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3 1 DFC W
R.P.A. Cheap Reprints—No. 51 (New Series)
MONASTERY
By JOSEPH McCABE
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��TWELVE YEARS
IN A
MONASTERY
By Joseph McCabe
(Formerly the Very Rev. Father Antony, O.S.F.),
Author of “ Peter Aboard,” “ The Story
of Evolution,” “ Goethe,” etc.
Third and Revised Edition
Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited
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�TRANSLATED BY JOSEPH McCABE.
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�PREFACE
TO THE THIRD EDITION
When this work first appeared, in 1897, the only
aj criticism which the author observed among the many
(columns of press notices was that he would have
done well to refrain for a few years from writing
a about the Church he had abandoned. The painful
?, experiences which are recorded in its later chapters
I
! would not unnaturally suggest that the book must
have been written in an embittered mood. The
implication was, however, inaccurate, and when, in
1903, a second edition was prepared, after the work
had been out of print for five years, very little
change was needed. The author had had the good
fortune, on leaving the Church, to come under the
genial influence of Sir Leslie Stephen, and had
endeavoured to write in the mood of “ good-natured
contempt,” which the great critic recommended to
him. Neither in this nor in any subsequent work
of his will there be found any justification for the
petulant Catholic complaint that the author writes
with “bitterness” or “hatred” of the Roman
Church.
The truth is that, on re-reading the book after
an interval of nine years, for the purpose of pre
paring a popular edition, the moderation of its
temper somewhat surprises the author. The reader
�vi
PREFACE
may judge for himself whether the system depicted
in the following pages has been harshly judged in
the few phrases of censure which have been admitted
into the work. The author himself looks back with
astonishment on features of that system which had
almost faded from his memory, and is amazed to
think that such a system still commands the nominal
allegiance of large numbers of educated men and
refined women. The Rome of history we all know
—the Rome which retained the bandage of ignor
ance about the eyes of Europe for a thousand years,
and, while exhibiting a spectacle of continuous and
unblushing immorality in its most sacred courts,
employed the rack and the stake to intimidate any
man who would venture to impugn its sanctity or
its truth. But there is a widespread feeling that
the Reformation chastened the Church of Rome,
and that at least in the nineteenth and twentieth
century it has ground, whatever its superstitions,
to claim to be one of the greatest spiritual forces
in the world.
This description of the Roman system by one who
had intimate experience of it for many years,
written with cold impartiality at a time when every
feature was still fresh in his memory, must give
ground for reflection to those who would grant
Catholicism some strange preference over the
Reformed Christian Churches. The work is not an
indictment, but a simple description. A distin
guished London priest once told the author that it
had had a considerable influence in checking the
flow of “ converts ” from the English to the Roman
Church. To such “ movements of population ” the
�PREFACE
vii
author is genially indifferent. His aim was solely to
present to those who were interested a candid
account of intimate Roman Catholic life and of the
author’s career as monk, priest, and professor; and
the constant circulation of the book fifteen years
after its first publication, no less than the cordial
welcome extended to it by men so diverse as Sir
John Robinson, Sir Walter Besant, Dr. St. George
Mivart, and Mr. Stead, have encouraged the author
to think that it was interesting in substance and
moderate in temper. Yet, when he looks back upon
that system across sixteen years’ experience of
“ worldly life ”—to use the phrase of his monastic
days—he is disposed to use a harsher language in
characterising its profound hypocrisy and its wilful
encouragement of delusions. More than sixteen
years ago the author looked out, timidly and
anxiously, from the windows of a monastery upon
what he had been taught to call, with a shudder,
the world ”—the world into which an honest
change of convictions now forced him. He has
found a sweeter and happier life, and finer types
of men and women, in that broad world, and now
looks back with a shudder on the musty, insincere,
and oppressive life of the cloister from which he was
happily delivered.
Yet the temptation to add a censorious language
to the book shall be resisted. It remains, in its
third edition, a cold and detached depictment of
modern monasticism, and of so much of the inner
life of the Roman clergy as came within the author’s
knowledge. Considerable revision was needed in
preparing the book for the wider public to which
B 2
�viii
PREFACE
it now appeals, but this has consisted only in some
literary correction of the juvenility of the original
and the substitution for certain technical passages of
material of more general interest. Here and there
the text has been brought up to date, but the author
must confess to a certain indifference to the for
tunes of the Church of Rome which prevents him
from bringing it entirely up to date. The fiction
of the Catholic journalist, that the author hovers
about the fringes of the Church in some mysterious
eagerness to assail it, is too ludicrous for words;
and the grossly untruthful character and low
cultural standard of such Catholic publications
(especially of the “ Catholic Truth Society ”) as are
occasionally sent to him, on account of their lurid
references to himself, deter him from taking such
interest in Romanist literature as he should like to
take. The work must, therefore, be regarded as
a plain statement of personal experience, which, in
the fifteen years of its circulation, has attracted
considerable and most virulent abuse, but no serious
criticism.
J. M.
September, 1912,
�CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAP.
I
II
.
INTRODUCTION
VOCATION
.
.
II
.
.
.
.
.
18
HI
NOVITIATE .
31
IV
STUDENTSHIP
59
81
V
PRIESTHOOD
THE CONFESSIONAL
IOI
VII
A YEAR AT LOUVAIN .
121
VIII
MINISTRY IN LONDON .
146
OTHER ORDERS AND THE I ONDON CLERGY
168
COUNTRY MINISTRY
.
192
SECESSION .
.
VI
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
.
.
.
208
CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM .
224
THE CHURCH OF ROME
239
IX
��TWELVE YEARS IN A
MONASTERY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Monasticism, inseparable as it is from every
advanced religious system, seems to be a direct out
growth from the fundamental religious idea. The
great religions of Asia, Europe, and America, despite
their marked differences in conceiving the ultimate
objects of religious belief, and the distinct racial and
territorial influences that have affected them, have been
equally prolific in monastic institutions; they seem to
have been evoked by the story which is common to
them all. Nor is it strange that that story inspired
such an abdication of earthly joys as the monastic
system embodies. If philosophers have, on their cold
reasonings, been led to despise the changeful forms
for the enduring realities they thought they perceived,
it is not strange that religion should have taught the
same theme with yet deeper effect. Men gazed on
the entrancing vision of a world beyond, until the
attitude of hope and expectancy satisfied them even,
now. In the hermit’s cell or in the cloistered abbey
11
�12
INTRODUCTION
they withdrew from earth and awaited the removal
of the veil.
But the religious mind has entered upon a more
troubled phase of its development. Physical and
economical science have drawn its attention more
eagerly to its present home; a growing self-conscious
ness has made it more critical and reflective; the
outlines of the eternal city are once more fading.
The vision has lost all the sharpness of outline and the
warmth of colour that once made it so potent an
agency in human life. The preacher must speak more
of “the city of men,” and be less, disdainful of its
interests and pleasures. The age of martyrs, the age
of Crusaders, the age of public penance, or even of
private mortification, must hope for no revival. The
sterner dictates of the older supernaturalism must be
explained away as unsuited to our more energetic age,
or as a blunder on the part of a less enlightened
generation.
Hence when, a few years ago, Dr. St. George Mivart
confessed that he looked forward to a revival of the
religious orders of the thirteenth century, he was
greeted with a smile of incredulity outside the narrow
sphere of his own co-religionists. Monasticism was
dying—not in the odour of sanctity. Men visited
the venerable ruins of abbeys and monasteries, and
re-peopled in spirit the deserted cells and dreary
cloisters and roofless chapel with a kindly archaeological
interest; smiled at their capacious refectories and
wine-cellars; dwelt gratefully on the labours of the
Benedictines through the Age of Iron; conjured up
the picturesque life and fervent activity of the Grey
Friars before their corruption; and shuddered at the
�INTRODUCTION
13
zeal of the White Friars in Inquisition days. But
people would as soon have thought to see the dead
bones of the monks re-clothed with flesh as to see
any great revival of their institutions. France and
Portugal have already expelled the monks for ever;
Italy and Spain will probably follow their example
within the next twenty years. And how could one
expect them to prosper in the lands of the Reformers?
In point of fact, however, there has been a revival
of monastic institutions in England, Germany, and
the United States proportionate to the revival of Roman
Catholicism. A hundred years ago England flattered
itself that the monastic spirit—if not Popery itself—
was extinguished for ever within its frontiers: the
few survivors of the old orders were still proscribed,
and crept stealthily about the land in strange disguises.
Then the French refugees surreptitiously reintroduced
it, just as they brought over large quantities of the
hated “ popish baubles ” in their huge boxes, which,
on the king’s secret instructions, passed the custom
house untouched. The long Irish immigration set in,
and the zeal of the aliens kept pace with growing
British tolerance. The removal of Catholic disabilities,
the Oxford movement, and the establishment of the
hierarchy followed in quick succession, and, as Catholi
cism spread rapidly through the land, the Continental
branches of the monastic orders grasped the oppor
tunity of once more planting colonies on the fruitful
British soil.
At the present day every order is represented in
England and America, and the vast army of monks
and nuns is tens of thousands strong. The expulsions
from France and Portugal are increasing the number
�14
INTRODUCTION
yearly. From train and road one sees the severe
quadrangular structures springing up on the hillsides
and in the quiet valleys as in days of old. Any
important ecclesiastical function in England or the
States attracts crowds of monks in their quaint
mediaeval costumes. After three long centuries they
have started from their graves, and are walking
amongst us once more.
It is true that the fact is not wholly realised outside
their own sphere, for the monks have fallen under
the law of evolution. The Benedictine does not now
bury himself with dusty tomes far from the cities of
men; he is found daily in the British Museum and
nightly in comfortable hotels about Russell Square.
The Grey Friar, erstwhile (and at home even now)
bareheaded and barefooted, flits about the suburbs in
silk hat and patent leather boots, and with silver
headed cane. The Jesuit is again found everywhere,
but in the garb of an English gentleman. Still, what
ever be their inconsistency, they come amongst us with
the old profession, the archaic customs and costumes,
of their long-buried brethren.
Their reappearance has provoked several contro
versies of some interest. When the monks last
vanished from the stage in England they left behind
them a dishonourable record which their enemies were
not slow to publish. Are modern monasteries and
convents the same whited sepulchres as their pre
decessors, on whom the scourge of the Reformation
fell so heavily? A strong suspicion is raised against
them by their former history; the suspicion is con
firmed by a number of “ escaped ” monks and nuns
who have traversed the land proclaiming that such
�INTRODUCTION
15
is the case, and it is not allayed by the impenetrable
secrecy of modern monastic life.
One of the least satisfactory features of the con
troversy that has arisen is that the disputants on both
sides are, as a rule, entirely ignorant of the true
condition of monasteries. The Catholic layman, to
whom the task of defending them is usually com
mitted, generally knows little more of the interior and
regime of English monasteries than he does of those
of Thibet. The monks preserve the most jealous
secrecy about their inner lives; their constitutions
strictly forbid them to talk of domestic matters to
outsiders, and their secular servants are enjoined a
like secrecy with regard to the little that falls under
their observation. Roman Catholics who live under the
very shadow of monasteries for many years are usually
found, in spite of a most ardent curiosity, to be com
pletely ignorant of the ways of conventual life. The
Protestant is, of course, not more enlightened. And it
must be stated that the pictures offered to the public
by impartial and liberal writers are not wholly trust
worthy. Sir Walter Besant once described to me a
visit of his to a Benedictine monastery for the purpose
of giving colour to his “ Westminster.” The life was '
very edifying ; the fathers had, of course, been “ sitting
for their portrait.” I remember an occasion when
Dr. Mivart spent twenty-four hours at our Franciscan
monastery for the purpose of describing our life in one
of the magazines. We were duly warned of his coming,
and the portrait he drew of us was admirable.
In such circumstances there is, perhaps, occasion for
an ex-monk to contribute his personal experiences.
The writer, after spending twelve years in various
�16
INTRODUCTION
monasteries of the Franciscan Order, found himself
compelled in the early part of 1896 to secede from
the Roman Catholic priesthood. During those years
he acquired a large experience of Catholic educational,
polemical, and administrative methods, and of the
monastic life, and it may not be inopportune to set
it forth in simple narrative.
The religious Order to which I belonged is a revival
of the once famous Province of Grey Friars, the
English section of the Order of St. Francis. At the
beginning of the thirteenth century, immediately after
the foundation of the Order, Agnellus of Pisa success
fully introduced it into England. Even after the
Reformation a few friars lived in the country in disguise
until the nineteenth century. Then occurred the
remarkable change in the fortunes of the Church of
Rome. The very causes which were undermining the
dominion of the Papacy in Italy, Spain, and France—
the growth of a sceptical and critical spirit, and the
broadening of the older feeling for dogma—reopened
England and Germany, and opened the United States,
to the Roman missionaries. The Belgian and French
friars quickly planted colonies in England, and the
German and Italian provinces (each national branch
of the Order is called “ a province ”) founded the
Order of St. Francis in the United States. The dis
persion of the Irish Catholics through the Englishspeaking world coincided in quite a dramatic fashion
with the new opportunity, and before the end of the
nineteenth century the Franciscans had become fairly
numerous.
Other monastic orders and religious congregations
advanced with the same rapidity. The Jesuit Society
�INTRODUCTION
17
has enjoyed its customary prosperity : the Benedictine,
Dominican, Carmelite, and Carthusian Orders are also
well represented, together with the minor congrega
tions—Passionists, Marists, Redemptorists, Oblates,
Servites, &c., and the infinite variety of orders and
congregations of women. In the following pages I
shall give such items of interest concerning them (and
the Church of Rome at large) as may have fallen under
my experience. As the narrative follows, for the sake
of convenience, the course of the writer’s own life,
it is necessary to commence with the means of recruit
ing the religious orders and the clergy in general.
�CHAPTER II
VOCATION
In an earlier age the “ vocation ” to a monastic life
was understood to have an element of miracle, and
there are psychologists of our time who affect at least
to find a fascinating problem in the religious “ con
version.” It may be said at once that the overwhelm
ing majority of calls to the monastic life have not the
least interest in either respect. The romantic con
versions of the days of faith are rare events in our
time. Monasteries and nunneries are no longer the
refuges of converted sinners, of outworn debauchees,
of maimed knights-errant, or of betrayed women.
One does not need the pen of a Huysman to describe
the soul en route to the higher life of the religious
world. The classes from which monasticism draws jts
adherents to-day are much less romantic, and much
less creditable, it must be confessed.
Nine-tenths of the religious and clerical vocations
of the present day are conceived at the early age of
fourteen or fifteen. As a general rule the boy is fired
with the desire of the priesthood or the monastery pre
cisely as he is fired with the longing for a military
career. His young imagination is impressed with the
dignity and the importance of the priest’s position,
his liturgical finery, his easy circumstances, his unJ8
�VOCATION
19
usually wide circle of friends and admirers. The
inconveniences of the office, very few of which he
really knows, are no more formidable to him than the
stern discipline and the balls and bayonets are to the
martial dreamer; the one great thorn of the priest’s
crown—celibacy—he is utterly incapable of appreciat
ing. So he declares his wish to his parents, and they
take every precaution to prevent the lapse of his
inclination. In due time, before .the breath of the
world can sully the purity of his mind—that is to say,
before he can know what he is about to sacrifice—he
is introduced into the seminary or monastery, where
every means is employed to foster and strengthen his
inclination until he shall have bound himself for life
by an irrevocable vow.
That is the ordinary growth of a vocation to the
clerical state to-day. There are exceptions, but men
of maturer age rarely seek admission into the cloister
now. Occasionally a “ convert ” to Rome in the first
rush of zeal plunges headlong into ascetical excesses.
Sometimes a man of more advanced years will enter a
monastery in order to attain the priesthood more
easily; monastic superiors are not unwilling, especially
if a generous alms is given to a monastery, to press
a timid aspirant through the episcopal examinations
(which are less formidable to monks), and then allow
him, with a dispensation from Rome, to pass into the
ranks of the secular clergy. There are cases, it is
true, when a man becomes seriously enamoured of the
monastic ideal, and seeks admission into the cloister;
rarely, however, does his zeal survive the first year
of practical experience.
Apart from such exceptional cases, monasteries and
�20
VOCATION
seminaries receive their yearly reinforcements from
boys of from fourteen to fifteen years. Nothing could
be more distant from the Roman Catholic practice
than the Anglican custom of choosing the Church at
an age of deliberation, during or after the university
career. The Catholic priesthood would be hopelessly
impoverished if that course were adopted. The earliest
boyish wish is jealously consecrated, for Catholic
parents are only too eager to contribute a member to
the ranks of the clergy, and ecclesiastical authorities
are only too deficient in agreeable applications for the
dignity. The result is that, instead of a boy being
afforded opportunities of learning what life really is
before he makes a solemn sacrifice of its fairest gifts,
he is carefully preserved from contact with it through
fear of endangering his vocation. Too often, indeed,
he is unduly influenced by the eagerness of his rela
tives, he enters a seminary or a convent for their
gratification or glorification, and, if he has not the
courage to return, to the disappointment and mortifica
tion of his friends, he bears for the rest of his life a
broken or a depraved heart under his vestments of silk
and gold. For it must be remembered that before he
reaches what is usually considered to be the age of
deliberation he is chained for life to his oar, as will
appear in the next chapter.
There was no trace of undue family influence in
my own case, but as my vocation was typical in its
banality, a few words on it will illustrate the theme.
My boyhood and early youth were spent under the
shadow of a beautiful Franciscan church at Man
chester. I have a distinct recollection that, in spite
of my eagerness to serve in the sanctuary, my mind
�VOCATION
21
was closed against the idea of joining the fraternity.
The friars frequently suggested it in playful mood,
but I always repulsed their advances. At length a
lay brother 1 with whom I spent long hours in the
sacristy exerted himself to inspire me with a desire
to enter their Order. After many conversations I
yielded to his influence. Twice circumstances inter
vened to prevent me from joining, and I acquiesced in
them as easily as I had done in my “ vocation.” At
length a third attempt was made to arrange my admis
sion, and I rather listlessly gave my name as a pupil
and aspirant to the monastic life. I had been con
scious throughout of merely yielding to circumstances,
to the advice and exhortations of my elders. There
was no definite craving for the life on my part, cer
tainly no “ voice speaking within me ” to which I felt
it a duty to submit. I do not, of course, mean to say
that my subsequent profession was in any way a matter
of constraint. Once within the walls of the monastery,
my mind was seriously and deliberately formed, in so
far as we may regard the reflections of a boy of fifteen
as serious. I am merely describing the manner in
which a religious “ vocation ” is engendered. About
the same time a Jesuit, the late F. Anderdon, S.J.,
made advances to me from another direction; and a
third proposal was made to send me to the diocesan
seminary to study for the secular clergy. There seem
1 The inmates of a monastery are divided into two sharply
distinct categories, clerics (priests and clerical students) and lay
brothers. The latter are usually men of little or no education,
who discharge the menial offices of the community. They are
called lay brothers in contradistinction to the students or cleric
brothers, who, however, familiarly go by their Latin name,
fratres.
�22
VOCATION
to have been no premonitory symptoms in my youthful
conduct of the scandal of my later years.
The
vocations ” of most of my fellow-students,
and of my students in later years, had a similar origin.
They had either lived in the vicinity of a Franciscan
convent, or their parish had been visited by Franciscan
missionaries. Already troubled with a vague desire
for a sacerdotal career, the picturesque brown robe, the
eventful life, and the commanding influence of the
missionary had completed their vision. They felt a
“ vocation ” to the Order of St. Francis ; their parents,
if they were at all unwilling, were too religious to
resist; the missionary was informed (after an unsuc
cessful struggle on the part of the parish priest to get
the boy for the diocesan seminary), and the boy of
thirteen or fourteen was admitted to the monastic
college.
Other religious orders are recruited, as a rule, in the
same way. The more important bodies—the Jesuits,
Benedictines, and Dominicans—have more reliable
sources of supply in their large public schools at Stonyhurst, Douai, and Downside. In those institutions the
thoughts of the more promising pupils can easily be
directed into the higher channels of religious aspiration
by the zealous monks, without any undue influence
whatever. But the minor congregations are sorely
pressed for recruits; many of them, indeed, were glad
to accept the very small fish that ran through even
the net of the Franciscans. Ireland furnishes most of
the recruits to the English orders and clergy.
Missionaries are the principal recruiting sergeants.
Besides holding his “ revival exercises ” for the good
of souls, the missionary has the task of procuring
�VOCATION
23
funds and novices for his monastery; and in propor
tion to his success in this will be his superior’s thought
fulness in appointing him to the more comfortable
missions. For the modern missionary is not so insens
ible to the charms of hospitality as his mediaeval
forerunner was.
The ranks of the secular clergy are recruited in the
same way. Large numbers of boys, usually of the
middle and poorer classes, are drafted annually into
the preparatory seminaries, to be preserved jealously
in their vocation if they have one, or inspired with
one if they have not. Parents and parish priests are
continually on the watch for symptoms of the divine
call, and in the case of clever, quiet boys the desire
is tactfully created.
Finally, a word must be said here of the vocation
of nuns; more will be said of them in the following
chapter. It is true that the proportion of women
who take the veil in maturer years is much larger
than that of men. Whatever may be their ultimate
attitude, it must be admitted that there is a large
amount of earnestness and religious sincerity in the
vocations of women. Still the number of young girls
who are received into nunneries is lamentably high,
and the anxiety shown by nun-teachers to inspire
their pupils with a “ vocation ” is extremely deplor
able. They frequently request priests to secure
aspirants for their congregations, and many a priest
is tempted, out of desire to find favour at the con
vent (an important social distinction), to welcome
the first word that his girl-penitents breathe in the
confessional about a religious vocation. Many priests
develop quite a mania for sending their penitents to
�24
VOCATION
convents. For myself, in my hours of deepest faith
I never found courage to send a girl to a nunnery.
One girl, a penitent of mine, often solicited me about
her vocation. I am thankful to say that I restrained
her, and that no heart is, owing to my action, wearing
itself out to-day in the dreary institutions which we
know as nunneries. It is a fiction of the Catholic
novelist that most nuns are happy in the life they have
chosen.
A conspicuous advantage of this system (from the
ecclesiastical point of view) is that it affords time for
a more extensive and systematic training. If other
Christian sects prefer the more honourable course of
not extending any ecclesiastical sanction whatever to
aspirants until they arrive at a deliberative age, they
must and do suffer in consequence in the training
of their ministry. The divinity lectures which the
Anglicans follow are but a feeble substitute for the
specialised education which their grave responsibility
as religious teachers obviously demands; and in a
large proportion of cases the theological training of
Anglican curates begins and ends with such lectures.
In later years, when contact with earnest readers
impresses them with a due sense of their position, they
are not infrequently heard to desiderate the systematic
training of their Romanist rivals. No doubt in point
of general culture they are much superior to the
average priest; one can often recognise the priest who
has entered the sanctuary in a maturer age, after seces
sion from Anglicanism, by that impalpable culture
which is the characteristic gift of the university.
How it happens that the Catholic educational system
produces such inferior results will appear subsequently ;
*
�VOCATION
25
in theory it is admirably constructed for the attain
ment of the ecclesiastical aim. Instead of merely
adding to an ordinary liberal education a few lectures
on current theological controversies, it takes the boy
of thirteen or fourteen and arranges his whole curri
culum up to the age of twenty-four with a direct
relation to his sacerdotal ministry. The course of
training thus extends over a period of ten or eleven
years under direct ecclesiastical control. The boy is
handed over by his parents and transferred to the
seminary, or to a preparatory college in connection
with it, where his education is at once undertaken
by clerics. All the larger dioceses have their own
seminaries, and each monastic body has its colleges.
The scheme of education is divided broadly, accord
ing to universal ecclesiastical usage, into three sections.
The preliminary training consists of the usual course
of classics and mathematics; the classics being more
than usually expurgated, and the whole training gener
ously provided with spiritual and ascetical exercises.
This stage extends over a period of five or six years on
the average. To the “ humanities ” succeeds a course
of scholastic philosophy, which usually occupies two
years, and which now usually includes a few carefully
expurgated and commentated lessons on physical
science. Finally the student is treated to a threeyears’ course of theology, passes a severe examination,
and is admitted to ordination. The various stages
will be described more in detail as the. writer passed
through them.
Such is the scheme of education of the Catholic
priesthood all the world over, with but few local
variations. The mendicant orders and the minor
�26
VOCATION
congregations generally corrupt and mutilate it: the
larger seminaries and the more important orders
expand it. The Jesuits have the longest and fullest
curriculum, and their educational scheme has the
highest reputation. In reality the curriculum of the
Jesuit student is protracted mainly because he has
to spend long periods in teaching, during which his
own studies are materially impeded. Although the
Jesuits have the finest Catholic schools to draw pupils
from, and the longest curriculum of clerical training,
it will hardly be contended that, as a body, they
show any marked superiority over their less-dreaded
colleagues, either in literature or pulpit oratory.
The Benedictines and Dominicans also conduct their
preliminary studies in a creditable manner in their
well-known colleges, but most of the other religious
bodies are extremely negligent in that stage of clerical
education. Each religious order is responsible for the
training of its own candidates. The religious orders
—the regular or monastic clergy as opposed to the
secular—do not fall directly under the jurisdiction
of the bishop of the diocese. Monks are irregular
auxiliaries of the ecclesiastical army, and are supposed
to emerge occasionally from their mountain fastnesses
to assist in the holy warfare. The monasteries of the
same order in each land are grouped into a province,
and the central authority, the provincial, exercises a
quasi-episcopal jurisdiction over them. All the pro
vinces are united under a common general at Rome;
and there is a special congregation of cardinals at
Rome to regulate the conflicts (not infrequent) of
bishops and the monastic clergy. Hence monks have
but few points of contact with episcopal authority,
�VOCATION
27
and indeed they are usually regarded with jealous
suspicion by the bishop and the secular clergy. Car
dinal Manning was known to cherish a profound anti
pathy to all religious orders except the Franciscan,
and to the Franciscans he said, with characteristic
candour: “I like you—where you are (in East
London).” Indeed, nearly throughout England the
monastic orders have been compelled to undertake
parochial duties like the ordinary clergy.
However, the comparative independence of the
monastic orders gives them an opportunity of modify
ing the scheme of education according to the pressure
of circumstances, and the general result is extremely
unsatisfactory. The low ideal of sacerdotal education
which they usually cherish is largely explained by the
strong foreign element pervading, if not dominating,
them. They have been founded, at no very remote
date, by foreigners (by Belgians in England, and by
Germans and Italians in the States), and are still
frequently reinforced from the Continent. And it
will be conceded at once that the continental priest
(or even the Irish priest) does not attach a very grave
importance to the necessity of culture. A priest has
definite functions assigned him by the Church, and
for their due fulfilment he needs a moderate acquaint
ance with liturgy, casuistry, and dogma; beyond these
all is a matter of taste. Relying, in Catholic countries,
upon the dogmatic idea, and the instinctive reverence
which his parishioners have for the priesthood, he does
not concern himself about any further means of con
ciliating and impressing them. The consequence is
that a low standard of education is accepted, and those
who have imported it into English-speaking countries
�28
VOCATION
have not fully appreciated their new environment—
have not realised that here a clergyman is expected to
be a gentleman of culture and refinement. The effect
is most clearly seen in a wanton neglect of classics.
The Franciscan regime, at the time I made its
acquaintance, may serve as an instance.
The preparatory college of the Grey Friars (for they
retain the name in spite of the fact that they now
wear the brown robe of their Belgian cousins) was, at
that time, part of their large monastery at Manchester.
Seraphic Colleges, as the Franciscan colleges are
called (because St. Francis is currently named the
“ Seraphic ” Saint), are a recent innovation on their
scheme of studies, on account of the falling-off of
vocations amongst more advanced students. The
college was not a grave burden on the time and
resources of the friars at that period. One of their
number, an estimable and energetic priest, whose only
defect was his weakness in classics, was appointed to
conduct the classical studies and generally supervise
and instruct the few aspirants to the order who pre
sented themselves. We numbered eight that year, and
it may be safely doubted whether there was an idler
and more mischievous set of collegiates in the United
Kingdom. Our worthy professor knew little more
of boys than he did of girls, and he had numerous
engagements to fulfil in addition to his professorial
duties. The rector of the college, a delightfully obtuse
old Belgian friar, would have discharged his function
equally well if he had lived on Mars.
In spite, however, of the discouraging circumstances
we contrived to attain our object very rapidly. We
were all anxious to begin our monastic career in robe
�VOCATION
29
and tonsure as soon as possible, and all that the order
required as a preliminary condition was a moderate
acquaintance with Latin—the language of the Liturgy.
Our professor, indeed, had a higher but imperfectly
grasped ideal. He added French and Greek to our
programme. Physics and mathematics were unthought-of luxuries, and our English was left at its
natural level, which was, in most cases, a rich and
substantial Irish brogue; but at one time our pro
fessor began to give us a course of Hebrew, learning
the day’s lesson himself on the previous evening.
Still, taking advantage of the fact that I studied at
my own home, I was enabled to present a list of
conquests at the end of the year which at once secured
my admission to the monastic garb. The list will
serve to illustrate further our educational proceedings :
it comprised, (1) French grammar and a little French
literature (such as Fenelon’s Telemaque); (2) Greek
grammar, St. John’s Gospel, one book of Xenophon,
and a few pages of the Iliad—crammed for the
purpose of disconcerting the monastic examiner; (3)
Latin grammar, several lives from Nepos, two books
of Caesar, six orations of Cicero, the Catilina of Sallust,
the Germania of Tacitus, the /lrs Poetica of Horace,
two books of Livy, two books of the ^Eneid, and
fragments of Ovid, Terence, and Curtius. As I
remained at the college only from June 1884 until
the following May, it will be seen how much private
care and exertion were required in later years to correct
the crudity of such an education.
The kindliness of my first professor and of most of
my later teachers will ever be remembered by me.
I was treated always as the favourite pupil. Yet this
�30
VOCATION
description of the only training which the Roman
Church gave me, apart from a theological equipment
which is now useless, will suffice to answer the ridicu
lous and frequent statement that I owe my knowledge
of languages, science, and history to that Church.
Such as that knowledge is, it represents thirty years
of intense personal labour. Even of Latin only an
elementary knowledge is given by the Church. Very
few monks could read Vergil at sight.
Those were not the worst days of our Seraphic
College. Our professor was an earnest and hard
working priest, though an indifferent scholar, an un
skilful teacher, and burdened with many tasks. But
the time came when even less discretion was exercised;
and not only were studies neglected, but the youthful
aspirants to the monastic life, living in a monastery,
had more licence than they would have had in any
college in England. The system is somewhat better
to-day. I was myself entrusted with the task of recon
structing it ten years later. But I pass on to my first
acquaintance with the inner working of monastic life.
�CHAPTER III
NOVITIATE
The novitiate is an episode in the training of the
monastic, not of the secular, clergy : it is a period of
probation imposed upon all aspirants to the monastic
life. Religious of every order and congregation,1 both
men and women, must spend at least one year as
“ novices ” before they are permitted to bind them
selves by the solemnity of the vows. During that
period they experience the full severity and asceticism
of the life to which they aspire, and they are minutely
observed and tested by their superiors. It is a wise
provision: the least that can be done to palliate the
gravity of taking such an irrevocable step. Since no
formal study is permitted during its course, it causes
an interruption of the “ humanities ” of the monastic
clerics.
In the original intention of the founders of the
monastic orders there was no distinction between cleric
and lay members. Francis of Assisi, who was not a
priest himself, simply drew up a rule of life, a modified
1 A congregation is a monastic institution of less importance and
antiquity than an order. The members of both are commonly
called “religious,” in the substantive sense. Monastic priests are
further known as “regular” clergy (because they live under a
“rule”), while the scattered, ordinary priests, who live “in the
world” (saeciilum), are known as the “secular” clergy.
31
�32
NOVITIATE
version of his own extraordinary life, and allowed his
followers, after due probation, to bind themselves by
vow to its fulfilment. In it he naively proscribes
study: “ Let those who know not letters not seek to
learn them.” However, although a divine inspiration
is claimed for him in his first composition of the rule,
he soon recognised the necessity of a different treat
ment of his clerical brethren; Antony of Padua was
appointed by him “ to teach theology to the brethren.”
He had not been many years in his grave—his pre
mature death was not unassisted by his grief at the
growing corruption of his order (the saintly Antony
of Padua having already been publicly flogged in the
convent of Aracaeli at Rome for his dogged resistance
to the corruptors)—when the intellectual fever of the
thirteenth century completely mastered the fraternity,
and friars were to be found in hundreds at all the great
universities, even in the professorial chairs at Oxford,
Paris, and Cologne. Gradually the lay-brothers became
the mere servants of the priests; and the studies of
the clerics were duly organised.
At that time and until the present century the
neophytes were men of a more advanced age. After
twelve months of trial, prayer, and reflection, they
were permitted to make their vows or “ profession,”
from which there was no dispensation. In recent
years, however, the practice of receiving aspirants at
an earlier age has developed so rapidly that one feels
apprehensive of a revival of the old Benedictine custom
of accepting children of tender years, whose parents
were resolved that they should be monks, for financial
or political reasons. Pius IX. made an important
change in this direction. “ Attenta raritate vocationum
�NOVITIATE
33
—seeing the fewness of vocations,” as he frankly
confessed, he decreed that there should be two sets of
vows. It would be too serious an outrage on human
nature to allow boys of sixteen to contract an utterly
irrevocable 1 obligation of so grave a character; at the
same time it w’as clearly imperative to secure boys at
that age if the religious orders were not to die of
inanition. So a compromise was effected. Boys should
be admitted to the monastic life at the age of fifteen
for their novitiate, and should make what are called
“ simple ” vows at the age of sixteen. From the
simple vows the Pope was prepared to grant a dis
pensation : and the General of the order could annul
them (on the part of the order) if the neophyte turned
out unsatisfactory. The “ solemn ” or indispensable
vows would be taken at nineteen, leaving three years
as a kind of secondary novitiate.
Thus the criticism of the enemies of monasticism
was thought to be averted, and at the same time
boys were practically secured at an early age; for
it will be readily imagined that few boys would care
to make an application to Rome for a dispensation
and return to disturb the peaceful content of their
families—having, moreover, had twelve months’ pro
bation besides two or three years in a monastic
college. In justice to the monks I must add that I
have never known a case in which difficulties have been
put in the way of one who desired a dispensation :
certainly the accusation of physical detention in
1 The Pope claims to have the power to dissolve solemn vows,
but in point of fact they are practically insoluble. There is only
one clear case on record where the power has been used ; needless
to say it was in favour of a member of a wealthy royal house,
which was threatened with extinction.
�34
NOVITIATE
monasteries or convents is without foundation in my
experience. If the student was promising, their advice
to him to reconsider his position would, no doubt, take
a very urgent and solemn character; if he persisted,
I feel sure they would conscientiously procure his
dispensation. However, in my personal experience I
have only known one instance; the youth had entered
under the influence of relatives and endured the strain
for two years, but he wisely revolted at length, sought
a dispensation, and took to the stage.
It is thus explained how the monastic career usually
commences at such an early age. A visitor to the
novitiate of any order (a privilege which is rarely
granted) cannot fail to notice the extreme youth of
most of those who are engaged in weighing the
tremendous problem of an irrevocable choice. They
have, as a rule, entered the preliminary college at the
age of thirteen, and have been called upon to come
to a decision, fraught with such momentous con
sequences, at the age of fifteen or sixteen.
The novitiate, as the convent is called in which the
novices are trained, is normally a distinct and secluded
monastery; but economy of space frequently compels
the monks merely to devote the wing of some existing
monastery to the purpose. In either case the regula
tions for its complete isolation are very severe. The
novices are not allowed to leave the monastery under
any pretext whatever, and they are permitted to
receive but few visitors, and to have little correspond
ence (which is carefully examined) with the outside
world. The comparison of monastic and secular life
is conspicuously one-sided.
For the novitiate of the Franciscan Order at that
�NOVITIATE
35
time a portion of their friary 1 at Killarney had been
set aside. The three enterprising Belgian friars who
invaded England forty or fifty years ago found them
selves presently compelled to carry their tent to the
more hospitable sister-isle. At Killarney their presence
led to scenes of enthusiasm that take one back to the
Middle Ages. The peasantry flew to their assistance,
and before long they erected the plain but substantial
building which catches the eye of the tourist on
issuing from the station. The friary enjoyed an
uninterrupted prosperity from the date of its founda
tion, with the usual consequence that its inner life
soon became much more notable for comfort than for
asceticism. However, one or two small scandals, the
advent of a hostile bishop, the impoverishment of the
country, and frequent visits from higher authorities,
brought about a curtailment of the friars’ amenities.
And when the place was chosen as convent of the
novitiate, the good friars put their house in order,
tightened their girdles, and resigned themselves to a
more or less regular discipline; for one of their
most sacred principles is that novices must not be
scandalised.
The first emotion which the place inspired in me
when I entered it at the end of May 1885 was one
of profound melancholy and discontent. It had a
large and well-cultivated garden, and before us daily
was the lovely and changeful panorama of the hills.
But the interior of the monastery, with its chill,
gloomy cloisters,, its solemn and silent inmates, gave
me a deep impression of solitude and isolation. When
1 A house of friars may with equal propriety be called a friary,
monastery, or convent.
�36
NOVITIATE
we sat down to supper at the bare wooden tables on
the evening of our arrival—my first community-meal
—widely separated from each other, eating in profound
silence, and with a most depressing gravity, I felt that
my monastic career would be a short one. A young
friend had entered their novitiate the previous year,
and had ignominiously taken flight two days after his
arrival; I found myself warmly sympathising with
him.
However, since we were not to receive the monastic
garb for a week or more, we were allowed a good deal
of liberty, and my depression gradually wore off. It
happened, too, that I was already acquainted with
three of the friars, and soon became attached to the
community. The first friar whom we had met, a
lay-brother, rather increased our trouble; he was
already far advanced in religious mania and ascetical
consumption, and did, in fact, die a year afterwards
in the local asylum. The second we met, also a laybrother, did not help to remove the unfavourable
impression. His jovial and effusive disposition only
accentuated his curious deformity of structure; his
hands and bare toes diverged conspicuously from the
central axis, one shoulder was much higher than its
fellow, his nose was a pronounced specimen of the
Socratic type, and a touch of rheumatism imparted a
shuffling gait to the entire composition. Happily we
found that the teratological department of the convent
ended with these two.
Our novice-master, or “ Instructor,” at that time
was an excellent and much esteemed friar of six-andtwenty years; we were soon convinced of his kindness,
consideration, and religious sincerity, and accepted
�NOVITIATE
37
willingly the intimate relations with him in which our
position placed us. The superior of the monastery
likewise had no difficulty in securing our esteem. He
was a kindly, generous, and upright man, but without
a touch of asceticism. Tall and very stout, with dark
twinkling eyes and full features, he was a real “ Friar
of Orders Grey ” of the good old times. He was a
Belgian, but he had attained wide popularity in Kerry
by acquiring a good Flemish parody of an Irish brogue,
and constructing a genealogical tree in which some
safely remote ancestor was shown to be Irish. His
ideal of life was not heroic, but he acted up to it con
scientiously; he was genuinely pious in church,
fulminatory in pulpit and confessional, kind and fami
liar with the poor and sick, generous and a moderate
disciplinarian in his convent.
A few lay-brothers and four other priests made up
the rest of the community. There was a cultured and
refined young friar, who, after a few years of perverse
misunderstanding and petty persecution from his
brethren, took to drink, and was happily rescued from
his position by the hand of death. A second, a tall,
eccentric friar, ultimately became a stumbling-block
to his fraternity and was expelled for drunkenness;
another, a little, stout Lancashireman, of earnest and
blameless life, and of a deeply humane and affectionate
disposition, fell a victim a year later to typhus. Lastly,
there was a little, round, rubicund Irishman of enthu
siastic, unreasoning piety; kind, ascetical, hard-work
ing, studious (he studied everything except religious
evidences), he was a greatly respected figure in Irish
missionary circles. The one rule he confided to young
missionaries was : “ Throw the fire of hell at them ”;
C
�38
NOVITIATE
and with his own stentorian voice (though he told you
he was consumptive, and that one lung had already
decayed) he threw it with prodigious effect amongst
the peasantry.
A few days afterwards we were duly clotlied with
the monastic garb. The “ clothing ” has developed
into an impressive religious ceremony, and as there
were six of us (of whom four were under the age of
sixteen) to be clothed on this occasion, and it was the
inauguration of a new novitiate, the event was cele
brated with much solemnity. The six tunics (“ habits,”
as they are called) of rough brown frieze, with their
knotted cords, were blessed and sprinkled with holy
water during the mass, and we were solemnly enrobed
with the consecrated garments amidst much prayer and
psalm-singing, and the audible groans of the peasantry.
Our heads had been shaven in advance, leaving a
bald uncomfortable patch on the vertex about the
size of a cheese plate, a symbol, it is said, of the crown
of thorns of Christ’s passion. The brown tunic is
also symbolical of the passion, for it is made in the
form of a cross, the body being of the same width
from neck to foot, and the wide sleeves branching
out at right angles. However, the symbolism is an
outgrowth of more modern piety. Francis of Assisi
made no fantastic choice of a costume. Casting aside
his rich garments at his conversion, he merely adopted
the costume of the Italian beggar of his time—a rough
tunic and hood, girded with a knotted cord, and
sandals to his feet. The habit which excites so much
comment on the modern friar is thus merely an Italian
beggar’s costume of the thirteenth century; substan
tially, at least, for it too has fallen under the law of
�NOVITIATE
39
evolution. In fact, the point of vital importance on
which the two great branches of the Franciscan Order 1
diverge is the sartorial question, What was the original
form of the habit of St. Francis? The Capuchins hold
that his hood (or “ capuce ”) was long and pointed,
and that he had a beard; their rivals—the Observantes,
Recollecti, and Reformati—dissent, and their age-long
and unfraternal strife on the subject became as fierce
and alarming as the historical controversy of the
Dominicans and Jesuits of the sixteenth century on the
nature of grace. The Roman authorities had to inter
vene and stop the flow of literature and untheological
language by declaring all further publications on the
subject to be on the Index Expurgatorius.
The costume is still uncomfortable and insanitary.
In summer the heavy robe and the rough woollen
underclothing are intolerable; in winter the looseness
and v/idth of the tunic promote ventilation to an un
desirable extent; and sandals, with all respect to Mr.
Edward Carpenter, are neither healthy nor delectable.
The rule prescribes that the costume consist of “ two
tunics, a hood, a girdle, and drawers,” but in England
and America the inner tunic is interpreted to mean
an ordinary woollen shirt; on the Continent it is a
second tight-fitting tunic of the same brown material.
A mantle of the same colour is usually worn out of
doors, and is considered part of the costume during
the winter.
The name of the novice is changed when he enters
the monastery, as a sign that he is henceforth dead
to the world. The surname is entirely dropped, and
1 Since united under a common General.
C 2
Second edition.
�40
NOVITIATE
the Christian name is changed into that of some saint
of the order, who is adopted as patron; thus my own
name was changed into Antony. We were now, there
fore, fully fledged friars—of the mature age of fifteen
—and we entered at once upon the dull routine of the
monastic life. The character of the life will be best
understood by a detailed description of an ordinary
monastic day.
At a quarter to five every morning one of the friars
was awakened by his alarm-clock, and proceeded at
once to rouse the community. We novices, having
the eye of our instructor constantly upon us, shot out
of our rooms with proper despatch, but in most cases
the procedure was not so simple. There were friars
of all stages of somnolency. Some, of nervous tem
perament, heard the alarm themselves, and perhaps
rushed upstairs for a cold bath (a luxury admitted in
the degenerate friaries of England and the States);
the majority were aroused by a vigorous tap of the
wooden hammer at their door, accompanied by the
pious salutation, “ Laudetur Jesus Christus,” to which
they sleepily responded “ Amen ” (or made some other
pious or facetious observation); some slept so pro
foundly that the knocker-up had to enter their rooms
and shake them violently every morning. On one
occasion a young friar was carried out on his mattress
in profound sleep by his fellow-students and laid in
the middle of the busy corridor. When the round
was completed (all the bedrooms opening into a wide
central corridor, in accordance with the ever-watchful
constitutions), the large bell sent a deafening clangour
through the dormitories, and we quickly prepared
for chapel.
�NOVITIATE
41
A quarter of an hour was allowed for the purpose,
but, as our toilet was extremely simple, most of the
friars who had got beyond the stage of “ primitive
innocence ” continued their slumbers for five or ten
minutes. We were ordered by the constitutions to
retain all our underclothing during the night, so there
was nothing to do but throw on the rough brown robe
and gird it with the knotted cord. Then, towel in
hand, we raced to our common lavatory, for our simple
cells of twelve feet square were not encumbered with
washstands and toilet tables. In the lavatory a long
narrow zinc trough, with a few metal basins and a
row of taps overhead, was provided for our ablutions.
I afterwards discovered that, crude as it was, this
arrangement was rather luxurious for a friary.
At the end of the quarter the bell rang out its
second warning, and all were supposed to be kneeling
in their stalls in the choir by that time. The supe
rior’s eye wandered over the room to see if all were
present, and any unfortunate sleeper was at once sum
moned, and would have to do public penance for his
fault at dinner. At five the religious exercises began,
and they continued, with half-an-hour’s interval, until
eight o’clock.
The ancient monastic custom of rising at midnight
for the purpose of chanting the “ Office ” finds little
favour with modern monks; and, even from a religious
point of view, they are wise. I was enabled to make
observations on the custom some years later on the
Continent, and I found little ground for that enthu
siasm which Roman Catholic writers (usually those
who have never tried it) frequently express. A few
devotees enter into the service with their usual fer
�42
NOVITIATE
vour; but the vast majority, to whom a religious con
centration of thought during an hour’s service is an
impossibility, even in their most lucid hours, are
fatally oppressed with sleep and weariness. In
summer they fall asleep in their stalls; in winter the
night s repose is lost, and many constitutions are
ruined, by the hour or hour and a half spent in the
icy-cold chapel at midnight. There is very slender
ground for romantic admiration.
1 he Office ” which is thus chanted in choir is a
collection of Latin psalms, hymns, and readings from
Scripture, which every priest is bound to recite every
day. The monks chant it, or “ psalmody ” it, as they
say, in a monotone in their chapel at various hours
of the day;
Matins and Lauds, ’ ’ the principal
section, form the opening ceremony in the morning.
It lasts about an hour, and is followed by a half-hour
of silent meditation—a sad pitfall for the somnolent
at that early hour. During meditation the friars turn
away from each other and kneel in their stalls, with
their faces buried in their hands and their arms rest
ing on the seat. A facetious London priest, who
had once endeavoured to pass through the novitiate of
a monastery, used to tell me that he was discharged
because he snored so loudly during meditation as to
disturb the slumbers of the elder brethren. Mass
followed, and then breakfast was taken in profound
silence. It was a simple meal, consisting only of
coffee (taken in bowls, and without sugar—except on
fast-days) and bread and butter; during the meal a
few pages of the Imitation of Christ were read
aloud. After breakfast a further section of the Office
was chanted, and we were dismissed to arrange our
�NOVITIATE
43
rooms; for every friar, even the highest superior, is
his own chambermaid.
Afterwards we were allowed a quarter of an hour
in the garden in strict silence, and then our semi
religious studies and classes commenced. During the
novitiate profane study is prohibited (the perusal of
a Greek grammar one day brought on me as severe
a reprimand as if it had been a French novel), and
the time is occupied with religious exercises, of which
we had seven or eight hours daily, and the study of
our rule and constitutions, of ritual, and of ascetica!
literature. At half-past eleven another section of the
Office was chanted, at twelve there was a second halfhour of silent contemplation (an injudicious custom—
St. Teresa rightly maintained that one cannot medi
tate fasting), and at 12.30 the welcome dinner bell
was heard. Growling, rather than reciting, a De
Profundis for departed benefactors, we walked in
silent procession to the refectory, where, standing face
to face in two long rows down the room, we chanted
a long and curiously intonated grace.
Dinner was taken in strict silence. Two friars read
aloud, in Latin and English alternately, from Scripture
or some ascetical work, and the superior gave the
necessary signals with a small bell that hung before
him. There were no table-cloths, as monks are for
bidden the use of linen, but our pine tables were as
smooth as marble and scrupulously clean. The friars
only sit on one side of the table, on benches fixed into
the wall, so that the long narrow tables run round
the sides of the room. The dinner itself was frugal
but substantial enough; it usually consisted of soup,
two courses of meat and two vegetables, and fruit,
�44
NOVITIATE
with a pint of beer to each friar. A pint is the con
stitutional potion, but we juniors were, after grave
deliberation, allowed to have a smaller mug as a con
cession to English sobriety. Many of us had hardly
reached the age of strong drink, but we were forced
to take our two mugs daily, at dinner and supper,
with the rest. In Belgian and German friaries there
is an amusing intrigue constantly going on for securing
the larger mugs, and there even the youngest novices
must drink at least three pints of beer a day.
After dinner tongues were loosened at last, and
recreation permitted until 2.30. There is a curious
custom for two of the friars (a priest and a student) to
wash the dishes after dinner. A large tank of hot
water containing the dishes is suitably mounted in
the kitchen, and the two friars, armed with cloths tied
to the end of sticks, hurry through their task, chanting
meanwhile alternate verses of the Miserere in Latin,
freely interspersed with comments on the temperature
of the water. From this custom, too, the element of
spiritual romance has departed. Every Friday evening,
when the offices of the ensuing week are distributed
at supper, and announced in Latin by the reader, it is
still prescribed that “ Pater A----- et Frater B----lavabunt scutellas,” but the ceremony has not a particle
of the spiritual force it had in the days when the papal
legates, bringing the cardinal’s hat to the great St.
Bonaventure, found him so employed, and were told to
hang the hat on the bushes until he had finished.
Recreation is, in all monasteries, an incurably dull
affair. It generally consists of a walk round the
garden, while the friars indulge in light banter or
ponderous discussions of theology. We were allowed
�NOVITIATE
45
cricket at the beginning of our monastic career, but
it was presently vetoed by a foreign authority on the
ground that it was contrary to religious modesty.
Hand-ball was played by the students, and at one
place an ineffectual attempt was made to introduce
tennis. The lay-brothers and the priests played
dominoes or skittles; but the three castes—priests,
students, and lay-brothers—are forbidden to inter
mingle, or even to speak to each other without neces
sity. Cards are strictly forbidden in the monastic con
stitutions ; bagatelle was popular, and billiards not
unknown; and I have known the priests of a London
monastery to occupy their recreation with marbles for
many months. It was strangely impressive to hear
such problems as Predestination or Neo-Malthusianism
discussed over a game of marbles.
At 2.30 the bell summoned us to choir for Vespers,
the last section of the Office, and shortly afterwards
tea was announced. Nothing was eaten, but each
friar received a large bowl of tea; many of the older
friars took a second pint of beer instead, for tea was
a comparatively recent innovation. The Belgian friars
and the early English missionaries always take beer.
Silence was not enforced during the quarter of an hour
which is allowed for tea, but at its termination the
strictest silence was supposed to be observed until
recreation on the following day. In point of fact,
however, the law of monastic silence is only observed
with any degree of fidelity by novices and students,
and by these only so long as the superior is within
earshot. “ Charity,” they would plead in justifica
tion, “ is the greatest of all commandments.”
After an hour of prayer and spiritual reading we
�46
NOVITIATE
continued our pious studies until 6.30, when a third
half-hour of silent contemplation had to be accom
plished. It was pitiful, sometimes, to see young
students endeavouring to keep their attention fixed
upon the abstract doctrines of Christianity for so long
a time—to see them nervously tightening their lips
against the assaults of the evil one. For our monastic
literature, never entertaining for a moment the idea
that such a performance was beyond the powers of
the average individual, taught us to see in spirit
myriads of ugly little demons, with pointed ears and
forked tails, sitting on our shoulders and on the arms
of our stalls, and filling our minds with irrelevant
thoughts. In fact, our worthy novice-master (and a
number of reputable authors) assured us that these
imps had been seen on more than one occasion by
particularly pious elder brethren; that on one dread
occasion, happily long ago, a full-sized demon had
entered the choir with a basket and orthodox trident,
discovered a young friar who was distracted in his
prayers, and promptly disappeared with him in his
basket. To all of which we were obliged to listen
with perfect gravity, if we set any value upon our
sojourn in the monastery.
A series of mental devices, or “ methods of medita
tion,” had been invented for the purpose of aiding
the mind to fix its gaze on the things of the spirit
without interruption. Unfortunately they were often
so complicated as to make confusion worse con
founded. The method which our instructor selected
for us was quite an elaborate treatise in itself. I
remember one of our novices confiding to me the
trouble it occasioned him. The method was, of course,
�NOVITIATE
47
merely an abstract form of thought to be filled in with
the subject one chose to meditate about. But my
comrade, a clever ex-solicitor, had by some incompre
hensible confusion actually mistaken it for the subject
of meditation, and complained that the bell usually
rang before he had got through the scheme, and that
he had no time left to consider the particular virtue
or vice he had wished to meditate upon. On the
whole, it will be readily understood that of the seven
hours of prayer which were imposed upon us at that
period six at least were a sheer waste of time.
At seven we were summoned to supper—a simple
meal of eggs or cold meat, potatoes, and beer. After
wards, on three evenings per week, we took the dis
cipline, or self-scourging. Each friar repaired to his
cell for the purpose and flogged himself (at his own
discretion) across the shoulders with a knotted cord,
whilst the superior, kneeling in the middle of the
corridor, recited the Miserere aloud. Knowing that
our instructor used to listen at our doors during the
performance, we frequently gave him an exaggerated
impression of our fervour by religiously flogging the
desk or any other resonant surface. However, our
instruments of torture were guaranteed to be perfectly
harmless, even in the hands of a fanatic. I remember
how we hated a bloodthirsty little Portuguese friar,
who told us, with a suggestion of imitation, stories
of the way they took discipline in Portugal. But
before the end of the novitiate we had learned the
true value of the edifying tales with which visitors
invariably entertained the novices.
The remainder of the evening was spent in private
devotions or spiritual reading, and at 9.30 we were
�48
NOVITIATE
obliged to retire. Straw mattresses and a few blankets
were our only bed-furniture; and one wooden chair, a
plain desk, with half-a-dozen necessary books, com
pleted the inventory of the cell. A small plaster
crucifix was the only decoration on the unwashed walls.
Our dormitory was cut off from the others by a special
partition which was locked every evening, for the
papal regulations for the isolation of novices were
very stringent. Our novice-master kept the key, and
even the superior of the monastery was not allowed
to enter our department except in the company of
one of the older friars.
That was the ordinary course of our lives through
out the year of the novitiate, and indeed it had few
variations. Feast-days were the principal events we
looked forward to; in fact, it would be safe to say
that few boys would persevere in their condition if
the feast-days were abolished. A score of festivals
were indicated in the constitutions on which the
superior was directed to allow conversation at
dinner, and to give wine to the brethren: “ half
a bottle to each ” was the generous allowance of
the constitutions. In ordinary monasteries festivals
are much more frequent, and conversation is granted
at dinner on the slightest pretext. In the novitiate,
where a stricter discipline prevailed, we had usually
two or three every month, and on the more important
feasts the midday dinner assumed enormous propor
tions. At Christmas the quantity of fowl and other
seasonable food which was sent in occupied our strenu
ous attention during a full week; in fact, all our
convents had the custom of celebrating the entire
octave of Christmas with full gastronomic honours.
�NOVITIATE
49
So many friends conceived the happy idea of sending
a gift to the “ poor friars ” that the larder was
swollen with vast quantities of Christmas fare. I had
never tasted beer or wine before I entered the
monastery, but a little calculation shows that I must
(in my sixteenth year) have consumed fifty gallons
of ale and a dozen bottles of good wine during that
first year of monastic life.
The greatest event of the year, however, was the
patronal feast of the superior of the monastery. He
was a warm favourite in Killarney, and there were
enough comestibles (and potables) sent in to store a
small ship, the two neighbouring nunneries especially,
and a host of friends, vying with each other in the
profusion and excellence of gifts to honour his festival.
Even when a feast-day fell upon a fast-day, the
restriction in solids was usually compensated by a
greater generosity in fluids; we young novices were
more than exhilarated on one or two occasions when
dinner had opened with a strong claret soup, had been
accompanied by the usual pint of beer and a glass of
sherry, and followed by two or three glasses of
excellent port—sometimes even champagne. Nor is
the restriction to fish felt very acutely in Killarney,
where the lakes yield magnificent salmon, and where,
by a most ingenious process of casuistic reasoning,
water-fowl are included under the heading of fish!
The monotony of the life was also relieved by the
occurrence of the fasts. Besides the ordinary fasts
of the Church, the friars observe several that are
peculiar to their rule of life, especially a long fast
from the first of November until Christmas. How
ever, there are now few who really fast—that is to
�50
NOVITIATE
say, content themselves with one full meal per day—
even in monasteries; abstinence from flesh meat is the
usual limit of monastic mortification. On the Con
tinent fasting, in the strict sense of the word, is
much more frequently practised in monasteries, but
it may be questioned if idleness is not too heavy a
price to pay for an observance which is discredited
by modern moralists of all schools. In England and
the States the monks, and clergy generally, more
wisely prefer industry to fasting, though it is regret
table that they do not modify their professions in
accordance. The Passionists are the only English con
gregation who cling to the practice with any fidelity,
and their statistics of premature mortality are a
sufficient commentary on the stupidity of the Italian
authorities who are responsible for it.1
Moreover, the fasting ” of modern times departs
not a little from the primitive model. I have seen
the “ one full meal ” which is allowed at midday
protracted until four o’clock; and a partial meal has
been introduced in the evening. Drink, of course,
does not break the fast, except strong soup, choco
late, and a few other thick fluids, a list of which is
duly drawn up by casuists. Any amount of beer or
wine may be taken. And since it is, or may be,
injurious to drink much without eating, a certain
quantity of bread is allowed with the morning coffee;
at night (or in the morning if preferred), eight or ten
ounces of solid food arc permitted. The Franciscans
. * Since this was written I have met an ex-member of the Passionist body, who laughingly assured me that my statement that
the Passionists were ascetic was “the only serious mistake in my
book.
Second edition.
J
�NOVITIATE
51
are much reproved by rival schools of theologians for
their laxity in this regard, and the strained interpreta
tion they put upon admitted principles. At one time a
caricature was brought out in Rome depicting a Fran
ciscan friar complacently attacking a huge flagon of
ale and a generous allowance of bread and cheese in
the middle of his fast. To the ale was attached the
sound theological aphorism, “ Potus non frangit
jejunium—drink does not break the fast ” ; the huge
chunk of bread was justified by the received principle,
“ Ne potus noceat—in order that the drink may do
no harm ” ; and the cheese was added in virtue of the
well-known saying, “ Parum pro nihilo reputatur—
a little counts as nothing.”
Since there was no parish attached to the monastery
at Killarney (which is the correct canonical status of
a monastery), a few words must be said of the life
of the priests. At that time it was a hopeless mystery
to me, and it is principally from later observation and
information that I am able to describe it. That it was
far from being an industrious life will be understood;
occasional visits to the sick poor and the rendeiing of
services to the secular clergy of the diocese con
stituted the whole of their work outside. In our own
church there was only one sermon per week, and there
were six friars to share the work. Hence the greater
portion of the day was at the personal disposal of
the priests; and, as manual labour was considered
beneath the sacerdotal dignity, and their crude educa
tion had given them, with few exceptions, little or
no taste for study, they were always eager for dis
tractions. They were frequently to be met rowing or
sailing on the lakes (always in their brown habits), or
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NOVITIATE
driving on side-cars through the loveliest parts of
Kerry; and in return the parish priests whom they
visited or assisted paid frequent visits to the friary
and helped the monks to fill up an idle hour with a
cigar and a glass of whisky. A few years later,
indeed, a large-minded superior of this friary con
verted a conservatory that stood in the centre of the
garden into a cosy smoking-room.
In point of fact both whisky and tobacco were
forbidden in our constitutions, but I have never yet
seen a constitution in which a theologian could not
find a loophole and pass through it with unruffled
dignity. Our professor of theology used to tell a
genial story (against the casuist) of an old lady at
Glasgow who lost her purse, and prayed that it might
not fall into the hands of a theologian. The con
viviality of the priests, in our days, was confined to
a small room at a safe distance from our wing of
the house, but we frequently met one of the younger
priests moving stealthily along the corridor with the
neck of a bottle peeping out from his mantle, and
often, as we lay awake at midnight, we caught the
faint echo from the distant room of “ Killarney ” or
“ The Dear Little Shamrock.”
The penances, too, were an interesting feature of
the life, when observed in the case of one’s com
panions. The common form of public penance is to
kneel in the centre of the refectory during dinner,
praying silently with arms outstretched, until the
superior gives permission to rise. The next in point
of severity is to kneel without the hood, or with an
inscription stating one’s crime, or with the fragments
of anything one has broken. For graver faults,
�NOVITIATE
58
especially of insubordination, a culprit is condemned
to eat his dinner on the floor in the centre, the
observed of all observers, for one or more days; and
for an exaggerated offence his diet is restricted to
bread and water. Confinement to the monastery for
a long period, suspension from sacerdotal functions,
and, ultimately, expulsion from the order, are the
more grievous forms of punishment. Though monastic
constitutions still direct that each monastery must
have its “ prison,” I do not think that formal incar
ceration is now practised in any part of the world.
Apart, however, from these penances the whole scheme
of discipline is crushing and degrading. For speaking
a word in time of silence a novice would be forced to
carry a stick in his mouth during recreation; he would
be called upon at any time, for no fault whatever
(and generally just in proportion as he was intelligent
and sensitive), to stand against the wall or in a corner
of the room and make a fool of himself in the most
idiotic fashion. Everything is done to expel the last
particle of what is commonly called self-respect, to
distort and pervert character according to a stupid
mediaeval ideal. I remember once nearly bringing my
monastic career to a very early close by a transgression
of this supreme command of blind obedience. I had
been asked a question which would implicate a col
league—in a trivial matter—and I refused out of a
sense of honour to reply. If I had not apologised
afterwards in a public and humiliating fashion I should
have been expelled at once.
Thus the twelve months passed monotonously, and
the time approached for us to take the “ simple vows.”
The votes of the community are taken every three
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NOVITIATE
months on the merits of candidates for the order. The
community is assembled for the purpose in the chapter
room (a room in which the superior assembles his
religious three times a week for prayer, exhortation,
and public confession of their minor faults—breaking
utensils, oversleeping, &c.) and the superior invites a
discussion on the merits or demerits of the novice.
He then produces a bag of white and black marbles,
of which he gives a pair to each voter; they are
collected with great secrecy in two bags, and if the
novice does not obtain a majority of “ white balls ”
he is invited to abandon his intention. If it is probable
that he will be “ blackballed,” he is usually warned
in advance : hence it very rarely happens.
Our votes having been satisfactorily obtained we
prepared to make our religious profession at the com
pletion of our year of probation. The profession, an
impressive religious ceremony, consists essentially of a
vow to observe the rule of St. Francis and to “ live
in poverty, chastity,1 and obedience for the whole
time of our lives.” When the morning arrived, a large
and sympathetic congregation had gathered in the
church, and the sight of the six young friars—mere
boys we all were—solemnly forswearing every earthly
desire moved them deeply. The purport of the vow
was explained to them in the exhortation given by
the superior, and they at least knew the extent of the
sacrifice we were making. We, too, were convinced
1 A vow of chastity embraces the obligation of celibacy and
much more : it doubles the guilt of any transgression of the virtue
of chastity or purity, which, in the theory of the Church of Rome,
is a very comprehensive piece of ethical legislation. Yet many
confessors encourage their girl-penitents, living in the world, to
make such a vow.
�NOVITIATE
55
that we fully realised the gravity of the step; as,
although our thoughts were taken up rather with the
glamour of the position we ultimately sought and the
advantages it offered, we were not in our way insens
ible of the price we were asked to pay. But it was
many.a long year before the act could be appreciated
—not until long after we had solemnly and irrevocably
ratified our vows.
What are the world and the flesh to a boy of
sixteen, or even to a youth of nineteen (at which age
the final, irrevocable step is taken), who has been
confined in an ecclesiastical institution from his
thirteenth year? He knows little more of the life
which he sacrifices so lightly with his vow of poverty
than he does of life on Mars; and he is, when he
utters his vow of celibacy, entirely unacquainted with
the passion that will one day throb in every fibre of
his being, and transform the world beyond conception.
He has signed a blank cheque, on which nature may
one day write a fearful sum. Yet he is permitted, nay
persuaded, to make that blind sacrifice, and place
himself in lifelong antagonism to the deepest forces
of his being, before he can have the faintest idea of
his moral strength. If it be true that monastic life
is ever sinking into corruption, we should feel more
inclined to pity than to blame the monks.
The secular clergy make no vow of poverty or
obedience, and it may be urged that even their vow
of celibacy is more defensible. The seminary student
makes his vow when he is admitted to the subdiaconate, the first of the holy orders, and the
canonical and usual age of the subdeacon is twentyone. The average youth of twenty-one may be
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NOVITIATE
admitted to be capable, in ordinary circumstances,
of forming an opinion on such matters, but we must
remember that the ecclesiastical student has had an
abnormal training. Every precaution has been taken
to keep him in complete ignorance of sexual matters,
and to defer the development of that faculty of which
he is asked to make a lifelong sacrifice. He has never
come in contact with the other sex, for even during
his vacation the fear of scandal hangs like a millstone
about him; he has never read a line concerning the
most elementary facts and forces of life—his classics,
his history, his very fiction, have been rigidly expur
gated; the weekly minute confession of his thoughts,
the incessant supervision of his superiors, the constant
presence of innumerable threats, have combined to
postpone the unfolding of his sex-life until he shall
have blindly abdicated it for ever. In the confessional
I have known students of a much more advanced age
yho were still sexually undeveloped. In fact, the
Church knows that they are unconscious of sex, and
expects them to be unconscious; for if she awaited the
full development of mind and body in her candidates
her clergy would never be sufficiently recruited as long
as she insists on celibacy.
The proportion of nuns who take the vow of chastity
at an early age is smaller, as I have said, but the sin
is more grievous. The life of the nun who finds in
later life that she has made a mistake is infinitely more
wretched. The priest is in the world and frequently
of it ;■ the nun is jealously imprisoned in the walls of
her convent. No doubt, her vow is usually only a
“ simple ” vow and theoretically dispensable; but who
ever knew a nun to write to Rome for a dispensation?
�NOVITIATE
57
No woman would dare to face the ignominy of such a
step. “ Woe to him (or her) who draws back his hand
from the plough ” is one of the most inculcated maxims
of the conventual life; and the prospect of returning,
a failure, to one’s family and friends is most for
bidding.
I have never been able to witness without a shudder
the ceremony of a young girl making her vows. Some
comfortable monk or light-tongued Jesuit preaches to
her from the altar of the tranquil joy of her future
life as spouse of Christ alone, and the candid virginal
eyes that are bent upon him tell only too clearly of
her profound ignorance of the sleeping fires within her,
the unknown joys of love and maternity which she
sacrifices so readily. In ten years more she will know
the meaning of the vow of chastity into which she has
been deluded. It was brought home to me vividly on
hearing one day the confession of a young nun who
was in the wild throes of passion-birth. After
enumerating the usual peccadilloes, she began to tell
me of her utter misery and isolation. Her sisters
were unkind, thoughtless, and jealous; “and yet,
father,” she urged piteously, “ I do want some one
to love me.” I muttered the commonplaces of our
literature; but as she knelt at my feet, looking sadly
up at me, in their little convent chapel, I felt how
dark a sin it was to admit an immature girl to a vow
of chastity. How their parents—their mothers—can
let them act thus, nay, can look on with smiles and
congratulations, surpasses my comprehension. We
read with shudders of the ancient Mexican sacrifices
of maidens, yet hundreds of fine-natured girls are
annually sacrificed on this perverse altar of chastity in
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NOVITIATE
England. They send home no word of unhappiness,
it may be said. Do their parents not know that every
letter they write must be given, open, to a superior?
I doubt if France ever did a greater service to its
women than when it (though not entirely) closed t-heir
convents.
�CHAPTER IV
STUDENTSHIP
After the novitiate had been successfully accom
plished it was necessary to resume the course of our
education. Owing to the total neglect of profane
study which is foolishly directed, most of the ground
we had already conquered was lost during the year
of the novitiate. Latin was sustained, even advanced
a step, since all our services and quasi-religious studies
had been in Latin; although ecclesiastical Latin, and
especially the Latin of the Psalms, of which we heard
so much, would make the shade of Cicero shudder.
Whatever other acquisitions had been made such as
Greek and French were entirely lost. We had, there
fore, to devote ourselves once more to “ humanities,”
and for this purpose we were transferred (without a
glimpse of the immortal lakes, for the friars had fallen
on evil days with the bishop) to what is now the
principal house of studies of the Franciscans at Forest
Gate in East London.
The large and imposing pile of buildings which the
friars have to-day at Forest Gate is often quoted as
an illustration of the growth of Catholicism. Fifteen
years ago (1882) there was no Catholic congregation
in the locality; only a dozen worshippers made their
way to the washhouse of the neighbouring nunnery,
59
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STUDENTSHIP
when the friars first came to celebrate mass there.
When our party arrived three years afterwards the
congregation numbered 300 souls; and when I left in
1896 the friars had erected property to the value of
about <£25,000, and ministered to a congregation of
more than 3000 souls. As a matter of fact this was
only a symptom of the decentralisation that was going
on in London. There were few converts to Rome in
the new congregation, and these were merely the
flotsam and jetsam of superficial religious controversy
—good people who would save their souls in any
Church, or none. The great bulk of the parish were
the middle-class Catholics who had migrated from all
parts of East London to the new and healthier district,
in which the sagacious friars had erected a church,
mainly on borrowed funds.1
The priest who was entrusted by the Belgian author
ities with the supervision of our studies was Father
David, since Minister-General of the entire Franciscan
Order, and erudite counsellor to the Holy Office. An
abler student than teacher—a distinction of which our
authorities never dreamed—and a man of many
interests, he contributed little more than the example
of his great industry and learning to our develop
ment; and most of us were very barren soil for that
seed. During the first six months no attempt was
made to organise our work. All our religious exer
cises were hurried through early in the morning,
making more than three consecutive hours of prayers
of divers kinds; as a rule we then had the monastery
to ourselves during the day. Once or twice a week,
1 One of their chief benefactors, Mgr. A. Wells, has since seceded
from the Church.
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61
at any hour of the day or night, our professor would
interrupt the course of his ministerial and parochial
duties, and his studies of Sanscrit at the British
Museum, to give us a class in Latin. Even during
that half-hour he used to write letters, and we would
purposely make the most atrocious blunders, and con
duct ourselves in the wildest manner our imagination
could suggest.
Our long Saturnalia came to an end at last with
the arrival of a second and younger professor, who
entered into the work of reform with alarming zeal.
He was fresh from the Belgian province, in which a
perfect discipline (from a mechanical point of view)
prevails in the houses of study. Young, intensely
earnest, and sincerely religious, he made an honest
effort to reform us without losing our sympathy, but,
as he knew little more of our studies than we did, and
had an uncontrollable temper and a conspicuous harsh
ness of character, lie alienated us more and more as
time went on. From Belgium, too, he had imported
the system of espionage, which is deservedly odious to
English students; he considered that the necessary
rigour of monastic discipline justified it. However,
he never cared to be caught in the act, and we gave
him many an unpleasant quarter of an hour by running
to the door of our study room when we saw his
shadow near it, and chasing him through the convent
in his anxiety not to be seen. At length we appealed
to authority, and effected his deposition and removal.
In later years I learned to esteem and respect him, and
he made rapid progress in the order and in the London
ministry; finally, however, he ended in an ignominious
flight with the contents of the fraternal cash-box.
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His successor was a monk of a very different char
acter. Far from continuing the rigour of his pre
decessor, he became alarmingly liberal and familiar,
and before many months had elapsed we found it
impossible to retain a particle of respect for him. In
point of fact he already showed symptoms of mental
aberration, and a few years afterwards his conduct
became so extraordinary that absolute dementia is the
kindest interpretation of it. He, too, was removed
at our appeal, and we began to have an evil reputation.
During our five years of study at Forest Gate we
succeeded in removing no less than six professors and
superiors; and, since I was the “dean” of the
students throughout my course, I attracted an uncom
plimentary interest. I have no doubt that my own
fall was frequently predicted many years in advance.
After twelve months at Latin we were initiated into
a course of rhetoric. The Jesuits more wisely post
pone the rhetorical studies until the last year; in any
case, it is little more than a waste of time. Lessons
in elocution and declamation are clearly expedient,
and should be insisted upon much more conscientiously
than they are in the training of priests, but the usual
“course of rhetoric ” is only learned to be forgotten.
It deals with the invention and distribution of argu
ments, the analysis and composition of orations, the
various styles of discourse, figures of speech, and the
comparative play of ideas and emotions. There are
few who retain any knowledge of its multitudinous
rules when the period of practice arrives; fewer still
who pay the slightest attention to them. The only
useful element of the training is the practice of
making ecclesiastical students prepare and deliver
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short sermons to their companions. In many
monasteries the students preach to the assembled com
munity during dinner. It affords excellent training
for public speaking, for one who is able to speak with
any degree of self-possession to a small audience will
have little fear of a large congregation. I often
preached to a congregation of a thousand people with
the utmost composure, yet trembled before a con
gregation of ten or twelve persons.
The course of rhetoric is succeeded by a course of
scholastic philosophy. In the great mediaeval schools
philosophy was taught in conjunction with theology,
but the rationalistic spirt, which had been so vigor
ously expressed by Abelard, and the growing import
ance of the Moorish thinkers, led gradually to the
separation of philosophy. By the sixteenth century,
when there was a notable revival of speculative
activity, the separation of philosophy from theology
was complete. In a rationalistic age like ours such
a separation is imperative. Before a positive revela
tion can be entertained, certain preliminary truths,
especially the existence, nature, and authority of the
Revealer, must necessarily be established by pure reason
ing ; in other words, philosophy must precede theology,
and this is now fully recognised by the Church.
The scholastic philosophy which is now taught in
Catholic seminaries usually includes treatises on logic,
metaphysics, and natural ethics. First is given a short
treatise on dialectics, which differs little from the
logic of Jevons or Whateley, and is followed by a more
careful study of the second or material part of logic.
A treatise of general metaphysics follows, in which
are discussed, analysed, and vindicated the general
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concepts and principles which will be used subse
quently in the construction of the desired theses.
Special metaphysics is divided into three parts,
cosmology, psychology and natural theology. It
opens with a proof of the existence of the material
world, against the Idealists, and discusses its origin
and its features of time and space; then the question
of life is entered upon, its origin and nature discussed,
and the two great branches of the organic world are
philosophically described and commented upon. The
second part, psychology, is concerned with the human
soul; it seeks to prove its spirituality and immortality,
against the Materialist, classifies and analyses its
various faculties, treats of the origin and nature of
thoughts, emotions, and volitions. The third part
treats of God; it opens with the usual demonstration
of his existence, against the Agnostics, endeavours to
elucidate his attributes as far as mere reasoning will
avail (and the scholastic philosopher is persuaded that
it will avail much), and considers his relations to
this nether world.
The line of reasoning throughout is taken closely
from Aristotle—or, as Renan would say, from a bad
Latin translation of an Arabic paraphrase of a Syriac
version of Aristotle. Until the time of Thomas
Aquinas, all Catholic philosophers (except Boetius) had
followed Plato, and regarded Aristotle with suspicion;
St. Thomas, however, and all the schoolmen, except
St. Bonaventure, rejected the Platonist method and
introduced Aristotle (through the Latin translations
of the Arabic school), expurgated his philosophy, and
enlarged it in certain directions in harmony with
Christian teaching. Thus the Neo-Scholastic philo-
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sophy is fundamentally the philosophy of Aristotle
enlarged by allusions to modern problems and philo
sophies, and usually enriched with a moderate acquaint
ance with modern science. The Jesuits of Stoneyhurst
have published (in English) an excellent series of
manuals of the Neo-Scholastic philosophy at its best.
To logic and metaphysics is usually added a treatise
on natural ethics, which is founded on the Nicomachean
ethics. It deals with the abstract conceptions of right
and duty, virtue and vice, law and conscience; dis
cusses the various current theories of moral obligation;
and expounds and enforces the various duties which
arise from the relations of individual, social, and inter
national life. Since no appeal to revelation is admitted
in it, and in order to distinguish it from moral
theology (which covers the same ground in the light
of revelation and authority), the treatise goes by the
name of natural ethics.
Customary as it is to decry the scholastic philo
sophy, I would willingly subscribe to the generous
appreciation of it by Mill and Hamilton as a mental
discipline. Its chief defect is its narrow and arrogant
exclusivism. That the system is strongly and skil
fully constructed is what one would expect from the
number of gifted minds that have contributed to it;
but almost every manual from which it is taught, and
nearly every professor, carefully excludes, or only gives
a most inaccurate version of, rival philosophies. The
impression made on the student is that the scholastic
system is so clearly and uniquely true that all oppo
nents are either feeble-minded or dishonest; the latter
theory is only too often urged. When I afterwards
became professor of philosophy I made it my duty to
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study more modern systems, and learned how petty
and antiquated the scholastic system is in comparison.
Even one who had taken a degree in it could hardly
read such writers as Lotze or Royce.
And, indeed, apart from the fact that all opponents
are on the Index 1 (in that they write “ expressly
against the faith ”), and that it would be a sacrilege
to entertain for a moment the possibility of their
being in the right, the time which is devoted to the
vast subject is wholly inadequate. Two years is the
usual duration of the course; one year is very fre
quently the limit of philosophical study. Then the
ages of the students must be taken into account.
They are generally youths of from eighteen to twentyone, who are quite incompetent to enter seriously into
such grave problems; only one in a hundred makes
an attempt to do so. Sufficient information to satisfy
an examiner is committed to memory; but, unless
the student is drawn to the science for a solution of
questions that have arisen in his own soul (which is
very rarely the case), he shirks philosophy as far as
possible, and looks forward eagerly to his deliverance
from it. Further, it is supposed to be taught through
the medium of a dead language, and most of the
professors in the seminaries have very little acquaint
ance with modern science. They are also injudicious
in that, neglecting the problems of actual interest and
importance, they fritter away the allotted time in the
1 The Index, or “list of prohibited books,” is really a far more
extensive thing than the published list. Every work that is
regarded as “against the faith ” (such as this) is prohibited to the
Catholic under pain of hell, although not expressly put on the list.
Hence the ease with which Catholic journals can misrepresent a
book. Their readers dare not read it.
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most trivial controversies. The liberty of the will
or the existence of God will be dismissed in a day,
and a week will be zealously devoted to the question
whether substance and personality are two distinct
entities, or whether the qualities of a thing are
physically, formally, or mentally distinct from its
substance. In many seminaries a certain amount of
physical science is taught in conjunction with the
course of philosophy, but much jealousy is shown with
regard to it. I was much attracted to the empirical
sciences from the beginning, and, though not actually
impeded, I was much discouraged in that pursuit; I
was informed that the empirical sciences made the
mind “ mechanical,” and predisposed to materialism.
F. David, though not actually my professor, guided
my studies with great kindness throughout my course.
Although I fortunately broke loose from his influence
in some directions, and found that I had subsequently
to verify with care whatever I had accepted from
him, I was certainly much indebted to him for the
formation of habits of industry and precision.
The priest who was nominally entrusted with our
philosophical training is certainly not responsible for
the fatal depth to which I ultimately penetrated. One
of the few things he had not mastered was meta
physics ; he could paint and play, and he was an
authority on architecture, archaeology, rubrics, canon
law, and history. He was a Belgian friar of pro
nounced eccentricity, and his method of teaching
philosophy was original. After each lesson he dictated
in Latin a number of questions and answers, and on
the following morning the answers had to be repeated
word for word. Some of my fellow-students passed
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a most satisfactory examination at the end of the
term without having a single idea on philosophical
questions. The worthy father was another victim of
our seditious movements, and his eccentricities enabled
us to make his life a serious burden. He, for instance,
hated meeting anybody on our broad staircases, and
we haunted the stairs. He lived mainly on hard toast,
and we at times stole some of it and scrunched it in
the most silent intervals of dinner, to the delight of
his colleagues.
The last three or four years of the student’s career
are devoted to theology. Under that title are usually
comprised ecclesiastical history, canon law, Scripture,
and moral and dogmatic theology. Ecclesiastical
history, usually a very one-sided version of the vicissi
tudes of the Church, does not, as a rule, occupy much
of the time. Canon law, a vast system of ecclesiastical
legislation, is either neglected or only given in a very
rudimentary fashion. Each order and diocese secures
one or two experts in the subject, who are appealed
to in case of complications, but the majority of the
clergy are content with the slight knowledge of canon
law which they necessarily glean from their moral
theology. The three years are, therefore, devoted to
Scripture and theology proper. In my course not a
single lesson of Canon Law was given.
With four lectures each week during a period of
two or three years it is impossible to study satisfac
torily more than a comparatively small section of the
Scriptures. Certain books are selected, after a general
introduction, for detailed commentary, and the students
are supposed to study the exegetical method in order
to cover the rest of the ground at their leisure.
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How far is the study of Scripture in the Church
of Rome affected by the Higher Criticism (and the
monuments)? Very profoundly, in point of fact,
though this modification of views can find no expres
sion since the celebrated retrograde encyclical of Leo
XIII. Newman’s contention, that there were obiter
dicta in Scripture which did not fall under the in
spiring influence, introduced a far-reaching principle;
it was not necessary to hold that all was inspired,
In face of the stern criticism of the Rationalists many
had begun to admit scientific and historical errors in
Scripture, and the famous French professor, M. Loisy,
went very far in company with the critics. Then
came the Pope’s encyclical, declaring that no errors
could be admitted in Scripture, and M. Loisy dis
appeared from his chair (with, it is true, a most suave
and courteous letter in his pocket, recognising his past
services, from the Pope). However, an encyclical only
affects the expressions, not the thoughts, of scholarly
Catholics. Leo XIII. has never once claimed to
exercise his infallible authority. His encyclicals enjoy
no more than his personal authority as a theologian,
and that is not serious. The bulk of the faithful are
impressed by his utterances, both on the ground of
their wisdom and under the erroneous impression that
they, according to Catholic theology, share to some
degree the prestige of his supernatural power. There
are no degrees in infallibility. Catholic scholars are
waiting patiently until Cardinal Vanutelli, or some
broader-minded man, assumes the tiara.
In the meantime, on this Scriptural question, they
have a refuge in the elasticity of the term “ inspira-‘
tion.” The advanced thinker may give it any interD
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pretation his views may require. A very able professor
of Scripture at Louvain University told me that his
own ideas on Scripture were absolutely chaotic on
account of this vagueness of the fundamental idea.
Another distinguished professor saw in it a line of
dignified retreat for the Papacy when the time came.
What the commission which is now sitting on the
Biblical question at the Vatican may determine can
not be conjectured. But the private opinion of the
leading spirit in that commission is not unknown to
me. “ The truth is,” I recollect Father David saying
to me, when Mr. Sayce’s “ Higher Criticism and the
Monuments ” appeared, “ the truth is that the Old
Testament was not written for us, and the sooner the
Church can quietly drop it overboard the better.” 1
Moral theology has been detached from dogmatic
in the specialisation of studies, and forms a distinct
science of a purely practical nature. It opens with a
few general treatises on moral responsibility, con1 When the first edition was written Leo XIII. had appointed a
commission of theologians, with my tutor, F. David, as secretary,
to draw up a series of guiding statements on the question of
Sciipture. It is plain that Leo XIII. had seen the error of his
encyclical, and was disposed to be more liberal. He is said to
have repeatedly muttered in his last hours : “The Biblical ques
tion, the Biblical question.” Then came the accession of Pius X.
one of the most narrow-minded and medieval of the whole college
of cardinals. The rival partisans of Vanutelli and RampoBa
could come to no agreement, and a nonentity had to be admitted
to the tiara. Unfortunately, he proved as conscientious as he is
ignorant. The Biblical Commission was swamped with reactionary
scholars, and one of the first pronouncements signed by my liberal
tutor was that the whole Pentateuch was certainly written by
Moses ! Then began the great fight against the liberals, or Modern
ists. Cultivated Catholics groan under the rule of Pius X., and
believe that he is ruining the Church. It is a singular commentary
on the dogma of papal inspiration. Third edition.
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71
science, law, and sin, which constitute what is called
fundamental theology. The special treatises which
follow discuss the obligations of the moral agent in
every conceivable relation and circumstance. Each
treatise usually takes a particular virtue as its object,
and enumerates every possible transgression of the
same, discussing their comparative gravity, and fre
quently giving practical rules to the confessor in deal
ing with them. There is a treatise on impurity, which
gives the student the physiological elements of the sub
ject, and enumerates (with the crudest details) the
interminable catalogue of forms of vice, the professor
usually supplementing the treatise from his own ex
perience in the confessional. There are also treatises
on charity, on justice (a voluminous treatise which
descends into the minutest details of conjugal, social,
and commercial life), on veracity, and all other virtues.
Throughout the preceding section on virtues and
vices, which usually forms a quarto volume of 500 or
600 pages, little appeal is made to positive revelation.
The judgments of the theologian are supported from
time to time by texts of Scripture and references to
ecclesiastical legislation, but the main portion of the
work is purely ethical and rational. The second
section, however, another quarto volume of 500 pages,
discusses the seven sacraments of the Church of Rome,
the vast number of obligations they entail in practical
life, the transgressions which arise from their neglect
or abuse, and their theory and practice. The principal
treatises are the two that deal with confession and
matrimony. In the one the future confessor receives
the necessary directions for his task (a much more
complicated one than is commonly supposed); in the
D2
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other the many impediments to marriage, on the
Catholic view, are discussed, as well as the dispensa
tions from them, and there is a further discussion of
conjugal relations. The path throughout is beset with
the innumerable conflicts of theologians, and every point
is profusely illustrated with real or fictitious “ cases.”
Moral theology is regarded as the most important
of sacerdotal studies, and in many monastic orders it
is the only study that is seriously cultivated. Young
priests have annual examinations in it for many years
after their ordination, and throughout life the priest
has to attend periodical conferences, which are held
in every monastery and diocese, for the discussion of
points of casuistry. Our professor was a young man
of much ability and refinement of character, who
lectured on the cruder sections with marked confusion
and apology, but, as a rule, priests soon acquire the
habit of discussing indelicate “ cases ” with the calm
ness of a medical man.
Much as we were attached to our professor for his
kindliness and charm of character, we had to procure
his removal at the end of a year. Though a man of
more than average ability, he was too weak and un
suited for the monastic condition to fill his position
with credit. The dull, oppressive environment grad
ually led him to drink, and he died an unhappy and
premature death.
For our course of dogmatic theology we had the
able guidance of Father David. He was a man of
wide erudition and considerable mental power, and
held us, with one or two exceptions, magnetically
bound to him during our studentship. It was a curious
fact that nearly all of his students withdrew them-
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selves from his influence in later years. The change
seemed to be due to the subsequent discovery of the
inaccuracy of many of the statements we had taken
from him—want of practice in writing and a shrinking
from criticism had encouraged a certain degree of care
lessness in his expressions—and partly to the fact that
his early kindness and assistance had too much of an
element of patronage and authority to survive in
maturer years. Personally I was the most indebted to
his guidance, and was the last of my course to remain
under his influence. He had a remarkable grasp of
dogmatic theology, because he had a thorough know
ledge of the scholastic philosophy, which pervades and
unites its entire structure. For dogmatic theology
takes the student in hand at the point at which philo
sophy has left him; it is, in fact, merely revelation set
in a philosophical frame. The various points of dogma
which are contained (or supposed to be contained) in
Scripture, were first selected by the Fathers, and
developed, generally by the aid of the Neo-Platonic
philosophy, into formidable structures. The schoolmen
completed the synthesis with the aid of the Peripatetic
philosophy, and elaborated the whole into a vast scheme
which they called theology. The purely philosophical
problems which arose have been extracted, and now
form the distinct science of metaphysics; the ethical
questions have been separated and formed into a moral
theology; the speculative science which remains, still
wholly philosophical in form and largely so in argu
ment, is dogmatic theology.
Much space is occupied with the conflicts of rival
schools of theologians, especially of the Thomists, or
followers of St. Thomas (chiefly the Dominicans and
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Jesuits—though Thomism is in general favour just
now, since the Pope has declared for St. Thomas), and
the Scotists (Franciscans) or followers of the Franciscan
Duns Scotus. These rival groups quarrel about every
question that the Church has left undefined. One im
portant result of these divisions is that grave questions
of living interest are only imperfectly grasped by
theologians until the world has moved on a step, and
they then ungracefully follow it. Their time is chiefly
occupied with questions that are fitly illustrated by the
problem of the number of angels that could stand on a
needle’s point.
Through this scheme of education every aspirant to
the Roman Catholic priesthood must pass. In the
larger seminaries and more prosperous congregations
the programme is carried out with great fidelity, and
the more brilliant students are sent on to the universi
ties (Washington, Louvain, Innspruck, Freiburg, and
Rome) for more advanced courses. The smaller
seminaries and minor congregations, who are ever
pressed for priests, curtail the scheme very freely;
philosophy is all but omitted, dogmatic theology is
reduced to the indispensable minimum, and moral
theology is carefully pruned of its luxurious growth
of superfluous controversies. In the case of monastic
orders, whose work consists almost entirely in mission
ary and parochial activity amongst the poor, the Church
connives at a lower standard of education.
In the Franciscan Order the constitutions, from
which its admirers usually but wrongly derive their
information of its practices, generously prescribe three
years for philosophy and four for theology. In few
branches of the order are more than five years devoted
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to the higher studies. In England we were the
pioneers of a new system, and from first to last our
studies were irregular and stunted. We spent five
years as students at Forest Gate, of which fifteen
months were devoted to classics and rhetoric, fifteen
months to philosophy, and two years and a half to
theology. During that period our life differed little
from the model described in the preceding chapter.
We rose at a quarter to five, dragged through the long
programme of religious services, and commenced study
at eight; six or seven hours per day were devoted to
study, and the remainder of the time was occupied as
I have described.
We had taken the irrevocable vows three years after
leaving the novitiate. One of our number had obtained
papal release from his “simple ” vows, but most of
us looked forward eagerly to the priesthood, the “ end
of study,” as we equivocally called it, and we found
means to enliven the dull and insanitary life that had
to be traversed first. No vacation is allowed during
the whole of the period, but once or twice a week we
had the luxury of divesting ourselves of the heavy robe
and taking long walks in ordinary clerical attire, and
once or twice a year we were granted a whole-day
holiday to some pleasant spot. This was in the later
years. At the commencement of the period we had
ample practical illustration of the meaning of a vow
of poverty—which is more than the modern mendicant
friar anticipates. Under one superior, a very mediocre
friar, who had been put into office to serve the purpose
of a diplomatic and ambitious higher superior, our diet
and clothing became painfully appropriate to our pro
fession of mendicancy. His parsimony and real lack
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of money were neatly concealed behind a cheerful pro
fession and praise of “ holy poverty ” before which all
complaint was stultified. However, our congregation,
and the income of our church increased, so that
“ holy poverty ” was laid aside in favour of more
humane sentiments. Our diet became generous and
substantial, our beer and wine more expensive, and a
heating apparatus was introduced; we almost attained
the ordinary level of modern monastic life.
Still the life was extremely insanitary, and there
was much sickness amongst us. During three years
we lost six of our young men, and almost all of us
entered upon our active career with deeply impaired
constitutions. Our medical attendant waged a constant
but fruitless war with our superiors to procure a saner
recreation for us; at his demand for exercise we were
furnished with picks and shovels and turned into our
garden. One huge mound of earth afforded us exercise
for four years; one superior desired to see it in a
central heap, his successor fancied it in the form of a
Roman camp, and a third directed us to form an en
trenchment along the side of the garden with it. But
the root of the evil was far deeper than they cared to
recognise; it lay in the isolation, the dull, soul
benumbing oppression of the monastic life.
The sick were treated with great kindness, as a
rule, but, naturally, with little skill and effectiveness;
for no woman is, under any conceivable circumstances,
allowed to enter the monastery. In a serious illness
which befell me I had painful experience of that aspect
of celibate life. The custards and beef-tea which the
doctor had ordered were made by our cook of corn
flour and somebody’s essence of beef (the cook had the
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laudable intention of saving time for his prayers); and
even when certain lady friends outside had taken the
responsibility for my diet, I still had the equivocal
blessing of “ fraternal ” nursing. The lay-brother
who acted as my infirmarian, a good, rough, kindhearted fellow, like most of his class, had been a collier
before his conversion, and, though he made a strained
effort to be gentle and soothing, his big horny hands
lent themselves very badly to the work. However, no
expense was spared in the care of the sick, and most
superiors were extremely kind and considerate in their
treatment.
The constant changes of the inmates of the monastery
also afford some relief to the monotony of the life.
Elections are held every eighteen months, at which
changes of superiors are made and monks are trans
ferred from one monastery to another. For months in
advance the convents are thrown into a fever of excite
ment over the issues. Discontented inferiors are
afforded an opportunity of venting their grievances, as
a commissioner, or “ visitator,” is sent from Rome,
who has a strictly secret and confidential talk with
every friar in the province before the election takes
place. In some monasteries and nunneries the superior
is elected for life, and in such cases he is usually
chosen by the inmates themselves with great care. In
our fraternity, and in many other congregations, the
local superiors, or “ guardians,” of the various mon
asteries were appointed by a higher council, as I will
describe later, and had to hand in their resignations
at the end of eighteen months; if their record was
satisfactory, they might be re-elected for a time. The
frequent change is a matter of general satisfaction, for
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no superior ever succeeds in gaining the sympathy of
an entire community. One of the kindest and ablest
superiors we ever had, Father Bede, a man of excep
tionally earnest, sincere, and unworldly life, only
retained the position for a year and a half, and at the
end of that term was with great difficulty dissuaded
from leaving our province altogether. There was a
great deal of intrigue afoot always in connection with
the elections.
Feast-days also helped to break the monotony of
the life. Even in our poorest days the higher festivals
were celebrated with much gaiety and opulent meals;
for there are always plenty of thoughtful friends, and
usually a nunnery or two, in the neighbourhood of a
friary to supply the defects of the masculine cuisine on
special occasions. On such days the law of silence is
suspended at dinner, and the friars join in a general
conversation and raillery; often, too, an impromptu
concert is added, and the songs of bygone days re-echo
through the cloisters. Our refectory was prudently
located, as is usual, at the back of the house, and far
from profane ears. Wine is poured out in abundance;
in our days of poverty it was weak Rhine wine or an
inferior port, but with the return of prosperity (and
the advent of a generous benefactress), good port and
whisky, and a fair quantity of champagne, made their
appearance. We students also were liberally supplied
with wine, and, as some religiously declined it, others
drank too generously. Youths in their teens, who had
never seen wine in their homes, drank their half-bottle
once or twice a month. A lamentable proportion of
them became immoderate drinkers.
The long preparation for the priesthood is divided
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into stages marked by the reception of the preliminary
orders. In the Church of Rome there are seven orders
through which the cleric must pass, four minor and
three major or “ holy ” orders. In the early Church
each order marked a certain category of officials in
which the candidate for the priesthood was detained
for some time. The first ceremony, the giving of the
“ tonsure,” in which the bishop symbolically cuts five
locks of hair from the head of the neophyte, is a formal
initiation into the ranks of the clergy. Whilst the hair
is being cut the youth repeats after the bishop the
words, “ The Lord is the part of my inheritance,” for
the “ cleric ” is one who has chosen the part (cleros)
of the Lord. After a time he passes through the four
minor orders, and becomes successively doorkeeper,
reader, exorcist, and acolythe. To-day the tonsure
and the minor orders are usually given in one ceremony,
for the lower offices have been partly absorbed in the
higher, and partly committed to non-clerics. But the
conservatism of the Church still insists on the orders
being taken and their functions discharged at least
once; so that the newly appointed doorkeeper, for in
stance, must march ceremoniously to the church door,
which he opens and shuts, and rings the bell, before
the bishop will proceed to make him reader. The
function of exorcist can now only be discharged by a
priest, with the permission of the bishop in each case.
In the west of Ireland, where belief in diabolical inter
ference and the power of the priest is still very pro
found, exorcisms are not infrequent. But they are not
unknown in enlightened London. A case came to my
knowledge recently in which Cardinal Vaughan con
templated exorcising a man, but the spirit threatened
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to do such serious internal damage before departing
that the ceremony was abandoned.
The subdiaconate is usually received at the age of
twenty-one, and the diaconate in the following year.
In the monastic orders, where the vow of celibacy has
already been pronounced, these ceremonies are com
paratively unimportant, but to the secular student the
subdiaconate is a fateful step; the vow is made by
taking a step forward in the sanctuary at the invita
tion of the bishop, and many a student has withdrawn
at the last moment. The long ceremony of ordination
is impressive and ridiculous in turns. It contains many
beautiful prayers and symbolic rites, but it retains parts
—such as the exhortations to the candidates (who rarely
understand the muttered Latin) and the interrogation
of the people (who would almost commit a sacrilege if
they replied) about the merits of the candidates—which
have long ceased to have any force whatever.
Two years are supposed to elapse between the diacon
ate and the priesthood, but we received the three major
orders within the same six months. Ecclesiastical laws
can always be suspended by Rome in unusual circum
stances, and the extraordinary extent to which clerical
regulations are over-ruled to-day indicates on what evil
days the Church has fallen.
�CHAPTER V
PRIESTHOOD
A consideration of the scheme of study which has
been described would lead to the impression that
Roman Catholic priests must be in a highly satisfactory
condition of intellectual equipment. No other priest
hood has, or ever had, a longer and more systematic
course of training. For ten years, on the average, the
candidate is under the exclusive control of the ecclesi
astical authorities—authorities who have the advantage
of an indefinitely long and world-wide experience in
training their neophytes and a religious authority over
them. Their scheme of education, indeed, does seem
perfectly constructed for the attainment of their
particular object.
Yet it is generally recognised that the Catholic priest
hood, as a body, are not at all remarkable for their
attainments and their intellectual training. Their
system is admirable on paper, but it evidently breaks
down somewhere. That this widely-felt impression of
their inferiority is not a lingering trace of the ancient
prejudice against Rome is clear from the fact that
Englishmen notice the inferiority more particularly out
side of England, where Roman Catholic priests do not
present themselves in the light of schismatical in
truders. And it is placed beyond all doubt by the cir81
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cumstance that the feeling is largely shared, and has
been emphatically expressed, by the Roman Catholic
laity. The correspondence columns of their journals
frequently contain appeals for the better education of
the clergy. The broad fact that, with the wider diffusion
of modern thought, the theological army has struck its
flag, and retreated from point after point, implies a
grave defect even in the leading thinkers of the Church,
as the laity are quick to perceive. It is not surpris
ing, therefore, to find the ordinary clergy much behind
the age in questions of general interest.
The last sermon I preached in a Catholic church
(that of St. Antony, at Forest Gate) was an appeal
for the higher education of the clergy. I urged that
modern thought had entirely changed the position of
the religious teacher, and had made it necessary to
have a regard for intellectual as well as moral train
ing; and I freely denounced the actual ignorance of
the clergy. My mind had already passed from the
Roman Catholic faith, and I spoke strongly and
sincerely on the subject. My colleagues feebly con
gratulated me afterwards, but the laymen of the con
gregation actually sent a deputy to assure me of their
gratitude and their admiration of my bold expression
of their sentiments. On the following evening, after
a scientific lecture I gave them, I spoke on the subject
to a group of educated laymen, and found them deeply
moved on the question. Certainly the clergy of St.
Antony’s (four of whom were professors) were not
below the average. In most of the churches of that
part of London the clergy were far more ignorant, and
even among communities of priests who have wealth
and leisure, like the Jesuits or Oratorians, there are
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few who have even a superficial knowledge of modem
science, history, or philosophy. The impression was
confirmed wherever one listened to Catholic sermons
or entered into serious conversation with the priests.
The reasons of this signal failure of a fine educational
scheme may be deduced partly from what has pre
ceded. The system is unproductive, in the first in
stance, on account of the youth and immaturity of
the students. At nineteen, when they should still be
polishing their wit on Homer, or Tacitus, or Euclid,
they are gravely attacking the profoundest problems
of metaphysics. A well-educated man of thirty-two,
who had a brief course of philosophy under F. David,
told me that he felt as if he were handling blocks of
granite which he was unable to penetrate; our usual
students never even realised that they were handling
“ blocks of granite.” Out of several groups of
students who passed through my hands only one boy
had an idea of the meaning of philosophy. He con
fessed to me that it was because, like myself, he was
tormented by religious doubt from an early age. Be
fore he reaches the age of twenty-four the student has
traversed the whole vast system of scholastic philosophy
and theology, with its innumerable secondary problems
and controversies. He has his opinions formed upon
hundreds of subjects, and knows what to think of every
philosophical and religious system that has ever been
invented, if it be ancient enough. He will have very
little opportunity and less competence to reconsider his
opinions afterwards.
But the studies are not even conducted at the ages
and with the intervals prescribed by the ecclesiastical
legislation; the scarcity of priests (the raritas voca-
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PRIESTHOOD
tionum of which the Pope speaks), induces authorities
unduly to accelerate and curtail the course cf the
higher studies. Every diocese and nearly every religi
ous congregation in England and the States is insuffi
ciently manned. Thousands of baptized Catholics are
allowed to drift for want of clergy, and bishops not
infrequently in despair accept priests who have been
expelled from other dioceses or congregations. It is
true that scores of priests are sent to convert the
natives of Borneo, or to bargain with rival missionaries
over the fortunate Ugandians, and that strenuous efforts
are made to touch the consciences of respectable adher
ents of other Churches; but the fact remains that in
both London and New York tens of thousands of poor
Catholics have drifted for want of priests and chapels.
This leads inevitably to pressure in the seminaries and
curtailment of the studies.
And it is not merely to procure “ labourers for the
vineyard ” that the studies are deplorably mutilated;
another, and a rather curious motive of hurry is found
in certain congregations at least. Certainly in the
Franciscan Order students were prematurely advanced
to the priesthood for the sake of earning money by
their masses. A mass, of course, cannot be sold; that
would be simony. But a priest will say mass for you
or your intention if you make him a present of halfa-crown. He may say it gratuitously if he pleases, but
the English bishops have decreed that if a priest
accepts a “ stipend ” at all he must not take less than
half-a-crown. Now every friar is bound to say mass
for his superior’s intention, and the superior, having
to provide for the community, secures as many and
as “ fat ” stipends as he possibly can. As a friar is
�PRIESTHOOD
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bound to say mass every morning he is worth at least
£1 per week on that count alone; in fact, at Forest
Gate, where we were six priests, mere than £400 was
obtained annually in stipends for masses. As a priest,
however young he may be, says mass daily from the
day of his ordination, the anxiety of the superior to
see him ordained is easily understood. A student is
an onus on the community; he must be made productive
as soon as possible.
Under such conditions it is not strange that their
educational system leads to such unsatisfactory results.
Numbers of young priests are annually discharged upon
humanity with full powers to condemn and anathe
matise, and an intense itching to do so. They soon
find that the “ crude and undigested mass ” they have
learned is a burden to themselves and a source of pain
to their long-suffering audience. In their eagerness to
be subtle they teach rank heresy, trouble timid con
sciences, and hurt themselves against episcopal author
ity. Then they abandon study entirely, thinking it
useless for their purpose. Mr. Jerome has a caricature
somewhere of the newly fledged Anglican curate. The
young evangelist stands at a table on which are
cigarettes and brandy and soda; his books are on sale
or exchange, “ owner having no further use for same.”
The skit is entirely applicable to the average priest.
The canonical age for ordination is twenty-four,
and it is probably the average age; but this precau
tion is nullified by the facility with which dispensations
are granted. The bishop can dispense at twenty-three,
and the Roman authorities readily grant a dispensation
once the candidate has reached the age of twenty-two
and two months. Most of our friars began to earn
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PRIESTHOOD
their pound per week at the age of twenty-two or
twenty-three. Under one provincial bishop, it is said
that there was always a brood of half-fledged priests,
who went by the name of “ Sovereign Pontiffs ” ; they
used to be sent to sing mass on Sundays for priests
who were absent or unwell, and the bishop always
exacted a sovereign for their services. The usual
term of reproach for such immature priests is, “ Praesta
quaesumus ”—an allusion to the fact that they cannot
do more than say mass, for the expression is a common
beginning of mass-prayers.
The ordination is preceded by an episcopal examina
tion in theology. Before the subdiaconate the student
must present one treatise on theology for examination;
he must prepare two for the diaconate and three for
the priesthood. The examination is, however, little
more than a test of the memory and industry of the
aspirant; if he knows the defined points of Catholic
doctrine on the subjects taken, little more is expected
of him. And students are usually careful to select the
shortest treatises for presentation, and to carry the
same treatise through three examinations. Still aspir
ants are occasionally “ ploughed ”; though, judging
from the preposterous answers of certain successful
students whom I have seen at the tribunal, it is difficult
to conceive the possibility of failure.
The ceremony of ordination, which may be wit
nessed on Ember Saturdays in Catholic cathedrals, is
very long and highly symbolical. In fact, it has de
veloped to such an alarming extent that no theologian
can say in what the “ essence ” of the ordination
really consists; there are innumerable controversies as
to which rites are essential to the validity of the sacra
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ment. From the readiness of the theologian to pass
judgment on Anglican orders one would imagine that
he knew the conditions of validity without hesitation;
the truth is, that in the case of each of the three
“ sacred orders,” theologians differ emphatically as
to the essential parts of the ordination. Students are
usually in a state of terror about the numerous possi
bilities of the invalidity of their ordination, and even
bishops betray much nervous anxiety in the matter;
the ceremony is sometimes repeated for general satis
faction. A curious story in illustration of the strange
contingencies that affect the validity of orders is told
of a French bishop. He had exercised episcopal func
tions for many years, when one day his old nurse was
heard to boast that she had baptized him (in periculo),
and that she had not used common water, but rose
water for the purpose. The baptism was invalid; his
subsequent confirmation and ordination were invalid,
for baptism is an indispensable condition of receiving
the other sacraments; all the ordinations he had ever
held were invalid, and had. to be repeated; and all the
masses, absolutions, &c., performed by himself and
his priests during that period had been invalid.
A further source of confusion is found in the need
for what is called “ jurisdiction ” before certain of
the priestly functions can be validly used. At ordina
tion the priest receives the power to say mass, and not
even the Papacy can withdraw this (though it may for
bid him to exercise it). On the Catholic theory I still
possess that power in full, and if I seriously utter the
words, “ Hoc est enim corpus meum ” over the piece
of bread I am eating (for that is the essential part of
the mass) it is changed forthwith into the living body
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PRIESTHOOD
of Christ: it is seriously believed on the Continent
that apostate priests frequently consecrate for the socalled Satanists and Freemasons. However, the power
of absolving from sin is not of the same character; it
is only radically received in the ceremony of ordina
tion, and the validity of its exercise is entirely depend
ent upon ecclesiastical authority. M. Zola, most
patient and accurate of inquirers, has overlooked this
distinction; in “ Lourdes” the Abbe Pierre is made
to hear Marie’s confession when he has no jurisdiction
over her and could not validly absolve her.1
A second examination (in casuistry) is necessary
before “ faculties ” to hear confessions are granted,
which is usually some time after ordination. And
jurisdiction is limited to the diocese of the bishop who
gives faculties, and may be still further restricted at
his pleasure: nunneries and boarding-schools are
always excepted from it; and there are always a cer
tain number of sins the absolution of which the bishop
reserves for himself. In some dioceses the list of
“ reserved cases ” is long and interesting : it usually
comprises the sins which are most prevalent in a dis
trict. The confessor must, in such cases, write to the
bishop for power to absolve, and tell the penitent to
return to him. In London four cases are reserved :
immoral advances by a priest to women in the con
fessional, frequentation of theatres by a priest,1 murder,
2
1 A non-Catholic writer ia almost certain to stumble in liturgical
matters. M. Zola’s administration of the sacraments to the dying
—to the pilgrim in the train in 1 ‘ Lourdes, ” and to Count Dario in
“ Rome ”—is quite incorrect. It has never been pointed out, too,
that the moon’s conduct, during Pierre’s three last nights in Rome,
is out of all bounds of astronomical propriety.
2 It must not be supposed that every priest one sees in a London
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and connection with a secret society. Two cases which
are always reserved to the Pope will be treated in the
next chapter.
For a long period after his ordination the priest’s
activity is confined to saying mass every morning. He
is not indeed bound to say mass every morning; he is
compelled to hear mass every Sunday by the general
law, but there is no clear obligation for him to exercise
his power to consecrate.1 But the young priest says
it daily during the years of his primitive fervour, and
many continue the practice faithfully throughout life.
Monastic priests* are usually bound by their constitu
tions to say mass daily. It would be wiser to allow
them liberty in that respect. Priests soon contract
the habit of hurrying through their mass at a speed
which ill harmonises with its solemn character. In
fact, the Church has been forced to legislate on the
point, and forbid the saying of mass in less than twenty
minutes for an ordinary, and fifteen minutes for a
“ black ” * mass (for the dead). No doubt a priest
2
1
works up to a high rate of speed largely out of anxiety
to meet the wishes of his congregation, yet the sight
is distressing to one who knows how much is squeezed
into the twenty minutes. An ordinary worshipper
theatre has incurred this. The law is local only in action, and
does not apply to visitors—say, from the States.
1 So that Zola is wrong in imputing it as a fault that the priests
at Lourdes omitted to say mass.
2 A black mass—in which the priest wears black vestments—is
shorter than usual: hence it is that black vestments so often adorn
the shoulders of an ordinary secular priest. Green vestments are
worn on a common, saintless day ; red for a martyr or the Holy
Ghost; white for virgins, confessors, and all great feasts ; purple
for sadder festivals; and gold for any purpose.
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PRIESTHOOD
merely sees the rapid irreverent genuflections and the
desperate hand movements which are supposed to be
crosses over the sacrament, but the mutilation of the
prayers is much more deplorable: nearly all are direct
and more or less familiar petitions to the Almighty,
and one cannot but hope (for the priest’s sake) that
he is wholly unconscious of the meaning of his
orisons. It is difficult, no doubt, when a large con
gregation is shifting uneasily on the benches, and
perhaps another priest is frowning upon you from the
chancel, waiting for his turn. Certainly there are
very many priests who acquit themselves with edifying
devotion, but the majority run through their mass
(apart from pressure) in the allotted twenty minutes;
and, since it takes a priest nearly an hour to say mass
in his early practising days, one can imagine at what
price the high speed is obtained.
The mass is rendered rather ludicrous sometimes
from an opposite reason—through its undue prolonga
tion and interruption by musical accompaniment. The
High Mass only differs from the daily Low Mass in
the number of assistants and the musical rendering of
some of the parts. It is utterly incongruous from the
purely religious point of view that the celebrant should
interrupt his solemn rites, whilst he and his congrega
tion listen to the florid strains of Haydn or Gounod,
operatically rendered by soulless singers who have no
idea of the meaning of their words, and are very fre
quently non-Catholics. Pope Leo XIII. did endeavour
to bring about a reform, but he must have realised
that it is the music and display that fill the Catholic
churches.
At the same time it must be said that the Church
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does not do all in its power to make the mass (and
other ceremonies) appeal to the priest. It retains a
number of vestments and rites that have ceased to
have any meaning. The “ humeral veil,” which is
worn over the shoulders by the sub-deacon at mass and
by the priest at Benediction, is a curious survival of
the once intelligible custom of drawing a veil across
the sanctuary at the most solemn moments; the
maniple, an embroidered cloth that dangles at the
priest’s left elbow, and is a similarly atrophied relic
of the primitive handkerchief, is now not only un
meaning but gravely inconvenient. The practice of
solemnly facing the people to sing the epistle and gospel
in Latin, and other such survivals of ancient custom,
are interesting from an archaeological point of view,
but they ought to have been changed centuries ago;
indeed, no serious defence can be made of the use of
Latin at all in the Church of Rome.
Ecclesiastical Latin is, of course, easy, yet it is a
fact that many priests know so little Latin of any
kind that many parts of the mass and Office are quite
meaningless to them. I remember a country priest
who was invited to bless a churn. He took the book
of (Latin) benedictions to the farm, and donned his
surplice. Not knowing the Latin for a churn (which
may be excused) he pitched upon a “ Benedictio
thalami ” as probably referring to a churn, and read
the “ Blessing of a marriage bed,” with the usual
solemnity, over the churn of cream.1 Certainly some
1 There are blessings for every conceivable purpose. In my
younger days a woman once asked me to read a prayer over her.
