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THE LAST WORD ABOUT JESUS.
BY JOHN
FISKE.
THE JESUS OF HISTORY*
StW Jill the great founders of religions, Jesus is at once the best
.1 1 known and the least known to the modern scholar. From
/ the dogmatic point of view he is the best known, from the
historic point of view he is the least known. The Jesus of
dogma is in every lineament familiar to us from early childhood ; but
concerning the Jesus of history we possess but few facts resting upon
trustworthy evidence ; and in order to form a picture of him at once
consistent, probable, and distinct in its outlines, it is necessary to enter
upon a long and difficult investigation, in the course of which some of
the most delicate apparatus of modern criticism will not fail to be re
quired. This circumstance is sufficiently singular to require especial
*
explanation. The case of Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, which
may perhaps be cited as parallel, is in reality wholly different. Not
only did Sakyamuni live five centuries earlier than Jesus, among a
people that have at no time possessed the art of insuring authenticity
in their records of events, and at an era which is at best but dimly dis
cerned through the mists of fable and legend, but the work which be
achieved lies wholly out of the course of European history, and it is
only in recent times that his career has presented itself to us as a
problem needing to be solved. Jesus, on the other hand, appeared in
an age which is familiarly and in many respects minutely known to us,
and among a people whose fortunes we can trace with historic certainty
for at least seven1 centuries previous to his birth ; while his life and
achievements have probably had a larger share in directing the entire
subsequent intellectual and moral development of Europe than those
of any other man who has ever lived. Nevertheless, the details of his
personal career are shrouded in an obscurity almost as dense as that
which envelops the life of the remote founder of Buddhism.
* The Jesus of History (Anonymous). 8vo, pp. 426. London : Williams &
Norgate, 1869. New York : Scribner, Welford & Co.
Vie De Jesus, par Ernest Renan. Paris, 1867. (Thirteenth edition, revised and
partly rewritten.)
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THE
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OF
HISTORY.
This phenomenon, however, appears less strange and paradoxical
when we come to examine it more closely. A little reflection will dis
close to us several good reasons why the historical records of the life of
Jesus should be so scanty as they are. In the first place, the activity
of Jesus was private rather than public. Confined within exceedingly
narrow limits, both of space and of duration, it made no impression
whatever upon the politics or the literature of the time. His name
does not occur in the pages of any contemporary writer, Roman. Greek,
or Jewish. Doubtless the case would have been wholly different, had
he, like Mohammed, lived to a ripe age, and had the exigencies of his
peculiar position as the Messiah of the Jewish people brought him into
relations with the empire; though whether, in such case, the success
of his grand undertaking would have been as complete as it has
actually been, may well be doubted.
Secondly, Jesus did not, like Mohammed and Paul, leave behind
him authentic writings which might serve to throw light upon his
mental development as well as upon the external facts of his career.
Without the Koran and the four genuine Epistles of Paul, we should
be nearly as much in the dark concerning these great men as we now
are concerning the historical Jesus. We should be compelled to rely,
in the one case, upon the untrustworthy gossip of Mussulman chron
iclers, and in the other case upon the garbled statements.of the “ Acts
of the Apostles,” a book written with a distinct dogmatic pui
p
*ose,
sixty or seventy years after the occurrence of the events which it pro
fesses to record.
It is true, many of the words of Jesus, preserved by hearsay tradi
tion through the generation immediately succeeding his death, have
come down to us, probably with little alteration, in the pages of the
three earlier evangelists. These are priceless data, since, as we shall
see, they are almost the only materials at our command for forming
even a partial conception of the character of Jesus’ work. .Neverthe
less, even here the cautious inquirer has only too often to pause in face
of the difficulty of distinguishing the authentic utterances ’of the great
teacher from the later interpolations suggested by the dogmatic neces
sities of the narrators. Bitterly must the historian regret that Jesus
had no philosophic disciple, like Xenophon, to record his Memorabilia.
Of the various writings included in the New Testament, the Apocalypse
alone (and possibly the Epistle of Jude), is from the pen of a personal
acquaintance of Jesus; and besides this, the four epistles of Paul, to
the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, make up the sum of the
writings from which we may demand contemporary testimony. Yet
from these we obtain absolutely nothing of that for which we are
seeking. The brief writings of Paul are occupied exclusively with the
internal significance of Jesus’ work. The epistle of Jude—if it be
really written by Jesus’ brother of that name, which is doubtful—is
solely a polemic directed against the innovations of Paul. And the
�THE
JESUS
OF
HISTORY.
11
Apocalypse, the work of the fiery and imaginative disciple John, is con
fined to a prophetic description of the Messiah’s anticipated return, and
tells us nothing concerning the deeds of that Messiah while on the earth.
Here we touch upon our third consideration,—the consideration
which best enables us to see why the historic notices of Jesus are so
meagre. Rightly considered, the statement with which we opened this
article is its own explanation. The Jesus of history is so little known,
just because the Jesus of dogma is so well known. Other teachers—
Paul, Mohammed, Sakyamuni—have come merely as preachers of
righteousness, speaking in the name of general principles with which
their own personalities were not directly implicated. But Jesus, as we
shall see, before, the close of his life, proclaimed himself to be some
thing more than a preacher of righteousness. He announced himself—
and justly, from his own point of view—as the long-expected Messiah
sent by Jehovah to liberate the Jewish race. Thus the success of his
religious teachings became at once implicated with the question of his
personal nature and character. After the sudden and violent termina
tion of his career, it immediately became all-important with his fol
lowers to prove that he was really the Messiah, and to insist upon the
certainty of his speedy return to the earth. Thus the first generation
of disciples dogmatized about him, instead of narrating his life—a task
which to them would have seemed of little profit. For them the allabsorbing object of contemplation was the immediate future rather than
the immediate past. As all the earlier Christian literature informs us,
for nearly a century after the death of Jesus, his followers lived in daily
anticipation of his triumphant return to the earth. The end of all
things being so near-at hand, no attempt was made to ensure accurate
and complete memoirs for the use of a posterity which was destined, in
Christian imagination, never to arrive. The first Christians wrote but
little ; even Papias, at the end of a century, preferring second-hand or
third-hand oral tradition to the written gospels which were then be
ginning to come into circulation. Memoirs of the life and teachings
of Jesus were called forth by the necessity of having a written stan
dard of doctrine to which to appeal amid the growing differences of
opinion which disturbed the Church. Thus the earlier gospels exhibit,
though in different degrees, the indications of a modifying, sometimes
of an overruling dogmatic purpose. There is, indeed, no conscious
violation of historic truth, but from the varied mass of material sup
plied by tradition, such incidents are selected as are fit to support the
views of the writers concerning the personality of Jesus. Accordingly,
while the early gospels throw a strong light upon the state of Christian
opinion at the dates when they were successively composed, the infor
mation which they give concerning Jesus himself is, for that very
reason, often vague, uncritical, and contradictory. Still more is this
true of the fourth gospel, written late in the second century, in which
historic tradition is moulded in the interests of dogma until it becomes
�12
THE
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OF HISTORY.
no longer recognizable, and in the place of the human Messiah of the
earlier accounts, we have a semi-divine Logos or zEon, detached from
God and incarnate for a brief season in the likeness of man.
Not only was history subordinated to dogma by the writers of the
gospel-narratives, but in the minds of the Fathers of the Church who
assisted in determining what writings should be considered canonical,
dogmatic prepossession went very much further than critical acumen.
Nor is this strange when we reflect that critical discrimination in
questions of literary authenticity is one of the latest acquisitions of the
cultivated human mind. In the early ages of the Church, the evidence
of the genuineness of any literary production was never weighed critic
ally ; writings containing doctrines acceptable to the majority of Chris
tians, were quoted as authoritative, while writings which supplied no
dogmatic want were overlooked, or perhaps condemned as apocryphal.
A striking instance of this is furnished by the fortunes of the Apoca
lypse. Although perhaps the best authenticated work in the New
Testament collection, its millenarian doctrines caused it to become
unpopular as the Church gradually ceased to look for the speedy return
of the Messiah, and, accordingly, as the canon assumed a definite
shape, it was placed among the “ Antilegomena,” or doubtful books,
and continued to hold a precarious position until after the time of the
Protestant Reformation. On the other hand, the fourth gospel, which
was quite unknown and probably did not exist at the time of the
Quartodeciman controversy (A. D. 168), was accepted with little hesi
tation, and at the beginning of the third century is mentioned by
Irenapus, Clement, and Tertullian, as the work of the Apostle John.
To this uncritical spirit, leading to the neglect of such books as failed
to answer the dogmatic requirements of the Church, may probably be
attributed the loss of so many of the earlier gospels. It is doubtless
for this reason that we do not possess the Aramaean original of the
“Logia” of Matthew, or the “Memorabilia” of Mark, the companion
of Peter,—two works to which Papias (A. D. 120) alludes as containing
authentic reports of the utterances of Jesus.
These considerations will, we believe, sufficiently explain the curious
circumstance that, while we know the Jesus of dogma so intimately,
we know the Jesus of history so slightly. The literature of early
Christianity enables us to trace with tolerable completeness the
progress of opinion concerning the nature of Jesus, from the time of
Paul’s early missions to the time of the Nicene Council; but upon the
actual words and deeds of Jesus it throws a very unsteady light. The
dogmatic purpose everywhere obscures the historic basis.
This same dogmatic prepossession which has rendered the data for
a biography of Jesus so scanty and untrustworthy, has also until com
paratively recent times prevented any unbiased critical examination of
such data as we actually possess. Previous to the eighteenth century
any attempt to deal with the life of Jesus upon purely historical
�TSE JESUS
OE BISTORT.
13
methods would have been not only contemned as irrational, but stig
matized as impious. And even in the eighteenth century, those
writers who had become wholly emancipated from ecclesiastic tradition
were so destitute of all historic sympathy and so unskilled in scientific
methods of criticism, that they utterly failed to comprehend the re
quirements of the problem. Their aims were in the main polemic, not
historical. They thought more of overthrowing current dogmas than
of impartially examining the earliest Christian literature with a view of
eliciting its historic contents; and, accordingly, they accomplished but
little. Two brilliant exceptions must, however, be noticed. Spinoza,
in the seventeenth century, and Lessing, in the eighteenth, were men
far in advance of their age. They are the fathers of modern historical
criticism; and to Lessing in particular, with his enormous erudition
and incomparable sagacity, belongs the honor of initiating that method
of inquiry which, in the hands of the so-called Tübingen School, has
led to such striking and valuable conclusions concerning the age and
character of all the New Testament Literature. But it was long
before any one could be found fit to bend the bow which Lessing and
Spinoza had wielded. A succession of able scholars—Semler, Eich
horn, Paulus, Schleiermacher, Bretschneider, and De Wette,—were re
quired to examine, with German patience and accuracy, the details of
the subject, and to propound various untenable hypotheses, before such
a work could be performed as that of Strauss. The “ Life of Jesus,”
published by Strauss when only twenty-six years of age, is one of the
monumental works of the nineteenth century, worthy to rank, as a
historical effort, along with Niebuhr’s “ History of Rome,” Wolf’s
“ Prolegomena,” or Bentley’s “ Dissertations on Phalaris.” It instantly
superseded and rendered antiquated everything which had preceded it;
nor has any work on early Christianity been written in Germany for
the past thirty years which has not been dominated by the recollection
of that marvelous book. Nevertheless, the labors of another genera
tion of scholars have carried our knowledge of the New Testament
literature far beyond the point which it had reached when Strauss first
wrote. At that time the dates of but few of the New Testament
writings had been fixed with any approach to certainty; the age and
character of the fourth gospel, the genuineness of the Pauline epistles,
even the mutual relations of the three Synoptics, were still undeter
mined ; and, as a natural result of this uncertainty, the progress of
dogma during the first century was ill understood. At the present day
it is impossible to read the early work of Strauss without being im
pressed with the necessity of obtaining positive data as to the origin
and dogmatic character of the New Testament writings, before at
tempting to reach any conclusions as to the probable career of Jesus.
These positive data we owe to the genius and diligence of the Tübingen
School, and, above all, to its founder, Ferdinand Christian Baur. Be
ginning with the epistles of Paul, of which he distinguished four as
�14
THE JESUS
OE HISTORY.
genuine, Baur gradually worked his way through the entire New
Testament collection, detecting—with that inspired insight which only
unflinching diligence can impart to original genius—the age at which
each book was written, and the circumstances which called it forth.
To give any account of Baur’s detailed conclusions, or of the method
by which he reached them, would require a volume. They are very
scantily presented in Mr. Mackay’s work on the “ Tübingen School and
its Antecedents,” to which we may refer the reader desirous of further
information. We can here merely say that twenty years of energetic
controversy have only served to establish nearly all Baur’s leading
conclusions more firmly than ever. The priority of the so-called
gospel of Matthew, the Pauline purpose of “ Luke,” the second in date
of our gospels, the derivative and second-hand character of “ Mark,”
and the unapostolic origin of the fourth gospel, are points which may
for the future be regarded as completely established by circumstantial
evidence. So with respect to the pseudo-Pauline epistles, Baur’s work
was done so thoroughly that the only question still left open for much
discussion is that concerning the date and authorship of the first
and second “ Thessalonians,”—a point of quite inferior importance, so
far as our present subject is concerned. Seldom have such vast results
been achieved by the labor of a single scholar. Seldom has any
historical critic possessed such a combination of analytic and of co
ordinating powers as Baur. His keen criticism and his wonderful
flashes of insight, exercise upon the reader a truly poetic effect like
that which is felt in contemplating the marvels of physical discovery.
The comprehensive labors of Baur were followed up by Zeller’s able
work on the “ Acts of the Apostles,” in which that book was shown
to have been partly founded upon documents written by Luke, or
some other companion of Paul, and expanded and modified by a
much later writer with the purpose of covering up the traces of the
early schism between the Pauline and the Petrine sections of the
Church. Along with this, Schwegler’s work on the “ Post-Apostolic
Times ” deserves mention as clearing up many obscure points relating
to the early development of dogma. Finally,- the “New Life of Jesus,”
by Strauss, adopting and utilizing the principal discoveries of Baur
and his followers, and combining all into one grand historical pic
ture, worthily completes the task which the earlier work of the same
author had inaugurated.
The reader will have noticed that, with the exception of Spinoza,
every one of the names- above cited in connection with the literary
analysis and criticism of the New Testament is the name of a German.
Until xvithin the last decade, Germany has indeed possessed almost an
absolute monopoly of the science of Biblical criticism ; other countries
having remained not only unfamiliar with its methods, but even grossly
ignorant of its conspicuous results, save when some German treatise of
more than ordinary popularity has now and then been translated.
�THE
JESTS
<iE HISTORY.
15
But during the past ten years France has entered the lists ; and the
writings of Reville, Reuss, Nicolas, D’Eichthal, Scherer, and Colarie
testify to the rapidity with which the German seed has fructified upon
her soil.
None of these books, however, have achieved such wide-spread
celebrity, or done so much toward interesting the general public in this
class of historical inquiries, as the “ Life of Jesus,” by Renan. This
pre-eminence of fame is partly, but not wholly, deserved. From a
•purely literary point of view, Renan’s work doubtless merits all the
celebrity it has gained. Its author writes a style such as is perhaps
equaled by that of no other living Frenchman. It is by far the most
readable book which has ever been written concerning the life of Jesus.
And no doubt some of its popularity is due to its very faults, which,
from a critical point of view, are neither few nor small. • For Renan is
certainly very faulty, as a historical critic, when he practically ignores
the extreme meagreness of our positive knowledge of the career of
Jesus, and describes scene after scene in his life as minutely and with
as much confidence as if he had himself been present to witness it all.
Again and again the critical reader feels prompted to ask, How do you
know all this ? or why, out of two or three conflicting accounts, do you
quietly adopt some particular one, as if its superior authority were
self-evident ? But in the eye of the uncritical reader, these defects are
excellences ; for it is unpleasant to be kept in ignorance when we are
seeking after definite knowledge, and it is disheartening to read page
after page of an elaborate discussion which ends in convincing us that
.definite knowledge cannot be gained.
In the thirteenth edition of the “Vie de Jesus,” Renan has cor
rected some of the most striking errors of the original work, and in
particular has, with praiseworthy candor, abandoned, his untenable
position with regard to the age and character of the fourth gospel. As
is well known, Renan, in his earlier editions, ascribed to this gospel a
historical value superior to that of the synoptics, believing it to have
been written by an eye-witness of the events which it relates; and
from this source, accordingly, he drew the larger share of his mate
rials. Now, if there is any one conclusion concerning the New Testa
ment literature which must be regarded as incontrovertibly established
by the labors of a whole generation of scholars, it is this, that the
fourth gospel was utterly unknown until about A. D. 170, that it was
written by some one who possessed very little direct knowledge of
Palestine, that its purpose was rather to expound a dogma than to give
an accurate record of events, and that as a guide to the comprehension
of the career of Jesus it is of far less value than the three synoptic
gospels. It is impossible, in a brief review like the present, to epito
mize the evidence upon which this conclusion rests, which may more
profitably be sought in the Rev. J. J. Tayleris work on “ The Fourth
Gospel,” or in Davidson s “ Introduction to the New Testament.” It
�16
THE
JESUS
OF HISTORY.
must suffice to mention that this gospel is not cited by Papias; that
Justin, Marcion, and Valentinus make no allusion to it, though, since
it furnishes so much that is germane to their views, they would gladly
have appealed to it, had it been in existence, when those view's were as
yet questionable ; and that, finally, in the great quartodeciman contro
versy, A. D. 168, the gospel is not only not mentioned, but the authority
of John is cited by Polycarp in flat contradiction of the view after
wards taken by this evangelist. Still more, the assumption of Renan
led at once into complicated difficulties with reference to the Apoca
lypse. The fourth gospel, if it does not unmistakably announce itself
as the work of John, at least professes to be Johannine; and it cannot
for a moment be supposed that such a book, making such claims, could
have gained currency during John’s lifetime without calling forth his
indignant protest. For, in reality, no book in the New Testament col
lection would so completely have shocked the prejudices of the Johan
nine party. John’s own views are well known to us from the Apoca
lypse. John was the most enthusiastic of millenarians and the most
narrow and rigid of Judaizers. In his antagonism to the Pauline
innovations he went farther than Peter himself. Intense hatred of
Paul and his followers appears in several passages of the Apocalypse,
where they are stigmatized as “ Nicolai tans,” “ deceivers of the people,”
“ those who say they are apostles and and are not,” “ eaters of meat
offered to idols,” “ fornicators,” “pretended Jews,” “ liars,” “ synagogue
of Satan,” etc. (Chap. II.) On the other hand, the fourth gospel con
tains nothing millenarian or Judaical; it carries Pauline universalism
to a far greater extent than Paul himself ventured to carry it, even
condemning the Jews as children of darkness, and by implication con
trasting them unfavorably with the Gentiles ; and it contains a theory
of the nature of Jesus which the Ebionitish Christians, to whom John
belonged, rejected to the last.
In his present edition Renan admits the insuperable force of these
objections, and abandons his theory of the apostolic origin of the fourth
gospel. And as this has necessitated the omission or alteration of all
such passages as rested upon the authority of that gospel, the book is
to a considerable extent rewritten, and the changes are such as greatly
to increase its value as a history of Jesus. Nevertheless, the author
has so long been in the habit of shaping his conceptions of the career
of Jesus by the aid of the fourth gospel, that it has become very diffi
cult for him to pass freely to another point of view. He still clings to
the hypothesis that there is an element of historic tradition contained
in the book, drawn from memorial writings which had perhaps been
handed down from John, and which were inaccessible to the synoptists.
In a very interesting appendix, he collects the evidence in favor of this
hypothesis, which indeed is not without plausibility, since there is
*
every reason for supposing that the gospel was written at Ephesus,
which a century before had been John’s place of residence. But even
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
17
granting most of Renan’s assumptions, it must still follow that the
authority of this gospel is far inferior to that of the synoptics, and can
in no case be very confidently appealed to.“ The question is one of the
first importance to the historian of early Christianity. In inquiring
into the life of Jesus, the very first thing to do is to establish firmly in
the mind the true relations of the fourth gospel to the first three.
Until this has been done, no one is competent to write on the subject ;
and it is because he has done this so imperfectly that Renan’s work is,
from a critical point of view, so imperfectly successful.
The anonymous work entitled “ The Jesus of History,” which we
have placed at the head of this article, is in every respect noteworthy
as the first systematic attempt made in England to follow in the foot
steps of German criticism in writing a life of Jesus. We know of no
good reason why the book should be published anonymously ; for as a
historical essay it possesses extraordinary merit, and does great credit
not only to its author, but to English scholarship and acumen. It is
not, indeed, a book calculated to captivate the imagination of the read
ing public. Though written in a clear, forcible, and often elegant style,
it possesses no such wonderful rhetorical charm as the work of Renan ;
and it will probably never find half-a-dozen readers where the “ Vie de
Jésus ” has found a hundred. But the success of a book of this sort
is not to be measured by its rhetorical excellence, or by its adaptation
to the literary tastes of an uncritical and uninstructed public, but
rather by the amount of critical sagacity which it brings to bear upon
the elucidation of the many difficult and disputed points in the subject
of which it treats. Measured by this standard, the “ Jesus of History”
must rank very high indeed. To say that it throws more light upon
the career of Jesus than any work which has ever before been written
in English would be very inadequate praise, since the English language
has been singularly deficient in this branch of historical literature.We shall convey a more just idea of its merits if we say that it will
bear comparison with anything which even Germany has produced,
save only the works of Strauss, Baur, and Zeller.
The fitness of our author for the task which he has undertaken is
shown at the outset by his choice of materials. In basing his con
clusions almost exclusively upon the statements contained in the first
gospel, he is upheld by every sound principle of criticism. The times
and places at which our three synoptic gospels were written have been,
through the labors of the Tiibingen critics, determined almost to a
certainty. Of the three, “ Mark ” is unquestionably the latest ; with
the exception of about twenty verses, it is entirely made up from
“ Matthew ” and “ Luke,” the diverse Petrine and Pauline tendencies
of which it strives to neutralize in conformity to the conciliatory dis
position of the Church at Rome, at the epoch at which this gospel
was written, about A. D. 130. Thé third gospel was âlsp written at
Rome, some fifteen years earlier. In the preface, its author describes
�18
THE
JEEUE
OE HIE To RY.
it as a compilation from previously existing written materials. Among
these materials was certainly the first gospel, several passages of which
are adopted word for word by the author of “ Luke.” Yet the narra
tive varies materially from that of the first gospel in many essential
points. The arrangement of events is less natural, and, as in the
“ Acts of the Apostles ” by the same author, there is apparent through
out the design of suppressing the old discord between Paul and the
Judaizing disciples, and of representing Christianity as essentially
Pauline from the outset. How far Paul was correct in his interpreta
tion of the teachings of Jesus, it is difficult to decide. It is, no doubt,
possible that the first gospel may have lent to the words of Jesus an
Ebionite coloring in some instances,' and that now and then the third
gospel may present us with a truer account. To this supremely im
portant point we shall by and by return. For the present it must
suffice to observe that the evidences of an overruling dogmatic pur
pose are generally much more conspicuous in the third synoptist than
in the first; and that the very loose manner in which this writer has
handled his materials in the “Acts” is not calculated to inspire us
with confidence in the historical accuracy of his gospel. The writer
who, in spite of the direct testimony of Paul himself, could represent
the apostle to the Gentiles as acting under the direction of the dis
ciples at Jerusalem, and who puts Pauline sentiments into the mouth
of Peter, would certainly have been capable of unwarrantably giving
a Pauline turn to the teachings of Jesus himself. We are therefore,
as a last resort, brought back to the first gospel, which we find to
possess, as a historical narrative, far stronger claims upon our attention
than the second and third. In all probability it had assumed nearly
its present shape before A. I). 100; its origin is unmistakably Pales
tinian ; it betrays comparatively few indications of dogmatic purpose;
and there are strong reasons for believing that the speeches of Jesus
recorded in it are in substance taken from the genuine “ Logia ” of
Matthew mentioned by Papias, which must have been written as early
as A. D. 60-70, before the destruction of Jerusalem. Indeed, we are
inclined to agree with our author that the gospel, even in its present
shape (save only a few interpolated passages), may have existed as
early as A. D. 80, since it places the time of Jesus’ second coming
immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem; whereas the third
evangelist, who wrote forty-five years after that event, is careful to tell
us, “ The end is not immediately.” Moreover, it must have been
written while the Paulo-Petrine controversy was still raging, as is
shown by the parable of the “ enemy who sowed the tares,” which
manifestly refers to Paul, and also by the allusions to “ false prophets,”
(vii. 15,) to those who say, “ Lord, Lord,” and who “ cast out demons
in the name of the Lord,” (vii. 21-23,) teaching men to break the
commandinents, (v. 17-20.) There is, therefore, good reason for be
lieving that we have here a narrative written not much more than fifty
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
19
years after the death of Jesus, based partly upon the written memorials
of an apostle, and in the main trustworthy, save where it relates oc
currences of a marvelous and legendary character. Such is our
author’s conclusion, and in describing the career of the Jesus of his
tory, he relies almost exclusively upon the statements contained in the
first gospel. Let us now, after this long but inadequate introduction,
give a brief sketch of the life of Jesus, as it is to be found in our
author.
II.
Concerning the time and place of the birth of Jesus, we know next
to nothing. According to uniform tradition, based upon a statement
of the third gospel, he was about thirty years of age at the time when
he began teaching. The same gospel states, with elaborate precision,
that the public career of John the Baptist began in the fifteenth year
of Tiberius, or A. D. 28. In the winter of A. D. 35-36, Pontius Pilate
was recalled from Judaea, so that the crucifixion could not have taken
place later than in the spring of 35. Thus we have a period of about
six years during which the ministry of Jesus must have begun and
ended; and if the tradition with respect to his age be trustworthy, we
shall not be far out of the way in supposing him to have been born
somewhere between B. C. 5 and A. D. 5. He is everywhere alluded to
in the gospels as Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee, where lived also his
father, mother, brothers and sisters, and where very likely he was born.
His parents’ names are said to have been Joseph and Mary. His own
name is a Hellenized form of Joshua, a name very common among the
Jews. According to the first gospel (xiii. 55), he had four brothers,—
Joseph and Simon; James, who was afterward^
one
**
of the heads of
the church at Jerusalem, and the most formidable enemy of Paul; and
Judas or Jude, who is perhaps the author of the anti-Pauline epistle
commonly ascribed to him.
Of the early youth of Jesus, and of the circumstances which guided
his intellectual development, we know absolutely nothing, nor have we
the data requisite for forming any plausible hypothesis. He first
appears in history about A. D. 29 or 30, in connection with a very
remarkable person whom the third evangelist describes as his cousin,
and who seems, from his mode of life, to have been in some way con
nected with or influenced by the Hellenizing sect of Essenes. Here
we obtain our first clue to guide us in forming a consecutive theory of
the development of Jesus’ opinions. The sect of Essenes took its rise
in the times of the Maccabees, about B. C. 170. Upon the funda
mental doctrines of Judaism it had engrafted many Pythagorean
notions, and was doubtless in the time of Jesus instrumental in
spreading Greek ideas among the people of Galilee, whei^ Judaism
was far from being so narrow and rigid as at Jerusalem. The Essenes
�20
THE
JESUS
OF HISTORY.
•attached but little importance to the Messianic expectations of the
Pharisees, and mingled scarcely at all in national politics. They lived
for the most part a strictly ascetic life, being indeed the legitimate pre
decessors of the early Christian hermits and monks. But while pre
eminent for sanctity of life, they heaped ridicule upon the entire
sacrificial service of the Temple, despised the Pharisees as hypocrites,
and insisted upon charity toward all men instead of the old. Jewish
exclusiveness.
It was once a favorite theory that both John the Baptist and Jesus
were members of the Essenian brotherhood; but that theory is now
generally abandoned. Whatever may have been the case with John,
who is said to have lived like an anchorite in the desert, there seems to
have been but little practical Essenism in Jesus, who is almost uni
formly represented as cheerful and social in demeanor, and against
whom it was expressly urged that he came eating and drinking, making
no pretence of puritanical holiness. He was neither a puritan, like the
Essence, nor a ritualist, like the Pharisees. Besides-which, both John
and Jesus seem to have begun their careers by preaching the un-Essene
doctrine of the speedy advent of the “ kingdom of heaven,” by which is
meant the reign of the Messiah upon the earth. Nevertheless, though
we cannot regard Jesus as actually a member of the Essenian commu
nity or sect, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that he, as well as
John the Baptist, had been at some time strongly influenced by Es
senian doctrines. The spiritualized conception of the “kingdom of
heaven” proclaimed by him was just what would naturally and logi
cally arise from a remodeling of the Messianic theories of the Phar
isees in conformity to advanced Essenian notions. It seems highly
probable that some such refined conception of the functions of the
Messiah was reached by John, who, stigmatizing the Pharisees and
Sadducees as a “generation of vipers,” called aloud to the people to re
pent of their sins, in view of the speedy advent of the Messiah, and to
testify to their repentance by submitting to the Essenian rite of bap
tism. There is no positive evidence that Jesus was ever a disciple of
John; yet the account of the baptism, in spite of the legendary char
acter of its details, seems to rest upon a historical basis; and perhaps
the most plausible hypothesis which can be framed is, that Jesus re
ceived baptism at John’s hands, became for awhile his disciple, and
acquired from him a knowledge of Essenian doctrines.
The career of John seems to have been very brief. His stern puritanism brought him soon into disgrace with the government of Galilee.
He was seized by Herod, thrown into prison, and beheaded. After the
brief hints given as to the intercourse between Jesus and John, we next
hear of Jesus alone in the desert, where, like Sakyamuni and Moham
med, he may have brooded in solitude over his great project. Yet we
do not find that he had as yet formed any distinct conception of his
own Messiahship. The total neglect of chronology by our authorities
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
21
renders it impossible to trace the development of his thoughts step by
step; but for some time after John’s catastrophe we find him calling
upon the people to repent, in view of the speedy approach of the Mes
siah, speaking with great and commanding personal authority, but
using no language which would indicate that he was striving to do
more than worthily fill the place and add to the good work of his late
master. The Sermon on the Mount, which the first gospel inserts in
this place, was probably never spoken as a continuous discourse; but it
no doubt for the most part contains the very words of Jesus, and repre
sents the general spirit of his teaching during this earlier portion of
his career. In this is contained nearly all that has made Christianity
so powerful in the domain of ethics. If all the rest of the gospel were
taken away, or destroyed in the night of some future barbarian inva
sion, we should still here possess the secret of the wonderful impression
which Jesus made upon those who heard him speak. Added to the
Essenian scorn of Pharisaic formalism, and the spiritualized conception
of the Messianic kingdom, which Jesus may probably have shared with
John the Baptist, we have here for the first time the distinctively
Christian conception of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
men, which ultimately insured the success of the new religion. The
special point of originality in Jesus was his conception of Deity. As
Strauss well says, “ he conceived of God, in a moral point of view, as
being identical in character with himself in the most exalted moments
of his religious life, and strengthened in turn his own religious life by
this ideal. But the most exalted religious tendency in his own con
sciousness was exactly that comprehensive love, overpowering the evil
only by the good, and which he therefore transferred to God as the
fundamental tendency of His nature.” From this conception of God,
observes Zeller, flowed naturally all the moral teaching of Jesus; the
insistance upon spiritual righteousness instead of the mere mechanical
observance of Mosaic precepts; the call to be perfect even as the Father
is perfect; the principle of the spiritual equality of men before God and
the equal duties of all men toward each other.
How far, in addition to these vitally important lessons, Jesus may
have taught doctrines of an ephemeral or visionary character, it is very
difficult to decide. We are inclined to regard the third gospel as of
some importance in settling this point. The author of that gospel rep
resents Jesus as decidedly hostile to the rich. Where Matthew has
“ Blessed are the. poor in spirit,” Luke has “ Blessed are ye poor.” In
the first gospel we read, “ Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for they will be filled; ” but in the third gospel we find,
“ Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye will be filled; ” and this assur
ance is immediately followed by the denunciation, “ Woe to you that
are rich, for ye have received your consolation! Woe to you that are
full now, for ye will hunger.” The parable of Dives and Lazarus illus
trates concretely this view of the case, which is still further corroborated
�22
THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
by the account, given in both the first and the third gospels, of the
young man who came to seek everlasting life. Jesus here maintains
that righteousness is insufficient unless voluntary poverty be super
added. Though the young man has strictly fulfilled the greatest of the
commandments—»to love his neighbor as himself—he is required, as a
needful proof of his sincerity, to distribute all his vast possessions
among the poor. And when he naturally manifests a reluctance to
perform so superfluous a sacrifice, Jesus observes that it will be easier
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
share in the glories of the anticipated Messianic kingdom. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that we have here a very primitive and
probably authentic, tradition; and when we remember the importance
which, according to the “ Acts,” the earliest disciples attached to the
principle of communism, as illustrated in the legend of Ananias and
Sapphira,.we must admit strong reasons for believing that Jesus him
self held views which tended toward the abolition of private property.
On this point, the testimony of the third evangelist singly is of consid
erable weight; since at the time when he wrote, the communistic the
ories of the first generation of Christians had been generally abandoned,
and in the absence of any dogmatic motives, he could only have inserted
these particular traditions because he believed them to possess histori
cal value. But we- are not dependent on the third gospel alone. The
story just cited is attested by both our authorities, and is in perfect
keeping with the general views of Jesus as reported by the first evan
gelist. Thus his disciples are enjoined to leave all, and follow him; to
take no thought for the morrow; to think no more of laying up treas
ures on the earth, for in the Messianic kingdom they shall have treas
ures in abundance, which can neither be wasted nor stolen. On
making their journeys, they are to provide neither money, nor clothes,
nor food, but are to live at the expense of those whom they visit; and
if any town refuse to harbor them, the Messiah, on his arrival, will deal
with that town more severely than Jehovah dealt with the cities of the
plain. Indeed, since the end of the world was to come before the end
of the generation then living (Matt. xxiv. 34; 1 Cor. xv. 51-56; vii, 29),
there could be no need for acquiring property or making arrangements
for the future; even marriage became unnecessary. These teachings
of Jesus have a marked Essenian character, as well as his declaration
that in the Messianic kingdom there was to be no more marriage, per
haps no distinction of sex (Matt. xxii. 30). The sect of Ebionites, who
represented the earliest doctrine and practice of Christianity before it
had been modified by Paul, differed from the Essenes in no essential
respect save in the acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah, and the
expectation of his speedy return to the earth.
How long, or with what success, Jesus continued to preach the
coming of the Messiah in Galilee, it is impossible to conjecture. His
fellow-townsmen of Nazareth appear to have ridiculed him in his pro
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
23
phetical capacity; or, if we may trust the third evangelist, to have
arisen against him with indignation, and made an attempt upon his
life. To them he was but a carpenter, the son of a carpenter (Matt,
xiii. 55 ; Mark vi. 3), who told them disagreeable truths. Our author
represents his teaching in Galilee to have produced but little result,
but the gospel narratives afford no definite data for deciding this point.
We believe the most probable conclusion to be that Jesus did attract
many followers, and became famous throughout Galilee ; for Herod is
said to have regarded him as John the Baptist risen from the grave.
