and returns when the body
awakes. In the abiding sleep of death this
formulae against all opposing foes and evil
shadowy self becomes a ghost which haunts
spirits, to be rqcited by the dead Osiris (for
the soul was conceived to have such affinity its old abodes and former associates, mostly
with evil intent, and which has to be deceived
with the god Osiris as to be called by his
or propitiated, to prevent it from doing mis
name) in his journey to Amenti, the underchief. Hence the sacrifices and offerings, and
world that led to the Fields of the Blessed.
the many devices for preventing the return
It had already acquired such an authority
of the ghost by carrying the dead body by
in the times of Pepi and Teta, of the
devious paths to some safe locality. Hence
sixth dynasty, about 3800 B.C., that the
also the superstitious dread of evil spirits,
inner walls of their pyramids are covered
and the interment of food and implements
with hieroglyphics of chapters taken from
with the corpse to induce the ghost to
it. From this time forward, almost every
remain tranquilly in the grave, or to set
tomb and mummy-case contains quotations
out comfortably on its journey to another
from it, just as passages of the Bible are
world.
inscribed on our own gravestones.
Animism is another, and, probably, still
. Birch, in his Ancient History of Egypt
older, tap-root of the lower religions. As
from the Monuments, which I prefer to
quote from, as, being published by the the child sees life in the doll, so the savage
sees life in every object, animate or inani
Societyfor Promoting Christian Knowledge,
mate, which comes in contact with him, and
it cannot be suspected of any bias to dis
affects his existence. Animals, and even
credit orthodoxy, says that t£ in their moral
stocks and stones, are supposed to have
law the Egyptians followed the same pre
souls, and who knows that these may not
cepts as the Decalogue (ascribed to Moses
be the souls of departed ancestors, and
2,500 years later), and enumerated treason,
murder, adultery, theft, and the practice of have some mysterious power of helping or
of hurting him? In any case the safer
magic as crimes of the deepest dye.” The
plan is to propitiate them by worship and
position of women is one of the surest tests
sacrifice.
of an advanced civilisation ; for in rude
From these rude beginnings _ we see
times, and among savage races, force reigns
nations as they advance in civilisation rising
supreme, and the weaker sex is always the
to higher conceptions, developing, as in
slave or drudge of the stronger one. It is
�ANCIENT RELIGIONS
some parts of India to this day, their
ghosts into gods, and confining their opera
tions to the greater phenomena of nature,
such as the sky, the earth, the sun,
the stars, seasons, and so forth. By
degrees the unity of nature begins to
be felt by the higher minds; priestly
castes are established in which there is
leisure for meditation; ideas are trans
mitted from generation to generation ; and
the vague and primitive nature-worship
passes into the phase of philosophical and
scientific religion. The popular rites and
superstitions linger on with the mass of the
population, but an inner circle of hereditary
priests refines and elevates them, and begins
to ask for a solution of the great problems
of the universe ; what it means, and how it
was created; the mystery of good and
evil; man’s origin, future life and destiny;
and all the questions which, down to
the present day, are asked though never
answered by the higher minds of the
highest races. In this stage of religious
development metaphysical speculations
occupy a foremost place. Priests of Helio
polis, magi of Eridhu and of Ur, reasoned
like Christian fathers and Milton’s devils
of
“ Fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,”
and, like them
“ Found no end, in wandering mazes lost.”
Theories of theism and pantheism, of
creations and incarnations, of trinities and
atonements, of polarities between good and
evil, free-will and necessity, were argued
and answered, now in one direction and
now in another. Science contributed its
share, sometimes in the form of crude cos
mogonies and first attempts at ethnology,
but principally through the medium of
astronomy. An important function of the
priests was to form a calendar, predict the
seasons, and regulate the holding of reli
gious rites at the proper times. Hence the
course of the heavens was carefully watched,
the stars were mapped out into constella
tions through which the progress of the
sun and planets was recorded ; and myths
sprang into existence based on the sun’s
daily rising and setting, and its annual
journey through the seasons and the signs
of the zodiac. Mixed up with astronomy
was astrology, which, watching the sun,
moon, and five planets, inferred life from
motion, and recognised gods exerting a
divine influence on human events. The
sacred character of the priests was con
45
firmed by the popular conviction that they
were at the same time prophets and
magicians, and that they alone were able
to interpret the will of personified powers
of nature, and influence them for good or
evil.
Ethical codes are among the latest
to appear. It is only after a long
progress of civilisation that ideas of
personal sin and righteousness, of an over
ruling justice and goodness, of future
rewards and punishments, are developed
from the cruder conceptions and supersti
tious observances of earlier times. It was
a long road from the jealous and savage
local god of the Hebrew tribes, who smelt
the sweet savour of burnt sacrifices and
was pleased, and who commanded the
extermination of enemies, and the slaughter
of women and children, to the supreme
Jehovah, who loved justice and mercy
better than the blood of bulls and rams.
It is one great merit of the Bible, intelli
gently read, that it records so clearly the
growth and evolution of moral ideas, from
a plane almost identical with that of the
Red Indians, to the supreme height of the
Sermon on the Mount and St. Paul’s defini
tion of charity.
The elevated moral code of portions of the
Book of the Dead may be cited as another
proof of the great antiquity of Egyptian
civilisation. The prayer of the soul pleading
in the day of judgment before Osiris and
the Celestial Jury, which embodies the
idea of moral perfection entertained by the
contemporaries of Menes, contains the
following articles :—
“ I have told no lies; committed no
frauds ; been good to widows ; not over
tasked servants ; not lazy or negligent;
done nothing hateful to the gods ; been
kind to slaves ; promoted no strife ; caused
no one to weep; committed no murder;
stolen no offerings to the dead; made no
fraudulent gains ; seized no lands wrong
fully ; not tampered with weights and
measures ; not taken the milk from suck
lings ; not molested sacred beasts or birds;
not cut off or monopolised water courses ;
have sown joy and not sorrow ; have given
food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty,
and clothed the naked :
“ I am pure; I am pure.”
It is evident that such an ideal of life,
not imported from foreign sources, but the
growth of an internal civilisation, must be
removed by an enormous time from the
crude ideas and revolting customs of bar
baric ages.
�46
HUMAN ORIGINS
There is one phenomenon to be noted i mainly chronological, these vicissitudes in
religious beliefs are not important. If, at
in these ancient religions, that of degenera
the earliest date to which authentic history
tion.
After having risen to a certain
extends, we find a national religion which
height of pure and lofty conceptions they
has already passed from the primitive into
cease to advance, become corrupted by
the metaphysical stage, and which embodies
degrading myths, by cruel and immoral
abstract ideas, astronomical observations,
rites, and finally decay and perish. Thus
and a high and pure code of morals, it is a
do they prove that subjugation to the
legitimate inference that it is the outcome
law of birth, growth, maturity, decay, and
of a long antecedent era of civilisation.
death, which accompanies all sublunary
This is eminently the case with the
things.
ancient religions of Egypt and Chaldaea.
“ The old order changes, giving place to new.”
The ancient Egyptians were the most
religious people ever known.
Their
Environment changes, and religions, laws,
thoughts were so fixed on a future life
and social institutions must adapt them
that, as Herodotus says, they looked upon
selves thereto, or perish. Empires rise
their houses as temporary inns, and their
and fall, old civilisations disappear, old
tombs as their true permanent homes.
creeds become incredible, and often, for
The idea of an immediate day of judgment
a time, the course of humanity seems
to be retrograde.
But as the flowing , for each individual soul after death was so
JUDGMENT OF THE SOUL BY OSIRIS.—WEIGHING GOOD AND BAD DEEDS.
(From Champoilion’s Egypt.}
fixed in their minds that it exercised a
tide rises, though the successive waves on
constant practical influence on their life
the shore advance and recede, evolution,
and conduct. Piety to the gods, loyalty to
or the law of progress, in the long run pre
the throne, obedience to superiors, justice
vails, and, amid the many, oscillations of
and mercy to inferiors, and observance of
temporary conditions, carries the human
all the principal moral laws, and especially
race ever towards higher things.
that of truthfulness, were enforced by the
In the case of ancient religions it is easy
conviction that no sooner had the breath
to see how processes of degeneration are
departed from the body, which was forth
aided.
Priests who were the pioneers
with deposited as a mummy, with its
of progress and leaders of advanced
Ka or second shadowy self, in the tomb,
thought, became first conservatives, and
than the soul would appear before the
then obscurantists.
Pantheistic concep
supreme judge Osiris, and the forty-two
tions, and personifications of divine attri
heavenly assessors, to whom it would
butes, lead to polytheism. As religions
have to confess the naked truth, and be
become popular, and pass from the learned
rewarded or punished according to its
few to the ignorant many, they become
merits.
vulgarised, and the real meaning of myths
The theory was that man consisted of
and symbols is either lost or confined to a
| three or more parts : the body or ordinary
select inner circle.
.
.
But for my present purpose, which is I living man; the Ka or double, a sort
�ANCIENT RELIGIONS
of shadowy self which came out of the
body and returned to it, as in dreams ; and
the soul, a still more subtle essence, which
at death went to the gods, was judged, and
either rewarded for its merits by living
with them in heaven, or punished for its
sins by being sent to the nether world of
torment. But this soul still retained such
a connection with its former body as to
come down from time to time to visit it ;
while the Ka or double retained the old
connection so closely as to live habitually
in it, only coming out to eat, drink, and
repeat the acts of its former life, but
incapable of existing without a physical
basis in the old body or some likeness of
it. The same doctrine of the double was
applied to all animated and even to inani
mate objects, so that the shadowy man
could come out of his mummy, live in his
own shadowy house, feed on shadowy food,
be surrounded by shadowy geese, oxen, and
other simulacra of his former possessions.
Hence arose the extraordinary care in pro
viding a fitting tomb and preserving the
mummy, or, failing the mummy, which in
course of time might decay, providing a
portrait-statue or painted likeness, which
might give a point d'appui for the Ka, and
a receptacle for the occasional visits of the
soul. . While these were preserved,
conscious personal life was continued
beyond the grave, and the good man who
went to heaven was immortal.
But if
these were destroyed and the physical
basis perished, the Ka and soul were left
without a home, and either perished also
or were left to flit like gibbering ghosts
through the. world of shadows without a
local habitation or a name. The origin of
this theory as. regards the Ka is easily
explained. It is, as Mr. Herbert Spencer
has conclusively shown, a natural inference
from dreams, and is found everywhere
from the stone period down to the
crude beliefs of existing savages. It
even survives among many civilised races
in the belief in ghosts, and the precautions
taken to prevent the Ka of dead men
from returning to haunt their former
homes and annoy their relatives. The
origin of the third element or soul is not so
clear. It may either be a relic of the
animism which among savage races attri
butes life to every object in nature, or a
philosophical deduction of more advanced
periods, which sees an universal spirit
underlying all creation, and recognising in
man a spark of this spirit which is indesJructibl^ and migrates either into fresh
47
forms or into fresh spheres of celestial or
infernal regions, and is finally absorbed in
the great ocean from which it sprang.
We. find almost the precise form of this
Egyptian beliefamong many existing savage
or semi-civilised men separated by wide
distances in different quarters of the world.
The Negroes of the Gold Coast believe in
the same three entities, and they call the
soul which exists independently of the man,
before his birth and after his death, the
Kra. The Navajos and other tribes of
Red Indians have precisely the same
belief. . It seems probable that, as we
find it in the earliest Egyptian records, it
was a development, evolved through ages
of growing civilisation by a succession of
learned priests, from the primitive fetichism
and fear of ghosts of rude ancestors ; and
in the animal worship and other supersti
tions of later times we find traces of these
primitive beliefs still surviving among the
mass of the population. Be this as it may,
this theory of a future life was firmly rooted
at the dawn of Egyptian history, and we
are indebted to the dryness of the
climate for the marvellous preservation
of records which give us such an intimate
acquaintance with the history, the religion,
the literature, and the details of a domestic
and social life which is distant from our
own by an interval of more than 6,000
years.
. No other nation ever attained to such a
vivid and practical belief in a future exist
ence as these ancient Egyptians. Taking
merely the material test of money, what an
enormous capital must have been expended
in pyramids, tombs, and mummies ; what
a large proportion of his income must every
Egyptian of the upper classes have spent in
the preparations for a future life; how
shadowy and dim does the idea of immor
tality appear in comparison among the fore
most races of the present day!
I return for a brief space to the Egyptian
pantheon (a summary of whose contents
would more than fill this chapter) to refer
to the honours paid by the one deity of nome
or temple to his two companion deities,
usually one god and one goddess, son and
wife respectively,because in this we have the
formulating of triads or, trinities, in which
Wiedemann sees “ the earlier outcome of
the effort after a systematic grouping of the
deities,” and because it is impossible for us
to see the figures of Isis and her son Horus
without being reminded of the Virgin Mary
and Jesus, a comparison giving emphasis
to the words of Scripture : ‘ Out of Egypt
�4»
HUMAN ORIGINS
horoscopes, and “ in the later papyri-,” so
have I called my Son.’ But the Christian
Wiedemann tells us, we find “ spheres ” or
Trinity is simplicity itself as contrasted
“ tables by which the fortune of a man
with the three-in-one groups of the Egyptian
could be calculated from certain data,
creed.' For its gods were mortal, and
such as the hour of his birth, and the like.
when the father died the son became the
From the Egyptians and the Chaldaeans,
father, and became the husband of his
who also held similar ideas, these practices
mother, and so on, in a pretty confusion
were passed on to the Greeks, and from
worse confounded when we arrive at the
them to the learned men (astrologers ?) of
expansion of triads into Enneads or
the Middle Ages, and in their last outcome
cycles of time, of which some of the
temples had two sets, ‘ the great and the —far removed indeed from their original
religious nature—they still play a great part
small.’ ”
The varying and the regular phenomena in modern books of prophecy.” The priests
of nature alike supplied conceptions of the had doubtless long studied astronomy;
functions of the several gods. The dif they had watched the stars, traced the
annual course of the sun, divided the year
ferent phases of the sun were studied and
received different names, as Horus, when into months and the circle into 360°, and
constructed calendars for bringing the civil
on the horizon rising or setting ; Ra in its
into correspondence with the sidereal year.
midday splendour; Osiris during its journey
They not only had intercalated the five
in the night through the underground world
supplemental days, bringing the duration
of darkness. Of these Ra naturally had
of the year from 360 to 365, but they had
the pre-eminence; the title of Pharaoh
invented a sothic cycle for the odd quarter
given to kings, t£ belief in whose divinity
of a day, by which at the end of every
was maintained throughout Egyptian
1,460 years a year was added, and the sun
history,” was probably derived, however,
not from Ra, but from Per-oa = great brought back to rise on the first day of the
first month of Thoth in the same place in
house—a title corresponding to Sublime
the heavens, determined by the heliacal
Porte. The Osiris myth, which was
risings of the brightest of the stars, Sothis
the basis of belief in a future life and
or Sirius.
. .
day of judgment, was clearly solar. This
It is to be observed that the religion of
barbaric cosmogony held its ground among
the Egyptians as tenaciously as the Mosaic ancient Egypt seems to be of native growth.
cosmogony among Western illiterates. To No trace is to be found, either in record, or
them the firmament was an ocean or a tradition, of any importation from a foreign
source, such as may be seen in the Chalcelestial Nile running through a metal sky,
on either of which the sun made passage dsean legend of Oannes and other religions
from his rising to his setting. Or the great of antiquity. On the contrary, all the
Egyptian myths and traditions ascribe the
vault was a celestial cow upheld by four gods
invention of religion, arts, and literature, to
(as in Hindu cosmogony the earth rests
Thoth, Osiris, Horus, and other native
upon an elephant), and it was over the
Egyptian gods.
surface of the cow’s body that the sun made
The development of the art of writing
his daily journey. His annual course through
from hieroglyphics affords strong confirma
Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter,
tion of this view. It is native to the soil;
translated itself as applied to man into the
the symbols are taken from Egypt and not
ideas of birth, growth, manhood, decline,
and are essentially
and death, to be followed by a day of judg from foreign objects, the Chaldasan cunei
different from those of
ment, a sojourn in the under-world, and a
form, which is the only other form of writing
resurrection.
...
that might possibly compare in point of
In fact, the Egyptian religion seems to
antiquity with the Egyptian hieroglyphics
have concentrated itself mainly on the Sun.
and hieratic.
The planets and signs of the zodiac did not,
In all other ancient systems of writing,
as with the Chaldees, afford a principal
such as Chaldaean and Chinese, we see the
element of their sacred books and mytho development from the original picture
logies, star-worship being extremely rare.
writing into conventional signs, syllabaries,
Nevertheless, all the heavenly bodies were
and finally into ideographs and phonetics ;
believed to control the destiny of those
in the case
when we
born under them, although the fate of the but sight of it inof Egyptian, dynasties, first
get
the earliest
it is
individual was determined by laws which
already fully formed, and undergoes no
the stars and planets must themselves obey.
essential changes during the next 5,ooq
These were ascertainable by means of
�ANCIENT RELIGIONS
49
years. . Even the hieratic, or cursive hier
oglyphic for ordinary purposes, was current
in the Old Empire, as is proved by the cele
brated Prisse papyrus, the date of which
is supposed to be about 3580 B.c.
so on. This character of magicians and
soothsayers clung to the Chaldsean priests
even down to a later period, and under the
Roman Empire Chaldaean rites were
identified with sorcery and divination.
From what may, speaking broadly, be
The Chaldaean religion went through
called early Akkadian times, we find a belief
more changes in the course of its evolution.
in great gods who are personifications of the
In the case of Egypt,. the influences of forces of nature. They are departmental
Semitic and other foreign conquests and
deities ; henotheistic, that is to say, each
intercourse left few traces, and the only is supreme in the element which he repre
serious attempt at a radical religious revo sents ; and, as already shown, the intense
lution by the heretic king who endeavoured language with which he is addressed has
to dethrone the old Egyptian gods, and sub led to the erroneous inference of One God
stitute a system more nearly monotheistic of Gods, and consequently to misleading
under the emblem of the winged solar-disc, theories of monotheism as a feature both
produced no permanent effect, and dis of Egyptian, as already noted, and of
appeared in one or two generations. But
Chaldaean theology. This applies es
in Chaldaea, Semitic influences prevailed pecially to the tutelary deities of the
from a very early period, and when we
several cities, who, within their own limits,
reach the historical periods of the great were regarded as supreme ; and the same
Babylonian and Assyrian empires, the
theory has to be extended to the guardian
kings, priests, and nobles were Semite,
god of each individual, who, in all times of
and the Akkadian had become a dead
trouble and peril, sought supernatural aid,
language, which could be read only as we repairing to priest and temple as vehicles
read Latin or Hebrew, by the aid of of help.
translations and . of grammars and dic
. The Chaldseans. invented a whole
tionaries. Still, its records remained, as hierarchy of Trinities, rising one above
the Hebrew Bible does to us, and the
the other, while below them were an
sacred books of the old religion and its indefinite number of minor gods and
fundamental ideas were only developed
goddesses taken for the most part from
and not changed.
astronomical myths of the sun, moon,
In the background of this Akkadian planets, and seasons. For the religion of
religion we perhaps make a nearer approach the Chaldees was, even more than that of
than in that of Egypt to the primitive the Egyptians, based on astronomy and
superstitions, peculiar to the Mongolian
race. To this day the religion of the semi- astrology, as may be seen in their national
epic of Gilgamesh,
barbarous races of that stock is “ Sha the passage of thewhich is a solar myth of
sun through the twelve
manism ” ; a fear of ghosts and goblins, a signs of the zodiac, the last chapter but one
belief that the universe swarms with being a representation of the passage
myriads of spirits, mostly evil, and that through the sign of Aquarius, in the legend
the only escape from them is by the aid of of a universal deluge.
conjurer-priests, who know magical rites
composed
and formulas which can baffle their of The first Akkadian triad was or Ana, is
Anu, Mull-il, and Ea. Anu,
malevolent designs. These incantations,
the word for
and the interpretation of omens and scribed as the heaven, and the god is de
Lord of
auguries occupy a great part of the oldest and “ the first-born, thethe starry heavens,”
oldest, the Father
sacred books, and more than 100 tablets
of the gods. It is the same idea as that
have been already recovered from the expressed by” the Sanscrit Varuna, the Greek
great, work on Astronomy and Astrology O.uranos. Mull-il, the next member of this
compiled from them by the priests of triad,
Ea is the god
Agade, for the royal library of Sargon I. of theis the earth-god, while and personifies
abyss or underworld,
Tliey are for the larger part of the most
absurd and puerile character; as, for the wise and beneficent side of the Divine
Intelligence,
order and
instance, “ if a sheep give birth to a lion harmony, thethe maintainer ofVery early,
friend of man.
there will be war”; “if a mare give birth
with the introduction of Semitic influences,’
r° -a £%.„there .wiI1 be disaster and
Mull-il dropped out of his
the
famine ; if a white dog enter a temple trinity, and was superseded place in who
by Bel,
its foundation will subsist; if a grey dog
was conceived as being the son of Ea, the
the temple will lose its possessions,” and*
personification of the active and combative
E
�5°
HUMAN ORIGINS
energy which carries out the wise designs
of Ea by reducing the chaos to order,
creating the sun and heavenly bodies, and
directing them in their courses, subduing
evil spirits and slaying monsters. His name
simply signifies “ the Lord,” and is applied
to other inferior deities as a title of honour,
as Bel-Marduk, the Lord Marduk or Merodach, the patron god of Babylon. In this
capacity Bel is associated with the mid-day
sun, as the emblem of a terrible yet bene
ficent power, the enemy of evil spirits and
dragons of darkness.
The next triad is more distinctly astrono
mical. It consists of Uruk the moon, Ud
the sun, and Mermer the god of the air, of
rain and tempest. These are the old
Akkadian names, but they are better known
by the Semitic translations of Sin, Samas,
and Ramman. The next group of gods is
purely astronomical, consisting of the five
planets, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and
Saturn, personified as Nergal, Nebo, Mar
duk, I star, and Nindar. The number of
gods was further increased by assigning a
wife to each male deity. Thus Belit, or
“ the Lady,” was the wife of Bel, he repre
senting the masculine element of nature,
strength and courage ; she the feminine
principle of tenderness and maternity. So
also Nana the earth was the wife of Anu,
the god of the strong heavens ; Annunit
the moon the wife of Samas the sun ; and
Istar (Astarte, Astoreth, or Aphrodite), the
planet Venus, the Goddess of Love and
War, though a great goddess in her own
right, was fabled to have wooed the youthful
lover Tammuz or Thammuz, at whose death
she descended to the underworld, that she
might bring him back. Their return sym
bolised the advent of spring. The worship
of Istar and Tammuz spread over the whole
of Western Asia ; and the beautiful myth
has its variant in the descent of Demeter in
search of Persephone in the realms of Pluto.
But of these only Belit and Istar were
admitted into the circle of the great gods,
consisting of the two triads and the planets,
who held the foremost place in the Chaldaean and Assyrian mythology. Of the
minor gods, Meri-dug or Marduk, the
Merodach of the Bible, is the most remark
able, for, according to some interpreters, he
represents the idea which, some 5)000 years
later, became the fundamental one of the
Christian religion — that of a Son of
God, who acts the part of mediator and
friend of man. He is the son of Ea and
Damkina, ?.<?. of heaven and earth, and an
emanation from the Supreme Spirit con
sidered in its attribute of benevolence.
The tablets are full of inscriptions on which
he is represented as applying to his father
Ea for aid and advice to assist suffering
humanity, most commonly by teaching the
spells which will drive away the demons
who are supposed to be the cause of all
misfortunes and illness. It is not surpris
ing, therefore, to find that he and Istar, the
lovely goddess, were the favourite deities,
and occupied much the same position as
Jesus and the Virgin Mary do in the
Catholic religion of the present day, while
the other deities were local gods attached
to separate cities where their temples stood,
and where they occupied a position not
unlike that of the patron saints and holy
relics of which almost every considerable
town and cathedral boasted in mediaeval
Christianity. Thus they rose and fell in
rank with the ascendancy or decline of
their respective cities, just as Pthah and
Ammon did in Egypt according as the seat
of empire was at Memphis or Thebes. In
one instance only in later times, in Assyria,
which had become exclusively Semitic, do
we find the idea of one supreme god, who
was national and not local, and who over
shadowed all other gods, as Jahve in the
later days of the Jewish monarchy, and as,
in the conception of the Hebrew prophets,
did the gods of the surrounding nations.
Assur, the local god of the city of Assur,
the first capital of Assyria, became, with
the growth of the Assyrian Empire, the
one supreme god, in whose name wars
were undertaken, cities destroyed, and
captives massacred or mutilated. In fact,
the resemblance is very close between
Assur and the ferocious and vindictive
Jahve of the Israelites during the rude
times of the Judges. They are both jealous
gods, delighting in the massacre and torture
of prisoners, women, and children, and
enjoining the extermination of nations who
insult their dignity by worshipping other
gods. We almost seem to see, when we
read the records of T. iglath-Pilesei and
Sennacherib and the Books of Judges and
of Samuel, the origin of religious wars, and
the spirit of cold-blooded cruelty inspired
by a gloomy fanaticism, which is so charac
teristic of the Semitic nature, and which
in later times led to the propagation of
Mohammedanism by the sword. With the
Hebrews this conception of a cruel and
vindictive J ahve was beaten out of them by
persecutions and sufferings, and that of a
one merciful god evolved from it; but
Assyria went through no such schooling,
�ANCIENT RELIGIONS
and retained its arrogant prosperity down to
the era of its disappearance from history
with the fall of Nineveh ; but it is easy to
see that the course of events might have
been different, and monotheism might have
been evolved from the conception of Assur.
These, however, are speculations relating
to a much later period than the primitive
religion with which we are principally con
cerned.
It is remarkable how many of our modern
religious conceptions find an almost exact
counterpart in those of this immensely
remote period. Incarnations, emanations,
atonements, personifications of Divine attri
butes, are all there, and also the subtle
metaphysical theories by which the human
intellect, striving to penetrate the mysteries
of the unknowable, endeavours to account
for the existence of good and evil, and to
reconcile multiplicity of manifestation with
unity of essence. If Wordsworth sings
of a
5i
confesses his sins, pleads ignorance, and
sues for mercy, almost in the identical words
of the “sweet singer of Israel.” In one
of these, headed “The complaints of the
repentant heart,” we find such verses as
these—
“ I eat the food of wrath, and drink the
waters of anguish.”
*****
“ Oh, my God, my transgressions are
very great, very great my sins.
‘ The Lord in his wrath has overwhelmed
me with confusion.”
*****
“ I lie on the ground, and none reaches
a hand to me. I am silent and in tears,
and none takes me by the hand. I cry
out, and there is none who hears me.”
*****
“ My God, who knowest the unknown,1
be merciful to me. My Goddess, who
knowest the unknown, be merciful.”
- “sense sublime
*****
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
“ God, who knowest the unknown, in the
And the round ocean and the living air,
midst of the stormy waters take me by the
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ;
hand ; my sins are seven times seven, for
A motion and a spirit that impels
give my sins !”
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
Another hymn is remarkable for its artis
And rolls through all things,”
tic construction. It is in regular strophes,
he conveys the fundamental idea which was the penitent speaking in each five double
at the bottom of these earliest religions, lines, to which the priest adds two, support
and which has been perpetuated in the ing his prayer. The whole is in precisely
East in the idea of Pantheism, or of the same style as the similar penitential
an universe which is one with its First psalms of the Hebrew Bible, as will
Cause, and not a mechanical work called appear from the following quotation of
into existence from without by a personal one _ of the strophes from the translation
of Zimmern:—
Creator.
Penitent. “ I, thy servant, full of sighs,
An ancient priest of Egypt or Chaldsea
might have written these verses of the call to thee. Whoso is beset with sin, his
philosophic poet of the nineteenth century, ardent supplication thou acceptest. If thou
only he would have written Horus or Bel lookest on a man with pity, that man liveth.
for the “ setting sun,” Ea for the “ round Ruler of all, mistress of mankind, merciful
ocean,” Anur for the “sky,” and so on. one to whom it is good to turn, who dost
Side by side with these intellectual and receive sighs.”
Priest. “ While.his god and- his goddess
philosophical conceptions of ancient reli
gions we find the element of personal are wroth with him he calls on thee. Thy
countenance turn on him, take hold of his
piety occupying a place which contrasts
wonderfully with the childish and super hand.”
These hymns are remarkable, both as
stitious idea of evil spirits, magical spells,
and omens. We read, in the same collec showing that the sentiments of personal
tions of tablets, of mares-bringing forth dogs piety and contrition for sin as a thing hate
and women lions ; and psalms which in ful to the god might be,as intense in a poly
their elevation of moral tone and in theistic as in a monothestic religion, and
tensity of personal devotion might readily as illustrating the immense interval of time
be mistaken for the Hebrew Psalms attri
buted to David. There is a large collection
of what are known as “the Penitential that Or, as some translators read,Who knowest
I knew not”—i.e., that I sinned in
Psalms,” in which the Chaldsean penitent ignorance.
�52
HUMAN ORIGINS
which must have elapsed before such senti
ments could have grown up from the rude
beginnings of savage or semi-civilised
superstitions. The two oldest religions of
the world, those of Egypt and Chaldaea,
tell the same story, that of the immense
interval which must have elapsed prior to
the earliest known historical date of 7000
B.C. to allow of such ideas and civilisation
having grown up from a state of things
which, perchance, prevailed even in the
neolithic period, and still prevails among
the races of the world who have remained,
isolated and unchanged, in the hunting or
nomad condition.
I have dwelt at some length on the
ancient religions, for nothing more tends to
open the mind and break down the narrow
barriers of sectarian prejudice than to see
how the ideas which we have believed to be
the peculiar possession of our own religion
are in fact the inevitable products of the
evolution of the human race from barbarism
to civilisation, and have appeared in sub
stantially the same forms in so many ages
and countries. And surely, in these days,
when faith in direct inspiration has been so
rudely shaken, it must be consoling to many
enlightened Christians to find that the funda
mental articles of their creed, as trinities,
emanations, incarnations, atonements, a
future life and day of judgment, are not the
isolated conceptions of a minority of the
human race in recent times, but have been
held from a remote antiquity, by other
nations which have taken a leading part in
civilisation.
To all enlightened minds also, whatever
may be their theological creeds, it must be
a cheering reflection that the fundamental
axioms of morality do not depend on the
evidence that the Decalogue was written
on a stone by God’s own finger, or that the
Sermon on the Mount is correctly reported,
but on the evolution of the natural instincts
of the human mind. All advanced and
civilised communities have had their Deca
logues and Sermons on the Mount, and it
is impossible for any dispassionate obseiver
to read them without feeling that in sub
stance they are identical, whether con
tained in the Egyptian Todtenbuch, the
Babylonian hymns, the Zoroastrian Zendavesta, the sacred books of Brahmanism and
Buddhism, the Maxims of Confucius, the
Doctrines of Plato and the Stoics, or the
Christian Bible.
None are absolutely perfect and com
plete, and of some it may be said that they
contain precepts of the highest practical
importance which are either omitted or
contradicted in the Christian formulas. For
instance, the praise of diligence, and the
injunction not to be idle, in the Egyptian
and Zoroastrian creeds, contrast favourably
with the behest, “ Take no thought for the
morrow,” of the Sermon on the Mount.
But in this, as in all summaries of moral
axioms, apparent differences arise not from
fundamental oppositions, but from truth
having two sides, and passing over readily
into
“The falsehood of extremes.”
Even the injunction to “take no thought
for the morrow ” is only an extreme way of
stating that the active side of human life,
strenuous effort, self-denial, and foresight,
must not be pushed so far as to stifle all
higher aspirations. Probably if the same
concrete case of conduct had been sub
mitted to an Egyptian, a Babylonian, or
Zoroastrian priest, and to the late Bishop
of Peterborough, their verdicts would not
have been different. Such a wide extension
does the maxim take, “ One touch of
Nature makes the whole world kin,” when
we educate ourselves up to the general
idea that civilised man has everywhere felt
and believed since the dawn of history
very much as we ourselves do at the close
of the nineteenth century.
CHAPTER V.
ANCIENT SCIENCE AND ART
Evidence of Antiquity—Pyramids and Temples
— Arithmetic — Decimal and Duodecimal
Scales—Astronomy—Geometry reached in
Egypt at earliest Dates—Great PyramidPiazza Smyth and Pyramid Religion—Pyra
mids formerly Royal Tombs, but built on
scientific plans—Exact Orientation on Meri
dian-Centre in 30° N. Latitude—Tunnel
points to Pole—Possible use as an Observatory
—Proctor—Probably Astrological—Planetary
Influences—Signs of the Zodiac Mathema
tical coincidences of Great Pyramid —Chaldaenn Astronomy—Ziggurats—Tower. of
Babel—Different Orientation from Egyptian
Pyramids — Astronomical
Treatise
from
Library of Sargon I., 3800 B.C.—Eclipses
and Phases of Venus—Measures of Time
from Old Chaldsean—Moon and Sun—Found
among many distant Races—Implies Com
merce and Intercourse—Art and Industry
�ANCIENT SCIENCE AND ART
Embankment of Menes—Sphinx—Industrial
Arts—Fine Arts—Sculpture and Painting—
The Oldest Art the best—Chaldsean Art—De
Sarzec’s Find at Sirgalla—Statues and Works
of Art—Imply long use of Bronze—Whence
came the Copper and Tin—Phoenician and
Etruscan Commerce—Bronze known 200
years earlier—-Same Alloy everywhere—
Possible Sources of Supply—Age of Copper
—Domestic Animals—Horse—Ox and Ass—
Agriculture—All proves Extreme Antiquity.
The conclusion, drawn from the religions
of Egypt and Chaldsea, as to the existence
of a very long period of advanced civilisa
tion prior to the historical era, is fully
confirmed by the state of the arts and
sciences at the commencement of the
earliest records. A knowledge of astro
nomy implies a long series of observations
and a certain amount of mathematical
calculation. The construction of great
works of hydraulic engineering and of
such buildings as temples and pyramids,
also proves an advanced state of scientific
knowledge. Such a building, for instance,
as the Great Pyramid must have required
a considerable acquaintance with geometry,
and with the effects of strains and pressures;
and the same is true of the early temples
and ziggurats, or temple-towers or observa
tories, of Chaldaea. There must have been
regular schools of astronomers and archi
tects, and books treating on scientific sub
jects, before such structures could have
been possible.
The knowledge of science possessed by a
nation affords a more definite test of its
antecedent civilisation than its religion.
It is always possible to say that advanced
religious ideas may have been derived from
some supernatural revelation, but in the
case of the exact sciences, such as arith
metic, geometry, and astronomy, this is no
longer possible, and their progress can be
traced step by step by the development of
human reason. Thus there are savage
races, like the Australians at the present
day, who cannot count beyond “ one, two,
and a great number ” ; and some philolo
gists tell us that, from the prevalence of
dual forms which seem to have preceded
those of the plural, traces of this state can
be discovered in the origin of civilised
languages.
The next stage is that of counting by the
fingers, which gives rise to a natural
system of decimal notation, as shown by
such words as ten, which invariably means
two hands ; twenty, which is twice ten,
and so on. Many existing races, who are
53
a little more advanced than the Australians,
use their fingers forcounting, and canreckon
up to five or ten. Even the chimpanzee Sally
could count to five. But when we come to a
duodecimal system we may feel certain that
a considerable advance has been made, and
that arithmetic has come into existence as
a science; for the number 12 has no natural
basis of support like 10, and can only have
been adopted because it was exactly divis
ible into whole numbers by 2, 3, 4, 6.
The mere fact, therefore, of the existence of
a duodecimal system shows that the nation
which adopts it must have progressed a long
way from the primitive “ one, two, a great
many,” and acquired ideas, both as to the
relation of numbers and a multitude of
other things, such as the division of the
circle, of days, months, and years, of
weights and measures, and other matters,
in which ready division into whole parts
without fractions had become desirable.
And at the very first in Egypt, Chaldasa,
and among the Mongolian races generally,
we find this duodecimal system firmly
established. The circle has 360 degrees,
the year 360 days, the day 24 single or 12
double hours, and so on. But from this
point the journey is a long one to calcula
tions which imply a knowledge of geometry
and mathematics, and to observations of
celestial bodies which imply a long ante
cedent science of astronomy, and accurate
records of the motions of the sun, moon,
and planets, and of eclipses and other
memorable events.
The earliest records, both of Egypt and
Chaldasa, show that such an advanced
state of science had been reached at the
first dawn of the historical period, and we
read of works on astronomy, geometry,
medicine, and other sciences, written, or
compiled from older treatises, by Egyptian
kings of the old empire, and by Sargon I.
of Akkad from older Akkadian works. But
the monuments prove still more conclusively
that such sciences must have been long
known. The Great Pyramid of Cheops
affords a very definite proof of the progress
which must have been made in geometrical,
mechanical, and astronomical science at
the time of its erection. If we were to
believe Professor Piazzi Smyth, and the
little knot of his followers who have founded
what may be called a Pyramid-religion,
this remarkable structure contains a revela
tion in stone for future ages of almost all
the material scientific facts which have been
discovered since through 6,000 years of
unwearied research by the unaided human
�54
HUMAN ORIGINS
intellect. Its designers must have known
and recorded, with an accuracy surpassing
that of modern observation, such facts as
the dimensions of the earth, the distance of
the sun, the ratio of the area of a. circle to
its diameter, the precise determination of
latitude and of a true meridian line, and
the establishment of standards of measure
taken, like the metre, from a definite division
of the earth’s circumference. It is argued
that such facts as these could not have
been discovered so accurately in the infancy
of science, and without the aid of the
telescope, and therefore that they must
have been made known by revelation ; and
the Great Pyramid is looked upon, therefore,
as a sort of Bible in stone, which is, in
some not very intelligible way, to be taken
as a confirmation of the inspiration of the
Hebrew Bible, and read as a sort of supple
ment to it.
This is of course absurd. A supernatural
revelation to teach a chosen people the
worship of the one true God is at any rate
an intelligible proposition, but. scarcely
that of such a revelation to an idolatrous
monarch and people, to teach, details of
abstruse sciences, which in point of fact
were not taught, for the monument on which
they were recorded was sealed up by a
casing of polished stone almost directly
after it was built, and its contents were
discovered only by accident, long after the
facts and figures which it is supposed to
teach had been discovered elsewhere by
human reason. The only thing approach
ing to a revelation of religious import which
Piazzi Smyth professed to have discovered
in the Pyramid was a prediction, which is
now more than twenty years overdue, of the
advent of the millennium in 1881.
But these extravagances have had the
good effect of giving us accurate measure
ments of nearly all the dimensions of the
Great Pyramid, and raising a great, deal of
sober discussion as to its aim and origin. In
the first place, it is quite clear that its primary
object was to provide a royal tomb; a tomb
of solid masonry with a base larger than
Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and 130 feet higher
than St. Paul’s. When the interior both
of this and other pyramids is explored
nothing is found but one or two small
sepulchral chambers containing the stone
coffins of a king or queen. The Great
Pyramid is not an exceptional monument,
but one of a series of some seventy
pyramid-tombs of kings, beginning with
earlier, and continued by later, dynasties
of the Old Empire. The reason of their
construction is obvious. It originates from
the peculiar ideas, which have been already
pointed out, of the existence of a Ka or
shadowy double, and a still more ethereal
soul or spirit, whose immortality depended
on the preservation of a material basis
in the form of a mummy or likeness
of the deceased person, preferably, no
doubt, by the
preservation of the
mummy. This led to the enormous
outlay, not by kings only, but by private
persons, on costly tombs, which, as
Herodotus says, were considered to be
their permanent habitations.
With an
absolute monarchy in which the divine
right of kings was strained so far that the
monarch was considered as an actual god,
it was only natural that their tombs should
far exceed those of their richest subjects,
and that unusual care should be taken to
prevent them from being desecrated, in
future ages by new and foreign dynasties.
Suppose a great and powerful monarch to
have an unusually long and prosperous
reign, it is quite conceivable that he should
wish to have a tomb which should not only
surpass those of his predecessors, but any
probable effort of his successors, and be
an unique monument defying the attacks
not only of future generations, but of time
itself.
This seems, without doubt, to have been
the primary motive of the Great Pyramid,
and in a lesser degree of all pyramids,
sepulchral mounds, and costly tombs.
But the pyramids, and especially the Great
Pyramid, are not mere piles of masonry
heaped together without plan or design,
and upon this matter we may, without
committing ourselves to acquiescence
of what now follows, refer to recent
theories. Each pyramid, it is argued, is
built on a settled plan, which implies an
acquaintance with the sciences of geometry
and astronomy, and which, in the case of
the Great Pyramid, is carried to an extent
showing very advanced knowledge of those
sciences, and going far to prove that it
may have been used, during part of the
period of its construction, as a national
observatory. The full details of this plan
are given by Proctor in his work on the
Great Pyramid, and, although the want of
a more accurate knowledge of Egyptology
has led him into some erroneous specula
tions as to the age and object of this
pyramid, his authority on the scientific
facts and the astronomical and geometrical
conclusions which are to be drawn from
them is not to be lightly set aside.
�ANCIENT SCIENCE AND ART
It appears that the first object of all
pyramid builders was to secure a correct
orientation ; that is, that the four sides
should face truly to the north, south, east,
and west, or, in other words, that a line
drawn through the centre of the base
parallel to the sides should stand on a true
meridian line. This, with our modern
instruments, would be a comparatively
easy task, but before the invention of the
telescope it must have required great
nicety of observation to obtain such
extremely accurate results in all the sides
and successive layers of such an enormous
building. There are only two ways in
of the Great Pyramid is correct, and the
centre of its base corresponds with the
thirtieth degree of north latitude within a
slight error which was inevitable, if, as is
probable, the Egyptian astronomers were
unacquainted with the effect of atmos
pheric refraction in raising the apparent
above the true place of celestial bodies,
or had formed an insufficient estimate
of its amount.
The centre of the
base is 2,328 yards south of the real
thirtieth parallel of latitude, which is 944
yards north of the position which would
have been deduced from the pole-star
method, and 3,459 yards south of that from
which it could be attempted—one by
observing the shadow cast by a vertical
gnomon when the sun was on the meridian,
and the other by keeping a standard line
constantly directed to the true north pole
of the heavens. In the case of the Great
Pyramid another object seems to have
been in view which required the same class
of observations—viz., to place the centre of
the base on the thirtieth degree of north
latitude, being the latitude in which the
pole of the heavens is exactly one-third of
the way from the horizon to the zenith.
Both these objects have been attained
with wonderful accuracy. The orientation
the shadow-method, by astronomers igno
rant of the effect of refraction. The
shadow-method could never have been so
reliable as the polar method, and it is
certain therefore a priori that the latter
must have been adopted either wholly or
principally; and this conclusion is confirmed
by the internal construction of the pyramid
itself, which is shown by the subjoined
diagram.
The tunnel A B c is bored for a distance
of 350 feet underground through the solid
rock, and is inclined at an angle pointing
directly to what was then the pole-star,
Alpha Draconis, at its lower culmination.
�56
HUMAN ORIGINS
As there is no bright star at the true pole, its this supposition is negatived by the fact
position is ascertained by taking the point that the grand gallery must have been shut
half-way between the highest and lowest up, and the building rendered useless for
positions of the conspicuous star nearest astronomical purposes in a very short time,
to it, which therefore revolves in the by the completion of the pyramid, which
smallest circle about it. This star is not was then covered over by a casing of
always the same on account of the preces polished stone, evidently with a view of
sion of the equinoxes, and Alpha Draconis concealing all traces of the passages which
supplied the place of the present pole-star led to the tomb. The solution seems to be
about 3440 B.c., and practically for several that suggested by Proctor, that the object
centuries before and after that date.
was astrological rather than astronomical,
Now, the underground tunnel is bored and that all those minute precautions were
exactly at the angle of 26° 17' to the horizon, taken in order to provide, not only a secure
at which Alpha Draconis would shine down tomb, but an accurate horoscope for the
it at its lower culmination when 30 42' from reigning monarch. Astrology and astro
the pole ; and the ascending passage and nomy were, in fact, closely identified in the
grand gallery are inclined at the same ancient world, and relics of the superstition
angle in an opposite direction, so that the still linger in the form of Zadkiel almanacks.
image of the star reflected from a plane When the sun, moon, and five planets had
mirror or from water at B would be seen
been identified as the celestial bodies pos
on the southern meridian line by an observer sessing motion, and therefore, as it was
in the grand gallery, while another very inferred, life, and had been converted into
conspicuous star, Alpha Centauri, would at gods, nothing was more natural than to
that period shine directly down it. The suppose that they exercised an influence on
passages therefore would have the double human affairs, and that their configuration
effect—(1) of enabling the builders to orient affected the destinies both of individuals
the base and lower layers of the pyramid and of nations. A superstitious people who
up to the king’s chamber in a perfectly saw auguries in the flight of birds, the
true north and south line ; (2) of making movements of animals, the rustling of
the grand gallery the equivalent of an leaves, and in almost every natural occur
equatorially-mounted telescope of a modern rence, could not fail to be impressed by the
observatory, by which the transit of heavenly higher influences and omens of those
bodies in a considerable section of the sky majestic orbs which revolved in such mys
comprising the equatorial and zodiacal terious courses through the stationary stars
regions, across the meridian, and therefore of the host of heaven. Accordingly, in the
at their highest elevations, could be observed very earliest traditions of the Akkadians
by the naked eye with great accuracy.
and Egyptians we find an astrological sig
Those who wish to study the evidence in
nificance attached to the first astronomical
detail should read Proctor’s work on the facts which were observed and recorded.
