3 10 32 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/0e5717368fc78d07a9e8d05ce050a3c8.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=rRkPrnDrZIOCl2Ctz%7EFDKElIJ%7EMgLZ-8Pmmou2dIesaEaKnFJU%7EekSo6Gge0Ncl6B8kaStJWAOjEWhoxs5KtXNYRAU75t0k0NmCgBG8B01RQg%7En11PGDEl%7EZk6eZ8wUIZ99OByvYZK9lJd1VkTcFsdXbDcNxBf0PihV9gdCwssYjJFNsY7LGUjCMmTnTu-GbKy8AM3XiTLQw3IKBFzBbSt7iyHjN%7EaIG4t7xgPuAAx-ITbcumQ7qqwSU2s3YUUVTtvyKt7wRQgssuD1HugCPxclMnTvYFBeSki1jk4WGqO70wltSfWeErZLaCESIlK%7EfBb8-56ulHwqHw3gwzZhEVQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 01c8aa8dd2fda92b555e36ebf88d38c3 PDF Text Text SECOND PART. THE :E OF THE “FATHERS” ON THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. BEING Iferture DELIVERED BEFORE THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, ON SUNDAY, 27th MARCH, 1881, Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R.Hist.S. PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. 1881. PRICE THREEPENCE. �SYLLABUS. Some of the most influential Fathers of the First Century. Objections of the Jews and Heathens to Christianity. Celsus, Lucian, Porphyrius, and Julian. The Apologists: Athenagoras, Tatian and his Disciples. Clemens of Alexandria. Falsification of History. Origen, his character and great talent. Eusebius and Basil, Cyril and Hypatia. Tertullian and Ambrose. Augustine. He studies Aristotle and Plato. His influence on the Theology of our own times. His Confessions. Pride in prayer. “ In the be­ ginning.” The Trinity. “ The City of God.” The “ Original Sin.” A Chinese Mandarin. Augustine and Rousseau compared. Heathen customs and principles mixed with Christianity. Effects of the Controversialists and Casuists on the simplicity of Christ’s teachings. The Third Lecture to treat on Monasticism and Scholaticism. Conclusion. �CHRISTIANITY. II. The Influence of the “ Fathers ” on the Further Development oj C hristianity. IHE ancient world, with its plurality of godsT ceremonies, oracles, festivities, political and social organisation', its' moral laws and philosophy did not die very quickly. During the first Century of our era, the Christians were merely a small sect of re­ formed Jews, called “Nazarenes,” who met secretly, often in the dead of night, in burial places and catacombs. The few existing records were written only in Hebrew or Syriac. The first change brought about in the new faith, was the more exclusive use of the Greek language, not in its classical purity, but in a colloquial form, in order to make the teachings of the converted Hebrews more popular. The next step was the aboli­ tion of some of the most striking social arrangements of the new sect with regard to possessing “ all things in common.” The Indian and Egyptian priests, the Pythagoreans, Essenes, and Buddhistic monks, had long before possessed a similar organi­ sation. They were compelled to give up their private property and to divide it amongst the members of the community which they joined. Notwithstanding all attempts to deny, distort, or falsify them, the records of the Evangelists, and the acts clearly prove that the germs of “ Communism ” and “ Socialism ” may be traced to the primitive constitution of the oldest Christian Sects. Barnabas, one of the earliest Fathers, whose real name was Joses, a rich Levite, sold all he possessed, and gave everything to the Apostles. He wrote a Gospel, but this was declared apocryphal. Hermas, another of the Fathers of the first Century, also a rich Jow, who lived at Borne, gave up his property, followed St. Paul, and represented Christ as an angelic shepherd preaching doctrines of love and equality. The sudden and miraculous deaths of Ana­ nias and his wife Sapphira for concealing, and not giving up their own goods to the. community, prove conclusively that “ Communism ” was the basis of the first Hebrew-Christian Sect. Another funda­ mental creed of primitive Christianity, that concerning the return 1 �4 Christianity. of the Son in the glory of his Father, with his angels, to bring peace on earth, which was to happen during the lifetime of those to whom the promise had been made, was reluctantly given up as hopeless. The belief in this promise goes far to prove that the first Christians must have looked upon Christ as a powerful hero who would vanquish his enemies, and bestow worldly grandeur on his followers. Doubt and controversy very early pervaded the assertions of the fathers. Ignatius was assumed to have been the “little child” held up by Christ to the people at Capernaum, but Chrysostom, another Father, says that Ignatius never beheld Christ. The writings of Ignatius were looked upon as forgeries, as they are saturated with dogmas of a later period, and could not have been written before the 5th or 6th Century. The same must be said of the writings of Dionysius, of Athens, who was a well educated man, a member of the highest tribunal, the Areopagus, and therefore called the “ Areopagite ”; he was made an overseer by St. Paul, and works “ On the Order of the Heavenly Spirits,” “ On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy” (which was not then in existence), “ On God’s Name,” “ On Mystic Theology,” &c., were attributed to him. The very title of the last work, how­ ever, proves that it could not possibly have been written in the first Century, as mystic theology was certainly wholly unknown at that period. The works are full of theological and dialectical controversies not then thought of; they refer to dogmas and cere­ monies, the introduction of which was of a far later date; the very word “ Monakos,” which occurs in them, and which only came into use about the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century, convincingly proves that these writings, like so many others, were pious forgeries. During the first centuries terrible accusations were hurled against Christianity by both Jews and Heathens. The Jews were more violent than the Gentiles. They saw in Christ a faithless deserter from their own ranks. They accused him of having taught Atheism; of having destroyed the unity of the Godhead; of having without any right proclaimed himself the Messiah. They complained that he bad propounded utterly impracticable laws, commanding men “ to give to him that asketh; ” “ not to hate, but to pray for our enemies,”—that he had asserted that the Father in Heaven ‘f maketh the Sun to rise on the evil and on the �Christianity. 5 good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust;” and that it would be “ easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven! ” If Christ’s teachings were true, they would do away with the rich, and make the poor masters of the world I What would become of trade and commerce, of barter and exchange, of all the glorious promises of plenty on earth, if the poor had any right to such exaltation ? Humanity would sink into barbarism, and the whole covenant with the chosen people be cancelled. The Mosaic law would be abolished if men were no longer to be allowed “ to take an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; ” or forced to hold out their left cheek when smitten on the right. Christ had forbidden man to go to law, for he had enacted, “ if any take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also 1 ” All this the Jews thought shocking, horrible, and impossible! What was to become of the law and lawyers, of the learned in the Scripture, and of the expounders, and teachers of true morals? Were men no longer to be allowed to hate fer­ vently, to despise cordially, to persecute, to flog, to stone, and to crucify ? They recoiled from such a prospect, and asserted that this Jeshua had been a dreamer, a blasphemer, nay, they even doubted the fact of his very existence, and looked upon everything that had been reported of his life, miracles, and resurrection, as mere inventions. They attempted to show that he had never taught anything new, and that everything practical and moral, he said, was contained in the Old Testament, which he had despised by breaking the Sabbath, and blaspheming God, whilst pretending to be God himself. It is a historical fact that the Jews could never comprehend a faith based on love and mutual forbearance, and unfortunately more than eighteen hundred years have been required to teach Christians to understand Christ’s most valuable enactments, which were to be taken in the spirit, and not to the letter. The Heathens objected to Christianity because it was a social and political revolution. It declared all men equal, and denied the ancient gods that had ruled for thousands of years. The Christ­ ians were accused of despising emperors, consuls, pro-consuls, high priests, and philosophers, whilst they worshipped and paid divine honours to a crucified rebel. They were called deceiving “ Sibylists ”; dealers in mysteries, pretending to perform miracles which they had learned from Indian and Egyptian mountebanks, and impostors. They were taunted with objecting to the gods in �6 Christianity. human form, whilst they themselves were “ anthropolatrae ” (idola­ trous worshippers of a man). It was said that whilst they were opposed to the eating of certain parts of the flesh of the sacrifices, they were themselves “ Theophagi” (god-eaters)—eating the flesh and drinking the blood of their own God. The Old and New Testaments were said to be full of incredible stories, contradic­ tions, and fables, teeming with ignorance, and contrary to com­ mon sense and reason. The Christians were accused of asserting that all the laws of Nature had been suspended and acted against by the eternal gods for the glorification of One who had not been able to save himself from the most ignominious death. The Christ­ ians were accused to hate humanity, to blaspheme God, and to court death. They were charged with the grossest immorality, with eating their own children, and with committing incest; they were called conspirators, assassins, perjurers, infidels, communists, and atheists ! They were also contemptuously designated Nazarenes, Galileans, Men of the Magical Superstition, Plautinians, Corne­ lians, Synedrians, Cyrillians, Apostatics, Nestorians, Arians, Eustathians, Cataphrygians, and Homousians. These different appel­ lations prove that from the earliest times Christianity must have been divided into many antagonistic sects. The attacks on both sides became fiercer, the more plainly the Jews and Pagans perceived that their dominion was at an end, and that humanity was adopting entirely new principles upon which to build up an altogether different political and social organisation. One of the most determined opponents of Christianity (about 150 a.d.) was Celsus, who could not see the necessity of mys­ ticism and secrecy in a work of general redemption. Lucian wrote “ Three Dialogues ” against Christianity, characterising it as a dreamy superstition, based on falsehoods. Pobphybius (Malchus of Tyre) was said to have been a Christian, but returned to Pagan­ ism. He wrote fifteen books “ On Christianity,” which have been entirely destroyed, with the exception of a few fragments selected by Eusebius for the purpose of refutation. Hiebokles of Nikomedia, a philosopher under Diocletian, was one of the principal instigators of the persecution of the Chris­ tians by this emperor, as he described them as dangerous fanatics and reckless conspirators. He endeavoured to prove that Christ had in fact been Apollonius Tyannseus, who could see distant occurrences, and who gave an account of the murder of Domitian in the open market place at Ephesus, at the very moment when �Christianity. ' 7 the terrible deed was done at Rome. Apollonius was said to have had interviews with spirits, to have revived a dead young woman, and to have died at the age of one hundred years. The Pagans often confounded this contemporary of Jesus with Christ himself, and the deeds of the one were attributed to the other. The last but not least formidable antagonist of Christianity was Julian the Apostate, so called because he returned to Paganism after his conversion. He wrote seven books “On Christianity,” which are entirely lost, with the exception of a few quotations in the ten controversial books against him by Cyril of Alexandria. The works of Julian may be divided into four principal groups :— (a.) Treatises which he himself calls, Discourses of a more or less sophistical character. (A) Satires, written in the style of Lucian, concerning his con­ temporaries, and his relations to science. (c.) Letters, partly official, which he had written when regent, and partly unofficial, addressed to friends and mere ac­ quaintances. (cZ.) His diatribes against Christianity. Julian was one of the most important and cultivated men of his time; he possessed a determined character, was an industrious and clever administrator, promoted education, and reveals to us more clearly than any other writer the entirely changed condition of the world. He endeavoured to transform the religion of the ancients into a mystic-symbolic system, to satisfy the wants of the people, and to oppose the subversive tendencies of Christianity, which already began to revel in gloomy superstitions, and to discard the simplicity and lofty grandeur of Christ’s teachings. The violent attacks on Christianity produced an entirely new science, cultivated to the detriment of real truth up to our own times, that of “ Apologetics.” There are two modes of becoming an Apologist. The one is to ignore your opponent altogether; this is the passive method. Never mention his works; destroy every vestige of his writings, and silence him to death. This passive mode of controversy is exceedingly efficacious, and the least troublesome; it requires no great effort, and after all is capable of upholding errors, preju­ dices, and superstitions. The other method is active; you must try to refute ytjur opponents. You must state first what they say and be careful to quote only what you are able to refute; or quote so as to turn your opponent’s statements into the grossest absurd- �8 Christianity. ities. To illustrate this method with an example from our own times I need only refer to a mighty genius who has devoted him­ self to the minute study of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, who saw everywhere connecting links and analogous laws, and has built on these the striking theory of evolution. Do not read Darwin’s book, but simply say:—“ Bah ! He proves that we are all monkeys; that we are descended from monkeys, and that there is nothing higher than a monkey !” By this means you at once horrify the immense majority of monkeys, who dread nothing so much as self-knowledge, and you may hope to cause your antagonist’s theories to remain for ages a dead letter. By this calumniating method you may most efficaciously obstruct pro­ gress on whatever field of inquiry. The primitive Christian Apologists made it a point, by fair or any other means, to defend Christianity, and to silence their antagonists. They were, above all, firmly convinced of the superiority of their religion, which required no study, no particular training, no philo­ sophy, but simply faith—nothing but faith; faith was to move moun­ tains ; faith was to serve as the panacea for every evil to which our flesh and spirit was heir. As long as this faith was only demanded for the levelling enactments of Christ proclaiming the universal bro­ therhood of men, it worked miracles. When, at a later period, the Fathers called in the aid of Pagan philosophy and dialectics, when they endeavoured to prove, in order to gain as many votaries as possible, that Christianity contained all the dogmas of the most influential ruling religious systems, their task became gigantic, and we must honestly confess that many of the Apologists showed an undoubted superiority over their enervated adversaries. The Apologists inaugurated through their writings a struggle between faith or religion, and reason or science, which was the principal and vital cause of the uninterrupted progressive development of Christianity. The mystic dogmas and incredible assertions made with the smooth plausibility of a G-reek sophist, or the trenchant dialectics of a Boman casuist pleading before some court of just­ ice, provoked contradiction, self-thought, inquiry, and argumenta­ tion. This fact explains the fierce intellectual thunderstorm of controversy which swept over the world, silencing all contradiction in time. When Athenagobas (177 a.d.) proclaimed Plato and Christ to be in perfect harmony, he united Pagan philosophy with the Christian faith. He endeavoured to bring about a balance between �Christianity. 9 the intellectual and moral faculties of men. But he was emotional, and explained with assumptions and assertions what he did not know. That his writings were altered in passing through the hands of ignorant copyists or interested church dignitaries, may be fairly assumed; for we find side by side with passages written under the distinct influence of the Neo-Platonic school, others that are altogether opposed to their mode of thinking. Some other passages, again, are full of Hebraism in contradiction to his Hellenism. He earnestly protested against the re-marriage of widows, and propounded wild and fantastic speculations on the “ fallen angels,” dividing them into two Categories, such as were lost to all sense of justice, and such as had still something good left in them ; that is, bad and good evil-spirits. Tatian, who was born in Syria, devoted himself to the gloomy Study of Gnosticism. He looked upon matter as the fountain of all evil, recommended the mortification of the body, and introduced Indian, Persian, and, above all, Buddhistic ideas into Christianity. His disciples abjured all the comforts and enjoyments of life, and abstained from wine with such rigorous obstinacy, that at the Lord’s Supper they used nothing but water, holding that God’s will would transform water into blood, as it had formerly transformed it into wine. Tatian constantly referred to a Universal Soul or Spirit pervading the universe in contradistinction to the Creator of all things. He borrowed this idea from Plato, who took it from the Egyptians, who had inherited it from the Indian Pan­ theists. There can be no doubt that the ancient classics with their dry formalism no longer sufficed to satisfy man’s restless emotional nature, craving for a deeper knowledge of the supernatural. The theological spirit of mysticism borrowed from the East was drawn into the mighty vortex of man’s speculative activity, and opened new fields to the moral and intellectual forces working in Humanity. The union between God and man, formally accomplished by the classical world, was now to be spiritually completed. The divine Power which had assumed form in the unsurpassed artistic, poetitical, and philosophical works of antiquity, was with Clemens of Alexandria to become flesh, vivified by the Spirit of the East, and newly moulded as one mystic, incomprehensible, and super­ natural whole, by Christianity. The mythological conceptions of the Greeks, the theosophies of the Hebrews, and the mysteries of the Egyptians, were to be blended with the simple, yet sublime, �10 Christianity. teachings of Christ. As the prophets, Moses, Aaron, and Elijah, had devoted themselves to the Lord; as kings had sacrificed their heirs on the walls of their besieged towns to force the enemy to abandon their assaults ; as Jephthah had been ready to sacrifice his daughter—so Christ had been a sacrifice to the Most High for humanity. The Apologists, however, ignored the fact that the same had been said of Kama and Krishna by the Indians, of Osiris by the Egyptians, of the Kentaur, Cheiron, of Apollo, as Adonai or Adonis by the Hellens, and of Curtius by the Bomans. The descendants of those who had believed in these self-sacrifices were easily persuaded that the founder of their religion bad offered himself as the most precious sacrifice to appease the wrath of an angry father. Clemens introduced Hebraism most prominently into Christ­ ianity. He held that there was no truth except in the Books of Moses and the Prophets, and that the writings known as the Old Testament were the only reliable, the only true books, and older than any of the writings of any other nation, and that whatever had been asserted by whomsoever had been taken, copied, or transcribed from these writings. This monstrous historical falsifi­ cation obstructed the progress of humanity for more than 1,400 years. His misstatements were turned into articles of faith, re­ peated year by year, hour by hour, in the principal Christian schools, and thus were transformed into brain-crystallizations and petrifactions in the believing, but not reasoning and inquiring minds of the people. A systematic falsification of history was thus established, fostered, and kept up by a well organised hierarchy, supported at a later period by the wealth and power of states, which left the whole machinery of national, collegiate, and uni­ versity education in clerical hands, and imposed upon the masses by means of penal laws, fire and sword, the gallows and the stake, certain historical statements, chronological assertions, astronomi­ cal errors, and geological impossibilities, as so many indisputable facts. If we have reason to complain of the primitive apologists of Christianity, who showed at least a certain candour and probity, we have still stronger grounds to be dissatisfied with those who used sophistry and pious frauds. The Fathers, generally, appear to have been destitute of penetration, learning, system, application, and talent. They used arguments to dazzle the fancy, and not to enlighten or convince the mind. They assumed the antiquity of a �Clbristianit^-. Il doctrine to be evidence of its truth. But all these facts must not blind us to acknowledge the great ability, and even genius of some of them, who, notwithstanding certain brain-petrifactions really endeavoured to promote truth, although truth had unfortunately been already settled for them as such, by the terrible power of credulity and undisputed authority. These petrifactions became in time whole ranges of granite blocks of superstition. Many a tiny barque of inquiry on the vast ocean of free-thought, sailing with a fair wind of common sense, guided by the compass of reason, has been dashed to pieces and sunk by these terrible, apparently immoveable rocks! But after all the stable rock with its resistence excited the activity of the dashing sea-farers. To the honour of the human intellect it must be confessed that the credulous, who wished to persuade themselves and others that they were right in their belief of the incredible, contributed much to the possibility of the dissolution of their own superstitions. Foremost in the rank of the free-thinking fathers stood Origen. The historical development of Christianity must remain for ever an unintelligible riddle without a thorough acquaintance with the writings of Origen. This father endeavoured to look on the Scriptures from a rational point of view, and shook “ Bibliolatry ” to its very foundation. He cast aside the literal interpretation, finding the mere letter often unintelligible and contradictory, sought for hidden meanings, and asserted that the Scriptures ought to be read by the light of reason. He had a higher con­ ception of the Deity, believed in the pre-existence of pure angelic souls and their fall into mortal bodies, and in a “final restoration of all intelligent beings to order and happiness.” This was equivalent to denying eternal hell-fire, and was too much for the loving hearts of his contemporary Christians, so that he was, therefore, condemned as a heretic. It is most satisfactory to find that in our own times several Divines, and among them Canon Farrar, have dared, in the spirit of Origen, to shake the deluding and maddening hell-fire petrifaction in the brains of some believers, and to free the Deity from the reproach of being an irreconcilable and wrathful Avenger without mercy or pity. Origen was followed by Eusebius, the Father of Christian Historiography. He worked out a chronology which, in spite of geology, Egyptian monuments, Assyrian inscriptions, Indian philology, and Chinese records, serves some of our bigoted �12 Christianity. historians as a basis for their historical distortions. Eusebius collected most of the raw historical material of ancient times, and of his own age. He wrote with one aim, to prove the superiority of Christian morals, and in doing so would not admit that there could have been anything good in other far more ancient religious systems. He had to sift facts and to record only such as served his one-sided and special assumption, and this mode of writing history is still the most cherished method of historical sectarians of whatever denomination or tribal division. To strike the principal death-blow at pure Christianity was reserved to Athanasius, who borrowed Ins mystic, “ Three in one,” from the Egyptians. To this incomprehensible “ idol,” once petrified, thousands and thousands of human beings were sacrificed. The Council of Nice, which, in 325 A.D., determined the Duality of God as “ Father and Son,” (the Trinitarian dogma having passed only in 381 A.D.), selected also the four gospels as the only canonical books from a quantity of other gospels then existing. The proceedings on that memorable occasion were the following according to Pappus in his Synodicon to the council. “ The fathers, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, placed pro­ miscuously under a communion table, in front of which the Council was assembled, all the Gospels which were known at that time. They then prayed devoutly to God beseeching him ‘ that the inspired writings might get upon the table, whilst the spurious ones remained underneath.’ After the prayer a miracle took place. The gospels which Gelasius ought to burn remained under the table, and the four inspired ones got upon it, and were declared to be canonical.” A still greater miracle happened. “ It was agreed that in order to make the Council valid, all the fathers should sign the records. Two bishops, however, Musonius and Chrisantes, died during the Council without having signed them. The difficulty was great, for the Council was invalid without their signatures, but the fathers caused guards to be placed round the tombs of the bishops, and placed in them the Acts of the Council, which, as is well known, were divided into sections. The fathers passed the night in prayer, and the next day they found that the deceased bishops had fortunately signed the records of the Council.” (See “ On Man­ kind their Origin and Destiny.” By an M.A. of Baliol College, Oxford. London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1872., pp. 166 and 167.) �Christianity. 