To escape the malice of Herod, Jesus then retired to Syro-Phoenicia,
and during this eventful journey, the consciousness of his own Messiahship seems for the first time to have distinctly dawned upon him
(Matt. xiv. 1, 13 ; xv. 21; xvi. 13-20). Already, it appears, specula
tions were rife as to the character of this wonderful preacher. Some
thought he was John the Baptist, or perhaps one of the prophets of the
Assyrian period returned to the earth. Some, in accordance with a
generally-received tradition, supposed him to be Elijah, who had never
seen death, and had now at last returned from the regions above the
firmament to announce the coming of the Messiah in the clouds. It
was generally admitted, among enthusiastic hearers, that he who spake
as never man spake before must have some divine commission to exe
cute. These speculations, coming to the ears of Jesus during his
preaching in Galilee, could not fail to excite in him a train of self-con
scious reflections. To him also must have been presented the query as
to his own proper character and functions ; and, as our author acutely
demonstrates, his only choice lay between a profitless life of exile in
Syro-Phoenicia, and a bold return to Jewish territory in some pro
nounced character. The problem being thus propounded, there could
hardly be a doubt as to what that character should be. Jesus knew
well that he was not John the Baptist; nor, however completely he
may have been dominated by his sublime enthusiasm, was it likely that
he could mistake himself for an ancient prophet arisen from the lower
world of shades, or for Elijah descended from the sky. But the Mes
siah himself he might well be. Such indeed was the almost inevitable
corollary from his own conception of Messiahship. We have seen that
he had, probably from the very outset, discarded the traditional notion
Qf a political Messiah, and recognized the truth that the happiness of a
people lies not so much in political autonomy as in the love of God and
the sincere practice of righteousness. The people were to be freed
from the bondage of sin, of meaningless formalism, of consecrated
hypocrisy,—a bondage more degrading than the payment of tribute to
the emperor. The true business of the Messiah, then, was to deliver
his people from the former bondage; it might be left to Jehovah, in
his own good time, to deliver them from the latter. Holding these
views, it was hardly possible that it should not sooner or later occur to
Jesus that he himself was the person destined to discharge this glorious
�34
THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
function, to liberate his countrymen from the thraldom of Pharisaic
ritualism, and to inaugurate the real Messianic kingdom of spiritual
righteousness. Had he not already preached the advent of this spiritual
kingdom, and been instrumental in raising many to loftier conceptions
of duty, and to a higher and purer life ? And might he not now, by a
grand attack upon Pharisaism in its central stronghold, destroy its
prestige in the eyes of the people, and cause Israel to adopt a nobler
religious and ethical doctrine ? The temerity of such a purpose
detracts nothing from its sublimity. And if that purpose should be
accomplished, Jesus would really have performed the legitimate work
of the Messiah. Thus, from his own point of view, Jesus was thor
oughly consistent and rational in announcing himself as the expected
Deliverer; and in the eyes of the impartial historian his course is fully
justified.
From that time,” says the first evangelist, “ Jesus began to show
to his disciples, that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things
from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be put to death, and
rise again on the third day.” Here we have, obviously, the knowledge
of the writer, after the event, reflected back and attributed to Jesus.
It is of course impossible that Jesus should have predicted with such
definiteness his approaching death ; nor is it very likely that he enter
tained any hope of being raised from the grave “ on the third day.”
To a man in that age and country, the conception of a return from the
lower world of shades was not a difficult one to frame; and it may well
be that Jesus’ sense of his own exalted position was sufficiently great
to inspire him with the confidence that, even in case of temporary fail
ure, Jehovah would rescue him from the grave and send him back with
larger powers to carry out the purpose of his mission. But the diffi
culty of distinguishing between his own words and the interpretation
put upon them by his disciples becomes here insuperable; and there
will always be room for the hypothesis that Jesus had in view no
posthumous career of his own, but only expressed his unshaken confi
dence in the success of his enterprise, even after and in spite of his
death.
At all events, the possibility of his death must now have been often
in his mind. He was undertaking a well-nigh desperate task,—to
overthrow the Pharisees in Jerusalem itself. No other alternative was
left him.' And here we believe Mr. F. W. Newman to be singularly at
fault in pronouncing this attempt of Jesus upon Jerusalem a “fool
hardy ” attempt. According to Mr. Newman, no man has any busi
ness to rush upon certain death, and it is only a crazy fanatic who will
do so. But such “ glittering generalizations ” will here help us but
little. The historic data show that to go to Jerusalem, even at the
risk of death, was absolutely necessary to the realization of Jesus’ Mes
sianic project. Mr. Newman certainly would not have had him drag
out an inglorious and baffled existence in Syro-Phoenicia. If the
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
25
Messianic kingdom was to be fairly inaugurated, there was work to be
done in Jerusalem, and Jesus must go there as one in authority,, cost
what it might- We believe him to have gone there in a spirit of grand
and careless braverv. vet seriously and soberly and under the influence
of no fanatical delusion. He knew the risks, but deliberately chose to
incur them, that the will of Jehovah might be accomplished.
We next hear of Jesus traveling down to Jerusalem by way of
Jericho,, and entering the sacred city in his character of Messiah, at
tended by a great multitude. It was near the time of the Passover,
when people from all parts of Galilee and Judaea were sure to be at
x
Jerusalem, and the nature of his reception seems to indicate that he
had already secured a considerable number of followers upon whose
assistance hc^might hope to rely, though it nowhere appears that he
intended to use other than purely moral weapons to insure a favorable
reception. We must remember that for half a century many of the
Jewish people had been constantly looking for the arrival of the Mes
siah, and there can be little doubt that the entry of Jesus riding upon
an ass in literal fulfilment of prophecy must have wrought powerfully
upon the imagination of the multitude. That the believers in him
were verv numerous must be inferred from the cautious, not to say
timid, behavior of the rulers at Jerusalem, who are represented as
Hearing to arrest him, but as deterred from taking active steps
through fear of the people. We are led to the same conclusion by his
driving the monev-changers out of the temple; an act upon which he
could hardly have ventured, had not the popular enthusiasm in his
favor been for the moment overwhelming. But the enthusiasm of a
mob is short-lived, and needs to be fed upon the excitement of brilliant
and dramatically arranged events. The calm preacher of righteousness,
or even the fierv denouncer of the scribes and Pharisees, could not
_ hope to retain nndiminished authority save by the display of extraor
dinary powers to which, so far as we know, Jesus (like Mohammed)
made no pretence. (Matt. xvi. 1—L) The ignorant and materialistic
populace could not understand the exalted conception of Messiahship
which had been formed by Jesus, and as day after day elapsed without
the appearance of any marvelous sign from Jehovah, their enthusiasm
must naturally have cooled down. Then the Pharisees appear cau
tiously endeavoring to entrap him into admissions which might render
him obnoxious to the Boman governor. He saw through their design,
however, and foiled them by the magnificent repartee, “ Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesars, and unto God the things that are
God’s.” Nothing could more forcibly illustrate the completely non
political character of his Messianic doctrines. Nevertheless, we are
told that, failing in this attempt, the chief priests suborned false wit
nesses to testify against him: this sabbath-breaker, this derider of
Mosaic formalism, who with his Messianic pretensions excited the
people against their hereditary teachers, must at all events be put out
�26
THE JESUS
OF HIS T O R U.
of the way. Jesus must suffer the fate which society has too often had
in store for the reformer; the fate which Socrates and Savonarola,
Vanini and Bruno have suffered for being wiser than their own genera
tion. Messianic adventurers had already given much trouble to the
Roman authorities, who were not likely to scrutinize critically the
peculiar claims of Jesus. And when the chief priests accused him.
before Pilate of professing to be “ King of the Jews,” this claim could
in Roman apprehension bear but one interpretation. The offence was
treason, punishable, save in the case of Roman citizens, by crucifixion.
Such in its main outlines is the historic career of Jesus, as con
structed by our author from data furnished chiefly by the first gospel.
Connected .with the narrative there are many interesting topics of dis
cussion, of which our rapidly diminishing space will allow us to select
only one for comment. That one is perhaps the most important of all,
namely, the question as to how far Jesus anticipated the views of Paul
in admitting Gentiles to share in the privileges of the Messianic king
dom. Our author argues, writh much force, that the designs of Jesus
were entirely confined to the Jewish people, and that it was Paul
who first, by admitting Gentiles to the Christian fold without requiring
them to live like Jews, gave to Christianity the character of a universal
religion. Our author reminds us that the third gospel is not to be
depended upon in determining this point, since it manifestly puts
Pauline sentiments into the mouth of Jesus, and in particular attrib
utes to Jesus an acquaintance with heretical Samaria which the first
gospel disclaims. He argues that the apostles were in every respect
Jews, save in their belief that Jesus was the Messiah ; and he perti
nently asks, if James, who was the brother of Jesus, and Peter and
John, who were his nearest friends, unanimously opposed Paul and
stigmatized him as a liar and heretic, is it at all likely that Jesus had
ever distinctly sanctioned such views as Paul maintained ?
In the course of many years’ reflection upon this point, we have
several times been inclined to accept the narrow interpretation of
Jesus’ teaching here indicated; yet, on the whole, we do not believe it
can ever be conclusively established. In the first place it must be re
membered that if the third gospel throws a Pauline coloring .over the
events which it describes, the first gospel also shows a decidedly anti
Pauline bias, and the one party was as likely as the other to attribute
its own views to Jesus himself. One striking instance of this tendency
has been pointed out by Strauss, who has shown that the verses Matt,
v. 17-20, are an interpolation. The person who teaches men to break
the commandments is undoubtedly Paul, and in order to furnish a text
against Paul’s followers, the “ Nicolaitans,” Jesus is made to declare
that he came not to destroy one tittle of the law, but to fulfil the
whole in every particular. Such an utterance is in manifest contradic
tion to the spirit of Jesus’ teaching, as shown in the very same chapter,
and throughout a great part of the same gospel. He who taught in
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
2Ÿ
his own name and not as the scribes, who proclaimed himself Lord
over the Sabbath, and who manifested from first to last a more than
Essenian contempt for rites and ceremonies, did not come to fulfil the
law of Mosaism, but to supersede it. Nor can any inference ad
verse to this conclusion be drawn from the injunction to the disciples,
(Matt. x. 5-7,) not to preach to Gentiles and Samaritans, but only “to
the lost sheep of the house of Israelfor this remark is placed before
the beginning of Jesus’ Messianic career, and the reason assigned for
the restriction is merely that the disciples will not have time even to
preach to all the Jews before the coming of the Messiah, whose ap
proach Jesus was announcing. (Matt. x. 23.)
These examples show that we must use caution in weighing the
testimony even of the first gospel, and must not too hastily cite it as
proof that Jesus supposed his mission to be restricted to the Jews.
When we come to consider what happened a few years after the death
of Jesus, we shall be still less ready to insist upon the view defended
by our anonymous author. Paul, according to his own confession, per
secuted the Christians unto death. Now what, in the theories or in
the practice of the Jewish disciples of Jesus, could have moved Paul
to such fanatic behavior ? Certainly not their spiritual interpretation
of Mosaism, for Paul himself belonged to the liberal school of Gama
liel, to the views of which the teachings and practices of Peter, James
and John might easily be accommodated. Probably not their belief in
Jesus as the Messiah, for at the riot in which Stephen was murdered
and all the Hellenist disciples driven from Jerusalem, the Jewish disci
ples were allowed to remain in the city unmolested. (See Acts viii.
1, 14.) This marked difference of treatment indicates that Paul re
garded Stephen and his friends as decidedly more heretical and obnox
ious than Peter, James and John, whom, indeed, Paul’s own master
Gamaliel had recently (Acts v. 34) defended before the council. And
this influence is fully confirmed by the account of Stephen’s death,
where his murderers charge him with maintaining that Jesus had
founded a new religion which was destined entirely to supersede and
replace Judaism. (Acts vi. 14.) The Petrine disciples never held
this view of the mission of Jesus; and to this difference it is undoubt
edly owing that Paul and his companions forbore to disturb them. It
would thus appear that even previous to Paul's conversion, within five
or six years after the death of Jesus, there was a prominent party
among the disciples which held that the new religion was not a modi
fication but an abrogation of Judaism ; and their name “ Hellenists ”
sufficiently shows either that there were Gentiles among them or that
they held fellowship with Gentiles. It was this which aroused Paul to
persecution, and upon his sudden conversion it was with these Hellen
istic doctrines that he fraternized, taking little heed of the Petrine
disciples (Galatians i. 15), who were hardly more than a Jewish
sect.
�Now the existence of these Hellenists at Jerusalem so soon after
the death of Jesus is clear proof that he had never distinctly and irrev
ocably pronounced against the admission of Gentiles to the Messianic
kingdom, and it makes it very probable that the downfall of Mosaism
as a result of his preaching was by no means unpremeditated. While,
on the other hand, the obstinacy of the Petrine party in adhering to
Jewish customs shows equally that Jesus could not have unequivocally
committed himself in favor of a new gospel for the Gentiles. Probably
Jesus was seldom brought into direct contact with others than Jews,
so that the questions concerning the admission of Gentile converts did
not come up during his lifetime; and thus the way was left open for
the controversy which soon broke out between the Petrine party and
Paul. Nevertheless, though Jesus may never have definitely pro
nounced. upon this point, it will hardly be denied that his teaching,
even as reported in the first gospel, is in its utter condemnation of for
malism far more closely allied to the Pauline than to the Petrine doc
trines. In his hands Mosaism became spiritualized until it really lost
its identity, and was transformed into a code fit for the whole Roman
world. And we do not doubt that if any one had asked Jesus whether
circumcision were an essential prerequisite for admission to the Mes
sianic kingdom, he would have given the same answer which Paul after
wards gave. We agree with Zeller and Strauss that, “as Luther was a
more liberal spirit than the Lutheran divines of the succeeding genera
tion, and Socrates a more profound thinker than Xenophon or Antisthenes, so also Jesus must be credited with having raised himself far
higher above the narrow prejudices of his nation than those of his dis
ciples who could scarcely understand the spread of Christianity among
the heathen when it had become an accomplished fact.”
THE JESUS OF DOGMA
*
HE meagerness of our information concerning the historic
career of Jesus stands in striking contrast to the mass of
information which lies within our reach concerning the
primitive character of Christologie speculation. First we
have the epistles of Paul, written from twenty to thirty years after
the crucifixion, which, although they tell us next to nothing about
T
* Saint-Paul. par Ernest Renan. Paris, 1869. (English translation. New
York : Carleton, 1869.)
Histoire du Dogme de la Divinité de Jesus-Christ, par Albert Réville.
Paris, 1869.
The End of the.World and the Day of Judgment. Two Discourses by
the Rev. W. R. Alger. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1870.
�THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
29
what Jesus did. nevertheless give us very plain information as to
the impression which he made. Then we have the Apocalypse,
written by John, AD. 68, which exhibits the Messianic theory en
tertained by the earliest disciples. Next we have the epistles to the
Hebrews, Philippians. Colossians, and Ephesians, besides the four gos
pels, constituting altogether a connected chain of testimony to the
progress of Christian doctrine from the destruction of Jerusalem to the
time of the quartodeciman controversy (A. D. 70-170). Finallv, there
is the vast collection of apocryphal, heretical, and patristic literature,
from the writings of Justin Martin, the pseudo-Clement, and the
pseudo-Ignatius, down to the time of the Council of Nikaia. when the
official theories of Christ's person assumed very nearly the shape which
they have retained, within the orthodox churches of Christendom,
down to the present day. As we pointed out in “ The Jesus of His
tory,” while all this voluminous literature throws but an uncertain
light upon the life and teachings of the founder of Christianity, it
nevertheless furnishes nearly all the data which we could desire for
knowing what the early Christians thought of the master of their
faith. Having given a brief account of the historic career of Jesus, so
far as it can now be determined, we propose here to sketch the rise and
progress of Christologic doctrine, in its most striking features, during
the first three centuries. Beginning with the apostolic view of the
human Messiah sent to deliver Judaism from its spiritual torpor, and
prepare it for the millennial kingdom, we shall briefly trace the pro
gressive metamorphosis of this conception until it completely loses its
identity in the Athanasian theory, according to which Jesus was God
himself, the creator of the universe, incarnate in human flesh.
The earliest dogma held by the apostles concerning Jesus was that
of his resurrection from the grave after death. It was not only the
earliest, but the most essential to the success of the new religion.
Christianity might have overspread the Roman Empire, and main
tained its hold upon men’s faith until to-day, without the dogmas of
the incarnation and the Trinity; but without the dogma of the resur
rection it would probably have failed at the very outset. Its lofty
morality would not alone have sufficed to insure its success. For what
men needed then, as indeed they still need, and will always need, was
not merely a rule of life and a mirror to the heart, but also a compre
hensive and satisfactory theory of things, a philosophy or theosophy.
The times demanded intellectual as well as moral consolation; and the
disintegration of ancient theologies needed to be repaired, that the new
ethical impulse imparted by Christianity might rest upon a plausible
speculative basis. The doctrine of the resurrection was but the begin
ning of a series of speculative innovations which prepared the way for
the new religion to emancipate itself from Judaism, and achieve the
conquest of the Empire. Even the faith of the apostles in the speedy
return of their master the Messiah must have somewhat lost ground,
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had it not been supported by their belief in his resurrection from the
grave and his consequent transfer from Sheol, the gloomy land of
shadows, to the regions above the sky.
The origin of the dogma of the resurrection cannot be determined
with certainty. The question has, during the past century, been the
subject of much discussion, upon which it is not necessary for us
here to comment. Such apparent evidence as there is in favor of the
old theory of Jesus’ natural recovery from the effects of the cruci
fixion, may be found in Salvador’s “ Jesus-Christ et sa Doctrine
but, as Zeller has shown, the theory is utterly unsatisfactory. The
natural return of Jesus to his disciples never could have given rise to
the notion of his resurrection, since the natural explanation would
have been the more obvious one; besides which, if we were to adopt
this hypothesis, we should be obliged to account for the fact that the
historic career of Jesus ends with the crucifixion. The most probable
explanation, on the whole, is the one suggested by the accounts in the
gospels, that the dogma of the resurrection is due originally to the
excited imagination of Mary of Magdala. The testimony of Paul may
also be cited in favor of this view, since he always alludes to earlier
Christophanies in just the same language which he uses in describing
his own vision on the road to Damascus.
But the question as to how the belief in the resurrection of Jesus
originated is of less importance than the question as to how it should
have produced the effect that it did. The dogma of the resurrection
has, until recent times, been so rarely treated from the historical point
of view, that the student of history at firsts finds some difficulty in
thoroughly realizing its import to the minds of those who first pro
claimed it. We cannot hope to understand it without bearing in mind
the theories of the Jews and early Christians concerning the structure
of the world and the cosmic location of departed souls. Since the time
of Copernicus modern Christians no longer attempt to locate heaven
and hell; they are conceived merely as mysterious places remote from
the earth. The theological universe no longer corresponds to that
which physical science presents for our contemplation. It was quite
different with the Jew. His conception of the abode of Jehovah
and the angels, and of departed souls, was exceedingly simple and
definite. In the Jewish theory the universe is like a sort of threestory house. The flat earth rests upon the waters, and under the
earth’s surface is the land of graves, called Sheol, where after death the
souls of all men go, the righteous as well as the wicked, for the Jew
had not arrived at the doctrine of heaven and hell. The Hebrew Sheol
corresponds strictly to the Greek Hades, before the notions of Elysium
and Tartarus were added to it,—a land peopled with flitting shadows,
suffering no torment, but experiencing no pleasure, like those whom
Dante met in one of the upper circles of his Inferno. Sheol is the first
story of the cosmic house ; the earth is the second. Above the earth is
�TH R
JESUS
Of
DOGMA.
31
the firmament or sky, which, according to the book of Genesis (chap. i.
v. 6, Hebrew text), is a vast plate hammered out by the gods, and sup
ports a great ocean like that upon which the earth rests. Rain is
caused by the opening of little windows or trap-doors in the firmament,
through which pours the water of this upper ocean. Upon this water
rests the land of heaven, where Jehovah reigns, surrounded by hosts
of angels. To this blessed land two only of the human race had ever
been admitted,—Enoch and Elijah, the latter of whom had ascended in
a chariot of fire, and was destined to return .to earth as the herald and
forerunner of the Messiah. Heaven forms the third story of the cosmic
house. Between the firmament and the earth is the air, which is the
habitation of evil demons ruled by Satan, the “prince of the powers of
the air.”
Such was the cosmology of the ancient Jew ; and his theology was
equally simple. Sheol was the destined abode of all men after death,
and no theory of moral retribution was attached to the conception.
The rewards and punishments known to the authors of the Pentateuch
and the early Psalms are all earthly rewards and punishments. But in
course of time the prosperity of the wicked and the misfortunes of the
good man furnished a troublesome problem for the Jewish thinker;
and after the Babylonish Captivity, we find the doctrine of a resurrec
tion from Sheol devised in order to meet this case. According to this
doctrine—which was borrowed from the Zarathustrian theology of
Persia—the Messiah on his arrival was to free from Sheol all the souls
of the righteous, causing them to ascend reinvested in their bodies to a
renewed and beautiful earth, while on the other hand the wicked were
to be punished with, tortures like those of the valley of Hinnom, or
were to be immersed in liquid brimstone, like that which had rained
upon Sodom and Gomorrah. Here we get the first announcement of
a future state of retribution. The doctrine was peculiarly Pharisaic,
and the Sadducees, who were strict adherents to the letter of Mosaism,
rejected it to the last. By degrees this doctrine became coupled with
the Messianic theories of the Pharisees. The loss of Jewish independ
ence under the dominion of Persians, Macedonians and Romans, caused
the people to look over more earnestly toward the expected time when
the Messiah should appear in Jerusalem to deliver them from their
oppressors. The moral doctrines of the Psalms and earlier prophets
assumed an increasingly political aspect. The Jews were the righteous
“ under a cloud,” whose sufferings were symbolically depicted by the
younger Isaiah as the afflictions of the “ servant of Jehovah;” while on
the other hand, the “ wicked ” were the Gentile oppressors of the holy
people. Accordingly the Messiah, on his arrival, was to sit in judg
ment in the valley of Jehoshaphat, rectifying the. wrongs of his chosen
ones, condemning the Gentile tyrants to the torments of Gehenna, and
raising from Sheol all those Jews who had lived and died during the
evil times before his coming. These were to find in the Messianic
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THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
kingdom the compensation for the ills which they had suffered in their
first earthly existence. Such are the main outlines of the theory found
in the Book of Enoch, written about B. C. 100, and it is adopted in the
Johannine Apocalypse, with little variation, save in the recognition of
Jesus as the Messiah, and in the transference to his second coming of
all these wonderful proceedings. The manner of the Messiah's coming
had been variously imagined. According to an earlier view, he was to
enter Jerusalem as a King of the house of David, and therefore of
human lineage. According to a later view, presented in the Book of
Daniel, he was to descend from the sky, and appear among the clouds.
Both these views were adopted by the disciples of Jesus, who harmo
nized them by referring the one to his first and the other to his second
appearance.
Now to the imaginations of these earliest disciples the belief in the
resurrection of Jesus presented itself as a needful guarantee of his
Messiahship. Their faith, which must have been shaken by his execu
tion and descent into Sheol, received welcome confirmation by the
springing up of the belief that he had been again seen upon the face
of the earth. Applying the imagery of Daniel, it became a logical
conclusion that he must have ascended into the sky, whence he might
shortly be expected to make his appearance, to enact the scenes foretold
in prophecy. That such was the actual process of inference is shown
by the legend of the Ascension in the first chapter of the “Acts,” and
especially by the words, “This Jesus who hath been taken up from you
into heaven, will come in the same manner in which ye beheld him
going into heaven.” In the Apocalvpse, written A. T). G8, just after
the death of Nero, this second coming is described as something im
mediately to happen, and the colors in which it is depicted show how
closely allied were the Johannine notions to those of the Pharisees.
The glories of the New Jerusalem are to be reserved for Jews, while
for the Roman tyrants of Judaea is reserved a fearful retribution.
They are to be trodden under-foot by the Messiah, like grapes in a
wine-press, until the gushing blood shall rise to the height of the
horse’s bridle.
In the writings of Paul, the dogma of the resurrection assumes a
very different aspect. Though Paul, like the older apostles, held that
Jesus, as the Messiah, was to return to the earth within a few years, yet
to his catholic mind this anticipated event had become divested of its
narrow Jewish significance. In the eyes of Paul, the religion preached
by Jesus was an abrogation of Mosaism, and the truths contained in it
were a free gift to the Gentile as well as to the Jewish world. Accord
ing to Paul, death came into the world as a punishment for the sin of
Adam. By this he meant that, had it not been for the original trans
gression, all men escaping death would either have remained upon
earth or have been conveyed to heaven, like Enoch and Elijah, in in
corruptible bodies. But in reality as a penance for disobedience, all
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JESUS
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33
men, with these two exceptions, had suffered death, and been exiled
to the gloomy caverns of Sheol. The Mosaic ritual was powerless to
free men from this repulsive doom, but it had nevertheless served a
good purpose in keeping men’s minds directed toward holiness, pre
paring them, as a schoolmaster would prepare his pupils, to receive the
vitalizing truths of Christ. Now, at last, the Messiah or Christ had
come as a second Adam, and being without sin had been raised by Je
hovah out of Sheol and taken up into heaven, as testimony to men
that the power of sin and death was at last defeated. The wav hence
forth to avoid death and escape the exile to Sheol was to live spiritually
like Jesus, and with him to be dead to sensual requirements. Faith,
in Paul’s apprehension, was not an intellectual assent to definitely pre
scribed dogmas, but, as Matthew Arnold has well pointed out, it was
an emotional striving after righteousness, a developing consciousness
of God in the soul, such as Jesus had possessed, or in Paul’s phrase
ology, a subjugation of the flesh by the spirit. All those who should
thus seek spiritual perfection should escape the original curse. The
Messiah was destined to return to the earth to establish the reign of
spiritual holiness, probably during Paul’s own lifetime. (1 Cor. xv.
51.) Then the true followers of Jesus should be clothed in ethereal
bodies, free from the imperfections of “ the flesh,” and should ascend
to heaven without suffering death, while the righteous dead should at
the same time be released from Sheol, even as Jesus himself had been
released.
To the doctrine of the resurrection, in which ethical and speculative
elements are thus happily blended by Paul, the new religion doubtless
owed in great part its rapid success. Into an account of the causes
which favored the spreading of Christianity, it is not our purpose to
enter at present. * ut we may note that the local religions of the ancient
B
pagan world had partly destroyed each other by mutual intermingling,
and had lost their hold upon people from the circumstance that their
ethical teaching no longer corresponded to the advanced ethical feeling,
of the age. Polytheism, in short, was outgrown. It was outgrown
both intellectually and morally. People were ceasing to believe in its
doctrines, and were ceasing to respect its precepts. The learned were
taking refuge in philosophy, the ignorant in mystical superstitions im
ported Trom Asia. The commanding ethical motive of ancient repub
lican times had been patriotism—devotion to the interests of the com
munity. But Roman dominion had destroyed patriotism as a guiding
principle of life, and thus in every way the minds of men were left in
a sceptical, unsatisfied state,—craving after a new theory of life, and
craving after a new stimulus to right action. Obviously the only
theology which could now be satisfactory to philosophy or to common
sense was some form of monotheism;—some system of doctrines which
should represent all men as spiritually subjected to the will of a single
God, just as they were subjected to the temporal authority of the Em
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THE JESUS
Of DOGMA.
peror. And similarly the only system of ethics which could have a
chance of prevailing must be some system which should clearly pre
scribe the mutual duties of all men without distinction of race or
locality. Thus the spiritual morality of Jesus, and his conception of
God as a father and of all men as brothers, appeared at once to meet
the ethical and speculative demands of the time.
Yet whatever effect these teachings might have produced, if un
aided by further doctrinal elaboration, was enhanced myriadfold by the
elaboration which they received at the hands of Paul. Philosophic
Stoics and Epicureans had arrived at the conception of the brotherhood
of men, and the Greek hymn of Kleanthes had exhibited a deep spirit
ual sense of the fatherhood of God. The originality of Christianity lay
not so much in its enunciation of new ethical precepts as in the fact
that it furnished a new ethical sanction—a commanding incentive to
holiness of living. That it might accomplish this result, it was abso
lutely necessary that it should begin by discarding both the ritualism
and the narrow theories of Judaism. The mere desire for a mono
theistic creed had led many pagans, in Paul’s time, to embrace Juda
ism, in spite of its requirements, which to Romans and Greeks were
meaningless, and often, disgusting; but such conversions could never
have been numerous. Judaism could never have conquered the Roman
world; nor is it likely that the Judaical Christianity of Peter, James,
and John would have been any more successful. The doctrine of the
resurrection, in particular, was not likely to prove attractive wheu ac
companied by the picture of the Messiah treading the Gentiles in the
wine-press of his righteous indignation. But here Paul showed his
profound originality. The condemnation of Jewish formalism which
*
Jesus had pronounced, Paul turned against the older apostles, who in
sisted upon circumcision. With marvelous flexibility of mind, Paul
placed circumcision and the Mosaic injunctions about meats upon a
level with the ritual observances of pagan nations, allowing each feeble
brother to perform such works as might tickle his fancy, but bidding
all take heed that salvation was not to be obtained after any such me
chanical method, but only by devoting the whole soul to righteousness,
after the example of Jesus.
This was the negative part of Paul’s work. This was the knocking
down of the barriers which had kept men, and would always have kept
them, from entering into the kingdom of heaven. But the positive
part of Paul’s work is contained in his theory of the salvation of men
from death through the second Adam, whom Jehovah rescued from
Sheol for his sinlessness. The resurrection of Jesus was the visible
token of the escape from death which might be achieved by all men
who, with God’s aid, should succeed in freeing themselves from thè
burden of sin which had encumbered all the children of Adam. The
end of the world was at hand, and they who would live with Christ
must figuratively die with Christ—must become dead to sin. Thus to
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OF DOGMA.
35
the pure and spiritual ethics contained in the teachings of Jesus, Paul
added an incalculably’powerful incentive to right action, and a theory
of life calculated to satisfy the speculative necessities of the pagan or
v Gentile world. To the educated and sceptical Athenian, as to the criti
cal scholar of modern times, the physical resurrection of Jesus from the
grave, and his ascent through the vaulted floor of heaven, might seem
foolishness or naïveté. But to the average. Greek or Roman the con
ception presented no serious difficulty. The cosmical theories upon
. which the conception was founded were essentially the same among
Jews and Gentiles, and indeed were but little modified until the estab
lishment of the Copernican astronomy. The doctrine of the Messiah’s
second coming was also received without opposition, and for about a
century men lived in continual anticipation of that event, until hope
long deferred produced its usual results ; the writings in which that
event was predicted were gradually explained away, ignored, or stigma
tized as uncanonical ; and the Church ended by condemning as a
heresy the very doctrine which Paul and the Judaizing apostles, who
agreed in little else, had alike made the basis of their spéculative
teachings. Nevertheless, by the dint of allegorical interpretation, the
belief has maintained an obscure existence even down to the present
time ; the Antiochus of the Book of Daniel and the Nero of the Apoc
alypse having given place to the Roman Pontiff or to the Emperor of
the French.
But as the millenarism of the primitive Church gradually died out
during the second century, the essential principles involved in it lost
none of their hold on men’s minds. As the generation contemporary
with Paul died away and was gathered into Sheol, it became apparent
that the original theory must be somewhat modified, and to this ques
tion the author of the second epistle to the Thessalonians addresses
himself. Instead of literal preservation from death, the doctrine of a
resurrection from the grave was gradually extended to the case of the
new believers, who were to share in the same glorious revival with the
righteous of ancient times. And thus by slow degrees the victory over
death, of which the resurrection of Jesus was a symbol and a witness,
became metamorphosed into the comparatively modern doctrine of the
rest of the saints in heaven, while the banishment of the unrighteous
to Sheol was -made still more dreadful by coupling with the vague con
ception of a gloomy subterranean cavern the horrible imagery of the
lake of tire and brimstone borrowed from the apocalyptic descriptions
of Gehenna. But in this modification of the original theory, the fun
damental idea of a future state of retribution was only the more dis
tinctly emphasized; although, in course of time, the original incentive
to righteousness supplied by Paul was more and more subordinated to
the comparatively degrading incentive involved in the fear of damna
tion. There can hardly be a doubt that the definiteness and vividness
• of the Pauline theory of a future life contributed very largely to the
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THE JESUS
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rapid spread of the Christian religion; nor can it be doubted that to
the desire to be holy like Jesus, in order to escape death and live with
Jesus, is due the elevating ethical influence which, even in the worst
times of ecclesiastic degeneracy, Christianity has never failed to exert.
Doubtless, as Lessing long ago observed, the notion of future reward
and punishment needs to be eliminated in order that the incentive to
holiness may be a perfectly pure one. The highest virtue is that which
takes no thought of reward or punishment; but for a conception of
this sort the mind of antiquity was not ready, nor is the average mind
of to-day yet ready; and the sudden or premature dissolution of the
Christian theory—which is fortunately impossible—would no doubt
entail a moral retrogradation.
The above is by no means intended as a complete account of the
religious philosophy of Paul. We have aimed only at a clear definition
of the character and scope of the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus,
at the time when it was first elaborated. We have now to notice the
influence of that doctrine upon the development of Christo logic specu
lation.
In neither of the four genuine epistles of Paul is Jesus described
as superhuman, or as differing in nature from other men, save in his
freedom from sin. As Baur has shown, “the proper nature of the
Pauline Christ is human. He is a man, but a spiritual man, one in
whom spirit or pneumo, was the essential principle, so that he was
spirit as well as man. The principle of an ideal humanity existed
before Christ in the bright form of a typical man, but was manifested
to mankind in the person of Christ.” Such, according to Baur, is
Paul’s interpretation of the Messianic idea. Paul knows nothing of
the miracles, of the supernatural conception, of the incarnation, or of
the Logos. The Christ whom he preaches is the man Jesus, the
founder of a new and spiritual order of humanity, as Adam was the
father of humanity after the flesh. The resurrection is uniformly
described by him as a manifestation of the power of Jehovah, not of
Jesus himself. The later conception of Christ bursting the barred
gates of Sheol, and arising by his own might to heaven, finds no
warrant in the expressions of Paul. Indeed it was essential to Paul’s
theory of the Messiah as a new Adam, that he should be human and
not divine ; for the escape of a divine being from Sheol could afford no
precedent and furnish no assurance of the future escape of human
beings. It was expressly because the man Jesus had been rescued from
the grave because of his spirituality, that other men might hope, by
becoming spiritual like him, to be rescued also. Accordingly Paul is
careful to state that “ since through man came death, through man
came also the resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor. xv. 21); a passage
which would look like an express denial of Christ’s superhuman
character, were it probable that any of Paul’s contemporaries had ever
conceived of Jesus as other than essentially human.
�THE JESES
OE DOGMA.
But though Paul’s Christology remained in this primitive stage, it
contained the germs of a more advanced theory. For even Paul con
ceived of Jesus as a man wholly exceptional in spiritual character ; or,
in the phraseology of the time, as consisting to a larger extent of
pneuma than any man who had lived before him. The question was
sure to arise, whence came thisyuie^ma or spiritual quality? Whether
the question ever distinctly presented itself to Paul’s mind cannot be
determined. Probably it did not. In those writings of his which
have come down to us, he shows himself careless of metaphysical con
siderations. He is mainly concerned with exhibiting the unsatisfactory
character of Jewish Christianity, and with inculcating a spiritual
morality, to which the doctrine of Christ’s resurrection is made to
supply a surpassingly powerful sanction. But attempts to solve the
problem were not long in coming. According to a very early tradition,
of which the obscured traces remain in the ^noptic gospels, Jesus
received theyme/wn« at the time of his baptism, when the Holy Spirit,
or visible manifestation of the essence of Jehovah, descended upon him
and became incarnate in him. This theory, however, was exposed to
the objection that it implied a sudden and entire transformation of an
ordinary man into a person inspired or possessed by the Deity.