Problems of the Pyramids; but for the pre The week of seven days, which was doubt
sent purpose it may be sufficient to sum up
less founded on the first attempts to measure
the conclusions of that accomplished astro time by the four phases of the lunar month,
nomer. He says : “ The sun’s annual course became associated with the seven planets
round the celestial sphere could be deter in the remotest antiquity; and the names of
mined much more exactly than by any
their seven presiding gods, in the same
gnomon by observations made from the order and with the same meaning, have
great gallery. The moon’s monthly path descended unchanged to our own times,
and its changes could have been dealt with as will be shown more fully in a subsequent
in the same effective way. The geometric chapter.
paths, and thence the true paths of the
Observations on the sun’s annual course
planets, could be determined very accu led to the fixing of it along a zodiac of
rately. The place of any visible star along twelve signs, corresponding roughly to
the zodiac could be most accurately deter twelve lunar months, and defined by con
mined.”
stellations, or groups of stars, having a
If, therefore, the pyramid had only been fanciful resemblance to animals or deified
completed up to the fiftieth layer, which
heroes. Those zodiacal signs are of im
would leave the southern opening of the
mense antiquity and range. We find them
great gallery uncovered, the object might in the earliest mythology of Clialdasa and
have been safely assumed to be the erec Egypt, in the labours of Hercules, in the
tion of a great national observatory. But traditions of a deluge associated with the
�ANCIENT SCIENCE AND ART
sign of Aquarius, and even, though in a
somewhat altered form, in such distant
countries as China and Mexico. We have
so many examples of the origin of corre
sponding ideas among peoples between
whom there can have been no contact for
ages, that it is perilous to theorise about
the source whence these signs were derived.
But we know that the oldest records and
universal tradition show the primitive
Akkadians to have been astronomers, who
from time immemorial had made observa
tions on the heavenly bodies, .and who
remained down to the Roman Empire
the most celebrated astrologers.
Even if we admit, however, Proctor’s
suggestion that the pyramids had an astro
logical origin in addition to their primary
object as tombs, it is difficult to understand
how such enormous structures could have
been built. The Great Pyramid must have
been built on a plan designed from the
first, and not by any haphazard process of
adding a layer each year according to the
number of years the monarch happened to
reign. How could he foresee the exact
number of years of an unusually long life
and reign, or what security could he have
that, if he died early, his successor would
complete his pyramid in addition to erect
ing one of almost equal magnitude for him
self?
Herodotus has apiece of gossip, probably
picked up from some ignorant guides, which
represents Cheops and Chephren as detested
tyrants, who shut up the temples of the gods,
and which confounds the national hatred of
the shepherd kings, who conquered Egypt
some 2,000 years later, with that of these
pyramid-builders ; but this is confuted by
the monuments, which show them as
pious builders or restorers of temples of
the national gods in other localities, as, for
instance, at Bubastis, where the cartouche
of Chephren was lately found by M. Naville
on an addition to the Temple of Isis. All
the records also of the fourth or pyramid
building dynasty, and of the two next
dynasties, show it to have been a period
of peace and prosperity.
Although some matters relating to the
structure of the pyramids may thus warrant
conjecture, enough is certain from the
astronomical facts disclosed in their con
struction to show the advanced state of
this science at this remote period. Nor is
this all, for the dimensions of the Great
Pyramid, when stripped of fanciful coinci
dences and mystical theories, still show
enough to prove a wonderful knowledge of
57
mathematics and geometry. The following
may be taken as undoubted facts from the
most accurate measurements of their dimen
sions.
1st. The triangular area of each of the
four sloping, sides equals the square of the
vertical height. This was mentioned by
Herodotus, and there can be no doubt that
it was a real relation intended by the
builders.
2nd. The united length of the four sides
of the square base bears to the vertical
height the same proportion as that of the
circumference of a circle to its radius. In
other words, it gives the ratio, which under
the symbol ir plays such an important part
in all the higher mathematics. There are
other remarkable coincidences which seem
to show a still more wonderful advance in
science, though they are not quite so certain,
as they depend on the assumption that the
builders took as their unit of measurement
a pyramid inch and sacred cubit different
from those in ordinary use, the former being
equal to the 500,000,000th part of the earth’s
diameter, and the latter containing twentyfive of those inches, or about the 20,000,000th
part of that diameter. To arrive at such
standards it is evident that the priestly
astronomers must have measured very accu
rately an arc of the meridian or length of
the line on the earth’s surface which just
raised or lowered the pole of the heavens
by i°, and inferred from it that the earth
was a spherical body of given dimensions.
Those dimensions would not be quite accu
rate, for they must have been ignorant of
the compression of the earth at its poles
and protuberance at the equator ; but the
measurement of such an arc at or near 30°
of north latitude would give a close ap
proximation to the mean value of the earth’s
diameter. Proctor thinks, from the scientific
knowledge which must have been possessed
by the builders of the pyramid, that
it is quite possible that they may have
measured an arc of the meridian with con
siderable accuracy, and calculated from it
the length of the earth’s diameter, assum
ing it to be a perfect sphere. And if so
they may have intended to make the side of
the square base of the pyramid of a length
which would bear in inches some relation
to the length of this diameter; for it is
probable that, at this stage of the world’s
science, the mysterious or rather magical
value which was attached to certain words
would attach equally to the fundamental
facts, figures, and important discoveries of
the growing sciences. It is quite probable,
�58
HUMAN ORIGINS
could not have been known with any ap
proach to accuracy before the invention of
the telescope, it is forgotten that this height
had been already determined by a totally
unconnected consideration—viz., the ratio of
the diameter of a circle to its circumfer
ence. The coincidence, therefore, of the
sun’s distance must be purely accidental.
A still more startling coincidence has
been found in the fact that the two
diagonals of the base contain 25,824 pyra
mid inches, or almost exactly the number
of years in the precessional period. This
also must be accidental, for the number of
inches in the diagonals follows as a matter
of course from the sides being taken at
365% cubits, corresponding to the length
of the year ; and there can be no connec
tion between this and the precession of the
equinoxes, which, moreover, was unknown
in the astronomy of the ancient world
until it was discovered in the time of the
Ptolemies by Hipparchus.
But with all these doubtful coincidences,
and the many others
which have been dis
covered by devotees
of the pyramid religion,
quite enough remains
to justify the conclu
sion that between 5,000
and 6,000 years ago
there were astrono
mers, mathematicians^!
and architects in
Egypt who had car
ried their respective
sciences to a high
degree of perfection
corresponding to that
shown by their en
gineers and artists.
When we turn to
Chaldaea we find simi
lar evidence as to the
advance of science, and
especially of astrono
mical science, in the
earliest historical
times. Babylonia was
the birthplace of astro*!
nomy. Every impor
tant city had its temple,
and attached to its
temple its ziggurat,
which is in some
respects the counter
part of the pyramid,
being a pyramidal
structure built up in
THE TOWER OF BABEL.
therefore, that the sacred inch and cubit
may have been invented, like the metre,
from an aliquot part of the earth’s supposed
diameter, so as to afford an invariable stan
dard. But there is no positive proof of this
from the pyramid itself, the dimensions of
which may be expressed just as well in the
ordinary working cubit; and it must remain
open to doubt whether the coincidences
prove the pyramid inch, or whether the inch
was invented to prove the coincidences.
Assuming, however, for the moment that
these measures were really used, some of
the coincidences are very remarkable. The
length of each side of the square base is
365% of these sacred cubits, or equal to
the length of the year in days. The height
is 5,819 inches, and the sun’s distance from
the earth, taken at 91,840,000 miles, which
is very nearly correct, is just 5,819 thousand
millions of such inches. It has been
thought, therefore, that this height was in
tended to symbolise the sun’s distance. But
independently of the fact that this distance
ZIGGURAT RESTORED (Perrot and Chipiez),
�ANCIENT SCIENCE AND ART
successive stages or platforms super
imposed on one another and narrowing as
they rose, so-as to leave a small platform
on the top, on which was a small shrine or
temple, and from which observations could
be made. These ziggurats being built
entirely of bricks, mostly sun-burnt, have
crumbled into shapeless mounds of
rubbish; but a fair idea of their size and
construction may be obtained from the
descriptions and pictures of them pre
served in contemporary tablets and slabs,
especially from those of the great ziggurat
of the seven spheres or planets at Borsippa,
a suburb of Babylon, which was rebuilt by
Nebuchadrezzar about 500 B.C., on the site
of a much more ancient ruined con
struction. This, which was the largest
and most famous of the ziggurats, became
identified in after times with the tower of
Babel and the legend of the confusion of
tongues; but it was in fact an astronomical
building in seven stages dedicated to the
sun, moon, and five planets, taken in the
order of magnitude of their respective
orbits, and each distinguished by their
respective colours. Thus the lowest or
largest platform was dedicated to Saturn,
and coloured black ; the second to Jupiter
was orange ; the third to Mars red ; the
fourth to the Sun golden; the fifth to
Venus pale yellow ; the sixth to Mercury
an azure blue, obtained by vitrifying the
facing bricks ; and the seventh to the
Moon was probably coated with plates of
silver. The height of this ziggurat was 150
feet, and, standing as it did on a level allu
vial plain, it must have been a very impos
ing object.
It may be affirmed of all these ziggurats
that they were not tombs like the Egyptian
pyramids, but were erected for astrono
mical and astrological purposes. The
number of stages appears to have had re
ference to some religious or astronomical
fact, as three to symbolise the great triad ;
five for the five planets ; or seven for those
and the sun and moon; the number of
seven being never exceeded, and the order
being the same as that adopted for the days
of the week—viz., according to the magni
tudes of their respective orbits. They were
oriented with as much care as the pyramids,
which is of itself a proof that they were
used as observatories, but with this differ
ence, that their angles instead of their faces
were directed towards the true north and
south. To this rule there are only two ex
ceptions, probably of late date after Egyp
tian influences had been introduced; but the
59
original and national ziggurats invariably
observe the rule of pointing angles and not
sides to the four cardinal points. This is a
remarkable fact, as showing that the astro
nomies of Egypt and Chaldsea were not
borrowed one from the other, but evolved
independently in prehistoric times. An ex
planation of it has been found in the fact
recorded on a geographical tablet, that the
Akkadians were accustomed to use the
terms north, south, east, and west to denote,
not the real cardinal points, but countries
which lay to the N.W., S.E., and S.W. of
them. It is inconceivable, however, that
such skilful astronomers should have sup
posed that the North Pole was in the north
west, and a more probable explanation is to
be found in the meaning of ziggurat, which
is said to signify holy mountain.
• It was a cardinal point in their cosmo
gony that the heavens formed a crystal
vault, which revolved round an exceedingly
high mountain as an axis. The ziggurats
were miniature representations of this
sacred mountain of the gods. The early
astronomers must have known that this
mountain could be nowhere but in the true
north, as the daily revolutions of the
heavenly bodies took place round the North
Pole. It was natural, therefore, that they
should direct the apex or angle of a model
of this mountain rather than its side to the
position in the true north occupied by the
peak of the world’s pivot.
Be this as it may, the fact that the
ziggurats were carefully oriented, and cer
tainly used as observatories at the earliest
dates of Chaldaean history, is sufficient to
prove that the priestly astronomers must
have already attained an advanced know
ledge of science, and kept an accurate
record of long-continued observations. This
is fully confirmed by the astronomical and
astrological treatise compiled for the royal
library of Sargon I., date 3800 B.C., which
treats of eclipses, the phases of Venus, and
other matters implying a long previous
series of accurate and refined astronomical
observations.
The most conclusive proof, however, of
the antiquity of Chaldsean science is afforded
by the measures of time which were estab
lished prior to the commencement of his
tory, and have come down to the present
era in the days of the week and the signs
of the zodiac. There can be no doubt that
the first attempts to measure time beyond
the single day and night were lunar, and
not solar. The phases of the moon occur
at short intervals, and are more easily
�6o
HUMAN ORIGINS
discerned and measured than those of the
sun in its annual revolution. The beginning
and end of a solar year and the solstices
and equinoxes are not marked by any
decided natural phenomena, and it is only
by long-continued observations of the sun’s
path among the fixed stars that any tolerably
accurate number of days can be assigned
to the duration of the year and seasons.
But the recurrence of new and full moon,
and more especially of the half-moons when
dusk and light are divided by a straight
line, must have been noted by the first
shepherds who watched the sky at night,
and have given rise to the idea of the month,
and its first approximate division into four
weeks of seven days each. Hence “moon”
takes its name from a root which signifies
“the measurer,” while the sun is the
“ bright ” or shining one.
A relic of this superior importance of the
moon as the measurer of time is found in
the old Akkadian mythology, in which the
moon-god is masculine and the sun-god
feminine ; while with other nations of a later
and more advanced civilisation the genders,
with some few exceptions, are reversed.
For, as observations multiplied and science
advanced, it would be found that the lunar
month of twenty-eight days was only an
approximation, and that the solar year and
months defined by the sun’s progress through
the fixed stars afforded a much more accurate
chronometer. Thus we find the importance
of the moon and of lunar myths gradually
superseded by solar, which, connecting
themselves with the sun’s daily risings and
settings, his assumed death in winter and
resurrection in spring, and his passage
through the signs of the solar zodiac,
assumed a preponderating part in ancient
religions. Traces, however, of the older
period of lunar science and lunar mythology
survived, especially in the week of seven
days, and the mysterious importance
attached to the number seven. This was
doubtless aided by the discovery which
could not fail to be made with the earliest
accurate observations of the heavens, that
there were seven moving bodies, the sun,
moon, and five planets, which revolved in
settled courses, while all the other stars
appeared to be fixed. Scientific astrology,
as distinguished from a mere superstitious
regard of the flight of birds and other
omens, had its origin in this discovery. The
first philosophers who pondered on these
celestial phenomena shared the common
belief that motion implied life, and, in the
case of such brilliant and remote bodies,
divine life ; and that as the sun and moon
exerted such an obvious influence on the
seasons andother human affairs, so probably
did the other planets or the gods who pre
sided over them. The names and order of
the days of the week, which have remained
similar among a number of ancient and
modern nations, show how far these astro
logical notions must have progressed when
they assumed their present form, for the
order is a highly artificial one.
Why do we divide time into weeks of
seven days, and call the days Sunday,
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, and Saturday, and why are these
names of special planets, or of the special
gods associated with them, identical, and
present in the same order among so many
different nations? For whether we say
Thor’s-day or Jove’s-day,and call it “Thurs
day” or “Jeudi,” the same god identified
with the same planet is meant, and
so for the others.
It is clear that the
names of the seven days of the week were
originally taken from the seven planets—
e.,
i. from the seven celestial bodies which
were observed by ancient astronomers to
move, and, therefore, to be presumably
endowed with life, while the rest of the
host of heaven remained stationary.
These bodies are in order of apparent
magnitude
1. The Sun.
2. The Moon.
3. Jupiter.
4. Venus.
5. Mars.
6. Saturn.
7. Mercury.
And this is the natural order in which we
might have expected to find them appro
priated to the days of the week. But,
obviously, this is not the principle on
which the days have been named ; for, to
give a single instance, the nimble Mercury,
the smallest of the visible planets, comes
next before the majestic Jupiter, the ruler
of the heavens and wielder of the thunder
bolt.
Let us try another principle, that of
classifying the planets in importance, not
by their size and splendour, but by the
magnitude of their orbits and the length
of their revolutions. This will give the
following order :—
1. Saturn.
2. Jupiter.
3. Mars.
4. The Sun (?.<?., really the earth).
5. Venus.
�ANCIENT SCIENCE AND ART
6. Mercury.
7. The Moon.
We are now on the track of the right
solution, though there is still apparently
hopeless discord between this order and
that of the days of the week. The true
solution is such an artificial one that we
should never have discovered it if it had
not been disclosed to us by the clay tablets
exhumed from ancient royal libraries in
the temples and palaces of Chaldma.
These tablets are extremely ancient, going
back in many cases to the times of the old
Akkadians who inhabited Chaldasa prior to
the advent of the Semites. Some of them,'
in fact, are from the royal library of
Sargon I., of Akkad, whose date is fixed by
the best authorities at about 3800 B.c.
As has been said, these Akkadians were a
civilised people, well versed in astronomy,
but extremely superstitious, and addicted
beyond measure to astrology. To some
of their ancient priests it occurred that the
planets must be gods watching over and
influencing human events, and that, as
Mars was ruddy, he was probably the god
of war; Venus, the lovely evening star,
the goddess of love ; Jupiter, powerful ;
Saturn, slow and malignant; and Mercury,
quick and nimble. By degrees the idea
expanded, and it was thought that each
planet exerted its peculiar influence, not
only on the days of the week, but on the
hours of the day; and the planet which
presided over the first hour of the day was
thought to preside over the whole of that
day. But the day had been already
divided into twenty-four hours, because
the earliest Chaldseans had adopted the
duodecimal scale, and counted by sixes,
twelves, and sixties. Now, twenty-four is
not divisible by seven, and, therefore, the
same planets do not recur in the same
order, to preside over the same hours of
successive days. If Saturn ruled the first
hour, he would rule the twenty-second hour;
and, if we refer to the above list of the
planets, ranged according to the magnitude
of their orbits, we shall find that the Sun
would rule the first hour of the succeeding
day, and then in succession the Moon,
Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus, round
to Saturn again, in the precise order of our
days of the week. This order is so artificial
that it cannot have been invented sepa
rately, and wherever we find it we may feel
certain that it has descended from the
astrological fancies of Akkadian priestly
astronomers at least 6,000 years ago.
Now for the Sabbath. The same clay
61
tablets, older by some chiliads than the
accepted Biblical date of the creation of the
world, mention both the name and the in
stitution, not as a day of rest for man, but
as a day when the gods rested from their
wrath, and might be pacified. The “ Sab
bath ” was the day ruled over by the gloomy
and malignant Saturn, as shown by his
wider orbit, the oldest of the planetary gods,
but dimmed with age, and morose at having
been dethroned by his brilliant son Jupiter.
It was unlucky in the extreme, therefore, to
do any work, or begin any undertaking, on
the “ Sabbath ” or Saturday. Hence, long
centuries before Jewish Pharisees or Eng
lish Puritans, rules of Sabbatarian strict
ness were enforced at Babylon and Nine
veh, reminding one of the man who
“ Hanged his cat on Monday
For killing a mouse on Sunday.”
The king was not allowed to ride or walk on
the Sabbath, and, even if he fell ill, had to
wait till the following day before taking
medicine. This superstition as to the un
luckiness of Saturn’s day was common to
all ancient nations, including the Jews ; but
when the idea of a local deity, one among
many others, expanded, under the influence
of the later prophets and the exile, unto that
of one universal God, the compilers of the
Old Testament dealt with the Sabbath
as they did with the Deluge, the Creation,
and other myths. That is to say, they
revised them in a monotheistic sense,
wrote “ God ” for “ gods,” and gave them
a religious rather than an astronomical
or astrological meaning. Thus the origin
of the Sabbath, as a day when no work was
to be done, was transferred from Saturn to
Jehovah, and the reason assigned was that
“ in six days the Lord created the heaven
and the earth, and all that therein is, and
rested on the seventh day.”
One more step only remains to bring us
to our modern Sunday, and this also, like
the last, is to be attributed to a religious
motive. The early Christian Church wished
to wean the masses from Paganism, and
very wisely, instead of attacking old-estab
lished usages in front, turned their flank by
assigning them to different days. Thus
the day of rest, based on the legend of
the rising of Jesus from the tomb, was
shifted from Saturday to the first day
of the week, which was made the Chris
tian Sabbath, and the name changed
by the Latin races from the day of
the sun to the Lord’s Day, “Domi
nica Dies.” It has remained Saturday,
�62
HUMAN ORIGINS
however, with the Jews, and it is quite clear an organised society, we find the oldest
that it was on a Saturday, and not a Sun traces of it everywhere in the science of
astronomy. They watched the phases of
day, that Jesus walked through the fields
the moon, counted the planets, followed
with his disciples, plucking ears of corn,
the sun in its annual course, marking it
and saying, “ The Sabbath was made for
first by seasons, and, as science advanced,
man, and not man for the Sabbath.” It is
by its progress through groups of fixed
equally clear that our modern Sabbatarians
stars fancifully defined as constellations.
are much nearer in spirit to the Pharisees
Everywhere the moon seems to have been
whom Jesus rebuked, and to the old
Akkadian astrologers, than to the founder taken as the first standard for measuring
time beyond the primary unit of day and
of Christianity.
night. This is natural, for, as has been
It is encouraging, however, to those who
shown, the monthly changes of the moon
believe in progress, to observe how in this,
as in many other cases, the course of evolu come much more frequently, and are more
tion makes for good. The superstitions of easily measured, than the annual courses
Akkadian astrologers led to the establish of the sun. But, as observations accumu
late and become more accurate, it is found
ment of one day of rest out of every seven
that the sun, and not the moon, regulates
days—an institution which is in harmony
the seasons, and that the year repeats on a
with the requirements of human nature,
and which has been attended by most larger scale the phenomena presented by
day and night, of the birth, growth,
beneficial results. The religious sanctions
which attached themselves to this institu maturity, decay, and death of the sun,
followed by a resurrection or new birth,
tion, first as the Hebrew Sabbath, and
when the same cycle begins anew. Hence
secondly as transformed into the Christian
Sunday, have been a powerful means of the oldest civilised nations have taken from
the two phenomena of the day and year the
preserving this day of rest through so
same fundamental ideas and festivals. The
many social and political revolutions. Let
us, therefore, not be too hasty in condemn ideas are those of a miraculous birth, death,
and resurrection, and of an upper and lower
ing everything which, on the face of it,
world, the one of light and life, the other of
appears to be antiquated and absurd.
darkness and death, through which the sun
Millions will enjoy a holiday, get a breath
god and human souls have to pass to
of fresh air and a glimpse of nature, or go
emerge again into life. The festivals are
to church or chapel cleanly and respectable
those of the four great divisions of the year :
in behaviour and attire, because there were
Akkadian Zadkiels 6,000 years ago who the winter solstice, when the aged sun sinks
into the tomb and rises again with a new
believed in the maleficent influence of the
birth ; the spring equinox, when he passes
planet Saturn.
definitely out of the domain of winter into
When we find that these highly intricate
and artificial calculations of advanced that of summer ; the summer solstice, when
he is in full manhood, “ rejoicing like a
astrological and astronomical lore existed
at the dawn of Chaldtean history, and are giant to run his course,” and withering up
found in so many and such widely-separated vegetation as with the hot breath of a
races and regions, it is impossible to avoid raging lion ; and, finally, the autumnal
equinox, when he sinks once more into the
two conclusions.
wintry half of the year and amid storms
1st. That an immense time must have
and deluges fades daily to the tomb
elapsed since the Akkadians first settled in
and reclaimed the alluvial valleys and from which he started. Of these festivals,
Christmas and Easter have survived to the
marshy deltas of the Tigris and Euphrates.
2nd. That the intercourse between remote present day, and the last traces of the feast
of the summer solstice are still lingeringin
regions, whether by land or sea, and by
the remote parts of Scotland and Ireland in
commerce or otherwise, must have been
the Bel fires, which, when I was young,
much closer in prehistoric times than has
were lighted on Midsummer night on the
been generally supposed.
As in the days of the week, so in the highest hills of Orkney and Shetland. As
a boy, I have rushed, with my playmates,
festivals of the year, we trace their origin
through the smoke of those bonfires with
to astronomical observations. When
nations passed from the condition of out a suspicion that we were repeating the
savages, hunters, or nomads, into the homage paid to Baal in the Valley of
Hinnom.
agricultural stage, and developed dense
When we turn from science to art and
populations, cities, temples, priests, and
�ANCIENT SCIENCE AND ART
industry, the same conclusion of immense
antiquity is forcibly impressed on us. In
Egypt the reign of Menes, 4700 B.C., was
signalised by a great engineering work,
which would have been a considerable
achievement at the present day. He built
a great embankment, which still remains,
by which the old course of the Nile close to
the Libyan hills was diverted, and a site
obtained for the new capital of Memphis
oa the west side of the river, placing it
between the city and any enemy from the
east. At the same time this dyke assisted
fe regulating the flow of the inundation,
awl it may be compared for magnitude and
utility to the modern barrage attempted by
Liaant Bey and carried out by Sir Colin
Moncrieff. Evidently such a work implies
great engineering skill and great resources,
and it prepares us for what we have seen a
few centuries later in the construction of
the Great Pyramids.
Many of the most famous cities and
temples of Egypt also date their original
foundation to a period prior to that of
Menes. It has been shown already that
one of the most colossal and remarkable
monuments, the Sphinx, with the little
temple of granite and alabaster between its
paws, is older than the accession of Menes.
There is abundant proof that at the
dawn of Egyptian history, some 7,000
years ago, the arts of architecture, engi
neering, irrigation, and agriculture had
reached a high level corresponding to that
Shown by the state of religion, science,
and letters. A little later the paintings on
the tombs of the Old Empire show that all
the industrial arts, such as spinning,
weaving, working in wood and metals,
rearing cattle, and a thousand others,
which are the furniture of an old civilised
country, were just as well understood and
practised in Egypt 6,000 or 7,000 years
ago as they are at the present day.
This being the case, I must refer those
who wish to pursue this branch of the
subject to professed works on Egyptology.
F©? my present purpose, if the oldest
records of monuments prove the existence
df a long antecedent civilisation, it is superfltlOus to trace the proofs in detail through
the course of later ages.
When we turn to the fine arts we find
the same evidence. The difficulty is not
to trace a golden age up to rude beginnings,
but to explain the seeming paradox that
the oldest art is the best. A visit to the
Museum of Boulak, where Mariette’s
collection of works of the first six dynasties
63
is deposited, will convince any one that the
statues, statuettes, wall-pictures, and other
works of art of the Ancient Empire, from
Memphis and its cemetery of Sakkarah,
are in point of conception and execution
superior to those of a later period. None
of the later statues equal the four de force
by which the majestic portrait statue of
Chephren, the builder of the second great
pyramid, has been chiselled out from a
block of diorite, one of the hardest stones
known, and hardly assailable by the best
modern tools.
Nor has portraiture in
wood or stone ever surpassed the ease,
grace, and life-like expression of such
THE VILLAGE SHEIK, A WOODEN STATUETTE.
Boulak Museum, from Gizeh.—According to the
chronological table Oi Mariette, this statue is over 6,000
years old. From a photograph by Brugsch Bey.
statues as that known as the Village Sheik,
from its resemblance to the functionary
who filled that office 6,000 years later in
�64
HUMAN ORIGINS
the village where the statue was dis
covered ; or those of the kneeling scribes,
one handing in his accounts, the other
writing from dictation. And the pictures
on the walls of tombs, of houses, gardens,
fishing and musical parties, and animals
and birds of all kinds, tame and wild, are
equally remarkable for their colouring and
drawing, and for the vivacity and accuracy
with which attitudes and expressions are
rendered. In short, Egypt begins where
most modern countries seem to be ending,
with a very perfect school of realistic
art.
For it is remarkable that this first school
of art of the Old Empire is thoroughly
naturalistic, and knows very little of the
ideal or supernatural. And the tombs tell
the same story. The statues and paintings
represent natural objects and not theo
logical conventions ; the tombs are fac
simile representations of the house in
which the deceased lived, with his mummy
and those of his family, and pictures of his
oxen, geese, and other belongings, but no
gods, and few of those quotations from the
Book of the Dead which are so universal in
later ages. It would seem that at this early
period of Egyptian history life was simple
and cheerful, and both art and religion less
fettered by superstitions and conventions
than they were when despotism and priest
craft had been for centuries stereotyped
institutions, and when originality of any
sort was little better than heresy. War
also and warlike arms hardly appear on
these earliest representations of Egyptian
life, conflicts being probably confined to
frontier skirmishes with Bedouins and
Libyans, such as we see commemorated on
the tablet of Seneferu (p. 13).
In Chaldaea the evidence for great anti
quity is derived less from architectural
monuments and arts, and more from books,
than in Egypt, for the obvious reason that
stone was wanting and clay abundant in
Mesopotamia. Where temples and palaces
were built of sun-dried bricks, they rapidly
crumbled into mounds of rubbish, and
nothing was preserved but the baked clay
tablets with cuneiform inscriptions. In
like manner sculpture and wall-painting
never flourished in a country devoid of
stone, and the religious ideas of Chaldsea
never took the Egyptian form of the con
tinuance of ordinary life after death by the
Ka or ghost requiring a house, a mummy,
and representations of belongings. The
bas-relief and fringes sculptured on slabs of
alabaster brought home by Layard and
others belong mostly to the later period of
the Assyrian Empire.
Accordingly, the oldest works of art from
Chaldaea consist mainly of books and
documents in the form of clay cylinders,
and of gems, amulets, and other small
articles of precious stones or metals. But
the recent discovery of De Sarzec at
Sirgalla shows that in the very earliest
period of Chaldaean history the arts stood
at a level which is fairly comparable to
that of the Old Empire in Egypt. He
found in the ruins of the very ancient
Temple of the Sun nine statues of Patesi
or priest-kings of Akkadian race, who had
ruled there prior to the consolidation of
Sumir and Akkad into one empire by
Sargon I., somewhere about 3800 B.c. The
remarkable thing about these statues is
that they, like the statue of Chephren,
are of diorite, which is believed to be
found only in the peninsula of Sinai,
and is so hard that it must have taken
excellent tools and great technical skill to
carve it. The statues are much of the
same size and in the same seated attitude
as that of Chephren, and have the appear
ance of belonging to the same epoch and
school of art. This is confirmed by the
discovery along with the statues of a number
of statuettes and small objects of art which
are also in an excellent style, very similar
to that of the Old Egyptian dynasty, and
showing great proficiency both in taste and
in technical execution.
The discovery of these diorite statues at
such an early date, both in Egypt and
Chaldaea, raises an interesting question as
to the tools by which such an intractable
material could be so finely wrought. Evi
dently they must have been of the hardest
bronze, and the construction of such works
as the dyke of Menes and the Pyramids
shows that the art of masonry must have
been long known and extensively practised.
But this again implies a large stock of
metals and long acquaintance with them
since the close of the latest stone period.
Perhaps there is no test which is more
conclusive of the state of prehistoric civili
sation and commerce than that which is
afforded by the general knowledge and use
of metals. It is true that a knowledge of
some of the metals which are found in a
native state, or in easily fusible ores, may
co-exist with very primitive barbarism.
Some even of the cannibal tribes of Africa
are well acquainted with iron, and know
how to smelt its ores and manufacture tools
and weapons. Gold also, which is so
�ANCIENT SCIENCE AND ART
extensively found in the native state, could
not fail to be known from the earliest
times and in certain districts pure copper
presents itself in native and malleable
form.
But when we come to metals
which require great knowledge of mining
to detect them in their ores and to produce
them in large quantities, and to alloys
which require a long practice of metallurgy
to discover and mix in the proper pro
portions, the case is different, and the stone
period must be already far behind. Still
more is this the case when tools and
weapons of such artificial alloys are found
in universal use in countries where Nature
has provided no metals, and where their
presence can be accounted for only by the
existence of an international commerce
with distant metal-producing countries.
Iron was no doubt known at a very early
period, but it was extremely scarce, and
even as late as Homer’s time was so valu
able that a lump of it constituted one of
the principal prizes at the funeral games of
Patroclus. Noris there any reason to sup
pose that the art of making from it the best
steel, which alone could have competed
with bronze in cutting granite and diorite,
had been discovered. It may be assumed,
therefore, that bronze was the material
universally used for the finer tools and
weapons by the great civilised empires , of
Egypt and Chaldaea during the long in
terval between the neolithic stone age and
the later adoption of iron.
Evidently, then, both the Egyptians and
the Chaldaeans must have been well pro
vided with bronze tools capable of hewing
and polishing the hardest rocks. Now,
bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Copper
is a common metal, easily reduced from its
ores, and sometimes occurring, as remarked
above, in a metallic state, as in the
mines of Lake Superior, where the Red
Indians hammered out blocks of it from the
native metal. And we have proofs that the
ancient Egyptians obtained copper at a very
early date from the mines of Wady Magerah
in the peninsula of Sinai, and probably also
from Cyprus. But where did they get their
tin, without which there is no bronze ? Tin
is a metal which is found only in a few
localities, and in the form of a black oxide
which requires a considerable knowledge
of metallurgy to detect and to reduce.
The only considerable sources now known
are those of Cornwall, Malacca, Banca, and
Australia. Of these, the last was of course
unknown to the ancient world, but there
is significance in the fact that “kassiteros ”
65
the Greek name for tin, is derived from
“ kestira,” the Sanskrit name for that
metal; and the island Cassitera must have
been in the Straits of Malacca, whence tin
may have been brought by prehistoric sea
routes to India, thence to Egypt by the Red
Sea, and to Chaldaea by the Persian Gulf.
This is the conjecture of one of the latest
authorities in a very interesting work just
published on The Dawn of Ancient Art.
But the existence of tin in the Iberian
mainland and in Britain was known to
ancient traders at a remote period. In his
valuable summary on the various sources
of tin and on the trade-routes of the
Phoenicians given in his Origins of English
History, the late Mr. Charles Elton remarks
that the “knowledge of the tin-deposits
was the most valuable secret of Tyre and
Carthage. The Phoenician sailors busied
themselves in all known regions of the
world in seeking for the precious ore. The
seas were covered with their sails, and the
harbours full of their ships, which they
loaded with metal smelted from the tinbearing gravels of the Malayan Cassitara.”
The transfer of the name “ Cassiterides ”
(wrongly assumed to be the Scilly Isles)
to the islands off the Lusitanian coast shows
how their enterprise extended from the far
East to beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
In the celebrated 27th chapter of Ezekiel,
which describes the commerce of Tyre
when in the height of its glory, tin is
mentioned only once as being imported
along with silver, iron, and lead from
Tarshish—?>., from the emporium of
Gades or Cadiz. The only other refer
ence to tin is, that Javan, Tubal, and
Meshech—the Ionians, and tribes of
Asia Minor in the mountainous districts to
the south of the Black Sea—traded with
slaves and vessels of brass ; and if brass
meant bronze, this would imply a know
ledge of tin. Another considerable supply
of tin came from the Etruscans, who worked
extensive mines in Northern Italy. But
the evidence of these does not go back
farther than from 1000 to 1500 B.C., and it
leaves untouched the question how Egypt
and Chaldaea had obtained large stocks of
bronze, certainly long before 5000 B.c.; and
how they kept up these stocks for certainly
more than 2,000 years before the Phoeni
cians appeared on the scene to supply tin
by maritime commerce. It is in some
other direction that we must look, for it is
certain that neither Egypt nor Chaldaea
had any native sources of this metal. They
must have imported, and that from a
F
�66
HUMAN ORIGINS
distance, either the manufactured bronze,
or the tin with which to manufacture it
themselves by alloying copper. The latter
seems most probable, for the Egyptians
worked the copper mines of Sinai from a
very early date, and drew supplies of
copper from Cyprus, which could have
been made useful only by alloying it with
tin ; while, if they imported all the immense
quantity of bronze which they must have
used, in the manufactured state, the pure
copper would have been useless to them.
A remarkable fact is that the bronze
found throughout most of the ancient world,
from the earliest monuments downwards,
including the dolmens, lake villages, and
other prehistoric monuments in which metal
begins to appear, is almost entirely of
uniform composition, consisting of an alloy
of io to 15 per cent, of tin to 85 or 90 per
cent, of copper. That is for tools and
weapons where great hardness was required,
for objects of art and statuettes were often
made of pure copper, ox with a smaller
alloy of tin, showing that the latter metal
was too scarce and valuable to be wasted.1
Evidently this alloy must have been dis
covered in some locality where tin and
copper were both found, and trials could
be made of the proportions which gave the
best result; and the secret must have been
communicated to other nations along with
the tin which was necessary for the manu
facture. Where can we fix the precise
localities which supplied this tin, and the
knowledge how to use it, to the two great
civilised nations of Egypt and Chaldaea ?
Where can we say with certainty that
bronze was in common use prior to 5000
B.C. ? The knowledge both of bronze
and of other metals, such as iron and
gold, seems to have been universally
diffused among the Mongolian races who
were the primitive inhabitants of Northern
Asia. How could Egypt have got its tin
even from the nearest known source ?
Consider the length of the caravan route;
the number of beasts of burden required ;
the necessity for roads, depots, and
stations ; the mountain ranges, rivers, and
1 This normal alloy does not seem to have
been in general use in Egypt before the eighteenth
dynasty, and the bronze of earlier periods con
tains less tin. But evidently a very hard alloy
of copper must have been used from the earliest
times, to chisel out statues of granite and diorite;
and, although tin was too scarce for common use,
the tools for such purposes must have contained
a considerable percentage of it.
deserts to be traversed : such a journey is
scarcely conceivable either through dis
tricts sparsely peopled and without re
sources, or infested by savage tribes and
robbers. And yet if the tin did not come
by land, it must have come for the greater
part of the way by water, floating down the
Euphrates or Tigris, and being shipped
from Ur or Eridhu by way of the Persian
Gulf and Red Sea.
We are driven to the conclusion that
nations, capable of conducting extensive
mining operations, must have been in
existence in the Caucasus, the HindooKush, the Altai, or other remote regions ;
and that routes of international commerce
must have been established by which the
scarce but indispensable tin could be
transported from divers regions to the dense
and civilised communities which had grown
up in the alluvial valleys and deltas of the
Nile and the Euphrates.
It is very singular, however, that, if such
an intercourse existed, the knowledge of
other objects of what may be called the
first necessity should have been so long
limited to certain areas and races. For
instance, in the case of the domestic
animals, the horse was unknown in Egypt
and Arabia till after the Hyksos conquest,
when in a short time it' became common,
and these countries supplied the finest
breeds and the greatest number of horses
for exportation. On the other hand, the
horse must have been known at a very
early period in Chaldaea, for the tablet of
Sargon I., B.C. 3800, talks of riding in
brazen chariots over rugged mountains.
This makes it the more singular that the
horse should have remained so long
unknown in Egypt and Arabia, for it is
such an eminently useful animal, both for
peace and war, that one would think it
must have been introduced almost from the
very first moment when trading caravans
arrived. And yet tin would appear to have
arrived from regions where in all proba
bility the horse had been long domesti
cated before the time of Menes. The only
explanation I can see is, that the tin must
have come by sea ; but by what maritime
route could it have come prior to the rise
of Phoenician commerce ? Could it have
come down the Euphrates or Tigris and
been exported from the great sea-ports of
Eridhu or Ur by way of the Persian Gulf
and Red Sea?
This seems the more probable, as Eridhu
was certainly an important maritime port
at the early period of Chaldsean civilisation,
�ANCIENT SCIENCE AND ART
The diorite statues found at Tell-loh by
M. de Sarzec are stated by an inscription
on them to have come from Sinai, and
indeed they could have come from no other
locality, as this is the only known site of
the peculiar greenish-black basalt or diorite
of which those statues and the similar one
of the Egyptian Chephren of the second
pyramid are made. And in this case the
transport of such heavy blocks for such a
distance could have been effected only, by
sea. There are traces also of the maritime
commerce of Eridhu having extended as
far as India. Teak wood, which could
have' come only from the Malabar coast,
has been found in the ruins of Ur; and
“ Sindhu,” which is Indian cloth or muslin,
was known from the earliest times. It
seems not improbable, therefore, that
Eridhu and Ur may have played the part
which was subsequently taken by Sidon
and Tyre, in the prehistoric stages of the
civilisations both of Egypt and of Chaldaea;
and this is confirmed by the earliest
traditions of the primitive Akkadians,
which represent these cities on the Persian
Gulf as maritime ports, whose people were
well acquainted with ships, as we see in
their legend of the Deluge, which, instead
of the Hebrew ark of Noah, has a wellequipped ship with sails and a pilot.
The instance of the horse is the more
remarkable, as throughout a great part of
the stone period the wild horse was the
commonest of animals, and afforded the
staple food of the savages whose remains
are found in all parts of Europe. At one
station alone, at Solutre in Burgundy, it is
computed that the remains of more than
40,000 horses are found in the vast heap of
debris of a village of the stone period.
What became of these innumerable horses,
and how is it that the existence of the
animal seems to have been so long
unknown to the great civilised races? It
is singular that a similar problem presents
itself in America, where the ancestral tree
of the horse is most clearly traced through
the Eocene and Miocene periods, and
where the animal existed in vast numbers
both in the Northern and Southern
Continent, under conditions eminently
favourable for its existence; and yet it
became so completely extinct that there
was not even a tradition of it remaining at
the time of the Spanish conquest. On the
other hand, the ass seems to have been
known from the earliest times, both to the
Egyptians and the Semites of Arabia and
Syria, and unknown to the Aryan-speaking
peoples, whose names for it are all
borrowed from the Semitic. Large herds
of asses are enumerated among the
possessions of great Egyptian landowners
as far back as the fifth and sixth dynasties,
and no doubt it had been the beast of
burden in Egypt from time immemorial.
It is in this respect only—viz., the intro
duction of the horse—that we can discern
any foreign importation calculated to
materially affect the native civilisation of
Egypt, during the immensely long period
of its existence. It had no doubt a great
deal to do with launching Egypt on a
career of foreign wars and conquests under
the eighteenth dynasty, and so bringing it
into closer contact with other nations, and
subjecting it to the vicissitudes of alternate
triumphs and disasters, now carrying the
Egyptian arms to the Euphrates and Tigris,
and now bringing Assyrian and Persian
conquerors to Thebes and Memphis. But
in the older ages of the First and Middle
Empire the ox, the ass, the sheep, ducks
and geese, and the dog, seem to have been
the principal domestic animals. Gazelles
also were tamed and fed in herds during
the Old Empire, and the cat was domesti
cated from an African species during the
Middle Empire.
Agriculture was conducted both in Egypt
and Chaldsea much as it is in China at the
present day, by a very perfect system of
irrigation depending on embankments and
canals, and by a sort of garden cultivation
enabling a large population to live in a
limited area. The people also, both in
Egypt and Chaldaea, seem to have been
singularly like the modern Chinese, patient,
industrious, submissive to authority, unwar
like, practical, and prosaic. If, therefore,
the influence of any foreign race on a
relatively high plane of civilisation be
excluded, we have sufficing period from
prehistoric times to the dawn of history for
the conversion of the aborigines, who left
their rude stone implements in the sands
and gravels of these localities, into the
civilised and populous communities which
we find existing there long before the
reigns of Menes and of Sargon.
�HUMAN ORIGINS
68
CHAPTER VI.
PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS
Short Duration of Tradition—No Recollection
of Stone Age—Celts taken for Thunderbolts
—Stone Age in Egypt—Palaeolithic Imple
ments—Earliest Egyptian Traditions—Extinct
Animals forgotten—Their Bones attributed to
Giants—Chinese and American Traditions—
Traditions of Origin of Man—Philosophical
Myths—Cruder Myths from Stones, Trees,
and Animals—Totems—Recent Events soon
forgotten — Autochthonous Nations — Wide
Diffusion of Myths — The Deluge — Im
portance of, as Test of Inspiration—More
Definite than
Legend of Creation—
Account of the Deluge in
Genesis
—Date—Extent—Duration—All Life des
troyed except Pairs preserved in the Ark—Such a Deluge impossible—Contradicted by
Physical Science—By Geology—By Zoology
'—By Ethnology—By History—How Deluge
Myths arise—Local Floods—Sea Shells on
Mountains—Solar Myths—Deluge of Parnapishtim—Noah’s Deluge copied from it—Re
vised in a Monotheistic Sense at a compara
tively Late Period—Rational View of Inspira
tion.
In passing from the historical period, in
which we can appeal to written records
and monuments, into that of palaeontology
and geology, where we have to rely on
scientific facts and reasons, we have to
traverse an intermediate stage in which
legends and traditions still cast a dim and
glimmering twilight. The first point to
notice is that this, like the twilight of
tropical evenings, is extremely brief, and
fades almost at once into the darkness of
night.
It is singular in how short a time all
memory is lost of events which are not
recorded in some form of writing or
inscription, and depend solely on oral tradi
tion. Thus it may be safely affirmed that
no nation which has passed into the metal
age retains any distinct recollection of that
of polished stone, and a fortiori none of
the palaeolithic period, or of the origins of
their own race or of mankind. The proof
of this is found in the fact that the stone
axes and arrow-heads which are found so
abundantly in many countries are every
where taken for thunderbolts or fairy arrows
shot down from the skies. This belief was
well-nigh universal throughout the world ;
we find it in all the classical nations, in
modern Europe, in China, Japan, and India.
Its antiquity is attested by the fact that
neolithic arrow-heads have been found
attached as amulets in necklaces from
Egyptian and Etruscan tombs, and palaeo
lithic celts in the foundations of Chaldaean
temples. In India many of the best speci
mens of palaeolithic implements were
obtained from the gardens of ryots, where
they had been placed on posts, and offer
ings of ghee duly made to them. Like so
many old superstitions, this still lingers in
popular belief, and the common name for
the finely-chipped arrow-heads which are so
plentifully scattered over the soil from Scot
land to Japan is that of elf-bolts, supposed
to have been shot down from the skies by
fairies or spirits.
Until the discoveries of Boucher-dePerthes were confirmed only half a century
ago, this ignorance as to the origin of stone
implements was shared by the learned men
of all countries, and many volumes have
been written to explain how the “ cerauni,”
or stone-celts, taken to be thunderbolts,
were formed in the air during storms.
They are already described by Pliny, and a
Chinese Encyclopaedia says that “ some of
these lightning stones have the shape of a
hatchet, others of a knife, some are made
like mallets. They are metals, stones, and
pebbles, which the fire of the thunder has
metamorphosed by splitting them suddenly
and uniting inseparablydifferent substances.
On some of them a kind of vitrification is
distinctly to be observed.”
The Chinese philosopher was evidently
acquainted with real meteorites and with
the stone implements which were mistaken
for them, and his account is comparatively
sober and rational. But the explanations
of the Christian fathers and mediaeval
philosophers, and even of scientific writers
down to a very recent period, are vastly
more mystical. A single specimen may
suffice which is quoted by Tylor in his
Early History of Mankind. Tollius in
1649 figures some ordinary palaeolithic
stone axes and hammers, and tells us that
“ the naturalists say they are generated in
the sky by a fulgurous exhalation conglobed
in a cloud by the circumfused humour, and
are as it were baked hard by intense heat,
and the weapon becomes pointed by the
damp mixed with it flying from the dry part,
and leaving the other end denser, but the
exhalations press it so hard that it breaks
out through the cloud and makes thunder
and lightning.”
But these attempts at scientific explana
tions were looked upon with disfavour by
�PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS
theologians, the orthodox belief being that
the “cerauni” were the bolts by which
Satan and his angels had been driven from
heaven into the fiery abyss. These specula
tions, however, of later ages are of less im
portance for our present purpose than the
fact that in no single instance can anything
like a real historical tradition be found con
necting the stone age with that of metals,
and giving a true account of even the latest
forms of neolithic implements.
The fantastic theories of the causes of
the worked flints are paralleled by those as
to the origin of the remains of the great
extinct quaternary animals which are con
temporary with man. Everywhere we find
the fossil bones of the elephant and
rhinoceros explained as those of monsters
and giants.