I could not divine the particular purpose, and she seemed uncom
municative. So I chose one from the book, rather at random ; and
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of the sequences in the mass and many of the hymns
in the Breviary are beyond the capacity of a large
number of priests.
And it must be admitted that no familiarity with
Latin will enable the priest to attach a meaning to
certain portions of the liturgy—especially to some of
the psalms. The approved Latin version of the Psalter
is a disgraceful performance; yet it has been used for
1600 years, and there is no question of changing it.
St. Jerome, an expert Hebraist, offered an excellent
translation in his classical Latin, but the monks knew
the old Psalter by heart and would not change; hence
the first translation of the psalms into bad Latin by
very imperfect Hebrew scholars endures to this day.
Some of the psalms—notably the 58th—contain un
mitigated absurdities; the verse i( Kings of armies have
fled, have fled ” is rendered, “ King of virtues, beloved,
beloved ”; verse 18 runs, “ If you sleep in the middle
of the lots, the wings of the dove are silvered,” &c.
There are many similar verses. Yet the good old
monks, who doubtless found many deep symbolical
meanings in the above, clung to the version, and their
modern successors may be excused for wool-gathering
during their chanting.
About forty psalms enter into the daily “ Office ”
which the priest has to recite. One often sees a
secular priest mumbling over his Breviary in train or
omnibus; he is bound to form the words with his lips,
she was safely delivered of twins shortly afterwards. In Belgium I
was severely censured for sending to a dentist a young woman who
came to me with a severe toothache, and an old lady, who had
diseased cows, to a veterinary surgeon. I incurred grave suspicion
of rationalism from my colleagues.
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at least. The monks, however, recite their Office in
their choir, or private chapel, which is fitted with
stalls, like a cathedral. The two sides take up the
alternate verses of the psalms, chanting the words in
a loud monotone; it is only sung on solemn occasions.
The whole of it is set to music, and in such inactive
monasteries as the Carthusians, where it is a question
what to do with one’s time, the whole is sung daily.
It takes about three hours to chant it in the ordinary
monotone, and no normal human mind could remain
in real prayer so long. Indeed, the facility with
which the two rows of chanting friars could be thrown
into fits of laughter was a clear symptom of vacuity.
Even during our novitiate we were frequently con
vulsed with laughter at the entanglements of an elderly
friar who read the prayers at breakneck speed. At
London one day our instructor, who led one side of the
choir, suddenly raised the tone about an octave in the
middle of the psalm. The head superior, who led the
other side, disagreed with him (as usual). We were
afraid to join with either, for they were equally formid
able to us, so we listened with interest as they con
tinued the psalm to the end, chanting alternate verses
at a distance of an octave and a half. Deaf elderly
friars also caused distraction by going ahead in com
plete unconsciousness of the pauses of the rest of the
community.
And if there was much to be desired in these'
religious offices which were of a private character it
will be readily imagined that their public services were
not more satisfactory. It is impossible to expect a
continuous ecstasy during the long hours which monks
and nuns devote to prayer every day; and since most
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of the psalms do not vary from day to day, the very
monotony of the services would stand in the way of
any very serious devotion. In fact, the idea of follow
ing the sense of the words recited day after day for
hours together was so forbidding that it was frankly
given up by our spiritual writers; they were content
to urge us to prepare in advance lines of religious
thought to follow while we were chanting which would
have no connection with the Office itself. We tried
to do so. But the early riser who passes some London
monastery in the small hours of a winter morning, and
catches the sound of the solemn chant breaking on the
sleepy air, must not too hastily conclude that here is a
focus of intense spiritual thought which should work_
if only telepathically (as some think to-day)—for the
betterment of life. The religious exercises of the friars
must be cut down by two-thirds before they can become
really spiritual.
But in the public ceremonies a new distracting
element is introduced—the presence of closely observ
ant spectators; it were not in human nature to be
insensible of their presence. The sanctuary becomes a
stage; and strive how he may to think of higher things,
the ordinary mortal cannot banish the thought that
some hundreds, perhaps thousands, of reverent eyes
are bent upon his every movement. The Catholic
sanctuary, with its myriads of burning tapers, its
fragrant incense, its glory of colour in flowers and
vestments, compels attention. Every line of the
church converges to the altar and the priest. Hence
it is not surprising to find that there is a great deal of
formalism and purely dramatic effect in sanctuary
work. No one, probably, will think much of the grave
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and devout expressions of the ministers. It is a part
of their discipline to cultivate such an expression, and
it soon becomes automatic. In point of fact, there
are few who are not keenly concerned about the
material success of their function—their singing, their
deportment, and appearance. At such a time as Holy
Week, for instance, the feverish anxiety for the suc
cess of the elaborate services runs so high that one may
safely say they are quite unattended with religious
feeling in the sanctuary. Ceremonies and music are
practised for weeks in advance, and, when the time
comes, celebrants are too busy and too nervous to
think of more than the merely mechanical or theatrical
part of the devotions.
And the same thought applies, naturally, to preach
ing ; it runs on the same lines in the Church of Rome
as in every other church. There are deeply religious
preachers whose only serious thought is for the good
of their hearers, as they conceive it; there are preachers
who think only of making a flattering impression on
their audience, or who are utterly indifferent what
effect or impression they produce; the vast majority
strive to benefit their hearers, and are not unassisted
in their efforts by a very natural feeling of self-interest.
I heard a typical story of one a few years ago. The
priest in question is one of the most familiar figures
in Catholic circles in the north of England, an ardent
zealot for the “ conversion ” of England, and, I be
lieve, a very earnest and worthy man. On this
occasion he was preaching in the open air to a large
special congregation who had made a pilgrimage to
some Roman Catholic resort. The preacher seemed
to be carried away by his feelings. My informant,
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however, a keen critic of elocution, noticed that one
gesture—a graceful sweep of the wide-sleeved arm—
was unduly prolonged, and, looking more closely, he
saw that the preacher was signalling to a photographer
in the opposite corner of the quadrangle. The preacher
told him afterwards that he had arranged to be photo
graphed at this specially prepared gesture. The photo
grapher had been so captivated by the sermon that
he had to be recalled to his duty by the orator himself. I also remember being grievously shocked once
in my early days at one of the London “ stars.” I
happened to be near the door when he re-entered the
cloister after a very fervent discourse, and he immediately burst out with the exclamation, “ Now, where
is that glass of port! ” Five years later I used to
feel grateful myself for a glass of port after preaching.
It is not an apostolic practice, but this is not an
apostolic age, and it only merits contempt when it
professes to be such.
If the priest has an educated congregation he usually
prepares his sermon with care. The sermons are rarely
original, for there is a vast library of sermonnaires at
the disposal of the Catholic priest, but it is often
written out in full; though it is never read from the
pulpit, as is done in Anglican congregations. Good
preaching is, however, rather the exception than the
rule; though the age of martyrs has passed away, a
Catholic can always find a sufficient test of his faith
in the shape of an indifferent preacher who insists on
thinking that he needs two three-quarters of an hour
sermons every Sunday. In poor parishes the sermons
usually degenerate into intolerable harangues. A priest
who had charge of a large poor mission told me that
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he always prepared his sermon the hour before it was
delivered : he took a cup of tea, lit a cigar, opened the
gospel of the day and thought dreamily over it, then
he ascended the pulpit and preached for half-an-hour.
Men of wide erudition and facility of utterance would
often preach most impressive sermons at a few minutes’
notice; others, of an ascetic, earnest, contemplative
type, would also preach sound and rational moral dis
courses without preparation. The practice of preach
ing the same sermon many times is, of course, widely
prevalent. I remember one old friar fondly kissing a
much worn manuscript after a sermon on St. Joseph :
“ God bless it,” he said, “ that is the sixty-third time
I have preached it.”
There are many other functions in which the priest
finds it difficult to sustain the becoming attitude. Con
fession will be treated in the next chapter; Extreme
Unction is a ceremony in which only a keener faith
than we usually meet to-day can take a religious
interest. But it is in the ceremony of baptism,
especially, that the most unreasonable rites survive and
the most diverting incidents occur. There is, for in
stance, a long series of questions to be put to the
sponsors, and the Church, unmindful apparently of the
march of time, still insists on their being put in Latin
(and answered by the priest) and repeated afterwards
in English. One lay-brother who used to assist me
in baptizing thought it more proper that he should
learn the Latin responses, instead of allowing me to
answer myself. Unfortunately he muddled the dia
logues, and to my query : i ‘ Dost thou believe in God
the Father,” &c. ? he answered,* with proud emphasis,
“ Abrenuntio—I renounce him.”
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PRIESTHOOD
I was, however, little occupied with sacerdotal
functions. Even before my ordination I had been
appointed to the chair of philosophy, and as soon as
I became a priest I entered upon my duties as pro
fessor. My interest in philosophy had been noticed
by the authorities, and probably attributed to a natural
taste for the subject. The truth was that I was
tormented with doubt, and I knew that philosophy
alone could furnish the cure—if cure there was. My
doubts had commenced six years previously, in the
novitiate. I can remember almost the hour, almost
the spot in the monastic garden, when, on a fine
winter’s day, as I chanted to myself the eternal refrain
of our ascetic literature, “ Ye shall receive a hundred
fold in heaven,” the fatal question fell across my mind
like a lightning-shaft, to sear and torture for many a
weary year. I had dutifully confessed my state of
mind to my superior. Kind and earnest as he was,
he had nevertheless little capacity for such emer
gencies ; he made me kneel at his feet in his cell and,
after severely pointing out the conceit of a boy daring
to have doubts—holding up the exemplary faith of
Wiseman, Newman, &c.—he discharged me with the
usual admonition to stifle immediately any further
temptation of that character. He acted upon the
received ascetical principle that there are two kinds
of temptations which must be fled from, not met and
fought, namely, temptations against purity and tempta
tions against faith: in the second case the rule is
certainly dishonest. Indeed, thoughtful priests do not
recognise it, though it is sanctioned, in theory and
practice, by the majority.
My scepticism increased; it was partly an effect of
�PRIESTHOOD
99
temperament, partly a natural desire to verify the
opinions which I found myself acting upon. At
London I immediately put myself under the guidance
of F. David, and for seven years he was informed,
almost weekly, of the growth of my thoughts.
Though most intimate with him I never allowed him
to make any allusion to my difficulties outside the con
fessional, but, in confession, I spent many hours pro
pounding my difficulties and listening with sincere
attention to his replies. As time went on I began to
feel that I had exhausted his apologetical resources,
that he had but the old threadbare formulae to oppose
to my ever-deepening difficulties. I became, there
fore, more dependent upon my own studies; and, as
my difficulties were wholly philosophical, I devoted
myself with untiring energy to the study of scholastic
philosophy. If, in later years, I did not appeal to
F. David when the crisis came, it was because I was
firmly convinced that I had, in private and in public
lectures, heard all that he had to say on the subject.
He was the only man who knew that my secession
was not the work of one day, but the final step in a
bitter conflict of ten long painful years. All that my
colleagues knew was that I was ever reticent and
gloomy ‘ (which was, I think, attributed to pride and
to sickness), and that I was strangely enamoured of
metaphysics; I was, accordingly, appointed professor
of that subject.
In due time I received jurisdiction and commenced
the full exercise of sacerdotal power. A monastic
superior has the power of examining his own subjects,
and thus practically dispensing with the episcopal
examinations. Knowing that I was not a zealous student
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PRIESTHOOD
of casuistry, F. David kindly undertook my examina
tion ; he asked me the formula of absolution (which I
did not know) one day when I met him in the cloister,
and then sent me up to the Vicar-General as “ ex
amined and found worthy.” I then immediately
entered the mysterious and much-dreaded confessional.
How does one feel on entering upon that unique
experience? I remember the emotion, but am incom
petent to analyse it. I only know that as I sat for
the first time in “ the box ” awaiting the first penitent
I was benumbed, not exalted, with a vague, elemental,
un-rational excitement. Behind me lay my long and
minute book-knowledge of all the conceivable trans
gressions of man, woman, or child; before me vaguely
outstretched the living world, as few see it. Then
came the quick step, the opening of the door, the rustle
of a dress—one last tremor, and the sensation was gone
for ever.
Preaching and other functions also commenced. I
was fully launched on my sacerdotal career. But the
confessional is a subject for more careful study.
�CHAPTER VI
HIE CONFESSIONAL
No point in the vast and contentious system of the
Church of Rome has excited, and still excites, a deeper
and a less flattering interest than the practice of
auricular confession. The Inquisition and the com
merce in relics and indulgences (though this com
merce is by no means extinct) are still favourite sub
jects of the historical critic. Monasticism, the Index,
the use of a dead language, political ambition and
secular intrigue, are some of its actual features which
attract no small amount of opprobrium, and even try
the patience of many of its own adherents. But the
chief butt of the innumerable anti-papal lecturers and
pamphleteers is the confessional. The air of mystery
and secrecy is a necessary evil of the confessional, and
it is a feature that provokes bitter criticism. A
Catholic layman cannot, of course, with delicacy en
large upon his own experience of the confessional, and
in any case it would be too personal to be effective.
No ex-priest has hitherto given his impressions of the
institution, and no priest would venture to express an
unfavourable opinion upon it, or any opinion of a
circumstantial character, for fear of alarming his
co-religionists.
Yet, in point of fact, there is no reason in the
E
101
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THE CONFESSIONAL
nature of things why even an actual confessor should
not write a most ample and detailed account of his
experiences. The “ seal of confession ” is not merely
a sacramental obligation; it is a natural obligation
which no ex-priest would ever dream of violating.
But the obligation has certain limits which are ex
plicitly defined in theological works, and are practically
observed by priests. The obligation is merely to main
tain such secrecy about confessional matters as shall
prevent the knowledge of the crime of a definite indi
vidual ; within those limits the obligation is absolute,
and admits of no possible excuse in the smallest matter.
The priest is not even allowed to use a probability in
his own favour in this question. He is forbidden
under an obligation of the gravest possible character
to say a single word or perform any action whatever
from which the declaration of his penitent might pos
sibly be inferred. Hence he cannot, under any con
ceivable circumstances, act upon the information he
has received. If a priest learned from the confession
of his servant that she had put poison in the wine he
was to take for dinner, Catholic theology directs that
he must not even change the bottle, but act precisely
as if he had heard nothing. I never heard of a test
case, though it is well known that there have been
martyrs to the seal of confession. In less important
matters the confessor interprets his obligation gener
ously. One of our friars, the superior of a monastery,
interrupted an inferior who was confessing to him, and
made him stand up and repeat apart from his confes
sion a certain fault for which he wished to inflict a
public penance. It was a breach of the seal, though
my colleague was too subtle a casuist to admit it. I
�THE CONFESSIONAL
103
remember a priest who was confessor to an acquaint
ance of mine once saying to me of her: “ Miss ----seems to be very well educated; she speaks quite
smoothly on the most delicate points.” I doubt
whether my friend would have cared for me to know
so much of her confession.
However, once the danger of identifying the indi
vidual penitent is precluded, the confessor is free to
make whatever use he pleases of his knowledge.
Theological writers admonish him that it is extremely
imprudent to discuss such matters before laymen, but
that is only part of the discretion of the priest with
regard to the laity, and carries no moral obligation.
Amongst themselves priests discuss their interesting
experiences very freely; and the professor of casuistry
is usually a man of wide experience, who gives his
students the full benefit thereof. In their conferences
(discussion-meetings) the clergy talk freely of their
experiences. It is a common practice of missionaries
to discuss the relative wickedness of town and country,
and of large cities or localities in a city. Such com
mentaries, however, are carefully restricted to sacer
dotal circles, there is no doubt that any departure
from the policy of unqualified secrecy would deeply
impair the fidelity of the laity, and tend to withdraw
them from that greatest engine of sacerdotal influence,
the confessional.
And there is another reason why confessors have
not thought it necessary to enter into the controversy
to any important extent. The attacks upon the con
fessional have usually defeated their own object by
emphasising too strongly the accidental rather than
the inherent and essential evil of the institution.
E2
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THE CONFESSIONAL
Dark stories—which may quite possibly be true in
some cases—are circulated in connection with it, and
the impression is at once urged that such practices are
a normal, or at least a large part, of what is hidden
under the veil of secrecy. The generalisation is fatal,
for the Catholic apologist has little difficulty in pointing
out the impossibility of such a state of things; besides,
the days are happily gone by when the Catholic priest
hood as a body could be accused of systematic and con
scious immorality. The main contention of the critic
having been thus met and answered, attention ii
diverted from the real evil of the confessional, which
is not sufficiently realised by those who are unfamiliar
with it.
The structures which are found in every Catholic
church for the purpose of hearing confessions quite
exclude the cruder anti-papal view on the subject.
The penitent usually remains in sight of the congre
gation, but in any case priest and penitent are separ
ated by a complete partition; a wire gauze-work, about
eighteen inches square, which is set into the partition,
enables them to talk in whispers, but contact is im
possible. These “ boxes,” or confessionals, may be
inspected in any church. In hearing the confessions
of nuns the precautions are usually still more stringent;
the confessor is locked in a kind of bureau, the nun
remaining entirely outside. But it is a fact that the
priest is not bound to hear every confession in the
“box,” and that he frequently hears them in less
guarded places. I have heard the confessions of a
whole community of nuns where no such precautions
existed; they entered singly and entirely unobserved
into the room where I sat to hear them. Their usual
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105
confessor was a venerable and sedate old priest, and it
was either forgotten, or thought unnecessary, to alter
the arrangement for me. During certain hours on
Saturday the priest sits in his box for all comers. Out
side those hours he will hear confessions in the sacristy
(where I have known a liaison to be systematically
pursued under that pretence) or anywhere, and the
anti-papal lecturer may find serious ground for reflection
in that section of his practice.
Confessions are also frequently heard at the resi
dences of penitents. The Church does not sanction
the practice with regard to people who are capable of
attending church, but it is frequently necessary to
hear the confessions of persons who are confined to
bed. The priest is urged in such cases to leave doors
open and take various precautions to avoid scandal,
but those directions are seldom acted upon and would
not be appreciated, as a rule, by the penitent herself.
Cases are known to me in which women have feigned
or exaggerated illness for the purpose of bringing the
priest to their room—with his connivance or at his
suggestion—and a liaison of priest and penitent has
long been maintained in that way. But such appoint
ments are attended with danger, and cannot be
widespread.
I do not believe that there is any large amount of
immorality in connection with the confessional; the
legislation of the Church on that point is stringent and
effective, and the priest is well aware that the con
fessional is the worst place in the world for him to
indulge improper tendencies. He is involved in a net
work of regulations, and sooner or later his misconduct
is bound to come to the knowledge of his authorities,
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THE CONFESSIONAL
with very disastrous consequences to himself. In the
first place, as I explained in the last chapter, improper
suggestion on the part of the confessor is a sin reserved
to the bishop. He cannot say mass until he has
received absolution (I am assuming that he has not
lost all sense of obligation T), and no brother priest
can absolve him from his fault. He must have recourse
to the bishop; and it is safe to presume that he will
not relapse for a considerable period. In the second
place, he is deprived of the power of absolving his
accomplice. An attempt to do so is a sin reserved
to the Pope; and, as every Catholic woman knows
that such absolution is invalid, the misconduct is once
more liable to come to the cognisance of the author
ities. The second sin which is reserved to the Pope
is a false denunciation of a confessor by a woman, so
that one has a guarantee of the genuineness of such
denunciations as are actually made.
Thus it is obviously ill-advised for the unfaithful
priest to make an evil use of the confessional, for the
danger of exposure is sternly prohibitive. A devout
Roman Catholic is horrified at the very speculation;
an impartial thinker, whose estimate of human nature
is neither unduly raised by thoughts of special graces
nor depressed by prejudice, will think of priests as
men more than usually exposed to temptation and
burdened with an enforced celibacy, but will give them
credit, on the whole, for an honest effort to realise
that higher integrity which they profess. He will
1 In that case his infidelity might not be revealed until death,
when any priest can absolve. A curious case was mentioned (by a
priest) in the Daily Telegraph a few years ago. At the death of a
Catholic military chaplain a woman presented herself to the army
authorities as his wife, and actually produced a marriage certificate.
�THE CONFESSIONAL
107
not think them superhuman with the Catholic, nor
infrahuman with certain Protestants. He will not
believe that any of their habitual practices are in
herently immoral, but he will expect the occasional
lapses from which no large body of men can be
free.
The priest’s danger is not in the confessional. It
is the same as that of any voluntary celibate, though,
in the light of what has been said about the age of
taking the vow, perhaps we ought to call him an
involuntary celibate. The fact that from time im
memorial ecclesiastical legislation has returned again
and again to the question of priests’ servants is in
structive enough. From the thirteenth century onward
the Church has recognised a vast deal of this kind of
immorality, and I am aware that there is much of it
in England to-day, even where the housekeeper is a
relative of the priest. Further, the house-to-house
visits of the priest, and the visits he receives, are
made to ladies ; the priest is idle in the hours when
the husband is employed. From the nature of the
case, however, it is impossible to make positive state
ments in this matter.
Whatever may be said of the general integrity of
the priest’s life,1 it may be safely admitted that the
occasional transgressions of his vow in connection with
the confessional have been grossly exaggerated. And
one unfortunate consequence of the excess is that it
1 I have elsewhere ventured to say, as a result of long reflection,
that probably one priest in ten is a man of exceptionally high
character, and one in ten a man of degraded or hypocritical life ;
the remaining eight-tenths are neither very spiritual nor the re
verse, and may lapse occasionally. But in Catholic countries such
as Spain clerical immorality is general. Second edition.
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THE CONFESSIONAL
has diverted attention from the real evil of the con
fessional. It is bad enough for adult men and women
(apart from the few who really desire it) to have to
kneel weekly or monthly at the feet of a priest (usually
a man they know intimately), and tell every unworthy
thought and act into which they have been betrayed;
for girls and young women to discuss their inmost
thoughts and feelings with such a man is vicious and
lamentable. If they are of a refined temper the
practice causes them much pain, and often leads to
duplicity or to actual debasement; to those of a coarser
complexion the temptation to abuse the occasion is
very severe.
When I first began to hear confessions I was much
impressed with the number of girls who unburdened
their minds to me (I was almost a stranger to them)
of some long-concealed transgression of an indelicate
character. A Catholic girl usually chooses a particular
confessor (we were six in number at Forest Gate), and
presents herself at his box every week, fortnight, or
month. The priest learns to recognise her voice, if
he does not know her already, and counts her amongst
his regular penitents, of whom every confessor is
proud to have a certain number. Week after week
she comes with her slender list of the usual feminine
frailities—fibs, temper, and backbiting. At last she
is betrayed into some graver fault, or something which
she imagines (usually after it has taken place) to be
serious. She is unable to reveal it to her ordinary
confessor after her long immunity from serious sin has
won her a certain esteem from him. If she goes to
another confessor, her habitual director will learn it,
for she is bound to say how long it is since her last
�THE CONFESSIONAL
109
confession. He will draw an obvious conclusion; some
confessors go so far as to exact a repetition of the
confession to themselves. She therefore conceals the
sin, and continues her confessions and communions for
months, even years, without confessing it. Now each
such confession and communion, she has been taught,
is as vile a sin as murder or adultery. She goes
through life with her soul in her hands and the awful
picture of a Catholic hell burning deeper into her;
until at last, in an agony of fear, she crouches one day
in the corner of the box and falters out the dread
secret of her breaking heart. And it must be remem
bered that the subject of so much pain is often no real
sin at all. The most unavoidable feelings and acts are
confused with the most vicious practices, and some
times regarded as “ mortal sins.”
But a yet sadder category is the large number of
girls who are actually corrupted by the practice of
confession. Girls who would never dream of talking
to their companions, even to their sisters or mothers
on certain points, will talk without the least restraint
to the priest. They are taught when young that such
is the intention of Christ; that in the confessional
every irregular movement (and to their vaguely dis
ciplined moral sense the category embraces the whole
of sexual physiology) must be revealed. They are
reminded that nothing superfluous must be added, yet
that the sense of shame in the confessional must be
regarded as a grave temptation of the evil one. So
they learn to control it, then to lay it aside temporarily,
and finally, to lose it. They begin to confer with each
other on the subject, to compare the impressibility,
the inquisitiveness, or the knowledge, of various con
�110
THE CONFESSIONAL
fessors, and they make plots (they have admitted as
much to me) to put embarrassing questions to priests.
I am not suggesting for a moment that Catholic
women and girls are less sensitive or less moral than
those under the influence of other religions. That
would be an untruth. But quite certainly it is one
of the evil influences in their lives that, although they
at first manifest a quick sense of shame and delicacy,
they are compelled by the confessor to be more minute
and circumstantial in their narratives.1 A girl will
often try to slip her less delicate transgressions
hurriedly between two common peccadilloes, and only
accuse herself in a general way of having been “ rude ”
or immodest. No confessor can allow such a general
accusation to pass; he is bound to call her and question
her minutely on the subject; for by some curious pro
cess of reasoning the Church of Rome has deduced
from certain of Christ’s words that the confessor,
being judge, must have a detailed knowledge of every
serious transgression before he can give absolution.
The conversation which ensues can very well be
imagined.
Finally, there is a still more curious and pitiable
category of victims of the sacrament of penance. I
speak again of women, because men may be roughly
distributed into two simple classes; the small minority
who are spiritually aided by the weekly discussion of
their fallings and temptations, and the great majority
1 Here the traditional purity of the west of Ireland maiden may
be quoted to me. But, apart from the fact that there is no such
remarkable virtue in Catholic Dublin, or still more Catholic Spain,
it is now proved that the ratio of illegitimate births in the west of
Ireland is kept down by sending the sinners to Glasgow, Liverpool,
or America.
�THE CONFESSIONAL
111
to whom confession is a bore and a burden. The
missionary priest who travels from parish to parish is
often warned that certain women will come to confess
who must be carefully handled. These are, in various
degrees, monomaniacs of the system, and are found in
every diocese. Sometimes they have a morbid love of
denouncing priests to the bishop on a charge of solicita
tion; and in the hope of getting evidence they will
entangle him in the crudest conversation. Sometimes
they are women “ with a history,” which, in their
morbid love of the secret conversation, they urge,
freshly embroidered, upon every confessor they meet,
and make him think that he has secured a Magdalen.
Frequently they are mere novelists who deliberately
invent the most shameless stories in order to gratify
their craving for that peculiar conversation to which
they have grown accustomed in the confessional.
In this I am, of course, relying to some extent on
the larger experience of my older colleagues, but some
pitiable cases linger in my own memory. Almost one
of the first confessions which I received from a woman
was a sordid and lengthy story of a liaison with one
of my colleagues. She assured me that she had never
told it before. When, however, after an hour of this
conversation, I returned to the house, another priest,
who had seen her leave my “ box,” asked me with a
laugh: “How did you get on with Clara?” (I
change the name, of course.) It appeared that, though
her story was probably true, she had hawked it over
London. Others confessed that they came to con
fession precisely on account of the sexual excitement
it gave them; the effect was at times very perceptible.
These are exceptional, but numerous, cases; so are the
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THE CONFESSIONAL
cases in which the confession is a real and valued
spiritual aid. For the vast majority of Catholics it is
a burden which they would gladly avoid if the Church
did not force it on them.
This, then, is the essential, inalienable evil of the
confessional as an obligatory and universal institution.
It may not be so directly productive of gross acts as
is frequently supposed, but it has a corruptive influence
that is clear to all save those who have been familiar
with it from childhood. And yet this system, of so
grave a responsibility, has the most slender basis of all
the institutions of the Church of Rome. The reason
ing by which it is deduced from Scripture is a master
piece of subtlety. “ Whose sins ye shall forgive they
are forgiven, and whose sins ye shall retain they are
retained,” is the sole text bearing on the subject.
The Catholic method of inferring the obligation of
confession from the latter part of the text is interest
ing, and yet very simple. The Apostles, the Church
says, have the power of retaining sin; but if it were
possible to obtain forgiveness in any other way than
by absolution from the Apostles or their successors the
power of retaining sin would be nugatory; therefore
there is only one way of obtaining forgiveness—by
absolution, after full confession. This argument is
strengthened by one from tradition, from the fact that,
in the fourth century, the Church claimed, against the
Novatians, the power of absolving from all sins; but
what was meant in the fourth century by confession
and absolution is not quite clear even to Catholic
theologians, and an outsider may be excused for not
seeing the force of the argument. Certainly confession
was not then obligatory.
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The fact is that, when the Church first began (in
the thirteenth century) to talk about the obligation
of confession, it had not the same critical spirit to
face which it has to-day. It found that a practice
had somehow developed amongst the faithful which
could be turned into a most powerful instrument, and
it proceeded to make the practice obligatory. The
newly founded religious orders were then administer
ing their spiritual narcotics to humanity, and the law
was accepted with docility. Hence, in our own day,
when the Church must provide a more rational basis
for its tenets and institutions, the search for proof of
the divine sanction of the practice is found to be more
than usually difficult to the expert interpreters of the
Church of Rome.
Apart, however, from its feeble dogmatic defence,
it is usual for preachers and writers to expatiate upon
the moral advantages of the practice. Sermons on
the subject are very frequent, for it is well known
that many people are deterred by it from passing over
to Rome. It is urged that confession gives a certain
relief to the soul that is burdened with the conscious
ness of sin, and that it is a great preventive of dis
order. That a large number of the Catholics of the
higher spiritual type are helped by the weekly con
sultation with the confessor is unquestionable. All the
saintly men and women of the Church who are uni
versally esteemed to-day regarded the confessional as
an important aid. In fact, one often meets non
Catholics of high moral sensitiveness who look with
eager longing to the institution. That is certainly an
argument for the admission of quite voluntary con
fession under circumstances of especial security, but it
�114
THE CONFESSIONAL
lends no support to the Roman law of compulsory
confession.
On the other hand, the academic conclusion of the
preacher, that the confessional is a preventive of sin,
vanishes completely before facts which are patent to
all. Catholics are neither more nor less moral than
their non-Catholic fellows in any country where they
mingle. To compare Catholic countries with Protest
ant would be useless. London and Berlin, if we may
strike an average of conflicting opinions, are neither
better nor worse than Madrid or Rome. Paris has not
deteriorated, but rather improved, since it threw off
the yoke of the Church. Milan, largely non-Catholic,
is far more moral than Naples. Liverpool and Glasgow
are much more Catholic than Manchester or London;
yet missionaries admit that they are more vicious.1
The truth is, that whilst the confessor can exercise a
restraining influence over his habitual penitent (as a
rule), the majority soon become so inured to the con
fession that it fails to deter them, and a certain number
are actually encouraged to sin by the thought of the
facility of absolution. The latter point has been
strained by critics; it is by no means a general feature.
But I have been informed by penitents on more than
one occasion that they sinned more readily under the
influence of this thought. In monastic or quasi
monastic institutions the weekly confession to the
chaplain does exercise a degree of influence, but even
1 To meet the generally unfavourable contrast of Catholic lands
and Protestant, the Catholic apologist pretends that vice is more
easily avoided in cooler latitudes. This is ludicrous. Germany
and Italy were equal in vice before the Reformation ; Christiania
and St. Petersburg are as vicious as London : Canada is not more
virtuous than Australia.
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115
here nature has its revenge. The temptation to con
ceal and the practice of concealing are so great that
the Church prescribes that an “ extraordinary con
fessor ” shall be provided every three months, and
that each monk or nun or cleric shall present himself.
In discharging that function I have not only met cases
of long concealment, as might be expected, but I have
known the inmates deliberately to indulge in the pros
pect of my coming. All these facts must be set
against the advantages of the confession for the
spiritual elect1; or, rather, they show that, whatever
may be thought of confession in the abstract, the law
of obligatory confession is a grave moral blunder. I
have heard confessions in very many parts of England
and abroad; I have read much casuistic literature that
is permeated with confessional experience; I have con
ferred on the subject with missionaries who have heard
hundreds of thousands of confessions, and I am con
vinced that the majority of Catholics are unaffected
by the confessional. They are bound to confess once
every year; if they wish to pass as men of ordinary
piety they confess every month or oftener; but in the
whirligig of life the confessional is forgotten, and has
no influence whatever on their morality.
That the institution is a source of great power to
the Church at large is easily understood : it creates a
vast gulf between clergy and laity, and considerably
accentuates the superiority of the former. But to a
large number of individual priests the function is very
distasteful. Apart from the obvious unpleasantness of
1 I have dwelt more fully on these advantages, and said all that
can be urged in favour of confession, in my “ Church Discipline:
an Ethical Study of the Church of Rome,” ch. iv.
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THE CONFESSIONAL
the task, it is much more fatiguing than would be
supposed. Three or four hours’ continuous hearing I
have found very exhausting, and a missionary has fre
quently to spend seven or eight hours a day in the
box. Still there are many priests who show a great
liking for the work, and they will sit for hours in their
boxes waiting—one could not help comparing them to
patient spiders—for the arrival of penitents.
The obligation of confessing commences at the age
of seven years, and is incumbent upon every member
of the Church, clergy and laity alike, even on the
Pope, who has a simple, harmless Franciscan friar
serving him in that capacity. The theory is that the
obligation of confessing commences when the possi
bility of contracting grave sin is first developed, and
in the eyes of the Church of Rome the average child
of seven is capable of meriting eternal damnation by
its acts. Needless to say, the confession of the average
child of seven or eight is a farce. The children used
to be conducted to us from the schools every three
months, after a careful drilling from their teachers,
but scarcely one child in ten had the faintest glimmer
ing of an idea of the nature of absolution. Few of
them could even be sufficiently instructed to fulfil the
material part of the ceremony; they mixed the various
parts of the formulae in the most unintelligible fashion,
and generally wished to retreat before they had
received the essential object of their coming—
absolution.
The method of the ceremony is described in any
Roman Catholic prayer-book. The penitent first
kneels for ten or fifteen minutes in the church and,
with the aid of the minute catalogue of sins in his
�THE CONFESSIONAL
117
book, recalls his transgressions since his last confession.
Entering the box, and usually asking the priest’s bless
ing, he states the occasion of his last confession, so
that the confessor may form a correct estimate of his
sinfulness. He then states his faults, the number of
times he has committed each, and any aggravating
circumstances; if the confessor is not satisfied, he
questions him and elicits further details. Then pre
mising, as a rule, a few words of exhortation or re
proof, he imposes a penance and dismisses him with
absolution, after an act of sorrow and a promise to
amend. According to Catholic doctrine the act of
sorrow and the “ purpose of amendment ” are the vital
and essential elements of the ceremony. The utter
ing of the formula by the priest—every Catholic is
told repeatedly—is entirely useless unless the contri
tion and good resolve are present. This shows that
the Church itself has not a mechanical conception of
the confession; but it must be added that, in practice,
the ordinary Catholic does constantly tend to rely on
just such a conception of the mechanical efficacy of
the rite. No money is ever exacted or received for
absolution. The stories circulated by travellers of lists
of prices of absolution seen in Continental churches
are entirely devoid of foundation.1 Further, an “ in1 I leave this in the text, but must add that I have since been
credibly informed of lists hanging in Canadian churches which set
a price on sin. But I gather that this was not the price of absolu
tion, but of an indulgence (remission of purgatorial punishment)
roughly adapted to various sins. The Catholic believes that,
although absolution relieves him of the fear of hell, he has still the
fires of Purgatory to face. Alms and good works may reduce his
liability to this, and the lists in question, sordid as they are, may
be merely suggestions of what amount of alms may trust to clear
the penalty of sins. Third edition.
�118
THE CONFESSIONAL
diligence ” has no reference whatever to future sin,
but is a remission of the purgatorial punishment due
for sin committed, and already substantially forgiven
by absolution, which the Church of Rome claims the
power to give. That indulgences are still practically
sold cannot be denied : not that a written indulgence
is now ever handed over for so much hard cash 1—such
bargains have proved too disastrous to the Church—but
papal blessings, richly-indulgenced crosses and rosaries,
&c., are well-known rewards of the generous alms-giver.
In Tyndall’s “ Sound ” a curious instance is men
tioned of a church in which certain acoustic peculi
arities enabled the listener at a distant point to hear
the whispers in the confessional; it is said that a
husband in this way heard his own wife’s confession.
Such contingencies are foreseen and provided for in
theological works. The seal of confession applies not
only to the priest, but to every person who comes to
a knowledge of confessional matter. It happens some
times that the penitents waiting outside overhear the
words of priest or penitent, especially when one or
other is a little deaf. At a church in Manchester,
Once more I don the white sheet—so little does even the priest
know of Catholicism in Catholic lands. I have before me four
indulgences which were bought in Spain for fifty, seventy-five, and
105 centimos each in the year 1902, and they bear that date. The
Archbishop of Toledo issues millions of these every year, and
money alone secures them. The Church calls the money an alms
(to itself), and the indulgence a reward of the alms. One of these
infamous papers is known in Spain as “ the thieves’ bula.” It is
the most expensive of the four (about Is.). It assures the thief
that, if he does not know the name of the owner of the ill-gotten
property he has, the Church allows him to keep it in consideration
of this alms. For valuable property large sums have to be paid.
Third edition.
�THE CONFESSIONAL
119
one busy Saturday evening, the priest interrupted his
labours to inquire the object of a scuffle outside his
box. There was a quarrel—not uncommon—about
precedence amongst the mixed crowd that waited their
turn at the door. A boy was complaining of being
deprived of his legitimate place, and when the priest’s
head appeared he exclaimed, “ Please, father, I was
next to the woman who stole the silk umbrella! ”
And in my young days I remember that, on one occa
sion, when we had been conducted to church for the
purpose of confessing, we who were waiting our turn
were startled to hear our stolid elderly confessor cry
out, repeating with horrified emphasis some statement
of his youthful penitent, 44 Eighty-three times! ” We
knew little about the seal in those days, and the boy
did not grudge us the joke we had against him for
many a day.
The 44 penance ” which is inflicted usually consists
of a few prayers. Corporal penances are now unknown
outside of country districts in Spain or Italy (where
one may still see a girl kneeling in chapel with a
pointed reference to the seventh commandment pinned
to her back), and even long and frequently repeated
prayer is not now imposed in England or the States;
the Irish peasant may be ordered to say daily for
months the seven penitential psalms. I soon found,
from the number of people who accused themselves of
neglecting their penance, how useless it was to impose
burdens; those who did not curtail it hurried through
it with precipitate haste. For it is customary to kneel
and say the penance immediately after the confession,
and as there are some scores of idle witnesses, calculat
ing the severity of the penance from the time expended
�120
THE CONFESSIONAL
on it, and thence inferring the gravity of the sin,
brevity is a feature of some importance. Hence I
never imposed more than five or six Pater Nosters.
On one occasion I imposed the usual “ Four Hail
Marys ” on a quiet, unoffending old priest. He was
slightly deaf, and, changing his posture of deep
humility, he looked up at me indignantly, exclaiming
“ Forty Hail Marys! ”
Short penances were not the only deviation from
our theological rules which I allowed myself; I soon
abandoned the hateful practice of interrogating on
malodorous subjects. At first when I heard a general
accusation I merely asked whether the morbidity in
question was serious or not (for if it were not serious
there was no obligation to interrogate). I was, how
ever, so indignantly repulsed when the lady did
happen to have a lighter debt that I was compelled
to resort to the usual dialogue. It was not long
before I entirely abandoned the practice, and simply
allowed my penitents to say what they thought neces
sary. The Church imposes on the priest the obliga
tion of cross-examining under pain of mortal sin, so
that I do not doubt that some of my perplexed
colleagues will see in that “ sin ” the reason of the
withdrawal of the light of faith from me. However,
the institution had become repulsive to me, and I
eagerly embraced an opportunity of escaping from it
and other ministerial work by a course of study at
Louvain University. There came a year when our
studies were disorganised, and I had no students for
philosophy. I gladly accepted an invitation to go and
study oriental languages at Louvain.
�CHAPTER VII
A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
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Louvain University is the principal Roman Catholic
university in the north of Europe. Nominally it is
a centre of higher Catholic instruction for all the
northern countries, including, until a recent date, the
United States. However it is, in point of fact, little
more than a national institution. The patriotic
Germans naturally prefer their own vigorous, though
less venerable, University of Innspruck. Britons and
Americans have always been represented in its colleges
very sparsely, for they had been usually attracted to
the fountain-head, to Rome, in their thirst for higher
doctrine. Now America has its great Washington
University, and English Catholicism has brought to
an end its self-imposed banishment from Oxford and
Cambridge. English ecclesiastics will, no doubt, con
tinue to be sent into a more Catholic atmosphere
abroad, and will continue to prefer Spain or Italy to
Belgium. Still, Louvain could boast many nation
alities amongst its 1600 students.
The long struggle between Catholicism and Liberal
ism in Belgium has had the effect of isolating Louvain
as a distinctively Catholic university. The clerical
party naturally concentrated upon it, with its long
tradition of orthodoxy and its roll of illustrious names,
121
�122
A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
and determined to exclude the liberalising tendencies
which had either mastered, or threatened to master,
the universities of Brussels, Ghent, &c. The control
is exclusively clerical, both rector and vice-rector being
high ecclesiastical dignitaries, and every orthodox
family with a care for the correct training of its sons
is expected to send them to Louvain.
But Louvain is by no means merely a centre for
clerical training. Belgian Catholicism has fallen much
too low to realise so ambitious a dream. During the
year I spent there—1893-94—there were not more
than fifty clerical students out of the 1600. Ecclesi
astical studies were, therefore, working at a dead loss,
for the theological staff was numerous and distin
guished. The greater part of the students were in
law or medicine, though there were also sections for
engineering, brewery, and other technical branches.
Moreover, the university suffered from the presence of
a rival clerical establishment in the same town—con
ducted, of course, by the Jesuits. The Jesuits, the
“ thundering legion ” of the ecclesiastical army, have
one weakness from a disciplinary point of view; they
never co-operate. “ Aut Caesar aut nullus ” is their
motto whenever they take the field. And so at Lou
vain, after, it is said, a long and fruitless effort to
secure the monopoly of the university itself, they have
erected a splendid and efficient college, in which the
lectures are thrown open to outsiders, and from which
a brilliant student is occasionally sent to throw down
his glove to the university, to defend thirty or forty
theses against the united phalanx of veteran professors.
The Dominicans have also a large international college
in the town, and the American bishops a fourth, in
�A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
123
which European volunteers for the American missions
are trained. The rivalry which results, although it
does occasionally overflow the channel of fraternal
charity, helps to sustain the vitality of the Belgian
Church, and turns its attention from the rapid growth
of Rationalism and Socialism.
One difference between the Belgian and the English
system is that few of the students live in the colleges,
scattered at intervals over the town, which form the
university. These are usually only lecture halls, with
their attendant rooms and museums; the students live
in the houses of the townspeople, for the town exists
merely for the accommodation of the university. The
vice-president keeps a record of all houses and the
addresses of the students, but the supervision is slight,
and the liberty of the students great. A second and most
important difference from English or American uni
versity life lies in the complete absence of athleticism.
The Belgians are entirely averse to muscular exertion
of any kind. I saw very little cycling, no cricket, no
football, no rowing—nothing more active than skittles
during the whole period; for “ beer and skittles ” is
much more than a figurative ideal to the Belgians.
Their free time, and they are not at all a studious
race, is mainly spent in the estaminets, or beer houses;
and, like German students, they consume enormous
quantities of their national beverage and smoke
unceasingly.
The ethical result of such a mode of life may be
deduced from general physiological laws. The “ rector
magnificus ” was a very able and estimable man, but
of a retiring and studious character; the vice-rector,
Mgr. Cartuyvels, was, however, an active and zealous
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A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
disciplinarian, and, by means of a wide system of
espionnage, he was tolerably acquainted with the con
dition of affairs. Still he was powerless to stem an
inevitable tide, and indeed it was said that he was
afraid to enforce his authority too sternly, lest he
should drive more Catholics to the Liberal universities.
The religion of the students did not seem to be of a
much higher quality than their conduct. I was in
formed by a Louvain priest that at least 500 out of
the 1500 did not attend mass on Sundays; and such
attendance is obligatory and a test of communion in
the Church of Rome. Like that of so many of our
Irish neighbours in England, their faith needs the
stimulus of a row or a riot over religious questions to
bring it to consciousness. Once the Liberals or the
Socialists fill the street with their anti-clerical, “ A
bas la calotte,” the students are found to be Catholic
to a man. Apart from these uncanonical, though not
infrequent, ebullitions their piety is little exhibited.
The clerical students, who usually live in the
colleges, are priests who have distinguished them
selves in their ordinary theological course, and who
have been sent by their respective bishops to graduate
in theology, philosophy, or canon law. Few of them
see the full term of a university career, as their bishops
are compelled by financial and other pressure, if not
by reports of the examiners, to withdraw them pre
maturely to the active work of the diocese. The suc
cessful student secures his licentiate at the end of the
third year, and his bachelorship at the end of the
fourth. He then ceases to follow the public lectures
at the halls, and spends two years at the study of his
subject, under the guidance of his late professor.
�A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
125
During that time he must write a Latin treatise on
any theme he chooses. Finally, in the great hall,
before a numerous audience, he wins his cap by
defending a score of theses against the professors and
any ecclesiastic who cares to oppose him. As every
religious order, and consequently every school of
philosophy and theology, is formidably represented in
the town, very lively scenes are sometimes witnessed
during the discussion of the theses. Certain contro
versies have had to be practically excluded from the list
of debatable questions in order to avoid an undignified
delay of the proceedings by the Dominicans and Jesuits
in the gallery. The success of the student is, however,
practically guaranteed by the mere fact of his presenta
tion by a professor. The whole system differs little
from what it was in medieval Louvain, and the divorce
between modern Belgian culture and the Belgian
Church is thus foolishly maintained by the clergy
themselves.
The programme of clerical study at the university
is identical in form with that of the seminaries, but
the questions are treated more profoundly and ex
haustively. Only one treatise is taken each year.
Each question is thoroughly discussed, and subsidiary
questions are treated which are crushed out of the
briefer elementary course. It is like passing from
Huxley’s “ Elements of Physiology ” to the more
exhaustive work of Kirk or Carpenter on the same
subject. Then the philosopher has the advantage of
attending, with the medical students, scientific courses
under men who are eminent in their respective sciences
(which, however, he rarely does), and a few of the
students of theology and Scripture attend lectures in
�126
A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
the Oriental languages under equally distinguished pro
fessors. In addition to these there are courses of
Persian, Sanscrit, Chinese, &c., and courses of the
higher literature of most European languages, and of
Latin and Greek classics. There is, however, no
degree corresponding to the English M.A., and literary
studies are greatly neglected. All the clerical students
are intended by their bishops to become professors in
their seminaries, and, in addition to their degree in
theology, they are directed to follow the particular
course which will benefit them. Still a spirit of
narrow utilitarianism pervades all ranks. The laystudents have a definite profession in view and have
no superfluous industry to devote to other studies; the
priests think of little else besides their theology or
philosophy. There are a few disinterested worshippers
at the shrine of philosophy and letters, but their num
ber is comparatively small. The course of Sanscrit and
Chinese ascribed to the distinguished student of those
(and many other) languages, Mgr. de Harlez, seems to
have a mythical existence. Persian is never demanded,
and even Arabic (though the professor is an Arabic
scholar of the first rank) is rarely taken. Hebrew
must be studied by aspirants for theological degrees,
but Syriac has few scholars. There were three of us
who took the Syriac course in 1893, and of the three two
were mendicant friars who paid no fee. It will appear
presently that we received little more than we gave.
I was requested by my superior to follow the course
of Hebrew under M. Van Hoonacker, and, taking
advantage of the temporary interruption of my lectures
on philosophy, I made my way to the monastery of
our order at Louvain. I added a course of Syriac (in
�A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
127
virtue of which I hoped to disturb my Anglican
brethren over the Peschito version of the New Testa
ment), an elementary course of biblical criticism, and
an advanced course of scholastic philosophy.
The lectures on Hebrew and on biblical criticism
were given by M. Van Hoonacker, an effective teacher
and erudite scholar, who crossed swords (with more
courage than success) with the great Kuenen. An
abler professor of Hebrew we could not have had, and
even in handling the delicate questions raised by the
Higher Criticism he displayed much wealth of know
ledge, a generous acquaintance with the writings of
his opponents (Wellhausen, Kuenen, &c.), and much
argumentative power. The subject marked on the
programme was an introduction to the canon of Scrip
ture; it was based upon the work of M. Loisy, and
ran upon the traditional lines. But he quickly ex
hausted that subject and hastened to his favourite
topic, the discussion, against Wellhausen, of the origin
of the Jewish festivals. Of erudition he gave abund
ant proof, and he showed not a little ingenuity in
research and in the grouping of arguments; but it was
obvious that few of the students had any large view
of the general issues at stake. All scribbled rapidly
as the professor spoke (for we had no manual), and
endeavoured to gather as much detailed information as
would suffice for examination purposes.
In private intercourse I found him extremely kind
and courteous, and he frequently spoke to me of the
difficulty of his position as professor of biblical criti
cism, when the Church left us without any clearly
defined doctrine about the nature and extent of in
spiration in face of modern rationalism : he did not
�128
A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
appreciate the liberty of thought which the Church
wisely grants until secular science has reached its highwater mark and it knows what it can decide with
security. The Pope’s encyclical had not yet appeared,
but I know that, as a theologian and an expert, he
would have little internal respect for it.
The professor of Syriac (and of some parts of
Scripture) was a man of a very different type. He
was a very old man, Mgr. Lamy, a distinguished
Syriac scholar, but a poor teacher, and one whose
opinions on biblical questions were of the older days.
Like M. Van Hoonacker, he took the first chapter of
Genesis as a subject for translation, and devoted more
time to his commentaries on the text than to its
Syriac construction. The contrast was instructive.
On the Monday morning we had the Hebrew pro
fessor’s advanced and semi-rationalistic commentary,
resolving the famous chapter into myths and allegories;
the following morning, from the same pulpit, Mgr.
Lamy religiously anathematised all that we had heard,
and gave the literal interpretation so dear to the
earlier generation. He was kind and earnest, but his
method of teaching was so unfortunate that, after
receiving one lecture a week for nine months, we knew
little more than the Syriac alphabet. Toward the end
of the term he startled us by commanding us to pre
pare for the next lecture a translation of a dozen lines
of Syriac without vowel points! The sequel unhap
pily illustrates the average Flemish character as I met
it among the clergy. We were three in number in the
course, and it was my turn to read at the next lecture.
But my companions, fearful of their own turn, endeav
oured to persuade me not to attempt such a preposter
�A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
129
ous task. By dint of great exertion I copied out the
translation of the passage and brought it to lecture on
the following Tuesday, when my companion, a Flemish
priest, snatched the paper from my hand and tore it
in pieces.
The third professor whose lectures I followed, Mgr.
Mercier, was a gentleman of refined and sympathetic
character, and one of the ablest living exponents of
Catholic philosophy. To a perfect knowledge of the
scholastic philosophy he added a wide acquaintance
with physical science (which can rarely be affirmed of
the scholastic metaphysician) and a very fair estimate
of modern rival schools of philosophy. Instead of
wasting time on the absurd controversies of the
medieval schools he made a continuous effort to face
the deep metaphysical criticism of the German and
English systems; with what success may be judged
from his numerous writings on philosophical questions.
During the year I attended, he took “ Criteriology ”
as his subject; he considered it the most important
section of philosophy in these days when, after 2000
years of faith, the Neo-Academic cry, “ What is
truth? ” has revived in such earnest.
Unfortunately the modern sophist finds little earn
est and disinterested attention, even in universities;
modern students of the great science are widely re
moved from the restless zeal of Athens or Alexandria
or medieval Paris. Mgr. Mercier is, moreover, bur
dened with an obligation to adhere to the teaching of
St. Thomas, almost the least critical of the medieval
theologians, but the present favourite at Rome. How
ever, the Vatican keeps a jealous eye on Louvain since
the outbreak of heterodoxy under the famous Ubaghs
�130
A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
some thirty years ago. It is still under the suspicion
of Cartesianism in a mild form, but that is only a
matter of concern to Jesuits and other philosophical
rivals.
I experienced much kindness from Mgr. Mercier.
Like most of the Walloons, he is more refined and
sensitive than the Fleming usually is. Belgium is
made up of two radically distinct and hostile races.
The southern half is occupied by a French-speaking
people (with a curious native Walloon language) whose
characteristics are wholly French; while the northern
race, the Flemings, are decidedly Teutonic, very
hospitable, painfully candid and communicative, but
usually coarse, material, and unsympathetic. The two
races are nearly as hostile as the French and Germans
whom they respectively resemble (though, I think,
neither French nor Germans admit the affinity—the
Germans have a great contempt for the Flemings).
Louvain or Leuven is in Flemish territory, and Mgr.
Mercier, justly suspecting that I was not at ease with
my Teutonic brethren, offered to establish me in his
own house, but my monastic regulations forbade it.
Both through him and the other professors I have the
kindest recollection of the university, from which,
however, I was soon recalled.
A secondary object of my visit to Belgium was the
opportunity it afforded of studying monastic life in
all the tranquillity and fulness of development which
it enjoys in a Catholic country. In England it was
impossible to fulfil many of our obligations to the
letter. It is a firm decree of a monastic order that the
religious costume must never be laid aside. But it is
still decreed in English law that any person wearing
�A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
131
a monastic habit in the public streets shall be im
prisoned; and, although the law has become a dead
letter, experiment has shown the practice to be at
tended with grave inconveniences. Again, the Fran
ciscan constitutions strictly forbid collective or indi
vidual ownership, and even the mere physical contact
of money; but English law does not recognise the
peculiar effects of a vow of poverty, and English rail
way companies and others are unwilling to accept a
note from a religious superior instead of the coin of
the realm, as the Belgian railways do. In a Roman
Catholic country, at least in Belgium, the friars have
full liberty to translate their evangelical ideas into
active life. I had heard that the Belgian province
was a perfect model of monastic life, and, as I had
vague dreams of helping F. David in his slowly
maturing plan to reform our English houses, I desired
to study it attentively.
I soon learned that perfection consisted, in their
view, very largely of a mechanical and lifeless disci
pline. Much stress was laid on the exact observance
of the letter of the constitutions, which we English
friars greatly neglected. In most of the monasteries
the friars arose at midnight for Office, rigorously
observed all the fasts, would not touch a sou with a
shovel, never laid aside their religious habit, and never
interfered in secular business. They felt themselves,
therefore, at a sufficient altitude to look down com
passionately on our English province, and they were
sincerely astonished when a general of the order, the
shrewd and gifted F. Bernardine, quite failed to
appreciate their excellent condition on the occasion of
a visit from Rome. In point of fact, the province is
�132
A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
infected with the idle, intriguing, and materialistic
spirit which is too notoriously associated with monasti
cism when it is not under the constant pressure and
supervision of heretics and unbelievers.
Their literal fulfilment of the vow of poverty in
these unsympathetic times leads to curious complica
tions. In the primitive innocence of the order (its
first ten years) the vow of poverty implied that all
the houses, clothing, &c., that were given to the friars
remained the property of the donors; that money was
on no account to be received for their labours; and
that all food was to be begged in kind. In the course
of time the paternal solicitude of the Pope helped
them out of difficulties by declaring that whatever was
given to the friars became his—the Pope’s—property.
He also instructed them to appoint a layman as syndic
to each of the monasteries, who should undertake (in
the Pope’s name, not that of the friars) the financial
and legal matters which the letter of the rule forbade
the friars to undertake; gradually, too, brothers of
the third order, who make no vow of poverty, were
introduced into the friaries as servants, and a superior
could thus always have a treasurer at hand.
In England the friars never troubled either syndic
or lay-brother. Once a quarter the syndic, or “papa,”
was invited to the friary to sign the books, but the
friars were careful to choose some religious-minded
man whose trust was larger than his curiosity. I
remember the consternation that once fell on the Man
chester friary, which was far from ascetic, when the
syndic they had indiscreetly chosen asked that the
books might be sent to him to study before he signed.
The bill for spirits would have surprised him, if he
�A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
133
had insisted on seeing the accounts. The superior of
each of our English monasteries had his safe and his
bank account, no priest ever went out with an empty
pocket, and the authorities made contracts (from which
the Pope’s name is wisely excluded) and went to law
like every other modern Christian. In Belgium the
scheme of holy poverty as modified by the Popes
(which would have pained Francis of Assisi) is followed
out faithfully. All food is sent in in kind by the
surrounding peasantry except, usually, meat and beer,
which are bought through the syndic. A lay-brother
is constantly wandering about the country begging
provisions for the friars, and the response is generous
both in quantity and quality. The brown habit is
sure to elicit sympathy, especially in the form of liquid,
and even the railway officials accept a note from the
friary when a ticket is necessary. I have travelled all
over Belgium, visiting Brussels, Waterloo, &c., as com
fortably as a tourist, without touching a centime from
one end of the year to the other.
Their monasteries, too, bear the visible stamp of
their voluntary poverty. Linen is never seen in them,
on tables (except on high festivals), on beds, or on the
persons of the friars; and another point on which they
imitate the apostle St. James is that they rigorously
deny themselves the luxury of a bath—for the reason,
apparently, that was given by the French nun to the
English girl who asked why she was not allowed to
take a bath at the pensionnat: “ Le bon Dieu vous
verrait! ” Gas is not admitted; and, worst of all,
they think it incumbent on them to reproduce in their
friaries the primitive sanitary arrangements of the
neighbouring cottages. Our lavatory, too, was fitted
�134
A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
up with archaic severity. A dirty battered zinc
trough ran along under a row of carefully assorted
taps, and into these the water had to be pumped every
three minutes. There were no hand-basins, there was
no hot water, and neither comb nor brush; and only
a tub of black soft soap was provided for our ablutions.
Some of the friars made use, in the absence of basins,
of vessels which must be left to the reader’s imagina
tion. I have seen this done, from force of habit, even
in England. .
The fasts were rigorously observed; though, as it
is a widespread custom both in France and Belgium
not to breakfast before midday, the friars suffered
little inconvenience by this. At the same time the
feasts were celebrated with a proportionate zeal. On
an ordinary feast-day, which occurs once or twice
every month, the friars would sit for three hours or
more, sipping their wine, talking, chaffing, quarrelling,
long after the dinner had disappeared. Extraordinary
feasts would be celebrated with the enthusiasm of
schoolboys. There would be banquets of a most
sumptuous character, with linen tablecloths, flowers,
and myriads of glasses; wine in abundance and of
excellent quality; music, instrumental and vocal;
dramatic, humorous, and character sketches. In the
larger convents, where there are about thirty priests
and forty or fifty students, there was plenty of musical
talent, and concerts would sometimes be prepared for
weeksu in advance in honour of a jubilee or similar
festival; and every priest had his circle of “ quasels ”
•—pious admirers and penitents of the gentler sex—
who undertook the culinary honours of his festival.
The quantity of beer and claret which they consume
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135
is enormous, yet I saw no excesses in that direction;
their capacity, however, is astonishing, and there are
few of them who do not kindle at the prospect of an
extra pint of beer or of a bottle of red wine. The
youngest novices take three pints of beer per day, for
they take no tea in the afternoon, and they soon learn
to look out for every opportunity of an extra pint.
Spirits are forbidden, though a few of the elders who
have been on the English mission have developed a
taste for Whisky. They tell a curious story in con
nection with it in one of their monasteries. An Eng
lish visitor had smuggled over a bottle for a lay-brother
whom he had known in former years. Later in the
afternoon the lay-brother and one of his comrades
were missing from Vespers. After a long search they
were at length discovered in one of the workshops in
a profound slumber, with the half-empty bottle and
all the materials of punch on a table beside them. At
Louvain the friars had been forced to build a special
entrance to the monastery for the introduction of their
beer, as a censorious Liberal lived opposite the great
gate, and kept a malicious account of the barrels im
ported. One of the most anxious concerns of a superior
is his wine-cellar, for he knows well that his chance
of re-election is closely connected with it. On one
occasion, when I had asked why a certain young friar
seemed, to be a popular candidate for the highest posi
tion before an election, I was told with a smile that
“ his brother was a wine merchant.” Wherever I
went in Belgium, to monasteries, nunneries, or private
houses, I found that teetotalism was regarded as a
disease whose characteristic microbe was indigenous to
the British Isles.
F2
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A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
The first unfavourable impression I made upon my
hosts was by my unintelligible refusal to drink. We
arrived at Ghent for dinner, and after dinner (with
the usual pint of strong ale) four of us sat down to
five or six bottles of good claret. I drew the line at
the sixth glass, and at once attracted as much sus
picion as a “ water-bibber” of ancient Greece or Rome.
At three o’clock a second pint of strong ale had to be
faced, and at seven a third; when wine re-appeared
after that I violently protested, and I neveT recovered
their good opinion. Thirst seems to be a national
affliction, for even the peasant women sometimes have
drinking matches (of coffee) at their village fairs, and
the first or second prize has more than once fallen a
victim to her cafeine intemperance. It is interesting
to note that few of the friars preserve any mental
vigour up to their sixtieth year, and that great
numbers fall victims to apoplexy.
• There are no congregations attached to the friaries,
so that their work differs materially from that of
English priests. In fact, their life is the typical
monastic life, for, as has been explained, canon law
prescribes that monastic houses should only be con
sidered as auxiliaries of the regular clergy. The first
result, however, is usually a conflict with the priest
in whose parish the monks establish themselves, as
they attract his parishioners to their services; and
they rarely find much favour with the bishop of the
diocese. They hear great numbers of confessions,
principally of the surrounding peasantry, and have
frequent ceremonies in their churches, but, as there
are usually so many friars, the work occupies little
time. The only work of importance which they do
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137
is to preach special sermons and give missions in dis
tant parishes, but even that is little in proportion to
their vast numbers. One meets amongst them many
earnest and devout men who are never idle for a
moment, but the majority lead the most dull and
inactive and useless lives.
At Louvain there were nine priests and hardly
sufficient work to occupy the time of four. There
was one earnest exemplary friar, who was constantly
and usefully occupied; another, equally earnest, would
exhaust himself one fortnight and recuperate the next;
the remainder led a life of most unenviable inaction.
Some, under one pretext or another, did absolutely
nothing from one end of the week to the other. They
were no students; in fact, most of them were grossly
ignorant, and their large library was practically unused.
In summer they would lounge in the garden or bask
at the windows of their cells until the bell rang out
the next signal for some vapid religious exercise; in
winter they would crowd round their stove, and discuss
the daily paper or some point of ritual or casuistry,
eager as children for the most trivial distraction.
In fact, between idleness and eccentricity, many of
them had developed most extraordinary manias. One
of our priests, a venerable old friar whose only
sacerdotal duties consisted in blessing babies and
giving the peasants recipes (prayers) for diseased
cattle, had succeeded in getting himself appointed as
assistant cook. His gluttony was the standard joke of
the community; his meals were prodigious. Another
friar devoted his time to the solution of the problem
of perpetual motion; another had designed a cycle
Which was to outrun any in the market, if he could
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A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
devise a brake capable of stopping it when in motion;
another explained to me a system of the universe which
he had constructed (from certain texts of Genesis) to
the utter and final overthrow of materialism. He had
explained it to several professors of science, who had
admitted its force in silence, and I found myself in
the same predicament. Some took to mending clocks,
of which they had a number in their cells, others to
painting, others to gardening, others to making col
lections of little pictures of the Virgin or St. Joseph,
or of miraculous statues. Few of them spent any
large proportion of their time in what even a Catholic
would consider the service of humanity.
The little knowledge they possessed was usually con
fined to liturgy and casuistry. Not being parish
priests they had not the advantage of daily visits
amongst the laity, which is the only refining influence
and almost the only stimulus to education of a celibate
clergy; and the little preaching and ministerial work
they were entrusted with, lying almost exclusively
amongst the poor, did not demand any serious thought
or study. There are always a few ripe scholars amongst
them—very few at the present time—but the majority
profess to base their undisguised aversion for study on
the letter and spirit of their constitutions; and not
without reason, though they forget that the age to
which that rule was adapted has passed for ever.
There is no pressure upon them, yet their ordinary
studies make little impression on them, and, though
the Catholic university opens its halls gratis to them,
they only reluctantly allow one or two of their students
to enter it each year. To graduate they regard as an
unpardonable conceit for a monk, and I was therefore
�A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
139
not permitted to take the degree of Ph.D. to which my
studies entitled me.
Their complete ignorance of philosophy led them ta
take a superfluous interest in my welfare, and gave
me a small idea of the way in which Roger Bacons
are victimised. Mgr. Mercier had sent me Paul Janet’s
“ Causes Finales ” to read, and whilst I was doing
so one of the elder friars came to glance at the title
of my book. He considered it for some moments in
perplexity, and at length exclaimed : “ Tiens! la cause
finale, c’est la mort! ” I offered no correction, and
he went to acquaint the others, as usual. Then one
of the younger friars, the scholar of the community,
recollected that he had read somewhere that Janet
was “ chef de l’ecole spiritualiste ” in France, and,
nobody knowing the difference betwen spiritism and
spiritualism, it was agreed that I was exploring the
questionable region of spooks. When Mgr. Mercier
went on to lend me the works of Schopenhauer (and
they had looked up the name in the encyclopaedia) there
was serious question of breaking off my intercourse
with him and writing to England of my suspected
tendencies. Happily, I was in a position to treat them
with indifference, for I was neither their subject nor
their guest. They were paid (by my mass fees) for
my maintenance—which cost them nothing—and even
my books, clothing, bedding, &c., had to be paid for
from England. Englishmen, in their eyes, are
proverbially proud; I was credited with an inordinate
share of that British virtue.
At present they are making strenuous efforts to re
organise and improve their scheme of study. One or
two earnest men are striving to lift the burden which.
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A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
is oppressing them, and possibly time will bring an
improvement; though it can only be by a sacrifice in
point of numbers which all are unwilling to make.
The two points in which the glory of the fraternity is
thought to consist are the maintenance of a perfect
formal discipline and the increase of members. The
Belgian friars are wrongly endeavouring to secure both
points at once. They have built recently a large pre
paratory college, which is always crowded with aspir
ants. But when I asked one of the Belgian friars, in
an unguarded moment, whence the aspirants came, he
answered with a shrug of his shoulders: “ They have
swept up the rubbish of the streets ”; and another
explained that their training was deeply vitiated by
espionnage and by an injudicious system of rewards
and punishments. Whatever may be their future—
and so long as Socialism is kept in check they have
every favourable condition—it is quite clear that any
serious attempt to purify, to vitalise and spiritualise
their fraternity, will meet bitter opposition, and will,
if successful, considerably reduce their numbers. No
large body of men will ever again sincerely adopt an
ascetical spirit in their common life. And the Belgian
fraternity will be healthier and happier for the re
mainder of its days if it can rid itself of all its malades
imaginaires, lazy pietists, crass sensualists, and
ambitious office-seekers.
Belgium is claimed as a Roman Catholic country,
and it may be interesting to discuss the extent and
nature of its fidelity to Rome in the light of my
inquiries and observations. I had many and intimate
opportunities for studying it, and I availed myself of
�A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
141
them carefully; not only because I took a speculative
interest in the question, but on account of the dis
paraging references that the friars made repeatedly to
my own heretical country—“ your unhappy country ”
was their usual description of England. When I
noticed in the list of Peter’s-pence offerings that
Belgium had collected for his Holiness only 200,000
lire, and England 1,200,000, I felt there was occasion
for careful inquiry.
Politics and religion are so confused in Belgium
that the religious status of the country has been
roughly indicated at every election. For many years
there has been a fierce struggle between Liberalism
and Catholicism, in which the orthodox party has been
frequently overpowered; and Liberalism, as is well
known, is the anti-clerical, free-thought party. It is,
roughly speaking, the bourgeoisie of Belgium (with a
sprinkling of the higher and of the industrial class),
permeated with Voltaireanism and modern rationalism :
its motto was Gambetta’s “ Le clericalisme, voila
l’ennemi,” or as the Belgian mob puts it more forcibly
“ A bas la calotte! ” Not that it was at all a philo
sophical sect; it was purely active, but accepted the
conclusions of the philosophers and the critics as
honestly as the orthodox clung to the conclusions of
the theologian. In any case it was bitterly opposed
to the established religion and the dominion of the
clergy on every issue. The aristocracy, for obvious
reasons, indolently sided with the Church; the
peasantry, on the whole, remained faithful out of brute
stolidity and imperviousness to argument.
But during the last few years there has been a pro
found change in the field as Socialism gained power
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A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
and character. Not very many years ago a young
advocate at the Brussels Catholic conference declared
himself a Christian socialist, and was emphatically
suppressed by the clerical and aristocratic members;
now, if it were not for Christian Socialism, Rome
would soon lose its hold of the peasantry. Socialism,
avowedly anti-Christian as it is on the Continent, has
secured the industrial classes and is undoubtedly mak
ing progress amongst the peasantry. However, it can
not join forces with waning Liberalism, for it hates
and is hated by the bourgeoisie; and it has had the
effect of arousing the monarchy and aristocracy to some
sense of their danger. Thus the power of the Church
remains as yet slightly in the ascendant: it can com
mand a little more than half the votes of the country
as long as the present partial suffrage holds. The
results, however, show that Catholics are really in the
minority, and if ever the Socialists and Liberals unite
they will be swept out of power.
So much is clear from election results; but in a
country that is fermenting with new ideas mere
statistics teach very little of themselves. A new party,
which is hardly a generation old, and which has had
a marvellously rapid growth, is presumed to have
acquired a serious momentum. It consists almost
entirely of converts, and the convert is usually con
scious of his opinions and zealous for them. The
adherents of the old party may still be, to a great
extent, in their traditional apathy, and only need
their minds to be quickened to make them change their
position. Such would seem to be the state of affairs
in Belgium, if we take no more than clerical
witnesses.
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143
It is much easier to test the real fidelity of nominal
adherents of the Church of Rome than of those of any
other sect or party in existence; it is the only sect that
binds its members under pain of grievous sin to certain
positive religious observances. Hence it is possible
to gauge the depth and vitality of its influence over
its statistical members without entering into their
consciences. And so the fact that one-third of the
students at the only Catholic university habitually
neglect mass has a great significance. I once heard
a dispute between a Walloon Premonstratensian monk
and a Flemish Franciscan about the religious merits
of their respective races. To a stranger it seemed
difficult to choose between them. Confession was
taken as a safe test, for annual confession is essential,
and its integrity is equally demanded under pain of
mortal sin. However, the Walloon boasted that you
could believe a Walloon in the confessional, but cer
tainly not a Fleming. The Fleming admitted that it
was true, but he added, “ You can believe a Walloon
when you get him, but he only comes to confess twice
in his life, at his first communion and at death.”
They were both old missionaries, and their points were
quite confirmed by the others present.
Moreover, I had a more intimate experience of the
country, which confirmed my low estimate of its
Catholicism. During the Easter vacation I went to a
small convent in the country, about ten miles south of
Brussels. The superior of the convent obtained juris
diction for me, and I did much service in the chapel
of the Comtesse de Meeus, in our own great solid iron
church at Argenteuil (well known to Waterloo visitors),
and in the parish church at Ohain. We monks were
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A YEAR AT LOUVAIN
forbidden under pain of suspension to assist the dying
or to hear Easter confessions; but I soon found that if
we did not do so a great many people would refuse to
take the sacraments. I assisted three dying persons:
one was already unconscious and could only be
anointed, and her friends were utterly indifferent about
even that; another, a young man, had to be coaxed
into making his confession, but refused point blank
to receive communion and extreme unction from his
parish priest, and died without them; the third visibly
condescended to confess, saying that it was immaterial
to him—he would if I wished. Many others came to
confess, saying that they would either confess to me
or not at all. Everywhere, even amongst professing
Catholics, there was a strong anti-clerical feeling,
though the peasantry made a curious exception in
favour of monks. They had not the least idea of the
real life inside the friaries and the quantity of liquor
consumed.
And when I went down to assist at Ohain for the
last day of the Easter confessions I found the little
parish in a curious condition, even to my heretical
experience. The cure smiled when I asked how many
he expected for confession, and said that he had not
the faintest idea. Theoretically, he should have known
how many had already made their Paques (or Easter
confession), and how many parishioners he had; it was
a simple sum of subtraction. He was amused at my
simplicity. It appeared that there were some hundreds
who might or might not make their Paques: in point
of fact, we had about a hundred more than the per
ceding year. He did not seem much concerned about
the matter; said it was not an abnormal condition, and
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145
that it seemed irremediable. It was curious to note
that a Protestant mission which had been founded in
the neighbourhood for some time had only succeeded
after heroic efforts in securing two dilapidated “ con
verts.” The Belgians, like the French, are Catholic
or nothing.
What I observed was fully confirmed by the informa
tion I sought on the subject. The people were indif
ferent, and even a large proportion of the clergy were
apathetic. Great Catholic demonstrations there were
in abundance, but little importance can be attached to
such manifestations. In the great procession of the
Fete-Dieu at Louvain I saw hundreds taking part who
were merely nominal Catholics; and other extraordin
ary religious displays, such as the procession of the
miraculous statue at Hasselt, where I spent some time,
were largely supported by the Liberal municipality and
hotel-keepers from commercial reasons. Little can be
gathered, therefore, from statistics or from external
pageantry. The fidelity of the people must be tested,
as in France, by their obedience to the grave obligations
the Church imposes. Under such a test the Catholi
cism of Belgium fails lamentably. Although the
wisdom of uniting religious and political issues may
be questioned, one may confidently anticipate a steady
growth of the anti-clerical party.
�CHAPTER VIII
MINISTRY IN LONDON
From Louvain I was recalled at the close of the first
academical year by a revival of my educational func
tions at London. A new generation of philosophers
had arrived, and I had to resume the task of im
printing the conclusions of the scholastic philosophy
on their youthful and unsympathetic minds. The
theological studies also were conducted at Forest
Gate, and all the students had to remain under an
“ instructor ” until they were promoted to the priest
hood. As I held that position during most of the
time I remained at Forest Gate, I had ample oppor
tunity to study the formation of priests, as the in
structor is responsible for the material and spiritual
welfare of those under his charge. Of the innumer
able complications with superiors, and with a certain
type of inferiors, which my zeal (not always, perhaps,
nicely tempered with prudence) provoked I forbear
to speak. Enough has been said in the preceding
chapters about the life of the students, so I pass on
to a fuller treatment of the sacerdotal ministry, in
which I was now thoroughly immersed.
In a monastic house, evert in England, there are
always more priests than in a secular presbytery;
more, indeed, than are necessary for the administra146
�MINISTRY IN LONDON
147
tion of the parish which is committed to their care.
Many of these priests, however, are travelling mis
sionaries whose work lies almost entirely outside their
convent. It is customary in Catholic churches to hold
a mission, or series of services somewhat akin to the
revival services of the Methodists, every few years;
it consists principally of a course of the most violent
and imaginative sermons on hell, heaven, eternity, &c.,
and really has the effect of converting numbers to a
sense of their religious duties. Although Cardinal
Manning, who, in writing and in action, shows a
studied disregard of the monastic orders, endeavoured
to form a band of secular or non-monastic missionaries,
it is usually conceded that the desired effect can only
be satisfactorily attained by monks. Hence every order
has a number of religious specially trained for that
purpose, of whom two or three are found in every
monastery. *
Their life differs entirely from that of the ordinary
monk; even when they are at home they are exempt
from community services, from which the constitu
tions release them for three days after returning from
and three days before starting for a mission. They
frequently travel long distances, especially to Ireland,
and are sometimes absent from their monastery for
months at a time. They are, as has been said, the
chief bread-winners of the community. They receive
from five to ten pounds per week for their services,
and bring home also large sums in the shape of alms
or mass-stipends; if a smaller fee is offered they never
return to that parish. I have known a Franciscan
superior (whose rule forbids him to claim any fee
whatever, or to receive any money) to maintain a
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MINISTRY IN LONDON
warm correspondence with a parish priest on the in
sufficiency of his fee. “ Tempora mutantur, nos et
mutamur in illis ” would not be an inappropriate
motto for the friars to substitute for their highsounding “ In sanctitate et doctrina.” However, the
missionaries have very severe labours, as a rule, and
many of them work with untiring industry and devo
tion. They hold a service every evening, including
one heavy sermon, an instruction, and a number of
fatiguing ceremonies. I have known many priests
to collapse under the strain. The enormous number
of confessions they hear adds much to their exertions.
At the same time, many of them prefer the change
and comparative comfort of the life to confinement in
the monastery. They lighten their task by preaching
the same sermons everywhere they go, and they usually
find the presbytery much more comfortable than home;
if they do not, the parish priest will ask in vain for
a second mission.
Another form of outside work which is less understood is the practice of giving “ retreats ” to monas
teries, nunneries, and other religious establishments.
A retreat is a period of recollection in which the
inmates of a convent suspend all study and secular
occupation, and occupy themselves exclusively with
religious exercises; it usually lasts from ten to fourteen
days, and is held annually. The day is spent in
profound silence and meditation, but there are a
number of common ceremonies, and two or three
“ meditations ”—a kind of familiar sermon or causerie
—are preached daily. The amiable Jesuits are much
in demand for retreats, especially by the equally
amiable congregations of teaching nuns, but our friars
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149
were entrusted with a large number every year
amongst the Jess aristocratic congregations of nuns.
To give a retreat is, after a slight experience, not at
all a disagreeable task, and many even of our pro
fessors used to spend their vacation in preaching them.
The usual method is to write out a set of meditations
(the usual graphic descriptions of the “ last day,”
heaven, hell, &c.), though abler men, or men of
sincere fervour, make no preparation. The same set
of meditations is, of course, used in different places,
and five or six sets suffice for a lifetime; for a priest
is often invited several years in succession to the
same convent, and, if the nuns have been particularly
amiable and hospitable, he accepts. In such cases he
must have a new set of conferences, for nuns have
long memories, and will look up maliciously if he
drops into a passage of one of his former sermons.
Besides receiving the usual five or ten pounds, the
priest can always count upon a warm welcome and
tender and graceful hospitality from the good sisters
during his residence in their convent; and, as the
convent is very frequently at a pleasant wateringplace or other desirable locality, it is not surprising
that the work is much appreciated.
Then there are minor functions which bring grist
to the conventual mill, and afford the friars some
diversion from the dreary monotony of home life.
The secular clergy take annual holidays, and engage
a friar at one pound per Sunday to conduct their
services; one of our friaries (at Manchester), where
the missionaries were not in great demand for higher
work, took up the work of “ supply ” with such zeal
that it earned the title of the “ Seraphic Cab-stand.”
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MINISTRY IN LONDON
Special sermons, also, are frequently asked, and
chaplaincies are sometimes offered to the friars. A
neighbouring nunnery will always demand their
services, and even country families may prefer to
bring a friar down every Sunday for a couple of
guineas than to have a chaplain haunting the premises
all the week.
With so many outward attractions of a lucrative and
congenial nature the friars are sometimes tempted to
neglect their own parish, which is, or should be, their
principal care. The superior of the monastery is
always rector or parish priest,1 and several of his
inferiors act as curates; as a rule there is about one
priest to every thousand people, less in older and
larger parishes—at Glasgow we had six priests to
attend to 16,000 people—and more in growing con
gregations. The work, however, is usually confined
to the week end. On Saturday confessions are heard,
for it is necessary to confess before approaching the
sacrament, which is usually received on Sunday morning. On Sunday the priest has a long and very
fatiguing day’s work; he must, as a rule, say two
masses, an early one for communicants and a late
sung mass, at which also he preaches. On account
of the obligation to remain fasting, so stern that not
even a drop of water must pass his lips until the end
of the last mass, the work is very exacting, especially
to a priest Who is single-handed. The section of
In reality all priests in England are merely missionaries, from
the. point of view of canon law ; the bishops are the only real
Parish priests. Beyond the fact that they are thus transferable at
diff^enc0^ S PleaSUrG’the irreSuIarity does not make much practical
�MINISTRY IN LONDON
151
theology which treats of this peculiar fast is interest
ing ; the careful calculation what fraction of a tea
spoonful of water, or what substances (whether flies,
cork, glass, silk, cotton, &c.) break the fast, affords
serious pre-occupation to the casuist. In the afternoon
there are numerous minor ceremonies, baptisms,
catechetical instructions, &c.; and in the evening
another long sermon with Vespers and Benediction.
Speaking from experience I may say that for one
man it is as severe a day’s work as can be found in
any profession.
Here, however, the monastic clergy have the
advantage of numbers. Even the ordinary priest has
the consolation that the other six days of the week
will be practically days of rest; but to monks the
Sunday itself is not very formidable. Of the six
friars in our community there were never less than
three at home on Sunday, so that the work was fairly
distributed.
However, the Sunday work of the priest is obvious
enough. Curiosity looks rather to the manner in
which he spends the other six days of the week. It
may be said in a word that the daily life of a clergy
man is much the same in every religious sect. Apart
from the fact that he has no family relations, the
Catholic priest occupies himself in a manner very
similar to that of his Anglican brother. The friar,
of course, is supposed to follow a very different and
much more serious “ order of the day,” but here
again theory and practice lie wide apart. The rule
of the friar, who, in a missionary country like England
or the States, is unfortunately compelled to take
charge of a parish, is simple and reasonable; he must
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MINISTRY IN LONDON
assist at the community devotions which have been
previously described, and the remainder of his time
must be divided between study and the discharge of
his parochial duties. In the morning from eight to
twelve he is supposed to study, from three to seven
he must visit his parishioners, from eight to ten he
must occupy himself once more with study or prayer.
That is the edifying theory, but the fact is that
the more agreeable task of attending to their
parishioners absorbs most of the priests’ time. There
are few friars who, after they have once entered upon
parochial duties, give more than a sporadic and careless
attention to study. They say that they do not find
any advantage for the better performance of their
duties in study, and, since most of their “ duty ”
resolves itself into visits to the sick and chattering
with ladies over afternoon tea, their contention is
plausible enough; although there are many cases in
which their unfamiliarity with modern literature and
its great problems brings them into contempt. I have
been asked by wives or sisters in the confessional to
visit men who were understood to be wavering in
faith. When I referred them to their parish priests,
I was answered that they had so low an estimate of
their parish priests that they refused to discuss with
them. And where they do meet a Catholic who shows
an interest in and acquaintance with modern literature,
the clergy are suspiciously prompt to urge the restric
tions imposed by the Index. If they are not prepared
to acquaint themselves with current literature—and a
not unintelligent colleague of mine once frankly
admitted that he could not read even the pellucid
essays of Mr. Huxley—they take care that their flock
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does not outstrip them. I once heard a professor of
dogmatic theology contend that the Nineteenth Century
is on the Index, and should be forbidden to Catholics;
yet so curious is the procedure of the Church, that
it was reserved for a Catholic writer (Mivart) to
procure for it, by his contributions, a place in the
distinguished gallery of the condemned. At any rate,
a priest who is not inclined to study finds in the
elasticity of the Church’s policy ample justification for
literary tyranny.
The manner in which the clergy exercise their
literary responsibility tries the patience of the educated
layman. The priest, and especially the friar, has very
little acquaintance with fiction (which is expressly
proscribed by the monastic constitutions), still less
with science or philosophy, and has very wrong ideas
of history; and, since the majority of condemned
books are not named in the Index, but are simply
involved in the general censure of “ against faith or
morals,” he has to exercise his judgment on a point
of some delicacy. The result is sad confusion. One
priest is delighted with “ The Three Musketeers,”
and permits Dumas—unconscious that Dumas is
expressly on the Index. Ouida is much disputed,
even amongst the Jesuits. The high-principled works
of George Eliot are condemned unread; she was an
agnostic, and lived with Lewes. Mrs. Lynn Linton,
Mrs. Humphry Ward, Sarah Grand, Marie Corelli,
George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, Hall Caine, Eden
Phillpotts, Jerome K. Jerome, Anthony Hope, H. G.
Wells, and most of our leading novelists are either
deists or agnostics. Even Mrs. Craigie and Dr. Barry
give anxiety at times. The poor Catholic is perplexed
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before the list of modern novelists, and so reads them
all. So it is with science and philosophy. The best
English and German exponents are heterodox, and
when the priest pays his visit and sees their works
lying about, he not infrequently demands that they
be destroyed. Hence it is that Jesuit and other
“ Catholic Truth Society ” writers find it possible to
foist on the Catholic body the lamentable garbling
of history and science which one finds in their publica
tions. Their readers are forbidden to read the other
side, and Catholic reviews of antagonistic literature
are quite unscrupulous, at least in such journals as
the Catholic Times.
The priest’s conversation is rendered insipid and
uninviting by the same dearth of knowledge and
narrowness of judgment. On biblical criticism,
sociology, and a host of prominent questions, the
priest is either painfully dogmatic on points that the
educated world has long ceased to dogmatise about,
or else he is just as painfully confused. But even on
a number of questions on which the world has formed
a decided opinion years ago, he is strangely timid and
conservative. Rome itself showed much caution in
responding to an inquiry about hypnotic phenomena,
and such eminent modern theologians as Lehmkuhl
and Ballerini seem convinced that in its more abstruse
phenomena hypnotism embodies a diabolical influence.
Even table-turning, of which Carpenter gave a lucid
explanation ages ago, is gravely called in question by
the Roman decrees and the casuists, and, naturally,
by the majority. In fact, the author whom I was
directed to use in teaching philosophy, Mgr. E. Grand claude, a widely popular modern author, gravely
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attributes the more curious manifestations of som
nambulism to the same untiring and ubiquitous agent.
On almost every question the priest is found to be
ignorant, antiquated, tyrannical.
Naturally, then, the conversations with their
parishioners, which occupy most of their time, are
not of an intellectual type. In the morning the friar
rarely visits, except in cases of sickness, but he is
much visited. In every monastery there is a section
marked off near the door—usually the hall and a few
small parlours—to which ladies are allowed access.
Into the monastery proper women (except the queen,
who cannot be excluded) are never admitted under
any circumstances, even to visit a dying son or brother,
under pain of excommunication. I have known a
mother to sit in tears in the waiting-room while her
son, a young priest, was dying in the infirmary almost
above her head. In these parlours, however (which, I
hasten to add, are fitted with glass doors), the friars
spend a good part of the morning. The rest of the
forenoon is supposed to be spent in reading or prepar
ing sermons in the cells; but it goes very largely in
chatting in each other’s cells, or in the library, or
over the daily paper—all of which is entirely illicit.
After dinner, recreation, and early tea, the friars
exchange their brown habits for ordinary clerical attire
and proceed to visit their parishioners. They are
directed to return to the convent at seven, but they
usually arrive much later.
Apart from the care of the sick and the dying, and
the occasional necessity of reproving wandering sheep,
the duty of “ visiting,” which is almost their only
function on the six appointed days of labour, is far
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from laborious. The parish is divided into districts,
of which one is committed to the care of each priest,
and he is directed to visit each family once in three
months. The object is, of course, to strengthen the
bond between clergy and laity and to secure individual
fidelity to the Church. Naturally, however, what
really happens is that a few agreeable families are
selected for frequent visits, which differ in no respect
from the visits of ordinary unconsecrated people (in
fact, the priest would hardly be welcome who paraded
his profession too much); sometimes they are unusu
ally generous benefactors, sometimes merely families
of ordinary social attractiveness, very frequently
merely young and amiable ladies whose husbands or
fathers are at business. In any case, the poor and
uninteresting are forgotten; the favourites are visited
weekly or oftener, and the visits are sometimes pro
tracted to two or three hours. Much jealousy ensues
amongst the favourites (who watch each other’s
houses), and counter visits, teas, dinners, parties, &c.,
have to be accepted. Thus the week is easily and not
uncongenially absorbed, and a priest often finds that
he is scarcely able to prepare a sermon for the Sunday.
Since most of the visits are made in the afternoon
and on week days, it follows that they are almost
exclusively made to ladies; one result of which is that
our English friars are found to be much less
misogynous than their continental or their medieval
brethren, who have or had no parishes to superintend.
Many Protestant husbands forbid the admission of a
priest into the house in their absence. On the whole,
the priests are discreet, and an excellent control is
exercised over all concerned by a comprehensive system
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157
of jealousy. The priests are jealous of each other, and
strongly resent any intrusion in each other’s district
or parish; the ladies honoured with the visits are
jealous of each other; and a numerous non-Catholic
population is jealously surveying the whole. In the
Franciscan rule there is, besides the vow of chastity,
a special grave precept enjoining the friars to avoid
“ suspicious intercourse ” with women, and it is not
uncommon for a superior publicly to denounce an
inferior for that fault. Two or three cases happened
at Forest Gate in my time, but the accusation clearly
sprang from jealousy on the part of the superior. In
private, mutual accusation, especially of frequenting
by preference the society of young women, was very
common, and was not without foundation. Another
rule that tended to prevent disorder was that all
letters were |o be given open to the superior to be
forwarded, and he was supposed to read all the letters
he received for his inferiors. But the superior who
followed out this rule in dealing with the correspond
ence of any but the juniors would have an unenviable
position; and, of course, the priests were out every
day themselves and could easily post their letters.
There was also a regulation—the only one in our
constitutions (which, unlike “ the rule ” written by
St. Francis, the friar does not solemnly vow to observe,
and which are only disciplinary) that was enforced
under a grave moral obligation—forbidding us to take
any intoxicating drink within the limits of our own
parish. The rule, which merely aimed at preventing
scandal, led to curious incidents and many transgres
sions. One old Belgian friar, who was afflicted with
chronic thirst and did not find the monastic allowance
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sufficient, used to take the tram regularly to some hotel
just outside the limits of the parish (at Stratford in
East London). A dispensation could only be obtained
by calling together the elders of the community and
asking their collective permission. They were, of
course, always willing to oblige each other and, to do
them justice, even the juniors. In my later monastic
days, when faith waned, I appreciated the arrange
ment. There were friars, however, who drank where
they willed and ignored the rule. Like all other
rules, it was susceptible of many ingenious interpreta
tions, and, finally, the opinion was started that the
whole of the constitutions were invalid.
The mutual intercourse of the friars was limited,
in theory, to the hour’s recreation after dinner. Wine
was only granted by the constitutions about once per
month, and whisky was entirely prohibited. In point
of fact, there were friaries (Manchester, for instance)
in which whisky was given almost every day, and
sometimes three times per day. In most friaries it
was given every Saturday and Sunday evening. At
Forest Gate, partly from greater sobriety, partly (and
very much) from greater poverty, and partly on account
of the presence of students, we only drank wine or
spirits three or four times per week; whisky was
discountenanced, but one friar found port to injure his
tonsils, another complained of liver, another of heart,
&c., so that it was the favourite drink. Smoking also
was prohibited in the monastery; but it was not
difficult to obtain a medical recommendation to smoke,
and the local superior could always distribute cigars
when he willed.
The nature of the recreation has been mentioned
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159
in a previous chapter. We sat and talked over our
coffee for half-an-hour, then discoursed in the garden
for half-an-hour. In some monasteries dominoes,
bagatelle, skittles, &c., were introduced to escape the
necessity for conversation. Cards were forbidden, and
chess was discountenanced (with complete success) on
the ambiguous ground that the friars had no cerebral
tissue to waste on intellectual games.1
The conversation only deserves a word on account
of the curiosity which seems to prevail with regard to
it. Two types of monastic conversation are known
to the general public: the spiritual talk recommended
by monastic writers and the jolly intercourse so dear
to the artist. Both types, and especially the former,
are infrequent in the real life of the friary. Mr.
Dendy Sadler’s pictures of jolly friars may serve to
illustrate their high festivals, but the ordinary con
versation was dull and depressing. Politics had the
largest share in it. All the friars were keen politicians,
though they dare not openly manifest any political
sympathy. They were all Liberals, but for the sake
of argument one or other would attack or defend some
point in an uninteresting way for an hour or so. One
daily paper is allowed in the friary, but no weeklies
or monthlies. Then casuistry gave much matter for
discussion, and points of ritual and canon law were
often debated. Here and there some friar of a higher
intellectual type might broach questions of living
interest, but in those cases the conversation was apt
1 It is a remarkable and mysterious fact that cards were, as far
as my experience went, never seen in a monastery. Speaking quite
literally, I may say that this was the only one of our rules which
we seriously observed.
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to degenerate into a pedantic and not very accurate
monologue. But a vast amount of time was spent,
as has frequently been suggested of them, in the most
painful puerilities. Their sense of humour seems to
undergo an extraordinary degeneration, and the more
rational of them frequently express their disgust at
the character of their “ recreation.” There are one
or two strong personalities who habitually tyrannise
over the friaries in which they are found, and even
contrive at the elections to keep near them one or
two less gifted brethren whom they may bully and
banter at will. As they are men of high authority
and influence, their victims find it expedient to submit
patiently to this constant flight of rudely fashioned
shafts for a year or two; in the end they usually
find themselves elevated to some position to which
their intrinsic merit could hardly have raised them.
For throughout the length and breadth of the
Franciscan Order (and every other order) ambition
and intrigue of office are the most effectual hindrances
to fraternal charity. All officials are elected and fre
quently changed, so that the little province is as
saturated with jealousy and intrigue as a South
American Republic. Every three years a general
election is held, at which the General from Rome is
supposed to preside. The usual course is for the
General (whose real name is “ general servant ” of
the fraternity, but it is usually preferred in the
abbreviated form) to send a deputy to the province
which is about to hold its elections. The deputy,
or “ visitator,” visits all the monasteries in succession
and affords each friar an opportunity, in private con
versation, to submit his personal grievances or his
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161
knowledge of general abuses. Of the former, how
ever, the visitator takes little notice, referring them
to more immediate superiors, and he is usually quite
powerless to correct any general abuse. One of our
English friars was deputed to visit the Irish province
on the occasion of its election some years before my
secession. He did not disguise his intention of making
a special effort to check the flow of whisky in that
province, as he considered it the source of all evil in
modern monastic life; his own particular vanity was
port. We were not a little surprised to find on the
return of our zealous crusader that he had himself
been converted to the seductive spirit, and only the
too openly manifested delight of his numerous enemies
—whom he had persistently denounced at Rome for
ten years as “ whisky-drinkers ”—prevailed upon him
to return to port.
When the visitator has completed the circuit of the
province he summons the members of the higher
council, or “ definitors,” to the monastery where the
election is held. The superiors or “ guardians ” of the
various monasteries then send in their resignations,
together with a declaration on oath by their priests
(if they can get all the signatures), that they have
fulfilled their duty to their community and a full
account of their financial transactions. The guardians
themselves arrive on the following day, and proceed
by a secret ballot to the election of a new provincial,
and his council of five definitors. The guardians then
disperse, and the newly elected council proceeds to
appoint new guardians with their subordinate officers.
Everything is conducted with the utmost secrecy, the
voting papers being burned and pulverised in the
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presence of the voters, and every friar present being
put under oath not to reveal the proceedings. Public
prayers are also commanded for weeks in advance, and
the election opens with a solemn High Mass to the
Holy Spirit; an oath is also taken by the electors that
they will choose those whom they consider the most
worthy.
That is the admirable theory of the election; its
actual course is somewhat different. Before the
solemn imploration of the light of the Holy Spirit
on the election morning the whole scheme has been
practically settled. The province is really an oligarchy,
not an elective democracy. A few abler or older men
form the Definitorium, and there is a sufficiently clear
understanding 1 between them and the guardians to
insure that the guardians will re-elect them and they,
in their turn, will reappoint the guardians. There is
a slight struggle from one or two young Radicals, and
perhaps a new aspirant to a place on the council, but
changes rarely occur. The old definitors are prac
1 The following extracts from a letter written by one monastic
superior to another may be instructive :—
“ . . . they are trying to force me to do what I don’t think fair or
just to my successor . . . but I will not do anything that I deem in
principle mean or unjust to my successor. I say mean, for I deem
it such when guardians to please their superiors send them gifts
which the papal Bulls call bribes, and which several Popes strictly
forbid. But I absolutely refused until compelled by obedience to do
such. Of course I was threatened by the ‘ powers that be ’ that I
would pay for it, etc. ; but I told them over and over again, ‘ I
fear only God and my conscience.’”
Unfortunately there were many who had not the firmness, honesty,
and deep religious spirit of the writer of that letter. [As the writer
is now dead, I will add that the letter was written by the Very Rev.
Father Jarlath, 0. S.F., to myself a few weeks before I left. Second
edition.']
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163
tically sure of re-election, and so on the night before
the electors arrive they have arranged all appointments
under no other spiritual influence than that of a cigar
and a glass of whisky.
For the higher position of provincial—a quasi
episcopate—the intrigue runs much deeper. Votes
are practically bought, by means of minor appoint
ments and other bon-bons, years in advance, and the
province is really severed into factions headed by the
different candidates. There are many friars to whom
these proceedings are very repugnant, but others use
them more or less unscrupulously. I once took a
prominent friar to task for his indulgent treatment of
a notoriously unworthy official. He answered frankly
that the man “ had a vote ”—going on to explain how
necessary it was for the good of the fraternity that
he himself should take the helm at the next election,
however reluctant he felt to do so.
When these facts are considered, in addition to the
jealousy which naturally arises in connection with
preaching, penitents, and the esteem of the laity
generally, it will be understood that life in a friary
is not one of paradisaical monotony. Open conflicts
are rare, but the strained relations between rivals and
their followers frequently find expression in conversa
tion and conference. In fact, the constant suspicion
and caution sometimes lead to very unexpected
phenomena. Thus, a colleague of mine seemed to me
in uncomfortable relations with a large number of friars,
and of one of them he told me a strange story. He
had entered his cell during the friar’s absence and
found a revolver, which he abstracted and destroyed;
he even added that he kept a secret lock on his own
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bedroom door at night, for the ordinary lock is open
to a superior’s master-key, and the friar in question
was a superior and a priest of high reputation.1
Besides the triennial election, called a chapter,
there is a half-chapter every eighteen months in which
many changes take place. The friars do not, how
ever, as a rule, appreciate the variety which is thus
afforded them, for they soon find attachments in a
mission which they are loth to break off. But quite
apart from elections a friar is liable to be ordered off
to a different monastery at any moment. It is related
of the celebrated Duns Scotus that when he received
the order to go from Paris to Cologne, he happened
to be away from the Paris monastery. He at once
set off on foot for Cologne without returning even
to bid good-bye to his brethren. The modern friar
is not so precipitate. His “ obedience,” as the formal
order to remove is called, allows three days to reach
his destination; so that the friar has ample time to
collect his luggage (for in spite of his vow of poverty
every friar has a certain amount of personal property),
and perhaps elicit a testimonial from his pious admirers.
Needless to say, the friar no longer makes his jour
neys on foot, as the founder of the order intended.
There is a precept in the rule that forbids “ riding ”
under pain of mortal sin, and commentators are much
at variance in their efforts to apply it to modern
1 This incident somewhat startled me on re-reading it, but I now
recollect it quite clearly. The two men were two of the most dis
tinguished preachers at our Forest Gate friary, and each tried to
turn me against the other. I leave it to the reader to settle whether
the one who spoke to me of revolvers and secret locks was merely
lying. Third edition.
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165
means of locomotion. Most of them say that the
horse is still gravely prohibited—to ride, that is to
say, for in Belgium we more than once had the
pleasure of eating it; the ass and the camel are not
to be mounted without necessity; and a ship may be
used when the friar has not to pay for his sail. The
railway is a subject of grave theoretical controversy,
but the majority of the pundits are agreed that it may
be used when necessary ; which is a convenient solution.
i In point of fact, the English or American friar takes
1 his cab or ’bus or train without giving a thought to
his rule. He has, at least once in three years, a
holiday of two or three weeks’ duration, and he has
I odd days in the country or at the seaside. He cannot,
I however, leave his own country without special per
mission from Rome.
| The “ obedience,” or formal order to travel, is at
I the same time a mark of identity for the friar when
he arrives at a strange convent. He is always bound
to seek the hospitality of his brethren if they have a
I convent in the town, and the superior’s first care is
to demand his “ obedience,” on which his destination
is marked. This is enjoined as a precaution against
| apostates, and especially against frauds. For even
monastic hospitality has been taken advantage of by
impostors. In Belgium some years ago the imposition
I was attempted on a large scale at one of our friaries.
| A bishop and his secretary presented themselves for
a few days’ hospitality, and were received and treated
I by the friars with the courtesy and attention which
I befitted their rank. There was nothing unusual in the
I occurrence, and the friars were always glad to receive
iso flattering a guest. His lordship said mass daily
G
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with correct episcopal ceremony, and had all the
requisite paraphernalia. After a time, however, a
suspicion was aroused, and when his lordship had
casually mentioned the name of the cardinal who had
consecrated him, a telegraphic communication was
made with Rome, with the result that the impostors
were handed over to the civil authority. At London
we had visitors from all parts of the world, and it
would be difficult to detect an impostor. I remember
one whom we turned out of the monastery after a
few weeks’ hospitality, and no one knows to this
day whether he was a genuine friar or not. He was
a Spaniard, an old man with our brown costume in
his possession, who represented himself as a laybrother from our province of Mexico. He hinted
that a secret Government mission had brought him
to London. He spoke French fluently, and was a
most interesting conversationalist, representing that he
had at one time been a private secretary of Don Carlos
and an active figure in Spanish politics. However,
Fra Carpoforo’s business in London seemed unduly
protracted, and our suspicious superiors politely
recommended him an hotel in the city.
Impostors find great difficulty in penetrating into the
order as novices in modern times, for there are
numerous formalities to comply with. Not only are
his baptismal certificate and a letter from his bishop
necessary, but inquiries are made as to whether there
is any hereditary disease, or insanity, or heresy in his
family, whether he is single and legitimate, and so
with a host of other qualifications. In olden times
anybody who presented himself was admitted to “ the
habit of probation ” without inquiry, and it is a well-
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167
known fact that women have thus obtained entrance
into the monastery and remained in it until their
neath. Several such women are recorded in the
official Martyrology of the Order : a book in which the
memory is preserved of holy friars who have not
attained the supreme rank of canonisation. Their
names were read to us annually.
An amusing case of imposture occurred at Forest
Gate a few years before my secession. A young man
of very smart appearance presented himself at the
monastery and intimated a desire to enter the order
as a lay-brother. He had no credentials, but mentioned
casually one or two friars in other monasteries “ whose
masses he had served.” He represented himself as a
cook, saying that he had been at Charing Cross Hotel
and other places. Without a single inquiry he was
received into the monastery, where he remained for
three weeks, cooking for the brethren and maintaining
a very modest and satisfactory demeanour. On the
third Sunday, however, he vanished with the whole
of the money that had been collected in the church on
that day, and a quantity of clothing, &c., which he
had borrowed. As the Sunday was one of the great
festivals, on which a special collection had been taken
for the friars, the anger of the superior may be
imagined. The police smiled when we gave them a
description of our “ novice.”
G2
�CHAPTER IX
OTHER ORDERS AND THE LONDON CLERGY
It will be readily perceived that the less attractive
features of the life of the Grey Friars, which I have
described, are not due to circumstances which are
peculiar to that order. They are the inevitable result
of forcing a mediaeval ideal on temperaments and in
circumstances that are entirely modern. It will be
expected, therefore, that other monastic congregations,
at least, will present much the same features. The
rules and constitutions of different orders differ as
much as their costumes, and their specific aims—for
each order is supposed to have a distinctive aim to
justify its separate foundation—also differ. But again,
the difference is rather theoretical than practical.
Through the exigencies of their missionary status in
England and the United States,1 they have been
1 As I have mentioned, the hierarchy and the parochial system
are not in their normal condition in ‘ ‘ heretical ” countries. Hence
Dr. Temple was, from the canonical point of view, more correct
than he knew when he-styled the Church of Borne in England
“ the Italian Mission.” The conditions are so exactly parallel in
England and the States, and in the greater part of Canada, that
my experiences may be freely used in estimating monastic life in
America. The American friars I have met were, if anything,
further removed from the ideal of St. Francis than my immediate
colleagues.
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169
brought down to one common level of parochial
activity. Their work differs little from that of the
secular clergy, or the non-Catholic clergy; and the
same curious and half-hearted efforts are made to
maintain their ritual and ascetical peculiarities in the
privacy of the convent as have been described in the
case of the Grey Friars.
It was well known by my colleagues that I was
deeply concerned at the unpleasant condition of my
surroundings for many years before my secession. I
frequently spoke with one distinguished friar on the
subject, and he professed to be in entire accord with
me on the point, and used to deprecate it in even
stronger terms than I. However, suspecting that I
would on that account be tempted to procure a release
from the Franciscan rule and pass to some other order
(for which permission could be obtained), he would
go on to assure me—and he was a man of knowledge
—that every other order, and the secular clergy too,
was in a similarly unsatisfactory condition. As time
went on I found many reasons to acquiesce in the
opinion he gave me. Catholic priests have two weak
nesses in common with the gentler sex—vanity and
love of scandal. One cannot move much in clerical
circles without soon learning the seamy side of different
orders and dioceses. The different dioceses of the
secular clergy are more or less jealous of each other,
and the secular clergy are, as a rule, strongly opposed
to the regulars. Nine secular priests out of ten hate
all monks, and nine priests (of either kind) out of ten
hate the Jesuits. One meets many priests who are
willing to accept the extreme Protestant version of
Jesuitism. Only a few years ago a drama was
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OTHER ORDERS
presented in a theatre at Barcelona, in which were
embodied the bitterest and gravest charges against the
Jesuits; and when the delighted Spaniards called for
the author, a priest in his clerical dress walked to the
footlights. In the presence of laymen, of course, every
branch of sacerdotalism is treated as little less than
angelic; a priest will then, as I have heard them do,
praise a priest he hates. But a few years’ attentive
intercourse with different orders and with the clergy
of several dioceses has taught me to regard all priests
as very human, neither more nor less.
For instance, there were in my time, as was ex
plained in the second chapter, three distinct branches
of the Franciscan Order in England; and the three
sections were as jealous, hostile, and mutually depre
ciatory as three rival missionary societies. A few
years before I left the French colony of friars at
Clevedon advertised for cast-off clothing for their
youthful aspirants for the order; our authorities imme
diately wrote to Rome and got their action reproved
as derogatory to the dignity of the order—the order,
it will be remembered, being a mendicant order, indeed
the most humble of all mendicant orders. The French
friars in their turn disturbed the peace of my colleagues
by securing the patronage of the Duchess of Newcastle
and pitching their tent within a few miles of Forest
Gate; not even inviting us to the foundation of their
church. Another day our friars were exalted at the
news that their Capuchin brethren (the bearded Fran
ciscans) had been forced to sell their Dulwich monas
tery to the Benedictines, and again at the rumour that
the Capuchins (amongst whom, it was said, there had
been a general scuffle and dispersion and that several
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171
of their best men had departed for the American
missions) were likely to be starved into selling their
house at Olton. Both these monastic bodies had the
same manner of life as ourselves, and are, indeed, now
amalgamated with my late colleagues.
Other historic bodies, such as the Dominicans,
Benedictines, and Carmelites, bear much the same
relation to their primitive models, though their mem
bers are more cultured and refined, on the whole, than
my colleagues were. The Protestant surroundings
are held to prevent them from being entirely faithful
to their rules, and once the thin end of the wedge
is in it penetrates very deeply. The modern friars
have too much sense to attempt a full revival of the
thirteenth century. There is a poetry and romance
about the retention of the costume, but its asceticism
and crude religious realism are as antiquated as
feudalism. In olden times every monastery had
quite an armoury of spiked chains, bloody scourges,
thigh-bracelets, hair shirts, &c. In all my experience
I have only seen one such instrument of self-torture.
It was a thigh-bracelet, a broad wire chain, each link
ending in a sharp point that ran into the flesh. It
was rusty enough, though not from the blood of
victims, and it excited as much interest and humorous
comment in the party of monks who were examin
ing it as does a Spanish instrument of torture in the
Tower of London in the crowd of Protestant visitors.
St. Aloysius, the great model of the Jesuits, was so
modest in his relations with the dangerous sex, that he
did not even know his own mother by sight. To shake
hands with a woman is condemned by all monastic
writers as a very grave action. Most Catholic young
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ladies are aware that the modern monk—above all,
the Jesuit—is not at all misogynous.
The Dominicans have several peculiar precepts in
their rule which they are much tempted to think
lightly of; they are entirely forbidden flesh-meat, and
they are always forbidden to talk over dinner. I
have had the pleasure of dining at their large house
at Haverstock Hill on several festive occasions, and
I noticed that they trim the constitution a little by
adjourning to the library for dessert and wine; in
fact, my estimable neighbour did keep up a sotto voce
conversation with me throughout dinner. I heard
a much bolder feat of another Dominican convent.
Their precept directs, I understand, that flesh-meat
must not enter the refectory or dining-room; the good
friars, however, wearied of the daily fish, but saved
their consciences on the days they took meat by
dining in another room. It reminds one of the pious
fraud of the Dublin Carmelites. They secured an
excellent site for a church, but had to surmount an
obstacle raised by a former proprietor. He, it appears,
did not wish a church to be erected on the spot, so
he stipulated that the land should only be sold to a
person or persons agreeing to build a house thereon.
That was too wide a net for a theologian; the Car
melites bought the land, erected a fine church on it,
and a house on top of the church!
I met another curious illustration of this theological
ingenuity at one time in London. A Dominican friar
had been commissioned to raise funds in England for
the conduct of the process of canonisation of a French
priest. He had with him a number of small patches
of black cloth, which were said to be portions of the
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cassock of the holy man. He could not sell these—
the sale of relics is a grave sin in theology—but he
was, like the Spanish Church with its indulgences,
prepared to give one to every Catholic who gave him
ten shillings for the cause. My colleagues made a
friendly calculation that the relics which were being
thus distributed all over the Catholic world were so
large and numerous that they would make a consider
able number of cassocks. Possibly the cloth had
grown, as the Holy Cross did in pre-critical days;
but we further noted that the relics were pieces of
excellent stuff, whereas it was recorded as a particular
proof of the saint’s piety that he always wore an old
and ragged cassock. All this criticism was passed
at the time by priests, for it must not be supposed
that the clergy are as credulous as they like the laity
to be. They know that the manufacture of relics is
a lucrative ecclesiastical industry. The Dominican, in
fact, admitted to us that his relics had merely touched
the original cassock of the saint, and we forced him,
under threat of exposure, to return a half sovereign
a lady had given him.
The Jesuits are the most flourishing body of regular
clergy in England and America, and in every other
civilised or uncivilised nation. The reason of their
success is not far to seek. St. Ignatius bade them*
from the start cultivate the powerful and wealthy and
found colleges for the young. They have been more
than faithful to this part of his teaching, and they
draw numbers of youths from their fine colleges. To
a good supply of men and money they add a rigorous
discipline, and the elements of success are complete.
A famous Roman caricature hits off very happily the
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characteristic feature of the Jesuits and of three other
orders by a play on the words of Peter to Christ.
A Franciscan, Dominican, Augustinian, and Jesuit are
seated at a table of money; the Franciscan repels it
with the words “ Behold we have left all things,”
the Dominican imitates him, “ And we have followed
thee,” the Augustinian strikes an argumentative atti
tude, asking, “ What then? ” and the Jesuit gathers
in the spoils, with the rest of the text, “ remains
for us.”
At the same time they are characterised by a
remarkable esprit de corps which leads to an intense
isolated activity. The glory of the society is para
mount, and always coupled with the glory of the
Church; they never co-operate with other orders, but
they freely cut across the lines of, and come into col
lision with, other ecclesiastical forces. Hence there is
a very strong feeling against them amongst the clergy
and in higher quarters; indeed, one would be sur
prised to find how many priests are ready to agree
with Kingsley and Zola with regard to them. In
considering the accusations that are so commonly
brought against them one must remember how far
the acknowledged principles of Catholic casuistry can
be extended. It is true that the maxim, “ The end
justifies the means,” is denounced by all the theo
logical schools, including the Jesuits, but the rejection
is at times little more than a quibble. An act which
remains intrinsically bad cannot be done for a good
purpose, they say, but every theologian admits that
the “ end ” of an action enters into and modifies its
moral essence; and the act must be a very wicked
one which cannot be hallowed by being pressed into
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the service of the Church Catholic—or of the Society
of Jesus.