13 Basil and Gregory of Nazianzen were the founders of the Eastern, whilst Tertullian and Augustine must he considered as the bulwarks of the Western Church. They all became so many crystallized authorities in Theology. They established obstinacy and blind faith as the most Christian virtues, and supported their theory with the most involved intricacies of dialectics. The pheno­ menon that astonishes us is, that the learned world, until very recently, should have applied their two-edged dialectical weapons for one purpose—to prove what they assumed to be necessary for the salvation of Humanity. All doubt in that which they asserted to be an incontestable fact, they punished with stoning, crucifixion, hanging, or burning. The intellectual, reasoning, thinking, and inquiring faculty—in a word, the dynamic force, with which Humanity is endowed, was to be exclusively directed to supernatural matters and authoritative enactments settled beforehand. At this period, the greatest calumny against God, the Creator, and Man, His creature was brought into a systematic form. All was tempta­ tion, sinfulness, and horrible wickedness. Nature was to be ex­ pelled from nature. Man was to see in every other man an offspring of hell, sent into this world to do wrong. Hatred and contempt, trembling and fear, were thus made the chemical elements of which man’s moral and social condition was to be composed, and a strange mixture they produced I We need not be astonished that the false Christians, once come to power, should have fostered an unrelenting hatred against anything stepping into their obstructive path. Cyril had nothing but death for the beautiful Hypatia, who dared to think, to reason, and to inquire, when thinking was already considered a deadly sin, reasoning a crime, and inquiry a blasphemy! Tertullian went so far as to state in his “De Idolatria” that all astronomers, sculptors, mythologists, and merchants were idolaters and servants of the “Evil One.” Man was so afflicted by the general reaction which took place in consequence of the over-strained action of . the ancient classic times, that he lost all self-reliance, self-thought, self-respect, and entered upon a life which in reality was no life, or at all events no intellectual life. That the dynamic force in Humanity cannot be stifled may be best studied in the writings of Tertullian who exhibits in his works a mingling of virtues and defects, of learning and ignorance, of piety and worldliness, which makes him appear on one page as the most profound scholar, whilst on another, he evinces the most hopeless superstition and credulity. Through this his double nature �14 Christianity. he exercised great influence on the Scholastics of the Mediaeval period. Par greater in character and genius than the works of Tertullian are the six books “ On the Creation,” by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. In his obstinacy, and in his firm convictions, he was the very model of an ecclesiastical prince. He was no Sophist or orator in the pulpit, but a kind-hearted administrator, stern and active, who said what he meant, and was firmly convinced that whatever he said or wrote, was intended for the good of Humanity. In his works we may study the transition of primitive Christianity into a complicated system of hierarchical feudalism. Passive submission, faith and self-abnegation were established in contradiction to the ancient philosophers who enjoined active energy, self-conscious conviction, and honest virtue. Ambrose insisted, above all, on “ Faith.” He, however, attempted to distinguish between the strictly doctrinal, and the less reliable historical parts of the Old and New Testaments. Origen and Ambrose were the principal founders of a broader treatment of the Bible, which led on the uninterrupted path of progressive continuity to our most modern theological criticism. Ambrose looked upon the emotional in Humanity as the only force to be developed and cultivated, to be restrained and regulated. Poetry, painting, sculpture, and music, were to strengthen this force, and we owe to him the introduction of a higher culture of the Arts in the Western Christian Churches. More important than any of the other Fathers was Augustine (Aurelius Augustinus), who in the 4th and 5th centuries a.d., gave Christianity an entirely new dialectical and theological shape, widely differing from that simplicity and universal humanism which we find in Christ’s teachings. He was born 354 a.d., at Tageste, in Numidia. His father, Patricius, was a Pagan, and his mother, Monica, a Christian—Paganism and Christianity being thus blended into one in him through his parents. In his youth at Carthage he led a wild, reckless, and immoral life; but he was suddenly reformed through the study of “Hortensius” by Cicero, a book unfortunately lost, and a diligent reading of the works of Aristotle. He joined the sect of the Manichseans, went to Rome to teach rhetorics—(philosophy and elocution)—and thence pro­ ceeded to Milan, where he taught with great success. He there made the acquaintance of Ambrose, who instructed him in the tenets of the then already to a great degree crystallized orthodox Christianity. Augustine renounced Manichaeism, and at once �Christianity. 15 denounced it, with the fervour usual in converts, as the most per­ nicious heresy. He now devoted himself to the exclusive study of Plato, with the aid of whose ideal philosophical assumptions he succeeded in constructing an abstruse metaphysical system of Christian theology. The influence of his works on the culture and further dog­ matic development of Christianity was unbounded. His ideas inspired the dissertations and controversies between Abelard and Bernhard. His subtle and dialectical theories may be traced in the dissensions between Calvinists and Lutherans, Churchmen and Ritualists, Baptists and Methodists. The struggle between the Jansenists and Jesuits was principally called forth by his ideas on abstruse subjects. The influence of Augustine may be traced in the following utterly meaningless utterances of one of our noble Lords, who said a week or two ago, “that no law was needed to sanction or proclaim that the Sabbath was of divine origin. The profound wisdom inducing it, and the absolute necessity of such a day, must be apparent to all, whilst no human mind could have evolved such a scheme of Sunday observance; ” and immediately after he complains that the observance which needed no law was being jeopardised by the lawgivers of England, who intended to abolish the law with reference to the keeping of the Sabbath ; and thus an institution, which no human mind could have evolved, would vanish for ever. The ignorance of the noble Lord is stupendous; he apparently does not know that he is really de­ fending an institution which took its origin in the worship of the heathenish God, “ Sab,” which the nomadic Jews carried about in an ark, and which they deposited every seventh day in a “ bath ” (tent) called Sabbath, the “ tent of Sab,” and not “ tabernacle; ” and he seems to be equally unaware of the fact that the Phoenicians, Assyrians, and Chaldseans possessed similar movable “ sun-oracles.” Such senseless utterances have occupied, and still occupy, more than seven-eights of Christianity. The first great dialectical wars which Augustine waged were directed against the Manichaeans, Donatists, and, above all, the Pelagians, the followers of Pelagius, a British Monk, who dared to teach that death had not been introduced into the world by Adam, but that, on the contrary, man was necessarily, and by nature mortal, so that even had Adam not sinned, he would nevertheless have died; and that further, the consequences of Adam’s sin were confined to himself, and did not affect his posterity. Erom these premises, Pelagius drew certain �16 Christianity. important conclusions—which necessarily went against the inherited sin theory, the necessity of an atonement, and the numberless calum­ nies against our miserable, wretched, wicked, sinful, abominable, and horrible nature. Pelagius shook the very foundation of the theological structure, which in its details and dogmas began to be far more Pagan than Christian. Augustine was in arms against these blasphemies; and historians can trace in this quarrel between the wild and passionate Monk, and the cool and rational British Priest, a more developed germ of the Reformation, the seed of which had been sown long before by the not very edifying quarrels between St. Paul and St. Peter, as representatives of Hellenism and Hebraism. A Synod held at Diopolis acquitted Pelagius of heresy. Pope Innocent I. condemned him. The next Pope, Zosimus, declared the opinions of Pelagius perfectly orthodox, but in spite of this, Augustine craftily obtained a decree from the Emperor, declaring Pelagius a heretic, condemning him and his adherents to exile and confiscating all their worldly goods. To obtain an insight into the arguing practised and taught by Augustine, it will be well to consider a few passages from the 11th, 12th, and 13th books of his “ Confessions.” He of course begins by praying “that God will give him to understand the Scriptures, and will open their meaning to him,” and declares at once “that in them there is nothing superfluous, but that the words have a manifold meaning.” The apparent humility of this prayer really conceals the most inordinate pride. First he prayed, then comes the terrible assumption that God must have heard his prayer—and then all his utterances and writings become embodiments of God’s spirit, and the most unscientific, confused and incoherent loquacity is taken as spoken or written under God’s holy inspiration. Having invoked the help of God, Augustine begins to argue and apparently to contradict Scripture; but as he contradicts with the purpose of refuting his own contradictions, the doubts which he raises are so childish, that it does not require much ingenuity to dispose of them. This is the method generally followed bv theo­ logically trained minds, a method calculated to deceive ignorant men and emotional women. With pomp and vanity Augustine says :— “ The face of creation testifies that there has been a Creator; but at once arises the question, How and when did He make �Christianity. 17 heaven and earth ? They could not have been’made in heaven and earth; the world could not have been made in the world, nor could they have been made when there was nothing to make them of.” The solution Augustine finds is extremely simple :— “ Thou spakest, and they were made! ” he exclaims, but does not tell us where the Deity spoke; in or beyond the world. The speaking of the Deity involves him in new perplexities, for he says:— “ The syllables thus uttered by God came forth in succession, and there must have been some created thing to express the words. This created thing must therefore have existed before heaven and earth, and yet there could have been no corporeal thing before heaven and earth. It must have been a creature because the words passed away and came to an end; but we know that the word of the Lord endureth for ever! Moreover, it is plain that the words thus spoken could not have been spoken successively, but simulta­ neously, else there would have been time and change; succession in its nature implying time, whereas there was then nothing but eternity and immortality. God knows and says eternally what takes place in time.” There is time and yet there is no time, there is eternity but that is not time. There is an eternally speaking Deity, but the words this Deity speaks could not have been spoken successively, but must.have been spoken simultaneously and eternally. A superficial analysis of these and similar phrases amply suffices to show their utter hollowness and senselessness. The next difficulty Augustine finds in the mystic words : “ In the beginning.” What was there before the Beginning began? He suddenly saves himself from the terrible aspect of a beginning Beginning, and exclaims:— “ How wonderful are Thy works, 0 Lord! in wisdom hast Thou made them all. This wisdom is the beginning, and in that Begin­ ning the Lord created heaven and earth. But,” he adds, “ some one may ask: ‘ What was God doing before He made the heaven and earth ?’ for, if at any particular moment He began to employ Himself, that means time, not eternity. In eternity nothing transpires ; the whole is present.” He at once answers the indirect question with one of those direct assertions, insinuating that, though he did not intend to say �18 Christianity. anything, yet that he was well acquainted with the doings of the Deity:— “ I will not answer this question by saying that He was pre­ paring Hell for pryers into his mysteries. I say that before God made heaven and earth He did not make anything; for no crea­ ture could be made before any creature was made. Time itself is a creature, and hence it could not possibly exist before creation. What then is time ? The past is not, the future is not, the pre­ sent—who can tell what it is, unless it be that which has no dura­ tion between two nonentities ? There is no such thing as 4 a long time,’ or ‘ a short time,’ for there are no such things as the past and the future. They have no existence, except in the soul.” Such incoherent, rhapsodical assertions as these have been looked upon as learned disquisitions on sacred and scientific subjects for more than fourteen hundred years. We might quote the whole of Augustine’s works, line by line, to prove that they are nothing but inflated and arrogant conversations between the writer and his assumed God. These utterances may be looked upon as those of an individual suffering from religious hallucination, which have become to a high degree methodical; and we may well exclaim with Polonius : 44 Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.” And such mystic madness stimulated men’s thinking faculties into action, and in time produced a Bacon, a Newton, a Leibnitz, a Des Cartes, and a Kant. Another passage from the twelfth book is still more charac­ teristic in its originality, but less methodical:— 44 This, then, is what I conceive, O, my God,” when I hear the Scripture saying, 4 In the beginning God made heaven and earth; and the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep,’ and not mentioning what day thou createdst them; this is what I conceive, that because of the heaven of heavens—that intellectual heaven whose intelligence knows all at once, not in part, not darkly, not through a glass, but as a whole, in manifesta­ tion, face to face; not this thing now, and that thing anon; but (as I said) know all at once, without any succession of times ; and because of the earth, invisible and without form, without any succession of times, which succession presents this thing now, that thing anon, because where there is no form there is no distinction of things; it is, then, on account of these two, a primitive formed, and a primitive formless; the one heaven, but the heaven of �Christianity. 19 heavens; the other, earth, but the earth moveable and without form; because of these two, do I conceive did the Scripture say, without mention of days, ‘ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ For, forthwith it subjoined what earth it spake of, and also in that firmament is recorded to be created the second day, and called heaven, it conveys to us of which heaven He before spake without mention of days. Wondrous depth of Thy words I Whose surface, behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth, O, my God—a wondrous depth I It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love. The enemies, therefore, I hate vehemently; O that Thou wouldst slay them with Thy two-edged sword, that they might no longer be enemies to it; for so do I love to have them slain unto themselves, that they may live unto Thee!” Greek philosophy was turned by this passionate African fanatic into rambling sophistry, and the teachings of Christ, full of love and forgiveness, into a system of bloodthirsty persecution. Science was scorned, and continually abused, but barefaced stupidity, heartless pride, and insolent arrogance were used to destroy and degrade pure Christianity, to transform it into a code of implacable hatred, and to foster persecution and wholesale murder. In the thirteenth Book of his “ Confessions,” Augustine touches the grand Mystery of Mysteries, the “ Trinity,” and proves it to be contained in the teachings of the immortal Jewish lawgiver, Moses. In great excitement, he says :— “ Lo, now the Trinity appears unto me in a glass darkly, which is Thou, my God, because Thou, O Father, in Him who is the beginning of our wisdom, which is Thy wisdom, born of Thyself, equal unto Thee, and co-eternal, that is, in Thy Son, createdst heaven and earth. Much now have we said of the heaven of the heavens, and of the earth, invisible and without form, and of the darksome deep, in reference to the wandering instability of its spiritual deformity, unless it had been converted unto Him, from whom it. had its then degree of life, and by His enlightening became a beauteous life, and the heaven of that heaven, which was after­ wards set between water and water. And under the name of God I now beheld the Father, who made these things ; and under the name of the beginning, the Son in whom He made these things ; and believing as I did, my God as the Trinity; I searched further in His holy words, and lo! Thy Spirit moved upon the waters. �20 Christianity. Behold the Trinity, my God! Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, Creator of all Creation ! ” As a contrast to this let us turn to a passage from the Indian Bamayana, a poem written by Valmikis, in 24,000 double verses (about 1200 b.c., according to the great bibliographer, Dr. Graesse). In the Ram ay ana, no conceited monk discusses the Deity; in­ directly threatening all who may dare to pry into His mysteries with hell-fire, whilst he thinks himself authorised to commit pre­ cisely the same indiscretion; but the gods are assembled in heaven, and one of them addresses the incomprehensible first Cause in the following lofty and sublime strain :— “ O Thou, whom threefold might and splendour veil, ' Maker, Preserver, and Transformer, hail! Thy gaze surveys this world from clime to clime, Thyself immeasurable in space and time: To no corrupt desires, no passions prone: Unconquered conqueror, infinite, unknown ; « Though in one form Thou veil’st Thy might divine, Still, at Thy pleasure, every form is Thine. Pure crystals thus prismatic hues assume As varying light and varying tints illume; Men think Thee absent; Thou art ever near, Pitying those sorrows, which Thou ne’er canst fear. Unsordid penance Thou alone canst pay; Unchanged, unchanging—old without decay: Thou knowest all things—who Thy praise can state ? Createdst all things—Thyself uncreate! ” What a difference in language, purity and grandeur of concep­ tion I The three in one is the Universe pervaded by a Divine Force, manifesting itself in the tri-une phenomena of Creation, Preservation, and Transformation in space and time throughout eternity. In imitation of Plato’s “ State ” and Pliny’s “ History of Na­ ture,” Augustine wrote a work entitled “De civitate Dei, Libri XXII.” (The City of God, in twentv-two books). He here divides humanity into two groups : 1. Such as have mere carnal ideas, and are damned. And— 2. Such as live in the spirit, and must be saved. Augustine thus assumed two States, of which one would perish in the general conflagration on the day o£ judgment. Of this perishable State the Devil was supreme ruler; it was based on Egotism and a contempt of God. The other he asserted to be a heavenly State, in which God is King: the State itself being based �Christianity. 21 on Love to God, and contempt of ourselves. The phenomenal or visible world was with Augustine a realm of sin, wickedness, misery, crime and wretchedness, in opposition to an ideal world of faith and blissfulness, of purity and eternal salvation. Reality was with him corrupt, and he left reality to the lay power, which by degrees began to feel its strength: and the struggle between Pope and Emperor, the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the Devil commenced. This struggle was foreshadowed in Augustine’s writings ; it lasted for more than a thousand years, and ended in our century with the abolition of the temporal power, of the Pope. Augustine, in his “ City of God,” condemns all worldly endeavour or activity as sinful; he assumes a spiritual government over all earthly matters, and settles all moral, dogmatic and scientific sub­ jects from a theological point of view. Augustine worked out the hypotheses of “ Predestination,” “ Special Grace,” and “ Eree Willconfusing assumptions with an utterly false moral foundation. . If “ Predestination ” were made the ruling force of humanity, what would become of our self-conscious moral responsibility ? If we were to admit a higher, more powerful, independent force not within, but without or above us, which directly or even indirectly regulated the destinies of individuals, nations, and humanity—individuals, nations, and humanity would be released from all moral responsibility, and could not become masters of their fate; their actions having been predisposed, pre-arranged, and providentially predestined, by “ Special Grace,” or any other arbitrary grant over which the individual had no control, could not come under the influence of order and law. The hypotheses of “ Predestination ” and “ Special Grace ” transformed man into a mere puppet, with a mighty divine wire­ puller behind him ; and history enacted by such puppets could be nothing but an incoherent pantomime, in which the scientific men were the clowns, and the theologians the managers, directing both, their self-constituted wire-pulling Deity and the besotted puppets, and continually preparing “.the last transformation scene,” illumined with the lurid glare of hell-fire. Augustine and his theological disciples looked upon the phe-. nomena of nature, and of man’s higher moral and intellectual activity, as mere chance effects of the working of some supernatural power. . . �22 Christianity. Contrary to Confucius, mediaeval Christianity on the principles laid down by Augustine did not follow out the axiom—“ The wise man seeks the cause of his defects in himself ; but the fool, avoid­ ing himself, seeks it in all others beside himself.” The bigoted and uneducated under theological training look for redress in proud humbleness and blind faith, from any force or power without, and not within themselves, and by this means fall an easy prey to their ecclesiastical or political task-masters. It is either “ despotism,” pure and simple, assuming the incompetence of the masses to govern themselves, that plays at “ Providence,” “ Predestination,” “ Special Grace by the Will of Godor it is “ Clericalism ” in a thousand different forms, which, in accordance with Augustine, builds up, arranges, furnishes, decorates, and adorns “ a higher state ” of spiritual blissfulness in unapproachable regions, where archangels, angels, saints, confessors, martyrs, deacons, sextons, ringers, and beadles, rule supreme in opposition to this world, in which the masses are misled by devils, demons, infidels, unbelievers, agnostics, pantheists, and, worst of all, scientific inquirers, who dare to pry into the “ wonderful ” and “ awful ” mysteries of God. Rousseau, like Augustine, wrote “Confessions”—the one from a political, and the other from a purely theological point of view. Both were fanatics, and both strove to improve the fate of humanity. Augustine, like Rousseau, gives us a precise history of his own inner life, which he finishes by adopting the Christian religion; the other, who began as a pious Christian child, abjured Christi­ anity, became an atheist, and tells us the causes which induced him to change his opinions on matters divine and human. Augustine looks upon history as something utterly indifferent, and far beneath the dignity of his consideration. He is convinced that in all historical matters God and Predestination are doing what is right, and that no amount of study and knowledge can change what has been ordained by God to happen, whether in politics or in every man’s private life. This ruling conviction still excludes the study of General History on a scientific basis from nearly all our educational establishments, and may serve to explain the unanimity with which the University of Oxford hailed the introduction of the study of Scandinavian languages and antiqui­ ties, and the delight which one of our most liberal papers expressed on this occasion, finding it perfectly clear that there could be no taint of heresy, or of radicalism, in Scandinavian studies. The �Christianity. 23 study of General History by reason of its drawing of analogies and comparisons, rectifying of dates, and analysing of different religious systems, is thought to be tainted with the horrible poison of heresy, and the bigoted fear, lest we might learn from history that man at all times, and in all places, had very analogous notions with reference to the means by which his higher moral progress was to be effected. Bousseau on the other hand, like Vico, Guicciardini, Bolingbroke, Herder and Lessing before him, clearly saw the necessity of the study of history, and assigned to it the greatest importance. But whilst Bousseau often misunderstood history, we are compelled to admit that Augustine thoroughly grasped the wants of super­ stitious and ignorant humanity. Scepticism and mere negation are even more bleak and despairing than the most childish “ emotionalism,” leading through fear of punishment, and hope for reward to a certain kind of practical morals. Bousseau saw only chance, misery, and wretchedness in the progressive development of civilisation, and wanted to lead us back to the bosom of mother nature. Augustine traced all the miseries besetting humanity, not to a misunderstanding of the laws of nature, but to a Father who mercifully punished his children for a sin committed by Adam in Paradise—which was called “ the original sin,” and he advised humanity to rely on this Father with childlike submission, to eat, to drink, to sleep, but above all to pray, to sing, to believe, and not to inquire, as we had only one destiny on earth, to atone for the terrible inheritance left us by Adam, “ the original sin.” Augustine heard in the first cry of a new-born child a heart­ rending lament over the sinfulness of this world, which had been created by a benevolent first Cause. The degrading theory of an original sin cannot possibly exercise any elevating influence on our moral development. In connection with this it may be instructive to consider the impression this pre­ posterous and impious assumption made on the mind of a cul­ tivated Chinese Mandarin, who had been brought up in the moral principles of Confucius. He met a missionary and hearing of the superiority of the Christian religion, was ready patiently to listen, and to allow himself to be instructed. The creation of the world by a God was admitted; then came the special creation of man, and the “ inherited Sin ”—and the assertion that “ by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” The Mandarin �24 Christianity. rose in wrath, clutched a bamboo, and asked the following ques­ tions : Who created the world “? “ God,” was the answer. And who created man ? “ God,” was the next answer. And who made man sin, and created him mortal ? The missionary hesitated, and the Mandarin thereupon gave him a sound thrashing, and ex­ claimed, “ I will teach you to have a higher notion of the Deity, and to have a loftier conception of his most perfect and wonderful creature—man, with all his exalted virtues of family love, know­ ledge, industry, arts and sciences. Go, and annoy me no longer with your blasphemous assumptions for which you have not a word in the teachings of Christ.” The fundamental theory upon which a degrading system of morals had been constructed was, in Augustine’s time,- already opposed by great divines and was altogether discarded by Rousseau who, in his sceptic atheism, was more pious in assuming that nature could not have done any wrong. Whilst Augustine insisted upon faith, prayer and contemplation, as the only means of con­ quering our sunken, sinful nature, and thus poisoned the pure moral atmosphere of man,—Rousseau demanded practical sciences, technical skill—anything that would strengthen the inventive and reasoning faculty. Both agree that the young ought to be made acquainted with truth; but, unhappily, this word has many relative significations, and cannot be grasped by finite beings in its absolute sense. They both wished intellect to be cultivated; the one that it might see the glories of the heavens, and the other, to improve man’s earthly happiness. Both were equally blind to the fact that only in a perfectly harmonious culture of imagination and reason, of heart and head, of morals and intellect, could an approximate solution of our destiny be found. Augustine should be read side by side with Rousseau; but we must be careful not to take the opinions of either for dogmatic truths or mathematical rules of life. Many of their guesses at the causes of the evils rampant among us are correct; but they are mere suggestions thrown out, according to the spirit of the time in which both lived. Augustine is the alpha of a theologicophilosophical system that swayed humanity to its detriment for more than fourteen hundred years, and Rousseau is the politico­ social omega produced by the same wild and fantastic theological system. Both—in preaching faith and common sense, hope and practical reason, charity, freedom, and equality—produced blood­ �Christianity. 