St. Augustine denounces
infidels who do not believe that “ men’s
bodies were formerly much greater than
now,” and quotes, in proof of the assertion,
that he had seen himself “ so huge a molar
tooth of a man that it would cut up into a
hundred teeth of ordinary men ”—doubtless
the molar of a fossil elephant. Marcus
Scaurus brought to Rome from Joppa the
bones of the monster who was to have
devoured Andromeda.
The Chinese
Encyclopaedia, already referred to, describes
the “ Fon-shu, an animal which dwells in
the extreme cold on the coast of the
Northern Sea, which resembles a rat in
shape, but is as big as an elephant, and
lives in dark caverns, ever shunning the
light. There is got from it an ivory as
white as that of an elephant ” ; evidently
referring to the frozen mammoths found, in
Siberia. Similar circumstances gave rise
to the same myth in South America, and
the natives told Darwin that the skeletons
of the mastodon on the banks of the
Parana were those of a huge burrowing
animal, like the bizchaca or prairie-rat.
If fossil animals have thus given rise
everywhere to legends of giants, fossil
shells have played the same part as regards
legends of a deluge. These fossils are in
many cases so abundant at high levels that
they could not fail to be observed, and
to be attributed to the sea having
once covered these levels and inundated
all the earth except the highest peaks.
The tradition of an universal deluge is,
however, so important that I reserve it for
separate consideration at the end of the
present chapter.
If, then, all memory of a period so com
paratively recent as that of the neolithic
stone age and of the latest extinct animals
69
was completely lost when the first dawn of
history commences, it follows as a matter
of course that nothing like an historical
tradition of the immensely longer palaeo
lithic period and of the origin of man
survives anywhere. Man in all ages has
asked himself how he came here, and. has
indulged in speculations as to his origin.
These speculations have taken a form
corresponding very much to the stage of
culture and civilisation to which he had
attained. They are of almost infinite
variety, but may be classed generally under
three heads. Those nations which had
attained a sufficient degree of culture to
personify first causes and the phenomena
of Nature as gods, attribute the creation of
the world and of man to some one or more
of these gods; and, as they advance
further in philosophical reasonings, em
bellish the myth with allegories embody
ing the problems of human existence.
Thus, if Bel makes man out of clay, and
moulds him with his own blood; or J ehovah
(Jahve) fashions him from dust, and breathes
into his nostrils the breath of life ; in each
case it is an obvious allegory to explain the
fact that man ha& a dual nature, animal
and spiritual.
So the myth of the Garden of Eden,
the Temptation by the Serpent, the Trees
of Knowledge and of Life, and the Fall of
Adam, which we see represented on a
Babylonian cylinder, is obviously an alle
gorical attempt to explain the origin of
evil.
These philosophical myths are,
however, very various among different
nations.
Thus the orthodox belief of
200,000,000 of Hindoos is that mankind
were created in castes, the Brahmins by an
emanation from Brahma’s head, the
warriors from his chest, the traders and
artisans from his legs, and the sudras or
lowest caste from his feet; obviously an
ex post facto myth to account for the
institution of caste, and to stamp it with
divine authority.
But before reflection had risen to this
level, and among the savage and semibarbarous people of the present day, we
find much more crude speculations, which,
in the main, correspond with the kindred
creeds of Animism and Totemism. When
life and magical powers were attributed to
inanimate objects, nothing was more natural
than to suppose that stones and trees might
be converted into men and women, and con
versely men and women into trees and
stones. Thus we find the stone theory very
widely diffused. Even with a people so far
�70
HUMAN ORIGINS
advanced as the early Greeks, it meets us
in the celebrated fable of Deucalion and
Pyrrha peopling the earth by throwing
stones behind them, which turned into men
and women ; and the same myth, of stones
turning into the first men, meets us at the
present day in almost every barbaric
cosmogony brought home by missionaries
and anthropologists from Africa, America,
and Polynesia. In some cases trees take
the place of stones, and transformations of
men into both are among the commonest
occurrences. From Daphne into a laurel,
and Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, down to
the Cornish maidens transformed into a
circle of stones for dancing on Sunday, we
find everywhere that wherever natural
objects present any resemblance to the
human figure, such myths sprung up spon
taneously in all ages and countries.
Another great school of creation-myths
originates in the widespread institution of
the totem. It is a step in advance of the
pure fetich-worship of stocks and stones, to
conceive of animals as having thought and
language, and being in fact men under a
different form. From this it is a short step
to endowing them with magical attributes
and supernatural powers, adopting them as
patrons of tribes and families, and finally
considering them as ancestors. Myths of
this kind are common among the lower
races, especially in America, where many
of the tribes considered themselves as
descendants of some great bear or elk, or
of some extremely wise fox or beaver, and
held this belief so firmly that intermarriage
among members of the same totem was for
bidden as incestuous. The same system
prevails among most races at an equally
low or lower stage of civilisation, as in
Australia ; and there are traces of its having
existed among old civilised nations at
remote periods. The animal-worship of
Egypt may have been a survival of the old
faith in totems, differing among different
clans, which was so firmly rooted in the
popular traditions that the priests had to
accommodate their religious conceptions to
it, as the Christian fathers did with many
pagan superstitions. The division of the
twelve tribes of Israel may have been
originally totemic, judging from the old
saga in which Jacob gives them his bless
ing, identifying Judah with a lion, Dan with
an adder, and so on.
But in all these various and discordant
myths of the creation of man it is evident
there are no echoes of a possible historical
reminiscence of anything that actually
occurred ; and they must be relegated to
the same place as the corresponding myths
of the creation of the animal world and of
the universe. They are neither more or less
credible than the theories that the earth is
a great tortoise floating on the water, or the
sky a crystal dome with windows in it to let
down the rain, and stars hung from it like
lamps to illuminate a tea-garden.
Even when we come to comparatively
recent periods, and have to deal with
traditions, not of how races originated, but
how they came into the abodes where we
find them, it is astonishing how little we
can depend on anything prior to written
records. Most ancient nations fancied
themselves autochthonous, and took a pride
in believing that they sprang from the soil
on which they lived. And this is also the
case with ruder races, except where the
migrations and conquests recorded are of
very recent date. Thus Ancient Egypt
believed itself to be autochthonous, and
traced the origin of arts and sciences to
native gods. Chaldaea, according to
Berosus, was inhabited from time imme
morial by a mixed multitude, and, though
Oannes brought letters and arts from the
shores of the Persian Gulf, he taught them
to a previously existing population. This
is the more remarkable as the name of
Akkad and the form of the oldest Akkadian
hieroglyphics make it almost certain that
they had migrated into Mesopotamia from
the highlands of Kurdistan or of Central
Asia. The Athenians also and the other
Greek tribes all claimed to be autoch
thonous, and their legends of men spring
ing from the stones of Deucalion, and
from the dragon’s teeth of Cadmus, all
point in the same direction. The great
Aryan-speaking races also have no tradi
tions of any ancient migrations from Asia
into Europe, or vice versa, and their
languages seem to denote a common
residence during the formation of the
different dialects in those regions of
Northern Europe and Southern Russia in
which we find them living when we first
catch sight of them. The only exception
to this is in the record in the Zendavesta of
successive migrations from the Pamer or
Altai, down the Oxus and Jaxartes into
Bactria, and thence into Persia. But this
is not found in the original portion of the
Zendavesta, and only in later commentaries
on it, and is very probably a legend intro
duced to exemplify the constant warfare
between Ormuzd and Ahriman. The
Vedas contain no history, and the
�PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS.
inference that a people of Aryan speech
lived in the Punjaub when the Rig-Veda
was composed, and conquered Hindostan
later, is derived from the references con
tained in the oldest hymns which point to
that conclusion, rather than from any
definite historical record. Rome again had
no tradition of Umbrian pile-dwellers
descending from neolithic Switzerland,
expelling Iberians, and being themselves
expelled by Etruscans.
It may appear singular, considering the
almost total absence of genuine historical
traditions, how certain myths and usages
have been universally diffused, and come
down to the present day from a very remote
antiquity.'\ The identity of the days of the
week, based on a highly artificial and complicated.GftlGulation of Chaldsean astrology,
has been already referred to as a striking
instance of the wide diffusion of astrono
mical myths in very early times. Then,
too, many of the most popular nursery
tales also, such as Jack the Giant-killer,
Jack and the Beanstalk, and Cinderella,
are found almost in the same form in the
most remote regions and among the. most
various races, both civilised and uncivilised.
■ One explanation of puzzling identities is
that the human mind, at the same level of
culture, explains like phenomena in the
same way, just as, in prehistoric times, man
everywhere made shift with similar tools
and weapons.
I come now to the tradition of a Deluge,
which is important both on account of its pre
valence among a number of different races
and nations, often remote from one another,
and because it affords the most immediate
and crucial test of the claim of the Bible to
be taken as a literally true and inspired
account, not only of matters of moral and
religious import, but of all the historical
and scientific statements recorded in its
pages. The Confession of Faith of an able
and excellent man, the late Mr. Spurgeon,
and adopted by fifteen or twenty other Non
conformist ministers, says :—
“ We avow our firmest belief in the verbal
inspiration of all Holy Scripture as origi
nally given. To us the Bible does not merely
contain the Word of God, but is the Word
of God.”
Following this example, thirty - eight
clergymen of the Church of England
put forward a similar Declaration. They
say:—
“ We solemnly profess and declare our
unfeigned belief in all the Canonical Scrip
tures of the Old and New Testaments, as
handed down to us by the undivided Church
in the original languages. We believe that
they are inspired by the Holy Ghost ; that
they are what they profess to be ; that they
mean what they say ; and that they declare
incontrovertibly the actual historical truth
in all records, both of past events and of
the delivery of predictions to be thereafter
fulfilled.”
It is perfectly obvious that for those who
accept these Confessions of Faith, not only
the so-called “ higher Biblical Criticism,”
but all the discoveries of modern science,
from Galileo and Newton down to Lyell
and Darwin, are simple delusions. There
can be no question that if the words of the
Old Testament are “ literally inspired,” and
“ mean what they say,” they oppose an in
flexible non possnmus to all the most certain
discoveries of Astronomy, Geology, Zoology,
Biology, Egyptology, Assyriology, and other
modern sciences. Now, the account of the
Deluge in Genesis affords the readiest
means of bringing this theory to the test,
and proving or disproving it, by the process
which Euclid calls the reductw ad absurdum.
Not that other narratives, such as those
of the Creation in Genesis, do' not contain
as startling contradictions, if we keep in
mind the assertion of the orthodox thirty
eight, that the inspired words of the Old
Testament ‘ mean what they say”—z.^., that
they mean what they were necessarily taken
to mean by contemporaries and long subse
quent generations ; for instance, that if th®
inspired writer says days defined by a
morning and an evening, he means natural
days, and not indefinitely long periods. But
this is just what the defenders of orthodoxy
always ignore, and all attempts at recon
ciling the accounts of Creation in Genesis
with the conclusions of science turn on the
assumption that the inspired writers do not
“mean what they say,” but something
entirely different. If they say “ days,” they
mean geological periods of which no reader
had the remotest conception until the
present century. If they say that light was
made before the sun, and the earth before
the sun, moon, and stars, they really mean,
in some unexplained way, to indicate
Newton’s law of gravity, Laplace’s nebular
theory, and the discoveries of the.spectro
scope. By using words, therefore, in a non
natural sense, and surrounding them with
a halo of mystical and misty eloquence,
they evade bringing the pleadings to a dis
tinct and definite issue such as the popular
mind can at once understand. But in the
�HUMAN ORIGINS
case of the Deluge no such evasion is pos
sible. The narrative is a specific statement
of facts alleged to have occurred at a com
paratively recent date, not nearly so remote
as the historical records of Egypt and
Chaldsea, and therefore must be either true
or false. If false, there is an end of any
attempt to consider the whole scientific
and historical portions of the Bible as
written by Divine inspiration; for the
narrative is not one of trivial importance,
but of what is really a second creation of
all life, including man, from a single pair or
very few pairs miraculously preserved and
radiating from a single centre.1
Consider, then, what the narrative of the
Deluge really tells us. First, as to date.
The Hebrew Bible, from which our own is
translated, gives the names of the ten
generations from Noah to Abraham, with
the precise dates of each birth and death,
making the total number of years 297 from
the Flood to Abraham. The Septuagint
version assigns 700 years more than that of
the Hebrew Bible for the interval between
Abraham and Noah ; but this is only done
by increasing the already fabulous age of
the patriarchs. Accepting, however, this
Septuagint version, though it has been
constantly repudiated by the Jews them
selves and by nearly all Christian authori
ties from St. Jerome down to Archbishop
Usher, the date of the Deluge cannot be
carried further back than to about 3000
B.C., a date at least 2,000, and more pro
bably 4,000, years later than that shown by
the records and monuments of Egypt and
Chaldasa, when great empires, populous
cities, and a high degree of civilisation
already existed in those countries. The
statement of the Bible, therefore, is that, at
a date not earlier than 2200 B.c., or at the
very earliest 3000 B.c., a deluge occurred
which “ covered all the high hills that
were under the whole heaven,” and pre
vailed upon the earth for 150 days before
it began to subside; that seven months
and sixteen days elapsed before the tops of
the mountains were first seen ; and that
1 The following arguments so closely resemble
those of Professor Huxley in a recent article in
the Nineteenth Century that it may be well to
state that they were written before I had seen
that article. I insert them not as attempting to
vie with one of the greatest masters of English
prose, but as showing that the same con
clusions inevitably force themselves on all
who understand the first rudiments of Modern
Science.
only after twelve months and ten days
from the commencement of the flood was
the earth sufficiently dried to allow Noah
and the inmates of the Ark to leave it.
Naturally all life was destroyed, with the
exception of Noah and those who were
with him in the Ark, consisting of his wife,
his three sons and their wives; and pairs,
male and female, of all beasts, fowls, and
creeping things ; or, as another account
has it, seven pairs of clean beasts and of
birds, and single pairs of unclean beasts and
creeping things. The statement is abso
lutely specific : “ All flesh died that moved
upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle,
and of beast, and of every creeping thing
that creepeth upon earth, and every man.”
And again : “ Every living substance was
destroyed which was upon the face of the
ground, both men and cattle, and the
creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven,
and they were destroyed from the earth ;
and Noah only remained alive, and they
that were with him in the Ark.” And
finally, when the Ark was opened, “ God
spake unto Noah and said, Go forth of the
Ark, thou and thy wife, and thy sons and
sons’ wives with thee. Bring forth with
thee every living thing that is with thee,
of all flesh, both of fowl and of cattle, and
of every creeping thing that creepeth upon
the earth, that they may breed abundantly
on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply
upon the earth.”
It is evident that such a narrative cannot
be tortured into any reminiscence of a
partial and local inundation. It might
possibly be taken for a poetical exaggera
tion of some vague myth or tradition of a
local flood, if it were found in the legends
of some early races, or semi-civilised
tribes.
But such an interpretation is
impossible when the narrative is taken, as
orthodox believers take it, as a Divinelyinspired and literally true account contained
in one of the most important chapters in
the history of the relations of man to God.
In this view it is a still more signal
instance than the fall of Adam, of God’s
displeasure with sin and its disastrous
consequences, of his justice and mercy in
sparing the innocent and rewarding
righteousness ; it establishes a new depar
ture for the human race, a new distinction
between the chosen people of Israel and
the accursed Canaanites, based not on
Cain’s murder of Abel, but on Ham’s
irreverence towards his father; and it
introduces a covenant between God and
Noah which continued through Abraham
�PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS
and David, and became the basis of Jewish
nationality and of the Christian dispensa
tion. If in such a narrative there are
manifest errors, the theory of Divine
inspiration obviously breaks down, and the
book which contains it cannot be excepted
from the ordinary rules of historical
criticism.
Now, that no such Deluge as that
described in Genesis ever took place is as
certain as that the earth moves about the
sun. Physical science tells us that it never
could have occurred; geology, zoology,
ethnology, and history all tell us alike that
it never did occur. Physical science tells
us two things about water : that it cannot
be made out of nothing, and that it always
finds its level. In order to cover the
highest mountains on the earth and remain
stationary at that level for months, we must
suppose an uniform shell of water of six
miles in depth to be added to the existing
water of the earth. Even if we take
Ararat as the highest mountain covered,
the shell must have been three miles in
thickness over the whole globe. Where
did this water come from, and where did it
go to ? Rain is simply water raised from
the seas by evaporation, and is returned to
them by rivers. It does not add a single
drop of water to that already existing on
the earth and in its atmosphere. The
heaviest rains do nothing but swell rivers
and inundate the adjacent flat lands to a
depth of a few feet, which rapidly subside.
The only escape from this law of nature
is to suppose some sudden convulsion, such
as a change in the position of the earth’s
axis of rotation, by which the existing
waters of the earth were drained in some
latitudes and heaped up in others. But
any such local accumulation of water
implies a sudden and violent rush to. heap
it up in forty days, and an equally violent
rush to run it down to its old level when
the disturbing cause ceased, as it must
have done in 150 days. Such a disturbance
in recent times is not only inconsistent
with all known facts, but with the positive
statement of the narrative that the whole
earth was covered, and that the Ark floated
quietly on the waters, drifting slowly north
wards, until it grounded on Ararat. The
only other alternative is to suppose a sub
sidence of the land below the level of the
sea. But a subsidence which carried a
whole continent 15,000, or even 1,500 feet
down, followed by an elevation which
brought it back to the old level, both accom
plished within the space of twelve months,
73
is even more impossible than a cataclysmal
deluge of water. Such movements are now,
and have been throughout all the geological
periods, excessively slow, certainly not
exceeding, at the very outside, a few feet in
a century.
And, if physical science shows that no
such Deluge as that described in Genesis
could have occurred, geology is equally
positive that it never did occur. The drift
and boulders which cover a great part of
Europe and North America are beyond all
doubt glacial, and not diluvial. They are
strictly limited by the extension of glaciers
and ice-sheets, and of the streams flowing
from them. The high-level gravels in which
human remains are found in conjunction
with those of extinct animals are the result
of the erosion of valleys by rivers. They
are not marine, they are interstratified with
beds of sand and silt, containing often deli
cate fluviatile shells, which were deposited
when the stream ran tranquilly, as the
coarser gravels were deposited when it ran
with a stronger torrent. And the gravels of
adjacent valleys, even when separated by a
low water-shed, are not intermixed, but
each composed of the debris of its own
system of drainage, by which small rivers
like the Somme and the Avon have, in the
course of ages, scooped out their present
valleys to an extent of more than 100 feet
in depth and two miles in width. Masses
of loose sand, volcanic ashes, and other in
coherent materials of tertiary formation
remain on the surface, which must have
been swept away by anything resembling a
diluvial wave. And, above all, Egypt and
other flat countries adjoining the sea, such
as the deltas of the Euphrates, the Ganges,
and the Mississippi, which must have been
submerged by a slight elevation of the sea
or subsidence of the land, show by borings,
carried in some cases to the depth of 100
feet and upwards, nothing but an accumu
lation of such tranquil deposits as are now
going on, continued for hundreds of cen
turies, and uninterrupted by anything like a
marine or diluvial deposit.
Zoology is even more emphatic than
geology in showing the impossibility of
accepting the narrative of the Deluge as a
true representation of actual events. Who
ever wrote it must have had ideas of science
as infantile as those of the children who are
amused by a toy ark in the nursery. His
range of vision could hardly have extended
beyond the confines of his own country.
And, if a reductio ad absurdum were needed
of the fallacies to which reconcilers are
�74
HUMAN ORIGINS
driven, it would be afforded by Sir J. W.
Dawson’s comparison of the Ark to an
American cattle-steamer. Recollect that
the date assigned to the Deluge affords no
time for the development of new species
and races, since every “living substance
was destroyed that was upon the face of the
ground,” except the pairs preserved in the
Ark. It is a question, therefore, not of one
pair of bears, but of many—polar, grizzly,
brown, and all the varieties, down to the
pigmy bear of Sumatra. So of cattle :
there must have been not only pairs of the
wild and domestic species of Europe, but
of the gaur of India, the Brahmin bull, the
yak, the musk-ox, and of all the many
species of buffaloes and bisons. If we take
the larger animals only, there must have
been several pairs of elephants, rhinoce
roses, camels, horses, oxen, buffaloes, elk,
deer and antelopes, apes, zebras, and
innumerable others of the herbivora, to say
nothing of lions, tigers, and other carnivora.
Let any one calculate the cubic space
which such a collection would require for a
year’s voyage under hatches, and he will see
at once the absurdity of supposing that
they could have been stowed away in the
Ark. And this is only the beginning of the
difficulty, for all the smaller animals, all
birds, and all creeping things have also to
be accommodated, and to live together for
a year under conditions of temperature and
otherwise which, if suited for some, must
inevitably have been fatal for others. How
did polar bears, lemmings, and snowy owls
live in a temperature suited for monkeys
and humming-birds ?
Then there is the crowning difficulty of
the food. Go to the Zoological Gardens,
and inquire as to the quantity and bulk of
a year’s rations for elephants, giraffes, and
lions, or multiply by 365 the daily allow
ance of hay and oats for horses, and of
grass or green food for bullocks, and it will
soon be found that the bulk required for
food is far greater than that of the animals.
And what did the birds and creeping
things feed upon ? Were there rats and
mCce for the owls, gnats for the swallows,
worms and butterflies for the thrushes, and
generally a supply of insects for the lizards,
toads, and other insectivora, whether birds,
reptiles, or mammals? And of the humbler
forms which live on microscopic animals
and on each other, were they also included
in the destruction of “ every living sub
stance,” and was the earth repeopled with
•them from the single centre of Ararat ?
Here also Zoology has a decisive word to I
say. The earth could not have been
repeopled, within any recent geological
time, from any single centre, for in point of
fact it is divided into distinct zoological
provinces. The fauna of Australia, for
instance, is totally different from that of
Europe, Asia, and America. How did the
kangaroo get there, if he is descended
from a pair preserved in the Ark? Did
he perchance jump at one bound from
Ararat to the Antipodes ?
Ethnology again takes up a limited
branch of the same subject, but one which
is more immediately interesting to us—
that of the variety of human races. The
narrative of Genesis states positively that
“ every man in whose nostrils was the'
breath of life ” was destroyed by the Flood,
except those who were saved in the Ark,
and that “ the whole earth was overspread”
of the three sons of Noah—Shem, Ham,
and Japheth. That is, it asserts distinctly
that all the varieties of the human race
have descended from one common ancestor,
Noah, who lived not more than 5,000 years
ago. Consider the vast variety and diver
sity of human races existing now, and in
some of the most typical instances shown
by Egyptian and Chaldaean monuments to
have existed before Noah was born—the
black and woolly-haired Negroes, the
yellow Mongolians, the Australians, the
Negritos, the Hottentots, the pygmies of
Stanley’s African forest, the Esquimaux,
the American Red Indians, and an immense
number of others, differing fundamentally
from one another in colour, stature,
language, and almost every trait, physical
and moral. To suppose these to have all
descended from a single pair, Noah and
his wife, and to have “spread over the
whole earth ” from Ararat, since 3000 years
B.C., is simply absurd. No man of good
faith can honestly say that he believes it to
be true ; and, if not true, what becomes of
inspiration ?
If anything were wanting to complete
the demonstration, it would be furnished
by history. We have perfectly authentic
historical records, confirmed by monu
ments, extending in Egypt to a date
certainly 3,000 years older than that
assigned for Noah’s Deluge ; an.d similar
records in Chaldaea going back as far.
In none of these is there any mention of
an universal deluge as an historical event
occurring within the period of time
embraced by those records. The only
reference to such a deluge is contained in
one chapter of a Chaldaean epic poem
�PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS
based on a solar myth, and placed in an
immense and fabulous antiquity. In Egypt
the case is, if possible, even stronger, for
here the configuration of the Nile valley is
such that anything approaching an
universal deluge must have destroyed all
traces of civilisation, and buried the country
thousands of feet under a deep ocean.
Even a very great local inundation must
have spread devastation far and wide, and
been a memorable event in all subsequent
annals. When remarkable natural events,
such as earthquakes, did occur, they are
mentioned in the annals of the reigning
king, but no mention is made of any
deluge. On the contrary, all the records
and monuments confirm the statement
made by the priests of Heliopolis to
Herodotus when they showed him the
statues of the 360 successive high priests
who had all been “mortal men, sons of
mortal men,” that during this long period
there had been no change in the average
duration of human life, and no departure
from the ordinary course of nature.
When this historical evidence is added
to that of geology, which shows that
nothing resembling a deluge could have
occurred in the valleys of the Nile or
Euphrates without leaving unmistakable
traces of its passage which are totally
absent, the demonstration seems as con
clusive as that of any of the propositions of
Euclid.
It remains to consider why so many
traditions of a deluge should be found
among so many different races often so
widely separated. There are three ways in
which deluge-myths must have originated.
1. From tradition of destructive local
floods.
2. From the presence of marine shells
on what is now dry land.
3. From the diffusion of solar myths
like that of Izdubar.
There can be no doubt that destructive
local floods must have frequently occurred
in ancient and prehistoric times as they do
at the present day. Such an inundation
as that of the Yang-tse-Kiang, which
destroyed half a million of people, or the
hurricane wave which swept over the
Sunderbunds, must have left an impres
sion which, among isolated and illiterate
people, might readily take the form of an
universal deluge. And such catastrophes
must have been specially frequent in the
early post-glacial period, when the ice
dams, which converted many valleys into
lakes, were melting.
75
But I am inclined to doubt whether the
tradition of such local floods was ever pre
served long enough to account for deluge
myths. All experience shows that the
memory of historical events fades away
with surprising rapidity when it is not pre
served by written records. If, as Xenophon
records, all memory of the great city of
Nineveh had disappeared in 200 years after
its destruction, how can it be expected that
oral tradition shall preserve a recollection
of prehistoric local floods magnified into
universal deluges ?
And when the deluge-myths of different
nations are examined closely, it generally
appears that they have had an origin rather
in solar myths or cosmogonical specula
tions than in actual facts. For instance,
the tradition of a deluge in Mexico has
often been referred to as a confirmation of
the Noachian flood. But when looked into
it appears that this Mexican deluge was
only a part of their mythical cosmogony,
which told of four successive destructions
and renovations of the world by the four
elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The
first period being closed by earthquakes,
the second by hurricanes, the third by vol
canoes, it did not require any local tradition
to ensure the fourth being closed by a flood.
Again, deluge-myths must have inevitably
arisen from the presence of marine shells,
fossil and recent, in many localities where
they were too numerous to escape notice.
If palaeolithic stone implements and bones
of fossil elephants gave rise to myths of
thunderbolts and giants, sea-shells on
mountain-tops must have given rise to
speculations as to deluges. At the very
beginning of history, Egyptian and Chaldsean astronomers were sufficiently advanced'
in science to endeavour to account for such
phenomena, and to argue that where sea
shells were found the sea must once have
been. Many of the deluge-myths of anti
quity, such as that of Deucalion and Pyrrha,
look very much as if this had been their
origin. They are too different from the
Chaldaean and Biblical Deluge, as for
instance in repeopling the world by stones,
to have been copied from the same original,
and they fit in with the very general belief
of ancient nations that they were autoch
thonous.
In a majority of cases, however, I believe
it will be found that deluge-myths have
originated from some transmission, more or
less distorted, of the very ancient Chaldaean
astronomical myths of the passage of the
sun through the signs of the zodiac. For
�76
HUMAN ORIGINS
example, in the Hindoo mythology the
fish-god Ea-han, or Oannes, is introduced
as a divine fish who swims up to the Ark
and guides it to a place of refuge.
The legend in Genesis is much closer to
the original myth, and, in fact, almost iden
tical with that of the deluge of Parnapishtim (formerly read as Hasisadra) in the
Chaldaean epic, discovered by Mr. George
Smith among the clay tablets in the British
Museum. This poem was obviously based
on an astronomical myth. It was in twelve
chapters, dedicated to the sun’s passage
through the twelve signs of the zodiac. The
adventures of Gilgamesh (formerly read as
Izdubar), like those of Heracles, have
obvious reference to these signs, and to the
sun’s birth, growth, summer splendour,
decline to the tomb when smitten with the
sickness of approaching winter by the in
censed Nature-goddess, and final new birth
and resurrection from the nether world.
The Deluge is introduced as an episode
told to Gilgamesh during his descent to the
lower regions by his ancestor Parnapishtim,
one of the God-kings, who are said to have
reigned for periods of tens of thousands of
years. It has every appearance of being a.
myth to commemorate the sun’s passage
through the rainy sign of Aquarius, just as
the contests of Izdubar and Heracles with
Leo, Taurus, Draco, Sagittarius, etc.,
symbolise his passage through other
zodiacal constellations.
It forms the
eleventh chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh,
corresponding to the eleventh month of
the Chaldaean year, which was the time of
heavy rains and floods.
Now, this deluge of Parnapishtim, as
related by Berosus, and still more distinctly
by Smith’s Izdubar tablets, corresponds so
closely with that of Noah that no doubt can
remain that one is taken from the other.
All the principal incidents and the order of
events are the same, and even particular
expressions, such as the dove finding no
rest for the sole of her foot, are so identical
as to show that they must have been taken
from the same written record. Even the
name Noah is that of Nouah, the Semitic
translation of the Akkadian god who pre
sided over the realm of water, and navi
gated the bark or ark of the sun across it,
when returning from its setting in the west
to its rising in the east. The chief differ
ence is the same as in the Chaldaean and
Biblical cosmogonies of the creation of the
universe—viz., that theformer is Polytheistic,
and the latter Monotheistic. Where the
former talks of Bel, Ea, and Istar, the I
latter attributes everything to Jehovah or
Elohim. Thus the warning to Parnapish
tim is given in a dream sent by Ea, who is
a sort of Chaldaean Prometheus, or kindly
god, who wishes to save mankind from the
total destruction contemplated by the
wrathful superior god, Bel; while in
Genesis it is “Elohim said unto Noah.”
In Genesis the altar is built to the Lord,
who smells the sweet savour of the sacrifice,
while in the Chaldaean legend the altar is
built to the seven gods, who “ smelt the
sweet savour of sacrifice, and swarmed like
bees about it.”
The Chaldaean narrative is more prolix,
more realistic, and, on the whole, more
scientific. That is, it mitigates some of the
more obvious impossibilities ofthe Noachian
narrative. Instead of an ark, there is a
ship with a steersman, which was certainly
more likely to survive the perils of a long
voyage on the stormy waters of an universal
ocean. The duration of the Deluge and of
the voyage is shortened from a year to a
little more than a month; more human
beings are saved, as Parnapishtim takes
on board not his own family only, but
several of his friends and relations ; and
the difficulty of repeopling the earth from a
single centre is diminished by throwing the
date of the Deluge back to an immense and
mythical antiquity. On the other hand,
the moral and religious significance of the
legend is accentuated in the Hebrew
narrative. It is no longer the capricious
anger of an offended Bel which decrees the
destruction of mankind, but the righteous
indignation of the one Supreme God
against sin, tempered by justice and mercy
towards the upright man who was “ perfect
in his generations.”
I have dwelt at such length on the Deluge
because it affords a crucial test of the dogma
of Divine inspiration for the whole of the
Bible. The account of the Creation may
be obscured by forced interpretations and
misty eloquence ; but there can be no mis
take as to the specific and precise state
ments respecting the second creation of
man and of animal life. They are either
true or untrue ; and the issue is one upon
which any unprejudiced mind of ordinary
intelligence and information can arrive at a
conclusive verdict. If there nevei" was an
universal Deluge within historical times ; if
the highest mountains were never covered ;
if all life was never destroyed, except the
contents of the Ark; if the whole animal
creation, including beasts, birds, and creeping things, never lived together for twelve
�PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS
months cooped-up in it ; and if the earth
was not repeopled with all the varieties of
the human race, and all the orders, genera,
and species of animal life, from a single
centre at Ararat, then the Bible is not in
spired as regards its scientific and historical
statements. This, however, in no way
affects the question of the inspiration (as
this is defined in the next chapter) of the
religious and moral portions of the Bible.
I have sometimes thought how, if 1 were
an advocate stating the case for the inspi
ration of the Bible, I should be inclined to
put it. I should start with Archbishop
Temple’s definition of the First Cause, a
personal God, with faculties like ours, but
so transcendentally greater that he had no
occasion to be perpetually patching and
mending his work, but did everything by
an “original impress,” which included all
subsequent evolution, as the nucleolus in
the primitive ovum includes the whole evo
lution and subsequent life of the chicken,
mammal, or man. I should go on to say
that the Bible has clearly been an important
factor in this evolution of the human race ;
that it consists of two portions—one of
moral and religious import, the other of
scientific statements and theories, relating
to such matters of purely human reason as
astronomy, geology, literary criticism, and
ancient history ; and that these two parts
are essentially different. It is quite con
ceivable that, on the hypothesis of a Divine
Creator, one step in the majestic evolution
from the original impress should have
been that men of genius and devout
nature should write books containing juster
notions of man’s relations to his Maker
than prevailed in the polytheisms of early
civilisations, and thus gradually educating
a peculiar people who accepted these
writings as sacred, and preparing the
ground for a still higher and purer religion.
But it is not conceivable that this, which
may be called inspiration of the religious
and moral teaching, should have been
extended to closing the record of all human
discovery and progress, by teaching, as it
were by rote, all that subsequent genera
tions have, after long and painful effort,
found out for themselves.
In point of fact, the Bible does not teach
such truths, for in the domain of science it
is full of the most obvious errors, and
teaches nothing but what were the primitive
myths, legends, and traditions of the early
races. It is to be observed also that, on
the theory of “ original impress,” those
errors are just as much a part of the
77
evolution of the Divine idea as the moral
and religious truths. Those who insist
that all or none of the Bible must be
inspired, remind me of the king who said
that, if God had only consulted him in his
scheme of creation, he could have saved
him from a good many mistakes. It is not
difficult to understand how even if we
assume the theory of inspiration, or of
original impress, for the religious portion
of the Bible, the other or scientific portion
should have been purposely left open to all
the errors and contradictions of the human
intellect in its early strivings to arrive at
some sort of conception of the origin of
things, and of the laws of the universe.
And also that a collection of narratives of
different dates and doubtful authorship
should bear on the face of them evidence
of the writers sharing in the errors and
prejudices, and generally adopting points
of view of successive generations of con
temporaries.
Assuming this theory, I can only say for
myself that the removal of the wet blanket
of literal inspiration makes me turn to the
Bible with increased interest. It is a most
valuable record of the ways of thinking,
and of the early conceptions of religion
and science in the ancient world, and a
most instructive chapter in the history of
the evolution of the human mind from
lower to higher things. _ Above all, it is a
record of the preparation of the soil, in a
peculiar race, for Christianity, which has
been and is such an important factor in
the history of the foremost races and
highest civilisations. With all the errors
"and absurdities, all the crimes and cruelties
which have attached themselves to it, but
which in the light of science and free
thought are rapidly being sloughed off, it
cannot be denied that the European, and
especially our English-speaking races,
stand on a higher platform than would have
been reached had the Saracens been vic
torious at Tours, with the result, in Gibbon’s
words, that “ perhaps the interpretation of
the Koran would now be taught at Oxford,”
while her pulpits demonstrated “ to a cir
cumcised people the sanctity and truth of
the revelation of Mohammed.”
�78
HUMAN ORIGINS
CHAPTER VII.
impress,” though possibly, with our limited
faculties. and knowledge, I might think
“ Evolution” a more modest term to apply
to that “increasing purpose” which the
poet tells us—
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE
OLD TESTAMENT
“ Thro’ the ages runs,
Ana the thoughts of men are widened with the
process of the suns.”
Moral and Religious distinct from Historical
Inspiration—Myth and Allegory—The Higher
Criticism—-Ancient History and Monuments
—Cyrus—Composite Structure of Old Testa
ment—Elohist and Jehovist—Priests’ CodeCanon Driver—Book of Chronicles—Methods
of Jewish Historians—Post-Exilic References
— Tradition of Esdras—Nehemiah and Ezra—
Foundation of Modern Judaism—Different
from Pre-Exilic—Discovery of Book of the
Law under Josiah—Deuteronomy—Earliest
Sacred Writings—Conclusions—Aristocratic
and Prophetic Schools—Triumph of Pietism
—Pre-Abrahamic and Patriarchal Period
mythical—Discordant Chronology—Josephus’
Quotation from Manetho—Doubtful Traces
of Egyptian Influence—Future Life—Legend
of Joseph—Moses—Osarsiph—Life of Moses
full of Legends—-His Birth—Plagues of
Egypt—The Exoci us — Colenso — Contradic
tions and Impossibilities •— Immoralities —
Massacres — Joshua and the Judges—Bar
barisms and Absurdities—Only safe Conclu
sion no Authentic History before the
Monarchy—David and Solomon—Compara
tively Modern Date.
But, admitting this, I do not see how
any one who is at all acquainted with the
results of modern science and of historical
criticism can doubt that the materials with
which this edifice was gradually built up
consist, to a great extent, of myths, legends,
and traditions of rude and unscientific ages
which have no pretension to be true state
ments or real history.
After all, this is only applying to the Old
the same principles of interpretation which
are applied to the New Testament. If the
theory of literal inspiration requires us to
accept the manifest impossibilities ofNoah’s
Deluge, why does it not equally compel us
to believe that there really was a rich man
who fared sumptuously every day, a beggar
named Lazarus, and that there are definite
localities of a Heaven and Hell within
speaking distance of one another, though
separated by an impassable gulf? The
assertion is made positively and without
any reservation. There was a rich man ;
Lazarus died, and was carried to Abraham's
bosom; and Dives cried to Abraham, who
answered him in a detailed colloquy. But
common-sense steps in and says all this
never actually occurred, but was invented
to illustrate by a parable the moral truth
that it is wrong for the selfish rich to
neglect the suffering poor.
Why should not common sense equally
step in, and say of the narrative of the
Garden of Eden, with its trees of Knowledge
and of Life, that here is an obvious allegory,
stating the problem which has perplexed so
many generations of men, of the origin of
evil, man’s dual nature, and how to recon
cile the fact of the existence of sin and
suffering with the theory of a benevolent
and omnipotent Creator? Or again, why
hesitate to admit that the story of the
Deluge is not literal history, but a version
of a chapter of an old Chaldaean solar epic,
revised in a monotheistic sense, and used
for the purpose of impressing the lesson
that the ways of sin are ways of destruc
tion, and that righteousness is the true path
of safety ? This is in effect what Conti
nental critics have long recognised, and
what the most liberal and learned Anglican
Divines of the present day are beginning
In dealing with the historical portion of
the Old Testament, it is important to keep
clearly in view the distinction between the
historical and the religious and moral
elements which are contained in the collec
tion of works comprised under that title. It
is open to any one to hold that there runs
through the whole of these writings a
certain moral and religious idea, which is
gradually developed from rude beginnings
into pure and lofty views of an Almighty
God who created all things, and who loves
justice and mercy better than the blood of
mules and rams. It is open to him to call
this inspiration, and to see it also in the
series of influences and events by which
the Jews were moulded into a peculiar
people, through whose instrumentality the
two great Monotheistic religions of the
world, Judaism and Mohammedanism, and
the quasi-Monotheistic (for it is in essence
Tritheistic) Christianity, superseded the
. older forms of polytheism.
With inspiration in this sense I have no
quarrel, any more than I have with Arch
bishop Temple’s definition of “original
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
to recognise; for we find Oxford Pro
fessors like Canon Driver and Canon
Cheyne insisting on “the fundamental im
portance of disengaging the religious from
the critical and historical problems of the
Old Testament.” We hear a great deal
about the “ higher criticism,” and those who
dislike its conclusions try to represent it as
something very obscure and unintelligible,
spun from the inner consciousness of
German pedants. But there is nothing
obscure about it. It is simply the criticism
of common sense applied from a higher
point of view, which embraces, not the
immediate subject only, but all branches of
human knowledge which are related to it.
This new criticism bears the same relation
to the old as Mommsen’s History of Rome
does to the school-boy manuals which used
to assume Romulus and Remus, Numa and
Tarquin, as real men who lived and reigned
just as certainly as Julius Caesar and
Augustus.
This criticism has now been so systema
tised by the labours of a number of earnest
and learned men in all the principal
countries of Europe that it has risen to the
dignity and security of a science; and,
although there are still differences as to
details, its leading theories are no more in
dispute than those of Geology or Biology.
The conclusions of enlightened English
divines like Driver, Sayce, and Cheyne are
practically the same as those of Kuenen,
Wellhausen, Dillmann, and Renan, and
any one who wishes to have any intelli
gent understanding of the Hebrew Bible
must take those conclusions into con
sideration.
Although the Old Testament does not
carry history back nearly as far as the
records of Egypt and Chaldasa, it affords
a very interesting picture of the ways of
thinking of ancient races, of speculations
about their origin and diffusion, of their
manners and customs, of their popular
legends and traditions, and of their first
attempts to solve problems of science and
philosophy.
It is with these historical matters only
that I propose to deal, and this not in the
way of minute criticism, but of the broad,
common-sense aspects of the question, and
in view of the salient facts which rise up
like guiding pillars in the vast mass of
literature on the subject, of which it may
be said, in the words of St. John’s Gospel,
that, if all that has been written were
collected, “ I suppose that even the world
itself could not contain the books.”
79
I may begin by referring to the extreme
uncertainty that attaches to all ancient
history unless it is confirmed by monu
ments, or by comparison with annals of
other nations which have been so confirmed.
The instance of Cyrus, which has been
already given, is a most instructive one, since
it teaches us to regard with considerable
doubt all history prior to the fifth or sixth
century B.c. which is not confirmed by
contemporary monuments.
The historical portion of the Old Testa
ment is singularly deficient in this essential
point of confirmation.
But we are
somewhat anticipating matters which fall
more fitly into place later on, and the first
thing necessary is to have some clear idea
of what this Old Testament really consists.
Until the recent era of scientific criticism,
it was assumed to constitute, in effect, one
volume, the earlier chapters of which were
written by Moses, and the later ones by a
continuance of the same Divine inspiration,
which made the Bible from Genesis to
Chronicles one consistent and infallible
whole, in which it was impossible that
there should be any error or contradiction.
Such a theory could not stand a' moment’s
investigation in the free light of reason.
It is only necessary to read the first two
chapters of Genesis to see that the book is
of a composite structure, made up of
different and inconsistent elements. We
have only to include in the first chapter the
first two verses printed in the second
chapter, and to write the original Hebrew
word “Elohim’’for “God,” and “Yahve”
or Jehovah for “Lord God,” to see this at
a glance.
The two accounts of the creation of the
heaven and earth, of animal and vegetable
life, and of man, are quite different. In
the first, man is created last, male and
female, in the image of God, with dominion
over all the previous forms of matter and
of life, which have been created for his
benefit. In the second, man is formed
from the dust of the earth immediately
after the creation of the heavens and earth
and of the vegetable world; and subse
quently all the beasts of the field and fowls
of the air are formed out of the ground, and
brought to Adam to name, while, last of all,
woman is made frorfi a rib taken from
Adam.
The two narratives, Elohistic and Jehovistic, thus distinguished by the different
names of God and by a number of other
peculiarities,run almost side by side through
a great part of the earlier portion of the
�8o
HUMAN ORIGINS
Old Testament, presenting often flagrant
contradictions.
Thus Lamech, the father of Noah, is re
presented in one as a descendant of Cain,
in the other, of Seth. Canaan is in one the
grandson of Adam, in the other the grand
son of Noah. The Elohistsays that Noah
took two of each sort of living things, a
male and a female, into the ark ; the Jehovist that he took seven pairs of clean, and
single pairs of unclean, animals.
The difference between these narratives,
the Elohistic and Jehovistic, is, however,
only the first and most obvious instance of
the composite.character of the Pentateuch.
These narratives are distinguished from
one another by a number of minute
peculiarities of language and expressions,
and they are both embedded in the much
larger mass of matter which relates mainly
to the sacrificial and ceremonial system of
the Israelites, and to the position, privi
leges, and functions of the priests and
priestly caste of Levites. This is com
monly known as the “ Priests’ Code,” and
a great deal of it is obviously of late date,
having relation to practices and ceremonies
which had gradually grown up after the
foundation of the Temple at Jerusalem.
A vast amount of erudition has been
expended in the minute analysis of these
different documents by learned scholars
who have devoted their lives to the subject.
I shall not attempt to enter upon it, but
content myself with taking the main results
from Canon Driver, both because he is
thoroughly competent from his knowledge
of the latest foreign criticism and from
his position as Professor of Hebrew, and
because he cannot be suspected of any
adverse leaning to the old orthodox views.
In fact he is a strenuous advocate of the
inspiration of the Bible, taken in the
larger sense of the religious and moral
purpose underlying the often mistaken
and conflicting statements of fallible
writers.
The conclusions at which he arrives, in
common with a great majority of competent
critics in all countries, are :—
1. That the old orthodox belief that the
Pentateuch is one work written by Moses
is quite untenable.
2. That the Pentateuch and Book of
Joshua have been formed by the combina
tion of different layers of narrative, each
marked by characteristic features of its
own.
3. That the Elohistic and Jehovistic
narratives, which are the oldest portion of I
the. collection, have nothing archaic in
their style, but belong to the golden period
of Hebrew literature, the date assigned to
them by most critics being not earlier than
the eighth or ninth century B.c., though of
course they may be founded partly on older
legends and traditions ; and, on the other
hand, they contain many passages which
could only have been introduced by some
post-exilic editor.
4. That Deuteronomy, which is placed.
almost unanimously by critics in the reign
of either Josiah or Manasseh, is absolutely
inconsistent in many respects with the
Priests’ Code, and apparently of earlier
date, before the priestly system had crystal
lised into such a definite code of minute
regulations as we find it in the later days
of Jewish history after the Exile.
5. There is a difference of opinion, how
ever, in respect to the date of the Priests’
Code, Kuenen, Wellhausen, and Graf hold
ing it to be post-Deuteronomic, and pro
bably committed to writing during the
period from the beginning of the exile to
the time of Nehemiah, while Dillmann
assigns the main body to about 800
B.c., though admitting that additions
may have been made as late as the time
of Ezra.
Being concerned mainly with the his
torical question, I shall not attempt to
pursue this higher criticism further, but
content myself with referring to the prin
cipal points which, judged by the broad
conclusions of common sense, stand out
as guiding pillars in the mass of details.
Taking these in ascending order of time,
they seem to me to be—
1. The Book of Chronicles.
2. The foundation of modern Judaism as
described in the Books of Ezra and Nehe
miah.