Such quibbles as Kingsley attributes to them in
“ Westward Ho! ” are certainly defensible on Catholic
principles and are constantly perpetrated by priests; 1
and I should not be at all surprised if a Jesuit were
to argue himself into accepting the commission which
George Sand attributes to the Jesuit tutor in “ Con
suelo.” Many priests would admit that M. Zola’s
account of their activity, in “ Rome,” is probably cor
rect. I once heard F. Bernard Vaughan, S.J., preach
a sermon on the title “ What is a Jesuit? ” With his
accustomed eloquence he summed up the traditional
idea—the historian’s idea—of a Jesuit, and, in refuta
tion, contented himself with detailing the spiritual
exercises through which the Jesuit so frequently
passes. Although, aided by F. Vaughan’s great thea
trical power and by the operatic performances which
preceded and followed it, the sermon produced con
siderable effect, it was in reality merely a trick of
rhetoric. No one contends that the Jesuit is violating
his conscience in his plots, intrigues, and equivoca
tions; regret is usually felt that he should have been
able to bring his moral sense into such an accom
modating attitude. Every ecclesiastic claims to be
unworldly in ultimate ambition; yet even a pope
would think a lifetime well spent in diplomatic intrigue
for the restoration of his temporal power. All such
activity is easily covered by the accepted principles
of Catholic casuistry.
Still, whatever may have been the policy of Jesuits
1 See afterwards, p. 209.
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in past ages their activity in England at the present
day is patent. In London they have no parish, but
they are continually seeking out the wealthier Catholics
in various parishes and endeavouring to attach them
to their congregation at Farm Street, or send them to
help their struggling missions at Stamford Hill and
Wimbledon. They even penetrated to Forest Gate
in this “ poaching ” spirit, and my colleagues were
greatly agitated when a Jesuit was known to be
about. We usually lost a well-to-do parishioner.
They have thus excited much hostility amongst the
rest of the clergy, but four centuries of bad treatment
from clergy and laity alike have sufficiently inured
them, and only made them more self-contained and
independent. Apart from such petty intrigues for
the advancement of the society there does not seem
to be any deep undercurrent of Jesuit activity in
England at the present time; at Rome, of course,
every congregation and every individual must partici
pate in the great struggle for canonical existence.1
Besides the great orders there are innumerable
minor congregations of regular or monastic priests
represented in London—Oblates of Mary, Oblates of
the Sacred Heart, Oblates of St. Charles, Servites,
Barnabites, Vincentians, Fathers of Charity, Marists,
Passionists, Redemptorists, &c. Most of them have
been founded in recent times by priests who were
eager to promote some particular devotion, and, by
influence or money, succeeded in getting permission
to found congregations embodying their idea. As a
1 See Count Hoensbroech’s “ Fourteen Years a Jesuit ” for some
scathing observations on the English Jesuits.
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rule their ideal is not very ascetic, so that there is
less hypocrisy in their lives; but they also are gener
ally too hard pressed in the inere struggle for existence
to pay much attention to the particular features and
objects of their respective congregations. I knew
little of them, but used to hear my older colleagues
tell with pleasure how Cardinal Manning scornfully
spoke of the Brompton Oratory as “ the hen-coop,”
and how the Benedictines were rent with factions (as
one of them afterwards described in the Pall Mall
Magazine).
Besides the great number of regular clergy—who
would be more aptly styled the “ Irregulars,” both for
a disciplinary reason and in view of their canonical
relation to the rest of the clerical army—there are
the ordinary secular or non-monastic clergy. The
seculars are those who live in the world (sseculum)
and the regulars those who live in convents, under a
rule (regula). The seculars have a similar life to
that of the ordinary non-Catholic clergyman; it has
been fully described in the preceding chapter, for it
is similar to that of the monastic clergy who under
take parochial duties. On Sunday their work is long
and laborious. During the week they visit their
parishioners, and the more attractive amongst their
neighbour’s parishioners (which dangerous practice is
called “ poaching,” and is watched accordingly); take
tea and supper and play cards with them; visit, dine,
and wine with each other; and picnics, parties, enter
tainments, meetings, special services (with luncheons),
visits to the cardinal (after a polite and chilling
invitation called a compareat), and occasional holidays,
help to fill up the inside of the week. They are
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forbidden under pain of suspension to enter a theatre,
or witness theatrical performances of any kind.
They cordially detest the monastic clergy—who
have secured most of the best parishes of the diocese
—but do not object to dining with them on their
festivals. I remember hearing one at a dinner (or
near the close of a dinner) in a friary belonging to
our Franciscan rivals, unburden his mind about monks
in general and our friars in particular, in a way which
would have been w’armly approved by the most loyally
Protestant body. With nuns they are usually on very
good terms; they find pupils and novices for the
convent, and in return are invited to the innumerable
special services, luncheons, entertainments, distribu
tions of prizes, &c., which are equally gratifying to
them and the sisters.
Their circumstances, naturally, differ very widely
in different parishes; as a rule they are not rich. I
have known a priest to reduce his living expenses to
nine shillings per week, and I should think there
are few who have £150 per annum. However, they
live in hopes of better days. The State grant to their
schools has meant a material increase in their personal
income. They, of course, claim it as a relief to their
parishioners, but in point of fact the special collections
they make for their schools are and always were
insignificant.
The cardinal usually assists the poorest missions,
in some of which, as at Ongar in my time, there are
not a score of Catholics; at least Cardinal Manning
did, though Cardinal Vaughan withdrew most of his
predecessor’s allowances. They were more afraid of
having money taken from them by Cardinal Vaughan
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\ than of the contrary, and they filled up their statistical
papers with much ingenuity. Cardinal Manning took
little interest in the incomes and expenditures of his
clergy, but as soon as Vaughan arrived they all re
ceived a detailed form to fill in and return, giving
an account of their receipts and expenses. Unfor
tunately the cardinal made a canonical slip in sending
the same paper to the secular and to the monastic
clergy; the latter are not responsible to him for
their conduct qua monks, but only qua parish priests.
They therefore held an indignation meeting and pro
tested, with the result that a new form had to be
printed which distinguished between their parochial
property and income and their monastic affairs, and
only demanded an account of the former. Needless
to say, the replies were very discreet; it is said that
the Dominicans returned a blank sheet.
On the whole the relation of the secular clergy to
their archbishop 1 may be described as one of goodnatured tolerance. He was not popular in the north,
and he is not popular in the south. He is kind and
affable, and always leaves a good impression after a
visit to a priest. Not so inflexible as his predecessor
—in fact, it is complained that he is too easily influ
enced—he is a prelate of unquestionable earnestness
and sincerity. But he had the misfortune to step
into the shoes of a great man, and he has acted
unwisely in endeavouring to tread in his predecessor’s
footsteps instead of confining his attention to the
1 It is, perhaps, of interest to leave in the text this lengthy
reference to Cardinal Vaughan. It must be understood, however,
that it does not refer to the present Archbishop, of whom I know
nothing. Third edition.
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administration of the archdiocese. The intense activity
which has kept him continually on the move since
he entered the diocese, and which has so rapidly aged
him, has had little or no palpable result, and has
certainly not deepened the attachment of his clergy.
His predecessor remained day after day in his little
room at Carlyle Place; the world came to him and
sought his influence.
Yet with all his activity and the perpetual flutter
ing of aristocratic wings in his vicinity he cannot give
the financial aid to his clergy which his predecessor
did. One of his first cares was to change the existing
financial arrangements, cutting off many allowances
and commanding new contributions. He had a perfect
right to do so; but when, after so many economical
measures, he confessed in his Trinity Sunday pastoral
that he could not reach the income of his predecessor
his clergy felt little sympathy. In the same pastoral
he preached a panegyric of the aristocracy which gave
great offence, and he gave a comparison of the con
tributions of five West End churches and five East
End churches, which was not quite accurate, was
hardly fair, and was certainly impolitic. However,
he has made many wise changes in the distribution
of his clergy and other improvements that Cardinal
Manning had strangely neglected. When the time
comes it will not be a light task to find a worthy
successor to Cardinal Vaughan/
1 The Vaughan family is a remarkable one ; of the seven brothers
six became prominent ecclesiastics. Roger died Archbishop of
Sydney ; Herbert is cardinal; Bernard, the Jesuit, is the first
Catholic preacher in England; Jerome is the founder of a new
order ; Kenelm is a world-wide missionary : John is a monsignore.
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The same may be said of the education of secular
priests as of that of regulars; in fact, the observations
in the preceding chapter apply to the clergy generally.
The classical and mathematical training of the seculars
is slightly better than that of the friars; otherwise
the curriculum is much the same. Their philosophical
and theological studies in the seminary have been
equally disorderly and precipitate. They have had
no serious introduction either to the thought of past
ages (beyond the thirteenth century) or to the living
thoughts of our own day. They read little and know
little beyond the interminable Anglican controversy.
The laity are coerced into literary apathy, and con
sequently the stimulus to study is absent.
About five years ago the cardinal realised that his
priests were not up to date, and that they were really
unable to bring themselves adequately in touch with
modern thought, so he instituted a kind of intellectual
committee to sit upon modern questions, and report
to the majority. A dozen of the better-informed
London priests constituted it, and they met occasion
ally to discuss, especially social questions and the
biblical question. I remember procuring a large
amount of socialistic literature for certain members
who wished to study both sides. When the members
of this new Areopagus had come to a few decisions,
they were to enlighten their less studious or less
leisured brethren by a series of small books. Those
It is said that John attempted a smart aphorism on the family ; he
himself represented thought, Bernard word, and Herbert deed.
When Bernard heard it he caustically added, “ and Jerome
omission." The allusion is to the Catholic classification of sins—
sins of thought, word, deed, and omission.
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books have not yet appeared. The fact that the pro
posed writers (to my knowledge) dare not print their
true ideas on the above problems at present may not
be unconnected with the delay. A Jesuit writer,
about the same time, began a series of explanatory
and very dogmatic articles on the critical question
in the Tablet, but he was immediately cut to pieces
by other Catholic writers. The Jesuits have also
published a series of volumes of scholastic philo
sophy in English. The student will find in them an
acquaintance with modern science and philosophy
which is rarely found in the scholastic metaphysician.
Unfortunately they are little better on the main
lines of argument than a translation of the discarded
Latin manuals. They follow disused shafts of thought
much too frequently to be of value. The more im
portant volumes seem to have been entrusted to the
less important men; and whilst there is much acute
criticism of minor topics, the treatment of the more
profound problems is very unsatisfactory—such theses
as the spirituality of the soul and the existence and
infinity of God being merely supported by the old
worn-out arguments.
What has been said of the perpetual intrigues of
the monastic clergy does not apply so forcibly to the
secular priests. Each monastery is a small world in
itself, and contains nearly as many officers as privates;
to the secular clergy the number of possible appoint
ments is very slight in proportion to their numbers,
and thus the fever of ambition is less widespread.
There is naturally a certain amount of intrigue for
the wealthier parishes, but few of the priests have
any ambition beyond the desire to settle down as
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rector of some comfortable and respectable congrega
tion. In a witty French book a benevolent parent
gives as a supreme counsel to his son who has become
a priest, “ Arrondissez-vous.” A few may then aspire
to the dignity of dean of their district, or to the title
of “ missionary rector.” But so far there is no differ
ence from the clergy of any other denomination; the
genuine Roman fever only begins with the narrow
circle of those who presume to aspire to the title of
monsignore, or even of canon of the diocese. The
dignity of monsignore is not a very significant one;
it may or may not be a reward of merit. Any wealthy
priest of good family may receive it as a mere com
pliment. I know one monsignore who received his,
purple because he had given a few thousand pounds
to my colleagues, and another (a very worthy man, but
painfully commonplace) who got it for his attentions
to a distinguished visitor from Rome.
Even canons, as a rule, are very feeble and harm
less conspirators; they are generally old men, who
are more conspicuous for quantity than quality of
service, but have usually sufficient discretion left to
know that they are not expected to aspire any higher.
In matters of ordinary administration their long ex
perience is often useful to the bishop, with whom
they form the chapter of the diocese, but otherwise
they have not a very grave responsibility. The same
may be said of the titular bishops, or those whose
titles are in partibus infidelium—the “ suffragans ” 1
of the Anglican hierarchy. The cardinal (or any
1 The word has a different meaning amongst Catholics ; a suffragan
is any bishop under an archbishop. All the bishops of England
are suffragcmi to the cardinal-archbishop.
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important bishop) has a number of advisers quite
outside his chapter, experts in canon law, professors
of theology, &c., who are generally mutually hostile
and contradictory, and from their opinions he finally
deduces a course of action.
There is little excitement or intrigue over the
election to an unimportant bishopric. A private
income is as good a qualification as any where the
diocese is small and poor, and no great energy is
required for its administration. When the bishopric
of Clifton fell vacant a few years ago, it was laugh
ingly whispered in clerical circles that the first con
dition required in the candidate was the possession
of the modest private income of <£250 a year. When
an important see is vacant there is more wire-pulling,
both in the locality and at Rome; for the diocese has
not a decisive vote in the election of its bishop. The
canons meet and decide upon three names to send
to Rome as dignissimus, dignior, and dignus. But
the Pope frequently changes the order, and sometimes
(as in Manning’s election) entirely disregards the
ternum.
Thus it is that every prominent ecclesiastic, whether
he be bishop, priest, or monk (for a monk may be
raised to the episcopate without intermediate stages),
is a continuous object of jealous observation and
intrigue, in view of the possible cardinals’ hats or
bishoprics. The state of things described in Purcell’s
“ Life of Manning ” is only exceptional in that the
Church in England is not likely again to have such a
number of able men simultaneously. The jealousy,
hostility, meanness, and persecution therein described
are familiar incidents in the life of every “ great
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'ecclesiastical statesman,” as Manning is most aptly
called. And it must not be imagined that the picture
is at all complete—it is not by any means as darkly
shaded as the reality. No Catholic could in conI science tell all that is handed down in clerical circles
with regard to the relations of Manning, Newman,
Ward, the Jesuits, &c. And although the author
has made a generous concession in the cause of hisI torical truth, the public have not had the full benefit
I of his sincerity. If the book could have been pubI lished in its original form, it would have been much
more interesting, but after spending two years in
purgatorial flames as it did, we must take it with
’ discretion. Some of my colleagues were intimate with
the author’s brother, and gave us continual reports
of the painful progress of the work. About two
I years before its appearance we were told that it was
j finished, and some very spicy letters and anecdotes
' were promised. Then there were rumours of war;
Ithe defenders of Manning, the supporters of Ward,
the Jesuits, and others threatened legal action, and
I the work was much “ bowdlerised.” On the whole,
1 the impression of those who seemed to be in the secret
i was that Newman had been treated by all parties in
J a manner that dare not be made public, and that
■ there were documents kept back which would throw
much discredit upon all other prominent Catholics of
| the period. We must not suppose, however, that
’ Newman was the meek victim of all this intrigue.
| Bishop Paterson, who knew him well, once described
if | him in my presence as “ a tiger by nature, an angel
& B by grace.”
However undesirable such a state of things may
±
J
1 Cl
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be, it is no other than any disinterested person would
expect. The Church cannot change its character in
a day, and its past history, like the history of every
priesthood under the sun, is throughout marred by
such weaknesses. The life of Cardinal Pie in France,
though written by a Catholic for Catholics, gives one
the same impression; the relations of the Irish pre
lates (one of whom is “ primate of Ireland,” and
another “ primate of all Ireland,”) and of the American
prelates are quite analogous; and Rome itself is a
school of diplomacy and intrigue of no gentle charac
ter. Such things are inevitable, and it is a clumsy
device to attempt to conceal them and support the
idea that ecclesiastical dignitaries are only guided by
preternatural influences.
The condition of Catholicism in London is a matter
of anxious discussion, even in clerical circles. As will
be explained subsequently, grave doubts are expressed
as to whether the Church is making any progress at
all in England, and especially in London. Catholic
journals are not unlike Egyptian monuments; they
write large (and in good round numbers) the con
quests of their Church, but they do not see the need
for chronicling its losses. Of converted Anglican
ministers they speak with warmth and eloquence; of
seceding priests they are silent—until some incident
brings them into public notice, when they publish a
series of reckless attacks on them and refuse to insert
their explanations. Once or twice, however, notices
of meetings have crept in at which the opinion has
been maintained by priests that the Church is really
losing, instead of making that miraculous progress
which the average layman believes. Great numbers
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of Catholics imagine that as soon as the Church of
England is disestablished 1 and thus thrown directly
upon the support of the people it will vanish almost
immediately. I once heard Bishop Paterson explain
that it was undesirable to work for disestablishment
just yet, because we Catholics really had not nearly
sufficient accommodation for the vast flood of converts
that would ensue; we should be quite disorganised.
In point of fact there should be now about a quarter
of a million Catholics in London, whereas the Daily
Nezes census shows that only 90,000 attend church,
and the total number cannot therefore be more than
120,000. Throughout England the ratio of the
Catholic population is about 1 in 20, but it is much
higher in Lancashire, much lower in London and other
places. In Cardinal Manning’s time the figures were
vague and disputable. When Cardinal Vaughan came
down in a hurricane of zeal a census was made of the
archdiocese; but the exact figures only established the
truth of the pessimistic theory. It wras thought that
Catholicism did not really know its strength, and that
it would be well to proclaim its formidable statistics
to the world; but when the result of the census was
known, it was whispered indeed from priest to priest,
but with a caution that the cardinal did not wish to
see it in print.
I have not seen the exact figures—I do not suppose
they ever passed the archbishop’s study in writing—■
but I was informed by reliable priests that out of the
small Catholic population of London between 70,000
1 A Catholic is bound in conscience to desire—to work for, if
possible—the disestablishment of the Anglican Church: then he is
equally bound to work for the establishment of his own.
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and 80,000 never went near a church—had practic
ally abandoned the Church. I have explained that
the positive ceremonial obligations (to hear mass) of
a Catholic are so grave that a continued neglect of
them puts a man outside the pale of the Church.
Most priests can ascertain with some confidence how
many nominal Catholics there are in their district—
that is to say, how many ought to be Catholics by
parentage, baptism, education, &c. By subtracting
from this the average number of attendances at mass
on Sunday (an obligatory service) they should have
the number of renegades. So, also, the priest can
make a minimum calculation from his school-children
—multiply the number of children by five, and you
have the population (though in some places many
Catholic children attend Board Schools); and the
number of marriages affords a maximum indication.
Disagreeable as the general statement is, a few
details will show that it must be rather under than
over the truth. The priest, as a rule, likes to give as
roseate an account as possible of his flock, so that in
the aggregate there is probably a great loss in point
of accuracy. In the parish of Canning Town in East
London there are about 6000 nominal Catholics; 5000
of these never come near the church. I was dining
with F. Hazel the day the form to be filled arrived,
and saw him write it. We measured the church and
found that, filling the doorsteps and arch ledges, it
would not contain more than 400; certainly not a
thousand, mostly children, came to mass on Sundays,
and Easter confessions were proportionate. A question
was asked, How many of your youths (15-21) attend
their duties? About five per cent, was the answer.
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The income of the parish was deplorable; the vast
territory it embraces is full of poor Irish families
who live less religiously and not more virtuously than
pagans.
At Barking there are more than 200 children in
the schools, and the number is not at all complete,
and there are not more than fifty adults who attend
church; at Grays there is the same condition. A
few years ago a zealous priest, F. Gordon Thompson,
determined to start a mission in a neglected part of
East London—Bow Common ; his aim was necessarily
small, he could only hope to take care of the children
of nominal Catholics. In the first three streets he
visited he found 120 such children, and could go no
further; their parents he could not attempt to gather.
He told me that there were several other localities in
East London in precisely the same condition. In fact,
every parish in East London counts at least hundreds
of drifted Catholics. The circumstance is by no means
confined to poor districts, but it is more noticeable
in them; ecclesiastics are naturally slow to undertake
and prosecute such unremunerative toil.
In the light of these details it will not be wondered
that there is so great a leakage from the Church that
the “ converts ” do not nearly fill the vacant space.1
I have thought for many years, and have been confirmed in the opinion by many colleagues, that for
1 I have since made careful research into the matter, and more
than established the truth of this. My conclusions are given in an
article in the National Review for August 1901, and especially in
my “ Decay of the Church of Rome ” (1909), where I have shown
that the Church of Rome has lost at least two million and a
quarter followers in England alone during the nineteenth century.
Third edition.
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OTHER ORDERS
the last twenty years at least the Church of Rome
has made no progress in England, but has probably
lost in numbers, taking into account, of course, the
increase of a generation, The Church has made a
considerable number of converts, and it would be
foolish to question the earnestness of a large propor
tion of them. At the same time the majority of them
are of such a class that the change has no deep
religious significance. There are thousands of ordinary
people whose only convictions, such as they are, regard
certain fundamental points of Christianity, and who
are drawn into one or other sect by the merest accident
•—by contact with a zealous or particularly affable
proselytiser, by the influence of relatives, by kindness,
taste, and a host of non-religious considerations. In
fact it is only too clear (and not unnatural) that many
associate with the Church of Rome out of purely
aesthetic considerations. It is well known that many
of the much vaunted converts of Farm Street and of
Brompton are simply aesthetes, who are attracted by
the sensuous character of the services.
Matrimonial considerations are also very powerful
agents in the cause of the Church. Many Catholic
priests and families insist upon “ conversion ” before
admitting a non-Catholic to matrimonial relation.
The only “ convert ” I am responsible for was a young
lady who was engaged to be married to a Catholic;
she drank in my instructions like water, never find
ing the slightest intellectual difficulty; and a few
years afterwards, being jilted by him, she happily
returned to Anglicanism with the same facility. One
of my colleagues was summoned to attend a Catholic
who was seriously ill. The wife met him at the door,
�OTHER ORDERS
191
tai and asked him to “ be careful, because her husband
J was only a marriage-convert.” When inter-marriage
Jis allowed, the Church exacts several promises in her
i!favour; all children of the marriage must be brought
l III up Catholics, the non-Catholic partner must promise
i at not to interfere in any way with the religion of the
! Catholic parent and children—and then the Catholic
is separately bound to do all in his or her power to
convert the other.
Schools, too, are proselytising agencies. In board
ing-schools kept by nuns, to which Protestant girls
J are frequently sent, it is regarded as a sacred duty to
»q influence the children as much as possible, no matter
tljwhat promises are made to the parents. Elementary
,d public schools are not only the most effective guardians
J of their own children, but also help to extend Catholic
.^influence. Like the consideration which has been pre>i|viously mentioned, it is not one to which the clergy
iggive political prominence, but it is certainly an
jbimportant item in their secret programme.
�CHAPTER X
COUNTRY
MINISTRY
After four years’ experience of the life which has
been described in the preceding pages, I was not un
willing to find some means of escape. Besides the
uncongenial environment in which I found myself, my
religious troubles had increased every year, until at
length I found myself consciously speculating on the
possibility of being ultimately forced to secede. The
prospect was naturally very painful and alarming, and
I resolved to use every honourable means to avert it.
However, in the increasing cares of the ministry I
could not secure the necessary time for sustained
study. I was relieved from monastic duties, and also
from parochial work, on account of my professorship :
I never visited or received visitors until the last six
months of my monastic career. Still, as preacher,
confessor, instructor, and professor, I was continually
distracted and failing in health, and I eagerly grasped
an opportunity of retiring from London.
The authorities of our province had at length
decided to take action for the improvement of our
studies, and F. David was directed to found a new
college for the preparatory studies. He had a large
but vague idea that the college was ultimately to be
192
�COUNTRY MINISTRY
193
connected with Oxford University, and sent down a X
friar of high reputation for economy to make inquiries
in that region. However, no land could be obtained
at their price nearer than Buckingham, and there the
friar established himself.
The friar lived in the vicinity during the progress
of the building, which was erected principally on
borrowed funds, as is usual with Roman Catholic in
stitutions. Knowing that the financial prospects of
the college were precarious, the good friar set himself
to live with great economy and store up a little against
the opening of the establishment. He had an excel
lent reputation for economy already : he knew all the
halfpenny ’buses in London, and patronised shops
where a cup of tea could be had for a halfpenny.
However, he surpassed himself at Buckingham. He
read by the light of a street lamp which shone in at
his window (thus saving the cost of oil), had no
servant, and achieved the fabulous feat of living on
sixpence per day 1 during a long period. Being forced
at length to keep a lay-brother he chose a poor little
ascetic who, he knew, was only too eager to find a
superior who would allow him to starve himself on
orthodox principles.
When at length it was deemed expedient to remove
the zealous friar to another part of England, he had
saved the sum of <£100. This he left to his successor,
who, accordingly, in recording his disappearance in the
“ Annals ” of the new college, added that he deserved
great praise for the efficient state in which he left the
mission. But the newcomer had quite a different
1 The diet was bread, beer and coffee, and tinned meat. Foi
feast-days he used a special meat which cost a penny per tin more.
�194
COUNTRY MINISTRY
theory of life. He agreed with Francis of Assisi that
it was irreverent to make provision for the morrow;
and so he made himself comfortable in the little
cottage they had rented, and religiously trusted to
Providence for the future of the college. The income
was also doubled through a kind of chaplaincy to the
Comte de Paris which he undertook, yet when I suc
ceeded him my legacy consisted mainly of wine and
spirit bills (paid) and empty bottles.
In the meantime the councillors were again at
loggerheads over the choice of a rector. F. David
had asked me to volunteer for the post, and, for the
reasons already given, and from a sincere desire to
help in reforming our studies, I did so. Subsequent
proceedings, however, disgusted me to such an extent
that for a time I refused to take it, and several
authorities, knowing that I would now have to work
in the face of much intrigue and secret opposition,
wished to save me from it. I was finally appointed,
and entered upon my duty willingly and with earnest
and honest purpose. I had incurred the bitter but
secret hostility of those who were ostensibly respons
ible for my financial success; I knew that the province
was almost universally hostile to the new foundation;
my parish, of some twelve miles in extent, contained
only three poor Catholics; and I had eight pupils who
paid between them the collective sum of <£80 per
annum. I had now entered the troubled waters of
ecclesiastical intrigue, and I give a few details in
illustration of that interesting experience.
Immediately after my arrival the cabinet ministers
of the fraternity—who had prudently sent me a ten
pound note in advance—came to the college to hold a
�COUNTRY MINISTRY
195
two days’ conference. During those two d«iys the
little college resounded with loud but, unhappily, in
articulate discourse. When it was over I demanded
instructions from the provincial, a worthy but obtuse
old friar, who, by some curious freak of diplomacy,
had been pushed into the highest position. He blandly
replied that he had no instructions for me. I (aged
twenty-seven) was to be chief professor and rector,
superior of the house, instructor of the lay-brothers,
parish priest—everything, in short; with carte blanche
to make any regulations, programme of study, or
domestic discipline that I desired. I was even free
to adopt or not the “ closure ” (excluding ladies). I
then turned to the delicate financial question, and was
promptly assured that the whole of this responsibility
had been undertaken by one of the definitors. I
afterwards ascertained that neither the provincial nor
the other councillors had any idea of the financial con
dition of the institution. I warned him that the
definitor in question was known to be anxious for my
ruin and humiliation (for my spiritual good), and that
the others could not shift their responsibility. He
smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and departed. I never
saw him again.
Under these auspicious circumstances I opened the
college of St. Bernardine, a large and handsome build
ing, in spacious grounds just outside Buckingham, in
October 1895. During the five months I remained
there I received no help from the friar of whom they
had spoken; at the end of the time he stood in my
debt. I knew that he had another and more docile
candidate waiting for the rectorship, and that he had
openly expressed his intention of letting me “ sink.”
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COUNTRY MINISTRY
However, other friars came to my assistance, and I
left the college comparatively prosperous when I
abandoned it.
I had one associate in teaching, a young and kindly
but ignorant priest, so that a curious assortment of
classes fell to my lot. I taught Latin grammar,
French, Euclid, algebra, physics, and a little Greek.
And the difficulty of educating the boys was increased
by my complete ignorance of the term they were to
remain under me. I remonstrated with the authorities
in vain; they were in utter discord themselves, and
left everything to chance. Some of them hoped that
the institution would fail. To enliven still further
the monotony of our country life there was a revolt of
the two servants or lay-brothers, occasioned by my
checking their beer accounts. They were both older
than myself, selfish, unsympathetic, and impatient
of discipline. The authorities refused to remove
them.
At the same time the bishop of the diocese was
piteously calling my attention to the condition of the
district, and putting a new charge on my shoulders.
There was evidently more duplicity on this point. I
was informed that there was no parish attached to
the college; the bishop understood that there was,
and had promised me a map of it. It mattered little,
for the “ parish *’ would consist of an enormous extent
of territory containing three Catholics known and three
or four suspected. The town of Buckingham (con
taining 3000 inhabitants) boasts of one Roman Catholic,
who, with rustic diplomacy, attended early service at
the parish church and mass afterwards at the college.
He was my gardener. The whole diocese of North
�COUNTRY MINISTRY
197
ampton is a spiritual desert to the Catholic mind. It
is the most extensive in England, yet contains only
a few thousand Catholics.
At Buckingham I was expected to re-kindle the
light of the ancient faith in a very short time. My
predecessors had left glowing accounts of the ripeness
of the harvest. But I soon found that the easy
tolerance, if not cordiality, of the townsfolk had quite
a different meaning. The presence of the French
soi-disant royal family had done much to remove the
unreasonable prejudice against Catholics which is
found in many agricultural districts. Stowe House
had been the chief support of the little town; and
when the Orleanist family departed, after the death
of the Count, the town was prepared to receive with
open arms any institution that would help to fill the
void in its commerce. The college was built just at
that moment, and as my colleagues predicted for it
a rapid and unlimited growth, it was warmly wel
comed by the inhabitants, who, no doubt, religiously
steeled their hearts at the same time against its assumed
proselytising purpose. In fact, I found that one or
two men who had been noted by my predecessors as
likely to prove the first and easiest converts were con
firmed agnostics who had keenly enjoyed the simplicity
of my predecessors. It was soon felt that I was not
of a proselytising disposition—apart from the insecurity
of my own position, I am afraid that I never sufficiently
realised the gravity of the condition of our Anglican
neighbours—and the college worked in complete
harmony with the Protestant clergy and laity of the
vicinity.
Of my own diocesan colleagues I hardly made the
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COUNTRY MINISTRY
acquaintance. The nearest priest of my own diocese
was at a distance of twelve miles to the south; the
next, fourteen miles to the north; and there, as else
where, the secular clergy do not fraternise with monks.
I was now, however, bound to put in an appearance
at the casuistry conferences which are held periodic
ally, as has been explained. A diocese is divided into
deaneries, and the rectors are summoned every month
to a conference at the dean’s residence. A programme
is printed for each year in which a casus—an incident
for moral diagnosis and prescription—is appointed for
each conference; a few questions are added which
serve to elicit the principles of casuistry on which the
“ case ” must be solved. A priest is appointed to
read the case, solve it, and answer the questions at
each meeting; all are then invited by the dean or
president to express their opinions in turn, and, as the
casus is usually very complicated, a long discussion
generally follows.1 Nearly every point in casuistry is
disputed, and arguments are abundant in the modern
Latin manuals—Lehmkuhl, Ballerini, Palmieri, &c.
The final decision rests with the president.
A conference in a populous diocese is a very exciting
ceremony; rival schools of theology are represented,
1 The casus are always in Latin : the following may serve as
a specimen :—Titius steals a watch from the person of a cleric in
church. This he sells to Caius, and nothing further is heard of
him. The priest at length identifies his watch in the possession of
Caius and claims it, satisfactorily proving it to be his property.
Caius refuses to return the watch until his money is returned and
the thief cannot be traced.
Q. 1. How many kinds of sacrilege are there ?
Q. 2. How many sins did Titius commit ?
Q. 3. How is the case to be solved ?
Such a case would provoke hours of controversy.
�COUNTRY MINISTRY
199
young priests are pitted against old ones, and the
more ambitious are eager to make an impression. But
at Northampton our conference was very tame. Only
t ten priests could be assembled out of a very wide
territory, and they were far from being brilliant theo
logians. A desultory and not very instructive con
versation ensued after the case had been read, and in
the middle of it the bell rang for lunch, which seemed,
of the two, to be the more important function for
which we were convened.
The life of a priest in a country parish is usually
very dull and monotonous; in our diocese it was not
unlike the life of a foreign missionary, so few Catholics
there were in the vast territory. I had one parishioner
in the town, a poor ignorant creature whose faith was
very closely connected with his works; another at a
distance of four miles, who was a doubtful acquisition
to the Church; a third, five miles away, who patiently
submitted to being called a Catholic; and a fourth, or
rather an excellent family, about eight miles away,
who had been effectually scared from us by my prede
cessors. The three or four mythical Catholic harvest
I men and washerwomen, whom a diocesan tradition
& located somewhere within the limits of my twelve-mile
district, I never met in the flesh. Most of the other
priests in the diocese had rather more souls to care
af for, but rarely sufficient to provide a maintenance.
SThey were poor, and could not travel much; they had
few parishioners with whom they could have congenial
intercourse; they were widely separated from each
other, and had neither books nor inclination to study.
The life of an Anglican clergyman in a small country
parish is not one to be envied: a priest has the
1
H 2
�200
COUNTRY MINISTRY
additional disadvantage of no family, and usually
hostile neighbours.
When I had at length introduced a certain amount
of method into the college and of discipline into my
small community, my thoughts reverted to the per
sonal object I had in view in leaving London. Surprise
is often expressed that the number of seceders from
the Roman Catholic priesthood is not higher. Apart
from the fact that few people know the number of
seceders, as will appear presently, a little reflection
on two points, which I have already adduced, will
help to explain the matter. In the first place, the
philosophical and theological studies of the priest have
been stunted, one-sided, and superficial. Very few
of the clergy have continued the work at a university,
and even there the studies would again be narrow and
superficial. They plunge into active parochial work
immediately after their ordination; they have no
stimulus to, and little continuous time for, study—
except a little casuistry—while, on the other hand,
there is ample opportunity and pressing invitation to
dissipate their time and wits in agreeable trivialities.
Under such circumstances they feel disposed to regard
Wellhausen and Kuenen (or even Sayce and Cheyne),
Huxley and Spencer, White and Draper, and even
Protestant divines, as so many literary hedgehogs.
Their scholastic system was plausible enough when the
professor urged it upon them, and they give no
further thought to the subject. Add to this the fact
that most of them are Irish, and the buoyant Celtic
temperament does not take religious doubt very
seriously; no one knows into what depths of study
or seas of trouble it may lead. In the educated lay-
�COUNTRY MINISTRY
201
x | man that temperament is sceptical enough, though it
i i is a careless, lighthearted scepticism, not obtrusive and
not very consistent; in the priest the same disposition
11 leads to a natural reluctance to take any steps that
may involve a violent dislocation, and carries with it a
habit of deprecating a Quixotic effort to attain mathenj matical precision and consistency of thought.
And if it happens that doubts do enter into the
minds of the clergy (and in familiar intercourse with
them one soon finds that they are not uncommon—1 I have sometimes heard priests openly express the
CT most cynical scepticism), what time has the ordinary
$ priest to make a sincere and protracted study of his
<) opinions? With all my privileges and opportunities
il for study, it cost me the better part of ten years of
ct constant reading and thought to come to a final and
ct reliable decision. The fact that the actual seceders
dj from the Church are usually men who have had
special opportunity and a marked disposition for study
si is significant enough; the fact that few emerge from
I| the ordinary ranks of the clergy with convictions firm
!1 enough to face the painful struggle of secession should
)fl not be surprising. Active external occupation banishes
» doubt from consciousness. To deliberately resort to it
oj for that purpose would be dishonest; few men would
uj subscribe to the Catholic rule, that doubt must be
suppressed at once, yet it is the ordinary fate of the
I clergyman. I experienced a relief myself during the
initial labours for my college, but once my work
dropped into some kind of routine, the old questions
reappeared, and I determined to answer them, cost
what it might.
My doubts were of a philosophical and fundamental
I
1
�202
COUNTRY MINISTRY
character. I had felt that, until the basic truths of
religion were firmly assented to, the Anglican con
troversy had little interest for me, and even the biblical
question was of secondary importance. Accordingly
most of my time from my first introduction to philo
sophy was spent, directly or indirectly, in investigating
the fundamental problems. I had read all the litera
ture which could possibly be of use to me in forming
my judgment, and I had been guided (as far as he
could do so) by a man who is thought most competent
for that purpose. All that remained was to survey
the evidence as it had accumulated in my memory, and
form a severe and well-weighed decision upon it. I
drew up on paper the points round which my doubts
centred, and added from memory all the arguments I
had met in my protracted search. I was not at all
influenced by hostile writers, of whom I had read very
little, and I had never discussed the questions with
any non-Catholic. The sole question was, Is the evi
dence I have collected satisfactory or not? During
the Christmas vacation I settled resolutely to my task,
and uninterruptedly, all day and half the night, I
went solemnly back over the ground of my studies.
Point by point the structure of argument yielded
under the pressure. Before many days a heavy and
benumbing consciousness weighed upon me that I was
drifting out into the mist and the unknown sea. And
it was on Christmas morning, 1895, after I had cele
brated three masses, while the bells of the parish
church were ringing out the Christ-message of peace,
that, with a great pain, I found myself far out from
the familiar land—homelessly, aimlessly drifting. But
the bells were right, after all; from that hour I have
�COUNTRY MINISTRY
203
been wholly free from the nightmare of doubt that
had lain on me for ten years.
The literature that I had studied during the preced
ing years was principally Latin and French. I had,,
naturally, looked for evidence in the vast arsenal of
Catholic apologetics, and though my study has been
greatly extended since, I am not sure that any dia
lectically firmer evidence is available. The Kantist and;
Hegelian philosophies, and all that is grounded on;
either or both, Green, Fiske, Lotze, Royce, Caird, have?
left me untouched. The philosophy of the Scotch
school, from Reid to Hamilton, is only plausible in so*
far as it is Aristotelic, and therefore a repetition of
the scholastic system. Martineau also is unwittingly
scholastic in his better passages, and he is too much
disposed to that “ extra-rational ” proof which ap
pealed to Mr. Romanes in his later years : for my part,
I would not take a single serious step in this life on
extra-rational proof, and I fail to see why it is a surer
guide to the next. Thus I came to attach most im
portance to the schoolmen and the writers who adapt
their principles to modern thought. I studied with
extreme care St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, Scotus,
Suarez, Vasquez, Pontius, Herinx, and a host of other
veterans; also an infinity of smaller modern writers*
Tongiorgi, Sanseverino, Lepidi, Pesch, Moigno,
Zigliara, Rosmini, Lacordaire, Monsabre, Zahn, Het
tinger, &c.
Amongst English Catholic literature there was littleto be read. In my younger days I had been taught
to shelter myself under the authority of the great
Newman: it was a very few years before I found that
that was rather a compromising position for a philo
�204
COUNTRY MINISTRY
sopher. There is an old adage in the schools that “ in
philosophy an authority is worth just as much as his
arguments, and no more.” Newman is the last guide
in the world to choose in philosophical matters. The
key to his line of thought is found in the inscription
(epitaph, one feels tempted to say) of his one philo
sophical work, “ The Grammar of Assent ”—a text
from St. Ambrose, “ Not by logic hath it pleased God
to save His people.” Newman was penetrated with
that edifying sentiment, hence it is not surprising to
find how faithfully he acts upon it in constructing the
existence of God and the divinity of Christ. His one
witness to God’s existence is conscience (he says in
one of his sermons that without it he would be an
atheist), and under his ceaseless attentions conscience
becomes a faculty which few ordinary human beings
will recognise. His treatment of it is anything but
scientific; it is highly imaginative and grossly anthropo
morphic. The text from St. Ambrose is principally
intended as a gauntlet for his rival, Dr. Ward; still,
it is true that Newman had a profound contempt for
metaphysics, and, like most people who much despise
it, had no knowledge whatever of that science. It is
usually assumed that Newman was a traditionalist,1
but his poetical and unscientific method seems rather
attributable to a wholesome dread of Kant; not that
he shows evidence of intimate acquaintance with
Kant’s Critique, but he seems to have been vaguely
convinced that Kant had undermined all metaphysical
1 Traditionalism was an important heresy within the bounds
of the Church, which was effectually extinguished. It reprobated
entirely the use of reason in supra-sensible matters and advocated
authority as the sole guide.
�COUNTRY MINISTRY
205
research, and his own splendid literary power enabled
him to make a plausible defence of his opinions with
out the aid of philosophy. He is obviously no guide
for a serious scientific mind.
His rival, Dr. Ward, also a prominent figure in the
Oxford Movement, was the very antithesis of New
man. Newman used to speak contemptuously of the
“ dry bones ” of Ward’s logic, and evidently con
sidered that his own works clothed them and made
them attractive. Ward was an able dialectician, a
subtle metaphysician, and a vigorous writer. His
“ Philosophy of Theism ” is the best English defence
of the scholastic philosophy, but is incomplete. J. S.
Mill was leading him to the critical points of the
system in a famous controversy, but it ended pre
maturely with Mill’s death.
Dr. Mivart was certainly the most influential writer
on the Catholic side of his day, and the most competent
to discuss the eternal problems in the light in which
they presented themselves to the nineteenth century.
Issuing, as he did, from the Darwinian school, it is
natural to find in him a breadth of view and serious
ness of treatment that distinguish his works from those
of clerical apologists. But Mivart was no meta
physician ; hence his psychological criticism of Dar
winism—his chief original contribution—rests on the
enumeration of striking points of difference between
animal and human faculties which are losing their
force with every advance of science, and may yet be
fully harmonised. On other points, such as the free
dom of the will, the evolution of ethics, and the origin
of the universe, he is extremely feeble; and he has a
disposition to waste his strength upon the criticism
�306
COUNTRY MINISTRY
•of accidental phases and features of monism and
•agnosticism rather than upon their essential destruc
tiveness. He himself unconsciously gave me the key
to his position some time after I left the Church. In
a genial talk at the Oriental Club he admitted that he
•had little or no belief in even the most distinctive
•dogmas of the Church. He literally laughed at the
■doctrine of the miraculous birth of Christ. “ Do they
really teach that in the seminaries? ” he asked. What
the limits of his scepticism were he seemed hardly to
.know himself. Nor was this a mere failure of his
later years; it was a mature and resolute attitude.
Mivart was then (two years before his death) in full
•vigour of mind and will. Yet I hasten to add that his
position was perfectly honest, and I appreciated it, as
he appreciated mine. He thought the Church of
Rome the greatest spiritual force in existence, and so
he would remain in it and help to remove the stress
it lays on belief. There are still many like him in
the Church, even amongst the clergy; there are many
in every Church to-day. But such a position accounts
for the weakness of his arguments on specific doctrines.
Of the Jesuit writers and their series of volumes on
‘scholastic philosophy I have already spoken. Father
■Clarke and Father Maher are able and informed
writers. They have passed some sound criticism on
certain aspects of opposing systems, but they condemn
themselves to futility by their Quixotic defence of the
•arguments of St. Thomas and the medieval philosophy.
'Of the Jesuit popular writers it is difficult to speak
with politeness. Mr. Lilly belongs to the Platonic or
•sentimental group of apologists. Of Father Zahm
•and other lingering representatives of the school for
�COUNTRY MINISTRY
207
harmonising religion and science little need be said
beyond recalling the fate of their predecessors. Car
dinal Manning’s essay in apologetics hardly calls for
mention. He was a man of action, not of speculation
—certainly not a philosopher. His cast of mind is
well illustrated by his words to one who was urging
certain scientific statements in conflict with Genesis;
without listening to them he blandly replied, like the
Anglican bishop whom Mr. Stead consulted about the
statements of the higher critics: “I don’t believe
them.”
I had now exhausted every possible means of con
firming myself in my position, and failed to do so.
Apart from the fact that at that time it seemed to
me that the loss of a belief in immortality made life
irremediably insipid, I had fearful practical difficulties
to expect if I seceded. I had every prospect of suc
cess in my position, or, if I preferred, I could have
passed to the ranks of the secular clergy without diffi
culty. I consulted many friends and strangers, and I
was confirmed in my resolution to terminate my sacer
dotal career, allowing a few weeks for possible change
of thought. As the manner of my secession curiously
illustrates certain features of Roman Catholic methods
and the general question of secession, I describe it at
some length in the following chapter.
�CHAPTER XI
SECESSION
The Catholic layman has usually a fixed belief in
the absolute integrity of his priesthood. He may
entertain a suspicion of avarice, or indolence, or
worldliness with regard to certain individuals, but in
point of faith and morality he is quite convinced of
the invulnerability of his pastors. At wide intervals
a few may be found who are acquainted with the fact
of a secession, but the report is usually confined with
great care to the locality, and the Catholic press—
proof against all the ordinary temptations of the
journalist, when the honour of the Church is at stake
carefully abstains from disseminating the unwelcome
news. Thus there are few laymen who know of more
than one secession, and who are prepared to admit
the possibility of a serious and conscientious withdrawal
from their communion. Indeed, there are few priests
who know that there have been more than a very
few secessions from their ranks, so carefully are such
events concealed wherever it is possible.
The secrecy is, of course, not the effect of accident,
for such incidents are not devoid of public interest,
and are matters of very deep concern to the Catholic
body. The Roman Church claims such a monopoly
of demonstrative evidence that it receives a check when
208
�SECESSION
209
its credentials are rejected by one who is so familiar
with them; it is—or would be, if it were frankly
admitted—a flat contradiction of their persistent teach
ing that their claims only need to be studied to be
admitted. Hence the ecclesiastical policy is to conceal
a secession, if possible, and, when it is made public,
to represent it as dishonest and immoral. My own
position would not for a moment be admitted to be
bona fide. The gentler of my colleagues seem to
think that a “ light ” has been taken from me for
some inscrutable reason, whilst others have circulated
various hypotheses in explanation, such as pride of
judgment, the inebriation of premature honours, &c.
But of some of my fellow-seceders I had heard, before
I left the Church, the grossest and most calumnious
stories circulated; pure and malicious fabrications they
were, simply intended to throw dust in the eyes of
the laity and to make secession still more painful. The
majority of priests, when questioned by Catholics about
a secession, will simply shake their heads and mutter
the usual phrase: “ Wine and women.”
But in the first instance every effort is made to
keep secession secret, even from clerics. I have
mentioned a case in the note on page 60 which is, I
think, known only to a small number of ecclesiastics;
the dignitary in question had not discharged any public
function for some years, hence his disappearance was
unnoticed. I elicited the fact with some difficulty,
and was earnestly begged not to divulge it further.
On another occasion at Forest Gate, I was asked to
accompany a canon, who was giving a mission there
at the time, to a certain address in the district.
Noticing an air of secrecy about the visit, and a desire
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SECESSION
on the part of the good canon that I should remain
outside, I entered the house with him, and found that
it was occupied by an “ apostate ” priest. So much I
learned by accident, but neither the canon nor my own
colleagues would give me the slightest information
about him. I never heard of him before or since,
and know nothing of his character: I merely mention
the incident as an illustration of the concealment of
secessions.
And not only is silence enjoined, but deliberate
falsehoods are told with regard to seceders. One of
our superiors at Forest Gate seceded or “ apostatised.”
My colleagues deliberately told our parishioners that
he had gone on the foreign missions—some of them,
under pressure, giving details as to his destination;
though they knew that he had only retired to Southendon-Sea with the contents of the fraternal purse. I
OA1J.
efPIajned that ^ese are not looked upon
as falsehoods by Catholic theologians. The case given in the text
is a more direct deception than usual; generally they are quibbles
and equivocations which are covered by their remarkably elastic
principles of mental reserve and of the necessity of avoiding scandal.
Here is another illustration
.
I was informed one day at Forest Gate that one of my students
had lodged a complaint against me with certain higher superiors,
lhe accusation was entirely erroneous ; the student had been de
ceived by another, and I desired to undeceive him by explaining
1 accosted him immediately, and asked him if he had been com
plaining about me. He not only emphatically denied it, but
endeavoured, by his manner, to give me the impression that it was
the last thing in the world he would dream of. When I told him
of the superior’s words, he coolly replied that I had no right to
question him, so he was at liberty to deny it. He was a welleducated ma.n of thirty, the son of an Anglican minister, and,
before he joined us, a man of honour and courage. He had been
instructed to act as he did by the priests (hostile to me) with
whom he had lodged the accusation.
�SECESSION
211
was myself informed for a week that he had gone
on the foreign missions, so that I could be relied
upon not to spoil the story. I believe that even the
cardinal was ignorant of the event, as a year afterwards
his brother made inquiries of me as to the fate of the
friar in question, of which he evidently knew nothing.
In these ways is the fiction of the preternatural
integrity of the Catholic clergy maintained. How
many priests have seceded from the Church in England
it is impossible to say, but they are certainly more
numerous than is usually supposed. They mingle
quietly with the crowd, and rarely even come to know
each other.1 Many of them, such as Dr. Washington
Sullivan, Dr. Klein, Dr. Wells, Mr. Addis, Mr.
Hutton, Mr. Law, Mr. Galton, Mr. Sydney, or
Mr. Hargrave, are men of scholarly attainments, and
of high repute in the various bodies with which they
have associated.
If it is thought that the number is not large in
proportion to the number of priests in England, it must
be remembered that their education, literary acquire
ments, and subsequent occupation are not of a nature
to unsettle their minds very seriously. But a still
more serious circumstance is the peculiarly painful
nature of the breach with the Church of Rome. A
1 In the first edition I said that I was “ acquainted with a
dozen, but there may be a greater number.” By this time (1903)
I have heard of from forty to fifty secessions of priests in this
generation in England. I published some research into the point
in the National Review for April 1902. A few weeks afterwards a
further score of names, hitherto unknown to me, appeared in an
ecclesiastical column, and I have heard others since. I will only
say here that my own fraternity—and I know no reason for holding
it to be exceptional—lost twelve per cent, of its priests by secession
within my recollection. Second edition.
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breach with any lifelong communion is attended with
much pain, and this is greater in the case of the
minister of religion who finds himself impelled to that
violent wrench of the affections which conscience
occasionally dictates. He has formed definite habits
of thought and life and innumerable attachments, and
the severing of these is accompanied with a pain akin
to the physical pain of dislocation and the wrenching
asunder of nerves and fibres. In the Church of Rome,
at least, secession means farewell to the past—farewell
to whatever honour, whatever esteem and affection,
may have been gained by a life of industry and merit.
The decree, of the Church goes forth against the
‘ apostate.” He is excommunicated—cursed in this
life and the next and socially ostracised, if not
slandered. The many, the great crowd of admirers,
listen to every idle tale that is hatched against him;
the few, whose moral and humane instincts are too
deep to be thus perverted, can but offer a distant and
stealthy sympathy. He is cast out to recommence
life, socially and financially, in middle age; perhaps
he is homeless, friendless, and resourceless. A descrip
tion of my own experience of the ordeal may be
instructive.
When I was forced at length to acknowledge that I
had lost all faith in my religious profession, I thought
to avail myself of my position as superior to enter
into secular life with more facility. I revealed my
state of mind to several non-Catholic acquaintances—it
would have been fatal to my plans and quite useless
to reveal it to a Catholic—and they agreed that I must
withdraw, after a short time for reflection; only one
man, a prominent public man in London, thought that
�SECESSION
218
I should be justified in remaining at my post.1 I
began, therefore, to make inquiries and preparations
for a new departure. In the meantime I continued to
fulfil my duty to the college conscientiously—as a
matter of common honesty, and in order to give no
ground for subsequent calumny.
For the same reason I resolved to take no money
from the institution, though I felt that I should have
been justified in doing so to some extent. When the
superior of a monastery with which I was connected
left its walls, he took <£50 with him “as a temporary
loan ”; that circumstance did not excite any par
ticular discussion, and certainly there was no question
of prosecution for theft. Another friar ran away
with about £200. My own case, however, was of
quite a different character, and would be treated with
a very different policy. The two friars were not
genuine seceders from the Church. The second was
clearly a case of wanton revolt against discipline; the
first was rather doubtful—he returned to penance after
a fruitless effort to find secular employment. In both
cases it was evidently the policy of the fraternity to
conceal the misdemeanour from the laity. These
two remained priests, and for the credit of the Church
and the prestige of its clergy their faults must be
concealed at all costs. But when a priest really secedes
from the Church the opposite policy is naturally
followed; for the credit of the Church and the con
fusion of its enemies the seceder must be placed in as
unfavourable a light as possible. I was too well
acquainted with esoteric ecclesiastical teaching to be
unprepared, so I determined to give them no handle.
1 That was the opinion of the late Mr. Stead.
Third edition.
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SECESSION
Studies were conducted with perfect regularity; dis
cipline was so severe that my inferiors chafed under
it; my accounts were balanced almost from day to
day.
At length, I was urgently entreated by a lady at
Forest Gate to take her into my confidence, for it
was seen that I was in great trouble. She was a clever,
well-educated person with whom I was particularly
friendly, and I told her of my intention, exacting
strict secrecy, and intimating that a revelation would
do me much injury, and that nothing could now detain
me. I got an hysterical reply imploring me to remain
in the Church, and saying that, in case of refusal, I
should hear no more from her. She had been my
kindest and closest friend in the Church of Rome;
but she kept her word, handed my letter to my
colleagues, and, so far as I know, she has never cared
to learn a word further about the fortunes and bitter
struggles of “ the apostate.”
A council of the fraternal cabinet was summoned
immediately at Manchester, and Father David
obtained discretionary power to act. It was certainly
the intention of my friend, and possibly of the
authorities, that Father David should induce me to
communicate my difficulties and endeavour to remove
them. He himself can hardly have expected that, as
his guidance had been exhausted years before. On
the night of his arrival he chatted amiably enough
with me over the usual glass of wine, but as soon as
he had closed the bank account in the morning, he
curtly informed me that I was deposed from my
position, and ordered to retire to the friary at
Chilworth, in Surrey.
�SECESSION
215
This friary is in a very secluded locality, and
banishment to it was a recognised penal procedure.
It is the novitiate of the fraternity, and in it I should
be compelled to occupy all my time in formal religious
exercises, and should be entirely cut off from the
outside world, besides being expected to put my con
fidence in a superior who knew nothing of philosophy,
and who would much rather burn an agnostic at the
stake than argue with him. It would have been utterly
useless for me to go there, now that my mind was
firmly convinced. I preferred to remain and com
mence my new career with sympathetic friends. To
avoid unpleasantness, however, I said nothing of my
intention, and prepared to leave the college about the
time of the departure of the train; but when formally
asked if I intended to take the train, I refused to
say. Meantime I had packed up my books, &c., and
sent them to a friend’s house. I balanced my books,
and handed the surplus money to Father David, who
was good enough to offer me the fraternal kiss at my
departure; I declined it. I thus turned my back
for ever, as I imagined, on monasticism, and hastened
down to meet one or two kind and sympathetic
friends.
The following morning I strolled down to my
friend’s office, and was surprised to find him closeted
with a friar. It was one of my rebellious lay-brothers
(though he had obtained an interview under a priest’s
name) who had brought a letter from the college. The
letter was to acquaint my friend with the fact that
a certain Mr. McCabe, who had been left in “ tem
porary ” charge of the college, had absconded with a
quantity of valuable property belonging thereto; that
�216
SECESSION
the said stolen property was understood to be on his
premises; and that he was informed, in a friendly
way, that the matter was in the hands of the police.
The writer signed himself M.A., though he had no
degree in arts. He might contend that he was a
“ missionary apostolic.” As a commentary on the
letter, the friar gave my friend a long and interesting
critique of my public character and mental capacity,
and was turned out of the office. As it was impossible
to get immediate legal advice we decided to await
developments.
In point of fact, I knew there were a few books
amongst my own, overlooked in the hurry of departure,
which did belong to the college. I had fortunately
already told my friend of this, and we intended to
return them. But the complaint of my colleagues was
not on this ground at all. Although they did not
communicate with me on the subject—if they had done
so the same arrangement would have been made
without police-intervention—it appears that they
claimed everything I had removed, and even the
clothes I wore, which they expected me to ask of
them as an alms. The claim was ostensibly based
on my vow of poverty or abdication of the right of
property. The fact that the college was just as
incapable of ownership as I (on their peculiar theory)
was ignored, and the new rector, Father David,
claimed them in the name of the college. They were
books and instruments (especially a telescope) which
friends had given me on various occasions (every friar
accumulates a quantity of such presents, which remain
his, for all practical purposes). Legally (for canon
law is happily not authoritative in England) they were
�SECESSION
217
my property, and I had no hesitation in thinking
myself morally justified in retaining them after my
conscientious labours, and especially since most of
the donors were hardly aware of the college’s existence,
and certainly meant the gifts to be personal.
In the afternoon the police-sergeant appeared and
claimed the property which had been “ stolen from
St. Bernardine’s College.” I believe that his proceed
ings were entirely illegal, though I was unfortunately
not sure of it at the time. However, we disputed the
ownership of the property, and he at once retreated.
Then, in order to avoid litigation, I promised to
surrender a large number of books if Father David
would come to claim them. Father David came, again
bringing, to the increasing astonishment of the little
town, the representative of law and order. We effected
a rough division of the books, and the telescope was
referred to the donor, who awarded it to me. The
next day, wearied to death and not a little alarmed,
I returned even the small sum of money I had taken
for travelling expenses, and faced the world without
a penny or the immediate prospect of earning one. It
was a sensation with which I was to become more or
less familiar. But I had narrowly escaped an igno
minious position, which would have increased a thou
sand-fold the difficulty of entering upon a new career.
That was the aim of my colleagues.
Then came the painful desertion of all my late
co-religionists. Even some to whom I was deeply
attached wrote harsh and bitter letters to me; they
were taught as a matter of religious duty to regard
a secession in a moral light, and not as a change of
convictions. Of the effect on the wider circle of
�218
SECESSION
acquaintances made in the course of ministry I have
given one painful illustration, and will give another,
as the truth is all but incredible. I knew what to
expect, yet was loth to admit it myself without a
struggle. So I singled out one layman of exceptional
education and mature age, with whom I had been
familiar for some time, and who, only two weeks
previously, had spoken to me in terms of high esteem
and affection. I wrote merely to ask him to suspend
his judgment until I could send a full explanation of
my action. He replied at once:—
Dear Father Antony,—I am deeply pained to
find you have fled from the harvest field and become
a scatterer—of what type remains to be seen. It is
not for me to reproach you, Father Antony—the
worm of conscience will do that efficiently, God knows
—but it is necessary I should answer your last letter
at once in order to prove my position and give no
countenance to yours. * You ask me to suspend judg
ment on you, which means that I should pass judgment
on Father David forthwith and dub him slanderer, at
the bidding of one who has obviously betrayed a sacred
trust.
“ With reference to your Upton sermon it is true
I suggested its publication for the benefit of your
mission. Unsuspicious of heterodoxy I failed at first
to catch its true import, but quiet reflection after
wards revealed it to me as a subtle attack on Chris
tianity itself, through the doctrine of evolution as
applied to morals and religion.1 How in the face of
He refers to the sermon mentioned on p. 82 ; there were just
two lines in it on the “evolution of morals and religion,” and they
�SECESSION
219
this you can still talk of your ‘ religious opinions ’ is
inexplicable, surely? I can just conceive you as an
agnostic with a shred of honesty remaining—but as
any other odd fish—No! However it may be, God
save you from the lowest depths of unbelief! We
know too well the evolution of the apostate.
“Yet I desire to speak without bitterness [?] and
shall think of you in sorrow only. If at any future
time you think I can give you one helpful word, write
to me, and believe me now to remain in simple truth,
yours sincerely.”
The writer of this letter is considered to be unusu
ally well informed in philosophical matters. I had,
therefore, thought it possible that he would be able
to regard my secession in an intellectual light. After
such perverse misunderstanding and harsh and insulting
language from him I was constrained to abandon all
hope of sympathy from Catholics. Of the 3000 people
of the congregation to which I was attached, as priest
or student, for ten years, and from whom I experienced
nothing but deep respect as long as I was with them,
not a soul has ever written to relieve my distress with
a single word of interest or concern. One only of them
has spoken to me since my secession—one who stopped
me in the street to ask “ if I was not afraid that the
ground would open under my feet.” One only of
were orthodox. The writer it was who came to thank me for the
sermon—a most unusual proceeding—and ask for its publication.
He repeated his praise and his request twenty-four hours afterwards.
It was a plea for the better education of the clergy, and, although it
hit my own colleagues in a tender spot (and on that very account
so much gratified the laity) they congratulated me on it without a
word against its orthodoxy.
�220
SECESSION
my late colleagues has ever written or said a sym
pathetic word to me. At the time of my secession
he wrote me a letter in which the effect of the system
is again visible, pitifully obscuring the kind and
humane temper of the writer. It concluded
“ And now having made my protest, let me say,
my dear Father, that you were quite right in thinking
that I am your sincere friend and brother. . . . You
will never find any friends so true as the old ones [?],
and it is to be regretted that you did not, in. the dark
hours of doubt and temptation, seek help from those
whose prudence and experience might have saved you
from wrecking your life by this false step. Vae soli.
You did not have recourse to those whom you were
bound to consult, but relied upon yourself; or, if you
took counsel, it was rather with unbelievers than with
those of the Faith and of the Order.1
You know well that other and greater intellects
than yours have examined the same questions more
deeply than you can possibly have done, and have
come to an opposite conclusion ” [the writer, as is
usual, disregards the fact that, in this century, the
number of authorities against him is equally high and
brilliant, at least J ; and this ought to have made you
distrust your own judgment, doubt the infallibility of
your own lights, and feel there was much you have
1 The reader is already aware that both these statements are
absolutely inaccurate. I never took counsel with an unbeliever,
whereas for eight years I took counsel with the most competent
friar we had, until his counsel was threadbare. But my corre
spondent, F. Bede, was disappointed that I had not consulted him.
The reason was that, although I had and have the highest possible
regard for his character, he had no knowledge whatever of science
or philosophy.
�SECESSION
221
not been able to see, which, if you could see, would
lead you the opposite way. I fear that this pride
may have contributed to bring about the withdrawal
of the light. What may also have helped is that
bitterness of spirit you have sometimes manifested
towards others, which is not according to the dictates
of charity. Add to that a want of respect for those
in authority, and you have the factors which may
have helped to bring this chastisement from God. I
do not judge you; you must know your own con
science, but I feel I ought to tell you what appears
to me as likely to have been the cause of your mis
fortune. ... As it is, I can only pray earnestly to
God to give you light and grace to see the truth and
submit to it, and to beg our Holy Father not to cast
you off. . . . That shall be my constant prayer, and
one that I confidently hope will sooner or later be
heard.—Believe me, my dear Father, very sorrowfully,
but very sincerely, yours in Christ.”
Here, at last, a kindly and humane feeling reveals
itself, but how hardly it struggles through the narrow
bonds of the dogmatic sense 1 Like the preceding
letter, but much less harshly, it persists in considering
my action in a purely moral light. The writer cannot
entertain the possibility of my being honestly com
pelled by my studies to secede; though he has since,
I am glad to say, expressed an entirely just conception
of my position. One curious effect of his dogmatic
view is seen in his effort to sum up my faults—and he
knew me well. My “ pride ” of judgment is, I trust,
excusable; I was bound to form an opinion. The
charge of disrespect to authority and sarcasm in inter
�222
SECESSION
course with my fellows, which I must fully admit,
will be understood in the light of preceding chapters.
I confess that I have taken some complacency in my
moral character after that summary of it by my
advocatus diaboli. But it is pitiful to see that a clever,
experienced, and humane priest can entertain the
thought that a man will be damned eternally for such
trivialities. His whole attitude is, as in the preceding
case, a significant effect of the system; and it is only
as effects and illustrations of that system that I offer
these details about my secession.
It would be useless to describe all the incidents that
arose at the separation; they were wearisome and
painful repetitions of the same unfortunate spirit.
During my clerical days I had attracted some suspicion
by defending the possibility of honest secession from
the Church, and especially of bona fide scepticism; it
was now my turn to be sacrificed to the system which
I had resented. It has been explained that the Church
is prepared to go to any length to prevent scandal, and
the recognition by the laity of an honourable secession
of one of the clergy would be a serious scandal; hence
little scruple is shown by priests in discussing the
character of a former colleague. In my own case I
believe that nothing very offensive has been invented.1
I must add, with reluctance, and only because it is a material
fact in regard to the Roman system, that, as the years passed and
1 began to write critical works, the same vile calumnies were circulated about me by the clergy as about all other seceding priests.
These things are carefully kept out of print, so that one has no
reJPe(~y j but I have had inquiries about them from all parts
of the English-speaking world. The chief and most flagrant aim
is to connect my secession with my marriage. The Catholic lavman will not trouble to glance at “ Who’s Who ? ” from which lie
would at once learn that I did not marry until three years and a
�SECESSION
223
The favourite hypothesis seems to be that indiscreet
flattery and premature honours have unfortunately
deranged my intelligence—discipline, of course, re
quiring the usual excommunication and social ostracism.
Those of my acquaintances who cannot convince them
selves of my mental derangement are offered the grim
alternative of regarding me as having “ obviously
betrayed a sacred trust ” (to quote my former friend).
Only my own immediate family circle and one other
family, out of a wide circle of friends, seem to regard
me still as a rational and honest human being. As
far as I can gather, the majority of my earlier friends
would have preferred me—whatever my frame of mind
—to remain at their altars. There are many priests
who do so.
Some such violent disruption from the past is the lot
of every seceder from Rome. Add to it the practical
difficulty of recommencing life in mature age, and some
idea will be formed of one great force that helps to
preserve the integrity of the Catholic priesthood.
_ _________ *
___________
_
half after my secession. I was unaware, until two years after I
had left the Church, even of the existence of the lady whom I
eventually married. The whole of these legends are remarkable
for their absolutely reckless mendacity. Third edition.
�CHAPTER XII
CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
Before I proceed to summarise the information regard
ing monastic life which is dispersed through the pre
ceding chapters, and to make it the ground of an
opinion, it will be well to enlarge and supplement it
as far as possible. However interesting these details
may be in themselves, they would throw little light
on the general condition of monasticism if it could
be thought that they only illustrated the life of one
particular order, and still less if they were due to the
abnormal circumstances in which one small branch of
that order chances to find itself. On so narrow a base
only a very restricted opinion could be reared. No
fault, indeed, is more frequently committed by English
and American writers on the Church of Rome than
this of undue generalisation. It is often forgotten that
the Roman Church in England is, after all, merely
a large and active mission in a foreign land. Hence
many writers fail to correct the insularity of their
experience, and thus have not a due sense of the real
proportions of sects and their institutions on the great
world-stage. They likewise fail to make allowance for
the peculiar effect of a missionary status. To escape
this fallacy the preceding description of monasticism
224
�CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
225
in England, illustrated copiously from the life of the
Grey Friars, needs collateral support from other
countries or national “ provinces ” of that order.
One other province has been described already
at some length. The Belgian province, it must be
remembered, is in an entirely different condition from
the English province. It labours under no financial
difficulties (the seven monasteries of the English friars
bear a collective debt of about £50,000), it has no
scarcity of vocations, it suffers not the slightest civic
or legislative interference with its manner of life. It
may be taken as a typical branch of modern monas
ticism, and is claimed to be such by its adherents.
Yet although it differs considerably in literal fulfilment
of the Franciscan rule, in formal discipline and ritual,
it will be recognised from the contents of Chapter VII.
that it agrees entirely with the English province in
the features which are important to the philosophical
observer. On the whole, its life is sordid and
hypocritical.
A slight allusion has also been made to the condition
of the Franciscan Order in Ireland. So unsatisfactory
fs it, from a monastic point of view, that the Roman
authorities for many years were bent on extinguishing
it. Ireland, one of the most Catholic countries in the
civilised world, is the richest possible soil for monas
ticism ; men who lead the lives of the medieval monks
will receive from its peasantry the deep reverence and
hospitality of the medieval world. Yet the Irish
province was, at the time I left the Franciscan Order,
one of its most enfeebled branches. During the years
of persecution the scattered friars naturally discarded
every monastic feature from their lives, and no amount
�226
CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
of pressure from Rome had been able to reform them.
I hey individually possessed money (thus ignoring the
first principle of the Franciscan rule), wore boots and
stockings, rarely donned their habits, had secular
servants, and were guilty of many other condemned
practices. But in the last few years the province has
been restored to a moderate regularity, and is now a
little better disciplined than the English province.
Another flourishing branch of the order is found
in Holland. Although it is in an “ heretical ” country
it has full civic liberty and is generously patronised;
hence it has grown into a powerful body. During
my sojourn in Belgium I gathered that it fell far
short of the high standard of the Flemish province,
and the fact seemed to be generally confirmed. But
shortly after my return to England I received a
curious confiimation of the opinion. We received
a small pamphlet, written in Latin (for it was not
intended to reach the eyes of the laity), having for its
theme the condition of the Dutch Franciscan pro
vince. It was signed by a Dutch friar, who declared
that he was (and had been for some years) incar
cerated by his colleagues because he would not keep
silence; he had written the pamphlet in his room of
detention, and managed to have it conveyed to friends
in the outer world. He declared that the province
was deeply corrupted; that asceticism was almost un
known, and a gross sensualism pervaded their ranks—
even mentioning isolated cases of friars being brought
home to the monastery “ theologically drunk,” with
the aid of police-stretchers. He further declared that
the superiors of the monasteries bribed their provincial
to overlook the state of things, and that the province
�CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
227
secured tranquillity by sending large sums of money
to the Roman authorities for their new international
college. The pamphlet was clearly not the composi
tion of an insane person, and none of our friars called
its accuracy into question. It must be remembered
that this pamphlet was written by a Franciscan priest
solely for the perusal of other Franciscan priests.
Again, therefore, we meet the same unfavourable moral
and intellectual features, much more accentuated than
even in the Irish province.
The other branches of the order are only known
to me by conversation with isolated members. The
circumstances of the friars in the United States are
entirely similar to those of the English friars, and
their condition is closely analogous, if not a little less
ascetic. The South American friars, I gathered from
one of them whom I knew, urgently needed reform.
The friars of Spain are fairly well known since the
opening up of the Spanish colonies to civilisation.
The German provinces seem to be slightly better—
a little more industrious and studious, as would be
expected—but, on the whole, do not differ materially
from their Belgian neighbours. The French friars
were very little higher in the spiritual scale, as a rule,
than the Belgians, taking into account the enormous
difference of temperament. France will not be much
the poorer for their loss. The Italian friars, as a
rule, maintain a more rigorous discipline, and are less
material than their northern brethren; but they are
very generally idle, quarrelsome, ignorant, and am
bitious of office. There are, it need hardly be said,
fervent individual monks everywhere, and many fer
vent communities in Italy and Spain. For my purpose
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I must give the broad features. I must say that,
where the profession of asceticism is not a sham,
it can point only to a mechanical and unspiritual
discipline.
I have, in the ninth chapter, said enough about
other religious orders to show that they are in an
analogous condition. Where the rule of life is not
very ascetical, it is observed; where, as in all the
older orders, there is a profession of austerity, the
practice is not in accord with the profession. It is
hardly likely that Rome would tolerate an unusual
corruption on the part of one particular order. In
spite of the great diversity in their aims and charac
ters, the same forces are at work in each. In fact,
the various monastic congregations have so far lost
sight of the special purposes for which they were
founded that, especially in England and the United
States, they differ from the ordinary clergy in little
more than dress and community life and ceremonies.
The orders which, like the Franciscan, were founded
for the purpose of caring for the poor, and embodying
voluntary poverty in their own lives, are found to be
continually seeking a higher social level; vying with
each other for the patronage of the rich, and always
choosing a middle class in preference to a poor con
gregation. The Dominican order was intended to be
an “ Order of Friars Preachers,” but it now has no
more claim to that title than the other semi-monastic
and semi-secular congregations. Carmelites, Servites,
Marists, and Oblates were founded in order to increase
the cult of the mother of Christ; Jesuits for the fight
against heresy and the instruction of the young; Pas
sionists to spread devotion to the Passion. In all of
�CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
229
them the original object has dropped very much out
of sight, and there is a very close resemblance of life
and activity. It is said that there has been serious
question at Rome of suppressing the majority of them,
and reducing the number to about four, of different
types, which would suffice for vocations of all
complexions.
We are now in a position to answer with some
degree of justice the often repeated question : What
is the ethical significance and the ethical value of
modern monasticism? The slightest reflection on the
origin of the monastic bodies will make it clear that
a high degree of spirituality and a keen faith in the
supernatural are necessary in the earnest votary of
monasticism. The orders have been founded by men
of an abnormally neurotic and spiritual temperament,
men who were capable of almost any ascetical excesses.
Extraordinary actions were their ordinary stimulant,
and they devoted themselves with ardour to that
ascetical rigour of life which the Christian Church
has, from the earliest stages, derived from the teaching
of its founder. It is clear that Christ did lay great
stress on the merit of self-denial; but it seems equally
clear that he did not contemplate the system of
eremitical and cenobitic life which commenced in the
Thebaid a few centuries after his death, and which is
Still rigorously presented in the life of the Carthusians,
and less rigorously in that of the Trappists. However
that may be, St. Bernard, St. Bruno, St. Francis,
St. Dominic, and the other founders, translated literally
into their own lives, under the influence of an excep
tionally fervid religious emotion, the principles of
I
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CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
Christian ethics, as they were universally expounded
up to the fifteenth century.
In an age when it was thought that one man
could expiate the sins and purchase the pleasures of
another, these saints became centres of great public
interest and attracted many disciples. Then, in an
evil hour, they drew up certain rules of life, which
were only slightly modified versions of their own
extraordinary lives, and bade their followers bind
themselves by the most solemn and indissoluble
obligation to their observance. Such rules could only
be observed by men who shared the same exalted
spiritual temper and imagination; and one needs little
knowledge of life to understand how very scarce such
men are, and how great an error it is to suppose that
any large body of men would observe such rules with
fidelity. In the Middle Ages faith was not overcast
by scientific, historical, and philosophical controversies,
and tradition was a paramount authority. Men were
not only chronologically nearer to the great drama of
the foundation of Christianity, but they accepted the
traditional version with unquestioning confidence.
However, even in the Middle Ages, monasticism
was no purer an institution than it is now. Soon
after the foundation of the several orders there begins
the long history of corruptions, reforms, and schisms
inside the order, and of papal and episcopal fulminations and historical impeachments from without.
Long before the death of Francis of Assisi his order
was deeply corrupted; indeed, his own primitive com
panions had made him tear up, or had torn up for him,
the first version of his rule, and it was only by the
intrigue of certain patrons at Rome that he secured
�CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
231
~ "I
8
W
fl' F i
T
the papal assent to his second rule. And scarcely
had the supreme command passed, during Francis’s
lifetime, into the hands of Fr. Elias, than a powerful
party of moderates arose, and dissension, intrigue,
and schism threw the entire body into a fever of
agitation. Elias was a clever and ambitious friar, who
had a much wider acquaintance with human nature
and much less ascetical fervour than Francis. The
manner of life which he advocated was, like that of
modern monks, much more sensible; his error was,
also like that of the moderns, to cling to the original
profession. And that struggle of human nature
against the unnatural standard of life it had some
how adopted has never ceased. The many branches
<1 of the Franciscan Order, Capuchins, Recollects, ReVi formed, Conventuals, and Observants, mark so many
f| different schisms over the perpetual quarrel; yet, at
if the present day, they are all once more on a common
level. And, apart from this internal evidence, secular
history gives abundant proof of the periods of deep
fl degradation into which the orders of monks have
periodically fallen.; if secular historians are not trusted,
a a judicious selection of papal decrees and episcopal
'al letters would place the fact beyond controversy.
Hence it is only natural to expect that, in these
uHdays of less luminous and tranquil faith and less
fervid imagination, the spirit of monasticism will be
sal less potent than ever; the more so as a large section
i^of Christianity has now repudiated the ascetical ideal
a entirely, and emphatically dissociated it from the
£ teaching of Christ. Protestantism first fell upon
u monasticism, flail in hand, for its corruption, and
a pearly extinguished it; then it sought theological
I 2
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CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
justification, and convinced itself that monasticism
was unscriptural. Although there have been many
vain attempts in modern days to reanimate it, the
vast majority of non-Catholics persist in regarding
monasticism as founded on an exegetical error and
humanly unjustifiable; and that conviction, together
with the causes that produced it or occasioned its
formation, has re-acted on the old Church. The
mental attitude which in former ages passed at once
and instinctively from deep fervour to great ascetical
rigour is rarely found to-day amongst educated
people. Not only is faith less confident, but the
growth of the moral sense has affected the tradition.
It is now thought an unworthy conception of God
that he should be held to look down with com
placency on a race of “ self-tormentors ” and should
promise rewards for the sacrifice of the gifts he has
put before us. And the growing sense of the unity
of human nature has made it no longer possible to
suppose that we may enfeeble “ the flesh ” yet
strengthen the spirit. Capacity for work is placed
higher than bloodless debility. To face life manfully
is held to be nobler than to shun it.
The description I have given of modern monastic
life shows that all these changes of the spirit of the
world have penetrated into the cloister. The idyllic
life of the monk, a life of prayer and toil and un
worldliness or other-worldliness, does not exist to any I
great extent outside the pages of Catholic apologists
and a few non-Catholic poets and novelists. The
forms of monasticism remain, but the spirit is almost
gone from them. One is forcibly reminded of that
passage of Carlyle where he speaks of institutions as
�CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
233
fair masks under which, instead of fair faces, one
catches a glimpse of shuddering corruption. Not
that monasticism, apart from its high profession, is an
object of special moral reprobation; its fault, its title
to contempt, lies rather in its continued profession of
an ideal from which it has hopelessly fallen, and in
its constant effort to hide that discrepancy.
There are, of course, isolated members who are
deeply corrupted in monasteries and nunneries, as in
all other spheres; there are also many individuals of
unusually exalted character. But the great majority
of the inmates of monastic institutions may be
divided, as is clear from the preceding, into two
categories. One is the category of those who are
religiously inclined, but whose whole merit consists
in the equivocal virtue of having bound themselves
to a certain system of religious services, through which
they pass mechanically and with much resignation,
and which they alleviate by as much harmless
pleasure and distraction as they can procure. The
other category, and, perhaps, the larger one, consists
of those who seem to have exhausted their moral
heroism in the taking of the vows; for the rest of
their lives (and one of the most remarkable features
of monks of all classes is the anxiety they show to
prolong their “ earthly exile ”) they chafe under the
discipline they have undertaken, modify and withdraw
from it as much as possible, and add to it as much
“ worldly ” pleasure as circumstances permit. Both
categories lead lives of ordinary morality—but only
ordinary, so that the garments of the saints sit very
incongruously on their shoulders. They seem to
appreciate the good things of this life as keenly as
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CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
ordinary mortals do, and shrink from death as naively
as if death meant annihilation instead of entrance into
Paradise.
Thus, on the one hand, certain anti-papal lecturers
err in representing monasticism, as a body, as an
institution of a particularly dark character; on the
other hand, the belief of the average Catholic layman
that it is an institution of unusual merit—that con
vents are “ the lightning conductors of divine wrath
from the cities,” &c.—is pitifully incorrect. Monas
ticism has suffered a luxurious overgrowth of sensuous
ness. This is partly due to the idleness, and partly
to the vow of celibacy, of the monks. I have said
enough of their idleness, which is one of the most
constant features of their life in Catholic countries.
Their religious ceremonies do not afford serious occupa
tion of mind. They never undertake manual labour,
and they study little. The amount of work they
are entrusted with does not give occupation to half
the community. Hence results much idleness; and
idleness is, as St. Francis told them, “ the devil’s
pillow.”
Then there is the absence of contact (entire absence
in Catholic countries) with the sex which is, by instinct
and education, more refined, and exercises a refining
influence. In the absence of that influence a natural
masculine tendency to coarseness develops freely,
unless it receives a check in deep spirituality, which
cannot be said to be frequently the case. In point
of fact, most of the founders of orders seem to have
appreciated that influence very sensibly. St. Augus
tine, of course, in his saintly days, does not, for
obvious reasons; but St. Benedict had his Scholastica,
�CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
235
St. Francis his Clare, St. Francis de Sales his Jeanne
Franfoise, and even the grim St. Peter of Alcantara
had his Teresa. Their modern disciples have also
many “ spiritual ” friendships, but the fact is unable
to counterbalance the effect of their celibate home
life. Their intercourse with women, in the face of
their ascetical teaching, is necessarily either very
limited or hypocritical.
Thus it is that, wherever there is not deep piety,
we find a selfish individualism, which is the root of
all the undignified intrigue, meanness, and dissension
that have been described. Thus it is also that there
is a morbid craving for indulgence in food and drink,
making a mockery of their long fasts and abstinences.
In the midst of a long fast they will celebrate an
accidental feast-day most luxuriously, and at the close
of the fast have quite a gastronomic saturnalia. Still
it must be said that, whilst there is more drinking
than is supposed, there is little drunkenness. There
is usually a constant and liberal supply of drink, if
the convent is in good circumstances, but excess is
rare; it is, however, not treated seriously unless it
has become public.
A third effect of this pious exclusion of women is
seen in the tone of their conversation; it is too
frequently of an unpleasant character—not immoral,
rarely suggestive, but often coarse and malodorous.
Tales which the better class of Catholic laymen would
not suffer to be told in their presence, and which
are more fitting for such books as La Terre and
L’Assommoir, are frequently told in clerical, and
especially monastic, circles.
On the point of immorality in the specific sense I
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CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
must endeavour to formulate an opinion. My ex
perience has been wide, though not of long duration,
so that I could not rebut an opposite and more
damaging statement of experience. Yet I am con
vinced there has been much exaggeration in this
respect. The evidence of the majority of “ escaped ”
monks and nuns seems to me unreliable. But even
if all their tales were true, it would only prove that,
as everybody expects, there are many isolated cases
of immorality. It is improper to extend the charge
to the whole body. It can only be said that these
cases are numerous. There can be nothing very
startling in that statement. I have no doubt it would
be less true of the clergy than of an ordinary body
of men if their lives were healthier. But as long
as they are indiscriminately and prematurely bound
to celibacy, and to a life which is so productive of
egoism, sensuousness, and indolence, it is the only
possible condition for them.
The same must be said of the vow of celibacy of
the secular clergy. In theory it is admirable for the
ecclesiastical purpose, and it is very graceful to con
template from the standpoint of Christian asceticism.
In practice it is a deplorable blunder, and leads to
much subterfuge and hypocrisy. Like monasticism,
it would probably not be accepted by one-half their
number if they were not involved in an irrevocable
engagement to it before they properly understand it.
Like monasticism, it will probably disappear, as a
universal law, when the Church of Rome is awakened
at length from her conservative lethargy with the din
and roar of a great battle in her ears.
Finally, an answer is also ready to that other
�CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
237
question which is not infrequently heard in these
days: What is the relation of the monastic orders
to Socialism ? Socialising Christians, or Christian
Socialists, frequently hold up the monastic orders as
embodiments of a true social spirit. The argument
rests, of course, on a very superficial analogy; there is
really no parallel between monasticism and Socialism.
On the contrary, they are at the very opposite poles
of economics. Monasticism, in the first place (except
the modified monasticism of the Jesuits), does not
counsel a community of goods; neither in individual
nor in common does it permit ownership. But it
parts company with Socialism very emphatically when
it goes on to impose extraordinary limits on pro
duction. Socialism urges a common use of the con
veniences produced, and urges the production of as
many as possible. And lest it should seem that
monasticism at least sympathises with the Socialists
of simpler life, such as Mr. E. Carpenter, it must be
remembered that it limits production on an exactly
opposite principle. Mr. Carpenter thinks simplicity
conducive to comfort and happiness; monasticism
trusts that it is productive of discomfort and mortifica
tion. In fine, it wishes its votaries to be uncomfort
able in this world, which is the very antithesis of the
Socialistic aim.
In a minor degree its celibacy is anti-socialistic;
whatever relation of the sexes the Socialist may advo
cate, he certainly advocates some form of intimate
relation. And the Socialist would not for a moment
sanction the withdrawal of a large number of citizens
from every civic duty on the plea that they were more
interested in another world. He would not exempt a
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CRITIQUE OF MONASTICISM
large number of able-bodied men from labour on the
plea that they were “ waterspouts of divine grace ” or
“ lightning conductors of divine wrath ” for their sin
ful brethren. He would be impatient of all indolence,
and mendicancy, and parasitism of any complexion.
However, the parallel has never been very seriously
entertained, and does not merit further criticism.
Monasticism has neither interest nor advantage for
the modern world; it is an enfeebled and corrupted
survival of an institution whose congenial environ
ment seems to have disappeared, and it is only main
tained by the scandalous practice of enticing or
permitting boys to undertake life-long obligations of
a most serious character. Even in the stern monas
teries of the Carthusians, where it still retains its full
rigour of ascetism and solitude, it loses the sympathy
of the modern world; merit is now thought to consist
in the fulfilment of the whole duty of man, in works
that produce visible fruit, and that tend to remove
the actual evils of life. But, for the majority of the
monastic bodies, with their indolent withdrawal from
life’s difficulties and duties, without any real compen
sating virtue, or with their pitiful compromise between
external occupation and their antiquated theories of
detachment, one cannot but feel a certain contempt.
At the best, a monk would merely have the merit of
making himself a part of a great penitential machine.
As it is, his profession of extraordinary virtue and
unworldliness is an insincere formality.
�CHAPTER XIII
THE CHURCH OF ROME
There is at the present time a profound struggle in
progress over fundamental religious questions. Dur
ing three centuries Europe has resounded with the
din, and even been watered with the blood, of con
flicting sects. At length the sections of Christianity
have been distracted from their civil war by the
advent of a common enemy—anti-sacerdotalism, if not
a yet more revolutionary force that has been called
naturalism—and they are eager to unite under a com
mon banner against it. No one who is at all familiar
with modern literature can ignore that struggle. Dur
ing the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the number
of powerful writers and thinkers who have withstood
the traditional religious authority in England, France,
and Germany, is deeply significant. There is in our
day a comparative lull in the storm of controversy—
a comparative dearth of eminent thinkers on both sides
—but one still finds unmistakable traces of the conflict
in every page of every branch of literature. A great
number of influential writers advocate one or other
form of naturalism; it is hardly too much to say that
the greater number of the eminent exponents of
literature, science, and art depart in some measure
from the orthodox path. It is usually said that women
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THE CHURCH OF ROME
are the more reliable support of clericalism. We have
at the present day in England a number of brilliant
women writers, but though few of them (for reasons
which may be left to the psychologist) profess extreme
naturalism, very few of them adhere strictly to the
orthodox sacerdotal institutions. The issue of the
struggle is, therefore, the object of much anxious
speculation.
The place which the Church of Rome is destined
to occupy in this struggle is a matter of much inter
est, and it is usually expected that it will be a very
prominent position. The Church itself, of course, with
that buoyant confidence which is one of the most
patent symptoms of its “ perennial youth,” predicts
the ultimate absorption of all other forms of Chris
tianity into itself, and proclaims that the final conflict
will be between Rome and Rationalism. And Roman
Catholics boast, with much truth, that their prediction
is confirmed by many independent observers; Macau
lay’s vision of the undying glory of the Papacy rising
through the mists of future ages over the ruins of
England (and, presumably, Anglicanism) finds many
sympathisers. Mr. H. G. Wells has lent the force of
his expert prophetic faculty recently to the “ anticipa
tion ” that Catholicism will outlive Protestantism.
But it is not usually noticed that there is a great
difference in the ground of the prediction in the two
cases. Rome prides herself on the intellectual value
of her credentials, and thinks that time is sure to
bring about their universal acceptance. On the other
hand, those non-Catholic writers who talk of an ulti
mate struggle between Rome and Rationalism are under
the impression that Rome does not appeal to reason
�THE CHURCH OF ROME
241
at all. They divide men into two categories—rational
and extra-rational—and think that the final trial of
strength will be between reason and authority, which
they identify with Rome. There is a curious mis
understanding on both sides. Roman theologians per
versely represent Rationalists as men who reject
mysteries, miracles, &c., on the mere ground that they
are supra-rational, and without reference to their
credentials; and most Rationalists are under the impres
sion that Rome professes an irrational method, rebukes
and demands the blind submission of reason, instead of
offering it satisfactory evidence, and preaches authority
from first to last. Under that impression it is not
surprising that the Church of Rome is selected as the
fittest to survive of the Christian sects. But the
impression is wrong.
Just as the Rationalist does not reject supra-rational
theorems if they are not contra-rational, and if there
is satisfactory evidence in their favour, so neither
does the theologian reject the demands of reason for
logical satisfaction. The Catholic scheme claims to
be pre-eminently logical, and does precisely appeal
to the intellect of the inquirer; indeed, it is taught
that the “ convert ” from Rationalism must have a
natural rational certitude before he can receive the
“ light of faith.” The system has been described in
an earlier chapter, but the process would be of this
character. The inquirer (if beginning from scepticism)
would be offered rational evidence of the existence
and personality of God, and (usually, though not neces
sarily) of the immortality of the soul; if that evidence
did not satisfy him there would be no further pro
gress. If convinced on those points he would be
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THE CHURCH OF ROME
offered evidence, still of a purely rational character,
of the divinity of Christ and Christianity, and of the
authenticity of the Scriptures. Then he would be led,
on historical grounds, to accept the divine institution
of the Church of Rome, its infallible magisterium
and its indispensable ministerium, and the prerogatives
of its supreme pastor. He is now prepared to accept
statements, logically, on authority, and the rest of
the dogmas are, consequently, proved from Scripture,
tradition, and the authority of the Church.
But even here reason is not abandoned; not only is
it continually sought to confirm statements by rational
and historical analogies, but it is admitted as a prin
ciple that every dogma must meet the negative test
of reason. If any dogma contains a single proposition
which offends against reason the whole system must be
rejected. That is the teaching of the Church. Hence
much ingenuity is shown in averting the rationalistic
criticism of such thorny dogmas as the Trinity and the
Eucharist, it is claimed that the accusation of absurdity
is disproved, and therefore reason may confidently
take them on authority. And again, when it is said
that there is a living infallible magisterium in the
Church, this must be accepted in a very narrow sense.
The overwhelming majority of the bulls, decrees,
encyclicals, &c., which the Popes have issued, have
only a disciplinary effect. It is piously believed by
many that Providence takes a minor interest in them;
but most priests take little notice of them, and the
doctrine of infallibility has been carefully drawn up
not to include them. The great dogma simply
amounts to this, that the Pope (or the Church) can
teach no new doctrine, but he has special guidance
�THE CHURCH OF ROME
243
in his solemn declarations (which are few and far
between) that certain doctrines are contained in the
deposit of revelation. There have only been two such
definitions in the nineteenth century. Neither Leo
XIII. nor Pius X. has given any. Hence it will be
understood how great an error those Protestants make
who go over to Rome for the sake of its infallible
voice (as if they were to have an infallible Times at
breakfast every morning), and also how untrue it is
that Rome is the antithesis, the professed opponent,
of reason, and only preaches submission.
No, the Church of Rome does not profess to be the
refuge of the timid and the sentimental in a subver
sive age. Its strength must be sought in its distinctive
methods and institutions, not in a position that would
make it the centre of all forces opposed to Rationalism.
These advantages have been described in the course
of my narrative. In the first place, it has a very
superior organisation to that of any other Christian
sect, or any other religion whatever. Its constitution
embodies all the several advantages of an elective
monarchy and an oligarchy (indeed canonists dispute
whether it is to be called monarchic or oligarchic);
and at the same time it escapes the instability incident
on democratic forms by dogmatically dissociating its
power from the civil power and claiming a supernatural
source for it. Its hierarchy, of which the centre is
a figure about whom a vague supernatural halo is set,
and who is now always a commanding and venerable
personage, lends a rigid unity to its 200,000,000 adher
ents. Rome, the heir of the tact, ambition, and
vigour of the Caesars, the richest treasury of art, and
a veritable hive of lawyers and diplomatists, controls
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THE CHURCH OF ROME
and utilises the talent, the ambition, and the jealousy
or its great sacerdotal army, and with easy confidence
commands the attention of the civilised world.
k.,Thenrthe comPleteness, the unity, and the plausi
bility of its theological system must be considered,
rrom the days of St. John Damascene until the sixteenth century almost all the talent of the civilised
world has contributed to the formation of that system •
it is a truism to say that it is plausible. Enduring
almost unchanged through ten centuries, and eliciting
the veneration of almost the entire intellectual world,
it presents an imposing contrast to the theologies of
more recent growth. Moreover, even in recent times
it las been accepted by many great writers who have
left the impress of their genius upon it, and accom
modated it to minds of every cast.
And side by side with the elaboration of its own
system must be classed an instrument which it uses
very adroitly for the same purpose, the Index Expurgatonus, or list of condemned books. In England and
America there is little explicit mention of the Index
for economical reasons, but every Catholic is given
very clearly to understand the depravity of reading
books against faith or morals.” The restriction is
cleverly represented to be a moral, not a disciplinary
prescription, and thus the end of the Index is practic
ally achieved without mentioning the odious word.
Non-Catholics are gravely reminded that it is ethically
imperative to study both sides of every religious
question. Catholics are told in the same breath that
it is sinful for them to read the works of opponents,
because they are already in possession of the truth
and must not run the risk of losing it.
�THE CHURCH OF ROME
245
At the same time Catholics are indulged to some
extent in their wayward anxiety to know what oppon
ents are saying by having their objections formulated
for them in their own apologetical literature—with
satisfactory solutions appended. Here again the
peculiarity of the Catholic controversial method tells
in its immediate favour. As one would expect, most
of the objections have been carefully prepared for the
express purpose of refutation. No Catholic writer
ever gives an accurate version of hostile criticism.
Newman is usually said to be the most satisfactory in
this respect. In fact it is claimed that he formulates
the opinion of an adversary more lucidly than the
original writer. But take, for instance, the exposition
of Gibbon’s five causes of the spread of Christianity in
the appendix to the “ Grammar of Assent ” and com
pare it with the classical chapter of Gibbon. It is
utterly inaccurate and unworthy. And not only are
the opinions of critics garbled and mutilated, but their
personal characters are too lightly aspersed. Anglicans
are allowed some precarious hope of ultimate salvation.
But when we come to deeper sceptics the credit of
bona fides is stopped. All the theological manuals
grossly affirm that there is no such thing as honest
agnosticism, and it is firm Catholic doctrine that none
but a believer in personal theism can ever enter heaven.
Thus the most puerile stories—as that Julian died cry
ing out, “ Vicisti, Galilaee,” and that Voltaire died
raving for a priest, and so on—are generally accepted;
and the most dishonourable motives are imputed to the
bnemies of the Church. If a modern Inferno were
written it would describe a brilliant literary circle.
So also the results of philosophical, historical, and
�246
THE CHURCH OF ROME
scientific research are accommodated to pious purposes.
For several years geology and palaeontology suffered
great torture at the hands of Genesiac interpreters;
history and archaeology and philology then yielded
marvellously convenient results; ethnology was racked
to support a biblical chronology which is now aban
doned ; even chemistry, embryology, psychophysics,
and a host of innocent sciences were pressed into
service and pressed out of shape in the process.
Of another institution which the Church formerly
used for the same high purpose of guarding its flock
against intellectual wolves—the Inquisition—little need
be said. If it were truly a dead and discarded pro
ceeding, like persecution on the Protestant side, it
would not merit notice; it seems unprofitable to
reproach the Church of Rome continually with the
many and dark sins of the past of which it has really
repented. However, it is not at all clear that the
Church has repented of this particular outrage upon
morals and humanity. The principles on which the
Inquisition was founded are still part of the Church’s
teaching; and if it were possible to conceive a return
of the ecclesiastical supremacy of former days, there
is little doubt that the same policy would be urged.
Happily for many of us, civil governments are be
coming more and more reluctant to be guided by
ecclesiastical principles and wishes in the discharge of
their function to the community. Logical and candid
writers like Dr. Ward admit this. It is said that
he found Huxley once examining his premises, and
was asked by him “ where he kept his stake for*
heretics! ”
A second great source of strength in the Roman
�THE CHURCH OF ROME
247
Church is its impressive use of aesthetic agencies. . The
subject has been treated already, and hardly needs to
be enlarged on. In Protestant countries, where the
reaction against Roman corruption has reduced the
worship to a state of spiritual nudity, this attraction
of the Catholic services is very powerful. A com
parison of the percentage of converts in various
parishes with the sensuous attractiveness of their
services would yield interesting results.
Other forces which are peculiarly at work in the
Church of Rome can only be briefly mentioned. Its
vast and imposing diplomatic body of legates, &c.,
and its incessant political intrigue, have no parallel
in any other religion; nor has the great wealth it
gathers every year by means of an organised collec
tion throughout the world. Owing to its profound
antiquity and its comprehensive range it can enumer
ate a long series of humanitarian works which have
been done by men who happened to be ecclesiastics;
these become an imposing record of the Church’s
wondrous benefits to humanity in art, science,
sociology, and philanthropy. So even in ethics the
Church of Rome professes a more effective promotion
of the welfare of humanity than other Churches,
though in this department its claim of special power
does not seem difficult to impugn on the test of fruits.
Such would seem to be the peculiar strength of the
Church of Rome in the religious struggle, as distin
guished from all other Christian sects. The influences
at work for its extension and consolidation are un
doubtedly effective, but side by side with them it has
many characteristic weaknesses which seem to give
less assurance of its fabled immortality. In the first
�248
THE CHURCH OF ROME
place, seeing that it does not shrink from and repudiate
the rational criterion which the new-born age is
applying to every existing institution, its very vast
ness is a source of danger; it presents a broader front
to the keen rationalistic attack. If the mysterious
dogmas which are common to all Christian sects invite
criticism, nothing is gained in point of security by
adding to them that microcosm of miracles—Transubstantiation—or the seven sacraments, or the vaguely
floating tradition of an Immaculate Conception. Then,
too, the Church of Rome is so dogmatic in its teaching,
and has so frequently to abandon very positive posi
tions. In other sects the privilege of private judgment
and the absence of an authoritative magisterium give
greater elasticity under hostile pressure.
Again the ideal of a higher life which the Church
of Rome puts forward brings it into conflict with
modern moralists. Self-torment will never again be
recognised by the world at large as the supreme virtue,
yet the saints of the Roman calendar are honoured
principally for that practice. One of the most recent
models that the Church has raised up for the venera
tion of humanity, Benedict Joseph Labre, shows the
exemplary record of having avoided labour and lived
by mendicancy, and having deliberately cultivated the
most filthy habits. Usefulness to humanity is now
held to be the highest virtue, and the Church pays
little heed to that in canonisation. In fact, the very
essence of its ethical teaching is entirely at variance
with modern views. It teaches conformity with an
external standard (about which there are innumerable
controversies) and this for the sake of conciliating a
Supreme Being and escaping his presumed vindictive
�THE CHURCH OF ROME
249
ness. There is a growing tendency to regard actions
that spring from such motives as non-ethical.
In fine, the very methods from which its strength
is now derived will one day prove grievous sources
of offence, for the simple reason that they are incon
sistent with its real function as a purely religious
organism. Diplomatic intrigue and the exercise of a
purely temporal power may serve for the moment to
extend and strengthen its influence; but they are
agencies of a very questionable character in the hands
of a spiritual body, and have more than once inspired
an effective protest against Rome. And it need hardly
be said that its literary exclusiveness, its Index, its
tyranny, its wilful calumniation of great opponents
and distortion of their criticisms, are very vulnerable
parts of its system. As yet they are effective methods
of preserving the integrity of the Church. But in the
better educated nations they are already being dis
carded. Laymen are now taking the polemical work
on their own shouldersj and interpreting the strictures
of theologians at their own discretion. The result will
be an impatient rejection of the literary restrictions
which have so long insulted their intelligence and
moral courage.
Such, then, are the strength and the weakness re
spectively of the Church of Rome in the present stage
of its conflict. During its protracted existence it has
! encountered and triumphed over many kinds of opposi| tion. It emerged victorious from its secular struggle
| with polytheistic Rome and with the destructive neoI Hellenism of Alexandria; it met confidently and rose
upon the flood of barbarism that poured out over
I Southern Europe; it guided its fortunes safely through
g
a
I
�250
THE CHURCH OF ROME
the age of iron that followed, and then controlled the
fierce intellectual activity of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries; it subdued and repressed the Renaissance
and almost compensated its losses in the great Re
formation. But the Church has never had so varied
and so powerful a host of adversaries to encounter as
it has at the present day. Apart altogether from the
rival Christian sects—and in point of fact these seem
more disposed to friendly alliance with it than to a
continued conflict—the number of opposing forces of
every character, intellectual, ethical, political, and
aesthetical, is a matter of grave consideration.
In the first place, there is Rationalism—taking the
term in its broad sense so as to include not only
“ naturalism,” but also that attenuated theism which
rejects orthodox Christianity in virtue of the results
of the Higher Criticism. In that sense the term does
not designate a single and homogeneous system, but a
huge collection of distinct and militant bodies—
Materialism, Agnosticism, Positivism, Pantheism,
Secularism, Theism, and Unitarianism. They may
all be safely grouped under the banner of anti-sacer
dotalism, and described as a formidable intellectual
movement directed against orthodox Christianity in
general and the Church of Rome in particular, the
most dogmatic, conservative, and unyielding section
of Christianity, led by the most powerful and most
skilfully organised priesthood the world has ever seen.
Non-Catholic sects have no stereotyped profession;
they yield and adapt themselves to pressure, as is so
well illustrated in Mr. Mallock’s “ New Republic.”
The revolutionary movement finds its chief antagonist
in the Church of Rome, which wages with it appar
�THE CHURCH OF ROME
251
ently a guerre a outrance. How extensive that move
ment is—embracing, as it does, all who accept the
results of philosophical, scientific, historical, and bibli
cal criticism—and how powerfully represented in every
branch of literature, is too well known and too fre
quently pointed out by clerical writers themselves to
need enlarging upon.
Then there is a distinctively modern force of an
ethical character which militates against the authority
of the Church. In the United States, England, and
Germany especially, a number of Ethical Societies
have been founded and propagated with much zeal.
They do not profess hostility to ecclesiastical institu
tions, but the mere fact that they advocate the trans
ference of ethical life to a non-theological basis marks
them out as enemies. The Church of Rome, in par
ticular, regards herself as the only effective guardian
of morality, and the ethical function of its priests is
their most prominent service. It will never submit
to the transfer of ethical interests to a secular institu
tion ; otherwise it would be reduced to the condition
of the Greek or Roman priesthood—a condition which
would not last long in modern times. Yet the Ethical
Societies rapidly grow in importance.
In the political world the Church has met with
harsh treatment from time immemorial, and its own
diplomatic power has grown keen in the long contest.
But the political anti-clerical movement of modern
times is in a very different position from the violent
movements of that character which are dispersed
throughout history. Until the last century the anti
clerical politician or diplomatist had no great antitheological system to fall back upon. Now, the large
�252
THE CHURCH OF ROME
body who are ever ready to spring up in reaction
against the Church’s political encroachments have a
powerful philosophy to appeal to. Formerly the
Church’s troubles generally came from a few sceptical
individuals; now they spring from large political
bodies, such as the Liberals of Spain and Belgium,
the Libres-Penseurs of France, and the Freemasons
of Italy. To the same great force must be added
(from the present point of view) a new and anxiously
regarded power—Socialism. The Church is very
sensible of approaching danger from this quarter; and
therefore, instead of its traditional practice of fiercely
opposing every new movement, we find it attempting
a compromise by patronising “ Christian Socialism.”
This sociological force does not spend much time in
discussing the Church’s credentials. The thinkers of
the modern world, it says, are fairly divided about the
religious problem, and that problem has, under their
attentions, assumed portentous dimensions; hence we
busy people must be content with a mild scepticism,
and if the Church crosses our path in reforming this
world so much the worse for it.
A fourth influence of a less tangible and definable
character may be set down under the head of Erotism.
It may be thought that this is no new danger, but the
world-old revolt of human nature against Christian
ethics. But there are two considerations which make
that influence present rather a new aspect. The first
is the enfeeblement of the popular faith in the super
natural. The fourteenth, fifteenth, and eighteenth
centuries were marked by great outbreaks of that
influence, or by the spread of public immorality; but
a keen faith still lurked in the popular mind, and the
�THE CHURCH OF ROME
253
Church could successfully appeal to it. A Savonarola
could meet and stem a veritable tide of Hellenism.
In the present division of the world of thought, and
seeing the imposing opposition to ecclesiastical teach
ing, that simple faith must be, and is, deeply affected;
and erotism gains proportionately in power and
stability. The second consideration is that this erot
ism, or revolt against traditional ethics, has become
speculative and ratiocinative, and seeks to organise its
votaries and systematise its protest. What is called
literary decadence is, perhaps, midway between
practical and organised immorality ; it is a great literary
power, very widespread in France, and on the increase
in England and Germany. The free-love movement
has also assumed important proportions, and counts
some eminent literary exponents. There is, further,
an aesthetic and Hellenistic school which will prove a
serious adversary of traditional ethics. In practice it
adheres to a severe Puritanism; in theory it is revolu
tionary. It cherishes the higher Greek ideal of love
(as found in Plato); venerates the writings of Whit
man, Nietzsche, and Carpenter; has all the fervour of
youth and the fanaticism of ascetics.
Such are the forces which the Church of Rome finds
opposed to it at the beginning of the twentieth century.
I hesitate to enter on the path of prophecy, but a few
observations may be offered as to the direction in which
we may seek development. In the first place, I wholly
dissent from Mr. H. G. Wells when he anticipates “ a
great revival of Catholicism,” and thinks it will out
live Protestantism. The Protestant or Puritan religious
temperament is as natural and enduring as the Catholic
or Ritualist. I do not believe either will survive the
�254
THE CHURCH OF ROME
other, though the Protestant sects are likely to relax
the sternness of their exclusion of the ministry of art
from the temple. And from what I have already said
in this chapter it will be clear that I do not accept
the current rationalistic feeling that Rome will survive
because of its doctrine of authority.
But so shrewd and informed an observer as Mr.
Wells has probably built on existing movements rather
than on theories, and here, it seems to me, he has
really even less support. There is every indication
that the Church of Rome has reached, and is already
falling away from, its high-water mark. Germany is
perhaps the only country where the Church has made
genuine progress in the last few decades 1; and against
this must be put the “ away from Rome ” movement
in Austria, the secession of many hundreds of priests
and a corresponding number of the laity to the
evangelical movement in France, and heavy losses in
the industrial northern provinces of Italy and Spain
and all over Belgium. But observers are misled chiefly
by the apparent advance of Roman Catholicism in the
English-speaking world. One might almost dismiss
that phenomenon with one word—the Irish dispersion.
The population of Ireland should be to-day, if it had
had a normal growth, about 17,000,000. It is actually
less than four millions and a half. The missing twelve
millions, mostly Roman Catholics, are in England,
Australia, and the United States. If the Roman
1 Again I must make a correction; and it is singular to note
that, wherever I erred in the first edition, I erred in favour of the
Church. I have shown in my ‘ ‘ Decay of the Church ofRome ” that it
is, on the confession of its own clergy, losing ground all over the
world. It has lost a hundred million followers in a hundred years.
Third edition.
�THE CHURCH OF ROME
255
Church in England had retained the population it had
at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as well
as the million of Irish immigrants, it should have to
day, apart from any conversions, about 2,500,000 souls.
I have proved (National Review, August 1901) that it
has not more than 1,250,000. In other words, its
losses are enormously larger than its gains. What I
have said of Catholicism in London and the provinces
will confirm this. I will add one other illustration.
There is a long strip of the Lancashire coast called
the Fylde which curiously retained the faith down to
the nineteenth century. But I was told a few years ago
by a priest who has worked for years in that district
that the old Catholic families are falling away to-day
in a remarkable manner. The last census taken in
Australia pointed to a distinct decrease of Catholicism
in that country. Recent inquiries in New York have
put that city on a level with London; against the great
parade of wealthy converts must be put immense losses
amongst the poor Irish and their descendants. The
overwhelming majority of the 12,000,000 Irish who
are missing from their country to-day are in the
United States; and they have made mixed marriages,
under the usual stringent conditions, on every side.
To these must be added a great immigration of Italian
and German Catholics. With these elements the ap
parent growth of Catholicism in the States is easily
explained. I will add one further observation on
Catholicism in France. It is acknowledged that French
men do not favour the Church. But when we remem
ber that the Church forbids the use of contraceptives
iunder pain of mortal sin, and then find the French
[population so long nearly stationary, and learn that
Kb
RE8»'
d
�256
THE CHURCH OF ROME
there are in France only some 200,000 women with
more than six children, we are forced to question
the authority of the Church even over the women.
Thus on patient consideration of the condition
of each country the proud Catholic claim of having
250,000,000 followers collapses like an inflated bladder.
The area of the Church’s influence is shrinking
yearly.
In former ages it compensated home losses by mis
sionary conquests; its actual paltry missionary profits
are little more than financial transactions. I have
spoken with missionaries from every one of the great
fields, and they all confirm the opinion. On public
platforms, of course, they deliver optimistic speeches,
at the end of which a collection is made; but in the
genial atmosphere of the sitting-room afterwards they
unbend, and unequivocally represent “ conversions ”
of natives as money matters.
And when we turn to consider the movements of
thought within the Church we seem to have another
indication of the coming development. If we cannot
admit either that Catholicism will in time absorb its
rivals, or will itself be superseded by them, there is
only one alternative. Its distinctive features will
gradually disappear, its rigid walls will cyumble away,
until at length it pours its historic stream of spiritual
effort into the broad unsectarian spirit of a later day.
By its distinctive features I do not understand the
famous “ four notes of the true Church—unity, holi
ness, universality, and apostolicity ”—which are in no
sense distinctive of the Church of Rome to-day. Its
characteristics are rather—asceticism, excessive dog
matism, elaborate ritual, and the Papacy. It seems
�THE CHURCH OF ROME
257
to me that these features are visibly altering, and that
we may confidently look forward to their complete
disappearance or transformation.
If one thing may be claimed to be established in
the preceding chapters it is that the ascetic spirit is
rapidly decaying in the Church of Rome. Here and
there a group of Carthusian monks 1 cling more or less
to the medieval idea, but throughout the monastic
world generally voluntary austerities are no longer
' practised, and the austerities enjoined by rule are
evaded, or compensated, as much as possible. When
this is true of the monks it is superfluous to discuss
the laity. The law of abstinence from flesh-meat on
certain days, the only ascetic practice now imposed
on them, is relaxing year by year. Before the century
is out Rome, too, will have quietly abandoned the
ascetic ideal. The decay of the dogmatic feeling
amongst Roman Catholics is less patent, but hardly less
real. Beneath the outward uniformity, which the
Vatican is still able to exact or to persuade, there is
the same difference of thought and feeling as in every
other sect. A considerable number of cases have
lately come to my knowledge of priests who are quite
as liberal as Dr. Mivart; in some cases as sceptical
as myself. They intend to remain in the Church,
and work for the removal of the emphasis from belief
to conduct. The twentieth century will witness most
considerable modifications in this respect. As the
1 I have repeatedly spoken of the asceticism of the Carthusian
monks. It is only fair to the reader to say that this is not beyond
. question. A friend of mine told me of certain personal experi
ences at the Grande Chartreuse in France, which made it clear that
at least a good part of the monks were far from ascetic. Third
edition.
�258
THE CHURCH OF ROME
Catholic ritual is only the artistic presentment of its
doctrines some changes in this are bound to ensue,
but—as we see so well in the decay of the old Roman
religion—forms and ceremonies may long survive the
beliefs that originally inspired them. There will also
be a ritual advance in the other Christian Churches,
so that here, too, the distinguishing feature tends to
disappear. Before many decades Latin will cease to
be the universal liturgical language; though in such
forms as the mass—a symbolic sacrifice which the
people only witness—it may remain indefinitely. And
the Papacy will be proportionately modified. In the
coming age of increasing centralisation and organisa
tion it is not at all likely that the Roman Catholics
will part with their magnificent polity. But the
Vatican will see strange changes. For a time the
aesthetic sense will persuade the new Catholicism to
tolerate the glitter and the stage-lightning of the
papal court. But it will gradually approximate to
the model of the actual Free Church organisation.
The president of the Church Catholic in the year 2000
will have as little resemblance to Leo XIII. in his
Sedia gestatoria as the president of the German
Republic of that date will have to William II.
To conclude by borrowing a fine metaphor from
Mr. Wells; it would be hazardous to say when the
Catholics may be expected finally to extinguish the
sectarian lantern by which they have so long guided
the steps of men. The day is fast breaking, and one
by one the old lights will disappear. But if our social
evolution is to be unequal—if we are content to leave
vast areas such as the workers, or women, in mental
obscurity—Catholicism may last indefinitely. If the
�THE CHURCH OF ROME
259
new light is to penetrate to every part of our social
structure, it cannot be many centuries before the last
faint flicker of the historic lamp will die out, nay,
will even be voluntarily extinguished in the blaze of
the coming day.