Though long maintained by the Ebionites or primitive Christians, it
was very soon rejected by the great body of the Church, which asserted
instead that Jesus had been inspired by the Holy Spirit from the
moment of his conception. From this it was but a step to the theory
that Jesus was actually begotten by or of the Holy Spirit; a notion
which the Hellenic mind, accustomed to the myths of Leda, Anchises,
and others, found no difficulty in entertaining. According to the
Gospel of the Hebrews, as cited by Origen, the Holy Spirit was the
mother of Jesus, and Joseph was his father. But according to the
prevailing opinion, as represented in the first and third synoptists, the
relationship was just the other way. With greater apparent plausibil
ity, the divine vEon was substituted for the human father, and a myth
sprang up, of which the materialistic details furnished to the oppo
nents of the new religion an opportunity for making the most gross
and exasperating insinuations. • The dominance of this theory marks
the era at which our first and third synoptic gospels were composed,—
from sixty to ninety years after the death of Jesus. In the luxuriant
mythologic growth there exhibited, we may yet trace the various suc
cessive phases of Christologic speculation but imperfectly blended. In
“Matthew” and “Luke” we find the original Messianic theory ex
emplified in the genealogies of Jesus, in which, contrary to historic
probability, (cf. Matt. xxii. 41-46,) but in accordance with a tihiehonored tradition, his pedigree is traced back to David ; “ Matthew ”
referring him to the royal line of Judah, while “ Luke ” more cautiously
has recourse to an assumed younger branch. Superposed upon this
primitive mythologic stratum, we find, in the same narratives, the ac-
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I
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THE JESUS
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count of the descent of the pneumo, at the time of the baptism ; and
crowning the whole, there are the two accounts of the nativity which,
though conflicting in nearly all their details, agree in representing the
divine pneuma as the father of Jesus. Of these three stages of
Christology, the last becomes entirely irreconcilable with the first; and
nothing can better illustrate the uncritical character of the synoptists
than the fact that the assumed descent of Jesus from David through
his father Joseph is allowed to stand side by side with the account of
the miraculous conception which completely negatives it. Of this
difficulty “Matthew” is quite unconscious, and “Luke,” while vaguely
noticing it, (iii. 23,) proposes no solution, and appears .undisturbed by
the contradiction.
Thus far the Christology with which we have been dealing is pre
dominantly Jewish, though to some extent influenced by Hellenic
conceptions. None of the successive doctrines presented in Paul,
“ Matthew,” and “ Luke,” assert or imply the pre-existence of Jesus.
At this early period he was regarded as a human being raised to parti
cipation in certain attributes of divinity; and this was as far as the
dogma could be carried by the Jewish metaphysics. But soon after
the date of our third gospel, a Hellenic system of Christology arose
into prominence, in which the problem was reversed, and Jesus was
regarded as a semi-divine being temporarily lowered to participation in
certain attributes of humanity. For such a doctrine Jewish mythol
ogy supplied no precedents; but the Indo-European mind was familiar
with the conception of deity incarnate in human form, as in the
avatars of Vishnu, or even suffering in the interests of humanity, as in
the noble myth of Prometheus. The elements of Christology pre-ex
isting in the religious conceptions of Greece, India, and Persia, are too
rich and numerous to be discussed here. A very full account of them
is given in Mr. R. W. Mackay’s treatise on the “ Religious Development
of the Greeks and Hebrews,”—one of the most acute and erudite theo
logical works which this century has produced.
It was in Alexandria, where Jewish theology first came into contact
with Hellenic and Oriental ideas, that the way was prepared for the
dogma of Christ’s pre-existence. The attempt to rationalize the con
ception of deity as embodied in the Jehovah of the Old Testament,
gave rise to the class of opinions described as Gnosis, or Gnosticism.
The signification of Gnosis is simply “rationalism,”—the endeavor to
harmonize the materialistic statements of an old mythology with the
more advanced spiritualistic philosophy of the time. The Gnostics
rejected the conception of an anthropomorphic deity who had appeared
visibly and audibly to th^ patriarchs ; and they were the authors of the
doctrine, very widely spread during the second and third centuries,
that God could not in person have been the creator of the world. Ac
cording to them, God, as pure spirit, could not act directly upon vile
and gross matter. The difficulty which troubled them was curiously
�THE ,J E 8 US
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39
analogous to that which disturbed the Cartesians and followers of Leib
nitz in the seventeenth century : how was spirit to act upon matter,
without ceasing, pro tanto, to be spirit ? To meet this difficulty, the
Gnostics postulated a series of emanations from God, becoming success
ively less and less spiritual and more and more material, until at the
lowest end of the scale was reached the Demiurgus or Jehovah of the
Old Testament, who created the world and appeared, clothed in mate
rial form, to the patriarchs. According to some of the Gnostics, this
lowest mon or emanation was identical with the Jewish Satan, or Ahri
man of the Persians, who is called “ the prince of this world,” and the
creation of the world was an essentially evil act. But all did not share
in these extreme opinions. In the prevailing theory, this last of the
divine emanations was identified with the “ Sophia,” or personified
“Wisdom,” of the Book of Proverbs, (viii. 22-30,) who is described as
present with God before the foundation of the world. The totality of
these icons constituted the ptleroma, or “ fullness of God,” (Coloss. i. 20;
Ephes, i. 23,) and in a corollary which bears unmistakable marks of
Buddhist influence, it was argued that, in the final consummation of
things, matter should be eliminated and all spirit reunited with God,
from whom it had primarily flowed.
It was impossible that such .views as these should not soon be taken
up and applied to the fluctuating Christology of the time. According
to the “ Shepherd of Hermas,” an apocalyptic writing nearly contem
porary with the gospel of “ Mark,” the ¿eon or son of God who existed
previous to the creation was not the Christ, or the Sophia, but the
Pneuma or Holy Spirit, represented in the Old Testament as the
“angel of Jehovah.” Jesus, in reward for his perfect goodness, was
admitted to a share in the privileges of this Pneuma. (Reville, p. 39.)
Here, as M. Reville observes, though a Gnostic idea is adopted, Jesus is
nevertheless viewed as ascending humanity, and not as descending
divinity. The author of the “Clementine Homilies” advances a step
farther, and clearly assumes the pre-existence of Jesus, who, in his
opinion, was the pure, primitive man, successively incarnate in Adam,
Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and finally in the Messiah
or Christ. The author protests, in vehement language, against those
Hellenists who, misled by their polytheistic associations, would elevate
Jesus into a god. Nevertheless his own hypothesis of pre-existence
supplied at once the requisite fulcrum for those Gnostics who wished
to reconcile a strict monotheism with the ascription of divine attri
butes to Jesus. Combining With this notion of pre-existence the pneu
matic or spiritual quality attributed to Jesus in the writings of Paul,
the gnosticising Christians maintained that Christ was an mon or em
anation from God, redeeming men from the consequences entailed by
their imprisonment in matter. At this stage of Christologic specu
lation appeared the anonymous epistle to the “Hebrews,” and the
pseudo-Pauline euistles to the “Colossians,” “Ephesians,”and “Philip-
�40
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JESUS
OF DOGMA.
pians.” (A. D. 130.) In these epistles, which originated among the
Pauline Christians, the Gnostic theosophy is skillfully applied to the
Pauline conception of the scope and purposes of Christianity. Jesus
is described as the creator of the world, (Coloss. i. 16,) the visible image
J •
of the invisible God, the chief and ruler of the “thrones, dominions,
¡principalities and powers,” into which, in Gnostic phraseology, the em
anations of God were classified. Or, according to “ Colossians ” and
t1|
“ Ph ilippians,” all the ieons are summed up in him, in whom dwells
the pleroma, or “fullness of God.” Thus Jesus is elevated quite above
ordinary humanity, and a close approach is made to ditheism, although
he is still emphatically subordinated to God by being made the creator
of the world,—an office then regarded as incompatible with absolute
divine perfection. In the celebrated passage, “ Philippians” ii. 6-11,
the aeon Jesus is described as being the form or visible manifestation
of God, yet as humbling himself by taking on the form or semblance
of humanity, and suffering death, in return for which he is to be exalt•
ed even above the archangels. A similar view is taken in “ Hebrews ; ”
and it is probable that to the growing favor with which these doctrines
were received, we owe the omission of the miraculous conception from
the gospel of “Mark,”—a circumstance which has misled some critics
into assigning to that gospel an earlier date than to “ Matthew” and
“ Luke.” Yet the fact that in this gospel Jesus is implicitly ranked
above the angels, (Mark xiii, 32, 33,) reveals a later stage of Christologic doctrine than that reached-by the first and third synoptists; and
if is altogether probable that, in accordance with the noticeable con
ciliatory disposition of this evangelist, the supernatural conception is
omitted out of deference to the gnosticising theories of “ Colossians ”
and “Philippians,” in which this materialistic doctrine seems to have
had no assignable place. In “ Philippians ” especially, many expres
sions seem to verge upon Docefism, the extreme form of Gnosticism,
according to which the human body of Jesus was only a phan tom.
Valentinus, who was contemporary with the Pauline writers of the
second century, maintained that Jesus was not born of Mary by any
process of conception, but merely passed through her, as light traverses
a translucent substance. And finally Marcion (A. D. 140) carried the
theory to its extreme limits by declaring that Jesus was the pure Pneuma or Spirit, who contained nothing in common with carnal humanity.
The pseudo-Pauline writers steered clear of this extravagant doc
trine, which erred by breaking entirely with historic tradition, and was
consequently soon condemned as heretical. Their language, though
unmistakably Gnostic, was sufficiently neutral and indefinite to allow
of their combination with earlier and later expositions of dogma,
and they were therefore eventually received into the canon, where they
exhibit a stage of opinion midway between that of Paul and that of
the fourth gospel.
For the construction of a durable system of Christology, still
i
t
�THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
41
further elaboration was necessary. The pre-existence of Jesus, as an
emanation from God, in whom were summed up the attributes of the
pleroma or full scale of Gnostic a?ons, was now generally conceded.
Blit the relation of this pleroma to the Godhead of which it was the
visible manifestation, needed to be more-accurately defined. And here
recourse was had to the conception of the “Logos,”—a notion which
Philo had borrowed from Plato, lending to it a theosophic significance.
In the Platonic metaphysics, objective existence was attributed to
general terms, the signs of general notions. Besides each particular
man, horse, or tree, and besides all men, horses, and trees, in the
aggregate, there was supposed to exist an ideal Man, Horse, and Tree.
Each particular man, hors#, or tree consisted of abstract existence plus
a portion of the ideal man, horse, or tree. Socrates, for instance, con
sisted of Existence, plus Animality, plus Humanity, plus Socraticity.
The visible world of particulars thus existed only by virtue of its par
ticipation in the attributes of the ideal world of universals. God
created the world by encumbering each idea with an envelopment or
clothing of visible matter; and since matter is vile or imperfect, all
things are more or less perfect as they partake more or less fully of the
idea. The pure unencumbered idea, the “ Idea of ideas,” is the Logos,
or divine Reason, which represents the sum-total of the activities
which sustain the world, and serves as a mediator between the abso
lutely ideal God and the absolutely non-ideal matter. Here we arrive
at a Gnostic conception, which the Philonists of Alexandria were not
slow to appropriate. The Logos, or divine Reason, was identified with
the Sophia, or divine Wisdom of the Jewish Gnostics, which had dwelt
with God before the creation of the world. By a subtle play upon the
double meaning of the Greek term {logos = “ reason ” or “ word,”) a
distinction was drawn between the divine Reason and the divine Word.
The former was the archetypal idea or thought of God, existing from
all eternity; the latter was the external manifestation or realization of
that idea which occurred at the moment of creation, when, according
to Genesis, God spoke, and the world was.
In the middle of the second century, this Philonian theory was the
one thing needful to add metaphysical precision to the Gnostic and
Pauline speculations concerning the nature of Jesus. In the writings
of Justin Martyr, (A. D. 150-1G6,) Jesus is for the first time identified
with the Philonian logos or “Word of God.” According to Justin, an
impassable abyss exists between the Infinite Deity and the Finite
World; the one cannot act upon the other; pure spirit cannot con
taminate itself by contact with impure matter. To meet this difficulty,
God evolves from himself a secondary God, the Logos,—yet without
diminishing himself any more than a flame is diminished when it
gives birth to a second flame. Thus generated, like light begotten of
light, {lumen de lumine,) the Logos creates the world, inspires the
ancient prophets with their divine revelations, and finally reveals him
�42
THE
JESUS
OE DOGMA.
self to mankind in the person of Christ. Yet Justin sedulously guards
himself against ditheism, insisting frequently and emphatically upon
the immeasurable inferiority of the Logos as compared with the actual
God (7zo ontos theos.)
We have here reached very nearly the ultimate phase of New Tes
tament speculation concerning Jesus. The doctrines enunciated by
Justin became eventually, with slight modification, the official doc
trines of the Church : yet before they could thus be received, some
further elaboration was needed. The pre-existing Logos-Christ of
Justin was no longer the human Messiah of the firstand third gos
pels, born of a woman, inspired by the divine Pneuma, and tempted
by the Devil. There was danger that Christologie speculation might
break quite loose from historic tradition, and pass into the metaphysical
extreme of Docetism. Had this come to pass, there might perhaps
have been a fatal schism in the Church. Tradition still remained
Ebionitish ; dogma had become decidedly Gnostic ; how were the two
to be moulded into harmony with each other ? Such was the prob
lem which presented itself to the author of the fourth gospel (A. D.
170-180). As M. Réville observes, “if the doctrine of the Logos
were really to be applied to the person of Jesus, it was necessary to re
model the evangelical history.” Tradition must be moulded so as to
fit the dogma, but the dogma must be restrained by tradition from
running into Docetic extravagance. It must 'be shown historically
how “ the Word became flesh ” and dwelt on earth, (John i. 14,) how
the deeds of Jesus of Nazareth were the deeds of the incarnate Logos,
in whom was exhibited the pleroma or fullness of the divine attri
butes. The author of the fourth gospel is, like Justin, a Philonian
Gnostic; but he differs from Justin in his bold and skilful treatment
of the traditional materials supplied by the earlier gospels. The prooess of development in the theories and purposes of Jesus, which can
be traced throughout the Messianic descriptions of the first gospel,
is entirely obliterated in the fourth. Here Jesus appears at the out
set as the creator of the world, descended from his glory, but des
tined soon to be reinstated. The title “ Son of Man ” has lost its
original significance, and become synonymous with “ Son of God.”
The temptation, the transfiguration, the scene in Gethsemane, are
omitted, and for the latter is substituted a Philonian prayer. Never
theless, the author carefully avoids the extremes of Docetism or di
theism. Not only does he represent the human life of Jesus as real,
and his death as a truly physical death, but he distinctly asserts the
inferiority of the Son to the Father (John xiv. 28.) Indeed, as M. Ré
ville well observes, it is part of the very notion of the Logos that it
should be imperfect relatively to the absolute God ; since it is only its
relative imperfection which allows it to sustain relations to the world
and to men which are incompatible with absolute perfection, from the
Philonian point of view. The Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity
�THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
43
finds no support in the fourth gospel, any more than in the earlier
books collected in the New Testament.
The fourth gospel completes the speculative revolution by which
the conception of a divine being lowered to humanity was substituted
for that of a human being raised to divinity. We have here traveled a
long distance from the risen Messiah of the genuine Pauline epistles,
or the preacher of righteousness in the first gospel. Yet it does not
seem probable tliat the Church of the third century was thoroughly
aware of the discrepancy. The authors of the later Christology did not
regard themselves as adding new truths to Christianity, but merely as
giving a fuller and more consistent interpretation to what must have
been known from the outset. They were so completely destitute of the
historic sense, and so strictly confined to the dogmatic point of view,
that they projected their own theories back into the past, and vituper
ated as heretics those who adhered to tradition in its earlier and sim
pler form. Examples from more recent times are not wanting, which
show that we are dealing here with an inveterate tendency of the
human mind. New facts and new theories are at first condemned as
heretical or ridiculous; but when once firmly established, it is imme
diately maintained that every one knew them before. After the Coper
nican astronomy had won the day, it was tacitly assumed that the
ancient Hebrew astronomy was Copernican, and the Biblical concep
tion of the universe as a kind of three-story house was ignored, and has
been, except by scholars, quite forgotten. When the geologic evidence
of the earth’s immense antiquity could no longer be gainsaid, it was
suddenly ascertained that the Bible had from the outset asserted that
antiquity; and in our own day we have seen an elegant popular writer
perverting the testimony of the rocks and distorting the Elohistic cos
mogony of the Pentateuch, until the twain have been made to furnish
what Bacon long ago described as “ a heretical religion and a false
philosophy.” Now just as in the popular thought of the present day
the ancient Elohist is accredited with a knowledge of modern geology
and astronomy, so in the opinion of the fourth evangelist and his con
temporaries the doctrine of the Logos-Christ was implicitly contained
in the Old Testament and in the early traditions concerning Jesus, and
needed only to be brought into prominence by a fresh interpretation.
Hence arose the fourth gospel, which was no more a conscious violation
of historic data than Hugh Miller’s imaginative description of the
“ Mosaic Vision of Creation.” Its metaphysical discourses were readily
accepted as equally authentic with the Sermon on the Mount. Its
Philonian doctrines were imputed to Paul and the apostles, the pseudo
Pauline epistles furnishing the needful texts. The Ebionites—who
were simply Judaizing Christians, holding in nearly its original form
the doctrine of Peter, Janies, and John—were ejected from the Church
as the most pernicious of heretics ; and so completely was their historic
position misunderstood and forgotten, that, in order to account for
�44
THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
their existence, it became necessary to invent an epoifymous heresiarch,
Ebion, who was supposed to have led them astray from the true faith I
The Christology of the fourth gospel is substantially the same as
that which was held in the next two centuries by Tertullian, Clement
of Alexandria, Origen, and Arius. When the doctrine of the Trinity
was first announced by Sabellius (A. D. 250-260), it was formally con
demned as heretical, the Church being not yet quite prepared to receive
it. In 269 the Council of Antioch solemnly declared that the Son was
not consubstantial with the Father—a declaration which, within sixty
years, the Council of Nikaia was destined as solemnly to contradict
The trinitarian Christology struggled long for acceptance, and did not
finally win the victory until the end of the fourth century. Yet from
the outset its ultimate victory was hardly doubtful. The peculiar doc
trines of the fourth gospel could retain their
integrity
*
only so long as
Gnostic ideas were prevalent. When Gnosticism declined in importtance, and its theories faded out of recollection, its peculiar phraseology
received of necessity a new interpretation. The doctrine that God
could not act directly upon the world sank gradually into oblivion as
the Church grew more and more hostile to the Neo-Platonic philoso
phy. And when this theory was once forgotten, it was inevitable that
the Logos, as the creator of the world, should be raised to an equality
or identity with God himself. In the view of the fourth evangelist, the
Creator was necessarily inferior to God; in the view of later ages, the
Creator could be none other than God. And so the very phrases which
had most emphatically asserted the subordination' of the Son were
afterward interpreted as asserting his absolute divinity. To the Gnos
tic formula, “ lumen de lumine,” was added the Athanasian scholium,
“Deum verum de Deo vero ; ” and the trinitarian dogma of the union of
persons in a single Godhead became thus the only available logical
device for preserving the purity of monotheism.
The modern theory, however, at which we seem to be slowly arriv
ing is, that light, heat, electricity, life itself, are only forms of motion,
and that death is merely the cessation of this motion; that the deity
is, throughout the universe, the embodiment (sinee that is the only
word I can think of to express myself) of motion itself; and that all
which dies, or, in other words, ceases to move, falls back into the uni
verse, and is absorbed into the deity. This was the belief of the Bud
dhist—the framer or acceptor of a pure and beautiful religion ; and to
this belief modern science and the enlargement of knowledge slowly
tend.—Macmillan’s Magazine.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The last word about Jesus
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Fiske, John
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Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: [9]-48 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Extracted from Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. Includes bibliographical references. Printed on grey paper. Marks from adhesive tape on first page.
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Jesus Christ
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Conway Tracts
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ-Historicity
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Text
THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
BY FREDERIC HARRISON.
HE interest which the system known as Positivism awakens
in public attention is so vastly in excess of any knowledge
of the writings of Comte, and of any attempts at propagandism made by his followers, that it may afford matter
for some curious reflection. On the one hand, we have one of the most
voluminous if not the most elaborate of all modern philosophies, com
posed in a foreign language and a highly technical style. Those who
have honestly studied, or even actually read, these difficult works may
be numbered on the hand; and no methodical exposition of them exists
in this country. The full adherents of this system in England are
known to be few; and they but very rarely address the public. Among
the regular students of Comte two or three alone find means occasion
ally to express their views, and that for the most part on special sub
jects. Such is the only medium through which the ideas of Comte are
promulgated—a mass of writings practically unread; a handful of
disciples for the most part silent.
On the other hand, the press and society, platform and pulpit, are
continually resounding with criticism, invective, and moral reflection
arrayed against this system. Reviews devote article after article to
demonstrate anew the absurdity or the enormity of these views. The
critics cut and thrust at will, well knowing that there is no one to re
taliate ; secure of the field to themselves, they fight the battle o’er again;
thrice have they routed all their foes, and thrice they slay the slain.
Religious journalism, too, delights to use the name of Comte as a sort
of dark relief to the glowing colors of the Scarlet Woman. Semi-re
ligious journals detect his subtle influence in everything, from the last
poem to the coming revolution. Drowsy congregations are warned
against doctrines from which they run as little risk as they do from
that of Parthenogenesis, and which they are yet less likely to under
stand. Society even knows all about it, and chirrups the last gossip or
jest at afternoon tea-tables. Yet even under this the philosophy of
Comte survives; for criticism of this kind, it need hardly be said, is
not for the most part according to knowledge.
Some such impression is left by the glaring inconsistencies which
appear among the critics themselves. They have so easy a time of it in
T
�50
THE
POSITIVIST PBOBLEM.
piling up charges against Positivism, that they, in a great degree, dis
pose of each other. According to some, for instance, it would promote
a perfect pandemonium of anarchy. With others it means only the
“paralyzing and iron rule of law.” With some it is the concentration
of all human energy on self; with others, an Utopia which is to elimi
nate self from human nature. Now it is to crush out of man every
instinct of veneration for a superior being; now it is to enthrall him in
a superstitious devotion. The followers of Comte are at once the vota
ries of disorder and of arbitrary power; of the coldest materialism and
the most ideal sentimentalism; they are blind to everything but the
facts of sensation, yet they foster the most visionary of hopes; they
execrate all that is noble in man, and yet dream of human perfectibility.
In a word, they are anarchists or absolutists; pitiless or maudlin; ma
terialists or transcendentalists, as it may suit the palette of the artist to
depict them.
Now all of these things cannot be true together. If it is proved to
the satisfaction of a thousand critics that Positivism is a mass of absur
dity, why need we hear so much about it ? How can that still be
dangerous which is hardly ever heard of but in professed refutations,
and known only through adverse critics ? It is strange that a writer,
as they tell us, of obscure French, such as no one can make sense of,
who finds in this country but an occasional student, should need such
an army to annihilate him. If he were responsible for one-tenth of the
contradictory views which are put into his mouth, he is self-condemned
already. No house so divided against itself could stand, to say nothing
of the critical batteries which thunder on it night and day—religious,
scientific, literary champions without stint, warning an intelligent
public against a new mystery of abominations. “ Dearly beloved,” cries
the priest, “beware of this soul-destroying doctrine of Humanity!”
“ Science has not a good word for it,” cries the man of physics, “ to say
nothing of its irreligion! ” and so makes a truce with the man of God.
“ And literature has a thousand ill names for it,” cry out the brazen
tongues of the press through all its hundred throats of brass. Yet,
withal, the thoughts of Comte seem still to live and grow, to flourish
without adherents, and to increase without apostles. They must be in
some way in the air; for all that men see is the refutation of that
which none study, the smiting of those who do not contend. Epur si
muove !
Those to whom the system of Comte is of serious moment would be
but of a poor spirit if they lost heart under such a combination of
assaults, or took pleasure in the signs of so wide-spread an interest. A
perpetual buzzing about a new system of thought can as little do it
good as it can do it harm. The students of Comte would be foolishly
sanguine if they set this down to real study or serious interest in his
system. They would be culpably weak if they supposed it was due to
any efforts of their own to extend it.
�THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
51
However much Positivism may desire the fullest discussion, little can
come of criticism which does not pretend to start with effective study.
As a system it demands far too much both in the way of sustained
thought and of practical action, to gain by becoming merely a subject
of social or literary causerie. The platoon firing of the professional
critics, and the buzz of the world, may become fatiguing; but both in
the main are harmless, and in any case appear to be inevitable.
But when we look below the surface a different view will appear.
However few are they who avow Positivism completely, its spirit per
meates all modem thought. Those who teach the world have all learnt
something from it. The awe-struck interest it arouses in truly relig
ious minds shows how it can touch the springs of human feeling. Men
of the world are conscious that it is a power clearly organic, and that it
is bent on results. And even the curiosity of society bears witness that
its ideas can probe our social instincts to the root.
It cannot, indeed, be denied that so general an interest in this subject
is itself a significant fact; and though it be not due to anything like a
study of Comte, and most certainly to nothing that is done by his
adherents, it has beyond question a cause. This cause is that the age
is one of Construction—and Positivism is essentially constructive.
Men in these times crave something organic and systematic. Ideas are
gaining a slow but certain ascendency. There is abroad a strange consciousne*ss of doubt, instability, and incoherence; and, withal, a secret
yearning after certainty and reorganization in thought and in life.
Even the special merits of this time, its candor, tolerance, and spirit of
inquiry, exaggerate our consciousness of mental anarchy, and give a
strange fascination to anything that promises to end it.
We have passed that stage of thought in which men hate or despise
the religious and social beliefs they have outgrown—their articles of
religion, constitutions of State, and orders of society. We feel the need
of something to replace them more and more sadly, and day by day we
grow more honestly and yet tenderly ashamed of the old faiths we once
had. At bottom mankind really longs for something like a rule of
life, something that shall embody all the phases of our multiform
knowledge, and yet slake our thirst for organic order. Now there is, it
may be said without fear, absolutely nothing which pretends to meet
all these conditions—but one thing, and that is Positivism. There are,
no doubt, religions in plenty, systems of science, theories of politics,
and the like; but there is only one system which takes as its subject
all sides of human thought, feeling, and action, and then builds these
up into a practical system of life. Hence it is that, however imperfectly
known, Positivism is continually presenting itself; and though but
little studied, and even less preached, it ceases not to work. It proposes
some solution to the problem which is silently calling for an answer in
the depths of every vigorous mind that has ceased to be satisfied with
the past. It states the problem at least, and nothing else does even
�52
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
this. Thus, in spite of every distortion from ignorance or design, the
scheme of Positivism has such affinity for the situation that it is ever
returning to men’s view. For whilst mankind, in the building of the
mighty tower of Civilization, seem for the time struck as if with a con
fusion of purpose, and the plan of the majestic edifice for the time
seems lost or forgotten, ever and anon there grows visible to the eye of
imagination the outline of an edifice in the future, of harmonious de
sign and just proportion, filling the mind with a sense of completeness
and symmetry.
An interest thus wide and increasing in a system so very imperfectly
known, proves that it strikes a chord in modern thought. And as
among those who sit in judgment on it there must be some who hon
estly desire to give it a fair hearing, a few words may not be out of
place to point out some of the postulates, as it were, of the subject, and
some of the causes which may account for criticisms so incessant and
so contradictory. It need hardly be said that these words are offered
not as by authority, or ex cathedrd, from one who pretends to speak in
the name of any body or any person whatever. They are some of the
questions which have beset the path of one who is himself a disciple
and not an apostle, and the answers which he offers are simple sugges
tions proposed only to such as may care to be fellow-hearers with him.
It is of the first importance for any serious consideration of Posi
tivism to know what is the task it proposes to itself. For the grounds
on which it is attacked are so strangely remote, and appear to be so
little connected, that perhaps no very definite conception exists of what
its true scope is. There is much discussion now as to its scientific
dogmas, now as to its forms of worship, now as to its political prin
ciples. But Positivism is not simply a new system of thought. It is
not simply a religion—much less is it a political system. It is at once
a philosophy and a polity; a system of thought and a system of life;
the aim of which is to bring all our intellectual powers and our social
sympathies into close correlation. The problem which it proposes is
twofold: to harmonize our conceptions and to systematize human life;
and furthermore, to do the first only for the sake of the second.
Now this primary notion stands at the very root of the matter, and
if well kept in view it may spare much useless discussion and many
hard words. Thus viewed, Positivism is really not in competition with
any other existing system. It is hardly in contrast with any, because
none is in pari materid—none claims the same sphere. No extant re
ligion professes to cover the same ground, and therefore with none can
Positivism be placed in contrast. Christianity, whatever it may have
claimed in the age of Aquinas and Dante, certainly in our day does not
profess to harmonize the results of science and methodize thought. On
the contrary, it is one of the boasts of Christianity that its work is ac
complished in the human heart, whatever be the forms of thought and
even of society. It cannot therefore be properly contrasted with Posi
�THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
53
tivism, for they are essentially disparate, and the function claimed by
the one is not that claimed by the other.
So, too, Positivism is hardly capable of comparison with any existing
philosophy. There are many systems of science and methods of thought
before the world, but they insist on being heard simply as such, and
not as being also religions, or schemes of life. They stand before the
judgment-seat of the intellect, and they call for sentence from it accord
ing to its law. Such social or moral motive as they rest on is ade
quately supplied in the love of truth and the general bearing of knowl
edge on human happiness. Their doctrines ask to stand or fall on
their own absolute strength, and are not put forward as a mere intro
duction to a form of life. Not but what, of course, philosophers,
ancient and modern, have elaborated practical applications of their
teaching to life. But no modern philosophy, as such, puts itself forth
as a part of a larger system, as a mere foundation on which to build the
society, as a major premise only in a strict syllogism of which the con
clusion is action. Now this the Positive philosophy does. Positivism
therefore is not a religion, for its first task was to found a complete
system of philosophy: nor is it á philosophy, for its doctrines are but
the intellectual basis of a definite scheme of life: nor a polity, for it
makes political progress but the corollary of moral and intellectual
movements. But, though being itself none of these three, it professes
to comprehend them all, and that in their fullest sense. Thus it
stands essentially alone, a system in antagonism strictly with none, the
function and sphere of which is claimed by no other as its own.
Criticism which ignores this primary point, which deals with a sys
tem as if its end were something other than it is, can hardly be worth
much. And thus viewed, a mass of popular objections fall to the
ground. For instance, a continual stumbling-block is found in politi
cal institutions and reforms which Positivism proposes—institutions
which are wholly alien, it is true, to our existing political atmosphere,
and which could hardly exist in it, or would be actively noxious. But
these are proposed by Positivism only on the assumption that they fol
low on and complete an intellectual, social, and moral reorganization
by which society would be previously transformed, and for which an
adequate machinery is provided. No value can attach therefore to any
judgment on the political institutions per se, tom from the soil in
which they are to be planted, crudely judged by the political tone of
the hour. No serious judgment is possible until the social and intel
lectual basis on which they are to be built has been comprehended and
weighed, and found to be inadequate or impossible. But this is what
he who criticises the system from a special point of view is unwilling
or unable to do.
So with the philosophy—we often hear indignant protests against
the attempt made by Comte to organize the investigation of nature.
Nothing is easier than to show that the organization proposed might
�54
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
check the discovery of some curious facts, or the pursuits of certain
seekers after truth. But the same would be true of any organization
whatever. The problem of human life is not to secure the greatest ac
cumulation of knowledge, or the vastest body of truth, but that which
is most valuable to man; not to stimulate to the utmost the exercise
of the intelligence, but to make it practically subservient to the happi
ness of the race. The charge therefore that the Positive philosophy
would set boundaries to the intellect by setting it a task, is not to the
purpose, even if it were true. This might be said of almost every re
ligion and any system of morality. The very point in issue is whether
the true welfare of mankind is best secured by the absolute independ
ence of the mind, going to and fro like the wind which bloweth
whither it listeth.
Thus, too, in criticising the religious side of Positivism, it is argued
that it fails to provide for this or that emotion or yearning of the re
ligious spirit; that it leaves many a solemn question unanswered, and
many a hope unsatisfied, and has no place for the mystical and the In
finite, for absolute goodness, or power, or eternity. Be it so. The
objection might have weight if Positivism were offering a new form of
theology, or came forward simply as a new sort of religion. But the
problem before us is this—whether these ideas can find a place in any
religion which is to be in living harmony with a scientific philosophy.
We are called on to decide whether, since these notions are repugnant
to rational philosophy, religion and thought must forever be divorced,
and whether we must choose thought without religion, or religion
without thought. Positivism, if it has no place for the mystical or su
pernatural, has the Widest field for the Ideal and the Abstract. It
holds out the utmost reach for any intensity of sentiment. Nor could
its believers fail in a boundless vista of hope; of hope which, while it
is substantial and real, is not less ardent, and far more unselfish, than
the ideals of' older faiths. Positivism maintains that supposing estab
lished such a scientific and moral philosophy as it conceives, inspiring
a community so full of practical energies and social sympathies as that
which it creates, a rational religion is possible, but such hopes and
yearnings would be practically obsolete, supplanted by deeper and yet
purer aspirations. They would perish of inanition in a mind or a so
ciety really imbued with the relative and social spirit. They had -no
place under the practical morality and social life of past ages. They
would have none, it argues, under the scientific philosophy and the
public activity of the future. The truth of this expectation cannot
possibly be estimated without a thorough weighing both of the philos
ophy and of the polity which it is proposed to found, and a very sys
tematic comparison of their combined effects.
To treat philosophy, religion, or polity without regard to the place
each holds in the general synthesis, is simply to beg the question. It is
much more to the purpose to argue that the general synthesis which
�THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
55
Positivism proposes to create is not needed at all, or even if needed, is
perfectly chimerical. Certainly it is a question which cannot be dis
cussed here; and perhaps it is one which cannot be settled by any dis
cussion at all. It seems one of those ultimate questions which can only
be determined by the practical issue, and which no a, priori argument
can touch. Solvetur ambulando. It has been most vigorously treated
by Mr. Mill in his estimate of Positivism, and, like all that he has said
on this subject, deserves the most diligent thought. After all, it may
be the truth that this question of questions—if human life be or be not
reducible to one harmony—is one of those highest generalizations
which the future alone can decide, and which no man can decide to be
impossible until it has been proved so.
In any case, those who have no mind to busy themselves with any
system of life or synthesis of social existence whatever—and they are
the great bulk of rqankind—may well be asked to spare themselves
many needless protestations. Positivism most certainly will not
trouble them; and the world is wide enough for them all. Still less
need of passionate disclaimers and attacks have all they who are hon
estly satisfied with their religious and social faith as it is. Positivism
looks on their convictions with the most sincere respect, and shrinks from
wounding or disturbing the very least of them. How much waste of
energy and serenity might be spared to many conscientious persons if
these simple conditions were observed! Positivism is in its very essence
unaggressive and non-destructive; for it seeks only to build up, and to
build up step by step. It must appeal to very few at present, for the first of
its conditions—the need of a new System of Life—is as yet admitted only
by a few. It must progress but slowly as yet, for its scheme is too wide
to be compatible with haste. If all of those who are alien to anything
like a new order of human life, and all those who are satisfied with the
* order they have lived under would go their own way and leave Posi
tivism to those who seek it, a great deal of needless irritation and agi
tation would be happily averted. The idea that thought and life may
some day on this earth be reduced to organic order and harmony may
be Utopian, but is it one so grotesque that it need arouse the tiresome
horseplay of every literary trifler? And though there be men so un
wise as to search after this Sangreal in a moral and intellectual re
form, is their dream so anti-social as to justify an organized hostility
which amounts to oppression? Incessant attempts to crush by the
weight of invective, fair or unfair, a new system of philosophy, which
appeals solely to opinion, and which numbers but a handful of adher
ents for the most part engaged in study, are not the highest forms of
intelligent criticism. Positivism as a system has nothing to say to any
but the very few who are at once disbelievers in the actual systems of
faith and life, and are believers in the possibility of such a system in
the future. To the few who seek it, it presents a task, as it fairly warns
them, requiring prolonged patience and labor. The rest it will scarcely
�56
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
trouble unless they seek it; and perhaps it will be better that they
should leave it alone. Little can come of eternally discussing the solu
tion of a problem which men have no wish to see solved, or of multi
plying objections to what they have no mind to investigate.