3. The discovery of the Book of the Law
or Deuteronomy in the reign of Josiah.
The Book of Chronicles is important
because we know its date—viz., about 300
B.c., and to a great extent the materials
from which it was compiled—viz., the Books
of Samuel and Kings. We have thus an
object-lesson as to the way in which a
Hebrew writer, as late as 300 B.c., or nearly
300 years after the exile, composed history
and treated the earlier records. It is totally
different from the method of a classical or
modern historian, and may be aptly de
scribed as a “ scissors and paste ” method.
That is to say, he makes excerpts from the
sources at his disposal; sometimes inserts
them consecutively and without alteration ;
�81
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
at other times makes additions and changes
of his own ; and, in Canon Driver’s words,
“does not scruple to omit wha^ is not
required for his purpose, and in fact treats
his authorities with considerable freedom.”
He also does not scruple to put into the
mouth of David and other historical
characters of the olden time speeches which,
from their spirit, grammar, and vocabulary,
are evidently of his own age and composi
tion.
If this was the method of a writer as late
as 300 B.C., whose work was afterwards
received as canonical, two things are evi
dent. First, that the canon of the earlier
Books of the Old Testament could not have
been then fixed and invested with the same
sacred authority as we find to be the case
two or three centuries later, when the Thora,
or Book of Moses and the Prophets, was
regarded very much as the Moslems regard
the Koran, as an inspired volume which it
was impious to alter by a single jot or tittle.
This late date for fixing the canon of the
Books of the Old Testament is confirmed
by Canon Cheyne’s learned and exhaustive
work on the Psalter, in which he shows that
a great majority of the Psalms; attributed
to David, were written in the time of the
Maccabees, and that there are only one or
two doubtful cases in which it can be
plausibly contended that any of the Psalms
are pre-exilic.
Secondly, that if a_writer, as late as 300
B.C., could employ this method, and get his
work accepted as a part of the Sacred
Canon, a writer who lived earlier, say any
time between the Chronicler and the founda
tion of the Jewish Monarchy, might pro
bably adopt the same methods. If the
Chronicler put a speech of his own compo
sition into the mouth of David, the Deuteronomist might well do so in the case of
Moses. According to the ideas of the age
and country, this would not be considered
to be what we moderns would call literary
forgery, but rather a legitimate and praise
worthy means of giving authority to good
precepts and sentiments.
A perfect illustration of the “scissors
and paste” method is afforded by the
first and second chapters of Genesis,
and the way in which the Elohistic
and Jehovistic narratives are so strangely
intermingled throughout the Pentateuch.
No attempt is made to blend the two narraifives into one harmonious and consistent
whole, but excerpts, sometimes from one and
sometimes from the other, are placed
together without any attempt to explain
away the evident contradictions, Clearly
the same hand could not have written both
narratives, and the compilation must have
been made by some subsequent editor, or
editors, for there is conclusive proof that
the final edition, as it has come down to us,
could not have been made until after the
Exile. Thus in Leviticus xxvi. we find, “ I
will scatter you among the heathen, and
your land shall be desolate, and your cities
waste,” and “ they that are left of you shall
pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’
land.” And in Deuteronomy xxix., “ And
the Lord rooted them out of their land in
anger, and in wrath, and in great indigna
tion, and cast them into another land, as it
is to this day.” Even in Genesis, which
professes to be the earliest Book, we find
(xii. 6), “ and the Canaanite was then in the
land.” This could not have been written
until the memory of the Canaanite had
become a tradition of a remote past, and
this could not have been until after the
return of the Jews from the Babylonian
Captivity, for we find from the Books of
Ezra and Nehemiah that the Canaanites
were then still in the land, and the Jewish
leaders, and even priests and Levites, were
intermarrying freely with Canaanite wives.
The Apocryphal Book of Esdras contains
a legend that, the sacred books of the Law
having been lost or destroyed when Jeru
salem was taken by Nebuchadrezzar, they
were re-written miraculously by Ezra dic
tating to five ready writers at once in a
wonderfully short time. This is a counter
part of the legend of the Septuagint being
a translation of the Hebrew text into Greek,
made by seventy different translators, whose
separate versions agreed down to the
minutest particular. This legend, in the
case of the Septuagint, is based on an
historical fact that there really was a Greek
translation of the Hebrew Sacred Books
made by order of Ptolemy Philadel/phus;
and it may well be that the legend of
Esdras contains some reminiscence of an
actual fact, that among the other reforms
introduced by Ezra a new and complete
edition of the old writings was made and
stamped with a sacred character.
These reforms, and the condition of the
Jewish people after the return from the
Captivity, as disclosed by the Books of
Nehemiah and Ezra, afford what I call the
second guiding pillar, in our attempt to
trace backwards the course of Jewish his
tory. Those books were indeed not written
in their present form until a later period,
and, as most critics think, by the same hand
G
�82
HUMAN ORIGINS
as Chronicles; but there is no reason to
doubt the substantial accuracy of the his
torical statements, which relate, not to a
remote antiquity, but to a comparatively
recent period after the use of writing had
become general. They constitute, in fact,
the dividing line between ancient and
modern Judaism, and show us the origin of
the latter.
Modern Judaism—that is, the religious
and social life of the Jewish people, since
they fairly entered into the current of
modern history, has been marked by many
strong and characteristic peculiarities.
The Jews have been zealously, almost
fanatically, attached to the idea of one
Supreme God, Jehovah, with whom they
had a special covenant inherited from
Abraham, and whose will, in regard to all
religious rites and ceremonies and social
usages, was conveyed to them in a sacred
book containing the inspired writings of
Moses and the Prophets. This led them
to consider themselves a peculiar people,
and to regard all other nations with aver
sion, as being idolaters and unclean, feel
ings which were returned by the rest of the
world, so that they stood alone, hating and
being hated. No force or persuasion was
required in order to prevent them from
lapsing into idolatry or intermarrying with
heathen women. On the contrary, they
were inspired to the most heroic efforts,
and ready to endure the severest sufferings
and martyrdom for the pure faith. The
belief in the sacred character of their
ancient writings gradually crystallised into
a faith as absolute as that of the Moslems
in the Koran; a canon was formed, and
although, as we have seen in the case of
the Chronicles and Psalms, some time
must have elapsed before this sacred cha
racter was fully recognised, it ended in a
theory of the literal inspiration of every
word of the Old Testament down even to
the commas and vowel points, and in the
establishment of learned schools of Scribes
and Pharisees, whose literary labours were
concentrated on expounding the text in
synagogues, and writing volumes of Tal
mudic commentaries of unsurpassed
tediousness.
Now, during the period preceding the
Exile all this was very different. So far
from being zealous for one Supreme God,
Jehovah was long recognised only as a
tribal.or national god, one among the many
gods of surrounding nations, but primus
inter pares, or “ first among equals.” When
the idea of a Supreme Deity, who loved
justice and mercy better than the blood of
bullocks and rams, was at length elaborated
by the later prophets, it received but scant
acceptance. The great majority of the
kings and people, both of Judah and Israel,
were always ready to lapse into idolatry,
worship strange gods, golden calves, and
brazen serpents, and flock to the alluring
rites of Baal and Astarte in groves and
high places. They were also always ready
to intermarry freely with heathen wives,
and to form political alliances with heathen
nations. There is no trace of the religious
and social repulsion towards other races
which forms such a marked trait in modern
Judaism. Nor, as we shall see presently,
is there any evidence, prior to the reign of
Josiah, of anything like a sacred book or
code of divine laws, universally known and
accepted. The Books of Nehemiah and
Ezra afford invaluable evidence of the time
and manner in which this modern Judaism
was stamped upon the character of the
people after the return from exile. We are
told that when Ezra came to Jerusalem
from Babylon, armed with a decree of
Artaxerxes, he was scandalised at finding
that nearly all the Jews, including the
principal nobles and many priests and
Levites,had intermarried with the daughters
of the people of the land, “of the Canaanites,
Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites,
Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites.”
Backed by Nehemiah, the cup-bearer and
favourite of Artaxerxes, who had been
appointed governor of Jerusalem, he per
suaded or compelled the J ews to put away
these wives and their children, and to
separate themselves as a peculiar people
from other nations.
It was a cruel act, characteristic of the
fanatical spirit of priestly domination,
which, when these conflict with its aggran
disement, never hesitates to trample on the
natural affections and the laws of charity
and mercy. But it was the means of crystal
lising the Jewish race into a mould so rigid
that it defied wars, persecutions, and all
dissolving influences, and preserved the
idea of Monotheism which was to grow up
into the world-wide religions of Christianity
and Mohammedanism. So true is it that
evolution works out its results by un
expected means often opposed to what
seem like the best instincts of human
nature.
What is important, however, is to ob
serve that clearly at this date the popu
lation of the Holy Land must have
consisted mainly of the descendants of
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
the old races, who had been con
quered, but not exterminated, by the
Israelites. Such a sentence as “for the
Canaanites were then in the land” could
not have been written till long after the
time when the Jews were intermarrying
freely with Canaanite wives. Nor does it
seem possible that codes, such as those of
Leviticus, Numbers, and the Priests’ Code,
could have been generally known and
accepted as sacred books written by Moses
under Divine inspiration, when the rulers,
nobles, and even priests and Levites acted
in such apparent ignorance of them. In
fact, we are told in Nehemiah that Ezra
read and explained the Book of the Law,
whatever that may have included, to the
people, who apparently had no previous
knowledge of it.
By far the most important landmark,
however, in the history of the Old Testa
ment is afforded by the account in 2 Kings
xxii. and xxiii. of the discovery of the Book
of the Law in the Temple in the eighteenth
year of the reign of Josiah. It says that
Shaphan the scribe, having been sent by
the king to Hilkiah the high priest, to
obtain an account of the silver collected
from the people for the repairs of the
Temple, Hilkiah told him that he had
“ found the Book of the Law in the house
of the Lord.” Shaphan brought it to the
king and read it to him ; whereupon Josiah,
in great consternation at finding that so
many of its injunctions had been violated,
and that such dreadful penalties were
threatened, rent his clothes, and, being con
firmed in his fears by Huldah the pro
phetess, proceeded to take stringent
measures to stamp out idolatry, which,
from the account given in 2 Kings xxiii.,
seems to have been almost universal. We
read of vessels consecrated to Baal and to
the host of heaven in the Temple itself,
and of horses and chariots of the Sun at its
entrance ; of idolatrous priests who had
been ordained by the kings of Judah to
burn incense “unto Baal, to the Sun, and
to the Moon, and to the planets, and to all
the host of heaven and of high places
close to Jerusalem, with groves, images,
and altars, which had been built by Solo
mon to Ashtaroth, the goddess of the
Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moab
ites, and Milcom the god of the Ammonites,
and had apparently remained undisturbed
and places of popular worship ever since
the time of Solomon.
On any ordinary principles of criticism it
is impossible to doubt that, if this narrative
83
is correct, there could have been no pre
vious Book of the Law in existence,
and generally recognised as a volume
written by Divine inspiration. When even
such a great and wise king as Solomon
could establish such a system of idolatry,
and pious kings like Hezekiah, and Josiah
during the first eighteen years of his reign,
could allow it to continue, there could have
been no knowledge that it was in direct
contravention of the most essential pre
cepts of a sacred law dictated by Jehovah
to Moses. It is generally admitted by
critics that the Book of the Law discovered
by Hilkiah was Deuteronomy, or rather
perhaps an earlier or shorter original of the
Deuteronomy which has come down to us,
and which had already been re-edited with
additions after the Exile. The title
“ Deuteronomy,” which might seem to
imply that it was a supplement to an earlier
law, is taken, like the other headings of the
books of the Old Testament in our Bible,
from the Septuagint version, and in the
original Hebrew the heading is “ The Book
of the Law.” The internal evidence points
also to Deuteronomy, as placing the threats
of punishment and promises of reward
mainly on moral grounds, in the spirit
of the later prophets, such as Isaiah, who
lived shortly before the discovery of the
book by Hilkiah. And it is apparent that,
when Deuteronomy was written, the Priests’
Code, which forms such an important part
of the other books of the Pentateuch, could
not have been known, because so many of
the ceremonial rites and usages are clearly
inconsistent with it.
It is not to be inferred that there were
no writings in existence before the reign of
Josiah. Doubtless annals of the principal
events of each reign from the foundation
of the Monarchy had been kept, and many
of the old legends and traditions of the
race had been collected and reduced to
writing during the period from Solomon to
the later kings.
The Priests’ Code also, though of later
date in its complete form, was doubtless
not an invention of any single priest, but a
compilation of usages, some of which had
long existed, while others had grown up in i
connection with the Second Temple after
the return from exile. So also the civil
and social legislation was not a code pro
mulgated, like the Code Napoleon, by any
one monarch or high priest, but a compila
tion from usages and precedents which had
come to be received as having an established
authority. But what is plainly inconsistent
�84
HUMAN ORIGINS
with the account of the discovery of the
Book of the Law in the reign of Josiah is
the supposition that there had been, in
long previous existence, a collection of
sacred books, recognised as a Bible or
work of Divine inspiration, as the Old
Testament came to be among the Jews of
the first or second century B.c.
It is to be observed that, among early
nations, such historical annals and legisla
tive enactments never form the first stratum
of a sacred literature, which consists invari
ably of hymns, prayers, ceremonial rites,
and astronomical or astrological myths
Thus the Rig Veda of the Hindoos, the
early portions of the Vendidad of the
Iranians, the Book of the Dead of the
Egyptians, and the penitential psalms and
invocations of the Chaldaeans, formed the
oldest sacred books, about which codes and
commentaries, and in some cases historical
allusions and biographies, gradually accu
mulated, though never attaining to quite
an equal authority.
There is abundant internal evidence in
the books of the Old Testament which
profess to be older than the reign of Josiah,
to show that they are in great part, at any
rate, of later compilation, and could not
have been recognised as the sacred Thora
or Bible of the nation. To take a single
instance, that of Solomon. Is it conceiv
able that this greatest and wisest of kings,
who had held personal commune with
Jehovah, and who knew everything
il even unto the hyssop that springeth
out of the wall,” could have been ignorant
of such a sacred book if it had been
in existence? And if he had known
it, or even the Decalogue, is it conceivable
that he should have totally ignored its first
and fundamental precepts, “Thou shalt
have no other gods but me,” and “Thou
shalt not make unto thyself any graven
image”? Could uxoriousness, divided
among 700 wives, have turned the heart
of such a monarch so completely as to
make him worship Ashtaroth and Milcom,
and build high places for Chemosh and
Moloch ? And could he have done this
without the opposition, and apparently with
the approval, of the priests and the people ?
And again, could these high places and
altars and vessels dedicated to Baal and
the host of heaven have been allowed to
remain in the Temple, down to the
eighteenth year of Josiah, under a succes
sion of kings several of whom were reputed
to be pious servants of Jehovah ? And the
idolatrous tendencies of the ten tribes of
Israel, who formed the majority of the
Hebrew race, and had a common history
and traditions, are even more apparent.
In the speeches put into the mouth of
Solomon in 1 Kings, in which reference is
made to “ statutes and commandments
spoken by Jehovah by the hand of Moses,”
there is abundant evidence that their com
position must be assigned to a much later
date. They are full of references to the
captivity in a foreign land and return from
exile (1 Kings viii. 46-53 and ix. 6-9).
Similar references to the Exile are found
throughout the Book of Kings, and even in
Books of the Pentateuch which profess to
be written by Moses. If such a code of
sacred writings had been in existence in the
time of. Josiah, instead of rending his
clothes in dismay when Shaphan brought
him the Book of the Law found by Hilkiah,
he would have said, “ Why, this is only a
different version of what we know already.”
On the whole, the evidence points to this
conclusion. The idea of one Supreme
God who was a Spirit, while all other gods
were mere idols made by men’s hands ;
who created and ruled all things in heaven
and earth; and who loved justice and
mercy rather than the blood of rams and
bullocks, was slowly evolved from the crude
conceptions of a jealous, vindictive, and
cruel anthropomorphic local god, by the
prophets and best minds of Israel after it
had settled down under the Monarchy into ■
a civilised and cultured state. It appears
for the first time distinctly in Isaiah and
Amos, and was never popular with the
majority of the kings and upper classes, or
with the mass of the nation until the Exile;
but it gradually gained ground during the
calamities of the later days, when Assyrian
armies were . threatening destruction. A
strong opposition arose in the later reigns
between the aristocracy, who looked on the
situation from a political point of view and
trusted to armies and alliances, and what
may be called the pietist or evangelical
party of the prophets, who took a purely
religious view of matters, and considered
the misfortunes of the country as a conse
quence of its sins, to be averted only by
repentance and Divine interposition.
It was a natural, and, under the circum
stances of the age and country, quite a
justifiable, proceeding on the part of the
prophetic school to endeavour to stamp
their views with Divine authority, and re
commend them for acceptance as coming
from Moses, the traditional deliverer of
Israel from Egypt. For this purpose no doubt
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
numerous materials existed in the form of
legends, traditions, customs, and old records,
and very probably some of those had been
collected and reduced to writing, like the
Sagas of the old Norsemen, though without
any idea of collecting them into a sacred
volume.
The first attempt in this direction was
made in the reign of Josiah, and it had only
a partial success, as we find the nation
“ doing evil in the sight of the Lord ”—that
is, relapsing into the old idolatrous prac
tices, in the reigns of his three next suc
cessors, Jehoiachin, Jehoiachim, and Zedechiah. But the crowning calamity of the
capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar,
and the seventy years’ exile, seems to have
crushed out the old aristocratic and national
party, and converted all the leading minds
among the Jews of the Captivity, including
the priests, to the prophetical view that the
essence of the question was the religious
one, and that the only hope for the future
lay in repentance for sins and in drawing
closer to the worship of Jehovah and the
Covenant between him and his chosen
people. Prophets disappear from this
period because priests, scribes, and rulers
had adopted their views, and there was no
longer room for itinerant and unofficial
missionaries. Under such circumstances
the religion, after the return from the Exile,
crystallised rapidly into definite forms.
Creeds, rituals, and sacred books were
multiplied down to the third century B.C.,
or later, when the canon was closed with
the Books of Chronicles and Daniel and
the later Psalms, and the era began of
commentaries on the text, every word of
which was held to be infallibly inspired.
The different crystals in solution have
now united into one large crystal of fixed
form, and henceforward we are in the full
age of Talmudism and Pharisaism.
It is not to be supposed, however, that
the books which thus came to be considered
sacred were the inventions of priests and
scribes of this later age. Doubtless they
were based to a great extent on old tradi
tions, legends, and written annals and
records, compiled perhaps in the reigns of
Solomon and his successors, but based
on still older materials. The very
crudeness of many of the representa
tions, and the barbarism of manners, point
to an early original. It is impossible to
conceive any contemporary of Isaiah, or of
the cultured court of Solomon, describing
the Almighty ruler of the universe as show
ing his hinder part to Moses, or as sewing
85
skins to clothe Adam and Eve; and the
conception of a jealous and vindictive
Jehovah who commanded the indiscriminate
massacre of prisoners of war, women and
children, must be far removed from that of
a God who loved justice and mercy. These
crude, impossible, and immoral representa
tions must have existed in the form of
Sagas during the early and semi-barbarous
stage of the people of Israel, and become
so rooted in the popular mind that they
could not be neglected when authors of
later ages came to fix the old traditions in
writing, and hence religious reformers used
them in endeavouring to enforce higher views
and a purer morality. It is from this jungle
of old legends and traditions, written and
re-written, edited and re-edited, many times
over, to suit the ideas of various stages of
advancing civilisation, that we have to pick
out as we best can what is really historical
prior to the foundation of the Monarchy,
from which time downwards we doubtless
have more or less authentic annals, which
meet with confirmations from Egyptian
and Assyrian history.
To the two accounts of the creation of
the universe and of man in Genesis, contra
dictory with one another, and each hopelessly
inconsistent with the best established con
clusions of astronomy, geology, ethnology,
and other sciences, there follows the story
of ten antediluvian patriarchs, who live on
the average 847 years each, and who
correspond with the ten gods or demi
gods in the Chaldaean mythology ; while
side by side with this genealogy is a
fragment of one which is entirely different,
mentioning seven only of the ten patriarchs,
and tracing the descent of Enoish and Noah
from Adam through Cain instead of through
Seth.
Then comes the Deluge, with all the
flagrant impossibilities which have been
pointed out in a preceding chapter ; the
building of the Tower of Babel, with the
dispersion of mankind and confusion of
languages, equally opposed to the most
certain conclusions of history, ethnology,
and philology. The descent from Noah to
Abraham is then traced through ten other
patriarchs, whose ages average 394 years
each; and similar genealogies are given for
the descendants of the other two sons of
Noah, Ham and Japheth. It is evident
that these genealogies are not history,
but ethnology of a very rude and
primitive description, by a writer with im
perfect knowledge and a limited range of
vision. A great majority of the primitive
�86
HUMAN ORIGINS
races of the world, such as the Negroes
and the Mongolians, are omitted altogether,
and Semitic Canaan is coupled with Hittite
as a descendant not of Shem but of Ham.
It is unnecessary to go into details, for
when we find such an instance as that
Canaan begat Sidon his first-born, it is
evident that this does not mean that two
such men really lived. It is an Oriental
way of stating that the Phoenicians were of
the same race as the Canaanites, and that
Sidon was their earliest sea-port on the
shore of the Mediterranean.
The whole Biblical literature to the
time of the Exodus is clearly myth and
legend, and not history ; and whoever will
compare it dispassionately with the much
older Chaldaean myths and legends known
to us from Berosus and the tablets can
hardly doubt that both are derived from a
common source, and revised at a later date
—that of the Hebrew in a monotheistic
sense. The cuneiform tablets discovered
at Tel-el-Amarna in Egypt in 1887, evi
dencing the use of the Babylonian language
in Canaan at a date not later than 1700
B.C., warrant the inference that Babylonian
legends may have been imported thither,
and that on the settlement of the Israelites
in that country these legends were incor
porated with their traditions, and, abiding
among them, were woven into the Penta
teuch when priestly and prophetic hands
gave it final shape. As an example of the
changes which the materials underwent,
where the Chaldaean solar epic of Izdubar,
in the chapter on the passage of the sun
through the rainy sign of Aquarius, which
describes the Deluge, says that “ the gods
smelt the sweet savour of the sacrifice
offered by Parnapishtim on emerging from
the ark, and flocked like flies about the
altar,” Genesis says simply that “ the Lord
smelled a sweet savour”; and where the
mixture of a divine and animal nature in
man is symbolised in the Chaldaean legend
by Bel cutting off his own head and knead
ing the clay with the blood into the first
man, the Jehovist narrative in Genesis ii.
says that “ the Lord God formed man from
the dust of the ground, and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life.”
When we arrive at Abraham we feel as if
we might be treading on really historical
ground. There is the universal tradition of
the Hebrew race that he was their ancestor,
and his figure is very like what in the un
changing East may be met with to the
present day. We seem to see the dignified
sheik sitting at the door of his tent dis
pensing hospitality, raiding with his retainers
on the rear of a retreating army and cap
turing booty, and much exercised by
domestic difficulties between the women of
his household. Surely this is an historical
figure. But when we look closer, doubts
and difficulties appear. In the first place,
the name “ Abram ” suggests that of an
eponymous ancestor, like Shem for the
Semites, or Canaa-n for the Canaanites.
Abram, Sayce tells us, is the Babylonian.
Abu-ramer or “ exalted father,” a name
much more likely to be given to a mythical
ancestor than to an actual man. This is
rendered more probable by the fact that, as
we have already seen, the genealogy of
Abraham traced upwards consists mainly of
eponyms, while those which radiate from
him downwards are of the same character.
Thus two of his sons by Keturah are Jokshan and Midian; and Sheba, Dedan, and
Assurim are among his descendants. Again,
Abraham is said to have lived for 175
years, and to have had a son by Sarah when
she was ninety-nine and he was one hun
dred ; and a large family by Keturah, whom
he married after Sarah’s death. Figures
such as these are a sure test that legend
has taken the place of authentic history.
Another circumstance which tells strongly
against the historical character of Abraham
is his connection with Lot, and the legend
of Lot’s wife. The history of this legend
is a curious one. For many centuries, in
fact, down to quite modern times, the vol
canic phenomena of the Dead Sea were
appealed to as convincing confirmations of
the account in Genesis of the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrha, and hundreds of
pious pilgrims saw, touched, and tasted the
identical pillar of salt into which Lot’s wife
was changed. It is now certain that the
volcanic eruptions were of an earlier geo
logical age, and that the story of Lot’s wife
is owing to the disintegration of a stratum
of salt marl, which weathers away under
the action of wind and rain into columnar
masses, like those in a similar formation in
Catalonia described by Lyell. Innumer
able travellers and pilgrims from early
Christian times down to the seventeenth
century returned from Palestine testifying
that they had seen Lot’s wife, and this was
appealed to by theologians as a convincing
proof of the truth of the Scripture narra
tive. Some saw her big, some little, some
upright, and some prostrate, according to
the state of disintegration of the pillars,
which change their form rapidly under the
influence of the weather ; but no doubt was
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
entertained as to the attestation of the
miracle. It turns out, however, to be one
of those geological myths of precisely the
same nature as that which attributed the
Devil’s Dyke near Brighton to an arrested
attempt of the Evil One to cut a trench
through the South Downs, so as to let in the
sea and submerge the Weald. The episode
of Lot and his daughters is also clearly a
myth to account for the aversion of the
Hebrews to races so closely akin to them
as the Moabites and Ammonites, and it
could hardly have originated until after the
date of the Book of Ruth, which shows no
trace of such a racial aversion.
(
Many of the events recorded ofAbraham s
life, though not so wildly extravagant as
those attributed to Noah, are still clearly
unhistorical. That a woman getting on
towards one hundred years old should be
so beautiful that her husband passes her oft
as his sister, fearing that, if known to be
his wife, the king would kill him in order to
take her into his harem, does not seem to
be very probable. But when precisely the
same thing is said to have occurred twice
over to the same man, once at the court of
Pharaoh and again at that of Abimelech ;
and a third time to his son Isaac, at the
* same place, Gerar, and to the same king
Abimelech, the improbability becomes im
possibility, and the. legendary character
is obvious. Nor is it very consistent with
the character of the pious patriarch, the
father of the chosen people, to have told
such lies, and apparently connived at his
wife’s prostitution, so that he could save his
own skin, and grow rich on the . sheep and
oxen, asses, manservants, maidservants,
and camels ” given him by the king on the
supposition that he was Sarah s brother.
Nor can we take as authentic history
Abraham talking with the Lord, and hold
ing a sort of Dutch auction with him, in
which he beats down from fifty to ten the
number of righteous men who, if found in
Sodom, are to save it from destruction.
On the whole, I do not see that there is
anything in the account of Abraham and
his times which we can safely assume to be
historical, except the general fact that the
Hebrews were descended from a Semitic
family or clan, who migrated from the dis
trict of Ur in Lower Chaldma. probably
about the time, and possibly in conse
quence, of the Elamite conquest, about
2200 B.C., which set in motion so many
wars, revolutions, and migrations in
Western Asia. But it is needless to further
pursue this matter, since we have admis
Sy
sions as to the mythical character of the
patriarchal age by every orthodox scholar
whose name carries weight. Animadvert
ing on the assumptions of pseudo-concessionists of the type of Professor Sayce,
Canon Driver says : “ Mr. Tomkins and
Professor Sayce have produced works on
The Age of Abraham and Patriarchal
Palestine, full of interesting particulars,
collected from the monuments, respecting
the condition, political, social, and religious,
of Babylonia, Palestine, and Egypt, m the
centuries before the age of Moses; but
neither of these volumes contains the
smallest evidence that either Abraham or
the other patriarchs ever actually existed.
Patriarchal Palestine, in fact, opens with a
fallacy. Critics, it is said., have taught
4 that there were no Patriarchs and no
Patriarchal age, but, the critics notwith
standing, the Patriarchal age has actually
existed,’ and ‘ it has been shown by modern
discovery to be a fact.’ Modern discovery
has shown no such thing. It has shown,
indeed, that Palestine had inhabitants
before the Mosaic age; that Babylonians,
Egyptians, and Canaanites, for instance,
visited it, or made it their home ; but that
the Hebrew patriarchs lived in it there is
no tittle of monumental evidence whatever.
They may have done so ; but our know
ledge of the fact depends at present entirely
upon what is said in the Book of Genesis.
Not one of the many facts adduced by Pro
fessor Sayce is independent evidence that
the Patriarchs visited Palestine, or even
that they existed at all.”
To the like effect writes Dr. G. A. Smith
in his Modern Criticism and the Preaching
of the Old Testament: “While archaeology
has richly illustrated the main outlines of
the Book of Genesis from Abraham to
Joseph, it has not one whit of proof to offer
for the personal existence or characters of
the Patriarchs themselves. This is the
whole change archaeology has wrought; it
has given us a background and an atmo
sphere for the stories of Genesis ; it is
unable to recall or to certify their
heroes.”
The legendary character of the patri
archal age, which may be compared with
the heroic age in Greece, was demonstrated
by Kuenen, Knappert, and other Conti
nental scholars thirty years ago.
Actual
ancestors are never distinctly traceable,
says Dillmann—a sound statement pushed
to extremes by Goldziher, who, following
the late Professor Max Muller’s philological
methods, resolved Abraham, Isaac, and
�88
HUMAN ORIGINS
Jacob into sun and sky myths, Jacob’s
twelve sons being the moon and eleven
stars. Steinthal, with more warrant, con
verted Samson, the “ shining one,” into a
solar hero whose labours correspond to
those of Hercules. But such specula
tions are of slight importance, since the
major fact of the unhistorical founda
tion of the early Hebrew narratives is
admitted.
There is no period of Jewish history so
obscure as that of the sojourn in Egypt.
The long date is based entirely on the dis
tinct statement in Genesis xii., that the
sojourning of the children of Israel was
430 years, and other statements that it was
400 years, all of which are hopelessly
inconsistent with the genealogies. Gene
alogies are perhaps more likely to be pre
served accurately by oral tradition than by
dates and figures, _ which Oriental races
generally deal with in a very arbitrary way.
But there are serious difficulties in the way
of accepting either date as historical.
There is no mention of any specific event
during the sojourn of the Israelites in
Egypt between their advent in the time of
Joseph and the Exodus, except their
oppression by a new king who knew not
Joseph, and the building of the treasure
cities, Pi-thom and Ramses, by their
forced labour. But there is no confirma
tion, from Egyptian records or monuments,
of any of the events related in the Penta
teuch, until we come to the passage quoted
from Manetho by Josephus, which describes
how the unclean people and lepers were
oppressed ; how they revolted under the
leadership of a priest of Hieropolis, who
changed his name from Osarphis to
Moyses; how they fortified Avaris and
called in help from the expelled Hyksos
settled at Jerusalem ; how the Egyptian
king and his army retreated before them.
into Ethiopia without striking a blow, and
the revolters ruled Egypt for thirteen
years, killing the sacred animals and dese
crating the temples; and how, at the end
of this period, the king and his son returned
with a great army, defeated the rebels and
shepherds with great slaughter, and pursued
them to the bounds of Syria.
This account is evidently very different
from that of Exodus, and does not itself
read very like real history, nor is there
anything in the Egyptian monuments to
confirm it, but rather the reverse. Menepthah certainly reigned many years after he
was said to have been drowned in the Red
Sea, and his power and that of his imme
diate successors, though greatly diminished,
still extended with a sort of suzerainty over
Palestine and Southern Syria. It is said
that the Egyptians purposely omitted all
mention of disasters and defeats, but this
is distinctly untrue, for Manetho records
events such as the conquest of Egypt by
the Hyksos without a battle, and the
retreat of Menepthah into Ethiopia for
thirteen years before the impure rebels,
which were much more disgraceful than
would have been the destruction of a pur
suing force of chariots by the returning
tide of the Red Sea.
The question therefore of the sojourn of
the Israelites in Egypt and the Exodus has
to be considered solely by the light of the
internal evidence afforded by the books of
the Old Testament. The long period of
430 years is open to grave objections. It
is inconceivable that a people who had
lived for four centuries in an old and highlycivilised empire, for part of the time at any
rate on equal or superior terms under the
king who “knew Joseph,” and who appear
to have been so much intermixed with the
native Egyptians as to have been borrow
ing from them as neighbours before their
flight, should have been influenced so
little, if at all, by Egyptian manners and
beliefs. And where the positive evidence
is scanty, the negative appears to be
conclusive. This is most remarkable
in the absence of all belief in a resur
rection of the body, future State, and
day of judgment, which were the car
dinal axioms of the practical daily life
of the Egyptian people. Temporal rewards
and punishments to the individual and his
posterity in the present life are the sole
inducements held out to practise virtue and
abstain from vice, from the Decalogue down
to the comparatively late period of Eccle
siastes, where Solomon the wise king is
represented as saying, “ There is no work,
nor device, nor knowledge in the grave
whither thou goest.” Even down to the
Christian era the Sadducees, who were the
conservative aristocracy standing on the
old ways and on the law of Moses, and
from whose ranks most of the high priests
were taken, were opposed to the new
fangled Pharisaic doctrine of a resurrec
tion. How completely foreign the idea
was to the Jewish mind is apparent from
the writings of the Prophets and the
Book of Job, where the obvious solution
of the problem why goodness was not
always rewarded and wickedness punished,
afforded by the theory of a judgment after
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
death and future lire, was never even
hinted at by Job or his friends, however
hardly they might be pressed in argu
ment.
.
If the sojourn in Egypt really lasted for
430 years, it must have embraced many of
the greatest events in Egyptian history.
The descendants of Jacob must have wit
nessed a long period of the rule of the
Hyksos, and lived through the desolating
thirty years’ war by which these foreign
conquerors were gradually driven back by
the native armies of Upper Egypt. They
must have been close to the scene of the
final campaigns, the siege of Avaris, and
the expulsion of the Hyksos. They must
have been subjects of Ahmes, Thotmes,
and the conquering kings of the eigh
teenth dynasty, who followed up the
fugitive Hyksos, and carried the con
quering arms of Egypt not only over
Palestine and Syria, but up to the
Euphrates and Tigris, and over nearly the
whole of Western Asia. They must have
witnessed the decline of this empire, the
growth of the Hittites, and the half-century
of wars waged between them and the
Egyptians in Palestine and Syria.
The victory of Ramses II. at Kadesh
and the epic poem of Pentaur must have
been known to the generation before the
Exodus as signal events. And if there is
any truth in the account quoted by
Josephus, they must have been aware that
they did not fly from Egypt as a body of
fugitive slaves, but as retreating warriors
who for thirteen years had held Egypt up
to Ethiopia in subjection. And yet of all
these memorable events there is not the
slightest trace in the Hebrew annals which
have come down to us.
An even greater difficulty is to under
stand how, if the children of Israel had
lived for anything like 400 years in such a
civilised empire as Egypt, they could have
emerged from it at such a plane of low
civilisation, or rather of ferocious savagery
and crude superstitions as are shown by
the books of the Old Testament, where
they burst like a host of Red Indians, on
the settlements and cities of the Amorites
and other more advanced nations of Pales
tine. The discoveries at Lachish already
referred to show that their civilisation
could not have exceeded that of the rudest
Bedouins, while their myths and legends are
so similar to those of the North American
Indians as to show that they must have
originated in a very similar stage of mental
development.
89
If we adopt the short date of the
genealogies, we are equally confronted by
difficulties. If the Exodus occurred in the
reign of Menepthah, 180 years back from
that date would take us, not to the Hyksos
dynasty, where alone it would have been
possible for Joseph to be a vizier and for a
Semitic tribe of shepherds to be welcomed
in Egypt, but into the midst of the great
and glorious eighteenth dynasty who had
expelled the Hyksos, and carried the
dominion of Egypt to the Euphrates.
Nor would there have been time for
the seventy souls, who, we are told, were all
of the family of Jacob that migrated into
Egypt, to have increased in three genera
tions into a nation numerous enough to
alarm the Egyptians and conquer the
Canaanites.
The legend of Joseph is very touching
and beautiful, but it may just as well be
romance as history; and this suspicion is
strengthened by the fact that the episode
of Potiphar’s wife is almost verbatim the
same as in one of the chapters of the
Egyptian novel of the Two Brothers.
Nor does it seem likely that such a seven
years’ famine and such a momentous
change as the conversion of all the land
of Egypt from freehold into a tenure held
from the king subject to payment of a rent
of one-fifth of the gross produce, should
have left no trace in the records. Again,
the age of no years assigned to Joseph,
and 147 to his father, are a sufficient proof
that we are not upon strictly historical
ground ; so that, on the whole, this narra
tive does not go far, in the absence of any
confirmation from monuments, in assisting
us to fix dates, or enabling us to form any
consistent idea of the real conditions of
the sojourn of the people of Israel in
Egypt. It places them on far too high a
level of civilisation at first, to have fallen
to such a low one as we find depicted in
the Books of Exodus, Joshua, and Judges.
Further excavations in the mounds of
ruined cities in Judaea and Palestine, like
those of Schliemann on the sites of Troy
and Mycenae, can alone give us anything
like certain facts as to the real condition of
the Hebrew tribes who destroyed the older
walled cities of the comparatively civilised
Amorites and Canaanites. If the con
clusions of Mr. Flinders Petrie, from the
section of the mound of Lachish, as to the
extremely rude condition of the tribes who
built the second town of mud-huts on the
ruins of the Amorite city, should be conI firmed, it would go far to negative the idea
�90
HUMAN ORIGINS
that the accounts of their having been
trained in an advanced code of Mosaic
legislation have any historical founda
tion.
We come next to Moses. It is difficult
to refuse an historical character to a
personage who has been accepted by
uniform tradition as the chief who led the
Israelites out of Egypt, and as the great
legislator who laid the foundations of the
religious and civil institutions of the
peculiar people. And if the passage from
Manetho is correctly quoted by Josephus,
and was really taken from contemporary
Egyptian annals, and is not a later version
of the account in the Pentateuch modified
to suit Egyptian prejudices, Moses is clearly
identified with Osarsiph, the priest of Hieropolis, who abandoned the worship of the
old gods, and headed the revolt of the
unclean people, which probably meant the
heretics. It may be conjectured that this
may have had some connection with the
great religious revolution of the heretic
king of Tel-el-Amarna, which for a time
displaced the national gods, worshipped in
the form of sacred animals and symbolic
statues, by an approach to Monotheism
under the image of the winged solar disc.
Such a reform must have had many
adherents to have survived as the State
religion for two or three reigns, and must
have left a large number of so-called
heretics when the nation returned to its
ancient faith ; and it is quite intelligible
that some of the more enlightened priests
should have assimilated to it the doctrine
of one Supreme God, which, as has been
shown, without sufficient warrant, some
authorities detect in the religious meta
physics of the earliest ages in Egypt.
This, however, must remain purely a con
jecture, and we must look for anything
specific in regard to Moses exclusively to
the Old Testament.
And here we are at once assailed by
formidable difficulties. As long as we con
fine ourselves to general views it may be
accepted as historical that the Israelites
really came out of Egypt under a great
leader and legislator; but when we come
to details, and to the events connected with
Moses, and to a great extent supposed to
have been written by him or taken from
his journals, they are for the most part,
more wildly and hopelessly impossible than
anything related of the earlier patriarchs,
Abraham and Joseph. As already noted,
the story of his preservation in infancy, as of
an infant hero or god, is a variation of the
myth common among many nations. When
grown up he is represented first as the
adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, and
then as a shepherd in the wilderness of
Midian talking with the Lord in a fiery
bush, who for the first time communicates
his real name of Jehovah, which he says
was not known to Abraham, Isaac, or
Jacob, although constantly used by them,
and although men began to call him by
that name in the time of Enos, Adam’s
grandson. At Jehovah’s command Moses
throws his rod on the ground, when it
becomes a serpent from which he flies,
and when he takes it up by the tail
it becomes a rod again; and as a
further sign his hand is changed from
sound to leprous as white as snow, and
back again to sound, in a minute or two
of time.
On returning to Egypt, Moses is repre
sented as going ten times into the presence
of Pharaoh, demanding of him to let the
Hebrews depart, and inflicting on Egypt a
succession of plagues, each one more than
sufficient to have convinced the king of the
futility of opposing such supernatural
powers, and to have made him only too
anxious to get rid of the Hebrews from the
land at any price. What could have been
the condition of Egypt if for seven days
“the streams, the rivers, the ponds and
pools, and even the water in the vessels of
wood and of stone, through all the land
of Egypt,” had been really turned into
blood ? And what sort of magicians must
they have been who could do the same with
their enchantments ?
The whole account of these plagues has
distinctly the air of being an historical
romance rather than real history. Those
repeated interviews, accompanied by taunts
and reproaches of Moses, the representa
tive of an oppressed race of slaves’, in the
august presence of a Pharaoh who, like the
Inca of Peru or the Mikado of Japan, was
half monarch and half deity, are totally
inconsistent with all we know of Egyptian
usage.
The son and successor of the
splendid Ramses II., who has been called
the Louis XIV. of Egyptian history, would
certainly, after the first interview and
miracle, either have recognised the super
natural power which it was useless to resist,
or ordered Moses to instant execution.
It is remarkable also how the series of
plagues reproduce the natural features of
the Egyptian seasons. Recent travellers
tell us how at the end of the dry season,
when the Nile is at its lowest, and the
�the historical element in the old testament^
9i
and other matters, which are involved
adjacent plains are arid and lifeless^ < the supposition that a population, half as
suddenly one morning at sHn^se *7 It j large as that of London, wandered about
the river apparently turned into blood, it
under tents from camp to camp for forty
s the phenomenon of the red Me, which
.years in a desert. No attempt has ever
is caused by the first flush of the Abyssinian
been made to refute him, except by vague
highland flood, coming from banks o: red
suppositions that the deserts of Sinai and
marl After a few days the real use com
Arabia may then have been m a very
mences, the Ni\res?m%\VSthe “Lnks
different condition, and capable of support
percolates its banks, fills *he /an
ing a large population. But this is impos
and ponds, and finally overflows and satu
sible in the present geological age and
rates^the dusty plains. The first signal
under existing geographical conditions.
the renewal of life is the cro£f a°e
These deserts form part of the great rain
innumerable frogs, and soon the plains^are
less zone of the earth between the north
alive with flies, gnats, and all manner o
tropical and south temperate zones, where
creeping and hopping insects, as if the
cultivation is only possible when the means
dust had been turned into lice. Then, afte
of irrigation are afforded by lakes, rivers,
the inundation, there foUow *e
or melting snow. But there aJe no“eJ"
ulagfues which in the summer and autumn
these in the deserts of Sinai and Northern
seasons frequently afflict the young. crop
Arabia, and therefore no water and no
and the inhabitants—local hah-storms,
vegetation sufficient to support any popula
locusts murrain among the cattle, boils and
tion No army has ever invaded Egypt
other sicknesses while the stagnant wa
from Asia, or Asia from Egypt, except by
are drying up. It reads like what some
the short route adjoining the Mediterranean
Rider Haggard of the Court of Solonio
between Pelusium and Jaffa, and with the
mifflit have written in workmg-up the tales
command of the sea and assistance of
of travellers and old popular tra/ffions
trains to carry supplies and water. And
into an historical romance of the deliver
the account in Exodus itself confirms this,
ance of Israel from Egypt.
.
for both food and water are stated to have
When we come to the Exodus the impos
been supplied miraculously, and there is no
sibilities of the narrative are even more
mention made of anything but the present
obvious. The robust c0™7°n’se/athearid and uninhabited desert in the various
Bishop Colenso, sharpened by a mathe
encampments? and marches. In fact, the
matical education, submitted P1//
Bible constantly dwells on the inhospitable
these to the convincing test of .arl*™et1^
barrenness of the “ howling wilderness
The host of Israelites who left Egyp
Accordingly, reconcilers have been reduced
said to have comprised 603,550 fighti g
to the supposition that ciphers may have
men above the age of twenty; exc:la/1Y
been added by copyists, and that the real
of the Levites and of a mixed multitude
number may have been 6,000, or even, as
who followed. This implies a total populasome writers think, 600. But this is incon
tion of at least 2,500,000, who are said to
sistent with the detailed numeration by
have wandered for forty years /
twelve separate tribes, which works out to
desert of Sinai, one of the most and
the same figure of 603,550 fighting men1 for
wildernesses in the world, destitute alike
the total number. Nor is it consistent
of water, arable soil, and pasture, and
with the statement that the Hebrews did
where a Bedouin tribe of even 600> souls
evacuate Egypt in sufficient numbers and
would find it difficult to exist. They are
sufficiently armed to burst through the
said to have been miraculously fed during
frontiers, and capture the walled cities of
these forty years on manna, a swee?s“’
considerable nations like the Amontes and
gummy exudation from the scanty foliage
Canaanites, who had been long settle/
of certain prickly desert plants, which is
the country. The narrative of Manetho
described as being “as small as the
quoted by Josephus, seems much more like
hoar frost,” and as so imbued with
real history : that the Hebrews formed part
of an army^ which, after having held Lower
Sabbatarian qualities as to keep fresh•
only for the day it is gathered, but tor ; Egypt for thirteen years, was fina ly defeated,
two days if gathered on a Friday, so as
and retreated by the usual military route
to prevent the necessity of Sabbath labour
across the short part of the desert from
Pelusium to Palestine; the Hebrews, for
in Bishop Colenso points out with irresistible
some reason, branching off, and-taking to a
force the obvious impossibilities in regar
Bedouin life on the outskirts of the desert
to food, water, fuel, sanitation, transport,
�92
HUMAN ORIGINS
and cultivated land, just as many Bedouin
tribes live a semi-nomad life in the same
regions at the present day. Too much
emphasis cannot be laid upon the fact that
to the present time, not a single monu
mental notice of the Hebrews, as dwellers
m the land of Egypt and the house of
bondage, is forthcoming. In narrating the
results of his excavations in 1896, Professor
Minders Petrie reported the discovery of
the upper part of a black granite colossus
Ox Amenhotep III., on which was inscribed
an account of wars carried on by that king in
Syria, apparently Northern Palestine, with
the people of Israel, whom he spoiled.
hat was the first time that any mention
of tne Israelites in any form had been
found in Egypt, and, obviously, it throws
no light upon the statements of the Old
Testament, which remain the sole, and not
unquestioned, authority upon the events
gathering round the reputed Exodus.