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Twelve years in a monastery
Description
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Edition: Third and revised ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: ix, 11-259 p. : ill. (port.) ; 16 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints (New series)
Series number: No. 51
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. First published, London: Smith, Elder, 1897. Publisher's advertisements inside front cover, and inside and on back cover. List of works by, or translated by, McCabe on preliminary pages.
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McCabe, Joseph [1867-1955]
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Watts and Co.
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1912
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N458
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Catholic Church
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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 (Twelve years in a monastery), 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
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English
Joseph McCabe
Monasticism and Religious Orders
NSS
Roman Catholic Church
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Text
THE SPIRIT WORLD1
By^the BishopSof Salford
I
The Church of Christ—established by her Divine
Founder for the purpose of teaching mankind those
truths in both the intellectual and the moral order
which are to lead them to the fulfilment of the end
for which they were created and to their eternal
happiness hereafter—has never ceased on the one
hand to propound full and satisfying systems of truth
on all questions concerning man’s relation to his
Maker and all that affects his own destiny; and on
the other to reprobate and condemn 'those many
false systems, religious, ethical, or social, which have
arisen in all ages from the very days of the Apostles
to our own. Many of these systems have contained,
indeed, a certain admixture of truths, or at least half
truths, which have rendered them the more insidious
and the more dangerous, as even earnest believers
may be the more easily led away into false systems
by the elements of good which appear therein, so
that they may deceive, as Christ warned us, “ even the
Elect.”2
Not unfrequently systems of this character have
been denominated by names ending in “ ism,” and
there are cases where such an ending, attached to a
term which in itself may be unobjectionable; acts as a
kind of danger signal that the complex of teachings
1 A Pastoral Letter, 1912.
2 Mark xiii. 22.
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which it involves may contain errors of a dangerous and
a pernicious character. Thus whilst the Church may
approve and even maintain certain of the teachings
appropriated by such systems; yet. as she is bound
by her very nature to condemn the errors which are
mixed up with them, so is it her duty to reprobate
these systems as a whole and to warn her children
from attaching themselves to them and becoming
disciples or partisans of the schools which teach
them.
Modern Errors
A few recent examples will make our meaning
clear. It is well known to all, that within recent
years our present Holy Father, Pope Pius X., has
condemned with no uncertain voice and with
Apostolic severity that religious system known as
“Modernism.” Now, we are fully aware that so far
from reprobating or discouraging modern progress of
any kind, whether intellectual, political, or social, the
Church in all ages has blessed and fostered all true
progress and development. Thus she took under her
fostering wing the advancement of literature and the
fine arts in the Middle Ages. The theological and
philosophical syntheses of Thomas Aquinas, so novel
to his contemporaries1; the mighty creations of
Dante, of Raphael, and Michelangelo; the heroic
discoveries of Christopher Columbus, received the
fulness of her patronage and blessing. Similarly, at
the close of the Middle Ages, the Church fostered and
encouraged the then modern revival of ancient
classical learning, known as the Renascence, whilst at
the same time severely condemning and checking the
1 “To his contemporaries the novelty of his work was its character
istic. His first early biographer, William de Tocco, speaks of his
‘new and clear method of deciding questions’; of his ‘new
opinions,’ ‘new projects,’ ‘new ideas.’”—W. Ward, Life of Cardinal
Newman, vol. i. p. 435.
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pernicious neopaganism, the outcome of the excess to
which that revival led, and which vitiated so much of
its action on the mind and morals of Europe.1 Yet
more strikingly did she hail that art, so thoroughly
Catholic in its inception, the art of printing, whose
earliest beginnings she blessed and even enriched
with copious indulgences.2 In our own days, she has
incorporated into her Ritual special blessings for
such modern inventions as the railway, textile
machinery, the telegraph, the motor, and even
the aeroplane. Thus the Church bestows her
approval and benediction on all that is good and
useful in modern progress and enlightenment, whilst
she condemns—-as she is obliged to do—those
dangerous philosophical and theological errors which
have been mixed up with so much of modern
criticism and methods, and are collectively known
under the title of “ Modernism.” It is not, therefore,
what is “ modern ” as such that falls under her ban,
but what is “ modernistic.”
The system known as “ Socialism ” is another
example of what we mean. So far from the Church
being opposed to social reform, it is she who from
her beginning has been the pioneer in all the social
improvements of mankind’s lot. The very adjective
“social” implies “society,” and society itself, as
indicating the brotherhood of mankind under the
fatherhood of God and the equality before God of
all men, “whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or
free,” 3 is the direct creation of the teachings of our
Lord and His Apostles, and most conspicuously of the
great Apostle of the Gentiles, St. Paul.4 The first
result of this entire revolution in the conception of
mankind was the gradual but sure extinction of
ancient slavery and of later serfdom, brought about
1 See Pastor, History of the Popes.
2 See The Catholic Church and the Printing Press, C.T. S., Jd.
3 i Cor. xii. 13.
4 See his Epistle to Philemon.
*
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7'he Spirit World
by the constant pressure of the Church, and especially
of the Holy See, from the days of the Apostles to the
final emancipation of the slaves of Brazil during the
reign and at the solicitation of Leo XIII. The
mention of the name of this great Pontiff cannot but
recall those magnificent Encyclicals1 on the rights of
labour, on the conditions of the working classes, and
on all the burning social questions of the day, forming
a perfect and coherent code of sound teaching, based
upon the principles of Christian doctrine, which will
be found eventually to supply the only true and real
basis for a constructive sociology capable of obviating
and curing the manifold evils and miseries of present
social conditions. But that system which has arro
gated to itself the title of “ Socialism,” based as it is
on principles quite other than those of Christ and His
Church—having for its final goal exclusively man’s
temporal instead of his eternal welfare, and thus
radically subordinating what is primary to what is
secondary—is as such condemned by the Church,
even whilst it advocates a number of practical reforms
which merit her approval and blessing. And the
Church’s wisdom in this discrimination is, alas, only
too emphatically proved by the sad fact, to which
our parochial clergy bear abundant witness, that
our young men, especially among the working classes,
who are beguiled into joining the Socialistic ranks,
invariably end by abandoning the Church and even
giving up Christianity. Here, again, the Church
disapproves not of what is “ social,” but of what is
“ socialistic.”
Spiritualism
The third case to which we would refer, and con
cerning which we shall speak at more length, is the
movement known as “Spiritualism” or “Spiritism.”
The Catholic Church at all times is chiefly concerned
1 See The Pope and the People, C.T.S.
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5
with the spiritual side of man and his destiny, with
the future life beyond the grave, and with the
existence and operation of spiritual beings, whether
good or bad. Hence we might justly say that the
Catholic Church beyond all other religious systems
is a “Spiritualist” organization. But, as in the case
of Modernism and Socialism, an otherwise unobjec
tionable or even desirable epithet has been appro
priated by an entirely different and even hostile
system of teaching and practice, which is nowadays
familiar to everybody under the above-quoted titles.
The history of this remarkable movement is in
teresting. The scepticism engendered by the French
philosophers and encyclopaedists at the close of the
eighteenth century, followed by the hasty generaliza
tions and arrogant assertions of so many students of
physical science in the early part of the nineteenth,
led to the growth and wide diffusion of what is known
as “ Materialism,” which long held sway in both scien
tific and popular literature, as well as in many of
the universities. Because the anatomist and ' the
biologist in dissecting the animal body, or in studyi°g germs beneath the microscope, were unable to
find any trace of an immaterial or spiritual sub
stance ; because the astronomer, the physicist, and
the chemist, in investigating the regions of space or
analysing matter into its component elements, found
no trace of anything outside of matter to respond
to their tests ; because the philosopher, the historian,
the economist considered that the whole story of the
evolution of the universe allowed no place for the
action , of a spiritual First Cause or the agency of
subordinate and secondary spiritual beings; so the
existence of human souls, of pure spiritual beings,
of a God as the Supreme Spirit, were either roundly
denied, or at best declared to be, in the “ Agnostic ”
teaching, unknown and unknowable. There was a
time when Materialism seemed to threaten to absorb
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The Spirit World
the world of science and thought. But the reaction
inevitably came. Pure Materialism is so essentially
contrary to the profoundest instincts of the human
race and to the most venerable and persistent tradi
tional beliefs of every age and race, that the convic
tion of the existence and power of spiritual agencies
forced its way back into men’s minds. An old Latin
poet declared, in the form of a homely proverb, “ You
may drive out nature with a pitchfork, but she will
always return.”1 And so human nature reasserted
its innate and traditional belief in the supersensible
or spiritual by a strong and even violent reaction.
For as all reactions are apt to be violent and to
swing to extremes, so have we experienced of late
years an anti-materialist reaction in the form of an
elaborate and extravagant Spiritualism, permeating
all classes and exercising an ever-growing and, as we
believe, pernicious influence. It is not certain indi
vidual truths, which Spiritualism teaches quite in
accordance with Christian doctrine—such as the
existence of the human soul, its life after death, the
agency of disembodied spirits, the possibility of their
communicating with us—but, as in the cases of
.Modernism and Socialism, the system as a whole,
with all its concomitant errors and abuses, that the
Catholic Church reprobates. Once again we may
say the Church disapproves, not what is “ spiritual,”
but what is “spiritualistic.” And again it must be
plainly stated that Catholics who give themselves up
to spiritualistic beliefs and practices invariably make
shipwreck of their faith, unless they are happily rescued
in time and taught to see the danger of their position.
There is the less excuse for Catholics falling into
the power of Spiritism, inasmuch as the teachings
of their own faith supply them with the most perfect,
the most complete, the most logical, and the most
satisfying system of doctrine with reference to the
1 “ Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret.”—Horace.
�The Spirit World
7
world of Spirit and all that it implies in itself and in
its relation to man’s life and destiny.
II
The Teaching
of the
Church
What then is the Catholic doctrine on these
momentous topics? We shall endeavour as briefly
as possible to set forth this teaching.
God the Supreme Being, existing of Himself and
necessarily existing from all eternity, Himself pure
and absolute Spirit, is by His own infinite power and
freewill the Creator of all that exists, whether spiritual
or material. His creation is thus of a double nature,
the one consisting of the material universe, vast
beyond human conception in its magnitude and
extent, the other essentially and purely spiritual.
The Doctors of the Church teach that this spiritual
creation, although strictly speaking it has no direct
relation to space, is of itself immeasurably greater, of
more excellent nature and powers, more wonderful
and more splendid than the whole material universe,
as well as prior to it by creation. The first and
principal portion of this vast. creation consists of
those highly gifted spiritual beings, endowed with
pre-eminent attributes of intelligence and free will,
whom we designate by the generic term of the
Angels, of whom God says in the Book of Job, “The
morning stars praise Me together, and all the sons of
God make a joyful melody.”1 These so highlyendowed pure spirits were destined for a supernatural
end of eternal happiness, but this they had to merit
by the action of their free will; thus, though their
nature was by God endowed with grace from the
beginning, still they had to undergo a form of pro
bation, the nature of which has not been made known
to us, although the Fathers and theologians of the
1 Job xxxiii. 7.
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The Spirit World
Church have speculated much on the subject. What
is certain is that a large proportion of those spirits,
under the leadership of one, the most highly endowed
and the most resplendent of all, by an abuse of their
free will and a refusal to obey Almighty God, fell
away from their primitive state of grace, became
reprobate, and were cast by the terrible judgement of
their Creator into eternal punishment. “ God spared
not the angels that sinned, but delivered them ....
to the lower hell unto torments.”1 “ And the angels
who kept not their principality but forsook their
own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in
everlasting chains.”2 And our Lord Himself tells us
of the “ everlasting fire which was prepared for the
devil and his angels.”3 Thus, henceforth there exist
two vast opposing armies of spiritual beings, respec
tively the servants and the enemies of God, actively
engaged in mutual opposition and hostility.
But this does not exhaust the spirit world. There
is a wondrous creature of God, who stands midway
between the spiritual world and the material world.
This creature is Man. Man is most justly defined as
a spirit or soul endowed with a material body ; and
the complete man consists of the two in intimate and
necessary union. By his soul man belongs to the
spirit world, and like the spirits is endowed with the
supreme gifts of intelligence and free will. By his
body man belongs to the material world, of which his
frame forms a portion physically, chemically, and
biologically. At the very moment of his conception,
man’s soul is created by God, and joined in the
mysterious union with the material germ that is to
evolve into his body; and this union is so intimate
and so necessary that it is destined to subsist for
eternity. Nevertheless, by a wonderful disposition of
Divine Providence there is in the life history of each
human being an epoch during which the spirit and
1 2 Peter ii. 4.
2 Jude 6.
3 Matthew xxv. 41.
�The Spirit World
9
the flesh are temporarily disunited ; and whilst the
one goes on living apart, the other is, perhaps for
cycles of time, resolved into its component material
elements. This epoch is the space which extends
from the moment of the man’s death on earth to the
last Judgement Day. During this space, which may,
indeed, subsist for aeons of time, but which neverthe
less must come to an end, the disembodied soul
subsists in one of three states—either united to God
in the eternal felicity of heaven, or suffering in the
eternal prison of hell, or detained for a time in the
temporary place of banishment called purgatory, but
in this latter case infallibly destined after a certain
lapse of time to pass on through the gates of heaven.
At the great Accounting Day this temporary and, so
to speak, unnatural state of separation will in all cases
come to an end, and disembodied spirits will once
again resume for eternity their bodily or material
parts.
The Activity
of
Spirits
Such is a conspectus of the Christian teaching
regarding the existence of immaterial beings, or
spirits, of all orders. But the Church teaches us, not
only of their existence, but also of their manifold
activities, and of their practical relations to and inter
course with ourselves during our mortal lives. In
the first place, there is no doubt that Almighty God
makes use of the vast hosts of those blessed and
happy spirits who share the felicity of heaven as His
agents and messengers in the government of creation.
Hence they are properly called “ Angels,” a Greek
word signifying “messengers”; hence the Psalmist
Says “ Who maketh His Angels spirits.”1 Some of the
Fathers, indeed, hold that God makes use of the agency
of His Angels even in the physical ordering of the
powers of nature and the phenomena of the physical
1 Psalm ciii, 4.
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The Spirit World
world.1 Be this as it may, we know from Holy Scripture
how greatly God uses the ministry of these spirits in
His dealings with mankind.2 The Angel who kept
our first parents out of Paradise,3 the Angels who at
different times appeared to Abraham,4 to Jacob;5
Gabriel in the history of Daniel,6 Raphael in that
of Tobias, are all familiar instances in the Old
Testament; whilst the New, from the Annunciation
of Gabriel to Mary to the delivery of Peter by an
Angel, is full of examples of angelic intervention.
Over and above this the Church teaches the beautiful
and consoling doctrine of our Guardian Angels ; that
is to say, that every individual human soul that is
born into the world, has assigned to it by God one of
His angelic spirits, charged to watch over and
protect it from both spiritual and material evils and
aid it on its way to salvation. “ He hath given His
Angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy
ways.”7 The task of the Angels is also represented
as that of carrying up our prayers before the throne
of God; and the whole of this angelic activity
between God and man is symbolically represented by
Jacob’s wonderful vision of the ladder between heaven
and earth : “ the Angels of God ascending and
descending by it.”8
On the other hand, there is no doubt that, according
to the mystery of God’s Providence, the lost spirits,
Lucifer and his host of fallen angels, whom we call
the devils or demons, are allowed to exercise no incon
siderable influence in the creation—perhaps, according
to some of the Fathers, even over phenomena of nature,
1 “ Omnia corporalia reguntur per Angelos.” S. Augustin., iii. de
Trinitate, c. 4 (quoted by S. Th. Aq., I. q. no, a. I. o.).
2 “Sunt igitur Angeli universales executores divinse providential”
S. Th. Aq., op. xiv., de Szibstantiis separatism c. 14.
3 Gen. iii. 24.
4 Gen. xix., xxii.
5 Gen. xxviii.
6 Daniel viii., ix.
7 Psalm xc. n.
8 Gen. xxviii. 12. On the whole of this subject, see Lanzoni, Gli
Angeli nelle Divine Scritture, Torino, 1891.
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but certainly in the spiritual, and sometimes even
the physical, life of men.1 Part of our probation in
this life consists in the suggestions and temptations to
sin which these evil spirits are allowed to make
directly or indirectly to our mind and will. “ Our
wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but . . .
against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.”2
Nay, we know, from both the history of the New
Testament and the lives of the Saints in all ages, that
God sometimes allows these terrible spirits even
physically to attack and persecute man’s body. No
more awful phenomena are recorded than those cases
of possession or obsession which are familiar in the
New Testament, and have been known in every age
of the Church even to our own days. For, although
modern science may be able to explain by physical
and psychological forces many cases that our fore
fathers recorded as preternatural, still it must be
admitted that there is a residuum, even in modern
times, of phenomena which can only be regarded as
diabolical in origin.
This teaching has been unchanging in the tradition
of the Church from the Gospel narrative of the
temptation of Christ our Lord in the wilderness by
Satan even down to the well-authenticated cases of
the attacks of the evil spirits on the Blesssed Cure
of Ars in our own days. And although we believe
that since the death of Christ “ the old serpent, which
is the devil” has been bound 3—that is to say that
his power, both spiritual and physical, is very greatly
limited — nevertheless the Church has always held
that he and his wicked hosts exercise a very dreadful
degree of pernicious power, and that more especially
in pagan lands and where the influence of the Church
is less powerful.
1 “ Immissiones per cmgelos malos,” Psalm lxxvii. 49.
2 Eph, vi. 12.
s Apoc. xx. 2.
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Mankind
and the
World of Spirits
Turning now from the activities of these vast
kingdoms of spirits, good and evil, we may ask what
are our relations with that other great and evergrowing multitude of disembodied spirits—that is to
say, the souls of all those who have departed this life,
whether in grace or in sin. Concerning these, the
Church teaches us that God allows the blessed souls
in heaven to know what passes on earth, and to be
interested in the fate of those living. And this is
not a mere benevolent interest, but one of immense
utility and practical value, inasmuch as charity leads
them to be our earnest and unwearying advocates
with the Divine Majesty, so that their prayers are
continually pleading for both our temporal and
spiritual welfare, particularly of those amongst us
who are bound to them by the ties of kinship or
devotion.
Likewise the holy souls, who are
temporarily detained in purgatory most probably are
similarly endowed with this knowledge of what passes
here below, and with the vicissitudes of their fellow
creatures, and more particularly of their kinsfolk and
friends ; and though these souls can no longer pray
or merit for themselves, it is held by great theologians
that they are allowed to exercise some degree of
intercession on our behalf.
The manifold good offices which living men are
constantly receiving from the world of. holy spirits,
whether the angelic hosts or the disembodied spirits
of the just, require from us in return corresponding
offices.
Towards the holy Angels and the Saints and Blessed
in heaven, we have a tribute to pay of homage,
veneration, and devotion, expressed either in the
public liturgy of the Church, so much of which is
occupied by praise and prayers addressed to them, or
by our own individual prayers and devotions. By
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these means the accidental glory of all the blessed
inhabitants of heaven is greatly increased, whilst the
Church and her individual members receive in return
a great accretion of help and patronage.
Towards the souls in purgatory our position is
reversed, and we living here on earth are, by God’s
generous mercy, allowed very greatly to assist them
and to shorten the weary time of their purgation by
offering up for them our prayers and good works of
every kind. In this great work of charity the blessed
spirits in heaven are also engaged. And thus it is that,
by these mutual offices, the whole of God’s kingdom
is for ever vivified by a golden stream of divine
charity which permeates every part:
“ For so the whole round world is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”1
The constant communion between the spirit world
and mankind, above described at some length, is
normally a purely spiritual or intellectual, i.e. a non
material one. Yet there are undoubtedly rare cases
where God allows spiritual beings, whether good or
bad, to make their presence known and even to
communicate with living men by impressions on the
senses of sight, hearing, or touch. Such phenomena,
when spirits thus communicate in some sensible form,
assuming even bodily appearances, are called
“ apparitions.” Not, indeed, that these spirits,
whether angelic or human, do assume real material
bodies, but, by some process which we cannot under
stand, they are allowed temporarily to exercise some
influence on our senses as if they were really embodied
material beings. The Holy Scriptures, the history of
the Church, and the lives of the Saints are full of
instances of these extraordinary phenomena, which
Gods sees fit to allow either for the consolation and
direction, or for the warning and correction, of His
1 Tennyson, Morte d'Arthur.
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children. They are phenomena which men must
humbly endure for their spiritual good, but which we
must not desire or seek for, according to our own will
and judgement. Such a practice was reprobated in
the Old Testament in the case of Saul and his
evocation of the spirit of Samuel.1 And it is as
unlawful now as it was in the days of Saul.
Ill
The Pernicious Element of Spiritism
Now the essential and most pernicious element of
modern Spiritism is precisely this unlawful trafficking
with, or seeking to traffic with, spirits, whether good or
bad, whether human, angelic, or diabolical in their
nature. It is begotten of a morbid and fearfully
dangerous curiosity, like that of our first parents, to
know those hidden things which God does not see fit
to make known to us, and therefore to seek such
knowledge is to act contrary to and to sin against the
Divine Will. The Church in all ages has sternly
reprobated and forbidden all such unlawful commerce
with the unseen world, and has reckoned it as a grave
form of that sin which is known as superstition.
But it is not only the sinfulness of these practices
that makes them to deserve the warnings and con
demnation of Holy Church. There is no doubt that
the pursuit of spiritistic practices has a deplorable
effect upon the minds and even the bodies of its
votaries. The most appalling of these effects is the
weakening of the will power. This weakening is pro
gressive and alarmingly inevitable in its developments.
Like the taste for alcohol, but in a still more fatal
manner, it gradually grows in the soul until it absorbs
the energies of the free will and reduces its victim to
almost hopeless helplessness. Now, the loss of the
1 I Kings xxviii.
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free will, by which man has to co-operate in his
eternal salvation, is the greatest loss that can befall
a rational being. It leads to a slavery of the worst
kind and too often ends in the loss of mental control,
in other words in lunacy and despair. Not theo
logians only, but many experienced scientific and
medical authorities are agreed upon these sad facts.
Lest this should seem an exaggerated estimate,
listen to this pathetic outcry of a distressed soul—
one whose personality is well known to several—in a
letter in the columns of a Catholic newspaper only a
few months ago :—
“ I am a trance medium, and I might say an un
willing clairvoyante. Of course, I know Holy Church
forbids all such dangerous and pernicious practices ;
but from actual 'experience I find that the Church
does not fully appreciate their gravity. In my own
case I constantly receive absolution. But how can
I get away from the deadly fascinations of spirit
dealing, which is, as I have proved for myself, nothing
less than direct communication with the devil ? I
know and also feel the inevitable result—a lunatic
asylum. Could others only take warning ! could they
only for one frightful moment see the horrors which
it has fallen to my lot to view whilst in the trance
state! It is too ludicrous for words to imagine for a
moment that departed (passed-over) spirits reappear
at seances; yet many are willing to credit this.
Could they but realize in what close proximity they
are in reality to ‘ the prince of the powers of dark
ness,’ viz. Satan, they would in dread and horror turn
and fly before the magic powers of fascination had
succeeded in weaving that most deadly of all spells.
I have had many and varied experiences that would
take me many hours to relate; but this one thing I
must say, that for those who allow themselves to be
influenced by what they please to term departed
spirits, and who persist, in spite of the warning of
�16
The Spirit World
conscience, etc., there is but one end—damnation.
I know and feel this even at this moment; but what
hope is there now ? It is too late.”1
And in introducing the writer to the press, the
well-known authority on Spiritism, Mr. Godfrey
Raupert, writes:—
“ Although it is typical of the kind of letters which
I am constantly receiving, it puts the matter in an
exceptionally direct and uncompromising form. It
is difficult for me to describe the keen distress
which these letters cause to my mind, and how
deeply they make me realize my isolation and help
lessness in the face of this gigantic evil. It is of a
most subtle and pernicious character, and is not
merely threatening, but is steadily invading human
life, and is ruining countless souls. There is, alas !
abundant evidence that the Catholic sphere is being
increasingly affected. I am daily asking myself:
What is to be done? A letter such as this must
in any case free one from a charge of exaggera
tion, or of over-emphasizing the importance of a
subject of which one happens to have made a special
study.”
We are quite aware that a considerable part of
this modern Spiritism, with its mediums, seances, clair
voyance, evocation of spirits, etc., is demonstrably
made up of chicanery and fraud. But such an admix
ture of mere charlatanism does not preclude the
really preternatural, or even diabolical, character of
some of the phenomena of more advanced Spiritism.
And whatever explanation, whether natural or preter
natural, be given of such phenomena, there is no
doubt that the crucial evil, the specific danger, of
spiritualistic practices is the eventual subjection of
the will power to what is denominated “external
control,” be that control diabolical or merely human.
This control, this surrender of the keys of the free
1 The Tablet, 22nd July 1911.
�The Spirit World
if
will, is the true source of the frightful evils to which
Spiritualism inevitably leads.1
You may ask with some surprise why we should
have chosen such a subject as the present upon
which to address our flock in a Lenten Pastoral.
The reason is that it has been borne in upon us
by testimony from many sides that the pernicious
cult of Spiritism is spreading to an alarming extent
in all classes of the population, and even making
headway among Catholics. We have been credibly
informed that the evil is specially showing itself in
certain parts of our diocese, and that in North-East
Lancashire it is undoubtedly spreading among the
factory operatives, so many of whom belong to our
flock. It has thus appeared to us a solemn duty
to utter a timely and most serious warning against
the dangers, spiritual and even material, which the
adoption of spiritualistic beliefs and practices involves.
And this all the more so, because all the beginnings
are small and apparently harmless. A little dabbling,
perhaps for amusement, in some slight forms of
occultism, leads to deeper interest and an ever-grow
ing craving to know more and see more, until the
victim becomes a full adept and a slave of the cult,
like the writer of the pathetic letter quoted above.
We,-therefore, in the name of Almighty God and of
His Church, most earnestly warn, in the charity of
Jesus Christ, all members of our flock who shall hear
or read our words, to take heed and resist the seduc
tions of any and every form of Spiritism and super
stition of all kind, no matter how mild; and we
warmly exhort our Clergy both by public instruction
1 Full information on the dangers of Spiritism, which we can but
briefly summarize, is to be found in several recent Catholic writers,
e-f ,^auPert> Dangers of Spiritism (Kegan Paul & Co.), Modern
Spiritism (Sands & Co.), The Supreme Problem (Washbourne); F.
Lepicier, O.S.M., The Unseen World(Kegan Paul & Co.); Lapponi,
Hypnotism and Spiritism (Chapman & Hall); F. Miller, O.S.C.,
Sermons on Modern Spiritualism (Kegan Paul & Co.).
�The. Spirit World
and by guidance in the confessional, to preserve souls
committed to their care from these temptations, and
to endeavour to release such as may be already en
meshed in the evil influences.
“ Holy Michael, Archangel, defend us in the day of
battle ; be our safeguard against the wickedness and
snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly
pray : and do thou, Prince of the heavenly hosts, by
the power of God, thrust down to hell Satan and
all wicked spirits who wander through the world
for the ruin of souls.” (Prayer of Leo XIII., said
after Mass.)
APPENDIX
The following is an extract from the report of a
theologian upon the Conference cases of the Diocese
of Salford, 1911-12, concerning Spiritism :—
“ Amongst a multitude of letters which have reached
me is one from a non-Catholic lady, telling me that
she, with a sister and two brothers, had had very
strange experiences, of which she sent me the record
she had made. I wish I could divulge the name,
because then it would be seen that the word of the
elder brother was unimpeachable. All I am allowed
to say is that this elder brother was a man who stood
in the first rank of English biologists.
“ These four determined to see whether they could
get communication with the spirits of the dead, as
they thought. In their own drawing-room, without
cabinet or medium, or lowering of lights, they com
menced operations, sitting round a table with their
hands upon it. At once there were signs of the
presence of spirits. To begin with the communica
tions were very trivial, but after a few sittings the
spirit declared that he was the spirit of Bellew.
Bellew, a c.onverted Anglican clergyman, was a great
�The Spirit World
19
friend of this family. They were pleased to think
that they were in communication with the spirit of
their old friend, and some questions were put and
answered. One evening the elder brother asked:
‘ Is your present religion similar in the main to that
which you accepted in this life ? ’ Answer: ‘Yes.’
‘ Are there any material differences between your
present religion and your past religion ? ’ Answer :
‘ Yes.’ ‘ Have you any reason to modify your views
with respect to the doctrine of atonement, which
during your earthly life you fully accepted?’ ‘Yes.’
‘To what extent? to complete negation?’ ‘Yes.’
‘ In that case I presume that you no longer believe
Christ to have been the Son of God in any special
sense?’ ‘No.’ ‘Nor that as the Messiah He was
and is the Saviour of mankind ? ’ ‘ No.’
“ These answers of the spirit perplexed and troubled
the sitters very much, for they were ardent believers
in the divinity of Christ, and in Christ as Saviour.
They began to doubt whether they were really com
municating with the spirit of Bellew, and earnestly
prayed to God that they might not be deceived by
lying spirits. A very extraordinary answer to their
prayer was displayed at the next seance. The spirit
speedily manifested his presence and seemed willing
to answer, but yet 1 like a chained animal seemed
unable to do anything.’ The younger brother was
ordered out of the room by the spirit, and he ‘went
into the country for an hour’s walk, all the time
requesting God to cause the truth to appear, and to
defend His people from deception.’ The elder brother
asked: ‘Why can you not communicate with us
to-night? Is there anything wrong on our side?’
‘No.’ ‘ Are you willing to communicate?’ ‘Yes.’
‘ Are you able to communicate ? ’ ‘ No.’ ‘ Are you
controlled?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘By whom? good spirits?’
‘Yes.’ ‘Then are you the spirit of Bellew?’ ‘No.’
‘Were you deceiving us last night and to-night?’
�20
The Spirit World
‘Yes.’ ‘ Why do you undeceive us now ? Is it because
you are compelled?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you retract all
you said about the doctrine of Christianity being
false?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What is the nature of. the control
you are under ? ’ (Answer) ‘ God defends you.’
‘ Then what are you—are you the spirit of a human
being?’ ‘No.’ ‘You were never in the body?’
‘No.’ ‘Then you are one of the Devil’s own?’
‘ Yes.’ ‘ Do the spirits of departed persons ever visit
this earth?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then all the spirits which have
communicated with all believers .in spiritism have
always been evil?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘ What motive have you
in communicating with human beings?’ ‘Hatred.’
‘Hatred of mankind?’ ‘No.’ ‘Hatred to God?’
‘ Yes.’ ‘ You mean us to understand that your hatred
to God leads you to wish to seduce mankind (whom
He loves) from faith in our Lord Jesus Christ ? ’ ‘ Yes.’
‘ In order that they may be ruined and lost? ’ 1 Yes.’
‘ Do the spirits of wicked men ever return to attempt
to deceive their brethren?’ ‘No, none are so bad.’
‘ That appalling depth of malice is reserved for Devils
only?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Now, we know you are a lying
spirit, will you communicate with us any more ? ’
‘No.’
“ From that day, though they made a few attempts,
these four never succeeded in establishing communica
tion. It is of interest to know that these questions of
the elder brother were put mentally, without sound or
sign being made. These quotations, from a long record,
are a strange confirmation of the Church’s teaching ;
and therefore I was tempted to put them forward.
This is by no means the only instance on record of
the evil spirit being compelled, greatly against his
own wish, to declare the truth of his own discom
fiture.” (Sjtz. Saif. xxxi. pp. 106, 107.)
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.
N.—July 1912.
�
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The spirit world
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Casartelli, Louis Charles
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Notes: "A pastoral letter, 1912".||(BIB) Includes bibliographical references. Author's name from KVK . On p. 1 the author is given as 'The Bishop of Salford', without a name.
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Spiritualism
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Spiritualism
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No. 50.—R.P.A. CHEAP REPRINTS
With 56 Illustrations
k
.
a?
|
6
g 1 DEC ^18
I
........... -!
THE KINGDOM
OF MAN
'»a^i
BY SIR RAY LANKESTER
•
NEW AND REVISED EDITION
WATTS & CO.,
17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
.......................
ALSO IN CLOTH, ONE SHILLING NET
i
■ -7=
�Cranial Dome of Pitheoanthr opus erectus from river gravel in Java.
Skull of a Greek from an ancient cemetery.
�THE
KINGDOM OF MAN
BY
E. RAY LANKESTEB, K.G.B., M.A., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S.
HONORARY FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE AND HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH,
OXFORD; MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE ; EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON J LATE PRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE J LATE
DIRECTOR OF THE NATURAL HISTORY DEPARTMENTS
OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
[issued
for the rationalist press association, limited]
London:
WATTS & CO.,
17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.O.
1912
�SIR RAY LANKESTER’S POPULAR
BOOKS ON SCIENCE.
EXTINCT ANIMALS.
With a portrait of the author and 218 illustrations. New
Edition, 1909 ; price 2s. 6d. (Constable and Co.)
The Times says: “There has been published no book on this
subject combining so successfully the virtues of accuracy and
' attractiveness.”
The Athenceum says: “Described with a masterly hand.”
SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR.
Fifth Edition, 1911; price 6s.
(Methuen and Co.)
A series of chapters selected from the well-known weekly articles
by the author originally published in the Daily Telegraph, revised
and illustrated by numerous drawings. The subjects treated
include Darwin’s Theory, the Story of the Common Eel, the
Dragon, Oysters, Sleep, Comets, Tadpoles, Gossamer, Hop-blight,
the Most Ancient Men, and many others.
THE EASY CHAIR SERIES.
By
SIR RAY LANKESTER, K.C.B., F.R.S.
Annual volumes similar in origin and character to the preceding
are in preparation. The first, now ready for press, illustrated with
numerous plates and text-figures, is entitled
DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST,
Price 6s., and will be published by Simpkin and Marshall,
Paternoster Row, London, in July, 1912.
A few copies of the First (Library) Edi
tion of “The Kingdom of Man” may
still be procured, price 2s. 6d. net
(inland postage 5d.).
(Watts & Co.)
�DESCRIPTION OE THE FRONTISPIECE.
The upper figure is from a cast of the celebrated specimen found in a river gravel in Java, probably
of as great age as the palaeolithic gravels of Europe. Though rightly to be regarded as a “ man,” the
creature which possessed this skull has been given the n&me Pithecanthropus. The shape of the cranial
dome differs from that of a well-developed European human skull (shown in the lower photograph, that
of a Greek skull) in the same features as do the very ancient prehistoric skulls from the Belgian caves
of Spey, and from the Neanderthal of the Rhineland. These differences are, however, measurably
greater in the Javanese skull.
The three great features of difference are: (1) the great size of the eyebrow ridges (the part below
and in front of A in the figures) in the Java skull; (2) the much greater relative height of the middle and
back part of the cranial dome (lines e and/) in the Greek skull; (3) the much greater prominence in the
Greek skull of the front part of the cranial dome—the prefrontal area or frontal “ boss ” (the part in
front of the line A C, the depth of which is shown by the line d).
The parts of the cranial cavity thus obviously more capacious in the Greek skull are precisely those
which are small in the Apes, and overlie those convolutions of the brain which have been specially
developed in Man as compared with the highest Apes.
The line A B in both the figures is the ophryo-tentorial line. It is drawn from the ophryon (the
mid-joint in the line drawn across the narrowest part of the frontal bone just above the eyebrow ridges),
.Which corresponds externally to the most anterior limit of the brain, to the extra-tentorial point
(between the occipital ridges), and is practically the base line of the cerebrum. The lines e and / are
perpendiculars on this base line, the first half-way between A and B, the second half-way between the
first and the extra-tentorial point.
C is the point known to craniologists as “ bregma,” the meeting point of the frontal and the two
parietal bones. .
The line A C is drawn as a straight line joining A and C; but if the skull is accurately posed it
corresponds to the edge of the plane at right angles to the sagittal plane of the skull—which traverses
both bregma (C) and ophryon (A)—and where it “cuts” the skull marks off the prefrontal area or boss,
(See for the full-face view of this area in the two skulls Figs. 1 and 2.) The line d is a perpendicular let
fall from the point of greatest prominence of the prefrontal area on to the prefrontal plane. It indicates
the depth of the prefrontal cerebral region. Drawn on both sides on the surface of the bone and looked
at from the front (the white dotted line in Figs. 1 and 2), it gives the maximum breadth of the prefrontal
area.
By dividing the ophryo-tentorial line into 100 units, and using those units as measures, the depths of
the brain cavity in the regions plumbed by the lines d, e, and/ can be expressed numerically and their
differences in a series of skulls stated in percentage of the ophryo-tentorial length.
�WONDERS are many ! And none is there greater than Man, who
Steers his ship over the sea driven on by the south wind,
Cleaving the threatening swell of the waters around him,
Wears away year after year with deeply-cut furrows,
Wears as he drags the sharp plough to and fro with his horses,
Th’ Earth-mother, eldest of Gods, inexhaustible, ceaseless.
He captures the gay-hearted birds ; he entangles adroitly
Creatures that live on the land and the brood of the ocean,
Spreading his well-woven nets. Man full of devices !
The beasts of the forest, the cattle that roam on the moorland
Artfully hath he subdued, and the shaggy-maned horses;
Yokes grip the necks of the masterful bulls of the mountain.
Speech and swift thought free as wind, the building of cities,
Shelters to ward off the arrows of rain and to temper
Sharp-biting frost—all these hath he taught himself. Surely
Stratagem hath he for all that comes 1 Never the future
Finds him resourceless ! Deftly he combats grievous diseases,
Oft from their grip doth he free himself. Death alone vainly—
Vainly he seeks to escape; ’gainst Death he is helpless.
Man with his skill past belief and his endless invention
Oft reaches happiness ; oft stumbles on to disaster.
Chorus from the “Antigone" of Sophocles.
�Contents
PAGE
Chapter
I—NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
1
Chapter II.—THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE (1881-1906)
.
.
.
CHAPTER III.—NATURE’S REVENGES: THE SLEEPING SICKNESS'
.
37
.
95
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Frontispiece
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
Profile views of the
Cranial Dome of Pithe
canthropus erectus, the
ape-like man from an
ancient river gravel in
Java, and of a Greek
skull
1.—-Frontal view of the Cranial
Dome of Pithecanthropus
2.—Frontal view of the same
Greek skull as that shown in
the frontispiece
3.—-Eoliths, of “ borer ” shape,
from Ightham, Kent .
4.—Eoliths of trinacrial shape,
from Ightham, Kent .
5.—Brain casts of four large
Mammals ....
6.—Spironema pallidum, the
microbe of syphilis dis
covered by Fritz Schaudinn .
7.—The Canals in Mars
8.—The Canals in Mars
9.—Becquerel's shadow - print
obtained by rays from
Uranium Salt
10.—Diagrams of the visible lines
of the Spectrum given by
incandescent Helium and
Radium
....
11.—The transformation of Ra
dium Emanation into Helium
(spectra)
....
Fig. 12. —Dry-plate photograph of a
Nebula and surrounding stars
Jelly-fish
Limnocodium
14. —Polyp of Limnocodium
15. —Sense-organ of Limnocodium
16. —The Freshwater Jelly-fish of
Lake Tanganyika
17. —Sir Harry Johnston’s speci
men of the Okapi
18. —Bandoliers cut from the
striped skin of the Okapi
19. —Skull of the horned male of
the Okapi ....
20. —The metamorphosis of the
young of the common Eel .
21. —A unicellular parasite of the
common Octopus, producing
spermatozoa
22. —The Coccidium, a microscopic
parasite of the Rabbit, pro
ducing spermatozoa
23. —Spermatozoa of a unicellular
parasite inhabiting a Centi
pede .....
24. —The motile fertilising ele
ments (antherozoids or sper
matozoa) of a peculiar cone
bearing tree, the Gycas revoluta .....
25. —The gigantic extinct Reptile
Triceratops ....
26. —A large carnivorous Reptile
PAGE
51
Fig. 13. —The Freshwater
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
9
Fig.
Fig.
9
Fig.
10
Fig.
11
Fig.
13
Fig.
21
24
25
Fig.
41
Fig.
43
Fig.
47
Fig.
vii
54
54
54
54
56
56
56
57
59
59
59
59
60
�viii
CONTENTS
PAGE
from the Triassic rocks of
North Russia
...
FIG. 27.—The curious &sh Drepanaspis,
from the Old Red Sandstone
of Germany ....
FIG. 28.—The oldest Fossil Fish known
FIG. 29.—The skull and lower jaw of
the ancestral Elephant,
Palceomastodon, from Egypt
FIG. 30.—The latest discovered skull of
Palaiomastodon ...
FIG. 31.—Skulls of Meritherium, an
Elephant ancestor, from the
Upper Eocene of Egypt
.
FIG. 32.—The nodules on the roots of
bean-plants and the nitrogen
fixing microbe, Bacillus
radicola, which produces
them .....
FIG. 33.—The continuity of the proto
plasm of vegetable cells
.
FIG. 34.—Diagram of the structures
present in a typical organic
“cell”
....
FIG. 35.—The number of the Chromo
somes .....
FIG. 36.—The number of the Chromo
somes .....
FIGS. 37-42.—Phagocytes engulfing
disease germs — drawn by
Metschnikoff
...
PAGE
FIG. 43.—A Phagocyte containing three
61
Spirilla, the germs of relaps
ing fever, which it has en
gulfed
.... 81
61 FIG. 44.—The life-history of the Malaria
61
Parasite
.... 84
FIG. 45.—The first blood-cell parasite
described, the Lankesterella
62
of Frog’s blood ... 86
FIG. 46.—Various kinds of Trypano
63
somes .......................................... 87
FIG. 47.—The Laboratory of the Marine
Biological Association on the
64
Citadel Hill, Plymouth
. 93
FIG. 48.—The Tsetze fly, Glossina
morsitans .... 103
FIG. 49.—The Trypanosome of Frog’s
blood ..... 104
66 FIG. 50.—’The Trypanosome which
causes the Sleeping Sickness 105
67 FIG. 51.—The Trypanosome of the
disease called “ Dourine ” . 106
FIGS. 52-56.—Stages in the growth and
68
multiplication of a Trypano
some which lives for part of
69
its life in the blood of the
little owl Athene noctua,
76
and for the other part in the
gut of the common gnat
(Gulex)
.
.
.
107-10
81
�PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
This little volume is founded on three discourses which I have slightly
modified for the pfesent purpose, and have endeavoured to render
interesting by the introduction of illustrative process blocks, which are
described sufficiently fully to form a large extension of the original text.
The first, entitled “ Nature’s Insurgent Son,” formed, under another
title, the Romanes lecture at Oxford in 1905. Its object is to exhibit
in brief the “Kingdom of Man,” to show that there is undue neglect in
the taking over of that possession by mankind, and to urge upon our
Universities the duty of acting the leading part in removing that
neglect.
The second is an account, which served as the presidential address
to the British Association at York in 1906, of the progress made in the
last quarter of a century towards the assumption of his kingship by
slowly-moving Man.
The third, reprinted from the Quarterly Review, is a more detailed
account of recent attempts to deal with a terrible disease—the Sleeping
Sickness of tropical Africa—and furnishes an example of one of the
innumerable directions in which Man brings down disaster on his head
by resisting the old rule of selection of the fit and destruction of the
unfit, so that he is painfully forced to the conclusion that knowledge of
Nature must be sought and control of her processes eventually obtained.
I am glad to be able to state that as a result of the representations of the
Tropical Diseases Committee of the Royal Society, and, as I am told,
in some measure in consequence of the explanation of the state of
things given in this essay, funds have been provided by the Colonial
Office for the support of a professorship of Protozoology in the University
of London, to which Mr. E. A. Minchin has been appointed. It is
recognised that the only way in which we can hope to deal effectually
with such diseases as the Sleeping Sickness is by a greatly increased
knowledge of the nature and life-history of the parasitic Protozoa which
produce those diseases.
I have to thank Mr. John Murray for permission to reprint the
article on Sleeping Sickness, and I am also greatly indebted to scientific
ix
�X
PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION
colleagues for assistance in the survey of progress given in the second
discourse. Among these I desire especially to mention Mr. Frederick
Soddy, F.B.S., Professor H. H. Turner, F.B.S., Professor Sydney
Vines, F.B.S., Mr. MacDougal of Oxford, and Professor Sherrington,
F.B.S. To Mr. Perceval Lowell I owe my thanks for permission to
copy two of his drawings of Mars, and to the Boyal Astronomical
Society for the loan of the star-picture on p. 51.
E. Bay Lankester,
•
January, 1907,
PBEFACE TO THE PBESENT EDITION
The publication of a cheap edition of the Kingdom of Man has made
it necessary for me to revise the text so far as to alter here and there
the terms of reference to events and discoveries which are now six
years older than they were when the book was first printed. I have
made some of these corrections in the text and inserted others as
footnotes enclosed in square brackets, and have also drawn attention to
some newly ascertained facts, and to recent events which bear upon
statements made in the earlier edition. An improved figure showing
the relative size of the cerebral hemispheres in the extinct mammal
Dinoceras and large mammals now living has been substituted for that
previously published.
I have willingly agreed to the proposal of the Bationalist Press
Association to issue this book in a form and at a price which render it
readily accessible to a large body of readers, since, next to the search for
new knowledge, there is no enterprise in which I so gladly take part as
that of endeavouring to assist others to gain an acquaintance with the
results of the investigation of Nature and an understanding of the
supreme importance of that investigation to mankind.
E. Bay Lankester,
Boiirnemouth, February, 1912.
�THE KINGDOM OF MAN
Chapter I.
NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
same at the present day as it has been
in the past: as commonly used, it is a
word of varied meanings and limita
tions, so that misconception and con
fusion is liable to be associated with
it. By the professed student of modern
sciences it is usually understood as a
name for the entire mechanism of the
universe, the kosmos in all its parts;
and it is in this sense that I use it.
But many still identify “ Nature ” with
a limited portion of that great system,
and even retain for it a special appli
cation to the animals and plants of
this earth and their immediate sur
roundings. Thus we have the term
“natural history,” and the French
term les sciences naturelies, limited to
the study of the more immediate and
concrete forms of animals, plants, and
crystals. There is some justification
for separating the conception of Nature
as specially concerned in the produc
tion and maintenance of living things
from that larger Nature which em
braces, together with this small but
deeply significant area, the whole ex
panse of the heavens in the one direc
tion, and Man himself in the other.
2.—The Word “Nature.”
Giordano Bruno, who a little more
The signification attached to the than three hundred years ago visited
word “Nature” is by no means the Oxford and expounded his views, was
1.—The Outlook.
It has become more and more a
matter of conviction to me—and I
believe that I share that conviction
with a large body of fellow students
both in this country and other civilised
States—that the time has arrived when
the true relation of Nature to Man
has been so clearly ascertained that it
should be more generally known than
is at present the case, and that this
knowledge should form far more largely
than it does at this moment the object
of human activity and endeavour—that
it should be, in fact, the guide of State
government, the trusted basis of the
development of human communities.
That it is not so already, that men
should still allow their energies to run
in other directions, appears to some of
us a thing so monstrous, so injurious
to the prosperity of our fellow men,
that we must do what lies within our
power to draw attention to the con
ditions and circumstances which attend
this neglect, the evils arising from it,
and the benefits which must follow
from its abatement.
�2
NATURE’S INSURGENT SON '
perhaps the first to perceive and teach
the unity of this greater Nature, anti
cipating thus, in his prophetic vision,
the conclusion which we now accept
as the result of an accumulated mass
of evidence. Shakespeare came into
touch with Bruno’s conception, and
has contrasted the more limited and a
larger (though not the largest) view of
Nature in the words of Perdita and
Polyxenes. Says Perdita:—
.......the fairest flowers o’ the season
Are our carnations, and streak’d gillyvors,
Which some call Nature’s bastards; of that
kind
Our rustic garden’s barren ; and I care not
To get slips of them.......For I have heard it
said,
There is an art which, in their piedness,
shares
With great creating nature.
To which Polyxenes replies :—
Say there be—
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean; so, over that
art,
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid,
we marry
A gentle scion to the wildest stock ;
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race ; this is an art
Which does mend nature—change it, rather :
but
The art itself is nature.
The larger proportion of so-called
educated people even at the present
day have not got beyond Perdita’s
view of Nature. They regard the
territory of Nature as a limited one,
the playground or sport of all sorts of
non-natural demons and fairies, spirits
and occult agencies. Apart from any
definite scheme or conception of these
operations, they personify Nature, and
attribute a variety of virtues and ten
dencies to her for which there is no
justification. We are told, according
to the fancy of the speaker, that such
a course is in accordance with Nature;
that another course is contrary to
Nature; we are urged to return to
Nature, and we are also urged to resist
Nature. We hear that Nature will
find a remedy for every ill, that Nature
is just, that Nature is cruel, that
Nature is sweet and our loving mother.
On the one hand, Man is regarded as
outside of and opposed to Nature, and
his dealings are contrasted favourably
or unfavourably with those of Nature.
On the other hand, we are informed
that Man must, after all, submit to
Nature, and that it is useless to oppose
her. These contradictory views are,
in fact, fragments of various systems
of philosophy of various ages, in which
the word “ Nature ” has been assigned
equally various limitations and exten
sions. Without attempting to discuss
the history and justification of these
different uses of the word “ Nature,”
I think that I may here use the word
“ Nature ” as indicating the entire
kosmos of which this cooling globe,
with all upon it, is a portion.
3.—Na trnre-S earc hers.
The discovery of regular processes,
of expected effects following upon
specified antecedents, of constant pro
perties and qualities in the material
around him, has from the earliest
recorded times been a chief occupation
of Man, and has led to the attainment
by Man of an extraordinarily complex
control of the conditions in which his
life is carried on. But it was not until
Bruno’s conception of the unity of
terrestrial nature with that of the
kosmos had commended itself that a
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
3
knowledge of Greek grammar is the
traditional and immemorial occupation
of Oxford students, that until the
modern days of the eighteenth century
(“ modern ” in the history of Oxford)
Greek was less known in Oxford than
Hebrew is at present, and that the
study of Nature—Nature-knowledge
and Nature-control—was the appro
priate occupation of her learned men.
It is, indeed, a fact that the very
peculiar classical education at present
insisted on in Oxford, and imposed by
her on the public schools of .the
country, is a modern innovation, an
unintentional and, in a biological
sense, “morbid” outgrowth of that
“ Humanism ” to which a familiarity
with the dead languages was, but is no
1 The foundation, of the Royal Society, of
London is most intimately connected with longer, the pathway.
deliberate and determined investigation
of natural processes, with a view to
tfteir more complete apprehension, was
Instituted. One of the earliest and most
active steps in this direction was the
foundation, less than 250 years ago,
of the Royal Society of London for
the Promotion of Natural Knowledge,
by a body of students who had organ
ised their conferences and inquiries
whilst resident in Oxford.1
All over Western Europe such asso
ciations or academies for the building
up of the New Philosophy (as it was
called here) came into existence. It is
a fact which is strangely overlooked at
the present day, when the assumption
is made that the acquirement of a
the University of Oxford. Dr. Wallis, an
original member, writes :—“ I take its first
ground and foundation to have been in
London about the year 1645, when Dr.
Wilkins and others met weekly at a certain
day and hour........About the year 1648-9
some of our company were removed to Oxford;
first Dr. Wilkins, then I, and soon after Dr.
Goddard. Those in London continued to
meet there as before (and we with them, when
we had occasion to be there), and those of us
at Oxford; with Dr. Ward (since Bishop of
Salisbury), Dr. Ralph Bathurst (now Presi
dent of Trinity College in Oxford), Dr. Petty
(since Sir William Petty), Dr. Willis (then
an eminent physician in Oxford), and divers
others, continued such meetings in Oxford
and brought those studies into fashion there ;
meetings first at Dr. Petty’s lodgings (in an
apothecarie’s house) because of the con
venience of inspecting drugs and the like, as
there was occasion; and after his remove to
Ireland (though not so constantly) at the
lodgings of Dr. Wilkins, then Warden of
Wadham College, and after his removal to
Trinity College in Cambridge, at the lodg
ings of the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle,
then resident for divers years in Oxford........
In the meanwhile our company at Gresham
College being much again increased by the
accession of divers eminent and noble persons,
I Upon His Majesty’s return we were (about the
beginning of the year 1662) by His Majesty’s
I grace and favour incorporated by the name
of the Royal Society.”
4.—The Doctrine of Evolution.
What is sometimes called the scien
tific movement, but may be more
appropriately described as the Nature
searching movement, rapidly attained
an immense development. In the
latter half of the last century this
culminated in so complete a know
ledge of the movements of the heavenly
bodies, their chemical nature and phy
sical condition—so detailed a determi
nation of the history of the crust of this
earth and of the living things upon it,
of the chemical and physical processes
which go on in Man and other living
things, and of the structure of Man as
compared with the animals most like
him, and of the enormous length of
time during which Man has existed on
the earth—that it became possible to
establish a general doctrine of the
evolution of the kosmos, with more
special detail in regard to the history
�4
NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
of this earth and the development of
Man from a lower animal ancestry.
Animals were, in their turn, shown to
have developed from simplest living
matter, and this from less highly
elaborated compounds of chemical
‘elements” differentiated at a still
earlier stage of evolution. There is,
it may be said without exaggeration,
no school or body of thinkers at the
present day who are acquainted with
the facts now ascertained which denies
the orderly evolution of the kosmos by
the* regular operation of a more or less
completely ascertained series of proper
ties resident in the material of which
it consists.1 The process of evolution
—the interaction of these ascertainable,
if not fully ascertained properties—has
led (it is held), in the case of the cool
ing cinder which we call the earth, by
an inevitable and predestined course,
to the formation of that which we call
living matter, and eventually of Man
himself. From this process all dis
orderly or arbitrary interferences must,
it seems, be excluded. The old fancies
as to presiding demons or fairies—
which, it was imagined, had for their
business to interrupt the supposed
feeble and limited efforts of Nature,
as yet unexplored and unappreciated
—have passed out of mind. The con
sensus is complete: Man is held to be
a part of Nature, a product of the
definite and orderly evolution which
is universal; a being resulting from
and driven by the one great nexus of
mechanism which we call Nature.
He stands alone, face to face with
that relentless mechanism. It is his
destiny to understand and to control it.
5.— Unwarranted Inferences from
the Evolution of Man.
There are not wanting those who,
accepting this conclusion, seek to
belittle Man and endeavour to repre
sent that the veil is lifted, that all is
explained,” obvious, commonplace,
and mean in regard to the significance
of life and of Man, because it has
become clear that the kosmic process
has brought them forth in due order.
There are others who rightly perceive
that life is no common property of our
cooling matter, but unique and excep
tional, and that Man stands apart from
and above all natural products, whether
animate or inanimate. Some of these
thinkers appear to accept the conclu
sion that if life and Man are regarded
as products of the kosmic process—
that is, of Nature—“ life ” and “ Man ”
lose so much in importance and signi
ficance that dire consequences must
follow to Man’s conception of his
dignity and to the essential features
of his systems of conduct and social
organisation. Accordingly, they cling
to the belief that living matter and
Man have not proceeded from an
orderly evolution of Nature, but are
“ super ’’-natural. It is found, on the
other hand, by many who have con
sidered these speculations, and hold no
less explicitly than do the super
naturalists ” that life is a momentou s
and peculiar feature of our earth s
surface, and Man the isolated and
unparalleled piece of work,
the
beauty of the world,” “the paragon
of animals”—it is found by many
such, I say, that nothing is gained in
regard to our conception of Man’s
1 See, however, the letter from the Times,
nobility and significance by supposing
reprinted on p. 34.
�NATUBE’S INSUBGENT SON
fchat he and the living matter which
has given rise to him are not the
outcome of that system of orderly
process which we call Nature.
There is one consideration in regard
to this matter which, it seems, is often
overlooked and should be emphasised.
It is sometimes—and perhaps with a
sufficient excuse in a want of acquaint
ance with Nature—held by those who
oppose the conclusion that Man has
been evolved by natural processes that
the products of Nature are arbitrary,
haphazard, and due to chance, and
that Man cannot be conceived of as
originating by chance. This notion of
“ chance ” is a misleading figment
inherited by the modern world from
days of blank ignorance. The “ Nature
searchers” of to-day admit no such
possibility as “ chance.” It will be in
the recollection of many of my readers
that a leading writer and investigator
of the Victorian Era—the physicist
John Tyndall—pointed out in a cele
brated address delivered at Belfast
that, according to the conceptions of
the mechanism of Nature arrived at
by modern science, • the structure of
that mechanism is such that it would
have been possible for a being of
adequate intelligence inspecting the
gaseous nebula from which our plane
tary system has evolved to have fore
seen in that luminous vapour the
Belfast audience and the professor
addressing it I
The fallacy that in given but un
known circumstances anything what
ever may occur in spite of the fact
that some one thing has been irrevo
cably arranged to occur is a common
one.1 It is correct to assume in the
5
absence of any pertinent knowledge
(if we are compelled to estimate the
probabilities) that one event is as
likely as another to occur; but never
theless there is no “ chance ” in the
matter since the event has been already
determined, and might be predicted by
those possessing the knowledge which
we lack. Thus, then, it appears that
the conclusion that man is a part of
nature is by no means equivalent to
asserting that he has originated by
“ blind chance it is, in fact, a specific
assertion that he is the predestined
outcome of an orderly—and to a large
extent “ perceptible ”—mechanism.2
6.—Nature’s Mode of Producing
Organic Forms.
The general process by which the
Variation, as affording the opportunity for the
operation of Natural Selection, to assume
that the variations presented by organisms
are minute variations in every direction around
a central point. Those observers who have
done useful work in showing the definite and
limited character of organic variations have
very generally assumed that they are opposing
a commonly held opinion that variation is of
this equally distributed character. I cannot
find that Mr. Darwin made any such assump
tion ; and it is certain, and must on reflection
have been recognised by all naturalists, that
the variations by the selection and intensifi
cation of which natural selection has produced
distinct forms or species, and in the course of
time altogether new groups of plants and
animals, are strictly limited to definite lines
rendered possible, and alone possible, by the
constitution of the living matter of the
parental organism. We have no reason to
suppose that the offspring of a beetle could in
the course of any number of generations
present variations on which selection could
operate so as to eventually produce a mam
malian vertebrate; or that, in fact, the
general result of the process of selection of
favourable variations in the past has not been
ab initio limited by the definite and restricted
possibilities characteristic of the living sub
stance of the parental organisms of each
divergent line or branch of the pedigree.
1 There is a tendency among writers on
2 See p. 34,
�6
NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
higher and more elaborate forms of
life, and eventually man himself, have
been produced has been shown by
Darwin to depend upon two important
properties of living matter manifested
in connection with the multiplication
of individuals. Living matter has a
special property of adding to its bulk
by taking up the chemical elements
which it requires and building up the
food so taken as additional living
matter. It further has the power of
separating from itself minute particles
or germs which feed and grow inde
pendently, and thus multiply their
kind. It is a fundamental character
of this process of reproduction that
the detached or pullulated germ in
herits or carries with it from its parents
the peculiarities of form and structure
of its parent. This is the property
known as Heredity. It is most essen
tially modified by another property—
namely, that though eventually grow
ing to be closely like the parent, the
germ (especially when it is formed, as
is usual, by the fusion of two germs
from two separate parents) is never
identical in all respects with the parent.
It shows Variation. In virtue of
heredity the new congenital variations
shown by a new generation are trans
mitted to their offspring when in due
time they pullulate or produce germs.
Man has long been aware of this; and,
by selecting variations of beasts, birds,
or plants agreeable or useful to him,
has intensified such variations and
produced animals and plants in many
features very unlike those with which
he started.
It was Darwin’s merit to show that
a process of selection which he called
“ Natural Selection ” must take place
in the free untouched conditions under
which animals and plants exist, and
have existed for ages, on this globe.
Both animals and plants produce
germs, or young, in excess—usually in
vast excess. The world, the earth’s
surface, is practically full—that is to
say, fully occupied. Only one pair of
young can grow up to take the place
of the pair—male and female—which
have launched a dozen, or it may be
as many as a hundred thousand, young
individuals on the world.1 The pro
perty of variation ensures that amongst
this excess of young there are many
differences. Eventually those survive
which are most fitted to the special
conditions under which this particular
organism has to live. The conditions
may, and indeed in long lapses of time
must, change, and thus some variation
not previously favoured will gain the
day and survive. The “ struggle for
existence ” of Darwin is the struggle
amongst all the superabundant young
of a given species, in a given area, to
gain the necessary food, to escape
voracious enemies, and gain protection
from excesses of* heat, cold, moisture,
and dryness. One pair in the new
generation—only one pair—survive for
every parental pair. Animal popula
tion does not increase. “ Increase and
multiply ” has never been said by
Nature to her lower creatures. Locally,
and from time to time, owing to excep
tional changes, a species may multiply
here and decrease there; but it is im
portant to realise that the “ struggle
for existence ” in Nature—that is to
say, among the animals and plants of
this earth untouched by man—is a
1 A single pair of American oysters produce
on an average .twenty million fertilised eggs I
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
desperate OB©, however tranquil and
peaceful the battlefield may appear to
us. The struggle for existence takes
jjace, not as a clever French writer1
1 M, Paul Bourget, of the Academic Franeaise, is not only a charming writer of modern
“novels,” but claims to be a “psychologist,”
a title which perhaps may be conceded to
every author who writes of human character.
His works are so deservedly esteemed, and his
erudition is as a rule so unassailable, that in
selecting him as an example of the frequent
aaisrepresentation among literary men of
Darwin’s doctrine, I trust that my choice
may be regarded as a testimony of my admira
tion for his art. In his novel Un Divorce,
published in 1904, M. Bourget says: “La
lutte entre les especos, cette inflexible loi de
1’univers animal, a sa correspondence exacte
dans le monde des idees. Certaines men
tality constituent de vdritables especes* intellectuelles qui ne peuvent pas durer d cotd les
unes des autres” (Edition Pion, p. 317). This
inflexible law of the animal universe, the
Struggle between species, is one which is quite
unknown to zoologists. The “ struggle for
existence,” to which Darwin assigned im
portance, is not a struggle between different
species, but one between closely similar
members of the same species. The struggle
between species is by no means universal, but
in fact very rare. The preying of one species
on another is a moderated affair of balance
and adjustment which may be described rather
as an accommodation than as a struggle.
A more objectionable misinterpretation of
the naturalists’ doctrine of the survival of the
fittest in the struggle for existence is that
made by journalists and literary politicians,
who declare, according to their political bias,
either that science rightly teaches that the
gross quality measured by wealth and strength
alone can survive, and should therefore alone
be cultivated, or that science (and especially
Darwinism) has done serious injury to the
progress of mankind by authorising this
teaching. Both are wrong, and owe their
error to self-satisfied flippancy and traditional
ignorance in regard to Nature-knowledge and
the teaching of Darwin. The “ fittest ” does
not mean the “strongest.” The causes of
survival under Natural Selection are very far
indeed from being rightly described as mere
strength, nor are they baldly similar to the
power of accumulating wealth. Frequently
in Nature the more obscure and feeble survive
in the struggle because of their modesty and
L suitability to given conditions, whilst the rich
K are sent empty away and the mighty perish
by hunger.
1
glibly informs his readers, between
different species, but between indi
viduals of the same species, brothers
and sisters and cousins. The struggle
between a beast of prey which seeks
to nourish itself and the buffalo which
defends its life with its horns is not
“ the struggle for existence ” so named
by Darwin. Moreover, the struggle
among the members of a species in
natural conditions differs totally from
the mere struggle for advancement or
wealth with which uneducated writers
so frequently compare it. It differs
essentially in this—that in Nature s
struggle for existence, death, immediate
obliteration, is the fate of the van
quished, whilst the only reward to the
victors—few, very few, but rare and
beautiful in the fitness which has
carried them to victory—is the per
mission to reproduce their kind—to
carry on by heredity to another genera
tion the specific qualities by which
they triumphed.
It is not generally realised how
severe is the pressure and competition
in Nature, not between different species,
but between the immature members of
the population of one and the same
species, precisely because they are of
the same species and have exactly the
same needs. From a human point of
view, the pressure under which many
wild things live is awful in its severity
and relentless tenacity. Not only are
new forms established by natural
selection, but the old forms, when
they exactly fit the mould presented,
as it were, for competitive filling, are
maintained by the same unremitting
process. A distinctive quality in the
beauty of natural productions (in which
man delights) is due to the unobtrusive
�8
NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
yet tremendous slaughter of the unfit
8.—The Emergence of Man.
which is incessantly going on and the
absolute restriction of the privilege of
As to how and when Man emerged
parentage to the happy few who attain from the terrestrial animal population
to the standard described as "the so strictly controlled and moulded by
fittest.”
natural selection is a matter upon
which we gain further information
7-. The Limited Variety of Nature’s year by year. There must be many
Products.
readers who remember, as I do, the
The process of development of an astounding and almost sudden dis
immense variety of animal and vege covery some forty-five years ago of
table forms has proceeded in this way abundant and overwhelming evidence
through countless ages of geologic that man had existed in Western
time, but it must not be supposed Europe as a contemporary of the
that any and every conceivable form mammoth and rhinoceros, the hyaena
and variety has been produced. There and the lion, which also existed there.
are only two great diverging lines of The dispute over the facts submitted
descent from original living matter- to the scientific world by Boucher de
only the animals and the plants. And Perthes was violent and of short
in each of these there are and have duration. The immense antiquity of
been only a limited number of branches Man was established and accepted on
to the pedigree, some coming off at a all sides just before Mr. Darwin pub
lower level, others at higher points lished his book on The Origin of Species.
when more elaborate structure has The palaeolithic implements of the river
been attained. It is easy to imagine gravels, though probably made much
groups of both plants and animals more than 150,000 years ago, do not,
with characters and structures which any more than do the imperfect skulls
have never existed and never will exist. occasionally found in association with
The limitation of the whole process, in them, indicate a condition of the
spite of its enormous duration in time, human race greatly more monkey-like
its gigantic output and variety, is a than is presented by existing savage
striking and important fact. Linnaeus races (see Pigs. 1 and 2 and Frontis
said : There are just as many species piece, and their explanations). The
as in the beginning the Infinite Being implements themselves are manufac
created”; and the modern naturalist tured with great skill and artistic
can go no further than the paraphrase feeling. Within the last ten years
of this, and must say : “ There are and much rougher flint implements, of
have been just so many and just so few peculiar types, have been discovered
varieties of animal and vegetable struc in gravels which are 500 feet above
ture on this earth as it was possible for the level of the existing rivers (see
the physical and chemical contents of Figs. 3 and 4).1 These Eoliths of the
the still molten globe to form up to the
1 [In 1909 large, skilfully worked flint
hour now reached.”
implements called “ rostro - carinate,” or
“eagles’ beaks,” were discovered in the bone-
�\T A'TTTT^Ti1’Si
T NTSi TTP. ft 7<! NT SION
9
�10
NATURE'S INSURGENT SON
Fig. 3.
Photographs of eight Eoliths of one and the same shape, namely, with a chipped or worked tooth
like prominence, rendering the flint fit for use as a "borer”—photographed half the actual size
(linear measurement) from specimens found near Ightham, Kent, in the high-level gravel—which
form part of the Prestwieh collection in the Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London. Many
others of the same shape have been found in the same locality. These and the trinacrial implements
photographed in Fig. 4 are far older than the oval and leaf-shaped Palaeoliths of the low-lying gravels
oi the valleys of the Thames, Somme, and other rivers. (Original.)
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
1]
Fig. 4.
Photographs of six Eoliths of the “shoulder of mutton” or "trinacrial” type—from the same locality
and collection as those shown in Fig. 3. The photographs are of half the length of the actual specimens.
A considerable number of worked flints of this peculiar shape have been found in the same locality.
Possibly their shape enabled the primitive men who “ chipped ” and used them to attach them by thongs
to a stick or club. The descriptive term “ trinacrial” is suggested by me for these flints in allusion to
the form of the island of Sicily, which they resemble. (Original.) [An important fact tending to prove
the human authorship of these “ trinacrial implements ” is the discovery by Dr. Blackmore of one in a
gravel near Salisbury, together with a large Quantity of hollow-faced “ scrapers.” The specimen is in
the Jfetural History Museum, Cromwell Road.]
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NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
South of England indicate a race of
men of less developed skill than the
makers of the Palaaoliths, and carry
the antiquity of man at least as far
back beyond the Palaeoliths as these
are from the present day. We have
as yet found no remains giving the
direct basis for conclusions on the sub
ject ; but, judging by the analogy (not
by any means a conclusive method)
furnished by the history of other large
animals now living alongside of man—
such as the horse, the rhinoceros, the
tapir, the wolf, the hyaena, and the
bear—it is not improbable that it was
in the remote period known as the
lower Miocene—remote even as com
pared with the gravels in which
Eoliths occur—that Natural Selection
began to favour that increase in the
size of the brain of a large and not
very powerful semi-erect ape which
eventuated, after some hundreds of
thousands of years, in the breeding
out of a being with a relatively
enormous brain-case, a skilful hand,
and an inveterate tendency to throw
stones, flourish sticks, protect himself
in caves, and in general to defeat
aggression and satisfy his natural
appetites by the use of his wits rather
than by strength alone, in which, how
ever, he was not deficient. Probably
this creature had nearly the full size
of brain and every other physical
character of modern man, although
he had not as yet stumbled upon the
art of making fire by friction, nor
converted his conventional grunts and
groans, his screams, laughter, and
bed at the base of the Red Crag of Suffolk
by Mr. Reid Moir, of Ipswich, and establish
the existence of man in the Pliocene period.
See Lankester, Proc. Royal Society, Novem
ber, 1911.]
interjections, into a language corre
sponding to (and thenceforth develop
ing) his power of thought.
9.—The Enlarged Brain.
The leading feature in the develop
ment and separation of Man from
amongst other animals is undoubtedly
the relatively enormous size of the
brain in man, and the corresponding
increase in its activities and capacity.
It is a very striking fact that it was
not in the ancestors of man alone that
this increase in the size of the brain
took place at this same period—viz.,
the Miocene. The great mammals such
as the titanotherium, which represented
the rhinoceros in early Tertiary times,
had a brain which was, in proportion to
the bulk of the body, not more than oneeighth the volume of the brain of the
modern rhinoceros (see Fig. 5). Other
great mammals of the earlier Tertiary
period were in the same case; and the
ancestors of the horse, which are better
known than those of any other modern
animal, certainly had very much smaller
brains, in proportion to the size of their
bodies, than has their descendant.
We may well ask to what this
sudden and marked increase in the size
of the brain in several lines of the
animal pedigree is due. It seems that
the inborn hereditary nervous mechan
ism by which many simple and neces
sary movements of the body are con
trolled and brought into relation with
the outer world, acting upon the sense
organs, can be carried in a relatively
small bulk of brain-substance. Fish,
lizards, and crocodiles, with their small
brains, carry on a complex and effec
tive life of relation with their sur
roundings.
It appears that the
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
increased bulk of cerebral substance
rnp.g.ns increased educability
an
increased power of storing up individual experience—which tends to take
the place of the inherited mechanism,
with which it is often in antagonism.
The power of profiting by individual
experience—in fact, educability must,
in conditions of close competition, be,
When other conditions are equal, an
immense advantage to its possessor.
It seems that we have to imagine that
the adaptation of mammalian form to
the various conditions of life had, in
Miocene times, reached a point when
13
reward, the triumph, the survival,
would fall to those who possessed most
skill in the use of the instrument.
And in successive generations the bigger
and more educable brains would sur
vive and mate, and thus bigger and
bigger brains be produced.
It would not be difficult (though
not, perhaps, profitable) to imagine
the conditions which have favoured
the continuation of this process to a
far greater length in the Simian line
of the pedigree than in other mam
malian groups. The result is that the
creature called Man emerged with an
Fig. 5.
Four casts of the cavity of the skull lodging the brain of a series of large Ungulate Mammals in order to
show the relatively small size of the cerebral hemispheres of the extinct creature>fromi whichi A is taken.
A is that of Dinoceras, a huge extinct Eocene mammal which was as large as a Rhmoceios , B is that
of Hippopotamus? C of Horse ; and D of Rhinoceros. In each figure O points to the olfactory lobes of
the brain, C to the cerebrum, CL to the cerebellum, and M to the medulla oblongata.
further alteration and elaboration of
the various types which we know then
existed could lead to no advantage.
The variations presented for selection
in the struggle for existence presented
no advantage—the “ fittest” had prac
tically been reached, and was destined
to survive with little change. Assum
ing such a relative lull in the develop
ment of mere mechanical form, it is
obvious that the opportunity for those
individuals with the most “ educable ”
brains to defeat their competitors
Would arise. No marked improvement
in the instrument being possible, the
educable brain of some five or six times
the bulk (in proportion to his size and
weight) of that of any other surviving
Simian. Great as is this difference, it
is one of the most curious facts in the
history of man’s development that the
bulk of his brain does not appear to
have continued to increase in any very
marked degree since early Palaeolithic
times. The cranial capacity of many
savage races and of some of the
most ancient human skulls is not
less than that of the average man of
highly-civilised race. The value of
the mental activities in which primitive
�14
NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
man differs from the highest apes
may be measured in some degree by
the difference in the size of the man’s
and the ape’s brain ; but the difference
in the size of the brain of Isaac Newton
and an Australian black-fellow is not
in the remotest degree proportionate
to the difference in their mental quali
ties. Man, it would seem, at a very
remote period, attained the extra
ordinary development of brain which
marked him off from the rest of the
animal world, but has ever since been
developing the powers and qualities of
this organ without increasing its size,
or materially altering in other bodily
features.1
10.—The Progress of Man.
The origin of Man by the process
of Natural Selection is one chapter
in Man’s history; another one begins
with the consideration of his further
development and his diffusion over the
surface of the globe.
The mental qualities which have
developed in Man, though traceable in
a vague and rudimentary condition in
some of his animal associates, are of
such an unprecedented power, and so
far dominate everything else in his
activities as a living organism, that
they have to a very large extent, if not
1 A short discussion of this subject and the
introduction of the term “educability” was
published in a paper by me, entitled “The
Significance of the Increased Size of the
Cerebrum in Recent as Compared with Extinct
Mammalia,” Cinquantenaire de la Societi de
Biologie, Paris, 1899, pp. 48-51.
It has been pointed out to me by my friend
Dr. Andrews, of the Geological Department
of the British Museum, that the brain cavity
of the elephants was already of relatively
large size in the Eocene members of that
group, which may be connected with the per
sistence of these animals through subsequent
geological periods.
entirely, cut him off from the general
operation of that process of Natural
Selection and survival of the fittest
which, up to their appearance, had
been the law of the living world. They
justify the view that Man forms a new
departure in the gradual unfolding of
Nature’s predestined scheme. Know
ledge, reason, self-consciousness, will,
are the attributes of Man. It is not
my purpose to attempt to trace their
development from lower phases of
mental activity in Man’s animal ances
tors, nor even to suggest the steps by
which that development has proceeded.
What we call the will or volition of
Man—a discussion of the nature and
limitation of which would be impos
sible in these pages, and is happily
not necessary for my present purpose
—has become a power in Nature, an
imperium in imperio, which has pro
foundly modified not only Man’s own
history, but that of the whole living
world and the face of the planet on
which he exists. Nature’s inexorable
discipline of death to those who do
not rise to her standard—survival and
parentage for those alone who do—has
been from the earliest times more and
more definitely resisted by the will of
Man. If we may, for the purpose of
analysis, as it were, extract Man from
the rest of Nature, of which he is truly
a product and part, then we may say
that Man is Nature’s rebel. Where
Nature says “Die!” Man says “I
will live.” According to the law pre
viously in universal operation, Man
should have been limited in geo
graphical area, killed by extremes of
cold or of heat, subject to starvation if
one kind of diet were unobtainable,
and should have been unable to
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
15
increase and multiply, just as are his on failure. The stronger, the more
animal relatives, without losing his cunning, the better armed, the more
specific structure and acquiring new courageous tribe or family group, ex
physical characters according to the terminated by actual slaughter or
requirements of the new conditions starvation the neighbouring tribes less
into which he strayed—should have gifted in one or all of these qualities.
perished except on the condition of be But from what we know of the history
coming a new morphological species.” of warlike exterminating savage tribes
ButMan’swits and his will have enabled at the present day—as, for instance,
him to cross rivers and oceans by rafts the Masai of East Africa—it seems
and boats, to clothe himself against unlikely that the method of exter
cold, to shelter himself from heat and mination—that is, of true natural
rain, to prepare an endless variety of selection—had much effect in man s
food by fire, and to “ increase and development after the very earliest
multiply ” as no other animal, without period. Union and absorption were
change of form, without submitting to more usual results of the contact of
the terrible axe of selection wielded by primitive tribes than struggles to the
ruthless Nature over all other living death. The expulsion of one group
things on this globe. And as he has by another from a desired territory
more and more obtained this control was more usual than the destruction
over his surroundings, he has expanded of the conquered. In spite of the
that unconscious protective attitude frequent assertions to the contrary, it
towards his immature offspring which seems that neither the more ancient
N atural Selection had already favoured wars of mankind for conquest and
and established in the animal race migration, nor the present and future
into a conscious and larger love for wars for commercial privilege, have
his tribe, his race, his nationality, and any real equivalence to the simple
his kind. He has developed speech, removal by death of the unfit and the
the power of communicating, and, survival and reproduction of the fit,
above all, of recording and handing which we know as Natural Selection.
on from generation to generation his
1 It would be an error to maintain that the
thought and knowledge.
He has process of Natural Selection is entirely in
regard Man. In
formed communities, built cities, and abeyance in PresenttoEvolution an interesting
book, The
of Man, Dr.
set up empires. At every step of his Archdall Reid has shown that in regard to
progress Man has receded further and zymotic diseases, and also in regard to the
use of dangerous drugs such as alcohol and
further from the ancient rule exercised opium, there is first of all the acquirement of
by Nature. He has advanced so far, immunity by powerful races of men through
among them of those strains
and become so unfitted to the earlier the survivalthe disease or of the drug, and,
tolerant of
rule, that to suppose that Man can secondly, the introduction of those diseases
drugs by
powerful immune race, in
“return to Nature” is as unreason andmigrations, theraces not previously exposed
its
to
able as to suppose that an adult animal either to the diseases or the drugs, and a con
sequent destruction of the invaded race. The
can return to its mother’s womb.
survival of the fittest is, in these cases, a
In early tribal times Natural Selec survival of the tolerant, and eventually of the
tion still imposed the death penalty immune.
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NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
The standard raised by the rebel
man is not that of “ fitness ” to the
conditions proffered by extra-human
nature, but is one of an ideal comfort,
prosperity, and conscious joy in life—
imposed by the will of man, and in
volving a control, and in important
respects a subversion, of what were
Nature’s methods of dealing with life
before she had produced her insurgent
son. The progress of man in the
acquirement of this control of Nature
has been one of enormous rapidity
within the historical period, and within
the last two centuries has led, on the
one hand, to immensely increased
facilities in the application of mechan
ical power, in locomotion, in agricul
ture, and in endless arts and indus
tries ; and, on the other hand, to the
mitigation of disease and pain. The
men whom we may designate as “ the
Nature- searchers ”—those who founded
the New Philosophy of the so-called
“ Invisible College ” at Oxford and the
Royal Society in London—have placed
boundless power in the hands of man
kind.
11.—-The Attainment by Man of the
Knowledge of his Relations to Nature.
But to many the greatest result
achieved by the progress of Natural
Knowledge seems not to have been so
much in its practical applications and
its material gifts to humanity as in
the fact that Man has arrived through
it at spiritual emancipation and free
dom of thought.
In the latter part of the last century
Man’s place in Nature became clearly
marked out by the accumulation of
definite evidence. The significance
and the immeasurable importance of
the knowledge of Nature to philosophy
and the highest regions of speculative
thought are expressed in the lines of
one who most truly and with keenest
insight embodied in his imperishable
verse the wisdom and the aspirations
of the Victorian age:—
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies ;
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower ; but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
To many the nearer approach to
that “ understanding ” has seemed the
greatest and a sufficient result of
scientific researches. The recognition
that such an understanding leads to
such vast knowledge would seem to
ensure further and combined effort to
bring it nearer and nearer to the
complete form, even if the perfect
understanding of the “ all in all ” be
for ever unattainable. Nevertheless,
the clearer apprehension, so recently
attained, of Man’s origin and destiny,
and of the enormous powers of which
he has actually the control, has not
led to any very obvious change in the
attitude of responsible leaders of human
activity in the great civilised communi
ties of the world. They still attach
little or no importance to the acquire
ment of a knowledge of Nature; they
remain fixed in the old ruts of tradi
tional ignorance, and obstinately turn
their faces towards the past, still
believing that the teachings and say
ings of antiquity and the contempla
tion—not to say the detailed enumera
tion—of the blunders and crimes of its
ancestors can furnish mankind with
the knowledge necessary for its future
progress. The comparative failure of
what may be called the speculative
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
triumph of the New Philosophy to
produce immediate practical conse
quences has even led some among
those prejudiced by custom and educa
tion in favour of the exclusive employ
ment of man’s thought and ingenuity
in the delineation and imaginative
resurrection of the youthful follies and
excesses of his race, to declare that
the knowledge of Nature is a failure,
the New Philosophy of the Nature
searchers a fraud. Thus the wellknown French publicist M. Brunetidre
has taken upon himself to declare what
he calls the Bankruptcy of Science.
37
13.—Man's Destiny.
Within the last few years an attempt
to spur the will of Englishmen in this
direction has been made by some who
have represented that this way lie
great fortunes, national ascendancy,
imperial domination. The effort has
not met with much success. On the
other hand, I speak for those who
would urge the conscious and deli
berate assumption of his kingdom by
Man, not as a matter of markets and
of increased opportunity for the cos
mopolitan dealers in finance, but as
an absolute duty, the fulfilment of
Man’s destiny,1 a necessity the inci
dence of which can only be deferred
and not avoided.
This is, indeed, the definite purpose
of my discourse: to point out that
civilised man has proceeded so far in
his interference with extra-human
Nature, has produced for himself and
the living organisms associated with
bim such a special state of things by
his rebellion against Natural Selection
and his defiance of Nature’s pre-human
dispositions, that he must either go on
and acquire firmer control of the con
ditions or perish miserably by the
vengeance certain to fall on the half
hearted meddler in great affairs. We
may, indeed, compare civilised man to
a successful rebel against Nature, who
by every step forward renders himself
liable to greater and greater penalties,
and so cannot afford to pause or fail
in one single step. Or, again, we may
think of him as the heir to a vast and
12.—The Regnum Hominis.
As a matter of fact, the new know
ledge of Nature—the newly-ascertained
capacity of Man for a control of Nature
so thorough as to be almost unlimited
—has not as yet had an opportunity
for showing what it can do. A lull
after victory, a lethargic contentment,
has to some extent followed on the
crowning triumphs of the great
Nature-searchers whose days were
numbered with the closing years of
that nineteenth century which through
them marks an epoch. No power
has called on Man to arise and enter
upon the possession of his kingdom—
the Regnum Hominis foreseen by
Francis Bacon and pictured by him
to an admiring but incredulous age
with all the fervour and picturesque
detail of which he was capable. And
yet at this moment the mechanical
difficulties, the want of assurance and
of exact knowledge, which necessarily
prevented Bacon’s schemes from taking
1 “ Religion means the knowledge of our
practical shape, have been removed.
destiny and of the means of fulfilling it.” The will to possess and administer Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, some
time Bishop of London, Vol. II., p. 195.
this vast territory alone is wanting.
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NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
magnificent kingdom who has been
finally educated so as to fit him to
take possession of his property, and is
at length left alone to do his best; he
has wilfully abrogated in many impor
tant respects the laws of his mother
Nature, by which the kingdom was
hitherto governed; be has gained some
power and advantage by so doing, but
is threatened on every hand by dangers
and disasters hitherto restrained. No
retreat is possible; his only hope is to
control, as he knows that he can, the
sources of these dangers and disasters.
They already make him wince. How
long-will he sit listening to the fairy
tales of his boyhood and shrink from
manhood’s task ?
A brief consideration of well-ascer
tained facts is sufficient to show that
Man, whilst emancipating himself from
the destructive methods of Natural
Selection, has accumulated a new
series of dangers and difficulties with
which he must incessantly contend.
14.—Man and Disease.
In the extra-human system of
Nature there is no disease and there
is no conjunction of incompatible
forms of life, such as Man has brought
about on the surface of the globe. In
extra-human Nature the selection of
the fittest necessarily eliminates those
diseased or liable to disease. Disease
both of parasitic and congenital origin
occurs as a minor phenomenon. The
congenitally diseased are destroyed
before they can reproduce; the attacks
of parasites great and small either
serve only to carry off the congenitally
weak, and thus strengthen the race, or
become harmless by the survival of
those individuals which, owing to
peculiar qualities in their tissues, can
tolerate such attacks without injury,
resulting in the establishment of
immune races. It is a remarkable
thing—which possibly may be less
generally true than our present know
ledge seems to suggest—that the
adjustment of organisms to their
surroundings is so severely complete
in Nature apart from Man that dis
eases are unknown as constant and
normal phenomena under those condi
tions. It is no doubt difficult to
investigate this matter, since the
presence of Man as an observer itself
implies human intervention. But it
seems to be a legitimate view that
every disease to which animals (and
probably plants also) are liable,
excepting as a transient and very
exceptional occurrence, is due to
Man’s interference. The diseases of
cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses are not
known except in domesticated herds
and those wild creatures to which
Man’s domesticated productions have
communicated them. The trypano
some lives in the blood of wild game
and of rats without producing mis
chief. The hosts have become tolerant
of the parasite. It is only when Man
brings his unselected, humanly nur
tured races of cattle and horses into
contact with the parasite that it is
found to have deadly properties.1 The
1 This has been established in the case of
the Trypanosoma Brucei, a minute parasite
living in the blood of big game in South-East
Africa, amongst which it is disseminated by
a bloodsucking fly, the Glossina morsitans
or Tsetze fly. The parasite appears to do
little or no harm to the native big game, but
causes a deadly disease both in tbe horses and
cattle introduced by Europeans and in the
more anciently introduced native cattle (of
Indian origin). Similar cases are found where
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
19
various cattle-diseases which in Africa
have done so much harm to native
cattle, and have in some regions
exterminated big game, have per contra
been introduced by Man through his
importation of diseased animals of his
own breeding from Europe. Most, if
not all, animals in extra-human condi
tions, including the minuter things such
as insects, shell-fish, and invisible
aquatic organisms, have been brought
into a condition of “ adjustment ” to
their parasites as well as to the other
conditions in which they live; it is
this most delicate and efficient balance
of Nature which Man everywhere
upsets. A solitary case of a ravaging
epidemic constantly recurring amongst
animals living in extra-human condi
tions, one of a strangely interesting
character,is the phosphorescent disease
of the sand-shrimps or sand-hoppers.
This is due to a microscopic parasite, a
bacterium, which infests the blood, and
is phosphorescent, so that the infected
sand-hopper has at night the br'Uiancy
of a glow-worm. The disease is deadly,
and is common among the sand-hoppers
dwelling in the sandy flats of the north
coast of France, where it may readily
be studied.1 It has not been recorded
as occurring in this country. It is not
at all improbable that this disease is
also in truth one which only occurs in
the trail of Man. It is quite likely
that the artificial conditions of sewage
and garbage set up by man on the sea
coast are responsible for the prevalence
of this parasite and the weakly recep
tivity of the too numerous sand
hoppers.
It is probable enough that, from
time to time, under the influence of
certain changes of climate and asso
ciated fauna and flora—due to meteoric
or geologic movements — parasitic
a disease germ (such as that of measles) pro
duces but a small degree of sickness and
mortality in a pppulation long associated with
it, but is deadly to a human community to
which it is a new-comer. Thus, Europeans
have introduced measles with deadly results
in the South Sea Islands. A similar kind of
difficulty, of whioh many might be cited, is
brought about by Man’s importations and
exportations of useful plants. He thus
brought the Phylloxera to Europe, not
realising beforehand that this little parasitic
bug, though harmless to the American vine,
which puts out new shoots on its roots when
the insect injures the old ones, is absolutely
deadly to the European vine, which has not
acquired the simple but all-important mode
of growth by which the American vine is
rendered safe. Thus, too, he took the cofieeplant to Ceylon, and found his plantations
suddenly devastated by a minute mould, the
Hemileia vastatrix, which had lived very
innocently before that in the Cingalese
forests, but was ready to burst into rapacious
and destructive activity when the new un
adjusted coflee-trees were imported by man
tod presented in carefully crowded planta
tions to its unrestrained infeotion.
1 The phosphorescent disease of the sand
hopper (Talitrus) is described by Giard and
Billet in a paper entitled “ Observations sur la
maladie phosphorescente des Talitres et autres
Crustaces,” in the Memoirs of the Society de
Biologie, Oct. 19, 1889. Billet subsequently
gave a further account of this organism, and
named it Bacillus Qiardi—after Professor
Giard of Paris. (Bulletins sdentifiques de la
France et de la Belgique, xxi, 1898, p. 144.)
It appears that the parasite is transmitted
from one individual to another in coition.
The specimens studied by Giard and Billet
were obtained at Wimereux, near Boulogne.
I found the disease very abundant at Ouistreham, near Caen, in the summer of 1900. I
have not observed it nor heard of its occur
rence on the English coast. Sea-water nommonly contains a free-living phosphorescent
bacterium which can be cultivated in flasks
of liquid food, and gives rich growths
which glow like a lamp when the flask is
agitated so as to expose the contents to
oxidation. This bacterium is not, however,
the cause of the “ phosphorescence ” of the
sea often seen on our coasts. That is due, in
most cases, to a much larger organism, as big
as a small pin’s head, and known as Noctiluca
miliaris,
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NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
disease has for a time ravaged this or
that species newly exposed to it; but
the final result is one of the alterna
tives, extinction or adjustment, death
or toleration. The disease does not
establish itself as a scourge against
which the diseased organism inces
santly contends. It either obliterates
its victim or settles down with it into
relations of reciprocal toleration.
Man does not admit this alternative
either for himself or for the domesti
cated and cultivated organisms which
he protects. He “ treats ” disease, he
staves off “ the adjustment by death,”
and thus accumulates vast populations
of unadjusted human beings, animals,
and plants, which from time to time
are ravaged by disease—producing
uncertainty and dismay in human
society. Within the past few years
the knowledge of the causes of disease
has become so far advanced that it is
a matter of practical certainty that, by
the unstinted application of known
methods of investigation and conse
quent controlling action, all epidemic
disease could be abolished within a
period so short as fifty years. It is
merely a question of the employment
of the means at our command. Where
there is one man of first-rate intelli
gence employed in detecting the disease
producing parasites, their special con
ditions of life and the way to bring
them to an end, there should be a
thousand. It should be as much the
purpose of civilised governments to
protect their citizens in this respect
as it is to provide defence against
human aggression. Yet it is the fact
that this immensely important control
of a great and constant danger and
injury to mankind is left to the unor
ganised inquiries of a few enthusiasts.
So little is this matter understood or
appreciated that those who are respon
sible for the welfare of States, with
the rarest exceptions, do not even
know that such protection is possible,
and others again are so far from an
intelligent view as to its importance
that they actually entertain the opinion
that it would be a good thing were
there more disease in order to get rid
of the weakly surplus population I
In the spring of 1905 I was enabled
to examine in the Pasteur Institute in
Paris the minute spiral thread (see
Fig. 6) which had just been discovered
and shown to be the cause of the
most terrible and widely spread of
human diseases, destroying the health
and strength of those whom it does
not kill and damaging the lives of their
children, so that it has been justly
said that this malady and the use of
alcohol as a beverage are together
responsible for more than half the
disease and early death of the mature
population of Europe. For more than
thirty years a few workers here and
there have been searching for this
parasite, and the means of suppressing
the awful curse of which it is the
instrument. It would have been dis
covered many years ago had greater
value been set on the inquiries which
lead to such discoveries by those who
direct the public expenditure of civilised
States. And now the complete sup
pression of this dire enemy of humanity
is as plain and certain a piece of work
to be at once accomplished as is the
building of an ironclad. But it will
not be done for many years because of
the ignorance and unbelief of those
who alone can act for the community
�NATURE'S INSURGENT SON
in such matters. The discovery—the
presentation to the eye and to explor
ing manipulation—of that well-nigh
ultra-microscopic germ of death seemed
to me, as I gazed at its delicate shape,
a thing of greater significance to man
kind than the emendation of a Greek
text or the determination of the exact
degree of turpitude of a statesman of
a bygone age.
The knowledge of the causation of
disease by bacterial and protozoic
21
obtained has led to a control of the
attack or of the poisonous action of
the parasite. Antiseptic surgery, by
defeating the poisonous parasite, has
saved not only thousands upon thou
sands of lives, but has removed an
incalculable amount of pain. Control
is slowly being obtained in regard to
several others among these deadly
microbes in various ways, most wonder
ful of which is the development, under
Man’s control, of serums containing
Fig. 6.
The minute vibratile organism discovered by Fritz Schaudinn in 1905 in the eruptive formations and
other diseased growths of syphilis—and called by him Spirochaeta pallida (since altered to Spironema
pallidum): a common phase; b shortened and thickened form leading on to e the Trypanosoma-like
form; c, d stages of division by fission; / elongated multi-nuclear form;
segments into which it
breaks up ; h supposed conjugation of male and female units (after Krystallovitch and Siedlevski).
This organism, though resembling the spirillar forms of bacteria, is probably not one of that group
of vegetable parasites, but allied to the minute animal parasites known as Trypanosomes (see pp. 87
and 10S and figures). It is regarded as the “germ” or active cause of the terrible disease known as
syphilis.
parasites is a thing which has come
into existence, under our very eyes
and hands, within the last fifty years.
The parasite, and much of its nature
and history, has been discovered in the
case of splenic fever, leprosy, phthisis,
diphtheria, typhoid fever, glanders,
cholera, plague, lockjaw, gangrene,
septic poisoning (of wounds), puerperal
fever, malaria, sleeping sickness, and
some other diseases which are fatal to
man. In some cases the knowledge
anti-toxins appropriate to each disease,
which have to be injected into the
blood as the means of either cure or
protection. But why should we be
content to wait long years, even
centuries, for this control, when we
can have it in a few years ? If more
men and abler men were employed to
study and experiment on this matter,
we should soon make an end of all
infectious disease. Is there anyone,
man or woman, who would not wish
�22
HATUBE’S INSUBEENT SON_________________ .
to contribute to the removal from
human life of the suffering and un
certainty due to disease, the anguish
and misery caused by premature
death ? Yet nothing is done by those
who determine the expenditure of the
revenues of great States towards deal
ing adequately with this matter.
1 As little is the question of the use and
abuse of food and drink dealt with, as yet, by
civilised Man. As in many other matters
Man has carried into his later crowded,
artificial, Nature-controlling life habits and
tendencies derived from savage prehistoric
days, so has he perpetuated ways of feeding
which are mere traditions from his early
“ animal ” days, and have never been seriously
called in question and put to proof, The
persistence under new conditions of either
habit or structure which belonged to old con
ditions may be attended with great danger
and difficulty to an organism which changes,
as Man does, with great rapidity important
features in its general surroundings and mode
of life. This is in efiect MetschnikoS’s doc
trine of “ disharmonies.” It is probable that
in very early days, when a tribe of primitive
men killed a mammoth, they all rushed on
to the dead monster and gorged as much of
its flesh as they could swallow (cooked or
possibly uncooked). They had to take in
enough to last for another week or two—that
is to say, until another large animal should
be trapped and slain. Accordingly he who
could eat most would be strongest and best
able to seize a good share when the next
opportunity arrived, and it naturally became
considered an indication of strength, vigour,
and future prosperity to be capable of gorging
large quantities of food. By means of the
phrases “ enjoying a good appetite,” or a
good trencherman,” or other such approving
terms, civilised society still encourages the
heavy feeder. The poorer classes always con
sider a ravenous appetite to be an indication
of strength and future prosperity in a child.
Most healthy men, and even many women, m
Western Europe attack their food and swallow
it without sufficient mastication, and as
though they did not hope to get another
chance of feeding for a week or two to come.
Medical men have never ventured to inves
tigate seriously whether civilised man is
doing best for his health in behaving like a
• savage about his food. It is their business to
attend to the patient with a disordered diges
tion, but not to experiment upon the amount
of food of various kinds which the modern
man should swallow in order to avoid indiges-
15,—The Increase of Human
Population.
Whilst there is a certainty of Man’s
power to remove all disease from his
life, a difficulty which he has already
created for himself will be thereby in
creased. That difficulty is the increase
of human population beyond the
capacity of the earth’s surface to
provide food and the other necessities
of life. By rebelling against Nature’s
method Man has made himself the
tion and yet supply his alimentary needs.
No individual can possibly pay medical men
to make these observations. It is the business
of the State to do so, because such knowledge
is not only needed by the private citizen, but
is of enormous importance in the manage
ment of armies and navies, in the victualling
of hospitals, asylums, and prisons, lhousands of tons of preserved meat have been
wasted in recent wars because the reckless
and ignorant persons who purchased the pre
served meat to feed soldiers had never taken
the trouble to ascertain whether preserved
meat can be eaten by a body of men as a
regular and chief article of diet. It appears
that certain methods of preserving meat
render it innutritious and impossible as a
It is probable from recent experiment that
we all, except those unfortunate few who do
not get enough, eat about twice as much as
we require, and that the superfluous quantity
swallowed not only is wasted, but is actually
a cause of serious illness and suffering. 1
surely is an urgent matter that these questions
about food should be thoroughly investigated
and settled. In the opinion of the most
eminent physiologist of the United States
(Professor Bowditch), we shall never establish
a rational and healthy mode of feeding our
selves until we give up the barbarous but to
some persons pleasant custom of converting
the meal into a social function ; we are thus
tempted into excess. Only long and„extensive
experiment can provide us with definite an
conclusive information on this matter, whic
is far more important than at firs sg
seems to be. And similarly with rega^d ?2
the admittedly serious question of alcohol
only very extensive and authoritative exper
ment will suffice to show mankind whether 1
is a wise and healthy thing to take it in small
quantities, the exact limits of which must be
stated, or to reject it altogether.
.lUfi-
�NATURE'S INSURGENT SON
only animal which constantly increases
in numbers. Whenever disease is con
trolled his increase will be still more
rapid than at present. At the same
time, no attempt at present has been
made by the more advanced com
munities of civilised men to prevent
the multiplication of the weakly or
of those liable to congenital disease.
Already something like a panic on this
subject has appeared in this country.
Inquiries have been conducted by
public authorities. But the only pos
sible method of dealing with this
matter, and in the first place of
estimating its importance as imme
diate or remote, has not been applied.
Man can only deal with this difficulty,
created by his own departure from
Nature—to wrhich he can never return
—by thoroughly investigating the laws
of breeding and heredity, and pro
ceeding to apply a control to human
multiplication based upon certain and
indisputable knowledge.
It may be a century, or it may be
more than five centuries, before the
matter would, if let alone, force itself
upon a desperate humanity, brutalised
by overcrowding and the struggle for
food. A return to Nature’s terrible
selection of the fittest may, it is con
ceivable, be in this way in store for
us. But it is more probable that
humanity will submit, before that con
dition occurs, to a restriction by the
community in respect of the right to
multiply with as good a grace as it
has given up the right to murder and
to steal. In view of this, Man must,
in entering on his kingdom, at once
proceed to perfect those studies as
to the transmission of qualities by
heredity which have as yet been only
23
roughly carried out by breeders of
animals and horticulturists.
There is absolutely no provision for
this study in any civilised community,
and no conception among the people
or their leaders that it is a matter
which concerns anyone but farmers.1
16.—An Untouched Source of Energy.
The applications of steam and elec
tricity have so far astonished and
gratified the rebel Man that he is
sometimes disposed to conclude that
he has come to the end of his power
of relieving himself from the use of his
own muscles for anything but refined
movements and well-considered health
giving exercises. One of the greatest
of chemical discoverers, M. Berthelot
(who died in 1909), has, however,
recently pressed on our attention the
question of the possibility of tapping
the central heat of the earth, and
making use of it as a perennial source
of energy. Many competent physicists
have expressed the opinion that the
mechanical difficulties of such a boring
as would be necessary are insuperable.
No one, however, would venture to
prophesy, in such a matter as this,
that what is prevented by insuperable
obstacles to-day may not be within
our powers in the course of a few
years.
17 .—Spectilations as to the Martians.
Such audacious control of the re
sources of our planet is suggested as
a possibility, a legitimate hope and
1 [A few private organisations with this
object in view have come into existence
within the last five years, but their resources
are altogether inadequate. Results of value
cannot be obtained without the expenditure
of much money.]
�24
NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
aim, by recent observations and specu
lations as to our neighbour, the planet
Mars. I do not venture to express
any opinion as to the interpretation of
the appearances revealed by the tele
scope on the surface of the planet
Mars, and, indeed, would take the
most sceptical attitude until further
information is obtained. But the in
fluence of these statements about Mars
on the imagination and hopes of Man
cally filled with water* which is derived
from the polar snow-caps of the planet
at the season of greatest polar heat.
It is suggested that Mars is inhabited
by an intelligent population, not neces
sarily closely similar to mankind, but,
on the contrary, unlike mankind in
proportion as the conditions of Mars
are unlike those of the Earth, and
that these inhabitants have con
structed, by their own efforts, the
enormous irrigation works
upon which the fertility and
habitability of their planet,
at the present time, depend.
These speculations lead M.
Faguet, of the French Aca
demy, to further reflections.
Not only must the Martians,
who have carried out this
vast manipulation of a
planet, be far in advance
of the inhabitants of the
Earth in intelligence and
mechanical power, as a re
sult of the greater age of
their planet and the longer
continuance there of the
evolution of an intelligent
Fig. 7.
race, but such a vast work
.Drawing of Mars in November with Long. 156° on the meri
dian, showing the “Mare Sirenum” (the shaded sickle-shaped
and its maintenance would
area), connected with a network of “canals” showing “spots”
or oases ” at the intersections of the canals and a system of
seem to imply a complete
spherical triangles as the form of the meshwork.—From
Mars,” by Perceval Lowell.
unanimity among the popu
lation—a world-wide peace
seems to me to possess considerable and common government. Since we
interest. The markings on the surface can imagine such a result of the
of the planet Mars, which have been prolonged play of forces in Mars
interpreted as a system of canals, have similar to those at work in our own
been known and discussed for many Earth, and even obtain some slight
years (see Bigs. 7 and 8). It has confirmation of the supposition, may
recently been observed that these we not indulge in the surmise
canals undergo a recurrent seasonal that some such future is in store
change of appearance consistent with for Man; that he may be able here
the hypothesis that they are periodi after to ' deal with great planetary
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
25
nings and its limitations, than it is
for him to know the minutest details
of the workings of Nature. Just as
much in the one case as in the other,
it is impossible for him to trust to the
imperfect analysis made by ancient
races of men, and the traditions and
fancies handed down in old writings—
produced by generations who had not
18.—The Investigation of the Human arrived at the method of investigation
Mind.
which we now can apply. Experiment
In such a desultory survey
as that on which I have ven
tured of Man’s kingdom and
its dangers, it occurs to me to
mention another area upon
which it seems urgent that the
activities of Nature-searchers
should be immediately turned
with increased power and num
ber. The experimental study
of his body and of that of ani
mals has been carried far, and
with valuable results, by in
quiring Man. But a singu
larly small amount of atten
tion has as yet been given to
the investigation of Man’s
mind as a natural phenome
Fig. 8.
non, and one which can be
Drawing
seen
better understood to the im 325° on the of Mars asby Mr. on November 18,1894 (Long.
meridian)
Perceval Lowell at the Flag
staff Observatory, Arizona, U.S.A., showing ‘ twin” or
mense advantage of the race.
“ double ” canals, connected northwards with the “ Mare
The mind of Man—it mat Icarium.” The two figures here reproduced give only a
small portion of the system of canals, oases, and seas of
ters not, for my immediate the planet Mars mapped by Mr. Lowell.
argument, whether it be re
garded as having arisen normally or upon the mental processes of animals
abnormally from the mind of animals and of Man is greatly needed. Only
—is obviously the one and all-powerful here and there has anything been done
instrument with which he has con in this direction. Most promising
tended, and is destined hereafter to results have been obtained by such
contend, against extra-human Nature. observations as those on hypnotism
It is no less important for him to know and on various diseased and abnormal
the quality, the capacity, the mode of states of the brain. But the subject
operation of this instrument, its begin is so little explored that wild and
factors to his own advantage, and not
only draw heat from the bowels of the
earth for such purposes as are at
present within his scope, but even so
as to regulate, at some distant day,
ths climates of the earth’s surface, and
the winds and the rain which seem
now for ever beyond his control ?
�26
NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
untested assertions as to the powers of
the mind are current, and have given
rise to strange beliefs, accepted by
many seriously intentioned men and
women. We boldly operate upon the
minds of children in our systems of
education without really knowing what
we are doing. We blindly assume that
the owners of certain minds, tradi
tionally trained in amusing elegancies,
are fit to govern their fellow-men and
administer vast provinces ; we assume
that the discovery and comprehension
of Nature’s processes must be the
work of very few and peculiar minds ;
that if we take care of the body the
mind will take care of itself. We
know really nothing of the heredity of
mental qualities, nor how to estimate
their presence or absence in the young
so as to develop the mind to greatest
advantage. We know the pain and
the penalty of muscular fatigue, but
we play with the brains of young and
old as though they were indestructible
machinery. What is called experi
mental psychology is only in its in
fancy ; but it is of urgent necessity
that it should be systematically pur
sued by the application of public funds,
in order that Man may know how to
make the best use of his only weapon
in his struggle to control Nature.
19.—Man’s Delay: Its Cause and
Remedy.
Even the slight and rapid review
just given of Man’s position, face to
face with Nature, enables us to see
what a tremendous step he has taken,
what desperate conditions he has
created, by the wonderful exercise of
his will; how much he has done and
can do to control the order of Nature,
and how urgent it is, beyond all that
words can say, for him to apply his
whole strength and capacity to gaining
further control, so that he may accom
plish his destiny and escape from
misery.
It is obvious enough that Man is at
present doing very little in this direc
tion ; so little that one seeks for an
explanation of his apathy, his seeming
paralysis.
The explanation is that the masses
of the people, in civilised as well as
uncivilised countries, are not yet aware
of the situation. When knowledge on
this matter reaches, as it inevitably
will in time, to the general population,
it is certain that the democracy will
demand that those who expend the
resources of the community, and as
Government officials undertake the
organisation of the national defence
and other great public services for the
common good, shall put into practice
the power of Nature-control which
has been gained by mankind, and
shall exert every sinew to obtain
more. To effect this the democracy
will demand that those who carry on
public affairs shall not be persons
solely acquainted with the elegant
fancies and stories of past ages, but
shall be trained in the acquisition of
natural knowledge and keenly active
in the skilful application of Nature
control to the development of the well
being of the community.
It would not be necessary to wait
for this pressure from below were the
well-to-do class — which in most
modern States exercises so large an
influence both in the actual adminis
tration of Governments and by example
—so situated as to be in any way
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
aware of the responsibilities which
rest upon it. Traditional education
has, owing to causes which are not far
to seek, deprived the well-to-do class
of a knowledge of, and interest in,
Man’s relation to Nature, and of his
power to control natural processes.
During the whole period of the growth
of Man’s knowledge of Nature—that is
to say, ever since the days of Bruno—
the education of the well-to-do has
been directed to the acquirement of
entertaining information and elegant
accomplishments, whilst “useful know
ledge ” has been despised and obtained
when considered necessary from lowerclass “ workmen ” at workmen’s wages.
It is of course not to be overlooked
that there have been notable excep
tions to this, but they have been excep
tions. Even at the present day, in
some civilised States, a body of clerks,
without any pretence to an education
in the knowledge of Nature, headed by
gentlemen of title, equally ignorant,
are entrusted with, and handsomely
paid and rewarded for, the superinten
dence of the armies, the navies, the
agriculture, the public works, the
fisheries, and even the public educa
tion of the State. When compelled
to seek the assistance of those who
have been trained in the knowledge of
Nature (for even in these States there
are a few such eccentric persons to be
found), the officials demand that such
assistance shall be freely given to them
without pay, or else offer to buy the
knowledge required at the rate paid to
a copying clerk.
This state of things is not one for
which it is possible to blame those
who, in blissful ignorance, contentedly
perform what they consider to be their
27
duty to their country. There are,
however, in many States institutions,
of vast influence in the education of
the whole community, known as
Universities. In many countries they
as well as the schools are directly con
trolled by the State. In England,
however, we are happy in having free
Universities, the older of which, though
in some important respects tied down
by law, yet have the power to deter
mine almost absolutely, not only what
shall be studied within their own walls,
but what shall be studied in all the
schools of the country frequented by
the children of the well-to-do.
It is the pride of our ancient Univer
sities that they are largely, if not ex
clusively, frequented by young men of
the class who are going to take an
active part in the public affairs of the
country — either as politicians and
statesmen, as governors of remote
colonies, or as leaders of the great
professions of the Church, the Law,
and Medicine. It would seem, then,
that if these Universities attached a
greater, even a predominant, import
ance to the studies which lead to the
knowledge and control of Nature, the
schools would follow their example,
and that the governing class of the
country would become acquainted with
the urgent need for more knowledge of
the kind, and for the immediate appli
cation in public affairs of that know
ledge which exists.
It would seem that in Great Britain,
at any rate, it would not be necessary,
were the Universities alive to the situa
tion, to await the pressure of demo
cracy, but that a better and more
rapid mode of development would
obtain; the influential and trusted
�28
NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
leaders of the community would set
the example in seeking and using for
the good of the State the new know
ledge of Nature. The world has seen
with admiration and astonishment the
entire people of Japan follow the
example of its governing class in the
almost sudden adoption of the know
ledge and control of Nature as the
purpose of national education and the
guide of State administration. It is
possible that in a less rapid and
startling manner our old Universities
may, at no distant date, influence the
intellectual life of the more fortunate
of our fellow-citizens, and consequently
of the entire community. The weari
ness which is so largely expressed at
the present day in regard to human
effort—whether it be in the field of
politics, of literature, or of other art,
or in relation to the improvement of
social organisation and the individual
life—is possibly due to the fact that
we have exhausted the old sources of
inspiration, and have not yet learnt to
believe in the new. The “ return to
Nature,” which is sometimes vaguely
put forward as a cure for the all
pervading tcedium of this age, is
perhaps an imperfect expression of the
truth that it is time for civilized Man
not to return to the “ state of Nature,”
but to abandon his retrospective atti
tude and to take up whole-heartedly
the kingdom of Nature which it is his
destiny to rule. New hope, new life
will, when he does this, be infused
into every line of human activity:
Art will acquire a new impulse, and
politics become real and interesting.
To a community which believes in the
destiny of Man as the controller of
Nature, and has consciously entered
upon its fulfilment, there can be none
of the weariness and even despair
which comes from an exclusive wor
ship of the past. There can only be
encouragement in every victory gained,
hope and the realisation of hope.
Even in the face of the overwhelming
opposition and incredulity which now
unhappily have the upper hand, the
believer in the predestined triumph of
Man over Nature can exert himself to
place a contribution, however small,
in the great edifice of Nature-know
ledge, happy in the conviction that his
life has been worth living, has counted
to the good in the imperishable result.
20.—The Influence of Oxford.
If I venture now to consider more
specifically the influence exercised by
the University of Oxford upon the
welfare of the State and of the human
community in general, in view of the
conclusions which have been set forth
in what has preceded, I beg to say that
I do so with the greatest respect to the
opinions of others who differ from me.
When I say this I am not using an
empty formula. I mean that I believe
that there must be many University
men who are fair-minded and dis
interested, and have given special
attention to the matter of which I
wish to speak, and who are yet very
far from agreeing with me. I ask
them to consider what I have said,
and what I have further to say, in the
same spirit as that in which I approach
them.