25 shed, hatred, despair, despotism, and political and religious perse­ cution. The forces working in Humanity were disturbed by both, be­ cause they started with preconceived ideas; the one with “ a con­ crete original sin,” the other with “ an abstract purity of nature both powerfully impressed those whom they addressed, and both failed to readjust the balance between morals and intellect in a truly Christian sense. There was, however, something wonderfully beneficial in the blending of heathen notions and principles with Christianity; the thread of continuity was kept up, isolation avoided, and humanity appears to the assiduous student of true history as one great whole, swayed by immutable laws. By placing religion and science in a conflicting and antagonistic relation the Fathers aroused a spirit of inquiry, and controversial­ ists and theological casuists who sought to lead us away from the first simple teachings of Christ were in reality instrumental in bringing us back to them. In Church and State an apparently retrograde movement to the benefit of humanity at large is fortunately perceptible. The State gives up more and more an assumed fantastic prestige of national honour, diplomatic niceties and double dealings—the stronger a State is, the more it can afford to be equitable and just. In reli­ gion we endeavour to turn back to the primitive sources of Chris­ tianity which, like all streams, was far purer, more lucid and refreshing at its source than in its continually broadening course, when it became mixed with the quicksands of sophistry, the shoals of dogmatic rubbish, and coloured red by the torrents of blood shed by the fanatics of all sects. The Fathers benefited humanity, for they tried— (a.) To be scientific, though they opposed science. (6.) They used the Greek philosophical and historical writers, though they declared them profane and heretical. (c.) They wrote in Latin, and thus kept up the knowledge of the language of Cicero, Caesar, Tacitus, Pliny, and Seneca. (d.) They cursed and abused nature, prohibited its study as a prying into the awful mysteries of God, and by degrees, on the principle “ nitimur in vetitum ” (we crave for the forbidden), promoted a systematic study of nature. (e.) They used the Hebrew Scriptures, and blended the Oriental and Hellenic mode of thinking into one. �26 Christianity. (/.) They fostered mysticism, and called forth the study of man and nature, of astronomy, chemistry, physiology and psycho­ logy; abounding in far greater and more intelligible mysteries than any of the Fathers ever dreamt of. (</.) They preached love, humility, and forbearance, and yet openly practised hatred, pride, and persecution, by which means they kept man’s moral and intellectual powers in a continuous motion of action and reaction. (A.) They introduced a controversial spirit into theology, which stimulated and disciplined man’s mental activity, and led Humanity through the dark cloisters of monasteries into the broad daylight of inventions and discoveries, that put an end to all the distorted theological conceptions of the Deity. Thus Man began to be studied in his slow and gradual historical development, not on false and imaginary principles, but on the foundation of his own human nature. The calumnious assertion that man, from the moment he entered into this world, had been destined for evil is dying out; and the assumption that the whole of his earthly pilgrimage is to be simply a dim attempt to answer the inane question: “ Is life worth living ? ” is contemptuously looked upon as the utterance of attitudinizing Pessimists, who think that we have only one task to fulfil—to sigh and to crouch in everlasting terror of a curse which Humanity is said to have been blessed with by the merciful Creator of all things visible and invisible. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Christianity : second part. The influence of the "Fathers" on the further development of Christianity, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday, 27th March, 1881 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George) Description An account of the resource In this lecture Dr. G. G. Zerffi explores the most notable and influential "Fathers" and their effect on the development of Christianity. Place of publication: London Collation: 26, [2] p. ; 18 cm Notes: Publisher's series list on unnumbered pages at the end. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sunday Lecture Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1881 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3432, G5200 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Christianity : second part. The influence of the "Fathers" on the further development of Christianity, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday, 27th March, 1881), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Christianity Christianity https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/e2e2fc9aceec11cf6012610c838dc8d9.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=tM1MCrt1yUyc3oKS22mxNXyY3RkYzPML7tJWKDNekgvZpSELxLCS7cibiG1DHfY5aa0WeM2YiP8zk82DSjaBUQg7GHW%7EYNc%7EVscCUBN8Z3%7E9bdnJPWWxQGdIzDdmsIYvFIeLlFuqu-%7ElfxcqNmVLSEnt-BYsOLKR81WW8uF0LnNMHTYsXYYPqmyCu6BeoMbeNCvHJ-RVPkVdScUrJnphe%7EtOwjYj2Ky3hVDoHcO0AhFLH5%7E12ZBI5mQnggaUW9PQDlZRp7IqRVvMAhbyOJPqmAkqVBbpp4Gg9RJRPFMVzp6v06in9TYrTKr4OFfCFxSGQg3kcm%7E480OH0KRZ5ZfwXw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c3d4e54631d37eb5043116b3c0389ad1 PDF Text Text THE SCIENCE OF LIFE WORTH LIVING. DELIVERED BEFORE THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 22nd, FEBRUARY, 1880, By A. ELLEY FINCH. London: PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. 1880. PRICE THEEPENCE. �The Society’s Leetures by the same Author, now printed, are—on Erasmus; his Life, Works, and Influence upon the Spirit of the Reformation.” (Price 3d., or post free 3jd.) “ Civilization : a Sketch of its Rise and Progress, its Modem Safe-guards, and Future Prospects.” (Price 3d., or post free 3^d.) “ The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the Development of the Human Mink.” (Price 3d., or post free 3jd.) “The Principles of Political Economy; their Scientific Basis, and Practical application to Social Well-being.” (Price 3d., or post free 3 jd.) “ The English Free-thinkers of the Eighteenth Cen­ tury.” (Price 3d., or post free 3^d.) “ The Inductive Philosophy : including a Parallel between Lord Bacon and A. Comte as Philosophers.” With Notes and Authorities, (pp. 100, cloth 8vo., price 5s., or post free 5s. 3d.) “ The Pursuit of Truth : as Exemplified in the Principles of Evidence—Theological, Scientific and Judicial.” With Notes and Authorities, (pp. 106, cloth 8vo., price 5s., or post free 5s. 3d.) Can be obtained (on remittance by letter of postage stamps or order) of the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W., or at the Hall on the days of Lecture: or of Mr. John Bumpus, 158, Oxford Street, W. �SYLLABUS. The two theories of the Universe and of Human Life, derived respectively from Superstition and Science. 1. The theory derived from Superstition stated, with indica­ tions of its source. Biassed belief in this (theological) theory arising from early training in creeds, catechisms, and sermons, and from the in­ fluence of proselyting societies. Illustrations from the Reports of the Sunday School Union Society; the British and Foreign Bible Society; the Religious Tract Society. Our actual condition (or practice) of life shown to be based upon the theological theory. Illustrations of its overcrowding, poverty, intemperance, disease, crime, premature death, &c., from the Census Population Returns. The Registrar General’s Returns. Fry’s Royal Guide to the London Charities. Statistics of Prisons and Lunatic Asylums. The present attitude of Science in relation to these features of human existence. 2. The theory of the Universe and of Human Life (physio­ logical) derived from Science stated, with indications of its source. Illustrations from Newton’s Principia. Darwin’s Descent of Man. Remarkable absence of Societies for spreading knowledge of and inducing belief in the theory derived from Science. Summary of the Natural Law by virtue of which organised bodies are multiplied in excess of their means of subsistence. Illustrations of the inexorable operation of this law from Haeckel’s History of the Creation. Darwin’s Origin of Species. Walford’s Famines of the World. The first canon of scientific culture of life involves limitation of numbers, and the controlling of physical conditions of repro­ duction through the application of human intelligence. How the continuity or similarity of structure and function between human, animal, and vegetal organisms, enables Science (through comparative research) to acquire knowledge of the nature of the constitution of man, and to originate rules for its right treatment and progressive improvement. Illustrations from Huxley’s Man’s place in Nature—Galton’s Hereditary Genius. Responsibility (taught by Science) in becoming a factor of posterity. To what extent, by applying (analogically) to the rearing of the Human Being the scientific methods that have produced the exquisite growth, maturity, and beauty of cultivated Flowers and Fruit, and the joyousness, hilarity, and perfection of form, temper, and disposition of the thorough-bred Animal, the evils of our present existence might be eliminated, its morality puri­ fied and elevated, its course converted into a career of virtuous enjoyment, and Life practically made worth Living. ��THE SCIENCE OF LIFE WORTH LIVING. ----- !----- Iw the arena of European thought there are at the pre­ sent time conspicuous two conflicting conceptions or theories concerning the nature of the Universe, and the origin and nature of Human Life. One of these theories is based upon supposed Super­ natural Knowledge, and, inasmuch as, from the point of view of Science, all alleged knowledge of what transcends Nature relates to the region of the emotional imagination, I will, for the sake of distinction, designate the concep­ tion I am now alluding to as—;the theofy derived from Superstition. The other conception is one which has slowly emerged from the long series of human discoveries that have gradually brought to light those facts and laws of Nature upon the truth and experience of which it will be found to be exclusively based. I will designate it therefore as —the theory derived from Science. You all know, more or less, what are the salient points of these respective theories, having probably learnt them by rote. I am going to restate them now, because the argument of the Lecture is founded upon an endeavour to realise them by our reason, and to reflect upon them by way of comparison; notwithstanding that it has be­ come the intellectual fashion with a certain school to en­ courage subtle and plausible attempts to reconcile these theories—or hopelessly to confuse the separate provinces of reason and faith. �6 The Science of Life Worth Living. Now the prior-mentioned theory may I think be shortly stated thus—First, with regard to the Universe; that it came into existence by the fiat of the Will of an Almighty Power, which, somewhere about six thousand years ago, created it out of nothing in six days. That the principle part of this Universe consists of the World our Earth, which is a fixed plain or vast floor, arched over by a con­ cave vault. The Sun and Moon, and the Stars which stud this vault or firmament, and which move round the fixed earth, are simply greater and lesser lights created subordinate to, and called into existence for the purpose of the earth, and to give light thereon. Secondly, with respect to the origin and nature of Man, the theory under consideration is more complex, as well as of more serious interest, and can only be com­ prehended (so far as human reason can comprehend any­ thing so mysterious,) by entering into somewhat more detail. It is related then that the Almighty Power created man by forming him out of the dust of the ground, and breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, whereby man became a living soul; and the other sex we are told was created by the causing of a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and the taking out of one of his ribs, and the closing up of the flesh instead thereof; and the rib which was so taken from the man was made into a woman; and this first-created pair were commanded to be fruitful and multiply. The theory then goes on to relate that the man and woman, thus created pure and sinless, were immediately tempted into sin by Satan in the form of a serpent. That this sin of our first parents brought a curse upon the Earth, and incurred the penalty of death for themselves �The Science of Life Worth Living. 7 and for all their posterity. That the human race thence­ forth became more wicked, so that the Almighty repented that he had made man, and destroyed by a deluge all the inhabitants of the Earth, with the exception of eight per­ sons who had feared him, chiefly Noah and his sons; who also were commanded to be fruitful and multiply. This sweeping purification however was as futile as the origi­ nal design, and men became more wicked than ever, and the final remedy devised by the Almighty for the salva­ tion of his human creatures was the incarnation of him­ self in the person of his only Son (the second person of a mysterious trinity). That the death of such only Son upon the Cross, the innocent for the guilty, was a vi­ carious expiation or atonement of the sins of the World; provided however that all this should be believed; faith or belief in it being made the condition upon which alone such salvation is possible. The theory does not however stop there. It declares that everything which happens upon the Earth is the direct effect of the exercise of the Will of this Almighty Power, so that even a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his sanction or knowledge, and moreover that the ills of life are to be remedied by means of prayer or en­ treaty directed to him. Man therefore is emphatically counselled to be constant in prayer; to pray without ceasing. He is assured that the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. That the prayer of faith shall save the sick. That when two or three are gathered in the name of the Almighty he will grant their requests, and that whatsoever any man shall ask Him in the name of Christ (his only son before mentioned) it shall be granted to him. Then, as to our state of life; the theory inculcates that �8 The Science of Life Worth Living. poverty on Earth is a condition pleasing to the Almighty, and will be rewarded by riches in Heaven, and that the aim of our life here should be to qualify ourselves for ob­ taining this heavenly reward. That wealth and happiness on Earth are not therefore the ends in view at all, but are rather obstacles than otherwise to attaining Life everlast­ ing in the Kingdom of Heaven. That our brief existence in this World is a transitory state of probation, merely accessory or a passage to an­ other, where life will be endless ; eternal bliss in Heaven to those who have believed in this theory, eternal torment in Hell to those who have disbelieved in it. Such, in short compass, is an outline of the one theory of the Universe, and of the origin and nature of the life of Man. Now it is by no means easy to point out the source of the theory I have been slightly sketching. It is commonly supposed to be contained in the Bible. Partly no doubt it is so, partly it is even more ancient, for India and Egypt share in its origin with Palestine and Syria. As a whole it is the theory of theology; that is to say, it has been, in its ultimate shape, elaborated from the metaphy­ sical and scholastic subtleties of that remarkable class of men the Patres et Doctores—the Fathers and Schoolmen who flourished throughout the early centuries of the Christian era, and during that period of scientific dark­ ness termed the middle ages; and, so potent has been the indirect influence of their speculative interpretations of the oriental metaphors of scripture, that it is quite doubt­ ful whether any of us now living are capable of reading the Bible free from the prejudices and preconceptions that, partly by inheritance, and partly by education, we have imbibed from such speculations, and which, in the �The Science of Life Worth Living. & mystifying form of creeds, catechisms, confessions of faith, and other ecclesiastical devices, are now found to stand between man’s unsophisticated reason and the, unique language of Holy Writ. We are educated then to believe in this theological theory, and our belief is not only thus biassed from birth to manhood, but throughout our whole lives the most extraordinary pains are taken to retain our understand­ ings in its thraldom. It may surprise some of you to hear that there are in this metropolis alone upwards of 150 Missionary, Bible, Beligious Tract, Christian evidence, and other proselyting Societies applying large funds and exercising wide ranging influence in spreading the knowledge of, and persuading to the belief in this theological theory. Some idea may be gained of the extent of the operations of these societies if I give you a very few of the published statistics of some two or three of them. First I will instance the Sunday School Union Society, who, in their Annual lieport for last year of what they term their threefold work of pioneering, extension, and consolidation, and the overcoming of prejudices, sophisms, and personal antipathies, state that they have now in London upwards of 830 schools, 20,000 teachers, and. 231,000 scholars. I may here very appositely remark in reference gene­ rally to the academical system of this country, that there is not even yet a single one of our great Public Schools that is presided over by a head master who is not a theo­ logian. When therefore we read of a Conference of Head Masters, such as was held on 22nd of December last, we. must not be shocked to find that an adequate or more thorough teaching of Science formed no part of their pro­ �10 The Science of Life Worth Living. gramme, and that they should be largely occupied in discussing such subjects as “de flagellatione corporis” and “ de cerevisia potendo ”—that is—concerning the flogging of the little boys, and stopping the beer of the big ones. Next I will take a very few facts and figures from the last Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society. It is therein stated that in the year 1878 the Society had issued and circulated upwards of 3,340,000 copies of the scriptures in whole or in part. That from the commence­ ment of the Society’s operations in the year 1804, upwards of eighty-five millions of such copies had been circulated, and they calculate that they have thereby rendered the Bible available to seven hundred millions of the human family! I will lastly turn to the Report of the Religious Tract Society for the year 1878. There I find it stated that the total circulation from London alone of the various mis­ cellaneous issues of this energetic body had reached the astounding total of upwards of sixty millions, of which 28,500,000 were religious tracts; so that I think we may conclude that the community is tolerably saturated with this species of literature, even if we did not know, what is probably within the experience of nearly every one present, viz.: That you cannot walk the streets without having these publications thrust upon you, and that you can hardly enter a Railway Station or a room in a Hotel throughout the Kingdom which is not supplied with the scriptures gratis, and partly adorned by a display of theo­ logical tracts and texts. We cannot wonder then if we find, as the fact is, that the actual condition or practice of our lives is based upon the theological theory, and that whatever may be the prevalent form of ailment with society or any of its �The Science of Life Worth Living. 11 members, the sovereign cure suggested by our accredited teachers is resort to the theological agency of Prayer, Intercession, or Thanksgiving to the Supernatural Pro­ vidence assumed by the theory to be specially regulating the affairs of life. Things serious and trivial are alike affected by it. If bells are to be hung in a Church, they must first be blessed by the ministers of supernatural grace. If a vessel of war is to be named, a christening or theological ceremony must be performed over it. If new colours are presented to a regiment of soldiers, the approval of the supernatural must be invoked. If an epidemic prevails, prayer is to be resorted to to drive it away. If the weather is such that the crops will not ripen, the super­ natural is appealed to to change it. If, notwithstanding such appeal, the weather continues disastrous, the crops are destroyed, and the farmer is ruined, so inveterate are our theological habits that a harvest Thanksgiving to the supernatural must nevertheless be held 1 Even the sick room is overshadowed by this superstition, and sometimes becomes converted into the chamber of death, by reason of the physician’s skill being baffled, not by the symptoms of the disease but by the patient’s nervous depression and anxiety resulting from terrified belief in the theological theory. And now, if we turn to the characteristics of our life carried on under the influence of this theory, what do we find them to be ? I think I do not err if I describe them as being for the most part divers forms and shapes of misery, and variety of wretchedness—I am not of course alluding to the lives of the upper ten thousand, who are by their special circumstances exceptionally placed in relation to any theory, but I am referring more particu­ �12 The Science of Life Worth Living. larly to the lives of the masses of those who compose the middle and lower ranks of society. In verification of this assertion I will again appeal to the irrefutable logic of statistics. If we turn to the Population Census returns we find that whilst, in the judgment of the Registrar-General (whose conclusion I may add is confirmed by the reasonings and research of our friend Dr. Richardson), the fair natural limit of the life of the human being is stated to be 100 years, yet the average length of life in this country, taking all of us together, is only between forty and fifty years, whilst, if we confine our calculation to those who constitute our toiling millions, their actual average length of life is only between twenty and thirty years. It may be literally said that the natural length of life is ground out of them by over-work, by overcrowding, by intemperance, by disease, and by destitution. So short a span of existence can in­ deed be to many of them little more than the prolonged agony of a slow death. “We don’t live,”—said many of the street folk to Horace Mayhew, when he was enquiring into the habits of the London poor,—“ We don’t live— we starve.” Again, in the Registrar-General’s summary of births, deaths, and marriages for the year 1878 we find it recorded that out of the 83,000 deaths that occurred in London in that year, upwards of 42,000 took place at ages under twenty years, and it appears as a general inference from his figures that of the children that are brought into existence upwards of 40 per cent, of them perish under five years of age ! " Now these are very fearful facts, in whatever light we may view them, and the amount of human misery they involve can hardly be realised by means of languages �The Science of Life Worth Living. 13 though if it were necessary to paint with sadder colours the sorrows of our existence I would refer to Fry’s Royal Guide to the London Charities, amongst which are enume­ rated no less than some seventy Hospitals, having an annual aggregate of nearly 1,000,000 in-and-out-door patients 1 All honour indeed to those whose munificence supports these beneficent Institutions, but, what we are now con­ cerned to notice is the appalling mass of disease and destitution that renders them necessary, and fills to over­ flowing their tens of thousands of beds and appliances. I might7 even still further darken the picture of life if I summed up, however briefly, the statistics of our habits of intemperance and the numbers of committals to jails and of the inmates of lunatic asylums; but I think that what I have stated may at any rate be regarded as suffi­ ciently justifying the Apostle of Superstition, who has lately been heard to enquire so despairingly—Is Life worth Living ? Now, remembering that in obedience to the theological theory millions of prayers, in every conceivable variety that the will of man can devise, have been, and are being continually uttered imploring supernatural relief from the evils of this world of woe, I think we might well reply to the above enquiry by asking—Is it not time seriously to try something else ? There is no doubt that in one sense enlightened minds have been for a long time engaged in endeavouring to lessen the ills of life by the application of the teachings of Science. Philanthropists have especially sought to show that in matters relating to health, diseases for instance, chiefly result from the disregard of certain natural laws; but, between Superstition and Science there �14 The Science of Life Worth Living. is really no ratio, and, whilst the one appeals to super­ natural Providence for the cure of evil, and the other would rouse up the human reason to discover the law of nature which the presence of evil shows us has been dis­ regarded, it is in fact impracticable effectually to graft the resources of science upon the theological theory, and, in attempting it, we are only engaged in the delusive practice of pouring new wine into old bottles. The old bottles of theology are indeed from time to time burst, while the new wine of science is mostly spilt and lost. Not but what a summary of the achievements of science during even the present century would show us very remarkable changes bearing upon the progress of our every day life,—commerce freed from restrictions; trade monopolies broken down; the necessaries of life cheapened; important political, economic, and legal reforms effected; locomotion and the means of communication marvellously expedited ; vast improvements in the medical art; pain mitigated, diseases diminished, life itself lengthened. Yet the conclusion I desire to put to you is, that the expected beneficial results of these scientific achievements have been more or less neutralized or impeded through the influence of the theological theory, by the stimulus they have thereby been encouraged to impart to the irra­ tional and reckless over production of human beings, so that their most striking effect has been the excessive, that is, the too rapid increase of our population, especially of the indigent or wage receiving class, whose miserable lives and untimely deaths are but too surely vouched for by those remorseless returns of the Registrar General. It appears by the published digest of the last census that the population of England and Wales, which, in the year 1801 was nine millions, had doubled its numbers by �The Science of Life Worth Living. 15 the year 1851, and, by the year 1871, had increased to twenty-three millions I Then in relation to our education on the theological basis, the attitude of science is thus humourously de­ scribed by Professor Huxley. “The educational tree,” he remarks, “ seems to have its roots in the air, its leaves and flowers in the ground, and I confess I should like to turn it upside down, so that its roots might be solidly embedded among the facts of nature, and draw thence a sound nutriment for its foliage and fruit of literature and of art. I think I do not err in saying that if Science were made the foundation of education instead of being at most stuck on as a cornice to the edifice, the present state of things could not exist.” Let us now turn to the consideration of the theory of the Universe, and of the origin an-d nature of Human Life which we have derived from the discoveries of Science. When you look up at the sky on a bright cLear night of course you see the vast apparent dome over your heads profusely studded with constellations and multitudes of stars. You observe that the great majority of these appear to be fixed in their relative positions, always appearing in their accustomed places, no matter where . the observer may be, but that with regard to some few of the-stars, which appear to be larger than the rest, and to shine with a more brilliant and attractive light, these you observe to be perpetually shifting their positions, only some of them appearing together on any particular night. , Now the marvellous discoveries of astronomical science respecting the stars are shortly this. Those that are never seen to move out of their relative positions, and therefore called the fixed stars, are at an enormous, �16 The Science of Life Worth Living. practically an incalculable distance from the Earth, and are of vast size compared with it, many of them being indeed suns, the centres of systems similar to what is termed our solar system. They are altogether so removed from us as to exert no appreciable influence upon the earth, and they may be dismissed from present considera­ tion with the single observation, that they powerfully impress us with the vastness of the universe according to the scientific conception of it, far beyond realisation by the human imagination, and convince us that our earth can­ not be the world that the theological theory asserts, but that it is really only a very minute portion of the vast creation. To attain anything like a realisable idea of our World according to Science we must limit our reflections to those few moving stars whose larger size and softer brilliancy seem so to fascinate our sight and thoughts, and which are, relatively to the fixed stars, very near to us. These mov­ ing stars then are the planets that circle round our Sun. The Earth is known by science to be one of such planets, and to an observer placed upon the surface of any of the others the earth would appear very much like what they appear to us, though indeed, as to some of them, the planet Jupiter for instance with its four satellites or moons and whose bulk is some 1300 times larger than that of the Earth, our planet with its one moon would appear to an inhabitant of Jupiter, if visible at all, as a very insignificant star indeed. ‘ To comprehend this more clearly we must mentally separate this planetary system from the rest of the starry universe, and contemplate it distinctly by itself. Here you have an ordinary representation of a few of the chief bodies of the system,* showing the Sun in the * See diagram on opposite page. �The Science of Life Worth Living. URANUS'^.. 