The Books of the Pentateuch ascribed to
Moses are full of the most flagrant con
tradictions and absurdities. It is evident
that, instead of being the production of
some one contemporary writer, they have
been compiled and edited, probably many
times over, from old documents and tradi
tions, these being pieced together in juxta
position or succession, without regard to
their being contradictory or repetitions.
Thus in Exodus xxxiii. 2o#God says to
Moses : “ Thou canst not see my face and
live ; for there shall no man see me and
live”; and accordingly he shows Moses
only his cc back parts while in verse 11 in
the very same chapter we read : “And the
Lord spoke unto Moses face to face, as a
man speaketh unto a friend.” Again, in
Exodus xxiv. the Lord says to Moses,
that he alone shall come near the Lord ”
(verse 2); while in verses 9-11 of the same
chapter we are told that “ Moses, Aaron,
Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the
elders of Isiael, went up ; and they saw the
God of Israel, and there was under his feet
as it were a paved work of a sapphire
stone,” and, although they saw God, were
none the worse for it, but survived and “ did
eat and drink.” Is it possible to believe
that these excessively crude representations
of the Deity, and these flagrant inconsis
tencies, were all written at the same time,
by the same hand, and that the hand of a
man who, if not a holy inspired prophet,
was at any rate an educated and learned
ex-priest of Hieropolis, skilled in all the
knowledge of the Egyptians ?
The contradictions in the ideas and pre
cepts of morality and religion are even more
startling. These oscillate between the two
extremes of the conception of the later
prophets of a one Supreme God, who loves
justice and mercy better than sacrifice, and
that of a ferocious and vindictive tribal god
whose appetite for human blood is as
insatiable as that of the war-god of the
Mexicans. Thus we have, on the one
hand, the commandment, “Thou shalt do
no muider,” and, on the other, the injunc
tion to commit indiscriminate massacres.
A single instance may suffice. The “ Book
of the Law of Moses ” is quoted in 2 Kings
xiv. as saying: “The fathers shall not be put
to death for the children, nor the children
for the fathers ; but every man shall be put
to death for his own sin.” In Numbers
xxxi., Moses, the “meekest of mankind,” is
represented as extremely wrath with the
captains who, having warred against Midian
at the Lord’s command, had only slaughtered
the males, and taken the women of Midian
and their little ones captives ; and he
commands them to “kill every male among
the little ones, and every woman that hath
known man by lying with him ; but all the
women children that have not known man
by lying with him, keep alive for your
selves ”—these M idianites, be it remembered,
being the people whose high priest Jethro
had hospitably received Moses when he
fled for his life from Egypt, and gave him
his daughter as a wife, by whom he had
children who were half Midianites ; so that,
if the zealous Phinehas was right in slaying
the Hebrew who had married a Midianite
woman, Moses himself deserved the same
fate.
The same injunction of indiscriminate
massacre in order to escape the jealous
wrath of an offended Jehovah is repeated,
over and over again, in Joshua and Judges;
and even as late as after the foundation of
the Monarchy we find Samuel telling Saul,
m the name of the Lord of Hosts, to “ go
and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy
them, slaying both man and woman, infant
and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and
ass,” and denouncing Saul, and hewing
Agag in pieces before the Lord, because
this savage injunction had not been literally
obeyed. Even David, the man after the
Lord’s own heart, tortures to death the
prisoners taken at the fall of Rabbah, and
gives up seven of the sons of Saul to the
Gibeonites to be sacrificed before the
insatiate deity as human victims. It is
one of the strangest contradictions of
human nature that such atrocious violations
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
of the moral sense should have been
received for so many centuries as a divine
revelation, rather than as instances of what
may be more appropriately called “ devil
worship.”
Nor is it a less singular proof of the
power of cherished prepossessions that
such a medley of the sublime religious
ideas and lofty poetry of the prophetic
ages, with such a mass of puerile and
absurd legends, such obvious contradictions,
and such a number of passages obviously
dating from a later period, should be
received by many men of intelligence, even
to the present day, as the work of a single
contemporary writer, the inspired prophet
Moses.
When we pass from the Pentateuch to the
succeeding Books of Joshua and of Judges
the same remarks apply. The falling of
the walls of Jericho at the sound of the
trumpet, and the defeat of an army of
135,000 men of Midian and Amalek, with a
slaughter of 120,000, by 300 men under
Gideon, armed with pitchers and trumpets,
are on a par with the wandering of 2,500,000
Israelites in the desert for forty years, fed
with manna of the size of hoar-frost. The
moral atmosphere also continues to be that
of Red Indians down to the time of David,
for we read of nothing but murders and
massacres, sometimes of other races, some
times of one tribe by another ; while the
actions selected for special commendation
are like those of Jael, who drove a nail into
the head of the sleeping fugitive whom she
had invited into her tent; or of Jephthah,
who sacrificed his daughter as an offering
to the Lord in obedience to a vow.
The only safe conclusion seems to be
that authentic annals of Jewish history
begin with the Monarchy, and that every
thing prior to David and Solomon, or pos
sibly Saul and Samuel, consists of myth,
legend, and oral tradition, so inextricably
blended, and so mixed up with successive
later additions, as to give no certain infor
mation as to events or dates.
All that it is safe to assume is that, in a
general way, the Hebrews were originally a
Semitic tribe who migrated from Chaldsea
into Palestine, and perhaps thence into
Egypt, where, assuming the Exodus story
to be genuine, they remained for an uncer
tain time and were oppressed by the
national dynasty which expelled the
Hyksos ; leaving Egypt in the reign
of Menepthah, and as a consequence
of the rebellion recorded by Manetho;
that they then lived for an unknown
93
time as wandering Bedouins on the frontier
of Palestine in a state of very rude bar
barism; and finally burst in like the horde of
Aztecs Who conquered the older and more
civilised Mayas. For a long period after
this, perhaps for 200 or 300 years, they
lived in a state of chronic warfare with one
another, and with their neighbours, mas
sacring and being massacred with the alter
nate vicissitudes of war, but with the same
rudeness and ferocity of superstitions and
manners. Gradually, however, they ad
vanced in civilisation, and something of a
national feeling arose, which led to a partial
consolidation under priests, and a more
complete one under kings.
The first king, Saul, was opposed by
priestly influence and defeated and slain in
battle; but a captain of condottieri, David,
arose, a man of great energy and military
genius, who gradually formed a standing
army and conquered province after pro
vince, until at his death he left to his suc
cessor, Solomon, an empire extending from
the frontier of Egypt to Damascus, and
from the Red Sea almost to the Mediter
ranean.
This kingdom commanded two of the
great commercial routes between the East
and West, the caravan route between Tyre
and Babylon, wiA Damascus and Tadmor,
and the route from Tyre to the terminus at
Ezion-Gebir, of the sea-routes to Arabia,
Africa, and India. Solomon entered into
close commercial relations with Tyre, and
during his long and splendid reign Jeru
salem blossomed rapidly into a wealthy and
a cultured city, and the surrounding cities
and districts shared in the general pros
perity. The greatness of the kingdom did
not last long, for the revolt of the ten tribes
and the growth of other powers soon re
duced Judaea and Samaria to political in
significance ; but Jerusalem, down to the
time of its final destruction by Nebuchad
rezzar—z>., for a period of some 400 years
after Solomon—never seems to have lost its
character of a considerable and civilised
city. It is evident from the later prophets
that it was the seat of a good deal of wealth
and luxury, for their invectives are, to a
great extent, what we should call at the
present day Socialist denunciations of the
oppression of the poor by the rich, land
grabbing by the powerful, and extravagance
of dress by the ladies of fashion. There
were hereditary nobles, organised colleges
of priests and scribes, and no doubt there
was a certain amount of intellectual life and
literary activity. But of a sacred book
�HUMAN ORIGINS
94
there is no trace until the discovery of one
in the Temple in the reign of Josiah ; and
the peculiar tenets of modern Judaism had
no real hold on the mass of the people
until after the return from Exile and the
reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah.
The history, therefore, contained in the
Old Testament is comparatively modern.
There is nothing which can be relied on as
authentic in regard to events and dates
prior to the establishment of the Monarchy,
and even the wildest myths and the most
impossible legends do not carry us back
within 2,000 years of the time when we
have genuine historical annals attested by
monuments both in Egypt and Chaldaea.
PART II.—EVIDENCE FROM SCIENCE
CHAPTER VIII.
GEOLOGY AND PALAEONTOLOGY
Proved by Contemporary Monuments—Sum
mary of Historical Evidence — Geological
Evidence of Human Periods — Neolithic
Period — Palaeolithic or Quaternary — Ter
tiary — Secondary and Older Periods —
The Recent or Post-Glacial Period—LakeVillages— Bronze Age— Kitchen-Middens—
Scandinavian Peat-mosses—Neolithic Remains
comparatively Modern—Definition of PostGlacial-Period—Its Duration—Mellard Read’s
Estimate—Submerged Forests—Changes in
Physical Geography — H uxley — Obj ections
from America—Niagara—Quaternary Period
—Immense Antiquity — Presence of Man
throughout—First Glacial Period—Scandi
navian and Laurentian Ice-caps—Immense
Extent — Mass of Dbbris — Elevation and
Depression—In Britain—Inter-Glacial and
Second Glacial Periods—Antiquity measured
by Changes of Land—Lyell’s EstimateGlacial Dbb'ris and Loess—Recent Erosion—
Bournemouth —• Evans—Prest wich—W ealden
Ridge and Southern Drift—Contain Human
Implements—Evidence from New World—
California.
We have now to take leave of historical
records and fall back on the exact sciences
for further traces of human origins. Our
guides are still contemporary records, but
these are no longer stately tombs and
temples, massive pyramids and written
inscriptions. Instead of these we have flint
implements, incised bones, and a few rare
specimens of human skulls and skeletons,
the meaning of which has to be deciphered
by skilled experts in their respective depart
ments of science.
Still, these records tell their tale as con
clusively as any hieroglyphic or cuneiform
writings in Egyptian manuscripts or on
Babylonian cylinders. The celt, the knife,
the lance and arrow-heads, and other
weapons and implements, can be traced in
an uninterrupted progressive series from
the oldest and rudest palaeolithic specimens,
to the highly-finished ones of polished
stone, and through these into the age of
metals, and into historic times and the
actual implements of existing savage races.
It is impossible to doubt that one of the
palaeolithic celts from St. Acheul or St.Prest is as truly a work of the human hand,
guided by human intelligence, as a modern
axe ; and that an arrow-head from Moustier
or Kent’s Cavern is no more an elf-bolt, or a
lusus nature^ than is a Winchester rifle.
Before entering on this new line of in
vestigation, it may be well to sum up briefly
the evidence as to the starting-point from
history and tradition. The commencement
of the strictly historical period takes us
back certainly for 7,000 years in Egypt,
and probably for 9,000 years in Chaldsea.
In each case we find populous cities,
important temples, and public works,
writing and other advanced arts and indus
tries, and all the signs of an old civilisation,
already existing. Other nations also then
existed with whom these ancient empires
had relations of war and of commerce,
though the annals of even the oldest of
them, such as China, do not carry us back
further than from 4,000 to 5,000 years.
�GEOLOGY AND PALAEONTOLOGY
Traditions do not add much to the infor
mation furnished by monuments, and fade
rapidly away into myths and legends. The
oldest and most authentic, those of.Egypt,
confirm the inference of great antiquity as to
its civilisation prior to Menes, but give no
clue as to its origin. They neither trace it
up to the stone age, which we know existed
in the valley of the Nile, nor refer it to
any foreign source. The Egyptian people
thought themselves autochthonous, and
attributed their arts, industries, and sciences
to the inventions of native gods, or demi
gods, who reigned like mortal kings, in a
remote and fabulous antiquity. We can
gather nothing, therefore, from tradition
that would enable us to add even 1,000
years with certainty to the date of Menes ;
but from the high state of civilisation
which had been evolved prior to his acces
sion from the primitive conditions of the
stone period whose remains are found in
the Nile Valley, it is not extravagant to add
10,000 or 20,000 years to his date of 5004
years B.C., as a matter of probable conjec
ture for the first dawn of historical civilisa
tion. In any case we shall be well within
the mark if we take 10,000 years as our first
unit, or standard of chronological measure
ment, with which to start in our further
researches.
It may be well also to supplement this
statement of the historical standard by a
brief review of the previous geological
periods through which evidences of man’s
existence can be traced. Immediately
behind the historic age lies the recent
period during which the existing fauna and
flora, climate and configuration of seas and
lands, have undergone no material change.
It is characterised generally as the neolithic
period, in which we find polished stone
superseding the older and ruder forms of
dripped stone, and passing itself into the
copper, bronze, and iron ages of early
history. It may also be called the recent
or post-glacial period, for it coincides with
the final disappearance of the last great
glaciation, and the establishment of condi
tions of climate resembling those of the
present day.
Behind this again lies the quaternary or
pleistocene period, so called from its fauna,
which, although containing extinct species,
shows along with them many existing forms,
some of which have migrated and some
remain. This also may be called the glacial
period, for, although the commencement,
termination, and different phases of the two
great glaciations and intermediate and
95
inter-glacial periods cannot . be exactly
defined, nor hard-and-fast lines drawn
between the later pliocene at one end and
the post-glacial at the other, there is no
doubt that in a general way the quater
nary and glacial periods coincide, and that
the changes of climate were to a consider
able extent the cause of the changes of flora
and fauna.
Behind the quaternary lies the tertiary,
with its three main divisions of Pliocene,
Miocene, and Eocene, each containing
numerous subdivisions, and all showing a
progressive advance in forms of life, from
older and more generalised types towards
newer and more specialised ones, and a
constant approach towards genera and
species now existing. Behind the tertiary
lies the secondary period, into which it is
unnecessary to enterfor the present purpose,
for all is different, and even mammalian
life is known to be present only in a few
forms of small and feeble marsupials. Nor
is it necessary to enter on any detailed con
sideration of the Eocene or earlier tertiary,
for the types of mammalian life are so
different from those of later periods that it
cannot be supposed that any animal so
highly organised as man had then come
into existence. The utmost we can suppose
is that, as in the case of the horse, some
ancestral form from which the quadrumana
and man may possibly have been developed
may be found.
My present object being not to write a
book on geology, but on human origins, I
shall not attempt to trace back the geological
evidence beyond the Miocene, or to enter
on any details of the later periods, except
so far as they bear on what may be called
geological chronology—i.e., on the probable
dates which may be assigned to. the first
appearance and subsequent evolution of the
human race.
Beginning with the recent or post-glacial
period, the Swiss and Italian lake-villages
supply clear evidence of the progress of
man in Western Europe through the neo
lithic into the historical period. They afford
us an unbroken series of substantially the
same state of society, existing down to the
time of the Romans, in the shape of com
munities living in lake-villages built upon
piles, like the villages in Thrace described
by Herodotus, or those of the present day
in New Guinea. Some of these have been
occupied continuously, so that the debris, of
different ages are stored in consecutive
order like geological strata, and afford an
unerring test of their relative antiquity. It
�96
HUMAN ORIGINS
is clear that many of those lake-villages
were founded in the age of stone, and passed
through that of bronze into the age of iron.
The oldest settlements belong to the neo
lithic age, and contain polished stone imple
ments and pottery ; but they show a state
of civilisation not yet very far advanced.
The inhabitants were only just emerging
from the hunting into the pastoral stage.
They lived principally on the produce of the
chase, the bones of the stag and wild boar
being very plentiful, while those of ox and
sheep are rare. Agriculture and the cereals
seem to have been unknown, though stores
of acorns and hazel nuts were found which
had been roasted for food.
By degrees the bones of wild animals
became scarce, and those of ox and sheep
common, showing that the pastoral stage
had been reached; and the goat, pig, and
horse were added to the list of domestic
animals—the dog being included from the
first, and the horse only at a later period.
Agriculture follows next in order, and con
siderable proficiency was attained, barley
and wheat being staple articles of food, and
apples, pears, and other fruit being stored
for winter consumption. Flax also was
grown, and the arts of spinning and weaving
were introduced, so that clothing, instead
of being confined to skins, was made of
coarse linen and woollen stuffs.
The most important advance, however,
in the arts of civilisation is afforded by the
introduction of metals. These begin to
appear about the middle of the neolithic
period, at first very sparingly, and in a few
districts, such as Spain, Upper Italy, and
Hungary, where native copper was found
and was hammered into shapes modelled
on the old stone implements ; but as a
general rule, and in all the later settlements,
bronze, in new and improved shapes, super
sedes stone and copper. For the most part
these bronze implements seem to have been
obtained by foreign commerce from the
Phoenicians, Etruscans, and other nations
bordering on the Mediterranean, though in
some cases they were cast on the spot from
native or imported ores. The existence of
bronze, however, must go back to a far
greater antiquity than the time when the
neolithic people of Europe obtained their
first supplies from Phoenician traders.
Bronze, as we have seen in a former chapter,
is an alloy of two metals, copper and tin,
and the hardest and most serviceable alloy
is to be obtained only by mixing the
two in a definite proportion. Now, it is to
be noted that nearly all the prehistoric
bronze found in Europe is an alloy in this
definite proportion. Clearly all this bronze,
or the art of making it, must have originated
from some common centre.
The neolithic period which preceded
that of metals is of longer duration, but
still comparatively recent. Attempts have
been made to measure it by a sort of
natural chronometer in the case of the lake
villages,. by comparing the amount of silt
ing-up since the villages were built with the
known rate of silting-up since Roman
times. The calculations vary very much,
and can be taken as only approximative ;
but the oldest dates assigned do not exceed
5000 B.C., and most of them are not more
than 2000 or 3000 B.c. It must be remem
bered, however, that the foundation of a
lake-village on piles implies a long
antecedent neolithic period to have
arrived at a stage of civilisation which
made the construction of such villages
possible.
The civilisation coincides wonderfully
with that of the primitive Aryan groups, as
shown by linguistic palaeontology. The
discussion as to the origin of these has
thrown a great deal of light on this ques
tion, and has gone far to dispel the old
notion that they radiated from some centre
in Asia, and overran Europe in successive
waves. On the contrary, all the evidence
and all the best authorities point to their
having occupied, when we first get traces
of them, pretty much the same districts of
the great plain of Northern Europe and
Southern Russia as we now find them in,
and developed there their distinct dialects
and nationalities ; while the words common
to all or nearly all the Aryan-speaking
families point to their having been pastoral
nomads, in a state of civilisation very like
that of the earlier lake-villagers, before this
separation took place.
The Scandinavian kitchen-middens, or
shell-mounds, carry us further back into
this early neolithic period. The shell
mounds which are found in great numbers
along the Baltic shore of Denmark are
often of great size. They are formed of an
accumulation of shells of oysters, mussels,
and other shell-fish, bones of wild animals,
birds, and fish, all of existing species, with
numerous implements of flint or bone, and
occasional fragments of coarse pottery.
They are decidedly more archaic than the
lake-dwellings, showing a much ruder
civilisation of savages living like the
Fuegians of the present day, in scanty
tribes on the sea-shore, supported mainly
�GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY
by shell-fish, supplemented by the chase of
wild animals.
The dog was their only domestic animal,
and their only arts the fabrication of rude
pottery and implements of stone and bone,
unless it can be inferred, from the occa
sional presence of bones of cod and other
deep-sea fish, that they possessed some
form of boat or canoe, and had hooks and
lines or nets. These mounds must have
taken an enormous time to accumulate, for
they are very numerous, and often of great
bulk, some of them being 1,000 feet long,
200 feet wide, and io feet thick.
How
long such masses must have taken to accu
mulate must be apparent when we consider
that the state of civilisation implies a very
scanty population. It has been calculated
that, if the neolithic population of Denmark
required as many square miles for its sup
port as the similar existing populations of
Greenland and Patagonia, their total
number could not have exceeded 1,000, and
. each mound must have been the accumula
tion of perhaps two or three families.
Ancient, however, as these mounds must
be, they are clearly neolithic. They are
sharply distinguished from the far older
remains of the palaeolithic period by the
knowledge, however rude, of pottery and
polished stone, and still more by the fauna,
which is entirely recent, and from which
the extinct animals of the quaternary period
have disappeared ; while the position of the
mounds shows that only slight geological
changes, such as are now going on, have
occurred since they were accumulated.
Similar mounds, on even a larger scale,
occur on the sea-coasts of various districts
in Europe and America, but they afford no
indication beyond that of great antiquity.
The peat-mosses of Denmark have been
appealed to as supplying something like a
conjectural date for the early neolithic
period in that country. These are formed
in hollows of the glacial drift, which have
been small lakes or ponds in the midst of
forests, into which trees have fallen, and
which have become gradually converted
into peat by the growth of marsh plants.
It is clearly established that there have
been three successive ages of forest growth,
the upper one of beech, below it one of
oak, and lowest of all one of fir. The
implements and relics found in the beech
stratum are all modern, those in the oak
stratum are of the later neolithic and bronze
ages, and those in the lowest, or fir-horizon,
are earlier and ruder neolithic, resembling
those found in the older lake-villages and
97
shell-mounds. Now, beech has been the
characteristic forest tree of Denmark cer
tainly since the Roman period, or for 2,000
years, and no one can say for how much
longer. The stages of oaks and firs must
equally have been of long duration, and
the different stages could only have been
brought about by slow secular variations of
climate during the post-glacial period. Still,
this affords no reliable information as to
specific dates, and we can only take Steenstrup’s calculation of from 4,000 to 16,000
years for the formation of some of these
peat-bogs as a very vague estimate, carrying
us back perchance to a time when Egypt
and Chaldaea must have been already
densely peopled, and far advanced in
civilisation.
On the whole, it seems that the neolithic
arrow-heads found in Egypt, and the frag
ments of pottery brought up by borings
through the deposits of the Nile, are the
oldest certain human relics of the neolithic
age which have yet been discovered, and
these do not carry us back further than
a possible date of 15,000 or 20,000 years
B.c.
Nor is there any certainty that any of
the neolithic remains found in the newer
deposits of rivers and the upper strata of
caves go further, or even so far, back as
these relics of an Egyptian stone period.
All that the evidence really shows is, that
while the neolithic period must have lasted
for a long time as compared with historical
standards, its duration is almost infinitesi
mally small as compared with that of the
preceding palaeolithic period. Thus in
Kent’s Cavern neolithic remains are found
only in a small surface layer of black earth
from three to twelve inches thick ; while
below this palaeolithic implements and a
quaternary fauna occur in an upper stalag
mite one to three feet thick, below it in red
cave earth five to six feet thick, then in a
lower stalagmite in places ten or twelve feet
thick, and below it again in a breccia three
or four feet thick. This is confirmed by the
evidence of all the caves explored in all
parts of the world, which uniformly show
any neolithic remains confined to a super
ficial layer of a few inches, with many feet
of palaeolithic strata below them. And
river-drifts in the same manner show neo
lithic remains confined to the alluvia and
peat-beds of existing streams, while palaeo,
lithic remains occur during the whole series
of deposits while these rivers were exca
vating their present valleys. If we say feet
for inches, or twelve for one, we shall be
�98
HUMAN ORIGINS
well within the mark in estimating the com
parative duration of the palaeolithic and
neolithic periods, as measured by the thick
ness of their deposits in caves and river
drifts ; and, as we shall see hereafter, other
geological evidence from elevations and
depressions, denudations and depositions,
point to even a higher figure.
In going back from the neolithic into the
palaeolithic period, we are confronted by
the difficulty to which I have already re
ferred, of there being no hard-and-fast lines
by which geological eras are clearly sepa
rated from one another. Zoologically there
seems to be a very decided break between
the recent and the quaternary. The in
stances are rare and doubtful in which we
can see any trace of the remains of palaeo
lithic man, and of the fauna of extinct
animals, passing gradually into those of
neolithic and recent times. But geologi
cally, outside the British Isles (I am speak
ing now only of Europe) there is no such
abrupt break. We cannot draw a line at
the culmination of the last great glacia
tion and say, Here the glacial period ends
and the post-glacial begins. Nor can we
say of any definite period or horizon, This
is glacial and this recent.
A great number of palaeolithic remains
and of quaternary fossils are undoubtedly
post-glacial, in the sense of being found in
deposits which have accumulated since the
last great glaciers and ice-caps began to
retreat. Existing valleys have been exca
vated to a large extent since the present
rivers, swollen by the melting snows and
torrential rains of this period of the latest
glacial retreat, superseded old lines of
drainage, and began to wear down the sur
face of the earth into its present aspect.
This phase is more properly included in
the term glacial, for both the coming-on
and the disappearance of the periods of
intense cold are as much part of the pheno
menon as their maximum culmination, and
very probably occupied much longer inter
vals of time. In like manner, we cannot
positively say when this post-glacial period
ended and the recent began. Not, I should
say, until the exceptional effects of the last
great glacial period had finally disappeared,
and the climate, geographical conditions,
and fauna had assumed nearly or entirely
the modern conditions in which we find
them at the commencement of history.
And this may have been different in dif
ferent countries, for local conditions might
make the glacial period commence sooner
and continue later in some districts than in
others. Thus in North America, where the
glaciation was more intense, and the ice
cap extended some ten degrees further
south than in Europe, it might well be that
it was later in retreating and disappearing.
The elevation of the Laurentian highlands
into the region of perpetual snow was evi
dently one main factor of the American ice
cap, just as that of Scandinavia was of that
of Europe; and it by no means follows that
their depression was simultaneous. It would
be unwise, for instance, to take the time
occupied in cutting back the Niagara gorge
by a river which began to run only at some
stage of the post-glacial period, as an abso
lute test of the duration of that period all
over the world. Indeed, the glacial period
cannot be said to have ended or the post
glacial to have begun at the present day in
Greenland, if the disappearance of the ice
cap over very extensive regions is to be
taken as the test.
Any approximation to the duration of the
post-glacial period in any given locality
can be obtained only by defining its com
mencement with the first deposits which lie
above the latest glacial drift, and measur
ing the amount of work done since.
This has been done very carefully by the
officers of the Geological Survey and other
eminent authorities in England and Scot
land, and the result clearly shows that, since
the last glaciation left the country buried in
a thick mantle of boulder-clay and drift,
such an amount of denudation and such
movements of elevation and depression
have taken place as must have required a
great lapse of time. The most complete
attempt at an estimate of this time is that
made by Mr. Mellard Read, of the Geo
logical Survey, from the changes proved to
have occurred in the Mersey valley.
In this case it is shown that the valley,
■ almost in its present dimensions, must have
been first carved out of an uniform plain of
glacial drift and upper boulder-clay by sub
aerial denudation ; then that a depression
let the sea into the valley and accumulated
a series of estuarine clays and silts; then that
an elevation raised the whole into a plain
on which grew an extensive forest of oak
rooted in the clays. This again must have
subsided and let-in the sea for a second
time, which must have remained long
enough to leave a large estuarine deposit,
and finally the whole must have been raised
to the present level before historical times.
The phenomenon of the submerged forest
is a very general one, being traced along
almost all the sea-coasts of Western Europe,
�GEOLOGY AND PALAEONTOLOGY
where shelving shores and sheltered bays
favour the preservation of patches of this
primaeval forest. It testifies to a consider
able amount of elevation and subsequent
depression, for its remains can be traced
below low-water mark, and are occasionally
dredged up far out to sea, and stately oaks
could not have flourished unless more or
less continental conditions had prevailed.
It is evident that in this age of forests
the land now covered by the German
Ocean must have been a river valley,
the continent of Europe extending
beyond the Orkneys and Hebrides, pro
bably to the hundred fathom line. . Such
movements of elevation and depression, so
far as we know anything of them, are ex
tremely slow. There has been no change
in the fords of rivers in Britain since
Roman times, and the spit connecting St.
Michael’s Mount with Cornwall was dry at
ebb and covered at flood, as at the present
day, when the British carted their tin across
it to trade with the Phoenicians. Mr. Read
goes into elaborate calculations based, on
the time required for these geological
changes, and arrives at the conclusion that
they point to a date of not less than 5o>o°°
or 60,000 years ago for the commencement
of the post-glacial period. These calcula
tions are disputed, but it seems certain that
several multiples of the historical standard
of, say, 10,000 years must be required to
measure the period since the glacial age
finally disappeared, and the earth, with its
existing fauna, climate, and geographical
conditions, came fairly into view. This is
confirmed by the great changes which have
taken place in the distribution of land and
water since the quaternary period. Huxley,
in an article on “ The Aryan question,”
points out that in .recent times four great
separate bodies of water—the Black Sea,
the Caspian, the Sea of Aral, and Lake
Balkash—occupied the southern end of the
vast plains which extend from the Arctic
Sea to the highlands of the Balkan penin
sula, of Asia Minor, of Persia and Afghan
istan, and of the high plateaux of Central
Asia, as far as the Altai. But he says,
“This state of things is comparatively
modern. At no very distant period the land
of Asia Minor was continuous with that of
Europe, across the present site of the Bos
phorus, forming a barrier several hundred
feet high, which dammed-up the waters of
the Black Sea. A vast extent of Eastern
Europe and of west-central Asia thus
became one vast Ponto-Aralian Mediterra
nean, into which the largest rivers of
99
Europe and Asia, the Danube, Volga,
Oxus, andjaxartes, discharged their waters,
and which sent its overflow northwards
through the present basin of the Obi.” The
time necessary for such changes goes far to
confirm Mellard Read’s estimate for the long
duration of the recent or post-glacial period.
In fact, all the evidence from the Old
World goes to confirm the long duration of
the post-glacial period, and the immensely
greater antiquity of the glacial period taken
as a whole. It is only from the New World
that any serious arguments are forthcoming
to abridge those periods, or rather the post
glacial period, for that alone is affected by
the facts adduced. It is said that recent
measurements of the recession of the Falls
of Niagara show that, instead of requiring
35,000 years, as estimated by Lyell, to cut
back the gorge of seven miles from Lewis
ton to the Falls, 10,000 years at the outside
would have been amply sufficient; and that
this is confirmed by the gorges of other
rivers, such as that of the Mississippi at St.
Paul’s. The evidence is not conclusive, for
it depends on the rate of erosion going on
for the last twenty or thirty years, which
may obviously give a different result from
the true average ; and, in fact, older esti
mates, based on longer periods, gave the
rate adopted by Lyell. But if we admit the
accuracy of the modern estimates, it does
not affect the total duration of the glacial
period, but simply that of a late phase of
the post-glacial, when the ice-cap which
covered North America to a depth often of
2,000 or 3,000 feet had melted away and
shrunk back 400 miles from its . original
southern boundary, so as to admit of the
waters of the great lakes finding an outlet
to the north-east instead of by the old
drainage to the south. Nothing is more
likely than that, as the great Laurentian
ice-cap of America was deeper and ex
tended further than the Scandinavian ice
cap of Europe, it may have taken longer to
melt the larger accumulation of ice, and
thus postponed the establishment of post
glacial conditions and river-drainage to a
later period than in the warmer and more
insular climate of Europe. It is a matter
of every-day observation that the larger a
snowball is the longer it takes to melt, and
that when the mass is large it requires a
long time to make -it disappear even after
mild weather has set in.
The only other argument for a short
glacial period is drawn from the rate of
advance of the glaciers in Greenland, which
is shown to be much more rapid than that
�TOO
HUMAN ORIGINS
of the glaciers of Switzerland, from which
former calculations had been made. But
obviously the rate at which the fronts of
glaciers advance when forced by a mass of
continental ice down fiords on a steep
descending gradient into a deep sea, where
the front is floated off in icebergs, affords
no clue as to that of an ice-cap spread,
with a front of 1,000 miles, over half a
continent, retarded by friction, and sur
mounting mountain chains 3,000 feet high.
Nor does the rate of advance afford the
slightest clue to the time during which the
ice-cap may have remained stationary,
alternately advanced and retreated, and
finally disappeared.
We have now to adjust our time-telescope
to a wider range, and see what the Quater
nary or glacial period teaches us as to the
antiquity of man. The first remark is that,
if the post-glacial period is much longer
than that for which we have historical
records, the glacial exceeds the post-glacial
in a far higher proportion. The second is,
that throughout the whole of this glacial
period, from its commencement to its close,
we have conclusive evidence of the exist
ence of man, and that not only in a few
limited localities, but widely spread over
nearly all the habitable regions of the
earth.
The first point has been so conclusively
established by all geologists of all countries,
from the time of Lyell down to the present
day, that it is unnecessary to enter on any
detailed arguments, and the leading facts
may be taken as established. It may be
sufficient, therefore, if I give a short
summary of those facts, and quote a few
of the instances which show the enormous
period of time which must have elapsed
between the close of the tertiary and the
commencement of the modern epoch.
The glacial period was not one and
simple, but comprised several phases'.
During the Pliocene the climate was
gradually becoming colder; and either to
wards its close or at the commencement
of the Quaternary this culminated in a
first and most intense glaciation. Ice-caps
radiating from Scandinavia crept outwards,
filling up the North Sea, crossing valleys
and mountains, and covering with their
boulders and moraines a wide circle,
embracing Britain down to the Thames
valley, Germany to the Hartz mountains,
and Russia almost as far east as the Urals.
In North America a still more massive
ice-cap overflowed mountain ranges 3,000
feet high, and covered the whole eastern
half of the continent with an unbroken
mantle of ice as far south as New York and
Washington.
At the same time every great mountain
chain and high plateau' sent out enormous
glaciers, which, in the case of the Alps,
filled up the valley of the Rhone and the
Lake of Geneva, buried the whole of the
lower country of Switzerland under 3,000
feet of ice, and left the boulders of its
terminal moraine, carried from the Mont
Blanc range, at that height on the opposite
range of the Jura. Nor is this a solitary
instance. We find everywhere traces ofenormous glaciers in the Pyrenees and
Carpathians, the Atlas and Lebanon, the
Taurus and Caucasus, the highlands of
Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; in the Rocky
Mountains and Sierra Nevada; in the
Andes and Cordilleras of South America ;
in South Africa and in New Zealand.
These may not have all been simultaneous,
but they certainly all belong to the same
period of the great glaciation, and show
that it must have been affected by some
general cause, and not have been entirely
due to mere local accidents.
How this first great glacial period came
on, or how long it lasted, we do not know,
unless a clue be afforded—and authorities
differ as to this—by Dr. Croll’s theory, which
explains the great variations in climate as
due to periodic changes in the eccentricity
of the earth’s orbit, the periods of greatest
cold coinciding with those of greatest
eccentricity. But we know generally from
the amount of work done and the changes
which took place that the Ice Age must have
lasted for an immense time. The ice, which
covered so great a portion of the northern
hemisphere, was not a polar ice-cap, but,
as is proved conclusively from the direction
of the striae which were engraved by it on
the subjacent rocks, spread outwards in all
directions from great masses of elevated
land. This land must have been more
elevated than at present, so as to rise, like
Greenland, far into the region of perpetual
snow, where all rain falls and accumulates
in the solid form ; and also to supply the
enormous mass of dlbris which the ice-caps
and glaciers left behind them. It is not
too much to say that a million of square
miles in Europe, and more in North
America, were covered by the debris of
rocks ground down by these glaciers, and
often to great depths. Most of the debris
of the first glaciation have been removed
by denudation, or ploughed out by the
second great advance of the ice, leaving
�GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY
only the larger and harder boulders to
testify to their extent ; but enough remains
to show that the first series of boulder-clays
and drifts must have been on a scale larger
than those of the second and subsequent
glaciations, which now form the superficial
stratum of so much of the earth’s surface,
and often attain a depth of several hundred
feet. Wright, in his Ice Age in North
America., estimates that “not less than
1,000,000 square miles of territory in North
America is still covered with an average
depth of fifty feet of glacial dlbnsP
However, this first period of elevation
and of intense glaciation passed away, and
was succeeded by one of depression and
of milder climate. Whether or no the
depression was due, as some think, to the
weight of the enormous mass of ice weigh
ing down the yielding crust of the earth,
and whether or no the milder climate .was
partly occasioned by this depression letting
in the sea, the fact is certain that the two
coincided, and were general and not merely
local phenomena. Marine shells at the
top of what are now high, hills, which
during the preceding glaciation were pro
bably higher, attest the fact that a large
amount of land must have sunk below the
sea towards the close of this first glacial
period. It is equally clear that a long
inter-glacial period ensued, during which
many changes took place in the geographi
cal conditions and in the fauna and flora,
requiring a very long time. Thus Britain,
which had been reduced to an Arctic
Archipelago, in which only a few of the
highest mountain peaks emerged as frozen
islands, became united to the continent,
and the abode of a fauna consisting in
great part of African animals. At one time
boreal shells were deposited, at the bottom
of an Arctic ocean, on what is now the top
of Moel-Tryfen in Wales, a hill i,3°° feet
above the present sea-level; while at
another the hippopotamus found its way,
in some great river flowing from the south,
as far north as Yorkshire, and the remains
of African animals such as the hyena
accumulated in our caves. In Southern
France we had at one time a vegetation of
the Arctic willow and reindeer moss, at
another that of the fig-tree and canary
laurel. When we consider that little
if any change has occurred, either in
geographical conditions or in fauna or
flora, within the historical period, it is
difficult to assign the time which would be
sufficient to bring about such changes by
any known natural causes. And yet it
lot
comprises only a portion of the glacial
period, for after this inter-glacial period
had lasted for an indefinite time the climate
again became cold, and culminated in a
second glaciation, which, if not equal to
the first, was still of extreme severity, and
brought back ice-caps and glaciers almost
to their former limits, passing away slowly
and with several vicissitudes and alternate
retreats and advances.
It is not always easy to determine the
position of each individual phase of the two
glacial and the inter-glacial periods, for
they must often have been intermixed, while
the results of the last glaciation and of
subsequent denudation have to a great
extent obscured those of the earlier periods.
But taking a general view of the glacial
period as a whole, there are a few leading
facts which testify conclusively to its
immense antiquity. First, there is the
amount of elevation and depression. We
have seen that marine Arctic shells have
been found on the top of Moel-Tryfen,
1,300 feet above the present sea-level.
Nor is this an isolated instance, for marine
drifts apparently of the same character
have been traced on the mountains of
Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to a height
of between 2,000 and 3,000 feet. In
Norway, also, old sea beaches are found
to a height of 800 feet. Nor are these
great movements confined to the Old World
or to limited localities. According to
Professor Le Conte, at a meeting of
the Geological Congress at Washington, a
great continental movement, commencing
in the later tertiary and terminating in the
beginning of the quaternary, caused
changes of level amounting to 2,500 or
3,000 feet on both sides of the continent of
North America.
Now, elevation and depression of large
masses of land are, as far as we know
anything certain about them, very slow
processes, especially in countries unaffected
by recent volcanic action, which is the case
with nearly all the regions in North
America and Europe once covered by the
great ice-sheets. There has been little or
no perceptible change anywhere since the
commencement of history, and the only
accurate measurements of changes now
going on are those in Sweden, where
it appears that in some cases elevation,
and in others depression, is taking place
at the rate of about two and a half feet in a
century. In volcanic regions earthquakes
have occasionally caused movements of
greater amount in limited areas, but there
�lol
HUMAN ORIGINS
is no trace of anything of the sort in these
movements of the glacial period which
have apparently gone on by slight secular .
changes in the earth’s crust, as they are now
doing in Scandinavia.
But in this case a depression of 2,000
feet, followed by an elevation of equal
amount, at Lyell’s rate of two and a half
feet per century, would require 160,000
years, without allowing for any pauses
during the process. And this embraces
only part of the whole glacial period, for
the depression did not begin until after the
climax of the first great glaciation, when
the land probably stood higher than at
present. Of course, the actual movements
may have been more rapid; but, unless
we resort to the exploded theories of
cataclysms and catastrophes, the time
for such movements must have been very
great.
An equally conclusive proof of the im
mense antiquity of the glacial period is
afforded by the formation known as the
loess, which fills up so many of the valley
systems of Europe, Asia, and America to
great depths, and spreads over the adja
cent table-lands. It is the moraine mud
of glaciers, deposited by the water
which inundated the country when great
rivers from glaciated districts ran at higher
levels, and began to excavate their present
valleys. Lyell estimates the thickness of
this deposit in the Rhine valley at 800 feet,
and it is found at much higher levels on
upland plains. Now, this loess , is not a
marine or lacustrine deposit, as is proved
by the shells it contains, which are all of
land species ; nor is it a deposit of running
water, for there are no sands or gravels ;
but distinctly such a deposit from tranquil
sheets of muddy water like those accumu
lated in Egypt by the inundations of the
Nile. When the Rhine brought down such
volumes of muddy water from the glaciers
of the Alps as to overflow the upland plains,
it must have flowed at a level many hun
dred feet higher than its present valley,
which must have been since scooped out
by sub-aerial denudation. The rate of de
position of the Nile mud is about three
inches per century, and there seems no
reason why that of the fine glacial mud
should have been more rapid, charged as
the Nile is every year with mud from the
torrential rains of the Abyssinian high
lands. At this rate it would have required
320,000 years to accumulate the 800 feet of
loess of the Rhine valley. Here again the
rate may have been faster, but it is suffi
cient to show that an immense time must
have elapsed, and the loess is a distinctly
glacial deposit, containing palaeolithic
human remains and a pleistocene fauna,
and embracing only a portion of the quater
nary period. Nor is it an isolated pheno
menon confined to Europe, but is found
over the whole world wherever rivers have
flowed from regions which were formerly
buried under ice and snow.
Loess is
found in the valleys of the Yang-tseKang and the Mississippi; and Sir Charles
Lyell, referring to the fossil human bone
discovered at Natchez, says : “My reluc
tance in 1846 to regard the fossil human
bone as of post-pliocene date arose, in part,
from the reflection that the ancient loess of
Natchez is anterior in time to the whole
modern delta of the Mississippi. The table
land was, I believe, once a part of the
original alluvial plain or delta of the great
river before it was upraised. It has now
risen more than 200 feet above its pristine
level. After the upheaval, or during it, the
Mississippi cut through the whole fluviatile
formation, of which its bluffs are now
formed, just as the Rhine has in many
parts of its valley excavated a passage
through its ancient loess. If I was right
in calculating that the present delta of the
Mississippi has acquired, as a minimum of
time, more than 100,000 years for its
growth, it would follow, if the claims of
the Natchez man to have co-existed with
the mastodon are admitted, that North
America was peopled more than a thousand
centuries ago by the human race. But,
even were that true, we could not presume,
reasoning from ascertained geological
data, the Natchez bone was anterior
in date to the antique flint haches of
St. Acheul.”
Human remains have since been found m
the United States, both in the loess, and
in drifts, which are presumably older ; but
even if this were doubtful, the evidence
would remain the same for the immense
time required for such a deposit, and there
is abundant proof in Europe that human
implements, and even skulls and skeletons,
have been unearthed at considerable depths
the loess, along with remains of the mam
moth and other extinct animals.
It must be remembered also that the
loess is only one part of the work due to
glacial erosion. It is, in fact, only the
deposit of the fine mud ground from the
rocks by glaciers, the streams issuing
from which carry it beyond the coarser
debris, which, as wehave seen, cover 1,000,000
�GEOLOGY AND PALAEONTOLOGY
square miles to an average depth of fifty
feet in North America alone. _ The volumes
of the loess and of the debris tell the same
story of enormous erosion requiring im
mense periods of time.
Even in comparatively recent times
striking proofs of immense antiquity are
afforded by the amounts of denudation and
erosion which have taken place since the ice
disappeared and the lands and seas assumed
substantially their present contours and
levels. I will give one instance which,
although comparatively modern, will come
home readily to most British readers. Sir
John Evans, in his Ancient Stone Imple
ments, referring to those found at Bourne
mouth ioo feet above the present sea-level
in the gravels of the old Solent river,
which then ran at that height, says
“Who, standing on the edge of the
lofty cliff at Bournemouth, and gazing over
the wide expanse of waters between the
present shore and a line connecting the
Needles on the one hand and the BallardDown Foreland on the other, can fully
comprehend how immensely remote was
the epoch when what is now that vast bay
was high and dry land, and a long range of
chalk down, 600 feet above the sea, bounded
the horizon on the south ? And yet this
must have seen the sight that met the eyes
of those primaeval men who frequented
that ancient river, which buried their handi
works in gravels that now cap the cliffs, and
of the course of which so strange but indu
bitable a memorial subsists, in what has
now become the Solent Sea.”
And the same may be said of the still
wider strait which separates England from
France. No geologist could look either at
the Needles and Ballard Foreland, or at
Shakespear’s Cliff and Cape Grisnez, with
out a conviction that the chalk ridge was
once continuous, and has been worn away,
inch by inch, by the very same process as
is now going on. Nor can the action of
ice or river floods be evoked to accelerate
the process, for evidently it has throughout
been a case of marine erosion. The
only question is whether this dates back
even into the later phases of the glacial
period, for the opposite cliffs show no sign
of having been either depressed beneath
the sea or elevated above it, but rather
appear to have stood at their present level
since the erosion began. In any case, it
can only have occupied a comparatively
short and recent phase of the glacial
period, for there is abundant evidence that
the British islands have been connected
103
with the Continent in, geologically speak
ing, comparatively recent times.
Great, however, as is the antiquity shown
by these relatively modern instances, they
sink into insignificance compared with that
evidenced by a recent discovery, which I
quote the more readily because it rests on
the high authority of the late Professor
Prestwich, who has been foremost among
modern geologists in reducing the time
required for the glacial period and for the
existence of man. It. is afforded by the
upland gravels in Kent and Surrey, which
are scattered over wide areas of the chalk
downs and green-sand, at elevations far
above existing valleys and water sheds, and
which could have been deposited only
before the present rivers began to run,
and when the configuration of the
country was altogether different. Mr. Har
rison, a shopkeeper at Ightham in Kent,
who is an ardent field-geologist, recently
discovered what have been named eolithic,
or pre-palaeolithic, implements, in consider
able numbers and in various localities, in
these gravels of the great southern drift,
at an elevation of 75° fee^ above the sea
level. These discoveries, which have since
been repeated by other observers, led
Professor Prestwich to institute an exhaus
tive inquiry as to these upland drifts ; and
the startling conclusion he arrives at is
that the oldest of them, the great southern
drift, in which the implements are found,
could have come only from a mountain
range 2,000 to 3,000 feet high, which
formerly ran from east to west in the line
of the anticlinal axis which runs down the
centre to the present Weald of Kent,
between the north and south chalk downs,
and which has been since worn down to
the present low forest ridge by sub-aerial
denudation. The reasoning by which this
inference is supported seems irresistible.