It seems to me—and when I speak
of myself I would point out that I am
presenting the opinions of a large
number of educated men, and that
it will be better for me to avoid an
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
egotistical attitude-—it seems to us (I
prefer to say) that the University of
Oxford, by its present action in regard
to the choice and direction of subjects
of study, is exercising an injurious
influence upon the education of the
country, and especially upon the
education of those who will hereafter
occupy positions of influence, and will
largely determine both the action of
the State and the education and
opinions of those who will in turn
succeed them. The question has been
recently raised as to whether the
acquirement of a certain elementary
knowledge of the Greek language
should be required of all those who
desire to pursue their studies in this
University, and accordingly whether
the teaching of the elements of this
language should form a prominent
feature in the great schools of this
country. It seems to us that this is
only part of a much larger question—
namely, whether it is desirable to
continue to make the study of two
dead languages, and of the story of the
deeds of great men in the past, the
main, if not the exclusive, matter to
which the minds of the youth of the
well-to-do class are directed by our
schools and Universities. We have
come to the conclusion that this form
of education is a mistaken and injuri
ous one. We desire to make the chief
subject of education both in school
and in college a knowledge of Nature
as set forth in the sciences which are
spoken of as physics, chemistry, geo
logy, and biology. We think that all
education1 should consist, in the first
1 It is, perhaps, needful to point out that
what is aimed at is that the education of all
the youth of the country, both of pass-men
29
place, of this kind of knowledge, on
account of its commanding importance
both to the individual and to the
community. We think that every
man of even a moderate amount of
education should have acquired a
sufficient knowledge of these subjects
to enable him at any rate to appreciate
their value and to take an interest in
their progress and application to
human life. And we think further
that the ablest youths of the country
should be encouraged to proceed to
the extreme limit of present knowledge
in one or other branch of this know
ledge of Nature, so as to become
makers of new knowledge and the
possible discoverers of enduring im
provements in Man’s control of Nature.
No one should be educated so as to be
ignorant of the importance of these
things; and it should not be possible
for the greatest talent and mental
power to be diverted to other fields
of activity through the fact that the
necessary education and opportunity
in the pursuit of the knowledge of
Nature are withheld. The strongest
inducements in the way of reward
and consideration ought, we believe,
to be placed before a young man in the
direction of Nature-knowledge rather
than in the direction of other and far
less important subjects of study.
and of class-men, of girls as well as of boys,
of the rich as well as of the poor, should be
primarily directed to imparting an acquaint
ance with what we already possess in respect
of knowledge of Nature, and the training of
the pupil so as to enable him or her (a) to
make use of that knowledge, and (b) to take
part in gaining new knowledge of Nature, at
this moment needed but non-existent. This
does not involve the complete exclusion of
other subjects of instruction, to which about
one-third of the time and effort of school and
college life might be devoted.
�30
NATUBE’S INSUBGENT SON
In fact, we should wish to see the
classical and historical scheme of
education entirely abandoned, and its
place taken by a scheme of education
in the knowledge of Nature.
At the same time let me hasten to
say that few, if any, of us—and cer
tainly not he who writes these lines—
would wish to remove the acquirement
of the use of languages, the training in
the knowledge and perception of beauty
in literary art, and the feeding of the
mind with the great stories of the past
from a high and necessary position in
every grade of education.
It is a sad and apparently inevitable
accompaniment of all discussion of this
matter that those who advocate a great
and leading position for the knowledge
of Nature in education are accused of
desiring to abolish all study of litera
ture, history, and philosophy. This is,
in reality, so far from being the case
that we should most of us wish to see
a serviceable knowledge of foreign
languages, and a real acquaintance
with the beauties of English and
other literature, substituted for the
present unsuccessful efforts to teach
effectively either the language or
literature of the Greeks and Romans.
It should not be for one moment
supposed that those who attach the
vast importance which we do to the
knowledge of Nature imagine that
Man’s spirit can be satisfied by exclu
sive occupation with that knowledge.
We know as well as any that Man
does not live by bread alone. Though
the study of Nature is fitted to develop
great mental qualities—perseverance,
honesty, judgment, and initiative—we
do not suppose that it completes
Man’s mental equipment. Though
the knowledge of Nature calls upon,
excites, and gratifies the imagination
to a degree and in a way which is
peculiar to itself, we do not suppose
that it furnishes the opportunity for
all forms of mental activity. The
great joys of Art, the delights and
entertainment to be derived from the
romance and history of human char
acter, are not parts of it. They must
never be neglected. But are we not
justified in asserting that, for some
two hundred years or more, these
“ entertainments ” have been pursued
in the name of the highest education
and study to the exclusion of the far
weightier and more necessary know
ledge of Nature? “This should ye
have done, and yet not left the other
undone,” may justly be said to those
who have conducted the education of
our higher schools and Universities
along the pleasant lines of literature
and history, to the neglect of the
urgently needed “ improvement of
Natural Knowledge.” Nero was prob
ably a musician of taste and training,
and it was artistic and beautiful music
which he played while Rome was
burning; so, too, the studies of the
past carried on at Oxford have been
charming and full of beauty, whilst
England has lain, and lies, in mortal
peril for lack of knowledge of Nature.
It seems to be beyond dispute that
the studies, firstly of Latin, and much
more recently of Greek, were followed
in our Universities and in grammar
schools, not as educational exercises
in the use of language, but as keys to
unlock the storerooms—the books—in
which the knowledge of the ancients
was contained. So long as these keys
were needed, it was reasonable enough
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
that every well-educated man should
spend such time as was necessary in
providing himself with the key. But
now that the storerooms are empty,
now that their contents have been
appropriated and scattered far and
wide, in all languages of civilisation,
it seems to be merely an unreasoning
continuation of superannuated custom
to go on with the provision of these
keys. Such, however, is the force of
habit that it continues; new and
ingenious reasons for the practice are
put forward, whilst its original object
is entirely forgotten.
In the first place, it has come to be
regarded as a mark of good breeding,
and thus an end in itself, for a man to
have some first-hand acquaintance with
Latin and Greek authors, even when
he knows no other literature. It is a
fashion, like the wearing of a court
dress. This cannot be held to justify
the employment of most of the time
and energy of youth in its acquirement.
A second reason which is now put
forward for the practice is that the
effort and labour expended on the
provision of these keys—even though
it is admitted that they are useless—
are a wonderful and incomparably fine
exercise of the mind, fitting it for all
sorts of work. A theory of education
has been enunciated which fits in with
this defence of the continued attempt
to compel young men to acquire a
knowledge, however imperfect, of the
Latin and Greek languages. It is held
that what is called “ training the
mind ” is the chief, if not the only
proper, aim of education; and it is
declared that the continuation of the
study of those once useful, but now
useless, keys, Latin and Greek, is an
31
all-sufficient training. If this theory
were in accordance with the facts, the
conclusion in favour of giving a very
high place to the study so recom
mended would be inevitable. But the
facts do not support this theory.
Clever youths are taken and pressed
into the study of Greek and Latin,
and we are asked to conclude that
their cleverness is due to these studies.
On the other hand, we maintain that
though the study of grammar may be,
when properly carried out, a valuable
exercise, yet that it is easily converted
into a worthless one, and can never in
any case take the place of various other
forms of mental training, such as the
observation of natural objects, the
following out of experimental demon
stration of the qualities and relations
of natural bodies, and the devising and
execution of experiment as the test of
hypothesis. Apart from “ training,”
there is the need for providing the
mind with information as well as
method. The knowledge of Nature
is eagerly assimilated by young people,
and no training in mental gymnastics
can be a substitute for it or an excuse
for depriving the young of what is of
inestimable value and instinctively
desired.
The prominence which is assigned
to a familiarity with the details of
history, more especially of what may
be called biographical history, in the
educational system favoured by Oxford
seems to depend on the same causes
as those which have led to the main
tenance of the study of Greek and
Latin. To read history is a pleasant
occupation which has become a habit
and tradition. At one time men
believed that history repeats itself,
�32
NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
.and it was thought to be a proper
and useful training for one who would
take part in public affairs to store his
mind with precedents and picturesque
narratives of prominent statesmen and
rulers in far-off days and distant lands.
As a matter of fact, it cannot be shown
that any statesman, or even the hum
blest politician, has ever been guided
to useful action by such knowledge.
History does not repeat itself, and the
man who thinks that it does will be
led by his fragmentary knowledge of
stories of the past into serious blun
ders. To the fashionable journalist
such biographical history furnishes
the seasoning for his essays on
political questions of the day. But
this does not seem to be a sufficient
reason for assigning so prominent a
place in University studies to this
kind of history as is at present the
case. The reason, perhaps, of the
favour which it receives is that it is
one of the few subjects which a man
of purely classical education can
pursue without commencing his edu
cation in elementary matters afresh.
It would be a serious mistake1 to
suppose that those who would give a
complete supremacy to the study of
Nature in our educational system do
not value and enjoy biographical
history for what it is worth as an
entertainment; or, further, that they
do not set great value upon the scien
tific study of the history of the struggles
of the races and nations of mankind, as
a portion of the knowledge of the
evolution of Man, capable of giving
conclusions of great value when it has
been further and more thoroughly
treated as a department of Anthro
pology. What seems to us undesirable
is that mere stories and bald records
of certain peoples should be put for
ward as matter with which the minds
of children.and young men are to be
occupied, to the exclusion of the allimportant matters comprised in the
knowledge of Nature.
There are, it is well known, not a
few who regard the present institution
of Latin and Greek and so-called
History, in the pre-eminent place
which they occupy in Oxford and the
great schools of the country, as some
thing of so ancient and fundamental a
character that to question the wisdom
of that institution seems an odious
proceeding, partaking of the nature of
blasphemy. This state of mind takes
its origin in a common error, due to
the fact that a straightforward account
of the studies pursued in the University
during the last five hundred years has
never been written. Our present cur
riculum is a mere mushroom growth
of the last century, and has no claim
whatever to veneration. Greek was
studied by but a dozen or two
specialists in Oxford two hundred
and fifty years ago. In those days,
in proportion to what had been ascer
tained in that subject and could be
taught, there was a great and general
interest in the University in the know
ledge of Nature, such as we should
gladly see revived at the present day.
As a matter of fact, it is only within
1 I desire especially to draw the attention the last hundred years that the dogma
of those who have misunderstood and mis of compulsory Greek, and the value of
represented my estimate of the importance
of the study of History to this paragraph. what is now called a classical educa
—E. B. L.
tion, has been promulgated. These
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
things are not historically of ancient
date ; they are not essentials of
Oxford. We are, therefore, well
within our right in questioning the
wisdom of their continuance in so
favoured a position, and we are war
ranted in expressing the hope that
those who can change the policy of
the University and Colleges in this
matter will, at no distant day, do so.1
It is sometimes urged that Oxford
should contentedly resign herself to
the overwhelming predominance given
to the study of ancient elegance and
historic wisdom within her walls. It
ip said that she may well be reserved
for these delightful pursuits, whilst
newer institutions should do the hard
work of aiding Man in his conquest of
Nature. At first sight, such a pro
posal has a tempting character: we
are charmed with the suggestion that
our beautiful Oxford should be en
closed by a ring fence, and cut off for
ever from the contamination of the
world. But a few moments’ reflection
must convince most of us that such a
treatment of Oxford is an insult to
her, and an impossibility. Oxford is
not dead. Only a few decades have
passed—a mere fraction of her life
time—since she was free from the
oppression of grammar-school studies,
and sent forth Robert Boyle and Chris
topher Wren to establish the New
Philosophy of the Invisible College in
London. She seems, to some of us,
to have been used not quite wisely,
1 [It is practically certain now, in 1912—
after the failure of the attempts of the last
five years at reform of the University initiated
by its own members—that the Oxford of to
day cannot, owing to its law-enforced system
of government, reform itself. A change in
that mode of government is inevitable.]
33
perhaps not quite fairly, in the brief
period which has elapsed since that
time. Why should she not shake her
self free again, and give, hereafter,
most, if not the whole, of her wealth
and strength to the urgent work which
is actually pursued in every other
University of the world as a chief aim
and duty ?
The fact that Oxford attracts the
youth of the country to her, and so
determines the education offered in
the great schools, is a sufficient answer
to those who wish to perpetuate the
present employment of her resources
in the subvention and encouragement
of comparatively unimportant, though
fascinating (even too fascinating),
studies, to the neglect of the pressing
necessary knowledge of'Nature. Those
who enjoy great influence in the affairs
of the University tell us with pride
that Oxford not only determines what
our best schools shall teach, but has,
as a main preoccupation, the education
of statesmen, pro-consuls, leaders of
the learned professions, and members
of Parliament! Undoubtedly this
claim is well founded; and its truth
is the reason why we cannot be con
tent with the maintenance by the
University of the compulsory study of
Greek and Latin, and the neglect to
make the study of Nature an integral
and predominant part of every man’s
education.
To return to my original contention
—the knowledge and control of Nature
is Man’s destiny and his greatest need.
To enable future leaders of the com
munity to comprehend this, to per
ceive what the knowledge and control
of Nature are, and what are the steps
by which they are gained and increased,
�34
NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
is the duty of a great University. To
neglect this is to retard the approach
of well-being and happiness, and to
injure humanity.
I beg, finally, for toleration from
those who do not share my opinions.
I am well aware that they are open to
the objection that they partake more
of the nature of dreams of the future
than of practical proposals.1 That,
perhaps, may be accepted as my excuse
for indulging in them. There are, and
always have been, dreamers in Oxford;
and beautiful dreams they have
dreamed—some of the past, and some
of the future. The most fascinating
dreams are not, unfortunately, always
realised; but it is sometimes worth
while to tell one’s dream, for that may
bring it a step nearer to “ coming
true.”
1 The practical steps which would correspond
to the views enunciated in this discourse are
two. First, the formation of an educational
association to establish one or more schools
and colleges in which Nature-knowledge and
training in Nature-searching should be the
chief matters to which attention would be
given, whilst reasonable methods would also
be employed for implanting in the minds of
the students a love and understanding of
literature and other forms of art. Those who
desired such an education for their children
would support these schools and colleges, just
as, in the days of Anglican exclusiveness, the
Nonconformists and Roman Catholics sup
ported independent educational institutions.
The second practical step would be the forma
tion of a political union which would make
due respect to efficiency—that is to say, to a
knowledge of Nature—a test question in all
political contests. No candidate for Parlia
ment would receive the votes of the union
unless he were either himself educated in a
knowledge of Nature, or promised his support
exclusively to Ministers who would insist on
the utilisation of Nature-knowledge in the
administration of the great departments of
State, and would take active measures of a
financial character to develop, with far greater
rapidity and certainty than is at present the
case, that inquiry into and control of Nature
which is the indispensable factor in human
welfare and progress. Such a programme
will, I hope, at no distant date, obtain the
support of a sufficient number of Parlia
mentary voters to raise political questions of
a more genuine and interesting character than
those which many find so tedious at the
present moment.
[I have more than once been asked to write
on the question as to why, at the present
moment, there is so great a lack of “ efficient ”
men in all varieties and grades of occupation.
I venture to say that it is due to the mistaken
education administered in schools of all grades,
as well as in the Universities. A true and
skilfully graduated instruction in the facts
ascertained as to natural things, and m the
APPENDIX
I add here a brief statement published by me
in the “ Times,” May 17,1903, which touches
on the question of the origin of life and
certain theories of creation.
“ It seems to me that, were the dis
cussion excited by Lord Kelvin’s state
ments to the Christian Association at
University College allowed to close in
its present phase, the public would
be misled and injustice done both to
Lord Kelvin and his critics. I there
fore beg you to allow me to point out
what appear to me to be the signi
ficant features of the matter under
discussion.
“ Lord Kelvin, whose eminence as
a physicist gives a special interest to
his opinion upon any subject, made at
University College, or in his subse
quent letter to you, the following
statements:—“ 1. That ‘ fortuitous concourse of
atoms ’ is not an inappropriate des
cription of the formation of a crystal.
“ 2. That ‘ fortuitous concourse of
atoms ’ is utterly absurd in respect to
the coming into existence, or the
growth, or the continuation of the
methods by which they are ascertained, would
produce “ efficient ” men—men who can think
and act reasonably as the result of under
standing. But the teachers must first of all
be taught, and the teachers of the teachers !]
�NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
molecular combinations presented in
the bodies of living things.
“ 3. That, though inorganic pheno
mena do not do so, yet the phenomena
of such living things as a sprig of moss,
a microbe, a living animal—looked at
and considered as matters of scientific
investigation—compel us to conclude
that there is scientific reason for believ
ing in the existence of a creative and
directive purpose.
“ 4. That modern biologists are
coming once more to a firm accept
ance of something, and that is—a vital
principle.
“ In your article on the discussion
which has followed these statements
you declare that this (the opinions I
have quoted above) is ‘ a momentous
conclusion,’ and that it is a vital point
in the relation of science to religion.
“I do not agree with that view of
the matter, although I find Lord
Kelvin’s statements full of interest.
So far as I have been able to ascertain,
after many years in which these
matters have engaged my attention,
there is no relation, in the sense of
a connection or influence, between
science and religion. There is, it is
true, often an antagonistic relation
between exponents of science and ex
ponents of religion when the latter
illegitimately misrepresent or deny the
conclusions of scientific research or
try to prevent its being carried on, or,
again, when the former presume, by
magnifying the extremely limited con
clusions of science, to deal in a destruc
tive spirit with the very existence of
those beliefs and hopes which are
called ‘ religion.' Setting aside such
excusable and purely personal collisions
between rival claimants for authority
and power, it appears to me that
science proceeds on its path without
any contact with religion, and that
religion has not, in its essential quali
ties, anything to hope for, or to fear,
from science.
“ The whole order of nature, includ
35
ing living and lifeless matter—from
man to gas—is a network of mechanism
the main features and many details of
which have been made more or less
obvious to the wondering intelligence
of mankind by the labour and ingenuity
of scientific investigators. But no
sane man has ever pretended, since
science became a definite body of doc
trine, that we know, or ever can hope
to know or conceive of the possibility
of knowing, whence this mechanism
has come, why it is there, whither it
is going, and what there may or may
not be beyond and beside it which our
senses are incapable of appreciating.
These things are not ‘ explained ’ by
science, and never can be.
“ Lord Kelvin speaks of a ‘ fortuitous
concourse of atoms,’ but I must confess
that I am quite unable to apprehend
what he means by that phrase in the
connection in which he uses it. It
seems to me impossible that by for
tuitous ’ he can mean something which
is not determined by natural cause
and therefore is not part of the order
of nature. When an ordinary man
speaks of a concourse having arisen
‘ by chance ’ or ‘ fortuitously ’ he means
merely that the determining conditions
which have led by natural causation
to its occurrence were not known to
him beforehand; he does not mean to
assert that it has arisen without the
operation of such determining condi
tions and I am quite unable to under
stand how it can be maintained that
‘ the concourse of atoms ’ forming a
crystal, or even a lump of mud, is in
any philosophic sense more correctly
described as ‘ fortuitous ’ than is the
concourse of atoms which has given
rise to a sprig of moss or an animal.
It would be a matter of real interest
to many of your readers if Lord Kelvin
would explain more precisely what he
means by the distinction which he
has, somewhat dogmatically, laid down
I between the formation of a crystal as
' ‘ fortuitous ’ and the formation of an
�36
NATURE’S INSURGENT SON
organism as due to ‘ creative and
directive purpose.’
‘ I am not misrepresenting what
Lord Kelvin has said on this subject
when I say that he seems to have
formed the conception of a creator
who, first of all, without care or fore
sight, has produced what we call
matter,’ with its necessary properties,
and allowed it to aggregate and crystal
lise as a painter might allow his
pigments to run and intermingle on
his palette; and then, as a second
effort, has brought some of these
elements together with ‘ creative and
directive purpose,’ mixing them, as it
were, with ‘ a vital principle ’ so as to
form living things, just as the painter
might pick out certain colours from
his confused palette and paint a
picture.
This conception of the intermittent
action of creative power and purpose
does not, I confess, commend itself to
me. That, however, is not so surpris
ing as that it should be thought that
this curious conception of the action
of creative power is of value to religion.
Whether the intermittent theory is a
true or an erroneous conception seems
to me to have nothing to do with
‘ religion ’ in the large sense of that
word so often misused. It seems to
me to,be a kind of mythology, and I
should have thought could be of no
special assistance to teachers of Chris
tianity. Such theories of divided
creative operations are traceable his
torically to polytheism.
Lastly, with reference to Lord
Kelvin’s statement that * modern bio
logists are coming once more to a firm
acceptance of something—and that is
a vital principle.” ’ I will not venture
to doubt that Lord Kelvin has such
persons among his acquaintance. On
the other hand, I feel some confidence
in stating that a more extensive ac
quaintance with modern biologists
would have led Lord Kelvin to perceive
that those whom he cites are but a
trifling percentage of the whole. I do
not myself know of anyone of admitted
leadership among modern biologists
who is showing signs of ‘ coming to a
belief in the existence of a vital
principle.’
Biologists were, not many years
ago, so terribly hampered by these
hypothetical entities—‘ vitality,’ ‘ vital
spirits,’ ‘ anima animans,’ ‘ archetypes,’
vis medicatrix,’ ‘ providential artifice,’
and others which I cannot now
enumerate—that they are very shy of
setting any of them up again. Physi
cists, on the other hand, seem to have
got on very well with their proble
matic entities, their ‘ atoms ’ and
ether,’ and ‘the sorting demon of
Maxwell.’ Hence,perhaps, Lord Kelvin
offers to us, with a light heart, the
hypothesis of a ‘ vital principle ’ to
smooth over some of our admitted
difficulties. On the other hand, we
biologists, knowing the paralysing in
fluence of such hypotheses in the
past, are as unwilling to have any
thing to do with ‘ a vital principle,’
even though Lord Kelvin erroneously
thinks we are coming to it, as we are
to accept other strange ‘ entities ’
pressed upon us by other physicists of
a modern and singularly adventurous
type. Modern biologists (I am glad
to be able to affirm) do not accept the
hypothesis of ‘ telepathy ’ advocated
by Sir Oliver Lodge, nor that of the in
trusions of disembodied spirits pressed
upon them by others of the same
school.
“We biologists take no stock in
these mysterious entities. We think
it a more helpful method to be patient
and to seek by observation of, and
experiment with, the phenomena of
growth and development to trace the
evolution of life and of living things
without the facile and sterile hypo
thesis of ‘ a vital principle.’ Similarly,
we seek by the study of cerebral
disease to trace the genesis of the
phenomena which are supposed by
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
37
some physicists who have strayed into I announcing the ‘ discovery ’ of ‘ tele
biological fields to justify them in I pathy ’ and a belief m ghosts.
Chapter II.
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE, 1881-1906
I PROPOSE to give in the following
pages an outline of the advance of
science in the twenty-five years which
immediately preceded the writing of
them. It is necessary to distinguish
two main kinds of advancement, both of
which are important. Francis Bacon
gave the title Advancement of Learning
to that book in which he explained
not merely the methods by which the
increase of knowledge was possible,
but advocated the promotion of know
ledge to a new and influential position
in the organisation of human society.
His purpose, says Dean Church, was
“ to make knowledge really and intel
ligently the interest, not of the school
or the study or the laboratory only,
but of society at large.” So that in
surveying the advancement of science
in the past quarter of a century we
should ask not only what are the new
facts discovered, the new ideas and
conceptions which have come into
activity, but what progress has science
made in becoming really and intelli
gently the interest of society at large.
Is there evidence that there is an
increase in the influence of science on
the lives of our fellow-citizens and in
the great affairs of the State ? Is
there an increased provision for secur
ing the progress of scientific investiga
tion in proportion to the urgency of
its need or an increased disposition to
secure the employment of really com
petent men trained in scientific inves
tigation for the public service ?
1.—The Increase of Knowledge in the
Several Branches of Science.
The boundaries of my own under
standing and the practical considera
tion of what is appropriate to a brief
essay must limit my attempt to give to
the general reader some presentation
of what has been going on in the
workshops of science in this last
quarter of a century. My point of
view is essentially that of the
naturalist, and in my endeavour to
speak of some of the new things and
new properties of things discovered in
recent years I find it is impossible to
give any systematic or detailed account
of what has been done in each division
of science. All that I shall attempt is
to mention some of the discoveries
which have aroused my own interest
and admiration. I feel, indeed, that it
is necessary to ask forbearance for my
presumption in daring to treat of so
many subjects in which I cannot claim
to speak as an authority, but only as a
�38
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
younger brother full of fraternal pride
and sympathy in the glorious achieve
ments of the great experimentalists
and discoverers of our day.
As one might expect, the progress of
the Knowledge of Nature (for it is to
that rather than to the historical,
moral, and mental sciences that
English-speaking people refer when
they use the word “science”) has
consisted, in the last twenty-five years,
in the amplification and fuller verifica
tion of principles and theories already
accepted, and in the discovery of
hitherto unknown things which either
have fallen into place in the existing
scheme of each science or have neces
sitated new views, some not very
disturbing to existing general concep
tions, others of a more startling and,
at first sight, disconcerting character.
Nevertheless, I think I am justified in
saying that, exciting and of entrancing
interest as have been some of the
discoveries of the past few years, there
has been nothing to lead us to conclude
that we have been on the wrong path,
nothing which is really revolutionary
—that is to say, nothing which cannot
be accepted by an intelligible modifica
tion of previous conceptions. There
is, in fact, continuity and healthy
evolution in the realm of science.
Whilst some onlookers have declared
to the public that science is at an end,
its possibilities exhausted, and but little
of the hopes it raised realised, others
have asserted, on the contrary, that
the new discoveries—such as those
relating to the X-rays and to radium
—are so inconsistent with previous
knowledge as to shake the foundations
of science, and to justify a belief in
any and every absurdity of an un
restrained fancy. These two recipro
cally destructive accusations are due
to a class of persons who must be
described as the enemies of science.
Whether their attitude is due to
ignorance or traditions of self-interest,
such persons exist. It is one of the
objects of our scientific associations
and societies to combat those asser
tions, and to demonstrate, by the dis
coveries announced at their meetings
and the consequent orderly building up
of the great fabric of “natural know
ledge,” that Science has not come to
the end of her work—has, indeed, only
as yet given mankind a foretaste of
what she has in store for it—that her
methods and her accomplished results
are sound and trustworthy, serving
with perfect adaptability for the
increase of true discovery and the
expansion and development of those
general conceptions of the processes
of Nature at which she aims.
New Chemical, Elements.—There can
be no doubt that the past quarter of a
century will stand out for ever in
human history as that in which
new chemical elements, not of an
ordinary type, but possessed of truly
astounding properties, were made
known with extraordinary rapidity
and sureness of demonstration. In
teresting as the others are, it is the
discovery of radio-activity and of the
element radium which so far exceeds
all others in importance that we may
well account it a supreme privilege
that it has fallen to our lot to live in
the days of this discovery. No single
discovery ever made by the searchers
of Nature even approaches that of
radio-activity in respect of the novelty
of the properties of matter suddenly
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
revealed by it. A new conception of
the structure of matter is necessitated
and demonstrated by it; and yet, so
far from being destructive and discon
certing, thp new conception fits in
with, grows out of, and justifies the
older schemes which our previous
knowledge has formulated.
Before saying more of radio-activity,
which is apt to eclipse in interest every
other topic of discourse, I must recall
the discovery of the five inert gaseous
elements by Rayleigh and Ramsay,
which belongs to the period on which
we are looking back. It was found
that nitrogen obtained from the atmo
sphere invariably differed in weight
from nitrogen obtained from one of
its chemical combinations ; and thus
the conclusion was arrived at by
Rayleigh that a distinct gas is present
in the atmosphere, to the extent of 1
per cent., which had hitherto passed
for nitrogen. This gas was separated,
and to it the name argon (the lazy
one) was given, on account of its
incapacity to combine with any other
element. Subsequently this argon was
found by Ramsay to be itself impure,
and from it he obtained three other
gaseous elements equally inert—
namely, neon, krypton, and xenon.
These were all distinguished from one
another by the spectrum, the sign
manual of an element given by the
light emitted in each case by the gas
when in an incandescent condition. A
fifti. inert gaseous element was dis
covered by Ramsay as a constituent
of certain minerals which was proved
by its spectrum to be identical with
an element discovered thirty years
ago by Sir Norman Lockyer in the
atmosphere of the sun, where it exists
39
in enormous quantities. Lockyer had
given the name u helium ” to this new
solar element, and Ramsay thus found
it locked up in certain rare minerals in
the crust of the earth.
But by helium we are led back to
radium, for it was found by Sir
William Ramsay and Dr. Soddy in 1904
that helium is actually formed by a
gaseous emanation from radium. As
tounding as the statement seems, yet
that is one of the many unprecedented
facts which recent study has brought
to light. The alchemist’s dream is, if
not realised, at any rate justified. One
element is actually under our eyes con
verted into another; the element radium
decays into a gas which changes
into another element—namely, helium.
Radium, this wonder of wonders,
was discovered owing to the study of
the remarkable phosphorescence, as it
is called—the glowing without heat—
of glass vacuum-tubes through which
electric currents are made to pass.
Crookes, Lenard, and Rontgen each
played an important part in this
study, showing that peculiar rays or
linear streams of at least three distinct
kinds are set up in such tubes—rays
which are themselves invisible, but
have the property of making glass or
other bodies which they strike glow
with phosphorescent light. The cele
brated Rontgen-rays make ordinary
glass give out a bright green light;
but they pass through it, and cause
phosphorescence outside in various
substances, such as barium platinocyanide, calcium tungstate, and many
other such salts; they also act on a
photographic plate and “ discharge ”
an electrified body such as an electro
scope. But the most remarkable
�40
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
feature about them is their power
of penetrating substances opaque to
ordinary light. They will pass through
thin metal plates or black paper or
wood, but are stopped by more or less
dense material. Hence it has been
possible to obtain “ shadow pictures ”
or skiagraphs by allowing the invisible
Rontgen-rays to pass through a limb,
or even a whole animal, the denser
bone stopping the rays, whilst the
skin, flesh, and blood let them through.
They are allowed to fall (still invisible)
on to a photographic plate, when a
picture like an ordinary permanent
photograph is obtained by their
chemical action, or they may be
made to exert their phosphorescence
producing power on a glass plate
covered with a thin coating of a
phosphorescent salt such as barium
platino-cyanide, when a temporary
picture in light and shade is seen.
The rays discovered by Rontgen
were known as the X-rays, because
their exact nature was unknown. Other
rays studied in the electrified vacuum
tubes are known as cathode rays or
radiant corpuscles, and others, again,
as the Lenard rays.
It occurred to M. Henri Becquerel,
as he himself tells us, to inquire
whether other phosphorescent bodies
besides the glowing vacuum-tubes of
the electrician’s laboratory can emit
penetrating rays like the X-rays. I
say <! other phosphorescent bodies,”
for this power of glowing without heat
—of giving out, so to speak, cold light
—is known to be possessed by many
mineral substances. It has become
familiar to the public in the form of
“ phosphorescent paint,” which con
tains sulphide of calcium, a substance
which shines in the dark after expo
sure to sunlight—that is to say, is
phosphorescent. Other sulphides and
the minerals fluor-spar, apatite, some
gems, and, in fact, a whole list of sub
stances have, under different condi
tions of treatment, this power of
phosphorescence or shining in the
dark without combustion or chemical
change. All, however, require some
special treatment, such as exposure to
sunlight or heat or pressure, to elicit
the phosphorescence, which is of short
duration only. Many of the com
pounds of a somewhat uncommon
metallic element called uranium, used
for giving a fine green colour to glass,
are phosphorescent substances, and it
was, fortunately, one of them which
Henri Becquerel chose for experiment.
Henri Becquerel is professor in the
Jardin des Plantes of Paris ; his labora
tory is a delightful old-fashioned build
ing, which had for me a special interest
and sanctity when, a few years ago, I
visited him there, for, a hundred years
before, it was the dwelling-house of
the great Cuvier. Here Henri Bec
querel’s father and grandfather—men
renowned throughout the world for
their discoveries in mineralogy, elec
tricity, and light—had worked, and
here he had himself gone almost daily
from his earliest childhood. Many an
experiment bringing new knowledge
on the relations of light and electricity
had Henri Becquerel carried out in
that quiet old-world place before the
day on which, about eighteen years
ago,1 he made the experimental inquiry,
“ Does uranium give off penetrating
rays like Rontgen rays ? ” He wrapped
1 [ I have altered these numbers so as to
make them correct in 1912.]
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
a photographic plate in black paper,
and on it placed and left lying there
for twenty-four hours some uranium
salt. He had placed a cross, cut out
in thin metallic copper, under the
uranium powder, so as to give some
shape to the photographic print should
one be produced. It was produced.
Penetrating rays were given off by the
uranium: the black paper was pene
trated, and the form of the copper
cross was printed on a dark ground
(Fig. 9). The copper was also pene
trated to some extent by the rays from
the uranium, so that its image was
not left actually white. Only one
step more remained before Becquerel
made his great discovery. It was
known, as I stated just now, that
sulphide of calcium and similar sub
stances become, phosphorescent when
exposed to sunlight, and lose this
phosphorescence after a few hours.
Becquerel thought at first that perhaps
the uranium salt had acquired its
power similarly by exposure to light;
but very soon, by experimenting with
uranium salt long kept in the dark, he
found that the emission of penetrating
rays, giving photographic effects, was
produced spontaneously without any
immediately antecedent action of light,
heat, or pressure upon the salt. The
emission of rays by this particular
sample of uranium salt has shown no
sign of diminution since this discovery.
The emission of penetrating rays by
uranium was soon found to be inde
pendent of its phosphorescence. Phos
phorescent bodies, as such, do not
emit penetrating rays. Uranium com
pounds, wThether phosphorescent or
not, emit, and continue to emit, these
penetrating rays, capable of passing
41
through black paper and in a less
degree through metallic copper. They
do not derive this property from the
action of light or any other treatment.
The emission of these rays discovered
by Becquerel is a new property of
matter. It is called “ radio-activity,”
and the rays are called Becquerel rays.
From this discovery by Becquerel
to the detection and separation of the
new element radium is an easy step
in thought, though one of enormous
Fig. 9.—Henri Becquerel’s Discovery
Radio-Activity.
of
Photographic print or skiagraph of a copper
Maltese Cross produced by uranium, salt placed
as a heap of powder on the surface of black
paper wrapped round a sensitive plate. Between
the paper and the uranium powder the fiat copper
cross was interposed. The rays from the uranium
salt have penetrated the black paper, but have
been intercepted to a large extent by the copper
cross—so that the sensitive silver plate is darkened
all about the cross-over an area corresponding
to that of the heap of uranium salt, but is left
pale where the copper figure blocked the path of
the active rays given off by the uranium, partially
but not wholly. It was thus proved that the rays
from the uranium salt can pass through blackened
paper and also, though to a less extent, through
a plate of copper.
labour and difficulty in practice. Pro
fessor Pierre Curie (whose name I
cannot mention without expressing
the grief caused to all men of science
by the sad accident by which his life
was taken) and his wife, Madame
Sklodowska Curie, incited by Bec
querel’s discovery, examined the ore
called pitch-blende, which is worked in
mines in Bohemia and is found also
in Cornwall. It is the ore from which
�42
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
all commercial uranium is extracted.
The Curies found that pitch-blende
has a radio-activity four times more
powerful than that of metallic uranium
itself. They at once conceived the
idea that the radio-activity of the
uranium salts examined by Becquerel
is due not to the uranium itself, but
to another element present with it in
variable quantities. This proved to
be in part true. The refuse of the
first processes by which in the manu
facturer’s works the uranium is ex
tracted from its ore, pitch-blende, was
found to contain four times more of
the radio-active matter than does the
pure uranium. By a long series of
fusions, solutions, and crystallisations
the Curies succeeded in “ hunting
down,” as it were, the radio-active
element. The first step gave them a
powder mixed with barium chloride,
and having 2,000 times the activity of
the uranium in which Becquerel first
proved the existence of the new pro
perty—radio-activity. Then step by
step they purified it to a condition
10,000 times, then to 100,000 times,
and finally to the condition of a
crystalline salt having 1,800,000 times
the activity of Becquerel’s sample of
uranium. The purification could not
be carried further, but the extraor
dinary minuteness of the quantity of
the pure radio-active substance ob
tained and the amount of labour and
time expended in preparing it may be
judged of from the fact that of one ton
of the pitch-blende ore submitted to
the process of purification only the
hundredth of a gram—the one-seventh
of a grain—remained.
The amount of radium in pitch
blende is one ten-millionth per cent.—
rarer than gold in sea-water. The
marvel of this story and of all that
follows consists largely in the skill
and accuracy with which our chemists
and physicists have learnt to deal with
such infinitesimal quantities, and the
gigantic theoretical results which are
securely posed on this pin-point of
substantial matter.
The Curies at once determined that
the minute quantity of colourless
crystals they had obtained was the
chloride of a new metallic element
with the atomic weight 225, to which
they gave the name “radium.” The
proof that radium is an element is
given by its “ sign-manual ” — the
spectrum which it shows to the ob
server when in the incandescent state.
It consists of six bright lines and three
fainter lines in the visible part of the
spectrum, and of three very intense
lines in the ultra-violet (invisible) part
(Fig. 10). A very minute quantity is
enough for this observation ; the lines
given by radium are caused by no
other known element in heaven or
earth. They prove its title to be
entered on the roll-call of elements.
The atomic weight was determined
in the usual way by precipitating the
chlorine in a solution of radium chloride
by means of silver. None of the
precious element was lost in the pro
cess, but the Curies never had enough
of it to venture on any attempt to pre
pare pure metallic radium. This is a
piece of extravagance no one has yet
dared to undertake. Altogether the
Curies did not have more than some
four or five grains of chloride of radium
to experiment with, and the total
amount prepared and now in the hands
of scientific men in various parts of
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
the world probably does not amount
to more than an ounce or two at most.
When Professor Curie lectured on
radium nine years ago at the Royal
Institution in London, he made use
of a small tube, an inch long and of
one-eightii bore, containing nearly the
43
whole of his precious store, wrenched
by such determined labour and con
summate skill from tons of black,
shapeless pitch-blende. On his return
to Paris, he was one day demonstrat
ing in his lecture - room with this
precious tube the properties of radium,
�u
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
when it slipped from his hands, broke,
and scattered far and wide the most
precious and magical powder ever
dreamed of by alchemist or artist of
romance. Every scrap of dust was
immediately and carefully collected,
dissolved, and re-crystallised, and the
disaster averted with a loss of but a
minute fraction of the invaluable
product.
Thus, then, we have arrived at the
discovery of radium—the new element
endowed in an intense form with the
new property, “radio-activity,” dis
covered by Becquerel. The wonder
of this powder, incessantly and without
loss, under any and all conditions
pouring forth, by virtue of its own
intrinsic property, powerful rays cap
able of penetrating opaque bodies, and
of exciting phosphorescence and acting
on photographic plates, can perhaps
be realised when we reflect that it is
as marvellous as though we should
dig up a stone which, without external
influence or change, continually poured
forth light or heat, manufacturing both
in itself, and not only continuing to do
so without appreciable loss or change,
but necessarily having always done so
for countless ages whilst sunk beyond
the ken of man in the bowels of the
earth.
Wonderful as the story is, so far it
is really simple and commonplace com
pared with what yet remains to be
told. I will only barely and abruptly
state the fact that radio-activity has
been discovered in other elements,
some very rare, such as actinium and
polonium; others more abundant and
already known, such as thorium and
uranium, though their radio-activity
was not known until Becquerel’s
pioneer discovery. It is a little
strange, and no doubt significant,
that, after all, pure uranium is found
to have a radio-activity of its own, and
not to have been altogether usurping
the rights of its infinitesimal associate.
The wonders connected with radium
really begin when the experimental
examination of the properties of a few
grains is made. What I am saying
here is not a systematic, technical
account of radium ; so I shall venture
to relate some of the story as it im
presses me.
Leaving aside for a moment what
has been done in regard to the more
precise examination of the rays emitted
by radium, the following astonishing
facts have been found out in regard
to it: (1) If a glass tube containing
radium is much handled or kept in
the waistcoat pocket, it produces a
destruction of the skin and flesh over
a small area—in fact, a sore place.
(2) The smallest trace of radium
brought into a room where a charged
electroscope is present causes the dis
charge of the electroscope. So power
ful is this electrical action of radium
that a very sensitive electrometer can
detect the presence of a quantity of
radium five hundred thousand times
more minute than that which can be
detected by the spectroscope (that is
to say, by the spectroscopic examina
tion of a flame in which minute traces
of radium are present). (3) Badium
actually realises one of the properties
of the hypothetical stone to which I
compared it giving out light and heat.
For it does give out heat, which it
makes itself incessantly and without
appreciable loss of substance or energy
(“ appreciable ” is here an important
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
qualifying term). It is also faintly
self-luminous. Fairly sensitive ther
mometers show that a few granules
of radium salt have always a higher
temperature than that of surrounding
bodies. Eadium has been proved to
give out enough heat to melt rather
more than its own weight of ice every
hour; enough heat in one hour to
raise its own weight of water from
the freezing-point to the boiling-point.
After a year and six weeks a gram of
radium has emitted enough heat to
raise the temperature of a thousand
kilograms of water one degree. And
this is always going on. Even a small
quantity of radium diffused through
the earth will suffice to keep up its
temperature against all loss by radia
tion ! If the sun consists of a fraction
of one per cent, of radium, this will
account for and make good the heat
that is annually lost by it in its present
greatly cooled condition.
This is a tremendous fact, upsetting
all the calculations of physicists as to
the duration in past and future of the
sun’s heat and the temperature of the
earth’s surface. The geologists and
the biologists have long contended that
some thousand million years must
have passed during which the earth’s
surface has presented approximately
the same conditions of temperature as
at present, in order to allow time for
the evolution of living things and the
formation of the aqueous deposits of
the earth’s crust. The physicists,
notably Professor Tait and Lord Kel
vin, refused to allow more than ten
million years (which they subsequently
increased to a hundred million), basing
this estimate on the rate of cooling of
a sphere of the size and composition
45
of the earth. They have assumed
that its material is self-cooling. But,
as Huxley pointed out, mathematics
will not give a true result when ap
plied to erroneous data. It has now,
within these last five years, become
evident that the earth’s material is
not absolutely self-cooling, but, on the
contrary, to some extent, self-heating.
And away go the restrictions imposed
by physicists on geological time. They
now are willing to give us, not merely
a thousand million years, but as many
more as we want.
And now I have to mention the
strangest of all the proceedings of
radium—a proceeding in .which the
other radio-active bodies, actinium
and thorium, resemble it. This pro
ceeding has been entirely the discovery
of Eutherford [now, 1912, Professor
in Manchester], and his name must be
always associated with it. Eadium (he
discovered) is continually giving off,
apart from and in addition to the
rectilinear darting rays of Becquerel,
an “ emanation ”—a gaseous “ emana
tion.” This “ emanation ” is radio
active—that is, gives off Becquerel
rays—and deposits “ something ” upon
bodies brought near the radium, so
that they become radio-active, and
remain so for a time after the radium
is itself removed. This emanation is
always being formed by a radium salt,
and may be most easily collected by
dissolving the salt in water, when it
comes away with a rush, as a gas.
Sixty milligrams of bromide of radium
yielded to Eamsay and Soddy .124
(or about one-eighth) of a cubic milli
metre of this gaseous emanation.
What is it? It cannot be destroyed
or altered by heat or by chemical
�46
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
agents; it is a heavy gas, having a
molecular density of 100, and it can
be condensed to a liquid by exposing
it to the great cold of liquid air. It
gives a peculiar spectrum of its own,
and is probably a hitherto unknown
inert gas—a new element similar to
argon.1 But this by no means com
pletes its history, even so far as ex
periments have as yet gone.
The
radium emanation decays, changes its
character altogether, and loses half its
radio-activity every four days. Pre
cisely at the same rate as it decays
the specimen of radium salt from
which it was removed forms a new
quantity of emanation, having just the
amount of radio-activity which has
been lost by the old emanation. All
is not known about the decay of the
emanation; but one thing is abso
lutely certain, having first been dis
covered by Ramsay and Soddy, and
subsequently confirmed by independent
experiment by Madame Curie. It is
this: After being kept three or four
days, the emanation becomes, in part
at least, converted into helium—the
light gas (second only in the list of
elements to hydrogen) found thirty
years ago by Lockyer in the sun,
and since obtained in some quantities
from rare radio - active minerals by
Ramsay ! The proof of the formation
of helium from the radium emanation
is, of course, obtained by the spectro
scope, and its evidence is beyond assail
(see Pig. 11). Here, then, is the par
tial conversion or decay of one element,
radium, through an intermediate stage
into another. And not only that, but
if, as seems probable, the presence of
helium indicates the previous presence
of radium, we have the evidence of
enormous quantities of radium in the
sun, for we know helium is there in
vast quantity. Not only that, but, in
asmuch as helium has been discovered
in most hot springs and in various radio
active minerals in the earth, it may be
legitimately argued that no inconsider
able quantity of radium is present in
the earth. Indeed, it now seems
probable that there is enough radium
in the sun to keep up its present con
tinual output of heat, and enough in
the earth to make good its present
loss of heat by radiation into space,
for an almost indefinite period. Other
experiments of a similar kind have
rendered it practically certain that
radium itself is formed by a somewhat
similar transformation of uranium, so
that our ideas as to the permanence
and immutability on this globe of the
chemical elements are destroyed, and
must give place to new conceptions.
It seems not improbable that the final
product of the radium emanation, after
the helium is removed, is, or becomes,
the metal lead!
It must be obvious from all the
foregoing that radium is very slowly,
but none the less surely, destroying
itself. There is a definite loss of
particles, which, in the course of
time, must lead to the destruction of
the radium; and it would seem that
the large new credit on the bank of
time given to biologists in consequence
of its discovery has a definite, if remote,
limit. With the quantities of radium
at present available for experiment, the
1 [Sir William Ramsay has recently given
the name “Niton,” meaning “the shining amount of loss of particles is so small,
and the rate so slow, that it cannot be
one,” to this element.]
�47
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
weighed by the most delicate balance.
Nevertheless, it has been calculated
that a given quantity of radium will
transform half of itself in about fifteen
maintenance of the earth’s tempera
ture. As a reply to this depreciatory
statement, we have the discovery by
Rutherford and others that radium is
Tube containing
Helium gas de
rived from the
mineral Clevelandite.
A
B
Tube of Radium
emanation, a
year old.
C
Tube of Hydro
gen gas for
comparison.
Fig. 11.
Photographs of the “ spark” spectra of A, Helium as extracted from the mineral Clevelandite, of B,
the Radium “ emanation ” after a year’s enclosure in the tube used, and of C, of hydrogen gas : copied
from the paper by Mr. F. Giesel in the Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, Vol. XXXIX.,
part 10.
The three photos are accurately super-imposed so as to show the coincident lines.
.
The spectrum B of the tube containing radium emanation is the one which we are comparing with
the other two. When the radium emanation was first enclosed there was only a small quantity of
helium developed in it, but after keeping for a year the quantity has greatly increased. After five
minutes’ “sparking” (passage of the electric spark through the tube) the chief lines of. helium become
evident but faint in intensity. The present photograph B was obtained after forty minutes’ sparking,
and one result of that longer “sparking ” has been that a minute quantity of water vapour in the tube
has been broken up—so as to yield the hydrogen spectrum, which is accordingly seen accompanying the
now strong and. brightly developed helium spectrum.
The lines of the spectrum B which correspond with those of hydrogen are at once recognised by the
juxtaposition (below) of the pure Hydrogen spectrum from another tube, C : the lines in B belonging to
and indicating helium are also recognised by comparison with the pure helium spectrum of the tube A
juxtaposed above. A very few of the lines in B must be due to other minimal impurities, as they are
not present either in A or C.
Thirteen lines of the helium spectrum are thus photographed and recognised in the radium
emanation.
The following lines are present in the photographic but invisible spectrum of radium (not given in
Fig. 10), viz., at 381’47 /x/x (the strongest line in the radium spectrum) and at 364'96 (a strong line).
In the photographic but invisible spectrum of helium there are three very faint lines between wave
length 447'2 and 443'7 (appearing as two only in our photograph); a moderately strong one at 438'8;
others at 414'4, at 412'1, at 402‘6, and 396'5 ; a very strong one is present, at 388'9, and a very faint one at
381'9. All these are seen in the photograph A and also in B. Special treatment and spectroscopes
reveal four other very faint lines in the helium spectrum—the one furthest in the invisible direction
(that is, of highest refrangibility and lowest wave-length) being placed at 318'6 (Soddy).
hundred years, and unless it were
being produced in some way all the
radium now in existence would dis
appear much too soon to make it an
important geological factor in the
continually being formed afresh, and
from that particular element in con
nection with which it was discovered
—namely, uranium. Hypotheses and
experiments as to the details of this
�48
THE ADVANCE OE SCIENCE
process are at this moment in full
swing, and in this connection results
of a momentous kind are thought by
some physicists to be not improbable
in the immediate future.
The delicate electric test for radio
activity has been largely applied in the
last few years to all sorts and condi
tions of matter. As a result, it appears
that the radium emanation is always
present in our atmosphere ; that the
air in caves is especially rich in it, as
are underground waters and the soil.
Tin-foil, glass, silver, zinc, lead, copper,
platinum, and aluminium are all of
them slightly radio-active. The ques
tion has been raised whether this
widespread radio-activity is due to the
wide dissemination of infinitesimal
quantities of strong radio-active ele
ments, or whether it is the natural
intrinsic property of all matter to
emit Becquerel rays. This is the
immediate subject of research.
Over and above the more simply
appreciable facts which I have thus
narrated there comes the necessary
and difficult inquiry: What does it all
mean ? What are the Becquerel rays
of radio-activity? What must we
conceive to be the structure and
mechanism of the atoms of radium
and allied elements, which can not
only pour forth ceaseless streams of
intrinsic energy from their own
isolated substance, but are perpetu
ally, though in infinitesimal propor
tions, changing their elemental nature
spontaneously, so as to give rise to
other atoms which we recognise as
other elements ?
I cannot venture as an expositor
into this field. It belongs to that
wonderful group of men the modern |
physicists, who with an almost weird
power of visual imagination combine
the great instrument of exact state
ment and mental manipulation called
mathematics, and possess an ingenuity
and delicacy in appropriate experiment
which must fill all who even partially
follow their triumphant handling of
Nature with reverence and admiration.
Such men now or recently among us
are Kelvin, Clerk Maxwell, Crookes,
Rayleigh, and J. J. Thomson.
Becquerel showed early in his study
of the rays emitted by radium that
some of them could be bent out of
their straight path by making them
pass between the poles of a powerful
electro-magnet. In this way have
finally been distinguished three classes
of rays given off by radium: (1) the
alpha rays, which are only slightly
bent, and have little penetrative
power; (2) the beta rays, easily bent
in a direction opposite to that in
which the alpha rays bend, and of
considerable penetrative power; (3) the
gamma rays, which are absolutely un
bendable by the strongest magnetic
force, and have an extraordinary pene
trative power, producing a photographic
effect through a foot thickness of solid
iron.
The alpha rays are shown to be
streams of tiny bodies positively elec
trified, such as are given off by gas
flames and red-hot metals. The par
ticles have about twice the mass of a
hydrogen atom, and they fly off with
a velocity of 20,000 miles a second
—that is, 40,000 times greater than
that of a rifle-bullet. The heat pro
duced by radium is ascribed to the
impact of these particles of the alpha
rays.
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
The beta rays are streams of cor
puscles similar to those given off by
the cathode in a vacuum tube. They
are charged with negative electricity,
and travel at the velocity of 100,000
miles a second. They are far more
minute than the alpha particles. Their
mass is equal to the one-thousandth
of a hydrogen atom. They produce
the major part of the photographic
and phosphorescent effects of the
radium rays.
The gamma rays are apparently the
same, or nearly the same, thing as the
X-rays of Rontgen. They are probably
not particles at all, but pulses or waves
in the ether set up during the ejection
of the corpuscles which constitute the
beta rays. They produce the same
effects in a much smaller degree as do
the beta rays, but are more pene
trating.
The kind of conceptions to which
these and like discoveries have led the
modern physicist in regard to the
character of that supposed unbreakable
body the chemical atom—the simple
and unaffected friend of our youth—
are truly astounding. Nevertheless,
they are not destructive of our previous
conceptions, but rather elaborations
and developments of the simpler views,
introducing the notion of structure and
mechanism, agitated and whirling with
tremendous force, into what we for
merly conceived of as homogeneous or
simply built-up particles, the earlier
conception being not so much a posi
tive assertion of simplicity as a non
committal expectant formula awaiting
the progress of knowledge and the reve
lations which are now in our hands.
As I have already stated, the
attempt to show in detail how the
49
marvellous properties of radium and
radio-activity in general are thus
capable of a pictorial or structural
representation is beyond the limits of
the present essay ; but the fact that
such speculations furnish a scheme
into which the observed phenomena
can be fitted is what we may take on
the authority of the physicists and
chemists of our day.
Intimately connected with all the
work which has been done in the past
twenty-five years in the nature and
possible transformations of atoms is
the great series of investigations and
speculations on astral chemistry and
the development of the chemical
elements which we owe to the un
remitting labour during this period of
Sir Norman Lockyer.
Wireless Telegraphy.—Of great im
portance has been the whole progress
in the theory and practical handling
of electrical phenomena of late years.
The discovery of the Hertzian waves
and their application to wireless tele
graphy is a feature of this period,
though I may remind some of those
who have been impressed by these
discoveries that the mere fact of
electrical action at a distance is that
which hundreds of years ago gave to
electricity its name. The power which
we have gained of making an instru
ment oscillate in accordance with
a predetermined code of signalling,
although detached and a thousand
miles distant, does not really lend any
new support1 to the notion that the
1 It seems necessary to emphasise that I
here say merely that no “ new support ” is
given to the notion of so-called telepathy, a
support some persons have wrongly claimed.
I do not say that the notion is rendered less
likely to prove true than it was before. At
�50
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
old-time beliefs of thought-transference physical agents such as light and
and second sight are more than illu electricity for evidence as to the
sions based on incomplete observation arrangement of atoms in the molecules
and imperfect reasoning. For the im of the most diverse chemical com
portant factors in such human inter pounds. The study of “ valency ” and
course—namely, a signalling-instru its outcome, stereo-chemistry, have
ment and a code of signals—have not been the special lines in which ch emi sbeen discovered as yet in the structure try has advanced. As a matter of
of the human body, and have to be course hundreds, if not thousands, of
consciously devised and manufactured new chemical bodies have been pro
by man in the only examples of thought duced in the laboratory of greater or
transference over long distances at less theoretical interest. The discovery
present discovered or laid bare to of the greatest practical and industrial
experiment and observation.
importance in this connection is the
High and Low Temperatures.—The production of indigo by synthetical
past quarter of a century has witnessed processes, first by laboratory and then
a great development and application by factory methods, so as to compete
of the methods of producing both very successfully with the natural product.
low and very high temperatures. Sir Van Baeyer and Heumann are the
James Dewar, by improved apparatus, names associated with this remarkable
has produced liquid hydrogen and a achievement, which has necessarily
fall of temperature probably reaching dislocated a large industry which
to the absolute zero. A number of derived its raw material from British
applications of extremely low tem India.
Astronomy.—A biologist may well
peratures to research in various direc
tions has been rendered possible by refuse to offer any remarks on his
the facility with which they may now own authority in regard to this
be produced. Similarly high tempera earliest and grandest of all the
tures have been employed in continua sciences. I will, therefore, at once
tion of the earlier work of Deville and say that my friend the Savilian
others by Moissan, the distinguished Professor of Astronomy in Oxford
has turned my thoughts in the right
French chemist.
Progress in Chemistry.—In chemis direction in regard to this subject.
try generally the theoretical tendency There is no doubt that there has
guiding a great deal of work has been been an immense “revival” in astro
the completion and verification of the nomy since 1881; it has developed
“periodic law” of Mendeldeff; and, in every direction. The invention of
on the other hand, the search by the “ dry plate,” which has made it
possible to apply photography freely
the same time I have no hesitation in saying in all astronomical work, is the chief
that the “ stories ” related and regarded by cause of its great expansion. Photo
some persons as evidence of the existence of
telepathy are not to be accepted as free from graphy was applied to astronomical
the influence of illusion and erroneous obser work before 1881, but only with diffi
vation, even in those cases where the good
culty, and haltingly. It was the
faith of the narrator is admitted.
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
51
OS
T—1
6
Pm
This figure should be examined with a magnifying glass. It is a direct reproduction of a photograph
of a detached nebula and surrounding stars in Cygnus by Dr. Max Wolf of Heidelberg (reproduced bv
permission from the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. TjXIV, Plate 18, p. 839 q.v.).
rhe exposure was four hours on July 10,1901, with a camera the lenses of which have a diameter of
sixteen inches. The picture is enlarged so that the apparent diameter of the sun or moon would be
about is inch on the same scale (one minute, or sixtieth of a degree, equals one milimetre).
[ Continued on next page.
�52
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
dry-plate (see Fig. 12) which made long
exposures possible, and thus enabled
astronomers to obtain regular records
of faintly luminous objects such as
nebulae and star-spectra. Roughly
speaking, the number of stars visible
to the naked eye may be stated as
eight thousand; this is raised by the
use of our best telescopes to some
hundred million. But the number
which can be photographed is inde
finite, and depends on length of
exposure; some thousands of millions
can certainly be so recorded.
The serious practical proposal to
“ chart the sky ” by means of photo
graphy certainly dates from this side
of 1881. The Paris Conference of
1887, which made an international
scheme for sharing the sky among
eighteen observatories (still busy with
the work, and producing excellent
results), originated with photographs
of the comet of 1882, taken at the
Cape Observatory.
Professor Pickering, of Harvard, did
not join this co-operative scheme, but
has gradually devised methods of
charting the sky very rapidly, so
that he has at Harvard records of
the whole sky many times over; and
when new objects are discovered he.
can trace their history backwards for
more than a dozen years by reference
to his plates. This is a wonderful
new method, a mode of keeping record
of present movements and changes
which promises much for the future
of astronomy. By the photographic
method hundreds of new variable stars
and other interesting objects have
been discovered. New planets have
been detected by the hundred. Up
to 1881 two hundred and twenty were
known. In 1881 only one was found
—namely, Stephania, being No. 220,
discovered on May 19. Now a score
at least are discovered every year.
Over five hundred are now known.
One of these—-Eros (No. 433)—-is
particularly interesting, since it is
nearer to the sun than is Mars, and
gives a splendid opportunity for fixing
with increased accuracy the sun’s
distance from the earth. Two new
satellites to Saturn and two to Jupiter
have been discovered by photography
(besides one to Jupiter in 1892 by the
visual telescope of the Lick Observa
tory). One of the new satellites of
Saturn goes round that planet the
wrong way, thus calling for a funda
mental revision of our ideas of the
origin of the solar system.
The introduction of photography
has made an immense difference in
The “apparent diameter” of the sun or moon is about one in 115: that is to say, that a covering disc
of any size you like can be made exactly to coincide with and cover” the disc of the sun or moon
provided that you place it at a distance from the eye equal to 115 times its own diameter--thus a disc oi
an inch in diameter (say a halfpenny) will just “ cover ” the sun or moon if placed at a distance from tne
eye of a little less than ten feet, a threepenny piece will cover it at about six feet, and a disc of some
what less than half that size when held at arm’s length.
_ . .
The nebula (on the horizontal A A) is seen surrounded by a dark space—at the end of a lon& dark lane
or “ rift ” which reminds us of the track left by a snowball rolled along in the snow. Has the nebula in
some mysterious way swept up the stars in its journey through space? We cannot at present eitner
affirm or deny such interpretations.
.
,
,
o
One or two of the brightest of the surrounding stars might just be seen by an acute eye unaided oy a
telescope—but no more. The best existing telescopes would show only the large nebular body on tne
line A A, and the larger white spots; the finest dust-like particles are stars of which the existence is omy
demonstrated by prolonged photographic exposures such as this, with a lens which focuses its, image on
to the dry plate. The old “ wet-plate” would not remain wet sufficiently long to take the picture.
It should be borne in mind in looking at this picture that each of the minutest white spots is pro
bably of at least the same size as our 9VS sun; further, that each is probably surrounded by a planetary
system similar to our OW£P
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
spectroscopic work. The spectra of
the stars have been readily mapped
out and classified, and now the
motions in the line of sight of faint
stars
can
be
determined.
This
“motion in the line of sight,” which
was discernible but scarcely measur
able with accuracy before, now pro
vides one of the most refined methods
in astronomy for ascertaining the
dimensions and motions of the uni
verse. It gives us velocities in miles
per second instead of in an angular
unit to be interpreted by a very
imperfect knowledge of the star’s
distance. The method, initiated prac
tically by Huggins thirteen years
before, was in 1881 regarded by many
astronomers as a curiosity. Visual
observations were begun at Green
wich in 1875, but were found to be
affected by instrumental errors. The
introduction of dry plates, and their
application by Vogel in 1887, was the
beginning of general use of the method,
and line-of-sight work is now a vast
department of astronomical industry.
Among other by-products of the method
are the “ spectroscopic doubles,” stars
which we know to be double, and
of which we can determine the period of
revolution, though we cannot separate
them visually by the greatest telescope.
Work on the sun has been entirely
revolutionised by the use of photo
graphy. The last decade has seen the
invention of the spectro-heliograph—
which simply means that astronomers
can now study in detail portions of
the sun of which they could previously
only get a bare indication.
More of the same story could be
related, but enough has been said to
show how full of life and progress is
53
this most ancient and imposing of all
sciences.
A minor, though very important,
influence in the progress of astronomy
has been the provision, by the expendi
ture of great wealth in America, of
great telescopes and equipments.
In 1877 Sir George Darwin started
a line of mathematical research which
has been very fruitful and is of great
future promise for astronomy. As
recently as April, 1906, at the Royal
Astronomical Society, two important
papers were read—one by Mr. Cowell
and the other by Mr. Stratton—which
have their roots in Sir George Darwin’s
work. The former was led to suggest
that the day is lengthening ten times
as rapidly as had been supposed, and
the latter showed that in all probability
the planets had all turned upside down
since their birth.
And yet M. Brunetiere and his
friends wish us to believe that science
is bankrupt and has no new things in
store for humanity.
Geology.—In the field of geological
research the main feature in the past
twenty-five years has been the increas
ing acceptance of the evolutionary as
contrasted with the uniformitarian
view of geological phenomena. The
great work of Suess, Das Antlitz der
Erde, is undoubtedly the most import
ant contribution to physical geology
within the period. The first volume
appeared in 1885, and the impetus
which it has given to the science may
be judged of by the epithet applied to
the views for which Suess is respon
sible—“the New Geology.”
Suess
attempts to trace the orderly sequence
of the principal changes in the earth’s
crust since it first began to form. He
�Fig. 16.
Fig 13.—The Freshwater Jelly-fish of Regent’s Park (Lvmnocodium Sowerbu), magnified five times
linear It was discovered in the tropical lily tank of the Botanical Gardens in June, 1880, and swarmed
in great numbers year after year—then suddenly disappeared. It has since been found m similar tang
in Sheffield, Lyons, and Munich. Only male specimens were discovered, and the native home or tne
wonderful visitor is still unknown.
, ,
. .. . - ,
Big. 14.—The minute polyp attached to the rootlets of water plants—from which the jeiiy-nsn
Limnocodi/um was found to be “ budded off.”
.
,.
rn
Fig. 15.—One of the peculiar sense-organs from the edge of the swimming disc of Limnocodium. O,
cavity of capsule ; EC, ectoderm; EN, endoderm. Sense organs of identical structure are found m the
Freshwater Jelly-fish of Lake Tanganyika and in no other jelly-fish.
five
Fig. 16.—The Freshwater Jelly-fish of Lake Tanganyika (Lmnocmda Tangawyicae), magnified fa
times linear. Since its discovery in Tanganyika it has been found also in the Lake Victoria Nyanza and
pools in the Upper Niger basin.
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
Strongly opposes the old theory of
elevation, and accounts for the move
ments as due to differential collapse
of the crust, accompanied by folding
due to tangential stress. Among
special results gained by geologists in
the period we survey may be cited
new views as to the origin of the
crystalline schists, favouring a return
to something like the hypogene origin
advocated by Lyell; the facts as to
deep-sea deposits, now in course of
formation, embodied in the “ Challen
ger ” reports on that subject; the
increasing discrimination and tracking
of those minor divisions of strata
called “ zones the assignment of the
Olenellus fauna of Cambrian age to a
position earlier than that of the Paradoxides fauna ; the discovery of Eadiolaria in palaeozoic rocks by special
methods of examination, and the
recognition of Graptolites as indices
of geological horizons in lower palaeo
zoic beds. Glacially eroded rocks in
boulder-clays of permo-carboniferous
age have been recognised in many
parts of the world (e.g., Australia and
South Africa), and thus the view put
forward by W. T. Blanford as to the
occurrence of the same phenomena in
conglomerates of this age in India is
confirmed. Eozoon is finally aban
doned as owing its structure to an
organism. The oldest fossiliferous
beds known to us are still far from
the beginning of life. They contain a
highly developed and varied animal
fauna—and something like the whole
of the older moiety of rocks of aqueous
origin have failed as yet to present us
with any remains of the animals or
plants which must have inhabited the
seas which deposited them. The boring
55
of a coral reef initiated by Professor
Sollas at the Nottingham meeting of
the British Association in 1893 has
been successfully carried out, and a
depth of l,114i feet reached. Inform
ation of great value to geologists was
thus obtained.
Animal and Vegetable Morphography.
—Were I to attempt to give an account
of the new kinds of animals and plants
discovered since 1881, I should have
to offer a bare catalogue, for space
would not allow me to explain the
interest attaching to each. Explorers
have been busy in all parts of the
world — in Central Africa, in the
Antarctic, in remote parts of China,
in Patagonia and Australia, and on
the floor of the ocean, as well as in
caverns, on mountain tops, and in
great lakes and rivers. We have
learnt much that is new as to distri
bution ; countless new forms have
been discovered, and careful anatomical
and microscopical study conducted on
specimens sent home to our labora
tories. I cannot refrain from calling
to mind the discovery of the eggs of
the Australian duck-mole and spiny
ant-eater; the fresh-water jelly-fish
(Eigs. 13, 14, and 15) of Eegent’s
Park, the African lakes (Eig. 16), and
the Delaware Eiver; the marsupial
mole of Central Australia; the okapi
(Figs. 17, 18, and 19); the breeding
and transformations of the common
eel (Fig. 20); the young and adult of
the mud-fishes of Australia, Africa,
and South America ; the fishes of the
Nile and Congo ; the gill-bearing earth
worms and mud-worms; the various
forms of the caterpillar-like Peripatus ;
strange deep-sea fishes, polyps, and
sponges.
D
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
56
Fig. 17.
1’lG. 18.
Fig. 19.
Fig. 17. The giraffe-like animal called the Okapi, discovered by Sir Harry Johnston in the Congo
forest. Photograph of the skin of a female sent home by him in 1901, and now mounted and exhibited in
the Natural History Museum.
m
Fig. 18.—Two “ bandoliers " cut by the natives from the striped part of the skin (the haunches) and at
first supposed t(> be bits of the hide of a new kind of zebra. These were sent home by Sir Hk?ry Johnston
in iyuu.
.. FIG-19--Photograph of the skull of a male Okapi-showing the paired boney horn-cores-similar to
those of the giraffe, but connected with the frontal bones and not with the parietals as the horn-cores of
giraffes are.
°
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
57
The main result of a good deal of by very simple, remote, and not by
such investigation is measured by our proximate, ancestors with one another
increased knowledge of the pedigree of and with the ancestors of vertebrates.
The origin of the limbs of verte
organisms, in fact what used to be
called “ classification.” The anatomi brates is now generally agreed to be
cal study by the Australian professors correctly indicated in the ThatcherHill and Wilson of the
teeth and the foetus of the
Australian group of pouched
mammals—the marsupials
—has entirely upset pre
vious notions, to the effect
that these are a primitive
group, and has shown that
their possession of only one
replacing tooth is a reten
tion of one out of many
such teeth (the germs of
which are present), as in
placental mammals; and
further that many of these
marsupials have the nour
ishing outgrowth of the
foetus called the placenta
fairly well developed, so
that they must be regarded
as a degenerate side-branch
Fig. 20.
of the placental mammals,
Drawings
of the young of the
and not as primitive fore common Eelby Professor Grassi, of Rome, the natural size. The
and its metamorphosis. All of
transparent glass-like creature—
runners of that dominant uppermost figure represents a find” to marine naturalists, ana
which was known as a rare “
received the name Leptocephalus. Really it lives in vast
series.
numbers in great depths of the sea—five hundred fathoms ana
Speculations as to the more. It is hatched here from the eggs of the common eel
which descends from the ponds, lakes, and rivers of Europe in
ancestral connection of the order to breed in these great depths. The gradual change of the
Leptocephalus into a young eel or “ elver ” is shown, and was dis
great group of vertebrates covered by Grassi. The young eels leave the great depth of the
ocean and ascend the rivers in immense shoals of many hundred
with other great groups thousand individuals, and wriggle their way up banks and rocks
into the small streams and pools of the continent.
. ,
have been varied and in
The above figures were published by Professor Grassi in
November, 1896, in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science,
genious ; but most natura edited by E. Ray Lankester, and sold by Churchill and Sons.
lists are now inclined to
the view that it is a mistake to Mivart-Balfour theory, to the effect
assume any such connection in the that they are derived from a pair of
case of vertebrates of a more definite continuous lateral fins, in fish-like
character than we admit in the case of ancestors, similar in every way to the
starfishes, shell-fish, and insects. All continuous median dorsal fin of fishes.
The discovery of the formation of
these groups are ultimately connected
�58
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
true spermatozoa by simple unicellular
When we come to the results of the
animals of the group Protozoa is a digging out and study of extinct plants
startling thing, for it had always been and animals, the most remarkable
supposed that these peculiar repro results of all in regard to the affini
ductive elements were only formed by ties and pedigree of organisms have
multicellular organisms (Figs. 21, 22, been obtained. Among plants the
and 23). They have been discovered transition between cryptogams and
in some of the gregarina-like animal phanerogams has been practically
cules, the Coccidia, and also in the bridged over by the discovery that
blood-parasites.
certain fern-like plants of the Coal
Among plants one of the most im Measures — the Cycadofilices — sup
portant discoveries relates to these posed to be true ferns, are really seed
same reproductive elements, the sper bearing plants, and not ferns at all,
matozoa, which by botanists are called but phanerogams of a primitive type,
antherozoids. A great difference be allied to the cycads and gymnosperms.
tween the whole higher series of plants, They have been re-christened Pterithe flowering plants or phanerogams, dosperms by Scott, who, together with
and the cryptogams or lower plants, F. Oliver and Seward, has been the
including ferns, mosses, and algae, was chief discoverer in this most interesting
held to be that the latter produce field.
vibratile spermatozoa like those of
By their fossil remains whole series
animals, which swim in liquid and of new genera of extinct mammals
fertilise the motionless egg-cell of the have been traced through the tertiary
plant. Two Japanese botanists (and strata of North America, and their
the origin of this discovery from Japan, genetic connections established; and
from the University of Tokio, in itself from yet older strata of the same pro
marks an era in the history of science), lific source we have almost complete
Hirase and Ikeno, astonished the knowledge of several genera of huge
botanical world fifteen years ago by extinct Dinosauria of great variety of
showing that motile antherozoids or form and habit (Fig. 25).
spermatozoa are produced by two
The discoveries by Seeley at the
gymnosperms, the ging-ko tree (or Cape, and by Amalitzky in North
Salisburya) and the cycads (Fig. 24). Russia of identical genera of Triassic
The pollen-tube, which is the fertilis reptiles, which in many respects re
ing agent in all other phanerogams, semble the Mammalia and constitute
develops, in these cone-bearing trees, the group Theromorpha, is also a
beautiful motile spermatozoa, which prominent feature in the palseontology
swim in a cup of liquid provided for of the past twenty-five years (Fig. 26).
them in connection with the ovules. Nor must we forget the extraordinary
Thus a great distinction between Devonian and Silurian fishes discovered
phanerogams and cryptogams was and described by Professor Traquair
broken down, and the actual nature (Figs. 27 and 28). The most im
of the pollen-tube as a potential parent portant discovery of the kind of late
of spermatozoids demonstrated.
| years has been that of the Upper
�Fig.
21.
Fig.
23.
Fig. 24.
the normal male Sd;T»nd I fhX stages ^“the^^
Pt°Ulp Or °ctopus‘
is
UdFmg224-Pr^ 6t-b0Wfa female parasite with dermatozoa SroachingT
°a °U ltS SUrfaCe by
from the Lbtat^s
°n the SUrfaCe °f the unicellular parasite Coceidium oviforme,
in
°f the ™ice11^ Parasite EcMnospora found
Fig. 24. Spermatozoa (antlierozoicls) of Cvccls TcvolutcL qaah frnm fha
-p
.PermataPo« I.sph,ri„i.c™g.spl„l tocd
�60
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
Eocene and Miocene mammals of the
Egyptian Eayum, excavated by the
Egyptian Geological Survey and by
Dr. Andrews, of the Natural History
Museum, who has described and figured
which was abundant in Miocene and
Pliocene times in Europe and Asia,
and in still later times in America,
and survives at the present day in its
representatives the African and Indian
the remains. They include a huge
four-horned animal, as big as a rhino
ceros, but quite peculiar in its char
acters—the Arisinoitherium—and the
ancestors of the elephants, a group
elephant. One of the European ex
tinct elephants—the Tetrabelodon—
had, we have long known, an im
mensely long lower jaw with large
chisel-shaped terminal teeth. It had
�THE ADVANCE OE SCIENCE
61
Fig. 26.
Fig. 27.
Fig. 26.—Photograph of the skeleton of a large carnivorous Reptile from Triassic strata in North
Russia, discovered by Prof. Amalitzky and named by him Inostransevia. The head alone is two feet in
length.
Fig, 27.—Photographs of completed models of the Devonian fish Drepanaspis, from Devonian slates
of North Germany, worked out by Professor Traquair. The models are in the Natural History Museum,
London.
Fig. 28.—The oldest fossil fish known—discovered in the Upper Silurian strata of Scotland, and
named BirJcenia by Professor Traquair.
�62
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
been suggested by me that the modern mastodon, in which there are a long,
elephant’s trunk must have been de powerful jaw, an elongated faceBand
rived from the soft upper jaw and an increased number of molar teeth
nasal area, which rested on this elon (see Figs. 29 and 30) ; the second,
gated lower jaw, by the shortening (in Meritlzerium (Fig. 31), an animal with
the course of natural selection and a rhinoceros-like head, comparatively
modification by descent) of this long minute tusks, and a well-developed
lower jaw, to the present small dimen- complement of incisor, canine, and
Fig.
29.
Photograph of a complete model of the skull and lower jaw of the ancestral elephant, PaUzomastodon, discovered by Dr. Andrews in the Upper Eocene of the Fayum Desert, Egypt, and modelled
and restored under his direction in the Natural History Museum, London. The. comparatively short
trunk or snout rested on the broad front teeth of the long lower jaw. The face is elongated, and the
cheek-teeth are numerous.
sions of the elephant’s lower jaw, and
the consequent down-dropping of the
unshortened upper jaw and lips, which
thus became the proboscis.
Dr.
Andrews has described from Egypt
and placed in the Museum in London
specimens of the two new genera of
elephant-like animals — one Palao-
molar teeth, like a typical ungulate
mammal.
Undoubtedly we have in
these two forms the indications of
the steps by which the elephants b*fe
been evolved from ordinary-looking pig
like creatures of moderate size, devoid
of trunk or tusks. Other remains
belonging to this great mid-African
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
63
Eocene fauna indicate that not and many other new mammals and
only the elephants, but the Sirenia reptiles.
Another great area of exploration
(the dugong and manatee), took
Fig. 30.
Photograph of the lower face of the skull of a specimen of Palaomastoclon brought fr°m Egn>t in
April, 1906, by Dr. Andrews, and now in the Natural History Museum, London. The six charactenst 0
cheek-teeth on each side, and the pair of sabre-like tusks in front, are well seen.
their origin in this area. Amongst
them are also gigantic forms of
Hyrax, like the little Syrian coney
and source of new things has been the
southern part of Argentina and Pata
gonia, where Ameghino, Moreno, and
�64
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
Scott of Princeton have brought to
light a wonderful series of extinct ant
eaters, armadilloes, huge sloths, and
strange ungulates, reaching back into
early Tertiary times. But most re
Cruz strata, considered to be of early
Tertiary date, of remains of a huge
horned tortoise which is generically
identical with one found fossil in the
Australian area of later date, and
known as Miolania. In
the same wonderful area
we have the discovery in
a cave of the fresh bones,
hairy skin, and dung of
animals supposed to be
extinct—viz., the giant
sloth, Mylodon, and the
peculiar horse, Onohi/ppidium.
These remains
seem to belong to survivors from the last sub
mergence of this strangely
mobile land-surface, and
it is not improbable that
some individuals of this
“extinct” fauna are still
living in Patagonia. The
region is still unexplored,
and those who set out to
examine it have, by some
strange fatality, hitherto
failed to carry out the
professed purpose of their
expeditions.
I cannot quit this im
mense field of gathered
Fig. 31.
fact and growing generali
Drawing of the skull and lower jaw of the Meritherium, dissation without alluding to
cov eied by Dr. Andrews in the Upper Eocene of the Fayuni Desert,
lhe shape of the skull and propoi’tions of face and jaw are like
those of an ordinary hoofed mammal such as the pig; but the the study of animal em
cheek-teeth are similar to those of the Mastodon, and whilst the
bryology and the germfull complement of teeth is present in the front of the upper jaw
we can distinguish the big tusk-like incisor which alone survives on, layer theory, which has to
each side in Palazomastodon, Mastodon, and the elephants, as the
great pan* of tusks,
some extent been superseded by the study of em
markable has been the discovery in bryonic cell-lineage, so well pursued
this area of remains which indicate a by some American microscopists. The
former connection with the Australian great generalisation of the study of the
land surface. This connection is sug germ-layers and their formation seems
gested by the discovery in the Santa to be now firmly established—namely,
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
65
that the earliest multicellular animals morphology, I must apologise for my
were possessed of one structural cavity, inability to give space to a considera
the enteron, surrounded by a double tion of the growing and important
layer of cells, the ectoderm and endo science of anthropology, which ranges
derm. These Enteroccela or Ccelentera from the history of modern races and
gave rise to forms having a second of human institutions and language to
great body-cavity, the coelom, which the earliest prehistoric bones and im
originated not as a split between the plements. Let me therefore- note here
two layers, as was supposed twenty- the discovery of the cranial dome of
five years ago by Haeckel and Gegen- Pithecanthropus in a river gravel in
baur and their pupils, but by a pouch Java—undoubtedly the most ape-like
ing of the enteron to form one or more of human remains, and of great age
cavities in which the reproductive cells (see Bigs. 1 and 2); and, further, the
should develop—pouchings which be Eoliths of Prestwich (see Figs. 3 and
came nipped off from the cavity of 4), in the human authorship of which
their origin, and formed thus the inde I am inclined to believe, though I
pendent coelom. The animals so pro should be sorry to say the same of all
vided are the Ccelomoccela Us opposed the broken flints to which the name
to the Enterocoela), and comprise all “ Eolith ” has been applied. The sys
animals above the polyps, jelly-fish, tematic investigation and record of
corals, and sea-anemones. It has been savage races have taken on a new and
established in these twenty-five years scientific character. Such work as
that the coelom is a definite structural Baldwin Spencer’s and Haddon’s in
unit of the higher groups, and that Australasia furnishes examples of what
outgrowths from it to the exterior is being done in this way.
Physiology of Plants and Animals.
(coelomoducts) form the genital pas
—Since I have not space to do more
sages, and may become renal excretory
organs also. The vascular system has than pick out the most important
not, as it was formerly supposed to advances in each subject for brief
have, any derivative connection with mention, I must signalise, in regard
the coelom, but is independent of it, to the physiology of plants, the better
in origin and development, as also are understanding of the function of leaf
the primitive and superficial renal green or chlorophyll due to Pringsheim
tubes known as nephridia. These and to the Russian Timiriaseff, the
general statements seem to me to new facts as to the activity of stomata
cover the most important advance in in transpiration discovered by Horace
the general morphology of animals Brown, and the fixation of free nitrogen
which we owe to embryological re by living organisms in the soil and by
search in the past quarter of a cen organisms {Bacillus radicola) parasitic
in the rootlets of leguminous plants
tury.1
Before leaving the subject of animal (see Fig. 32), which thus benefit by a
supply of nitrogenous compounds which
1 See the Introduction to Part II. of A
Treatise on Zoology. Edited by E. Ray they can assimilate.
Great progress in the knowledge of
Lankester (London : A. & G. Black).
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THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
the chemistry of the living cells or
protoplasm of both plants and animals
has been made by the discovery of the
fact that ferments or enzymes are not
only secreted externally by cells, but
exist active and preformed inside cells.
Buchner’s final conquest of the secret
Fig. 32.
Bacillus radicola, the parasite which infests the
roots of leguminous plants and causes the growth
of nodules whilst assisting the plant in the assimila
tion of nitrogen : a nodule of the roots of the com
mon Lupine, natural size; b longitudinal section
through a Lupine root and nodule ; c a single cell
from a Lupine nodule showing the bacteria or
bacilli as black particles in the protoplasm,
magnified 600 diameters; d bacilli from the root
nodule of the Lupine; e triangular forms of the
bacillus from the root nodules of the Vetch ; f oval
forms from the root nodules of the Lupine; def
are magnified 1,500 diameters.
of the yeast-cell by heroic mechanical
methods—the actual grinding to powder
of these already very minute bodies—
first established this, and now succes
sive discoveries of intracellular fer
ments have led to the conclusion that
it is probable that the cell respires by
means of a respiratory “ oxydase,”
builds up new compounds and destroys
existing ones, contracts and accom
plishes its own internal life by fer
ments. Life thus (from the chemical
point of view) becomes a chain of
ferment actions. Another most signi
ficant advance in animal physiology
has been the sequel (as it were) of
Bernard’s discovery of the formation
of glycogen in the liver, a substance
not to be excreted, but to be taken up
by the blood and lymph, and in many
ways more important than the more
obvious formation of bile, which is
thrown out of the gland into the
alimentary canal. It has been dis
covered that many glands, such as the
kidney and pancreas and the ductless
glands, the suprarenals, thyroid, and
others, secrete indispensable products
into the blood and lymph. Hence
myxoedema, exophthalmic goitre, Addi
son’s disease, and other disorders have
been traced to a deficiency or excess of
internal secretions from glands formerly
regarded as interesting but unimportant
vestigial structures. From these glands
have in consequence been extracted
remarkable substances on which their
peculiar activity depends. From the
suprarenals a substance has been
extracted which causes activity of all
those structures which the sympathetic
nerve-system can excite to action ; the
thyroid yields a substance which
influences the growth of the skin,
hair, bones, etc.; the pituitary gland,
an extract which is a specific urinary
stimulant. Quite lately the mam
malian ovary has been shown by
Starling to yield a secretion which
influences the'state of nutrition of the
uterus and mammae. A great deal
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
more might be said here on topics
such as these — topics of almost
infinite importance; but the fact is
that the mere enumeration of the
most important lines of progress in
any one science would occupy many
pages.
Nerve - physiology has made im
mensely important advances. There
is now good evidence that all excita
tion of one group of nerve-centres is
accompanied by the concurrent inhibi
tion of a whole series of groups of
other centres, whose activity might
interfere with that of the group excited
to action. In a simple reflex flexure
of the knee the motor-neurones to the
flexor muscles are excited; but con
currently the motor-neurones to the
extensor muscles are thrown into a
state of inhibition, and so equally with
all the varied excitations of the nervous
system controlling the movements and
activities of the entire body.
The discovery of the continuity of
the protoplasm through the walls of
the vegetable cells by means of con
necting canals and threads (see Pig. 33)
is one of the most startling facts dis
covered in connection with plant
structure, since it was held twenty
years ago that a fundamental distinc
tion between animal and vegetable
structure consisted in the boxing-up
or encasement of each vegetable cell
unit in a case of cellulose, whereas
animal cells were not so imprisoned,
but freely communicated with one
another. It perhaps is on this
account the less surprising that lately
something like sense-organs have been
discovered on the roots, stems, and
leaves of plants, which, like the
otocysts of some animals, appear to
67
be really “ statocytes,” and to exert a
varying pressure according to the
relations of these parts of the plant
to gravity. There is apparently some
thing resembling a perception of the
incidence of gravity in plants which
reacts on irritable tissues, and is the
explanation of the phenomena of
geotropism. These results have grown
out of the observations of Charles
Darwin, followed by those of F. Dar
win, Haberlandt, and Nemec.
A few words must be said here as
to the progress of our knowledge of
The continuity of the protoplasm of neighbour
ing vegetable cells, by means of threads 'which
perforate the cell-walls. Drawing (after Gardiner)
of cells from the pulvinus of Robinia.
cell-substance, and what used to be
called the protoplasm question. We
do not now regard protoplasm as a
chemical expression, but, in accordance
with von Mohl’s original use of the
word, as a structure which holds in its
meshes many and very varied chemical
bodies of great complexity. Within
these twenty-five years the “ centrosome” of the cell - protoplasm has
been discovered (see Fig. 34), and a
great deal has been learnt as to the
structure of the nucleus and its
remarkable stain-taking bands, the
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
68
chromosomes. We now know that
these bands are of definite fixed
number, varying in different species
of plants and animals, and that they
are halved in number in the repro
ductive elements—the spermatozoid
and the ovum—so that on union of
these two to form the fertilised ovum
(the parent cell of all the tissues), the
proper specific number is attained (see
new nucleus —in fact, can do very
little but exhibit irritability. I am
inclined to agree with those who hold
that there is not sufficient evidence
that any organism exists at the
present time which has not both
protoplasm and nucleus; in fact, that
the simplest form of life at present
existing is a highly complicated struc
ture—a nucleated cell. 'That does not
Attraction-sphere enclosing two centrosomes.
Plastids lying in the
cytoplasm.
rpiasmosome or
true nucleolus.
Chromatin
network.
Nucleus
Linin-network.
k
Karyosome or
net-knot.
Vacuole.
Lifeless bodies (meta
plasm) suspended in
the cytoplasmic reticu
lum.
Fig.
34.
Diagrammatic representation of the structures present in a typical cell (after Wilson). Note the two
centrosomes, sometimes single.
Figs. 35 and 36). It has been pretty
clearly made out by cutting up large
living cells—unicellular animals—that
the body of the cell alone, without the
nucleus, can do very little but move
and maintain for a time its chemical
status. But it is the nucleus which
directs and determines all definite
growth, movement, secretion, and
reproduction. The simple protoplasm,
deprived of its nucleus, cannot form a
imply that simpler forms of living
matter have not preceded those which
we know. We must assume that
something more simple and homo
geneous than the cell, with its
differentiated cell-body or protoplasm,
and its cell kernel or nucleus, has at
one time existed. But the various
supposed instances of the survival to
the present day of such simple living
things—described by Haeckel and
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
69
others—have one by one yielded to been seriously revived within these
improved methods of microscopic twenty-five years. Our greater know
examination and proved to be dif- ledge of minute forms of life, and the
c.
Fig.
35.—The
Number oe the Chromosomes.
a Cell of the asexual generation of the cryptogam Pellia epiphylla: the nucleus is about to divide
a polar ray-formation is present at each end of the spindle-shaped nucleus, the chromosomes have
divided into two horizontal groups each of sixteen pieces: sixteen is the number of the chromosomes of
the ordinary tissue cells of Pellia. b Cell of the sexual generation of the same plant (PeZZia) in the
same phase of division, but with the reduced number of chromosomes—namely, eight m each half of
the dividing nucleus. The completed cells of the sexual generation have only eight chromosomes, c,
Somatic or tissue-cell of Salamander showing twenty-four V-shaped chromosomes, each of which is
becoming longitudinally split as a preliminary to division, d Sperm-mother-cell from testis of Sala
mander showing the reduced number of chromosomes of the sexual cells—namely, twelve; each is split
longitudinally. (From original drawings by Professor Farmer and Mr. Moore.)
ferentiated into nuclear and extra- conditions under which they can sur
vive, as well as our improved micro
nuclear substance.
The question of “ spontaneous scopes and methods of experiment and
generation ” cannot be said to have observation, have made an end of the
�70
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
arguments and instances of supposed
abiogenesis. The accounts which have
been published of “ radiobes,” minute
bodies arising in fluids of organic
origin when radium salts have been
allowed to mix in quantities with such
fluids, are wanting in precision and
detail; but the microscopic particles
which appear in the circumstances
described seem to be of a nature
identical with the minute bodies well
known to microscopists and recognised
as crystals modified by a colloid
medium. They have been described
Further stage in the division of the sexual cell
drawn in Fig. 35 cl, showing the twelve chromo
somes of the two nuclei of the sperm-cells resulting
from the division (twelve instead of twenty-four).
by Rainey, Harting, and Ord, on
different occasions, many years ago.
They are not devoid of interest, but
cannot be considered as having any
new bearing on the origin of living
matter.
Psychology.—I have given a special
heading to this subject because its
emergence as a definite line of experi
mental research seems to me one of
the most important features in the
progress of science in the past quarter
of a century. Thirty-five years ago
we were all delighted by Fechner’s
psycho-physical law; and at Leipzig
I, with others of my day, studied it
experimentally in the physiological
laboratory of that great teacher Carl
Ludwig. The physiological methods
of measurement (which are the phy
sical ones) have been more and more
widely, and with guiding intelligence
and ingenuity, applied since those
days to the study of the 'activities of
the complex organs of the nervous
system which are concerned with
“mind,” or psychic phenomena.
Whilst some enthusiasts have been
eagerly collecting ghost-stories and
records of human illusion and fancy
the serious experimental investigation
of the human mind, and its forerunner
the animal mind, has been quietly but
steadily proceeding in truly scientific
channels. The science is still in an
early phase—that of the collection of
accurate observations and measure
ments—awaiting the development of
great guiding hypotheses and theories.
But much has been done ; and it is a
matter of gratification to Oxford men
that through the liberality of the dis
tinguished electrician Mr. Henry
Wilde, F.R.S., a lectureship of Ex
perimental Psychology has been
founded in the University of Oxford,
where the older studies of Mental and
Moral Philosophy, Logic, and Meta
physics have so strong a hold, and
have so well prepared the ground for
the new experimental development.
The German investigators W. Wundt,
G. E. Muller, C. Stumpf, Ebbinghaus,
and Munsterberg have been prominent
in introducing laboratory methods,
and have determined such matters as
the elementary laws of association
and memory, and the perceptions of
musical tones and their relations.
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
71
The work of Goldschneider on the mus- doubtedly furnish the necessary scien
'
cular sense, and that of von Frey on the tific basis of the art of education, and
cutaneous sensations, are further ex psychology will hold the same relation
to that art as physiology does to the
amples of what is being done.
The difficult and extremely im art of medicine and hygiene.
There can be little doubt, moreover,
portant line of investigation first
of the valuable interaction of the study
scientifically treated by Braid under
the name “ Hypnotism” has been of physical psychology and the theories
greatly developed by the French school, of the origin of structural character by
especially by Charcot. The experi natural selection. The relation of the
mental investigation of suggestion, human mind to the mind of animals,
and the pathology of dual conscious and the gradual development of both,
ness and such exceptional conditions form a subject full of rich stores of
of the mind, has been greatly advanced new material, yielding conclusions of
the highest importance, which has not
by French observers.
The older work of Ferrier and Hitzig yet been satisfactorily approached.
I am glad to be able to give wider
on the functions of the parts of the
publicity here to some conclusions
brain has been carried further by Goltz
and Munk in Germany, and by Schafer, which I communicated to the Jubilee
Horsley, and Sherrington in England. volume of the Soci6t& de Biologic
The most important general advance of Paris in 1899. I there discussed
seems to be the recognition that the the significance of the great increase
mind of the human adult is a social in the size of the cerebral hemispheres
product; that it can only be under in recent, as compared with Eocene,
stood in relation with the special en mammals (see Fig. 5), and in Man as
vironment in which it develops, and compared with apes, and came to the
with which it is in perpetual inter conclusion that “ the power of building
action. Professor Baldwin, of Prince up appropriate cerebral mechanism in
ton, has done important work on this response to individual experience,” or
subject. Closely allied is the study what may be called educability, is
of what is called “ the psychology of the quality which characterises the
groups,” the laws of mental action larger cerebrum, and is that which
of the individual as modified by his has led to its selection, survival, and
membership of some form of society. further increase in volume. The bear
French authors have done valuable ing of this conception upon questions
of fundamental importance in what
work here.
These two developments of psy has been called “ genetic psychology ”
chology are destined to provide the is sketched as follows :—
“ The character which we describe
indispensable psychological basis for
Social Science, and for the anthro as ‘educability’ can be transmitted;
pological investigation of mental it is a congenital character. But the
results of education can not be transphenomena.
, mitted. In each generation they have
Hereafter, the well-ascertained laws
of experimental psychology will un to be acquired afresh. With increased
�72
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
educability ’ they are more readily
acquired, and a larger variety of them.
On the other hand, the nerve-mechan
isms of instinct are transmitted, and
owe their inferiority, as compared with
the results of education, to the very
fact that they are not acquired by the
individual in relation to his particular
needs, but have arisen by selection of
congenital variation in a long series of
preceding generations.”
To a large extent, the two series
of brain-mechanisms, the ‘ instinctive ’
and the ‘ individually acquired,’ are in
opposition to one another. Congenital
brain-mechanisms may prevent the
education of the brain and the develop
ment of new mechanisms specially
fitted to the special conditions of life.
To the educable animal the less there
is of specialised mechanism transmitted
by heredity the better. The loss of in
stinct is what permits and necessitates
the education of the receptive brain.”
We are thus led to the view that
it is hardly possible for a theory to be
further from the truth than that ex
pressed by George H. Lewes and
adopted by George Romanes—namely,
that instincts are due to ‘ lapsed ’ in
telligence. The fact is that there is
no community between the mechan
isms of instinct and the mechanisms
of intelligence, and that the latter are
later in the history of the development
of the brain than the former, and can
only develop in proportion as the former
become feeble and defective.”1
Darwinism.—Under the title “ Dar
winism ” it is convenient to designate
the various work of biologists tending
to establish, develop, or modify Mr.
Darwin’s great theory of the origin of
species. In looking back over twentyfive years, it seems to me that we
must say that the conclusions of
Darwin as to the origin of species by
the survival of selected races in the
struggle for existence are more firmly
established than ever — and this be
cause there have been many attempts
to gravely tamper with essential parts
of the fabric as he left it, and even to
substitute conceptions for those which
he endeavoured to establish, at vari
ance with his conclusions. These
attempts must, I think, be considered
as having failed. A great deal of
valuable work has been done in con
sequence ; for honest criticism, based
on observation and experiment, leads
to further investigation, and is the
legitimate and natural mode of in*
crease
of
scientific
knowledge.
Amongst the attempts to seriously
modify Darwin’s doctrine may be cited
that to assign a great and leading im
portance to Lamarck’s theory as to
the transmission by inheritance of
newly “acquired” characters, due
chiefly to American palaeontologists
and to the venerated defender of such
views, who has now closed his long
life of great work, Mr. Herbert Spencer;
that to attribute leading importance to
the action of physiological congruity
and incongruity in selective breeding,
which was put forward by another
able writer and naturalist who has
now passed from among us, Dr.
George Romanes; further, the views
of de Vries as to the discontinuity in
the origin of new species, supported
1 From the Jubilee volume of the Soc. de
by the valuable work of Mr. Bateson
Biol, of Paris, 1899. Reprinted in Nature,
Vol. LXI., 1900, pp. 624, 625.
on discontinuous variation ; and, lastly,
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
73
the attempt to assign a great and convincing and valuable works on
general importance to the facts ascer Darwinism. He is still alive, and not
tained many years ago by the Abb6 merely well, but pursuing his work
Mendel as to the cross-breeding of with vigour and ability. It was chiefly
varieties and the frequent production through his researches on insects in
(in regard to certain characters in South America and the Malay Islands
certain cases) of pure strains rather that Mr. Wallace was led to the Dar
than of breeds combining the charac winian theory; and there is no doubt
ters of both parents. On the other that the study of insects, especially of
hand, we have the splendid series of butterflies, is still one of the most
observations and writings of August prolific fields in which new facts can
Weismann, who has, in the opinion of be gathered in support of Darwin and
the majority of those who study this new views on the subject tested.
subject, rendered the Lamarckian Prominent amongst naturalists in this
theory of the origin and transmission line of research has been and is Edward
of new characters altogether untenable, Poulton, of Oxford, who has handed
and has, besides, furnished a most on to the study of entomology through
instructive, if not finally conclusive, out the world the impetus of the Dar
theory or mechanical scheme of the winian theory. I must here also name
phenomena of Heredity in his book a writer who, though unknown in our
The Germ, - Plasm. Professor Karl laboratories and museums, seems to
Pearson and the late Professor Weldon me to have rendered very valuable
—the latter so early in life and so service in late years to the testing of
recently lost to us—have, with the Darwin’s doctrines and to the bringing
finest courage and enthusiasm in the of a great class of organic pheno
face of an enormous and difficult task, mena within the cognisance of those
determined to bring the facts of varia naturalists who are especially occupied
tion and heredity into the solid form with the problems of Variation and
of statistical statement, and have Heredity. I mean Dr. Archdall Reid,
organised, and largely advanced in, who has with keen logic made use of
this branch of investigation, which the immense accumulation of material
they have termed “ Biometrics.” which is in the hands of medical men,
Many naturalists throughout the and has pointed out the urgent im
world have made it the main object portance of increased use by Dar
of their collecting and breeding of in winian investigators of the facts as to
sects, birds, and plants to test Darwin’s the variation and heredity of that
generalisations and to expand the unique animal Man — unique in his
work of Wallace in the same direc abundance, his reproductive activity,
tion. A delightful fact in this survey and his power of assisting his investi
is that we find Mr. Alfred Russel gator by his own record. There are
Wallace (who fifty years ago con more observations about the variation
ceived the same theory as that more and heredity of man and the condi
fully stated by Darwin) actively work tions attendant upon individual in
ing and publishing some of the most stances than with regard to any other
�74
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
animal. Medical men need only to
grasp clearly the questions at present
under discussion in order to be able
to furnish with ease data absolutely
invaluable in quantity and quality.
Dr. Archdall Reid has in two original
books full of insight and new sugges
tions, The Present Evolution of Man
and Principles of Heredity, shown a
new path for investigators to follow.
There are still some philosophers
and a few naturalists who accept
Lamarck’s theory of organic evolution
by the transmission of what he called
les changements acquis.” I use the
term “ acquired ” without prejudice in
the sense given to that word by
Lamarck himself. It is of primary
importance that those who follow this
controversy should clearly understand
what Lamarck pointed to by this word
u acquired.” Utter confusion and
absurdity have resulted from a mis
understanding on this subject by some
writers who deliberately call newly
appearing congenital characters “ ac
quired ” or “ acquisitions.”
[It is desirable, owing to the constant
misunderstandings on the subject, that
a word should be added here as to the
production of congenital variations by
changed or novel conditions which act
upon the parent’s body, and so upon the
germs within it. That such effects
are produced was one of Darwin’s
main contentions, in support of which
he produced important evidence. Yet
many persons plunge into the question
as to whether Lamarck’s theory of
the transmission of acquired characters,
or, on the other hand, Darwin’s theory
of the natural selection and transmis
sion of congenital variations, is true,
without knowing what has been sup
posed, proved, and published in these
matters.
No one when opposing
Lamarck ever denies that important,
even essential, effects are produced by
agencies which act upon the parental
body. Yet, every now and then, the
fact that they do—is triumphantly an
nounced as something new by persons
who imagine themselves to be believers
in Lamarck. "What!” they say, “you
declare that the effect of agencies acting
on the parent’s body cannot influence
the offspring ! Look here ! ” The state
of mind of these persons is a result
of superficial acquaintance with the
discussion and refusal to read the
actual statements made by Darwin
and by Lamarck.
Lamarck’s contention was that the
identical changes caused in the struc
ture of an individual animal or plant
by the action upon it of a novel
environment—such as increase of a
part by use or decrease by disuse, as
well as other responses of an adaptive
character—are transmitted by genera
tion to its offspring, and continue to
appear in successive generations derived
from that offspring, even when the
cause which set up the original modi
fication of structure has ceased to act.
The direct adaptation of the structure
of such individuals to new environ
ment was supposed by Lamarck to
become fixed, and thenceforth trans*
mitted by heredity. What may be
called a character superimposed on
individuals, during their individual life
as a direct reaction and adaptation to
a new external influence or agency,
was held by Lamarck to become
suddenly a thing of deeper quality, to
be passed on in all its details by the
germ to a new generation. On the
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
other hand, Darwin, whilst denying
that such inheritance of the adapta
tion of an organ, arising from the
action upon such organ of new condi
tions, was usual or capable of account
ing for the gradual development of
new specific forms, did categorically
state that he attributed the origin of
congenital variations (by the natural
selection or survival of which he
held that new species originate) to the
action or influence of changed condi
tions upon the parental body, and
through it upon the reproductive germs.
The great and fundamental differ
ence between the result of changed
conditions formulated by Darwin
and that formulated by Lamarck
is that Darwin showed that the
result of changed conditions is not
an adaptive change of the shape or
structure of the parental organism or
of its offspring—fitting it to meet the
particular change of conditions which
induced the change—but a disturbance,
an arbitrary alteration (often very
minute) in the germs within the body
of the affected organism. So that the
young which it produces show in
creased “ variation ” or departure from
the exact model of the parental form
in directions or ways having no signi
ficance so far as the nature of the
change of conditions is concerned.
Darwin’s statements on this matter
are often ignored, and it is erroneously
declared that he does not account for
the origin of variations. No doubt
there is more to be ascertained in the
direction which Darwin indicated. I
will quote here a passage taken from
Mr. Darwin’s eleventh edition of his
Origin of Species, 1872, pp. 7-8, which
presents his view on this matter. He
15
says : “ With respect to what I have
called the indirect action of changed
conditions—namely, through the repro
ductive system being affected—we may
infer that variability is thus induced
partly from the fact of this system
being extremely sensitive to any change
in the conditions, and partly from the
similarity (as Kolreuter and others
have remarked) between the varia
bility which follows from the crossing
of distinct species and that which
may be observed with plants and
animals when reared under new or
unnatural conditions. Many facts
clearly show how eminently suscep
tible the reproductive system is to
very slight changes in the surrounding
conditions.”
Darwin goes on to
summarise some of these facts, refer
ring for details to his book on The
Variation of Plants and Animals under
Domestication. He then proceeds:
“ Some naturalists have maintained
that all variations are connected with
the act of sexual reproduction; but
this is certainly an error, for I have
given in another work a long list of
‘ sporting plants,’ as they are called by
gardeners—that is, of plants which
have suddenly produced a single bud
with a new and sometimes widely
different character from that of the
other buds on the same plant.” He
concludes with reference to the relation
between the conditions which cause
variation and the particular result
ensuing that ‘ we clearly see that the
nature of the conditions is of subor
dinate importance, in comparison with
the nature of the organism, in deter
mining each particular form of varia
tion—perhaps not of more importance
than has the nature of the spark by
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TSE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
which a mass of combustible matter
is ignited in determining the nature of
the flames.” The effect of external
agencies in producing curiously definite
variations of buds or of offspring has
by other writers been compared (merely
in respect of their non-significance and
want of relation to the nature of the
condition which starts them) to the
production of a new pattern in a
kaleidoscope by the external agency
of a slight jar or tap on the apparatus.
Such variations are truly enough
responses to external changes, but
they have no qualitative or even
quantitative relation to the external
change.
They may therefore be
described as “ non-significant ” in re
lation to the external changes which
set them going, and are totally differ
ent from the adaptive changes of the
form or structure of a parental body
which have a direct correspondence with
the nature and amount of the novel
condition or stimulus, and were supposed
by Lamarck to be transmitted as such
from the parent to its offspring.]
The attempt to resuscitate Lamarck’s
views on the inheritance of acquired
characters has been met not only by
the demand for the production of
experimental proof that such inherit
ance takes place, which has never
been produced, but on Weismann’s
part by a demonstration that the
reproductive cells of organisms are, in
very many cases, developed and set
aside from the rest of the tissues at
so early a period that it is extremely
improbable that changes brought about
in those other tissues by unaccustomed
incident forces can be specifically com
municated to the germ-cells so as to
make their appearance in the offspring
by heredity. Apart from this, I have
drawn attention to the fact that
Lamarck’s first and second laws (as
he terms them) of heredity are con
tradictory the one of the other, and
therefore may be dismissed. In 1894
I wrote:—
Normal conditions of environment
have for many thousands of generations
moulded the individuals of a given
species of organism, and determined as
each individual developed and grew
‘responsive’ quantities in its parts
(characters); yet, as Lamarck tells us,
and as we know, there is in every
individual born a potentiality wThich
has not been extinguished. Change
the normal conditions of the species
in the case of a young individual taken
to-day from the site where for thou
sands of generations its ancestors have
responded in a perfectly defined way
to the normal and defined conditions
of environment; reduce the daily or
the seasonal amount of solar radiation
to which the individual is exposed; or
remove the aqueous vapour from the
atmosphere; or alter the chemical
composition of the pabulum accessible ;
or force the individual to previously
unaccustomed muscular effort, or to
new pressures and strains; and (as
Lamarck bids us observe), in spite of
all the long-continued response to the
earlier normal specific conditions, the
innate congenital potentiality shows
itself. The individual under the new
quantities of environing agencies shows
new responsive quantities in those
parts of its structure concerned, new
or acquired characters.
“ So far, so good. What Lamarck
next asks us to accept, as his ‘ second
law,’ seems not only to lack the
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
support of experimental proof, but to
be inconsistent with what has just
preceded it. The new character, which
is ex hypothesi, as was the old char
acter (length, breadth, weight of a
part) which it has replaced, a response
to environment, a particular moulding
or manipulation by incident forces of
the potential congenital quality of the
race, is, according to Lamarck, all of a
sudden raised to extraordinary powers.
The new or freshly acquired character
is declared by Lamarck and his adher
ents to be capable of transmission by
generation; that is to say, it alters
the potential character of the species.
It is no longer a merely responsive or
reactive character, determined quanti
tatively by quantitative conditions of
the environment, but becomes fixed
and incorporated in the potential of
the race, so as to persist when other
quantitative external conditions are
substituted for those which originally
determined it. In opposition to
Lamarck, one must urge, in the first
place, that this thing has never been
shown experimentally to occur; and,
in the second place, that there is no
ground for holding its occurrence to
be probable, but, on the contrary,
strong reason for holding it to be
improbable. Since the old character
(length, breadth, weight) had not
become fixed and congenital after
many thousands of successive genera
tions of individuals had developed it
in response to environment, but gave
place to a new character when new
conditions operated on an individual
(Lamarck’s first law), why should we
suppose that the new character is
likely to become fixed after a much
shorter time of responsive existence,
77
or to escape the operation of the first
law? Clearly there is no reason (so
far as Lamarck’s statement goes) for
any such supposition, and the two
so-called laws of Lamarck are at
variance with one another.”
In its most condensed form my
argument has been stated thus by
Professor Poulton: Lamarck’s “ first
law assumes that a past history of
indefinite duration is powerless to
create a bias by which the present
can be controlled; while the second
assumes that the brief history of the
present can readily raise a bias to
control the future.”1
An important light is thrown on
some facts which seem at first sight
to favour the Lamarckian hypothesis
by the consideration that, though an
“acquired” character is not trans
mitted to offspring as the consequence
of the action of external agencies
determining the “ acquirement,” yet
the tendency to react exhibited by the
parent is transmitted, and if the ten
dency is exceptionally great a false
suggestion of a Lamarckian inheri
tance can readily result. This inheri
tance of “ variation in tendencies to
react ” has a wide application, and has
led me to coin the word “ educability,”
as mentioned in my remarks on
Psychology (p. 71).
The principle of physiological selec
tion advocated by the late Dr. Romanes
does not seem to have caused much
discussion, and has been unduly
neglected by subsequent writers. It
was ingenious, and was based on some
interesting observations, but has failed
to gain support.
1 Nature, Vol. LI., 1894, p. 127.
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The observations of de Vries— application of them to the explanation
showing that in cultivated varieties of many difficult cases of the structure
of plants a new form will sometimes and distribution of organisms.
assert itself suddenly and attain a
Two general principles which Mr.
certain period of dominance, though Darwin fully recognised appear to me
not having been gradually brought to deserve more consideration and
into existence by a slow process of more general application to the his
selection—-have been considered by tory of species than he had time to
him, and by a good many other give to them, or than his followers
naturalists, as indicating the way in have accorded to them. The first is
which new species arise in Nature. the great principle of “ correlation of
The suggestion is a valuable one, if variation,” from which it follows that,
not very novel; but a great deal of whilst natural selection may be
observation will have to be made favouring some small and obscure
before it can be admitted as really change in an unseen group of cells
having a wide bearing upon the origin —such as digestive, pigmentary, or
of species. The same is true of those nervous cells, and that change a
interesting observations which were change of selective value—there may
first made by Mendel, and have been be, indeed often is, as we know, a
resuscitated and extended with great correlated or accompanying change in
labour and ingenuity by recent workers, a physiologically related part of far
especially in this country by Bateson greater magnitude and prominence to
and his pupils. If it should prove to the eye of the human onlooker. This
be true that varieties when crossed do accompanying or correlated character
not, in the course of eventual inter has no selective value, is not an
breeding, produce intermediate forms adaptation—is, in fact, a necessary
as hybrids, but that characters are but useless by-product. A list of a
either dominant or recessive, and that few cases of this kind was given by
breeds result having pure unmixed Darwin, but it is most desirable that
characters, we should, in proportion more should be established. For they
as the Mendelian law is shown to enable us to understand how it is that
apply to all tissues and organs and to specific characters, those seen and
a majority of organisms, have before noted on the surface by systematists,
us a very important and determining are not in most cases adaptations of
principle in all that relates to heredity selective value. They also open a
and variation. It remains, however, wide vista of incipient and useless
to be shown how far the Mendelian developments which may suddenly, in
phenomenon is general. And it is, of their turn, be seized upon by ever
course, admitted on all sides that, watchful natural selection and raised
even were the Mendelian phenomenon to a high pitch of growth and function.
The second, somewhat, but by no
general and raised to the rank of a law
of heredity, it would not be subversive means altogether, neglected principle
of Mr. Darwin’s generalisations, but is that a good deal of the important
probably tend to the more ready variation in both plants and animals
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
79
is not the variation of a minute part interest to mankind, who do not accept
or confined to one organ, but has their diseases unresistingly and die as
really an inner physiological basis, animals do, so purifying their race, but
and may be a variation of a whole incessantly combat and fight disease,
organic system or of a whole tissue producing new and terrible forms of
expressing itself at several points and it, by their wilful interference with
in several shapes. In fact, we should the earlier rule of Nature.
Our knowledge of disease has been
perhaps more generally conceive of
enormously advanced in the last quarter
variation as not so much the accom
plishment and presentation of one of a century, and in an important
little mark or difference in weight, degree our power of arresting it, by
length, or colour, as the expression of two great lines of study going on side
a tendency to vary in a given tissue or by side, and originated, not by medical
organ in a particular way. Thus we men nor by physiologists in the narrow
are prepared for the rapid extension technical sense, but by naturalists, a
and dominance of the variation if once botanist, and a zoologist. Ferdinand
it is favoured by selective breeding. It Cohn, Professor of Botany in Breslau,
seems to me that such cases as the by his own researches and by personal
complete disappearance of scales from training in his laboratory, gave to
the integument of some osseous fishes, Robert Koch the start on his distin
or the possible retention of three or guished career as a bacteriologist. It
four scales out of some hundreds is to Metschnikoff the zoologist and
present in nearly allied forms, favour embryologist that we owe the doctrine
this mode of conceiving of variation. of phagocytosis, and the consequent
So, also, does the marked tendency to theory of immunity now so widely
produce membranous expansions of the accepted.