Positivism, then, consists of a philosophy, a religion, and a polity;
and to regard it as being any one of these three singly, or to criticise
any one of them separately, is simple waste of time. Its first axiom is,
that all of these spheres of life suffer from their present disorder, because
hitherto no true synthesis has been found to harmonize them. This
axiom is obviously one which must meet with opposition, and in any
case be very slowly accepted. The very notion of system and organiza
tion implies subordination in the parts, submission to control, and
mutual concession. The unbounded activity, independence, and free
dom of the present age, not to say its anarchy and incoherence, quiver,
it seems, in every nerve at the least show of discipline. Yet any species
of organization involve discipline, and any discipline involves some re
straint. Of course, therefore, any scheme to organize thought and life
presented in an age of boundless liberty and individualism meets oppo
sition at every point. To show that Positivism involves a systematic
control over thought and life is not an adequate answer to it. To prove
of a new system that it is a system is not a final settling the question
until you have first proved that no system can be good. All civilizartion and every religion, all morality and every kind of society, imply
some restraint and subordination. The question—and it is a question
which cannot be decided off-hand—is whether more is implied in the
system of Positivism than is involved in the very notion of a synthesis,
or a harmony co-extensive with human life.
It is worthy of notice how entirely new to modern thought is this
cardinal idea of Positivism—that of religion, science, and industry
working in one common life—how little such an idea can be grasped *
in the light of the spirit of the day! Yet so far is it from being an
extravagant vision, that it sleeps silently in the depths of every brain
which ever looks into the future of the race. None but they who dwell
with regret on the past, or are engrossed in the cares of the present,
doubt but what the time will come when the riddle of social life will be
read, and the powers of man work in unison together; when thought
shall be the prelude only to action or to art, and action and art be but
the realization of affection and emotion; when brain, heart, and will
have but one end, and that end be the happiness of man on earth.
And thus while priest, professor, and politician forswear the scheme
which Positivism offers, and society resounds with criticism and refu
tation, none believe it overcome or doubt its vitality; for it remains
the only conception which pretends to satisfy an undying aspiration
of the soul.
Whether the pursuit of system or harmony be carried out by Comte
extravagantly or not is, no doubt, a question of the first importance.
�t
THE
ii a
pa
R
p
r
B
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
57
It is certainly one which there is no intention of discussing here. But
in any case it is not to be decided lightly. Mr. Mill, as has been said,
has argued this question-with all that power which in him is exceeded
only by his candor. But which of the other critics have done the
like ? A criticism like that of Mr. Mill is a totally different thing,
and worthy of all attention. Nor must it be forgotten how largely, in
criticising Positivism, he accepts its substantial bases. Nothing can
be more disingenuous than to appeal to the authority of Mr. Mill as
finally disposing of the social philosophy of Comte, when Mr. Mill has
adhered to so much of the chief bases of that philosophy in general,
and has warmly justified some of the most vital features of the social
system. A system may be false, but it is not false solely because it is a
system. It might very possibly be that harmony had only been
attained by Positivism at the expense of truth or life, by doing violence
to the facts of Nature, or by destroying liberty of action. But this is
a matter depending so much on a multitude of combined arguments
and on such general considerations, that it can be decided only after
long and patient study. It clearly cannot be done piecemeal or at first
sight. And of all questions is the one in which haste and exaggeration
are most certain to mislead.
Let us follow a little further each of the three sides of Positivism—
the Philosophy, the Religion, the Polity—in order, but not independ
ently, so as to put before us the goal they propose to win and the main
obstacles in their path. The grand end which it proposes to philosophy
is to give organic unity to the whole field of our conceptions, whether
in the material or in the moral world, to order all branches of knowl
edge into their due relations, and hence to classify the sciences. Even
if the unthinking were to regard this project as idle or extravagant,
every instructed mind well knows that it is involved in the very nature
of philosophy, and has been its dream from the first. Can it be neces
sary to argue that the very meaning of philosophy is to give system to
our thoughts ? What are laws of nature but generalizations ? what
are generalizations but a multitude of facts referred to a common
idea ? what is science but the bringing the manifold under the one ?
Knowledge itself is but the study of relations; and the highest knowl
edge, the study of the ultimate relations.
And as science has no meaning but the systematizing of separate
ideas, so the grand systematizing of all ideas has been the ceaseless aim
of philosophy. What else were the strange but luminous hypotheses
of the early Greeks? what else was the colossal task of Aristotle?
what else that of the elder Bacon and his coevals, of the other Bacon,
of Descartes, of Leibnitz, of the Encyclopaedists, of Hegel ?
That order is the ultimate destiny of all our knowledge is so ob
vious that the effort to found it at once can be met only by one objec
tion worthy of an answer, and that is that the aim is premature. It is
very easy to see that the earlier attempts, when even astronomy was in
�58
THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
complete and the moral sciences outside the pale of law, were utterly
premature. But whether the task is premature now is entirely dif
ferent. After all, it is one of those questions which no a priori argu
ment can affect. It is not premature if it can be even approximately
done. Yet the mere suggestion of it arouses a myriad-headed oppo
sition. In every science and every sub-section of a science a specialist
starts forth to tell us that generations of observers are needed to ex
haust even his own particular corner in the field of knowledge. And
if one science is to become but the instrument of another, if one kind
of inquiry is to be subordinated to another, we should fetter, they tell
us, the freedom which has led to so many brilliant discoveries, and
leave unsolved many a curious problem.
The answer of Positivism is simply this: If the systematizing of
knowledge will be premature before all this is accomplished, it will
always be premature. The end for which we are to wait is one utterly
chimerical. No doubt there are no bounds to knowledge, any more
than there are bounds to the universe. As Aristotle says, thus one
would go on for ever without result; so that the search will be fruitless
and vain. Nay, if we go by quantity, estimate our knowledge now as
compared with the facts of the universe, we are but children still play
ing on the shore of an infinite sea. If, before philosophy can be
formed into a systematic whole, every phenomenon which the mind
can grasp in the inorganic or in the organic world has to be first ex
amined—every atom which microscope can detect, every nebula which
telescope can reach—if every living thing has to be analyzed down to
the minutest variation of its tissues, from infinitesimal protozoa to
palaeontologic monsters—if every recorded act, word, or thought of
men has to be first exhausted before the science of sciences can begin
—the task is hopeless, for the subject is infinite. A life of toil may
be baffled by the problems to be found in one drop of turbid water.
Ten generations of thinkers might perish before they had succeeded in
explaining all that it is conceivable science might detect on a withered
leaf. And whole academies of historians would not suffice fully to
raise the veil that shrouds a single human life.
Were science pursued indefinitely on this scale, not only would the
earth not contain all the books that should be written, but no conceivable
brain could grasp, much less organize, the infinite maze. The task of
organization would thus be made more hopeless each day, and philos
ophy would be as helpless as Xerxes in the midst of his countless
hosts. The radical difference between the point of view of the positive
and the current philosophy, that which feeds the internecine conflict
between them, is that between the relative and the absolute. Looked
at from the absolute point of view—that is, as the phenomena of mat
ter and life present themselves from without—the task of exhausting
I he knowledge of them is truly infinite, and that of systematizing them
is truly hopeless. From the relative point of view philosophy is called
�THE P OSITIVIST PROBLEM.
59
on to exist, not for its own sake, but as the immediate minister of life.
To utilize it, and to organize in order to utilize it, is of far higher im
portance than to extend it. It judges the value of truths, not by the
degree of intellectual brilliancy they exhibit, or the delight they afford
to the imagination, but by their relation, in a broad sense, to the prob
lem of human happiness. Till this great problem is nearer its solution,
Positivism is content to leave many a problem yet unsolved and many
a discovery unrevealed. It sees life to be surrounded by such problems
as by an atmosphere “ measureless to man; ” for life rests ever like an
island girt by an ocean of the Insoluble, and hangs like our own planet,
a firm and solid spot suspended in impenetrable space.
What is the test of true knowledge, when phenomena, facts, and
therefore truths, are actually infinite? The fact that this or that gas
has been detected in a fixed star is, no doubt, a brilliant discovery in
the absolute point of view; but, in the relative, it might possibly turn
out to be a mere feat of scientific gymnastic—the answer to a scientific
puzzle. The discoverer of many a subtle problem may be, absolutely
speaking, entitled to the honor of mankind; but relatively, if his
problem is valueless, he may have been wasting his time and his
powers. Hence the special professors of every science are the first to
resent the principles and the judgments of the relative mode of
thought. They cannot endure that their intellectual achievements
should be judged by any but scientific standards, or their inquiries
directed by any but scientific motives. The whole conception of the
relative method differs from theirs. It calls for the solution first of
those problems in each science which a systematic philosophy of them
all indicates as the most fruitful sources of inquiry: it enjoins the fol
lowing of one study and science for the sake of and as minister to
another, and of all for the sake of establishing a rational basis for human
life and activity. And this not in the vague general spirit that all
knowledge is good, and all discoveries useful to man, and no one can
tell which or how. The same objection was brought against Aristotle
and Bacon when they proposed their Organa, or clues to inquiry. All
truths may have some value, but they are not equally valuable. The
claim of the relative is to test their value by a system of referring them
to human necessities. It sees the life of man stumbling and wander
ing for the want of a foundation and guide of certain and organized
knowledge. Each hour the want of a rational philosophy to direct and
control our social activity is more pressing, yet the absolute spirit in
science, vain-glorious and unmindful of its function, shakes off the idea
of a yoke-fellow, and widens the gulf between thought and life by soli
tary flights amidst worlds of infinite phenomena.
It is sometimes pretended—it must be said rather perversely—that
this relative conception of science is akin to the stifling of thought by
the Catholic Church. It is of course true that the Holy Inquisition,
like most dominant religions, did claim the right, in virtue of its
�60
THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
divine mission, of dictating to the intellect certain subjects as forbid
den ground, and warning it off from these limits; it dictated to the
intellect the conclusions which it was required to establish, and the
methods it was permitted to use—and this not on intellectual, but on
religious and supernatural grounds. Positivism neither dictates to the
intellect nor hampers its activity. It calls on it on grounds of philos
ophy, and on demonstrable principles, to work in its own free light;
but by that light, and at its own discretion, to choose those spheres and
to follow those methods that shall combine harmoniously with a scheme
of active life as systematic as itself. This is utterly distinct from the
slavery of the mind, according to the Catholic or any other religious
notion. The comparison is as simple a sophistry as to argue that it is
slavery in the will deliberately to follow the dictates of conscience.
No one who has given the subject a second thought can suppose
that Positivism, in bringing the intellect into intimate union with the
other sides of human nature for the direct object of human happiness,
intends thereby to confine it to the material uses of life, or to refer
every thought to some immediate practical end. The former is mere
materialism ; the second simple empiricism; and both utterly unphilosophical. On the contrary, by far the noblest part of the task of the
mind is to minister to moral and spiritual needs. And by far the most
of its efforts are employed in strengthening its own powers, and amass
ing the materials for long series of deductions. Philosophy, as Positiv
ism conceives it, would annihilate itself by becoming either material
or empirical. Its business is to systematize the highest results of
thought; but those results are the highest which are most essential
to, and can be assimilated best by, human life as a whole.
And
no system can be the true one but as it orders all thoughts in rela
tion, first to each other, and, secondly, in relation to every power of
man.
Can it be needful again to say that the attempt of Positivism to
systematize the sciences is very far from implying that there is but one
science and one method, or that it would reduce all knowledge to one
set of laws. Its chief task has been to show the boundaries of the
sciences, to classify the different methods appropriate to each, and to
point out how visionary are all attempts at ultimate generalizations.
When men of science tell us that processes of reasoning are used indis
criminately in all sciences, and that all scientific questions are ulti
mately referable to one set of laws, they are going back to the infancy
of philosophy, effacing all that has been done to analyze reasoning, and
attempting, as of old, to reach some chimerical, because universal,
principle. It is but the materialist phase of the metaphysical problem.
Supposing all questions of science, including all social questions, as has
been proposed, not apparently in jest, could be reduced to questions of
molecular physics, how would this serve human life more than if they
were reduced to air, water, or fire ? The end of specialism is at hand
�THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
61
if science is looking for some ultimate principle of the universe. The
search is equally unpractical, whether it be pursued by crude guessing
or by microscopes and retorts. It would not help us if we knew it;
and as Aristotle says of Plato’s idea, the highest principle would
contain none under it. It would be so general as to support no prac
tical derivatives. Like all extreme abstractions, it would bear no fruit.
Turn on whichever side we will, we meet this conflict between the
relative and the absolute point of view. The absolute burns for new
worlds to conquer; the relative insists that the empire already won,
before all things, be reduced to order, and knowledge systematized in
order to be applied. The absolute calls us to admire its brilliant dis
coveries ; the relative regrets that such efforts were not spent in dis
covering the needful thing. The absolute claims entire freedom for
itself; the relative asks that its labors be directed to a systematic end.
It is the old question between individual and associated effort—the
spontaneous and the disciplined—the special and the general point of
view'. We might imagine the case of a general with a genius for war,
such as Hannibal or Napoleon, carrying on a campaign with a hetero
geneous host and a staff of specialist subordinates. He desires to learn
the shape of a country, the powers of his artillery, the fortification of
his camp, or the engineering of his works. He seeks to master each
of these arts himself, so far as he has means, and for his ultimate end.
But with his specialists he wages a constant struggle. His geographer
has a thousand points still to observe to complete his survey. His en
gineers start curious problems in physics, and each science has its own
work, as each captain of irregulars may have his pet plan. It may be
true that much may be needed before any of the branches can be
thoroughly done ; and the scheme of some subordinate officer might
possibly destroy a certain number of the enemy. But the true general
knows that all these things are good only in a relative manner. His
end is victory, or rather conquest.
Thus it is not only intelligible, but quite inevitable, that Positivism
should meet the stoutest opposition from the science of the day, not
only in details and in estimates, but even in general conceptions, and
yet not be unscientific. The strictures of men even really eminent in
special departments are precisely what every system must encounter
which undertakes the same task. That all such should make them,
more especially if they be inclined to theology, or devotees of individ
ualism, is so entirely natural that any answer in detail must be an end
less task. By their fruits you shall know them. Let us see them pro
duce a system of thought more harmonious in itself and more applica
ble to the whole of human life. Every new philosophy which proposes to
change the very point of view of thought has always incurred fierce oppo
sition. Every new religion and social system has seemed to its predeces
sors an evil and cruel dream. How much more a system which involves
at once a new philosophy, a new religion, and a new society; which brings
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THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
to thought a change greater than that wrought by Bacon or Descartes;
which draws a spiritual bond vaster and deeper than that which was
conceived by Paul, and founds a social system that differs from our own
more than the modern differs from the ancient world.
Whether the actual solution of the problem of systematizing thought
as worked out by Comte in all its sides, his statement of natural laws,
and his classification of the sciences, be adequate or true, is a matter
which it is far from our present purpose to discuss. It would be for
eign to our immediate aim, and impossible within our present limits.
But there is a stronger reason. It would be simple charlatanry in one
without due scientific education to undertake such a task as that of
examining and reviewing a complete encyclopaedia of science. The
natural philosophy of Comte is a matter which no one could undertake
to justify in all its bearings without a systematic study of each science
in turn. Looking at it from the point of view of philosophy, and with
that relative spirit which the sense of social necessities involves, a dili
gent student of the system, who seeks to satisfy his mind on it as a
whole, can form a sufficient opinion, at least so far as to compare its
results with any other before us. After very carefully considering the
strictures passed on Comte’s classification of the sciences and his state
ment of the principal laws, it does not appear to the writer that one of
them will hold. If we are to shelter ourselves under authority, we may
be content with that of M. Littré, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Lewes. We are
too apt to forget the great distinction between philosophy and science,
and the paramount title of the former. Men of science are far too
ready to decide matters of philosophy by their own lights, matters
which depend far less on knowledge of special facts than on the gen
eral laws and history of thought, and even of society. Nor does there
appear to be any weight in some strictures which have recently been
published in this Review on the positive law of the three stages and the
classification of the sciences, the greater part of which objections have
been already anticipated and refuted by Mr. Mill—part of which are
obvious misconceptions of Comte, and part are transparent sophisms.
On the whole, it may be fairly left to any one who seriously seeks for a
philosophy of science, and is prepared to seek it with that patience
and breadth of view which such a purpose requires, to decide for him
self if he can discover any other solution of the problem, the general
co-ordination of knowledge as a basis of action.
Let us now for a moment turn to the system viewed as a religion,
not with the slightest intention of reviewing it, much less of advocating
it, but simply to see what it is, and what it proposes to do. Its funda
mental notion is that no body of truth, however complete, can effect
ually enlighten human life; no system of society can be stable or
sound without a regular power of acting on the higher emotions.
There are in human nature capacities which will not be second, and
cannot be dispensed with. There are instincts of self-devotion and of
�THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
63
sympathy, love, veneration, and beneficence, which ultimately control
human life, and alone can give it harmony. Though not the most
active either in the individual character, or even in the social, these
powers are in the long run supreme, because they are those only to
which the rest can permanently and harmoniously submit. Each sepa
rate soul requires, to give unity to the exercise of its powers, a motive
force outside of itself: for the highest of its powers are instinctively
turned to objects without. The joint action of every society is in the
long run due to sympathy, and to common devotion to some power on
which the whole depends. There thus arises a threefold work to be
accomplished—to give unity to the individual powers; to bind up the
individuals into harmonious action ; to keep that action true and per
manent—unity, association, discipline. Without this the most elabo
rate philosophy might become purely unpractical or essentially im
moral, the most active of societies thoroughly corrupt or oppressive,
and the result throughout the whole sphere of life—discord. Nothing
but the emotions remain as the original motive force of life in all its
sides; and none of the emotions but one can bring all the rest and all
other powers into harmony, and that is the devotion of all to a power
recognized as supreme. To moralize both Thought and Action, by
inspiring Thought with an ever-present social motive, by making
Action the embodiment only of benevolence—such is the aim of reli
gion as Positivism conceives it.
Now, without debating whether the mode in which Positivism
would affect this be true or not, adequate or not, it is plainly what
every system of religion in its higher forms has aimed at. And accord
ingly we see the singular attraction which this side of Positivism pos
sesses for many orthodox Christians. It is entirely their own claim;
and, indeed, there nowhere exists in the whole range of theological phil
osophy an argument on the necessity for and nature of religion in the
abstract at all to be compared with that in the second volume of the
“ Politique Positive.” Passing over the question whether Positivism
has carried out this aim by methods either arbitrary or excessive, it is
plain that every system which can claim to be an organized religion at
all, has had a body of doctrine, a living object of devotion, observances
of some kind, and an associated band of teachers. It is not easy to see
how there could be anything to be rightly called a religion without them,
or something with equivalent effect. A mere idea is not a religion,
such as that of the various neo-Christian and Deist schools.
The hostility, therefore, which the religious scheme of Positivism
awakens is one involved of necessity in the undertaking, and should
count for very little until it is seen that its critics are prepared fairly
to consider any such scheme at all. Those who are most disposed to
feel any interest in the scientific or political doctrines of Positivism
are just those who almost to a man reject worship, Church, and religion
altogether. This, for the most part, they have done, not on any gen
�64
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
eral philosophical reasons, but simply from antipathy to those forms of
devotion they find extant. Whether, in rejecting the actual forms of
them now or hitherto presented, the very spirit of these institutions
can be eliminated from human nature and from society, is a question
which they care neither to ask nor to answer. But in treating of the
Positive, or any scheme of religion, this is the question at issue. Nor
must it be forgotten that so much is the vital spirit of all religious
institutions extinct in modern thought, that even if the doctrines and
ceremonies of existing churches escape ridicule by virtue of habit and
association, forms less familiar, however rational in themselves, would
be certain to appear ridiculous, as doctrines far more intelligible and
capable of proof would appear chimerical to men accustomed to listen
calmly even to the Athanasian Creed.
Fully to conceive the task which Positivism as a religion has set
itself to accomplish, much more fairly to judge how its task has been
done, requires the mind to be placed in a point of view very different
from that of the actual moment. How little could the most cultivated
men of antiquity, who never looked into the inner life of their time,
estimate the force of early Christianity, or the most religious minds of
the middle ages accept the results of modern enlightenment! What
an effort of candor and patience would it have proved to any of these
men to do justice to the system which was to supersede theirs, even if
presented to their minds in its entirety and its highest form 1 It is
inherent in the nature of every scheme which involves a great social
change that it should bring into play or into new life powers of man
kind hitherto dormant or otherwise directed. Whether it be right in
so doing, or whether it do so to any purpose, is the question to decide;
but it is a question the most arduous which can be put to the intelligence,
and involves protracted labor and inexhaustible candor. Random criti
cism of any new scheme of religious union is of all things the most
easy and the most worthless. It can only amuse the leisure of a trifler,
but it deserves neither thought nor answer. Positivism in the plainest
way announces what is its religious aim and basis. The partisans of
the actual creeds may of course resist it by any means they think best.
But as it certainly does not seek them, nor address any who are at rest
within their folds, they cannot fairly complain of being scandalized by
what they may find in it for themselves. Those who attack it from
independent grounds show but small self-respect if they do so without
accepting the first condition of their own good faith, which is patiently
to weigh it as a whole. And those who fairly intend to consider it to
any purpose may be assured that they are undertaking a very long and
perplexing task; that much of it must necessarily seem repugnant to
our intellectual tone. A system which professes to be co-extensive
with life and based upon proof would be mere imposture if it could be
accepted off-hand as true or false, if it did more than assert and illus
trate general principles, or if it ended in closing the mind and leaving
�THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
65
man but a machine. The real point in issue is whether it be possible
to direct mankind by a religion of social duty, if humanity as a whole—
past, present, and to come—can inspire a living devotion, capable of
permanently concentrating the highest forces of the soul; whether it
be possible to maintain such a religion by appropriate observances and
an organized education. This is the true problem for any serious
inquirer, and not whether a number of provisions admittedly sub
ordinate approve themselves to the first glance. To travestie a new
system by exaggerating or isolating its details is a task as easy as it
is shallow.
In its third aspect—that is, as a polity—what is it that Positivism
proposes ? It is a political system in harmony with a corresponding
social and industrial system, tempered by a practical religion, and based
upon a popular education. The leading conception is to subordinate
politics to morals by bringing the practical life into accord with the
intellectual and the emotional. The first axiom, therefore, is this—
that permanent political changes cannot be effected without previous
social and moral changes. This is a scheme which may be said to be
wholly new in political philosophy. Every political system of modern
times hitherto has proposed to produce its results by legislative, or at
all events by practical changes, and has started from the point of view
that the desired end could be obtained if the true political machinery
could be hit upon. It is the starting-point of Positivism that no machinery whatever can effect' the end without a thorough regeneration
of the social system; and when that is done, the machinery becomes
of less importance. The principal thing, then, will be to have the ma
chinery as simple and as efficient as possible. Political action, like all
practical affairs, must in the main depend on the practical instinct.
And the chief care will be to give the greatest scope for the rise and
activity of such powers. But as the social system is to be recast, not
by the light of the opinion of the hour, but by a study of the human
powers as shown over their widest field, so the leading principles in
politics will find their rational basis in no corner of modern civilization,
but in the history of the human l’ace as a whole and a complete analy
sis of the human capacities.
Let us see what this involves. From the nature of its aim it can
not be revolutionary in the ordinary sense. The very meaning of revo
lution is a radical and sudden change in the constitution of the state.
Now, apart from its condemnation of all revolutionary methods, Posi
tivism insists that all political changes so made must prove abortive.
But, besides this, it repudiates disorder as invariably evil, and insists
that every healthy movement is nothing but the development of the
past. But at the same time the change to which it looks is of the
greatest extent and importance. It is thus the only systematic attempt
to conciliate progress and order, one which effects revolutionary ends by
a truly conservative spirit. Of all charges, therefore, that could be
�66
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
made against Positivism, that of being anarchical is the most super
ficial. The attempt to connect it with disorder and sedition is scan
dalously unjust. To the charge of being reactionary the best answer is
a simple statement of the future to which it looks forward. That it
contemplates a benevolent despotism is an idle sneer, for it conceives
the normal condition of public life as one in which the influence of
public opinion is at its maximum, and the sphere of government at
its minimum.
But just in proportion to the width of the system on which Positive
politics rest is the degree of opposition which it awakens. Adapting to
itself portions from each of the rival systems, it alienates each of them
in turn. It is impossible to do justice to the greatness o£*past ages, and
still more to revive anything from them, without offering a rock of
offence to all the revolutionary schools. And it.is impossible to pro
pose a reorganization of society at all without alarming the conserva
tive. These alternations of interest in and antipathy towards Positivist
politics, these bitter attacks, these contradictory charges, belong of
necessity to the undertaking, and need surprise no one. But those who
profess to know what they undertake to criticise, those to whom all
matters human and divine are open questions, who spend their time
but to hear or to tell some new thing, such, one would think, would be
careful that they understand the conditions on which a new system of
thought is based.
This hasty outline of the task which Positivism undertakes—the
mere statement of its problem—may suffice to explain the continual
interest it excites, and also the incessant hostility it meets. Let any
one fairly ask himself—if it be possible to accomplish such a task at all
without necessarily provoking a storm of opposition, and if the success
of the system as a whole could possibly be estimated without a patience
which, it may be said, it almost never receives. The mere variety of
the objects which it attempts to combine, while interesting men of the
most opposite views, of necessity presents to each some which utterly
repel him. It is impossible to reconcile a Babel of ideas without for
cing on each hearer many which he is accustomed to repudiate. The
man of science, who is attracted by the importance given to the physi
cal laws, starts back when it is proposed to extend these laws to the
science of society. The student of history, who sees the profound truth
of the philosophy of history, is scandalized by the very idea of a creed
of scientific proof. The politician foi* a time is held by the vision it
presents of social reforms, but he is disgusted at hearing that he must
take lessons from the past. The conservative delights to find his an
cient institutions so truly honored, to be shocked when he finds that
they are honored only that they may be the more thoroughly trans
formed. The man of religion is touched to find in such a quarter a
profound defence of worship and devotion, only to be struck dumb
with horror at a religion of mere humanity. The democrat, who hails
�THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
67
the picture of a regenerated society, turns with scorn from an attempt
to lay the bases of temporal and spiritual „authority. The reactionist
fares no better; for if he finds some comfort in the new importance
given to order, he dreads the results of an unqualified trust in popular
education and the constant appeal to public opinion. Those whom the
philosophy attracts, the religion repels. Those whom the moral the
ories strike shrink back from the science. Those who believe in the
forces of religion are no friends of scientific laws. Those who care most
for the progress of science are the first to be jealous of moral control.
It is simply impossible, therefore, to address with effect all of these
simultaneously without in turn wounding prejudices dear to each. It
could not be that the sciences could be organized without hurting the
susceptibilities of specialists everywhere, and it is the spirit of our time
to create specialists. To bridge over the vast chasm between the Past and
the Future, to co-ordinate the opinions and the emotions, to satisfy the
heart as well as the brain, to reconcile truth with feeling, duty with
happiness, the individual with society, fact and hope, order with
progress, religion with science, is no simple task. The task may be
looked on as hopeless, the solution of it may be derided as extravagant;
but if it were presented to men “ by an angel from heaven,” it would
sound strange to the bulk of hearers, men to whom such a notion is
alien, who have sympathy neither with the object nor the mode of pur
suing it. Hence the unthinking clamor which Positivism excites. To
the pure conservative it offers a fair mark for fierce denunciation. To
the jester it offers an opening for easy ridicule, for it offers to him
many things on which he has never thought. But by a critic of any
self-respect or intelligence it must be treated thoroughly, or not at all.
There are persons devoid of any solid knowledge, of the very shreds of
intellectual convictions, of any germ of social or religious sympathies,—
specialists ex hypothesis—to whom a serious effort to grapple with the
great problem of Man on earth is but the occasion for a cultivated
sneer, or a cynical appeal to the prejudices of the bigot. Non ragioniam di lor.
It must be plain to any one who gives all this a fair judgment that
the students of Comte could not possibly suffice for all such contro
versies, were they ten times as numerous as they are. The critics of
Positivism attack on a hundred quarters, and with every weapon, at
once. Only those who seriously interest themselves in the progress of
thought must remember that they are continually listening to mere
travesties, which it is worth no man’s while to expose, and to criticisms
which no one cares to answer. They would have only themselves to
blame if they choose to suppose that no answer could be given. Now
and then some striking case of misrepresentation has to be dealt with ;
but, as a rule, the students of Comte are of necessity otherwise engaged.
Controversy is alien to the whole genius of Positivism, for the range
of objections in detail is entirely infinite. Positivism must make way,
�68
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
if at all, like all efforts at construction, by its synthetic force, by its co
herence, and its fitness for the situation. If it has this, it can be
neither hindered nor promoted by any controversy, however brilliant as
a performance.
It is not an infrequent comment that the points of the Positive sys
tem are so widely remote and heterogeneous, that it appears somewhat
discursive. They are no doubt far apart from each other, and appar
ently, perhaps, disconnected. But it would be a most superficial view
to regard them as desultory. Now and then these principles are heard
of m matters of practical politics,—now in pure science, in religion, in
industry, in history, or in philosophy. But this is a necessity of the
case, and is a consequence of the connection between all these, which it
is the aim of Positivism to enforce, and of their general dependence on
common intellectual foundations. Its great principle is, that the errors
hitherto committed are due to the separate treatment of these cognate
phases of life and thought. And if it treats in turn very different sub
jects, it is by virtue of this very doctrine that each must be viewed in
its relation to the other. That individuals defending these principles
wander out of their course, and fall into inconsistencies, is their weak
ness, not that of the system. Positivism itself stands like an intrenched
camp, presenting a continuous chain of works to the beleaguring forces
around. Within its own circle the system of defence communicates
immediately to, and radiates from, its centre, while the attack, being
unorganized and ranged in a circle without, is spread over a vastly
greater area. It stands as yet almost entirely by the strength of its own
walls and the completeness of its works, and not by that of its defenders
within.
Metaphor apart, let any one in common fairness consider what stu
dents of Comte have to meet. The philosophical basis alone covers a
ground far apart from the ordinary education so wide that nothing but
general views of it can be possible. To be intelligently convinced of
the truth of the Positive Philosophy in a body in such a way as to be a
capable exponent, requires, first, a previous preparation which very few
have gained; and, secondly, a weighing of the system by that knowl
edge step by step, in bulk and in detail, which perhaps not five men in
this country have chosen to give. It need not be said that the present
writer has as little pretension to belong to one class as to the other.
But there is no reason why men, positivist in spirit and in general aim,
should feel bound to defend every point in turn in a vast body of phil
osophy for which they are not responsible, and which in its entirety
they do not pretend to teach. A student of Positivism may hold that
which he believes to be true without being concerned to maintain every
suggestion of Comte’s, which to the infinite wisdom of some critics
may appear ridiculous. Deductions of the kind they are fond of treat
ing are just what a serious student bent on mastering a body of prin
ciples leaves as open or indifferent matters, and trusts to the future to
�THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
69
decide. Besides, even on the assumption that many of these deduc
tions, and even some of these principles, were preposterous or false, still,
as Mr. Mill has well pointed out, the same might be said of every known
philosopher. Aristotle, Bacon, and Descartes have sown their whole
works broadcast'with the wildest blunders. What a flood of cheap rid
icule their contemporary critics had at their command I What a mass
of absurdity might not a smart reader discover who for the first time
were to glance through the Ethics of Aristotle, or the Organum of
Bacon 1 Yet even if the system of Comte were as full of absurdities as
those of these philosophers—which I am far from conceding—this
would not prevent his philosophy from being as valuable a step in
thought as any of the three. There seems a disposition to force men
who become students of Comte and accept generally the Positive sys
tem, as they might in their day have accepted the Aristotelian or the
Baconian philosophy, to defend every statement of Comte’s, as if it were
a question of verbal inspiration. It seems that men in this country
are at liberty to profess themselves adherents of every system of thought
but one. A man may—one or two do—study and uphold the princi
ples of Hegel. Benthamism is a creed with living disciples. Mr. Mill
may be called the chief of a school. A fair field is open to all of these,
at least in any field which is open to freedom of thought. But if a
man ventures to treat a public question avowedly from the Positive
point of view, he is assailed by professed friends to free inquiry as if he
were an enemy of the human race, to whom the ordinary courtesies are
denied; and some of the commonest names that he will hear for him
self are atheist, fanatic, and conspirator.
Respecting the actual adherents of Comte, perhaps a few words
may be permitted, and, indeed, a few are required. It is not usual in
this country to “ picket ” the ordinary doings of a school in politics or
opinion, even though you do happen to differ from them. But in the
case of Positivism it seems to be thought allowable to dispense with
such scruples. Accordingly, the most ordinary utterance of one of
those whom they dub as a member of the school is at once set down by
anonymous persons as some fresh act of what they are pleased to call
" this malignant sect.” The mode in use is a very old, a very simple,
but not a very candid plan: it consists only in this—the describing
every one who has adopted any Positivist principle as a professed disci
ple of Comte; next, of attributing to each of such persons everything
that any of them or that Comte has at any time countenanced; and
lastly, of ascribing to Positivism and to Comte, every act and almost
every word of any of these persons. And the world seems to relish
any preposterous bit of gossip about Positivist churches and ceremo
nies, schemes, plots, and what not 1 One can hardly keep one’s coun
tenance in doing it, but it seems necessary to state that all this illnatured gossip is the childish stuff such gossip invariably is. As to
telling the world anything about the “ sect ”—“ malignant ” or other
�70
THE POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
wise—there is nothing to tell. Whatever else may be true about Posi
tivism, publicity is its very essence—vivre au grand jour—in thought,
word, and deed, according to the motto of Comte; and every act and
statement it makes is open to any one who cares to look. The utmost
publicity about persons, congregations, rites, and preaching, by all
means. But the gossip need not be untrue as well as impertinent. As
is well known, Dr. Richard Congreve, who has adopted the system and
practice of Comte in its entirety, has occasionally made an address to
a small audience, and has subsequently published his discourse. He
has also from time to time given a course of lectures open to the
public. Those who like himself definitely accept Positivism as a re
ligion, and regard themselves as a community, of whom it should be
said the present writer is not one, occasionally have met together. But
the various observances instituted by Comte are scarcely practicable
here. It is obvious that it must be so. A religion, a worship, and an
education such as Comte conceived them, are not possible in all their
completeness without a body of persons and families steadily desirous
of observing them. It need hardly be said that the materials for this
do not as yet exist in this country. A system like Positivism does not
easily receive complete adherents. It is not like any of the religious,
political, or socialist systems—like Swedenborgianism or CornmnuiRm
—a simple doctrine capable of awakening a dominant fanaticism. It
cannot possibly be preached beside a hedge or in a workshop, and gain
converts by the score, like Methodism or Chartism. To promulgate it
duly requires a fresh education, followed by a long course of systematic
meditation. To form an honest and solid conviction upon a body of
philosophy thus encyclopedic requires years of study. Accordingly,
the number of those who have completely accepted the system of
Comte as a religion, among whom it has been said the present writer
cannot count himself, is small. To treat every student of Positivism
and avowed adherent of Comte’s system as a member of a sort of
secret society, and then to pretend that this supposed society is engaged
in a series of religious and political plots, the amusement of some
busybodies, is an idle impertinence. These tales are worthy only of an
imperialist journal describing an apparition of the Spectre Rouge.
The fact that there are men not so nervously afraid of being associated
with an unpopular cause as to be engaging in constant controversy or
defence, is no honest ground for including them in a body to which
they do not belong, for fastening on them any design, whether they
have countenanced it or not, and any opinion,whether they adopt it or
not. That there are men who think it their duty to say plainly what
they think, and to say it always under the guarantee of their own
names, is no good cause, though it makes it easy for masked opponents,
to eke out the argumentum ad rationem by a free use of the argumen
tum ad hominem. If all such attacks, which are the portion of any
man who dares to treat a question from the Positivist point of view,
�THE
POSITIV IST PROBLEM.
are for the most part unanswered and unnoticed, the reason most as
suredly is, not that they are true, but- that they are unworthy of
answer.
But enough of such matters. These petty questions of an hour
are but dust in the balance by which this question must be weighed.