The drift could not have been deposited by
the present rivers or during the present
configuration of the country, for it is found
at levels 300 or 400 feet higher than the
highest watersheds between the existing
valleys. It consists not only of chalk flints,
but to a great extent of cherts and sand
stones, such as are found at present in the
forest-ridge of the Wealden and nowhere
else. It must have been brought by water,
for the gravels are to a considerable
extent rounded and water-worn. Judging
from the size of the rolled stones, this
water must have travelled with consider
able velocity ; and it must have come from
the south, because the cherts and grits are
�i&4
HUMAN origins
found only there, and because the levels at
which the gravels are found are in that
direction. By following these levels as far
as the present surface extends, which is to
the southern edge of the green sand, it is
easy to plot out what must have been the
continuation of this rising gradient to the
south, and what the elevation of the southern
range in which these northward-flowing
streams took their origin. Prestwich has
gone into the question in full detail, and
his conclusion is that the height of this
Wealden ridge must have been at least
2,800 feet, or, in other words, that about
2,000 feet must have disappeared by
denudation. This is the more conclusive
because, as remarked above, Prestwich
approached the subject with a bias towards
shortening rather than lengthening the
periods commonly assigned for the glacial
epoch and the antiquity of man.
The present average rate of denudation
of continents has been approximately
measured by calculating the amount of
solid matter brought down by rivers. It
varies a good deal, according to the nature
of the area drained ; but the average is
about one foot in 3,000 years. At this rate
the time required for the removal of 2,000
feet of the Wealden ridge would be no less
than 6,000,000 years ; but of course this
would be no fair test, as denudation would
be vastly more rapid than the present
average rate on hilly ranges and under
glacial conditions of climate. It is enough
to say that the period required must have
been extremely great, and quite ample to
fit in with the most extended time required
by Croll’s theory of the varying eccentricity
of the earth’s orbit.
It is to be noted also that Prestwich pro
nounces part of this high level or southern
drift to be older than the Westleton pebble
drift which forms part of the Upper Plio
cene series in Suffolk and Norfolk, and
which he has traced over many of our
southern counties. If this conclusion is
correct, it solves the problem of tertiary man
by showing numerous palaeolithic imple
ments in a deposit older than an undoubted
Pliocene bed. The implements found in
these high-level southern drifts are all of a
very rude type, and the discovery is con
firmed by similar implements having been
found at corresponding elevations on the
chalk downs of Hertfordshire and on the
South Downs.
I will mention only one other instance,
which shows that the New World confirms
the conclusion as to the antiquity of the
quaternary age. The auriferous gravels of
California consist of an enormous mass of
debris washed down by pre-glacial or early
glacial rivers from the western slopes of the
great coast range. During their deposition
they became interstratified with lavas and
tuffs from eruptions of volcanoes long since
extinct, and finally covered by an immense
flow of basalts, which formed a gently
inclined plane from the Sierra Nevada to
the Pacific. This plane was attacked by the
denudations of the existing river-courses,
and cut down into a series of flat-topped
hills, divided by steep canons and by the
valleys of the present great rivers. In one
case, that of the Colombia river, this denu
dation has been carried down to a depth of
over 2,000 feet, and the river flows between
precipitous cliffs of this height. The pre
sent gold-mining is carried on mainly by
shafts and tunnels driven through super
ficial gravels and sheets of basalts and tuffs,
which are brought down in great masses by
hydraulic jets to the gravels of the pre
glacial rivers. In a large number of these
cases stone implements of undoubted
human origin have been found at great
depths under several successive sheets of
basalts, tuffs, and gravels. Mr. Skertchley,
an eminent English geologist, who visited
the district, says of these gravels : “ What
ever may be their absolute age from
a geological standpoint, their immense
antiquity historically is beyond question..
The present great river system of the Sacra-*
mento, Joaquin, and other rivers has been
established; canons 2,000 feet deep have
been carried through lava, gravels, and
into the bed rock; and the gravels, once
the bed of large rivers, now cap hills 6,000
feet high. There is ample ground for the
belief that these gravels are of Pliocene
age, but the presence of objects of human
formation invests them with a higher inte
rest to the anthropologist than even to the
geologist.”
I will return to this subject more fully in
the chapter on “ Tertiary Man ” when deal
ing with the question of the human remains
found in these Californian gravels.
Those who wish to pursue the subject
further will find abundant evidence in the
works of Lyell, Geikie, Evans, Boyd Daw
kins, and other modern geologists, and a
popular summary of it in my Modern
Science and Modern Thought.
It is sufficient for my present purpose to
have shown that, even taking the quater
nary period alone, geology proves that
there is an abundant balance in the
�Q UA TERNAR Y MAN
bank of.Time to meet any demands that
may be made upon it by the kindred
sciences.
CHAPTER IX.
QUATERNARY MAN
No longer doubted—Men existed in '-numbers
and widely spread — Palaeolithic Imple
ments of similar Type found everywhere
— Progress shown—Tests of Antiquity —
Position of Strata—Fauna—Oldest Types—
Mixed Northern and Southern Species—Rein
deer Period — Correspondence of Human
Remains with these Periods—Advance of
Civilisation—Clothing and Barbed Arrows—
Drawing and Sculpture—Passage into Neo
lithic and Recent Periods—Corresponding
Progress of Physical Man—Distinct Races
—How tested—Tests applied to Historical,
Neolithic, and Palaeolithic Man — Long
Heads and Broad Heads — Aryan Contro
versy — Primitive European Types—Canon
Taylor—Huxley—Preservation of Human
Remains depends mainly on Burials—About
forty Skulls and Skeletons known from
Quaternary Times—Summary of Results—
Quatrefages and Hamy—Races of Cannstadt
I *s»Cro-Magnon — F urfooz—Truchere—Skele
tons of Neanderthal and Spy—Cannstadt
Type oldest — Cro-Magnon Type next—
Skeleton of Cro-Magnon—Broad-headed and
Short Race resembling Lapps—American
Type—Negroes and Negritos—Summary of
Results.
The time is past when it is necessary
to go into any lengthened argument to
prove that man existed throughout the
Quaternary period. Little more than half
a century has elapsed since the confirma
tion of Boucher de Perthes’s discovery of
palaeolithic implements in the old gravels
of the Somme, and now the proofs have
multiplied to such an extent that they are
reckoned, not by scores or hundreds, but
by tens of thousands. Stone tools and
weapons have been found not in one locality
npr in one formation only, but in all the
deposits of the Quaternary age, from the
earliest to the latest, and in association with
the fauna of the Quaternary period, from
the extinct mammoth, woolly rhinoceros,
and cave-bear, to the reindeer, horse, ox,
and other existing animals. No geologist or
palaeontologist, who approaches the subject
105
with anything like competent knowledge,
and without theological or other pre
possessions, doubts that man is as much a
characteristic member of the Quaternary
fauna as any of these extinct or existing
animals, and that reasonable doubt only
begins when we pass from the Quaternary
into the Tertiary ages. I will content
myself, therefore, instead of proving facts
which are no longer disputed, with show
ing what bearing they have on the question
of human origins.
The first fact to note is that at this
palaeolithic celt (type of St. Acheul).
From Quaternary deposits of the Nerbudda,
India.
remote period man existed in considerable
numbers, and was already widely spread
over nearly the whole surface of the habit
able earth.
Implements and weapons of the palaeo
lithic type, such as celts or hatchets, lance
and arrow-heads, knives, borers, and
scrapers of flint, or, if that material be
wanting, of some hard stone of the district,
fashioned by chipping without any grinding
or polishing, have been found in the sands
and gravels of most of the river valleys
of Southern England, France, Belgium,
�io6
HUMAN ORIGINS
Germany, Spain, and Italy. Still more
numerously also in the caves and glacial
drifts of these andother European countries.
Nor are they confined to Europe. Stone
implements of the same type have been
found in Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Natal,
South Africa, Greece, Syria, Palestine,
Hindostan, and as far east as China and
Japan, while in the New World they
have been found in Maryland, Ohio,
California, and other States in North
America, and in Brazil, and the Argentine
probability that it will eventually be proved
that, with a few exceptions, wherever man
could have existed during the Quaternary
period, there he did exist. The northern
portions of Europe which were buried
under ice-caps are the only countries where
considerable search has failed to discover
palaeolithic implements, while vast areas
of Asia, Africa, and America remain un
explored.
The next point to observe is that through-
PALAEOLITHIC CELT IN ARGILLITE.
From the Delaware, United States (Abbott).
pampas in the South. And this has been
the result of the explorations of little more
than forty years, prior to which the co
existence of man with the extinct animals
was almost universally denied; explora
tions which, except in a few European
countries, have been very partial.
In fact, the area over which these evi
dences of man’s existence have been found
may be best defined by the negative, where
they have not been found, as there is every
(type of St. Acheul).
From Algeria (Lubbock).
PALAEOI.ITHIC FLINT CELT
out the whole of the Quaternary period
there has been a constant advance in
human intelligence. Any theory of human
origins which says that man has fallen and
not risen is demonstrably false. How
do we know this? The time-scale of
the Quaternary, as of other geological
periods, is determined partly by the super
position of strata, and partly by the changes
of fauna. In the case of existing rivers
�quaternary man
107
modern as we descend in the one case or
ascend in the others.
This is practically confirmed by. tne
coincidence of innumerable observations.
The oldest Quaternary fauna is character
ised by a preponderance of three species—
the mammoth (Elephas primigenius), the
woolly rhinoceros (Rhinoceros tichormus),
and the cave-bear (Ursus spelmus).
There are a few survivals from the Plio
cene, as the gigantic elephant (Elephas
antiquus), and a few anticipations of later
forms, as the reindeer, horse, and ox; but the
three mentioned are, with relics of palaeo
lithic man, the most characteristic. Then
comes a long period when a strange mixture
of northern and southern forms occurs. Side
by side with the remains of Arctic animals,
such as the mammoth, the glutton, the
musk ox, and the lemming, are found those
of African species adapted only for a warm
climate—the lion, panther, hyena, and, above
all, the hippopotamus, not distinguishable
from the existing species, which could
certainly not have lived in rivers that were
frozen in winter.
The intermixture is difficult to explain.
No doubt Africa and Europe were then
united, and the theory of migration may be
invoked. The Arctic animals may, it is
said, have moved south in winter and the
African animals north in summer, and
this was doubtless the case to some extent.
But there are some facts which militate
against this theory ; for instance, the hyena
caves, which seem to show a continuous
occupation by the same African species for
long periods. Nor is it easy to conceive
how the hippopotamus could have travelled
every summer from Africa to Yorkshire,
and retreated every autumn with the ap
proach of frost. Such instances point
rather to long inter-glacial periods with
vicissitudes of climate, enabling now a
northern, and now a southern, fauna to in
habit permanently the same region.
Be this as it may, the fact is certain that
palaeolithic celt of quartzite from
this strange intermixture of northern and
NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA.
southern species is found in almost all the
(Quatrefages.)
European deposits of the Quaternary age
until towards its close with the coming-on
lower. In the case of deposits in caves
of the second great glacial period, when
or in still water, or where glacial moraines
the southern forms disappear, and the rein
and debris are superimposed on one
deer, with an Arctic or boreal flora and
another, the case is reversed : the
fauna, become preponderant, and extend
lowest are the oldest, and the highest the
themselves over Southern France and Ger
most recent.
many up to the Alps and Pyrenees.
In like manner, if the fauna has changed,
The Quaternary period is therefore
the remains found in the highest deposits
roughly divided into three stages: 1st,
of rivers and the lowest deposits of caves
that of the mammoth and cave-bear, there
will be the oldest, and will become more
which have excavated their presentgalleys
in the course of ages, it is evident that th
highest deposits are the oldest. It the
Somme, Seine, or Thames left remains of
their terraces and patches of their silts and
gravels at heights 100 feet or more above
their present level, it is because they once
ran at these higher levels, and gradual y
worked their way downwards, leaving
traces of their floods ever lower and
�108
HUMAN ORIGINS
being some difference of opinion as to
which came first, though they may have
been simultaneous ; 2nd, the middle stage
of the mixed fauna ; 3rd, the latest stage,
that of the reindeer.
Now, to these stages there is striking
correspondence in the associated character
of the human implements. In the earliest,
those of the oldest deposits and of the
oldest animals, we find the rudest imple
ments. They consist almost exclusively
of native stones, chipped roughly into a few
primitive shapes ; celts, which are merely
lumps of flint or other hard stone with a
little chipping to supplement natural frac
tures in bringing them to a point or edge,
while the butt-end is left rough to be grasped
by the hand ; scrapers with a little chipping
to an edge on one side ; very rude arrow
heads without the vestige of a barb or
socket; and flakes struck off at a blow,
which may have served for knives. As we
ascend to later deposits, we find these
primitive types constantly improving. The
celts are chipped all over and the butt-ends
adapted for haftings; so with the other
implements and weapons, the arrow-heads
being barbed. And a great advance
occurs in the use of bone, which seems to
have been as. important a civilising agent
for palaeolithic as metals were for neo
lithic man. This again may be due to the
increasing preponderance of the reindeer,
whose horns afforded an abundant and
easily manipulated material for working
into the desired forms by flint knives.
At any rate, the fact is that, as we trace
palaeolithic man upwards into the later half
of the Quaternary period when the reindeer
became abundant, we find a notable advance
in civilisation. Bone needles appear, show
ing that skins of animals were stitched
together with sinews to provide clothing.
Barbed arrows and harpoons show that the
arts of war and of the chase had made a
great advance on the primitive unhafted
celt. . And finally we arrive at a time when
certain tribes showed not only an advance
in the industrial arts, but a really marvel
lous proficiency in the arts of sculpture and
drawing. In the later reindeer period,
when herds of that animal and of the wild
horse and ox roamed over the plains of
Southern France and Germany, and when
the mammoth and cave-bear, though not
extinct, were becoming scarce, tribes of
palaeolithic savages who lived in the caves
and rock shelters of the valleys of Southern
France and Germany, and of Switzerland
and Belgium, drew pictures of the animals
by which they were surrounded with the
point of a flint on pieces of bone or of
schist. They also carve'd bones into
images of these animals, to adorn the
handles of their weapons, or perhaps for
use as idols or amulets. Both drawings and
sculptures are in many cases admirably
executed, so as to leave no doubt as to the
animal intended, especially in the case of
the wild animals. Most of them represent
the reindeer in various attitudes; but the
mammoth, the cave-bear, the wild horse,
the Bos primigenius, and others, are
also represented with wonderful fidelity.
Portraits of the human figure are rare
and very roughly done.
With the close of the reindeer age we pass
into the Recent period, and from palaeolithic
to neolithic man. . Except in the British
Isles, whose geological detachment explains
the gap, there is no physical break, and we
cannot draw a hard-and-fast line as to where
one ends and where the other begins. All
we can say is that there is general evidence
of constantly decreasing cold during the
whole post-glacial period, from the climax
of the second great glaciation until modern
conditions of climate are fairly established
and the existing fauna has completely
superseded that of the Quaternary, the
older characteristic forms of which having
either become extinct or migrated. How
does this affect the most characteristic of
all Quaternary forms, that of man ? Can
we trace an uninterrupted succession from
the earliest Quaternary to the latest modern
times, or is there a break between the
Quaternary and Recent periods which with
our present knowledge cannot be bridged
over? And did the division of mankind
into widely different races, which is such
a prominent feature throughout human
history, exist in the palaeolithic age?
These are questions which can be an
swered—and that imperfectly—only by the
evidence of skulls and skeletons. I mplements
and weapons may have altered with the lapse
of ages, and new forms may have been intro
duced by commerce and conquest, without
any fundamental change in the race using
them. Still less can language be appealed
to as a test of race, for experience shows
how easily the language of a superior race
may be imposed on populations with which
it has no affinity in blood. To establish
distinction of races we consult the physical
anthropologist rather than the archaeologist
or philologist.
On what are the distinctions of the
human race founded ? Mainly on colour,
�Q UA TERNA RY MAN
stature, hair, and anatomical characters.
These are wonderfully persistent, and
have been so since historical times,
intermediate characters appearing only
where there has been intercrossing be
tween different races. But the primitive
types have continued unchanged ; no
one has ever seen a white race of
Negroes, or a black one of Europeans.
And this has certainly been the case during
the historical period, for the paintings on
old Egyptian tombs show us the types of
the Negro, the Libyan, the Syrian, and the
Copt as distinct as at the present day ; and
the Negroes especially, with their black
colour, long heads, projecting muzzles, and
woolly hair growing* in separate tufts, might
pass for typical photographs of the African
Negro of the nineteenth century.
Of these indications of race we are
practically reduced to the anatomical
in any finds in Quaternary gravel or caves
Even, then, a number of causes, which will
be indicated later on, combine to make
human remains few and scanty, and to
become constantly fewer and more imper
fect as we ascend the stream of time to
earlier periods. It must be remembered
also that even these scanty specimens of
early man are confined almost entirely to
one comparatively small portion of the
earth, that of Europe, and that we have
hardly a single palaeolithic skull or skeleton
of the black, the yellow, the olive, the
copper-coloured, or other typical race into
which the population of the earth is
divided.
We are confined, therefore, in the
main, to Europe for anything like positive
evidence of these anatomical characters of
prehistoric man, and can draw inferences
as to other habitable portions of the earth
and other races only from implements. For
tunately these racial characters are very
persistent, especially those of the skull and
. stature, and they exist in ample abundance
throughout the historic, prehistoric, and
neolithic ages to enable us to draw trust
worthy conclusions. At present, and
as far as we can see back with certainty,
the races which have inhabited Europe
may be classified as tall and short, long
headed and broad-headed, and as of
intermediate types, which latter, though
constituting a majority of most modern
countries, may be dismissed for the present,
as they are almost certainly not primitive,
but the result of intercrossing. _
Colour, complexion, and hair are also
very persistent, though, as we have pointed
109
out, we have no certain evidence by which
to test them beyond the historical period.
But the form of skulls, jaws, teeth, and
other parts of the skeleton remains wonder
fully constant in races where there has been
little or no intermixture.
The first great division is in the form of
the skull. Comparing the extreme breadth
of the skull with its extreme length from
front to back, if the breadth does not exceed
three-fourths or 75 per cent, of the length,
the skull is said to be dolicocephalic or
long-headed ; if it equals or exceeds 83 per
cent., it is called brachycephalic—z>., short
or broad-headed. Intermediate indices
between 75 and 83 per cent, are called
sub-dolicocephalic, or sub-brachycephalic,
according as they approach one or the other
of these extremes.
The prognathism of the jaws, the form
of the eye-orbits and nasal bones, the
superciliary ridges, the proportion of the
frontal to the posterior regions of the skull,
the stature and proportions of the limbs,
are also characteristic and persistent
features, and correspond generally with the
type of the skulls.
The controversy as to the origin of the
Aryans—a term which, strictly speaking,
denotes linguistic affinities—has led to a
great deal of argument as to these ethno
logical traits in prehistoric and neolithic
times; and Canon Taylors interesting
volume on the Origin of the Aryans, and
Professor Huxley’s article on the same
subject in the Nineteenth Century for
November, 1890 (reprinted in his Collected
Essays}, give a summary of the latest
researches on the subject. We shall have
to refer to these more fully in discussing
the question as to the place or places of
human origins ; but for the present it is
sufficient to state the general result at
which the latest science has arrived.
While not denying the specific unity of
the human race, the theory of a common
Asiatic centre from which all the _ four
main divisions of mankind—the Ethiopic,
the Mongolic, the American, _ and the
Caucasic—contemporaneously migrated, is
given up as unsupported by evidence.
When we first know anything of the early
European races, we find them occupying
substantially very much the same regions
as at present. Of the European types
already named, one, apparently the oldest
in Western Europe and in the Mediterra
nean region, probably represented by the
Iberians, and now by the Spanish Basques,
was short, dark, and long-headed ; a second,
�no
HUMAN ORIGINS
short, dark, and broad-headed, type, was
probably represented by the ancient Ligu
rians, and survives now in the Auvergnats
and Savoyards ; a third, tall, fair, and
long-headed, had its original seat in the
regions of the Baltic and North Sea, and
was always an energetic and conquering
race ; while the fourth, like the third, was
tall and fair, but broad-headed, and possibly
not a primitive race, but the result of
some ancient intermixture of the third or
Northern type with some of the broad
headed races.
Now, as far back as human remains
exist in sufficient numbers to enable us
to form some conclusion—that is, up to
the early neolithic period—we find similar
race-types already existing, and to a
considerable extent in the same localities.
In modern and historical times we find,
according to Canon Taylor, “all the
anthropological tests agreeing in exhibit
ing two extreme types—the African, with
long heads, long eye-orbits, and flat hair;
and the Mongolian, with round heads, round
orbits, and round hair. The European
type is intermediate—the head, orbits, and
sections of hair are oval. In the east of
Europe we find an approximation to the
Asiatic type ; in the south of Europe to the
African.”
More specifically, we find in Europe the
four races of tall and short long-heads, and
tall and short broad-heads, mentioned above.
The question is, how far back can any of
these races be identified ?
The preservation of human remains
depends mainly on the practice of burying
the dead. Until the corpse is placed in a
tomb, protected by a stone coffin or dolmen,
or in a grave dug in a cave, or otherwise
sheltered from rains, floods, and wild beasts,
the chances of its preservation are few and
far between. It is not until the neolithic
period that the custom of burying the
dead became general, and even then it
was not universal; in many nations, even in
historical times, corpses being burnt, not
buried. It was connected, perhaps, with
ideas of a future existence, which either
required troublesome ghosts to be put
securely out of the way, or to retain a
shadowy existence by some mysterious
connection with the body which had once
served them for a habitation. Cremation,
as Professor Ridgeway suggests, may have
originated in the idea of securing the soul
from any chance of pollution by contact
with the corpse. Such ideas, however, only
come with some advance of civilisation,
and it is questionable whether in prehistoric
times the human animal had any more
notion of preserving the body after death
than the bodies of other animals by which
he was surrounded.
The neolithic habit of burying, though it
preserves many relics of its own time, in
creases the difficulty when we come to deal
with those of an earlier age. A great
many caves which had been inhabited by
palaeolithic man were selected as fitting
spots for the graves of their neolithic suc
cessors, and thus the remains of the two
periods became intermixed. It is never
safe to rely on the antiquity of skulls and
skeletons found in association with palaeo
lithic implements and extinct animals,
unless the exploration has been made with
the greatest care by some competent scien
tific observer, or unless the circumstances of
the case are such as to preclude the possi
bility of later interments. Thus the famous
cavern of Aurignac had been long a
palaeolithic station, and many of the human
remains date back to this period; but
whether the fourteen skeletons which were
found in it, and lost owing to the pietistic
zeal of the Mayor who directed their burial,
were really palaeolithic, or part of a secon
dary neolithic interment, is a disputed
point.
But to return to undoubted neolithic
skulls, we have evidence that the four
distinct European races already existed.
Thus in Britain we have two forms of
barrows or burial tombs, one long, the other
round, and it has become proverbial that
long skulls go with long barrows, and round
skulls with round barrows. The long
barrows are the older, and belong entirely
to the stone age, no trace of metal, accord
ing to Canon Greenwell, having ever been
found in them. The skulls and skeletons
are those of a short, long-headed race,
who may be identified with the Iberians.
The round barrows contain bronze and,
finally, iron, and the people buried in
them were the tall, fair, round-headed
Gauls or Celts of early history, inter
mediate types between these and the
older race. Later came the tall, fair, and
long-headed Anglo-Saxon and Scandina
vian races, so that we have three out of the
four European types clearly defined in the
British islands and traceable in their des
cendants of the present day. But when we
attempt to go beyond the Iberians of the
neolithic age in Britain, we are completely
at fault. We have abundant remains of
palaeolithic implements, but scarcely a
�Q UA TERNAR Y MAN
single undoubted specimen of a palaeolithic
skeleton, and it is impossible to say whether
the men who feasted on the mammoth and
rhinoceros in Kent’s cavern, or who left
their rude implements in the high-level
gravel of the chalk downs, were tall or
short, long-headed or round-headed. On
the contrary, there seems a great hiatus
between the neolithic and the palaeolithic
periods in Great Britain, although, so far
as the Continent is concerned, there is
evidence of continuity. It would almost
seem that in these islands the old era had
disappeared with the last glacial period,
and that a new one had been introduced.
But, although the skulls . and bones of
palaeolithic races are wanting in Britain
and are scarce everywhere, enough have
been found in other European countries
to enable anthropologists not merely to say
that different races already existed at this
immensely remote period, but to classify
them by their types, and see how far these
correspond with those.of later times. This
has been done especially in France and
Belgium, where the discoveries of palaeo
lithic skeletons and skulls have been far
more frequent than elsewhere. Debierre in
his HHomme avant I'histoire. published in
the Bibliotheque Scientifique of 1888, enu
merates upwards of forty instances of such
undoubted Quaternary human remains, of
which at least twenty consisted of. entire
skulls, and others of jaws and other impor
tant bones connected with racial type.
The inference drawn from these remains
will be found in this work of Deb.ierre’s, and
in Y&xrrfs Palceontologie Humaine, Quatrefages’s Races Humaines^ and Topinard’s
Anthropologic; and it will' be sufficient to
give a short summary of the results., always
premising that doubt must attach itself to
the neolithic or palaeolithic character of
remains where the determination of their
exact place in any deposit is. unsettled.
Quaternary fossil man is divided, in
the Crania Ethnica of Quatrefages and
Hamy, into four races : 1st, the Cannstadt
race; 2nd, the Cro-Magnon race; 3rd, the
races of Grenelle and Furfooz ; 4th, the
race of Truchere.
The Cannstadt race is so called from the
first skull presumably of this type, which
was discovered two centuries ago in the
loess of the valley of the Neckar near
Wurtemberg. But the type is more cer
tainly represented by the celebrated
Neanderthal skull, which gave rise to
much discussion, and which was pronounced by some to be that of an idiot,
hi
and by others the most pithecoid specimen
of a human skull yet known.
A later discovery has set at rest all
doubt as to the Neanderthal skull being the
oldest Quaternary human type known in
Western Europe. In the year 1886 two
Belgian savants, Messrs. Fraipont and
Lohest—one an anatomist, the other a geo
logist—discovered in a cave at Spy near
Namur two skeletons with the skulls com
plete, which presented the Neanderthal
type in an exaggerated form. They were
found under circumstances which leave.no
doubt as to their belonging to the earliest
Quaternary deposit, being at the bottom of
the cave, in the lowest of three distinct
strata, the two uppermost of which were
full of the usual palaeolithic implements of
stone and bone, while the few found in the
lowest stratum with the skeletons were of
the rudest description. Huxley pronounces
the evidence such as will bear the severest
criticism, and he sums up the anatomical
characters of the skeletons in the following
terms :—
“ They were short of stature, but power
fully built, with strong, curiously curved
thigh-bones, the lower ends of which are so
fashioned that they must have walked with
a bend at the knees. Their long-depressed
skulls had very strong brow-ridges; their
lower jaws, of brutal depth and solidity,
sloped away from the teeth downwards and
backwards, in consequence of the absence
of that especially characteristic feature of
the higher type of man, the chin promi
nence.”
M. Fraipont says: “We consider our
selves in a position to say. that, having
regard merely to the anatomical structure
of the man of Spy, he possessed a greater
number of pithecoid characters than any
other race of mankind.”
And again he says :—
“The distance which separates the man
of Spy from the modern anthropoid ape is
undoubtedly enormous; but we must be
permitted to point out that, if the man of the
Quaternary age is the stock whence exist
ing races have sprung, he has travelled a
very great way. From the data now ob
tained, it is permissible to believe that we
shall be able to pursue the ancestral type
of man and the anthropoid apes still
further, perhaps as far as the Eocene and
even beyond.”
This Cannstadt or Neanderthal type was
widely diffused early in . the Quaternary
period, being detected in a skull from
the breccia of Gibraltar, and in skull?
�112
HUMAN ORIGINS
from Italy, . Spain, Austria, Sweden,
France, Belgium, and Western Germany ;
in fact, wherever skulls and skeletons
have been found in the oldest deposits
of caves and river-beds, notably in the
alluvia of the Seine valley near Paris,
where three distinct superimposed strata
are found, each with different human
types, that of Cannstadt being the oldest.
Hence it seems certain that the oldest
race of all in Europe was dolicocephalic,
and probable that it was of the Cannstadt
type, the skulls of.which are all low and
long, the length being attained by a great
development of the posterior part of the
head, which compensates for a deficient
forehead.
This type is also interesting because,
although the oldest, it shows occasional
signs of survival through the later palaeo
lithic and neolithic ages down to recent
times. The skulls of St. Manserg, a
mediaeval bishop of Toul, and of Lykke, a
scientific Dane of the last century, closely
resemble the Neanderthal skull in type, and
can scarcely be accounted for except as
instances of that atavism, or reversion to
old ancestral forms, which occasionally
crops up both in the human and in animal
species. It is thought by many that these
earliest palaeolithic men may be the
ancestors of the tall, fair, long-headed race
of Northern Europe; and Professor Vir
chow states that in the Frisian islands off
the North German coast, where the original
Teutonic type has been least affected by
intermixture, the F risian skull unmistakeably
approaches the Neanderthal and Spy type.
But if this be so, the type must have per
sisted for an immense time, for, as Huxley
observes, “ the difference is abysmal
between these rude and brutal savages and
the comely, fair, tall, and long-headed races
of historical times and of civilised nations.”
At the present day the closest resemblance
to the Neanderthal type is afforded by the
skulls of certain tribes of native Australians.
Next in antiquity to the Cannstadt type,
though still in the early age when the
mammoth and cave-bear were abundant,
and the implements and weapons still very
rude, we have that of the Cro-Magnon
type. The name is taken from the
skeleton of an old man, which was found
entire in the rock shelter of Cro-Magnon
in the valley of the Vezere, near the
station of Moustier, wherein occur the
types of some of the oldest and rudest
stone implements.
The skeleton was
found in the inner extremity of the
shelter, buried under a mass of debris and
fallen blocks of limestone, and associated
with bones of the mammoth and imple
ments of the Moustier type, so that there
appears to be no doubt of its extreme
antiquity.
. The skull, like that of the Cannstadt type
is dolichocephalic, but in all other respects
it is different. The brow-bridges and
generally bestial characters have disap
peared the brain is of fair or even large
capacity ; the stature tall; the forehead
fairly high and well rounded ; the face large;
the nose straight, the jaws prognathous,’
and the chin prominent.
This type is found in a number of locali
ties, especially in the south-west of France,
Belgium, and Italy, and it continued
through the Quaternary into the neolithic
period, being found in the caves of the rein
deer age and in dolmens. It is thought
by some ethnologists to present analogies
to the Berber type of North Africa, and to
that of the extinct Guanches of the Canary
Islands.
Co-existent with, or a little later than, this
type is one of a totally different character
viz., that of a brachycephalic race of very
short stature, closely resembling the modern
Lapps. This has been subdivided into the
several races of Furfooz, Grenelle, and
Truchere, according to the degree of
brachycephaly and other features; but
practically we may look on these as the
results of local variations or intercrossings,
and consider all the short, brachycephalic
races as forming a third type sharply
opposed to those of Cannstadt and CroMagnon.
We have thus evidence that the Qua
ternary fauna in Europe comprised three
distinct races of palaeolithic men, and
there is a good deal of evidence for
the existence of a fourth distinct race in
America with features differing from any
of the European races, and resembling
those of the native American in recent
times. But this affords no clue as to the
existence of other palaeolithic types in
Asia, Africa, India, Australia, and other
countries, forming quite three-fourths of
the inhabited world, in which totally
different races now exist or have existed
since the commencement of history; races
which cannot possibly have been derived
from any of the European types during
the lapse of time comprised within the
Quaternary period.
The Negro race is the most striking in
stance of this, for it differs essentially from
�Q UA TERNAR Y MAN
any other in many particulars, aU of which
are in the direction of approximation
towards the pithecoid or ape-like type.
The size of the brain is less, and a larger
proportion of it is in the hinder half; the
muzzle is much more projecting, and the
nose flatter; the fore-arm longer ; while
various other anatomical peculiarities all
point in the same direction, though the type
remains human in the main features. It
diverges, however, from the known types of
Quaternary man in Europe and from the
American type, as completely as. it does
from those of modern man, evidencing
that it is not derived from them, or they
from it, in the way of direct descent. If
there is any truth in evolution, the Negro
type must be one of the oldest, as
nearest to the animal ancestor, and this
ancestor must be placed very far back
beyond the Quaternary period, to allow
sufficient time for the development of
entirely different and improved races.
This will be the more evident if we con
sider the case of the pygmy Negritos, who
probably represent the earlier, perhaps pri
mitive, type of which the Negro were off
shoots, and who are spread over a wide tropi
cal belt of half the circumference of the
earth, from New Guinea to Western Africa.
They seem originally to have occupied
a large part of this belt, and to have
been driven to dense forests, high moun
tains, and isolated islands, by taller and
stronger races, such as the true Negro,
the Melanesian, and the Malay. But they
had already existed long enough to develop
various sub-types, for, although always
approaching more to the Negro type than
any other, the Negrito type differs in the
length of skull, colour, hair, prognathism,
and other particulars. They all agree in the
one respect which makes it impossible to
associate them with any known Quaternary
type, either as ancestors dr descendant^-—
viz., that of dwarfish stature. As a rule,
the Bushmen and Negritos do not average
above four feet six inches, and the females
three inches less ; while in some cases they
are as low as four feet—?>., they are quite
a foot shorter than the average of the
higher races, and nearly a foot and a half
below that of the Quaternary Cro-Magnon
and Mentone skeletons, and of the modern
Swedes and Scotchmen. They are small
and slightly built m proportion, but they
are by no means deformed specimens of
humanity. Professor Flower suggests that
they may be “the primitive type from which
the African Negroes on the one hand, and
113
the Melanesians on the other, have sprung.”
In any case they must certainly have existed
as a distinct type in the Quaternary period,
and probably earlier. It is remarkable
also that the oldest human implements
known get continually smaller as they
get older, until those from the Miocene beds
of Thenay and Puy Courny are almost
too small for the hands even of Stanley’s
pygmies. There is evidence that some of
these Negritos migrated into Europe not
later than the Neolithic age, Dr. Kollmann,
a Swiss anthropologist, having unearthed
skeletons of about four feet eight inches in
height in a neolithic deposit near Schaff
hausen, while an under-sized folk is still
found in Sicily and Sardinia, which islands
are surviving blocks of the ancient land
connection between Europe and Africa.
In concluding this summary of the
evidence as to Quaternary man, I must
remark on the analogy which it presents
to that of the historical period dealt with
in the earlier chapters. In each case we
have distinct evidence carrying us a long
way back : in that of the historical period
for 9,000 years ; in that of the Quaternary
for a vastly longer time, which, if the effects
of high eccentricity, postulated by Croll’s
theory, had any influence on the two last
glacial periods, cannot be less than 200,000
years. In each case also the positive
evidence takes us back to a state of things
which gives the most incontrovertible proof
of long previous existence ; In the historical
case the evidence of a dense population
and high civilisation already long prevailing
when written records began ; in the case
of palaeolithic man, that of his existence in
the same state of rude civilisation in the
most remote regions, and over the greater
part of the habitable earth, his almost
uniform progression upwards from a lower
to a higher civilisation, and his existing at
the beginning of the Quaternary period
already differentiated into races as remote
from one another as the typical races of
the present day. These facts of themselves
afford an irresistible presumption that the
origin of the human race must be sought
much further back, and it remains to con
sider what positive evidence has been
adduced in support of this presumption.
I
�114
HUMAN ORIGINS
culminate in the Lias, and become so
nearly extinct in the Secondary that the
crocodilia are their sole remaining repre
sentatives.
CHAPTER X.
And this applies when we attempt to
take our first step backwards in tracing the
TERTIARY MAN
origin of man, and follow him from the
Quaternary into the Pliocene. When did
Definition of Periods—Passage from Pliocene to
the Pliocene end andthe Quaternary begin?
Quaternary—Scarcity of Human Remains in
Within which of the two did the first great
Tertiary—Denudation—Evidence from Caves
glacial period fall ? Does pre-glacial mean
wanting—Tertiary Man a necessary inference
Pliocene, or is it included in the Quater
from widespread existence of Quaternary Man
—Both equally inconsistent with Genesis—
nary ? and to which do the oldest human
Was the first great Glaciation Pliocene or
remains such as the skeletons of Spy belong?
Quaternary ?—Section of Perrier—Supports
The difficulty of answering these ques
Croll’s Theory—Elephas Meridionalis—Mam
tions is increased because, as we go back
moth—St. Prest—Cut Bones—Instances of
in time, the human remains which guide us
Tertiary Man—Halitherium — Balseonotus —
in the Quaternary age necessarily become
Puy Courny—Thenay—Proofs of Human
scarcer. Mankind must have been fewer in
Agency — Latest Conclusions — Gaudry’s
number, and their relics to a great extent
Theory — Dryopithecus — Type of Tertiary
removed by denudation or destroyed by
Man—Skeleton of Castenedolo—Shows no
other causes, as, eg., devoured by carni
approach to the Missing Link—This must be
vora. The evidence from caves, which
sought in the Eocene—Evidence from the
affords by far the most information as to
New World—Glacial Period in America—
Palaeolithic Implements—Quaternary ManQuaternary man, entirely fails us as to the
Similar to Europe—California—Conditions
Pliocene and earlier periods. This may be
different—Auriferous Gravels—Volcanic Erup
readily accounted for when we consider the
tions—Enormous Denudation—Great Anti
great amount of the earth’s surface which
quity-Flora and Fauna—Point to Tertiary
has been removed by denudation. In fact,
Age—Discovery of Human Remains—Table
we have seen that nearly 2,000 feet of a
Mountain—Latest Finds—Calaveras Skullmountain range must have disappeared
Summary of Evidence—Other Evidence—
from the Weald of Kent, since the streams
Tuolumne—Brazil—Buenos Ayres—N ampa
from it rolled down the gravels with con
Images—Take us farther from First Origins
tained human implements, scattered over
and the Missing Link—If Darwin’s Theory
the North Downs as described by Professor
applies to Man, must go back to the Eocene.
Prestwich. What chance would Tertiary
The first difficulty which meets us in this caves have of surviving such an extensive
question is that of distinguishing clearly denudation ? Moreover, if any of the
between the different geological periods. present caves existed before the glacial
No hard-and-fast line separates the Quater period, their original contents must have
nary from the Pliocene, the Pliocene from been swept out, perhaps more than once,
the Miocene, or the Miocene from the before they became filled by the present
Eocene. They pass from one into the other deposits. We have evidence of this in
by insensible gradations, and the- names small patches of the older deposit being
given to them merely imply that such con found adhering to the cave-roof, as at
siderable changes have taken place in the Brixham and Maccagnone in Sicily. In
fauna as to enable us to distinguish one the latter place Dr. Falconer found flakes
period from another. And even this only of chipped stone and pieces of carbon in
applies when we take the periods as a whole, patches of a hard breccia.
There is another consideration also which
and see what have been the predominant
types, for single types often survive through must have greatly diminished the chance
successive periods. The course of evolu of finding human remains in Tertiary
tion seems to be that types and species, like deposits. Why did men take to living in
dark and damp caves ? Presumably for
individuals, have their periods of birth,
growth, maturity, decay, and death. Thus protection against cold. But in the Miocene
and the greater part of the Pliocene there
fish of the ganoid type appear sparingly in
was no great cold. The climate, as shown
the Silurian, culminate in the Devonian,
by the vegetation, was mild, equable, and
while the majority gradually die out in the
later formations. So also the gigantic ranged from semi-tropical to south-tempe*
rate, and the earth was to a certain extent
Saurians appear in the Carboniferous,
�TERTIARY MAN
covered by forests sustaining many fruit
bearing trees. Under such conditions men
would have every inducement to live in the
open air, and in or near forests where they
could obtain food and shelter, rather
than in caves. A few scattered savages,
thus living, would leave exceedingly few
traces of their existence. If the pygmy
races of Central Africa, or of the Andaman
Islands, became extinct, the chances would
be exceedingly small of a future geologist
finding any of their stone implements,
which alone would have a chance of sur
viving, dropped under secular accumula
tions of vegetable mould in a wide forest.
It is the more important, therefore, where
instances of human remains in Tertiary
strata, supported by strong primA facie
evidence, and vouched for by competent
authorities, do actually occur, to examine
them dispassionately, and not dismiss them
with a sort of scientific non possumus, like
that which was so long opposed to the
existence of Quaternary man and the dis
coveries of Boucher de Perthes. It is per
fectly evident from ‘the admitted existence
of man throughout the Quaternary period,
over a great part of the earth’s surface,
and divided into distinct types, that,
if there is any truth in evolution, he
must have had a long previous exist
ence. The only other possible alterna
tive would be the special miraculous
creations of men of different types, and
in many different centres, at the particu
lar period of time when the Tertiary
was replaced by the Quaternary. In other
words, that while all the rest of the animal
creation have come into existence by
evolution from ancestral types, man alone,
and that not merely as regards his spiritual
qualities, but physical man, with every bone
and muscle having its counter-part in the
other quadrumana, was an exception to
this universal law, and sprang into exist
ence spontaneously or by repeated acts of
supernatural interference.
As long as the account of the creation
in Genesis was held to be a divinelyinspired. narrative, and no facts contra
dicting it had been discovered, it is con
ceivable that such a theory might be held ;
but to admit evolution for Quaternary and
refuse to admit it for Tertiary man is an
extreme instance of “ straining at a gnat
and swallowing a camel,” for a duration of
even 10,000 or 20,000years is just as incon
sistent with Genesis as one of 100,000 or
half a million.
In attacking the question of Tertiary
ns
man, the first point to aim at is some clear
conception of where the Pliocene ends and
the Quaternary begins. These are, after
all, but terms applied to gradual changes
through long intervals of time ; still, they
require some definition, or otherwise we
should be beating the air, and ticketing in
some museums as Tertiary the identical
specimens which in others were labelled as
Quaternary. The distinction turns very
much on whether the first great glaciation
was Pliocene or Quaternary, and it must be
decided partly by the order of superposition
and.partly by the fauna. If we can find a
section where a thick morainic deposit is
interposed between two stratified deposits—
a lower one characterised by the usual fauna
of the Older Pliocene, and an upper one by
that of the Newer Pliocene—it is evident
that the glacier or ice-cap which left this
moraine must have existed in Pliocene
times. We know that the climate became
colder in the Pliocene, and rapidly colder
towards its close, and that in the cliffs of
Cromer the forest bed with a temperate
climate had given place to Arctic willows
and mosses, before the first and lowest
boulder-clay had bi ought blocks of Scandi
navian granite to England. We should be
prepared, therefore, for evidence that this
first. period of greatest cold had occurred
within the limits of the Pliocene period.
Such evidence is afforded by the valleys
which radiate from the great central boss of
France in the Auvergne. The hill of
Perrier had long been known as a rich site
of fossil remains of the extinct Pliocene
fauna, and its section has been carefully
studied by some of the best French geolo
gists, whose results are summed up as
follows by Hamy in his Palceontologie
Humaine:—
“ The bed-rock is primitive protogine,
which is covered by nearly horizontal lacus
trine Miocene, itself covered by some
metres of fluviatile gravels. Above comes
a bed of fine sand, a mfetre thick, which
contains numerous specimens of the wellknown mammalian fauna of the Lower Plio
cene, characterised by two mastodons (AT.
Armenicus and M. Borsonif Then comes
a mass of conglomerates 150 metres thick,
consisting of pebbles andboulders cemented
by yellowish mud ; and above this a dis
tinct layer of Upper Pliocene characterised
by the Elephas Meridionalis.
“The boulders, some of which are of
great size, are all angular, never rounded or
stratified, often scratched, and mostly con
sisting of trachyte, which must have been
�HUMAN ORIGINS
transported twenty-five kilometres from the
Puy de Dome. In short, the conglomerate
is absolutely indistinguishable from any
other glacial moraine, whether of the
Quaternary period or of the present day.
It is divided into three sections by two
layers of rolled pebbles and sands, which
could only have been caused by running
water, so that the glacier must have ad
vanced and retreated three times, leaving
each time a moraine fifty metres thick ; and
the whole of this must have occurred before
the deposit of the Upper Pliocene stratum
with its Elephas Meridionalis and other
Pliocene mammals.”
The importance of this will presently be
seen, for the Elephas Meridionalis is one of
the extinct animals which is most directly
connected with the proofs of man’s exist
ence before the Quaternary periodi
The three advances and retreats of
the great Perrier glacier also fit in well
with the calculated effects of precession
during high eccentricity, as about three
such periods must have occurred in the
period of the coming on, culminating,
and receding of each phase of maximum
eccentricity.
This evidence from Perrier does not
stand alone, for in the neighbouring
valleys, and in many other localities,
isolated boulders of foreign rocks, which
could have been transported only by ice,
are found at heights considerably above
those of the more recent moraines and
boulders which had been supposed to
mark the limit of the greatest glaciation.
Thus, on the slopes of the Jura and the
Vosges, boulders of Alpine rocks, much
worn by age, and whose accompanying
drifts and moraines have disappeared by
denudation, are found at heights 150 or 200
metres above the more obvious moraines
and boulders, which themselves rise to a
height of nearly 4,000 feet, and must have
been the front of glaciers from the Alps
which buried the plain of Switzerland under
that thickness of solid ice.
The only possible alternative to this
evidence from Perrier would be to throw
back the duration of the Quaternary and
limit that of the Pliocene enormously, by
supposing that all the deposits above the
great glacial conglomerate or old moraine
are inter-glacial, and not Tertiary. This
is, as has been pointed out, very much a
question of words, for the phenomena and
the time required to account for them
remain the same by whatever name we
elect to call them.
But it has its
importance, for it involves a fundamental
principle of geology, that of classifying
eras and formations by their fauna. If the
Elephas Meridionalis is a Pliocene and
not a Quaternary species, we must admit,
with the great majority of Continental
geologists, that the first and greatest
glaciation fell within the Pliocene period.
If, on the other hand, this elephant is, like
the mammoth, part of the Quaternary
fauna, we may believe, as many English
geologists do, that the first glacial period
coincided with and probably occasioned
the change from Pliocene to Quaternary,
and that everything above the oldest
boulder-clays and moraines is not Tertiary,
but inter-glacial.
As bones of the Elephas Meridionalis
have been frequently found in connection
with human implements, and with cuts on
them which could have been made only by
flint knives shaped by the human hand, it
will be seen . at once what an interest
attaches to this apparently dry geological
question of the age of the great southern
elephant.