We must not forget that in this
integument in the bats, not only between
same period much of the immortal
the digits and from the axilla, but from
the ears and different regions of the work of Pasteur on hydrophobia, of
face. Of course, the alternative hairy Behring and Roux on diphtheria, and
or smooth condition of the integuments of Ehrlich and many others to whom
both in plants and animals is a familiar the eternal gratitude of mankind is
instance in which a tendency extending due, has been going on. It is only
over a large area is recognised as that some fifteen years since Calmette
which constitutes the variation. In showed that, if cobra poison were in
smooth or hairy varieties we do not troduced into the blood of a horse in
postulate an individual development of less quantity than would cause death
hairs subjected one by one to selection the horse would tolerate, with little
and consequent survival or repression. disturbance, after ten days, a full dose,
Disease.— The study of the phy and then day after day an increasing
siology of unhealthy, injured, or dose, until the horse, without any
diseased organisms is called pathology. inconvenience, received an injection
It necessarily has an immense area of of cobra poison large enough to kill
observation, and is of transcending thirty horses of its size. Some of the
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THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
horse’s blood, being now withdrawn, the improvement in human conditions
was found to contain a very active which can thus be effected, yet we
antidote to cobra poison — what is cannot hope for any really complete or
called an antitoxin. The procedure satisfactory realisation of the ideal of
in the preparation of the antitoxin is escape from contact with infective
practically the same as that previously germs. The task is beyond human
adopted by Behring in the preparation powers. The conviction has now been
of the antitoxin of diphtheria poison. arrived at that, whilst we must take
Animals treated with injections of these every precaution to diminish infection,
antitoxins are immune to the poison yet our ultimate safety must come
itself when subsequently injected with from within—namely ,from the activity,
it, or, if already suffering from the the trained, stimulated, and carefully
poison (as, for instance, by snake-bite), guarded activity, of those wonderful
are readily shown by experiment to be colourless, amceba - like corpuscles
rapidly cured by the injection of the whose use was so long unrecognised,
appropriate antitoxin. This is, as all but has now been made clear by the
will admit, an intensely interesting bit patiently continued experiments and
of biology. The explanation of the arguments of Metschnikoff, who has
formation of the antitoxin in the blood named them “ phagocytes.”
The
and its mode of antagonising the poison doctrine of the activity and immense
is not easy. It seems that the anti importance of these corpuscles of the
toxin is undoubtedly formed from the living body, which form part of the
corresponding toxin or poison, and all-pervading connective tissues and
that the antagonism can be best under float also in the blood, is in its nature
stood as a chemical reaction by which and inception opposed to what are
the complex molecule of the poison is called the “ humoral ” and “ vitalistic ”
upset, or effectively modified.
theories of resistance to infection. Of
The remarkable development of this kind were the beliefs that the
Metschnikoff’s doctrine of phago liquids of the living body have an
cytosis during the past quarter of a inherent and somewhat vague power
century is certainly one of the charac of resisting infective germs, and even
teristic features of the activity of bio that the mere living quality of the
logical science in that period. At first tissues was in some unknown way
ridiculed as “ Metschnikoffism,” it has antagonistic to foreign intrusive disease
now won the support of its former germs.
adversaries.
The first eighteen years of Metsch
Bor a long time the ideal of hygien nikoff ’s career, after his undergraduate
ists has been to preserye man from all course, were devoted to zoological and
contact with the germs of infection, to embryological investigations. He dis
destroy them and destroy the animals covered many important facts, such as
conveying them, such as rats, mos the alternation of generations in the
quitoes, and other flies. But it has parasitic worm of the frog’s lung—
now been borne in upon us that, useful Ascaris nigrovenosa—and the history
as such attempts are, and great as is of the growth from the egg of sponges
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
In a transparent water-flea Metschnikoff saw these amceba-like, colour
less, floating blood-corpuscles swallow
ing and digesting the spores of a
parasitic fungus which had attacked
the water-fleas and was causing their
death. He came to the conclusion
and medusse. In these latter re
searches he came into contact with
the wonderfully active cells, or living
corpuscles, which in many low forms
of life can be seen by transparency in
the living animal. He saw that these
corpuscles (as was, indeed, already
Fig. 38-
Fig. 37.
Fig. 40.
81
Fig. 41.
Fig. 42.
Fig. 37.—Phagocyte or colourless corpuscle of a guinea-pig in the act of engulfing two Spirilla or
parasitic vegetable microbes of a spiral shape.
,
. , . _ ... ,
Fig. 38.—The same, half-an-hour later; one of the Spirilla is nearly completely engulfed.
Fig. 39._ The same, ten minutes later still; one of the Spirilla is completely absorbed into the
substance (protoplasm) of the phagocyte. (From Metsc'hnikoff’s book, Immunity, kindly supplied by
the Cambridge University Press.)
Fig. 40.—Phagocyte of a guinea-pig in the course of engulfing a very mobile undulating spirillum.
Fig'. 41.—The same, forty minutes later.
Fig 42 —The same, taken half-an-hour after Fig. 41. (From MetscHmkoff’s Immunity.}
Fig 43 —A large kind of phagocyte of the guinea-pig, killed and stained for microscopic examina
tion It shows the large spherical nucleus and three specimens of the Spirillum of relapsing-fever which
have been engulfed, and are lying within its protoplasm. They would have been slowly digested—that
is to say dissolved by the digestive juices within the phagocyte. (From Metschmkoff’s Immunity.)
known) resemble the well-known
amoeba, and can take into their soft
substance (protoplasm), at all parts of
their surface, any minute particles,
and digest them, thus destroying them.
that this is the chief, if not the whole,
value of these corpuscles in higher as
well as lower animals, in all of which
they are very abundant. It was known
that when a wound, bringing in foreign
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THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
matter, is inflicted on a vertebrate
animal, the blood - vessels become
gorged in the neighbourhood, and the
colourless corpuscles escape through
the walls of the vessels in crowds.
Their business in so doing, Metschnikoff showed, is to eat up the foreign
matter, and also to eat up and remove
the dead, wounded tissue. He there
fore called these white or colourless
corpuscles “ phagocytes,” the eater
cells, and in his beautiful book on
Inflammation, published twenty years
ago, proved the extreme importance of
their activity. At the same time he
had shown that they eat up intrusive
bacteria and other germs (see Figs. 3743); and his work for the last twentyfive years has mainly consisted in
demonstrating that they are the chief,
and probably the only, agents at work
in either ridding the human body of an
attack of disease-causing germs, or in
warding off even the commencement of
an attack, so that the man or animal
in which they are fully efficient is
“ immune ”—that is to say, cannot be
effectively attacked by disease-germs.
Disease-germs, bacteria, or protozoa
produce poisons which sometimes are
too much for the phagocytes, poison
ing them and so getting the upper
hand. But, as Metschnikoff showed,
the training of the phagocytes by weak
doses of the poison of the disease
germ, or by weakened cultures of the
disease-germ itself, brings about a
power of resistance in the phagocytes
to the germ’s poison, and thus makes
them capable of attacking the germs
and keeping them at bay. Hence the
value of inoculations.
The discussion and experiments
arising from Metschnikoff’s demon
strations have led to the discovery of
the production by the phagocytes of
certain exudations from their sub
stance which have a most important
effect in weakening the resistance of
the intrusive bacteria and rendering
them easy prey for the phagocyte.
These are called “ sensitisers,” and
have been largely studied. They may
be introduced artificially into ' the
blood and tissues so as to facilitate
the work of the phagocytes, and no
doubt it is a valuable remedial measure
to make use of such sensitisers as a
treatment. Dr. Wright considers that
such sensitisers are formed in the
blood and tissues independently of the
phagocytes, and has called them
“opsonins,” under which name he
has made most valuable application of
the method of injecting them into the
body so as to facilitate the work of
the phagocytes in devouring the hostile
bacteria of various diseases. Each
kind of disease-producing microbe has
its own sensitiser or opsonin; hence
there has been much careful research
and experiment required in order to
bring the discovery into practical use.
Metschnikoff himself holds and quotes
experiments to show that the “ opso
nins ” are actually produced by the
phagocytes themselves. That this
should be so is in accordance with
some striking zoological facts, as I
pointed out more than twenty years ago.1
For the lowest multicellular animals
provided with a digestive sac or gut,
such as the polyps, have that sac
lined by digestive cells which have the
same amoeboid character as “phago1 In a review of Metschnikofi’s “ Lemons
sur 1’Inflammation ” in Nature, 1889.
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
cytes,” and actually digest to a large
extent by swallowing or taking into
their individual protoplasm raw par
ticles of food. Such particles are
enclosed in a temporary cavity, or
vacuole, into which the cell-protoplasm
secretes digestive ferment and other
chemical agents. Now there is no
doubt that such digestive vacuoles may
burst and so pour out into the polyp’s
stomach a digestive juice which will
act on food particles outside the sub
stance of the cells, and thus by the
substitution of this process of out
pouring of the secretion for that of
ingestion of food particles into the
cells we get the usual form of digestion
by juices secreted into a digestive
cavity. Now this being certainly the
case in regard to the history of the
original phagocytes lining the polyp’s
gut, it does not seem at all unlikely,
but on the contrary in a high degree
probable, that the phagocytes of the
blood and tissues should behave in
the same way and pour out sensitisers
and opsonins to paralyse and prepare
their bacterial food. And the experi
ments of Metschnikoff’s pupils and
followers show that this is undoubtedly
the case. Whether there is any great
variety of and difference between
“sensitisers” and “opsonins” is a
matter which is still the subject of
active experiment. Metschnikoff’s con
clusion, as recently stated in regard to
the whole progress of this subject, is
that the phagocytes in our bodies
should be stimulated in their activity
in order successfully to fight the germs
of infection.
Alcohol, opium, and
even quinine hinder the phagocytic
action; they should therefore be
entirely eschewed or used only with
88
great caution where their other and
valuable properties are urgently needed.
It appears that the injection of blood
serum into the tissues of animals
causes an increase in the number and
activity of the phagocytes, and thus
an increase in the animals’ resistance
to pathogenic germs. Thus Durham
(who was a pioneer in his observations
on the curious phenomena of the
agglutination ” of blood corpuscles
in relation to disease) was led to
suggest the injection of sera during
surgical operations, and experiments
recently quoted by Metschnikoff seem
to show that the suggestion was well
founded. Both German and French
surgeons have employed the method
with successful results, and the demon
stration that an immense number of
microbes are thus taken up and
destroyed by the multiplication (due
to their regular increase by cell
division) of the phagocytes of the
injected patient. After years of oppo
sition bravely met in the pure scientific
spirit of renewed experiment and
demonstration, Metschnikoff is at last
able to say that the foundation-stone
of the hygiene of the tissues—the
thesis that our phagocytes are our
arms of defence against infective germs
—has been generally accepted.
Another feature of the progress of
our knowledge of disease—as a scien
tific problem—is the recent recognition
that minute animal parasites of that
low degree of unicellular structure to
which the name “ Protozoa ” is given
are the causes of serious and ravaging
diseases, and that the minute algoid
plants, the bacteria, are not alone in
possession of this field of activity. It
was Laveran—a French medical man
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Fig. 44.
A diagram showing the life-history and migration of the Malaria parasite, Laverania Malaria, as
discovered by Laveran, Ross, and Grassi. The stages above the dotted line take place in the blood of
man, The oblopg-pointed parasite is seen entering the blood at n just below No. I. The circles
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
—who, just about twenty-five years
ago, discovered the minute animal
organism in the red blood-corpuscles
which is the cause of malaria (see
Mg, 44). Year by year ever since our
knowledge of this terrible little parasite
has increased. We now know many
similar to, but not identical with it,
living in the blood of birds, reptiles,
and frogs (see Fig. 45).
It is the great merit of Sir Ronald
Ross, formerly of the Indian Army
Medical Staff, to have discovered, by
most patient and persevering experi
ment, that the malaria parasite passes
a part of its life in the spot-winged
gnat or mosquito {Anopheles), not, as
he had at first supposed, in the
common gnat or mosquito {Culex),
and that if we can get rid of spot
winged mosquitoes or avoid their
attentions, or even only prevent them
from sucking the blood of malarial
patients, we can lessen, or even abolish,
malaria.
This great discovery was followed
by another as to the production of the
deadly “ Nagana ” horse and cattle
disease in South Africa by a screw
like, minute animal parasite Trypano
soma, Brucii (see Fig. 46 B). The
85
Tsetze fly (see Fig. 48 A, B), which
was already known in some way to
produce this disease, was found by
Colonel David Bruce to do so by con
veying by its bite the Trypanosoma
from wild big-game animals to the
domesticated horses and cattle of the
colonists. The discovery of the parasite
and its relation to the fly and the
disease was as beautiful a piece of
scientific investigation as biologists
have ever seen. A curious and very
important fact was discovered by
Bruce—-namely, that the native big
game (zebras, antelopes, and probably
buffaloes) are tolerant of the parasite.
The Trypanosoma grows and multiplies
in their blood, but does not kill them
or even injure them. It is only the
unaccustomed introduced animals from
Europe which are poisoned by the
chemical excreta of the Trypanosomes
and die in consequence. Hence the
wild creatures—brought into a condi
tion of tolerance by natural selection
and the dying out of those susceptible
to the poison—form a sort of “ reser
voir ” of deadly Trypanosomes for the
Tsetze flies to carry into the blood of
new-comers. The same phenomenon
of “reservoir-hosts” (as I have else-
represent the red blood-discs of man. Schizogony means multiplication by simple division or splitting,
and it is seen in Nos. 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. The stages below the dotted line are passed in the body of the
spot-winged gnats of the genus Anopheles. A peculiar crescent or sausage-shaped condition is assumed
by the parasite inside the red corpuscle No. VI. These are found to be of two kinds, male and female,
Nos. Vila and Vllb. They are swallowed by the spot-winged gnat when it sucks the blood of an infected
ma.n- Fere I11 the gut of the gnat they become sphericle; the male spheres produce spermatozoa No.Xa,
whit® fuse with and fertilise the female spheres or egg-cells No. XI. An active worm-like form No. XIII
results, which pushes its way partly through the wall of the gnat’s gut, and is then nourished by the
gnat s blood. It swells up, divides internally again and again, and is enclosed in a firm transparent case
or cyst, Nos. XIV to XVIII. The cysts are far larger in proportion than is shown in the diagram, and
are visible to the naked eye. The final product of the breaking-up, which is called sporogony, is a vast
number of needle-shaped spores or young (called Exotospores, as opposed to the Enhaemospores, which
are formed m the human blood, as seen in Nos. 9 and 10, and serve there to spread the infection among
the red corpuscles). The needle-shaped spores formed in the gnat’s body accumulate in its salivary
glands, and pass out by the mouth of the gnat wnen it stabs a new human victim, who thus becomes
infected, No. XIX.
Had the sausage-like phases Nob. Vila and VHb been swallowed by a common gnat or mosquito of
tne genus Culex, they would have been digested and destroyed. It is only in species of gnats of the kind
known as Anopheles that the parasite can undergo its sexual development and subsequent process of
the formation of cysts and needle-shaped exotospores. (After Minchin in Part I. of Lankester’s Treatise
on Zoology, published by A. and C. Black.)
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Fig. 45.
Jbankestrella ranarum (Lank.), the parasite of the red blood-corpuscles of the edible frog, described
originally as Drevanidium ranarum by Lankester in 1882, and previously without name in 1871. The
large ovak^repreTenUhe red corpuscles of the frog ; the dark central mass is the nucleus, N. In a t w®
spindle-shaped parasites are seen ; in b one larger parasite with nucleus n'
^^fVhc spherical
parasite is V-shaped. In d the parasite has become spherical, and w;so ine also. Li f the sphci cal
Lankester’s Treatise on Zoology.)
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
where called them) has since been
observed in the case of malaria; the
children of the native blacks in Africa
and in other malarious regions are
tolerant of the malarial parasite, as
87
which consists in repulsion or destruc
tion of the parasite.
The Trypanosomes have acquired a
terrible notoriety within the last ten
years, since another species, also
E.
Fig. 46.
Various species of Trypanosoma from the blood of mammals, birds, and reptiles. A, T. Lewisii, i
from the blood of rats ; B, T. Brucii, the parasite of the Nagana or Tsetze-fly disease, found in the blood
of horses, cattle, and big game; O, T. gambiensi, the parasite causing sleeping sickness in man;
D, T. equinum, which causes the mal de caderas in South American horse ranches ; E, T. noctuee, from
the blood of the little owl, Athene noctua ; F, T. avium, found in the blood of many birds; G, a species
found in the blood of Indian pigeons; H, T. Ziemanni, a second species from the blood of the little owl;
J, T. Damoniee, from the blood of a tortoise; c g granules; v vacuole; I s fold of the crest or undulating
membrane.
These figures are from Dr. Woodcock’s article on the “ Heemoflagellates ” in the Quarterly Journal
of Microscopical Science, April and June, 1906. (See also the figures in the next chapter relating to
Sleeping Sickness.)
many as 80 per cent, of children under
ten being found to be infected, and yet
not suffering from the poison. This
is not the same thing as the immunity
carried by a Tsetze fly of another
species, has been discovered by Castellani in cases of “ sleeping sickness ” iu
Uganda, and demonstrated by Colonel
E
�88
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
Bruce to be the cause of that awful
disease.1 Over 200,000 natives of
Uganda have died from it within the
last five years. It is incurable, and,
sad to relate, not only a certain
number of European employees have
succumbed to it in tropical Africa,
but a brave young officer of the Army
Medical Corps, Lieutenant Tulloch,
has died from the disease, acquired by
him in the course of an investigation
of this disease and its possible cure,
which he was carrying out, in associa
tion with other men of science, on the
Victoria Nyanza Lake in Central
Africa. Lieutenant Tulloch was sent
out to this investigation by the Eoyal
Society of London, and I will venture
to ask my readers to join that body in
sympathy for his friends and admira
tion for him and the other courageous
men who risk their lives in the en
deavour to arrest disease.
Trypanosomes are now being recog
nised in the most diverse regions of
the world as the cause of disease—
new horse diseases in South America,2
in North Africa, in the Philippines,
and East India are all traced to
peculiar species of Trypanosome.
Other allied forms are responsible
for Delhi-sore and certain peculiar
Indian fevers of man. A peculiar
‘and ultra-minute parasite of the blood
cells causes Texas fever, and various
African fevers deadly to cattle.3 In
1 See the next chapter devoted to this
subject.
2 [As well as a new human disease carried
by a huge bug in Brazil. J
8 From recent researches it appears most
probable that ah extremely minute parasite
of this nature is the cause of yellow fever.
A special kind of mosquito, the Stegomgia
fasciata, has for some years now been known
to be its carrier.
all these cases, as also in that of
plague, the knowledge of the carrier
of the disease, often a tick or acarid—•
in that of plague the flea of the rat—is extremely important, as well as the
knowledge of reservoir - hosts when
such exist.
The zoologist thus comes into closer
touch than ever with the profession of
medicine, and the time has arrived
when the professional students of
disease fully admit that they must
bring to their great and hopeful task
of abolishing the diseases of man the
fullest aid from every branch of bio
logical science. I need not say how
great is the contentment of those who
have long worked at apparently useless
branches of science—such as are the
careful and elaborate distinction of
every separate kind of animal and the
life-history and structure peculiar to
each—in the belief that all knowledge is
good, to find that the science they have
cultivated has become suddenly and
urgently of the highest practical value.
I have not time to do more than
mention here the effort that is being
made by combined international
research and co-operation to push
further in our knowledge of phthisis
and of cancer, with a view to their
destruction. It is only within the
past quarter of a century that the
parasite of phthisis or tubercle has
been made known; we may hope that
it will not be long before we have
similar knowledge as to cancer. Only
eighteen months have elapsed since
Fritz Schaudinn discovered the longsought parasitic germ of syphilis, the
Spirocheta pallida (see Fig. 6). As I
write these words1 the sad news of
1 [In 1906].
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
Schaudinn’s death at the age of thirtyfive comes to me from his family at
Hamburg—an irreparable loss.
Let me finally state, in relation to
this study of disease, what is the
simple fact — namely, that if the
people of Britain wish to make an
end of infective and other diseases
they must take every possible means
to discover capable investigators and
employ them for this purpose. To do
this far more money is required than
is at present spent in that direction.
It is necessary, if we are to do our
utmost, to spend a thousand pounds
of public money on this task where
we now spend one pound. It would
be reasonable and wise to expend ten
million pounds a year of our revenues
on the investigation and attempt to
destroy disease. Actually, what is so
spent is a mere nothing, a few thou
sands a year. Meanwhile our people
are dying by thousands of preventable
disease.
2.—The Advancement of Science as
Measured by the Support given
to it by Public Funds, and the
Respect Accorded to Scientific
Work by the British Government
and the Community at Large.
Whilst I have been able, though in
a very fragmentary and incomplete
way, to indicate the satisfactory and,
indeed, the wonderful progress of
science in the last quarter of a cen
tury, so far as the making of new
knowledge is concerned, I am sorry
to say that there is by no means
a corresponding “ advancement” of
science in that signification of the
word which implies the increase of
89
the influence of science in the life of
the community, the increase of the
support given to it, and of the desire
to aid in its progress, to discover and
then to encourage and reward those
who are specially fitted to increase
scientific knowledge and to bring it to
bear so as to promote the welfare of
the community.
It is, unfortunately, true that the
successive political administrators of
the affairs of this country, as well as
the permanent officials, are altogether
unaware to-day, as they were twentyfive years ago, of the vital importance
of that knowledge which we call
science, and of the urgent need for
making use of it in a variety of public
affairs. Whole departments of Govern
ment in which scientific knowledge is
the one thing needful are carried on
by Ministers, permanent secretaries,
assistant secretaries, and clerks who
are wholly ignorant of science, and
naturally enough dislike it, since it
cannot be used by them, and is in
many instances the condemnation of
their official employment. Such officials
are, of course, not to be blamed, but
rather the general indifference of the
public to the unreasonable way in
which its interests are neglected.
A difficult feature in treating of this
subject is that when one mentions the
fact that Ministers of State and the
officials of the public service are not
acquainted with science, and do not
even profess to understand its results
or their importance, one’s statement
of this very obvious and notorious fact
is apt to be regarded as a personal
offence. It is difficult to see wherein
the offence lies, for no one seeks to
blame these officials for a condition of
�90
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
things which is traditional and frankly
admitted.
This is really a very serious matter
for the scientific world to consider and
deal with. We represent a line of
activity, a group of professions which
are in our opinion of vital importance
to the well-being of the nation. We
know that those interests which we
value so highly are not merely ignored
and neglected, but are actually treated
as of no account or as non-existent by
the old-established class of politicians
and administrators. It is not too much
to say that there is a natural fear and
dislike of scientific knowledge on the
part of a large proportion of the per
sons who are devoid of it, and who
would cease to hold, or never have
held, the positions of authority or
emolument which they now occupy
were scientific knowledge of the
matters with which they undertake
to deal required of them. This is a
thorny subject, and one in which,
however much one may endeavour to
speak in general terms, it is difficult
to avoid causing personal annoyance.
Yet it seems to me one of urgent
importance. Probably an inquiry into
and discussion of the neglect of science
and the questionable treatment of scien
tific men by the administrative depart
ments of Government might with
advantage be undertaken by a com
mittee appointed by our great scientific
societies for the purpose.
At the same time, public attention
should be drawn in general terms to
the fact that science is not gaining
“ advancement ” in public and official
consideration and support. The reason
is, I think, to be found in the defective
education, both at school and univer
sity, of our governing class, as well as
in a racial dislike among all classes to
the establishment and support by public
funds of posts which the average man
may not expect to succeed, by popular
clamour or class privilege, in gaining
for himself—posts which must be held
by men of special training and mental
gifts. Whatever the reason for the
neglect, the only remedy which we can
possibly apply is that of improved
education for the upper classes, and
the continued effort to spread a know
ledge of the results of science and a
love for it amongst all members of the
community. If believers in science
took this matter seriously to heart,
they might do a great deal by insisting
that their sons, and their daughters
too, should have reasonable instruction
in science both at school and college.
They could, by their own initiative
and example, do a good deal to put an
end to the trifling with classical litera
ture and the absorption in athletics
which is considered by too many
schoolmasters as that which the
British parent desires as the education
of his children.
Within the past year a letter has
been published by a well-known noble
man who is one of the Trustees of the
British Museum, holding up to public
condemnation the method in which
the system laid down by the officials
of the Treasury, and sanctioned by
successive Governments, as to the
remuneration of scientific men, was
applied in an individual case. I desire
to place on record here the Earl of
Crawford’s letter to the Times of
October 31, 1905, for the careful con
sideration of those who desire the
advancement of science. When such
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
91
things are done, science cannot be said failure of science to gain increased in
to have advanced much in public con fluence and support in this country,
sideration or Governmental support:— but to mention some instances on the
other side of the account. As long
To the Editor of the “ Times."
SIB,—The death, noted by you to-day, of ago as 1842 the British Association
my dear friend and colleague Dr. Copeland, took over and developed an observatory
His Majesty’s Astronomer for Scotland, creates in the Deer Park at Kew, which was
a vacancy in the scientific staff of Great placed at the disposal of the Associa
Britain.
Will you permit me, Sir, to offer a word of tion by Her Majesty the Queen. Until
warning to any who may be asked to succeed 1871 the Association spent annually
him ?
a large part of its income—as much in
Students or masters of astronomy are not, later years as £600 a year—in carrying
in the selfish sense, business men, nor are
on the work of the Kew Observatory,
they, as a general rule, overburdened with
this world’s goods. It behoves them hence consisting of magnetic, meteorological,
forth to take more care as to their future in and physical observations. In 1871
case of illness or physical infirmity, and not the Association handed over the Obser
to trust to the gratitude or generous impulse vatory to the Royal Society, which
of the Treasury Department.
In old days it was the custom, when a man had received an endowment of £10,000
distinguished in science was brought into a from Mr. Gassiot for its maintenance,
high position in the Civil Service, that he was and had further devoted to that pur
credited with a certain number of years’ service pose considerable sums from its own
ranking for pension. This practice has been donation fund and Government grant.
done away with, and a bargain system sub
stituted. A short while ago the growing Further aid for it was also received
agonies of heart disease caused Dr. Copeland from private sources. From this Obser
to feel that he was less able to carry on the vatory at last has sprung, in the begin
duties of his post, and he determined to resign; ning of the present century, the National
but he learnt that under the scale, and in the
Physical Laboratory in Bushey Park,
absence of any special bargain, the pension he
would receive would not suffice for the neces a fine and efficient scientific institution,
sities of life. The only increase his friends built and supported by grants from the
could get from the Treasury was an offer to State, and managed by a committee of
allow him about half-a-crown a week extra really devoted men of science who are
by way of a house.
Indignant and ashamed of my Government, largely representatives of the Royal
I persuaded Dr. Copeland to withdraw his Society. In addition to the value of
resignation, and to retain the official position the site and buildings occupied by
which he has honoured till his death.
the National Physical Laboratory, the
1 trust, Sir, that this memorandum of mine Government has contributed altogether
may cause eminent men of science who are
asked to enter the service of the State when £34,000 to the capital expenditure on
already of middle age to take heed for their new buildings, fittings, and apparatus,
future welfare.
and has further assigned a grant of
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
£6,000 a year to the working of the
Cbawfobd.
laboratory. This institution all men of
2 Cavendish Square, October 28.
science are truly glad to have gained
It is more agreeable to me not to from the State, and they will remember
dwell further on the comparative with gratitude the statesmen—the late
�92
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
Marquis of Salisbury, ths Right Hon.
Arthur J. Balfour, Mr. Haldane, and
others—as well as their own leaders
—Lord Rayleigh, Sir William Huggins,
and the active body of physicists in
the Royal Society—who have carried
this enterprise to completion. The
British Association has every reason
to be proud of its share in early days
in nursing the germ at Kew, which has
at length expanded into this splendid
national institution.
I may mention also another institu
tion which, during the past quarter of
a century, has come into existence,
and received, originally through the
influence of the late Lord Playfair (one
of the few men of science who have ever
occupied the position of a Minister of
the Grown), and later by the influence
of the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain,
a subsidy of £1,000 a year from the
Government and a contribution of
£5,000 towards its initial expenses.
This is the Marine Biological Associa
tion,1 which has a laboratory at Ply
mouth (see Pig. 47), and has lately
expended a special annual grant, at
the spontaneous invitation of His
Majesty’s Treasury, in conducting an
investigation of the North Sea in
accordance with an international
scheme devised by a central committee
of scientific experts. This scheme has
for its purpose the gaining of such know1 I had the honour and good fortune to
found this association, and to collect the funds
so generously given to it; then for many
years to act as its honorary secretary, to
design and superintend the erection of the
laboratory, and to organise, in conjunction
with my scientific colleagues, its staff, its
scheme of work and government. On the
death of our beloved President, Professor
Huxley, I was elected as his successor, and
still occupy that position.
ledge of the North Sea and its in
habitants as shall be useful in dealing
practically and by legislation with the
great fisheries of that area. The reader
will, perhaps, not be surprised to hear
that there are persons in high positions
who, though admittedly unacquainted
with the scientific questions at issue
or the proper manner of solving them,
are discontented with the action of the
Government in entrusting the expen
diture of public money to a body of
scientific men who give their services,
without reward or thanks, to carrying
out the purposes of the international
inquiry. Strange criticisms are offered
by these malcontents in regard to the
work done in the international explora
tion of the North Sea, and a desire is
expressed to secure the money for
expenditure by a less scientific agency.
I do not hesitate to say here that the
results obtained by the Marine Bio
logical Association are of great value
and interest, and, if properly con
tinued and put to practical application,
are likely to benefit very greatly the
fishery industry; on the other hand, if
the work is cut short or entrusted to
incompetent hands, it will, no doubt,
be the case that what has already been
done will lose its value—that is to
say, will have been wasted. There is
imminent danger of this perversion of
the funds assigned to this scientific
investigation taking place.1 There is
no guarantee for the continuance of
any funds or offices assigned to science
in one generation by the officials of the
next. The Mastership of the Mint,
held by Isaac Newton, and finally by
1 [The present Government (1911) has
withdrawn the special grant for North Sea
investigations.]
�THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
the ' great chemist Thomas Graham,
has been abolished, and its salary
appropriated by non-scientific officials.
Only a few years ago it was with great
difficulty that the Government of the
day was prevented from assigning the
Assistant-Directorship of Kew Gardens
to a young man of influence devoid of
all knowledge of botany I
One of the most solid tests of the
93
quent; they are rare in this country.
It is, therefore, with especial pleasure
that I call attention to a great gift to
science in this country made only a
few years ago.
Lord Iveagh has
endowed the Lister Institute, for
researches in connection with the
prevention of disease, with no less a
sum than a quarter of a million pounds
sterling. This is the largest gift ever
Fig. 47.
The Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association on the Citadel Hill, Plymouth, overlooking
Plymouth Sound. The laboratory was built with the aid of funds raised by public subscription and a
contribution of £5,000 by H.M. Government, and cost £12,200. The Association had up to the year 1906
expended, exclusive of this sum, since the opening of the laboratory in 1884, about £62,000, or an average
of £3,000 a year on the maintenance of the laboratory, steam-boat, and fishing boats, and in payment of
a staff of scientific observers. Of this sum the Government has contributed one-third; the rest has
come from private donations and subscriptions, and from the “ earnings ” of the laboratory by sale of
specimens, admission fees to the tank-room, etc. The journal of the Association, published at intervals,
records a vast amount of scientific work, advancing our knowledge of marine life and of the life-history
of fishes.
In addition to the above expenditure and results, the Association has superintended and most
carefully directed the expenditure of £6,000 a year during recent years in the investigation of the
southern area of the North Sea and of the Channel at the request of H.M. Government, the work being
part of the International Investigation of the North Sea. The very voluminous results of these inquiries
are published in special reports by the International Committee. Full particulars of the work of the
Marine Biological Association can be obtained from Dr. E. J. Allen, the Director, the Laboratory,
Citadel Hill, Plymouth, who will also receive donations and applications for membership of the
Association.
esteem and value attached to scientific
progress by the community is the dedi
cation of large sums of money to
scientific purposes by its wealthier
members. We know that in the
United States such gifts are not infre-
made to science in this country, and
will be productive of great benefit to
humanity. The Lister Institute took
its origin in the surplus of a fund
raised (at my suggestion, and with my
assistance as secretary) by Sir James
�94
THE ADVANCE OE SCIENCE
Whitehead, when Lord Mayor, for the
purpose of making a gift to the Pas
teur Institute in Paris, where many
English patients had been treated,
without charge, after being bitten by
rabid dogs. Three thousand pounds
was sent to M. Pasteur, and the sur
plus of a few hundred pounds was
made the starting-point of a fund
which grew, by one generous gift and
another, until the Lister Institute, on
the Thames Embankment at Chelsea,
was set up on a site presented by that
good and high-minded man the late
Duke of Westminster.
Many other noble gifts to scientific
research have been made in this
country during the period on which
we are looking back. Let us be thank
ful for them, and admire the wise
munificence of the donors. But none
the less we must refuse to rely en
tirely on such liberality for the deve
lopment of the army of science, which
has to do battle for mankind against
the obvious disabilities and sufferings
which afflict us and can be removed
by knowledge. The organisation and
finance of this army should be the care
of the State.
It is a fact, which many who have
observed it regret very keenly, that
there is to-day a less widespread inter
est than formerly in natural history
and general science outside the strictly
professional arena of the school and
university.
The field naturalists
among the squires and the country
parsons seem nowadays not to be so
numerous and active in their delight
ful pursuits as formerly, and the
Mechanics’ Institutes and Lecture
Societies of the days of Lord
Brougham have given place, to a very
large extent, to musical performances,
bioscopes, and other entertainments—
more diverting, but not really more
capable of giving pleasure, than those
in which science was popularised. No
doubt the organisation and profes
sional character of scientific work are
to a large extent the cause of this
falling-off in its attraction for ama
teurs. But perhaps that decadence is
also due in some measure to the in
creased general demand for a kind of
manufactured gaiety, readily sent out
in these days of easy transport from
the great centres of fashionable amuse
ment to the provinces and rural dis
tricts.
Before concluding this retrospect I
would venture to allude to the rela
tions of scientific progress to religion.
Putting aside the troubles connected
with special creeds and churches, and
the claims of the clerical profession to
certain funds and employments, to the
exclusion of laymen, it should, I think,
be recognised that there is no essential
antagonism between the scientific spirit
and what is called the religious sen
timent.
“ Religion,” said Bishop
Creighton, “ means the knowledge of
our destiny and of the means of ful
filling it.” We can say no more and
no less of Science. Men of Science
seek, in all reverence, to discover the
Almighty, the Everlasting.
They
claim sympathy and friendship with
those who, like themselves, have
turned away from the more material
struggles of human life, and have set
their hearts and minds on the know*
ledge of the Eternal.
�THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
95
Chapter III.
NATURE’S REVENGES: THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
Among the strange and mysterious
diseases to which mankind is subject
in regions less familiar to the civilised
world than Western Europe, none is
stranger or more appalling in its quiet,
inexorable deadliness than the Sleeping
Sickness of the West African coast.
Apparently it has existed among the
natives of that region from time
immemorial; but the first printed
record we have of it is due to Winter
bottom, who, writing in 1803 of Sierra
Leone, said: “ The Africans are very
subject to a species of lethargy which
they are much afraid of, as it proves
fatal in every instance.” One of the
latest notices of the disease, before it
became the subject of active investiga
tion within the last ten years, is that
of Miss Kingsley, who saw a few cases
near the Congo estuary; but, though
she was impressed by the mysterious
fatality of the disease, she did not
describe it as very prevalent or as a
general source of danger to life. The
opening up of the Congo basin and in
creased familiarity with the inner
lands of the West African coast have
shown that this disease is widely
scattered—though rarely so abundant
as to be a serious scourge—through
the whole of tropical West Africa.
Writers in the early part of the last
century described the disease as
occurring in the West Indies and in
Brazil. Its presence was almost cer
tainly due, in those days of the slave
trade, to the importation of negroes
already infected with the disease ; and
a curious theory obtained some favour,
according to which the sleeping sick
ness of the West Indian slaves was a
kind of nostalgia, and, in fact, the
manifestation of what is sometimes
called “ a broken heart.”
The signs that a patient has con
tracted the disease are very obvious.
They are recognised by the black
people, and the certainly fatal issue
accepted with calm acquiescence. The
usually intelligent expression of the
healthy negro is replaced by a dull,
apathetic appearance; and there is a
varying amount of fever and headache.
This may last for some weeks, but is
followed more or less rapidly by a
difficulty in locomotion and speech, a
trembling of the tongue and hands.
There is increased fever and constant
drowsiness, from which the patient is
roused only to take food. At last—usually after some three or four
months of illness—complete somno
lence sets in ; no food is taken, the
body becomes emaciated and ulcerated,
and the victim dies in a state of coma.
The course of the disease, from the
time when the apathetic stage is first
noticed, may last from two to twelve
months.
It is this terrible disease which has
lately appeared on the shores of the
Victoria Nyanza, in the kingdom of
Uganda, administered by the British
�96
THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
Government. Until the early part of
the year 1901 there was not the
slightest suspicion that sleeping sick
ness occurred in any part of the
Uganda Protectorate; nor was it
known in East Africa at all, any more
than in the north and south of that
great continent. It seems gradually to
have crept up the newly-opened traderoutes of the Congo basin, and thence
to have spread into the west of
Uganda, the territory known as
Busoga. Numbers of Soudanese and
Congo men are known to have settled
in this region after the death of Emin
Pasha. First noticed in 1901, it was
estimated in June, 1902, by the
Commissioner of Uganda, writing
officially to the Marquess of Lans
downe, that 20,000 persons had died
of this disease in the district of Busoga
alone, and several thousands in the
more eastern portion of Uganda.
In 1906 the number of deaths in
this region due to sleeping sickness
since 1901 amounted to more than
200,000 ; and this though, most fortu
nately, the disease had not yet spread
eastward from Uganda into British
East Africa,1 nor, so far as had been
1 The disease has actually entered into the
administrative area known as British Bast
Africa, but has not made any rapid progress
towards the coast. According to a report by
Dr. Wiggins, the disease is confined in British
East Africa, as in Uganda, to those areas in
which Glossina palpalis occurs. [To this I
must now (1912) add that the disease has
spread into both the Upper Soudan and
Nyassaland. Continuous and praiseworthy
efforts to deal with the disease have been
made by the Colonial Office, and are still in
progress. An expedition has this winter been
sent, under Colonel Sir David Bruce, to study
the spread of the disease in Nyassaland. The
Royal Society of London has now for some
years maintained a special bureau, issuing
reports at regular intervals of all information
as to the investigations into sleeping sickness
reported, down the Nile. No curative
treatment for the disease has yet been
discovered; nor is there any authen
ticated instance of recovery.1
The appalling mortality produced by
this disease in Central Africa naturally
caused the greatest anxiety to his
Majesty’s Government, which had but
just completed the railway from the
East Coast to the shores of lake Vic
toria Nyanza, and had established a
prosperous and happy rule in that
densely populated region. The official
medical men on the spot, though
capable and experienced practitioners,
were unable to cope with this new
and virulent outbreak. The Foreign
Office, having no imperial board of
hygiene and medical administration to
apply to in this country, sought the
assistance of the Royal Society of
London.
A committee of that society had
already undertaken the study of
malaria at the request of the Secre
tary of State for the Colonies, and
had sent out young medical men as a
commission to make certain enquiries
and experiments on that subject and
report to the committee in London.
The sleeping sickness enquiry was un
dertaken by the same committee; but
unfortunately very insufficient funds
were placed at its disposal. When
the South African cattle-owners found
their herds threatened twelve years
carried out not only by British observers and
officials, but also by French, German, and
other investigators. A really adequate effort
is being made to deal with the disease.J
1 [A treatment by means of injections of
antimony (potassium tartar emetic) into the
blood has been used, as well as other similar
methods. A very few cases (not a dozen) are
on record of permanent recovery under such
treatment.]
�THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
ago by a new form of mortal disease—
the East Coast fever ”—the South
African Government accepted the offer
of Dr. Robert Koch, of Berlin, to
undertake the investigation of the
disease and the discovery, if possible,
of a remedy, for the sum of £10,000.
No such sum was at the disposal of
the committee of the Royal Society.
They were obliged to send out young
and enterprising medical men, practi
cally without pay or reward, to see
what they could do in the way of
determining the cause of, and, if pos
sible, the remedy for, the terrible
sleeping sickness raging in Uganda
and destroying daily hundreds of
British subjects. The committee set
to work in the summer of 1902, and
sent out Drs. Low, Christy, and
Castellani to Entebbe, the capital of
Uganda.
The guesses as to the cause and
nature of sleeping sickness at the time
when this commission set forth were
very various. Some highly capable
medical authorities held that it was
due to poisonous food. The root of
the manioc, on which the natives feed,
was supposed to become infected by
some poison-producing ferment.
A
more generally received opinion was
that it was caused hy a specific bac
terium which invades the tissues of
the brain and spinal cord. Several
totally different micro-organisms of
this sort had been described with
equal confidence by Erench and Por
tuguese investigators as the cause of
the sleeping sickness studied by them
in West Africa or on the Congo. Sir
Patrick Manson, the head of the British
Colonial medical service, an authority
of great experience in tropical disease,
97
had put forward the suggestion that
the sleeping sickness was due to the
infection of the patient by a minute
thread-worm (allied to the “ vinegar
eel,” and one of a great class of para
sites) which he had discovered in the
blood of negroes, and had named
Filaria perstans.
The occurrence of minute worms
(true worms, neither unicellular plants
nor protozoa) in the blood of man was
first made known by Dr. Timothy
Lewis, who described the Filaria
sanguinis hominis, as well as some
other most important blood-parasites,
some years ago (1878), when officially
engaged in an enquiry into the cause
of cholera in Calcutta. Subsequently,
in China, Manson found that these
little blood-worms were sucked up by
mosquitoes when gorging themselves
on the blood of a patient. It is,
indeed, difficult to imagine how they
should escape passing into the mosquito
with the blood. Manson suggested
that the minute worms (known to be
the embryos of a worm which, when
adult, is about two inches long) are
obliged to pass through a mosquito in
order to accomplish their development;
but no proof of this suggestion has
ever been made. We know by abun
dant and repeated demonstration and
experiment that another blood-parasite
—the malaria parasite—must pass
through a mosquito, in whose body it
develops, and by which it is carried to
a new victim of infection. This was
suspected long ago by both peasants
and doctors, and experimentally proved
by Ross; but no such proof has been
given of the relation of Lewis’s blood
worm to a mosquito. The so-called
Filaria perstans, discovered by Manson
�98
THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
in the blood of negroes, appears to be
very different from the Filaria san
guinis hominis of Lewis. It is not
known how it gets into the blood ; and
it is very astonishing, and much to be
regretted, that none of the medical
men who have had it under observa
tion have given a proper anatomical
account of it. It appears that this
worm is very common in the blood of
negroes in tropical Africa; and as it
was found in several cases in the
blood of individuals attacked by sleep
ing sickness, Sir Patrick Manson was
justified in entertaining the view that
this parasite was the cause of the
disease.
One of the first results obtained by
the commission sent by the Royal
Society committee to Uganda was the
proof—which had, indeed, been already
furnished by the resident medical
officers of the Uganda Protectorate—
that Filaria perstans, though remark
ably abundant in the blood of the
negroes of Uganda, can have nothing
to do with sleeping sickness, since,
though it often occurs in persons
attacked with that disease, it also
exists in districts where sleeping sick
ness is unknown; and, further, many
cases of sleeping sickness have been
observed in which no Filaria perstans
has been discovered in the blood or
other parts of the body.
While Drs. Low and Christy occu
pied themselves with settling this
question as to the connection of Filaria
perstans with the disease and carried
out a careful study of its clinical
aspects, Dr. Castellani examined the
brain and spinal cord of those who
died from sleeping sickness, for bac
teria. He found again and again an
extremely minute globular vegetable
parasite—of the kind known as strep
tococcus—which he concluded to be
the cause of the disease, although he
had not produced the disease experi
mentally by inoculating an animal
with this microbe.
In the early part of 1903 these were
the only results obtained by some six
months’ work of the medical men sent
out by the Royal Society’s committee;
and it was felt that something more
must be done. The investigation of
a disease hitherto little known and
studied is one of the most difficult
tasks in the world, requiring the
highest scientific qualities.
Any
serious attempt to deal with the
sleeping sickness in Uganda would,
it was at length recognised, require
the dispatch of a man of proved
capacity and experience, provided
with full powers and with trained
men as his assistants. No such men
are provided by the public service of
the British Empire. To detach a
medical man of recognised insight and
experimental skill from his practice—
even were it possible to find one
specially qualified for the present
enquiry—would involve the payment
of a large fee, which neither the Royal
Society nor the Foreign Office could
command.
What, then, was to be done ? For
tunately there was one man in the
public service, recently appointed to
be one of the chiefs of the educational
arrangements of the Army Medical
Department, who had shown himself
to be especially gifted in the investi
gation of obscure diseases. This was
Colonel David Bruce, F.R.S., who
some fifteen years ago established the
�THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
existence of Malta fever as an inde
pendent disease by his clinical obser
vations and by the isolation and
cultivation of the parasitic bacterium
causing it; and who, further, when
employed by the governor of Zululand
a few years later (1895) to investigate
the celebrated tsetze-fly disease of South
Africa, had discovered, contrary to the
assertions and prejudices of a large
number of African sportsmen and
explorers, that the horse and cattle
disease known as nagana or tsetze-fly
disease was due to the presence in the
blood of the affected animals of a
peculiar corkscrew-like animal para
site, the Trypanosoma Brucei. This
is carried by the bite of the tsetze fly
from the blood of wild game, such as
buffalo and antelope, where it does no
harm, to the blood of domesticated
animals, in which it multiplies and
proves to be the source of a deadly
poison causing death in a few weeks.
The experiments by which Colonel
Bruce demonstrated this relationship
of tsetze fly, trypanosome parasite,
wild big game, and domesticated
animals were universally regarded as
masterly, both in conception and
execution, and absolutely conclusive.
The committee of the Royal Society
came to the conclusion that the thing
to be done was to get Colonel Bruce
to consent to proceed to Uganda, and
to recommend the Foreign Office to
obtain from the War Office the
temporary detachment of Colonel
Bruce for this service. Accordingly
Colonel Bruce arrived in Uganda in
the middle of March, 1903. Dr. Low
and Dr. Christy had already departed,
but Dr. Castellani was still at Entebbe
engaged in the study of his strepto
99
coccus. He mentioned to Colonel
Bruce on his arrival that he had on
more than one occasion seen a try
panosome in the cerebro-spinal fluid
of negroes suffering from sleeping
sickness; but, inasmuch as Dutton
on the West Coast and Hodges in
Uganda had described a trypanosome
as an occasional parasite in human
blood, he had not considered its
occurrence in sleeping-sickness patients
as of any more significance than is the
occurrence of Filaria perstans. Cas
tellani regarded the trypanosome, like
the filaria, as a mere accidental con
comitant of sleeping sickness, the
cause of which he considered to be
the bacterial streptococcus which he
had so frequently found to be present.
Naturally enough, Bruce was im
pressed by the fact that trypanosomes,
of the deadly nature of which he had
had ample experience, had been found,
even once, in the cerebro-spinal fluid
of sleeping-sickness patients; and he
immediately set to work to make a
thorough search for this parasite in
all the cases of sleeping sickness then
under observation at Entebbe. He
generously allowed Castellani to take
part in the investigation, which
resulted in the immediate discovery
of the trypanosome in the cerebro
spinal fluid of twenty cases, out of
thirty - four examined, of negroes
afflicted with the disease; whilst in
twelve negroes free from sleeping
sickness the trypanosome could not
be found in the cerebro-spinal fluid.
Castellani returned to Europe three
weeks after Bruce’s experiments were
commenced, and announced the dis
covery.
Bruce continued his work in Uganda
�100
THE SLEEPING- SICKNESS
until the end of August, 1903, having
been joined there by Colonel Greig of
the Indian Army, who continued the
work of the Royal Society’s com
mission after Bruce left. Other
valuable observations were carried
out by various medical men officially
connected with the Uganda Protec
torate. Bruce soon showed that in
every case of sleeping sickness, when
examined with sufficient care, the
trypanosome parasite is found to be
present in the cerebro-spinal fluid.
He also showed that it was absent from
that fluid in all negroes examined who
were not afflicted with the disease,
but made the very important discovery
that the trypanosome is present in the
blood (not the cerebro-spinal fluid) of
twenty-eight per cent, of the popula
tion in those areas where sleeping
sickness occurs, the persons thus
affected having none of the symptoms
of sleeping sickness, but being either
perfectly healthy or merely troubled
with a little occasional fever. It was
found in these cases, even in some
Europeans, that the earlier presence
of the trypanosome in the blood was
followed by its entry into the cerebro
spinal lymphatics, and by the fatal
development of sleeping sickness.
As already indicated, it was found
by Bruce, on recording the cases of
sleeping sickness brought into or
reported in Entebbe, that there were
certain “ sleeping-sickness areas ” and
other areas free from sleeping sickness.
The theory now took shape in Bruce’s
mind that the trypanosome first gets
into the blood, and then, after a time,
makes its way into the cerebro-spinal
system, only then producing its deadly
symptoms. Very generally, when once
in the blood, the trypanosome multi
plies itself, and sooner or later—
apparently, in some cases, evBn after
two or three years—gets into the
cerebro-spinal fluid. It is probable
that it may sometimes be destroyed
by natural processes in the human
body before this final stage is reached;
and thus the infected person may
recover and escape the deadly phase
of the disease. But nothing certain is
known, as yet, on this head. It was
shown that the trypanosome is found
alive and in large quantity in the
lymphatic glands, especially those in
the region of the neck, in infected
persons. These glands were known
to be enlarged in persons suffering
from the disease.
Colonel Bruce’s next step was to
ascertain the mode in which the
trypanosome is introduced into the
blood. Naturally he looked for a
kind of tsetze fly, such as carries the
trypanosome in the nagana disease of
horses and cattle already studied by
him in Zululand. It is a fact that
the Glossina morsitans and Glossina
pallidipes, which are the tsetze flies
of the “ fly districts ” where nagana
disease is rife, are unknown *in Central
or Western Africa; and also it is a
fact that no tsetze fly had been
observed in the neighbourhood of the
Victoria Nyanza when Colonel Bruce
began his enquiries. He employed,
through the good-will of the native
chiefs and rulers, a large number of
natives to collect flies throughout the
country forming a belt of twenty or
thirty miles around the north of the
lake. Many thousands of flies were
thus brought in, and the localities
from which they came carefully noted.
�THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
101
Among these flies Colonel Bruce were ascertained to be liable to
recognised a tsetze fly ; and when the infection of the sleeping-sick
these collections were received at the ness trypanosome when this was
Natural History Museum in London, introduced by means of injection
it was at once determined by Mr. through a syringe. Such monkeys
Austen, the assistant in charge of the were found to develop the chief
collections of Diptera (or two-winged symptoms of sleeping sickness, and
flies), that the Uganda tsetze fly was ultimately died of the disease, their
not the same species as that of Zulu- cerebro-spinal fluid being invaded by
land and the. fly country, but a distinct the parasites. Accordingly it was
species previously known only on the possible to use monkeys as test
West Coast and the Congo basin, and animals. It was found by Colonel
described by the name Glossina pat- Bruce that tsetze flies (Glossina pal
palis. The story thus developed pates) which had been made to bite
itself : the trypanosome of sleeping infected negroes could carry the infec
sickness is probably carried by this tion to the monkeys; and it was also
West Coast tsetze fly just as the found that even when a number of
trypanosome of nagana is carried in tsetze flies not specially prepared
the south-east of Africa by the Glossina were allowed to bite a monkey, the
morsitans and pallidipes, the regular latter eventually developed the try
panosome in its blood and cerebro
and original “ tsetze ” flies.
Sleeping sickness thus presented spinal fluid, thus showing that the
itself as a special kind of human tsetze flies, as naturally occurring in
tsetze-fly disease. To test this hypo the country around Entebbe, contain,
thesis, Colonel Bruce pursued two many of them, the trypanosome ready
very important and distinct lines of to pass from the fly to a human or
enquiry. In the first place, he found simian victim, when casually bitten
that those places oh his map which by the fly.
Experiments such as these of infec
were marked as “ sleeping-sickness
areas ” were precisely those places tion by the fly, and the use of monkeys
from which the collected flies included in the research, require very great care ;
specimens of tsetze fly, whilst he and it was quite reasonable to ask
found that there were no tsetze flies that they should be repeated and
in the collections of flies brought in most carefully checked before they
by the natives from the regions where were considered as demonstrative and
absolutely certain. It may now be
there was no sleeping sickness.
His second test inquiry consisted in considered as practically certain that
ascertaining whether the tsetze flies of the sleeping sickness is due to the
Uganda are actually found, experi presence in the cerebro-spinal fluid of
mentally, to be capable of carrying quantities of a minute parasite, the
the trypanosome from one infected Trypanosoma Gambiense, which is
person to another. Bor this purpose carried from man to man by the
it was necessary to make use of palpalis tsetze fly, which sucks it up
monkeys, certain species of which I from the blood of an infected individual
�102
THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
and conveys it to previously uninfected gnat, in the interior of which it/iultiindividuals. The natives in Uganda1 plies by a process of sexual conjugation.
lie about and sleep under the shade of At the same time the reader who is
trees where the tsetze flies are espe interested in sleeping sickness will
cially abundant; and they are quite probably desire to know more about
indifferent to the bites of flies of one the nature of the tsetze flies and some
kind and another.
further details as to the parasite spoken
It is the dislike to the mere touch of as trypanosome.
/
of a fly, still more to its bite, which
The tsetze flies form a genus called
has protected Europeans almost en by Wiedemann Lin 1830) \ Grlossina.”
tirely from the sleeping sickness. They are only found in Africa; and
Unfortunately there is no immunity some seven species1 in all ar(> known.
for Europeans in the matter; and the *They are little bigger than a common
existence of many cases of white house-fly, and much like it it colour
people infected with the trypanosome, (Fig. 48). They differ :n appearance
who have ultimately died in England from the house-fly in the fact that the
or elsewhere in Europe from sleeping wings, when the insect is at rest, are
sickness contracted through the bite parallel to one another, and slightly
of a fly in Africa, is abundant proof overlap in the middle line, instead of
that there is not, as has been supposed, being to a small extent divergent at
any special freedom from the disease their free extremities. The bite, like
for white people.1
that of all flies, is rather a stab than
The foregoing description of the a bite, and is effected by a beak-like
nature and mode of the infection of process of the head, the blood of the
sleeping sickness will not cause any animal pricked in this way being
astonishment to the layman of the drawn into the fly’s mouth by a
present day who knows anything of sucking action of the gullet. The
recent medical science. We are all tsetze flies appear to be especially
familiar with the danger of fly-bites, greedy, and are said to gorge them
even in this country, where deadly selves to such an extent that the
bacteria are occasionally carried by blood taken in from one animal over
biting flies, such as the horse-flies, flows the gullet, and so contaminates
into the human subject; and nowadays the wound inflicted by the fly on the
everyone is more or less familiar with next animal it visits. It is at the
the discovery of the minute blood present moment assumed very generally
parasite which causes malaria or ague that this is the way in which infection
and is carried by a particular kind of is produced. But it is not at all
1 Only last year (1905) Lieut. Tulloch, of improbable that the trypanosome
the Army Medical Department, who with undergoes some kind of multiplication
Professor Minchin was engaged in carrying
on further researches for the Royal Society and change of form when sucked into
on the sleeping sickness at Entebbe in the tsetze fly, as happens in the case
Uganda, became infected by the trypano
some, probably through an unobserved bite
by a tsetze fly, and died of the disease soon
1 [Now (1912) eleven species are distin
after his return to England.
,guished.}
�THE SLEEPING- SICKNESS
of the malaria parasite when swallowed
by the Anopheles gnat. No such change
has yet been discovered in regard to
the trypanosome of sleeping sickness;
but it cannot be said that the matter
has been exhaustively studied, or that
a negative conclusion is justified.1
As to the parasite itself—the trypa
nosome—a long and very interesting
story has now to be told. The first
blood-parasite ever made known to
naturalists and medical men was that
to which Gruby, in 1843, gave the
name Trypanosoma sanguinis.
He
found it in the blood of the common
frog. We have here reproduced a
Fig.
48.
Tsetze flies—Glossina morsitans—magnified two
diameters. This is the “fly” of the nagana or
horse and cattle disease of South Africa. The
Glossina palpalis, which carries the Trypanosoma
Gambiense, causing sleeping sickness, is very closely
similar to it in appearance.
figure of this original trypanosome
(fig. 49). Similar parasites had been
seen, but not named, in the blood of
fishes. These trypanosomes are all
1 Professor Minchiu investigated this subject
during 1905 in Uganda, whither he went on
behalf of the Tropical Diseases Committee of
the Royal Society. He did not discover
anything corresponding to the development
of the malarial parasite in the gnat, but his
investigations are not yet brought to a con
clusion (December, 1906). [Later investi
gations by French and German observers
—especially those of Kleiner—have recently
demonstrated that there is such a phase of
development and multiplication of the try
panosome of sleeping sickness in the body of
the tsetze fly.]
103
very minute and of a somewhat elon
gated form, a fair average length being
one thousandth of an inch. They are
simple protoplasmic animals, consist
ing of one single nucleated corpuscle.
The protoplasm is drawn out at one
end of the creature into a motile,
undulating thread, and from the point
where this joins the body a mem
branous undulating crest extends along
the greater part of the animal’s length.
There is no mouth, nutrition being
effected by the imbibition of soluble
nutrient matter.
After a long interval Gruby’s trypa
nosome was re-discovered in 1871; and
then several kinds were described in
the blood of tortoises, fishes, and birds.
In 1878 Dr. Timothy Lewis found a
parasite in the blood of rats, at first in
India, and subsequently in the common
rats of London sewers. This parasite
resembles a trypanosome in many
respects (Fig. 46a), but was very pro
perly given a distinct name by Savile
Kent, who called it “ Herpetomonas.”
This name has, however, been dropped;
and the rat’s-blood parasite is spoken
of as a trypanosome. It is the Trypa
nosoma Lewisii, and was the first of
these trypanosomes to be found in the
blood of a mammalian animal. The
Trypanosoma Lewisii of the rat’s blood
seems to do no harm to the rat, in
which it swarms, multiplying itself by
longitudinal fission; nor is it at pre
sent known to produce any trouble in
other animals when transferred to
their blood. Similarly, the frog’s try
panosome seems to exist innocently in
the frog’s blood.
The next trypanosome discovered
(1880) was, however, found in the
blood of camels, horses, and cattle
�104
THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
suffering from a deadly disease known
in India by the name “ surra.” It is
called Trypanosoma Evansii, after the
observer who detected it. Trypano
somes now began to get a bad name,
for the next was discovered in animals
afflicted by a North African disease
known to French veterinaries as
“dourine.”
This trypanosome was
called T. equiperdum.
A
injuring them, just as the rat’s trypa
nosome inhabits the rat’s blood with
out producing disease; and that it is
only when the trypanosome is carried
from these natural wild “hosts” to
domesticated animals introduced by
man, such as horses, asses, cattle, and
dogs, that disease results. The Wild
animals are “ immune ” to Bruce’s
trypanosome; the introduced animals
Fig. 49.
The earliest discovered Trypanosome, described by Gruby, in 1843, as Trypanosoma sanguinis, and
It was^not 'no^edSin
Wh°
figure of it in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science in that year.
A little later—namely, in the year
1895—came Bruce’s discovery of a try
panosome associated with a tsetze fly
in the production of the terrible nagana
disease of the “fly-belts” of South
Africa, which renders whole territories
impassable for horses or cattle (Fig.
46b). The remarkable and important
observation was made by Bruce that
this trypanosome (known as T. Brucei)
inhabits the blood of big game without
are poisoned by the products of its
growth and fissile multiplication in
their blood.
Since Bruce’s researches on nagana,
a trypanosome, T. equinum (Fig. 46d),
has been discovered in the horse
ranches of South America, where it
causes deadly disease, the mal de
caderas, among the collected .horses •
and a curiously large-sized trypano
some has been found by Theiler in the
�105
THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
blood of cattle in the Transvaal.1
Down to a recent date no trypano
some Jiad been found in the blood of
man ; and indeed it is almost certain
that none of the kinds hitherto men
tioned can survive in his blood. But
in 1902 Dutton discovered a trypano
some in the blood of a West African
patient; and a few other cases were
noted. This trypanosome of human
blood was called by Dutton T. Gambiense. It was not found to be con
nected with any serious symptoms, a
little fever being the only disturbance
noted. It now, however, appears that
this trypanosome in the blood is the
preliminary stage of the infection
which ends in sleeping sickness ; and,
as we have seen, in a population seri
ously attacked by sleeping sickness, as
is that of Uganda, as many as 28 per
cent, of the people have trypanosomes
in their blood.
There is no ground at present known
for distinguishing Dutton’s T. Gambiense of human blood from that which
Bruce has found to be so terribly
abundant in Uganda, and to be the
cause of sleeping sickness. Indeed,
all the trypanosomes of the blood of
the larger mammalia are singularly
alike in appearance; and the figure
which is here given (Eig. 50) of the
trypanosome of sleeping sickness (I7.
Gambiense) might, with very slight
modification, serve to represent the T.
Evansii of surra disease, the T. Brucei
1 [The number of kinds of trypanosome
known has been greatly increased during the
period 1906-1911, and diseases produced
by them have been described. Only one
additional kind producing a disease in man has
been discovered—namely, in Brazil, where it is
carried into the human body by the bite of
an enormous species of bug which infests the
dwellings of country-folk.]
of nagana disease, or the T. equinum of
the South American mol de caderas.
A most characteristic feature, which
has been made out by the careful study
of those trypanosomes by means of
colouring reagents and very high
powers of the microscope, is that,
whilst there is a large granular nucleus,
there is also a small body at the
anterior end of the animalcule which
readily stains, and is placed at the end
of the root (so to speak) of the vibratile flagellum or free thread. This
smaller nucleus has been variously
Fig.
50.
Trypanosoma Gambiense, from the blood of men
suffering from the early symptoms of sleeping
sickness. A, after Bruce and Navarro; B, after
CasteUani. They show a large oval nucleus (drawn
as a black mass), and a small black ” micronucleus,”
or “ blepharoplast ” in front.
called the “micronucleus,” the “ centrosome,” and the “ blepharoplast.”
It is identical with a structure simi
larly placed in non-parasitic micro
scopic animals to which Trypanosoma
is undoubtedly related. We find it in
the phosphorescent noctiluea of our
seas, and in various animalcules called
“ Elagellata.”
The creature drawn in our Eig. 50 is,
then, the typical trypanosome. It is
this which the medical investigator
looks for in his human or animal
patients; it is this which he has
regarded as the sign and proof of
�106
THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
infection. Experiments have shown
that, though so much alike in appear
ance in the different diseases we have
named, yet each trypanosome has its
own properties. Human blood-serum
is poisonous to one and not to another;
an animal immune to one is not
immune to another. At present ,no
treatment has been discovered which
will destroy the parasites when once
they have effected a lodgment, or act
as an antidote to the poison which they
produce in the infected animal or man.1
The Trypanosome (T. eauiperdum) of the
disease called “Dourine,” as seen alive in the
blood of a rat, eight days ofter inoculation.
a, the actively -wriggling corkscrew-like para
sites; b, the blood-corpuscles of the rat. This
figure, of comparatively low magnification, gives
an indication of the relative size of the parasites
and the blood corpuscles.
The blood-corpuscles are about j o cnrth of an
inch each in diameter.
always be remembered that we are
liable to confuse two different con-*1
ditions under this one term.
An
animal may be said to be immune to
a blood-parasite because that parasite
is actually unable to live in its blood.
On the other hand, an animal is often
said to be immune to a parasite when
the parasite can and does flourish in its
blood or tissues, but produces no poi
sonous effect. A more precise nomen
clature would describe the attacked
organism in the first case as “ repel
lent,” for it repels the parasite alto
gether; in the secondcaseas “tolerant,”
for it tolerates the presence and mul
tiplication of the parasite without
suffering by it.
We have yet to learn a good deal
more as to the repulsion and the tole
ration of the trypanosome parasites
by mammals and man. Still more
have we to learn about the life-history
of the trypanosome. At the moment
of writing absolutely nothing has been
ascertained as to the life-history of the
trypanosomes of mammalian blood
except that they multiply in the blood
by longitudinal fission.1 Our ignorance
about them is all the more serious
since other trypanosomes, discovered
by Danilewsky in birds, have been
studied, and have been shown to go
through the most varied phases of
multiplication and change of size and
shape, including a process of sexual
fertilisation like that of the malaria
But the fact that in some cases an
animal may become immune to the
attack of the parasite which usually is
deadly to its kind gives hope of an
eventual curative treatment for trypa
nosome infection; as does also the fact
that the serum of some animals acts
2 [Since the above was written there has
as a poison to trypanosomes which
been very great activity in microscopic re
flourish in other animals.
searches on this matter, and a great deal of
With regard to immunity, it must valuable knowledge has been obtained as to
1 [Though the injection of certain prepara
tions of arsenic, of antimony, and of mercury
have in a few cases been followed by recovery.)
the history of several mammalian trypano
somes and their multiplication in the bodies
of fleas, lice, and bugs, by which they are
carried from one victim to another.)
�THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
parasite, to which, indeed, it now seems
certain the trypanosomes are very
closely allied.
It is to; Dr. Schaudinn1 that we owe
a knowledge of some most extraordinary and important facts with regard
to the trypanosomes parasitic in the
blood of the little stone-owl of
southern Europe (Athene noctua).
These facts are so remarkable that,
Were Dr. Schaudinn not known as a
very competent investigator of micro
scopic organisms, we should hesitate to
accept them as true. Supposing as is
107
this chapter, the British Government
has no staff of public servants trained
to deal with the world-wide problems
of sanitation and disease which neces
sarily come with increasing frequency
before the puzzled administrators of
our scattered Empire. There is no
provision for the study of the nature
and history of blood-parasites in this
country—that is to say, no provision of
laboratories with the very ablest and
exceptionally-gifted investigators at
their head.1 We play with the pro
vision of an adequate army, officers,
\
Fig. 53.
Fin. 82.
5%.—Trypanosoma Ziemanni, from the gut of the gnat (Oulex), having been sucked in with the
btood of the owl (.Athene noctud). A, fertilised vermiform stage. B, multiplication of nucleus. C,
elongation and coiling, with increase of nuclei (after Schauamn).
frriTn
rniledformof
Fig. 53.—Minute neutral Trypanosomes in the gut of the gnat liberated fiom the coiled toim oi
Fig. 52, C (after Schaudinn).
Fig.
/not improbable, that similar facts can
be shown in regard to the trypano
somes of mammalian blood, the conclu
sions which our medical investigators
have based upon a very limited know
ledge of the form and life-history of
the trypanosomes occurring in diseases
such as sleeping sickness, surra, and
Bagana are likely to be gravely modified,
and practical issues of an unexpected
kind will be involved.
As has already been pointed out in
and equipment to fight disease which
annually destroys hundreds of thou
sands of our people, much as barbarous
1 Since this was written a professorship of
Protozoology has, with the assistance of the
Colonial Office, been established in the Uni
versity of London. This is a first step towards
a recognition of the duty of the State in this
matter. [Professor Minchin, F.R.S., who
has been appointed to this post, has made
important discoveries, in consequence, by .his
study of the trypasonome of sleeping sick
ness in Uganda, and of the relation of the
rat’s trypasonome to its flea. He has also
been to Rovigno and revised Schaudinn’s
observations on the parasites of the little
1 Dr. Schaudinn died in 1906. He was only owl, confirming some and rejecting others of
Schaudinn’s results.J
35 years of age.
�108
THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
States or bankrupt European kingdoms
play with the provision of an ordinary
army and navy. Their forces exist on
paper, or even in fact, but have no
ammunition, no officers, and no infor
mation, and there is no pay for the
soldiers or sailors. Dr. Schaudinn, on
the other hand, carried on his researches
as an officer of the German Imperial
Health Bureau of Berlin; and the
F.
Fig. 54.
A, B, C, D, elongated spiral forms of Try
panosoma Ziemanni (some intertwined) developed
from those of Fig. 53—showing transverse division,
nucleus, and blepharoplast.
E, F, pear-shaped forms resulting from the
contraction of forms like A; G, a cluster of very
minute individuals.
These forms are observed in the gnat and also
in the blood of the owl, into which they pass when
the gnat bites that bird, and were supposed by
Schaudinn to give rise to the large male and female
trypanosomes seen in Fig. 55 (after Schaudinn)
[though this conclusion is not at the present
moment (1911) accepted].
account of them was published in the
official Report of that important depart
ment of the German Imperial Adminis
trative Service three years ago.
It is not possible here to give a full
report on Dr. Schaudinn’s work ; but
it appears that he has studied two
distinct species of trypanosome, both
occurring side by side in the blood of
the little stone-owl, and already seen
but incompletely studied by Danilewsky
and Ziemann. The second of the two
species of trypanosome is in some
respects the more remarkable. Schau
dinn calls it Trypanosoma Ei&manni;
and from the figures which are here
given (Figs. 4, 5, 6, and 7), copied from
his article, with the explanations below
the figures, the reader will at once see
what an extraordinary range of form
and mode of multiplication is presented
by this one species of trypanosome.
Space will not permit us to comment
on these various phases beyond noting
how assuredly such forms would
have escaped recognition as belong
ing to the trypanosome history if
seen, before Dr. Schaudinn’s memoir
was printed, by any of our medical
commissioners blindly exploring round
about the diseases caused by trypano
somes in man and mammals.
One very astonishing and revolution
ary opinion announced by Schaudinn
we must, however, especially point out.
Medical men have long been acquainted
with the spirillum, or spiral threads,
discovered by Obermeyer in the blood
of patients suffering from the relapsing
fever of eastern Europe. These were
universally and without question
regarded as Bacteria (vegetable organ
isms), and referred to the genus
“ Spirochaeta ” of Ehrenberg. They
were called Spiro chata Obermeieri ;
and relapsing fever was held to be a
typical case of a bacterial infection
of the blood. It is now held by
Schaudinn that the blood - parasite
Spirochaeta is a phase of a trypano
some (Fig. 54); that it has a large
nucleus and a micronucleus or ble
pharoplast, neither of which is present
in the spiral Bacteria; and, further,
that it alters its shape, contracting so
�THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
as to present the form of minute oval
or pear-shaped bodies, each provided
with a larger and a smaller nucleus
(Fig. 54, E, F). These oval bodies
are often engulfed by the colourless
corpuscles (phagocytes) of the blood;
and it is in the highest degree probable
that such phases of the growth of a
trypanosome have been observed in
some tropical diseases without their
109
parasites, and must lead to important
discoveries in regard to diseases caused
by them in mammals and in man.
The facts that wild game serve as a
tolerant reservoir of trypanosomes for
the infection of domesticated animals
by the intermediary of the tsetze fly,
and that native children in malarial
regions act the same part for the
malarial parasite and mosquito, suggest
Fig. 55.
Trynanosoma Ziemanni, from the blood of the little owl. The stages shown in Figs. 52-54 are
snown m rigs, oz-oa.a-c
passed inside the gnat. The spiral and pear-shaped bodies of Fig. 54 pass from the gnat s proboscis into
the blood of the little owl, and grow there into the large forms here figured. A, B, and C are females,
destined to be fertilised by spermatozoa (see Fig. 21) when swallowed by a gnat. D and B are male
trypanosomes, which will give rise each to eight fertilising individuals or spermatozoa—as shown m
Fig. 56—when swallowed by a gnat.
relation to the spiral forms being
suspected.
The corpuscles lately
described by Leishman, in cases of
a peculiar Indian fever, are very
probably of this nature, as are also
similar bodies recently described in
Delhi sore. On the whole, it may
safely be said that the researches of
Dr. Schaudinn have widely modified
our conceptions as to these blood-
very strongly that some tolerant reser
voir of the sleeping-sickness trypano
some may exist in the shape of a
hitherto unsuspected mammal, bird,
or insect. The investigation of that
hypothesis and the discovery of the
reproductive and secondary forms of
the mammalian trypanosomes are the
matters which now most urgently call
for the efforts of capable medical
�110
THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
officers.1 But we must not be san
guine of rapid progress, since men
of the scientific quality needful for
pursuing these enquiries are not
numerous; and those who exist are
not endowed with private fortunes, as
a rule. At the same time no suffi
ciently serious attempt is made by the
British Government to take such men
into its pay, or to provide for the
training and selection of such officers.2
The relations of parasites to the
Fig. 56.
Mule Trypanosoma Ziemanni, giving rise by
nuclear division to eight spermatozoa or micro
gametes. From the stomach of the gnat (Culex).
Each of these penetrates and fuses with the
substance of a female trypanosome, swallowed at
the same time or already taken in by the gnat.
The fertilised animalcule is the vermiform motile
stage of Fig. 52, A; and so we return to the startingpoint of the cycle (after Sohaudinri).
organisms upon or in which they are
parasitic, and the relation of Man,
once entered on the first steps of his
career of civilisation, to the world of
parasites, form one of the most
1 [The life-history of the insects which
carry disease-producing trypanosomes is also
most important, and often difficult to ascer
tain. It is not yet known what insect carries
the parasites which produce horse-diseases,
and it is now thought probable that other
flies than Glossina may in some districts
carry the trypanosome of sleeping sickness.]
2 gee footnote on p. 107.
instructive and fascinating chapters
of natural history. It cannot be fully
written yet, but already some of the
conclusions to which the student is
led in examining this subject have
far-reaching importance and touch
upon great general principles in an
unexpected manner.
Before the arrival of Man—the
would-be controller, the disturber of
Nature — the adjustment of living
things to their surrounding conditions
and to one another has a certain
appearance of perfection. Natural
selection and the survival of the
fittest in the struggle for existence
lead to the production of a degree of
efficiency and harmonious interaction
of the units of the living y-orld which,
being based on the inexorable destruc
tion of what is inadequate and
inharmonious as soon as it appears,
result in a smooth and orderly working
of the great machine, and the con
tinuance by heredity of efficiency and
a high degree of individual perfection.
Parasites, whether microscopic or
of larger size, are not, in such circum
stances, the cause of widespread disease
or suffering. The weakly members of
a species may be destroyed by parasites,
as others are destroyed by beasts of
prey; but the general community of
the species, thus weeded, is benefited
by the operation. In the natural
world the inhabitants of areas bounded
by sea, mountain, and river become
adjusted to one another ; and a balance
is established. The only disturbing
factors are exceptional seasons, un
usual cold, wet, or drought. Such
recurrent factors may from time to
time increase the number of the
weakly who are unable to cope witlM
�THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
the invasions of minute destructive
parasites, and so reduce, even to
extermination, the kinds of animals or
plants especially susceptible to such
influences. But anything like the
recurring epidemic diseases of parasitic
origin with which civilised man is
unhappily familiar seems to be due
either to his own restless and ignorant
activity or, in his absence, to great
and probably somewhat sudden geo
logical changes—changes of the con
nections, and therefore communica
tions, of great land areas.
It is abundantly evident that animals
or plants which have, by long seons
of selection and adaptation, become
adjusted to the parasites and the
climatic conditions and the general
company (so to speak) of one con
tinent may be totally unfit to cope
with those of another; just as the
Martian giants of Mr. H. G. Wells,
though marvels of offensive and defen
sive development, were helpless in the
presence of mundane putrefactive bac
teria, and were rapidly and surely
destroyed by them. Accordingly, it is
not improbable that such geological
changes as the junction of the North
and South American continents, of
North and South Africa, and of various
large islands and neighbouring con
tinents, have, in ages before the advent
of man, led to the development of
disastrous epidemics. It is not a
far-fetched hypothesis that the dis
appearance of the whole equine race
from the American continent just
before or coincidently with the advent
of man—a region where horses of all
kinds had existed in greater variety
than in any other part of the world—
is due to the sudden introduction, by
111
means of some geological change, of a
deadly parasite which spread as an
epidemic and extinguished the entire
horse population.
Whatever may have happened in
past geological epochs, by force of
great changes in the connections of
land-surfaces which brought the adap
tations of one continent into con
tact with the parasites of another,
it is quite certain that Man, proud
Man, ever since he has learnt to build
a ship, and even before that, when he
made up his mind to march aimlessly
across continents till he could go no
further, has played havoc with himself
and all sorts of his fellow-beings by
mixing up the products of one area
with those of another. Nowhere has
Man allowed himself—let alone other
animals or even plants—to exist in
fixed local conditions to which he or
they have become adjusted. With
ceaseless restlessness he has introduced
men and beasts and plants from one
land to another. He has constantly
migrated, with his herds and his horses,
from continent to continent. Parasites,
in themselves beneficent purifiers of
the race, have been thus converted
into terrible scourges and the chronic
agents of disease. Europeans are
decimated by the locally innocuous
parasites of Africa; the South Sea
islanders are exterminated by the com
paratively harmless measles of Europe.
A striking example of the disasters
brought about by Man’s blind dealings
with Nature—disasters which can and
will hereafter be avoided by the aid of
science—is to be found in the history
of the insect phylloxera and the vine.
In America th« vine had become
adjusted to the phylloxera larvae, so
�112
TSE SLEEPING SICKNESS
that when they nibbled its roots the
American vine threw out new root
shoots, and was none the worse for
the little visitor. Man in his blunder
ing way introduced the American vine,
and with it the phylloxera, to Europe;
and in three years half the vines in
France and Italy were destroyed by
the phylloxera, because the European
vines had not been bred in association
with this little pest, and had not
acquired the simple adjusting faculty
of throwing out new shoots.
But it is not only by his reckless
mixing up of incompatibles from all
parts of the globe that the unscientific
man has risked the conversion of
paradise into a desert. In his greedy
efforts to produce large quantities of
animals and plaqts convenient for his
purposes, and in his eagerness to mass
and organise his own race for defence
and conquest, man has accumulated
unnatural swarms of one species in
field and ranch and unnatural crowds
of his own kind in towns and fortresses.
Such undiluted masses of one organism
serve as a ready field for the propaga
tion of previously rare and unimportant
parasites from individual to individual.
Human epidemic diseases, as well as
those of cattle and crops, are largely
due to this unguarded action of the
unscientific man.
A good instance of this is seen in
the history of the coffee plantations of
Ceylon, where a previously rare and
obscure parasitic fungus, leading an
uneventful life in the tropical forests
of that country, suddenly found itself
provided with an unlimited field of
growth and exuberance in the coffee
plantations. The coffee plantations
were destroyed by this parasite, which
has now returned to its pristine
obscurity. Disharmonious, blundering
man was responsible for its brief
triumph and celebrity. Dame Nature
had not allowed the coffee fungus
more than a very moderate scope.
Man comes in and takes the reins;
disaster follows. And there is no
possibility of return to the old regime;
man must make his blunders and
retrieve them by further interference
—by the full use of his intelligence,
by the continually increasing ingenuity
of his control of the physical world,
which he has ventured to wrest from
the old rule of natural selection and
adaptation.
The adjustment of all living things
to their proper environment is one of
great delicacy, and often of surprising
limitation. In no living things is this
more remarkable than in parasites.
The relation of a parasite to the
“ host ” or “ hosts ” in which it can
flourish (often the host is only one
special species, or even variety, of plant
or animal) is illustrated by the more
familiar restriction of certain plants to
a particular soil. Thus the Cornish
heath only grows on soil overlying the
chemically peculiar serpentine rocks of
Cornwall. The two common parasitic
tapeworms of man pass their early
life the one in the pig and the other
in bovine animals. But that which
requires the pig as its first host {Tania
solium) cannot use a bovine animal as
a substitute; nor can the other (Tania
mediocan&llata) exist in a pig. Yet the
difference of porcine and bovine flesh
and juices is not a very patent one ; it
is one of small variations in highly
complex organic chemical substances.
A big earthworm-like stomach-worm
�THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
flourishes in man, and another kind
similar to it in the horse. But that
frequenting man cannot exist in the
horsfi^ nor that of the horse in man.
Simpler parasites, such as are the
moulds, bacteria, and again the blood
parasites, trypanosoma, etc., exhibit
absolute restrictions as to the hosts in
which they can or cannot flourish
without showing specific changes in
their vital processes. Being far simpler
in structure than the parasitic worms,
they have less “ mechanism ” at their
disposal for bringing about adjustment
to varied conditions of life. The
microscopic parasites do not submit
to alterations in the chemical character
of their surroundings without them
selves reacting and showing changed
chemical activities. A change of soil
(that is to say, of host) may destroy
them ; but, on the other hand, it may
lead to increased vigour and the most un
expected reaction on their part in the
production of virulent chemical poisons.
We are justified in believing that
until man introduced his artificially
selected and transported breeds of
cattle and horses into Africa there
was no nagana disease. The Trypano
soma Brucei lived in the blood of the
big game in perfect harmony with its
host. So, too, it is probable that the
sleeping - sickness parasite flourished
innocently in a state of adjustment
due to tolerance on the part of the
aboriginal men and animals of West
Africa. It was not until the Arab
slave raiders, European explorers, and
india-rubber thieves stirred up the quiet
populations of Central Africa, and
mixed by their violence the susceptible
with the tolerant races, that the
sleeping - sickness parasite became a
113
deadly scourge—a “ disharmony,” to
use the suggestive term introduced by
my friend Elias Metschnikoff.
The adjustment of primaeval popu
lations to their conditions has also
been broken down by “ disharmonies ”
of another kind, due to Man’s restless
invention, as explained a few years
ago in the interesting book of Dr.
Archdall Reid on “ The Present Evolu
tion of Man.” Not only does the
human race within given areas become
adjusted to a variety of local parasites,
but it acquires a tolerance of dangerous
drugs, such as alcohol and opium,
extracted by Man’s ingenuity from
materials upon which he operates. A
race thus provided and thus immune,
by its restless migrations, imposes on
unaccustomed races the deadly poisons
to the consumption of which it is itself
habituated. The unaccustomed races
are deteriorated or even exterminated
by the poisons thus introduced.
Infectious disease, it was long ago
pointed out, must be studied from
three main points of view: (1) the
life history and nature of the disease
germ or infective matter; (2) the
infected subject, his repellent or
tolerant possibilities, and his predis
position or receptivity ; (3) the inter
mediary or carrying agents. Whilst
it is true that little or nothing has
been done by the State in acquiring or
making use of knowledge as to the
first and second of these factors, with
a view to controlling the spread of
disease, it is the fact that much has
been done both in the way of investi
gation and administration in relation
to the third factor. The great public
health enquiries and consequent legis
lation in this country, in which
�114
THE SLEEPING SICKNESS
scientific men of the highest qualifica
tions, such as Simon, Farr, Chadwick,
and Parkes, took part during the
Victorian period, have had excellent
results ; to them are due the vast
expenditure at the present day on pure
water, sewage disposal, and sanitary
inspection. But little or nothing has
been done in regard to the first and
second divisions of the subject, in
which the less organised portions of
the British Empire are more deeply
concerned than in waterworks and
sewer - pipes. It is still contested
whether leprosy (which is a serious
scourge in the British Empire, though
expelled from our own islands) is a
matter of predisposition caused by
diet or solely due to contagion ; and
yet it is left to individual practitioners
to work out the problem. The State
prepares vaccine lymph in a cheap
and unsatisfactory way for the use of
its—till recently—compulsorily vacci
nated citizens ; but the State, though
thus interfering in the matter of
vaccine, has spent no money to study
effectively and so to improve the
system of vaccination. Here and
there some temporary and ineffective
enquiry has been subsidised by a
Government office; but there is no
great army of investigators working in
the best possible laboratories, led by
the ablest minds of the day, with the
constant object of improving and
developing in new directions the
system of inoculation.1 Surely if
compulsion, or every pressure short
of compulsion, is justified in enforcing
vaccine inoculation on every British
family, it would be only reasonable
and consistent to expend a million or
so a year in the perfection and
intelligent control of this remedy by
the most skilled investigators. Yet
not a halfpenny is spent by the British
Government in this way. Medicine is
organised in this country by its prac
titioners as a fee-paid profession; but
as a necessary and invaluable branch
of the public service it is neglected,
misunderstood, and rendered to a large
extent futile by inadequate funds and
consequent lack of capable leaders!
The defiant, desperate battle which
civilised Man wages with Nature must
go on ; but Man’s suffering and loss in
the struggle—the delay in his ultimate
triumph—depend solely on how much
or how little the great civilised com
munities of the world seek for increased
knowledge of Nature as the basis of
their practical administration and
government.
1 [Recent progress in our knowledge of
tubercle—the disease caused by the tubercle
bacillus—renders it almost certain that a
system of preventive inoculation will have to
be applied in order to check this diseases.
Sanatoria and abstention from spitting cannot
effect much. The disease is too widely spread
and deeply rooted. It would not be possible
to isolate a fifth of the population, though
isolation would be, as in the case of leprosy,
the effective means of eradicating tubercle.]
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Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. First published, London: Constable, 1907. Printed in double columns. Includes bibliographical references. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited. Publisher's advertisements on four pages at end, also inside and on back cover.
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32
Pa m p h Iets for the Million—No» 10
THE GHOSTS
By R. G. INGERSOLL
London:
WATTS & CO.,
17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
�THE
RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION,
LIMITED.
Chairman :
Edward Clodd
Honorary Associates :
Alfred William Benn
Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner
Sir Edward Brabrook, C.B.
George Brandes
Dr. Charles Callaway
Dr. Paul Carus
Prof. B. H. Chamberlain
Dr. Stanton Coit
W. W. Collins
F. J. Gould
Prof. Ernst Haeckel
Leonard Huxley
'Joseph McCabe
Eden Phillpotts
John M. Robertson
Dr. W. R. Washington Sullivan
Prof. Lester F. Ward
Prof. Ed. A. Westermarck
Secretary and Registered Offices:
Charles E. Hooper, Nos. 5 & 6 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
How to Join and Help the R.P. A.
The minimum subscription to constitute Membership is 5s., renewable in January of
each year.
A form of application for Membership, with full particulars, including latest Annual
Report and specimen copy of the Literary Guide (the unofficial organ of the Associa
tion), can be obtained gratis on application to the Secretary.
Copies of new publications are forwarded regularly on account of Members’sub
scriptions, or a Member can arrange to make his own selection from the lists of
new books which are issued from time to time.
To join the Association is to help on its work, but to subscribe liberally is of course
to help more effectually. As Subscribers of from 5s. to 10s. and more are entitled to
receive back the whole value of their subscriptions in books, on which there is little
if any profit made, the Association is dependent, for the capital required to carryout
its objects, upon subscriptions of a larger amount and upon donations and bequests.
Ube Xiterar^ Guide
(the unofficial organ of the' R. P. A.)
is published on the 1st of each month, price 2d., by post 2W. Annual subscrip
tion : 2S. 6d. post paid.
The contributors comprise the leading writers in the Rationalist Movement,
including Mr. Joseph McCabe, Mrs. H. Bradlaugh Bonner, Mr. F. J. Gould
Mr. Charles T. Gorham, Dr. C. Callaway, Mr. A. W. Benn, and “ Mimnermus
SPECIMEN COPY POST FREE.
London : Watts & Co., 17 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
�'B U <
Pamphletsfor the Million.—No. io
national secular society
R. G. INGERSOLL
THE GHOSTS
ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST
PRESS
ASSOCIATION,
LIMITED
WATTS & CO., 17 JOHNSON’S COURT,
FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. — 1912
�PUBLISHERS ’ NOTE
This famous Lecture of Colonel Ingersoll is taken from the
Dresden edition of his works (12 vols.; £6 net), which was
published in America shortly after his death. In this country
nearly all his principal lectures and essays, apart from his
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Essays issued in three parts at 6d. each (by post 8d.; the
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PAMPHLETS FOR THE MILLION
ALREADY ISSUED
1. Why I Left the Church.
6. Liberty of Man, Woman,
By Joseph McCabe.
48
and Child.
By Colonel
PP-; id.
R. G. Ingersoll. 48 pp.; id.
2. Why Am I An Agnostic?
7. The Age of Reason. By
By Colonel R. G. Ingersoll.
Thomas Paine. 124 pp. ; 2d.
24 PP-; id.
8. Last Words on Evolu
3. Christianity’s Debt to
TO
tion. By Prof. Haeckel.
Earlier Religions.
By
64 pp.; id.
P. Vivian. (A Chapter from
9. Science and the Purpose
The Churches and Modern
OB' Life.
By Fridtjof
Thought.} 64 pp.; id.
Nansen. 16 pp.; £d.
4. How to Reform Mankind. 10. The Ghosts. By Colonel
By Colonel R. G. Ingersoll.
R. G. Ingersoll. 32 pp.; id.
24 pp.; ¿d.
11. The Passing of Histo
5. Myth or History in the
rical Christianity.
By
■Old Testament? By S.
Rev. R. Roberts. 16 pp.;
Laing. 48 pp.; id.
id.
�THE GHOSTS
let them cover their eyeless sockets with their flesh
less HANDS AND FADE FOREVER FROM THE IMAGINATION OF MEN.
HERE are three theories by which men account for all
phenomena, for everything that happens: first, the
supernatural; second, the supernatural and natural; third, the
natural. Between these theories there has been, from the
dawn of civilisation, a continual conflict. In this great war
nearly all the soldiers have been in the ranks of the super
natural. The believers in the supernatural insist that matter
is controlled and directed entirely by powers from without;
while naturalists maintain that nature acts from within;
that nature is not acted upon; that the universe is all there
is * that nature with infinite arms embraces everything that
exists, and that all supposed powers beyond the limits of
the material are simply ghosts.
You say,
Oh, this is
materialism 1 ” What is matter? I take in my hand some
earth—in this dust put seeds. Let the arrows of light from
the quiver of the sun smite upon it; let the rain fall upon it.
The seeds will grow, and a plant will bud and blossom.
Do you understand this? Can you explain it better than
you can the production of thought? Have you the slightest
conception of what it really is?
And yet you speak of
matter as though acquainted with its origin, as though you
had torn from the clenched hands of the rocks the secrets
of material existence. Do you know what force is? Can
you account for molecular action? Are you really familiar
with chemistry, and can you account for the loves and hatre s
of the atoms? Is there not something in matter that forever
-eludes?
After all, can you get beyond, above, or below
appearances? Before you cry “Materialism! ” had you not
better ascertain what matter really is? Can you think even
of anything without a material basis? Is it possible to
imagine annihilation of a single atom? Is it possible for you
to conceive of the creation of an atom? Can you have a
thought that was not suggested to you by what you call
matter ?
T
�4
THE GHOSTS
Our fathers denounced materialism, and accounted for all
phenomena by the caprice of gods and devils.
For thousands of years it was believed that ghosts, good
and bad, benevolent and malignant, weak and powerful
in some mysterious way, produced all phenomena: that
disease and health, happiness and misery, fortune and misortune, peace and war, life and death, success and failure
were but arrows from the quivers of these ghosts; that
shadowy phantoms rewarded and punished mankind; that
they were pleased and displeased by the actions of men;
that they sent and withheld the snow, the light, and the
rain ; that they blessed the earth with harvests or cursed
it with famine; that they fed or starved the children of men;
that they crowned and uncrowned kings; that they took
sides in war; that they controlled the winds; that they
gave prosperous voyages, allowing the brave mariner to
meet his wife and child inside the harbour bar, or sent
the storms, strewing the sad shores with wrecks of ships
and the bodies of men.
Formerly these ghosts were believed to be almost innumer
able. Earth, air, and water were filled with these phantom
hosts.
In modern times they have greatly decreased in
number, because the second theory—a mingling of the super
natural and natural—has generally been adopted.
The
remaining ghosts, however, are supposed to perform the same
offices as the hosts of yore.
It has always been believed that these ghosts could in
some way be appeased ; that they could be flattered by
sacrifices, by prayer, by fasting, by the building of temples
and cathedrals, by the blood of men and beasts, by forms
and ceremonies, by chants, by kneelings and prostrations,
by flagellations and maimings, by renouncing the joys of
home, by living alone in the wide desert, by the practice of
celibacy, by inventing instruments of torture, by destroying
men, women, and children, by covering the earth with
ungeons, by burning unbelievers, by putting chains upon the
thoughts and manacles upon the limbs of men, by believing
things without evidence and against evidence, by disbelieving
and denying demonstration, by despising facts, by hating
reason,, by denouncing liberty, by maligning heretics, by
slandering the dead, by subscribing to senseless and cruel
creeds, by discouraging investigation, by worshipping a book,
by the cultivation of credulity, by observing certain times
�THE GHOSTS
F
5
and days, by counting beads, by gazing at crosses, by hiring
others, to repeat verses and prayers, by burning candles and
ringing bells, by enslaving each other and putting out the
eyes of the soul. All this has been done to appease and
flatter these monsters of the air.
In the history of our poor world, no horror has been omitted,
no infamy has been left undone, by the believers in ghosts
by the worshippers of these fleshless phantoms.. And yet
these shadows were born of cowardice and malignity. They
were painted by the pencil of fear upon the canvas of ignorance
by that artist called superstition.
.
From these ghosts our fathers received information. They
were the schoolmasters of our ancestors.. They were the
scientists and philosophers, the geologists, legislators,
astronomers, physicians, metaphysicians, and historians of
the past. For ages these ghosts were supposed to be the
only source of real knowledge. They inspired men to write
books, and the books were considered sacred. If facts were
found to be inconsistent with these books, so much the
worse tor the facts, and especially for their discoverers. It
was then, and still is, believed that these books are the
basis of the idea of immortality; that to give up these volumes,
or, rather, the idea that they are inspired, is to renounce
the idea of immortality. This I deny.
The idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and
flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope
and fear beating against the shores and rocks of time and
fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any
religion.
It was born of human affection, and it will
continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of
doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.
It is the rainbow—Hope shining upon the tears of grief.
From the books written by the ghosts we have at last
ascertained that they knew nothing about the world in which
we live. Did they know anything about the next? Upon
every point where contradiction is possible they have been
contradicted.
By these ghosts, by these citizens of the air, the affairs
of government were administered; all authority to govern
came from them. The emperors, kings, and potentates all
had commissions from these phantoms.
Man was not
considered as the source of any power whatever. T<? rebel
against the king was to rebel against the ghosts, and nothing
�6
THE GHOSTS
less than the blood of the offender could appease the invisible
phantom or the visible tyrant. Kneeling was the proper
position to ,be assumed by the multitude. The prostrate
were thé good. Those who stood erect were infidels and
traitors. In the name and by the authority of the ghosts,
man was enslaved, crushed, and plundered. The many toiled
wearily in the storm and sun that the few favourites of the
ghosts might live in idleness. The many lived in huts, and
caves, and dens, that the few might dwell in palaces. The
many covered themselves with rags, that the few might
robe themselves in purple and in gold. The many crept, and
cringed, and crawled, that the few might tread upon their
flesh with iron feet.
From the ghosts men received, not only authority, but
information of every kind. They told us the form of this
earth. They informed us that eclipses were caused by the
sins of man ; that the universe was made in six days ; that
astronomy and geology were devices of wicked men,
instigated by wicked ghosts ; that gazing at the sky with a
telescope was a dangerous thing ; that digging into the earth
was sinful curiosity ; that trying to be wise above what they
had written was born of a rebellious and irreverent spirit.
They told us there was no virtue like belief, and no crime
like doubt ; that investigation was pure impudence, and the
punishment therefor eternal torment. They not only told
us all about this world, but about two others ; and, if their
statements about the other worlds are as true as about this,
no one can estimate the value of their information.
For counless ages the world was governed by ghosts, and
they spared no pains to change the eagle of the human
intellect into a bat of darkness. To accomplish this infamous
purpose ; to drive the love of truth from the human heart ;
to prevent the advancement of mankind ; to shut out from
the world every ray of intellectual light ; to pollute every
mind with superstition, the power of kings, the cunning and
cruelty of priests, and the wealth of nations were exhausted.
During these years of persecution, ignorance, superstition,
and slavery, nearly all the people, the kings, lawyers, doctors,
the learned and the unlearned, believed in that frightful
production of ignorance, fear, and faith, called witchcraft.
They believed that man was the sport and prey of devils.
They really thought that the very air was thick with these
enemies of man.
With few exceptions, this hideous and
�i
/
/
THE GHOSTS
7{
infamous belief was universal.
Under these conditions
progress was almost impossible.
Fear paralyses the brain. Progress is born of courage.
Fear_ believes courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth
and prays—courage stands erect and thinks. Fear retreats__
courage advances. Fear is barbarism—courage is civilisa
tion. _ Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils, and in ghosts.
Fear is religion—courage is science.
The facts upon which this terrible belief rested were proved
over and over again in every court of Europe. Thousands
confessed themselves guilty—admitted that they had sold
themselves to the devil. They gave the particulars of the
sale; told what they said and what the devil replied. They
confessed this, when they knew that confession was death;
their property would be confiscated, and their
children left to beg their bread. This is one of the miracles
of history—one of the strangest contradictions of the human
mind Without doubt, they really believed themselves guilty.
In the first place they believed in witchcraft as a fact, and
when charged with it they probably became insane. In their
insanity they confessed their guilt. They found themselves
abhorred and deserted—charged with a crime that they could
not disprove. Like a man in quicksand, every effort only
sank them deeper.
Caught in this frightful web, at the
mercy of the spiders of superstition, hope fled, and nothing
remained but the insanity of confession. The whole world
appeared to be insane.
In the time of James the First a man was executed for
causing a storm at sea with the intention of drowning one
of the royal family. How could he disprove it? How could he
snow that he did not cause the storm? All storms were at
that time generally supposed to be caused by the devil—the
prince of the power of the air—and by those whom he assisted.
. 1 implore you to remember that the believers in such
impossible things were the authors of our creeds and
confessions of faith.
A woman was tried and convicted before Sir Matthew Hale
one of the great judges and lawyers of England, for having
caused children to vomit crooked pins. She was also charged
with having nursed devils. The learned judge charged the
intelligent jury that there was no doubt as to the existence
teujht by the’ Kfe’ eStabHshed by a11 llis,or-v- “d exPr“sl>-
�THE GHOSTS
The woman was hanged and her body burned.
Sir Thomas More declared that to give up witchcraft was to
throwaway the sacred Scriptures. In my judgment, he was right.
John Wesley was a firm believer in ghosts and witches,
and insisted upon it, years after all laws upon the subject had
been repealed in England. I beg of you to remember that
John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist Church..
In New England a woman was charged with being a. witch,and with having changed herself into a fox. While in that
condition she was attacked and bitten by some dogs. A
committee of three men, by order of the court, examined this
woman. They removed her clothing and searched for witch
spots.” That is to say, spots into which needles could be
thrust without giving her pain. They, reported to the court
that such spots were found. She denied, however, that she
ever had changed herself into a fox. Upon the report of the
committee she was found guilty and actually executed. 1 his
was done by our Puritan fathers, by the gentlemen who
braved the dangers of the deep for the sake of worshipping
God and persecuting their fellow-men.
In those days people believed in what was known as
lycanthrophy—that is, that persons, with the assistance of. the
devil, could assume the form of wolves. An instance is. given
where a man was attacked by a wolf. He defended himself,
and succeeded in cutting off one of the animal’s paws. . lne
wolf ran away. The man picked up the paw, put it in his
pocket, and carried it home. There he found his wife with one '
of her hands gone. He took the paw from his pocket. It had
changed to a human hand. He charged his wife with being a
witch. She was tried. She confessed her guilt, and was burned.
People were burned for causing frosts in summer-tor
destroying crops with hail—for causing storms for making
cows go dry, and even for souring beer. There was no
impossibility for which someone was not tried and convicted.
The life of no one was secure. To be charged was to be
convicted. Every man was at the mercy of every, other
This infamous belief was so firmly seated in the minds ot
the people that to express a doubt as to its truth, was to be
suspected. Whoever denied the existence of witches and
devils was denounced as an infidel.
.
They believed that animals were often taken possession ot by
devils, and that the killing of the animal would destroy the
devil. They absolutely tried, convicted, and executed dumb beasts.
�THE GHOSTS
9
At Basle, in 1470, a rooster was tried upon the charge
of having laid an egg. Rooster eggs were used only in
making witch ointment—this everybody knew. The rooster
was convicted, and with all due solemnity was burned in the
public square. So a hog and six pigs were tried for having
killed and partially eaten a child. The hog was convicted,
but the pigs, on account probably of their extreme youth,
were acquitted. As late as 1740 a cow was tried and
convicted of being possessed by a devil.
They used to exorcise rats, locusts, snakes, and vermin.
They used to go through the alleys, streets, and fields, and
warn them to leave within a certain number of days. In case
they disobeyed, they were threatened with pains and penalties.
But let us be careful how we laugh at these things. Let
us not pride ourselves too much on the progress of our age.
We must not forget that some of our people are yet in the
same intelligent business.
Only a little while ago the
Governor of Minnesota appointed a day of fasting and prayer,
to see if some power could not be induced to kill the grass
hoppers, or send them into some other State.
About the close of the fifteenth century, so great was the
excitement with regard to the existence of witchcraft that
Pope Innocent VIII. issued a bull directing the inquisitors
to be vigilant in searching out and punishing all guilty of
this crime. Forms for the trial were regularly laid down in
a book or pamphlet called the Malleus Maleficorum (Hammer
of Witches), which was issued by the Roman See. Popes
Alexander, Leo, and Adrian issued like bulls.
For two
hundred and fifty years the Church was busy in punishing
the impossible crime of witchcraft; in burning, hanging, and
torturing men, women, and children. Protestants were as
active as Catholics, and in Geneva five hundred witches were
burned at the stake in a period of three months. About one
thousand were executed in one year in the diocese of Como.
At least one hundred thousand victims suffered in Germany
alone, the last execution (in Wurzburg) taking place as late
as 1739. Witches were burned in Switzerland as late as 1780.
In England the same frightful scenes were enacted.
Statutes were passed from Henry VI. to James I. defining
the crime and its punishment. The last Act passed by the
British Parliament was when Lord Bacon was a member of
theHouseof Commons; and this Act was not repealed until 1736*
Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws
�IO
THE GHOSTS
of England, says: “ To deny the possibility, nay, actual
existence, of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to
contradict the word of God in various passages both of the
Old and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to
which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testi
mony, either by examples seemingly well attested or by
prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of a
commerce with evil spirits.”
In Brown’s Dictionary of the Bible, published at
Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1807, it is said that “A witch is a
woman that has dealings with Satan. That such persons
are among men is abundantly plain fr.om Scripture, and that
they ought to be put to death.”
This work was' republished in Albany, New York, in 1816.
No wonder the clergy of that city are ignorant and bigoted
even unto this day.
In 1716 Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, nine years of age,
were hanged for selling their souls to the devil, and raising
a storm by pulling off their stockings and making a lather
of soap.
In England it has been estimated that at least thirty
thousand were hanged and burned. The last victim executed
in Scotland perished in 1722. “She was an innocent old
woman, who had so little idea of her situation as to rejoice
at the sight of the fire which was destined to consume her.
She had a daughter, lame of both hands and of feet—a
circumstance attributed to the witch having been used to
transform her daughter into a pony and getting her shod
by the devil.”
In 1692 nineteen persons were executed and one pressed
to death in Salem, Massachusetts, for the crime of witchcraft.
It was thought in those days that men and women made
compacts with the devil, orally and in writing; that they
abjured God and Jesus Christ, and dedicated themselves
wholly to the devil.
The contracts were confirmed at a
general meeting of witches and ghosts, over which the
devil himself presided; and the persons generally signed the
articles of agreement with their own blood. These contracts
were, in some instances, for a few years; in others, for life.
General assemblies of the witches were held at least once a
year, at which they appeared entirely naked, besmeared with
an ointment made from the bodies of unbaptised infants. “To
these meetings they rode from great distances on broomsticks,
�THE GHOSTS
ii
pokers, goats, hogs, and dogs. Here they did homage to the
prince of hell, and offered him sacrifices of young children,
and practised all sorts of license until the break of day.”
“As late as 1815 Belgium was disgraced by a witch trial;
and guilt was established by the water ordeal.” “ In 1836
the populace of Hela, near Dantzic, twice plunged into the
sea a woman reputed to be a sorceress; and as the miserable
creature persisted in rising to the surface, she was
pronounced guilty and beaten to death.”
“ It was believed that the bodies of devils are not, like those
of men and animals, cast in an unchangeable mould. It
\Vas thought they were like clouds, refined and subtle matter,
capable of assuming any form and penetrating into any
orifice. The horrible tortures they endured in their place
of punishment rendered them extremely sensitive to suffering,
and they continually sought a temperate and somewhat moist
warmth in order to allay their pangs. It was for this reason
they so frequently entered into men and women.”
The devil could transport men, at his will, through the
air. He could beget children; and Martin Luther himself
had come into contact with one of these children. He
recommended the mother to throw the child into the river,
in order to free their house from the presence of the devil.
It was believed that the devil could transform people into
any shape he pleased.
Whoever denied these things was denounced as an infidel.
All the believers in witchcraft confidently appealed to the
Bible. Their mouths were filled with passages demonstra
ting the existence of witches and their power over human
beings. By the Bible they proved that innumerable evil
spirits were ranging over the world endeavouring to ruin
mankind; that these spirits possessed a power and wisdom
far. transcending the limits of human faculties; that they
delighted in every misfortune that could befall the world;
that their malice was superhuman.
That they caused
tempests was proved by the action of the devil towards Job;
by the passage in the' book of Revelation describing the four
angels who held the four winds, and to whom it was given
to afflict the earth. They believed the devil could carry
persons hundreds of miles, in a few seconds, through the
air. They believed this, because they knew that Christ had
been carried by the devil in the same manner and placed on
a pinnacle of the temple. “The prophet Habakkuk had been
�12
THE GHOSTS
transported by a spirit from Judea to Babylon; and Philip,
the evangelist, had been the object of a similar miracle;
and in the same way St. Paul had been carried in the body
into the third heaven.”
“ In those pious days they believed that Incubi and Succubi
were forever wandering among mankind, alluring, by more
than human charms, the unwary to their destruction, and
laying plots, which were too often successful, against the
virtue of the saints. Sometimes the witches kindled in the
monastic priest a more terrestrial fire. People told, with
bated breath, how, under the spell of a vindictive woman,
four successive abbots in a Germian monastery had been
wasted away by an unholy flame.”
An instance is given in which the devil not only assumed
the appearance of a holy man, in order to pay his addresses
to a lady, but, when discovered, crept under the bed, suffered
himself to be dragged out, and was impudent enough to
declare that he was the veritable bishop. So perfectly had
he assumed the form and features of the prelate that those
who knew the bishop best were deceived.
One can hardly imagine the frightful state of the human
mind during these long centuries of darkness and super
stition.
To them these things were awful and frightful
realities. Hovering above them in the air, in their houses,
in the bosoms of friends, in their very bodies, in all the
darkness of night, everywhere, around, above, and below,
were innumerable hosts of unclean and malignant devils.
From the malice of those leering and vindictive vampires
of the air the Church pretended to defend mankind. Pursuedby these phantoms, the frightened multitudes fell upon their
faces and implored the aid of robed hypocrisy and sceptred
theft.
Take from the orthodox Church of to-day the threat and
fear of hell, and it becomes an extinct volcano.
Take from the Church the miraculous, the supernatural,
the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the un
knowable, and the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.
Notwithstanding all the infamous things justly laid to
the charge of the Church, we are told that the civilisation of
to-day is the child of what we are pleased to call the super
stition of the past.
Religion has not civilised man—man has civilised religion.
God improves as man advances.
�THE GHOSTS
13
Let me call your attention to what we have received from
the followers of the ghosts. Let me give you an outline of
the sciences as taught by these philosophers of the clouds.
All diseases were produced either as a punishment by the
good ghosts or out of pure malignity by the bad ones. There
were, properly speaking, no diseases. The sick were
possessed by ghosts. The science of medicine consisted in
knowing how to persuade these ghosts to vacate the premises.
For thousands of years the diseased were treated with
incantations, with hideous noises, with drums and gongs.
Everything was done to make the visit of the ghost as
unpleasant as possible, and they generally succeeded in
making things so disagreeable that, if the ghost did not leave,
the patient did. These ghosts were supposed to be of different
rank, power, and dignity. Now and then a man pretended
to have won the favour of some powerful ghost, and that
gave him power over the little ones. Such a man became
an eminent physician.
It was found that certain kinds of smoke, such as that
produced by burning the liver of a fish, the dried skin of a
serpent, the eyes of a toad, or the tongue of an adder, were
exceedingly offensive to the nostrils of an ordinary ghost.
With this smoke the sick room would be filled until the ghost
had vanished or the patient died.
It was also believed that certain words—the names of the
most powerful ghosts—when properly pronounced, were very
effective weapons. It was for a long time thought that
Latin words were .the best, Latin being a dead language,
and known by the clergy. , Others thought that two sticks
laid across each other and held before thé wicked ghost
would cause it instantly to flee in dread away.
For thousands of years ,the practice of medicine consisted
in driving these evil spirits out of the bodies of men.
In some instances bargains and compromises were made
with the ghosts. One case is given where a multitude of
devils traded a man for a herd of swine. In this transaction
the devils were the losers, as the swine immediately drowned
themselves in the sea. This idea of disease appears to have
been almost universal, and is by no means yet extinct.
The contortions of the epileptic, the strange twitchings
of those afflicted with chorea, the shakings of palsy, dreams,
trances, and the numberless frightful phenomena produced
by diseases of the nerves, were all seized upon as so many
\
.
�14
THE GHOSTS
proofs that the bodies of men were filled with unclean and
malignant g*hosts.
Whoever endeavoured to account for these things by
natural causes, whoever attempted to cure diseases by
natural means, was denounced by the Church as an infidel.
To explain anything was a crime. It was to the interest of
the priest that all phenomena should be accounted for by the
will and power of gods and devils.
The moment it is
admitted that all phenomena are within the domain of the
natural, the necessity for a priest has disappeared. Religion
breathes the air of the supernatural. Take from the mind of
man the idea of the supernatural, and religion ceases to exist.
For this reason, the Church has always despised the man who
explained the wonderful. Upon this principle, nothing was
left undone to stay the science of medicine. As long as
plagues and pestilences could be stopped by prayer, the priest
was useful. The moment the physician found a cure, the
priest became an extravagance. The moment it began to
be apparent that prayer could do nothing for the body, the
priest shifted his ground and began praying for the soul.
Long after the devil idea was substantially abandoned in
the practice of medicine, and when it was admitted that
God had nothing to do with ordinary coughs and colds, it
was still believed that all the frightful diseases were sent
by him as punishments for the wickedness of the people. It
was thought to be a kind of blasphemy to even try, by any
natural means,.to stay the ravages of pestilence. Formerly,
during the prevalence of plague and epidemics, the arrogance
of the priest was boundless. He told the people that they
had slighted the clergy, that they had refused to pay tithes,
that they had doubted some of the doctrines of the Church,
and that God was now taking his revenge. The people,
for the most part, believed this infamous tissue of priest
craft. They hastened to fall upon their knees; they poured
out their wealth upon the altars of hypocrisy; they abased
and debased themselves; from their minds they banished all
doubts, and made haste to crawl in the very dust of humility.
The Church never wanted disease to be under the control
of man.
Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College,
preached a sermon against vaccination. His idea was that,
if God had decreed from all eternity that a certain man should
die with the small-pox, it was a frightful sin to avoid and
annul that decree by the trick of vaccination. Small-pox
�THE GHOSTS
ij
being regarded as one of the heaviest guns in the arsenal of
heaven, to spike it was the height of presumption. Plagues
and pestilences were instrumentalities' in the hands of God
with which to gain the love arid worship of mankind. To
find a cure for disease was to take a weapon from the Church.
No one tries to cure the ague with prayer. Quinine has
been found altogether more reliable.
Just as soon as a
specific is found for a disease, that disease will be left out
of the list of prayer. The number of diseases with which
God from time to time afflicts mankind is continually decreas
ing. In a few years all of them will be under the control
of& man, the gods will be left unarmed, and the threats of
their priests will excite only a smile.
The science of medicine has had but one enemy—religion.
Man was afraid to save his body for fear he might lose his soul.
Is it any wonder that the people in those days believed in
and taught the infamous doctrine of eternal punishment—
a doctrine that makes God a heartless monster and man a
slimy hypocrite and slave?
The ghosts were historians, and their histories were the
grossest absurdities. “Tales told by idiots, full of sound
and fury, signifying nothing.” In those days the histories
were written by the monks, who, as a rule, were almost as
superstitious as they were dishonest. They wrote as though
they had been witnesses of every occurrence they related.
They wrote the history of every country of importance. They
told all the past, and predicted all the future with an impu
dence that amounted to sublimity. “ They traced the order of
St. Michael, in France, to the archangel himself, and alleged
that he was the founder of a chivalric order in heaven itself.
They said that Tartars originally came from hell, and that
they were called Tartars because Tartarus was one of the
names of perdition. They declared that Scotland was so
named after Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh, who landed in
Ireland, invaded Scotland, and took it by force of arms.
This statement was made in a letter addressed to the Pope
in the fourteenth century, and was alluded to as a well-known
fact. The letter was written by some of the highest digni
taries, and by the direction of the King himself.