However little it may be thought that Positivism has solved its
problem, it can hardly be said that the time is not ripe for its task,
that there is nothing that calls for solution. Into what a chaos and
deadlock is opinion reduced in spiritual as in practical things! Who
seriously looks for harmony to arise out of the Babel of sects which
have arisen amid the debris of the Catholic Church ? Or are any of
the Pantheist or Deist dreams more likely to give unity to the human
race ? The 'dogmas of Christianity have been by some refined and
adapted away until nothing is left of them but an aspiration. Qan an
aspiration master the wild confusion of brain and will ? And has even
the most unsparing of adaptations brought the ancient faith really
more near to true science or to active life ? To science, that which
cannot be reduced to law is that which cannot be known, and the un
knowable is a thing of naught. Activity on earth can be regulated
only by a real not a fictitious, a natural not a supernatural standard.
By their very terms, then, the various forms of spiritualism shut them
selves off from the world of knowledge and the world of action; and,
more or less distinctly, they assume an attitude of antagonism to
both.
And yet, on the other hand, is there any better prospect of harmony
in the ignoring of religion altogether? The men of science and of
action from time to time form desperate hopes for the triumph of their
own ideas and the ultimate extinction of religious sentiment. With
them it is a morbid growth of the human mind—a weakness bred of
ignorance or inaction. They chafe under the grossness of an age which
will not be content with the pure love of truth or with the fruits of
material success. Yet to how shallow and slight a hope do they trust!
Human nature under the influence of its deepest sentiments- venera-.
tion, adoration, and devotion—rises up from time to time, and snaps
their thin webs like tow. Errors a thousand times refuted spring up
again with new life. The instinct of religious feeling is paramount as
well as indestructible, and philosophy and politics are in turn con
founded by its force. It is an internecine struggle, in which they seem
fated eternally to contend, but in which neither can crush its op
ponent.
In political matters is there any foundation more sure ? Constitu
tions, suffrages, and governments are alike discredited. Some cry for
one reform, some for another; but where is the prospect of agreement ?
The best institutions of the age men cling to at most as stop-gaps, as
the practical solution of a shifting problem. But useful as they may
be, who believes in them as things of the future, destined to guide
�72
THE
POSITIVIST PROBLEM.
man’s course as a social being ? What a chaos of plans, nostrums, and
watch-cries ?—how little trust, or hope, or rest I
In things social is the prospect brighter? Is the question of rich
and poor, of labor and capital, of health and industry, of personal free
dom and public well-being, so much nearer to its answer than it was ?
With our great cities decimated by disease, famine, pauperism—with
the war of master and servant growing louder and deeper—the corrup
tion of industry increasing—and the whole world of commerce and
manufactures swept from time to time by hurricanes of ruin and
fraud,—is it a time tb indulge in visions of content? We all have
hope, it is true, in the force of civilization, in the noble elements of
progress, and in the destiny of the human race ; but by what patl^or
course they may arrive at the goal, what man shall say ?
In such a state of things Positivism comes forward with its system
of ideas, which, at the least, is comprehensive as well as uniform. To
some its solution may appear premature, to some incomplete, to others
erroneous. But what thoughtful mind, among those to whom the
social and religious forms of the past are no longer a living thing, can
honestly assert that no such problem as it attempts to solve exists at
all, or that this problem is already solved ?
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The positivist problem
Creator
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Harrison, Frederic
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Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: [49]-72 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Extracted from Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. Printed in brown ink on green paper.
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[American News Company]
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[1870]
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G5415
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Positivism
Philosophy
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English
Conway Tracts
Positivism
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THE
SCIENTIFIC BASIS
ORTHODOXY.
OF
BY FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD.
1.— THE NECESSARY INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY.
HE very recent declarations of Mr. John Fiske, of Harvard,
that Positivism regards itself as the legitimate successor of
theology, have resulted in directing the attention of thinkers
in this country to that subject. The speculations of Spencer,
who must be classed as a Positivist, though vastly at variance with
Comte in some of his conclusions, cannot be regarded as menacing to
orthodoxy, except in so far (if at all) as they may affect the general
cosmological and biological theorems upon which it depends. A sys
tem of philosophy—and Mr. Spencer may insult the adjective synthetic
with it, if it suits his fancy or egotism—a system of philosophy that
has no sympathy with history, must be regarded as too partial both in
its data and conclusions to affect the intellectual and moral evolution
of the oentury, except very limitedly ; and that Spencer’s system in
volves no hearty recognition of human history, is too apparent to need
elaborate demonstration. It is like a collection of bones, without moral
vitality ; and, in the putting together of the bones even, there is occa
sionally a lack of that deeper and more comprehensive synthesis which
constitutes the profounder part of philosophy. Comte has, on the
other hand, accepted the historical necessity of some religious system,
both as psychological and social; but has begun by eliminating from it
its valuable element, to wit, its supernaturalism, which, per se, is not
necessarily theistic or dependent upon the theistic idea, but belongs to
human nature and to human history as a progressive evolution of the
unconditioned from the conditioned.
Spencer’s speculations have not sufficient sympathy with evolution
as progressive — are too static. A just system of philosophy must
begin with the recognition, not only of history as the collective body
of human acts, but as the collective body of human progress in the
struggle toward ultimate freedom, in the sharpness of which struggle
the supernatural is engendered—the supernatural being understood in
its true historical sense as the sporadic manifestation, under given con
ditions, of that higher unconditioned humanity and nature, toward
T
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203
which both historical and geological evolution tend, and in whicli they
end.
Orthodoxy rests fundamentally upon two historical postulates,
namely, monotheism and the progressive historical evolution of the
God-consciousness in humanity. Admit these two postulates, and
the whole body of orthodox thought must be admitted as valid. Ra
tionalism is historically illogical, because it has no historical destiny,
and omits recognition of that which is to be regarded as evidence of
the progress of the evolution of the ultimate—in a word, omits recog
nition of the supernatural in history; and, for the same reason, Comte’s
religion of humanity is inadmissible. For all the purposes of philo
sophical poiesis it matters not whether the absolute be considered as
latent in humanity, that is, subjective, or as the God of the theolo
gians, that is, objective, or as the historical ultimate of humanity. The
fundamental conception is the same in either hypothesis, and, in either
hypothesis, represents an ideal sublimate which the history of human
consciousness has demonstrated to be universal. Furthermore, any
system of philosophy which, like undiluted Positivism, neglects to take
this God-instinct into account, is essentially partial, defective, and un
satisfactory. Omitting the ethical as historically interpretive of the
idea of right, and, therefore, not germane to the investigation, the
analyses of the historical manifestation of human consciousness may be
stated as threefold:
I. Philosophical or rational poiesis, which represents the struggle
of the rational intellect (Vernunfl) to apprehend the absolute in truth.
Subjectively, its processes are: apprehension and comprehension, that
is, knowledge; hypothesis and generalization, that is, ideal evolution;
-synthesis into system, that is, unification into absolute body of knowl
edge general, of knowledge particular.
II. Imaginative poiesis—art, poetry, music, and literary creation—
which represents the toiling of the imagination to apprehend and ob
jectify the absolute in beauty. As the toiling of reason is after the
absolute or ideal in knowledge, so the toiling of the imagination is
after the realization of the absolute or ideal in form, using the word in
its most comprehensive sense.
III. Inspirational poiesis—historically illustrated by the facts of
sacred history—which represents the struggle of the God-instinct to
compass the absolute in personal consciousness. For purposes of his
torical analysis, it is not necessary to postulate the objective esse of
God as postulated by theologians. Scientific disquisition assumes sim
ply the God-instinct in humanity, which is all that is necessary in
philosophical analysis, and leaves the question of objectivity to take
care of itself.
The first finds its struggle answered in the absolute in truth ; the
second, in the absolute in realization or beauty; the third, in the ab
solute in personal consciousness, the toiling after which constitutes,
philosophically, the ground of what is termed revelation.
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THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
Subjectively, therefore, truth and beauty are pure ideas, dependent
upon reason and imagination respectively. Subjectively, too, any sys
tem of philosophy or scientific hypothesis is just as really human in
vention as is a poem or a novel—a conclusion which is as lucidly
demonstrable as any proposition in Euclid. Suppose a person unen
dowed with reason, and truth is an impossible idea; suppose the same
person destitute of imagination, and beauty is an idea equally impossi
ble. It is not necessary at this stage of the discussion to open the
question of the objective reality of either—since conception of that
reality is grounded in imaginative and rational intellect, and since the
conception is often at best mistaken for the reality itself. In the crea
tion of any philosophico-imaginative cosmogony, like that of La Place,
therefore, the evolution of system is based upon the conceptions as
material of two faculties, to wit, reason, whence the ideal in abstract,
and imagination, whence the realization of the ideal in form.
As the construction of any hypothetical cosmogony is grounded in
these two ideas uniquely, it is, therefore, necessary to reduce both to
ultimate analysis, and develop the atomic notions upon which they
respectively depend.
At first sight, the idea of truth, in all moods of consciousness,
seems to be the simplest axiom or atom of thought, of which it is pos
sible to form a conception. A more minute scrutiny, however, suggests
the hypothesis that, truth as an idea is rather deductive than atomic—
suggests, I say, the conclusion that the idea of the true is deduced from
the atomic notion of the determinate, of the fixed. The struggle of
reason (represented in philosophy) is, therefore, a toiling after the fixed,
the determinate, the absolute in knowledge. In the processes and evo
lution of philosophy, the Positivists are correct in postulating the rela
tivity of knowledge; but, in its end, if that shall ever be attained,
knowledge must be absolute. In its historical ultimate, its to think
must be succeeded by to know. In seeking to apprehend this absolute,
therefore, which forever baffles and eludes his pursuit, what seeks man
but to apprehend the mystery and solve the riddle of himself ?—for, in
the consciousness of the man is hidden the secret of the universe and
the key of the true cosmogony. Constructive philosophy necessarily
consisting of two principal parts,—the synthesis of methods and the
synthesis of doctrines,—Comte’s position as a thinker by no means covers
the whole ground. His synthesis of methods may form the basis of a
philosophical system, but is not, in itself, a system of philosophy, and
must be complemented by the synthesis of doctrines which Spencer has
attempted to constitute really a philosophical body. Mr. Fiske has been
the first to condition Positivism in definition; and its cardinal theorems
cannot be stated more lucidly than this exceedingly analytic critic has
stated them:
I. That all knowledge is relative.
II. That all unverifiable hypotheses are inadmissible.
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205
III. That the evolution of philosophy, whatever else it may, is a
continuous process of deanthropomorphization.
IV. That philosophy is the synthesis of the doctrines and methods
of science.
V. That the critical attitude of philosophy is not destructive, but
constructive ; not sceptical, but dogmatic ; not negative, but positive.
These, according to Mr. Fiske, are the fundamental propositions of
Positivism. The Positive Philosophy, therefore, by no means involves
radicalism. On the other hand, historically considered, radicalism has
always been the handmaid of scepticism—has universally made its
appearance in conjunction therewith, aud more or less grounded upon
it. Positivism is essentially dogmatic, but not radical and noisy; it
maintains the quiet attitude of scientific criticism, and is not declama
tory ; attacks nothing, no faith, no belief, no theological dogma; is
satisfied with science as the developing element of civilization; enun
ciates what it deems to be truth, and waits its time. Relentless as fate,
it quarrels with nobody, but tramps strongly on, stopping only with
the cessation of scientific investigation. In its relation to past systems
of philosophy it claims to adopt the verifiable, rejecting the unverifiable element. As the latest outcome of the speculative instinct, as
emphatically the philosophy of the century and interpretative of its
spirit, it represents the present result of the philosophical poiesis his
torically considered.
In historical generalization, philosophy has run through two cycles,
and begun its third cycle in the system of Comte. The first cycle is
represented by the Greek systems. In ancient philosophy the first
period is cosmological, beginning with Thales and ending with Anaxa
goras and Demokritos; the second is psychological, represented by
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle ; the third period is one of general scep
ticism ; and the fourth is represented by Proklos whose divine light is
nearly identical with the Hegelian intuition, and completes the Greek
cycle. Mr. Lewes and Mr. Fiske regard Positivism as the end of the
modern cycle; but, more properly, it begins the scientific cycle. The
modern cycle begins with the promulgation of the method of Bacon
and the cultivation of the physical sciences; the cosmological element
cropping out in Galileo and Kepler. Its first period is ontological, be
ginning with Descartes and ending with Spinoza, whose inexorable
logic brought on a crisis and resulted in the reconsideration of the
initial conceptions of metaphysics and the rejection of the validity of
the subjective method.
This led to the second or psychological period, during which, for a
century or more, ontological speculation was abandoned or subordi
nated to psychological analysis. The adoption of the first canon of
Positivism—the relativity of knowledge—resulted from the investiga
tions of this period, and was rendered necessary by the1 inexorable an
alysis of mental operations, begun by Hobbes, and continued by Locke,
Berkley, and Hume.
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THE SCIENTIFIC BASTS OF ORTHODOXY.
This brought on the third or sceptical period, of which Hume ap
peal’s as the apostle, and in which Hartley’s keen analysis demonstrated
the possibility of bringing the scientific method to bear upon psycho
logical iuquiry. Sensationalism and crude materialism represent this
period in France. Against both, as the natural swing of the philo
sophical pendulum, there ensued later the tawdry superficially spiritual
istic reaction, conducted by Laromiguiere and Cousin, whose declam
atory le cœur answers to the divine light of Proklos, and ends the cycle
in France, with a fourth or intuitional period. In Germany the cycle
ends similarly, the re-examination of the subjective method by Kant
being episodical, and preparatory to the reassertion of the intuitional
by Hegel, who, again, denies the relativity of knowledge. The great
English thinkers of the century, with a caution engendered by the
Baconian method, diverge here from the logical completion of the cycle,
with the exception, perhaps, of Coleridge, who was addicted to German
ism ; Hamilton and Mansel accepting the Kantian psychology, but
stopping short of Hegelism. Thus ends the second cycle—the third
beginning with Positivism as interpreted by Spencer, in England, and
Comte, in France, and adopting substantially the cosmological system
of La Place. Pre-eminently it may be termed the cycle of the scien
tific method ; but, as to its ultimate historical deduction, it is folly to
speculate.
From this cursory generalization of the historical struggle of the
rational intellect after the fixed, the determinate, the absolute in knowl
edge, a parallel generalization of the history of the imaginative/xuLGais, it will be seen, quite unnecessary. Endlessly it everywhere repeats
the cycle—beginning with fable, merging into poetry and allegory, de
veloping into dramatic creation, and ending in pure, natural literature.
The historical manifestation of the God-instinct presents really but
one grand cycle which commences with cosmogonies. Then comes rev
elation objective, as its first rude groping after the latent absolute in
human consciousness, with its dreams, and omens, and visions. A pe
riod of transition ensues in which priestly mysteries succeed to objec
tivity. Then comes the intuitional, prophetic, or subjective- period, in
which objective revelation is abandoned, and the God is represented in
temporary union with the human consciousness. Then the final com
pleteness of the union of the God with human consciousness in the
son of Mary is asserted and accepted. Again, a brief period of pro
phetic prediction ensues, represented by the Apocalypse of St. John, in
which the ultimate historical triumph of the God-instinct ovei’ all
condition is foretold. Then comes a period of evolution ; and the
cycle, not yet completed, ends in the realization by the human of the
absolute in oonsciousness, as the ultimate deduction of the toiling of
the God-instinct after the God. The acceptance or denial of the esse
of the objective in no way affects the validity of the subjective instinct
—in no way affects the facts of its historical manifestation. The phe32
�TBE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
207
nomena are attested ; the objectivity of deity is a question with which
philosophy has no business. Truth, beauty, and deity may be subject
ive conceptions; but the supposition that they are cannot annul their
historical validity in the manifestation of consciousness. The collect
ive body of the motion of human consciousness towards freedom in all
directions—towards the absolute, in a word—constitutes, therefore,
historical progress, history being in ultimate definition the selfexpression of humanity; and at the basis of this progress, forever
restless, forever toiling towards the realization of its freedom from con
dition, tugs the God-instinct of the ego, the motive of all that is
grand and sublimated in human thought and human action. Neces
sary as the integrity of the ego is to this deduction, it may be well
here to notice the late English hypothesis that it is constituted by the
successive ideas which finds its refutation in the fact that, in the evolu
tion of ideas the consciousness is a double one—that is, I am conscious
of myself as myself, and conscious of myself as thinking.
Three profoundly instinctive and irrepressible, even fundamental,
directions of consciousness are found, therefore, if the preceding ratio
cination be valid, to underlie the historical self-expression of humanity.
They are, if coinage of the compounds may be permitted :
I. The thought-instinct, which seeks the absolute in knowledge, in
truth, in comprehension of the processes and laws of phenomenal
evolution.
II. The art-instinct, which toils to create the absolute in form, in
beauty, in objective realization.
III. The God-instinct, which struggles for the realization of the ab
solute in personal consciousness ; which attained, the history of human
consciousness as conditioned, ends.
The collective body of results, emanating from this threefold toil
ing of the human after freedom of self-expression, constitutes the es
sential facts of history, as the ultimate realization of the goal towards
which the struggle tends, constitutes its finis.
I have proceeded thus far without a break, for the sake of logical
coherence. Let me return now, and subject to analysis the idea of
beauty.
If the idea of beauty be subjected to careful analysis, it will, I
think, be conceded to be non-atomic, that is, deduced ; and if, again,
the dissection of the few poems, the beauty of which has been univers
ally acknowledged, be entered upon, their effect will be found to depend
upon a certain dreamy undulation, like the weird waving of restless
trees under moonlight, which pervades and spiritualizes their composi
tion. The atomic notion of beauty is, therefore, the undulative, the
rhythmical, the indeterminate. It is this principle that imbues
the beautiful with its soul of Faëry. From it may be deduced the
vague, the spiritual in poetic, artistic, and musical creation. Dispel
this perspective, this atmosphere of the indeterminate—imbue beauty
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THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
with mathematical decision, and it ceases to be beauty. The jump of
iambic rhythm is less beautiful than the dreamier winding of the
anapest, or the undulative dance of the dactyl. For a similar reason,
to wit, greater sweep of undulation, the Persian rhythms are more
beautiful than the English.
It is not intended in the preceding remarks to deny the mathemat
ical relations upon which the skeleton of the beautiful in form is
grounded. In rhythmical construction the sound-waves observe a
certain mathematical regularity of recurrence, as also in music ; but
that which constitutes a mathematical system of short and long syl
lables regularly alternating, and is mere scansion, must not be con
founded with the ebb and swell of the sound-wave, the undulation of
which is the ground of the beautiful in rhythm and music. Sculpture,
painting, and the plastic arts afford, perhaps, a more distinct recogni
tion of the relation of the geometrical to the beautiful ; but, in the
study of that relation, the two must be kept separate. The mathe
matical and geometrical are, so to speak, the bones of the beautiful.
“ Beauty of favor,” says Bacon, “ is least. Beauty of color is more
than that of favor ; and the beauty of sweet and graceful motion is
best of all. There is a beauty which a picture cannot express, nor
even the first sight of life. There is no excellent beauty without some
strangeness in the proportion.” The father of the scientific method
seems here to hint indistinctly at the categories of beauty, to wit, the
beautiful in form, which is the ground of sculpture ; the beautiful in
color, which lies at the basis of painting ; the beautiful in expression,
which verges further upon the ideal than either of the preceding ; and
the beautiful in individuation, which is still subtler and more ethereal.
The last category connects the beautiful with Schelling’s tendency to
individuation, and presupposes the intimate relation of the beautiful
to the biological, the plastic, the creative ; but, in no respect, invalidates
the reference of the idea of beauty to the wave-motion, which consti
tutes the law of force.
Hogarth, who located the principle in the curve, did, it seems, ap
proximate to the solution of the problem; the principle being really
the undulative or indeterminate curve, resultant from the wave-motion
of force as it enters into morphization. Prof. Tilman, in a recent
paper, has so lucidly developed the relations of the mathematical and
geometrical, upon which the symmetrical is grounded, to the musical
and rhythmical sound-wave, that argument is really superfluous. The
subject may, in fact, be pursued to any extent of illustration by reference
to instruments for the study of wave-motion, and to the subtler inves
tigation of the wave-forces that condition the forms of plants. The
beautiful must not be confounded with its geometry. The latter is the
skeleton, of which the former is the vivifaction and soul.
This analysis is supported essentially by the psychology of imagina
tive creation. Longfellow expresses himself as one—
�THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
209
“ Who, through long days of labor
And nights devoid of ease.
Still hears in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.”
Poe interprets the instinct when in “ Israfel ” he moans out—
“ If I could dwell where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody.
While a bolder note than his might swell
From my lyre within the sky.”
Again, depicting the poet under the similitude of a beautiful palace, he
sings—
“ And travelers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute’s well-tuned law.”
Shelley, more profoundly a poet than either mentioned, typifies the
poet in his “ Skylark ” thus—
“ Higher still, and higher.
Heavenward thou springest;
Like a cloud of fire,
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.”
_
But why multiply instances, when, from the bulbul-hearted Hafiz to
ethereally musical Tennyson, no poet has left the instinct for rhythm
unexpressed—when, in fact, the undulative is grounded in the very
nature of the art-instinct ? The wave-motion is the essential element
of the beautiful in imaginative poiesis, whether it be considered as the
rhythm-wave of poetry or as the sound-wave of music, or as the line
wave of art proper. Connect the gamut of musical sound with the
spectrum of color, and it will be seen, adopting the undulatory hypo
thesis of light, that the two have a direct relation. Red, produced by
the least number of light undulations, represents the tonic; yellow, the
mediant; and blue, the dominant. The darkest color, indigo, falls on
the relative minor tonic; the brightest yellow, on the brilliant medi
ant. It would, in fact, be perfectly easy to set the Ut-Re-Mi-Fa-SolLa-Si of the sound-septave to the septave of the spectrum; the color
translating the sound to the eye harmoniously, and the mathematical
correspondence of undulation to undulation being preserved with per
fect accuracy. The deduction is that light, heat, and actinism result
from undulations of the same attenuated medium; the perception of
light and color resulting from the ratio of undulations embraced in a
single octave. The deduction, incident to this ratiocination, is, how
ever, a broader one, to wit, that the wave-motion, the rhythmical im
pulse, is inherent in the objectively beautiful, whether it be represented
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THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
in sound dolor, or form, which latter constitutes simply the perma
nence of ttave-motion—is its mummifaction, so to speak, in connec
tion with matter; and in this rhythmical impulsion is, no doubt,
grounded the aesthetic (dement of the objective, its existence consti
tuting the basis of the aesthetic perception.
The universality of the rhythmical in the operation of force has
been assumed by so acute a Positivist as Herbert Spencer, and proved;
and what has been once demonstrated under the scientific method
need not be re-argued, further than to point out the parallelism be
tween natural and psychological operations, that is, to identify the
objective principle with the subjective idea—further than to admit the
conclusion that the art-method of human consciousness is identical
with the art-method of the phenomenal.
There is nothing in Mr. Spencer’s law of rhythm, except its incor
poration as a part of the scientific method. Dreamers were aware of it
before thinkers were. Plato expressed it in his music of the spheres;
and an old English author propounded it quaintly in the apothegm:
“The verie source and, so to speak, springheade of all Musicke is the
verie pleasant sound that the trees make when they grow.” It has, too,
been one of the ever-recurring imaginings of poetry. Mrs. Browning
expresses it:
“ The divine impulsion cleaves
In dim music to the leaves,
Dropt and lifted, dropt and lifted,
In the sunlight greenly sifted—
In the.sunlight and the moonlight
Greenly sifted through the trees.
Ever wave the Eden trees
In the sunlight and the moonlight,
In the nightlight and the noonlight,
Never stirred by rain or breeze.”
Or, again, here is a poetic personification of the rhythmical impulse in
nature, from “ Al Araaf
“ Ligeia, Ligeia,
My beautiful one,
Whose harshest idea
Will to melody run,
Say is it thy will
On the breezes to toss,
Or, capriciously still.
Like the lone albatross,
Incumbent on night
As she on the air,
To direct with delight
All the harmony there ?
Indeed, it is not the uucommonness of the fancy, but the common
ness of it, which gives it dignity; and its admission into the scientific
method is valueless except as demonstrative proof of the hypothesis
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211
that the æsthetic evolution of nature is identifiable with the æsthetic
evolution of art.
As philosophy, historically speaking, is a response to the rational
ideal, so art, music, poetry is a response—vague it may be as the music
of Memnon’s statue, unsatisfactory as the fatuous fire of the Will-o’the-Wisp, but a response nevertheless to the psychal ideal, to the
toiling to embody the ultimate in form. For this the musician
trickles music from his finger-tips, and the poet sets his vision to melody
of numbers; for this, the insensate blossoms into forms of supernal
loveliness ; for this, the quarried marble is fashioned into shapes of
beauty by the hand of the artist; for this, in short, the imagination
creates unto itself an ideal Eden, reflecting in form, in color, in mel
ody, its own vague prophecies of the absolute in beauty. In the
rustle of leaves, in the soughing of winds, in the muffled music of rain
upon grass, in the rhythmical laughter of rills, in the tremulous swing
ing of reeds—in all things, in a word, in which the wave-motion is ex
pressed, it seeks expression for its own sublimated conceptions of the
ideal—that ideal which is forever restless, and which, probably, no col
location of present physical forms could fully embody.
Men deficient in the art-instinct may sneer at the æsthetic inspira
tion as fare il santo, but it has its historical significance, nevertheless.
Truth, in essence, is sublime ; but its loftiest sublimity is lifeless—is
pulseless—is utterly ineffective when brought into comparison with the
inspiration of the beautiful. Dismiss rhapsody, and make a last deduc
tion—a deduction that logically ensues and offers a solution of the
riddle. It is that, the absolute in consciousness attained, man, still
ceasing not to be man, shall find in the full evolution of beauty the
historical answer to the struggle to create firms of physical loveliness.
It is that matter, mastered by consciousness and answering imme
diately, as it now answers mediately, to the art-instinct, shall yield
itself to the expression of the psychal ideal with perfect fluidity and
subjection. Whence, from beauty ephemeral is deduced beauty eternal.
The imaginative poiesis having been identified in principle with
the natural evolution of the beautiful, as the philosophical poiesis is
identifiable with the rationale of that phenomenal evolution, a more
minute analysis of the processes of the philosophical and imaginative
may be attempted. Both begin with perception, and proceed from per
ception to poiesis. The gradations from perception to philosophy in
the rational intellect are :
1. Perception of the object as object.
2. Perception of the object as subject, that is, rational cognition—
understanding.
3. Rational discursion, or pure reason—eventuating in philosophy.
The rational cognition or understanding is inclusive alike of the
cognition of the mathematical and of the logical relations of the
object.
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THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
The gradations of the imaginative or sensitive intellect are:—
1. Perception of the object as object.
2. Sensitive cognition, or cognition of the object as subject, that is,
in its relation to the idea of beauty—taste.
3. Sensitive discursion, or imagination—eventuating in artistic,
musical, or poetic creation.
Taking up the third poiesis, that is, the inspirational, springing his
torically from the theanthropic instinct, a third formulation is neces
sary to complete the formulations of the historical manifestation of the
human consciousness in what may be termed the literary form. This
third poiesis begins with the intuitional, and may be formulated
thus:
1. Intuitional perception, that is, perception of the absolute as the
ground (Urgrunde) of the relative.
2. Intuitional cognition, that is, cognition of the absolute as sub
jective—faith.
3. Intuitional discursion—eventuating in prophecy, in revelation,
or, more comprehensively stated, in theanthropomorphization.
This formulation agrees substantially with that adopted in the
phrenological scheme—which, however, can have no scientific psychol
ogy—though I may suggest that, in phrenology, that which is termed
the semi-intellectual would be more accurately described by the word
psychal, while for intellectual I should substitute rational, and for
religious, intuitional. In relation to the phenomenal, the rational
identifies itself with causation; the imaginative or psychal with
morphization; the intuitional with theanthropomorphization as the
historical deduction of consciousness and the historical destiny of
man.
Any who may wish to study the data upon which the preceding
generalizations are based, may, without subjecting themselves to the
trouble of looking further, consult Mr. Lewes’ history of philosophy,
the admirable work of M. Henry Taine, on art-criticism, and the pro
foundly philosophical treatise on sacred history, in the publication of
which Prof. Kurtz has done more to turn back the current of rational
ism than the whole body of his orthodox confreres taken together;
referring them to which, I may be permitted to take leave of historical
induction, and devote the remainder of the argument to the evolution
of a biological definition, sufficiently broad to cover not only the struc
tural, physiological, and psychological per se, but also the ultimate the
anthropomorphization which historical induction indicates as the final
historical sublimate of humanity.
I cannot, however, pass to the evolution of the biological definition
without noticing a curious and very superficial error, into which, mis
led by eminent English thinkers and savans, Mr. Fiske has fallen in
his summary lecture on Positivism. “ Since,” says that gentleman—
“ since the process of generalization has successively metamorphosed
�THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
213
fetishism into polytheism,, and polytheism into monotheism, the in
ference is that it must eventually complete the metamorphosis of mono
theism into Positivism; and thus Positivism regards itself as the le
gitimate successor of theology.” So partial is this generalization, and
so inconsequent and unpsychological is its conclusion, that it seems
strange that Mr. Fiske should have gravely enunciated it. So far as
the historical fact is concerned, monotheism began with the beginning
of history. Historically speaking, the relapse was from monotheism
into polytheism, that is, monotheism preceded. Fetishism cannot be
postulated as the starting-point of theism: Accepting the book of
Genesis as the initial attempt at history, which is demonstrably true,
it is obvious that theology began with monotheism in the Semitic
stem. The history of this stem presents the only completed cycle of
theanthropomorphization grounded in the persistence of the mono
theistic conception. The Indo-European stem presents at the begin
ning of history a series of mythological cosmogonies essentially simi
lar, but evidently deduced from the Semitic, which, though polytheistic
in terminology, are pantheistic in ultimate analysis. The Hindoo,
Persian, Gothic, Grecian, and Roman systems constitute a group, in
which monotheism original seems, by gradual process of theanthropo
morphization, imaginative rather than historical, to have been meta
morphosed into mythologies, superficially polytheistic, but essentially
pantheistic. In their cosmological systems they are evidently deriva
tive from the Semitic, which is historically older. The Egyptian and
Assyrian systems are still more obviously derivative from the Semitic.
All these derivative mythologies begin with the postulation of a mono
theistic original, answering to the Elohim, as in the Jupiter of the
Greeks, for example, and proceed to polytheism upon the principle of
multiplication; effecting a partial return to monotheism in the pan
theism that succeeds. The Mongolian stem differs from the IndoEuropean in details of mythology and cosmology, but not so essentially
as to stand aloof from the generalization; and, again, historically con
sidered, fetishism is rather representative of a degraded monotheism
than original. In all the so-called pagan systems, there are prismatic
reflections of the original element of the theanthropomorphization
more historically developed in the Semitic system. They appear in the
Vedas, in the Zendavesta. They are written in hieroglyphics amid the
relics of Egypt. They reappear in the Gothic, Greek, and Roman
mythologies, though more feebly; and, generally, the remoter the an
tiquity of the system, the more distinctly derivative from the Semitic
are these prismatic reflections. The pagan cycle, therefore, begins with
monotheism, descends to polytheism by theistic multiplication, and
ends in pantheism by generalization of the polytheistic. The return
to monotheism is effected through the historical triumph of the Semitic
system, which, having completed its first cycle in the synthesis (theo
retical at least) of the divine consciousness with the human, assumes
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THE SCIENTIFIC BASTS OF ORTHODOXY.
universality by general diffusion and propagation, and becomes the
great developing element of an historical civilization, grounded upon
monotheism and the ultimate historical theanthropomorphization of
man. The utmost deduction of the rational intellect postulates ulti
mate cause, which the realistic instinct of the imagination transforms
into a world-soul, which is pantheism; and, as a generalization, it may
be observed that, in the ancient pagan civilizations, in the old IndoEuropean civilization generally—in which the rational and imaginative
have had the ascendency—the theistic idea has lapsed from monotheism
into polytheism, and from polytheism, by synthesis of polytheistic gen
eralizations, has ascended into pantheism, and there has been arrested.
The historical generalization is, it is seen, in substantial concord with
the psychological deduction that the dominance of the aesthetic in
stinct universally results in pantheism. Poets are inevitably pan
theistic in proportion to the dominance of the imagination—that is, in
proportion to the dominance of the psychal over the intuitional—
as artists are in ratio to the intensity of the art-insight. The phil
osophical insight, on the other hand, is neutral—neither theistic nor
atheistic—and concerns itself with the absolute in causation without
regard to the realization of the absolute in causation in some absolute
ego supposed to stand at the head of the cosmology in the attitude
of the cosmical soul. The element of theanthropomorphization, in as
far as it colors the Greek system, must be referred, partially, to the em
bers of monotheism perdu and transmuted from the Semitic, and, par
tially, to the struggle of the intuitional to assert itself in „the Greek
civilization.
The elements of polytheism and pantheism have, historically con
sidered, always been ephemeral and fluctuating. The element of mono
theism, having as its historical end the theanthropomorphization of the
human, has, on the other hand, been permanent, and constitutes the
basis of most that is valuable in the present European system of civili
zation. The historical induction, therefore, denies the validity of Mr.
Fiske’s conclusion, and leads to the hypothesis that monotheism and
theanthropomorphization will complete the cycle of history in the
realization of the latter. Thus, the present cycle of history is found to
embrace the interval of biological evolution included between the reali
zation of the ego as conditioned consciousness and the realization of
the ego as unconditioned consciousness; and thus egotism, in its better
sense, appears as the definition of history. Thus, too, biology must be
considered as divisible into two cycles, to wit, the cycle of pre-historic
evolution, and that of evolution historical; and thus, again, the histor
ical permanence of theology, as at present constituted, may be as
sumed ; the post-historical being of course represented by perfected
theanthropomorphization.
�THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
215 x
II.—THE NECESSARY BIOLOGICAL DEFINITION.
The imperfect condition of biology prevented the contemporary
appreciation of the value and significance of Hartley’s interpretation of
Lockian philosophy ; and, until the end of the eighteenth century the
glittering sensationalism of Condillac divided the philosophical laurels
with crude materialism. The first reaction was constituted by the le
cœur system advocated by Laromiguiere and Victor Cousin—a spiritu
alistic reaction of the most superficial kind, consisting in equal quan
tities of tawdry rhetoric and rhapsodical appeal to the testimony of the
heart. Having deluged France with a diarrhoea of words that meant
nothing, the system died of its own want of vitality. In England, at the
same time, the scepticism of Hume had produced a philosophical crisis.
Then came Kant, in Germany, and Comte, in France—the formel'
laying tlie foundation for Hegelism, and the latter appearing as the
founder of the Positive system, which may be conditioned as the syn
thesis of the methods and doctrines of science. The distinctively Posi
tive attitude of Galileo, Descartes, and Bacon, to the last of whom is
due the authoritative enunciation of the second canon of Positivism,
prepared the way for that system as elaborated by Comte. The first
canon of Positivism resulted from the reconsideration of the meta
physics of Spinoza, in England, and was the direct consequence of the
movement begun by Hobbes and continued by Locke, Berkeley, and
Hume. The first two canons of Positivism are, therefore, pre-Comteian. The last three propositions are peculiar to Comte and Spencer,
the two great apostles of the Positive system, the ground-theorem of
which is that the sciences can be made to furnish the materials neces
sary to the evolution of a complete, synthetic, and unified conception
of the world. Fundamentally, the practical realization of this unified
conception depends upon the biological definition which must be equal
to the covering of the metaphysical as well as the physical, and equal
to the explanation, not only of the pre-historic and historical, but also
of the post-historic. For the latest and most lucidly-arranged collec
tion and collation of the data of biology, the student is referred to
Herbert Spencer’s “ First Principles ” and his two volumes on biologi
cal science, issued by the Appletons.