The transition from the mastodon into
the elephant took place in the Old World
(for in America the succession is different)
in the Pliocene period. In the older
Pliocene we have nothing but mastodons,
in the newer nothing but elephants ; and
the transition from the older to the newer
type is distinctly traced by intermediate
forms in the fossil fauna of the Sewalek
hills. The Elephas Meridionalis is the
oldest known form of true elephant,
and it is characteristic of all the different
formations of the Upper Pliocene, while it
is nowhere found in cave or river deposits
which belong unmistakeably to the Quater
nary. It was a gigantic animal, fully four
feet higherthan the tallest existing elephant,
and bulky in proportion. It had a near
relation in the Elephas Antiquus. which
was of.equal size, and different from it
mainly in a more specialised structure of
the molar teeth. The remains of this
elephant have been found in the lower strata
of some of the oldest bone-caves and river
silts, as to which it is difficult to say
whether they are older or younger than the
first glacial period. The remains of a
pygmy elephant, no bigger than an ass,
have also been found in the Upper Pliocene,
at Malta and Sicily, and those of the exist
ing African elephant in Sicily and Spain.
It would seem, therefore, that the Upper
Pliocene was the golden age of the ele
phants, when they were most widely
�TERTIARY MAN
diffused, and comprised most species and
most varieties, both in the direction of
gigantic and of diminutive size. But in
passing from the Pliocene into the Quater
nary period, they all, or almost all, disap
peared, and were superseded by the Elephas
Primigenius, or mammoth, which appeared
in the latest Pliocene, and became the
principal representative of the genus
Elephas in Europe and Northern Asia
down to comparatively recent times.
This succession is confirmed by that of
the rhinoceros, of which several species
were contemporary with the Elephas Meridionalis, while the Rhinoceros tichorinus,
or woolly rhinoceros, who is the inseparable
companion of the mammoth, appeared and
disappeared with him.
In these matters, those who are not
themselves specialists must rely on autho
rity, and when we find Lyell, Geikie,
and Prestwich coinciding with modern
117
tion in calling it a Pliocene river; but,
in the judgment of some, it is old
Quaternary. Its age might never have
been disputed if the question of man’s
antiquity had not been involved, for in
these sands and gravels have been found
numerous specimens of cut bones of the
ElephaS Meridionalis, together with the
flint knives which made the cuts, and other
stone implements, rude, but still unmistakeably of the usual palaeolithic type.
The subjoined plate will enable the
reader to compare the arrow-head, which is
the commonest type found at St. Prest,
with a comparatively recent arrow-head
from the Yorkshire wolds, and see how
illogical it seems to concede human agency
to the post-glacial and deny it to the
Pliocene specimen.
In this and other instances cut bones
afford one of the most certain tests of the
presence of man. The bones tell their own
tale, and their geolo
POST-GLACIAL.
gical age can be gene
rally identified. Sharp
cuts could be made
on them only while
PLIOCENE.
the bones were fresh;
and the state of fossilisation,andpresence
of dendrites or minute
crystals alike on the
side of the cuts and
on the bone, negative
any idea of forgery.
ARROW-HEAD—ST. PREST.
ARROW-HEAD—YORKSHIRE WOLDS.
The cuts can be com
(Hamy, Pahzontologie Humaine.}
(Evans, Stone Implements.}
pared with those on
thousands of un
French, German, Italian, and Belgian geo
doubted human cuts on bones from the
logists, in considering Elephas Meridionalis reindeer and other later periods, and with
as one of the characteristic Upper Pliocene cuts now made with old flint knives on
fauna, we can have no hesitation in adopt fresh bones. All these tests have been
ing their conclusion.
applied by some of the best anthropologists
In this case the section at St. Prest, near of the day, who have made a special study
Chartres, appears to afford a first abso of the subject, and who have shown their
lutely secure foothold in tracing our way caution and good faith by rejecting numerous
backwards towards human origins beyond
specimens which did not fully meet the
the Quaternary. The sands and gravels of most rigorous requirements. Their con
a river which ran on the bed-rock without
clusion is that there could be no reason
any underlying glacial debris are here able doubt that the cuts were really
exposed. The river had no relation to the
made by human implements guided by
Eure, the bed of which it crosses at human hands. The only possible alterna
an angle, and it must have run before that tive suggested is that they might have been
river had begun to excavate its valley, and made by gnawing animals or fishes. But,
when the drainage of the country was quite as Quatrefages observes, even an ordinary
different. The sands contain an extra carpenter would have no difficulty in dis
ordinary number of bones of the Elephas tinguishing between a clean cut made by a
Meridionalis, associated with old species of sharp knife, and a groove cut by repeated
rhinoceros and other Pliocene species.
strokes of a narrow chisel; and how much
Lyell, who visited the spot, had no hesita more would it be impossible for a Professor
�HUMAN ORIGINS
trained to scientific investigation, and armed
still denied by competent authorities.
with a microscope, to mistake a groove
Among these ought to be placed the
gnawed out by a shark or rodent for a cut
example from Portugal, for, although
made by a flint knife. No one who will refer
a large celt very like those of the
to Quatrefages’sAAwjw^fossiles, and look at the figures
of cut bones given there from
actual photographs, can feel
any doubt that the cuts there
delineated were made by flint
knives held by the human
hand.
In addition to this instance
of St. Prest, Quatrefages in
his Histoire des Races Humaines, published in 1887,
and containing the latest
summary of the evidence
generally accepted by French
geologists as to Tertiary man,
says that, omitting doubtful
cases, the presence of man
has been signalised in de
posits undoubtedly Tertiary
in five different localities—
viz., in France by the Abbe
Bourgeois, in the Lower Mio
cene of Thenay near Pontlevoy (Loir-et-Cher); by M.
Rames at Puy Courny near
Aurillac (Cantal), in the
Upper Miocene ; in Italy by
M. Capellini in the Pliocene
of Monte Aperto near Sienna,
and by M. Ragazzoni in the
Lower Pliocene of Castelnedolo near Brescia ; in Por
tugal by M. Ribiero at Otta,
in the valley of the Tagus, in
the Upper Miocene.
To these may be added the
cut bones of Halitherium, a
Miocene species, from Pouance (Maine et Loire), by M.
Delaunay; and those on the
tibia of a Rhinoceros Etruscus, and on other fossil bones
from the Upper Pliocene of
the Vai d’Arno. In addition CUTS WITH FLINT KNIFE ON RIB OF BAL^EONOTUS—PLIOCENE.
to these are the numerous
From Monte Aperto, Italy.
remains, certainly human and
(Quatrefages, Histoire des Races Humaines.}
presumably Tertiary, from
North and South America,
which will be referred to
later, and a considerable
number of cases where there
is a good deal of primd
facie evidence for Tertiary
human remains, but the
CUT MAGNIFIED BY MICROSCOPE.
authenticity of which is
�TER.TIAR Y MAN
ng
oldest palaeolithic type was undoubtedly tent geologist, were interstratified with
found in strata which had always been tuffs and lavas of these older volcanoes,
considered as Miocene, the Congress of and no doubt as to their geological age
Palaeontologists who assembled at Lisbon was raised by the Congress of French
were divided in opinion as to the conclu archaeologists to whom they were sub
mitted. The whole question turns, there
siveness of the evidence.
I have already discussed this matter so fore, on the sufficiency of the proofs of
fully in a former work {Problems of the human origin, as to which the same
Future, ch. v. on Tertiary Man) that I do Congress expressed themselves satisfied.
The specimens consist of several wellnot propose to go over the ground again,
but merely to refer briefly to some of the known palaeolithic types, celts, scrapers,
more important points which come out in arrow-heads, and flakes, only ruder and
the above six instances. In three of them— smaller than those of later periods. They
were found at three different localities in
those of the Halitherium of Pouance, the
Balasonotus of Monte Aperto, and the the same stratum of gravel, and comply
rhinoceros of the Vai d’Arno—the evidence with all the tests by which the genuineness
of Quaternary implements is ascertained,
depends entirely on cut bones, and in the
case of St. Prest on that of cut bones of such as bulbs of percussion, conchoidal
Elephas Meridionalis combined with paleo fractures, and, above all, intentional chip
ping in a determinate direction. It is
lithic implements.
evident that a series of small parallel chips
The evidence from cut bones is, for the
reasons already stated, very conclusive; and or trimmings, confined often to one side
when a jury of four or five of the leading
authorities, such as Quatrefages, Hamy,
Mortillet, and Delaunay, who have devoted
themselves to this branch of inquiry, and
have shown their great care and conscien
tiousness by rejecting numbers of cases
which did not satisfy the most rigid tests,
arrive unanimously at the conclusion that
many of the cuts on the bones of Tertiary
animals are unmistakeably of human origin,
there seems no room left for any reasonable
scepticism. I cannot doubt, therefore, that
we have positive evidence to confirm the
existence of man, at any rate from the
Pliocene period, through the long series
FLINT SCRAPER FROM HIGH LEVEL DRIFT,
of ages intervening between it and the
rent. (Prestwich.)
Quaternary.
But the discovery of flint implements at
Puy Courny in the Upper .Miocene, and only of the flint, and which have the effect
at Thenay in the Lower Miocene, carries us of bringing it into a shape which is known
back a long step further, and involves such from Quaternary and recent, implements
important issues as to the origin of the to be adapted for human use, imply, intelli
human race that it may be well to recapitu gent design, and could not have been pro
late the evidence upon which those dis duced by the casual collisions of pebbles
rolled down by an impetuous torrent.
coveries rest.
The first question is as to the geological Thus the annexed plate of an implement
age of the deposits in which these chipped from the high level drift on the North
implements have been found. In the case Downs, shown by Professor Prestwich to
of Puy Courny this appears to be beyond the Anthropological Society, is rude enough,
dispute. In the central region -of the but no one has ever expressed doubt as
Auvergne there have been two series of to its human origin.
The chipped flints from Puy Courny
volcanic eruptions, the later towards the
close of the Pliocene or commencement also afford another conclusive proof of
of the Quaternary period, while the earlier intelligent design. The gravelly. deposit
is proved by its position and fossils to in which they are found contains five
belong to the Upper Miocene. The different varieties of flints, and of these all
gravels in which the chipped flints were that look like human implements are con
discovered by M. Rames, a very compe fined to one particular variety, which from
�120
IlUMAN ORIGINS
ks nature is peculiarly adapted for human
use. As Quatrefages says, no torrents or
other natural causes could have exercised
such a discrimination, which could have
been made only by an intelligent being
selecting the stones best adapted for his
tools and weapons.
The general reader must be content to
rely to a great extent on the verdict of
experts, and in this instance of Puy Courny
need not perhaps go further than the con
clusion of the French Congress of archaeo
logists, who pronounced in favour both of
their Miocene and human origin. It may
'
be well, however, to
UPPER MIOCENE IMPLEMENTS.
PUY COURNY.
annex a plate showing
in two instances how
closely the specimens
from Puy Courny re
semble those of later
periods, of the human
origin of which no
doubt has ever been
entertained. It is cer
tainly carrying scien
tific scepticism to an
unreasonable pitch to
doubt that whatever
cause fashioned the
two lower figures, the
same
cause must
equally have fashioned
the upper ones ; and,
if that cause be human
intelligence in the
SCRAPER, OR LANCE-HEAD.
Quaternary period, it
Puy Courny. Upper Miocene
Puy Courny. Upper Miocene
must have been human
(Rames).
__ .
(Rames).,
(Quatrefages, RacesHumaines, p. 95.) (Quatrefages, Races Humaine, p.95.) or human-like intelli
gence in the Upper
Miocene.
The evidence for the
still older implements
of Thenay is of the
same nature as that
for those of Puy
Courny.
First as
regards the geological
horizon. Subjoined is
the section at Thenay
as made by M. Bour
geois, verified by MM.
Vibraye, ■ Delaunay,
Schmidt,
Belgrand,
and others, from per
sonal inspection, and
given by M. Hamy
in his Palceontologie
Humaine.
It would seem that
there could be little
doubt as to the geo
logical position of the
strata from which the
alleged chipped flints
come.
The Faluns
are a well - known
marine deposit of a
�TERTIARY MAN
121
shallow sea spread over a great part
of Central and Southern France, and
identified by its shells as Upper Miocene.
The Orleans Sands are another Miocene
deposit perfectly characterised by its
mammalian fauna, in which the Mastodon
Angustidens first appears, with other
peculiar species. The Calcaire de Beauce
is a solid fresh-water limestone formed
in the great lake which in the Miocene
age occupied the plain of the Beauce
and extended into Touraine. It forms
a clear horizon or dividing line between
the Upper Miocene, characterised by the
Mastodon, and the Lower Miocene, of
which the Acrotherium, a four-toed and
hornless rhinoceros, is the most charac
teristic fossil.
fessor Prestwich, who visited the section a
good many years ago in company with the
Abbe Bourgeois, and who is one of the
highest authorities on this class of questions,
remained unconvinced that the flints shown
him really came from the alleged strata
below the Calcaire de Beauce, and thought
that the specimens which appeared to show
human manufacture might have been on
the surface, and become intermixed with
the natural flints of the lower strata.
The geological horizon, however, seems
to have been generally accepted by French
and Continental geologists, especially by
the latest authorities, and the doubts which
have been expressed have turned mainly
on the proof of human design shown by
the implements. This is a question which
The supposed chipped flints are said to
appear sparingly in the upper deposits,
to disappear in the Calcaire de Beauce,
and to reappear, at first sparingly and
then plentifully, in the lacustrian marls
below7 the limestone. They are most
numerous in a thin layer of greenishyellow clay, No. 3 of section, below which
they rapidly disappear. There can be no
question, therefore, that if the flints really
came from the alleged deposits, and really
show the work of human hands, the savages
by w'hom they were chipped must have
lived on the shores or sand-banks of this
Miocene lake. As regards the geological
question, it is right to observe that Pro-
must be decided by the authority of experts
for it requires special experience to be able
to distinguish between accidental fractures
and human design in implements of the
extremely rude type of the earlier forma
tions. The test is mainly afforded by the
nature of the chipping. If it consists of a
number of small chips, all in the same
direction, with the result of bringing one
face or side into a definite form, adapted
for some special use, the inference is strong
that the chips were the work of design.
The general form might be the result of
accident, but fractures from frost or colli
sions simulating chipping could hardly be
all in the same direction, and confined to
�122
HUMAN ORIGINS
existing savages, which are beyond all
doubt products of human manufacture.
Tried by these tests, the evidence stands
as follows :—
When specimens of the flints from Thenay
were first submitted to the Anthropological
Congress at Brussels, in
1867, their human origin was
MIDDLE MIOCENE IMPLEMENTS.
admitted by MM. Worsae,
de Vibraye, de Mortillet, and
Schmidt, and rejected by
MM. Nilson, Hebert, and
others, while M. Quatrefages
reserved his opinion, thinking
a strong case made out, but
not being entirely satisfied.
M. Bourgeois himself was
partly responsible for these
doubts, for, like Boucher de
scraper, OR borer. Thenay.
SCRAPER FROM THENAY.
Perthes, he had injured his
(Showing bulb of percussion.
(Hamy, Palceontologie
case by overstating it, and
Humaine, p. 49.)
Quatrefages, Races Humaines,
including a number of small
p. 92.)
flints, which might have been,
and probably were, merely
natural specimens. But the
whole collection having been
transferred to the Archaeo
logical Museum at St.
Germain, its director, M.
Mortillet, selected those
which appeared most demon
strative of human origin, and
placed them in a glass case,
side by side with similar
types of undoubted Quater
nary implements. This re
moved a great many doubts,
and later discoveries of still
better specimens of the type
of scrapers have, in the words
of Quatrefages, “ dispelled
his last doubts,” while not a
single instance has occurred
of any convert in the opposite
direction, or of any opponent
who, after an equally careful
and minute investigation, has
adduced facts contradicting
the conclusions of Quatre
fages, Mortillet, and Hamy.
BORER, or awl.
KNIFE, OR SCRAPER.
In order to assist the
Thenay. Miocene.
Thenay. (Gaudry.
reader in forming an opinion
(Congres Prehistorique,
Quatrefages, p. 92.)
as to the claim of these
Bruxelles, 1872.)
flints from Thenay to show
such as would be made by scraping bones
clear traces of human design, I subjoin
or skins, while nothing of the sort is seen some illustrations of photographs in which
on the other natural edges, though they
they are compared with specimens of later
may be sharper. But, above all, the surest
date, which are undoubtedly and by
test is afforded by a comparison with other universal consent the work of human
implements of later dates, or even of hands.
one part of the stone. The inference is
strengthened if the specimen shows bulbs
of percussion where the blows had been
struck to fashion the implement, and if the
microscope discloses parallel stride and
other signs of use on the chipped edge,
�TERTIARY MAN
123
those fabricated by palaeolithic men of the
These figures seem to leave no reasonable
valley drift times.”
doubt that some at least of the flints from
In fact, we have only to look at the
Thenay show unmistakeable signs of human
figures which accompany Prestwich’s
handiwork, and I only hesitate to accept
essay1 to see that their types resemble
them as conclusive proofs of the existence
those of Puy Courny and Thenay, rather
of man in the Middle Miocene, because
than those of St. Acheul and Moustier.
such an authority as Prestwich retains
The following remarks of the Professor
doubts of their having come from the
would apply almost as well to the Miocene
geological horizon accepted by the most
implements as to those of the plateau :—
eminent modern French geologists.
“Unlike the valley implements, the
The evidence of the authenticity of these
implements from
COMPARE QUATERNARY IMPLEMENTS.
Thenay is, more
over,
greatly
strengthened
by
the discovery of
other Miocene im
plements at Puy
Courny, which have
not been seriously
impugned, and by
the essay of Pro
fessor Prestwich,
confirming the dis
covery of numerous
flint implements in
the upper level
gravels of the North
Downs, which could
have been deposit
ed only by streams
flowing from a
mountain ridge
along the anticlinal
of the Weald, of
which 2,000 feet
must have dis
appeared by sub
aerial denudation
since these rivers
flowed northwards
from its flanks.
How far back such
a denudation may
Carry us is a matter
of speculation.
QUATERNARY. Mammoth Period.
quaternary.
Chaleux, Belgium.
Certainly, as Prest
River Drift, Mesvin, Belgium.
Reindeer Period. (Congres
wich admits, into
(Congr^s Prehistorique, Bruxelles, 1872.)
Prehistorique, Bruxelles, 1872.)
the pre-glacial or
very early glacial
plateau implements are, as a rule, made of
ages, and possibly into the Tertiaries; but,
the fragments of natural drift flints that are
'at any rate, to a period which, by whatever
found scattered over the surface of the
name we call it, must be enormous accord
ground, or picked up in gravel-beds and
ing to any standard of centuries or millen
merely roughly trimmed. Sometimes the
niums. And what is specially interesting in
work is so slight as to be scarcely apparent;
these extremely ancient implements is that,
at others, it is sufficient to show a distinct
in Prestwich’s words, “ these plateau imple
ments exhibit distinct characters and types
such as would denote them to be the work
1 Journal of Anthropological Institute, Feb.,
1892, p. 262.
of a more primitive and ruder race than
�124
HUMAN ORIGINS
design and object. It indicates the very
infancy of the art, and probably the ear
liest efforts of man to fabricate his tools
and weapons from other substances than
wood or bone. That there was an object
and design is manifest from the fact that
they admit of being grouped according to
certain patterns. These are very simple,
but they answered to the wants of a primi
tive people.
“With few exceptions, the implements
are small, from 2 to 5 inches in length, and
mostly such as could have been usedin the
hand, and in the hand only. There is, with
the exceptions before named, an almost
entire absence of the large massive spear
head forms of the valley drifts, and a large
preponderance of forms adapted for chip
ping, hammering, and scraping. With
these are some implements that could not
have been used in the hand, but they are
few and rude. The difference between the
plateau and the valley implements is as
great or greater than between the latter and
the neolithic implements. Though the work
on the plateau implements is often so slight
as scarcely to be recognisable, even the
tools and weapons of modern savages—for
example, those of the Australian natives—
show, when divested of their mounting,
an amount of work no more distinct than
do these early palaeolithic specimens.
“ Some persons may be disposed to look
upon the slight and rude work which these
flints have received as the result only of the
abrasion and knocking about caused by
collision during the transport of the drift.
This belief prevailed for a time even in the
case of the comparatively well-fashioned
valley implements. A little practice, and
comparison with natural drift flints, will
show the difference, notwithstanding the,
at first, unpromising appearance of these
early specimens of man’s handicraft. . It is
as such, and from their being the earliest
with which we are acquainted, that they
are of so great interest, for they give us
some slight insight into the occupation
and surroundings of the race by whom
they were used. A main object their
owners would seem to have had in view was
the trimming of flints to supply them with
implements adapted to the breaking of
bones for the sake of the marrow, scraping
skins, and round bodies such as bones or
sticks, for use as simple tools or poles.
From the scarcity of the large massive im
plements of the pointed and adze type, so
common in the valley drifts, it would seem
as though offensive and defensive weapons
of this class had not been so much needed,
whether from the rarity of the large mam
malia, so common later on in the low-level
valley drifts, or from the habits and
character of those early people.”
Last, but not least, there is the discovery,
made by Dr. Dubois in 1892, of part of a
skull and thigh bone in the upper Pliocene
beds at Trinil, on the banks of the river
Bengawan, in Java. These remains, he
assumed, belonged to an animal named by
him Pithecanthropus erectusor “ upright
ape-man,” and they are of the greater
significance as occurring in a region where
it seems probable that man and ape diverged
from their common pithecoid ancestor.
The positive evidence is therefore
extremely strong that man existed in the
Tertiaries, and if we add to it the irresis
tible inference that he must have done so
to develop so many different races, and
leave his rude implements in so many and
such remote regions as are found early in
the Quaternary, I do not see how it is
possible to avoid accepting it as an estab
lished fact.
In using the term Tertiary Man, I do
not venture to define the exact meaning of
“ man,” or the precise stage in his evolution
which had been attained at this enormously
remote period. M. Gaudry, an excellent
authority, while admitting that the flints
fromThenay showed evidence of intentional
chipping, thought that they might have
been the work of the Dryopithecus, a fossil
ape, supposed to be nearer man than any
existing anthropoid, whose remains had
been found at Sausan in the Middle Mio
cene. But the Dryopithecus has been
deposed from his pride of place by the
subsequent discovery of a more perfect
jaw,1 and he is now considered, though
1 Having applied to Professor Flower, as the
highest authority, to inform me of the actual
position of the evidence as to the Dryopithecus,
he was good enough to reply to me as follows:—
“ Dryopithecus (Middle Miocene of France)
is an undoubted anthropoid, allied to gorilla and
chimpanzee; but the recent discovery of a more
complete jaw than that first found shows that it
is rather a lowerform than the two just mentioned,
instead of higher as once thought. (See Gaudry,
Mem. Soc. Geol. France—Palaontologie, 1890.)
The animal called Pliopiihecus, from the same
formation, is now generally considered to be
not distinguishable from the genus Hylobates
(Gibbon). So there is no doubt about the exist
ence of anthropoid apes in the Miocene of
Europe, but not of a higher type than the present
African or Asiatic species.”
�TERTIARY MAN
undoubtedly an anthropoid ape, to be of a
lower type than the chimpanzee or gorilla.
The strongest argument, however, for the
essentially human character of the artificers
of the flints of Thenay and Puy Courny is
that their type continues, with no change
except that of slight successive improve
ments, through the Pliocene, Quaternary,
and even down to the present day. ’ The
scraper of the Esquimaux and the Andaman
islanders is but an enlarged and improved
edition of the Miocene scraper, and in the
latter case the stones seem to have been
split by the same agency—viz., that of fire.
The early knowledge of fire is also con
firmed by the discovery, reported by M.
Bourgeois in the Orleans Sand at Thenay,
with bones of mastodon and dinotherium,
of a stony fragment mixed with carbon, in
a sort of hardened paste, which, as we can
hardly suppose pottery to have been known,
must be the remnant of a hearth on which
there had been a fire.
There must always, however, remain a
doubt as to the nature of this ancestral
Tertiary man, until actual skulls and skele
tons have been found under circumstances
which preclude doubt, and in sufficient
numbers to enable anthropologists to speak
with the same confidence as to types and
races as they can of his Quaternary
successors. This, again, is difficult from
the rarity of such remains, and from the
fact that, after burial of the dead was intro
duced, graves must often have been dug
down from the surface into older strata,
with which, in course of time, their contents
become intermixed. No case, therefore,
can be safely admitted where the find was
not made by well-known scientific authori
ties under circumstances which preclude
the possibility of subsequent interment,
and vouch for the geological age of the
undisturbed deposit. This test disposes of
all the alleged discoveries of human remains
in the Tertiaries of the Old World, except
one; and, although it is quite possible that
some maybe genuine among those rejected,
it is safer not to rely on them. There is
one, however, which is supported by ex
tremely strong evidence, and the dis
cussion of which I have reserved for the
last, as, if accepted, it throws a new and
unexpected light on the evolution of the
human race.
The following is the account of it, taken
from Quatrefages’s Races Humaines:—
11 The bones of four individuals—a man, a
woman, and two children—were found at
Castenedolo, near Brescia, in a bed identi
125
fied by its fossils as Lower Pliocene. The
excavations were made with the utmost
care, in undisturbed strata, by M. Ragazzoni, a well-known scientific man, assisted
by M. Germani, and the results confirmed
by M. Sergi, a well-known geologist, after a
minute personal investigation. The deposit
was removed in successive horizontal
layers, and not the least trace was found of
the beds having been mixed or disturbed.
The human bones presented the same
fossilised appearance as those of the extinct
animals in the same deposit. The female
skeleton was almost entire, and the frag
ments of the skull were sufficiently perfect
to admit of their being pieced together so
as to show almost its entire form.”
The first conjecture naturally was that it
must have been a case of subsequent inter
ment—a conjecture which was strengthened
by the fact of the female skeleton being so
entire ; but this is negatived by the undis
turbed nature of the beds, and by the fact
that the other bones were found scattered
at considerable distances throughout the
stratum.
M. Quatrefages concisely sums up the
evidence by saying “ that there exists no
serious reason for doubting the discovery,
and that, if made in a Quaternary deposit,
no one would have thought of contesting
its accuracy. Nothing can be opposed to
it but theoretical a priori objections similar
to those which so long repelled the exist
ence of Quaternary man.”
But if we accept this discovery, it leads
to the remarkable conclusion that Tertiary
man not only existed, but has undergone
little change in the thousands of centuries
which have since elapsed. The skull is of
fair capacity, very much like what might be
expected from a female of the Cannstadt
type, and less rude and ape-like than the
skulls of Spy and Neanderthal, orthose of
modern Bushmen and Australians. And
the other bones of the skeleton show no
marked peculiarities.
This makes it difficult to accept the
discovery unreservedly, notwithstanding
the great weight of positive evidence in its
favour. The principal objection to Tertiary
man has been that, as all other species bad
changed, and many had become extinct two
or three times over since the Miocene, it
was unlikely that an animal so highly
specialised as man should alone have had
a continuous existence. And this argument,
of course, becomes stronger the more it can
be shown that the oldest skeletons differed
little, if at all, from those of the Quaternary
�126
HUMAN ORIGINS
and Recent ages. Moreover, the earlier
specimens of Quaternary man which are so
numerous and authentic show, if not any
thing that can be fairly called the “missing
link,” still a decided tendency, as they get
older, towards the type of the rudest exist
ing races, which again show a distinct
though distant approximation towards the
type of the higher apes. The oldest Qua
ternary skulls are dolichocephalic, very
thick, with enormous frontal sinuses, low
and receding foreheads, flattened vertices,
prognathous jaws, and slight and receding
chins. The average cranial capacity is
about 1,150 cubic centimetres, or fully onefourth less than that of modern European
man ; and of this smaller brain a larger pro
portion is in the posterior region. The
other peculiarities of the skeletons all tend
in the same direction, and, as we have
seen in Huxley’s description of the men
of Spy, sometimes go a long way in the
pithecoid direction, even to the extent of
not being able to straighten the knee in
walking.
It would, therefore, be contrary to all our
ideas of evolution to find that some 100,000
or 200,000, or more probably 400,000 or
500,000, years prior to these men of Spy
and Neanderthal, the human race had
existed in higher physical perfection nearer
to the existing type of modern man.
Quatrefages meets this by saying that
Tertiary men with a larger brain, and there
fore more intelligence than the other Ter
tiary mammals, might have survived, where
these succumbed to changes and became
extinct. This is doubtless true to some
extent, but it hardly seems sufficient to
account for the presence of a higher and
more recent type, like that of Castenedolo
in the Lower Pliocene, that is, a whole geo
logical period earlier than that of the
Lower Quaternary. It is more to the pur
pose to say with Gaudry that the changes
on which the distinction of species are
founded are often so slight that they might
just as well be attributed to variations of
races ; and to appeal to instances like that
of the Hylobates of the Miocene, one of
the nearest congeners of man, in which no
genuine difference can be detected from
the Hylobates or Gibbon of the present
day ; and if the discovery, already referred
to, of anthropoid primates in the Eocene
of Patagonia, should be confirmed, it
would greatly strengthen the argument
for the persistence of the order to which
man belongs through several geological
I
periods.
In any case, we require more than the
evidence of this one discovery before we
can assume the type of Tertiary man as a
proved fact with the same confidence as we
can the existence of some anthropoid animal
in those remote ages, from the repeated
evidence of chipped stones and cut bones,
showing unmistakeable signs of being the
work of human intelligence. And, in the
meantime, the only safe conclusion seems
to be that it is very probable that we may
have to go back to the Eocene to find the
“ missing link,” or the ancestral animal
which may have been the common pro
genitor of man and of the other quadrumana.
I turn now to the evidence from the New
World. I have kept this distinct, for there
is no such proof of synchronism between
the later geological phases of this and of
the Old World as would warrant us in
assuming that what is true in one is neces
sarily true in the other. Thus, in Europe,
the presence of the mastodon is a conclu
sive proof that the formation in which its
remains are found is Upper Miocene or
Pliocene, and it has completely disappeared
before the glacial period and the Quater
nary era. But in North America it has sur
vived both these periods, and it is even a
question whether it is not found in recent
peat-mosses with arrow-heads of the his
torical Indians.
The glacial period also, which in the Old
World affords such a clear demarcation
between Tertiary and Recent ages, and such
manifest proofs of two great glaciations
with a long inter-glacial period, presents
different conditions in America, where the
ice-caps radiated from different centres,
and extended further south and over wider
areas. There is no proof whether the great
cold set in sooner or later, and whether
the elevations and depressions of land
synchronised with those of Europe. The
evidence for a long inter-glacial period is
by no means so clear, and the best
American geologists differ respecting it.
And, above all, the glacial period seems to
have lasted longer, and the time required
for post-glacial or recent denudation, and
erosion of river-gorges, to be less than is
required to account for post-glacial phe
nomena on this side of the Atlantic.
The evidence, therefore, from the New
World, though conclusive as to the
existence of man from an immense
antiquity, can hardl} be accepted as equally
so in an attempt to prove that antiquity
to be Tertiary in the sense of identifying
�TERTIARY MAN
it with specific European formations.
With this reservation I proceed to give a
short account of this evidence as bearing
on the question of the oldest proofs of
man’s existence. The first step or proof
of the presence of man in the Quaternary
deposits which correspond with the oldest
river-drifts of Europe has been made
quite recently. Mr. Abbott was the first
to discover implements of the usual
palaeolithic type in Quaternary gravels of
the river Delaware, near Trenton, in New
Jersey; and since then, as described by
Dr. Wright in his Ice Age in America,
they have been frequently found in
Ohio, Illinois, and other States, in the
old gravels of rivers which carried the
drainage of the great lake district to
the Hudson and the Mississippi, before
the present line of drainage was estab
lished by the Falls of Niagara and
the St. Lawrence. So far the evidence
merely confirms that drawn from similar
finds in the Old World of the existence of
127
the Secondary Age, though doubtless it
stood much higher before it was so greatly
denuded. All along its western flank and
far down into the great valley is an enormous
bed of auriferous gravel, doubtless derived
from the waste of the rocks of the Sierra
during an immense time by old rivers now
buried under their own deposits. While
these deposits were going on, a great out
burst of volcanoes occurred on the western
slope of the Sierra, and successive sheets
of tuffs, ashes, and lavas are interstratified
with the gravels, while finally an immense
flow of basalt covered up everything. The
country then presented the appearance of
a great plain, sloping gradually downwards
from the Sierra according to the flow of
the basalt and lavas. This plain was in
its turn attacked by denudation and worn
down by the existing main rivers into
valleys and gorges, and by their tributary
streams into a series of flat-topped hills,
capped by basalt and divided from one
another by deep and narrow canons.
SECTION OF GREAT CALIFORNIAN LAVA STREAM, CUT THROUGH BY RIVERS.
a, a, basalt; b, b, volcanic ashes; c, c, tertiary; d, d, cretaceous rocks; R, R, direction
of the old river-bed ; R, R, sections of the present river-beds.
(Le Conte, from Whitney.)
man in the early glacial or Quaternary
times, already widely diffused, and every
where in a similar condition of primitive
savagery, and chipping his rude stone
implements into the same forms. But if
we cross the Rocky Mountains into
California, we find evidence which
apparently carries us further back and
raises new questions.
The whole region west of the Rocky
Mountains is comparatively recent. The
coast range which now fronts the Pacific
is composed entirely of marine Tertiary
strata, and, when these were deposited, the
waves of the Pacific beat against the flanks
of the Sierra Nevada. At length the coast
range was upheaved, and a wide valley
left between it and the Sierra of over 400
miles in length, and with an average breadth
of seventy-five miles. The Sierra itself is old
land, the lower hills consisting of Triassic
slates and the higher ranges of granite;
and it has never been under water since
The immense time required for this latest
erosion may be inferred when it is stated
that, where the Columbia river cuts through
the axis of the Cascade Mountains, the pre
cipitous rocks on either side, to a height of
from 3,000 to 4,000 feet, consist of this late
Tertiary or Post-Tertiary basalt, and that
the Deschutes river has been cut into the
great basaltic plain for 140 miles to a depth
of from 1,000 to 2,500 feet, without reach
ing the bottom of the lava. The American
and Yuba valleys have been lowered from
800 to 1,500 feet, and the gorge of the
Stanislas river has cut through one of these
basalt-covered hills to the depth of 1,500
feet.
The enormous gorge of the Colorado has
cut its canons for hundreds of miles from
3,000 to 6,000 feet deep through all the
orders of sedimentary rocks from the Tertiaries down, and from 600 to 800 feet into
the primordial granite below, thus draining
the great lakes which in Tertiary times
�128
HUMAN ORIGINS
occupied a vast space in the interior of
America, which is now an arid desert.
Evidently the gravels which lie below the
basalt, and interstratified with the tuffs and
lavas, or below them, and which belong to
an older and still more extensive denuda
tion, must be of immense antiquity, an
antiquity which remains the same whether
we call it Quaternary or Tertiary. It is in
these gravels that gold is found, and in the
search for it great masses have been re
moved in which numerous stone imple
ments have been discovered.
The great antiquity of those gravels and
volcanic tuffs is further confirmed by the
changes in the flora and fauna which are
proved to have occurred. The animal
remains found beneath the basaltic cap are
very numerous, and all of extinct species.
They belong to the genera rhinoceros,
felis, canis, bos, tapirus, hipparion,
elephas (primigenius), mastodon, and
auchenia, and form an assemblage
entirely distinct from any now living in any
part of North America. Some of the
genera survived into the Quaternary age as
in Europe; but many, both of the genera
and species, are among those most charac
teristic of the Pliocene period.
The flora also, which is well preserved in
the white clays formed from the volcanic
ash, comprises forty-nine species of decidu
ous trees and shrubs, all distinct from those
now living, without a single trace of the
pines, firs, and other conifera which are
now the prevalent trees throughout Cali
fornia.
Tried by any test, therefore, of fauna,
flora, and of immensely long deposit before
the present drainage and configuration of
the country had begun to be established,
Professor Whitney’s contention that the
auriferous gravels are of Tertiary origin
seems to be fully established. It can only
be met by obliterating all definite distinc
tion between the Quaternary and the Plio
cene, and adding to the former all the time
subtracted from the latter. And even if we
apply this to the physical changes, it would
upset all our standards of geological for
mations characterised by fossils, to suppose
that a fauna comprising the elotherium,
hipparion, and auchenia could be properly
transferred to the Quaternary. In fact, no
one would have thought of doing so if
human implements and remains had not
been found in them.
The discovery of such implements was
first reported in 1862, and since then a
large number have been found, but their
authenticity has been hotly contested. The
most common were stone mortars, very
like those of the Indians of the present
day, only ruder; and it was objected, first,
that they were ground and not chipped,
and therefore belonged to the neolithic
age; secondly, that they might have slipped
down from the surface or been taken down
by miners. The difficulty in meeting these
objections was that the implements had
been found not by scientific men in situ,
but by ignorant miners, who were too keen
in the pursuit of gold to notice the location
of the find, and only knew that they
had picked them out in sorting loads of
the gravels, and generally thrown them
aside. They had occurred in such a
number of instances, over such wide
areas, and with such a total absence of
any motive on the part of the miners to
misrepresent or commit a fraud, that the
cumulative evidence became almost irresis
tible ; and we cannot sum it up better than
in the words of the latest and best authority,
Professor Wright, in an article in the
Century of April, 1891, which is the more
important because only two years pre
viously, in his Ice Age in North America,
he had still expressed himself as retaining
doubts.
He says : “ But so many of such dis
coveries have been reported as to make it
altogether improbable that the miners were
in every case mistaken ; and we must
conclude that rude stone implements do
actually occur in connection with the bones
of various extinct animals in the undis
turbed strata of the gold-bearing gravel.”
Fortunately, the mo^c important human
remains have been found in what may be
considered as a test case, where it was
physically impossible that they could have
been introduced by accident, and where
the evidence of a common workman as to
the locality of the find is as good as that
of a professed geologist.
During the deposition of the auriferous
gravel on the western flanks of the Sierra
there were great outbursts of volcanoes
near the summits of that range. Towards
their close a vast stream of lava flowed
down the shallow valley of the ancient
Stanislas river, filling up its channel for
forty miles or more, and covering its exten
sive gravel deposits. The modern Stanislas
river has cut across its former bed, and
now flows in a gorge from 1,200 to 2,000
feet deeper than the old valley which was
filled up by the lava stream, the surface of
which appears as a long flat-topped ridge,
�TERTIARY MAN
129
A second object exhibited was a pestle
known as Table Mountain. In many places
the sides of the valley which originally found by Mr. King, who was at one time
General Director of the United States
directed the course of the lava have been
Geological Survey, and is an expert whose
worn away, so that the walls on either side
present a perpendicular face one hundred judgment on such matters should be final,
and who had no doubt that the gravel in
feet or more in height.
The gravel of the ancient Stanislas river which he found the object must have lain
being very auriferous, great efforts have in place ever since the lava came down and
been made to reach the portion of it which covered it. The third object was a mortar
lies under Table Mountain. Large sums taken from the old gravel at the end of a
have been spent in sinking shafts from the tunnel driven diagonally 175 feet from the
top through the lava cap, and tunnelling western edge of the basalt cliff, and ioo
into it from the sides. Great masses of feet or more below the surface of the flat
gravel have been thus quarried and re top of Table Mountain, as supported by
evidence entirely satisfactory to Professor
moved, and a considerable amount of gold
Wright, who had just visited the locality
obtained, though in most cases not enough
to meet the expenses, and the workings have and cross-examined the principal witnesses.
This may prepare us to consider the case of
been mostly discontinued.
the celebrated Calaveras skull as by no means
It is evident that objects brought from a
an isolated or exceptional one, but antece
great depth below this lava cap must have
dently probable from the number of human
remained there undisturbed since they were
implements found in the same gravels, under
deposited along with the gravels, and that
the same beds of basalt and lava, at Table
the evidence of the simplest miner, who
Mountain and numerous other places.
says he brought them with a truck-load
of dirt from the
bottoms of shafts,
or ends of tunnels
pierced for hun
dreds of feet
through the solid
lava, is, if he speaks
the truth, as good
as if a scientist
SECTION ACROSS TABLE MOUNTAIN, TUOLUMNE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
had found them
in situ. And this
b, lava; G, gravel; S, slate ; R, old river-bed ; R', present river-bed.
evidence, together
(Le Conte.)
with that of mining
Professor Wright, in the article already
inspectors and respectable residents who
referred to, which is the latest on the sub
took an interest in scientific subjects,
has been forthcoming in such a large ject, and made after his visit to California
number of instances as to preclude any in 1890, which he says enabled him to add
supposition of mistake or fraud. Three of some important evidence, sums up the facts
the latest of these discoveries were reported as follows :—“In February, 1866, Mr. Mattenson, a
at the meeting of the Geological Society of
America on the 30th December, 1890, and blacksmith living near Table Mountain, in
the county Calaveras, employed his spare
they seem to be supported by very firstearnings in driving a tunnel under the por
class evidence.1 Mr. Becker, one of the
staff of the United States Geological Sur tion of the Sierra lava flow known as Bald
vey, to whom has been committed the re Hill. At a depth of 1.50 feet below the sur
face, of which 100 feet consisted of solid
sponsible work of reporting upon the goldbearing gravels of California, exhibited to lava, and the last fifty of interstratified beds
of lava, gravel, and volcanic tuffs, he came
the Society a stone mortar and some arrow
or spear-heads, with the sworn statement upon petrified wood, and an object which he
from Mr. Neale, a well-known mining at first took for the rpot of a tree, thickly
encased in cemented gravel. But seeing
superintendent, that he took them with his
own hands from undisturbed gravel in a that -what he took for one of the roots was a
lower jaw, he took the mass to the surface,
mine of which he had charge under the
and gave it to Mr. Scribner, the agent of
lava of Table Mountain.
an express company, and still living in the
1 Professor Wright in Century, April, 1891.
neighbourhood, and highly respected. Mr.
K
�13°
HUMAN ORIGINS
Scribner, on perceiving what it was, sent it
“ Even these Californian remains do not
to Dr. Jones, a medical gentleman of the exhaust the proofs of man’s great antiquity
highest reputation, now living at San in America, since we have the record of
Francisco, who gave it to Professor Whitney, another discovery which indicates that he
who visited the spot, and after a careful may, possibly, have existed at an even more
inquiry was fully satisfied with the evidence. remote epoch. Mr. E. L. Berthoud has
Soon afterwards Professor Whitney took described the finding of stone implements
the skull home with him to Cambridge, of a rude type in the Tertiary gravels of
where, in conjunction with Dr. Wynam, he the Crow Creek, Colorado. Some shells
subjected it to a very careful investigation, were obtained from the same gravels,
to see if the relic itself confirmed the story which were determined by Mr. T. A.
told by the discoverer, and this it did to
Conrad to be species which are ‘ certainly
such a degree that, to use ProfessorWright’s not older than Older Pliocene, or possibly
words, the circumstantial evidence alone
Miocene.’ ”
places its genuineness beyond all reason
I do not dwell on the discoveries which
able question.”
have been made of human implements and
This is not a solitary instance, for the skeletons in the cases of Minas Geraes in
Professor reports, as the result of his
Brazil, and in the drift or loess of the
personal inquiries only a year ago in the pampas of Buenos Ayres; for, although
district, that “the evidence that human associated with extinct animals usually
implements and fragments of the human considered as Pliocene, there is a differ
skeleton have been found in the stratum ence of opinion among competent geolo
of gravel underneath the lava of Table
gists whether the deposits are really
Mountain seems to be abundantly Tertiary or only early Quaternary.
sufficient”; among others a fragment of a
_ There is, however, one discovery, made
skull which came up with a bucketful of since the date of these above recorded, of
dirt from 180 feet below the surface of human work below the great basalt cap of
Table Mountain at Tuolumne.
North-Western America, brought up from
Dr. Wallace, in an article on “The a great depth of underlying gravels and
Antiquity of Man in North America,” in sands of a silted-up lake, formerly forming
the Nineteenth Century of November, 1887, part of the course of the Snake river at
thus enumerates some of the principal Nampa in Idaho, which is as-startling in its
instances :—
way as that of the Calaveras skull. The
“ In Tuolumne county from 1862 to 1865 following account of it is given on the
stone mortars and platters were found in authority of Professor Wright, who, having
the auriferous gravel along with bones and visited the locality in the summer of 1890,
teeth of mastodon ninety feet below the states that he found “ abundant confirma
surface, and a stone muller was obtained tory evidence”:—
in a tunnel driven under Table Mountain.
The Nampa image was brought up in
In 1870 a stone mortar was found at a boring an Artesian well, at Nampa in Ada
depth of sixty feet in gravel under clay and county, Idaho, through a lava-cap fifteen
‘ cement,’ as the hard clay with vegetable feet thick, and below it about 200 feet of
remains (the old volcanic ash) is called by the quicksands and clays of a silted-up
the miners. In Calaveras county- from lake, formed in a basin of the Snake river,
i860 to 1869 many mortars and other stone which joins the Columbia river, and flows,
implements were found in the gravels into the Pacific, forming part, therefore, of
under lava beds, and in other auriferous the same geographical and drainage system
gravels and clays at a depth of 150 feet. as the Californian gravels. At this depth
In Amador county stone mortars have been the borers came upon a stratum of
found in similar gravel at a depth of forty coarse sand, mixed with clay balls at the
feet. In Placer county stone platters and top, and resting at the bottom on an
dishes have been found in auriferous gravels ancient vegetable soil. The image was
from ten to twenty feet below the surface. found in the lower part of this coarse sand.
In Nevada county stone mortars and The borer, or liner of the well, was a sixground discs have been found from fifteen inch iron tube, and the drill was only used
to thirty feet deep in the gravel. In Butte in piercing the lava, while the sands below
county similar mortars and pestles have it were all extracted by a sand pump. Mr.
been found in the lower gravel beneath
King, a respectable citizen of Nampa, who
lava beds and auriferous gravel; and many was boring the well, states that he had
other similar finds have been recorded........ been for several days closely watching the
�TERTIARY MAN
progress of the well and passing through
his hands the contents of the sand pump
as they were brought up, so that he had
hold of the image before he suspected what
it was. Mr. Cumming, superintendent of
that portion of the Union Pacific Railway,
a highly-trained graduate of Harvard
College, was on the ground next day and
fiftw the image, and heard Mr. King’s
account of the discovery ; and Mr. Adams,
the president of the railway, happening to
pass that way about a month later, he
brought it to the notice of some of the
foremost geologists in the United States.