These gentlemen accounted for the red on the breasts of
robins from the fact that these birds carried water to
unbaptised infants in hell.
�16
THE GHOSTS
Matthew, of Paris, an eminent historian of the fourteenth
century, gaye the world the following piece of information :
It is well known that Mohammed was once a cardinal, and
became a heretic because he failed in his effort to be elected
Pope ; and that, haying drank to excess, he fell by the road
side, and in this condition was killed by swine. “And for that
reason his followers abhor pork even unto this day.”
Another eminent historian informs us that Nero was in
the habit of vomiting frogs. When I read this I said to
myself : Some of the croakers of the present day against
progress would be the better for such a vomit.
The history of Charlemagne was written by Turpin, of
Rheims. He was a bishop. He assures us that the walls
of a city fell down in answer to prayer; that there were
giants in those days who could take fifty ordinary men under
their arms and walk away with them. “ With the greatest
of these, a direct descendant of Goliath, one Orlando, had a
theological discussion; and in the heat of the debate, when
the giant was overwhelmed with the argument, Orlando
rushed forward and inflicted a fatal stab.”
The history of Britain, written by the archdeacons of
Monmouth and Oxford, was wonderfully popular. According
to them, Brutus conquered England and built the city of
London. During his time it rained pure blood for three days.
At another time a monster came from the sea, and, after
having devoured great multitudes of people, swallowed the
king and disappeared. They tell us that King Arthur was
not born like other mortals, but was the result of a magical
Contrivance; that he had great luck in killing giants; that
he killed one in France that had the cheerful habit of eating
some thirty men a day; that this giant had clothes woven
of the beards of the kings he had devoured. To cap the
climax, one of the authors of this book was promoted for
having written the only reliable history of his country.
In all the histories of those days there is hardly a single
truth.
Facts were considered unworthy of preservation.
Anything that really happened was not of sufficient interest
or importance to be recorded. The great religious historian,
Eusebius, ingenuously remarks that in his history he carefully
omitted whatever tended to discredit the Church, and that
he piously magnified all that conduced to her glory.
The same glorious principle was scrupulously adhered to
by all the historians of that time.
�THE GHOSTS
• i7
They wrote, and the people believed, that .the tracks of
Pharaoh’s chariots were still visible on the sands of the Red
Sea, and that they had been miraculously preserved from the
winds and waves as perpetual witnesses of the great miracle
there performed.
It is safe to say that every truth in the histories of those
times is the result of accident or mistake.
They accounted for everything as the work of good and
evil spirits. With cause and effect they had nothing to do.
Facts were in no way related to each other. God, governed
by infinite caprice, filled the world with miracles and dis
connected events. From the quiver of his hatred came the
arrows of famine, pestilence, and death.
The moment the idea is abandoned that all is natural, that
all phenomena are the necessary links in the endless chain
of being, the conception of history becomes impossible. With
the ghosts, the present is not the child of the past, nor the
mother of the future. In the domain of religion all is chance,
accident, and caprice.
Do not forget, I pray you, that our creeds were written
by the contemporaries of these historians.
The same idea was applied to law. It was believed by
our intelligent ancestors that all law derived its sacredness
and its binding force from the fact that it had been com
municated to man by the ghosts.
Of course it was not
pretended that the ghosts told everybody the law; but they
told it to a few, and the few told it to the people, and the
people, as a rule, paid them exceedingly well for their trouble.
It was thousands of ages before the people commenced
making laws for themselves, and, strange as it may appear,
most of these laws were vastly superior to the ghost article.
Through the web and woof of human legislation began to
run and shine and glitter the golden thread of justice.
During these years of darkness it was believed that rather
than see an act of injustice done, rather than see the
innocent suffer, rather than see the guilty triumph, some
ghost would interfere. This belief, as a rule, gave great
satisfaction to the victorious party, and, as the other man
was dead, no complaint was heard from him.
This doctrine was the sanctification of brute force and
chance. They had trials by battle, by fire, by water, and by
lot. Persons were made to grasp hot iron, and if it burned
them their guilt was established. Others, with tied hands
�THE GHOSTS
and feet, were cast into the sea, and if they sank the verdict
of guilty was unanimous; if they did not sink, they were in
league with devils.
So, in England, persons charged with crime could appeal
to the corsned. The corsned was a piece of the sacramental
bread. If the defendant could swallow this piece, he went
acquit. Godwin, Earl of Kent, in the time of Edward the
Confessor, appealed to the corsned. He failed to swallow it,
and was choked to death.
. The ghosts and their followers always took delight in
torture, in cruel and unusual punishments. For the infrac
tion of most of their laws death was the penalty—death
produced by stoning and by fire.
Sometimes, when man
committed only murder, he was allowed to flee to some city
of refuge. Murder was a 'crime against man. But for
saying certain words, or denying certain doctrines, or for
picking up sticks on certain days, or for worshipping the
wrong ghost, or for failing to pray to the right
one, or for laughing at a priest, or for saying that
wine was not blood, or that bread was not flesh, or for
failing to regard rams’ horns as artillery, or for insisting
that a dry bone was scarcely sufficient to take the place
of water works, or that a raven, as a rule, made a poor
landlord—death, produced by all the ways that the ingenuity
of hatred could devise, was the penalty.
Law is a growth—it is a science. Right and wrong exist
in the nature of things. Things are not right because they
are commanded, nor wrong because they are prohibited.
There are real crimes enough without creating artificial ones.
All progress in legislation has for centuries consisted in
repealing the laws of the ghosts.
The idea of right and wrong is born of man’s capacity
to enjoy and suffer. If man could not suffer, if he could not
inflict injury upon his fellow, if he could neither feel nor
inflict pain, the idea of right and wrong never would have
entered his brain.
But for this, the word “conscience”
never would have passed the lips of man. *
There is one good—happiness. There is but one sin—
selfishness.
All law should be for the preservation of
the one and the destruction of the other.
Under the regime of the ghosts, laws were not supposed
to exist in the nature of things. They were supposed to be
simply the irresponsible command of a ghost. These com-
�THE GHOSTS
19
mands were not supposed to rest upon reason ; they were
the product of arbitrary will.
The penalties for the violation of these laws were as cruel as
the laws were senseless and absurd. Working on the Sabbath
and murder were both punished with death. The tendency of
such laws is to blot from the human heart the sense of justice.
To show you how perfectly every department of knowledge,
or ignorance rather, was saturated with superstition, I will
for a moment refer to the science of language.
It was thought by our fathers that Hebrew was the original
language ; that it was taught to Adam in the Garden of Eden
by the Almighty, and that consequently all languages came
from, and could be traced to, the Hebrew. Every fact incon
sistent with that idea was discarded.
According to the
ghosts, the trouble at the tower of Babel accounted for the
fact that all people did not speak Hebrew.
The Babel
business settled all questions in the science of language.
After a time, so many facts were found to be inconsistent
with the Hebrew idea that it began to fall into disrepute, and
other languages began to compete for the honour of being
the original.
André Kempe, in 1569, published a work on the language
of Paradise, in which he maintained that God spoke to Adam
in Swedish ; that Adam answered in Danish ; and that the
serpent—which appears to me quite probable—spoke to Eve
in French. Erro, in a work published at Madrid, took the
ground that Basque was the language spoken in the Garden
of Eden; but in 1580 Goropius published his celebrated work
at Antwerp, in which he put the whole matter at rest by
showing, beyond all doubt, that the language spoken in
Paradise was neither more nor less than plain Holland Dutch.
The real founder of the science of language was Leibnitz,
, a contemporary of Sir Isaac Newton. He discarded the idea
that all languages could be traced to one language.
He
maintained that language was a natural growth. Experience
teaches us that this must be so. Words are continually dying
and continually being born.
Words are naturally and
necessarily produced.. Words are the garments of thought,
the robes of ideas. Some are as rude as the skins of wild
beasts, and others glisten and glitter like silk and gold.
They have been born of hatred and revenge ; of love and
self-sacrifice ; of hope and fear ; of agony and joy. These
�20
THE GHOSTS
words are born of the terror and beauty of nature.
The
stars have fashioned them. In them mingle the darkness
and the dawn. From everything they have taken something.
Words are the crystallisations of human history, of all that
man has enjoyed and suffered—his victories and defeats—all
that he has lost and won. Words are the shadows of all
that has been—the mirrors of all that is.
The ghosts also enlightened our fathers in astronomy and
geology. According to them, the earth was made out of
nothing, and, a little more nothing having been taken than
was used in the construction of the world, the stars were
made out of what was left over.'- Cosmos, in the sixth
century, taught that the stars were impelled by angels, who
either carried them on their shoulders, rolled them in front
of them, or drew them after. He also taught that each angel
that pushed a star took great pains to observe what the other
angels were doing, so that the relative distances between the
stars might always remain the same. He also gave his idea
as to the form of the world.
He stated that the world was a vast parallelogram ; that
on the outside was a strip of land, like the frame of a common
slate; that then there was a strip of water, and in the middle
a great piece of land; that Adam and Eve lived on the
outer strip; that their descendants, with the exception of the
Noah family, were drowned by a flood on this outer strip;
that the ark finally rested on the middle piece of land where
we now are. He accounted for night and day by saying that
on the outside strip of land there was a high mountain around
which the sun and moon revolved, and that when the sun
was on the other side of the mountain it was night, and when
on this side it was day.
He also declared that the earth was flat. This he proved
by many passages from the Bible.
Among other reasons
for believing the earth to be flat, he brought forward the
following : We are told in the New Testament that Christ
shall come again in glory and power, and all the world shall
see him. Now, if the world is round, how are the people
on the other side going to see Christ if he comes? That
settled the question, and the Church not only endorsed he
book, but declared that whoever believed less or more than
stated by Cosmos was a heretic.
In those blessed days Ignorance was a king and Science an
outcast.
�THE GHOSTS
21
They knew the moment this earth ceased to.be the centre
of the universe, and became a mere speck in the starry
heaven of existence, that their religion would become a child
ish fable of the past.
In the name and by the authority of the ghosts men enslaved
their fellow-men; they trampled upon the rights of women
and children. In the name and by the authority of the ghosts
they bought and sold and destroyed each other; they filled
heaven with tyrants and earth with slaves, the present with
despair and the future with horror. In the name and by the
authority of the ghosts they imprisoned the human, mind,
polluted the conscience, hardened the heart, subverted justice,
crowned robbery, sainted hypocrisy, and extinguished for a
thousand years the torch of reason.
I have endeavoured, in some faint degree, to show you
what has happened, and what always will happen when men
are governed by superstition and fear; when they desert the
sublime standard of reason; when they take the words of
others and do not investigate for themselves.
Even the great men of those days were nearly as weak
in this matter as the most ignorant.
Kepler, one of the
greatest men of the world, an astronomer second to none,
although he plucked from the stars the secrets of the universe,
was an astrologer, and really believed that he could predict the
career of a man by finding what star was in the ascendant at
his birth. This great man breathed, so to speak, the atmos
phere of his time. He believed in the music of the spheres,
and assigned alto, bass, tenor, and treble to certain stars.
Tycho Brahe, another astronomer, kept an idiot, whose
disconnected and meaningless words he carefully set down,
and then put them together in such manner as to make
prophecies, and waited patiently to see them fulfilled. . Luther
believed that he had actually seen the devil, and had discussed
points of theology with him. The human mind was in chains.
Every idea almost was a monster. Thought was deformed.
Facts were looked upon as worthless. Only the wonderful
was worth preserving. Things that actually happened were
not considered worth recording—real occurrences were too
common. Everybody expected the miraculous.
I'he ghosts were supposed to be busy ; devils were thought
to be the most industrious things in the universe, and with
these imps every occurrence of an unusual character was in
some way connected. There was no order, no serenity, no
/
�-
the ghosts
certainty in anything.
Everything depended upon ghosts
and phantoms. Man. was, for the most part, at the mercy
of maleyoient ^Pints. He protected himself as best he could
with holy water and tapers and wafers and cathedrals He
made noises and rung bells to frighten the ghosts, and he
made music to charm them. He used smoke to choke them
and incense to please them. He wore beads and crosses.
He said prayers, and hired others to say them. He fasted
when he was hungry, and feasted when he was not
He
believed everything that seemed unreasonable, just to appease
the ghosts. He humbled himself. He crawled in the dust.
He shut the doors and windows, and excluded every ray of
light from the temple of the soul. He debauched and polluted
his own mind, and toiled night and day to repair the walls
of his own prison. From the garden of his heart he plucked
and trampled upon the holy flowers of pity.
The priests reveiiea in horrible descriptions of hell
revelled
hell. Con
xue
cerning the wrath of God they grew eloquent. They
HPnniinf'Pri
x
J
denounced mor* oo 4-^4-nllr, depraved. mt
man as totally J;____________ 1
They made reason
blasphemy and pity a crime. Nothing so delighted them as
painting the torments and sufferings of the. lost. Over the
,never dies they grew poetic; and the second
death filled them with a kind of holy delight. According to
them, the smoke and cries ascending from hell were the
perfume and music of heaven.
At the risk of being tiresome, I have said what I have
to show you the productions of the human mind, when
enslaved; the effects of widespread ignorance—the results
of fear. I want to convince you that every form of slavery
is a viper that, sooner or later, will strike its poison fang's
into the bosoms of men.
The first great step towards progress is for man to cease
to be the slave of man ; the second, to cease to be the slave of
the monsters of his own creation—of the ghosts and phantoms
of the air.
For ages the human race was imprisoned. Through the
bars and grates came a few struggling rays of light. Against
these grates and bars Science pressed its pale and thoughtful
face, wooed by the holy dawn of human advancement.
Men found that the real was the useful; that what a man
knows is better than what a ghost says; that an event is
more valuable than a prophecy.
They found that diseases
were not produced by spirits, and could not be cured by
�THE GHOSTS
23
frightening them away. They found that death was as natural
as life. They began to study the anatomy and chemistry of
the human body, and found that all was natural and within the
domain of law.
The conjurer and sorceror were discarded, and the physician
and surgeon employed. They found that the earth was not
flat; that the stars were not mere specks. They found that
being born under a particular planet had nothing to do with
the fortunes of men.
The astrologer was discharged, and the astronomer took
his place.
They found that the earth had swept through the constella
tions for millions of ages. They found that good and evil
were produced by natural causes, and not by ghosts; that
man could not be good or bad enough to stop or cause a rain ;
that diseases were produced as naturally as grass, and were
not sent as punishments upon man for failing to believe a
certain creed. They found that man, through intelligence,
could take advantage of the forces of Nature—that he could
make the waves, the winds, the flames, and the lightnings
of heaven do his bidding and minister to his wants. They
found that the ghosts knew nothing of benefit to man; that
they were utterly ignorant of geology, of astronomy, of geo
graphy ; that they knew nothing of history; that they were
poor doctors and worse surgeons; that they knew nothing of
’law and less of justice ; that they were without brains,, and
utterly destitute of hearts ; that they knew nothing of the rights
of men; that they were despisers of women, the haters of
progress, the enemies of science, and the destroyers of liberty.
The condition of the world during the Dark Ages shows
exactly the result of enslaving the bodies and souls of men.
In those days there was no freedom. Labour was despised,
and a labourer was considered but little above a beast.
Ignorance, like a vast cowl, covered the brain of the world,
¿ind superstition ran riot with the imagination of man. The air
was filled with angels, with demons and monsters. Credulity
sat upon the throne of the soul, and Reason was an exiled
king. A man to be distinguished must be a soldier or a monk.
War and theology—that is to say, murder and hypocrisy—
were the principal employments of man. Industry was a slave,
theft was commerce ; murder was war, hypocrisy was religion.
Every Christian country maintained that it was no robbery
�24
THE GHOSTS
to take the property of Mohammedans by force, and no
murder to kill the owners. Lord Bacon was the first man
of note who maintained that a Christian country was bound
to keep its plighted faith with an infidel nation. Reading
and writing were considered dangerous arts. Every layman
who could read and write was suspected of being a heretic.
All thought was discouraged. They forged chains of super
stition for the minds and manacles of iron for the bodies of
men. The earth was ruled by the cowl and sword, by the
mitre and sceptre, by the altar and throne, by Fear and Force,
by Ignorance and Faith, by ghouls and ghosts.
In the fifteenth century the following law was in force in
England :—
“ That whosoever reads the Scriptures in the mother tongue
shall forfeit land, cattle, life, and goods from their heirs for
ever, and so be condemned for heretics to God, enemies to
the Crown, and most arrant traitors to the land.”
During the first year this law was in force thirty-nine were
hanged for its violation and their bodies burned.
In the sixteenth century men were burned because they
failed to kneel to a procession of monks.
The slightest word uttered against the superstition of the
time was published with death.
Even the reformers, so-called, of those days had no idea
of intellectual liberty—no idea even of toleration. Luther,
Knox, Calvin, believed in religious liberty only when they*
were in the minority. The moment they were clothed with
power they began to exterminate with fire and sword.
Castellio was the first minister who advocated the liberty
of the soul. He was regarded by the reformers as a criminal,
and treated as though he had committed the crime of crimes.
Bodinus, a lawyer of France, about the same time, wrote a
few words in favour of the freedom of conscience, but public
opinion was overwhelmingly against him. The people were
ready, anxious, and willing with whip and chain and fire to
drive from the mind of man the heresy that he had a right,
to think.
Montaigne, a man blessed with so much common sense that
he was the most uncommon man of his time, was the first
to raise a voice against torture in France. But what was
the voice of one man against the terrible cry of ignorant,
infatuated, superstitious, and malevolent millions? It was
the cry of a drowning man in the wild roar of the cruel sea.
�THE GHOSTS
25
In spite of the efforts of the brave few, the infamous war
against the freedom of the soul was waged until at least one
hundred millions of human beings—fathers, mothers, brothers,
sisters—with hopes, loves, and aspirations like ourselves,
were sacrificed upon the cruel altar of an ignorant faith.
They perished in every way by which death can be produced.
Every nerve of pain was sought out and touched by the
believers in ghosts.
.
. ,
For my part, I glory in the fact that here in the new world —in the United States—liberty of conscience was first
guaranteed to man, and that the Constitution of the United
States was the first great decree entered in the high court of
human equity forever divorcing Church and State—the first
injunction granted against the interference of the ghosts.
This was one of the grandest steps ever taken by the human
race in the direction of progress.
.
You will ask what has caused this wonderful change in
three hundred years. And I answer—the inventions and
discoveries of the few; the brave thoughts, the heroic utter
ances of the few; the acquisition of a few facts.
Besides, you must remember that every wrong in some
way tends to abolish itself. It is hard to make a he stand
always. A lie will not fit a fact. It will only fit another
lie made for the purpose. The life of a lie is simply a question
of time. Nothing but truth is immortal. The nobles and
kings quarrelled; the priests began to dispute; the ideas of
government began to change.
,
In 1441 printing was discovered. At that time the past
was a vast cemetery, with hardly an epitaph. The ideas of
men had mostly perished in the brain that produced them.
The lips of the human race had been sealed. Printing gave
”• pinions to thought. It preserved ideas. It made it possible
for man to bequeath to the future the riches of his brain,
the wealth of his soul. At first it was used to flood the world
with the mistakes of the ancients, but since that time it has
been flooding the world with light.
When people read they begin to reason, and when they
reason they progress. This was another grand step in the
direction of progress.
The discovery of gunpowder, that put the peasant almos
upon a par with the prince; that put an end to the so-called
age of chivalry ; that released a vast number of men from the
armies ; that gave pluck and nerve a chance with brute strength.
�26
THE GHOSTS
resdessdi«7ofradvLtori“ha7broe it“'68 T? ‘r°d by the
°f -> * • <tt
• iSr
o build a school-house is to construct a fort
livery library is an arsenal filled with the weanons and
~Z ix»
is a ™“b
niTui fndK^er“6 ^eIlan
^ank Gahleo^^
nicus, and Kepler, and Descartes, and Newton, and Lanlace
I thank Locke and Hume, and Bacon, and Shakespearfind
IndW^ts andVnknd
Goetbe' 1 thank Fu’lton’
wt>r>
a’ vt. °.ta’ an^ Galvani, and Franklin, and Morse
^ho made lightning- the messenger of man
r think
Humboldt, the Shakespeare of science. I thank Crompton
and Arkwright, from whose brains leaped the looms find
spindles that clothe the world. I thank Luther for protesting
S ' „ ‘ Je abuses of tht Church, and I denounce him becausf
he was the enemy of liberty. I thank Calvin for wridnTa
book m favour of religious freedom, and I abhor him because
pLtecX XVh / XX
resistin“opal
persecution, and I hate him because he persecuted in his
is obed efcT M C 7’’f°r SaTying’ “ Resistance to tyrants
is obedience to God, and yet I am compelled to say that
they were tyrants themselves. I thank Thomas Paine because
he was a believer in liberty, and because he did as much to
vfuG.my c°untry free as any other human being. I thank
A oltaire, that great man who, for half a century, was the
�THE GHOSTS
intellectual emperor of Europe, and who, from his throne at
the foot of the Alps, pointed the finger of scorn at every
hypocrite in Christendom. I thank Darwin, • Haeckel, and
Buchner, Spencer, Tyndall, and Huxley, Draper, Lecky, and
Buckle.
I thank the inventors, the discoverers, the thinkers, the
scientists, the explorers. I thank the honest millions who
have toiled.
I thank the brave men with brave thoughts. They are
the Atlases upon whose broad and mighty shoulders rests
the grand fabric of civilisation. They are the men who have
broken, and are still breaking, the chains of Superstition.
They are the Titans who carried Olympus by assault, and
who will soon stand victors upon’s Sinai’s crags.
We are beginning to learn that to exchange a mistake
for the truth—a superstition for a fact—to ascertain the
real—is to progress.
Happiness is the only possible good, and all that tends
to the happiness of man is right, and is of value. All that
tends to develop the bodies and minds of men; all that gives
us better houses, better clothes, better food, better pictures,
grander music, better heads, better hearts; all that renders
us more intellectual and more loving, nearer just; that makes
us better husbands and wives, better children, better citizens
—all these things combined produce what I call Progress.
Man advances only as he overcomes the obstructions of
Nature, and this can be done only by labour and by thought.
Labour is the foundation of all. Without labour, and without
great labour, progress is impossible. The progress of the
world depends upon the men who walk in the fresh furrows
and through the rustling corn ; upon those who sow and reap ;
upon those whose faces are radiant with the glare of furnace
fires; upon the delvers in the mines, and the workers in
shops; upon those who give to the winter air the ringing
music of the axe; upon those who battle with the boisterous
billows of the sea; upon the inventors and discoverers; upon
the brave thinkers.
From the surplus produced by labour schools and
universities are built and fostered. From this surplus the
painter is paid for the productions of the pencil; the sculptor
for chiselling shapeless rock into forms divinely beautiful, and
the poet for singing the hopes, the loves, the memories, and
�28
•
THE GHOSTS
the aspirations of the world. This surplus has given us the
books in which we converse with the dead and living kings
of the human race. It has given us all there is of beauty,
of elegance, and of refined happiness.
I am aware that there is a vast difference of opinion as to
what progress really is; that many denounce the ideas of
to-day as destructive of all happiness—of all good. I know
that there are many worshippers of the past. They venerate
the ancient because it is ancient. They see no beauty in
anything from which they do not blow the dust of ages with
the breath of praise. They say, no masters like the old;
no religion, no governments, like the ancient; no orators,
no poets, no statesmen, like those who have been dust for
two thousand years. Others love the modern simply because
it is modern.
We should have gratitude enough to acknowledge the
obligations we are under to the great and heroic of antiquity,
and independence enough not to believe what they said simply
because they said it.
With the idea that labour is the basis of progress goes the
truth that labour must be free. The labourer must be a free man.
The free man, working for wife and child, gets his head
and hands in partnership.
To do the greatest amount of work in the shortest space of
time is the problem of free labour.
Slavery does the least work in the longest space of time.
Free labour will give us wealth. Free thought will give
us truth.
Slowly but surely man is freeing his imagination of these
sexless phantoms, of these cruel ghosts. Slowly but surely
he is rising above the superstitions of the past. He is learning
to rely upon himself. He is beginning to find that labour
is the only prayer that ought to be answered, and that hoping,
toiling, aspiring, suffering men and women are of more
importance than all the ghosts that ever wandered through
the fenceless fields of space.
The believers in ghosts claim still that they are the only
wise and virtuous people upon the earth ; claim still that there
is a difference between them and unbelievers so vast that they
will be infinitely rewarded and the others infinitely punished.
I ask you to-night, do the theories and doctrines of the
theologians satisfy the heart or brain of the nineteenth century ?
Have the Churches the confidence of mankind?
�THE GHOSTS
29
Does the merchant give credit to a man because he belongs
to a Church?
Does the banker loan money to a man because he is
Methodist or Baptist?
Will a certificate of good standing in any Church be taken
as collateral security for one dollar?
Will you take the word of a Church member, or his note,
or his oath, simply because he is a Church member?
Are the clergy, as a class, better, kinder, and more generous
to their families—to their fellow-men—than doctors, lawyers,
merchants, and farmers?
Does a belief in ghosts and unreasonable things necessarily
make people honest?
When a man loses confidence in Moses, must the people
lose confidence in him?
Does not the credit system in morals breed extravagance
L
in sin ?
Why send missionaries to other lands while every peniten
tiary in ours is filled with criminals?
Is it philosophical to say that they who do right carry a cross ?
Is it a source of joy to think that perdition is the destina
tion of nearly all of the children of men ?
Is it worth while to quarrel about original sin—when there
is so much copy?
Does it pay to dispute about baptism, and the Trinity,
and predestination, and Apostolic succession, and the infalli|. bility of Churches, of Popes, and of books? Does all this
do any good?
Are the theologians welcomers of new truths? Are they
noted for their candour? Do they treat an opponent with
common fairness ?
Are they investigators ?
Do they pull
forward, or do they hold back? s
Is science indebted to the Church for a solitary fact?
'
What Church is an asylum for a persecuted truth?
What great reform has been inaugurated by the Church?
Did the Church abolish slavery?
Has the Church raised its voice against war?
I * I used to think that there was in religion no real restrainf ing force. Upon this point my mind has changed. Religion
I will prevent man from committing artificial crimes and offences.
■*
A man committed murder. The evidence was so conclusive
i
that he confessed his guilt.
He was asked why he killed his fellow-man.
�3°
THE GHOSTS
He replied: “For money.”
“ Did you get any? ”
“Yes.”
“ How much? ”
“Fifteen cents.”
“What did you do with the money?”
“ Spent it.”
“What for?”
“ Liquor.”
“What else did you find upon the dead man? ”
“He had his dinner in a bucket—some meat and bread.”
“What did you do with that?”
“ I ate the bread.”
“What did you do with the meat? ”
“I threw it away.”
“Why? ”
“ It was Friday.”
Just to the extent that man has freed himself from the
dominion of ghosts he has advanced. Just to the extent that
he has freed himself from the tyrants of his own creation he
has progressed. Just to the extent that he has investigated
for himself he has lost confidence in superstition.
With knowledge, obedience becomes intelligent acqui
escence—it is no longer degrading. Acquiescence in the
understood—in the known-—is the act of a sovereign, not
of a slave. It ennobles, it does not degrade.
Man has found that he must give liberty to others in order
to have it himself. He has found that a master is also a
slave; that a tyrant is himself a serf. He has found that
Governments should be founded and administered by man
and for man ; that the rights of all are equal; that the powers
that be are not ordained by God; that woman is at least
the equal of man; that men existed before books; that
religion is one of the phases of thought through which the
world is passing; that all creeds were made by man; that
everything is natural; that a miracle is an impossibility;
that we know nothing of origin and destiny; that concern
ing the unknown we are all equally ignorant; that the pew
has the right to contradict what the pulpit asserts; that man
is responsible only to himself and those he injures, and that
all have a right to think.
True religion must be free. Without perfect liberty of the
�THE GHOSTS
3i
mind there can be no true religion. Without liberty the brain
is a dungeon—the mind a convict. The slave may bow and
cringe and crawl, but he cannot adore—he cannot love.
True religion is the perfume of a free and grateful heart.
True religion is a subordination of the passions to the percep
tions of the intellect. True religion is not a theory—it is
a practice. It is not a creed—it is a life.
A theory that is afraid of investigation is undeserving a
place in the human mind.
I do not pretend to tell what all the truth is. I do not
pretend to have fathomed the abyss, nor to have floated on
outstretched wings level with the dim heights of thought.
I simply plead for freedom.
I denounce the cruelties and
horrors of slavery. I ask for light and air for the souls
of men. I say, Take off those chains—break those manacles
—free those limbs—release that brain ! I plead for the right
to think—to reason—to investigate. I ask that the future
may be enriched with the honest thoughts of men. I implore
every human being to be a soldier in the army of progress.
I will not invade the rights of others. You have no right
to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought. You
have no right to leap from the hedges of superstition and
strike down the pioneers of the human race. You have no
right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the altars of
ghosts. Believe what you may; preach what you desire;
have all the forms and ceremonies you please; exercise your
liberty in your own way, but extend to all others the same right.
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they
accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous
—if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one
and all, because they enslave the minds of men.
I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that
have ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room—
room for the human mind.
Why should we sacrifice a real world that we have for one
we know not of? Why should we enslave ourselves?
Why should we forge fetters for our own hands?
Why
should we be the slaves of phantoms? The darkness of
barbarism was the womb of these shadows. In the light
of science they cannot cloud the sky forever. They have
reddened the hands of man with innocent blood. They made
the cradle a curse, and the grave a place of torment.
�32
THE GHOSTS
They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of the human
race. They subverted all ideas of justice by promising infinite
rewards for finite virtues, and threatening infinite punish
ment for finite offences.
They filled the future with heavens and with hells, with
the shining peaks of selfish joy and the lurid abysses of
flame. For ages they kept the world in ignorance and awe,
in want and misery, in fear and chains.
I plead for light, for air, for opportunity.
I plead for
individual independence. I plead for the rights of labour
and of thought. I plead for a chainless future. Let the
ghosts go—justice remains. Let them disappear—men and
women and children are left. Let the monsters fade away—
the world is here with its hills and seas and plains, with its
seasons of smiles and frowns; its spring of leaf and bud;
its summer of shade and flower and murmuring stream;
its autumn with the laden boughs, when the withered
banners of the corn are stilly and gathered fields are growing
strangely wan; while death, poetic death, with hands that
colour what they touch, weaves in the autumn wood her
tapestries of gold and brown.
The world remains, with its winters and homes and fire
sides, where grow and bloom the virtues of our race. All
these are left; and music, with its sad and thrilling voice,
and all there is of art and song and hope and love and
aspiration high. All these remain. Let the ghosts go—we
will worship them no more.
Man i's greater than these phantoms.
Humanity is
grander than all the creeds, than all the books. Humanity
is the great sea, and these creeds, and books, and religions
are but the waves of a day. Humanity is the sky, and these
religions and dogmas and theories are but the mists and
clouds changing continually, destined finally to melt away.
That which is founded upon slavery, and fear, and ignor
ance cannot endure. In the religion of the future there will
be men and women and children, all the aspirations of the
soul, and all the tender humanities of the heart.
Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more. Let
them cover their eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands,
and fade forever from the imaginations of men.
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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
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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The ghosts
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 32 p. : ill. (front. port) ; 19 cm.
Series title: Pamphlets for the Millions
Series number: No. 10
Notes: Issued for the Rationalist Press Association. RPA "Sixpenny books" listed inside and on back cover. No. 26h in Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Watts & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1912
Identifier
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G1062
RA1765
N351
Subject
The topic of the resource
Spiritualism
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 (The ghosts), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Ghosts
Materialism
NSS
Supernatural
-
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6adebb82b5f4179638a64451bdb92e83
PDF Text
Text
I&jl.
£2-35 7
N'73
November, 1912
THE BLASPHEMY LAWS:
What they are, and why they should be
abolished.
“ Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to
argue freely according to conscience, above all
other liberties.”—Milton.
There have been more prosecutions for blasphemy during the
PAST YEAR than during the previous FIFTY YEARS. There
have been more prosecutions for SPOKEN blasphemy during the
past FIVE YEARS than during the previous HUNDRED
YEARS. What has become of our boasted freedom of speech?
What are the blasphemy laws; and why should they be per
mitted to continue?
During the first five centuries of Christianity in
England the legal prohibitions of heresy were few and
unimportant. The Church relied upon its terrible power
of excommunication to punish the man who dared to
exercise the right of private judgment. But when the
authority of the Pope was rejected by a large and
increasing number of persons, excommunication lost its
power, and in the fourteenth century it was complained
that there were “evil persons” who “expressly
despised ” the censures of the Church, and refused to
submit to its condemnation. At this period the aid of the
law was called in and there commenced a series ol
enactments for the extirpation of heresy by burning,
imprisoning, and fining the heretic. In addition to the
statute law, heresy also became a criminal offence under
what is known as common law, the law, i.e., which
has its origin in custom and acquires legal force through
the repeated decisions of more or less famous judges;
or which expresses the views of the judges without
warrant of legislature or custom. The statutes for the
�punishment of “offences against religion’’ still in force
are :—
I. Depraving, despising, or reviling the Sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper, (i Ed. VI, c. i.)
II. To speak in derogation, depraving, or despising of
the Book of Common Prayer, (i Eliz., c. 2, s. 3.)
III. An Act for |he more effectual suppression of blas
phemy and profaneness. (9 Wm. Ill, c. 35.)
IV. An Act to prevent certain abuses and profanations on
the Lord’s Day. (21 Geo. III. c. 49.)
V. An Act for the punishment of blasphemy in Scotland.
(6 Geo. IV, c. 47.)
To these must now be added Section 54 of the Metro
politan Police Act, 1839, and Section 28 of the Town
Police Clauses Act, 1847, which give the police power to
take persons into custody for using profane language
in public places. In the cases of Mr. Jackson at Leeds
in April, 1912, and Messrs. Chasty and Muirhead at
Ilkeston in the following month, the magistrates held
that profanity is indistinguishable from blasphemy.
The common law as to blasphemy was settled in 1676
by Lord Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale. The learned
judge then laid down that “ Christianity, being parcel
of the laws of England, therefore to speak in reproach
of the Christian religion is to speak in subversion of the
law.” This was the accepted reading of the law for
two centuries. So late as March, 1883, Mr. Justice
North, in trying Messrs. Foote, Ramsey, and Kemp,
said that it was blasphemy to deny the existence or
providence of God ; or to ridicule the persons of the
Trinity, or the Cnristian religion, or the Holy Scriptures
in any way. In April of the same year, however, Lord
Coleridge, in his celebrated summing up, gave what was
virtually a new reading of the law. Specifically
contradicting former rulings, he said that it was no
longer true that Christianity was part of the law of the
land, but that “ if the decencies of controversy are
observed, even the fundamentals of religion may be
attacked without the person being guilty of blasphemy.”
This ruling in effect put the law upon an entirely new
footing. It was traversed at the time by several learned
lawyers, and in 1886, in the case of Dr. Pankhurst v.
Thompson, Baron Huddleston and Mr. Justice Manisty
both expressed their disagreement with Lord Coleridge’s
�ruling, but it has recently been reiterated and confirmed
by Mr. Justice Phillimore and Mr. Justice Darling in
Mr. Boulter’s case, 1908-9, Mr. Justice Horridge in the
cases of Messrs. Stewart and Gott, 1911, and by Mr.
Justice Eldon Bankes in Mr. Bullock’s case, 1912.
All laws against heresy or blasphemy are laws for the
repression of opinion, and Lord Coleridge’s reading of
the law does not alter that fact or remove the danger of
prosecutions. Who is to decide what are the “ decen
cies of controversy ” ?
Are twelve antagonistic
jurymen to be the censors? What would be the
decision of twelve Belfast Orangemen who had
to try a Catholic speaker, or twelve Catholics
who were trying a bitter Protestant lecturer? Is
it reasonable to expect a more impartial verdict from
twelve Christians in trying a Secularist for an attack
upon their faith? The Secularist is, in effect, tried by a
packed jury. At its best, Lord Coleridge’s law as to
spoken or written blasphemy is a law which gives im
munity to “the scholar and the gentleman’’ whilst
denying it to the poor and unlearned. Can anyone de
fend the retention of a law which discriminates between
two classes of the community in this way?
Moreover, experience shows that these police prose
cutions are a complete failure even from the point of
view of the prosecution. So far from promoting
moderation of speech, by rousing resentment they
actually lead to the use of violent language. Free
thinkers to whom coarseness in controversy is extremely
repugnant are placed in a very awkward position.
There is something invidious in trying to moderate the
violence of those who are open to prosecution. It is
impossible to remonstrate with such a speaker publicly,
since the remonstrance might set the law on his track
and be used against him on his trial. It is equally diffi
cult to remonstrate privately with those embittered by
the imprisonment of their friends. The law, as it is
administered to-day, is an engine for silencing, not the
advocates of scurrility, but the advocates of moderation.
Further, even if Lord Coleridge’s law has superseded
that of the previous 200 years in regard to spoken or
written heresy., the old reading still obtains in regard
to legacies, contracts, and the guardianship of children.
A legacy bequeathed for the purpose of propagating
�opinions subversive of the Christian religion was held
to be contrary to the law so recently as 1903. The
question as to the “ decencies of controversy ” or the
place in which the opinions were to be propagated did
not arise. The legacy was invalid simply because it
was inconsistent with Christianity.
If a parent
publishes his or her Atheistical opinions, the
Court may hold (and has held) that as a reason for
depriving such parent of the custody or guardianship
of the children. Contracts for purposes involving the
publication of heretical opinion can be (and have been)
broken with impunity. It has even been held that
there is no copyright in heretical books.
It is argued that these laws are obsolete. If they
are obsolete, then nothing could be more simple or more
straightforward than to abolish them. The proof that
they are not obsolete is, first, that they are enforced;
second, that their abolition is resisted. So long as there
are people who oppose the abolition of the blasphemy
laws, so long may we be quite sure that there are people
who desire to see them enforced. The only way to ensure
that no one shall be imprisoned or otherwise punished
for his opinions is to take away the power to punish.
Public opinion ought to be the one and only censor of
the “ decencies of controversy.”
Freedom to criticise, freedom to express opinion, is
one of the most valuable rights a man can possess, and
should belong to the uncultured quite as much as to the
cultured. We therefore plead for the entire abolition
of the power to prosecute for the expression of opinion
in matters of religion.
Those who value the right to speak freely, according
to conscience, above all other liberties, are urgently
requested to join the Committee for the Repeal of the
Blasphemy Laws, and should send in their names at
once to the Secretary.
The following Societies are already represented on
the Executive Committee :—The British and Foreign
Unitarian. Association, the National Secular Society,
the Positivist Society, the Rationalist Press Associa
tion., the South Place Ethical Society, and the Union of
Ethical Societies.
Issued by the Commit'ee for the Repeal of the Blasphemy Laws,
South Place Institute, Finsbury, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & 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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The blasphemy laws : what they are, and why they should be abolished
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Committee for the Repeal of the Blasphemy Laws
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 4 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: The Committee was constituted in 1912 by the NSS, RPA, Union of Ethical Societies and the British and Foreign Unitarian Society. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Committee for the Repeal of the Blasphemy Laws
Date
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1912
Identifier
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N173
Subject
The topic of the resource
Blasphemy
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 (The blasphemy laws : what they are, and why they should be abolished), 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
Blasphemy
NSS
South Place Ethical Society
-
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de621c6568f29486d49b68e983d9adc2
Dublin Core
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Title
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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
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Parchment
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Surrender of leasehold premises 14, 15, 16 and 17 Lambs Conduit Passage, 10 July 1912
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<p>Surrender of leasehold premises 14, 15, 16 and 17 Lambs Conduit Passage, (10 July 1912).</p>
<ul><li>(1) Thomas George Smith of 7 Finsbury Square, son and heir of James Smith, as (2) above, and Emma his wife, both deceased</li>
<li>(2) John Savill Vaizey of Woodfield, Stansted, Essex, barrister, and Thomas Smith Curtis and Charles Frederick Booth, both of 4 Bedford Row, London, solicitors (mortgagees)</li>
<li>(3), Algernon Augustus de Lille Strickland of Apperley Court, Deerhurst, Glos, esq</li>
</ul><p>Pursuant to an agreement by all parties that (1) clear site of 14, 15, 16 and 17 Lambs Conduit Passage, which has been done, and to extinguish leasehold terms and covenants, (1) surrenders site and all interests to (2) and (3).</p>
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SPES/3/1/1/22
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Text
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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=OWLS000075-9" target="_blank">OWLS000075-9</a>.</p>
Lamb's Conduit Passage, Holborn
Strickland, Algernon Augustus de Lille
-
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Architecture and Place
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2016
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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.
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Conway Hall (London, England)
South Place Chapel, Finsbury
Mansford, Frederick Herbert (1871-1946)
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Surrender of lease of 17, 18, 19 and 20 Lambs Conduit Passage, 10 July 1912
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Surrender of lease of 17,18,19,20 Lambs Conduit Passage, (10 July 1912).</p>
<ul><li>(1) Robert Howe of 7 Finsbury Square, London, gent</li>
<li>(2) John Savill Vaizey of Woodfield, Stansted, Essex, barrister, and Thomas Smith Curtis and Charles Frederick Booth, both of 4 Bedford Row, London, solicitors (mortgagees)</li>
<li>(3) Algernon Augustus de Lille Strickland of Apperley Court, Deerhurst, Glos, esq</li>
</ul><p>Pursuant to agreement to demolish and demolition, and to extinguish leasehold terms under lease of 26 Nov 1908, (1) surrenders site and all interests to (2)-(3).</p>
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Unknown
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1912
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SPES/3/1/1/25
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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=OWLS000075-26" target="_blank">OWLS000075-26</a>.</p>
Lamb's Conduit Passage, Holborn
Strickland, Algernon Augustus de Lille
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d12c7b52e743976e8024e85a736ce062.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=JKk0ukiqqyaV1TabuSURHe66dUC8lVCPuUR8WHDuVnF4qdJi8ZooIIWW3IrgPL9G8QJEvnl7s%7EvK2M0%7ES92WBchTpOYpltK85saHY5EDI2nBXKeIXjO5xDsIGdjoxVHmdesMtxL0z8QmBzJPNq%7El9U7buc0n8GFMp5my3VlknRKOp%7EoUQYC9BmEjMlHiRgs3RBoPKWQOjoBzWkqJ4ogX9AC4PwLZTFsGbRGKDElUsyPiVyOWoKhWCHTj1L2qBV04O%7EeII-p%7EMXF9qGaEwF%7EhoF2zjzLGCfMArNXLbnzlzOv%7EA3CCpcpFIfNgJSs6Cc7XbgrK2sywbIx-8nDVGwTdhw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
b370e2b7bfef54971f88a8e5fa7052fd
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Text
St&ies of feature Society.
NATURAL ETHICS
IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. J
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Ethics of Nature Society,
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BY
C. W. SALEEBY, M.D., F.R.S.E.
., WATTS & Co.,
17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London.
1912.
>
PRICE 2d.
�the ethics of nature
SOCIETY is an Association for the
Harmonious Development of Life
through the practice of Ethics based
on the Laws of Nature, and for the
Propagation of the truth that the
history of Life in
its
evolution
provides a complete justification for
asserting that there is such a thing
as the Ethics of Nature.
Morality
therefore has natural sanction and
natural criteria.
�B.3II )
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
ETHICS OF NATURE SOCIETY.
Natural Ethics
IN THEORY AND
PRACTICE.
Extracts from Three Lectures given for the
ETHICS OF NATURE SOCIETY
BY
C. W. SALEEBY, M.D., F.R.S.E.
WATTS & Co.)
ty, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London
1912.
��THE
ORIGIN
OF
MORALITY.
[Reprinted from the Ethics of Nature Review.]
Before turning to- his subject for the evening, Dr. Saleeby
spoke of the three delusions which are prevalent as to the
origin of Morality—delusions which arise in part from a mis
understanding of the word Morality.
Of these three, the first and oldest is that Morality finds its
basis either in some kind of authoritative power or definite
law from on High (the Mosaic laws, the Koran, etc.), or in
persons representative of someone to whom that power was
given (the “divine right of Kings,” the clergy, etc.). Accord
ing to this delusion, Morality has no natural criterion, and
cannot be judged by its effects, but by an authorised code of
conduct only.
The second delusion is that Morality has
arisen without any definite cause or purpose, through Cus
tom; and the third and most important, which is
the common assertion of ecclesiasticism, is that there
is no natural, spontaneous, inherent Morality in Man.
Even John Stuart Mill, in his “Utilitarianism,” lays
it down that morals are not born in a man,
but
are acquired characteristics imposed on the individual by his
surroundings, and having no root in his own nature—that
man’s is a purely selfish nature, acting by means of external
pressure. It may be taken as an indication of the progress
of the last five and twenty years, that this delusion is so
rapidly dying out.
In turning to the true conception of the Origin of Morality,
Dr. Saleeby gave a definition of the term which coincides en
tirely (as did indeed his lecture from first to last) with the
views of the Ethics of Nature Society, not only in senti
ment, but in actual expression.
“Morality is that which
makes for more life as against less, and for higher life as
against lower.” The definition grows clearest- when we under
stand what Nature means by “higher” life.
Having definitely defined Morality in terms of life, we must
turn for its history to the History of Life, which is purely
�4
evolutionary.
Past historians, past the history of churches,
past human dogmas, we come down to the beginnings of Life
as it must somehow have arisen on our planet. Already in
the vegetable world, the; marvellous structures devisied by
Nature for the nurture of the young plant, point to- Morality,
according to our definition, since they make for life. Pass
ing to the animal world, as Herbert Spencer once said, in
discussing the subject, even when the first single cell divided
itself into two, there was the rude foreshadowing of Moral
action—here was a being not wholly selfish.
Morality has thus its origin of origins in that great necessity
of Life to reproduce itself—a necessity which arose in the
presence and irrevocability of Death. The arrangements
made in Nature for reproduction are connected from the' first
with Morality, and the sacrifices involved in the process- in
crease steadily as the scale of life ascends.
Through the animal world, past the invertebrates-, past the
lower forms of vertebrates (fish-, amphibia-, birds) to the- mam
malia, from the duckmole and the kangaroo up to- the remark
able monkey tribes, a-nd thence to Human-kind, the scale of
progress may be said to be uninterrupted. In due sequence
with the general trend, the amount of care, labour, and life
devoted by the parents (and especially by the mother) to
the young, grows ever greater.
More and more stress is
laid on Morality, because there is more and more, need for it.
From the historical level, we come to the level of positive
interpretations, being confronted at the first with the query
whether this Mora-lit-y, which is an ever increasing thing in
the history of Evolution, has arisen through a particular in
clination of nature in that- direction; and we conclude that
this is undoubtedly not the case, since the na-t-ural law isi uni
versally the Darwinian law of the survival of the- fittest—of
those best suited to their particular time, environment, and
circumstances.
Yet, though we see that Nature is strictly impartial, a-nd
will indifferently choose teeth and claws with murderous in
tent, or the most delicate o-f reproductive organs imposing
absolute self-abnegation and personal risk, it is always in
so far as one or other makes for Life and Higher Life.
Nature’s bias is vital, and Morality has consequently den
�5
veloped in Nature because of its superior survival value. Not
withstanding that Morality was handicapped from the first,
it has won through by that value alone.
In order to appreciate what Morality has done for man, let
us consider by what means a man survives in the world; not
indeed by means of a defensive armour, nor by any offensive
weapons, nor by reason of his strength or of his fleetness, but
because of his Intellect, that great instrument of adaptabilityAnd this instrument comes to him through Morality, since
an intelligent being can only develop, under maternal care,
and will develop only as Morality continues to increase.
Morality is no invention of men, or of priests, or of amiable
enthusiasts; it is the maker of man, and is as necessary to
all further development as it has been necessary from the
first to natural Evolution.
Having existed from all time,
being far older than mankind, and older in consequence than
all churches and dogmas and creeds-—Morality will doubtless
survive1 them all.
�G
NATURE
AND
ETHICS.
The subject is too large to be dealt with at all completely,
and I propose expressing only my own attitude as a student
of Nature, from the standpoint of the biologist. The subject,
taken more narrowly, lies between Ethics and Biology, the
Science of Life.
The biologist finds more particularly in the history of life, in
its evolution, complete justification for asserting that there is
such a thing asi an Ethics of Nature; that Morality has
natural sanction and natural criteria.
For Moral Education we generally have recourse to the
method of former generations ; we refer thei questioning child,
not to any ultimate sanction, but to1 an all-seeing and all
judging power; and in order to make our own commands
complied with, we offer the old alternative of punishment and
reward.
So long as the right people are ruling, and so long
as there isi sufficient faith in the authoritative source which
they plead, the problem is simple enough.
But at such a
time as this, when doubt is expressed not only as to what
is right and what wrong, but even as to the actual existence
of Right and Wrong at all, the matter of Moral Education
and the moral basis is entirely changed, and become extremely
complicated.
We no longer believe in the Fall of Man; we are beginning
to understand the Ascent of Man. The fact isi, we are clearly
living in a moral interregnum; the original and older sano
tions of morality have broken down; those who still profess
them will be found to be acting in accordance with what we
call “right," simply through their own nature, or custom
and public opinion, and not by a real belief in the sanction
which they assert.
We all know that there is a distinction between Right and
Wrong; there are certain sentiments or instincts which do
tell us, in crucial instances, how we should act, irrespective
of rewards, irrespective of any sanction, irrespective
of any thing outside ourselves.
But this is not sufficient
for all needs; we ask what moral anchorage there can be—•
not only what is right, but why it is right.
�7
It is to meet this demand, to which Herbert Spencer gave
expression in his “Data of Ethics,” that some come forward
to-day with what may be termed. “Ethics of Life”-—with what
Ellen Key calls the Religion of Life.
Her books are well
worth reading; for hers is no mystic confession or creed, she
simply lays down certain ideas, certain plans, for personal
and universal conduct; which she refers to> as the Religion
of Life. She believes, as the Ethics of Nature Society does,
that in Life and its laws are detailed information and direc
tion as to what is right and wrong.
Professor Bergson’s Philosophy of Life strengthens this
theory immeasurably.
He has, from his standpoint asi a
student of Biology, a clear feeling that in the very facts of Life
are to be found certain data on which to build a moral code.
It is extremely difficult to refer to facts of Nature without
seeming to give implication of design, purpose, or intent.
Looking at the facts of the living world (in both low and high
forms of life), there is distinctly a “thrust” or impetus (as
Bergson has it, an “elan vital”} which seeks to achieve more
life. This seems to me a perfectly just statement. Whether
Life is to be considered as an almost conscious Entity, striving
to realise its o-wn partly idealised purposes, as our individual
lives do, we can hardly say.
But it certainly does appear
so. Life is, above all, says Prof. Bergson, “ a tendency to act
cn inert matter”—reminding one of certain biologists who
have argued that life looks as if it were seeking to turn as
much lifeless matter as possible into living matter.
This
argument of Bergson reminds one also- of two passages in
Shelley,s “Adonais”:
“Through wood. and. stream and field and hill and ocean
A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has bursit.”
. . . “the one Spirit’s plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear.”
It is as though Life were something behind Matter, striving
to express itself; it isi as if that plan which Tennyson sums
up aS “More Life and fuller” were the purpose of living
Nature.
Above all, this may be seen in contemplating the
history of Life.
First of all we see no life at all, then we
find traces of very simple life; and finally life as we know it
to-day; through all the process there seems an almost irresist
�8
ible desire of Life to multiply, to magnify, to intensify itself.
This is shown not only in the life of the individual, but in
those ulterior purposes for which more and more the individ
ual appears' to be designed, and to which more, and more he is
devoted.
We are- all acquainted with the great paradox of Weismann
ism, that the individual exists only for the race, to be the
host of the immortal germ-plasm, so- that all bodies are simply
designed for the making of more life in the future, for parent
hood, for the enhancement of life, and, above all, for its in
tensive culture—the making of forms- less numerous, but with
greater intensity of what may be called the living flame.
This view, which is more and more justified, is the biological
statement of the functions of the individual a® designed (if
1 may use the word) throughout all the process' of evolution
less for its own life’s sake than for the making of more- life,
widespread.
Of that age-long process we; are the1 product.
What, then, of that aspect of living Nature which has
been regarded as nearly murderous, not only a-s non-moral,
but actually as anti-moral?
John Stuart Mill spoke of living Nature- as a- “slaughter
house”; Tennyson pictured Nature “red in tooth and claw”
We are all a-ware of the destruction of life, full-grown or
immature, in the processes of Nature; many forms of life are
designed to- do murder, are ruthless1 instruments for death.
Can the proposition of Nature’s desire for Life and Morality
be compatible with the enormous- amount of futile death we
see on all hands, and with the construction of creatures de
signed to give death ? Certainly it can !
In the first place, when we point to the destruction and
worse than wast-e- amongst the immature (animals, fish, seeds,
etc.), we forget that- those who are destroyed serve for the
food and life of other—largely of higher—formsThe waste
is only apparent.
We should first- have looked to the causes
of death before we- called it so.
If a fish produces- one- mil
lion eggs yearly, and perhaps only two reach maturity to
replace their parents, it- does not follow that there has- been
meaningless, fut-ile murders of the others; for they have- gone
to serve Nature in another way, by giving food to other
species.
�9
Nature sets out to make more life and fuller; not to de
stroy. Animals that hunt and kill for their food possess teeth
and claws which, though instruments of murder on the one
hand, on closer inspection prove' to be instruments1 for life,
since by them life is sustained. This comment may to some
extent remove the existing doubt whether Nature affords a
sanction for moral conduct.
Moral conduct is that which makes for more life; and since
Life is to be measured in terms of quality as well as in terms
of quantity, we must make the further proviso' that Nature
works for intenser (we may safely say for higher) forms;
that is, for more life confined in a. narrower space. The ten
dency to subsist for that belief, to evolve, from that, and to
move upon that, forms the basis of the. Ethics of Nature
Society.
Moral conduct on these' lines will be either that
which makes for more life as against less, or that which makes
for higher life as against lower1.
Lack of time prevents, me from attempting, this evening,
to meet, or even to name, all the, difficulties which the subject
brings up; they will be dealt, with at, future lectures; but, I
do want to repeat that if any of you think this is; a thing
to look into, you should read Bergson’s “Creative Evolution,”
and Ellen Key’s “Love- and Marriage” (the book has an un
fortunate title, but the moral and social conduct, which she
derives from that theory which it is difficult to avoid calling
the Purpose of Life,, isi extremely valuable). These books' I
recommend to be read in association with M. Deshumbert’s
“The Ethics of Nature,” which is entirely devoted to the
statement of our present thesis.
The, new theory of Morality, and of the nature of Morality,
is based more and more on Biology, relying greatly upon the
facts of our natural instincts, especially the parental instinct,
and their function. Thus Dr- Mercier, of the Charing Cross
Hospital, in his new book, “Conduct and its Disorders,” has
come to look at conduct from, the, point of view of Biology,
and to controvert the old, wildly delusive doctrine that in
man the instincts' have disappeared, and that in place of
instincts he has intelligence.
Intelligence is not a motor,
it is a pilot, and if we really had lost our instincts we should
sit like Job motionlessly contemplating life, instead of which
�10
we move and do1. The springs of our conduct are those, very
instincts which a few years ago, we were said not to possess.
On all this subject, Dr. McDougall is the master and pioneer,
in his “Social Psychology.”
We possess just such instincts as animals in their essential
nature, and they underlie all our emotions. Thus the emotion
of wonder is the subjective side of what we call the instinct
of curiosity. The parental instinct is correlative in us, with
“tender emotion.” The more you examine the parental in
stinct, whether it be exhibited in actual, or foster, or non
parents, tire more you see that it is the source of all the actions
which, consciously or unconsciously, you and I call moral, or
good, or right. You find it in the mother who lives, and if
need be dies, for her child; you find it in the old maid with
her cats; you find it in the doctor with his patient.
Psy
chologists have argued that parental instinct is what I may
call anticipatory gratitude; it is nothing of the kind.
It
is an instinctive feeling for life which is young' or is in need,
and which we can help; and it is by no means confined to
our own species (where reward in some form might be antici
pated), but is shown in other species, not self-conscious, which
cannot anticipate future repayment.
There is good, reason
to suppose that if you fuse this instinct, with, others; in o-ur
nature; you will produce those qualities which we call moral.
The ultimate justification for believing that these acts are
moral, is that somehow or other they serve (or will, or can
serve) the general life; we recognise in them, at least, an ele
ment of life-saving. It may be only serving an idea, it may
be serving only one particular class.
My particular cause
for existence is to serve Eugenics, on the theory that we can
do most for the general life by devoting our energies to the
life that is still unborn.
A final question arises if one, desires to make converts
either for Eugenics or for the Ethics of Nature Society: the
old question of “What has posterity done for me?” or, in the
words of Shylock: “On what compulsion must I; tell me
that.” There is, of course, no obvious profit, and no obvious
reason, but what does the astronomer ask, who, spends his
life in amassing stellar data which, in perhaps five hundred
years or so; but not, till then, will be of immense cosmological
value ?
�11
We cannot promise on this theory any direct reward to< be
gained, but it will, nevertheless, be involved in the truth that
virtue is its own reward. That is to say, if there be in any
one of us a native, ineradicable instinct which is essentially
parental, a vital instinct, a desire to serve life, we will get out
of it just that same satisfaction which follows when we yield
to the prompting of any other instincts, whose satisfaction
satisfies themJust as in the1 case1 of the astronomer, the
labour given and the knowledge one day to be gained—so
here, the life one day to be made or saved—these are the in
volved reward. Beyond such reward as this, the Religion of
Life or the Ethics of Nature has none to, offer. But has any
ci her Religion or Creed the warrant to offer more; and is not
this enou.Q'h ?
�12
NATURAL
ETHICS
AND
EUGENICS.
Reprinted from the Ethics of Nature Review.]
The object of this lecture was to show that the* practical
principles of Eugenics are* not only compatible with, but are
the actual outcome of the moral evolution described in the
first lecture, and to explain the theory and practice of
Eugenics in their relation to human life.
“By Eugenics I understaind the project of making the
highest human beings possible.”
The chief factors in this
process, as especially named by Sir Francis Galton are
“Nature and Nurture.” The Eugenics which concerns itself
with the natural or hereditary causes, is called by Dr. Saleeby
the primary factor- The nurtural or environmental takes the
place of secondary factor.
This is inverting the* customary
order, where environment is generally represented as answer
ing most, if not the whole of the question.
But although
neither of the factors could stand without the other, Eugenists
on biological grounds insist that environment is distinctly
secondary.
Primary Eugenics must again be separately defined and sub
divided.
From the point of view of heredity it is evident
that'—assuming the existence of this fact—parenthood must
be encouraged on the part of the worthy. This is the first aim
of the Eugenist, and goes by the name of Positive Eugenics.
Secondly, it is quite evident that the converse of Positive
Eugenics must be to discourage' parenthood on the part of the
unworthy. This is known as Negative Eugenics. And
thirdly, the Eugenics which stands between healthy stocks*
and those prime causes of degeneration generally understood
to-day under the name of racial poisons, the Eugenics, in
short, which strives to keep the worthy worthy, is termed
Preventive Eugenics.
Now as regards the relation of Eugenics to the theory and
practice of Natural Ethics, Positive Eugenics, in the first
place, is a process evidently approved by Nature, being simply
the process of natural selection by which those beings who
�are capable of reproducing their species survive and multiply.
Only one point arises here, which has to be met: there are
some Eugenists (and Mr. Bernard Shaw is amongst the num
ber) who propose that this business of encouraging parent
hood oni the part of the1 worthy should be- carried out by the
abolition of marriage.
Marriage—and more especially
monogamous marriagei—is strictly in keeping with the prin
ciples of the Ethics of Nature Society, being conducive, not
to most life as concerns a high birth-rate, but certainly to
most life as concerns a low death-rate. Also', marriage makes
the father responsible psychologically and socially for his chil
dren; this aspect of monogamy has to be considered. Posi
tive Eugenics will endeavour to work through marriage, which
is a natural institution far older than any decree^ or church,
and to improve it for the Eugenic purpose. The chief method
of Positive Eugenics to-day, is education for parenthood. The
education of the young should be from the very start a pre
paration for parenthood, and should not cease, as it now
most commonly does, at that time when it is most needed;
namely, at the age of adolescence.
Negative Eugenics certainly has a natural sanction.
Natural selection might with equal truth be called. Natural
rejection. Now the question arises, are we to apply the- prin
ciple of Natural Rejection to mankind, with the object of
preventing the parenthood of the unworthy ? It would cer
tainly appear to be a natural proceeding.
But here- the
Ethics of Nature Society says: We are not to kill, on the
contrary, we are to fight for those who- cannot fight1 for them
selves; whereas Nature says these' are- to be exterminated.
This apparent opposition between the natural and the moral
course of action was dwelt upon at some length by Huxley,
in his Romanes Lecture, on “Evolution and Ethics.
In
this lecture he describes cosmic evolution as being a ruthless
process where life advances by means of a general slaughter,
and where it is merely a case of “each for himself and the devil
take the hindmost,.” Moral evolution, hei said, is the, absolute
antithesis to the natural; Moral evolution is the care of the
hindmost, and necessitates at all times a course- exactly o-ppo
site to the model we have in Nature.
There are different
opinions as to- Huxley’s reasons for expressing himself in this
�14
unjustifiable manner on a subject which he was obviously
viewing at the time in a totally false light. And perhaps the
simplest and clearest of all explanations is that this very Leer
ture was written at a period of unfortunate estrangement
between Herbert Spencer and Huxley, and may have been
meant deliberately to set at defiance the principles and tenets
of Herbert Spencer, who maintained that “ there is a natural
evolutionary basis for Ethics?’
Darwin, in his Origin of Species, confesses that we keep
alive numbers of persons who, by natural selection, would
certainly have been exterminated; but, he adds, in, this case
we cannot follow the natural model. And there Darwin left
it; there was this antinomy between the “natural” course
and man s higher nature, and although it was obviously a
wrong thing to let the degenerate multiply, Darwin felt that
we must be content to let him multiply, because we are under
a. moral obligation to keep him alive.
There are Eugenists when want us to, throw moral evolution
overboard, as being mere sentimentalism, and to go straight
for the destruction of the unfit by means of exposing degen
erate babies, as the Spartans did, by means of lethal chambers,
and by reverting to all the horrors, of our grandfathers’ time,
the gallows, chains, and death by starvation for the feeble
minded- These are: the Eugenistsi who take the sacred name
of Eugenics in vain. Eugenics has nothing to do with kill
ing anybody at any stage of life whatever.
Human life,
such as it may be, is a, sacred thing, and cannot, be1 treated
with contempt at any stage whatever of its development.
What the Eugenist may do; however, is> this; he, may distin
guish between the right to live and the right to become a
parent. And this is the simple solution which both Huxley
and Darwin missedIn this simple solution the antinomy
which both Huxley and Darwin saw between cosmic and
moral evolution disappears.
Negative Eugenics is going to proceed, first of all, along
the lines of killing nobody, and secondly, of taking' care of the
unfit under the best possible conditions.
The distinction
between the process of natural selection and the process advo
cated by Eugenists, might bei put thus: Eugenics replaces
a selective death-rate by a selective birth-rate.
Erom the
�15
point of view of philosophy and the Ethics of Nature Society,
this course of action furnishes thei solution of the apparent
antinomy between cosmic and natural evolution.
Passing to the third division of Eugenics, it seems that
whilst we try to encourage parenthood on the part of the
worthy, and to discourage it on the part of the unworthy,
we must be prepared also to oppose the degradation of healthy
stocks through contact with, or as a result of, racial poisons.
Of these poisonous agencies, there are some which we are
certain of; how many there may be that are yet unknown
remains to be proved.
Alcohol, lead, arsenic, phosphorus,
and one or two diseases are decidedly transmissible to the
future, commonly by direct transference from parent to off
spring.
These are the poisons which Eugenists must fight
against, and they are false to their creed and to' their great
mission, if they fail to do all they can to root them out. The
chief, most urgent, most important task seems to be to inter
fere with maternal alcoholism.
Eugenics has nothing to do with decrying attempts to im
prove environment. But unfortunately many Eugenists have
merely taken it up as an alternative programme to social re
form; also, in. these same hands, it has become a new instru
ment for the resurrection of snobbery, on the totally unwar
ranted view that certain classes, sections, or sets of society
are biologically or innately superior to others. No one has
yet adduced evidence to prove that what we call the “better”
classes are naturally better, though they certainly are better
looking, better fed, better rested. Nor has it yet been ascer
tained what would be the results of giving the food and
sleep of the better, to the lower class children.
Nurtural
advantages are responsible for most of, if not all, the
physical superiority of the upper as against the lower classes.
As to psychological superiority, evidence is absolutely nil.
It is said that a man’s way of spending his leisure gives the
man in his true light; and judging by the way in which the
“upper” classes spend their spare time, there is certainly no
indication of superiority.
Eugenics must not be taken as an alternative' to providing
the needful factors for a child, bom or unborn.
Only that
society is truly moral and well organised which makes
�16
provision for every child.
Adequate provision and
adequate nurture for every child, would be no great
tax on our purses, for it would bring as a natural
consequence the abolition of many prisons, hospitals,
and asylums.
It is curious that, whilst it is not Socialism
to spend money on hospitals for the care of tuberculous,
rickety, or otherwise diseased children, it is Socialism to spend
a fraction of this money on those children at an earlier stage
of their lives; though it is obviously much cleaner, cheaper,
and pleasanter to follow this method, than to continue in
cur present method of vainly attempting to1 cure what might
and should have been prevented.
In closing, Dr. Saleeby added that he considered the
Eugenic programme to consort completely with the canons' of
the Ethics of Nature Society.
Printed at tlie “Croydon Guardian11 Offices 145 and 147, North End Croyddii;
�
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Natural ethics in theory and practice : extracts from three lectures given for the Ethics of Nature Society
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Saleeby, Caleb Williams
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Eugenics
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ZA(,’S
BY
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E. S. P. HAYNES
Author of “Religious Persecution,” ete.
London :
WATTS & CO.,
17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C„
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�Ml e\
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
MODERN MORALITY AND
MODERN TOLERATION
BY
E. S. P. HAYNES
Author of "Religious Persecution,” etc.
[issued
for the rationalist press association, limited]
London :
WATTS & CO.,
17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
�HJeOicateò
WITH AFFECTIONATE REGARD
TO
Mrs. THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
�INTRODUCTION
The two essays here published are, so to speak, pendants to
my book on Religious Persecution, which was published when
I was only twenty-seven years of age. The subject might
well occupy a lifetime, and it is scarcely surprising that I
should continue to meditate upon it in such moments of
leisure as I enjoy. The first essay was read to ten male
undergraduates at Oxford, and to about fifty male and
female undergraduates at Cambridge.
Both audiences
belonged to the flourishing society of “ Heretics.”
It is,
perhaps, not odd that Oxford should still continue her tradi
tion of discouraging heretics until they are senile or dead,
but one very trenchant Oxford critic helped me to define and
distinguish points which I had not sufficiently elaborated.
At Cambridge I was told that the example of Jesus Christ’s
life was a potent force in contemporary morality ; and I
could only reply that the example of men and women whom
we have actually known and admired in youth, and even in
later life, ought to be equally potent. Personally, I should
consider it more potent ; but it is impossible to see quite
inside the minds of others.
As each year passes it seems to me more and more
impossible to take any abstract system of thought seriously
unless it intimately affects the practical problems of every
day life ; and I have known many excellent Freethinkers in
the older generation who made a point of attending church
because they thought that the decline of churchgoing would
entail a moral cataclysm. If such admirable people as these
can be induced to think otherwise, our Association will
prosper even more than it has done hitherto.
3
�INTROD UCTION
4
I have to thank my friend Mr. Belloc for kindiv allowing’
me to reprint my second essay from the columns of the
Eye- Witness. It is at least consoling' to reflect that we shall
never relapse into complete “quietism” while Mr. Belta©
lives ; and the cordial admission of a Rationalist to th®
columns of his brilliant review shows that militant Catholicism
is by no means incompatible with certain qualities of intel
lectual curiosity and comprehensive vision which Rationalists
would always desire to see associated with their own cause.
I have used the personal pronoun without regard to the
snobbish and vulgar prejudice against it. The fear of this
prejudice often forces some writers into ponderous peri
phrases which no less often suggest that the writer’s personal
opinions are those of an influential majority. It is at once
humbler and more courageous to avoid pretending that
individual opinions have more than an individual value ;
and, in the matter of style, Cardinal Newman’s example is
good enough for me.
E. S. P. H.
SA John's Wood.
January, igis.
�I.
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND
MODERN MORALITY
Among Agnostics of the nineteenth century, and to
some extent to-day, it was, and is, largely held that the
disappearance of Christian, or even theistic, belief
involves not only no relaxation, but also no change, of
ethical sanctions or conduct. The latter view is, to my
mind, a perilous fallacy. Clearly, the Agnostic sanc
tions must be different; and if this be true, it follows
that conduct will also be different. Unless our society
is prepared to face this fact, and also to impart to the
rising generation some solid principles of ethical
training, it must, as Goldwin Smith long ago pre
dicted, be prepared to face a “ very bad quarter of an
hour.”
In a book which I wrote some years ago on Religious
Persecution I distinguished what I call “ civic morality ”
from what I call “ individual morality.” I defined “ civic
morality as that part of conduct which relates to other
citizens, and is regulated by the appointment of State
penalties for the enforcement of it. I defined “ individual
morality ” as conduct which is only regulated by social,
not legal, agencies, and is therefore more spontaneous.
Broadly speaking, civic morality depends less on senti
ment than on utilitarian common sense, though, of
course, legislation is adapted to changing views of
individual morality. Civic morality is, therefore, so
much the less likely to be moulded by religious
emotions or sanctions, except where the State is theo
cratic, as in the case of medieval Europe or modern.
Islam.
5
�6
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
Let us now analyse the Christian or theistic concep*
tion of morality. Christian morality is essentially a
matter' of duty towards God and a Creator. God is.
assumed by the Catholic Church and many other
Christian bodies to forbid, among other things, suicide,
divorce, limitation of the family, or the sacrifice of the
infant’s life to the mother’s life in childbirth without any
saving clause whatsoever. The use of anaesthetics and
cremation is still viewed with suspicion even where
allowed. God is understood to have made certain
definite arrangements for the life of each human being
and the propagation of the species, which must on no
account be interfered with. Imbued with some such
belief, the early Christians declined to shave their
beards, as they would not blasphemously attempt to
improve upon the handiwork of their Creator.
Moreover, the Church declares that Socialism is
sinful. To quote an excellent pamphlet of Ernest R.
Hull, S.J.: “The right of private property is a divine
ordinance....... the state of probation does not suppose
equality in the present lot of men....... There is to come
a final reckoning day in which all inequalities will be
levelled up and compensated for.”1 Men, therefore,
must not try to improve upon the social structure set
up by their Creator as exemplified in the Christian
world.
A different set of considerations emerges in regard to
the nature of the ethical sanction. Morality, according
to the theologian, is primarily concerned with God, who
rewards and punishes men exclusively in relation to
their obedience or disobedience to his commands. An
old man, alone in the world, without ties or obligations,
may prefer euthanasia to a slow and painful death by
cancer. This man is (theologically) quite as inexcusable
in the eyes of God as the man who by his suicide leaves
a wife and family to starve. God has ordered all men to
1 Why Should I be Moral? y. 95.
(Sands & Co.)
�AND MODERN MORALITY
I
live until the unavoidable moment of death. God has
also commanded all men and women to increase and
multiply, subject to the conditions laid down by the
Church. The Catholic Church has always told the wife
to comply with the husband’s demands for conjugal
rights in case he should be tempted to offend God by
committing adultery. Consequently, many a man has
forced his wife to have children every year till she died.
He has then married another wife and continued the
same course of conduct till the second wife died, and so
forth. This is a perfectly true picture, not only of
medieval Christendom, but also of Victorian England.
“ Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die ”
sums up the situation. “ Reasoning why ” may fre
quently lead to eternal damnation.
Starting with these ideas of duty to God, religious
thinkers quite logically proceed to indicate certain
changes in modern morality as the direct result of
religious unbelief, such as, for example, a greater
tolerance of suicide, divorce, and limitation of the
family, as well as a tendency to try and improve human
society from a purely terrestrial point of view. I
cordially agree with them, and am sorry to see so many
Agnostics attempting to deny the fact. I cannot see
the use of attacking the Christian religion except with
a view to substituting a rational morality for Christian
or theistic morality.
Theologians can no longer
interfere with modern science, but they can and do still
block the progress of modern morality.
The theologians defend their position by suggesting
that even on utilitarian grounds modern morality is
dangerous. “ Once admit euthanasia,” they argue,
“and suicide will become epidemic.
Once admit
divorce, and society will become promiscuous.” Again
I cordially agree with them. All moral changes are, in
the last degree, perilous, unless men know clearly what
they want and define clearly the sanctions on which they
rely. It is, therefore, all the more important not to
�THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
continue pretending1 that Christian morality is inde
pendent of the Christian religion.
It would be idle to deny that Christian morality
connotes a great deal of morality that is common to all
human societies, and it is of course largely based on
the Stoic and humanitarian ideas which filled the
atmosphere in which Christianity was born. That is
why it is so necessary to determine exactly how much
of our morality to-day is traceable to distinctly Christian
influences. I have tried up to now to define the
Christian basis of morality ; but it is equally incumbent
on me to try and indicate what I consider to be the
basis of modern, as distinct from Christian, morality.
A friend of mine once remarked that society was only
respectable because we did not all want to commit the
seven deadly sins at one and the same moment. The
reason why we do not want to commit them is because
we are for the most part the slaves of moral habits
inculcated in early youth. Our moral habits and
faculties have been hammered into us by a long process
of evolution. I cannot do better than quote again a
passage from Father Hull’s dialogue, in which he is
putting certain arguments for the Agnostic view into
the mouth of one of the many speakers whom he
subsequently refutes :—
We have no evidence to show how ethical ideas first came
into the human mind—whether they formed part of it from
the very first origin of the race, or were gradually evolved as
time went on. It is notorious that the “ moral sense ’’ flourishes
best in a moral environment—that is to say, in a circle where
both public and private opinion stand on the side of morality,
and the supremacy of the moral code is accepted by all without
question, and taught to and enforced on the young from their
very birth. Among the savage races and the criminal classes
it hardly appears at all ;T and experiments seem to show that
children separated from all moral influence irom birth grow up
apparently quite destitute of the ethical sense, and show little
or no capacity for imbibing it later on. May it not therefoie
x This is clearly untrue of savage races.
works passim.
See Dr. Westermarck’»
�AND MODERN MORALITY
9
be that evolution is right in explaining that the whole cluster
of moral ideas is the outcome of a gradual process of develop
ment, which, starting from practical experience and the clash
of interests, gradually gave rise to social conventions and tribal
laws, thus creating a habit of thinking in a groove which in
course of time became a sort of a second nature, indistinguish
able from nature itself? My contention in this case would be
that the ideas of right and wrong and the categorical form of
the dictate of conscience are indeed facts of consciousness ;
not, however, pertaining to our nature as such, but artificially
induced by the habit of generations—by perpetually drumming
into the minds of the young, as absolute truths, the ideals
which are already stereotyped in the minds of the old. A
similar example occurs in the department of manners. The
European and the Hindu are both so imbued with their
ancestral customs of eating and the rest, that so long as they
remain apart each takes for granted that his is the only feasible
way of going on. And even when they come together this
conviction remains so immovably fixed in the mind that they
detest each other’s ways heartily, and simply cannot tolerate
them. May it not be the same with the ethical ideas of the
■ intuitional theory—that they are so ingrained by tradition in
the mind as to become inseparable from it, and are thus taken
as part of the intrinsic constitution of human nature ; whereas
in fact they are merely an adventitious accretion, the inherit
ance of countless ages !
To this Father Hull adds, on his own side :—
So long as this view seems possible, so long does an air of
uncertainty pervade the whole sphere of ethics ; and so long
does it remain possible to doubt the absolute validity of its
principles and its dictates.1
Father Hull, of course, lays down the Christian
principle that all morality, being a divine command, is
comprehensive in every detail, and does not vary from
age to age. He deduces a great deal from the operation
of “Conscience,” and seems to forget Montaigne’s
apophthegm “Conscience is custom.” This view is
clearly repugnant to the modern Agnostic. Perhaps
the best statement of what ought to be an Agnostic’s
point of view is set forth in Sir Leslie Stephen’s Science
of Ethics. Stephen reconciles the utilitarian and evolu1 Op. cit.,
p. 77.
�IO
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
tionary theories, and points out that the aim and object
of every society is to achieve a certain kind of social
hygiene which will probably produce a social, though
not necessarily an individual, happiness. He points
out, for example, how a man who is too morally
sensitive for his generation, is liable to suffer just
because of this very fact.1 Shortly, however, the
ordinary modern test of our morality is its social value.
This view has been violently contested by writers like
the late Mr. Lecky. Mr. Lecky satirically commented
on the social position of the prostitute, in spite of her
seemingly obvious claim to honour on the utilitarian
ground of her existence being essential to the chastity of
other women.1 I do not see how Lecky’s contention can
2
be denied so long as we are content to admit that the
supposed chastity of all other women justifies the social
evil of prostitution ; nor must we forget that both in
ancient Greece and modern Japan (as opposed to Chris
tian countries) the prostitute enjoyed, and still enjoys,
the social esteem and recognition accorded to the ordinary
self-supporting citizen. The whole tendency, however,
of modern England is to rely less on prostitution as an
instrument of social welfare, and to attach a less super
stitious value to female chastity. Advanced thinkers—
like Mr. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw—attach more
importance to the economic independence than to the
chastity of women ; and in many cases, of course, female
chastity needs the security of economic independence.
I have chosen this particular example because Mr.
Lecky made his most effective point by means of it.
But in every region of morality we are to-day measuring
acts exclusively by their social consequences. Had a
strike, for example, occurred in the Middle Ages, the
population would at once have asked each other whether
1 A perfect example of this would be Sir Samuel Romilly, the sensitive
humanitarian, whose contemporaries thwarted almost every effort h©
made to remedy the barbarous cruelty of his age.
2 In his Introduction to the History of European Morals.
�AND MODERN MORALITY
11
the strike pleased or displeased God, and would have
supported or opposed the strike according to what they
imagined to be God’s will. Had the strike coincided
with a pestilence breaking out among the strikers, this
would have meant that God did not intend the strike
to continue, and the State would have taken measures
accordingly. The modern man discusses such a pheno
menon simply from the social point of view. He asks
himself whether the strike is or is not likely to promote
the ultimate welfare of society. For that reason a great
deal of modern morality is made up of compromises
between conflicting claims. In short, social harmony is
preferred to the development of particular virtues as ends
in themselves. Many thinkers vastly prefer the doctrine
of civic order and efficiency to the workings of Christian
charity. Again we subordinate so-called moral principles
to social convenience. It is to-day frankly acknowledged
that society would be instantly dissolved by any serious
adoption in practice of the Sermon on the Mount. It,
therefore, seems odd that medieval morality was in some
respects more inconsistent with Christian morality than
our own. Crimes of lust and hatred were far more
common in the Middle Ages than they are to-day. The
uncertainty of marriage was a perfect scandal, in spite
of the unquestioned dogma that the marriage was indis
soluble except by death. Private warfare was rampant
throughout medieval Europe, though it was quite unsafe
to challenge the inspired word of the Prince of Peace.
It must, however, be remembered that moral trans
gressions could be easily remedied by indulgences and
death-bed repentance. The more mundane process of
terrestrial cause and effect was obscured from view by
the supernatural machinery.
The improved and more stable morality of our civilisa
tion is of itself an argument in favour of what I call
modern morality. If theological conceptions produce
no better results than they did in the Middle Ages,
when they were far more literally accepted than they are
�12
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
now, they clearly cannot command as much confidence
as the appeal to reason. Moreover, the historian would
probably admit that the humanitarian movement of
to-day is rooted in the new doctrines of society that
came to birth at the end of the eighteenth century, and
in these doctrines religion is undoubtedly postponed to
human welfare.
It may be specially remarked that
Christian morality, as such, exercises very little influence
on the modern world. Such influence as it has can only
be observed in certain departments of human life where
old traditions have survived and escaped analysis.
I may perhaps take as an example the law of marriage
■and divorce in England. Whatever the merits of dis
cussion may be on social grounds, it is perfectly
ludicrous that the matter should be discussed with refer
ence to the textual condition of an old manuscript, or
that any intellectual body of persons in our generation
should concern themselves with a controversy conducted
on those lines; yet in 1910 we had the astonishing
spectacle of bishops appearing before the Royal Com
mission on Divorce, and solemnly arguing this grave
and weighty matter as if the solution of the problem
depended upon the doctrine of verbal inspiration.
It may be argued that modern Churchmen are more in
line with other humanitarian movements of to-day, and
the social , reforms of the nineteenth century are often
attributed to religious influences such as the influence of
the Wesleyan and Evangelical movements. Men like
Lord Shaftesbury are frequently cited in this connection.
It is difficult to prove anything strictly in discussing so
large a question ; but the study of history disposes many
people to believe that religion follows morality rather
than morality religion, and that both are deeply influ
enced by economic changes. It seems odd that Chris
tianity should have continued for 1,800 years without
producing the enormous humanitarian and ethical
changes which occurred in the first fifty years of th©
nineteenth century, and that these changes should then
�AND MODERN MORALITY
E3
be ascribed to a “revival ” of Christianity.1 Undoubtedly,
• writers like Voltaire and Rousseau and Fielding had
produced an enormous effect, and the new wealth of the
industrial revolution became widely diffused. The rail
way, the novel, the newspaper, and scientific discoveries
enormously enlarged the sympathies of the average man.
Nor did the “ revival ” of Christianity continue. The
whole forward movement here referred to became asso
ciated with the most formidable spread of sceptical ideas
known to European history. A curious sidelight on the
connection of religion with moral progress is thrown by
Mr. Joseph Clayton’s book on the Bishops as Legislators.
Why should the bishops have so sturdily and consis
tently declined to abolish a barbarously varied system of
capital punishment for small thefts if the Church was
really achieving the moral improvement of England
during this period, or if the bishops themselves had an
atom of real confidence in the moral influences of the
religion which they professed ?
The fact remains that men are not moral without some
sort of reason for being so, or without growing up in
moral habits ; but the time is long past when the young
could safely associate moral truths with the truths of
orthodox Christianity. Yet the advocates of secular
education for the most part tend to forget the need for
f As a specimen of Christian morality in eighteenth-century England
the following extract from Lecky’s History of England in the Eighteenth
Century deserves quotation (Vol. III., p. 537, Library Edition). It relates
to a case mentioned in Parliament in 1777 of a sailor taken by the press
gang from a wife not yet nineteen years of age, with two infant children.
“The breadwinner being gone, his goods were seized for an old debt,
and his wife was driven into the streets to beg. At last, in despair, she
stole a piece of coarse linen from a linen-draper’s shop. Her defence,
which was fully corroborated, was : ‘ She had lived in credit and wanted
for nothing till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her ; but
since then she had no bed to lie on and nothing to give her children to
eat, and they were almost naked. She might have done something
wrong, for she hardly knew what she did.’ The lawyers declared that,
shoplifting being a common offence, she must be executed ; and she was
driven to Tyburn with a child still suckling at her breast.” What were the
Christians doing at this date? Little, it is to be feared, but enjoying
rather gross pleasures and discussing how to make the best of both
worlds.
�14
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
some kind of moral training, and that if we are to give
the young moral training we must clearly give them
cogent reasons for moral conduct. It is worse than
useless to attach importance to religious sanctions of
morality unless we are prepared to justify the truth of
those sanctions up to the hilt. Are we to tell our
children that they must not lie or steal because God will
send them to Hell if they do, or because lying and
stealing are injurious to society and incidentally to
themselves? That is the question which modern society
shirks answering.
Modern society tries to meet the difficulty by a com
promise, which consists in hiring teachers who frequently
do not believe in the Christian religion to pretend that
they do. Indirectly, of course, these teachers employ
other inducements to morality besides the sanctions of
the Christian religion ; but the whole system is so
chaotic that it frequently ends in producing moral
chaos.
For these reasons it seems to me that the modern
Agnostic must not be content with the mere avowal of
disbelief in the Christian religion. If he does not
believe in the Christian religion, he cannot possibly
believe in the Christian sanctions of morality. If he
does not believe in the Christian sanctions, he must
find other sanctions, as I have indicated. If these
sanctions hold good for him, he must admit that they
will hold good for other people who have lost faith in
the Christian religion, and he must be prepared to make
an open profession of these principles, in spite of the
fact that the moral reformer encounters worse prejudice
than the religious reformer.
Rightly or wrongly, Agnostics believe that the
Christian religion is declining, and will progressively
continue to decline. If this be true, it means that an
increasingly larger number of persons will reject the
sanctions of Christian morality, and must either find
other sanctions for themselves or else be taught on an
�AND MODERN MORALITY
i5
entirely new system in early youth. This seems to me
far the most important concern of the modern Agnostic,
more especially because it has been neglected by the
old-fashioned type of Agnostic who wished to vindicate
himself and his friends from the suggestions of immorality
that were at one time made by the less scrupulous kind
of Christian. We cannot, and must not, therefore, shirk
the obvious conclusion that the old morality based on
Christian sanctions must be largely modified in accord
ance with social sanctions. Society must not, for
example, enforce celibacy on a particular class of men
because they are devoted to the service of God, though
society may well be justified in enforcing celibacy or
sterilised marriage on those who are unfit to become
parents. The real danger to-day is our inclination to
put the wine of this new social morality into the old
bottles of the Christian religion.
It may be asked how anything so fluctuating as the
social sanction can serve as a standard. When, for
instance, Antigone buried her brother in defiance of the
State, was she obeying or disobeying a social sanction ?
Assuming that she disobeyed, are we to deny her the
right of appeal to the social sanction of a future genera
tion ? Are not all heretics constantly trying to modify
or even destroy the social sanctions of their own age?
Indeed, is any social sanction of any ethical value
unless it is the spontaneous agreement of individuals,
and not a compulsory code enforced by a bureaucratic
or social tyranny? No one can be more alive to these
difficulties than a strong Individualist like myself; but
I maintain that in any society most people are fairly
well agreed on a number of questions concerning the
moral hygiene of that society, such as the reprobation
of murder or theft. Society can at least agree that the
starting-point of all discussion must be the welfare of
society, and not the textual criticism of antiquated folk
lore.
I should compare the social sanction with a debenture
�16
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
—that is to say, a floating charge on the present and
future assets of a company.
The property affected
by it varies from year to year ; in ten years it may be
entirely different from what it was. The terms of the
debenture bond or stock may be changed from time to
time ; but no variation of the terms of the loan or of the
assets makes the debenture less real or legally enforce
able. The debenture perishes only on redemption ; and
the social sanction will perish only with the abolition of
the criminal law. When every individual ungrudgingly
and spontaneously fulfils his social obligations, the
social sanction will become superfluous ; at present it
represents the claim of society to enforce such actions
on the individual as are determined for the moment to
be his duties to society.
In this connection it may be useful to illustrate my
meaning by applying the principles I have formulated
to modern Socialism. I should say at once that I am
no Socialist. Most of the Socialist writers I have read
seem to me to ignore either economic truths or the
truths of human psychology. They seem to me to
assume a state of society in which no one has an axe to
grind, and to draw too large cheques on public spirit
and altruism ; but their power and influence are largely
due to the omission of those who are not Socialists to
preach and to practise a social code of morals. Even
bishops hesitate nowadays to console a starving man by
telling him that he will be better off in the next world
than the rich man. They do not usually exhort him to
take no thought for the morrow, and to live like the
lilies of the field.1 Society must be prepared to justify
itself on a rational basis ; to convince the labourer that
he is receiving his proper hire, and to give him a
reasonable opportunity of earning what is due to him.
Society must also tackle the whole sex problem on rational
1 Except, perhaps, in regard to the irresponsible propagation of large
families.
�AND MODERN MORALITY
i7
lines. Marriage must be rational ; men must share
equitably with women the responsibilities for children
born out of wedlock; female labour must not be sweated;
and the whole question of venereal disease must be
scientifically handled.
The word “sin” must be
eliminated from the discussion of social or medical
remedies, for it has invariably been used as an excuse
for shirking social or medical remedies—as, for example,
when we are told that a certain venereal disease is the
“ finger of God.”1
The Socialists are bound to win all along the line
unless their opponents are prepared to face the question
of sanctions fairly and squarely, because in the meantime
Socialists are allowed by others to arrogate to them
selves the profession of public service and of working
exclusively for the public good. Christianity, however
one may twist its doctrines, is concerned with the end of
an old world. The business of the Agnostic is to share
in the beginnings of a new world.
1 An edifying remark frequently made by a deceased English officer
who was once Governor of Gibraltar.
c
�II.
THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN
TOLERATION
The word “ toleration ” has been used so constantly in
a theological sense, while theology has become so much
less prominent in our thoughts than it used to be, that
the word sounds almost obsolete, except perhaps in con
nection with the position of religious orders in countries
like France and Portugal. About ten years ago I wrote
a book to demonstrate that nearly all that we understand
by the name of Toleration was necessarily associated in
its religious sense with an undercurrent of scepticism,
either implicit or explicit, in regard to ultimate pro
blems, and that no really free discussion is allowed by
any human society concerning matters which they think
all-important. On the other hand, I was forced to
admit that our generation had more cosmopolitan
interests, more intellectual curiosity, and far more
novels and newspapers to read, all of which promoted
and necessitated a larger freedom of discussion.
During the last ten years I have constantly been
wondering how much toleration exists in regard to free
discussion of subjects outside religion, and especially of
what John Stuart Mill called “experiments in life.” On
the whole, I think that any contemporary observer is
bound to admit that the issues raised by the contro
versies of to-day are amazingly wide and deep as com
pared with those of the nineteenth century.
The two main obstacles to free discussion have at all
times been the conviction (i) that the principle “salus
populi, sziprema lex''1 must express the permanent
attitude of the State to public criticism ; and (2) that
18
�THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN TOLERA TION 19
those fundamental principles of morality on which
human society is deemed to repose must never be
subjected to the test of reason or argument. Thus, for
instance, there could be no free discussion of religious
problems so long as (¿z) it was feared that such dis
cussion might bring down the wrath of the gods on the
State or community which permitted the discussion ; or
(¿) the identification, or close association, of morality
with religion compelled men to believe that reli
gious creeds and moral principles must stand or fall
together.
On either assumption the free discussion of religious
problems necessarily provokes a breach of the peace
and becomes a matter of police supervision, as we see
in modern Spain, where Rationalism becomes confused
with anarchy. The State may sometimes bridge over
difficulties by tolerating a sort of passive heresy in
religion or morality, as, for example, the Romans did
in the case of local or particular cults, or as our Indian
Penal Code of to-day tolerates obscene works of art
connected with purely religious representations ; but
such partial toleration as this is not extended to any
kind of missionary effort or proselytism.
Yet to-day we behold the astonishing spectacle of
entirely free discussion in regard to the most crucial
problems of State and society. I need only refer to
disarmament, socialism, anarchism, the endowment of
motherhood, and the treatment of crime as disease.
Nor is all this discussion without practical results.
Arbitration is now a real force in European politics, the
Socialists have found their ideas embodied in a so-called
Liberal Budget, discontented artisans and suffragettes
increasingly disregard the King’s Peace, unmarried
mothers are less harshly treated by society, and prisons
are seemingly more attractive than workhouses. All
these changes evoke deep disgust in a large number of
citizens ; but they take place in a piecemeal and tranquil
fashion which never gives an opportunity for real
�2o
THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN TOLERATION
fighting-. Even modern revolutions come to pass with
out appreciable bloodshed.
So far from this result being anticipated, it may be
remembered that Mill dreaded the uniformity and
mediocrity of democracies as an engine of obscurantism.
But the democratic uniformity of to-day is principally
manifested in the cosmopolitan habits of modern Europe,
which make less for repression of the individual than
for international peace. We seem to be achieving a
sort of Chinese “harmony,” a spirit of pacific com
promise, in all departments of life. The only coercive
force appears in that bureaucratic tyranny which so
often distinguishes the more pacific types of society.
All these characteristics point either to an almost
universal confidence in the common sense of mankind,
and in the capacity of human nature to revolt effectively,
in the last resort, against intolerable abuses, or to a
prevalent conviction that nothing is much worth fighting
about. Some will be heard saying : “Magna est Veritas
et prcevalebit”; others that no principle on earth is
worth going to the stake for. The first attitude of mind
seems curiously associated with the second. Belief in
the ultimate victory of truth seems easily to breed indif
ference as regards the immediate prospects of truth.
All persecution, however, necessarily implies an attitude
of distrust towards those who would allow the collective
intelligence of mankind free play. The persecutor will
not accept the consolations that Newman found in
repeating the words “Securus judicat orbis terrarum.”
False theology must be suppressed as speedily as false
economics ; for men will either not distinguish the true
from the false, or else will resent the toil and incon
venience of always making the effort to do so. I choose
the analogy of economics because false economics are
likely to alarm the modern world more than false
theology, and we live in an atmosphere of Socialist and
anti-Socialist leagues, and of Free Trade and Tariff
Reform leagues. Indeed, all disputation about burning
�THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN TOLERATION
21
questions, such as property, seems bound to entail a dis
turbance of civil order, even if men really care little about
distinctions between true and false theories, and rely on
the financial common sense of the community. Thus,
however strongly I may be convinced that socialistic
experimentswill never destroy the proprietary instincts of
humanity, yet I may violently resent the inconvenience
of temporarily losing my property while such experi
ments are going on. Nevertheless, in modern society
such questions rarely tend to reach a violent, or even
decisive, issue. Some sort of compromise is nearly
always practicable. Ina given year I may have to pay
to the State one-eighth of my income, instead of onetenth ; but, in the first place, there is always the hope
that the electorate may stand this no longer, and, in the
second place, it is clearly more enjoyable to spend seven
eighths of my income in freedom than to be imprisoned
for resisting even a tyrannical and unjust surveyor of
taxes. The instinct of the highly civilised man leads
him to avoid the employment of force even where he would
not be opposing the State. If an armed burglar comes
to my house, and I am insured against burglary, it may
save a great deal of trouble, not to mention my life, if I
request him merely not to abstract articles of sentimental
value, but otherwise to make a free choice. An increas
ing disrespect for the ideal of chastity may lead to men’s
marital or paternal rights over their wives and daughters
being less strictly regarded; but it is quite old-fashioned
for an injured father or husband to aggravatethe scandal
by assaulting the offender.
The spirit of compromise seems, in fact, to increase
with all civilisation, and it is especially characteristic of
the oldest civilisation we know—namely, the Chinese.
In the Independent Review for April, 1904, an acute
observer recorded the tendency in Chinese civilisation
to encourage only an “ irreducible minimum " of the
virtues.1 “ Man,” he wrote, in describing the Chinese
1 Mr. A. M. Latter.
�22
THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN TOLERA TION
philosophy of life, “ is a difficult animal ; and human
intelligence must devise the best means of inducing hi®
to live in peace with his neighbours, to make the earth
yield to him its utmost, and to develop the most useful
part of him—-his intelligence. To this end certain moral
ideas are doubtless useful ; but the foundation of all such
ideals is harmony in society, and, in so far as any other
ideal appears to conflict with this, it must be checked.
Inasmuch as harmony is the end of all civilised beings,
with regard to other ideals the best thing to do in practice
is to use the irreducible minimum of them ; and it is in
the discovery of the irreducible minimum that the Mon
golian intellect has developed most completely its civilisa
tion.” As a concrete instance, the writer, who is and
was a practising barrister, cites “ the attainment of justice,
without either the discovery of truth or the employment
of dishonesty. The harmony of the people forbids the
decree of a gross injustice ; the harmony of the magis
trate and the yamen forbids the abstention from bribes ;
the actual circumstances of the case are impossible to
discover; while the fact that the litigants have, by mere
litigation, disturbed the general harmony” leads to a
decision whereby “ both sides are punished slightly, and
the side that recommends itself to the tribunal is also
rewarded.” This attitude is forcibly contrasted with the
old European ideal of seeking the highest development
of particular virtues as ends in themselves without
making social and political harmony the paramount
aim. Side by side with all this one remarks the pacific
character of Chinese civilisation, based not so much on
humanitarian feeling as on motives of general con
venience.
I have quoted all these observations on China because
they seem curiously applicable to the tendencies I have
before noted in modern Europe.
Such progressive
toleration as we see to-day seems to indicate a growing
subjection of the emotions to reason. Mr. Shaw has
been preaching this doctrine for years in regard to the
�THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN TOLERA TION
23
military virtue of courage. Mr. Wells and other
Socialists prefer the doctrine of civil order and efficiency
to the spirit of Christian charity. Modern men and
women set a higher value in society, politics, and
business on tact than on veracity. Advanced thinkers
attach more importance to the economic independence
than to the chastity of women. We all demand an irre
ducible minimum of armaments. The criminal is no
longer to be a pariah ; he is to be adapted to the uses of
a society which he must be taught to love. We deplore
nothing so much as physical pain or violence. Fight
ing, whether on the hustings or the battlefield, is begin
ning to appear nothing but a futile waste of time.
In such a climate of opinion toleration is bound to
thrive; but this very climate of opinion impliesan almost
revolutionary transformation of European ideals and a
radical overthrow of our older traditions. Its existence
can scarcely be denied. It is what the journalist really
means when he writes about “ materialism ” or “lack of
public spirit.” This spirit of “peace at any price” or
“anything for a quiet life ” may or may not have set in
permanently. But the late Mr. Charles Pearson, who
called it “the decay of character,” thought that it had
set in permanently, and resigned himself to the prospect
with stoical calm. Indeed, a future generation may con
ceivably take the view that we have initiated a social
harmony which is the only real and substantial fruit of
human reason and progress.
Whatever the ultimate result may be, the fact remains
that our modern toleration is conditioned by, and points
to, either an absence of really strong convictions in the
mass of men, or a collective conviction that the peace of
invariable compromise must in all circumstances and at
all costs be maintained. This has visibly come to pass
in the sphere of theological controversy, and it is also
coming to pass in the sphere of all other controversy.
The duellist can only resort to the law courts, the fanatic
to the pulpit, the moralist to the newspapers, and the
�24
THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERN TOLERATION
politician to the hustings. We have abolished the pistol,
the rack, the pillory, and almost the gallows. We are
trying with some success to abolish war. It will be
interesting to see if we have set up a stable or unstable
equilibrium. The achievement of free debate concerning
all subjects, reposing on a foundation of internal and
external peace, has been the »goal of human effort for
centuries, and especially of liberal thinkers in the nine
teenth century. But the success of the achievement
would possibly be damping to men like John Bright or
John Stuart Mill, whose enthusiasms were not precisely
those of the quietist.
For the most salient object of human endeavour is a
“quiet life.” We seek for the community the same sort
of existence, free from accidents and disturbance, that
Metchnikoff prescribes for the individual man with aspira
tions to longevity. Our ideals have lost a certain belli
gerency, except in so far as they imply class-warfare; they
have become more terrestrial than celestial. The late
Mr. Charles Pearson so admirably sketched out the future
on these lines nearly twenty years ago that I need not
elaborate the theme. The accuracy of the prophecy
depends very much on the course of international politics.
The most civilised societies are constantly broken up by
more primitive foes, and the future historian may find
some analogy to the phagocytes of the human body in the
bureaucrats of the community. The bureaucrats begin
to wear out the community just as the phagocytes begin
to wear out the body, as each becomes old. Complete
freedom of discussion may be only a symptom of national
decline and individual degeneracy, due to an exaggerated
development of intelligence at the expense of more
primitive qualities. The next fifty years will at least be
of keen interest to all those who feel that our society is
passing through a phase of experiment.
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Modern morality and modern toleration
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Haynes, E.S.P. (Edmund Sidney Pollock) [1877-1949]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. The Christian religion and modern morality (p.5-17)--The experiment of modern toleration (p.18-24). Publisher's list (Works by Joseph MacCabe and J.M. Robertson) inside front and back covers respectively. R.P.A. Sixpenny reprints listed on back cover. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Watts & Co.
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1912
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N301
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Ethics
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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 (Modern morality and modern toleration), 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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Text
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English
Morality
NSS
Toleration
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64- pp. It
Pamphlets for the Million—No. 8
LAST WORDS
ON
EVOLUTION
By ERNST HAECKEL
London :
WATTS & CO.,
17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
'
k
1d.
v
�THE
RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION,
LIMITED.
Chairman :
Edward Clodd
Honorary Associates :
Alfred William Benn
Hypatia .Bradlaugh Bonner
Sir Edward Brabrook, C. B.
George Brandes
Dr. Charles Callaway
Dr. Paul Carus
Prof. B. H. Chamberlain
Dr. Stanton Coit '
W. W. Collins
F. J. Gould
Prof. Ernst Haeckel
Leonard Huxley
Joseph McCabe
Eden Phillpotts
John M. Robertson
Dr. W. R. Washington SullivanProf. Lester F. Ward
Prof. Ed. A. Westermarck
Secretary and Registered Offices:
Charles E. Hooper, Nos. 5 & 6 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
How to Join and Help the R.P.A.
The minimum subscription to constitute Membership is 5s., renewable in January of
each year.
A form of application for Membership, with full particulars, including latest Annual
Report and specimen copy of the Literary Guide (the unofficial organ of the Associa
tion), can be obtained gratis on application to the Secretary.
Copies of new publications are forwarded regularly on account of Members’ sub
scriptions, or a Member can arrange to make his own selection from the lists of
new books which are issued from time to time.
To join the Association is to help on its work, but to subscribe liberally is of course
to help more effectually. As Subscribers of from 5s. to 10s. and more are entitled to
receive back the whole value of their subscriptions in books, on which there is little
if any profit made, the Association is dependent, for the capital required to carryout
its objects, upon subscriptions of a larger amount and upon donations and bequests.
Ube Uitcravv Guide
(the unofficial organ of the R. P. A.)
is published on the 1st of each month, price 2d., by post 2.Jd. Annual subscrip
tion : 2S. 6d. post paid.
The contributors comprise the leading writers in the Rationalist Movement,,
including Mr. Joseph McCabe, Mrs. H. Bradlaugh Bonner, Mr. F. J. Gould,
Mr. Charles T. Gorham, Dr. C. Callaway, Mr. A. W. Benn, and “ Mimnermus.”
SPECIMEN COPY POST FJIEE.
London : Watts & Co., 17 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
�NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
Pamph lets for the Million—No 8.
ERNST HAECKEL,
Professor at Jena University
LAST WORDS
ON
EVOLUTION
A POPULAR RETROSPECT AND
---------------- SUMMARY--------------- -
ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST
PRESS
ASSOCIATION,
LIMITED
WATTS & CO., 17 JOHNSON’S COURT,
FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. — 1912
�PAMPHLETS FOR THE MILLION
ALREADY ISSUED
1. Why I Left the Church.
6. Liberty of Man, Woman,
By Joseph McCabe. 48
and Child.
By Colonel
pp.; id.
R. G. Ingersoll. 48 pp.; id.
2. Why Am I An Agnostic? 7. The Age of Reason. By
By Colonel R. G. Ingersoll.
Thomas Paine. 124 pp.; 2d.
24 pp.; ¿d.
8. Last Words on Evolu
3. Christianity’s Debt to
tion. By Prof. Haeckel.
Earlier Religions. By
64 pp.; id.
P. Vivian. (A Chapter from 9. Science and the Purpose
The Churches and Modern
of Life.
By Fridtjof
Thought.') 64 pp.; id.
Nansen. 16 pp.; |d.
4. How to Reform Mankind. 10. The Ghosts. By Colonel
By Colonel R. G. Ingersoll.
R. G. Ingersoll. 32 pp.; id.
24 pp.; |d.
11. The Passing of Histo
5. Myth or History in the
rical Christianity.
By
Old Testament? By S.
Rev. R. Roberts. 16 pp.;
Laing. 48 pp.; id.
¿d.
�INTRODUCTION
Not very long ago the sensational announcement was made
that Professor Haeckel had abandoned Darwinism and given
public support to the teaching of a Jesuit writer. There was
something piquant in the suggestion that the “Darwin of
Germany ” had recanted the conclusions of fifty years of
laborious study. Nor could people forget that only two years
before Haeckel had written with some feeling about the
partial recantation of some of his colleagues. Many of our
journals boldly declined to insert the romantic news, which
came through one of the chief international press agencies.
Others drew the attention of their readers, in jubilant editorial
notes, to the lively prospect it opened out. To the many
inquiries addressed to me as the “apostle of Professor
Haeckel,” as Sir Oliver Lodge dubs me in a genial letter, I
timidly represented that even a German reporter sometimes
drank. But the correction quickly came that the telegram
had exactly reversed the position taken up by the great bio
logist. It is only just to the honourable calling of the reporter
to add that, according to the theory current in Germany, the
message was tampered with by subtle and ubiquitous
Jesuitry. Did they not penetrate even into the culinary
service' at Hatfield?
I have pleasure in now introducing the three famous lec
tures delivered by Professor Haeckel at Berlin, and the
reader will see the grotesqueness of the original announce
ment. They are the last public deliverance that the aged
professor will ever make. His enfeebled health forbids us
to hope that his decision may yet be undone. He is now
condemned, he tells me, to remain a passive spectator of the
tense drama in which he has played so prominent a part for
half a century. For him the red rays fall level on the scene
and the people about him. It may be that they light up too
luridly, too falsely, the situation in Germany; but the reader
�4
INTHOD UCTION
will understand how a Liberal of Haeckel’s temper must
feel his country to be between Scylla and Charybdis—between
an increasingly clear alternative of Catholicism or Socialism—
with a helmsman at the wheel whose vagaries inspire no
confidence.
The English reader will care to be instructed on the anti
thesis of Virchow and Haeckel which gives point to these
lectures, and which is often misrepresented in this country.
Virchow, the greatest pathologist and one of the leading
anthropologists of Germany, had much to do with the inspir
ing of Haeckel’s Monistic views in the ’fifties. Like several
other prominent German thinkers, Virchow subsequently
abandoned the positive Monistic position for one of agnos
ticism and scepticism, and a long and bitter conflict ensued.
It is hardly too much to say that Virchow’s ultra-timid reserve
in regard to the evolution of man and other questions has
died with him. Apart from one or two less prominent an
thropologists, and the curious distinction drawn by Dr. A. R.
Wallace, science has accepted the fact of evolution, and has,
indeed, accepted the main lines of Haeckel’s ancestral tree
of the human race.
The lectures are reproduced here not solely because of the
interest aroused in them by the “Jesuit” telegram. They
contain a very valuable summary of his conclusions, and
include the latest scientific confirmation. Rarely has the great
biologist written in such clear and untechnical phrases, so
that the general reader will easily learn the outlines of his
much-discussed Monism.
JOSEPH McCABE.
�CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction..........................................................................
CHAPTER I
The Controversy
about
Creation .
Evolution and Dogma
7
CHAPTER II
The Struggle
Genealogical Tree
over our
Our Ape-Relatives and the Vertebrate-Stem
27
CHAPTER III
The Controversy
over the
The Ideas of Immortality and God
5
Soul
....
47
��LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
CHAPTER I
The Controversy
about
Creation
EVOLUTION AND DOGMA
f
HE controversy over the idea of evolution is a prominent
feature in the mental life of the nineteenth century. It is
true'that a few great thinkers had spoken of a natural evolu
tion of all things several thousand years ago. They had,
indeed, partly investigated the laws that control the birth
and death of the world, and the rise of the earth and its
inhabitants; even the creation-stories and the myths of the
older religions betray a partial influence of these evolutionary
ideas. But it was not until the nineteenth century that the
idea of evolution took definite shape and was scientifically
grounded on various classes of evidence ; and it was not until
the last third of the century that it won general recognition.
The intimate connection that was proved to exist between all
branches of knowledge, once the continuity of historical
development was realised, and the union of them all through
the Monistic philosophy, are achievements of the last few
decades.
The great majority of the older ideas that thoughtful men
had formed on the origin and nature of the world and their
own frame were far removed from the notion of “ self
development.” They culminated in more or less obscure
\ creation-myths, which generally put in the foreground the
idea of a personal Creator. Just as man has used intelligence
and design in the making of his weapons and tools, his
houses and his -boats, so it was thought that the Creator
T
7
�8
LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
had fashioned the world with art and intelligence, according
to a definite plan. Among the many legends of this kind the
ancient Semitic story of creation, familiar to us as the
Mosaic narrative, but drawn for the most part from Baby
lonian sources, .has obtained a very great influence on Euro
pean culture owing to the general acceptance of the Bible.
The belief in miracles, that is involved in these religious
legends, was bound to come in conflict, at an early date, with
the evolutionary ideas of independent philosophical research.
On the one hand, in the prevalent religious teaching, we had
the supernatural world,the miraculous, teleology : on the other
hand, in the nascent science of evolution, only natural law,
pure reason, mechanical causality. Every step that was
made by this science brought into greater relief its incon
sistency with the predominant religion.1
If we glance for a moment at the various fields in which
the idea of evolution is scientifically applied we find that,
firstly, the whole universe is conceived as a unity; secondly,
our earth; thirdly, organic life on the earth; fourthly, man,
as its highest product; and fifthly, the soul, as a special •
immaterial entity. Thus we have, in historical succession,
the evolutionary research of cosmology, geology, biology,
anthropology, and psychology.
The first comprehensive idea of cosmological evolution was
put forth by the famous critical philosopher, Immanuel
Kant, in 1755, in the great work of his earlier years, General
Natural History of the Heavens, or an Attempt to Conceive
and to Explain the Origin of the Universe mechanically,
according to the Newtonian Laws. This remarkable work
appeared anonymously, and was dedicated to Frederick the
Great, who, however, never saw it. It was little noticed,
and was soon entirely forgotten, until it was exhumed ninety
years afterwards by Alexander von Humboldt. Note par1 The word “evolution” is still used in so many different ways in
various sciences that it is important to fix it in the general significance
which we here give it. By “evolution,” in the widest sense, I understand
the unceasing “ mutations of substance,” adopting Spinoza’s fundamental
conception of substance; it unites inseparably in itself “ matter and force
(or energy),” or “nature and mind” ( = the world and God). Hence the
science of evolution in its broader range is “the history of substance,”/
which postulates the general validity of “ the law of substance.” In the
latter are combined “the law of the constancy of matter” (Lavoisier,
1789) and “the law of the conservation of energy” (Robert Mayer, 1842),
however varied may be the changes of 'form of these elements in the
world-process. Cf. Chapter XII. of The Riddle.
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
9
ticularly that on the title-page stress is laid on the mechanical
origin of the world and its explanation on Newtonian prin
ciples ; in this way the strictly Monistic character of the whole
cosmogony and the absolutely universal rule of natural law
are clearly expressed. It is true that Kant speaks much in
it of God and his wisdom and omnipotence ; but this is
limited to the affirmation that God created once for all the
unchangeable laws of nature, and was henceforward bound
by them and only able to work through them. The Dualism
which became so pronounced subsequently in the philosopher
of Koenigsberg counts for very little here.
The idea of a natural development of the world occurs in a
clearer and more consistent form, and is provided with a
firm mathematical basis, forty years afterwards, in the re
markable Mécanique Céleste of Pierre Laplace. His popular
Exposition du Système du Monde (1796) destroyed at its
roots the legend of creation that had hitherto prevailed, or
the Mosaic narrative in the Bible. Laplace, who had become
Minister of the Interior, Count, and Chancellor of the Senate,
under Napoleon, was merely honourable and consistent when
he replied to the emperor’s question, “What room there was
for God in his system? ” : “Sire, I had no need for that un
founded hypothesis.” What strange ministers there are
sometimes ! 1 The shrewdness of the Church soon recog
nised that the personal Creator was dethroned, and the
creation-myth destroyed, by this Monistic and now generally
received theory of cosmic development. Nevertheless it
maintained towards it the attitude which it had taken up 250
years earlier in regard to the closely related and irrefutable
system of Copernicus. It endeavoured to conceal the truth
as long as possible, or to oppose it with Jesuitical methods,
1 Certain orthodox periodicals have lately endeavoured to deny this
famous atheistical confession of the great Laplace, which was merely a
candid deduction of his splendid cosmic system. They say that this
Monistic natural philosopher acknowledged the Catholic faith on his
death-bed ; and in proof of this they offer us the later testimony of an
Ultramontane priest. We need not point out how uncertain is the love
of truth of these heated partisans. When testimony of this kind tends
to “the good of religion” (i.e., their own good), it is held to be a pious
work (pia fraus). On the other hand, it is interesting to recall the reply
of a Prussian Minister of Religion, Von Zedlitz, 120 years ago, to the
Breslau Consistory, when it urged that “ those who believe most are
the best subjects.” He wrote in reply: “His majesty [Frederick the
Great] is not disposed to rest, the security of his State on the stupidity of
his subjects.”