17 �18 The Science of Life Worth Living. centre and the several principle planets in their respec­ tive orbits round the Sun. It tolerably represents what the eye would see, supposing we were not upon the Earth, but looking down on the system from a great elevation on its north side. Now, of this majestic system Science explains the pro­ bable formation. That is to say—It is known, from tele­ scopic observations and mathematical calculations, that the moving bodies in this system are all similar in form, being globes not quite spherical or round but oblate, that is, flattened at their poles. ( That they all severally ro­ tate upon their axes in the same direction. That they all move through space in the same common direction from West to East. That the curve of their respective orbits is not mathematically circular but elliptical. That the eccentricity of their orbits is very slight, and the incli­ nation of their planes very small in comparison with that of the Solar Equator, and that all these planetary bodies revolve round the central Sun in particular periodic times. Now these discovered facts, considered in connection with the known natural laws of gravitation, of motion, and of heat, and the known laws that rule the human in­ tellect in its search after truth, impel our reason towards certain conclusions, viz.: That the former state of the solar atmosphere, myriads of ages ago, was that of a vast zone of nebulous or gaseous matter in a state of extreme heat, extending to the utmost limits of the system, under­ going a gradual process of progressive cooling, contrac­ tion, and condensation, and that the present state of the system is simply the necessary physical result of such natural process of cooling, contracting, and condensing . by virtue of which the nebulous mass broke up, or sepa­ �The Science of Life Worth Living. 19 rated into its several component moving bodies, at first liquid, then becoming solid and such as we now see them. The entire system, which, as you have seen, is but a fragment of the starry cosmos, is yet of a size almost beyond the grasp of our understanding. Thus, the central Sun is a body 883,000 miles in diameter and is at a dis­ tance from our Earth of 93 millions of miles. The Sun’s distance from the planet Jupiter is 496 millions of miles, and its distance from the planet Neptune is more than 2,800 millions of miles. These figures help to give us some idea of the immense magnitude of this relatively small system. Now the points to which I wish to draw your attention are that science has further discovered that this system and every portion of it is governed by, as well as being the result of the operation of, fixed natural laws, especially the laws of gravitation, of motion, of light, and of heat. That these laws operate uniformly and continuously upon each one of the bodies of this system as a part of the whole, and that, with regard to some of these laws—the law of gravitation for example, it could not possibly be suspended or altered (physically speaking) in reference to any one of these bodies, without affecting the relation subsisting between it and all the other bodies of the system, so as to perturb, probably annihilate its cosmic, harmony, as we have it mathematically demonstrated in the immortal “ Principia ” of Sir Isaac Newton. You need not then be startled to hear that some of the greatest astronomers the world has seen, men who have made the laws of this stupendous system their profoundest study, notably the illustrious Laplace and Lalande, have declared that they had been unable to detect in the recon­ dite mechanism of its invariable order any indication what­ ever of the God of theology. �20 The Science of Life Worth Living. The system, so far as human knowledge of it extends, may be described as a realm of Natural invariable law, Such as we see it now, it has existed through countless ages, and such it must continue to exist for countless ages to come! Therefore, whilst theologians for the last 1800 years have been perpetually preaching the approaching end of the World, astronomers have only recently calculated the coming variations in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit for a million years following the year 1800 I Hence Science teaches us that the general laws of the astronomical phenomena of our solar system constitute the basis of all our real knowledge. So a venerated philosopher has said—• “ Two things I contemplate with ceaseles awe; The Stars of Heaven, and man’s sense of Law.” Turning now from the system, we must concentrate our attention upon a very small, but integral portion of it, a body scarcely 8000 miles in diameter, that globe which we call the Earth; for obviously we can form no scientific theory of human existence without knowing the scientific elements that characterise the planet which is the home of that existence. The sciences then of As­ tronomy and Geology, which together give us the space scale and the time scale of our world, armed with the knowledge of the natural laws already referred to, have been able to trace the formation, the shape, and the his­ tory of the Earth for ages before man appeared upon it, and to tell us that plants and animals came into existence by slow degrees, and that the condition to which they had severally attained at the time of man’s appearance was the result of variation or natural selection progress­ ing by means of the physiological interaction of adapta­ �The Science of Life Worth Living. 21 tion, and inheritance and survival of the fittest operating throughout, not six days, but enormously long periods of time. In fact, as to the progress or change in every­ thing taking place on our planet, including the seemingly capricious phenomena of human actions, and even, (as Dr. Maudesley put it to us so clearly last Sunday), the apparent freedom of the will, Science has discovered that all is regulated by the operation of invariable natural law, linked together, that is, in a chain of secondary causation, whose only modification is brought about by the interven­ tion of human intelligence. Thus Science is assured that the law of gravitation would annihilate in an instant the most pious person in the kingdom, if he lost his footing on a mountain without having first placed himself in circumstances to counteract the inexorable operation of such law, or, that if he inno­ cently swallowed what the laws of physiology have shown to be a fatal dose of prussic acid, not all the prayers of Christendom could avail to save his life. We are thus according to Science living under the reign of invariable natural law, and not according to Theology under the reign of arbitrary supernatural will, and there­ fore the aim of the human mind should be to find out and to study Natural Law, rather than to keep on seeking by perpetual entreaty to influence Supernatural Will. These few facts, which for our present purpose may be accepted as sufficiently representing an outline of the theory of the Universe derived from Science, are no longer questioned by competent minds, and I should hardly think that anyone capable of giving them unprejudiced con­ sideration could fail to perceive, that they are contradictory to, and incompatible with the theory derived from Super-? stition, which I commenced by describing. �22 The Science of Life Worth Living. Now, with reference to the first appearance or creation of man, Science can at present furnish us only with proba­ bilities. These are however the logical outcome of an ap­ paratus of evidence almost irresistable. The scientific view of the origin of the human species is that which has been made more or less familiar to us by the works of our illustrious countryman Charles Darwin. The logic of his argument is really very clear, as well as cogent, and the result of it may, I think, be thus in­ telligibly stated. Due regard being had to what is now known geologically, zoologically, and embryologically of the ascending gradations of animal life, especially in the vertebrate series, and regard being also had to the known continuity of Nature, it is highly probable that man is the evolution or development of some lower animal form of the simian or ape species, from the individuals of which he is found to differ organically less than the higher and lower apes differ from each other. Observe—Darwin does not say that Man came from a monkey. No one capable of comprehending his great argument would give utterance to such an absurdity; but, if Darwin’s biological theory embodies the truth, then there must have been some ancestral link in the pedigree of man which has not yet been discovered. Man, observes Darwin, must be included with other organic beings in any general conclusion respecting the manner of his appearance on this earth. And Professor Huxley, in his treatise on Man’s place in Nature, has clearly shown from exhaustive observation of biological phenomena, that the mode of origin and the early stages of the development of man are identical with those of the animals below him in the scale. But, be man’s origin what it may, that with which we �The Science of Life Worth Living. 23 are more immediately concerned is a scientifically estab­ lished fact, viz., his unity of organization with the higher animals, which again are scientifically found to be organi­ cally co-ordinated with the entire series of life below them. So that it may be said all the organisms on our planet are related through their structural and functional resem­ blances—the human being similar to the animal organism, only higher in degree. Such then is the conception of the origin and nature of Human Life derived from the discoveries of Science. Now it is remarkable that with regard to the scientific theory of the Universe, and of the origin and nature of Man, there is an almost total absence of proselyting societies for diffusing knowledge of the theory and bringing about belief in it. There is no Sunday Science School Society. There is no gratuitous distribution of scientific tracts or texts. Indeed, with the exception of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Society under whose auspices I am now addressing you, I can scarcely call to mind a single Society whose main object it is to circulate the knowledge of scientific truth amongst the people at large, and not only so, but we may call to mind that on this day of the week at this very hour there are being delivered from thousands of pulpits exciting exhor­ tations to persuade or to frighten men and women (chiefly I suspect the latter) still to go on, supinely acquiescing in the theological theory; whilst, with reference to our Society’s Lectures delivered here, they have, on the part of the public press, been simply welcomed ■with the con­ spiracy of silence. Yet I do not think the people, if encouraging oppor­ tunities were affored them, would be found generally �24 The Science of Life Worth Living, indifferent to the acquisition of scientific truth, insensible to its sublimity, or regardless of its utility. The Archbishop of York, in his sermon preached on the occasion of the meeting of the British Association in August last, declared that “ he did not know how it would fare with them if none but scientific theories were to guide them, for ” (said his Grace) “ the great majority of men did not take an interest in scientific generalisa­ tions, they could not appreciate them.” Well, 1 think it might fairly be replied to these observations that the majority of men are simply kept in ignorance of science, and have really at present no available means provided for their gaining scientific knowledge; but, if they had, I will venture to say most advisedly that they would soon be found to prefer Science to Superstition, quickly become able to distinguish the light of nature from the darkness of dogma, and eager to guide themselves by scientific authority. The scientific theory, having then explained to us the probable origin, and the physiological nature of man# proceeds to enlighten us concerning the conditions under which he is found to increase and multiply. Now the fundamental natural law discovered by science in relation to the multiplication of living organisms is simply this,—that they are everywhere, and under purely physical conditions, produced in excess of their means of subsistence. In other words, many more are born than can possibly survive. Hence the great struggle for exist­ ence, so graphically described, especially in relation to plants and animals, in Haeckel’s “ History of the Creation,” and in Darwin’s great works. But this primordial natural law is proved to apply equally to the production of human beings, and our �The Science of Life Worth Living. 25 . interest at the present moment is the consideration of the effect of its operation and consequent struggle for exist­ ence on the human race. If we carry our minds to the populations of the East we can have no difficulty in realising this problem. In Cornelius Walford’s instructive book on “the Famines of the World,” we read accounts of “Nature’s terrible cor­ rectives of redundancy ” in all their unmitigated horror. The recent famine in India has destroyed in one Presidency alone more than 500,000 people by starvation! and has thrown a million and a half more upon charity. It has indeed been recently stated on authority that 1,250,000 persons have perished of this famine. Such is the appalling result of the people recklessly multiplying beyond their means of subsistence. We are blind however to the operation of the law of population amongst ourselves. We fail to see its working in the premature deaths of the forty per cent, of all that are born under five years of age, in the 42,000 deaths under twenty years of age out of the 83,000 annual deaths in this metropolis, so blinded are we to the warnings of Nature through our biassed belief in the theological theory. Yet the great majority of our un­ timely deaths are truly traceable to the very causes that in uncivilised countries terminate in actual starvation! The first canon of scientific culture of life therefore requires that reckless or irrational multiplication should be restrained, and that man should apply his intelligence towards controlling the purely physical and mechanical conditions of reproduction. We see this canon systematically carried out by the florist in his culture of flowers. Seeds are sown, but when they come up they are carefully thinned out, in �26 The Science of Life Worth Living. order that, there - being no overcrowding, healthy and beautiful flowers may be produced by those that are left. We see the same principle in operation where fine fruit is desired. The buds are thinned out upon the trees, in order that the diminished number that are left may attain perfection of size and maturity. The agriculturist follows precisely the same course. He is careful, as regards his stock, that only a limited number of offspring shall be produced or allowed to survive, and, moreover, that their parentage shall be the result of careful selection. Some idea may be gained of the value and importance of such selective breeding from a case recently decided in our Law Courts, in which a well known grazier recovered a sum of =£750 damages for the injury inflicted on his herd by the fraudulent introduction of an animal with a false pedigree, but guaranteed, when he purchased it, to be thorough bred. Can we doubt what might be the improvement of the human race, if even the slightest similar care were taken with our own marriages ? “ Man’s natural qualities,” observes Francis Gallon, in his masterly work on Hereditary Genius, “are derived by inheritance under exactly the same conditions as are the form and the physical features of the whole organic world.” “ Man,” says Darwin, “ scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them, but when he comes to his own marriage, he rarely or never takes any such care. Yet he might by selection do something, not only for the bodily constitution and frame of his offspring, but for their intellectual and moral qualities.” Now the continuity of structure and function, that has been traced by biological science to exist between �The Science of Life Worth Living. 27 human, animal, and vegetal organisms, has enabled Science by comparative research, that is, by observation and experiment upon the lower animals, and even upon individuals of the vegetable kingdom, to acquire remark­ ably useful knowledge of the organic nature and constitu­ tion of the human being, and, through these means, to suggest most important rules for its treatment and pro­ gressive improvement. This is no new idea even in this country. Sir Richard Steele, writing in the “ Tatler ” 150 years ago, told his readers that “ one might wear any passion out of a family by culture, as skilful gardeners blot a colour out of a tulip that hurts its beauty.” Science in short shows us that the life of man, like that of all other living organisms on our planet, is governed by fixed natural laws, and that by the use of his understanding man can improve his life through the dis­ covery of these laws, and by regulating his. conduct in obedience to their dictates. That all his faculties are adapted to his existence in this world of Nature; that they do not inform him of any Super-natural world, thereby suggesting that prosperity and enjoyment on earth are the real moral ends to be desired, and that his noblest aspirations should be transmuted into good and useful actions for mankind, and not consumed in senseless supplications addressed to Supernatural Power. Thus Science shows us that the discovery by man of the physiological laws will enable him to enjoy health and good spirits—of the intellectual laws to acquire know­ ledge and mental power—of the economic laws to gain wealth or competency—of the social and moral laws to practice virtue, to delight in duty, and to attain to happiness. �28 The Science of Life Worth Living. Therefore Science, which yearns to see mankind re­ joicing in life and action, counsels us that one great object of education should be the study of these laws—to in­ culcate obedience to them, and to train our understandings so that we may conform our lives to their unalterable nature. In illustration of these propositions I observe, for example, that Science has established beyond controversy that the qualities, whether good or bad, of the parent are transmitted to, or are inherited by the offspring, and that this result is as certainly true of the human being as it is of the lower animal. Hence we are taught what grave responsibility does in reality rest upon us in becoming the factors of posterity—in other words, in bringing children into the world, for we are thus shown that the future of human life will be what we make it. So true is what our late friend Professor Clifford told us, “ that man has made himself,” to which therefore let us add, “ man can make himself better.” The theological theory indeed assumes a supernatural mystery in the matter. Its favourite text, “Be fruitful and multiply,” addressed, you remember, to Noah, when nearly all the inhabitants of the earth had been destroyed, is supposed to be applicable to the teeming millions of the crowded cities of this nineteenth century! and it is correspondingly asserted by the theological theory that “ when God sends mouths he sends meat to fill them.” But Science reads us a very different lesson, and I will quote, as pointedly expressing its salutary teaching, what Professor Matthew Arnold, in his remarkable book “ Culture and Anarchy,” has said upon that subject. “ A man’s children ” (he declares) “ are not sent any more than the pictures upon his walls or the-horses in �The Science of Life Worth Living. 29 his stable are sent, and to bring people into the world when one cannot afford to keep them and oneself decently .... or to bring more of them into the world than one can offord so to keep.... is by no means an accomplishment of the divine will, or a fulfilment of Nature’s simplest laws, but is just as wrong, just as con­ trary to the will of God, as for a man to have horses, or carriages, or pictures when he cannot afford them, or to have more of them than he can afford.” This extract from Matthew Arnold’s writings, you may think is very plain speaking, but, as J. Stuart Mill has remarked, no one would guess from ordinary talk, that man had any voice or choice in the matter, so complete is the confusion of ideas on the whole subject, owing to the mystery in which it is shrouded by a spurious delicacy, and that the diseases of society can no more than corporal maladies be prevented or cured without being spoken about in plain language. Now I think we may observe amongst our men of science, especially those whose minds are most free from the taint of that inherited mental malady Superstition, a growing tendency towards advocating the application to the culture of the Human Being of those scientific me­ thods that have proved so successful in producing the ex­ quisite growth, maturity, and beauty of cultivated Flowers and Fruit, and the joyousuess, hilarity, and perfection of form, temper, and disposition of the thorough - bred Animal. Such methods can of course only be applied to man by way of analogy—that is to say, in reference for instance to overpopulation, human beings cannot, like flowers, be destroyed after they are once born, nor can they be treated by mechanical methods as the lower animals are, �30 The Science of Life Worth Living. but man’s intelligence can be appealed to in his own behalf, his reason can be aroused, and his moral senti­ ments interested, and the mode by which the reckless increase of his numbers should be diminished will un­ doubtedly be by inducing fewer births, so as to put a stop to premature deaths, and the diseases by which premature deaths are ushered in, diseases, which should plainly in­ struct us that, somehow the laws of Nature are being outraged. Now, if this were to any appreciable extent accomp­ lished it can hardly be doubted that a vast amount of human misery, that, viz., which is scientifically attribu­ table to overpopulation, might be gradually eliminated. Even war could eventually be deprived of its victims, and the hideous vice that haunts the public places of our cities, so reproachful to our boasted civilization and the moral spirit of our age, might to a great extent be got rid of; so too the large amount of crime that results from temptation, so sorely pressing upon the indigent, made indigent by the competition of the overwhelming numbers that throng the labour market and depress the rate of wages, would almost disappear; the savagery of personal assaults especially upon wives, so often traceable to the irritability arising from overcrowding, and the demora­ lising effect of its vitiated atmosphere, would be found to vanish; and thus in fine our low-toned morality, which is the despair of the theologian, would in many respects be purified and elevated, the course of our existence tend to become converted into a career of virtuous enjoyment, and earthly Life, whose inborn delight is at present so em­ bittered to all of us by its blendings, or surroundings of suffering, sorrow, and sin, might, not merely in theory, but really, and practically be made worth Living. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The science of life worth living: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society on Sunday afternoon, 22nd February, 1880 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Finch, A. Elley Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 30, [2] p. : ill. (diag.) ; 18 cm Series: no 29 Notes: Publisher's series list on unnumbered pages at the end. A list of published pamphlets by the same author listed on title page verso. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sunday Lecture Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1880 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3427 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (The science of life worth living: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society on Sunday afternoon, 22nd February, 1880), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Science Religion Science and Religion https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d9399899f51bd6d3a275616f65b5b55e.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=ZmufLkbxP07XCiQeLN6S7nFSd-Am86CzYrazY3oMMt8L9YaiGBlulBfznsWJEwp1KVeYbCk1ZbMZc3%7EZUOt7Sls962qaqhNagfGxBqbXrUb68AgonlFb5YYVfyxbXWlQP%7ElJkLKZFnm3C7NFrJ%7EgFQf2cDJKosJPN8C7t1uKJck8C-r7c9WyOOgLANTLzoNC%7EHWP7ueYE3e0NlWitRgf09ckb4MHS64Epzh9RJHfQgtN15i5uX-wePwSXojzI4Mg-Uu1CBY2nNoWhflcbbtq-Qufgm8HslLIlmagZ6XA8OeKNCkaAXOwJHzrPTiKkog4wcTFuFIKOZ%7EFbfAkiW2gBg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM a17391d325e74992ee6f4cedbb5857bb PDF Text Text national SECULAR SOOT'™ tJil£ THE DOCTRIKE HUMAN- AUTOMATISM. A LECTURE (WITH ADDITIONS} delivered before THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, On Sunday Afternoon, 7th March, 1875. BY w. B. CARPENTER, LL.D., M.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., F.G.S. CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, AND REGISTRAR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON. 1 LONDON: PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTUBE SOCIETY, 18 75,' Price Threepence. �SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science— physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind. THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES ARE DELIVERED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALE, LANGHAM PLACE, On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely (Annually—from November to May). Twenty-eour Lectures (in three series), ending 2nd May, 1875, will be given. Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket (trans­ ferable, and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture. Tickets for each series (one for each lecture), as below :— To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d. To the Sixpenny Seats—2s., being at the rate of Threepence each lecture. For tickets apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W. Payment at the door One Penny Sixpence ■—and (Reserved Seats) One Shilling. �IS MAN AN AUTOMATON? Ladies and Gentlemen,—In. introducing to you the ■question which is to be the subject of my address this evening—the question, Is Man an Automaton ?