The direction of foreign scientific investigation tends to lessen the
number of primary assumptions ; and it is now substantially conceded
that hardness, solidity, rigidity, impenetrability, elasticity, and the like,
are not properties of matter, but manifestations of attendant force.
“ The monstrous assumption of philosophers that the infinitely peren
nial specific quality of matter-atoms is due to infinite strength and
infinite rigidity, has for its only pretext,” says Sir William Thomson,
4f that adopted by Newton and eminent modern physicists, namely :
that it seems to account for the unalterable distinguishing qualities of
�216
Tin: SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
different kinds of matter. The movement toward the rejection of the
hypothesis that atoms are infinitely strong and infinitely rigid was t
started by Helmholtz, three years since, in his investigation of the
dynamical properties of vortex rings, from which he eliminates an
important conclusion. Describing their motion as wirbel-bewegung
(whirling motion), he concludes, from his experiments, that, if once
set up a perfect fluid, that is, a fluid with no viscosity or friction of
particles, it would be absolutely perpetual. Inertia would then be
overcome. Vortex rings may be produced by smokers by arranging
the lips so as to pronounce the letter 0, and expelling smoke from the
mouth gently, with the lips in that position. The smoke answers the
function to render the rings visible—they being just as readily pro
ducible in transparent air, as has been experimentally demonstrated.
These cylindrical rings move upward, when expelled from the mouth,
perpendicularly to their planes, revolving rapidly, as they move, around
a circular axis. This rotation corresponds in direction on the inner
side with the general motion of the ring; the outer side moving in
a contrary direction. They are not broken by impelling them one
against another, but rebound with singular elasticity, the integrity of
the ring being preserved.
It was this investigation upon which Sir Wm. Thomson grounded
his new theory of the molecular constitution of matter; its ground
theorem being that a closed vortex core is literally indivisible by any
action resultant from vortex motion. All bodies being composed of
vortex atoms, therefore, the infinitely perennial specific quality of
atoms is explicable without the Newtonian assumption.
Helmholtz, having proved that this quality exists in a perfect fluid
when the motion he terms wirbel-bewegung has been created, and
actual experiments having proved that when smoke rings in air are so
impelled as to come in collision they cannot be made to penetrate each
other, but rebound resiliently, Sir William deduces the conclusion
that, by packing them more closely than gases are packed under the
dynamical theory, the properties of liquids and solids might be ex
plained without assuming the atoms themselves to be either liquid or
solid, and the further conclusion that the number of primary as
sumptions may be lessened by one on the hypothesis that all bodies are
composed of vortex atoms in a perfectly homogeneous fluid. The
dynamic theory of gases, now received by Thomson, Tait, Joule, Helm
holtz, and others—European physicists of eminence all of them—is in
concord with Prof. Thomson’s hypothesis also, which as generalization
is of eminent value to physicists. Prof. Huxley, more recent in his
conclusions, seems to assume the matter-atom as per se dynamic, if
his biological definition is indicial of any opinion on the subject; and,
generally, it will be noted, the tendency of physical science is to lessen
the number of primary assumptions by rejecting the Newtonian enum
eration of the primary properties.
�THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
217
The same general tendency may be observed in relation to the
physical forces. Prof. Grove has proved that light and heat are moods
of the same force. Faraday long since demonstrated that magnetism
would produce electricity, with the important condition, how
ever, that the electricity so produced is static, not dynamic;
directive, not active; while Helmholtz has developed many curious
analogies in his work on the interaction of forces. Mayer has done
considerable in the same direction ; while Carpenter has brought out the
essential relation of the physical to the vital forces. These data have
been all collected by Prof. Youmans, and brought together into a single
ably edited volume.
This vortex-atomic theory involves, however, an unverifiable hy
pothesis in the determination of the specific form of the atom, which
is an assumption to be avoided if possible, and can be by postulating
that matter is dynamo-atomic. The qualities or properties of matter
are thus reducible to a single postulate, which is self-evident, to wit,
capacity for motion. Carrying the deduction a step further, from the
correlation and interaction of all forces so-called, and from the demon
strated identity of light and heat; from the proved convertibility of
forces and the demonstrated conservation of them, the generalization
is valid that force is essentially the same, and that what are termed
forces are only moods of one universal force, which may be either dy
namic or static, either directive or motive, and the law of the motion
of which is undulation, or rhythm, or, more properly, the wave or
progressive motion.
The physicist may begin, therefore, with three simple postulates,
two of which are self-evident:
I. Force, that which causes to move—affording a very simple ex
planation of gravitation, light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and con
sciousness, by reference of either to mood.
II. Matter, that which is moved—rigidly excluding all assumption
of so-called primary qualities from the definition.
III. The explanation of physical, psychal, and intellectual phenom
ena in strict accordance with the dynamical hypothesis, that is, upon
principles strictly mathematical.
The presupposition of the undulatory theory of light is that of an
ethereal and exceedingly attenuated medium, which may, perhaps,
answer the definition of the perfect homogeneous fluid necessary to
the permanence of the wirbel-bewegung in Helmholtz’s deduction or
Thomson’s vortex-atomic hypothesis. The dynamo-atomic hypothesis
presupposes the same attenuated medium or ethereal matter pervading
all cosmical interval. The cosmological evolution begins, therefore,
with a dynamic element or. causative of motion, that is, force, and a
static element or vehicle of motion, that is, matter—which, strangely
enough, answer very minutely to the ancient cosmological postulates
of the male and female principles in the genesis of cosmogonies. This
28
�218
THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
force is either motive or directive, either transitive or modal. Magne
tism may be made to produce static electricity, as has been dem
onstrated by Prof. Faraday. Both electricity and magnetism may
be developed into activity by motion or revolution—the difference be
tween them being that electricity seems to be eccentric and diffusive,
while magnetism is concentric and attractive. Assuming. that polar
magnetism is magnetic force set free by revolution, and that the
magnetic force is concentric—the needle, when magnetized at only one
end, should point to the centre of the earth, which is in correspond
ence with the fact. Both ends being magnetized and the needle bal
anced, it points in the direction of the magnetic pole, parallel with the
magnetic current. Again, place a compass near the magnetic
pole and compel the needle to keep its horizontal position, and it
points any way at random ; but, if left to itself, it points downward
toward the centre of the earth, and this constitutes what is termed
the dip of the -needle, as you move it from the equator in the direction
of either pole. The conclusion is, therefore, that magnetism is concen
tric, which accounts for the facts, without supposing the interior of
the earth to be a fixed natural magnet, which is disproved by the vari
ation of the needle from year to year in the same locality, an exhaustive
investigation of the laws of which was instituted by John A. Parker
in 1866, and printed in the volume of American Institute reports for
1867, under the general head of Polar Magnetism. The conclusion is
that electricity and magnetism represent the eccentric and concentric
moods of the same force—the latter constituting the ground of what
Newton terms gravitation. The former is diffusive; the latter, attract
ive. Heat and light resulting from undulations of the same attenua
ted medium, differ materially in this: that the former varies inversely
as the length of the undulation, while the perception of the latter re
sults from the ratio of undulations embraced in a single octave; and,
again, heat appears to be attractive, while light is diffusive. Assuming
these four to represent the concentric and eccentric moods, affinity
may be postulated as their synthesis; and this completes the cosmo
logical generalization. Again, assume the vitality which is allied to
electricity as eccentric, and nervosity allied to magnetism as concen
tric, and consciousness represents the synthesis of all the moods in
biology. The cosmological analysis is formulated thus:—
Eccentric moods ------ Light-------- Electricity \
Concentric moods-------Heat-------- Magnetism
The biological formulary of the forces proceeds further, and stands
thus:—
Eccentric moods ------ Light------- Electricity
Concentric moods------ Heat------- Magnetism
Afflnity /Vitality > Consciousness.
\ Nervosity '
The classification of vitality with the eccentric, and of nervosity
with the concentric, is in concord with the fact that temperaments in
which vitality predominates are the more electric; while temperaments
�T H fí S C TEN TIFIO B J S r S O F O U T HOB O X Y.
219
having a predominance of nervosity are the more magnetic. Or. again,
the temperament of vitality develops more color; while the tempera
ment of nervosity develops more intensity. The formulation pro
pounded need not, however, be further verified, since the argument
from comparative anatomy is conclusive as to its validity—the data
being matters of every-day observation. Two points of the ground
assumption remain to be stated, to wit, the persistence of force and the
persistence of matter; the mutable element appearing in form. Of the
two former the absolute may be predicated ; the latter constitutes the
basis of phenomenal evolution and dissolution, or, in other words, the
element of non-persistence and limitation. It is, therefore, neither in
force nor in matter per se that the relative element appears, but in
morphization. The formulation of the two primary assumptions as
cosmological or biological includes, therefore, motion and form, and is
represented as : Force, that which causes motion, the law of the evolution
of which (motion) is rhythm; Matter, that in which motion appears,
either as simple and continuous, the law of which is rhythm; or as
arrested and limitedly persistent, that is, form or morphization, the law
of which is beauty. As morphization, form pertains to cosmology; as
individuation, to biology.
It is not proposed to attempt here the framing of a mécanique celeste
adopted to the dynamo-atomic theory, though, given the wirbel-bewegwig,
the elements upon which to ground a cosmological system are com
plete. Neither is it purposed to enter upon an analysis and enumera
tion of the data of biology, in which little could be added to the ad
mirable induction and collation already developed by Herbert Spencer.
The aim of this critique is, on the other hand, to develop an adequate
biological definition. The definitions thus far propounded are referable
to three generalizations, to wit:
1. Life is the tendency to individuation, which is German and con
notes the essential physical condition of the evolution of organism,
that is, individuality.
2. Life is the twofold internal movement of composition and de
composition, at once general and continuous—which is essentially
physiological and merely the assertion of a fact, rather than a general
ization from a collection of facts.
3. Life is the co-ordination of actions—which, again, is simply the
assertion of a fact, and the same fact as before, looked at from the
stand-point of the physicist rather than from that of the physiologist.
The first represents life merely as a tendency impressed upon the
constitution of matter; the second apprehends physiologically the
necessary condition of a living organism ; while the third apprehends
the same condition scientifically. The post-Kantian or Hegelian
period of German philosophy, if valuable for no other reason, is to be
credited with the only proximately satisfactory definition of life, as
well as a great many valuable contributions to' literary criticism. The
�220
THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
sin of German speculators has been—owingto a certain realistic ten
dency or disposition to mistake words for things, expunged from the
Latin stock by dialectics, but still inherent in German—the seemingly
profound at the expense of the really and intelligibly profound—as all
philosophy postulated upon so-called intellectual intuition necessarily
must be. Still, it is by no means a sequitur that the postulate is to be
denied, for there can exist no doubt as to the validity of the conclusion
that, as there is a poetic intuition or imaginative insight as to the ideal
in beauty, so the highest sublimation of the rational intellect is intui
tional in its processes. Of course, it is possible to explain the seem
ingly intuitional by assuming insensible processes of deduction going
on in the mind, but not perceived as going on, and, therefore, occult ;
but the fact remains : both the imaginative vision and the rational
vision are, in their most sublimated phases, rather immediate than
mediate. The evidence of fact is ample as to this point and this mood
of intellect, the paroxysms of which are rare—are, in their illumi
nation, as if a star had burst inside of one’s head—often astonish, as
if a sun had shot athwart the heavens at midnight. Having no
method of proof, however, the rational intuition is valueless to philo
sophical speculation ; and this fact Bacon, himself most profoundly
intuitional, was sensible enough to apprehend and announce in the
promulgation of the objective method. Logically, therefore, upon
Bacon, as the father of the objective method in philosophy, and New
ton, almost the father of physical discovery, the Positive system de
pends ; and yet the evolution of the only profound biological definition
is due to one of the dreamiest disciples of the subjective.
If the wave-motion be taken as the basis of the law of rhythm in
the action of motive force, it is to be considered in itself as both pro
gressive and analogous to Helmholtz’s irirbel-bewegHng, since it has
been proved by Gerstner and Scott Russell that, in the typical wave
motion of a liquid, in the ocean-wave, for example, all the particles
revolve at the same time, in the same direction, and in vertical col
umns. This pulsating motion appears at least in a couple of species
of plants—the Hedysarum gyrans and the Colocasia esculenta, as to
the rhythmical tremor, of which latter M. Lecoq reported to the
Academy of Sciences, France, in 1867, some very curious and interest
ing observations—and upon it and its dynamical laws is, no doubt, to
be grounded the permanent hypothesis of mécanique celeste, all cos
mical creation being analogous to a limitless and palpitating heart. At
the basis of all motion lies this rhythmical impulse.
It is not scientific to assume special creations in biology. For its
purposes, evolution is the fundamental conception of organism ; and,
as Mr. Spencer has been lucid in his definition of evolution and of its
processes, quotation is admissible :
“1. An object is said to be homogeneous when one of its parts is like
every other part. An illustration is not easy to find, as perfect homo
�THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
221
geneity has probably never existed in the universe. But one may say
that a piece of gold is homogeneous as compared with a piece of wood ;
or that a wooden ball is homogeneous as compared with an orange.
“ 2. An object is said to be heterogeneous where its parts have no
resemblance to one another. All objects whatever are more or less
heterogeneous. But a tree is said to be heterogeneous as compared
with the seed from which it has sprung; and• an orange is heteroge
neous as compared to a wooden ball.
“ 3. Differentiation is the arising of an unlikeness between any two
of the units which make up an aggregate. A piece of iron, before it is
exposed to the air, is, to all intents and purposes, homogeneous. But
when, by exposure to the air, it has acquired a coating of oxide, it is
heterogeneous. The units composing its outside are unlike the units
composing its inside; or, in other words, its outside is differentiated
from its inside.
“ 4. Integration is the grouping together of those units of a hetero
geneous aggregate which resemble one another. A good example is
afforded by crystallization. The particles of the crystallizing substance,
which resemble each other, and which have no resemblance to the par
ticles of the solvent fluid, gradually unite to form the crystal; which is
that said to be integrated from the solution. Another case of integra
tion is seen in the rising of cream upon the surface of a dish of milk,
and in the frothy collection of carbonic acid bubbles covering a lately
filled glass of ale. When small pebbles, mixed with sand, are thrown
into a tumbler and gently agitated, the result is an integration of the
pebbles at the bottom of the vessel and of the sand above them.”
From these definitions, which are definitions of processes, he
deduces his definition of evolution :
“ Whether it be in the development of the earth, in the develop
ment of life upon its surface, in the development of society, of govern
ment, manufactures, of commerce, of language, literature, science, art,
this same advance from the simple to the complex, through successive
differentiations, holds uniformly. From the earliest traceable cosmical
phenomena down to the latest results of civilization, it will be found
that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous is
that in which evolution essentially consists.”
There may be doubts as to the precision of the definition of evolu
tion as applied to biology. The tendency of matter to organization
would, perhaps, express Mr. Spencer’s meaning more definitively; the
tendency to individuation expressing with more precision that which
Mr. Spencer terms integration. In fact, the definitions of the English
philosopher pertain rather to non-biological evolution than to the evo
lution of living organism.
Pre-historically considered, the tendency of matter to organization
expresses the biological definition with sufficient precision; but, with
the advent of humanity, the necessitv for a broader and deeper gene-
�222
THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF O li T H O D 0 X F.
ralization appears. The phenomenon of self-consciousness must, be
accounted for and admitted into the generalization, if it is to cover
more than the mere physical conditions of being, which are expressed
definitely enough in the first definition quoted, which is attributable
to Schelling, or in the second, proposed by De Blainville, or in the
third, which belongs to Mr. Spencer. For philosophical purposes, as
inclusive of the phenofnenon of self-consciousness, it is necessary to
attempt a deeper generalization—to begin with the beginning, that is,
with matter, and end with the result, that is, with self-consciousness.
Individuation must appear simply as a law of biological evolution ; and
the co-ordination of actions as a condition of its persistence. The
word tendency expresses the dynamic idea sufficiently lucidly, and is,
perhaps, preferable to motion or impulse for purposes of definition.
The three words, matter, as expressive of the ground of organism,
tendency, as expressive of its dynamical direction, and consciousness, as
expressive of its logical end, may, therefore, be adopted as the basis of
definition. The collateral of consciousness, to wit, self-hood, must be
included in the generalization, as also must that of realization ; and
the fabric is logically complete. Put in the form of a proposition, it
stands thus:
Life is the tendency of matter to self-consciousness.
The propositions of Schelling, De Blainville and Spencer are expres
sive simply of certain laws of evolution incident to the tendency of
matter toward the realization of self-consciousness, and may be formu
lated thus:
1. Law of evolution : progressive individuation.
2. Law of persistence : co-ordination of actions.
3. Law of physiology: twofold internal movement of composition
and decomposition, at once general and continuous.
The first might, perhaps, be better designated as the law of mor
phization, though evolution is more comprehensive, and, for philo
sophical purposes,- is the most important of the three—the two latter
pertaining merely to physics. There remains yet a fourth law, grounded
upon the ratiocination which has preceded: it is the law of beauty.
For investigation of the question, What is to be the ultimate sublimate
of humanity ? the two latter may be rejected, and the law of beauty
added. The formulary will then be expressed:
Life is the tendency of matter to self-consciousness.
1. First law of morphization : progressive individuation.
2. Second law of'morphization : progressive beauty, that is, progress
from beauty as relative to beauty as absolute, from beauty as ephemeral
to beauty as persistent and eternal.
The persistence of the dynamic and static elements in organism,
that is, force and matter, has never been denied. The morphization
has constituted the element of mutation ; and that its mutation or
want of absolute persistence is due to the imperfect realization of the
�THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOX T.
223
individual and the beautiful in organism, ensues as a logical conse
quence. Again, as the struggle of matter is to apprehend itself in con
sciousness, and as the struggle of the limited in consciousness is to
attain the absolute in consciousness, it ensues, as a logical consequence,
that the realization of the theological ideal of the historical destiny of
man is by no means undemonstrable from the data and inductions of
science. There is one law worth noting here, as to the persistence of
the dynamic element, not only per se, but in any special mood that it
may develop. The modal persistence of forcé has given occasion to
assume plurality of forces; and there is as little reason to suppose that
the mood of self-consciousness—its most sublimated mood, certainly—
is not persistent as there is to suppose that the mood of magnetism is
not persistent. Admitting, therefore, the persistence of conservation
of force, as Prof. Carpenter terms it, and the further persistence of
mood, which is demonstrable from Prof. Grove’s investigations as to
the correlation of forces—the scientific induction proves the persistence
of self-consciousness, which may be termed the individuation of force ;
demonstrating thereby the theological dogma of the immortality of
the soul.
It is obvious, therefore, that theology may be brought within the
circle of scientific induction, provided the biological definition be deep
ened in its generalization, as heretofore suggested, sa as to include the
phenomenon of consciousness. This conclusion is, of course, fatal to
the pretensions of Positivism as the successor of theology, and indi
cates, with the precision that a weather-vane indicates the direction of
an air-current, that the historical persistence of the two fundamental
propositions in which the theological system is grounded, to wit, mono
theism and the historical theanthropomorphization of humanity, is
both a valid deduction from the phenomenon of consciousness and a
valid induction of science. Moreover, this induction, valid upon the
hypothesis of the unity of force, is of equal validity, whether what are
termed forces be simply moods, or original dynamic principles. The
ego, therefore, is a persistent and indestructible individuality, the self
expression of which constitutes history, the evolution of which consti
tutes the pre-historic biology, the finality of which, historical progress
being interpreted as the struggle of the limited in consciousness to com
pass the absolute in consciousness, is theanthropy or that realization of
the absolute, which the inspirational poiesis historically foreshadows.
At first glance, the biological definition herein proposed resembles a
truism, and, if I mistake not, a truism it is. The fact, however, that it
has been overlooked in the dreary annals of physical and metaphysical
speculation,, answers sufficiently well as an apology for having inflicted
upon the reader a rather obvious train of ratiocination looking to its
elimination. So many have been the fantastic pagodas of logic upreared
with the view of topping them with the solution of the mystery of
being, that it must be refreshing to peruse something obvious—at least
�224
THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF ORTHODOXY.
semi-occasionally; and this is my apology for having discussed at
length and rather discursively—for having endeavored to demonstrate,
step by step, a theorem which is, in all respects, almost too self-evident
to need elaborate demonstration.
The key is simple; but, with it may be unraveled the riddle. It
unlocks the door, at least, of a reconciliation of theology with the
scientific method; and, as both must be ranked as persistent, the recon
ciliation is desirable. Simple as is its generalization, it opens the way,
too, for bringing metaphysics within the circle of scientific demonstra
tion, and founds a durable scientific basis upon which to build the
structure of theological metaphysics: for, theologically stated, the
biological definition is equally explicit in its adherence to scientific
induction. Let me state it theologically:
Life is the tendency of the material toward the spiritual, eventuating
in the consciousness of self.
Supplement this definition with a second definition, that is, a defi
nition of history from the theological point of view, and the basis of
the theological fabric is complete and grounded on inexorable scientific
induction as well. This second definition may be thus formulated :
History is the struggle of the human in the direction of theanthropy,
eventuating in incarnation, and having for its enji the ultimate his
torical synthesis of the human with the God-consciousness.
This is the goal of the toilers after knowledge, and the goal that
forever eludes their pursuit.. It is the basis of the dreams of Kepler;
of the scientific reveries of Comte; of the inexorable inductions of
Bucan, of the splendid cosmogony of La Place; of the goblin philo
sophical structures of Hegel and Schelling. It constitutes the secret
of the vain pursuit of man after the phantom of truth, of beauty, of
novelty—in short, after the distant and vaguely apprehended ideals he
seeks to attain, but to attain which were yet madness. Budderless and
compassless, he presses on, in thought, in dream, in reverie, in art, in
poetry, in philosophy, through fens of speculation and morasses of
ontology, until at last his fate overtakes him, and an epitaph is all that
is left to tell the story of his vain struggle after the Egeria of his
dreams^—the absolute.
If materialism is to be the coming philosophy, therefore, the subjec
tive tendency (or element) of matter must be admitted in order to ren
der philosophy possible. The definition of evolution as the progressive
struggle of matter in the direction of subjectivity, will then constitute
the true meaning of Mr. Spencer’s generalization; while life (in defini
tion) will be represented by matter as apprehending itself in subjec
tivity, and philosophy will return to a profounder era of metaphysics
in the explanation of the phenomenal upon psychological principles
The problem will be: Given the objective and subjective poles in mat
ter to find the x of the grand unity; and this is a problem in the study
of which theologians can join with scientists.
�
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The scientific basis of orthodoxy
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Fairfield, Francis Gerry
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Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed in brown ink on cream paper. From Modern Thinker, no. 1,1870
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Conway Tracts
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THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN.
*
BY AUGUSTE
COMTE.
< BOUT the close of the year 1841 a correspondence Began be/
tween Mr. John Stuart Mill and M. Auguste Comte. It be/ \ came at once very cordial and friendly and continued so for
some years. Mr. Mill accepted the method formulated by M.
Comte in the “ Cours de Philosophie positive.” This acceptance was
complete and remains so up to the present. Agreement on this point
is the first and most essential; without it nothing can be accom
plished ; with it, everything. But while such was his relation to the
method, it was wholly different as to the doctrine. Mr. Mill reserved
this for future contemplation. Very much of it reflection and more
extended observation have shown him to be well-founded, and to that
part of it he has given his most unqualified adhesion. We may cite,
among other things, M. Comte’s view of human evolution; of the
philosophical limits of the sciences; and of their concatenation into a
series, which are perhaps the most important of “ positive ” doctrines.
There were other points, however, on which the English philosopher
dissented—a dissent prolonged up to the present time. Such are the
study of economic conditions as a separate science—the present politi
cal economy; the study of the intellectual functions apart from their
cerebral organs—the present psychology ; and the social condition of
women.
Mr. Mill has very recently devoted an entire work, or rather pam
phlet, to the advocacy of his views on the relations of the sexes, with
reference both to the family and to the social organism. Very few (we
think) can read the letters, here for the first time presented to the
English speaking public, without perceiving that “ The Subjection-of
Women”! embodies, in great part, a substantial, if not an exact re
production of the opinions and arguments communicated so many
years ago to M. Comte. As far as the constitution of th'e positive
philosophy is concerned, this question is of wholly minor importance;
it can be decided either way without affecting its integrity. It is, how
ever, the fundamental question in social statics without which that
half of the science of sociology cannot be constituted; while the lively
* Discussion with Mr. J. S. Mill on the social condition of women,
f London, 1869 ; and New York, 1870.
22
�172
THE
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OF
WOMEN.
sension about the condition and social destination of women, the more
suitable does it appear to me to characterize profoundly the deplorable
mental anarchy of our time, by showing the difficulty of a sufficient
present convergence even among the minds of the elite, between whom
there already exists, beside native sympathy, a logical harmony so pro
found as ours, and which, nevertheless, diverges, at least for the moment,
on one of the most fundamental questions which sociology can agitate;
upon the principal elementary base, to speak correctly, of all true so
cial hierarchy. Such a spectacle might even be enough to inspire a
kind of philosophical despair upon the final impossibility, as the relig
ious spirits pretend, of constituting a true intellectual concord upon
purely rational bases, if on the other hand a profound habitual estima
tion of our mental state, and even a sufficient personal experience, did
not tend to clearly convince me that the present position of your mind
constitutes in this respect only a necessarily temporary phase, the last
indirect reflection of the great negative transition. All thinkers who
seriously love women otherwise than as charming toys, have, in our
day, passed, I believe, through an analogous situation; on my own part,
I recollect very well the time when the strange work of Miss Mary
*
Wollstonecraft (before she espoused Godwin) produced a very strong
impression upon me. It was even chiefly by laboring to elucidate for
others the true elementary notions of domestic order, that I put my
mind, about twenty years, irrevocably beyond the pale of all similar
surprises of sentiment. I have no doubt that my special estimation of
this fundamental principle in the work which I am about commencing,
will suffice to dissipate, in this relation, all your uncertainties, if, before
this moment, your own meditations 'do not. essentially antedate this
important demonstration, on which we can prematurely talk a little in
our fraternal interview. In resuming summarily the indications of
your last letter, I hope that our spontaneous concert is less distant than
I at first feared. Although acknowledging the anatomical diversities
which more than anything else separate the feminine organism from
the great human type,f I think you have not allowed them a strong
enough physiological participation, while you have perhaps exaggerated
the possible influence of exercise, which, before everything, necessarily
supposes a suitable constitution. If, according to your hypothesis, our
cerebral apparatus never reached its adult state, all the exercise imag
inable would not render it susceptible of the high elaborations that it
ends by admitting of; and it is to this that I attribute the avortement,
too frequent in our day, of many unhappy youths who are exercised at
tasks repulsive to their age. Women are in the same category. In a
methodical discussion, I will have little to add to your judicious esti*“A Vindication of the Rights of Women, with strictures on political and moral
subjects.” London, 1792.
t As Littre remarks, this expression is not well chosen; “ human nature has no
human type which is independent of woman. The human ty pe can never, physically
or morally, be conceived but as double; it comprises two inseparable parts.”
�THE
SUBJECTION
OF
WOMEN.
173
naation of the normal limits of their faculties; but I find that you do
not attach sufficient importance to the real consequences of such native
inferiority. Their characteristic inaptitude for abstraction and construc
tion, the almost complete impossibility of rejecting emotional inspiration
in rational operations, though their passions are in general more gen
erous, must continue to indefinitely interdict them from all immediate
supreme direction of human affairs, not only in science or philosophy
as you allow, but also in esthetic life and even in practical life, as well
industrial as military, in which the spirit of consequence (de suite)
constitutes assuredly the principal condition of prolonged success. I
believe that women are as improper to direct any great commercial or
manufacturing enterprise as any important military operation; with
stronger reason are they radically incapable of all government, even
domestic, but only of secondary administration. In any case, neither
direction nor execution being suitable to them, they are essentially re
served for consultation and modification, in which their passive position
permits them to utilize very happily their sagacity and their character
istic * actuality.’ I have been able to observe very closely the feminine
organism, even in many eminent exceptions. I can further, on this
subject, mention my own wife, who, without having happily written
anything, at least up to the present, really possesses more mental force
than the greater number of the most justly praised persons of her sex.
I have everywhere found the essential characters of this type, a very
insufficient aptitude for the generalization of relations, and for persist
ence in deductions as well as in the preponderance of reason over pas
sion. All the cases of this kind are, in my eyes, too frequent and too
pronounced, to permit the imputation of difference of results chiefly
to diversity of education; for I have met with the same essential attri
butes where the whole surrounding influences had certainly tended to de
velop as far as possible an entirely different disposition. After all, is it
not otherwise in many respects a final advantage rather than a real incon
venience for women, to have been saved from this disastrous education
of words and entities which, during the great modem transition, has
replaced ancient military education ? As to the Fine Arts especially,
is it not evident that for two or three centuries, many women have
been very happily situated and trained for the cultivation, without ever
having been able, nevertheless, to produce anything truly great—no
more in music or painting than in poetry ? By a more profound es
timation of the whole field, one is, I think, led to recognize that this
social order so much execrated is radically arranged, on the contrary,
Sb as to essentially favor the proper scope of feminine qualities. Des
tined, beyond the maternal functions, to spontaneously constitute the
domestic auxilaries of all spiritual power, in supporting by sentiment
the practical influence of intelligence to modify morally the natural
reign of material force, women, are more and more placed in the condi
tions most proper for this important mission, by their isolation itself
�174
-THE
SUBJECTION
OF
WOMEN.
from active specialties which facilitates a judicious exercise of their
kind and moderating influence, at the same time that their own inter
ests are thus connected necessarily with the triumph of universal mo
rality. If it were possible that their position could change in this
respect and that they could become the equals of men instead of their
companions, I believe that the qualities which you justly attribute to
them would be much less developed. Their small instantaneous sagac
ity would become, for example, almost sterile, as soon as, ceasing to be
passive without being indifferent, they would have to conceive and di
rect, in place of regarding and counselling without serious responsi
bility. Besides, for truly positive philosophers, who know how, in all
cases, our systematic influence must be limited to wisely modify the ex
ercise of natural laws, without ever thinking of radically changing
their character and direction proper, the immense experience al
ready accomplished, in this respect, by the whole of humanity must
be, it seems to me, fully decisive; for we know the philosophical
worth of the theatrical declamations on the pretended abuse of force
on the part of the males. Although anatomical estimation has not
yet sufficiently established the explicit demonstration of the organic
superiority of our own species over the rest of animality, which has,
indeed, only very recently become possible, physiological research has
left no doubt upon the point, according to the single fact of the
progressive ascendancy obtained by man.
It is nearly the same in the question of sexes, though to a much less
degree; for how can the constant social subordination of the female sex
be otherwise explained ? The singular emaute organized in our day for
the benefit of women, but not by them, will certainly in the end only
add confirmation to this universal experience, although this grave in
cident of our anarchy may otherwise for the moment produce deplora
ble consequences, either private or public. The mass of our species
was for ages everywhere plunged in a social condition much inferior in
every way to that over which some now lament in women; but it has
been, since the beginning of the Middle Ages, gradually abandoned
among the most advanced peoples, because this collective subjection, a
temporary condition of ancient sociability, did not really belong to any
organic difference between the dominant and the dominated
*
But, .
on the contrary, the social subordination of women will be necessarily
indefinite, although progressively conformed to the normal universal
type, because it directly reposes upon a natural inferiority which
nothing can destroy, and which is even more pronounced among men
than among the other superior animals. By rendering women con
tinuously more suitable to their true general destination, I am con
vinced that the modern regeneration will more completely recall them
to their eminently domestic life, from which the disorder inseparable
See, on this illustration relative to the question of serfdom and slavery further
on in the third letter, p.
�THE
SUB JE C T T 0 N
OF
WOMEN.
175
from the great modern transition has, I think, momentarily turned
their attention in divers secondary respects. The natural movement
of our industry certainly tends to gradually turn over to men profes. sions for a long time carried on by women, and this spontaneous dispo
sition is, in my eyes, only one example of the growing tendency of our
sociability, to interdict women from all occupations which are not suf
ficiently reconcilable with their domestic destination, the importance
of which will become more and more preponderant. This is very far,
as you are aware, from interdicting them from a great and useful
indirect participation in the entire social movement, which could have
| never been conducted by them alone, even as to the essential scope of
opinions and manners which specially interest them. Every other
mode of conceiving their status and consequently their duties and
ours, will really be as contrary at the least to their own good as to uni
versal harmony. If from the attitude of woman’s protector, men enter
a situation of rivalry toward her, she will become, I believe, very un
happy through the necessary impossibility in which she will soon find
herself of sustaining such a competition, directly contrary to the con
ditions of her existence. I believe, therefore that those who sincerely
*
love her, who ardently desire the most complete evolution possible of
the faculties and functions properly belonging to her, must desire that
these anarchical utopias may never be tried?’
The third letter in this ensemble, and the last we shall give, is dated
Paris, November 14th, 1843. It is as follows: “Having now resumed
my daily occupations, I hasten to reply to your important letter of
October 30th before commencing my small work upon the ‘Ecole poly
technique,’ which, as it would take me a fortnight, would delay too
K long a response which I regard as the present termination of our great
biologico-sociological discussion. The general impression left upon
my mind by this letter, leads me, indeed, to think that this discussion
has now reached as far as it could with any utility be pushed; in
short, that there would at present be more inconvenience than advan
tage in further prolonging it, and it seems to me from your closing
words, that, at base, you are not far removed from the same opinion.
Without your divers arguments on this subject having in any way
shaken or even modified any of my previous convictions, they have
proved to me that the time has not yet come for seeing you arrive at
the fundamental truths upon this capital point which I have for a long
time received, but leave me, nevertheless, in all its fullness, the hope
that your further meditations may end by leading you also to the
same conclusion. In our present position we agree neither upon the
principles nor even the facts which must indispensably contribute
to the decision; and, consequently, it becomes proper not to finally
close the discussion, but to indefinitely suspend it, until such time as
on one side or the other the conditions of a useful resumption are found
effectively fulfilled. Still, I think I ought, for the last time, to take up
�176
THE
SUBJECTION
OF
WOMEN.
summarily the principal articles of your letter, in order the better to
characterize as I have not hitherto been able to do so, the essential
points of opposition, at once logical and scientific, thus established
between us in this respect.
“ In the beginning, I share essentially your logical opinion as to the
superior difficulty now offered by questions of social statics as compared
with dynamical questions. However, although the positive elaboration
of the latter is now much more mature, at the same time that it is
happily more urgent, I believe it possible to demonstrate immediately
the principal bases of static Sociology, and I expect to give an example
of it in the methodical treatise which I will commence at the end of
the present winter. I even think that without this preliminary condi
tion the dynamical theory would not have sufficient rationality. I can
now feel bold, as, for my own mind, this preamble has been accom
plished for many years, although I have not hitherto been able to
sufficiently develop this order of convictions so as to have them prop
erly shared by other thinkers. Owing to the fact that the fundamental
laws of existence can never be really suspended, it is very difficult to
clearly distinguish their continuous influence in the study of the
phenomena of activity; but this is not, however, impossible, as we can
do so by properly .estimating what is common to all the essential cases
offered by them. Besides, I believe that the preliminary light shed by
pure Biology, and which then has, especially in the present question, a
superior importance, is. now much more advanced than you seem ready
to admit, despite the little satisfactory state of our biological studies.
Doubtless, as you say, in reacting against the philosophical aberrations
of the last century, contemporary thinkers have been at times led to
exaggerate in the opposite direction. Thus Gall, in worthily upholding
the preponderant influence of the primordial organism, has too much
neglected that of education so abusively extolled by Helvetius. But,
though the truth is assuredly between the two, it is far, in my opinion,
from consisting in the exact balance {juste milien), and is found much
nearer the present opinion than the preceding. It was very natural to
at first estimate the external influences as plainer, and thi§ is what
the eighteenth century has everywhere done on all biological subjects
in which the notions of the medium are always shown before that of
the organism. But this is surely not the normal state of biological ’
philosophy, in which the organic conditions must certainly prevail;
since it is the organism and not the medium that makes us men rather
than monkeys or dogs, and which even determines our special mode
of humanity to a degree much more circumscribed than is commonly
believed. Under the logical aspect, by applying the natural march
that your valuable treatise has so judiciously characterized as the
Method of Residues, we cannot, it seems to me, especially in such
*
* See “ Mill’s Logic,” Vol. Ill, chap. viii. 3d London Ed. (1851) Vol. I, pp. 404, 405.