�I
LAS! WORDS ON EVOLUTION
and finally it yielded. If the Churches now silently admit
the Copernican system and the cosmogony of Laplace and
have ceased to oppose them, we must attribute the fact,
partly to a feeling of their spiritual impotence, partly to an
astute calculation that the ignorant masses do not reflect on
these great problems.
In order to obtain a clear idea and a firm conviction of this
cosmic evolution by natural law, the eternal birth and death
of millions of suns and stars, one needs some mathematical
training and a lively imagination, as well as a certain com
petence in astronomy and physics. The evolutionary process
is much simpler, and more readily grasped in geology.
Every shower of rain or wave of the sea, every volcanic
eruption and every pebble, gives us a direct proof of the
changes that are constantly taking place on the surface of
our planet. However, the historical significance of these
changes was not properly appreciated until 1822, by Karl
von Hoff of Gotha, and modern geology was only founded in
1830 by Charles Lyell, who explained the whole origin and
composition of the solid crust of the earth, the formation of
the mountains, and the periods of the earth’s development,
in a connected system by natural laws. From the immense
thickness of the stratified rocks, which contain the fossilised
remains of extinct organisms, we discovered the enormous
length—running into millions of years—of the periods during
which these sedimentary rocks were deposited in water.
Even the duration of the organic history of the earth—that is
to say, the period during which the plant and animal popu
lation of our planet was developing—must itself be put at
more than a hundred million years. These results of geology
and paleontology destroyed the current legend of the six
days’ work of a personal Creator. Many attempts were
made, it is true, and are still being made, to reconcile the
Mosaic supernatural story of creation with modem geology.1
All these efforts of believers are in vain. We may say, in
fact, that it is precisely the study of geology, the reflection it
entails on the enormous periods of evolution, and the habit
of seeking the simple mechanical causes of their constant
changes, that contribute very considerably to the advance of
1 See, for instance, Moses and Geology, or Harmony of the Bible with
Science, by Samuel Kinns (1882). In this work the pious Biblical
astronomer executes the most incredible and Jesuitical manoeuvres in
order to bring about an impossible reconciliation between science and the
Biblical narrative.
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
11
enlightenment. \et in spite of this (or, possibly, because of
this), geological instruction is either greatly neglected or
entirely suppressed in most schools. It is certainly emin
ently calculated (in connection with geography) to enlarge the
mind, and acquaint the child with the idea of evolution. An
educated person who knows the elements of geology will
never experience ennui. He will find everywhere in sur
rounding nature, in the rocks and in the water, in the desert
and on the mountains, the most instructive stimuli to
reflection.
The evolutionary process in organic nature is much more
difficult to grasp. Here we must distinguish two different
series of biological development, . which have only been
brought into proper causal connection by means of our biogenetic law (1866); one series is found in embryology (or
ontogeny), the other in phylogeny (or race-development). In
Germany “evolution” always meant embryology, or a part
of the whole, until forty years ago. It stood for a micro
scopic examination of the wonderful processes by means of
which the elaborate structure of the plant or animal body is
formed from the simple seed of the plant or the egg of the
bird. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century the
erroneous view was generally received that this marvellously
complicated structure existed, completely formed, in the
simple ovum, and that the various organs had merely to
grow and to shape themselves independently by a. process of
“evolution ” (or unfolding), before they entered into activity.
An able German scientist, Caspar Friedrich Wolff (son of a
Berlin tailor), had already shown the error of this “pre
formation theory ” in 1759. He had proved in his disserta
tion for the doctorate, that no trace of the later body, of its
bones, muscles, nerves, and feathers, can be found in the
hen’s egg (the commonest and most convenient object for
study), but merely a small round disc, consisting of two thin
superimposed layers. He had further showed that the
various organs are only built up gradually out of these
simple elements, and that we can trace, step by step, a series
of real new growths. However, these momentous dis
coveries, and the sound “theory of epigenesis ” that he based
on them, were wholly ignored for fifty years, and even re
jected by the leading authorities. It was not until Oken had
re-discovered these important facts at Jena (i<3o6), Pander
had more carefully distinguished the germinal layers (1817),
t 1
�12
LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
and finally Carl Ernst von Baer had happily combined ob
servation and reflection in his classical Animal Embryology
(1828), that embryology attained the rank of an independent
science with a sound empirical base.
A little later it secured a well-merited recognition in botany
also, especially owing to the efforts of Matthias Schleiden of
Jena, the distinguished student who provided biology with a
new foundation in the “cell theory ” (1838). But it was not
until the middle of the nineteenth century that people gener
ally recognised that the ovum of the plant or animal is itself
only a simple cell, and that the later tissues and organs
gradually develop from this “ elementary organism ” by a
repeated cleavage of, and division of labour in, the cells.
The most important step was then made of recognising that
our human organism also develops from an ovum (first dis
covered by Baer in 1827), in virtue of the same laws, and
that its embryonic development resembles that of the other
mammals, especially that of the ape. Each of us was, at the
beginning of his existence, a simple globule of protoplasm,
surrounded by a membrane, about jT^of an inch in diameter,
with a firmer nucleus inside it. These important embryo
logical discoveries confirmed the rational conception of the
human organism that had been attained much earlier by com
parative anatomy : the conviction that the human frame is
built in the same way, and develops similarly from a simple
ovum, as the body of all other mammals. Even Linné had
already (1735) given man a place in the mammal class in his
famous System of Nature.
^Differently from these embryological facts, which can be
directly observed, the phenomena of phylogeny (the develop
ment of species), which are needed to set the former in their
true light, are usually outside the range of immediate ob
servation. What was the origin of the countless species of
animals and plants? How can we explain the remarkable
relationships which unite similar species into genera and these
into classes? Linné answers the question very simply with
the belief in creation, relying on the generally accepted
Mosaic narrative: “There are as many different species of
animals and plants as there were different forms created by’
God in the beginning.” The first scientific answer was given
in 1809 by the great French scientist, Lamarck. He taught,
in his suggestive Philosophie Zoologique, that the resem
blances in form and structure of groups of species are due to
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
13
real affinity, and that all organisms descend from a few very
simple primitive forms (or, possibly, from a single one).
These primitive forms were developed out of lifeless matter
by spontaneous generation. The resemblances of related
groups of species are explained by inheritance from common
s:em-forms; their dissimilarities are due to adaptation to
different environments, and to variety in the action of the
modifiable organs. The human race has arisen in the same
way, by transformation of a series of mammal ancestors, the
nearest of which are ape-like primates.
These great ideas of Lamarck, which threw light on the
whole field of organic life, and were closely approached by
Goethe in his own speculations, gave rise to the theory that
we now know as transformism, or the theory of evolution or
descent. But the far-seeing Lamarck was—as Caspar
Friedrich Wolff had been fifty years before—half a century
before his time. His theory obtained no recognition, and
was soon wholly forgotten.
.
It was brought into the light once more in 1859 by the
genius of Charles Darwin, who had been born in the very
year that the Philosophic Zoologique was published. The
substance and the success of his system, which has gone by
the name of Darwinism (in the wider sense) for forty-six
years, are so generally known that I need not dwell on them.
I will only point out that the great success of Darwin’s epochmaking works is due to two causes : firstly, to the fact that
the English scientist most ingeniously worked up the em
pirical material that had accumulated during fifty years into,
a systematic proof of the theory of descent; and secondly, to
the fact that he gave it the support of a second theory of his
own, the theory of natural selection. This theory, which
gives a causal explanation of the transformation of species, is
what we ought to call “ Darwinism ” in the strict sense. . We
cannot go here into the question how far this theory, is justi
fied, or how far it is corrected by more recent theories, such
as Weismann’s theory of germ-plasm (1B44), or De Vries s
theory of mutations (1900). Our concern is rather, with the
unparalleled influence that Darwinism, and its application to
man, have had during the last forty years on the whole pro
vince of science; and at the same time, with its irreconcil
able opposition to the dogmas of the Churches.
The extension of the theory of evolution to man was., natur
ally, one of the most interesting and momentous applications
�U
LA S 7' WORDS ON EVOLUTION
of it. If all other organisms arose, not by a miraculous/
creation, but by a. natural modification of earlier forms of life,/
the presumption is that the human race also was developed by/
the transformation of the most man-like mammals, the
primates of Linné—the apes and lemurs. This natural infer
ence, which Lamarck had drawn in his simple way, but Da?- •
win had at first explicitly avoided, was first thoroughly estab
lished by the gifted zoologist, Thomas Huxley, in his th/ee
lectures on Man s Place in Nature (1862). He showed tnat
this “ question of questions ” is unequivocally answered/ by
three chief witnesses—the natural history of the anthropoid
apes, the anatomic and embryological relations of man tp the
animals immediately below him, and the recently discovered
fossil human remains. Darwin entirely accepted these con
clusions of his friend eight years afterwards, and, in his twovolume work, The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection
(1871), furnished a number of new proofs in support of the
dreaded “descent of man from the ape.” I myself then
(1874) completed the task I had begun in 1866, of determining
approximately the whole series of the extinct animal an
cestors of the human race, on the ground of comparative
anatomy, embryology, and paleontology. This attempt was
improved, as our knowledge advanced, in the five editions
of my Evolution of Man. In the last twenty years a vast
literature on the subject has accumulated. I must assume
that you are acquainted with the contents of one or other of
these works, and will turn to the question, that especially
engages our attention at present, how the inevitable struggle
between these momentous achievements of modern science
and the dogmas of the Churches has run in recent years.
It was obvious that both the general theory of evolution
and its extension to man in particular must meet from the
first with the most determined resistance on the part of the
Churches. Both were in flagrant contradiction to the Mosaic
story of creation, and other Biblical dogmas that were in
volved in it, and are still taught in our elementary schools.
It is creditable to the shrewdness of the theologians and their
associates, the metaphysicians, that they at once rejected
Darwinism, and made a particularly energetic resistance in
their writings to its chief consequence, the descent of man
from the ape. This resistance seemed the more justified and
hopeful as, for seven or eight years after Darwin’s appear
ance, few, biologists accepted his theory, and the general
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attitude amongst them was one of cold scepticism. I can
veil testify to this from my own experience. When 1 first
openly advocated Darwin’s theory at a scientific congress at
Stettin in 1863, I was almost alone, and was blamed by the
great majority for taking up seriously so fantastic a theory,
“fee dream of an after-dinner nap,” as the Göttinger zoo
logist, Keferstein, called it.
lhe general attitude towards Nature fifty years-ago was so
different from that we find everywhere to-day, that.it is
difficult to convey a clear idea of it to a young scientist or
philosopher. The great question of creation, the problem
how the various species of plants and animals came into the
world, and how man came into being, did .not exist yet in
exact science. There was, in fact, no question of it.
Seventy-seven years ago Alexander yon Humboldt de
livered, in this very spot, the lectures which afterwards made
up his famous work, Cosmos, the Elements, of a Physical
Description of the World. As he touched, in passing, the
obscure problem of the origin of the organic population of
our planet, he could only say resignedly : “ The mysterious
and unsolved problem of how things came to be does not
belong to the empirical province of objective research, the
description of what is.” It is instructive to find Johannes
Muller, the greatest of German biologists in the ^nineteenth
century, speaking thus in 1852, in his famous essay, On
the Generation of Snails in Holothurians ” :
The entrance
of various species of animals into creation is certain it is a
fact of paleontology; but it is supernatural as long as this
entrance cannot be perceived in the act and become an
element of observation.” I myself had a number of remark
able conversations with Müller, whom I put at the head of all
my distinguished teachers, in the summer of 1854. His lec
tures on comparative anatomy and physiology—the. most
illuminating and stimulating I ever heard—had captivated
me to such an extent that I asked and obtained his permission
to make a closer study of the skeletons and other preparations
in his splendid museum of comparative anatomy (then in the
right wing of the buildings of the Berlin University), and to
draw them. Müller (then in his fifty-fourth year) used to
spend the Sunday afternoon alone in the museum. He would
walk to and fro for hours in the spaoious rooms, his hands
behind his back, buried in thought about the mysterious
affinities of the vertebrates, the “ holy enigma ” of which was
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so forcibly impressed by the row of skeletons. Now and
again my great master would turn to a small table at the side J
at which I (a student of twenty years) was sitting in the angly
of a window, making conscientious drawings of the skulls oJ
mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes.
/
I would then beg him to explain particularly difficult poin/s
in anatomy, and once I ventured to put the question : “Myst
not all these vertebrates, with their identity in internal
skeleton, in spite of all their external differences, have come
originally from a common form? ” The great master nodded
his head thoughtfully, and said : “Ah, if we only knew that !
If ever you solve that riddle, you will have accomplished a
supreme work.” Two months afterwards, in September,
I^54> J had to accompany Müller to Heligoland, and le/rned
under his direction the beautiful and wonderful inhabitants
of the sea. As we fished together in the sea, and caugnt the
lovely medusæ, I asked him how it was possible to explain
their remarkable alternation of generations ; if the medusæ,
from the ova of which polyps develop to-day, must not have
come originally from the more simply organised polypi? To
this precocious question, I received the same resigned
answer: “Ah, that is a very obscure problem ! We know
nothing whatever about the origin of species.”
i
Johannes Müller was certainly one of the greatest scientists
of the nineteenth century. He takes rank with Cuviei, Baer,
Lamarck, and Darwin. His insight was profound and pene
trating, his philosophic judgment comprehensive, ^nd his
mastery of the vast province of biology was enormous. Emil
du Bois-Reymond happily compared him, in his fine com
memorative address, to Alexander the Great, whose kingdom
was divided into several independent realms at his death. In
his lectures and works Müller treated no less than Jour dif
ferent subjects, for which four separate chairs were founded
after his death in 1858—human anatomy, physiology, patho
logical anatomy, and comparative anatomy. In fact, we
ought really to add two more subjects—zoology and embryo
logy. Of these, also, we learned more from Müller’s classic
lectures than from the official lectures of the professors of
those subjects. The great master died in 1858, a few months
before Charles Darwin and Alfred R. Wallace made their
first communications on their new theory of selection in the
Journal of the Linnæan Society. I do not doubt in the least
that this surprising answer of the riddle of creation would
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17
have profoundly moved Muller, and have been fully admitted
by him on mature reflection.
To these leading- masters in biology, and to all other
anatomists, physiologists, zoologists, and botanists up to
1858, the question of organic creation was an unsolved
problem; the great majority regarded it as insoluble. The
theologians and their allies, the metaphysicians, built
triumphantly on this fact. It afforded a clear proof of the
limitations of reason and science. A miracle only could
account for the origin of these ingenious and carefully
designed organisms; nothing less than the Divine wisdom
and omnipotence could have brought man into being. But
this general resignation of reason, and the dominance of
supernatural ideas which it encouraged, were somewhat para
doxical in the thirty years between Lyell and Darwin,
between 1830 and 1859, since the natural evolution of the
earth, as conceived by the great geologist had come to be
universally recognised. Since the earlier of these dates the
iron necessity of natural law had ruled in inorganic nature, in
the formation of the mountains and the movement of the
heavenly bodies. In organic nature, on the contrary, in the
creation and the life of animals and plants, people saw only
the wisdom and power of an intelligent Creator and Con
troller; in other words, everything was ruled by mechanical
causality in the inorganic world, but by teleological finality in
the realm of biology.
Philosophy, strictly so called, paid little or no attention to
this dilemma. Absorbed almost exclusively in metaphysical
and dialectical speculations, it looked with supreme contempt
or indifference on the enormous progress that the empirical
sciences were making. It affected, in its character of
“purely mental science,” to build up the world out of its own
head, and to have no need of the splendid material that was
being laboriously gathered by observation and experiment.
This is especially true of Germany, where Hegel’s system of
“ absolute idealism ” had secured the highest regard, particu
larly since it had been made obligatory as “the royal State
philosophy of Prussia ”—mainly because, according to Hegel,
“ in the State the Divine will itself and the monarchical con
stitution alone represent the development of reason; all other
forms of constitution are lower stages of the development of
reason.” Hegel’s abstruse metaphysics has also been greatly
appreciated because it has made so thorough and consistent
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a use of the idea of evolution. But this pretended “ evolution
of reason ” floated far above real nature in the pure ether of
the absolute spirit, and was devoid of all the material ballast
that the empirical science of the evolution of the world, the
earth, and its living population, had meantime accumulated.
Moreover, it is well known how Hegel himself declared, with
humorous resignation, that only one of his many pupils had
understood him, and this one had misunderstood him.
From the higher standpoint of general culture the difficult
question forces itself on us : What is the real value of the
idea of evolution in the whole realm of science? We are
bound to answer that it varies considerably. The facts of
the evolution of the individual, or of ontogeny, were easy to
observe and grasp : the evolution of the crust of the earth
and of the mountains in geology seemed to have an equally
sound empirical foundation; the physical evolution of the
universe seemed to be established by mathematical specula
tion. There was no longer any serious question of creation,
in the literal sense, of the deliberate action of a personal
Creator, in these great provinces. But this made people
cling to the idea more than ever in regard to the origin of the
countless species of animals and plants, and especially the
creation of man. This transcendental problem seemed to be
entirely beyond the range of natural development; and the
same was thought of the question of the nature and origin of
the soul, the mystic entity that was appropriated by meta
physical speculation as its subject. Charles Darwin suddenly
brought a clear light into this dark chaos of contradictory
notions in 1859. His epoch-making work, The Origin of
Species, proved convincingly that this historical process is
not a supernatural mystery, but a physiological phenomenon;
and that the preservation of improved races in the struggle
for life had produced, by a natural evolution, the whole
wondrous world of organic life.
To-day, when evolution is almost universally recognised in
biology, when thousands of anatomic and physiological works
are based on it every year, the new generation can hardly
form an idea of the violent resistance that was offered to
Darwin’s theory and the impassioned struggles it provoked.
In the first place, the Churches at once raised a vigorous protest; they rightly regarded their new antagonist as the deadly
enemy of the legend of creation, and saw the very foundations
of their creed threatened. The Churches found a powerful
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ally in the dualistic metaphysics that still claims to represent
the real “ idealist philosophy ” at most universities. But
most dangerous of all to the young theory was the violent re
sistance it met almost everywhere in its own province of em
pirical science. The prevailing belief in the fixity and the
independent creation of the various species was much more
seriously menaced by Darwin’s theory than it had been by
Lamarck’s transformism. Lamarck had said substantially
the same thing fifty years before, but had failed to convince
through the lack of effective evidence. Many scientists,
some of great distinction, opposed Darwin because either
they had not an adequate acquaintance with the whole field of
biology, or it seemed to them that his bold speculation ad
vanced too far from the secure base of experience.
When Darwin’s work appeared in 1859, and fell like a flash
of lightning on the dark world of official biology, I was
engaged in a scientific expedition to Sicily and taken up with
a thorough study of the graceful radiolarians, those won
derful microscopic marine animals that surpass all other
organisms in the beauty and variety of their forms. The
special study of this remarkable class of animals, of which I
afterwards described more than 4,000 species, after more
than ten years of research, provided me with one of the solid
foundation-stones of my Darwinian ideas. But when I re
turned from Messina to Berlin in the spring of i860, I knew
nothing as yet of Darwin’s achievement. I merely heard
from my friends at Berlin that a remarkable work by a crazy
Englishman had attracted great attention, and that it turned
upside down all previous ideas as to the origin of species.
I soon perceived that almost all the experts at Berlin—chief
amongst them were the famous microscopist, Ehrenberg;
the anatomist, Reichert; the zoologist, Peters; and the
geologist, Beyrich—were unanimous in their condemnation of
Darwin. The brilliant orator of the Berlin Academy, Emil
du Bois-Reymond, hesitated. He recognised that the theory
of evolution was the only natural solution of the problem
of creation; but he laughed at the application of it as a
poor romance, and declared that the phylogenetic inquiries
into the relationship of the various species had about as
much value as the research of philologists into the genea
logical tree of the Homeric heroes.
The distinguished
botanist, Alexander Braun, stood quite alone in his full and
warm assent to the theory of evolution.
I found comfort
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
and encouragement with this dear and respected teacher,
when I was deeply moved by the first reading of Darwin’s
book, and soon completely converted to his views.
In
- Darwin’s great and harmonious conception of Nature, and
his convincing establishment of evolution, I had an answer
to all the doubts that had beset me since the beginning of
my biological studies.
My famous .teacher, Rudolf Virchow, whom I had met
at Wurzburg in 1852, and was soon associated with in the
most friendly relations as special pupil and admiring assist
ant, played a very curious part in this great controversy.
I am, I think, one of those elderly men who have followed
Virchow’s development, as man and thinker, with the greatest
interest during the last fifty years. I distinguish three periods
in his psychological metamorphoses.
In the first decade
of his academic life, from 1847 to 1858, mainly at Wurz
burg, he effected the great reform of medicine that culminated
brilliantly in his cellular pathology. In the following twenty
years (1858—1877) he was chiefly occupied with politics and
anthropology.
He was at first favourable to Darwinism,
then sceptical, and finally rejected it.
His powerful and
determined opposition to it dates from 1877, when, in his
famous speech on “The Freedom of Science in the Modern
State,” he struck a heavy blow at that freedom, denounced
the theory of evolution as dangerous to the State, and
demanded its exclusion from the schools. This remarkable
metamorphosis is so important, and has had so much influ
ence, yet has been so erroneously described, that I will deal
with it somewhat fully in the next chapter, especially as I
have then to treat one chief problem, the descent of man
from the ape. For the moment, I will merely recall the
fact that in Berlin, the “metropolis of intelligence,” as it
has been called, the theory of evolution, now generally
accepted, met with a more stubborn resistance than in most
of our other leading educational centres, and that this opposi
tion was due above all to the powerful authority of Virchow.
We can only glance briefly here at the victorious struggle
that the idea of evolution has conducted in the last three
decades of the nineteenth century. The violent resistance
that Darwinism encountered nearly everywhere in its early
years was paralysed towards the end of the first decade. In
the years 1866—1874 many works were published in which not
only were the foundations of the theory scientifically strength
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21
ened, but its general recognition was secured by popular
treatment of the subject. I made the first attempt in 1866,
in my General Morphology, to present connectedly the whole
subject of evolution and make it the foundation of a consistent
Monistic philosophy; and I then gave a popular summary
of my chief conclusions in the ten editions of my History of
Creation. In my Evolution of Man I made the first attempt
to apply the principles of evolution thoroughly and consistently
to man, and to draw up a hypothetical list of his animal
ancestors. The three volumes of my Systematic Phylogeny
(1894—1896) contain a fuller outline of a natural classification
of organisms on the basis of their stem-history. There have
been important contributions to the science of evolution in
all its branches in the Darwinian periodical Cosmos, since
1877; and a number of admirable popular works helped to
spread the system.
However, the most important and most welcome advance
was made by science when, in the last thirty years, the idea
of evolution penetrated into every branch of biology, and
was recognised as fundamental and indispensable. Thousands
of new discoveries and observations in all sections of botany,
zoology, protistology, and anthropology, were brought for
ward as empirical evidence of evolution. This is especially
true of the remarkable progress of paleontology, comparative
anatomy, and embryology, but it applies also to physiology,
chorology (the science of the distribution of living things),
and oecology (the description of the habits of animals). How
much our horizon was extended by these, and how much
the unity of our Monistic system gained, can be seen in any
modern manual of biology. If we compare them with those
that gave us extracts of natural history forty or fifty years
ago, we see at once what an enormous advance has taken
place. Even the more remote branches of anthropological
science, ethnography, sociology, ethics, and jurisprudence,
are entering into closer relations with the theory of evolution,
and can no longer escape its influence. In view of all this,
it is ridiculous for theological and metaphysical journals to
talk, as they do, of the failure of evolution and “the death
bed of Darwinism.”
Our science of evolution won its greatest triumph when,
at the beginning of the twentieth century, its most powerful
opponents, the Churches, became reconciled to it, and
endeavoured to bring their dogmas into line with it.
A
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number of timid attempts to do so had been made in the
preceding ten years by different freethinking theologians
and philosophers, but without much success. The distinction
of accomplishing this in a comprehensive and well-informed
manner was reserved for a Jesuit, Father Erich Wasmann of
Luxemburg. This able and learned entomologist had already
earned some recognition in zoology by a series of admirable
observations on the life of ants, and the captives that they
always keep in their homes, certain very small insects which
have themselves been curiously modified by adaptation to
their peculiar environment. He showed that these striking
modifications can only be rationally explained by descent from
other free-living species of insects. The various papers in
which Wasmann gave a thoroughly Darwinian explanation
of the biological phenomena first appeared (1901—1903) in the
Catholic periodical, Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, and are now
collected in a special work entitled, Modern Biology and the
Theory of Evolution.
This remarkable book of Wasmann’s is a masterpiece of
Jesuitical sophistry.
It really consists of three entirely
different sections. The first third gives, in the introduction,
what is, for Catholics, a clear and instructive account of
modern biology, especially the cell-theory, and the theory
of evolution (chapters i.—viii.). The second third, the ninth
chapter, is the most valuable part of the work. Ilj has the
title: “The Theory of Fixity or the Theory of Evolution?”
Here the learned entomologist gives an interesting account of
thè results of his prolonged studies of the morphology and
the cecology of the ants and their captives, the myrmecophilae.
He shows impartially and convincingly that these complicated
and remarkable phenomena can only be explained by evolution,
and that the older doctrine of the fixity and independent
creation of the various species is quite untenable. With a
few changes this ninth chapter could figure as a useful part
of a work by Darwin or Weismann or some other evolutionist.
The succeeding chapter (the last third) is flagrantly inconsist
ent with the ninth. It deals most absurdly with the application
of the theory of evolution to man. The reader has to ask
himself whether Wasmann really believes these confused and
ridiculous notions, or whether he merely aims at befogging
his readers, and so preparing the way for the acceptance
of the conventional creed.
Wasmann’s book has been well criticised by a number of
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
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competent students, especially by Escherich and France.
While fully recognising his great services, they insist very
strongly on the great mischief wrought by this smuggling
of the Jesuitical spirit into biology. Escherich points out at
length the glaring inconsistencies and the obvious untruths
of this “ecclesiastical evolution.” He summarises his
criticism in the words : “ If the theory of evolution can really
be reconciled with the dogmas of the Church only in the
way we find here, Wasmann has clearly proved that any such
reconciliation is impossible. Because what Wasmann gives
here as the theory of evolution is a thing mutilated beyond
recognition and incapable of any vitality.” He tries, like a
good Jesuit, to prove that it does not tend to undermine, but
to give a firm foundation to, the story of supernatural creation,
and that it was really not Lamarck and Darwin, but St.
Augustin and St. Thomas of Aquin, who founded the science
of evolution. “ God does not interfere directly in the order
of Nature when he can act by means of natural causes.”
Man alone constitutes a remarkable exception; because “the
human soul, being a spiritual entity, cannot be derived from
matter even by the Divine omnipotence, like the vital forms
of the plants and animals ” (p. 299).
In an instructive article on “Jesuitical Science” (in the
Frankfort Freie Wort, No. 22, 1904), R. H. Francd gives
an interesting list of the prominent Jesuits who are now at
work in the various branches of science. As he rightly says,
the danger consists “in a systematic introduction of the
Jesuitical spirit into science, a persistent perversion of all
its problems and solutions, and an astute undermining of its
foundations; to speak more precisely, the danger is that
people are not sufficiently conscious of it, and that they, and
even science itself, fall into the cleverly prepared pit of
believing that there is such a thing as Jesuitical science,
the results of which may be taken seriously.” 1
1 The eel-like sophistry of the Jesuits, which has been brought to such
a wonderful pitch in their political system, cannot, as a rule, be met by
argument. An interesting illustration of this was given by Father
Wasmann himself in his controversy with the physician, Dr. Julian
Marcuse. The “ scientific ” Wasmann had gone so far in his zeal for
religion as to support a downright swindle of a “ miraculous cure ” in
honour of the “Mother of God of Oostacker ” (the Belgian Lourdes).
Dr. Marcuse succeeded in exposing the whole astounding story of this
“pious fraud” (Deutsche Stimmen, Berlin, 1903, iv. Jahrg., No. 20).
Instead of giving a scientific refutation, the Jesuit replied with sophistic
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While fully recognising these dangers, I nevertheless feel
that the Jesuit Father Wasmann, and his colleagues, have—
unwittingly—done a very great service to the progress of
pure science. The Catholic Church, the most powerful and
widespread of the Christian sects, sees itself compelled to
capitulate to the idea of evolution. It embraces the most
important application of the idea, Lamarck and Darwin’s
theory of descent, which it had vigorously combated until
twenty years ago. It does, indeed, mutilate the great tree,
cutting off its roots and its highest branch; it rejects spon
taneous generation or archigony at the bottom, and the
descent of man from animal ancestors above.
But these
exceptions will not last. Impartial biology will take no notice
of them, and the religious creed will at length determine that
the more complex species have been evolved from a series of
simpler forms according to Darwinian principles. The belief
in a supernatural creation is restricted to the production of
the earliest and simplest stem-forms, from which the “natural
species ” have taken their origin; Wasmann gives that name
to all species that are demonstrably descended from a common
stem-form; in other words, to what other classifiers call
“ stems ” or “ phyla. ” The 4,000 species of ants in his system,
which he believes to be genetically related, are comprised by
him in one “natural species.” On the other hand, man forms
one isolated “ natural species ” for himself, without any con
nection with the other mammals.
The Jesuitical sophistry that Wasmann betrays in this
ingenious distinction between “systematic and natural
species ” is also found in his Philosophic “ Thoughts on
Evolution” (chap, viii.), his distinction between philosophic
and scientific evolution, or between evolution in one stem
and in several stems. His remarks (in chap, vii.) on “the
cell and spontaneous generation ” are similarly marred by
sophistry. The question of spontaneous generation or archi
gony—that is to say, of the first appearance of organic life
on the earth, is one of the most difficult problems in biology,
perversion and personal invective (Scientific [?] Supplement to Germania,
Berlin, 1902, No. 43, and 1903, No. 13). In his final reply, Dr. Marcuse
said : “I have accomplished my object—to let thoughtful people see once
fnore the kind of ideas that are found in the world of dead and literal
faith, which tries to put the crudest superstition and reverence for the
rnyth of miraculous cures in the place of science, truth and knowledge
(Deutsche Stimmen, 1903, v. Jahrgang, No. 3).
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25
one of those in which the most distinguished students betray
a striking weakness of judgment. Dr. Heinrich Schmidt,
of Jena, has lately written an able and popular little work on
that subject. In his Spontaneous Generation and Professor
Reinke (1903), he has shown to what absurd consequences
the ecclesiastical ideas lead on this very question.
The
botanist Reinke, of Kiel, is now regarded amongst religious
people as the chief opponent of Darwinism; for many con
servatives this is because he is a member of the Prussian
Herrenhaus (a very intelligent body, of course 1). Although
he is a strong evangelical, many of his mystic deductions
agree surprisingly with the Catholic speculations of Father
Wasmann. This is especially the case with regard to spon
taneous generation. They both declare that the first appear
ance of life must be traced to a miracle, to the work of
a personal deity, whom Reinke calls the “cosmic intelligence.”
I have shown the unscientific character of these notions in my
last two works, The Riddle of the Universe and The Wonders
of Life. I have drawn attention especially to the widely
distributed monera of the chromacea class—organisms of the
simplest type conceivable, whose whole body is merely an
unnucleated green, structureless globule of plasm (Chroococcus); their whole vital activity consists of growth (by
forming plasm) and multiplication (by dividing into two). There
is little theoretical difficulty in conceiving the origin of these
new simple monera from inorganic compounds of albumen,
or their later transformation into the simplest nucleated cells.
All this, and a good deal more that will not fit in his Jesuitical
frame, is shrewdly ignored by Wasmann.
In view of the great influence that Catholicism still has on
public life in Germany, through the Centre party, this change
of front should be a great gain to education.
Virchow
demanded as late as 1877 that the dangerous doctrine of
evolution should be excluded from the schools.
The
Ministers of Instruction of the two chief German States
gratefully adopted this warning from the leader of the pro
gressive party, forbade the teaching of Darwinian ideas, and
made every effort to check the spread of biological knowledge.
Now, twenty-five years afterwards, the Jesuits come forward,
and demand the opposite. They recognise openly that the
hated theory of evolution is established, and try to reconcile
it with the creed ! What an irony of history ! And we find
much the same story when we read the struggles for freedom
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of thought and for the recognition of evolution in the other
educated countries of Europe.
In Italy, its cradle and home, educated people generally look
upon the papacy with the most profound disdain. I have
spent many years in Italy, and have never met an educated
Italian of such bigoted and narrow views as we usually find
amongst educated German Catholics—represented with
success in the Reichstag by the Centre party. It is proof
enough of the reactionary character of German Catholics that
the Pope himself describes them as his most vigorous soldiers,
and points them out as models to the faithful of other nations.
As the whole history of the Roman Church shows, the charlatan
of the' Vatican is the deadly enemy of free science and free
teaching. The present German Emperor ought to regard it
as his most sacred duty to maintain the tradition of the
Reformation, and to promote the formation of the German
people in the sense of Frederick the Great. Instead of this
we have to look on with heavy hearts while the Emperor,
badly advised and misled by those in influence about him,
suffers himself to be caught closer and closer in the net of
the Catholic clergy, and sacrifices to it the intelligence of the
rising generation.
The firmness of the belief in conventional dogmas, which
hampers the progress of rational enlightenment in orthodox
Protestant circles as well as Catholic, is often admired as an
expression of the deep emotion of the German people. But
its real source is their confusion of thought and their credu
lity, the power of conservative tradition, and the reactionary
state of political education. While our schools are bent
under the yoke of the creeds, those of our neighbours are
free. France, the pious daughter of the Church, gives
anxious moments to her ambitious mother. She is breaking
the chains of the Concordat, and taking up the work of the
Reformation. In Germany, the birthplace of the Reforma
tion, the Reichstag and the Government vie with each other in
smoothing the paths for the Jesuits, and fostering, instead of
suppressing, the intolerant spirit of the sectarian school. Let
us hope that the latest episode in the history of evolution, its
recognition by Jesuitical science, will bring about the reverse
of what they intend—the substitution of rational science for
blind faith.
�CHAPTER II
' The Struggle over our Genealogical Tree
OUR APE-RELATIVES AND THE VERTEBRATE-STEM
In the previous chapter I tried to give you a general idea of
the present state of the controversy in regard to evolution.
Comparing the various branches of thought we found that the
older mythological ideas of the creation of the world were
driven long ago out of the province of inorganic science, but
that they did not yield to the rational conception of natural
development until a much later date in the field of organic
nature. Here the idea of evolution did not prove completely
victorious until the beginning of the twentieth century, when
its most zealous and dangerous opponent, the Church, was
forced to admit it. Hence the open acknowledgment of the
Jesuit, Father Wasmann, deserves careful attention, and we
may look forward to a further development. If his force of
conviction and his moral courage are strong enough, he will
go on to draw the normal conclusions from his high scientific
attainments and leave the Catholic Church, as the prominent
Jesuits, Count Hoensbroech and the able geologist, Professor
Renard of Ghent, one of the workers on the deep-sea deposits
in the Challenger expedition, have lately done. But even if
this does not happen, his recognition of Darwinism, in the
name of Christian belief, will remain a landmark in the
history of evolution. His ingenious and very Jesuitical
attempt to bring together the opposite poles will have no very
mischievous effect; it will rather tend to hasten the victory
of the scientific conception of evolution over the mystic
beliefs of the Churches.
You will see this more clearly if we go on to consider the
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important special problem of the “descent of man from the
ape,” and its irreconcilability with the conventional belief
that God made man according to His own image. That this
ape or pithecoid theory is an irresistible deduction from the
general principle of evolution was clearly recognised fortyfive years ago, when Darwin’s work appeared, by the shrewd
and vigilant theologians; it was precisely in this fact that
they found their strongest motive for vigorous resistance.
It is quite clear. Either man was brought into existence,
like the other animals, by a special creative act, as Moses and
Linné taught (an “ émbodied idea of the Creator,” as the
famous Agassiz put it so late as 1858) ; or he has been
developed naturally from a series of mammal ancestors, as is
claimed by the systems of Lamarck and Darwin.
In view of the very great importance of this pithecoid
theory, we will first cast a brief glance at its founders and
then summarise the proofs in support of it. The famous
French biologist, Jean Lamarck, was the first scientist defin
itely to affirm the descent of man from the ape and seek to
give scientific proof of it. In his splendid work, fifty years in
advance of his time, the Philosophie Zoologique (1809), he
clearly traced the modifications and advances that must
have taken place in the transformation of the man-like
apes (the primate forms similar to the orang and the
chimpanzee) ; the adaptation to walking upright, the
consequent modification of the hands and feet, and
later, the formation of speech and the attainment of a higher
degree of intelligence. Lamarck’s remarkable theory, and
this important consequence of it, soon fell into oblivion.
When Darwin brought evolution to the front again fifty years
afterwards, he paid no attention to the special conclusion.
He was content to make the following brief prophetic observa
tion in his work “ Light will be thrown on the origin and the
history of man.” Even this innocent remark seemed so
momentous to the first German translator of the work, Bronn,
that he suppressed it. When Darwin was asked by Wallace
whether he would not go more fully into it, he replied : “ I
think of avoiding the whole subject, as it is so much involved
in prejudice ; though I quite admit that it is the highest and
most interesting problem for the thinker.”
The first thorough works of importance on the subject ap
peared in 1863. Thomas Huxley in England, and Carl Vogt
in Germany, endeavoured to show that the descent of man
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
from the ape was a necessary consequence of Darwinism, and
to provide an empirical base for the theory by every available
argument. Huxley’s work on Afcwi 5 Place in Nature was
particularly valuable. • He first gave convincingly, in three
lectures, the empirical evidence on the subject—the natural
history of the anthropoid apes, the anatomical and embryo
logical relations of man to the next lowest animals, and the
recently discovered fossil human remains. I then (1866)
made the first attempt to establish the theory of evolution
comprehensively by research in anatomy and embryology,
and to determine the chief stages in the natural classification
of the vertebrates that must have been passed through by our
earlier vertebrate ancestors. Anthropology thus becomes a
part of zoology. In my History of Creation I further
developed these early evolutionary sketches, and improve
ments were made in the successive editions.
In the meantime, the great master, Darwin, had decided to
deal with this chief evolutionary problem in a special work.
The two volumes of his Descent of Man appeared in 1871.
They contained an able discussion of sexual selection, or the
selective influence of sexual love and high psychic activities
connected therewith, and their significance in regard to the
origin of man. As this part of Darwin’s work was after
wards attacked with particular virulence, I will say that, in
my opinion, it is of the greatest importance, not only for the
general theory of evolution, but also for psychology, anthro
pology, and aesthetics.
My own feeble early efforts (1866), not only to establish the
descent of man from the nearest related apes, but also to
determine more precisely the long series of our earlier and
lower vertebrate ancestors, had not at all satisfied me. In
praticular, I had had to leave unanswered in my General
Morphology the very interesting question : from which in
vertebrate animals the vertebrate stem originally came. A
clear and unexpected light was thrown on it some time after
wards by the astounding discoveries of Kowalevsky, which
revealed an essential agreement in embryonic development
between the lowest vertebrate (Amphioxus) and a lowly
tunicate (Ascidia). In the succeeding years, the numerous
discoveries in connection with the formation of the germinal
layers in different animals so much enlarged our embryo
logical outlook that I was able to prove the complete homo
logy of the two-layered gastrula (a cup-shaped embryonic
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form) in all the tissue-forming- animals (metazoa) in my
Monograph on the Sponges. From this I inferred, in virtue
of the biogenetic law, the common descent of all the metazoa
from one and the same gastrula-shaped stem-form, the
gastrcea. This hypothetical stem-form, to which man’s
earliest multicellular ancestors also belong, was afterwards
proved by Monticelli’s observations to be still in existence.
The evolution of these very simple tissue-forming animals
from still simpler unicellular forms (protozoa) is shown by the
corresponding processes that we witness in what is called
the segmentation of the ovum or gastrulation, in the develop
ment of the two-layered germ from the single cell of the ovum.
Encouraged by these great advances of modern phylogeny,
and with the support of many new discoveries in comparative
anatomy and embryology, in which a number of distinguished
observers were at work, I was able in 1874 to venture on the
first attempt to trace continuously the whole story of man’s
evolution. In doing so, I took my stand on the firm ground
of the biogenetic law, seeking to give a phylogenetic cause
for each fact of embryology. My Evolution of Man, which
made the first attempt to accomplish this difficult task, was
materially improved and enlarged as new and important dis
coveries were made. The latest edition (1903 [1904 in
English]) contains thirty chapters distributed in two
volumes, the first of which deals with embryology (or onto
geny), and the second with the development of species (or
phylogeny).
Though I was quite conscious that there were bound to be
gaps and weak points in these first attempts to frame a
natural anthropogeny I had hoped they would have some in
fluence on modern anthropology, and especially that the first
sketches of a genealogical tree of the animal world would
prove a stimulus to fresh research and improvement. In this
I was much mistaken. The dominant school of anthropology,
especially in Germany, declined to suffer the introduction of
the theory of evolution, declaring it to be an unfounded
hypothesis, and described our carefully prepared ancestral
trees as mere figments. This was due, in the first place, to
the great authority of the founder and president (for many
years) of the German Anthropological Society, Rudolf
Virchow, as I briefly pointed out in the previous chapter. In
view of the great regard that is felt for this distinguished
scientist, and the extent to which his powerful opposition pre-
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
31
vented the spread of the theory, it is necessary to deal more
fully with his position on the subject. I am still further con
strained to do this because of the erroneous views of it that
are circulating, and my own fifty years’ acquaintance with
my eminent teacher enables me to put them right.
Not one of Virchow’s numerous pupils and friends can
appreciate more than I do his real services to medical science.
His Cellular Pathology (1858), his thorough application of the
cell-theory to the science of disease, is, in my opinion, one
of the greatest advances made by modern medicine. I had
the good fortune to begin my medical studies at Würzburg in
1852, and to spend six valuable terms under the personal
guidance of four biologists of the first rank—Albert Kölliker,
Rudolf Virchow, Franz Leydig and Carl Gegenbaur. The
great stimulus that I received from these distinguished
masters in every branch of comparative and microscopic
biology was the starting-point of my whole training in that
science, and enabled me subsequently to follow with ease the
higher intellectual flight of Johannes Müller. From Virchow
especially I learned, not only the analytic art of careful
observation and judicious appreciation of the detailed facts of
anatomy, but also the synthetic conception of the whole
human frame, the profound conviction of the unity of our
nature, the inseparable connection of body and mind, to which
Virchow gave a fine expression in his classic essay on “The
Efforts to bring about Unity in Scientific Medicine ” (1849).
The leading articles which he wrote at that time for the
Journal of Pathological Anatomy and Physiology, which he
had founded, contain much new insight into the wonders of
life, and a number of excellent general reflections on their
significance—pregnant ideas that we can make direct use of
for Monistic purposes. In the controversy that broke out
between empirical rationalism and materialism and the older
vitalism and mysticism, he took the side of the former, and
fought together with Jacob Moleschott, Carl Vogt, and
Ludwig Büchner. I owe the firm conviction of the unity of
organic and inorganic nature, of the mechanical character of
all vital and psychic activity, which I have always held to be
the foundation of my Monistic system, in a great measure to
• Virchow’s teaching and the exhaustive conversations I had
with him when I was his assistant. The profound views of
the nature of the cell and the independent individuality of
these elementary organisms, which he advanced in his great
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work Cellular Pathology, remained guiding principles for me
in the prolonged studies that I made thirty years afterwards
erf the organisation of the radiolaria and other unicellular
protists; and also in regard to the theory of the cell-soul,
which followed naturally from the psychological study of
it.
His life at Wurzburg was the most brilliant period of
Virchow’s indefatigable scientific labours. A change took
place when he removed to Berlin in 1856. He then occupied
himself chiefly with political and social and civic interests. In
the last respect he has done so much for Berlin and the
welfare of the German people that I need not enlarge on it.
Nor will I go into his self-sacrificing and often thankless
political work as leader of the progressive party; there are I
differences of opinion as to its value. But we must carefully
examine his peculiar attitude towards evolution, and especially
its chief application, the ape-theory. He was at first favour
able to it, then sceptical, and finally decidedly hostile.
I
When the Lamarckian theory was brought to light again ■
by Darwin in 1859, many thought that it was Virchow’s
vocation to take the lead in defending it. He had made a
thorough study of the problem of heredity; he had realised
the power of adaptation through his study of pathological
changes; and he had been directed to the great question of
the origin of man by his anthropological studies. He was at
that time regarded as a determined opponent of all dogmas;
he combated transcendentalism either in the form of eccle
siastical creeds or anthropomorphism. After 1862 he de
clared that “the possibility of a transition from species to
species was a necessity of science.” When I opened the first
public discussion of Darwinism at the Stettin Scientific Con
gress in 1863, Virchow and Alexander Braun were among the
few scientists who would admit the subject to be important
and deserving of the most careful study. When I sent to
him in 1865 two lectures that I had delivered at Jena on the
origin and genealogical tree of the human race, he willingly
received them amongst his Collection of Popular Scientific
Lectures. In the course of many long conversations I had
with him on the matter, he agreed with me in the main,
though with the prudent reserve and cool scepticism that •
characterised him. He adopts the same moderate attitude in
the lecture that he delivered to the Artisans’ Union at Berlin
in 1869 on “Human and Ape Skulls.”
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33
His position definitely changed in regard to Darwinism
from 1877 onward. At the Scientific Congress that was then
held at Munich I had, at the pressing request of my Munich
friends, undertaken the first address (on 18th September) on
“Modern Evolution in Relation to the whole of Science.” In
this address I had substantially advanced the same general
views that I afterwards enlarged in my Monism, Riddle of
the Universe, and Wonders of Life. In the ultramontane •
capital of Bavaria, in sight of a great university which em
phatically describes itself as Catholic, it was somewhat bold
to make such a confession of faith. The deep impression
that it had made was indicated by the lively manifestations of
assent on the one hand, and displeasure on the other, that
were at once made in the Congress itself and in the Press.
On the following day I departed for Italy (according to an
arrangement made long before). Virchow did not come to
Munich until two days afterwards, when he delivered (on
22nd September, in response to entreaties from people of
position and influence) his famous antagonistic speech on
“The Freedom of Science in the Modern State.” The gist of
the speech was that this freedom ought to be restricted; that
evolution is an unproved hypothesis, and ought not to be
taught in the school because it is dangerous to the State:
“We must not teach,” he said, “that man descends from the
♦ ape or any other animal.” In 1849, the young Monist,
Virchow, had emphatically declared this conviction, “that he
would never be induced to deny the thesis of the unity of
human nature and its consequences ” ; now, . twenty-eight
years afterwards, the prudent Dualistic politician entirely
denied it. He had formerly taught that all the bodily and
mental processes in the human organism depend on the
mechanism of the cell-life; now he declared the soul to be a
special immaterial entity. But the crowning feature of this
reactionary speech was his compromise with the Church,
which he had fought so vigorously twenty years before.
The character of Virchow’s speech at Munich is best seen
in the delight with which it was at once received by the
reactionary and clerical papers, and the profound concern
of all Liberal journals, either in the political or the religious
sense. When Darwin read the English translation of the
speech he—generally so gentle in his judgments—wrote:
“Virchow’s conduct is shameful, and I hope he will some
day feel the shame.” In 1878, I made a full reply to it in my
>
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
Free Science and Free Teaching, in which I collected the
most important press opinions on the matter.1
From this very decided turn at Munich until‘his death
twenty-five years afterwards, Virchow was an indefatigable
and very influential opponent of evolution. In his annual
appearances at congresses he has always contested it, and
has obstinately clung to his statement that “it is quite cer
tain that man does not descend from the ape or any other
animal.” To the question : “Whence does he come, then? ”
he had no answer, and retired to the resigned position of the
Agnostic, which was common before Darwin’s time: “We
do not know how life arose, and how the various species came
into the world.” His son-in-law, Professor Rabi, has tried
to draw attention once more to his earlier conception, and has
declared that even in later years Virchow often recognised
the truth of evolution in private conversation. This only
makes it the more regrettable that he always said the con
trary in public. The fact remains that ever since the oppo-'
nents of evolution, especially the reactionaries and clericals
have appealed to the authority of Virchow.
’
The wholly reactionary system that this led to has been well
described by Robert Drill, (1902) in his Virchow as a Reac
tionary. How little qualified the great pathologist was to
appreciate the scientific bases of the pithecoid theory is clear
from the absurd statement he made, in the opening speech of
the Vienna Congress of Anthropologists, in 1894, that man
might just as well be claimed to descend from a sheep or an
elephant as from an ape. Any competent zoologist can see
from this the little knowledge Virchow had of systematic
zoology and comparative anatomy. However, he retained
his authority as president of the German Anthropological
Society, which remained impervious to Darwinian ideas.
Even such, vigorous controversialists as Carl Vogt, and
such scientific partisans of the ape-man of Neanderthal as
Schaafhausen, could make no impression. Virchow’s
authority was equally great for twenty years in the Berlin
Press, both Liberal and Conservative. The Kreutzzeitung
and the Ewangelische Kirchenzeitung were delighted that
•
. The manuscript letter in which the gentle Darwin expresses so severe
a judgment on Virchow is printed in my Cambridge lecture, The Last
Link. My answer to Virchow’s speech is contained in the second volume
of my Popular Lectures, and has latelv appeared in the Freie Wort
(April, 1905).
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
35
“the learned progressist was conservative in the best sense
of the word as regards evolution.” The ultramontane Ger
mania rejoiced that the powerful representative of pure science
had, “with a few strokes of his cudgel, reduced to impo
tence ” the absurd ape-theory and its chief protagonist, Ernst
Haeckel. The National-Zeitung could not sufficiently thank
the free-thinking, popular leader for having lifted from us for
ever the oppressive mountain of the theory of simian descent.
The editor of the Volks-Zeitung, Bernstein, who has done so
much for the spread of knowledge in his excellent popular
manuals of science, obstinately refused to admit articles that
ventured to support the erroneous ape-theory “refuted by
Virchow.
It would take up too much space to attempt to give even a
general survey of the remarkable and enormous literature of
the subject that has accumulated in the last three decades in
the shape of thousands of learned treatises and popular
articles. The greater part of these works have been written
under the influence of conventional religious prejudice, and
without the necessary acquaintance with the subject, that can
only be obtained by a thorough training in biology. The
most curious feature of them is that most of the. authors
restrict their genealogical interests to the most manlike apes,
and do not deal with their origin, or with the deeper roots of
our common ancestral tree. They do not see the wood for
the trees. Yet it is far easier and safer to penetrate the great
mysteries of our animal origin, if we look at the subject from
the higher standpoint of vertebrate phylogeny and go deeper
into the earlier records of the evolutionary history of the
vertebrates.
...
Since the great Lamarck established the idea of the verte
brate at the beginning of the nineteenth century (1801), and
his Parisian colleague, Cuvier, shortly afterwards recognised
the vertebrates as one of his four chief animal groups, the
natural unity of this advanced section of the animal world has
not been contested. In all the vertebrates, from the lowest
fishes and amphibians up to the apes and man,_ we have the
same type of structure, the same characteristic disposition
and relations of the chief organs; and they differ materially
from the corresponding features in all other animals. The
mysterious affinities of the vertebrates induced Goethe, 140
years ago, long before Cuvier, to make prolonged and labori
ous studies in their comparative anatomy at Jena and
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION '
Weimar. Just as he had, in his Metamorphosis of Plants
established the unity of organisation by means of the leaf as
the common primitive organ, he, in the metamorphosis of the
vertebrates, found this common eleipent in the vertebral
theory of the skull. And when Cuvier established compara
tive anatomy as an independent science, this branch of
biology was developed to such an extent by the classic re
search of Johannes Müller, Carl Gegenbaur, Richard Owen,
Thomas Huxley, and many other morphologists, that Dar
winism found its most powerful weapons in this arsenal. The
striking differences of external form and internal structure
that we find in the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and
mammals, are due to adaptation to the various uses of their
organs and their environments. On the other hand, the
4 astonishing agreement in their typical character, that persists
gj in spite of their differences, is due to inheritance from
4 common ancestors.
The evidence thus afforded by comparative anatomy is so
cogent that anyone who goes impartially and attentively
through a collection of skeletons can convince himself at
once of the morphological unity of the vertebrate stem. The
evolutionary evidence of comparative ontogeny, or embryor
,
*s fess easy to grasp and less accessible, but not less
important. It came to light at a much later date, and its
extreme value was only made clear, by means of the biogenetic law, some forty years ago. It shows that every verte
brate, like every other animal, develops from a single cell,
but that the course of its embryonic development is peculiar,
and characterised by embryonic forms that are not found in
the invertebrates. We find in them especially the chordula,
or chorda-larva, a very simple worm-shaped embryonic form,
without limbs, head, or higher sense-organs; the body con
sists merely of six very simple primitive organs. From these
are developed steadily the hundreds of different bones,
muscles, and other organs that we afterwards distinguish in
the mature vertebrate. The remarkable and very complex
course of this embryonic development is essentially the same
in man and the ape, and in the amphibians and fishes. We
see in it, in accordance with the biogenetic law, a new and
important witness to the common descent of all vertebrates
from a single primitive form, the chordcea.
But, important as these arguments of comparative embryo
logy are, one needs many years’ study in the unfamiliar and
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
37
difficult province of embryology before one can realise their
evolutionary force. There are, in fact, not a few embryo
logists (especially of the modern school of experimental em
bryology) who do not succeed in doing so. It is otherwise
with the palpable proofs that we take from a remote science,
paleontology. The remarkable fossil remains and impressions
of extinct animals and plants give us directly the historical
evidence we need to understand the successive appearance
and disappearance of the various species and groups.
Geology has firmly established the chronological order of the
sedimentary rocks, which have been successively formed of
mud at the floor of the ocean, and has deduced their age from
the thickness of the strata, and determined the relative date
of their formation. The vast period during which organic
life has been developing on the earth runs to many million
years. The number is variously estimated at less than a
hundred or at several hundred million years. If we take the
smaller number of 200 million years, we find them distributed
amongst the five chief periods of the earth’s organic develop
ment in such a way that the earlier or archeozoic period
absorbs nearly one half. As the sedimentary rocks of this
period, chiefly gneisses and crystalline schists, are in a meta
morphosed condition, the fossil remains in them are unrecog
nisable. In the next succeeding strata of the paleozoic period
we find the earliest remains of fossilised vertebrates, Silurian
primitive fishes (selachii) and ganoids. These are followed,
in the Devonian system, by the first dipneust fishes (a transi
tional form from the fishes to the amphibia). In the next,
the Carboniferous system, we find the first terrestrial or fourfooted vertebrates—amphibians of the order of the stegocephala. A little later, in the Permian rocks, the earliest amniotes, lowly, lizard-like reptiles (tocosauria), make their ap
pearance ; the warm-blooded birds and mammals are still
wanting. We have the first traces of the mammals in the
Triassic, the earliest sedimentary rocks of the mesozoic age;
these are of the monotreme sub-class (pantotheria and allotheria). They are succeeded by the first marsupials (prodidelphia) in the Jurassic, the ancestral forms of the placentals
(mallotheria), in the Cretaceous.
But the richest development of’ the mammal class takes
place in the next or Tertiary age. In the course of its four
periods—the eocene, oligocene, miocene, and pliocene—the
mammal species increase steadily in number, variety, and
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last words on evolution
complexity, down tq? the present time. From the lowest
common ancestral group of the placentals proceed four
djvergent branches, the legions of the carnassia, rodents,
th? rlTS’ Tanl-Pr^at?’i The Primate le£ion surpasses all
the rest. In this Linné long ago included the lemurs, apes
and man. The historical order in which the various staged
of vertebrate development make their successive appearance
corresponds entirely . to the morphological order of their
advance in organisation, as we have learned it from the
study of comparative anatomy and embryology.
These paleontological facts are among the most important
proofs of the descent of man from a long series of higher and
lower vertebrates. There is no other explanation possible
except evolution or the chronological succession of these
classes, which is in perfect harmony with, the morphological
and systematic distribution. The anti-èvolutionists have not
even attempted to give any other explanation. The fishes
dipneusts, amphibians, reptiles, monotremes, marsupials-’
placentals lemurs, apes, anthropoid apes, and ape-men
(pithecanthropi), are inseparable links of a long ancestral
chain, of which the last and most perfect link is man.
One of the paleontological facts I have quoted, namely, the
late appearance of the mammal class in geology—is particu
larly important. This most advanced group of the verte
brates comes on the stage in the Triassic period, in the
second and shorter half of the organic history of the earth.
It is represented only by low and small forms in the whole
of the mesozoic age, during the domination of the reptiles.
Throughout this long period, which is estimated by some
geologists at 8-11, by others at 20 or more, million years,
the.dominant reptile class developed its many remarkable and
curious forms; there were swimming marine reptiles (halisauria), flying reptiles (pterosauria), and colossal land reptiles
(dinosauria). It was much later, in the Tertiary period, that
the mammal class attained the wealth of larg and advanced
e
*
placental forms that secured its predominance over this more
recent period.
The many and thorough investigations made during the last
few decades into the ancestral history of the mammals have
convinced all zoologists who were engaged in them that they
may be traced to a common root. All the mammals, from
the lowest monotremes and marsupials to the ape and man,
have a large number of striking characteristics in common,
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
39
and these distinguish them from all oMer vertebrates : the
hair and glands of the skin, the feeding of the young with the
mother’s milk, the peculiar formation of the lower jaw and
the ear-bones connected therewith, and other features in the
structure of the skull; also, the possession of a knee-cap
(patelhW and the loss of the nucleus m the red blood-cells,
further, the complete diaphragm, which entirely separates
the pectoral cavity from the abdominal, is only found m the
mammals; in all the other vertebrates there is still an open
communication between the two cavities. The monophyletic
(or single) origin of the whole mammalian class is therefore
’now regarded by all competent experts as an established fact.
In the face of this important fact, what is called the ape
question ” loses a good deal of the importance that was for
merly ascribed to it. All the momentous consequences that
follow from it in regard to our human nature, our past and
future, and our bodily and psychic life, remain undisturbed
whether we derive man directly from one of the primates, an
ape or lemur, or from some other branch, some unknown
lower form, of the mammalian stem. It is important to point
this out, because certain dangerous attempts have been made
lately by Jesuitical zoologists and zoological Jesuits to cause
fresh confusion on the matter.
In a richly illustrated and widely read work that Hans
Kraemer published a few years ago, under the title, The
Universe and Man, an able and learned anthropologist, Pro
fessor Klaatsch of Heidelberg, deals with the origin and
development of the human race,” and admirably describes the
primitive history of man and his civilisation. However, he
denounces the idea of man’s descent from the ape as
“ irrational, narrow-minded, and false ”; he grounds this
severe censure on the fact that none of the living apes can be
the ancestor of humanity. But no competent scientist had
ever said anything so foolish. If we look closer inti) this
fight with windmills, we find that Klaatsch holds substantially
the same view of the pithecoid theory as I have done since
1866. He says expressly : “The three anthropoid apes, the
gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang, seem to diverge from a com
mon root, which was near to that of the gibbon and man.” I
had long ago given the name of archiprimas to this single
hypothetical root-form of the primates, which he calls the
“primatoid.” It lived in the earliest part of the Tertiary
period, and had probably been developed in the Cretaceous
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
from older mammals. The very forced and unnatural hypo
thesis by means of which Klaatsch goes pn to make the
primates depart very widely from the other mammals seems
to me to be quite untenable, like the similar hypothesis that
Alsberg, Wilser, and other anthropologists who deny our
pithecoid descent, have lately advanced.
All these attempts have a common object—to save’s man’s
privileged position in Nature, to widen as much as possible
the gulf between him and the rest of the mammals, and to
. conceal his real origin. It is the familiar tendency of the
■parvenu, which we so often notice in the aristocratic sons of
energetic men who have won a high position by their own ’
exertions. This sort of vanity is acceptable enough to the
ruling powers and the Churches, because it tends to support
their own fossilised pretensions to a “Divine image ” in man
and a special “ Divine grace ” in princes. The zoologist or
anthropologist who studies our genealogy in a strictly scien
tific spirit takes no more notice of these tendencies than of thè
Almanack de Gotha. He seeks to discover the naked truth,
as /t ls yielded by the great results of modern science, in
which there is no longer any doubt that man is really a de
scendant of the ape that is to say, of a long extinct anthro
poid ape. As has been pointed out over and over again by
distinguished supporters of this opinion, the proofs of it are
exceptionally clear and simple—much clearer and simpler
than they are in regard to many other mammals. Thus, for
instance, the origin of the elephants, the armadilloes, the
sirena, or the whales, is a much more difficult problem than
the origin of man.
When Huxley published his powerful essay on “Man’s
Place in Nature ” in 1863, he gave it a frontispiece showing
the skeletons of man and the four living anthropoid apes, the
Asiatic orang and gibbon, and the African chimpanzee and
gorilla. . Plate II. in the first edition of this work differs from
this in giving two young specimens of the orang and the chim
panzee, and raising their size to correspond with the other three
skeletons. Candid comparison of these five skeletons shows
that {hey. are not only very like each other generally, but are
identical in the structure, arrangement, and connection of all
the parts. The same 200 bones compose the skeleton in man
and in the four tailless anthropoid apes, our nearest relatives.
The same 300 muscles serve to move the various parts of the
skeleton. The same hair covers the skin; the same mam-
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
4P
mary glands provide food for the young. The same fourchambered heart acts as central pump of the circulation; the
same 32 teeth are found in our jaws; the same reproductive
organs maintain the species; the same groups of neurona or
ganglionic cells compose the wondrous structure of the brain,
and accomplish that highest function of the plasm which we
call the soul, and many still believe to be an immortal entity.
Huxley has thoroughly established this profound truth, and by
further comparison with the lower apes and lemurs he came to
formulate his important pithecometra principle : Whatever
organ we take, the differences between man and the anthro
poid apes are slighter than the corresponding differences
between the latter and the lower apes.” If we make a super
ficial comparison of our skeletons of the anthropomorpha, we
certainly notice a few salient differences in the size of the
various parts; but these are purely quantitative, and are due
to differences in growth, which in turn are caused by adapta
tion to different environments. There are, as is well known,
similar differences between human beings; their arms are
sometimes long, sometimes short; the forehead may be high
or low, the hair thick or thin, and so on.
These anatomic proofs of the pithecoid theory are most
happily supplemented and confirmed by certain recent brilliant
discoveries in physiology. Chief amongst these are the
famous experiments of Dr. Hans Friedenthal at Berlin. He
showed that the human blood acts poisonously on and decom
poses the blood of the lower apes and other mammals, but has
not that effect on the blood of the anthropoid apes.1
From previous transfusion experiments it had been learned
that the affinity of mammals is connected to a certain extent
with their chemical blood-relationship. If the living blood of
two nearly related animals of the same family, such as the
dog and the fox, or the rabbit and the hare, is mixed together,
the living blood-cells of each species remain uninfluenced. But
if we mix the blood of the dog and the rabbit, or the fox and
the hare, a struggle for life immediately takes place between
the two kinds of blood-cells. The watery fluid of serum
destroys the blood-cells of the rodent, and m’ce-'nersd.. It is
the same with specimens of the blood of the various primates.
The blood of the lower apes and lemurs, which are. close to
the common root of the primate stem, has a destructive effect
1 See account of similar experiments in the Lancet, 18th January,
1902. [Trans.]
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
on the blooiof the anthropoid apes and man, and mce
On the other hand, the human blood has no injurious effect
when it is mixed with that of the anthropoid apes.
In recent years these interesting experiments have been
continued by other physiologists and physicians, such as Pro
fessor Uhienhuth at Greifswald and Nuttall at London, and
they have proved directly the blood-relationship of various
mammals. Nuttall studied them carefully in 900 different
kinds of blood, which he tested by 16,000 reactions. He
the £r£“Jati°n of affinity to the lowest apes of the New
World ; and Uhienhuth continued as far as the lemurs. By
these results the affinity of man and the anthropoid apes, long
established by anatomy, has now been proved physiologically
to be in real “blood-relationship. ”1
*
?
Not less important are the embryological discoveries
of the deceased zoologist, Emil Selenka.
He made two
long journeys to the East Indies, in order to study on
the spot the embryology, of the Asiatic anthropoid apes
the orang and gibbon.
By means of a number of
embryos that he collected he showed that certain
remarkable peculiarities in the formation of the placenta, that
had up to that time been considered as exclusively human
and regarded as a special distinction of our species, were
found in just the same way in the closely related anthropoid
apes, though not in the rest of the apes. On the ground of
these and other facts, I maintain that the descent of man from
extinct Tertiary anthropoid apes is proved just as plainly as• the descent of birds from reptiles, or the descent of reptiles
from amphibians, which no zoologist hesitates to admit toThe relationship is as close as was claimed by my
former fellow-student, the Berlin anatomist, Robert Hartmann
(with whom I sat at the feet of Johannes Müller fifty years
ago), in his admirable work on the anthropoid apes (1883).
He proposed to divide the order of primates into two families
the primarii (man and the anthropoid apes), and simians (thè
real apes, the catarrhine or eastern, and the platyrrhine or
western apes).
Since? the Dutch physician, Eugen Dubois, discovered the '
famous remains of the fossil ape-man (pithecanthropus
1 Wasmann meets these convincing experiments with mere Jesuitical
sophistry. Of the same character is his attack on my Evolution of Man
an„,°n the instructive work of Robert Wiedersheim, Man’s Structure as
<a Witness to his Past.
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43
erectus) eleven years ago in Java, and thus brought to light
“the missing link,” a large number of works have been pub
lished on this very interesting group of the primates. In this
connection we may particularly note the demonstration by the
Strassburg anatomist, Gustav Schwalbe, that the previously
discovered Neanderthal skull belongs to an extinct species of
man, which was midway between the pithecanthropus and the
true human being—the homo primigenus. After a very
careful examination, Schwalbe at the same time refuted all
the biassed objections that Virchow had made to these and
other fossil discoveries, trying to represent them as patho
logical abnormalities. In all the important relics of fossil
men that prove our descent from anthropoid apes Virchow
saw pathological modifications, due to unsound habits, gout,
rickets, or other diseases of the dwellers in the diluvial caves.
He tried in every way to impair the force of the arguments
for our primate affinity. So in the controversy over the pithe
canthropus he raised the most improbable conjectures, merely
for the purpose of destroying its significance as a real link
between the anthropoid apes and man.
Even now, in the controversy over this important ape
question, amateurs and biassed anthropologists often repeat
the false statement that the gap between man and the anthro
poid ape is not yet filled up and the “ missing link ” not yet
discovered. This is a most perverse statement, and can only
arise either from ignorance of the anatomical, embryological,
and paleontological facts, or incompetence to interpret them
aright.
As a fact, the morphological chain that stretches
from the lemurs to the earlier western apes, from these to the
eastern tailed apes, and to the tailless anthropoid apes, and
from these direct to man, is now uninterrupted and clear. It
would be more plausible to speak of missing links between the
earliest lemurs and their marsupial ancestors, or between the
latter and their monotreme ancestors. But even these gaps
are unimportant, because comparative anatomy and embryo
logy, with the support of paleontology, have dissipated all
doubt as to the unity of the mammalian stem. It is ridiculous
to expect paleontology to furnish an unbroken series of
positive data, when we remember how scanty and imperfect
its material is.
I cannot go further here into the interesting recent research
in regard to special aspects of our simian descent; nor would
it greatly advance our object, because all the general con-
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elusions as to man’s primate descent remain intact, which
ever way we construct hypothetically the special lines of
simian evolution. On the other hand, it is interesting- for us
to see how the most recent form of Darwinism, so happily
described by Escherich as “ecclesiastical evolution,” stands
in regard to these great questions. What does its astutest
representative, Father Erich Wasmann, say about them? The
tenth chapter of his work, in which he deals at length with
‘the application of the theory of evolution to man,” is a
masterpiece of Jesuitical science, calculated to throw the
clearest truths into such confusion and so to misrepresent all
discoveries as to prevent any reader from forming a clear idea
of them. When we compare this tenth chapter with the ninth,
in which Wasmann represents the theory of evolution as an
irresistible truth on the strength of his own able studies, we
can hardly believe that they both came from the same pen—
or, rather, we can only understand when we recollect the rule
of the Jesuit Congregation : “The end justifies the means.”
Untruth is permitted and meritorious in the service of God
and his Church.
The Jesuitical sophistry that Wasmann employs in order
to save man’s unique position in Nature, and to prove that he
was immediately created by God, culminates in the antithesis
of his two natures. The “ purely zoological conception of
man,” which has been established beyond question by the
anatomical and embryological comparison with the ape, is
said to fail because it does not take into account the chief
feature, his “mental life.” It is “psychology that is best
fitted to deal with the nature and origin of man.” All the
facts of anatomy and embryology that I have gathered to
gether in my Evolution of Man in proof of the series of his
ancestors are either ignored or misconstrued and made ridicu
lous by Wasmann. The same is done with the instructive
facts of anthropology, especially the rudimentary organs,
which Robert. Wiederscheim has quoted in his Man’s Struc
ture as a Witness to his Past. It is clear that the Jesuit
writer lacks competence in this department; that he has only
a superficial and inadequate acquaintance with comparative
anatomy and embryology.
If Wasmann had studied the
morphology and physiology of the mammals as thoroughly
as those of the ants, he would have concluded, if he were
impartial, that it is just as necessary to admit a monophyletic
(or single) origin for the former as for the latter.
If, in
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
45
Wasmann’s opinion, the 4,000 species of ants form a single
“ natural system ”—that is to say, descend from one original
species—it is just as necessary to admit the same hypothesis
for the 6,000 (2,400 living and 3,600 fossil) species of
mammals, including the human species.
The severe strictures that I have passed on the sophisms
and trickery of this “ ecclesiastical evolution ” are not directed
against the person and the character of Father Wasmann,
but the Jesuitical system which he represents. I do not doubt
that this able naturalist (who is personally unknown to me)
has written his book in good faith, and has an honourable
ambition to reconcile the irreconcilable contradictions between
natural evolution and the story of supernatural creation. But
this reconciliation of reason and superstition is only possible
at the price of a sacrifice of the reason itself. We find this
in the case of all the other Jesuits—Fathers Cathrein, Braun,
y Besmer, Cornet, Linsmeier, and Muckermann—whose am
biguous “Jesuitical science” is aptly dealt with in the article
of R. H. France that I mentioned before (No. 22 of the Freie
Wort, 16th February, 1904, Frankfort).
This interesting attempt of Father Wasmann’s does not .
stand alone. Signs are multiplying that the Church militant
is about to enter on a systematic campaign. I heard from
Vienna on the 17th of February, that on the previous day
(which happened to be my birthday), a Jesuit, Father Giese,
had, in a well-received address, admitted not only evolution
in general, but even its application to man, and declared it
to be reconcilable with Catholic dogmas—and this at a
crowded meeting of “catechists”! It is important to note
that in a new Catholic cyclopaedia, Benziger’s Library of
Science, the first three volumes (issued at Einsiedeln and
Cologne, 1904) deal very fully and ably with the chief problems
of evolution : the first with the formation of the earth, the
second with spontaneous generation, the third with the theory
of descent. The author- of them, Father M. Gander, makes
most remarkable concessions to our theory, and endeavours
to show that they are not inconsistent with the Bible or the
dogmatic treatises of the chief fathers and schoolmen. But,
though there is a profuse expenditure of sophistical logic in
these Jesuitical efforts, Gander will hardly succeed in mis
leading thoughtful people. One of his characteristic positions
is that spontaneous generation (as the development of organ
ised living things by purely material processes) is inconceiv
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
able, but that it might be made possible “ by a special Divine
arrangement.” In regard to the descent of man from other
animals (which he grants), he makes the reserve that the
soul must in any case have been produced by a special creative
act.
It would be useless to go through the innumerable fallacies
and untruths of these modern Jesuits in detail, and point out
the rational and scientific'reply. The vast power of this most
dangerous religious congregation consists precisely in its
device of accepting one part of science in order to destroy the
other part more effectively with it. Their masterly act of
sophistry, their equivocal “ probabilism,” their mendacious
“reservado mentalis,” the principle that the higher aim sancti
fies the worst means, the pernicious casuistry of Liguori and
Gury, the cynicism with which they turn the holiest principles
to the gratification of their ambition, have impressed on the
Jesuits that black character that Carl Hoensbroech has so well
exposed recently.
The great dangers that menace real science, owing to
this smuggling into it of the Jesuitical spirit, must not be
undervalued. They have been well pointed out by Francé,
Escherich, and others. They are all the greater in Germany
at the present time, as the Government and the Reichstag are
working together to prepare the way for the Jesuits, and to
yield a most pernicious influence on the school to these deadly
enemies of the free spirit of the country. However, we will
hope that this clerical reaction represents only a passing
episode in modern history. We trust that one permanent result
of it will be the recognition, in principle, even by the Jesuits,
of the great idea of evolution. We may then rest assured
that its most important consequence, the descent of man from
other primate forms, will press on victoriously, and soon be
recognised as a beneficent and helpful truth.
�CHAPTER III
The Controversy
over
the
Soul.
THE IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY AND GOD
Though it was my original intention to deliver only two
lectures, I have been moved by several reasons to add a
supplementary one. In the first place, I notice with regret
that I have been compelled by pressure of time to leave un
touched in my earlier lectures, or to treat very inadequately,
several important points in my theme; there is, in particular,
the very important question of the nature of the soul. In the
second place, I have been convinced by the many contradictory
press-notices during the last few days that many of my in
complete observations have been misunderstood or misinter
preted. And, thirdly, it seemed advisable to give a brief and
clear summary of the whole subject in this farewell lecture,
to take a short survey of the past, present, and future of the
theory of evolution, and especially its relation to the three
great questions of personal immortality, the freedom of the
will, and the personality of God.
I must claim the reader’s patience and indulgence even to
a greater extent than in the previous chapters, as the subject
is one of the most difficult and obscure that the human mind
approaches.
I have dealt at length in my recent works,
The Riddle of the Universe and The Wonders of Life, with
the controversial questions of biology that I treat cursorily
here. But I would like to put before you now, in a general
survey, the powerful arguments that modern science employs
against the prevailing superstition in regard to evolution, and
to show that the Monistic system throws a clear light on the
great questions of God and the world, the soul and life.
In the previous chapters I have tried to give a general idea
•
47
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
of the present state of the theory of evolution and its victorious
struggle with the older legend of creation. We have seen
that even the most advanced organism, man, was not brought
into being by a creative act, but gradually developed from a
long series of mammal ancestors. We also saw that the most
man-like mammals, the anthropoid apes, have substantially
the same structure as man, and that the evolution of the
latter from the former can now be regarded as a fully estab
lished hypothesis, or, rather, an historical fact. But in this
study we had in view mainly the structure of the body and
its various organs. We touched very briefly on the evolution
of the human mind, or the immaterial soul that dwells in the
body for a time, according to a venerable tradition. To-day
we turn chiefly to the development of the soul, and consider
whether man’s mental development is controlled by the same
natural laws as that of his body, and whether it also is
inseparably bound up with that of the rest of the mammals.
At the very threshold of this difficult province we encounter
the curious fact that there are two radically distinct tendencies
in psychology at our universities to-day. On one side we
have the metaphysical and professional psychologists. They
still cling to the older view that man’s soul is a special entity,
a unique independent individuality, which dwells for a time
only in the mortal frame, leaving it and living on as an
immortal spirit after death. This dualistic theory is connected
with the doctrine of most religions, and owes its high
authority to the fact that it is associated with the most
important ethical, social, and practical interests. Plato gave
prominence to the idea of the immortality of the soul in
philosophy long ago. Descartes at a later date gave emphasis
to it by ascribing a true soul to man alone and refusing it to
the animals.
This metaphysical psychology, which ruled alone for a
considerable period, began to be opposed in the eighteenth,
and still more in the nineteenth, century by comparative
psychology. An impartial comparison of the psychic processes
in the higher and lower animals proved that there were numer
ous transitions and gradations. A long series of intermediate
stages connects the psychic life of the higher animals with
that of man on the one side, and that of the lower animals
on the other. There was no such thing as a sharp dividing
line, as Descartes supposed.
But the greatest blow was dealt at the predominant meta
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
49
physical conception of the life of the soul thirty years ago
by the new methods of psychophysics. By means of a series
of able experiments the physiologists, Theodor Fechner and
Ernst Heinrich Weber, of Leipsic, showed that an important
part of the mental activity can be measured and expressed in
mathematical formulae just as well as other physiological pro
cesses, such as muscular contractions.
Thus the laws of
physics control a part of the life of the soul just as absolutely
as they do the phenomena of inorganic nature. It is true that
psychophysics has only partially realised the very high ex
pectations that were entertained in regard to its Monistic
significance; but the fact remains that a part of the mental
life is just as unconditionally ruled by physical laws as any
other natural phenomena.
Thus physiological psychology was raised by psychophysics
to the rank of a physical and, in principle, exact science. But
it had already obtained solid foundations in other provinces
of biology. Comparative psychology had traced connectedly
the long gradation from man to the higher animals, from these
to the lower, and so on down to the very lowest. At the
lowest stage it found those remarkable beings, invisible with
the naked eye, that were discovered in stagnant water every
where after the invention of the microscope (in the second half
of the seventeenth century) and called “infusoria.”
They
were first accurately described and classified by Gottfried
Ehrenberg, the famous Berlin microscopist. In 1838 he
published a large and beautiful work, illustrating on 64 folio
pages the whole realm of microscopic life; and this is still
the base of all studies of the protists.
Ehrenberg was a
very ardent and imaginative observer, and succeeded in com
municating his zeal for the study of microscopic organisms
to his pupils. I still recall with pleasure the stimulating ex
cursions that I made fifty years ago (in the summer of 1854)
with my teacher, Ehrenberg, and a few other pupils—
including my student-friend, Ferdinand von Richthofen, the
famous geographer—to the Zoological Gardens at Berlin.
Equipped with fine nets and small glasses, we fished in the
ponds of the Zoological Gardens and in the Spree, and caught
thousands of invisible micro-organisms, which then richly
rewarded our curiosity by the beautiful forms and mysterious
movements they disclosed under the microscope.
The way in which Ehrenberg explained to us the structure
and the vital movements of his infusoria was very curious.
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Misled by the'comparison of the real infusoria with the micro-scopic but highly organised rotifers, he had formed the idea
that all animals are alike advanced in organisation, and had
indicated this erroneous theory in the very title of his work :
The Infusoria as Perfect Organisms: a Glance at the Deeper
Life of Organic Nature. He thought he could detect in the
simplest infusoria the same distinct organs as in the higher
animals—stomach, heart, ovaries, kidneys, muscles, and
nerves—and he interpreted their psychic life on the same
peculiar principle of equally advanced organisation.
Ehrenberg’s theory of life was entirely wrong, and was
radically destroyed in the hour of its birth (1838) by the cell
theory which was then formulated, and to which he never
became reconciled. Once Matthias Schleiden had shown the
composition of all the plants, tissues, and organs from micro
scopic cells, the last structural elements of the living organ
ism, and Theodor Schwann had done the same for the animal
.body, the theory attained such an importance that Kolliker
and Leydig based on it the modern science of tissues, or his
tology, and Virchow constructed his cellular pathology by
applying it to diseased human beings. These are the most
important advances of theoretical medicine. But it was still
a long time before the difficult question of the relation of these
microscopic beings to the cell was answered. Carl Theodor
von Siebold had already maintained (in 1845) that) the real
infusoria and the closely related rhizopods were unicellular
organisms, and had distinguished these protozoa from the
rest of the animals. At the same time, Carl Naegeli had de
scribed the lowest algae as “unicellular plants.” But this
important conception was not generally admitted until some
time afterwards, especially after I brought all the unicellular
organisms under the head of “protists” (1872), and defined
their psychic functions as the “cell-soul.”
I was led to make a very close study of these unicellular
protists and their primtive cell-soul through my research on
the radiolaria, a very remarkable class of microscopic organ
isms that float in the sea. I was engaged most of my time
for more than thirty of the best years of my life (1856-87) in
studying them in every aspect, and if I came eventually to
adopt a strictly Monistic attitude on all the great questions of
biology, I owe it for the most part to my innumerable ob
servations and uninterrupted reflections on the wonderful vita!
movements that are disclosed by these smallest and frailest,
.
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
51
and at the same time most beautiful and varied, of living
things.
I had undertaken the study of the radiolaria as a kind of
souvenir of my great master, Johannes Muller. He had loved
| to study these animals (of which only a few species were
discovered for the first time in the year of my birth, 1834) in
the last years of his life, and had in 1855 set up the special
group of the rhizopods (protozoa). His last work, which
appeared shortly after his death (1858), and contained a
description of 50 species of radiolaria, went with me to the
I Mediterranean when I made my first long voyage in the
summer of 1859. I was so fortunate as to discover about
150 new species of radiolaria at Messina, and based on these
my first monograph of this very instructive class of protists
(1862). I had no suspicion at that time that fifteen years
afterwards the deep-sea finds of the famous Challenger
expedition would bring to light an incalculable wealth of
these remarkable animals. In my second monograph on them
(1887), I was able to describe more than 4,000 different
species of radiolaria, and illustrate most of them on 140 plates.
I have given a selection of the prettiest forms on ten plates of
If- my Art-forms in Nature.
I have not space here to go into the forms and vital movei ments of the radiolaria, of the general import of which my
t friend, Wilhelm Bolsche, has given a very attractive account
! in his various popular works. I must restrict myself to
pointing out the general phenomena that bear upon our
| particular subject, the question of the mind. The pretty
; flinty skeletons of the radiolaria, which enclose and protect
I the soft unicellular body, are remarkable, not only for their
I extraordinary gracefulness and beauty, but also for the geo
metrical regularity and relative constancy of their forms. The
■ '4,000 species of radiolaria are just as constant as the 4,000
[’■ known species of ants; and, as the Darwinian Jesuit, Father
I Wasmann, has convinced himself that the latter have all
| descended by transformation from a common stem-form, I
s have concluded on the same principles that the 4,000 species
■ of radiolaria have developed from a primitive form in virtue
■ of adaptation and heredity. This primitive form, the stem[ radiolarian (Actissa) is a simple round cell, the soft living
protoplasmic body of which is divided into two different parts,
an inner central capsule (in the middle of which is the solid
■ round nucleus) and an outer gelatinous envelope (calymma).
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
From the outer surface of the latter hundreds and thousands
of fine plasmic threads radiate; these are mobile and sensitive
processes of the living internal substance, the plasm (or proto
plasm). 1 hese delicate microscopic threads, or pseudopodia,
are the curious organs that effect the sensations (of touch), the
locomotion (by pushing), and the orderly construction of the
flinty house; at the same time, they maintain the nourishment
of the unicellular body, by seizing infusoria, diatoms, and
other protists, and drawing them within the plasmic body,
where they are digested and assimilated.
The radiolaria
generally reproduce by the formation of spores. The nucleus
within the protoplasmic globule divides into two small nuclei,
each of which surrounds itself with a quantity of plasm, and
forms a new cell.
What is this plasm ? What is this mysterious “ living sub
stance ” that we find everywhere as the material foundation of
the “ wonders of life ” ? Plasm, or protoplasm, is, as Huxley
rightly said thirty years ago, “the physical basis of organic
life ”; to speak more precisely, it is a chemical compound of
carbon that alone accomplishes the various processes of life.
In its simplest form the living cell is merely a soft globule of
plasm, containing a firmer nucleus. The inner nuclear matter
(called caryoplasm) differs somewhat in chemical composition
from the outer cellular matter (or cytoplasm); but both sub
stances are composed of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen,
and sulphur; both belong to the remarkable group of the
albuminates, the nitrogenous carbonates that are distin
guished for the extraordinary size of their molecules and the
unstable arrangement of the numerous atoms (more than a
thousand) that compose them.
There are, however, still simpler organisms in which the
nucleus and the body of the cell have not yet been differentiated. These are the monera, the whole living body of
which is merely a homogeneous particle of plasm (the chromacea and bacteria). The well-known bacteria which now play
so important a part as the causes of most dangerous infectious
diseases, and the agents of putrefaction, fermentation, etc.,
show very clearly that organic life is only a chemical and
physical process, and not the outcome of a mysterious “ vital
force.”
We see this still more clearly in our radiolaria, and at the
same time they show us unmistakably that even the psychic
activity is such a physico-chemical process. All the different
I!
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�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
53
functions of their cell-soul, the sense-perception of stimuli,
the movement of their plasm, their nutrition, growth, and
reproduction are determined by the particular chemical com
position of each of the 4,000 species; and they have all
descended, in virtue of adaptation and heredity, from the
common stem-form of the naked, round parent-radiolarian
(Actissa).
We may instance, as a peculiarly interesting fact in the
psychic life of the unicellular radiolaria, the extraordinary
power of memory in them. The relative constancy with which
the 4,000 species transmit the orderly and often very complex
form of their protective flinty structure from generation to
generation can only be explained by admitting in the builders,
the invisible plasma-molecules of the pseudopodia, a fine
“plastic sense of distance,” and a tenacious recollection of
• the architectural power of their fathers. The fine, formless
plasma-threads are always building afresh the same delicate
flinty shells with an artistic trellis-work, and with protective
radiating needles and supports always at the same points of
their surface. The physiologist, Ewald Hering (of Leipsic),
had spoken in 1870 of memory as “a general function of
organised matter.” I myself had tried to explain the mole
cular features of heredity by the memory of the plasma-mole
cules, in my essay on “ The Perigenesis of the Plastidules ”
(1875). Recently one of the ablest of my pupils, Professor
Richard Semon (of Munich, 1904), made a profound study of
“Mneme as the principle of constancy in the changes of
organic phenomena,” and reduced the mechanical process of
reproduction to a purely physiological base.
From the cell-soul and its memory in the radiolaria and
other unicellular protists, we pass directly to the similar
phenomenon in the ovum, the unicellular starting-point of the
individual life, from which the complex multicellular frame of
all the histona, or tissue-forming animals and plants, is deve
loped. Even the human organism is at first a simple nucleated
globule of plasm, about-ji^-inch in diameter, barely visible
to the naked eye as a tiny point. This stem-cell (cytula) is
formed at the moment when the ovum is fertilised, or mingled
with the small male spermatozoon. The ovum transmits to
the child by heredity the personal traits of the mother, the
sperm-cell those of the father; and this hereditary trans
mission extends to the finest characteristics of the soul as well
as of the body. The modern research as to heredity, which
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occupies so much space now in biological literature, but was
only started by . Darwin in 1859, is directed immediately to
the visible material processes of impregnation.
The very interesting and important phenomena of impregna
tion have only been known to us in detail for thirty years.
It has been shown conclusively, after a number of delicate
investigations, that the individual development of the embryo
from the stem-cell or fertilised ovum is controlled by the same
laws in . all cases.
The stem-cell divides and subdivides
rapidly into a number of simple cells. From these a few
simple organs, the germinal layers, are formed at first; later
on the various organs, of which there is no trace in the early
embryo, are built up out of these. The biogenetic law teaches
us how, in this development, the original features of the
ancestral history are reproduced or recapitulated in the em
bryonic processes; and these facts in turn can only be
explained by the unconscious memory of the plasm, the
“ mneme of the living substance ” in the germ-cells and
especially in their nuclei.
One important result of these modern discoveries was the
prominence given to the fact that the personal soul has a
beginning of existence, and that we can determine the precise
moment in which this takes place; it is when the parent cells,
the ovum and spermatozoon, coalesce. Hence what we call
the soul of man or the animal has not pre-existed, but begins
its career at the moment of impregnation ; it is bound up with
the chemical constitution of the plasm, which is the material
vehicle of heredity in the nucleus of the maternal ovum and
the paternal spermatozoon. One cannot see how a being
that thus has a beginning of existence can afterwards prove
to be “immortal.”
Further, a candid examination of the simple cell-soul in the
unicellular infusoria, and of the dawn of the individual soul
in the unicellular germ of man and the higher animals, proves
at once that psychic action does not necessarily postulate a
fully formed nervous system, as was previously believed.
There is no such system in many of the lower animals, or any
of the plants, yet we find psychic activities, especially sensa
tion, irritability, and reflex action everywhere. All living
plasm has a psychic life, and in this sense the psyche is a
partial function of organic life generally. But the higher
psychic functions, particularly the phenomena of conscious
ness, only appear gradually in the higher animals, in which
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
55
(in consequence of a division of labour among the organs) the
nervous system has assumed these functions.
It is particularly interesting to glance at the central nervous
system of the vertebrates, the great stem of which we regard
ourselves as the crowning point. Here again the anatomical
and embryological facts speak a clear and unambiguous
language. In all vertebrates, from the lowest fishes up to
man, the psychic organ makes its appearance in the embryo, in
the same form—a simple cylindrical tube on the dorsal side t
of the embryonic body, in the middle line.
The anterior
section of this “ medullary tube ” expands into a club-shaped
vesicle, which is the beginning of the brain ; the posterior and
thinner section becomes the spinal cord. The cerebral vesicle
divides, by transverse constrictions, into three, then four, and
eventually five vesicles. The most important of .these is the
first, the cerebrum, the organ of the highest psychic functions.
The more the intelligence develops in the higher vertebrates,
the larger, more voluminous, and more specialised does the
cerebrum become. In particular, the grey mantle or cortex
of the cerebrum, its most important part, only attains in the
higher mammals the degree of quantitative and qualitative
.development that qualifies it to be the “organ of mind” in the
narrower sense. Through the famous discoveries, of Paul
Flechsig eleven years ago we were enabled to distinguish
eight fields in the cortex, four of which serve as the internal
centres of sense-perception, and the four that lie between these
are the thought-centres (or association-centres) of the higher
psychic faculties—the association’ of impressions, the forma
tion of ideas and concepts, induction and deduction. This
real organ of mind, the phronema, is not yet developed in
the lower mammals. It is only gradually built up in the more
advanced, exactly in proportion as their intelligence increases.
It is only in the most intelligent forms of the placentals, the
higher ungulates (horse, elephant), the carnivores (fox, dog),
and especially the primates, that the phronema attains the
high grade of development that leads us from the anthropoid
apes direct to the savage, and from him to civilised man.
We have learned a good deal about the special significance
of the various parts of the brain, as organs of specific
functions, by the progress of the modern science of experi
mental physiology. Careful experiments by Goltz, Munk,
Bernard, and many other physiologists, have shown that the
normal consciousness, speech, and the internal sense-percep
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tions, are connected with definite areas of the cortex, and that
these various parts of the soul are destroyed when the organic
areas connected with them are injured. But in this respect
Nature has unconsciously given us the most instructive
experiments. Diseases in these various areas show how their
functions are partially or totally extinguished when the cere
bral cells that compose them (the neurona or ganglionic cells)
are partially or entirely destroyed. Here again Virchow,
who was the first to make a careful microscopic study of the
finest changes in the diseased cells, and so explain the nature
of the disease, did pioneer work. I still remember very well
a spectacle of this kind (in the summer of 1855, at Wurz
burg), which made a deep impression on me.
Virchow’s
sharp eye had detected a small suspicious spot in the cerebrum
of a lunatic, though there seemed to be nothing remarkable
about it on superficial examination. He handed it to me for
microscopic examination, and I found that a large number of
the ganglionic cells were affected, partly by fatty degenera
tion and partly by calcification. The luminous remarks that
my great teacher made on these and similar finds in other
cases of mental disorder, confirmed my conviction of the unity
of the human organism and the inseparable connection of
mind and body, which he himself at that time expressly shared.
When he abandoned this Monistic conception of the psychic
life for Dualism and Mysticism twenty years afterwards
(especially after his Munich speech in 1877), we must attri
bute this partly to his psychological metamorphosis, and
partly to the political motives of which I spoke in the last
chapter.
We find another series of strong arguments in favour of
our Monistic psychology in the individual development of the
soul in the child and the young animal. We know that the
new-born child has as yet no consciousness, no intelligence,
no independent judgment and thought. We follow the gradual
development of these higher faculties step by step in the
first years of life, in strict proportion to the anatomical
development of the cortex with which they are bound up.
The inquiries into the child-soul which Wilhelm Preyer began
in Jena twenty-five years ago, his careful “observations of
the mental development of man in his early years,” and the
supplementary research of several more recent physiologists,
have shown, from the ontogenetic side, that the soul is not
a special immaterial entity, but the sum-total of a number of
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
57
connected functions of the brain. When the brain dies, the
soul comes to an end.
We have further proof in the .stem-history of the soul,
which we gather from the comparative psychology of the lower
and higher mammals, and of savage and civilised rapes.
Modern ethnography shows us in actual existence the various
stages through which the mind rose to its present height.
The most primitive races, such as the Veddahs of Ceylon, or
the Australian natives, are very little above the mental life
of the anthropoid apes. From the higher savages we pass by
a complete gradation of stages to the most civilised races.
But what a gulf there is, even here, between the genius of a
Goethe, a Darwin, or a Lamarck, and an ordinary philistine
or third-rate official. All these facts point to one conclusion :
the human soul has only reached its present height by a long
period of gradual evolution; it differs in degree, not in kind,
from the soul of the higher mammals; and thus it cannot in
any case be immortal.
That a large number of educated people still cling to the
dogma of personal immortality in spite of these luminous
proofs, is owing to the great power of conservative tradition
and the evil methods of instruction that stamp these untenable
dogmas deep on the growing mind in early years. It is for
that very reason that the Churches strive to keep the schools
under their power at any cost; they can control and exploit
the adults at will, if independent thought and judgment have
been stifled in the earlier years.
This brings us to the interesting question : What is the
position of the “ecclesiastical evolution” of the Jesuits (the
“latest course of Darwinism ”), as regards this great question
of the soul? Man is, according to Wasmann, the image of
God and a unique, immaterial being, differing from all other
animals in the possession of an immortal soul, and therefore
having a totally different origin from them. Man’s immortal
soql is, according to this Jesuit sophistry, “spiritual and
sensitive,” while the animal soul is sensitive only. God has
implanted his own spirit in man, and associated it with an
animal soul for the period of life. It is true that Wasmann
believes even man’s body to have been created directly by
God; but, in view of the overwhelming proofs of our animal
descent, he leaves open the possibility of a development from
a series of other animals, in which case the Divine spirit
would be breathed into him in the end. The Christian Fathers,
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
who were much occupied with the introduction of the soul into
the human embryo, tell us that the immortal soul enters the
soulless embryo on the fortieth day after conception in the
case of the boy, and on the eightieth day in the case of the
girl. If Wasmann . supposes that there was a similar intro
duction of the soul in the development of the race, he must
postulate a moment in the history of the anthropoid apes
when God sent his spirit into the hitherto unspiritual soul of
the ape.
When we look at the matter impartially in the light of
pure reason, the belief in immortality is wholly inconsistent
with the facts of evolution and of physiology. The onto
genetic dogma of the older Church, that the soul is introduced
into the soulless body at a particular moment of its embryonic
development, is just as absurd as the phylogenetic dogma of
the most modern Jesuits, that the Divine spirit was breathed
into the frame of an anthropoid ape at a certain period (in
the Tertiary period), and so converted it into an immortal
soul. We may examine and test this belief as we will, we
can find in it nothing but a piece of mystic superstition. It is
maintained solely by the great power of tradition and the
support of Conservative governments, the leaders of which
have no personal belief in these “revelations,” but cling to
the practical conviction that throne and altar must support
each other. They unfortunately overlook the circumstance
that the throne is apt to become merely the footstool to the
altar, and that the Church exploits the State for its own, not
the State’s, good.
We learn further, from the history of this dogma, that
the belief in immortality did not find its way into science until
a comparatively late date. It is not found in the great
Monistic natural philosophers who, six centuries before the
time of Christ, evinced a profound insight into the real nature
of the world. It is not found in Democritus and Empedocles,
in Seneca and Lucretius Carus. It is not found in the older
Oriental religions, Buddhism, the ancient religion of the,
Chinese, or Confucianism; in fact, there is no question of
individual persistence after death in the Pentateuch or the
earlier books of the Old Testament (which were written before
the Babylonian Exile). It wras Plato and his pupil, Aristotle,
that found a place for it in their dualistic metaphysics; and
its agreement with the Christian and Mohammedan teaching
secured for it a very widespread acceptance.
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
59
Another psychological dogma, the belief in man’s free-will,
is equally inconsistent with the truth of evolution. Modern
physiology shows clearly that the will is never really free in
man or in the animal, but determined by the organisation of
the brain ; this in turn is determined in its individual character
by the laws of heredity and the influence of the environment.
It is only because the apparent freedom of the will has such
a great practical significance in the province of religion,
morality, sociology, and law, that it still forms the subject
of the most contradictory claims. Theoretically, determinism,
or the doctrine of the necessary character of our volitions,
was established long ago.
With the belief in the absolute freedom of the will and the
personal immortality of the soul is associated, in the minds of
many highly educated people, a third article of faith, the
belief in a personal God. It is well known that this belief,
often wrongly represented as an indispensable foundation of
religion, assumes the most widely varied shapes. As a rule,
however, it is an open or covert anthropomorphism. God is
conceived as the “Supreme Being,” but turns out, on closer
examination, to be an idealised man.
According to the
Mosaic narrative, “God made man to his own image and
likeness,” but it is usually the reverse; “Man made God
according to his own image and likeness.” This idealised
man becomes creator and architect and produces the world,
forming the various species of plants and animals like a
modeller, governing the world like a wise and all-powerful
monarch, and, at the “Last Judgment,” rewarding the good
and punishing the wicked like a rigorous jud^e. The childish
conceptions of this extramundane God, who is set over against
the world as an independent being, the personal creator,
maintainer, and ruler of all things, are quite incompatible
with the advanced science of the nineteenth century, especially
with its two greatest triumphs, the law of substance and the
law of Monistic evolution.
Critical philosophy, moreover, long ago pronounced its
doom. In the first place, the most famous critical thinker,
Immanuel Kant, proved in his Critique of Pure Reason that
absolute science affords no support to the three central dogmas
of metaphysics, the personal God, the immortality of the soul,
and the freedom of the will. It is true that he afterwards
(in the course of his dualistic and dogmatic metamorphosis)
taught that we must believe these three great mystic forces,
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LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
and that they are indispensable postulates of practical reason ;
and that the latter must take precedence over pure reason.
Modern German philosophy, which clamours for a “ return to
Kant,” sees his chief distinction in this impossible reconcilia
tion of polar contradictions. The Churches, and the ruling
powers in alliance with them, accord a welcome to this
diametrical contradiction, recognised by all candid readers of
the Königsberg philosopher, between the two reasons. They
use the confusion that results for the purpose of putting the
light of the creeds in the darkness of doubting reason, and
imagine that they save religion in this way.
Whilst we are engaged with the important subject of
religion, we must refute the charge, often made, and renewed
of recent years, that our Monistic philosophy and the theory
of evolution that forms its chief foundation destroy religion.
It is only opposed to those lower forms of religion that are
based on superstition and ignorance, and would hold man’s
reason in bondage by empty formalism and belief in' the
miraculous, in order to control it for political purposes. This
is chiefly the case with Romanism or Ultramontanism, that
pitiful caricature of pure Christianity that still plays so im
portant a part in the world. Luther would turn in his grave
if he could see the predominance of the Roman Centre party
in the German Empire to-day. We find the papacy, thé deadly
enemy of Protestant Germany, controlling its destiny, and
the Reichstag submitting willingly to be led by the Jesuits.
Not a voice do we hear raised in it against the three most
dangerous and mischievous institutions of Romanism—the
obligatory celibacy of the clergy, the confessional, and in
dulgences. Though these later institutions of the Roman
Church have nothing to do with the original teaching of the
Church and pure Christianity ; though their immoral conse
quences, so prejudicial to the life of the family and the State,
are known to all, they exist just as they did before the
Reformation. Unfortunately, many German princes foster
the ambition of the Roman clergy, making their “Canossajourney ” to Rome, and bending the knee to the great
charlatan at the Vatican.
It is also very regrettable that the increasing tendency to
external show and festive parade at what is called “the new
court ” does grave injury to real and inner religion. We have
a striking instance of this external religion in the^ new
cathedral at Berlin, which many would have us regard as
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
6r
“ Catholic,” not Protestant and Evangelical. I often met in
India priests and pilgrims who believed they were pleasing
their God by turning prayer-wheels, or setting up prayer-mills
that were set in motion by the wind. One might utilise the
modern invention of automatic machines for the same pur
poses, and set up praying automata in the new cathedral, or
indulgence-machines that would give relief from lighter sins
for one mark [shilling], and from graver sins for twenty
marks. It would prove a great source of revenue to the
Church, especially if similar machines were set up in the
other churches that have lately been erected in Berlin at a
cost of millions of marks. It would have been better to have
spent the money on schools.
These observations on the more repellent characters of
modern orthodoxy and piety may be taken as some reply to
the sharp attacks to which I have been exposed for forty years,
and which have lately been renewed with great violence. The
spokesmen of Catholic and Evangelical beliefs, especially the
Romanist Germania and the Lutheran Reichsbote, have vied
with each other in deploring my lectures as “a desecration
of this venerable hall,” and in damning my theory of evolu-»
tion—without, of course, making any attempt to refute its
scientific truth. They have, in their Christian charity, thought
fit to put sandwich-men at the doors of this room, to dis
tribute scurrilous attacks on my person and my teaching to
those who enter. They have made a generous use of the
fanatical calumnies that the court chaplain, Stocker, the
theologian, Loofs, the philologist, Dennert, and other opponents of my Riddle of the Universe, have disseminated, and to
which I make a brief reply at the end of that work. I pass
by the many untruths of these zealous protagonists of
theology. We men of science have a different conception of
truth from that which prevails in ecclesiastical circles.1
1 I may remind those who think that the hall of the Musical Academy
is “desecrated” by my lectures, that it was in the very same place that
Alexander von Humboldt delivered, seventy-seven years ago (1.828), the
remarkable lectures that afterwards made up his Cosmos. The great
traveller, whose clear mind had recognised the unity of Nature, and had,
with Goethe, discovered therein the real knowledge of God, endeavoured
to convey his thoughts in popular form to the educated Berlin public,
and to establish the universality of natural law. It was my aim to
establish, as regards the organic world, precisely what Humboldt had
proved to exist in inorganic nature. I wanted to show how the great
advance of modern biology (since Darwin’s, time) enables us to solve
I the most difficult of all problems, the historical development of plants
�62
LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
As regards the relation of science to Christianity, I will only
point out that it is quite irreconcilable with the mystic and
supernatural Christian beliefs, but that it fully recognises
the high ethical value of Christian morality. It is true that
the highest commands of the Christian religion, especially
those of sympathy and brotherly love, are not discoveries of
its own ; the golden rule was taught and practised centuries
before the time of Christ. However, Christianity has the dis
tinction of. preaching and developing it with a fresh force.
In its time it has had a beneficial influence on the development
of civilisation,, though in the Middle Ages the Roman Church
became, with its Inquisition, its witch-drowning, its burning
of heretics, and its religious wars, the bloodiest caricature of
the gentle religion of love. Orthodox historical Christianity
is not directly destroyed by modern science, but by its own
learned and zealous theologians. The enlightened Protestant
ism that was so effectively advocated by Schleiermacher in
Berlin eighty years ago, the later works of Feuerbach, the
inquiries into the lif-e of Jesus of David Strauss and Ernest
Renan, the lectures recently delivered here by Delitzsch and
aHarnack, have left very little of what strict orthodoxy regards
as the indispensable foundations of historical Christianity.
Kalthoff, of Bremen, goes so far as to declare that all Christian
traditions are myths, and that the development of Christianity
is a necessary outcome of the civilisation of the time.
In view of this broadening tendency in theology and philo
sophy at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is an
unfortunate anachronism that the Ministers of Public Instruct
tion of Prussia and Bavaria sail in the wake of the Catholic
Church, and seek to instil the spirit of the Jesuits in both
lower and higher education. It is only a few weeks since thé
Prussian Minister of Worship made a dangerous attempt to
suppress academic freedom, the palladium of mental life in
Germany. This increasing réaction recalls the sad days of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when thousands of
the finest citizens of Germany migrated to North America,
in order to develop their mental powers in a free atmosphere.
This selective process formed a blessing to the United States,
but it was certainly very injurious to Germany. Large
and animals in humanity. Humboldt in his day earned the most lively
approval and gratitude of all free-thinking and truth-seeking men, and
the displeasure and suspicion of the orthodox and conservative courtiers
at Berlin.
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
63
numbers of weak and servile characters and sycophants were
thus favoured. The fossilised ideas of many of our leading
jurists seem to take us back sometimes to the Cretaceous and
Jurassic periods, while the palaeozoic rhetoric of our theo
logians and synods even goes back to the Permian and
Carboniferous epochs.
However, we must not take too seriously the anxiety that
this increasing political and clerical reaction causes us. We
must remember the vast resources of civilisation that are seen
to-day in our enormous international intercourse, and must
have confidence in the helpful exchange of ideas between East
and West that is being effected daily by our means of transit.
Even in Germany the darkness that now prevails will at
length give place to the dazzling light of the sun. Nothing,
in my opinion, will contribute more to that end than the
unconditional victory of the idea of evolution.
Beside the law of evolution, and closely connected with
it, we have that great triumph of modern science, the law of
substance—the law of the conservation of matter (Lavoisier,
1789), and of the conservation of energy (Robert Mayer, 1842).
These two laws are irreconcilable with the three central
dogmas of metaphysics, which so -many educated people still
regard as the most precious treasures of their spiritual life—
the belief in a personal God, the personal immortality of the
soul, and the liberty of the human will. But these great
objects of belief, so intimately bound up with numbers of our
treasured achievements and institutions, are not on that
account driven out of the world. They merely cease to pose
as truths in the realm of pure science. As imaginative
creations, they retain a certain value in the world of poetry.
Here they will not only, as they have done hitherto, furnish
’thousands of the finest and most lofty motives for every
branch of art—sculpture, painting, or music—but they will
still have a high ethical and social value in the education
of the young and in the organisation of society. Just as we
derive artistic and ethical inspiration from the legends of
classical antiquity (such as the Hercules myth, the Odyssey
and the Iliad) and the story of William Tell, so we shall con
tinue to do in regard to the stories of the Christian mythology.
But we must do the same with the poetical conceptions of
other religions, which have given the most varied forms to
the transcendental ideas of God, freedom, and immortality.
Thus the noble warmth of art will remain, together with—
||
?
;
;
�LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION
64
not in opposition to, but in harmony with-—the splendid light
of science, one of the most precious possessions of the human
mind. As Goethe said : “ He who has science and art has
religion ; he who has not these two had better have religion.”
Our Monistic system, the “connecting link between religion
and science,” brings God and the world into unity in the
sense that Goethe willed, the sense that Spinoza clearly ex
pressed long ago and Giordano Bruno had sealed with his
martyrdom. It has been said repeatedly of late that Goethe
was an orthodox Christian. A few years ago a young orator
quoted him in support of the wonderful dogmas of the
Christian religion. We may point out that Goethe himself
expressly said he was “a decided non-Christian.”
The
“great heathen of Weimar ” has given the clearest expression
. to his Pantheistic views in his noblest poems, Faust, Prome
theus, and God and the World. How could so vig'orous a
thinker, in whose mind the evolution of organic life ran
through millions of years, have shared the narrow belief of
a Jewish prophet and enthusiast who sought to give up his
life for humanity 1,900 years ago?
,
Our Monistic god, the all-embracing essence of the world,
the Nature-god of Spinoza and Goethe, is identical with the
1 eternal, all-inspiring energy, and is one, in eternal and infinite
£ substance, with space-filling matter. It “lives and moves in
| all things,” as the Gospel says. And as we see that the law
of substance is universal, that the conservation of matter and
of energy is inseparably connected, and that the ceaseless
development of this substance follows the same “eternal iron
| laws,” we find God in natural law itself. The will of God
is at work in every falling drop of rain and every growing
crystal, in the scent of the rose and the spirit of man.
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■ Passmore Edwards.
Paine.
The Unity of Comte’s Life
and Doetrine. By J. H. Paine’s Political Writings.
* The whole of the above List, exceptin those marked with an * or a J, may
be had in cloth at is. net. + Published at 6d. net (paper),
t Published in cloth at is. 6d. net.
London : Watts & Co., 17 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
�R.P.A. SIXPENNY REPRINTS.
(Five or mope fpee at published ppiee to any inland address.)
1. Huxley’s Lectures
and 25. 'God and the Bible.
By
Essays. (A Selection.)
I
Matthew Arnold.
2. The Pioneers of Evolu 26 & 27. ¡The Evolution of
tion. By Edward Clodd.
Man. By Ernst Haeckel.
3. Modern Science & Modern 28. Hume’s Essays: I.—An In
Thought. By Samuel Laing.
quiry _ Concerning- Human Under
standing. II.— An Inquiry Con
4. 'Literature and Dogma.
By Matthew Arnold.
cerning the Principles of Morals.
5. The Riddle of the Uni
verse. By Ernst Haeckel.
6. 'Education : Intellectual,
Moral, and Physical.
By
Herbert Spencer.
7. The Evolution of the idea
of God. By Grant Allen.
8. Human Origins. By S. Laing.
9. The Service of Man. By J.
Cotter Morrison.
10. Tyndall’s Lectures and
Essays. (A Selection.)
11. The Origin of Species.
By C. Darwin.
12. Emerson’s Addresses &
Essays.
13. On Liberty. By J. S. Mill.
74. 'The Story of Creation.
By Edward Clodd.
15. 'An Agnostic’s
Apology.
By Sir Leslie Stephen.
16. The
Life
of
Ernest Renan.
17. A
Modern
Jesus.
By
Zoroastrian.
By S. Laing.
Newman.
32. Asiatic
Studies.
A. C. Lyall.
Bv Sir
33. Man’s Place in Nature.
By T. II. Huxley.
34. The Origins of Religion,
and Other Essays.
Lang. ■
By Andrew
35. Twelve
Lectures
and
Essays. By T. H. Huxley.
36. Haeekel: His Life and
Work. By Wilhelm Bölsche.
37. 38,
and 39. 'Life of
Thomas Paine. By Moncure
D. Conway.
40. The Hand of God, and
Other Posthumous Es
says. By Grant Allen.
41. The Nature and Origin of
Living Matter. By Dr. H.
Charlton Bastian.
18. An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Herbert
Spencer. By Professor W. H.
Hudson.
19. Three Essays on Religion.
By John Stuart Mill.
20. Creed of
29. Herbert Spencer’s Es
says. (A Selection.)
30. An Easy Outline of Evo
lution. By Dennis Hird, M.A.
31 Phases of Faith. By F. W.
Christendom.
By W. R. Greg.
2L The Apostles.
Renan.
By Ernest
22. Problems of the Future.
By S. Laing.
23. Wonders of Life.
Haeckel.
By Ernst
24. Jesus of Nazareth.
Edward Clodd.
42. Last Words on Evolution.
By Ernst Haeckel.
43. Paganism and Christi
anity. By J. A. Farrer.
44 & 45. 'History of Ration
alism. By W. E. H. Lecky.
46. Aphorisms and Reflec
tions. By T. H. Huxley.
47 & 48. * History of, Euro
+
pean Morals. By W. E. H.
Lecky.
49. Selected Works of Vol
taire. Translated, with Intro
duction, by Joseph Mc.Cabe.
By
50. The
Kingdom
of Man.
By Sir Ray Lankester.
* The whole of the above list, with th i exception of those marked with an
asterisk, are supplied in cloth at is. net
t Published at 6d. qet.
Complete Catalogue and copy of iiThe Literary Guide ” (16 large pages)
free on receipt ofpost-card.
London : Watts & Co., 17 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & 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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Last words on evolution : a popular retrospect and summary
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August [1834-1919]
McCabe, Joseph [1867-1955]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 64 p. ; 18 cm.
Series title: Pamphlets for the Millions
Series number: No. 8
Notes: Publisher's advertisements inside and on back cover. Portrait of the author on front cover. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association. Marginal marking of text in pencil. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Watts & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1912
Identifier
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N295
Subject
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Evolution
Science
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Last words on evolution : a popular retrospect and summary), 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
Evolution
NSS