■—it is perhaps well that I should define, at the commencement, the sense in which I intend to use these words ; and it will be more convenient to take the second first—What do I mean by an Automaton ? The word automaton is derived ■from two Greek words, which mean self-moving. Well, of •course, man is a self-moving being, and in that sense he is an automaton. But the word automaton, as we use it, has & different signification. It means a structure which moves by a mechanism, and which can only move in a certain way. I.might take as illustrations various automata which are exhibited from time to time—I remember to have seen in my boyhood many remarkable collections. But I will draw my illustration from this very hall in which we are met. The great organ behind me is blown, I understand, by water power. You know, I daresay, that formerly organs were blown by manual or human power. The bellows-blower had before him what is called a “ tell-tale,” a little weight so hung as to indicate the amount of wind in the organ; and his business was to work the bellows so as ■always to keep the “ tell-tale ” below a certain point On the other hand, by a piece of mechanism constructed for the purpose with a great deal of skill, the organ is now blown by water-pressure. The water-pressure so acts, that when the organist requires a large supply of wind, as when he is playing loud through a great many pipes, the bellows �4 move faster ancl supply that wind ; while, on the otherhand, when he plays softly, and little wind is required, the bellows move more slowly. If that apparatus were incased in the frame of a human figure, and made to work the bellows-handle up and down, we should call it an auto­ maton. . Now, let us see on what the working of that automaton depends. It depends, in the first place, upon its structure. The mechanist who has constructed that apparatus has soarranged the play of its various parts, that it shall work with the' power communicated to it, in accordance with the oro-anist’s requirements. Then its working depends upon the force supplied by the water-pressure; that force being • made, by the construction of the machine, to exert itself in moving the bellows at the rate determined by the playing of the organist. Without a sufficient water-pressure the machine will not work; and when the organist ceases to touch the keys, the movement of the ■ bellows comes to a> stand. There you have then a machine which is moved, on the one hand, by a certain power, and the action of which is regulated by another set of circumstances external to itself. Now that is, I think, what we mean by an automaton—a machine which has within itself the power of motion, under conditions fixed for it, but not by it A watch, for instance, is an automaton. You wind it upand give it the power of movement; while you make it regulate itself by its balance, which you can so adjust as to make it keep accurate time. Any piece of mechanism of that sort, self-moving and self-regulating, is an automaton. But then all these machines are made to answer certain purposes, and cannot go beyond. They are entirely de­ pendent, first, upon their original construction, secondly, upon the force which is applied to them, and thirdly, upon the conditions under which that force is .made to act. -^he question then is, whether Man is a machine of that kind . his original constitution, derived from his ancestry, in the first place, shaping the mechanism of his body; and in the second place, the circumstances acting upon him through the whole period of his growth, and modifying the formation ot his body, also, in the same manner, determining the con­ stitution of his mind. Are we to regard the whole subse- �5 (mental aS Wel1 as bodily) of eacp individual, with his course of action in the world, as a necessary consequence or resultant of these conditions—as strictly •determined by his inherited and acquired organisation, and -by the external circumstances which act upon it? We must now consider what we understand by Man. I do not mean Man according to the zoologist’s definition— • a Vertebrate animal, belonging to the class Mammalia, older Bimana, genus and species Homo sapiens ; but Man as he is familiarly known to us, and as we have to regard him m our present inquiry-the bodily man and the mental man. We cannot help separating these two existences in thought, although my own course of study has been directed o the investigation of the nature of their relation. The -metaphysician considers man simply in his mental aspect; ih/^ eltCiallng With the organs of sensation; d the mode in which man acquires his knowledge of the external wor d through those organs; nor can°he help cea mg with the subject of voluntary action, and with the movements which express mental emotions. The physio­ logist, on the other hand, looks simply at the body of man-and yet he cannot help dealing with the physiological con­ ditions of mental activity—the way in which we become conscious of the impressions made upon the organs of sense appatatim °dVritl111011 Upon the muscu1^ appaiatus. A little consideration will shew that we mav justly regard the body of man as the instrument by which ns mind comes into relation with the external world. We exteraTworld Z m/3a.ns/omething distinct from the personalitZ convenieilt to call that feels think?7? ^tm term Ago. This Ego-which eels thinks, reasons judges, and determines—receives all its impressions of the external world through the Ze ZZ Z °f Again’ a11 action of e E^o upon the external world—including in that term the mmds m other men—is exerted through the instru mentality of the body. What am I doing "at the ZseZ time?—endeavouring to excite in your minds certain Ideas meais ?f paSSmg throufh W own. How do I do so?—by means of my organs of speech, which are regulated bv my nervous system; that apparatus being the instrument ' ' �6 through which my mind expresses my ideas in spoken laimuao'e. The sounds I utter, transmitted to you by vibrations of the air falling upon your ears, excite m the nerves with which those organs are supplied certain changes which are propagated through them to the sensonum, that wonderful organ through the medium of which a certain state of consciousness is aroused in your minds; and my aim is, by the use of appropriate words, to suggest to your minds the ideas I desire to implant in them. Such is the aspect under which I would have you con­ sider Man’s body this evening. I do not say it is the only aspect: but it best suits our present discussion to consider the body as the instrument by which the mind of each individual is made conscious of what is taking place around him, and by which he is able to act upon the ex­ ternal world; thus becoming the instrument of communi­ cation between one mind and another. To illustrate what I would have you keep before you strongly—that the Mind is the essential Ego—I will ask your attention to one or two facts of very familiar experience. It must have hap­ pened to most of you to have formed impressions of other individuals without any knowledge of their bodily appear­ ance. We do not know them m the flesh at all, but we know them intimately, or think we do, in the spirit.. 1 remember, in the year 1851, the year of the first, great . Exhibition, being told that a number of the Telegraph establishments in the country having given their clerks a free ticket to London, to enable them to go up and see the world’s fair—as it was called—m Hyde Park almost every clerk on first coming to Town before going; to the great Exhibition, went down to the telegraph office in city to fraternise with his chum. You P^^ably know that telegraph clerks very soon find out who is at the o end.” Several clerks occasionally work a particulai ^s ment, and each comes to know in half a dozen w has - gone on.” They recognise the style of telegjaphm,, just as you would recognise the handwilting +o i;ve After a'little there is some one whom eachcomess wlike better than others; A communicates individually with_ , and B with A; and beginning with the exchange>of lrttfe friendly messages at odd times, intimacies, I have been �7 assured, of the most fraternal kind, frequently spring up between those who have never seen each other. I daresay, now that young ladies are employed in telegraphing—and a most fitting employment it is for them—some more tender relations may spring up in the same manner. Take again another illustration—the way in which our sympathies are aroused with an author, when we come to . know his mind as presented in his writings. A great many of you felt when Dickens died, as if you had lost a personal friend—one with whose mind your own had grown into dose relation, whose thoughts had exercised a most valu­ able influence on yours, and whom you felt to be nearer to you than many so-called friends. Let me give you an instance from my own experience. I have been for some years a great admirer of an American writer, whose books I have read with the deepest interest, because I found in these books expressions of some of my own best thoughts, a great deal better put forth than I could put them forth myself—the products of a similar course of scientific inquiry, worked out with the aid of great poetic insight and a great fund of human sympathy, —a large human capacity altogether. In his writings I have felt as if I had one of my nearest and truest friends. Circumstances lately drew forth a letter from him to myself, in which he did me the honour to say that I had been his teacher in science; but I felt he was completely my master in everything that gives the best expression to scientific thoughts. Now if I were to go to America, the first man with whom I should seek to make acquaintance, with the cer­ tainty that we should meet as old personal friends, is Oliver Wendel Holmes.—I do not speak of Ralph Waldo Emer­ son, because we have long been personal friends. In the preface to a book I have lately received from him, he'sums up all I have been now saying in these pregnant words— “ Thoughts rule the world.” Thus it is the mind that reciprocates the mind, much more than the body reciprocates the body. The body is the symbol of the mind, just as spoken or written words are symbols of ideas ; and when we think of a friend whom we know personally, we combine with the conception of his personality our whole knowledge and conception of his �8 character. When yon say, “ I met my friend so and so in the street,” you do not mean you met simply his body, but that you met the man—the whole man. But when you say that you know a man “ by sight” only, you mean that you know his outside body and nothing more. In considering the body as the instrument of the mind, I shall shew you, first, the large amount of automatism in the human body, as to which I want you to have clear ideas. I do not wish, for any purpose whatever, to lead you away from this truth. I wish that you should be in the position yourselves to appreciate facts, so as not to be led away by one-sided statements. I desire particularly that my statements should not be one-sided; and so far as time will allow, I will place before you the whole of the moat important considerations relating to this subject. We must separate our body into two parts; and shall first consider the part that is most important as the instru­ ment of our mind—that which physiologists call the apparratus of animal life. This takes in the nervous system— the recipient of impressions made by the external world upon our organs of sense, the instrument through which these impressions are enabled to affect our conscious minds, and conversely the medium through which our minds ex­ press themselves in action on our bodies. Then, again, there is the muscular apparatus, which is called into action through the nervous system, and the framework of bones and joints by which this muscular apparatus gives move­ ment to the several parts of the body. But this “apparatus of animal life” cannot be maintained in its integrity, and cannot perform the actions which it is adapted to execute, without certain conditions. It must be maintained by nutrition, because it is always wearing and wasting by its very action, and is. in constant need of repair; and the material for this repair must be supplied by the blood-circulation. Again, the power it puts forth is dependent upon the operation of oxygen on the material of its tissues or of the blood which circulates through them; and this is as essential a condition as the pressure of water is upon the bellows of the organ. Then the circulation of the blood involves the prepara­ tion of the blood from food, and its exposure to the atmo- �9 ■sphere in the lungs, so as to get rid of the carbonic ■acid which is the product of the chemical change that generates nervo-muscular energy, and may take in a fresh supply of oxygen ; and hence there is required an apparatus of organic life. This apparatus consists of all the organs which take in the food, which digest it, prepare it, and convert it into blood, those which circulate the blood, and also those which subject the blood to the influence of the air. The working of this apparatus in man involves the action of certain nerves and muscles•, though it is not so with many of the lower animals, which are provided with a much simpler mechanism. In the case of man we have the need of muscles to take in and swallow the food, and of muscles to move the coats of the stomach in the process of its digestion; and we require a powerful muscle—the heart •—to circulate the blood through the body by the alternate contraction of its several chambers; while powerful muscles of respiration alternately fill and empty the lungs. Now, the first point I would lay stress upon is, that all these actions are essentially and originally automatic. When I say originally, I mean from the very beginning— from the moment when the child comes into the world, or oven before. We know that the first thing the new-born infant does is to draw a long breath; and from that time breathing never ceases,—the cessation of breathing being the cessation of life. The heart’s action has been going on for months before birth; and its entire suspension for ■& very short time, whether before or after birth, would bring the whole vital activity of the body to an end. These motions are executed by the nervo-muscular apparatus, in a way that does not involve our conscious­ ness at all. We do not even know of our heart’s action unless it be very violent, or we be in such a position that we feel it knocking against our side. But still it is going on regularly and tranquilly, though it may not be felt from one day’s end to another. We cannot stop it, if we would, by-any effort of the will; but it is affected by our '©motional states. So, again, we do not know that we are breathing, unless we attend to it. The moment that we direct our attention to it, we become aware of the fact; but if we are studying a2 �10 closely, or listening to a discourse, or attending to some piece of music, or, indeed, doing anything that engages our consciousness, we are no more aware of our breathing than we are during sleep. This shews you, then, that when breathing goes on regularly the action is purely automatic. But we have a very considerable control over our muscles of respiration. If my respiratory movements were as purely automatic as those of an insect, I could not be addressing vou to-night; because the whole act of speech depends upon the regulation of those movements. We must have such power over the muscles, as to be able to breathe forth succes­ sive jets, as it were, of air, which, by the apparatus of arti­ culation, are converted into sounding words. Though we have power over the respiratory organs to a certain extent, we cannot “ hold our breath” many seconds. In the West Indies the overworked negroes used formerly to try to commit suicide by holding their breath, but could not do it, except by doubling their tongues back so as to stop the aperture of the glottis; for the impulse and' necessity forbreathing became so imperative, that they could no longer resist the tendency to draw in a breath. Thus, whilst, we have a certain voluntary control over this act of breathing, so as to be enabled to regulate it to our purposes, we can­ not suspend its automatic performance long enough to interfere seriously with the aeration of the blood. Let me briefly notice some of our other automatic actions. In the act of swallowing, which properly begins at the back of the throat, the “swallow” lays hold of the food or the drink brought to it by the muscles of the mouth,, and carries this down into the stomach. We are quit® unconscious of its passage thither, unless we have taken a larger morsel or something hotter or colder than ordinary. This is an instance of purely automatic action. If you carry a feather, for instance, a little way clown into the “swallow,” it is laid hold of and carried down involuntarily, unless drawn back with your fingers. Take as another instance, the act of coughing. What does that proceed from ? You may have allowed a drop of water or a crumb of bread to “go the wrong way,” and get into the air-passages. It has no business there, and will excite a cough. This consists, in the first place, in the- �closure of the glottis—the narrow fissure which gives passage to the air—and then in a sort of convulsive action of the expiratory muscles, which sends a blast of air through the aperture, that serves to carry away the offending substance. Nothing can be more purpose-like than that action, yet it is purely automatic. You cannot help it. You may try to stifle a cough for the sake of the audience or the lecturer, but the impulse is too strong for you. You see, then, the purely involuntary nature of this action. The person who feels inclined to cough may endeavour to overcome the automatic tendency by an effort of his will. He may succeed to a certain degree, but cannot always do so. Now, although we cannot voluntarily stifle a cough when it is strongly excited, we can cough voluntarily, with no excitement at all. You can cough, if you choose, to interrupt the lecturer, as in the House of Commons coughing is some­ times used to put down a troublesome speaker; and little coughs are sometimes got up to give signals to some friend privately. Or, again, the lecturer, who may feel his voice husky in consequence of some little mucus in his throat, wishes to clear it away; its presence does not excite the movement, but he coughs intentionally to get rid of it. Now, I would have you fix your attention on these two points : in the first place, coughing as an involuntary move­ ment excited by a stimulus in the throat; and in the second place, as a voluntary movement executed by a determinate effort. This distinction is the key to the whole study of the nature of the relation between the mind of man and his muscular apparatus. The automatic movements of which I have been speaking depend upon a certain part of the nervous centres, which does not enter into the structure of the brain properly so called; namely, the medulla oblongata, or the upward prolongation of the spinal marrow—the spinal cord, as physiologists call it—into the skull (a, figs. 1, 2). The effect of the stimulus or irritation in the windpipe may not be felt as tickling; for coughing will take place in a state of profound insensibility. An impression is made upon the nerves which go to the medulla oblongata, and in that centre' excites a change. It is the fashion now to call �12- this change a “movement of moleculesbut it is nothing ■ more than a name for the action excited there, ;of the nature of which we know very little. I • do not think that this expression is really very much better than the old doctrine of “vibrations” put forth by Hartley & more than a century ago. The change thus excited produces a converse ac­ tion in the mo tor.nerves which go to the muscles, and thus calls forth the combined muscular move­ ment of which I have spoken. This is a typi­ Fig. 1.—Under Surface oe Brain.— cal example of what the a. Medulla oblongata, cut off from physiologist terms the spinal cord; b, pons varolii; c, “reflex action.” infundibulum; d, portion of the The whole Spinal Cord convoluted surface of the cerebrum; ■ e, portion of the same laid open, is a centre of “ reflex shewing the difference between the action,” in virtue of the grey or ganglionic substance of the grey or ganglionic mat­ convolutions, and the white or fibrous substance; /, cerebellum; 1, olfac­ ter it contains, in addi­ tory ganglion; 2, optic nerves; 3-9, tion to the white strands which form the connec­ successive cranial nerves. tion between the spinal nerves and the brain j and this grey matter is present in different parts of the cord in different amounts, in proportion to the size of the nerves connected with each. Each ordinary spinal nerve contains both sensory and motor fibres, bound up in the same trunk, blit these are separate at its roots (fig. 3) ; and a part of each set of fibres has its centre in the grey matter of the spinal cord itself, whilst another part is continued into its white strands. Although, however, we speak of “ sensory fibres, we do not mean that impressions on them always call forth sensations. For in the case of many involuntary acts, ascertain impression is made on the sensory nerve, �■:I3 .and a reflex influence excited by this. acts through the corresponding motor nerve without calling forth any sen­ sation. Ah impression is conveyed towards the ganglionic centre, which possesses a • power of reflexion — not reflection in the mental sense, but in the optical sense of the reflection of fffy' rays from a mirror. If we break any part' of this a nervous circle,” ‘ as Sir Charles Bell called it, its action is destroyed.' Cut the sensory ' nerves, and no reflex action can be excited. Cut the motor nerves? and no muscular contraction can be called forth. Destroy the centre, Fig. 2.—Vertical Section of Brain THROUGH ITS MIDDLE PLANE; and you will not have the shewing the relation of the Cere­ reflexion. The complete brum A and the Cerebellum B, to nervous circle is necessary the Sensori-motor Tract, which for the performance of may be considered as the upward extension of the every one of these reflex a, and includes medulla oblongata, the parts lettered actions. • ■ cl, e,f -, at h is shewn in section the What I want first to corpus callosum, or great transverse impress upon you is, that commissure uniting the two cere­ the reflex movements im­ bral hemispheres; and at g the longitudinal connect­ mediately concerned in the ing the frontcommissure, parts of and back maintenance of Organic ’ each; i, optic nerve. life all take place through this lower portion of the nervous system, which has no necessary connection with either sensation or will. That is to say, that if there were no higher part of the nervous System than the spinal cord, we should still have reflex action without the Ego having anything to do with it. ■ -I may illustrate this by the act of sucking, which in­ volves a curious combination of respiratory movements with movements of the lips. This act can be performed without any brain at all; for infants have come into the world with. out the brain, properly so-called—with nothing higher than. �14 the prolongation of the spinal cord—and have sacked, -pibreathed, and even cried for some hours; and all the true brain has beenremoved experimentally from new­ born puppies, which still Fig. 3.—Transvep.se Section of Spinal Cord ; shewing its grey or sucked at the finger when ganglionic core, enclosed in its moistened with milk and white strands; a, r, anterior or put between their lips. This motor roots; r, posterior or shews how purely automatic sensory roots. these actions are. But we now come to that other class of movements— namely, those properly belonging to the apparatus of Animal life—which are concerned in the obtaining of food and in carrying on ordinary locomotion. I have to shew you to what a large extent, among some of the lower ani­ mals, these movements are originally auto­ matic ; and, on the other hand, to inquire into their nature in Man. We will go to the class of Insects and their allies the Centipedes, as giving the best illus­ tration of the primary automatic movements of animal life. Here (fig. 4) is a diagram of a Centipede. Every child who has dug in the ground knows the “ hundred-legs,” and is pretty sure to have chopped one in two, and. noticed that each half continues to run. This is in virtue of the ganglion existing in every joint of the body, which is the centre of the reflex action of the legs belonging to it, and which keeps each joint in motion even after it is separated from the body. If one of these creatures is cut into half a dozen pieces, every one of them will continue to run along. But, again, if we divide the nervous cord which connects the ganglia, the sight of an obstacle Fig. 4.—Gan­ may cause the animal to stop the movement gliated Ner­ of its fore legs, yet the hind legs will continue vous Cord of to push it on. If you take out the middle por­ Centipede. tion of the chain of ganglia, the legs of that �15 part will not move J but the legs of the front part will move or not, according to the direction of the ganglia of the head, •which seem to control the action of the other ganglia in vir­ tue of their connection with the eyes; and the legs of the hind part will continue to move as before. When one of these creatures goes out of the way of an •object before it, we may assume that it sees the object; for although we have no absolute proof that insects do see anything, I cannot see that there is any disproof of a conclusion to which all analogy points. Certainly it seems to me that if I try to catch a fly, and if it jumps or flies away, or if I go out and try to catch a butterfly with a net, and it flies off, it does so because it sees the net. Those who have watched bees, when a storm is coming on, flying straight down from many yards’ distance to the en­ trance of the hive, can scarcely help concluding that they see the entrance. At any rate, it is not proved that they do not. Well, then, the Centipede avoids an obstacle. A visual impression is made on the eyes, and by their agency is.com­ municated to the large ganglia in the head; the reflex action of which controls that of the other ganglia, and directs the movement of the body. We find that the size of these cephalic ganglia in flying Insects has a very close relation to the development of their eyes; the eyes being most highly developed in the most active insects, and the ganglia connected with them the largest; while the general movements of these insects are most obviously guided by their sight. Here is a clear case of Original or primary automatism; because these actions are all performed by the insect almost immediately that it comes forth from the chrysalis or pupa state; as soon as its wings have dried, it begins to fly; and obviously sees and avoids obstacles just as well as if it had been practising these movements all its life. Then, in the case of Insects, we notice that very remark­ able uniformity of action, which we characterise as “instinc­ tive.” They execute most remarkable constructions after a Certain plan or pattern, with such extraordinary uniformity and absence of guidance from experience, that we infer that they must have inherent in them a tendency to perform those actions. �16 We see this in the case of hive bees, which are distin­ guished for theii* elaborate architecture, and for their rem arkable domestic economy. I do not say that there is no rationality in insects, and that there is nothing done with conception and purpose; because some of their actions seem to indicate this, especially those which are described in recent accounts of ants given by Mr. Belt in his “ Naturalist in Nicaragua.” Sir John Lubbock’s experiments also cer­ tainly do seem to indicate a power of adaptation to changes of circumstances that were not likely to have frequently oc­ curred naturally in the history of the race, so as to have become habitual—changes brought about by human agency, so foreign to the ordinary habits and instincts of the crea­ tures, that we can scarcely attribute their consequent action to anything but a conscious adaptation to these ends. Bub this is a matter to be still cleared up—how far experience modifies the actions of insects. As a general fact, I may say that they carry Automatism to its very highest extreme. . To give another illustration—the Mantis religiosa (fig. 5),. an insect which is allied to the crickets and grasshoppers, but which does not habitu­ ally either jump or fly. It is a very savage insect, and lies in wait for its prey like a tiger. You can see the curious form of the long fore-legs, which act as arms, and are waved about in the air; and it rests on the two hinder pairs of legs. Now, observe that the front pair are supported^, upon a very long first segment of the thorax; the two other segments bearing the wings and the two other pairs of legs. Each of these he centre of the move­ ments of the limbs attached to it. The insect is always �IT lying in wait; and if any unlucky insect comes sufficiently near, the arms dose round it and dig-in a pair of hooks, with which the feet are furnished. By this act the unfor­ tunate victim is soon put out of existence. Now if the head Of this Mantis be cut off, the arms still go on moviim -the aild if anything is brought Wife! their reach, they impress the hooks upon whatever &SSSP’ Fhe 6FS Simply direct their action>the a^ion itself being dependent on the ganglion from which the nerves of these members proceed. Further, if we cut off that «Vision and separate it from the hind part of the bodyithe same thing will go on If anything is put within its grasp, the arms close round it and impress the hooks with just W game automatic action as we see in the Venus’s fly-trap. Not only but if you try to upset the body, it will balance, and rise again upon the hind kgs. Ibis shews you how completely automatic the move­ ments are. The name of Mantis religiosa is derived from the curious attitude in which this insect habitually livesT? -tS TT prayer’ We have not this insect Britain; but the French call it the Prie Dieu is equivalent to religiosa. • ’ C°nie thS 10A7r Vertebrate animals, of which We my take the Frog as the best illustration. Its Spinal ’V �18 Cord may be considered as the representative of the chain of ganglia in the centipede ; the principal difference being that its ganglionic matter forms a continuous tract, instead of being broken up into distinct segments. But we find in the head, instead of the one pair of ganglia connected with the eyes, a series of ganglia connected with the several Organs of sense, together with two masses of which we have no distinct represent* It atives among the lower animals — namely, the cere­ brum and the cere­ bellum. The rela­ tion of these to the other ganglion» centres is shewn in tig. 6, which represents the brain oi the Turtle; A being the olfactive lobe,, or ganglion of smell, from which proceed the olfactory nerve»; B the cerebrum; C the optic lobe or ganglion of sight, from which proceed the optic nerves; D, the cerebellum; and E, the spinal cord. In mOTi fishes the cerebrum is actually smaller Tig. 7.