�THE
SUBJECTION
OF
WOMEN.
177
complex subjects, regard as indifferent the order of partial subtractions
which ought always to be followed out as far as possible according to
the decreasing importance that a primary general estimation sponta
neously awards to the diverse determinable influences; in short, that in
biological researches we ought most frequently to reverse the order which
you believe always preferable, viz., from the external to the internal.
u I regret exceedingly that the grave defects of co-ordination inherent
in Gall’s work should have so shocked a mind as methodical as yours, thus
hindering you hitherto from appreciating the fundamental reality of
his essential demonstrations, abstraction made of all irrational or prema
ture localization. You may, perhaps, in this respect be less dissatisfied
with his great early work, (Analogicpt physiologie du systeme nerveux
en general et du cerveau en particulier, in 4to,) although it is probably
too anatomical for your purpose. But the same fundamental ideas
are presented in better logical form in the more systematic works of
Spurzheim, that is to say, Observations sur la phrenologie, Essai philosophique sur les facultes morales et intellectuelles, the work upon
Education, and even that relating to insanity, which constitute in all
only four thin octavo volumes, easily read in one or two weeks.
Without the subordination of . sexes being directly examined there,
we can, however, regard this doctrine as having already sufficiently
established, as far, at least, as Biology can do so, the fundamental
principle of the domestic hierarchy. Before philosophical Biology
had properly arisen under Vicq. d’Azyr and Bichat, and altogether
independently of cerebral physiology, an estimable work, though not
very eminent, still deserving to be read, had already attempted to
found this principle upon the single preponderant consideration of
physical destination; it is a small treatise of a Montpellier physician,
(Roussel), entitled Systemephysique et morale de la femme, published in
1775, under the scientific impulsion of the labors of Borden, the great
precursor of Bichat. Comparative Biology seems to me, further, to
leave no real doubt on this subject. In following, for instance, M. de
Blainville’s lectures, though he had in yiew no thesis whatsoever on
this question, one cannot fail, to perceive arise from the ensemble of
the studies on animals, the general law of the superiority of the mas
culine sex in all the higher part of the living hierarchy; we will have
to descend among the invertebrates in order to find, and still very
rarely, notable exceptions to this great organic rule, which presents
besides the diversity of the sexes as increasing with the degree of
organization. I am, therefore, far from agreeing to abandon biological
considerations, although I regard the sociological appreciation as being
able without other aid to directly establish this important hotion; but
biological inspirations must then serve to properly direct sociological
speculations, which, in this respect, as in all other elementary ones,
seem to me ought to offer only a sort of philosophical prolongation of
-the great biological theorems.
23
�178
THE
SUBJECTION
OF
WOMEN.
“ As to the sociological appreciation separately regarded, I cannot
agree with you that the English medium is more favorable to the
mental and moral development of women than the French. Ab
straction made of all national vanity, of which you know me certainly
to be very independent, I believe, on the contrary, that the ladies of
France should be more developed from this very cause, that they live
in, more oomplete society with men. This diversity between us is
otherwise only a consequence of another more general, consisting in
the fact that the social constitution appears to you to have been
hitherto unfavorable to feminine development, while it seems to me
very proper for cultivating the qualities proper for women. As to the
rest, I am nowise competent to contest your observation upon English
households. But I believe that in it you confound too much simple
domestic administration with the true general government of the
family. In all Occidental Europe, I believe that, as in England,
households are administered by the women; but everywhere also,
save individual anomalies, it is the men who govern the common
affairs of the family. .
“1 cannot at all accept your comparison of the condition of women
to that of any sort of slaves. I have indicated this analogy only to
prevent a natural enough objection, tending to indirectly invalidate my
conclusion upon the passage from fact to principle. But, on a direct
comparison of the two cases, it seems to me that, since the establish
ment of monogamy, and especially in modern sociability, the term ‘ser
vitude’ is extremely vicious when meant to characterize the social
state of our gentle partners, and consequently I can nowise accept the
historical parallelism upon the simultaneous variations of two situations
so radically heterogeneous. Sale and non-possession are the principal
characters of all slavery—they have certainly never been applicable to
the occidentals of the last five centuries.
*
“ As to the progress which, for a century, is gradually working for
feminine emancipation, I do not at all believe in it, either as a fact or
as a principle. Our female authors seem to me no way superior, in
reality, to Mme. de Sevigne, Mme. de la Fayette, ,Mme. de Motteville,
and other remarkable ladies of the seventeenth century. I cannot
decide, whether it is otherwise in England. The woman who, under
a man’s name, (George Sand,) has now become so celebrated among us,
appears to me, at base, very inferior, not only in propriety, but even in
feminine originality, to the greater number of these estimable types.
* See remarks above, p. 174, and also “The Subjection of Women,” 2d London
Ed., pp. 8, 9,18, ff., and 28. Mr. Mill here traces pathetically, nay, almost tragically,
the parallelistn mentioned by M. Comte. One thought suggested itself while
reading it: Why slave-masters who were apparently as much interested as hus
bands in having their slaves docile, etc., did not try the same means to accomplish
this end as Mr. Mill asserts husbands to have done? Should his genesis of the
present condition of women prove true, of which certain damaging omissions
make us afraid, we would recommend it to Mr. Darwin as the most long-continued
and successful piece of artificial “ selection ” to be anywhere found.—Tr.
�THE
SUBJECTION
OF
WOMEN.
179
I do not see, in reality, any other notable increase than that of the
number and material fecundity of these authoresses, as Moli&re prob
ably foresaw; but I am doubtful whether any true progress is shown in
it. This movement consists chiefly in a growing intemperance, which
appears to me a sad but very natural consequence (or rather face) of
our universal mental anarchy since the inevitable decay of the frail
bases that theology had provisionally supplied to the entirety of great
moral and social notions. Beside this part of the negative disturbance
having been found especially favored by energetic passions, it has had
only to contend against perhaps the weakest part of theological socia
bility; for what can. be more illusory than to found the, domestic
hierarchy upon Adam’s supernumerary rib ? Is it astonishing, that
principles so lightly constituted, have not been able to resist the shock
of impassioned anarchy? But their momentary discredit really proves
no more than the necessity for better establishing them. Under this
relation the deplorable discussions thus raised, although yet essentially
deprived of logical reasonableness, besides being unhappily inevitable,
are at least useful, in obliging us to more profoundly fathom the in
timate motives of this indispensable domestic co-ordination. The
present emeuts of women, or rather of some womejn, will in the end
have no other result than that of presenting experimentally the insur
mountable reality of the fundamental principle of such subordination,
which must then. react profoundly upon all the other parts of social
economy; but this useful conclusion will be found purchased at the
price of much public and private misery, which a more philosophical
advance would have shunned were such rationality now possible. If
this disastrous social equality of the two sexes were ever really at
tempted, it would immediately radically disturb the conditions of
existence of the sex that some desire thus to favor, and with regard to
which the present protection, that must alone be completed by regu
lating it, would then be converted into a competition impossible to
habitually sustain. Such an assimilation will otherwise tend morally
to destroy the principal charm which now draws us towards women,
and which resulting from a sufficient harmony between social diversity
and organic diversity, supposes women to be in an essentially passive
and speculative situation that can in no way hinder their just partici
pation in all great social sympathies. If such a principle of repulsion
could be pushed to its extreme natural limit, I venture to affirm that it
will appear directly opposed to the reproduction of our species, which
restores, in this respect, the biological point of view, more intimately
connected there than elsewhere with the sociological.
“ All this may perhaps appear to you very extended for a discussion
which I regarded as provisionally terminated ; but for this very reason
I undertook to better characterize our principal dissidences. For the
rest, although without present result, I am far from regretting that you
have begun it, for it will assist me considerably in properly feeling the
�180
THE
’
SUBJECTION
OF
WOMEN.
A
essential points to be especially insisted upon in my forthcoming
treatise, in my attempt at a static demonstration of a principle which,
despite its eminently elementary nature, is yet so profoundly misunder
stood by so superior and so well-prepared a mind. Permit me, how
ever, to hope, according to my own previous experience, that this
situation of your judgment constitutes really only a last transient
phase of the great negative transition belonging to our age.”*
° Mr. Mill has forcibly called attention (work cited, p. 99) to a fact which
deserves Careful study. After acknowledging that no woman had been a Homer,
an Aristotle, or a Michael Angelo, he remarks: “ It is a curious consideration, that
the only things which the existing law excludes women from doing, are the things
^fliich they have proved they are able to do. * * * Their vocation for govern
ment has made its way and become conspicuous through the very few opportunities
which have been given, while in the lines of distinction, which apparently were
freely open to them, they have by no means so eminently distinguished them
selves.” From the way Mr. Mill puts it, the distinction seems well founded, and
on further reflection, seems one of the most “ curious ” things in the world. That
exercise and freedom should in woman’s case act the very reverse of what they do
among men, seems to go far to substantiate M. Comte’s doctrine of fundamental
difference between the sexes. While it seems in the nature of a standing “ miracle”
to know how a state could have originated or how it could be kept up that inter
dicts beings from their real natural vocation. If I understand the English philoso
pher correctly, it might be wholesome for women to have an edict on our statute
books against writing poetry or painting; if it could act as political proscription
seemingly does, all should hope for the early arrival of the day.—Tr.
�
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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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The subjection of women
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Comte, Auguste
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Place of publication: New York
Collation: [169]-180 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. "Discussion with Mr J.S. Mill on the social condition of women". Based on correspondence between Comte and Mill that began at the end of 1841. Includes bibliographical references. Printed on blue paper.
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Women's rights
Conway Tracts
John Stuart Mill
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Women-Social Conditions
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WHAT OF THE FUTURE.
BY D.
G.
CBOLY.
INTRODUCTORY.
N the chapters which follow this preface I shall try to forecast
something of the future. That the attempt is a presumptous
one, I am well aware; but l am certain it is quite time that some
one should lead the way in showing the advantages of studying
or at least speculating about our earthly hereafter. We are too apt to
animadvert upon the Chinese for their elaborate worship of ancestors;
but while we do not pay homage to our progenitors in a religious sense,
surely too much of the attention of our best and wisest scholars and
writers is given to the annals of the past. I insist that the only value
of history, apart from a natural curiosity as to what has taken place on
the earth before we came into conscious existence, is to give us data by
which we may forecast the future. So long as the race believed that
infinite Caprice in the form of supernatural and irresponsible wills gov
erned the universe, there could be no hope of a science of history.
This was impossible until the conception of universal law accounting
for all phenomena, the course of human events included, became cur
rent among the advanced thinkers of the race. We have had a good
deal, especially in modern times, of what is known as the philosophy
of history. Indeed all recent annalists have generalized more or less;
but' their theories of events are confined exclusively to the past, and
explain with greater or less accuracy what has already taken place, and
why it has come about. But the age demands something in advance
of this; the time has- come when the attempt at least should be made
to lay the foundations of what may be termed the science of human af
fairs. It is idle to speculate upon history and attempt to explain the
laws which govern the movements of human society, without endeavor
ing to apply the knowledge of the laws thus obtained in trying to realize
in thought what may occur hereafter. In the progress of this induction
I shall, of course, make many, very many, serious mistakes, but some
one must make the attempt; and it is inevitable that whoever does so
will help other inquirers in the same field by his very failures.
There is a very natural curiosity felt by every intelligent person
touching what will take place after he has passed from this earthly
sphere—what our children and our children’s children will do—what
T
�74
WHAT
OF
THE FUTURE.
they will probably believe—what form or forms of government will
control them—what will be the material condition of the masses of
mankind—what changes in the maps of the world—what inventions
to aid man’s control over the forces of nature, and what effect all Wiese
changes will have upon human conditions. The belief is becoming
general that man himself can very largely control his own future;
that the race can be, and in many respects even now is, a “ ruling prov-'
idence” to itself, and that the natural laws which govern human society
can be modified in their complex relations by the interposition of
human will—not arbitrary will, but intelligent human volition, having
definite objects in view, and itself controlled by necessary material con
ditions.
In the articles which are to follow I beg of my readers to give me
their indulgence. They must understand that the field is almost
wholly untrodden, and it is inevitable that some very wild guesses will
be made. This much, however, I can confidently predict, that the
most incredible statements I shall venture will really be the most trust
worthy, and that I shall be more apt to make mistakes in that depart
ment of inquiry in which I shall be least questioned ; that is to say, in
speculating upon the future of religion, of the movements of popula
tion, of the course of opinion, and of the social changes which will
take place, I shall very likely be most at fault, because the data for
these speculations have not as yet been formulated. The most aston
ishing results in the future will be brought about by the command to
be yet obtained by man over nature, by the discovery of mechanical
and chemical appliances which will add marvelously to the happiness
and comfort of the race. To illustrate: If at the beginning of this
century some theorizer should have set out upon the same inquiry upon
which I have dared to enter and should have speculated upon the
course of opinions, the fluctuations of religion, the social changes to
take place, he would probably have been heard with attention, and if
his reasoning was apparently sound, would have secured many assent
ing listeners; but if he had attempted to foretell the future of tele
graphy or the application of steam to transportation, he would have been
set down as a lunatic, a dreamer of fantastic dreams. Now, the most
marvelous changes in human conditions, in the future as in the past, will
be brought about by the discoveries of science as applied to the arts.
What some of these discoveries may be, I shall try to state in the'
papers which are to follow in this series; and just here, where I really
stand upon the most solid ground, I shall seem most wild in my vati
cinations. A simple invention may do more to alleviate certain forms
of human misery than the preachings of thousands of clergymen and
the wailings of as many poets. The “ Song of the Shirt ” stirred our
sympathies, but the sewing machine—what pen or tongue can tell the good it has accomplished for myriads of working women ? Could the
press and pulpit combined have had a tithe of the effect of this one
�WHAT
OF
THE
FUTURE.
75
beneficent invention ? But speculations as to the religious future, or
the social future, will necessarily be incomplete by reason of the com
plexity of the phenomena which will accompany them, and the as yet
unformalized science of society. In the present state of knowledge—
especially that which relates to the conditions of human society—the
ripest and most cultivated intellect would be at fault, not only by rea
son of the want of information, but because of his preconceived theories
and notions. It is very evident that in speculating upon the future,
men will be controlled very largely by their settled convictions and per
haps by the religious faith in which they have been nurtured. Suppose,
for instance, an intelligent Christian, a sceptic, and a scientist, were
each to give his views upon the future ; it is very clear, that although
each might mean to tell the truth, still each would give a different solu
tion of the problem before him—none of them could help being influ
enced by their preconceived impressions. From this cause of distrac
tion the writer is not of course free. Indeed any scheme of the future
—any hope of what is to come hereafter—must be based in great part
upon a religious theory; that is, a theory which embraces a conception
of the social and religious future as well as of man’s history.
The science of history was not possible so long as merely super
natural wills were understood to be the controlling powers in the uni
verse; but with the conception of invariable law, then a science of
human affairs becomes possible ; but that very conception is in itself
essentially a religious one.
There is still another element of uncertainty in endeavoring to fore
cast the hereafter, and that is the surprising results which sometimes
are brought about by accidental discoveries in science. The share
played by accident is as discreditable to man’s invention as it is morti
fying to his vanity. Bacon points this out in the 59th Aphorism of
his Novum Organum, in which, besides giving examples, he says:—
“ We may also derive some reason for hope from the circumstance of several
actual inventions being of such a nature, that scarcely any one could have formed a
conjecture about them previously to their discovery, but would rather have ridi
culed them as impossible. ********
We may therefore well hope that many excellent and useful matters are yet
treasured up in the bosom of nature, bearing no relation or analogy to our actual
discoveries, but out of the common track of the imagination, and still undiscovered,
and which will doubtless be brought to light in the course and lapse of years, as
others have been before them.”
*******
Conscious of his own deficiencies, the present writer cannot but
think that however poor his execution may be, such a work as this can
not but be suggestive, and may lead to the discovery of data by which
we may in a measure forecast the future. It is the first serious attempt
ever made to estimate accurately the forces at work in society, and to
point out what may result unless new agencies are brought into play.
Every existing human institution has a history which changes with
�76
THE
FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
the course of time. Now, in what direction do these changes tend?
This is the inquiry to which the papers that follow will be a partial
answer.
Those who are disposed to criticise the shortcomings of what is to
follow, would do well to bear in mind the acute remark of Herbert
Spencer, who says:
“ Not directly, but by successive approximations, do mankind reach correct con
clusions ; and those who first think in'the right direction—loose as may be their
reasonings, and wide of the mark as their inferences may be—yield indispensable
aid by framing provisional conceptions, and giving a bent to inquiry.”
CHAPTER I.
THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE.
The relations of the sexes ; what will they be thirty, fifty, one hun
dred years hence ? Is it possible to estimate the force of the agencies
at work modifying the old ideal of the institution of marriage, and to
point out what will be the probable issue ? Any one who has observed
the course of modem history, cannot but have been impressed with
certain tendencies concerning which there can be no chance of mistake.
During the middle ages and down to the reformation, marriage was
a sacrament of the church. It was God, according to this view, who
brought people together, and his command was that whom he had
joined no man should put asunder. Children, also, under this general
theory, were a gift of God ; it was by his will and not by man’s agency
that they were brought into existence.
This, however, is not the modern theory of the relation of the sexes.
Protestant Christendom regards marriage as a purely human institu
tion, and each State now claims the authority to separate those whom
it has joined together in the event of certain infractions of the law
regulating the institution. Roman Catholicism still sternly adhères
to its historical traditions of the sacramental character and to the
indissolubility of marriage, but the modern theory has beaten the
old church on its own ground, and in communities composed almost
exclusively of its own members. Indeed, this “free love” movement
was a potent force in the original outbreak against the church of
Rome ; as witness Luther’s marriage with a nun, his subsequent
acknowledgment of the validity of the union of a German prince to a
second wife, the first being still alive ; and also the tremendous conse
quences of Pope Clement’s refusal to divorce Henry VIII from Queen
Catherine. In every modern nation the first victory over the sacerdotal
power of mother church is signalized by the substitution of the civil
�THE
FUTURE
OF
MARRIAGE.
Tt
for the sacramental marriage, and the passage of laws admitting of
divorce under certain contingencies. The recent enactment of a civil
marriage law in Austria was made the occasion of a national holiday ;
the Spanish revolution was signalized by the recognition of the legiti
macy of such unions ; and the highest courts in Italy, in spite of the
protests of the. church, have solemnly affirmed the legal validity of the
marriage of priests.
But the substitution of the civil for the sacerdotal marriage was
only one step in this social revolution. The personal theory or the
relation of the sexes is what now obtains the widest sanction. In this
view marriage is a mere contract between two persons ; living together
is a sufficient proof that the couple are man and wife. This is the
American idea of marriage, which needs the sanction of neither church
nor state—only the consent of the two persons directly interested to
insure the respectability of the connection and legitimatize the off
spring.
Nor is this all ; this theory of mere consent giving validity to the
relation involves the further consequence that a separation may ensue
when either party becomes dissatisfied. If .marriage is a mere matter
of human convenience or pleasure, then it can be dissolved at will ; the
same persons who made the contract for their mutual happiness should
have the power to dissolve it when their comfort is not enhanced by
complying with its conditions. And this is the exact view taken by
John Stuart Mill, who represents, probably more than any other living
writer, the most advanced view of the times on all topics of social
concern.
And as a consequence of this growing conception of marriage as a
mere personal matter between individuals, what do we see in society at
large ? Why a constant tendency to loosen the ties which bind the
sexes together ? The statement may be broadly made that since the
reformation all legislation in modern Christendom has been in thé
direction of the entire freedom of the affections. Not a single instance
can be furnished of legal enactment to bind still firmer the marriage
bonds, or to go back to a stricter law of divorce. On the contrary,
every change or amendment of the ordinances which society imposes
on the sexes for its protection and their happiness tends to make the
bonds lighter and separation more easy. In our own country, which
Booner than any other adopts all the so-called improvements in legisla
tion, divorce laws are notoriously lax and the number of separations
extraordinarily large. Even in so conservative, and in one sense reli
gious a State as Vermont, there is an average of one separation to every
eleven marriages, and in Connecticut (among Americans), one to nine.
Of course, in other States, especially those settled by emigrants from
New England, the proportion is still greater.
Nor do I see in any quarter a desire to go back to a more stringent
rule. There is occasionally a feeble protest from some old-fashioned
�78
THE
FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
divine, but the church as a body has taken no action, and seems quite
willing that the marriage laws should be practically abrogated in time.
And here it may be remarked that our present monogamic mar
riage is not a Christian institution.- The Bible was written by and for
a nation of polygamists. There is not a text of Scripture, from Genesis
to Revelation, which prescribes that the man shall have but one wife,
and the woman but one husband. It is true there was such a limita
tion so far as bishops were concerned in the early church, but this Very
exception proved the rule to have been otherwise. Luther recognized
this in an instance I have already mentioned. And here again it must
be borne in mind that the relation of the sexes is purely conventional;
there is no absolute rule governing all the nations. We must dis
criminate between a permanent and a transient morality. In all ages,
and among all people, it has been considered wrong to murder, lie, or
steal; but there has been no general rule recognized among men gov
erning the relation of the sexes. It has varied widely in every age and
clime. There was a time when men married their sisters, and the
priests blessed the union. The law,“ Thou shalt not commit adultery,”
was given to a polygamous people, and was understood very differently
from the way we regard it.
The brothel is deemed infamous in New York, but is a govern
ment institution in Paris; while the tea-gardens as they are called in
Japan are as respectable as the school-house or tfie temples, and are
supposed to be quite as useful in their way. Hence in discussing this
subject of marriage, we must bear in mind that our conventional
standards are not common to the entire race, but only to a small part
of it, and have not therefore the same sanction as those rules of con
duct which are recognized universally.
So far there have been the following variations of the sexual rela
tions recognized openly or tacitly by mankind:
1. Polyandry, or several men the husbands of one wife. This was
probably the prevalent institution when the race was in its infancy
and still in a very savage state—when man was the hunted rather than
the hunters of beasts of prey; and hence what was needed to fight the
wild beasts of the forest was the strong male rather than the child-bear
ing female. This accounts for the custom which still obtains in the
East of killing female infants at birth. Polyandry is still a custom in
Thibet, and in other parts of Asia.
2. Polygamy was the next form of marriage, and the one which has
always been held in the highest favor by the great mass of mankind
within the historic period. Probably three-fourths of the race to-day
practice or tolerate polygamy.
3. Monogamy. This is undoubtedly the very highest form of the
relation of the sexes so far instituted among men, and has given us the
noblest types of women, as wife and mother, of the race. Some form
of the monogamic marriage is always associated with an advanced
civilization.
�THE
FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
79
4. Concubinage. This is a real institution of monogamic commu
nities, though in disrepute, and not recognized legally. Statistics
would show, if it were possible to collect them accurately, that in all
nations where the one-wife rule obtains legally, there are a certain defi
nite number of women who act as the temporary or permanent second
wives of married or unmarried men. Among the Jews the concubine
was but an inferior kind of wife, which is just what the kept mistress
is with us—only the position of the latter is disreputable, which was
not the case with the Jewish concubine.
5. Prostitution. This is also an institution almost exclusively pecu
liar to monogamic communities. Wherever the one-wife system pre
vails, whoredom is an inevitable accompaniment. In modern Europe
and America it is estimated that one woman in every sixty practically
ignores the conventional law 'of marriage either as a prostitute or as a
kept mistress, or by indulging in occasional liaisons. From the nature
of the case it is difficult to get at exact figures, but it is known that
each of these three classes bear a certain fixed proportion to the popu
*
lation in all single-wife communities.
6. Celibacy. It is perhaps a misnomer to class this state under the
head of the relation of the sexes, when in fact it signifies'an absence
of relation; but old maids form so large and growing a proportion of
'our population, that they must be considered in any discussion of the
general subject of marriage, especially the future of marriage. Celibacv
is probably the most cruel of all the institutions which control women;
it entails vastly more physical and mental suffering than prostitution,
apart, of course, from the contagion engendered by the latter, because
it affects such numbers of the sex. There are probably two hundred
* Since writing the above, further thought on the subject has led me to the
conclusion that prostitution is simply polyandry under another name. Both insti
tutions spring from the same real or fancied necessities of the race. In both a few
women are set apart for the satisfaction of the sexual passions of many men. Poly
andry, however, involves offspring, and is hence an honorable estate among the
savages who practice it: while prostitution has no aim beyond satisfying a sexual
appetite on the part of the male. The one is a permanent relation, and was and is
sanctified by habit and affection; the other is a transient flirtation, in nine cases out
of ten wholly animal. Concubinage also is simply the polygamy of monogamic
communities. It has been said that there was more polygamy in London than in
Constantinople, and this is probably true, only in the one case it is an honored in> stitution, and in the other a disreputable gratification, yet both satisfying pressing
social needs.
Hugh Miller, in combating the theories of progress rife in his time, attempted
to prove from geology that a process of degradation or retrogression was going on
as well as progression. What he did show was that upon the advent of a new race
of superior beings, the one which had before held the vantage ground fell back in
the scale of creation. Thus all living animal types were better represented on this
planet than they have been since the advent of man.
The same law seems to hold good with human institutions. Polyandry and
polygamy, which were once legal and honored institutions, have become degraded
in the presence of the highest form of the relation of the sexes as yet known to
large masses of men, viz., monogamy; yet it must not be forgotten that prostitu
tion and concubinage are real, permanent institutions in our present civilization,
which zoill exert themselves as social forces, and which cannot be ignored by the
sociologist.
�80
THE
FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
unmated women for every one prostitute, and in some respects the
latter has an advantage over the former. Her instinct of sex is grati
fied to the uttermost, while every purely womanly passion in the old
maid, widow, or young maid unmated, is a matter of secret shame and
perpetual disappointment. To make matters worse, the whole past
education of women has been to train them for marriage, as their sole
business in life. That so large a proportion of women are permanently
unmated in our modern civilization is proof positive that the theories
which have heretofore obtained touching theii’ exclusive devotion to
domestic life do not meet all the wants of society. And then the num
ber of involuntary celibates tends constantly to increase. For this
there are many causes, among which are the higher standard of com
fort and luxury, the greater industrial activity of women, and especially
the emigrating tendencies of men caused by the cheapness and rapidity
of modern travel. In England it is estimated that of every one hun
dred grown women only fifty-five are married; the rest are unmated.
So much for the past and the present.
But now what of the future ? What changes or variations may we
expect in marriage before the year 2000 ? Let us apply Comte’s concep
tion of historical filiation or Herbert Spencer’s law of evolution to
this subject, and see whither we are tending.
Historically, then, it is evident that we are passing from a super
natural to a purely human conception of marriage. It is no longer a
mystic rite or sacrament; it is an institution designed to perpetuate
the race and add to human happiness. All existing criticisms on mar
riage are from a purely human standpoint. Hence the tendency is to
greater individual freedom of action. All legislation, without any ex
ception in modern Christendom, is in this direction. Individual con
sent is now the bond between the sexes, not sacerdotal authority. The
metaphysical and anarchical doctrine of human rights, now urged with
so much vehemence all over the Christian world, is disintegrating mar
riage.
So much for the historical tendency, as any one can see who keeps
his eyes open. And now what does the law of evolution lead us to
expect ? This law is that in human institutions as well as in the or
ganic world about us, the tendency is from the homogeneous to the
heterogeneous, from the simple to the complex ; that what are at first
apparently accidental variations, become at length permanent character
istics ; in short, that a process of differentiation is constantly going on.
Now, if this is true, it will lead to some consequences, in considering
marriage, which will startle conservative people. Yet it is very evident
that in comparing a savage with a civilized people, one of the marked
distinctions will be the simplicity of the marriage institution in the
one, and the complex character of the relation of the sexes in the other.
A rude, simple community will tolerate but one rule or practice, but a
score of variations from the conventional requirement is winked at in
�THE
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OF MARRIAGE’
81
Rome, London, and Paris. As I have shown, monogamic communities
are forced to tolerate Polyandry and Pologamy in the form of Pfostitution and Concubinage, but there are many variations of the sexual re
lation that do not come under those heads which need not be par
ticularized here, and which are practised in all civilized communities.
This differentiation will, I think, go on until the scientific law or
laws governing the relation of the sexes has been discovered. What
these variations may be, it is now our business to try and point out.
One variation of marriage is that of the present Protestant theory
of the relation of the sexes carried to its logical conclusion. This in
volves marriage and divorce at will, without recognizing the authority
of any one or any organization outside of the couple most interested.
Practically we have almost reached that stage now. There is nothing
to hinder people separating and forming new unions, provided both
parties interested are willing. The embarrassment in the way is the
dependence of the woman, especially if she has children; but the equal
rights agitation is teaching her self-help, and the necessity of women
working and being pecuniarily independent of men. This general
form of marriage may be defined as the Protestant or individual sov
ereignty marriage, and has in itself many variations. So far it involves
an idea of faithfulness to each other while living together, but if there
is to be no check to individual freedom—if the man or woman is not
responsible to any one but him or herself, it is no one’s business but
their own with whom they consort, or how often they change partners.
Thus we come to absolute free love, and there is no logical stopping
place short of that on the prevalent individual rights theory. In a
greater or less degree this is the outcome of the marriage relation in
Protestant Christendom. The prevalent free-trade, no-government,
and every-man-for-himself notions which are generated by our political,
woman’s rights and social discussions, intensifies this tendency. Were
there no children to be considered, and were women as self-helpful as
men, there is no doubt that this form of the relation of the sexes
would soon be very common in Protestant and sceptical communities.
But the great bulk of women are not independent of men pecunia
rily, and children will be born, however undesirable they may be deemed
by those who wish to realize the theory of marriage which Protestant
communities are consciously or unconsciously working out.
The class of women workers, however, are constantly increasing,
and in a short time tens of thousands of the sex as artists, writers,
physicians, professors, teachers, and heads of establishments, will have
employment which they will not give up to fill the station of life in
volved in the old theory of marriage. Hence will come partial unions
which may be for a time or for life, which may involve absolute faith
fulness to each other or entire freedom of change. All this is certain
to come about whether we like it or not, and very probably in the next
generation. It is very likelv that for the next two generations the
�82
THE
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OF MARRIAGE.
monogamic form of marriage will obtain with the great mass of people,
but th«Tirregular unions I have pointed out will be not only tolerated—
they will not be under any social ban, for many worthy people will, in
all likelihood, deliberately rid themselves of the marriage fetters which
society now imposes. I expect very soon that among the large class of
professional women who will earn their own livelihood and whose oc
cupation do not admit of household cares, it will not be deemed dis
reputable to have children without any marriage formality. At first, of
course, this will create scandal, but if it is countenanced by a few women
of real character, standing, and professional reputation, it will soon be
tolerated, especially if it is done deliberately and in accordance with
some social and religious theory then prevailing, or which may be
promulgated to sanction such practices. An assumed noble motive or
religious conviction will give respectability to the wildest social aber
rations. A man or woman of recognized professional ability, who is
known to be honest, public-spirited and self-denying, could easily set a
fashion of this kind, which would be generally tolerated, though not
often imitated. A marriage contract for a limited time has been
seriously discussed in several of the Woman’s Rights and Spiritualist
journals. It is noticeable that it is the women who propose those
schemes. Here is a specimen and one very likely to be tried during
the coming years:
Ellen Storge sends a communication to the Woman’s Advocate, of Dayton, 0., •
in which she proposes the following social platform :
“ 1. Let the marriage contract be limited to from one to three years, at the coi
tion of the contracting parties.
“2. Discard the erroneous idea that this contract is divine; admit that this is
but a human transaction, intended to perpetuate the species and produce human
happiness.
“ 3. Make both parties equal; do not exact, special promises or terms from one
sex to its disadvantage and the advantage of the other. Exact pledges of mutual
fidelity and co-operation during continuance of the marital contract; but let love
alone. Love is a sensitive, spontaneous outgrowth of the heart, subject to the con
trol of treatment and circumstances rather than formal promises ; it is too tender,
too sacred, for the public gaze.
“ 4. Let the marriage contract embrace the contingency of issue, with full and
unequivocal provision therefor. If one child, let its custody devolve by written and
recorded agreement, void during coverture ; if two or more children, the same, or
division by such agreement, provided that the party refusing to renew the expired
contract, at the instance of the other party, or the offender in case of premature an
nulment, shall be compelled to maintain the offspring and be the custodian thereof,
at the option of the opposite party.
“ 5. Enact just laws for the determination of all such contingencies as might
arise under this new order of things : make them applicable only to those now un
married ; let there be no ex post facto taint about the matter. During coverture,
us also in the event of non-renewal of the contract., let each party control its own
finances ; of that they shall have together amassed, let there be an equal division.”
The complex marriage: ‘ this is what obtains at. present, in the
Oneida Community, and is simply organized free love. Wives and
w
�TEE
FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
83
husbands are alike common. To make this relation practicable, as
may be well understood, the very strongest social and religious influ
ence must be brought to bear, as the tendency would naturally be toward
pure- license, and a riot of the passions, with no care or even thought
of offspring. It could never be even tried except in a community
dominated by a strong will, or a stringent public opinion based upon a
definite social and religious creed. The complex marriage involves : A
non-recognition of preference between two persons of opposite sex, ex
cept for the time being. As a consequence, “ sweet love is slain,”—that
is to say, the romantic and sentimental side of that passion, which
invariably involves a conception of absolute possession as well as con
tinuance and perpetuity, is sternly reprohibited and stamped out. Love
in any of its so-called higher phases, involves exclusive possession of
the loved object, and this brings in jealousy, a feeling which'cannot be
tolerated in a community where all the men and women are common.
This necessary crucifixion of the sentimental side of love leaves merely
the animal passion to be gratified, and replaces the sense of personal
attachment by a conception of womanhood very different from that
which now obtains.
The Oneida Communists have practiced this complex marriage for
some twenty years. It is the most novel experiment in the relations of
the sexes ever tried, and deserves the most serious study from the
sociologist. This community is also testing some of the problems of
stirpiculture, or the scientific propagation of human beings. It is
needless to point out the very great value of the data they are collect
ing upon this most important of all the mysteries connected with the
life of the race upon this planet.
Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that the current theories with
regard to scientific breeding will have their effect in giving us several
new variations of the sexual relation. One well known writer has
seriously proposed that married men who are conscious of their own
unfitness for paternity, should introduce men of superior strains of
blood to their marriage bed. “Why,” he asks, “should not a man
desire splendid children in his home as well as carefully cultivated
flowers in his garden, or superior animals on his farm ?” So far this
has been urged privately ; but I have no doubt the writer will, in a
short time, make his views public. It will seem a monstrous proposi
tion to ninety-nine persons in a hundred, but here and there a few
crotchety people may make the experiment. If public opinion would
permit, there are to-day hundreds of well-to-do women who would have
children by men they admire, but whom they cannot or would not marry.
There is still another form of the sexual relation suggested by
Madame Clémence Royer, whicfy has been described as follows :
“ Her mode of mobilizing the family is to abolish the family. Woman, she
says, needs and must always have a permanent abode. She cannot rove, as man can
and must do ; therefore let her be no longer tied to any man in particular, or any
�»4
THE FUTURE
OF MARRIAGE.
man to her. ‘We must then/ she says, ‘ mobilize the family, destroy its indissolu
bility. This is the only way of saving it from shipwreck ; it is only in reforming
courageously that we can prevent its falling into complete desuetude.’ So she pro
poses that the marriage-contract should be dissolved on the simple request of either
of the parties, and that there should be instituted a kind of marriage correspond
ing to the confa/rreatio of the Romans, sufficient to legitimize the woman’s position
and the birth of her children, but not binding on her or her husband longer than
he or she pleases. The woman being the more permanent person, Madame Royer
proposes that she, and not the father, should give her name to the children and be
the legal head of the family, the father being relegated to a secondary position, and
constituting in domestic life a kind of shadowy auxiliary, of no moral influence or
weight, and not necessarily known to his children ; and the mother taking as many
husbands in succession as her fancy or circumstances suggested; the result being
perfect happiness, purity, and freedom for all concerned, and an end, total and com
plete, to the quarrelings, falsehood, and oppression of the present system. The
scheme is worked out with much ability, and its bearings on property and other
social arrangements are fairly considered.”