The image was sent to Boston by Mr.
King, who gave every information, and it
was found to be modelled from stiff clay,
like that of the clay balls found in the
jsand, slightly, if at all, touched by fire, and
^©Crusted like those balls with grains of
oxide of iron, which Professor Putnam
FRONT VIEW.
BACK VIEW.
THE NAMPA IMAGE—ACTUAL SIZE.
{Drawn from the object by J. D. Woodward.)
considers to be a conclusive proof of its
great antiquity. Mr. Emmons, of the
State Geological Society, gives it as his
■Opinion that the strata in which this image
is said to have been found is older by far
than any others in which human remains
have been discovered, unless it be those
taider Table Mountain, in California, from
•which came the celebrated Calaveras skull.
So much for the authenticity of the dis
covery, which seems unassailable; but now
-comes the remarkable feature of it, which,
■to a great extent, revolutionises our con
ception of this early palaeolithic age. The
image, or rather statuette, which is scarcely
an inch and a-half long, is by no means a
rede object, but, on the contrary, more
.artistic, and a better representation of the
human form than the little idols of many
comparatively modern and civilised people,
such as the Phoenicians. It is, in fact, very
like the little statuettes so abundantly found
in the neighbourhood of the old temple
pyramids of Mexico, which are generally
believed to be not much older than the
date of the Spanish Conquest.
In the face of this mass of evidence, from
both the Old and New Worlds, there
appears to be no warrant for further
question as to the existence of man in
Tertiary times. But we must accept with
it conclusions which are much opposed to
preconceived opinions. In the two bestauthenticated instances in which human
skulls have been found in presumably
Tertiary strata—those of Castenedolo and
Calaveras—it is distinctly stated that they
present no unusual appearance, and do not
go nearly as far in a brutal or pithecoid
direction as the Quaternary skulls of
Neanderthal and Spy, or as those of many
existing savage races. The Nampa image
also appears to show the existence of
considerable artistic skill at a period which,
if notTertiary, must be of immense antiquity.
How can this be reconciled with the theory
of evolution and the descent of man from
some animal ancestor common to him and
the other quadrumana ? Up to a certain
point—-viz., the earliest Quaternary period,
the evidence of progression seems fairly
satisfactory. _ If we take the general
average of this class of skulls as compared
with modern skulls, we find them of smaller
brain-capacity, thicker and flatter, with
prominent frontal sinuses, receding fore
heads, projecting _ muzzles, and weaker
chins. The brain is decidedly smaller, the
average being 1,150 cubic centimetres as
compared with 1,250 in Australians and
Bushmen, and 1,600 in well-developed
Europeans ; and of this smaller capacity a
larger proportion is contained in the
posterior part.1 Other parts of the skeleton
will tell the same story, and in many of the
earliest and most extreme instances, as
those of Neanderthal and Spy, a very
decided step is made in the direction of the
“ missing link.”
But if we accept the only two specimens
known of the type of Tertiary man, the
skulls of Castenedolo and Calaveras, which
are supported by such extremely strong evi
dence, it would seem that as we recede in
time, instead of getting nearer to the
“missing link,” we get further from it.
This, and this alone, throws doubt on evi
dence which would otherwise seem to be
1 Quatrefages and Hamy, Crania Ethnica.
�HUMAN ORIGINS
132
irresistible, and without a greater number
of well-authenticated confirmations we must
be content to hold our judgment, as to the
existence of man in the Tertiary period in
either hemisphere, to a certain extent in
suspense. But this extends only to the type
of man as shown by these two skulls, and
does not at all affect the fact that an ances
tral type of man did exist in the Pliocene
and Miocene periods. This is established
beyond reasonable doubt by the numerous
instances in which chipped implements and
cut bones have been found by experienced
observers, and pronounced genuine by the
highest authorities.
All we can say with any certainty is that,
if the Darwinian theory of evolution applies
to man, as it does to all other animals, and
specially to man’s closest kindred, the other
quadrumana, the common ancestor must be
sought very much further back in the
Eocene, which inaugurated the reign of
placental mammalia, and in which the
primitive types of so many of the later
mammals have been found. Nor will this
appear incredible when we consider that
man’s cousins, the apes and monkeys, first
appear in the Miocene, or even earlier in
the Eocene, and become plentiful in the
later Pliocene, and that even anthropoid
apes, and one of them, the Hylobates,
scarcely if at all distinguishable from the
Gibbon of the present day, have been found
at Sansan and other Miocene deposits in
the south of France, at (Eningen in Swit
zerland, and Pikermi in Greece.
CHAPTER XI.
RACES OF MANKIND
Monogeny or Polygeny — Darwin — Existing
Races—Colour—Hair—Skulls and Brains—
Dolichocephali and Brachycephali—Jaws and
Teeth—Stature—Other Tests—Isaac Taylor
— Prehistoric Types in Europe— Huxley’s
Classification—Language no Test of Race—■
Egyptian Monuments—Human and Animal
Races unchanged for 6,000 years—Neolithic
Races—Palaeolithic—Different Races of Man
as far back as we can trace—Types of Canstadt, Cro-Magnon, and Furfooz—Oldest
Races Dolichocephalic—Skulls of Neander
thal and Spy—Simian Characters—Objections
—Evidence confined to Europe—American
Man—Calaveras Skull—Tertiary Man—Skull
of Castenedolo—-Leaves Monogeny or Poly
geny an Open Question—Arguments on each
side—Old Arguments from the Bible and
Philology exploded—What Darwinian Theory
requires—Animal Types traced up to the
Eocene—Secondary Origins-—Dog and Horse
—Fertility of Races—Question of Hybridity
—Application to Man—Difference of Consti
tution^—Negro and White—Bearing on Ques
tion of Migration—Apes and Monkeys—
Question of Original Locality of Man—Asiatic
Theory— Eur-African —American —Arctic —
None based on sufficient Evidence—Mere
Speculations—Conclusion—Summary of Evi
dence as to Human Origins.
The immense antiquity of man upon earth
having been established, other questions
of great interest present themselves as to
the races of mankind. These questions
no longer depend on positive facts of
observation, like the discovery of palaeo
lithic remains in definite geological deposits,
but on inference and conjecture from these
and other observed facts, most of which are
of comparatively recent date and hardly
extend beyond the historical period.
Thus, if we start with the existing state
of things, we find a great variety of human
races actually prevailing, located in different
parts of the world, and of fundamental
types so dissimilar as to constitute what in
animal zoology would often be called sepa
rate species,1 and yet fertile among them
selves, and so similar in many physical and
mental characters as to infer an origin from
common ancestors. And we can infer from
history that this was so to a great extent
6,000 years ago, and that the length of time
has been insufficient to produce any marked
changes, either in physical or linguistic
types, of the different fundamental races.
Was this always so, and what inference
can be drawn as to the much-disputed ques
tion between monogeny and polygeny—that
is, between the theory of descent from a
single pair in a single locality, and that of
descent from several pairs, developed in
different localities by parallel, but not
strictly identical, lines of evolution ?
1 Topinard, one of the latest and best authori
ties, says in his book on Anthropology : “We
have seen the marked difference between woolly
and straight hair, between the prognathous and
the orthognathous, the jet black of the Yoloff
and the pale complexion of the Scandinavian,
between the ultra-dolichocephalic Esquimaux or
New Caledonian and the ultra-brachycephalic
Mongolian. But the line of separation between
the European and the Bosjesman, as regards
these two characters, is, in a morphological
point of view, still wider, as much so as between
each of the anthropoid apes, or between the dog
and the wolf, the goat and the sheep.”
�RACES OF MANKIND
This is a question which cannot be
decided off-hand by a priori considerations.
No doubt Darwinism points to the evolu
tion of all life from primitive forms, and
ultimately, perhaps, from the single
simplest form of life in the cell. But
this does not necessarily imply that the
more highly specialised, and what may be
called the secondary, forms of life, have all
originated from single secondary centres,
at one time and in one locality.
On the contrary, we have the authority
of Darwin himself for saying that this is
not a necessary consequence of his theory.
In a letter to Bentham he says : “ I dispute
whether a new race or species is necessarily
or even generally descended from a single
or pair of parents. The whole body of
individuals, I believe, became altered
together—like our race-horses, and like all
domestic breeds which are changed through
unconscious selection by man.”
The problem is, therefore, an open one,
and can be solved (or rather attacked, for in
the present state of our knowledge a com
plete solution is probably impossible) only
by a careful induction from ascertained
facts, ascending step by step from the
present to the past, from the known to the
unknown.
The first step is to have a clear idea of
what actually exists at the present moment.
There are an almost endless number of
minor varieties of the human race, but
none of them of sufficient importance to
imply diversity of origin, with the excep
tion of four, or at the most, five or six
fundamental types, which stand so widely
apart that it is difficult to imagine that
they are all descended from a common
pair of ancestors. These are the white,
yellow, and black races of the Old World,
the copper-coloured of America, and
perhaps the olive-coloured of Malaysia
and Polynesia, and the pygmy races of
1 Africa and Eastern Asia. The difficulty of
supposing these races to have all sprung
from a single pair will at once be apparent
if we personify this pair under the name of
Adam for the first man and Eve for the
first woman, and ask ourselves the ques
tion : What do we suppose to have been
their colour ?
But colour alone, though an obvious,
is by no means the sole, criterion of
difference of race.
The evidence is
cumulative, and other equally marked and
persistent characters, both of physical
Structure and of physiological and mental
peculiarities, stand out as distinctly as
133
differences of colour in the great typical
races. For instance, the hair is a per
sistent index of race. When the section
of it is circular, the hair is straight and
lank ; when flattened, woolly; and when
oval, curly or wavy. Now these characters
are so persistent that many of the best
anthropologists have taken hair as the
surest test of race. Everywhere the lank
and straight hair and circular section go
with the yellow and copper-coloured races ;
the woolly hair and flat section with the
black ; and the wavy hair and oval section
with the white races.
The solid framework of the skeleton
also affords very distinctive types of race,
especially where it is looked at in a general
way as applicable to great masses of pure
races, and not to individuals of mixed race,
like most Europeans. The skull is most
important, for it affords the measure of the
size and shape of the brain, which is the
highest organ, and that on which the
differentiation of man from the lower
animals mainly depends. The size of the
brain alone does not always afford a con
clusive proof of mental superiority, for it
varies with sex, height, and other indi
vidual characters, and often seems to
depend more on quality than on quantity.
Still, if we take general averages, we find
that superior and civilised races have
larger brains than inferior and savage
ones. Thus the average brain of the
European is about 1,500 cubic centimetres,
while that of the Australian and Bushman
does not exceed 1,200.
The shape as well as the size of the
skull affords another test of race which is
often appealed to. The main distinction
taken is between dolichocephalic and
brachycephalic, or long and broad skulls.
Here also we must look at general averages
rather than at individuals, for there is often
considerable variation within the same
race, especially among the mesocephalic,
or medium between the two extremes,
which is generally the prevalent form
where there has been much intermixture
of races. But, if we take widely different
types, there can be no doubt that the long
or broad skull is a characteristic and
persistent feature. The formation of the
jaws and teeth affords another important
test. Some races are .what is called prog
nathous—that is, the jaws project, and the
teeth are set in sockets sloping outwards,
so that the lower part of the face approxi
mates to the form of a muzzle ; others are
orthognathous, or have the iaws and teeth
�134
HUMAN ORIGINS
vertical. And the form of the chin seems
to be wonderfully correlated with the
general character and energy of the race.
It is hard to say why, but as a matter of
fact a weak chin generally denotes a weak,
and a strong chin a strong, race or individual.
Thus the chimpanzee and other apes have
no chin; the negro and lower races generally
have chins weak and receding. The races
who, like the Iberians, have been conquered
or driven from plains to mountains have
had poor chins ; while their successive
conquerors of Aryan-speaking race—-Celts,
Romans, Teutons, and Scandinavians—
might almost be classified by the pro
minence and solidity of this feature of the
face. The use of the term “Aryan” as
denoting race is misleading. As Professor
Keane remarks in his valuable treatise on
Man, Past and Present, there is no trace
whatever of the group of communities thus
named, since this has long been merged in
the countless other races on which its
language was imposed. “We can and
must speak of Aryan tongues, and of an
Aryan linguistic family; but of an Aryan
race there can be no further question, since
the absorption of the original stock in a
hundred other races in remote prehistoric
times.” Wherever the term is used through
out this book, it must be thus understood.
Stature is another very persistent feature.
The pygmy races of Equatorial Africa
described by Stanley have remained the
same since the early records of Egypt,
while the races of the north temperate
zone, Gauls, Germans, and Scandinavians,
have from the first dawn of history amazed
the shorter races of the south by their tall
stature, huge limbs, blue eyes, and yellow
hair. Here and there isolated tall races
may be found where the race has become
thoroughly acclimatised to a suitable
environment, as among some negro tribes,
and the Araucanian Indians of Patagonia ;
but, as a rule, the inferior races are short,
the bulk of the civilised races of the world
of intermediate stature, and the great
conquering races of the north temperate
zone decidedly tall.
Other tests are afforded by the shape of
the eye-orbits and nasal bones, and other
characters, all of which agree, in the words
of Isaac Taylor in his Origin of the
Aryans, in “ exhibiting two extreme types
—the African with long heads, long orbits,
and flat hair; and the Mongolian with
round heads, round orbits, and round hair.
The European type is intermediate, the
head, the orbit, and the hair being oval.
In the East of Europe we find an approximation to the Asiatic type ; in the South of
Europe to the African.”
Taking these prominent and already
noted characters as tests, we find four
distinct types among the earliest inhabitants
of Europe, which can be traced from
historic to neolithic times. They consist
of two long-headed and two short-headed
races, and in each case one is tall and
the other short. The dolichocephalic are
recognised everywhere throughout Western
Europe and on the Mediterranean basin,
including North Africa, as the oldest race,
and they are thought still to survive in the
original type in some of the people of
Wales and Ireland and the Spanish
Basques ; while they doubtless form a
large portion, intermixed with other races,
of the blood of the existing populations of
Great Britain and Ireland, of Western and
Southern France, of Spain, Portugal, Sicily,
Sardinia, North Africa, and other Mediter
ranean districts. This is known as the
Iberian race, and it can be traced clearly
beyond history and the knowledge of
metals into the neolithic stone age, and
may possibly be descended from some of
the vastly older palaeolithic types such as
that of Cro-Magnon. The type is every
where a feeble one, of short stature,
dolichocephalic, narrow oval face, orthog
nathic teeth, weak chin, and swarthy
complexion. We have only to compare a
skull of this type with one of ruder and
stronger races, to understand how the
latter must have survived as conquerors in
the struggle for existence in the early ages
of the world, before gunpowder and military
discipline had placed civilisation in a better
position to contend with brute force and
energy. Huxley sums up the latest evidence
as to the distinctive types of these historic
and prehistoric races of Europe as follows:—
1. Blond long-heads of tall stature who
appear with least admixture in Scandinavia,
North Germany, and parts of the British
Islands.
2. Brunette broad-heads of short stature
in Central France, the Central European
Highlands, and Piedmont. These are
identified with the Ligurian race, and their
most typical modern representatives are
the Auvergnats and Savoyards.
3. Mongoloid brunette broad-heads of
short stature in Arctic and Eastern Europe,
and Central Asia, represented by the Lapps
and other tribes of Northern Russia, pass
ing into the Mongols and Chinese of
Eastern Asia.
�RACES OF MANKIND
4. Brunette long-heads of short stature
—the Iberian race.
Huxley adds : “ The inhabitants of the
regions which lie between these five present
the intermediate gradations which might
be expected to result from their inter
mixture. The evidence at present extant
is consistent with the supposition that the
blond long-heads, the brunette broad-heads,
and the brunette long-heads—the Scan
dinavian, Ligurian, and Iberian races—have
existed in Europe very nearly in their
present localities throughout historic times
and very far back into prehistoric times.
There is no proof of any migration of
Asiatics into Europe west of the basin of
the Dnieper down to the time of Attila.
On the contrary, the first great movements
of the European population of which there
is any conclusive evidence are that series
of Gaulish invasions of the East and South
which ultimately extended from North Italy
to Galatia in Asia Minor.” I may add that
in more recent times many of the principal
movements have been from west to east—
viz., of Germans absorbing Slavs, and Slavs
absorbing or expelling Fins and Tartars.
The next question is, how far can we
trace back the existence of the present
widely different fundamental types of man
kind by the light of ascertained and certain
facts ?
The most important of these facts is that
the figures on Egyptian monuments
enable us to say that the existing diver
sities of the races of mankind are not
of recent origin, but have existed un
changed from the dawn of history. The
Egyptians themselves have come down
from the Old Empire, through all the
vicissitudes of conquests, mixtures of races,
changes of religion and language, so little
altered that the fellah of to-day is often the
image of the Egyptians who built the pyra
mids. The wooden statue of an officer of
Chephren, who died some 6,000 years ago
(see Ulus., p. 63), was such a striking por
trait of the village magistrate of to-day
that the Arab workmen christened it the
Sheik-el-Beled.” And these old Egyp
tians knew’ from the earliest times three at
least of the fundamental types of mankind :
the Nahsu, or negroes to the south, who are
represented on the monuments so faithfully
that they might be taken as typical pictures
of the modern negro; the Lebu to the west,
a fair-skinned and blue-eyed white race,
whose descendants remain to this day as
Kabyles and Berbers, in the same localities
of North Africa; and to the east various
135
tribes of Arabs, Syrians, and other Asiatics,
who are always painted of a yellowishbrown colour, and whose features may often
be traced in their modern descendants.
The same may be said of the wild and
domestic animals of the various countries,
which are the same now, unless where sub
sequently imported, as when they were first
known to the ancient Egyptians.
We start, therefore, with this undoubted
fact, that a period of 6,000 or 7,000 years
has been insufficient to make any percep
tible change in the types of pure races,
whether of the animal or of human species.
And doubtless this period might be greatly
extended if we had historical records of the
growth of Egyptian civilisation in the times
prior to Menes, for in the earliest records
we find accounts of wars both with the
Nahsu and the Lebu, implying large popu
lations of those races already existing both
to the south and west of the valley of the
Nile.
These positive dates carry us back so far
that it is of little use to investigate minutely
the differences of races shown by the
remains of the neolithic period. They were
very marked and numerous, but we have no
evidence to show that they were different
from those of more recent times, or that
their date can be confidently said to be much
older than the oldest Egyptian records.
All we can infer with certainty is that,
whether the neolithic period be of longer
or shorter duration, no changes have taken
place in the animal fauna contemporary
with man which cannot be traced to human
agency or other known causes. No new
species have appeared, or old ones disap
peared, in the course of natural evolution,
as was the case during the Quaternary and
preceding geological periods.
The neolithic is, however, a mere drop in
the ocean of time compared with the earlier
periods in which the existence of palaeo
lithic man can be traced by his remains ;
and as far back as we can go we find our
selves confronted by the same fact of a
diversity of races. As we have seen in the
chapter on Quaternary man, Europe, where
alone skulls and skeletons of the palaeo
lithic age have been discovered, affords at
least three very distinct types—that of Cannstadt, of Cro-Magnon, and of Furfooz.
The Cannstadt type, which includes the
men of Neanderthal and Spy, and which
was widely diffused, having been found as
far south as Gibraltar, is apparently the
oldest, and certainly the rudest and most
savage, being characterised by enormous
�HUMAN ORIGINS
136
brow-ridges, a low and receding forehead,
projecting muzzle, and thick bones with
powerful muscular attachments. It is very
dolichocephalic, but the length is due
mainly to the projection of the posterior
part of the brain, the total size of which is
below the average. The Cro-Magnon type,
which is also very old, being contemporary
with the cave-bear and mammoth, is the
very opposite of that of Cannstadt in many
respects. The superciliary ridges are
scarcely marked, the forehead is elevated,
the contour of the skull good, and the
volume of the brain equal or superior to
that of many modern civilised races. The
stature was tall, the nose straight or pro
jecting, and the chin prominent. The only
resemblance to the Cannstadt type is that
they are both dolichocephalic chiefly on
the posterior region, and both prognathous;
but the differences are so many and pro
l’homme
AVANT l’histoire.
(From
found that no anthropologist would say that
one of these races could have been derived
directly from the other. Still less could he
say that the small round-headed race of
Furfooz could have been a direct descen
dant of either of the two former. It is
found in close vicinity with them over an
extensive area, but generally in caves and
deposits which, from their geological situa
tion and associated fauna, point to a later
origin. In fact, if we go by European
evidence alone, we may consider it proved
that the oldest known races were dolichoce
phalic, that the brachycephalic races came
later, and that as long ago as in neolithic
times considerable intercrossing had taken
place, which has gone on ever since, pro
ducing the great variety of intermediate
types which now prevail over a great part
of Europe.
This inference of the priority of the
Cannstadt type is strengthened by its un
doubted approximation to that of the most
savage existing races and of the anthropoid
apes. If we take the skulls and skeletons
of Neanderthal and Spy, and compare them
with those of modern civilised man, we
find that, while they are still perfectly
human, they make a notable approximation
towards a savage and simian type in all
the peculiarities which have been described
by anthropologists as tests. The most
important of all, that of the capacity and
form of the brain, is best illustrated by the
subjoined diagram of the skulls of the
European, the Neanderthal, and the chim
panzee placed in superposition.
It will be seen at a glance that the
Neanderthal skull, especially in the frontal
part, which is the chief seat of intelligence,
is nearer to the chimpanzee than to modern
man. And all the other
characters correspond to
this inferiority of brain.
The enormous super
ciliary ridges; the greater
length of the fore-arm ;
the prognathous jaws,
larger canine teeth, and
smaller chin; the thicker
bones and stronger mus
cular attachments; the
rounder ribs ; the flatter
tibia, and many other
characters described by
palaeontologists, all point
in the same direction, and
take us some considerable
way towards the missing
Debierre.)
link 'which is to connect
the human race with animal ancestors.
Still, there are other considerations
which must make us pause before asserting
too positively that in following Quaternary
man up to the Cannstadt type we are on
the track of original man, and can say with
confidence that by following it up still
further wfc shall arrive at the earlier form
from which man was differentiated. In
the first place, Europe is the only part of
the world where this Cannstadt type has
hitherto been found. We have abundant
evidence from palaeolithic stone implements
that man existed pretty well over the whole
earth in early Quaternary times, but have
hitherto no sufficient evidence from human
remains outside of Europe from which we
can draw any inference as to the type of
man by whom these implements were made.
It is clear that in Europe the oldest races
�RACES OF MANKIND
were dolichocephalic, but we have no
certainty that this was the case in Asia,
in so many parts of which round-headed
races exclusively prevail, and have done so
from the earliest times. Again, we have
no evidence as to the origin of another
of the most strongly-marked types, that
of the Negro, or of the Negrito,
Bushmen, Australian, or other existing
races who approach most nearly to the
simian type. The only evidence we have
of the type of races who were certainly
early Quaternary, and may very possibly
go back to an older geological age than
that of the men of Neanderthal and Spy,
comes from the NewWorld,from California,
Brazil, and Buenos Ayres, and points to a
type not so savage and simian as that of
Cannstadt, but rather to that which charac
terises all the different varieties of American
man, though here also we find evidence of
distinct dolichocephalic and brachycephalic
races from the very earliest times. Another
difficulty in the way of considering the
Cannstadt type as a real advance towards
primitive man and the missing link arises
from the totally different and very superior
type of Cro-Magnon being found so near
it in time, as proved by the existence in
both of the cave-bear, mammoth, and
■other extinct animals. We can hardly
suppose the Cro-Magnon _ type to have
sprung by slow evolution in the ordinary
way of direct succession, from such a very
different type as that of Cannstadt, during
such a short interval of time as a small
portion of one geological period. Again,
it is very perplexing to find that the only
Tertiary skulls and skeletons for which we
possess really strong evidence, those of
Castenedolo, instead of showing, as might
be expected, a still more rude and simian
aspect than that of Cannstadt, show us the
Cannstadt type, indeed, but in a milder and
more human form.
All that can be said with certainty is
that, as far as authentic evidence carries
us back, the ancestral animal, or missing
link, has not been discovered, but that man
already existed from an enormous antiquity,
extending certainly through the Quaternary
into the Pliocene, and probably into the
Miocene period, and that at the earliest
date at which his remains have been found
the race was already divided, as at present,
into several sharply distinguished types.
This leaves the question of man’s ultimate
origin completely open to speculation, and
enables both monogenists and polygenists
to contend for their respective views with
137
plausible arguments, and without fear of
being refuted by facts. Polygeny, or plural
origins, would at first sight seem to be the
most plausible theory to account for the
great diversities of human races actually
existing, which can be shown to have
existed from such an immense antiquity.
And this seems to have been the first guess
of primitive nations, for most of them
considered themselves as autochthonous,
sprung from the soil, or created by their
own native gods. But by degrees this
theory gave place to that of monogeny,
which has been for a long while almost uni
versally accepted by the civilised world.
The cause of this among Christians, Jews,
and Mohammedans hasbeen the acceptance
of the narratives in Genesis, first of Adam
and secondly of Noah, as literally true
accounts of events which actually occurred.
This is an argument which has completely
broken down, and no competent and dis
passionate thinker any longer accepts the
Hebrew Scriptures as a literal and conclu
sive authority on facts of history and
science which lie within the domain of
human reason. The question, therefore,
became once more an open one; but, as the
old orthodox argument for monogeny faded
into oblivion, a new and more powerful one
was furnished by the doctrine of Evolution
as expounded by Darwin. The same argu
ment applies to man as to the rest of the
animal world, that if separate species imply
separate creations, these supernatural crea
tions must be multiplied to such an extent
as to make them altogether incredible ; as,
for instance, 150 separate creations for the
land shells alone of one of the group of
Madeira islands ; while, on the other hand,
genera grade off into species, species into
races, and races into varieties, by such in
sensible degrees as to establish an irresis
tible inference that they have all been deve
loped by evolution from common ancestors.
No one, I suppose, seriously doubts that
this is in the main the true theory of life,
though there may still be some uncertainty
as to the causes and mode of operation,
and of the different steps and stages of this
evolution. Monogeny, therefore, in this
general sense of evolution from some primi
tive mammalian type, may be accepted as
the present conclusion of science for man
as it has come to be for the horse, dog, and
so many other animals which are his con
stant companions. Their evolution can in
many cases be traced up, through succes
sive steps, to some more simple and general
ised type in the Eocene ; and it may be per-
�IJS
HUMAN ORIGINS
mitted to believe that if the whole geological
record could be traced as far back as that
of the horse, in the case of man and the
other quadrumana, their pedigree would be
as clearly made out. This, however, does
not conclude the question, for it is quite
permissible to contend that in the case of
man, as in that of the horse, though the
primary ancestral type in the Eocene may
be one, the secondary types from which
existing races are more immediately derived
may be more than one, and may have been
evolved in different localities. Thus in the
case of the dog it is almost certain that
some of the existing races have been
derived from wolves, and others from jackals
and foxes ; but this is quite consistent with
the belief that all the canine genus have
been evolved from the marsupial Carnivora
of the Eocene, through the Arctocyon, who
was a generalised type, half dog and half
bear. In fact, we have the authority of
Darwin himself, as quoted in the beginning
of this chapter, for saying that this would
be quite consistent with his view of the
origin of species.
Now the controversy between monogenists and polygenists has turned mainly
on these comparatively recent developments
of secondary types. It has been fought to
a great extent before the immense antiquity
of the human race had been established,
and it had become almost certain that its
original starting-point must be sought at
least as far back as in the Eocene period.
The main argument for monogeny has
been that the different races of mankind
are fertile among themselves. This is
doubtless true to a great extent, and shows
that these races have not diverged very
far from their ancestral type. But the
researches of Darwin and his successors
have thrown a good deal of new light on
the question of hybridity. Species can no
longer be looked upon as separated' from
one another and from races by hard-andfast lines, on one side of which is absolute
sterility and on the other absolute fertility;
but rather as blending into one another by
insensible gradations from free intercross
ing to sterility, according as the differences
from the original type became more pro
nounced and more fixed by heredity.
To revert to the case of dogs, we find
free interbreeding between races descended
from different secondary ancestors, such as
wolves, jackals, and foxes, though freer, I
believe, and more permanent as the races
are closer ; but as the specific differences
become more marked the fertility does not
abruptly cease, but . rapidly diminishes.
Thus Buffon’s experiment shows that a
hybrid cross between the dog and the wolf
may be produced and perpetuated for at
least three generations ; on the other hand,
the leporine cross between the hare and
rabbit has no established results ; and we
see in the mule the last expiring trace
of fertility in a cross between species which
have diverged so far in different directions
as the horse and the ass.
The human race repeats this lesson of
the animal world, and shows a graduated
scale of fertility and permanence in crosses,
between different types according as they
are closely or distantly related. Thus, if
we take the two extremes, the blond white
of North temperate Europe and the Negro
of Equatorial Africa, the disposition to
union is almost replaced by repugnance,
which is only overcome under special
circumstances, such as slavery, and by an
absence of women of their own race ; while
the offspring, the mulatto, is everywhere a
feeble folk, with deficient vitality,diminished
fertility, and prone to die out, or revert to
one or other of the original types. But
where the types are not so extremely diver
gent the fertility of the cross increases, as
between the brunette white of Southern
Europe and the Arab or Moor with the
Negro, and of the European with the
native Indian of America.
Perhaps the strongest argument for
polygeny is that derived from the different
constitutions of different races as regards
susceptibility to climatic and other influ
ences.
At present, and as far back as history
and tradition enable us to trace, mankind
has, as in the case of other animals, been
very much restricted to definite geological
provinces. Thus, in the extreme case of
the fair white and the Negro, the former
cannot live and propagate its type south
of the parallel of 40°, or the latter north of
it. This argument was no doubt pushed
too far by Agassiz, who supposed the whole
world to be divided into a number of limited
districts, in each of which a separate
creation both of men, animals, and plants
had taken place suited to the environment.
This is clearly inconsistent with facts, but
there is still some force in it when stripped
of exaggeration, and confined to the three
or four leading types which are markedly
different. Especially it bears on the argu
ment, on which monogenists mainly rely,
of the peopling of the earth by migration
from one common centre. No doubt migra-
�RACES OF MANKIND
139
white, or the white from the Negro. _ To
tion has played a very great part in the
deny the extension of human origins into
diffusion of all animal and vegetable
the Tertiaries is practically to deny
species, and their zoological provinces are
determined very much by the existence of Darwin’s theory of evolution altogether,
or to contend that man is an exception to
insurmountable barriers in early geological
the laws by which the rest of the animal
times. No doubt also man is better
creation have come into existence in the
organised for migration than most other
course of evolution.
terrestrial animals, and history and tradi
The question of the locality in which the
tion show that in comparatively recent times
human species first originated depends also
he has reached the remotest islands of the
very materially on the date assigned for
Pacific by perfectly natural means. But this
human origins. The various speculations
does not meet the difficulty of accounting,
which have been hazarded on this subject
if we place the origin of man from a single
are almost all based on the supposition
pair anywhere in the northern hemisphere,
that this origin took place in comparatively
for his presence in palaeolithic times in
recent times, when geographical and other
South Africa and South America. How
causes were not materially different from
did he get across the equatorial zone, in
those of the present day. It was for ages
which only a tropical fauna, including the
the accepted belief that all mankind were
tropical Negro, can now live and flourish?
descended primarily from a single pair of
Or vice versd, if the original Adam and
ancestors, who were miraculously created
Eve were black, and the Garden of Eden
in Mesopotamia, and secondarily from three
situated in the tropics, how did their
pairs who were miraculously preserved in
descendants migrate northwards, and live
the ark in Armenia. This, of course, never
on the skirts of the ice-caps of the glacial
had any other foundation than the belief
period? Or how did the yellow race, so
in the inspired authority of the Bible ; and
tolerant of heat and cold and of insanitary
when it came to be established that this, as
conditions, and so different in physical and
regards its scientific and prehistoric specu
moral characters from both the whites and
lations, was irreconcilable with the most
the blacks, either originate from them or
certain facts of science, the orthodox
give rise to them ? The nearest congeners
account of the Creation fell with it. The
of man, the anthropoid apes and monkeys,
theory of Asiatic origin was, however, taken
are all catarrhinein the Old World, and all
up on other grounds, and still lingers in
platyrrhine in South America. Why, if all
are descended from the same pair of ances some quarters, mainly among philologists,
who, headed by Max Muller, thought they
tors, and have spread from the same spot by
had discovered in Sanscrit and Zend the
migration ? We can only reconcile the
nearest approach to a common Aryan lan
fact that it is so with the facts of evolution,
guage. Tracing backwards the lines of
by throwing the common starting-points
migration of these people, the Sanscrit
or points of the lines of development much
speaking Hindoos and the Zend-speaking
further back into the Eocene, or even
Iranians, they found them intersecting
further; and if this be true for monkeys,
somewhere about the Upper Oxus, and
why not for man ?
One point seems quite clear, that jumped at the conclusion that the great
elevated plateau of Pamir, the “ roof of the
monogeny is only possible by extending
world,” had been the birthplace of man, as
the date of human origins far back into
it was of so many of the great rivers which
the Tertiaries. On any short-dated theories
flowed from it to the north, south, east, and
of man’s appearance upon earth—-as, for
west. This theory, however, has pretty
instance, that of Prestwich, that palaeolithic
well broken down, since it has been shown
man probably only existed for some
that other branches of the Aryan languages,
20,000 or 25,000 years before the neolithic
specially the Lithuanian, contain more
period—some theory like that of Agassiz,
archaic elements than either Sanscrit or
of separate creations in separate zoological
Zend ; that language is often no conclusive
provinces, follows inevitably.
If the
test of race; that migrations of peoples
immense time from the Miocene to the
have been from . west to east as well
Recent period has been insufficient to
as from east to west ; and that all
differentiate the Hylobates and Dryohistory, prehistoric traditions, and lin
pithecus very materially from the existing
guistic palaeontology point to the prin
anthropoid apes, a period such as 40,000
cipal Aryan-speaking races as having been
or 50,000 years would have gone a very
located in Northern and Central Europe
little way in deriving the Negro from the
�140
HUMAN ORIGINS
and in Central and Southern Russia verymuch as we find them at the present day..
The whole question of place of origin is
very much one of guess-work. The immense
antiquity which on the lowest possible esti
mate can be assigned for the proved exist
ence of man carries us back to a period
when geological, geographical, and climatic
conditions were so entirely different that all
inferences from those of the present period
are useless. For instance, certainly half
the Himalayas, and probably the whole,
were under the sea ; the Pamir and Central
Asia, instead of being the roof of the world,
may have been fathoms deep under a great
ocean; Greenland and Spitzbergen were
types of the north temperate climate best
suited for the highest races of man.
In like manner, language ceases to be an
available factor in any attempt to trace
human origins to their source. It is doubt
less true that at the present day different
fundamental types of language distinguish
the different typical races of the human
family. Thus the monosyllabic type, con
sisting of roots only without grammar,
characterises the Chinese and its allied
races of the extreme east of Asia; the
agglutinative, in which different shades of
meaning were attached to roots by definite
particles glued on to them, as it were, by
prefixes or suffixes, is the type adopted by
most of the oldest and most numerous
races of mankind in the Old World as their
means of conveying ideas by sound; while
in the New World the common type
of an immense variety of languages is
polysynthetic, or an attempt to splutter out
as it were a whole sentence in a single
immensely long word made up of fragments
of separate roots and particles—a type
which in the Old World is confined to the
Euskarian of the Spanish Basque. And at
the head of all, as refined instruments, for
the conveyance of thought, there stand the
two inflectional languages,.the Aryan and
Semitic, by which, though in each case by
a totally different system, roots acquire
their different shades of meaning by
particles, no longer mechanically glued on
to them, but melted down as it were with
the roots, and incorporated into new words
according to definite grammatical rules.
But this carries us back a very little way.
Judging by philology alone, the Chinese,
whose annals go back only to about 3000
B.C., would be an older race than the
Egyptians or Akkadians, whose languages
can be traced at least 2,000 years further
back. And if we go back into prehistoric
and geological times, we are absolutely
ignorant whether the neolithic and palaeo
lithic races spoke these languages, or
indeed had the gift of articulate speech at
all. Some palaeontologists have held that
there was evidence for the oldest palaeo
lithic race being speechless, and have
christened it “Homo alalus”; but this is
based on the fact that a single human
jaw, that of La Naulette, lacks the genial
tubercle, to which one of the muscles of
the tongue is attached, and which is absent
also in anthropoid apes.
It is, however, certain that from the first
man had a certain faculty, like other
animals, of expressing his meaning by
sounds and gestures; but at what particular
stage in the course of human evolution this
faculty ripened into what may be properly
called language is a matter of conjecture.
It may have been in the Tertiary, the
Quaternary, or not until the Recent period.
As Professor Cunningham expounds the
matter in his address at a recent meeting
of the British Association : “In the solu
tion of this vexed' question we have little
solid ground to go upon beyond the material
changes produced in the brain. The struc
tural characters which distinguish the
human brain in the region of the speech
centre constitute one of the leading pecu
liarities of the human cerebral cortex.
They are totally absent in the brain of the
anthropoid ape, and of the speechless
microcephalic idiot.”
All we can say is that, when we first
catch sight of languages, they are already
developed into the present distinct types,
arguing, as in the case of physical types,
either for distinct miraculous creations, or
for such an immensely remote ancestry as
to give time for the fixation of separate
secondary types before the formation of
language. Thus, if we confine ourselves
to the most perfect and advanced, and
apparently therefore^most modern, form of
language of the foremost races of the
world, the inflectional, we find two types,
the Semitic and Aryan, constructed on such
totally different principles that it is im
possible for one to be derived from the
other, or both to be descended from a
common parent. The Semitic device of
expressing shades of meaning by internal
flexion—that is, by ringing the changes of
vowels between three consonants, making
every word triliteral—is fundamentally dif
ferent from the Aryan device for attaining
the same object by fusing roots and added
particles into one new word in which equal
�RACES OF MANKIND
value is attached to vowels and consonants.
We can partly see how the latter may have
been developed from the agglutinative, but
not how the stiff and cramped Semitic can
have been derived either from that or from
the far more perfect and flexible type of the
Aryan languages. It has far more the ap
pearance of being an artificial invention
implying a considerable advance of intel
lectual attainment, and, therefore, of com
paratively recent date. In any case, we
may safely accept the conclusion that there
is nothing in language which assists us in
tracing back human origins into geological
times, or, indeed, much further than the
commencement of history.
.
We are reduced, therefore, to geological
evidence, and this gives us nothing better
than mere probabilities, or rather guesses,
as to the original centre or centres of
human existence upon the earth. . The in
ference most generally drawn is in favour
of the locality where the earliest traces of
human remains have been found, and where
the existence of the nearest allied species,
the apes and monkeys, can be carried back
furthest. This locality is undoubtedly EurAfrica, that is the continent which existed
when Europe and Africa were united by
one or more land connections. And in this
locality the preference must be assigned to
Western Europe and to Africa north of the
Atlas ; in fact, to the portion of this ancient
continent facing the Atlantic and Western
Mediterranean, then an island sea. Thus
far, Central and South-Western France,
Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Algeria, to which
may now be added Java, have afforded the
oldest proofs of the existence of man, and
of the co-existence of anthropoid ages.
Darwin inclined to the view that North
Africa was probably the scene of man’s first
appearance ; and a later authority on the
subject, Brinton, in his Races and Peoples^
gives at length reasons for assigning this to
somewhere in Eur-Africa.
. .
But it must be remembered that this in
ference rests entirely on the fact that the
district in question has been more or less
explored, while the rest of the earth can
hardly be said to have been explored at all
for anything prior to those Quaternary
palaeolithic implements, which prove the
existence of man, already spread over
nearly the whole of the habitable globe.
The foregoing summary of the matter
shows that in our present state of know
ledge all theories of the place, time, and
manner of human origins must remain
speculations. We have proof positive that
141
man was already spread over most parts
of the world in the Quaternary period; and
the irresistible inference that he must have
existed long before is confirmed by con
clusive evidence as to the finding of his
remains and implements in the earliest
Quaternary and latest Pliocene periods, and
by very strong evidence for carrying them
back into the Miocene. Anthropoid apes,
which are similar to man in physical
structure, and, in their limits, are as highly
specialised from any more general and
primitive ancestral form as man himself,
undoubtedly did exist in the Miocene
period, and have come down to us with
comparatively little change. It puzzles the
best anatomists to find any clear distinction
between the present Hylobates and the
Hylobates of the Middle Miocene, while
that between the white man and the Negro
is clear and unmistakeable. Why, then,
should “ Homo ” not have existed as soon
as “ Hylobates,” and why should any pre
possession in favour of man’s recent crea
tion, based mainly on exploded beliefs in
the scientific value of. the myths and
guesses of the earliest civilised nations of
Asia, stand in the way of accepting the
enormous and rapidly-increasing accumu
lation of evidence, tracing back the evolu
tion of the mammal man to the same
course of development as other mammals ?
As regards the course of th is . evolution,
all we know with any certainty is that, as
far as we can trace it back, the human
species was already differentiated
distinct races, and that in all probability
the present fundamental types were already
formed.
In conclusion, I may remark that the
questions as to monogeny or polygeny, and
as to the place of man’s fiist appearance
on earth, lose most of their importance
when it is realised that human oiigms must
be pushed back at least as far as the
Miocene, and probably into the Eocene
period. As long as it was held that no
traces of man’s existence could be found,
as Cuvier held, until the Recent period ; or
even, as some English geologists still con
tend, until the post-glacial, or, at any rate,
the glacial or Quaternary periods, it wasevident that the facts could only be
explained by the theory of a series of
supernatural
interferences..
Agassiz s
theory, or some modification of it, 01
numerous special creations of life at special
centres, as of the Esquimaux and polarbear in Arctic regions, the Negro and
gorilla in the troDics, and so forth.
�142
HUMAN ORIGINS
must be adopted. This theory has
been completely given up as regards
animals, in favour of the Darwinian theory
of evolution by natural causes; and no one
now believes in a multiplicity of miracles
to account for the existence of animal
species. Is man alone an exception to
this universal law, or is he, like the rest of
creation, a product of what Darwinians
call “ Evolution,” and enlightened theo
logians “ the original impress”?
The existing species of anthropoid apes—
the orang, the chimpanzee, and the _goriUn
do not differ more widely from one another
than do many of the extreme types of the
human species. In colour, hair, volume of
brain, form of skull, stature, and a hundred
other peculiarities, the Negro and the
European stand further apart than those
anthropoids do from one anothei'; and no
naturalist, say, from Mars or Saturn, inves
tigating the human family for the first time,
and free from prepossession, would hesitate
to class the white, black, yellow, red, and
perhaps five or six other varieties, as dif
ferent species.
In the case of these anthropoid apes no
one supposes that they were miraculously
created in recent times. On the contrary,
we find their type already fully developed
in the Miocene, and we infer that, like
the horse, camel, and many other existing
mammals, their origin may be traced step
by step backwards to some lower and
generalised type in the Eocene. Who can
doubt that physical man, an animal con
structed almost exactly on the same ana
tomical ground-plan as the anthropoids,
came into existence by a similar process ?
The only answer would be, if it could be
proved, that his existence on earth had
been so short as to make it impossible that
so many and such great specific variations
as now exist, some o'f which have been
proved to have existed early in the Quater
nary period, could have been developed by
natural means and by the slow processes of
evolution. But this is just where the evi
dence fails, and is breaking down more and
more every year and with every fresh dis
covery.
Recent man has given place to Quater
nary man ; post-glacial to inter-glacial and
pre-glacial; and now the evidence for the
existence of man, or of some ancestral form
of man, in the Tertiary period, has accu
mulated to such an extent that there are
few competent anthropologists who any
longer deny it.
But with this extension of time the story
of Human Origins, instead of being an
anomaly and a discord, falls in with the
sublime harmony of the universe, and, there
fore, takes its place in the universal order.
The next R. P. A. Cheap Reprint will be Cotter Morison’s SERVICE OF
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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
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Human origins
Creator
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Laing, Samuel [1812-1897]
Clodd, Edward [1840-1930]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 144 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints
Series number: No. 8
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Published for the Rationalist Press Association. Publisher's advertisements on last two pages. RA 1803 does not have the last two pages. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Watts & Co.
Date
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1903
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RA726
RA1725
RA1803
N429
Subject
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Anthropology
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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 (Human origins), 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
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Text
Language
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English
Anthropology-History
Human Beings-Origins
NSS
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Architecture and Place
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Humanist Library and Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised items from the Humanist Library and Archives telling the story of buildings and spaces occupied by the Conway Hall Ethical Society (formerly the South Place Ethical Society). Also includes several born digital items.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Subject
The topic of the resource
Architecture
Conway Hall (London, England)
South Place Chapel, Finsbury
Mansford, Frederick Herbert (1871-1946)
Language
A language of the resource
English
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Parchment
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lease of 14, 15 and 16 Lambs Conduit Passage, 23 January 1903
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Lease of 14,15,16 Lambs Conduit Passage, (23 January 1903).</p>
<ul><li>(1) Algernon Augustus de Lille Strickland of Eccleston Square, Middx, and 37 Fleet St, City of London, banker, tenant for life under will of Henry Eustatius Strickland who died 9 May 1865</li>
<li>(2) James Smith of 7 Finsbury Square, City of London, gent</li>
</ul><p>(1)-(2) 3 messuages nos. 14,15 and 16 Lambs Conduit Passage.</p>
<p>Term: 21 years</p>
<p>Rent: 120 pa</p>
<p>(2) covenants to insure premises for £3000.</p>
<p>Includes detailed plan of premises and detailed schedule of landlord's fixtures and furniture.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Unknown
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1903
Subject
The topic of the resource
Leases
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SPES/3/1/1/21
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
image/jpeg
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<p>Licenced for digitisation by the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/copyright-orphan-works" target="_blank">Intellectual Property Office</a> under Orphan Works Licence <a href="https://www.orphanworkslicensing.service.gov.uk/view-register/details?owlsNumber=OWLS000073-4" target="_blank">OWLS000073-4</a>.</p>
Lamb's Conduit Passage, Holborn
Strickland, Algernon Augustus de Lille
Strickland, Henry Eustatius