—Diagram of Brain, shewing the than the optic lobes; relations of its principal parts: a, spinal but as we ascend in cord; b, b, cerebellum divided so as to lay the series towards open the fourth ventricle, 4, which sepa­ man, we find it borates it from the medulla oblongata ; c, corpora quadrigemina ; d, optic thalami; coming relatively f, corpora striata, forming the sensori-motor larger and larger; tract; g, g, cerebral hemispheres ; h, corpus so that it covers-in callosum; i, fornix; 1,1, lateral ventricles; piJes the series Hr 3, third ventricle; 5, fifth ventricle. �19 «f ganglionic centres lying along the floor of the skull. These sensori-motor ganglia, (fig. 7, c, d, f), though com­ monly regarded as appendages to the cerebrum, really con­ stitute the fundamental portion of the brain; they may be regarded as an upward continuation of the spinal cord; and I have been accustomed to designate this whole series of centres (excluding the cerebrum and cerebellum) as the axial cord In this all the nerves of sense terminate, and irom it all the nerves of motion arise, the cerebrum having only an indirect connection with either. ° The proportional size of the Cerebrum in different animals compared with that of their axial cord, corresponds so closely with the manifestations of intelligence (that is, the '^itentional adaptation of means to ends, under the Guid­ ance o experience) as contrasted with blind unreasoning instinct, that there can be no doubt of its being the instn” Xnent of the reasoning faculty. The cerebrum attains its maximum size and complexity in Man ; on the other hand, 111} froS it is relatively much smaller than in the turtle • and it would seem that the actions of this animal are pro­ wled for almost entirely by the reflex power of its auto­ matic apparatus—namely, the spinal cord with the ganglia Z-ITe’rJ.1Su?P°?e that we divide tlie spinal cord in the »Welle of the back, between the fore legs and the hind le^s •what nappens? We find that the animal can no longer move tte hind legs by any power of its own, but that they can be made to move by pinching the skin of the foot. If acid SS put on one leg, the other will try to wipe it off: and a Wimber of movements of that kind are called forth by »famuli of various kinds. Yet we feel justified in saying A® frog does not feel them. We know, as a matter of penence that if a man receives a severe injury to his — Wy Often in Md also, I through his^tT5’ am0I1S tlle.slliPPing “ ‘he docks&h his stukmg some projecting object in falling 8o,T oomF,eteIy paralysed. He hal no feeling £ tat shock power of moving them. But after the S a„fe?„?fl, hera7dent has passed off- if y°u “»He the lei »™fnhlS feet’ or aPPly a hot plate to them, « +u-e£S a^e drawn UP- The man will tell you he feels othmg whatever, and would not know what had taken �20 ■ place if he did not see the movement. A case of this bir d occurred to the celebrated surgeon, John Hunter, who asked a man, 11 Do you feel this in your legs'?”“ No, sir,” he replied, (e but my legs do.” That was not scientifically correct, because his legs could not be properly said to feel that of which the Ego was unconscious ; but it expressed the fact that the irritation called’forth a respondent motion. ■ • There is only one other mode of explaining this action'; namely, that by dividing the spinal cord.we have made a second Ego—a new centre of sensation—in the lower part of the cord. In that case we make as many Egos in the centipede as we cut the body in pieces; and we might make three separate Egos in the frog—the head, the upper part of the trunk with the fore-legs, and the lower part with the hind legs, each acting independently. This seems, to me inconceivable; I entirely go with those who maintain that these actions are provided for by a purely automatic mechanism. ' . . - A” still more remarkable fact is, that if we remove • the higher nervous centres, leaving only the Spinal Cord, and with it the Cerebellum (which appears to have the ■ power of combining or co-ordinating the movements), we find that the general actions of locomotion are per­ formed as in the uninjured animal. Thus the frog will continue to sit up in its natural position ; and if we throw it into the water it will strike out with its limbs and swim, just as if the whole nervous system.was intact. * This is ■ the case also with the Dytiscus marginalis, a water-beetle, which, when the ganglia of the head have been removed, ' will remain unon a hard substance without any movement; ' yet, if dropped into water, will begin to strike out, swim­ ming in the usual way, but without any. avoidance o± obstacles. So the frog, if a stimulus is applied, will jump - just as if the brain had been left. If put on the hand it sits . there perfectly quiet, and would remain so unless stimulated to action; but if the hand be inclined very gently and slowly, so that the frog would naturally slip oil', the creature s *pre" feet are shifted on to the edge of the hand until he can just prevent himself from falling. If. the turning of the hand be ■ slowly continued, he mounts up with great care and deli­ beration, putting first one leg forward and then the other, �.21; nnial he balances himself with perfect precision upon the edge; ancl if the turning of the hand is continued, over he goes through the opposite set of operations, until he comes to be seated in security upon the back of the hand. All this is done after the brain proper has been removed, shewing how completely automatic this action is. Another remarkable fact is, that if you stroke one particular part of the skin, the frog will croak. * .. . Precisely parallel experiments were made by Flourens. By removing the brain of a Pigeon he found that the anwal retained its position, and would fly when thrown into the air* If the optic ganglia were left, he found evidence that animal either saw, or that its movements were guided by impressions received through its eyes. The head of the pigeon would move round and round if a light was moved round in front of the eyes. So in the frog it was found that, if the optic ganglia were left, it would avoid obstacles placed in front of it, when excited to jump. Thus we see how completely automatic these movements, are, and how entirely they are dependent on the reflex ■action of the axial cord, the Cerebrum not being necessary for their performance. The removal of that organ, how­ ever, seems to deprive the animal of all spontaneity; it remains at rest unless excited to move, and seems to do nothing with a purpose. Let us now go to Man, and examine the nature of his movements. You have all seen a child learning to walk. You know that it does not get upon its legs to walk all at ©nee, like a newly-dropped lamb ; but that its muscles have to be trained, and this training is a very long process. The child learning to walk, as Paley says, is the greatest posture-master in the world. It requires a long course ■bf experience to acquire the power of moving its limbs in ® proper .manner to execute the successive steps; but far more training is required in balancing. This balancing of the body is one of the most curious things in our mechanism. No automaton has ever been made to walk. I once saw an automaton that professed to walk; but it had only a gliding motion; and upon looking at the feet I found some concealed springs beneath, so that neither foot was ever really lifted. �22 The act of walking requires a. continual shifting, of the centre of gravity from side to side, so as to keep it over the base during every step; and it is this shifting from side to side, that constitutes the great difficulty, in. the act of walking. Almost every muscle in the body is in action in the maintenance of our balance and in the forward move­ ment. The muscles of the eyes, even, are in operation in keeping our gaze fixed upon what is before us, and thus guiding our onward movement. But when this movement has been once acquired, it goes on unconsciously. If you.are walking with a friend and engaged in earnest conversation, you may walk a mile and not be the least conscious all the time of your having been successively advancing one leg after another; and you do exactly the same thing, while walking in a state of mental abstraction. So, again, you are guided by your sight, when you have once set out, along the line you are accustomed to take. I am in the habit of walking down the Regent’s Park every lawful, day, as you call it in Scotland, to my office at the University of London. I frequently fall into some train of thought—as latelv about this lecture; and I follow on that train of thought, not only unconscious of the movements of my legs, but unaware of the directing action of my vision. Yet I know that my eyes have been directing me. When I have come into the crowded streets, I have not. run against my fellow passengers, or knocked myself against a lamp-post. My legs have been moving the whole time, and have brought me to my destination, sometimes to my surprise. This must have been the experience of all of you who are accustomed frequently to walk along a certain line. It has even been the case that when you have set out with the intention of departing from your accustomed line, for some little business or other, and have , fallen into a tram ot thought, through pre-formed association you keep m the habitual line. After getting half way down a street you suddenlv find that you have not gone out of your way, as you intended to do. I regard such habitual action as purely automatic; not primarily, but secondarily automatic, the automatism not being original but acquired. . Ihis. is the most universal of all forms of acquired automatic action �23 in Man—not only the motion of the limbs, but the direction of their movements by the sight. The act of walking may become so automatic as to be performed during sleep. Soldiers fatigued by a long march continue to plod onward when sound asleep. If there are Bo obstacles they go steadily onwards, just like the centi­ pede when its head has been cut off. The Indian punkahpullers—men who are engaged the whole day pulling a string backwards and forwards, to move the great fan which produces a current of air in every room—often go on as well when they are asleep as when they are awak®. These are two instances of acquired automatism; and I might add a great many more, because everything that becomes habitual to a man is occasionally performed auto­ matically in the state called absence of mind. Thus when & gentleman goes up to his dressing-room to dress for a party, the first thing he commonly does is to take out his Wtch and lay it on the table. The next thing he often does— I have done it myself—is to wind up his watch, as if he was retiring for the night. I have known a case in which the gentleman completed his undressing and then went to bed-; so that when his wife came in Search of him, he was comfortably resting from his day’s Work. That was a case of pure automatism ; and I could relate many more instances of the same kind, but you must all have noticed such things in your own experience. A particular manual operation can be done, if it is one not requiring the constant direction of the mind, quite autoinatically. A man can plane a board, for instance, or work his loom, while his mind is entirely occupied in another direction. A musician will play a piece of music, and yet maintain a continuous conversation at the same time. There is a very amusing and suggestive book which I recommend you to peruse, “ The Autobiography of Robert Moudin, the Conjurer,” who describes the training by which he prepared himself for the performance of various of his feats of dexterity. Amongst other things, he tells us that he devoted a great deal of time and attention in early life to the acquirement of the faculty of being able to read a book continuously, and at the same time to keep up balls in the air. He brought himself to be able to keep up four �24' balls in the air, without detaching his mind from his book for a moment. He could continue the tram of thought that the book suggested, without giving his attention at all to the keeping up of the balls; this action being only a more elaborate form of the trained automatism that 1 have spoken of. The thought occurred to him, when writing his autobiography, that he would try whether, after thirtv years’ cessation from this performance, he could still execute it. He stops, and then continues his memoii-: “ I have tried this, and find I can keep up three balls ” There, I believe, the nervo-muscular combination that was required, had come by early training to be a part of his physical constitution, and had been kept up by nutrition. Whatever, in fact, we learn to do in the period of growth, . we can continue to do without practice after the growth has been completed; whilst acquirements that we make subsequently are more easily lost when we are out o practice.” I think all experience shews that; and I believe it is for this physiological reason—that the bodily and mental constitution'acquired during the period of growth becomes “a second nature,” and is maintained throughout life, whilst any modification it may undergo afterwards is some­ thing superadded to that basis, and is the first to decline when the habit of action ceases. . We now pass to the other part of our subject—the rela­ tion between the higher part of our nature, the Ego, and these automatic actions. What I shall endeavour to shew you very briefly is this, that the whole of the neryomuscular apparatus concerned in executing the mandates of the mind acts as a framed automaton. Anything which ' we mentally determine to do “we will, as we say. In using the word “will” I do not mean a separate faculty, I mean the Ego in a state of action. The Ego determines to do a certain action, and commands the automaton to do it *The will does not, as physiologists used to believe, thio itself into a particular set of muscles; but says to the auto­ maton, “do this,” and it does it. There are manF which the Ego desires to do, but which he cannot make the automaton do for want of training. For instance, manyof you may strongly desire to be able to play a musical instru­ ment. You may be able to read the music, and by watchmo �25 a performer may see precisely how to do it, but you cannot do it, simply for want of training. The same is the case with a great many other actions which we can only acquire by practice. Again, you may wish to do something physicallv impossible. The Ego may earnestly desire and intend to make some great effort—to take a great leap, for instance, to save his life. He may will to hang on to a cord as long as xaay be necessary to prevent his falling from a height. The Ego wills this with all his energy; but his muscles will not. obey him, because it is not in their nature to maintain their tension for longer than a certain period. Let me give you a little experiment that I think every One will find instruction in performing on himself; it occurred to me while lecturing on physiology as suited to conduct my students exactly to the idea I wished to impress upon them. There happened to be a bust opposite me, and I said, “ Now, I will to look at that bust, and I will at the same time to move my head from side to side.” I told, them to watch my eyes, and they could all see them rolling from side to side in their sockets,—as you can see for yourselves by looking at your own eyes in a lookingglasSj and turning your head from side to side. You do not feel that you are using the slightest exertion, and would not be aware of the motion of your eyes unless you knew it as a matter of fact, or some one else told you that you were <at>ing so. You have said to your automaton, “Look at it” (whatever it may be), and at the same time “ move your head round.; ’ and the automaton rolls its eyes in the conteary direction, and thus keeps the image on the same part •of the retina. r That is what I maintain to be the general doctrine of the automatism of the body, directed and controlled by the will;—the Ego willing the result, and leaving it to the automaton to work it out; as when I set my automaton to walk to a certain place, and direct my thoughts to some­ thing altogether different. kave now, in the last place, to consider how far the Mind of man acts automatically. This is a subject con­ fessedly of very great difficulty. There are those who consider that the mind of man is essentially and entirely c ependent upon his bodily organisation, although they may �26 still hold the separate existence of the mind. They find.it,. indeed, very difficult to conceive that there can be anything else than automatic action; because they see to what a very large extent our mental activity is conditioned by the physical constitution of the body. The Physiologist can have no more doubt that there is a mechanism of thought and feeling, of intellect and imagina­ tion, of which the Cerebrum is the instrument, than that there is a mechanism of instinct of which the Axial Cord is the instrument. "When one idea suggests a second, in accor­ dance with a preformed association, the second a third, and so on, constituting what we call a “train of thought,” without any order from ourselves, we seem fully justified by a large body of evidence in affirming that this is the mental ex­ pression of a succession of automatic changes, each causing the next, in the ganglionic matter which forms the con­ voluted surface-layer of the Cerebrum. These changes may or may not result in bodily motion. What we call the “ movements of expression,” are the involuntary signs of the state of our feelings ; and so the movements executed by sleep-walkers are the expressions of the ideas with which their minds are possessed. So great talkers, like Coleridge, sometimes run on automatically, when they have got patient listeners; one subject suggesting another, with no more exertion or direction of the will than we use in walking along a course that has become habitual. All this may be regarded, physiologically, as the “reflex action of the cerebrum,” the physical mechanism of which is partly shaped by its inherited constitution, and partly by the training to which it has been subjected, whether by inten­ tional education, or by the education of. circumstances—the brain “ crowing to” the mode in which it is habiuually worked, &just a's the mechanism of our bodily movement shapes itself to the work we habitually call on it to peiform. We constantly see that mental faculties are inherited, as well as bodily powers ; that children brought up after the parents’ death, shew most remarkably the mental tendencies of one or both of them. They do a number.of things in exactly the same manner that the parent did, have the same moral and intellectual tendencies, and present an extraordinarily striking resemblance in general character. �27 This principle of the hereditary transmission of facultiesthrough the physical organisation is now generally admitted;, and what is more, I think it is clear that many of these Acuities and tendencies have been acquired and superin­ duced, as it were, in the constitution of the parent, upon what it originally possessed. There is one very remarkable and too common example of this hereditary transmission, namely, the tendency to alcoholic excess. I remember a friend telling me he had known a man who for forty years got up every morning with the strong apprehension of being unable to resist that craving, which was an essential and inherent part of his nature, inherited from the unhappy indulgence of his father. That man fought a most heroic­ fight every day of his life. Every now and then he fell, but recovered himself; and, to my mind, fall as he did, his recovery shewed him to possess a far higher moral nature than that of the man who never yieids because he is never tempted. I cite this merely as one example of acquired tendency hereditarily transmitted; all of us are familiar with cases more or less resembling it. But the question is, whether the Ego is completely under the necessary domination of his original or inherited tendencies, modified by subsequent education ; or whether he possesses within himself any power of directing ancl controlling these tendencies ? It is urged by some that as the physical structure of his Cerebrum at any one moment is the resultant of its whole previous activity, so its reflex action, determined by that physical structure, must be really automatic; the only difference between a voluntary oi’ rational, and an involuntary or instinctive action, lying in the complexity of the antecedent conditions in the former case, as distinguished from their simplicity in the latter. And it is held, in like manner, by many who look at the question from the mental side, and who do not trouble themselves at all about the physiological aspect of it, that a man cannot act in any other way than in accordance with his character; and that his character at any one moment is the general resultant of his whole previous mental life. But even John Stuart Mill, the most able and conspicuous advocate of this doctrine, felt that in making every man entirely dependent upon his in­ �28 herited constitution, and his subsequent “circumstances,” it excluded all possibility of real seZ/-direction, all hope of selfimprovement ; and this, he tells us in his autobiography, ■weighed on his existence like an incubus. “ I felt,” he says, “ as if I was scientifically proved to be the helpless slave of antecedent circumstances, as if my character and that of all others had been formed for us by agencies • beyond our control, and was wholly out of our own power.” 'The way out of this darkness he found in what seems to have struck him as a new discovery, although it was fa.mil 13,r enough to many who had previously studied the action of the mind,—“that we have real power over the formation of our own character; that our will, by influenc­ ing some of our circumstances, can modify our future "habits or capacities of willing.” Now, this I hold to be accordant with the experience of every one who has thought and observed, without troubling himself with philosophical theories. "VVe all perceive that in the earlier period of our lives, our characters have been formed for us, rather than by us. But we also recognise the fact, that there comes a time when each Ego 'may take in hand thé formation of his own character ; and that it thenceforth depends mainly upon himself what course its development shall take,-—the most valuable result of early training being that which prepares him to be his own master, keeping in subjection his lower appetites and passions, and giving the most favourable direction to the exercise of his higher faculties. And I shall now explain to you what seems to me the process by which this is ■ effected. Every one knows that he can determinately fix h%s attention upon some one object of sense, to the. more or less complete exclusion of all others. In looking at a picture, for instance, he can examine each part of it sepa­ rately; or, if he has a “musical ear,” he can single out any one instrument in an orchestra, and follow it through its whole performance. Now, just in the same manner we can fix our attention upon one state of consciousness (a thought or feeling) to the exclusion of others. Supposing that you are endeavouring to fix your mind upon a certain object of study, or are reading a book that requires much �29 thought to follow it, or are trying to master a mathe­ matical problem, or are desiring to work out a certain­ question as to the conduct of your own lives, and you are attracted by the coming-in of a book or a newspaper which you would like to look at, or are distracted by noises or the playing of a musical instrument, you feel that it is in your power to fix and maintain your attention by a suffi­ cient effort. That determinate effort is what we call an act of the will; and I believe that the power of so fixing. Our attention is the source of all that is highest and best in our intellectual self-education, as, in another direction, it. is the source of all our moral self-improvement. The automatist will say that your doing so is merely the result of the preponderance of one motive over the other,—the desire to go on with your study being stronger than the attractive or distracting influence. But if this be the whole account of the matter, why should we have to “ make an effort,”—to struggle against that influence ?We choose, as it seems to me, which is the thing that we deem preferable; and we then throw the force of the Ego into the doing of it, just like a man who makes a powerful muscular exertion to free himself from some restraint. And I hold that just as the Ego can turn to his own account the automatic action of his nervo-muscular appa­ ratus, regulating and directing his bodily movements, .so ha can turn to his own account the automatic activity of his cerebrum, regulating and directing the succession of his thoughts, the play of his emotions. That succession is in itself automatic; you cannot produce anything, other­ wise than by utilising what may spontaneously present, itself; and you do so by the selective attention of which I have spoken, intensifying your mental gaze so as to make , the object before you call up some other, until you get what you are seeking for. This you may readily trace out for yourselves if you will observe your own mental experiences, in trying to recollect something. And what shews the essentially automatic action of the cerebral mechanism in this familiar operation, is that after you have been for some time trying in vain to recall some forgotten name or some recent occurrence which has “ escaped your memory,” it will often flash into your mind �30 some little time afterwards, when yon have turned your attention to something else. In the same manner many important inventions and discoveries have proceeded from the automatic working of the Cerebrum, set going in the first place by the determinate fixation of the attention on the object to be attained; the success of the result being due to the whole previous “ training” of the organ. The act of fixing the attention, in my belief, lies at the foundation of all education, and is one to be fostered and encouraged in every child. It is better to begin with only a few minutes at a time; gradually, by encouragement, the child comes to feel that it has a power of its own to pro­ long its attention; and at last the encouragement is no longer needed, for the child that has been judiciously trained will exert all its determination to learn its lesson, in spite of temptations to go out and play or to amuse itself in any other mode. But if this determination were simply the expression of a preponderance of motive, I do not see why an effort should have to be made. If the motive to fix the attention be stronger than the attraction of any other object, or the prospective influence of the good to be gained be more powerful than the distracting influence, the mere preponderance of the one over the other would produce the result. But we know and feel that the making such a determinate effort, involves more expenditure, “ takes more out of you,” than the continuous sustained attention when there is no distracting influence; therefore, I say there is something here beyond the automatic preponderance of motive—the mark and measure of the independent exertion of the will. Now this power, call it what we may, is capable of being strengthened by exercise—no power more so; neglected children being generally most deficient in it, and most carried away by their own impulses. No doubt a greater power of concentration is natural to some, and a greater mobility to others. But still I believe there is no healthy mind in which this power is not capable of being developed by training, just like the power of the limbs in walking. Its possession is the foundation of all intellectual discipline; without it we can do nothing good in intellectual study. Look, now, at the moral side, and see how it operates �there. We begin by saying, “ I ought not” to do so and SOj*—assuming a moral standard. Take the case, which is unfortunately so common a one, of a man who has a strong temptation to alcoholic indulgence. He .knows perfectly well that an habitual yielding to that temptation will be his ruin. I have heard of a man who said that if a glass of spirits was put before him, and he knew that the pit of hell was yawning between, he must take it. This is an instance of the overpowering attraction it has for some individuals ; but this generally results from habit; and it is over the formation of habits that the will can exert its greatest power, by fixing the attention on one set of motives to the exclusion of other motives. I do not say that a man can bring motives before his mind. He cannot do that— we can only take what comes into our minds; but he can direct his thoughts in a certain line, as it were, so as to find them. He can think of his family or the future, and 80 exclusively fix his attention on the consequences, as to withdraw it from the immediate attraction. That I take to be the best mode. A struggle goes on in the mind of many a man subject to temptation; but if he has strength of principle enough to resist the immediate tendency to wrong action, and so gets time to deliberate, he may thus Herve himself for the conflict. Many good resolutions are formed—we know what place is said to be paved with them and we hope to realise them. We determine in ourselves that we will avoid particular indulgences. We may have Some strong disposition to apply our powers to ill uses, to play some mean trick, or something of that kind. Most of us have temptations of self-interest—not less strong be­ cause not pecuniary,-—as to gain credit that does not belong to us, and so on. We hold back—•“ puli ourselves together ” is the phrase of the present time—and summon all our resolution and determination not to yield. There is some­ thing more, here, than mere preponderance of motive; for we determinately direct our attention to the reasons why we should or should not do the particular act. I believe that in such cases the mind is best withdrawn from the temptation, fixing the attention upon something else. That is the real secret of victory. By fixing our mind upon the object, and saying “I won’t do it.” the temptation still �32 keeps haunting us. I have known many a struggle of this kind relieved by the determination to follow an entirely different course. We know that in cases of insanity, where a man is led by, physical disorder to take a miserable view of everything relating to himself, the medical man sends him abroad, where he is attracted by a new set of objects —something which prevents his mind from brooding over his gloomy thoughts; and in that way, as his physical health improves, the man comes to feel that he can voluntarily transfer his attention from them to objects of interest round him. This, I believe, is the manner in which we should distract our minds from anything we feel and know to be unworthy of our attention;—we should find out something more worthy, and pursue it with determination. I ask you to take as your guiding star, as it were, in the conduct of your lives, these four words—“I am,” “ I ought,” “I can,” “I will.”