This may seem very chimerical now, yet it but needs a place in
some religious or social scheme to have it tried almost any day.
There will be other variations of the marriage relation which it is
impossible to forecast now, but we may be sure that great diversity will
result from the individualistic theories which now obtain. The future
is in this respect anything but reassuring to the social philosopher and
philanthropist; it is easy enough to write calmly and in cold blood of
these possible experiments on the social relations, but they will all in
volve much human misery and some terrible heart tragedies.
For myself I have no faith in the permanence of the Individual Sov
ereignty conceptions of the relation of the sexes. It may endure for a
generation or two, but because it is individual it is necessarily anti-social,
and therefore unscientific. Whatever is purely egoistic and selfish is an
archical and self-destructive. Hence, while all these theories of marriage
will be worked out,—indeed it is indispensable to the real progress of the
race that they should all be tested by actual experiment,—they cannot
endure after their unsoundness as solutions of the great problem have
been demonstrated. For there is really a most notable problem to
solve. Our present marriage relation is not what it should be; it is a
makeshift, and must be scientifically reconstructed. The woes, disease,
miseries, divorces and murders which are incidental to the present sys
tem, or rather want of system, must give place to something which
will work out better results, especially in the way of offspring. What
that future relation may be it would be premature to point out now;
it is, however, certain it will not take the form of free love, but will be
an institution purer, more chaste, more self-denying, more altruistic
than any form of marriage which has yet been established among men.
Until the problem is solved all true reformers will watch and wait,
and conform in their own lives to the noble ideal of the monogamic mar
riage propounded by Auguste Comte—a marriage which admits of no
divorce for anyjsause, and which decrees eternal widowhood to the sur
viving partner.'
�1» T E AM
AS
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FA CTOR.
86
CHAPTER II.
STEAM AS A FACTOR IN SOCIOLOGY.
The use of steam and its application to transportation are so mod
em, that we as yet scarcely realize what wonders it has accomplished,
much less the marvels it has in store for us. We know in a general
way of the conveniences of railway and steam travel; but thus far no
one has apprehended all the consequences which will result from this
rapid method of intercommunication. We know that one of the first
effects of railway traffic was to develop and enrich the centers of popu
lation. Cities grew at the expense of the rural districts. This has
been true of all parts of the world into which railroads have been intro
duced. Another effect has been the rapid equalization of prices. The
inability of agriculturists to market their crops economically at the
centers of population, led in the past to great differences in prices.
During the last century, and up to the first third of the present, it was
a matter of frequent occurrence for all but bankrupt families in En
gland, to retire to some rural district on the continent to recruit their
fortunes, being able in that way to live on one-quarter or one-fifth of
their expense at home. In theory it was supposed that the building
of railroads would reduce prices at the centers of population ; but such
does not seem to have been the case. The converse fact, however, is
true, that it has largely enhanced prices in the rural districts.
Wherever railroads have run, the prices of agricultural products have
increased and have been equalized with the prices which formerly ob
tained in the large centers and controlling markets of the world. In
this country it is not so long since the cost of living away from the
large cities was very small. It is within the experience of us all that
as means of communication were established, country living became
more and more costly. This equalization of prices is having a most
important effect upon accumulation of wealth, and the relation of the
city to the country. Our farming class are becoming enriched. The
comparative poverty which characterized the agricultural community in
the past, has given way in these more recent years to comfort and in
some cases to affluence. The labor of the agriculturist is better paid
and the enjoyments of civilized life have been extended to an enlarged
and constantly enlarging class of people. What effect this will have
upon the education, the intelligence and the refinement of the farming
community, it is needless here to dwell upon.
Curiously enough, while the first effect of railroads has been to
build up great centers of population, it has had and is having a dispersing
effect upon these same centers. For instance, New York and London
have grown enormously since the general use of railroads, but, as an
�V
86
STEAM
AS
A
I
..
FACTOR.
offset to this packing of population, the railroad is coming in as a dis
persive agency also. It has added hundreds of square miles to the
available area of very large cities. The street railways, the dummies,
and the swarm of local steam railroads, which spring up to accommo
date the traffic between large cities and their suburbs, are having the
effect of scattering dense populations. Travelers in Europe may have
noticed that all the old cities, such as Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin, Vienna
and others, are notable for the extreme height of the houses, many of
them having from ten to fourteen stories. The reason for this packing
of population upon a small area of ground, was manifestly the impos
sibility of living at any great distance from the actual place of busi
ness. There was a limit to the spread of population with the growth
of business, and hence the people who could not be accommodated by
a lateral extension, remedied the difficulty by piling story upon story
of their houses. This is the secret of the “ Paris Flats,” so called,
which some of our unthinking architects have been trying to intro
duce into our American cities. The plea of necessity for either tene
ment houses or flats no longer exists ; all that is needed is the proper
extension of railroad facilities, the complete systematizing of trans
portation of local passengers; and the ground to be occupied is practi
cably illimitable. This is a matter of supreme importance to the resi
dents of large citiqs, and it is one which has as yet been almost entirely
overlooked. The remedy for the overcrowding of cities, is not the
erection of model lodging-houses or improved tenement-houses, or
“ Paris flats,” or any contrivance for packing people together in dense
masses. It is to be found in the extension of our railroad system, so
that every city business or working man may have his own home—his
own vine and apple-tree.
There is a larger view to take of the application of steam to rail
way and ocean navigation, which also has been hardly thought out,
and that is its effect upon the distribution of population. We have
seen that one of the most palpable effects of railway extension is the
equalization of the prices of produce ; and that further along in their
history, the equalizing of the wages of labor between city and country.
It will also be noticed that there is a dispersing as well as concentrating
action in the development of railroad traffic. Applying this conception
to the whole civilized world, we can readily see what changes may yet be
made in the distribution of population. History shows us how unequal
the distribution of population has been in all countries, in some deiise,
in others very sparse, the cause always being the dearness and difficulty
of transportation between the densely populated parts of the earth’s sur
face and. the portions not populated at all. But steam navigation is just
beginning to change all this. Its cheapness and rapidity is bringing it
year by year more and more within the means of the poorer classes.
One of the most extraordinary phenomena of modern times is the
equalizing of populations by the emigration of vast numbers of people.
�STEAM
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FA CTOR.
87
Such voluntary-quovement of masses of men and women as have been
witnessed since the introduction of steam power for the purposes of
transportation, were never known or even dreamed of before. Travel
has increased a hundred, aye, a thousand fold. We are still in only the
beginning of these enormous movements of population from one part
of the earth’s surface to another. Indeed this mighty flux of nations is
to be one of the most conspicuous features of the travel of the future.
When the post-horse system had reached its perfection in England
at the beginning of the present century, it ia estimated that there were
never more than eighty thousand persons per day traveling at any one
time. It is now estimated that in England alone, the railroads are
patronized by nearly one million persons per day. We have no figures
touching the rapid interchange of population by means of railroads in
this country, but from the general wealth of the community, and the
mental and bodily activity of the people, we know that the change
must have been far greater here, and it is not too much to say that five
hundred persons now travel by railway for every one person who trav
eled by stage-coach in the first years of the history of the Republic.
This easily generalized fact will show us that some of the problems of
modern society are to be solved by this ease of transit, in a way quite
unexpected to past writers upon political economy. Free travel will b$
found to be a mightier agency for elevating pauperized populations
than free trade. The common people of Ireland, of Germany, and of
England have begun to find out that there is an opening on other por
tions of the earth’s surface, and that there is no real necessity for them
to remain in their old homes, and starve, when they can go elsewhere
and live in abundance; and hence the armies, mightier than those com
manded by Timour, Genghis Khan or Attila, or led by Peter the Her
mit—armies not with weapons of war in their hands, but with instru
ments of labor, and willing and able to work, which are on the march
to attack the wild portions of the globe with the view of making them
the homes of civilized peoples. Hence the rush of population to our
Western Territories and the Pacific coast, the overflowing of New Zea
land, Australia, and the Islands of the Indian Ocean, and the rapid
extension of population even in South Africa. The streams, of emigra
tion from Southern Europe which have set in toward Brazil and other
parts of South America are indices of a mightier influx of population
in the future. The most portentous of these changes has already com
menced upon our Pacific coast. The Mongolians have discovered the
enormous riches of California, and are only waiting for proper facilities,
such as steam will yet afford, to overrun the whole of the Western
coast of the United States; and if not interrupted, millions of that
race will yet find their way into the Mississippi Valley, and even to the
North Atlantic coast.
*
This article was written in 1867.—Author.
�88
STEAM
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It is not so difficult, though the magnitude of the result may be
surprising, to forecast the effect of these changes of population upon
human conditions. All can be predicted with tolerable accuracy. The
agricultural poor of England are to-day the most debased of any class
in Europe—are the worst fed, worst used, and worst paid. This cheap
agricultural labor lies at the very basis of the aristocratic features of
English landed property, and of their whole tenant system Let the emi
gration fever once reach this lowest strata of English-Society—and it is
reaching it—and a heavy blow will have been dealt at the great tenant
farming interest of that country, and at the wealth of the large aristo
cratic landed establishments. A very small advance in the wages of
English agricultural laborers, will make the raising of wheat and of all
the cereals an unprofitable business in that country. It has already to
a great extent done so, and hence the attention which has been paid in
the last fifteen or twenty years to the growth and development of supe
rior cattle. But here again the equalizing tendencies of steam naviga
tion comes into play. While meat is extremely dear in England and
the west of Europe, owing to the density of the population and the
small amount of ground available for pasture, there are portions of the
earth’s surface where meat is worth scarcely anything. The problem is
¿o transport the meat from the place where it is very plenty to the
place where it is very scarce. Science is now at work upon the proper
method of preserving the meat; and it is believed that if this be not
as yet accomplished, it is on the very point of accomplishment. Steam
navigation will most certainly supply the necessary facilities for bring
ing the cheap meat and the dear meat countries into intimate relation;
and then another heavy blow will be dealt at the farming and aristo
cratic interests of Great Britain. Wages will be raised in that country
and food cheapened.
But the most important problem for us to solve in connection with
this coming flux of nations is, what shall we do with the millions of hea
thens willing to work for little more than a bare livelihood, who will be
swarming upon us from Eastern and Southern Asia ? What will become
of our working classes if this practically inexhaustible supply of laborers
be available for our industrial wants ? It is idle to talk of restrictive laws,
though they will undoubtedly be tried; indeed they have been tried.
The spirit of the age is all against this stoppage of emigration. We
may pile act of Congress upon act of Congress, and station war-ships
before every port in the Pacific, yet it would be impossible practically
to prevent this influx of Chinese and Hindoos upon our western coast.
Nothing will do it but the equalization of the prices of labor in Asia
and America. Undoubtedly there is trouble, a great deal of it, in the
future working of this question. We have already experienced some
of the effects of the influx of cheap labor from Europe ; but so far, our
mechanics have had such ready access to cheap lands, that the price of
labor has been upheld in the fact of a very large emigration. As the
�STEAM AS A
FACTOR.
89
foreigners arrived and embarked in the various trades, the American
mechanics started for the West and secured homes of their own. But
this change of employment will soon reach its limit. It will not/ be
many years before all the public lands will be taken up, and then will
commence the enhancement of the price of all the lands of this coun
try. The solution of this labor problem, it will be found, is not a local
matter; it is not confined to any one country, and no one nation will
be able to pass laws or create any conditions by which its own poor
will be well used, well fed and properly educated, without also taking into
consideration the feeding and educating of all peoples upon the globe.
The trades-unions in England, despite of all that has been said against
them, have really had the effect of raising the rate of wages in that
country, but in all those occupations in which the unionists succeeded
in banding together, they found that the chief obstacle in the way of
the success of their strikes and demands for higher wages, was the
ability of the English manufacturers to import laborers from France
and Belgium. This has, in a measure, been prevented by the English
workmen through the forming of labor-unions in Belgium and France,
and by having an understanding that there should be no competition
between the workmen of either of the three nations. This furnishes a
hint as to the solution of this labor problem. Steam is bringing about
that dream of the French socialists, the solidarity of the nations. The
working classes will find out that to permanently better their condi
tion, they must take into consideration, not only the workmen in their
own locality, but the laboring class of every other population under the
sun, and in time they will realize that, with the extremely rapid and
cheap system of transportation which is about to obtain all over the
world, there can be no very great differences of condition between the
laboring population of different countries; and this fact may yet bring
about that dream of the past:
“ Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new ;
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.”
This rapid interchange of populations will also have other and far
wider effects. What becomes of local patriotism in the face of a chang
ing fluctuating population ? The farmers in the country and the
bouseholders in the city may have sentiments of local attachment, but
the great trading community, the traveling and working population
who have no stake in the soil—what will they care for one country
more than another ? What attachment will then exist to bind them
to any particular spot of earth ? Is it not reasonable to suppose that
the extension of this agent of modern civilization, steam, may tend to
increase the number of cosmopolitans, people who care more for the
whole earth than for any particular part of it, for the race at large
rather than any of its natural divisions ?
Then again as to government, do we not already see that the ex
�90
STEAM AS A
FACTOR.
tension of the railroad has had most important effects in changing the
map of the world. The “ shrieks of locality ” are no longer heeded;
state lines have no longer the sacredness formerly attributed to them.
The history of modern governments is the history of the growth of
centralization. All efforts of late years towards rebellion or secession
have miserably failed. The South could not escape from the grasp of
the North. Hungary was beaten in her attempt to separate from
Austria. Ireland failed, entirely in her moral agitation to effect a repeal
of the act of union with Great Britain. Not so with efforts to consoli
date nations. Prussia to-day represents some forty smaller nationalities
that existed but a few short years ago. Italy is one nation where but
yesterday were six or seven. The United States Government keeps
adding steadily to its possessions; Russia encroaches upon Central Asia;
England extends her dominions in Southern Asia; and so as the means
of intercommunication multiply, the smaller become merged in the
larger nations. Contemporaneously with this enlargement of the
boundaries of great states, we find another curious and hitherto unsus
pected effect of the influence of modern steam travel, which is the
extension of suffrage to larger and still larger classes of the community.
There is no doubt whatever that this rapid flux of population is really
at the bottom of this equalizing of men’s position as regards the gov
ernment. In England, in America, in France, in Germany, in Italy,
in Spain—in every civilized nation, we see that greater and still greater
concessions are being made to the laboring population in the way of
political power. But strangely enough, and yet naturally enough, if
we regard it in the right light, with the extension of the voting privi
lege to the laboring classes we see a greater concentration of power in
the central authority. This follows naturally from the obliteration of
localities. All can see that New York State at large, through its legis
lature at Albany, takes the power away from New York City; that
Washington absorbs much of the power formerly centering in Albany.
Berlin to-day represents twenty small capitals of ten years ago. Paris,
in the van of civilization, has.long been the virtual head of all France.
The reason for this change is obvious. When the doctrine of States
rights in this country was preached in its early vigor, Washington was
in point of fact at a greater distance from the city of New York than it
is to-day from the city of Delhi. In point of actual time, it took
over two weeks to reach Maine from the capital, and a still greater
length of time to reach New Orleans. There could be no wise govern
ment of provinces which were so distant in point of time, where infor
mation to head-quarters took so long to go, and commands therefrom
so long to come. And this has been the real force of the argument in
favor of the exclusive government of localities by the people thereof;
but human conditions have changed marvelously within the last few
years, and distance in relation to time is practically annihilated by the
use of the telegraph, while space has been greatly abridged by the
�STEAM AS
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91
application of steam to transportation. The telegraphic wires have
become the real nerves of the human race. They communicate sensa
tion from all parts of the body politic, and in the fullness of time there
must be, as in the human organism, one great brain to which this sen
sation will be transmitted, and which must act intelligently for all
parts of the corporate body. I do not see how statesmen, political
economists, and philosophers generally can avoid realizing that the
mighty change in human conditions created by the use of steam will
change radically (indeed is changing radically) the relations of locali
ties to the central authority; and that while the equality of human
conditions brought about by steam and electricity has had the effect to
extend the right of the choice of rulers to wider circles of population,
and may yet include even women, it has taken more and more power
from localities, and concentrated it in the central governments. In no
part of the world to-day do we see any powers taken away from the
central governments; in every part of the world, with the extension of
suffrage we see more and more power added to the central authority.
In fact, when the active intelligent and effective part of the population
are rapidly moving from place to place, locality to locality, they are no
longer any better judges of the interests of that locality than are people
who permanently live at a distance. If in the future, therefore, an agi
tation in favor of local rights and State authority should prove feebler
than in past times in the history of our government, it can be readily
understood that this change is made by the agency of steam in effect
ing rapid intercommunication between all parts of the country.
To sum up, then, the effects of the application of steam to transpor
tation—
1. It has built up the centers of population at the expense of the
rural districts, thus stimulating the growth of large cities.
2. In its fullest development it will have a dispersive effect upon
large cities, and prevent overcrowding by rendering available larger
areas of country for business purposes. Cheap steam travel is the real
and certain cure for the tenement-house horror, and most of the evils
of overcrowding. One cheap, swift road, reaching out into the country
from the heart of a great city, is a greater beneficence to the poor than
could be conferred upon them by a generation of Peabodys.
3. Steam travel is equalizing the price of all commodities as well as
the wages of labor. So far the effect has been to enhance prices when
they were low; the reverse effect has rarely taken place; the leveling
has been up, not down. This is a fact upon which depends conse
quences most momentous to the future of the working classes the
world over.
4. Steam is giving an immense impetus to emigration, and is solv
ing the problem of over-population, or perhaps it would be more pre
cise to say, is making that problem one upon which the whole race
must sit in judgment rather than any one people. Like water, wages.
�92
STEAM AS
A
FACTOR.
prices, and population will find their level. The most momentous fact
of the immediate future will be the “flux of nations,” the emigration
of the laboring poor from places where land is dear to where it is
cheap, and from crowded communities to sparsely inhabited settle
ments.
5. This vast emigration will make the social future of the working
class a cosmopolitan question, and will in effect bring about that dream
of the continental socialists, the “ solidarity of the peoples.”
6. The railroad and telegraph, in helping to conquer time and
space, is bringing about the reign of a centralized democracy all over
the world. They tend on the one hand to extend the privilege of the
ballot to every grown human being, and on the other to center more
power in the general government. Localities are constantly getting to
be of less account.
Note.—The three chapters above given will form part of a book upon “ The
Future,” should I ever find time to write it. One other chapter, “ By 1900, What ? ”
was published in Appleton's Journal. In addition I have the rough drafts of about
a dozen other chapters, the contents of which may be judged by their titles, as
follows:
1. The Future of Language.
2. Synthetic Chemistry, and what it will Accomplish.
3. The Future of Money and Prices.
4. Will the Coming Man Sleep ?
5. Can Human Life be Prolonged, and How ?
6. The Food of the Future, and its probable effect upon the Structure of the
Human Body.
7. On the Equalization of the Temperature of the Globe.
8. The Probable Governments of the Future.
9. The Tendency of Educational Changes.
Of course the range of topics is endless, and none of them in the present state of
Sociological Science can be discussed with the intelligence they demand to be made
profitable as objects of serious study. The test of science, as Comte pointed out, is
prevision, and the foundations of a science of human affairs canndt be said to have
been begun until we are able speculatively to anticipate the future. Now all I can
do is to try and point out the tendency or drift of things. I may be mistaken on
every point, but of one thing I am sure—that those who follow me will succeed
where I have failed. All the value I claim for my speculations is the attempt to
deliberately foreeast the future. Now I firmly believe this not only can be done,
but some time or other it will be done.
D. G. C.
�THE SEXUAL QUESTION.
*
T is to the conspicuous disgrace of the medical profession, that so
far it has not supplied the public with any standard work upon
the intimate relations of the sexes. Of all the subjects relating to
the7 life of man upon this planet, there is no one of such prime
importance as the generative act between the sexes. So far it has prac
tically been regarded as a brute instinct, and an indecent shame has
prevented the wise, pure and good of both sexes from fully under
standing all about the act, as well as all the consequences it entails.
The curiosity with regard’to the sexual organs and their uses, not
withstanding this conventional, indelicate reticence, in every one con
scious of sex is necessarily very great, but it has to be gratified illegiti
mately. Mothers do not instruct their daughters, nor fathers their
sons touching this most important of all the relations of their life, not
only because of the sinful shame they feel in conversing upon such
topics with their children, but because of their own amazing ignorance
of the antecedents to and consequences of the act by which the race is
continued.
It may be broadly stated that there as yet has never been written
or published in any language one comprehensive and exhaustive work
upon the generative organs, their uses and abuses. Science has not
yet occupied that field: it has been left to quackery and empiricism.
The works appended are useful as an indication that some few
physicians at least, are becoming aware that these matters must be
discussed from a scientific standpoint, and that the knowledge in the
possession of the medical profession must be given to the public. The
real difficulty in the way, however, is the singular unacquaintance of
the profession with all that relates to the sociological side of this dis
cussion. Comte complained that in his day physicians were little
better than horse doctors when they came to regard man sexually.
They looked upon the male as an animal, and paid no attention to the
enormous modifications brought about by society, and the course of his
tory upon the human family. And this fruitful field is even yet left
unoccupied. Now that women are getting into the medical profession
there is reason to hope for some intelligent discussion of the sexual
question; for it is remarkable to note that the women are far less
squeamish than the men when this topic is broached in the press or on
I
* The Preventive Obstacle.—Dr. Bergeyet.
den&r. Common Sense.—Dr. Foote.
Conjugal Sin A—Dr. Garr-
�94
THE
SEXUAL
QUESTION.
the platform. All pure women feel what all artists and poets have ever
felt, that there is no sin or shame in any of the legitimate gratifications
of the sense of sex. And in considering this subject women seem to
realize more truly than men the social aspects of the case. These are
now up for comment and settlement, especially so far as they relate to
the means to be used in limiting the size of families.
The different methods in use to keep down population or prevent
an undesirable increase in families in times past, may be summed up as
follows:
1. The killing of infants after they are horn.—This is the most
ancient practice, and obtains to this day in the East and in exceptional
cases among the very poor in so-called civilized communities. The
Spartans made a wise use of this practice to rid themselves of mal
formed children, as well as those who should not have been generated.
2. Abortion—the killing of the foetus in the womb.—This is done to
a fearful extent in all " civilized ” communities. It is a worse practice
than infanticide, as it entails far more physical and moral evil. It
generally injures the physical system of the mother and prevents the
birth of desirable as well as undesirable offspring. Then, in spite of
all efforts, a number of half-killed children are born, and live to add to
the sum of human misery. Our laws tacitly recognize the right of
mothers to kill their unborn offspring. Throughout Christendom
there is not a law on any statute-book forbidding or punishing a
woman for killing the unborn fruit of her womb. It is only those who
make a business of committing abortion upon women who are dis
countenanced by law; but all enactments on this subject are practically
null. In New York city abortion is an open and lucrative profession,
as witness the advertisements in the papers and Mad. Restell’s splendid
mansion on Fifth Avenue.
3. Preventative measures.—George Sand is reputed to have said,
apropos of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, that the great
concern in the life of a Parisian woman was not “ how to conceive
without sin, but how to sin without conceiving.” Omitting all notion
of sin in the matter, this is the problem nearly all married couples in
modern civilization are compelled to try and solve. How is it possible to
nave sexual intercourse without resulting offspring ? That this is done
in myriads of cases every one is aware, but can these various practices be
kept up without peril to health ? As yet medical science has given no
decisive or satisfactory answer; but what little the profession does say
is against all attempts to interfere with the propagative act. Bergeret,
Gardener, Mayer, as well as nearly all who have written on the subject,
assert that all preventative measures are hurtful, and that the increase
of uterine diseases among women is due to them. But it is evident
from the loose popular way in which these books are written, that as
yet this problem is without a scientific solution which is likely to be
generally accepted. By commo’h consent it is considered desirable that
�THE
SEXUAL
QUESTION.
95
men and women should marry in order to satisfy the most intense and
exacting of all human passions; but at the same time the foremost
minds of the age insist upon the necessity of married people control
ling the number of their offspring. John Stuart Mill, who represents
the most advanced wing of the political economists, never tires of bear
ing testimony to the criminality of bringing more children into the
world than the family can well take care of, and the common sense of
the community supports this view.
We are agreed as to the'what, but how ? asks the married men and
women most interested.
Science has as yet no answer; the medical profession so far as it
has spoken says, “ absolute continence except when you are willing to
assume the responsibilities of paternity.” Here, then, is the dilemma.
All the best social influences conspire to induce people to marry; when
married, every consideration of prudence -and common sense prompt
them to try and control propagation; but the physicians say this cannot
be done without peril to health, except by complete abstention, some
times extending over years; for, according to Bergeret and his medical
confreres, no intercourse is allowable during pregnancy and lactation,
nor after the woman’s “turn of life.” Yet, every one knows that these
canons of conduct in the sexual relation are universally disregarded.
The Oneida communists profess to have solved this problem by
what they call “ male continence.” The sexes have intercourse, but the
male stops short of the emission of semen. But this is one of the
practices which Bergeret declares is destructive of health. Per contra,
the communists insist that they are not injured but benefited in health
by this peculiar custom, which has been in vogue among them for over
a score of years, and they point to their exemption from disease and
longevity as compared with their neighbors, as a proof of the truth of
their claim.
The simple truth is, the relations of the' sexes have not yet been
put under scientific co-ordination. Marriage and propagation are not
subject to the “ higher law.” Hence prostitution, celibacy, polygamy,
free love, disease, the gratification of mere brute instincts in marriage
and out of it, and, as a consequence, the social disturbance, the propa
gation of faulty human beings as well as the generation of hideous
diseases. The work to be done is to collect all the verified facts rela
ting to the intercourse of the sexes, and generalize the laws which con
trol them. When we have discovered those laws, all there is to do is to
obey them. In the preliminary discussions, what is needed is pure
thinking and plain speaking. The tawdry sentimentalizing which dis
tinguishes Dr. Gardener’s book, for instance, is extremely offensive.
Things must be called by their right names; but it must never be for
gotten that, as the sexual act involves the highest interests of society,
it must be lifted out of the slough of mere animality and discussed
from a religious point of view.
�96
UNIVERSOL OGY.
TEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS’S «Primary Synopsis of Universology,” embraces his scheme of a scientific universal lan
guage. • It is a condensation of another work, covering the
whole field of philosophy, as yet unpublished. I do not
propose to pass any verdict upon this preliminary work. Its author
makes a most tremendous claim. He alleges that he has discovered
the Science of Sciences—that he has supplied the connecting link
between the body of all human knowledges. In other words, he has
not only discovered a new Method, but the Method of Methods. If
this claim can be established, America has at length produced a philos
opher of the very highest type—a greater than Aristotle, Bacon, Des
cartes, Spinoza, or Comte. The audacity of Mr. Andrews’s claim can
not but challenge attention from the scientific world. It is quite safe
to predict that, whether his work has any value or not, it will be re
ceived with a storm of derision from all the old schools of thought.
The Modern Thinker, however, declines to pass a verdict until all the
testimony is in. Mr. Andrews is undoubtedly a man of unusual powers
of mind—he is an acute thinker, and has rare powers of persuasion
and exposition. We say this much because ordinary readers who take
up his book will be repelled by its terminology. Comte points out the
great value it would be to mankind if all phenomena could be referred
to some one law, such, for instance, as that of gravitation, but in the
same chaptei’ he denies that it is possible to formulate such a law.
Man is finite, and the universe is infinite, and therefore it is chimerical
to expect ever to discover the secret of the grand Unity, if indeed there
is a Unity. Now Mr. Andrews declares that what Comte pronounced
an eternally impossible feat he has accomplished. The very splendoi’
of the claim ought to command respect, at least; but I judge it will
not, and that for a long time to come he will have to submit to a good
deal of abuse and ridicule.
I am inclined to believe that Mr. Andrews has made a real discovery
in his universal language; at least, if he has not solved the problem
himself, he has pointed out how it may be done by some one else.
There are about sixty-four primary sounds in all languages. Every
one of these, Mr. Andrews alleges, is charged by nature with certain
meanings, which he prints in his new vocabulary. The instances Mr.
Andrews gives to prove his claim will carry a great deal of weight with
philologists who have made a study of phonetics. As there is a science
of harmony, which was not invented, but discovered, so, says our
author, there is a science of sound, expressing sense, which we must
find out by careful induction. When discovered, we will have the
Language of Man, which must, in time, be common to the whole planet.
It is possible that Mr. Andrews has been bedeviled by analogies; indeed
his universology is confessedly a science of analogies; but I believe he
has in this conception of a universal language hit upon something of
supreme importance to the race.—D. G.
S
�
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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What of the future
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Croly, David Goodman [1829-1889]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: [73]-96 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Croly was an American journalist. From 1870 to 1873, he published the journal Modern Thinker which served as a vehicle for the positivist and Spencerian positions of himself and a small circle of colleagues. Chapter headings: The Future of Marriage; Steam as a Factor of Sociology; The Sexual Question. From Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870.||(BND) Some uncut pages. Includes bibliographical references. Printed in red ink on cream paper.
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[American News Company]
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[1870]
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G5416
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Society
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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 (What of the future), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Conway Tracts
Future Life
Industrialization
Marriage
Sexual Behavior
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Text
WHAT WE BELIEVE.
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN AN INQUIRER AND AN “INCOMPLETE”
POSITIVIST.
I
NQUIRER. I understand you do not believe in a Personal God 01
great First Cause.
Positivist. We neither deny nor affirm respecting either.
There may be a God such as Christians and Mohammedans gen
erally accept as existing, but they no more than we can demonstrate
the fact, if it be a fact.
Inquirer. Then your religion does not recognize any God at all.
Positivist. Oh yes, it does. John Stuart Mill has done us grievous
injury in saying that August Comte propounded a religion without a
God or a future state; whereas we, with Comte, believe in both, if
allowed to define what we mean. Our Supreme Being is Humanity,
whom we love and serve. We say the only God man can know, or
whose existence can be- demonstrated, is the collective Man—the sum
of all human personalities, past, present, and future.
Inquirer. This strikes me as vague. How can you make a Thing
or a Person out of what is clearly an abstract conception ?
Positivist. But the human mind does very readily personify abstract
conceptions. The Town, the State, the Nation, the Church are no
more actual things or entities than is Humanity; yet they are—they
convey a definite impression to the rudest intelligence. Now Human
ity clearly exists as a subjective conception no less than an objective
phenomenon.
Inquirer. But how about the Creator? How do you account for
the origin of the universe ?
Positivist. We know nothing of the beginning of things. It is be
yond our ken. So far as we know, matter and force are eternal.
Science proves this in that no atom of matter can be destroyed or any
force wasted. Each can take a different form, but the precise quantity
or energy of the one or the other always exists in the same definite pro
portions. Hence to the human scientific mind there never was a be
ginning—there never can be an end. Eternity with us is a circle; in
other words, the old Hindoo symbol —the serpent with his tail in his
mouth. The ordinary conception is that of a straight line with a be
ginning and end.
�/
WHAT
WE BELIEVE.
149
Inquirer. When you discriminate between matter and force, do you
mean that there is any real difference between them ?
Positivist. Oh, I speak in a popular way of course. We want what
Mr. Lincoln called the “plain people” to understand us. We know of
matter only through force; that is, through its changes—by the im
pression it makes upon us; but this conception, which is simple enough
to you or me, is too subtile for common comprehension, and hence we
speak of matter and force as two distinct entities.
Inquirer. But the ordinary conception of God must have some valid
basis.
Positivist. So it has. All gods are idealizations of man himself.
They are man-made. Every attribute, with two important exceptions,
which the human race in its past history have ascribed to its gods, is
purely human. Thus love, justice, wisdom, mercy, as well as revenge
fulness, vanity, and lust—in short, all the emotions and passions which
have been attributed to Deity, are purely human. To these have been
added conceptions of the Infinite and Absolute, which are extra-human.
The elements which compose the popular notion of God vary with
every age. The Jewish Jehovah was stern, revengeful, jealous, vain;
the Christian God is a tender, loving Father; the more human or man
like the God, the better he is—hence the noblest Deity of all is the
man Christ-Jesus. In short, this brief and imperfect analysis shows us
that Humanity is, after all, the only pure metal in this alloy of gods.
Let us consecrate all our energies to the service of the only Supreme
Being we can ever know—Humanity. There may be in addition an
Infinite and Absolute Deity; we do not say there is not; but we hold
with Sir William Hamilton, Prof. Mansell, and Herbert Spencer, that
from the laws of our being we can never know or understand Him;
He is out of all relation with us. Unlike Herbert Spencer, we regard
the worship of an unknowable God as a rank absurdity. His ways
cannot be as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts. He is for
us as if he were not. Such is the verdict of modern Philosophy and
Science.
* Inquirer. How about Immortality? If a man die, shall he live
again ?
Positivist. We know we live upon this earth. We do not know
that we shall continue our personal consciousness after death. It may
be so, but we cannot demonstrate .it by any scientific proof. If the
phenomenon of Spiritualism so-called could be proven, all would be
plain sailing; but it resists scientific tests. There is, however, a real
immortality which we are scientifically sure of. We know that the
materials of which we are composed are indestructible. Every atom
which has formed a part of this body of mine from birth to death will
exist forever. And so too of the forces I generate; they cannot be lost
or wasted. “ The good I do lives after me.” I live in my children—in
the work I do—in what I hand down from those who came before to
�150
WETA T
WE BELIEVE.
those who will follow me. The machine becomes unusable and decays,
but the forces to which it gave birth live forever.
Inquirer. But does not life lose much of its interest and glory by
being confined to this earth, and the few, the very few years we spend
upon it ?
Positivist. We must take things as they are, and not as we would
like them to be. No doubt the hope of a personal, conscious immor
tality has done much in times past to soften and brighten the harsh
lot of myriads of human beings who else would have been given over
to despair from the wretchedness of their material surroundings; but
notwithstanding the comfort men have got from this and other pleasant
illusions, we Positivists decline countenancing the dogma of conscious
immortality until it is proven. So far it has no basis of fact to rest
upon. If it ever should be demonstrated, we should believe in it; but
we do not think this possible.
Inquirer. Do I understand you to wish to unsettle the faith of the
mass of mankind in a Personal Creator of the universe and a Personal
Immortality ?
Positivist. By no means. The prevalent disbelief and scepticism is
to us a worse symptom of the times than the current theological illu
sions. Any religion, even the most baseless, is better than the bald
atheism and materialism which is gaining such hold upon the age.
We want to build up a religion to supply the -spiritual needs of man
kind, and one which is based upon the facts of nature. The old faiths
rest upon supernatural authority and revelation; the new, upon dem
onstrated facts — in other words, upon science. The priest of the
Past appealed to the Unknown; the priest of the Future will be the
expounder, or rather the declarer, of the Known.
Inquirer. Does the belief in a future state do any harm ?
Positivist. Yes; it attracts the best and purest minds of the race
away from the solution of practical problems involving human well
being, to the consideration of insoluble questions. Now what is needed
is that all the energies of the race shall hereafter be devoted to making
this earth the fabled heaven. Human effort should be confined to
human improvement, and to making the earth more habitable.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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.
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Pamphlet
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Title
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What we believe: a dialogue between an inquirer and an "incomplete" positivist
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: [148]-150 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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[American News Company]
Date
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[1870]
Identifier
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G5419
Subject
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Positivism
Rights
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<p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (What we believe: a dialogue between an inquirer and an "incomplete" positivist), identified by <span style="color:#0000ff;"><span lang="zxx"><u>Humanist Library and Archives</u></span></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Creator
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[Unknown]
Conway Tracts
Positivism