—“I am” is the expression of reflection and self-consciousness, the looking-in upon our own trains of thought. If we do not feel “ I am" we do not think of ourselves and our own nature—we surrender ourselves. “ I ought"—expresses the sense of moral obligation. By steadily fixing our attention on the “I ought,” the course of action is first directed right, and its continuance m that path becomes habitual. “ Turn to the right and keep straight on,” and you will find the doing so easy in proportion. Every right act, every struggle of the will against wrong, is the exercise of a power which strengthens with use, and will make the next act easier to you. On the other hand, every time you surrender your will to the temptations of self-interest, or sensual gratification, or anything that turns you from the straight path, there is a loss of power which makes the next effort more difficult. Then, “I can"—the consciousness of power, is the foundation of all effort. And, lastly, it is not enough to say, “ I ought to do it, and I can do it,” but we must will to do it. The “ I am,” “ I ought,” “I can,” “I will,” of the Ego, can train the mental as well as the bodily Automaton, and make it do anything it is capable of executing. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The doctrine of human automatism : a lecture (with additions) delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, 7th March, 1875 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Carpenter, William Benjamin Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 32 p. : ill. ; 18 cm. Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sunday Lecture Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1875 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N116 Subject The topic of the resource Free will Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The doctrine of human automatism : a lecture (with additions) delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, 7th March, 1875), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Automatism NSS https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/33d79fd1fa6cacf3fafbaa4888d7fbf3.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=lg6NXBvTow3a98TsDpwvVvRXpl7MeUudwNJLLZTO0PynWUjxqwzdVmVP3TO678GI6uoyi3YqppEAxxh0W7flxZMMiVcCvwPRQFhzSqaL425NoTIzWJiQUqkJkphTJszg7HyZizBrgdu-rL6GA2QJAjlwtrQPLpESIcyNpvNL4VTo90IJ0TqCqM8EF6kPQ%7EVmA0jlCsazpTQkpn2LYgFwrLK90ORHp1-giH2kzhiwNSML994cJvZgcE4cFJqk6bKkkqpemDynsDI-cIayhcPN2Fu%7EWlV9MOhBKm7fdo%7EgToLOJOPZHQuikNSUECo4BKmhVn1Cfz6QfNLLHl6ExTBDsg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 6cd656c19d9a76899c129c9abd77f416 PDF Text Text CT 8} COMMON SOURCE OF ERROR IN SEEING AND BELIEVING. iCccturc DELIVERED BEFORE SUNDAY LECTURE THE SOCIETY, ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 27th FEBRUARY, 1881, By H. MAUDSLEY, M.D., PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. 1881. PRICE THREEPENCE. �Works by the same Author: “ The Pathology of Mind.” Being the Third Edition of the Second Part of the “ Physiology and Pathology of Mind,” re-cast, much enlarged, and re-written. In 8vo, price 18s. “The Physiology of Mind.” Being the First Part of a Third Edition, revised, enlarged, and re-written, of “ The Physiology and Pathology of Mind.” Crown 8vo, 10s. 6d. “ Body and Mind : ” An Inquiry into their connection and Mutual In­ fluence, especially with reference to Mental Disorders. Second Edition, enlarged and revised, with Psychological Essays added. Crown 8vo, 6s. 6d. Macmillan & Co., London. SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially iu their bearing upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind. , THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES ARE DELIVERED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely. (Annually—from November to May.) Twenty-four Lectures (in three series), ending 24th April, 1881, will be given. Members’ annual subscription, £1, entitles them to a ticket, transferable (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reserved-seat tickets, available for any lecture. Tickets for each series (one for each lecture)— To the Sixpenny Seats —2s., being at the rate of Threepence each lecture. For tickets, and the printed Lectures, and for list of all the Lectures published by the Society, apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, Payment at the door :—One Penny ■—Sixpence and (Reserved Seats) One Shilling. �SYLLABUS. 1. The influence of preconceived idea and of feeling to vitiate observation. Illustrations: a. Illusions of Sense. b. Hallucinations of Sense. c. Erroneous observation. d. Miracles. 2. The influence of feeling and belief to vitiate reasoning. a. Individuals. b. In communities. 3. The relation of feeling to intellect in the progress of the race. �.a c>i til* ol '. ' ' n 1 ,S ■ '. 1>. MCOih Io feflui ifU'.’ftU > I. .1’.' i|j,7 HW»fo -‘SK ,«> ,V . pail •<! '!u •rwsf'fyii J - - .mJiuHina.' 7 ’ v « .6 » * ■■ ',< ) 'uouMnwIT �COMMON SOURCE OF ERROR IN SEEING AND BELIEVING. PROPOSE not in this lecture to enumerate and discuss all the mistakes which we are liable to make when we see and draw conclusions from what we see—all the fallacies, that is to say, to which observation and reasoning are exposed; I purpose only to note and illustrate now one very common and prolific source of wrong observation and inference. It is certain we do not see and judge rightly by instinct; too often, although we have eyes, we see not truly, and although we have reason, we use it to come to wrong conclusions. Reason, we know, man claims as his almost exclusive prerogative, defining himself—for he has that advantage over other animals—as pre-eminently the reasoning animal; and one need not cavil at the definition so long as it is not understood to mean that everybody reasons rightly, or even commonly bases his beliefs upon reason. To say of the great majority of persons that they reason at all in the highest sense of the word is to say what is not true, since their opinions are plainly either got by inheritance, or engrafted by education, or moulded by particular life-experiences, or imposed by authority of some kind, and are then worn by them, as they wear their clothes, after the fashion. Governed by their habits of opinion as they are by their habits of life they find it as hard a matter to change the one as to change the other. If all men reasoned truly and adequately on every subject, it is evident that all men would be agreed, which is not quite the case; we should not be meeting here this afternoon to broach opinions which will not be perhaps in harmony with those which have been preached from a thousand pulpits this morning; the heresy of yesterday would not be, as it often is, the common sense of to-day, and the common sense of to-day the nonsense of to-morrow; the majority would not have found it necessary to stone, burn, poison, cut asunder, crucify, or otherwise silence the voices of the few who, in the succession of the ages, have not I �6 Common Source of Error in failed to appear from time to time to inspire and to raise men to higher planes of thought and duty; the world would have been without the history of its noble army of martyrs of humanity. This being so, it is a good thing, I think, from time to time to make a particular study of the common errors to which we are liable in observation and thinking, and to take note how far wrong they may carry us. My attention is drawn often and forcibly to this matter, because, in the course of my professional work, I meet with persons who, of sound understanding in respect of all ordinary matters, entertain some extraordinary delusions in respect of one or two subjects, and cannot be convinced of their errors by the plainest evidence and argument. Naturally one asks oneself how it comes to pass that they form and entertain notions which are absurd to the common sense of mankind, holding to them in the face of conclusive disproof, and notwithstanding that they cannot find a single person in the world to agree with them. The vulgar saying is that they have “ lost their senses,” but it is not so; their senses are in full work, but somehow they fail to perform their proper offices. In seeking the explanations of these remarkable distractions of mind one comes to perceive that, after all, these people have only carried to an extreme pitch, to an insane height, a kind of faulty observation and reasoning which is common enough among persons who are not in the least out of their minds. ’Tis not true perhaps, as is sometimes said, that everybody is a little mad, but it is true -that everybody makes day by day the same sort of errors in observation and reasoning as those which lead madmen to their delusions. I go at once to the heart of what I have to say by laying down the broad proposition that in looking at things a person sees what he believes he sees, not necessarily that which really is : his notion of what he sees may correspond with the reality or not, but in any case he does not see the reality purely ; he sees it through the idea or notion which he has of it. Had I been born blind, and were my eyes opened at this moment for the first time to see a human face before me, I should not know it to be such by my sense of sight alone: I know a human face, when I see it, only because of the training in seeing which has been going on ever since I was born, the unceasing, if unconscious, education which I have had. The idea has been organised gradually in my mind— abstract, so to speak, from a multitude of impressions—and when it is stirred into activity by the proper impression made upon sight it instantly interprets that impression, so that I recognise �Seeing and Believing. 7 the object. * If my idea were very active and at the same time did not fit the reality, it might mislead sight, making me mistake the identity of a face which I saw—just as Don Quixote, possessed with his fixed idea of giants and enchanted castles, mistook the sails of a windmill for the arms of a giant—or even, in a more extreme case, making me actually see a face where there was no face at all. You have perhaps seen a person who has been put into what is called the mesmeric state and noticed the extraordinary illusions which he can be made to suffer: the operator bids him take a glass of simple water, assuring him at the same time that it is exceedingly bitter and nasty, and he forthwith spits it out as if it were poison, with every expression of disgust; he is told that a wasp is buzzing about his face and he instantly makes frantic movements to strike it away; he is introduced to a stranger as his mother or sister and he immediately embraces her. There is scarcely a mistake of sense, however extravagant, of which he may not be made the victim if he is duly susceptible and the operator skilful and confident. Now what is it which takes place ? This: the idea suggested by the operator becomes so very active in the subject’s mind, takes such exclusive possession of it, that all other ideas are inhibited or silenced; they are inactive, in abey­ ance, asleep, so to speak, unable therefore to comment upon or correct it; accordingly the person sees, hears, or otherwise per­ ceives all impressions through the active idea, which interprets them instantly into the language of its own nature : being the only part of the mind which is then sensible to stimulus and in function, it cannot of necessity reveal anything which it does notice but in terms of itself. The person does not see the real thing but his notion of what the real thing is and that does not in this case accord with what really is. Here then is an experiment which plainly shows us that an idea in the mind may reach such a pitch of exclusive activity as to put to silence other ideas and to completely befool the senses. It is what happens also to the mad­ man who, having the delusion that he is the victim of a malignant persecution, sees or hears his persecutors pursue or threaten him where no one else can see or hear anything of them. I now go a step further and note that something of the same sort takes place in dreams. When we are asleep we see nothing * The common saying that “seeing is believing” may then be applied in a double sense—not alone in the understood sense that we believe by what we see, but also in the sense that we see by what we believe. �8 Common Source of Error in outside us: our eyes being shut it is impossible we should ; never­ theless we do see very remarkable scenes if we dream, seeing them too as if they were outside us and more vividly perhaps than we do see real things when we are awake. What happens is that the thoughts of the dreamer as they occur to him become instantly visible as sensory presentations ; the idea of a thing, so soon as it becomes active, takes form as the sensible object, is translated into the outward reality; the idea of a person, for example, becomes the seen person, the idea of a voice the heard voice. >80 before the dreamer’s eyes as a visible pageant, a scenic show, moves the train of succeeding ideas; it is as if each vague thought which came into the mind as we walked along the street absorbed in reverie was visible as an actual scene ; in which case it is plain we should be surrounded by an ideal world which would be the real world to us, while the real world would be faint and shadowy or quite unperceived. Now this happens the more easily in dreams for two reasons—first, because the active idea has for the time almost exclusive possession of the mind, the rest of it being asleep, and, secondly, because the closure of the senses by sleep to all outward things, preventing that distraction of them by other objects which is taking place more or less during waking even in the deepest reverie, leaves them at the mercy of the idea. Here there is another instance where an idea or notion vividly experi­ enced imposes itself upon sense, becomes an actual hallucination. Take another case: people don’t see ghosts nowadays when they go through churchyards by night, as they used often to do in olden times. Why is that ? It is because, not believing in ghosts, they do not expect to see them: they have not in their minds the idea of a ghost which may step solemnly forth from behind a tombstone or glide away like a guilty thing ashamed. ’Tis an instance of the excellent philosophy which is never wanting in Shakspeare, that he makes Hamlet see his father’s ghost at midnight, when the air is bitterly cold, not a mouse stirring, on the lonely and rocky platform before the castle of Elsinore, after he had been informed in solemnly impressive tones of its previous appearances, when he himself is there in a tremor of expectation to see it, and immedi­ ately after Horatio’s exclamation “ Look, my lord, it comes!” Again: there is an event which has happened sometimes to dying persons, well fitted to make a solemn and startling impres­ sion on those about them. When at the point of death or nearly so, the dying person, gazing intently before him, as if he saw some one there, may pronounce suddenly the name of a long dead �9 Seeing and Believing. Relative, exclaim perhaps “ Mother,” and soon after expire. Natu­ rally people suppose that the spirit of his dead mother has appeared to him, and are happy to think that he has joined in a better world those who were taken away from him in this world. So they take CQmfort to themselves when they lose by death one who is near and dear to them in the belief that although he shall not return to them they shall go to him. That may or may not be, but certainly the apparition is not proof of it, since it is no more than one of the hallucinations which a dying person is liable to have; for when he is near death and the failing functions of his brain portend their near impending extinction, wandering thoughts of the far distant past, impressions of childhood perhaps, seemingly long effaced, but never actually effaced, may flicker in the mind and, taking visible form as thoughts take form in dreams, be seen as visions. You will remember that Shakspeare makes Falstaff, when dying in a London tavern after a life of the most gross debauchery, a worn out old libertine, go back in this way to the memories of more innocent days and “babble of green fields.”* These broken reversions, as I may call them, are the last ebbing functions of the brain which, as Shakspeare puts it, then “ Doth by the idle comments that it makes Foretell the ending of mortality.” ' I might go on to multiply instances of this production of hallu­ cination by idea, since they are to be met with in all quarters. You have heard perhaps that there has lately been an apparition of the Virgin Mary at Lather Ignatius’s Monastery - of Llanthonev Abbey, which was seen first in a meadow by four boys of the Abbey, after that by a brother of the Abbey, and last of all by Father Ignatius himself. This is his account of what he saw:— “ About eight o’clock on Wednesday evening, the 15th inst. (after the last service of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin) we all * It is very doubtful, however, whether Shakspeare ever wrote what is now the received text. In the first authentic edition (1623) the words were not “ ’a babbled of green fields,” but “ a table of green fields,” which was nonsense. It was changed by an anonymous critic to “ ’a talked of green fields,” which Theobald altered into the present reading. Thirty years ago, however, an annotated copy of the edition of 1632 was found, which, among a great number of corrections of the text, substituted for “’a.table of green fields,” the words “on a table of green frieze ”—£<?., “ His nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of green frieze.” Dr. Newman makes use of these discrepancies for the purposes of his argument in Grammar of Assent (p. 265), and it is from him that I quote them. �10 Common Source of Error in came to the porch door. I held the processional crucifix. With me were the brothers, Mr. Bouse, and a gentleman from Oxford who had visited the Monastery for the purpose of endeavouring to see the vision. The boys were kneeling in front of us, Sister Janet was kneeling in the meadow. It was a very wet night. We were singing the ‘Aves.’ We had sung three ‘Aves ’ in honour of the Holy Trinity, and we had just finished a fourth to the Blessed Virgin, when, all of a sudden, when I was not expecting anything of the kind, I saw a tremendous outburst of light from the dark, heavy clouds over the farm building. It seemed to burst right upon the buildings. The light was all in bulging circles. In the very centre of the light there appeared, coming down upon us, a human form. It was a very commanding^ stately figure. I could only see sideways. The face was turned towards the bush. I could only see it momentarily, as it were in the 1 twinkling of an eye.’ But in that moment it stood out so distinctly and startling that I am sure that it was darker than the light. Had it been clothed in cloth of silver, or cloth of gold, it might have produced the same effect—the darkness against the light. There was an intense reality about the figure. It was momentary, as I before said, and yet it seemed that it might have been an hour’s vision, so intensely real was it. In the majesty of the figure, and in its being dark against the light, it reminded me of Dore’s picture, ‘The triumph of Christianity over Paganism.’ There were flashings of light about the figure. In a moment, as I looked, it vanished. Before it vanished it had appeared as if it would have descended upon the church door or the church roof. I feel sure that it must have been the figure of the Blessed Virgin, because, although I could not discern the dress it wore, I could see that it was fully draped; whereas in the visions which others have seen, when they have seen a male figure, it has always appeared with simply a cloth round the loins, as our Lord is represented in baptism, and at other times. I also feel sure that it was the Virgin, because the figure appeared immediately after we had sung the ‘ Ave ’ in her honour. The figure also had its face turned towards the bush, where our Ladye had first been seen. I have further confirmation in the fact that about two or three minutes afterwards the Blessed Virgin’s figure was seen by the gentleman who was watching with us, and by one of the boys, nearer to the ground.” * * South Wales Daily News, September 13th and 27th, 1880. �Seeing and Believing. 11 “ These,” he says, “ are extraordinary and absolute facts. The sceptic may and will scoff, but his scoffing will not explain or diminish the truth or supernatural character of these absolute and incontrovertible facts * * * No amount of contradiction, ridicule, or unbelief can alter the fact that Monday, August 30th, 1880, be­ tween the hours of 9 and 11 a.m., the Blessed Virgin appeared in dazzling light to four boys and did what no earthly being could do before their eyes.”. With such positive and incontrovertible testi­ mony of eye-witnesses, are you of so little faith as to doubt that the Blessed Virgin appeared ? Probably you have great doubts, as I have; and perhaps I may venture to think that I shall carry your sympathetic doubts with me in my sceptical interpretation of another vivid vision of an apparition in circumstances particularly favourable to its occurrence. The vision in this case happened to a woman whom we may believe to have been predisposed in some measure to hallucination, since we are told of her that she had once had seven devils cast out of her; a story which, in modern scientific interpretation, means that she had once been insane and had recovered. In all likelihood, therefore, she was one of those persons, susceptible or sensitive, as mesmerists call them, whose unstably balanced nervecentres were easily liable to take on that sort of irregular action which issues in hallucination and delusion. The woman I refer to is Mary Magdalene, who visited the sepulchre of Christ on the third day aft.er His burial, and who, according to the gospel of St. John, saw two angels in white sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain. I say accord­ ing to John, because the stories of the resurrection told by the writers of the different gospels differ considerably in details; amongst other things, not agreeing as to whether there was one angel or whether there were two angels, or as to the persons who saw the apparition or apparitions. Discrepancies in the stories of supernatural phenomena are not of course to be wondered at; they are the natural results of an inspiration more than natural pouring itself into natural channels. Those, however, whose understandings are informed by observation and experience of nature, not by inspiration from outside nature, may suspect perhaps that Mary Magdalene, having an excitable brain, was the victim of a hallucination. She ran to the sepulchre in hot excite­ ment, eagerly expectant to see something extraordinary, and she saw something extraordinary: a flitting impression on sight, pro­ bably the “ linen clothes lying there, and the napkin that was �12 Common Source of Error in about the head not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself,” suggested two angels, and the ideas of the angels so suggested took visible form, dominating the sense, just as the gleaming whiteness of a tombstone suggesting the idea of a ghost to the walker through a churchyard by night was trans­ formed instantly into a ghost. This dominion of the idea over the senses, which has its con­ summate effect in the production of hallucination, is really the most fruitful source of error and defect in common observation, an ever active, and never to be neglected, cause of fallacy. Men see not the reality purely, but see it in the coloured light of the notions which they have of it. Hence no two persons see an event exactly alike; two witnesses go into the witness-box and give widely different accounts of the same transaction at which they were present together ; two newspaper reporters, of different politics, believing themselves sincere and truthful, send home to their respective employers nearly opposite accounts of the same occurrences; in each case there is the individual mind behind the eye. Has any one got a belief, no matter how he got it—whether through his understanding, as he flatters himself he gets all his beliefs, or through his feelings, as he actually gets most of them—his mind yields willing access to all facts which are in keeping with it, and very Unwilling access to any fact which does not consist with it, insomuch that the belief comes to determine much of what he sees, to govern his actual observation of things. The stronger, more­ over, the feeling associated with a preconceived idea or belief, the more completely does it rule sense and vitiate observation. What infatuated lover ever fails to see “ Helen’s beauty in a brow of -Egypt?” What excited onlooker at a spectacle of horror could ever give an accurate account of it ? At one time it was a firmlyrooted superstition that the wounds on the body of a murdered person would bleed afresh when the murderer was made to touch the corpse, and witnesses testified frequently to having seen that happen. Two respectable clergymen, for example, swore at a trial in the time of Charles I. (1628-9) that the body having been taken out of the grave and laid on the grass, thirty days after death, and one of the parties accused of murder required to touch it, “ the brain of the dead began to have a dew or gentle sweat arise on it, which increased by degrees till the sweat ran down in drops on the face; the brow turned to a lively flesh-colour, and the deceased opened one of her eyes and shut it again ; and this opening of the eye was done three several times ; she likewise thrust out the ring, �Seeing and Believing. 13 or marriage finger, three times, and pulled it in again; and the finger dropped blood from it on the grass.” Here was evidence against the accused which, if true, must have convinced even him that he ought to be hanged. Of course, it was not true ; the witnesses, however, were not wilfully or wittingly deceiving, they were themselves deceived; they saw not the real thing, but the imagination of what the real thing was. One may be permitted to judge, by this example, of the value of the unsifted testimony of the believer who has seen a miracle. ’Tis not that he has really seen a miracle, but that. he has made a miracle of what he has mis-seen. It may be urged perhaps in respect of miracles that it is ex­ tremely improbable, if not impossible, that several persons attest­ ing them could be deceived in the same way at the same time. On the contrary, nothing more easy in certain circumstances : a great wave of emotion passing through a number of people, as emotion does pass by the quick infection of sympathy, will carry belief with it and make them see and testify to a quite impossible occurrence. Hence miracles have always abounded where there was a great fever of religious enthusiasm. The greater the heat of feeling the less the coolness of observation and the more plentiful the mira­ cles. Nay, it needs not much heat of feeling to see a miracle if a number of persons be collected together intently expecting to see something extraordinary happen: the ghost .seldom fails to appear where the spectators are gathered together to see it. Every religion has had its miracles and its multitudinous witnesses to them. We do not believe it any the more on that account; we ought indeed to believe it rather the less, since the miracle is pre­ sumption, if not proof, of bad observation by the witnesses. The lowest religion will have the most miracles, a higher religion will have few of them, and the highest of all will probably have none at ail. What we may fairly conclude from the testimony of hot believers is that, by reason of their strong belief, they were not witnesses to be depended upon, as observers. The interest of miracles at this day, I take it, is not that which could attach to an occurrence out of the fixed order of nature, but that which attaches to the study of the defective, irregular, or actually morbid action of the human brain, especially under conditions of unusual excite­ ment ; it is not whether the body of a dead man which had lain in the grave until it had begun to putrefy came to life again, but why people thought and said so. When the belief in miracles has become extinct they will be received by psychology into its domain �14 Common Source of Error in and they will be of lasting interest there. Indeed, it will be a most instructive study of the future to elucidate and set forth the exact relations of beliefs in supernatural phenomena to defective or morbid functions of the brain. Supernaturalism will take its proper place as an interesting chapter in psychology. Thus much then with regard to the action which idea may exert upon the senses; an action plainly so strong sometimes as to sub­ due them into a complete subjection to it. In any case it is almost impossible for one who has a preconceived notion in his mind to help seeing in an event that only which is agreeable to the notion, that which sorts or suits with it. Those who have not thought of this tendency as an active source of fallacy in observation, and realised how deeply, widely, constantly and unconsciously it works are not qualified to weigh the value of testimony; they are like those who should accept without question an assertion that the trees and grass were blue from one who was looking at the country through blue spectacles. To denote, moreover, this action of idea upon sense vaguely as imagination or even as mental carries us no further forward ; to rest satisfied there is simply to make a word do duty for a conception; there is neither explanation nor definite meaning in the statement. Whether we like it or not, we shall have to acknowledge, first or last, that the process is at bottom physical, and that we can have no explanation worth thinking about until we find out what the physical basis is. Unhappily we are yet a long way from that discovery; we must be satisfied for the present to figure grossly to ourselves what takes place in the intimate, most delicate and hidden operations of nerve molecules, by the help of conceptions derived from the grosser operations in physics which we can observe and manipulate. When the impres­ sion on sense vibrates to the same note as the idea, we may say, it is perceived and intensifies the idea—that is to say, is assimilated mentally; when it does not vibrate in unison with it there is no response, it is not perceived; the active idea responds to the note that is in harmony with it, just as the string of a harp gives back in consonant vibrations its proper note when that note is struck near it. I proceed now to mark the operation of the same sort of error in the higher region of thought—in reasoning, that is, about what we get from the senses when we have got the facts correctly. Even then we are liable to go all wrong in the opinions or infer­ ences which we form. The predominant bias sways the judgment. Two persons shall have the same facts presented to them, and �Seeing and Believing. 15 shall not differ as to the facts, yet it is notorious that they will, according to the bias of their respective opinions, feelings, interests, differ widely in the conclusions they draw from them, just as two judges will give very unequal sentences for the same kind of offence. How is it that the one sees a conclusion plainly and thinks the other, who does not see it, blinded by prejudice to the most obvious truth?' The reason of course is that each looks at the circumstances from his own standpoint, and sees only or mainly that which is in accord with the bias of his mind, over­ looking that which is not; he sees vividly the reasons which support his opinion, and which the other sees dimly or not at all; he sees only dimly, or not at all, the reasons which go counter to it, and which the other sees vividly. Now, how would a third person, undertaking to bring these two to the same conclusion, go about to accomplish it ? Certainly he would not treat them as purely reasoning beings, and encourage them to go on arguing, by which they would only heat themselves the more, but he would handle each as if he was anything but an exact reasoning being; he would not consider only the truth of what he had to say to him, but would take account of his feelings, principles, prejudices, character, and endeavour to bring this truth into the best relations possible with these predominant lines of disposition, making it pleasing or agreeable—that is to say, able to agree—and so to get it accepted; he would in fact persuade by agreeing more than by convincing, remembering the adage— “ A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still.” Dealing in this insinuating way with both he brings them gently and skilfully over their difference to the same conclusion, and that the right conclusion if the affair be properly managed. One must have the feelings of a person engaged in favour of reason before he can see reason, must prejudice him in favour of an argument before he can feel the force of it. Is not this a proof how very far man is from being the good reasoning machine which he imagines himself? There is not a day, not an hour of the day perhaps, in any one’s life which does not yield examples of this sort of biassed or one-sided perception and reasoning. The moods of the moment notably colour strongly our views of the character or issue of an event, notwithstanding that the dry light of reason ought to demonstrate a plain and certain conclusion. Optimism or pessi­ mism is a matter of temperament, not of reason ; life-despair may �16 Common Source of Error in be the intellectual expression, and suicide the outcome in act, of deranged organic feeling in a sadly tuned temperament. In that extreme state of morbid depression of mind which we call melancholia the sufferer cannot perceive a ray of hope, a glimmer of comfort anywhere; he sees every undertaking, every scheme, moving towards the same goal of ruin; he can follow the argu­ ments which prove that his fears are groundless, but they produce no effect upon him ; they reach his understanding, but they do not touch his gloom-enshrouded heart, and accordingly they “no more avail than breath against the wind.” Assuredly we credit ourselves with a great deal larger measure of reason in the forma­ tion and change of our beliefs than ever enters into them. On the one hand, strong and convincing argument will sometimes not compel belief; on the other hand, a change will sometimes take place in an individual’s belief, while the reasons in favour of it are as strong as ever; as Cardinal Newman has remarked, he does not know how or when the belief has gone, but he finds out some day that it is gone ; the perception of the old argument remains, but some change in feeling in himself arising out of condition, age, interests, occupation, &c., has worked a change of belief. I shall not go on now to give any more illustrations from individual experience, because I am anxious, in the time which remains at my disposal, to point out how this source of error in reasoning infects the belief of whole peoples, and leads them to the most illogical conclusions. Do we not oftentimes see nations swept by epidemics of feeling and belief, good or bad ? Have wars been rational undertakings, or have they not been, in nine cases out of ten, the results of insane suspicion and insaner folly ? When one looks quietly back at the history of man’s thoughts and doings upon earth, considering at the same time his claim to be pre-eminently a reasoning animal, it is impossible to help being amazed at the utterly irrational belief which pro­ fessedly rational beings have formed and sincerely cherished. More wonder, perhaps, that as they were so irrational as to form and hold them they were ever rational enough to get rid of them. It may be said, no doubt, that as they got better knowledge they abandoned them, but I doubt whether knowledge has nearly so much to do directly with human progress as we are in the easy habit of assuming. It has always been as positive a piece of knowledge as it is now that every one must die—that to be mortal is not to be immortal—and that when a person is dead and buried he does not come to life again ; that certainly is as long and sure �Seeing and Believing. 17 an experience as human beings have had, since it dates from the beginning of experience ; yet, in spite of that experience, the greater part of those ranking amongst the most civilized and enlightened of the earth, and marking therefore the highest water­ mark of human progress, solemnly believe at this moment that there have been men who have not died, and others who, after being dead, have come to life again. And at great expense, and through many perils, they send missionaries into all parts of the earth to teach that wisdom to those whose sad ignorance of it they compassionate. The very creed of the Christian is that the God whom he worships became a man, was crucified on the cross, died and was buried, and on the third day rose again and ascended into heaven. That is a matter of solemn belief, but can we truly say that it is a matter of rational knowledge ? Looked at in the dry light of the understanding, we must admit that there could not well be a doctrine more improbable, more revolting to reason. How it strikes the unbiassed minds of those who have not been trained from youth upwards to accept it we know by the experience of the Jesuit missionaries in China, who found the dogma of a crucified God so great an obstacle in the way of conversions that they quietly suppressed it; they preached Jesus Christ triumphant, not Jesus Christ crucified. It is beyond question then that there is in man a power deeper and stronger than knowledge which decides in some cases what he shall believe, and that the most complete contradiction of observation and reason which it is possible to conceive can be accepted as a solemn truth, if it be in harmony with the prevailing tone or feeling of mind. Thereupon all the powers of the understanding are brought into play, not to prove it by a searching trial of its worth, but in order to find out reasons why it should be believed. Meanwhile, all the reasons in the world against it will not seriously touch it so long as there is no fundamental change of feeling : when that takes place, how­ ever, the whole fabric of belief tumbles easily to pieces without any serious assault being made upon it. So far from rational im­ probability being a difficulty to theological faith, the greater the mystery the greater the faith of the true believer, until he reaches the logical climax of sublime credulity in the acceptance of Tertullian’s maxim—Credo quia impossible est, I believe it because it is impossible. Look back for a moment at the beginnings of Christianity. How little had knowledge to do with its origin and progress I It was born of the heart, not of the understanding of mankind, in the �18 Common Source of Error in stable not in the Academy or the Lyceum. The great and learned of that time looked down on it with scorn as a pernicious supersti­ tion, and it found acceptance among the poor and ignorant, the publicans and sinners. * Let us note well the meaning of that: the greatest revolutionary—or rather evolutionary—force which has moved human society was not the product of the intellect, but was an outcome of a glowing feeling of the universal brotherhood of mankind; a feeling so deep and strong and true that it has inspired and kept alive to this day many beliefs which outrage the understanding. Can we believe then that the next great revolu­ tionary force which shall move society afresh will spring from the understanding and be governed by its rules? It needs little reflection, I think, to show that a great social reform will never come from a Senate or a House of Lords or other sort of upper chamber, however cultivated and benevolent its members. No; the impulse will come deep out of the heart of the people, announcing itself many times beforehand no doubt in blind yearnings, in wild explosions of social discontent, perhaps in reck­ less uprisings of turbulence and violence, a great unreflecting force, which it should be the function of intelligence to guide in the right way. You may stop a revolution which has been hatched in the intellect, by cutting off the heads of the few who have knowledge ; you will never stop a revolution which has been bred in the heart of the people by cutting off their heads. Instead of denouncing wildly the social interest and visionary aspirations which find outlets in communistic, socialistic, nihilistic, and similar doctrines and disorders, it would be more wise to try to understand their meaning; since it may be they are the blind, * “ It is profitable to remind ourselves,” says Dr. Newman, “ that our Lord Himself was a sort of smith, and made ploughs and cattle-yokes. Four Apostles were fishermen, one a petty-tax collector, two husbandmen, one is said to have been a coachman, and another a market gardener.” Peter and John are spoken of as “illiterate men and of the lower sort.” Their converts were of the same rank. They are, says Celsus, “ weavers, shoe­ makers, fullers, illiterate clowns.” “ Fools, low-born fellows,” says Trypho. “ Men collected from the lowest dregs of the people ; ignorant, credulous women; ” “ unpolished, boors, illiterate, ignorant even of the sordid arts of life; they do not understand civil matters, how can they understand divine ? ” says Ccecilius. “ They deceive women, servants and slaves,” says Julian. The Fathers themselves give similar testimony as to their brethren. “ Ignorant men, mechanics, and old women,” says Athenagoras. “They are gathered,” says Jerome, “not from the Academy or the Lyceum, but from the low populace.” Of meaner sort and more de­ spised than the Communisis of Paris; and yet they overturned the world! �Seeing and Believing. 19 instinctive, dimly prophetic impulses of a truth which, coming from the suffering and brooding heart of society, lies deeper than knowledge and which knowledge will one day have to reckon with. No man’s intellect measures his character; from the un­ fathomed depths of his being comes not only that which he shall feel and do but in great measure also that which he shall think. So it is with humanity as a whole. It is feeling which inspires and stirs its great pulses, the intellect fashioning the moulds into which the feeling shall flow. How momentously important then that the people should have understanding, should learn know­ ledge, so that neither craft of superstition, nor craft of ruler, nor any other craft may again take possession of its forces and turn them to its profit I We are so comfortably confident of the stability of our progress in these days that we do not give the heed we should to the lessons of the past and consider seriously, as we might well do from time to time, to what destructive issues uninstructed popular feeling may one day carry us. There can be little doubt that each of the mighty nations of the past believed that its kingdom would endure and that it was impossible its gains should ever be lost to man­ kind. But Home, and Greece, and Egypt are now but the shadows of great names, and the once powerful Empires of the East have disappeared so completely that even the places where their mighty cities stood are hardly known. We may be sure that there were sagacious men in each of these dead nations who fore­ saw the end, perceived the causes that were leading straight to it, and raised their unregarded voices in warning to the people. But it is the eternal fate of Cassandra to be unheeded. In vain are the most obvious truths preached to a people possessed by an impulse of feeling with which they are not in harmony ; the nation which is declining to its fall is as deaf to the admonitions of the few thoughtful men who perceive and try to stay its course of folly as it is blind to the plainest lessons of its own experience; elementary principles of morality and the commonest maxims of prudence go down alike before the current of feeling, and the audacious charlatan who most cleverly flatters, fans, and directs its sentiments is acclaimed and obeyed as a hero. This has always been so, and it would be taking much too hopeful a view of human nature to believe that it will not be so again. In spite of all the gains of modern knowledge, which we think so certain, but which, after all, are the real work and possession of only a few, it is not at all out of the range of possible occurence that a �20 Common Source of Error in great turbid wave of superstition may overflow and overwhelm our civilization, as other civilizations have been overwhelmed before it. Do you think perhaps that the foundations of modern knowledge are laid so deep and sure that it is incredible that they should ever be swept away ? Well, it is a very sanguine belief: one might have thought it as sure a truth as could well be that a person once dead will not come to life again, but while multitudes believe the opposite of that very plain experience, are the foundations of belief so very sure ? xMen are not moved by knowledge, let me say again, but by feeling, and were a strong wave of superstitious feeling to pass through them they would see and believe nothing that was not in harmony with it, would see and believe every­ thing that was in harmony with it, would move on, until it was spent, a huge devastating force, so far as pure reason was concerned. There is something too much of complacent self-deception in the loud praise which we give to pure truth and in the high-flown devo­ tion which we loudly profess to it; we make up by our theoretical enthusiasm for it for much practical dislike and intolerance of it. Truth is not so acceptable as illusion, since we live in perpetual illusion, deceived and deceiving. We seem what we are not, and make others believe that we think them what they are not. No one speaks the truth sincerely to another, or talks of him in his presence as he does in his absence. There is no one who would not think himself grossly insulted if he had truth told of him, nor would any one who adopted the practice of speaking the truth always find it easy to keep himself out of an asylum. We hate the speaker of truth, although the truth which hurts our self-love may be most useful to us;. and love the flatterer, although we know the flattery to be false and injurious. The ardent profession which we make of a love of pure truth is itself a comfortable illusion which we create for ourselves. From cradle to grave we are occu­ pied—wisely, I dare say—in nursing our illusions, putting away one, when we have worn it out, to take up another more fitting the new desires which experience and years give us. If a person really believed at the outset of life, as he knows at the end of it, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, would he have sufficient motive to live ? Had there been no illusory prospect of Elysian fields, or happy hunting grounds, or other sort of paradise beyond the miseries of this world, where those who had suffered much and unjustly here might hope to find recompense, one may doubt almost whether faith in virtue could have been kept alive, whether �* ‘Seeing and Believing. 21 the social organism would have held together ; at any rate, thou­ sands of dreary lives would have been more dreary than they were, thousands of self-sacrifices of work, of wealth, of duty, would never have been made, the hopes, aspirations, and prayers which have consoled and sustained thousands of heavy-laden hearts would not have been. What then will be the consequence if science, as it seems to threaten, shatters these hopes as illusions ? Will the multitude be able to bear the pain, to face the fearful void, of so great a loss ? Will man be able to live what the Bishop of Peter­ borough has described lately as. “ a joyless existence, uncheered by the hope of a happier hereafter, undignified by the consciousness of divine descent and the heirship of immortality,” if science makes him sincerely realise, as it seems to be going to work to do, that he has no hope whatever of a happier hereafter, that his descent is not divine but simian, that his last heirship is the corruption of the grave ? Will not the bereaved people, craving for something to satisfy the needs of the heart which knowledge cannot give, fly for refuge in despair to some creed or church in which they may find again the hopes, and consolation, and support of which they have been robbed ? Here lies the strength of the position of the Church of Rome. Possessing an organization the most complete which the world has ever known, served by its ministers with a devotion which counts nothing gain that is not its gain, inspired with the theory that the meanest human soul is worthy of all its energies, it offers what seems a safe haven of refuge in the midst of the surging tur­ moil of doubts, perplexities, and despair, the perfect rest of absolute truth delivered into its keeping from the beginning: Come unto me, might be its cry, all ye that are weary of spirit, with many doubts and heavyladen of heart with the burden of your fears, and I will give yon rest. * It is admirably adapted by its organi­ * “ Thus it is sometimes spoken of as a hardship that a Catholic is not allowed to inquire into the truth of his Creed ; of course he cannot if he would retain the name of believer. He cannot be both inside and outside of the Church at once. It is merely common sense to tell him that, if he is seeking, he has not found. If seeking includes doubting, and doubting excludes believing, then the Catholic who sets about inquiring thereby declares that he is not a Catholic. He has already lost faith.” J. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent. p. 184. “ For, since we have the truth, and truth cannot change, how can we possibly change in our belief, except indeed through our own weakness or. fickleness.” p. 186. �22 Common Source of Error in zation, its ordinances, and its doctrine to respond to all the appeals of the weak side of human nature. And I make no doubt many will flee to it in the coming conflicts. But not of the people, we may predict; not of the masses which constitute the foundation and strength of the social organism. Its converts will come from the tired votaries of fashion, weary of the dreary frivolities of their lives, and eager to replace their exhausted desires by new sentiments; from those who are educated enough to perceive difficulties and perplexities of thought, without being courageous and capable enough to face them sincerely and to think them out thoroughly; from those again who, in the mortal struggle of new thought for existence, have not the strength of understanding and character to stay through the course, but falling by the wayside, eagerly in their need lay hold of the helping hand which authority holds out to them. These and the like are the classes from which its converts will mainly come. The strong pulsations of popular feel­ ing which make themselves felt in different nations, have no affini­ ties with the Church of Rome nor has it shown the least sympathy with them ; on the contrary they are essentially hostile to it, since it has committed what seems to an outsider the fatal mistake of allying itself with caste, privilege, power, and of alienating the great liberal forces with which lies the determination of the future : Catholic in name it has lost all claim to be Catholic in fact. It is a rash thing to prophesy, but if I may venture a prophesy here, it is that it will be by these great popular forces, not by the knowledge of the learned, that it will be overthrown in the final struggle. The French Revolution, momentous as an event, was perhaps more momentous as a prophesy. If what I have said thus far be true, what is the function of those who have faith in the future of mankind, who are sanguine enough to nurse enthusiastic hopes of its glorious destiny ? As­ suredly to work well together, while it is time, to enlighten the giant, so that when he puts forth his strength he may use it wisely, to give him the understanding to direct his might in the right way. Although intellect does not move the world it should guide directly the forces which do move it, and so modify indirectly, as it will by degrees, the deeper sources in which they take their instinctive origin. One thing is certain whatever else may be doubtful: that the true and honest method to pursue is directly the opposite of that which the Churches have striven to enforce ; it is not to incul­ cate credulity, to stifle doubt, to foster prej udice, in order that the beliefs which are may continue to be. That method we know to be �Seeing and Believing. 23 false. It is to seek truth and pursue it, at whatever cost, whether it bring us sorrow or joy, peace or tribulation. Doubt, be it never so disquieting, must go before enquiry, and enquiry before the discovery of new truth. Scepticism is guilt in the eyes only of those who fear truth, since it is the essential prerequisite of it. It is impossible to foresee what fate the future has in store for the race of man on earth; one may fain hope a more peaceful and happy career than that which he has had in the past, since to look back through his history from the beginning unto now is to look back through succeeding chapters of wars, treachery, tortures, cruelties and atrocities of all sorts and degrees by which “ man’s inhumanity to man” has “made countless thousands mourn;” a spectacle of horrors so appalling that, could we compass it in imagination, it might well warrant the belief, if matters ended now, of a malevo­ lent, not a benevolent, scheme of creation. We shall do well to cherish the hope, or if not the hope the illusion, that matters will not end here; that a brighter day will come when knowledge and peace shall spread through the whole earth, and man’s humanity to man leave few to mourn; that the past traditions of a golden age, when all was plenty and peace, and the later aspirations for a Paradise to come, in which sorrow and sin shall be no more, may be not entire fable and illusion, but essentially dim fore­ feelings, the prophetic instincts, of that which one day shall have a measure of fulfilment upon earth. �SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. The SOCIETY’S LECTURES NOW PRINTED are .— Miss Mary E. Beedy. On “Joint Education of Young Men and Women in the American Schools and Colleges.” Rev. J. F. Blake. On “The Geological Results of Arctic Exploration.” Professor G. S. Boulger. On “The Physiological Unity of Plants and Animals.” Professor Clifford. On “ The bearing of Morals on Religion.” On “Right and Wrong; the scientific ground of their distinction.” Mr. T. W. Rhys Davids. On “ Is life worth having ? and the eternal Hope. An Answer from Buddha’s First Sermon.” Mr. W. H. Domvtlle. On “ The Rights and Duties of Parents in regard to their children’s religious education and beliefs.” With notes. Mr. A. Elley Finch. On “The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the Development of the Human Mind.” With woodcut illustrations. On “ Civilization; its modern safeguards and future prospects.” On “The Principles of Political Economy; their scientific basis, and practical application to Social Well-being.” On “The English Freethinkers of the Eighteenth Century.” On “ The Science of Life Worth Living.” On “The Victories of Science in its Warfare with Superstition.” Rev. J. Panton Ham. On “The Stage and Drama in relation to Society.” Professor W. A. Hunter. On “A sketch of the English Law of Heresy past and present.” Mr. M. Macfie. On “ The impending contact of Turanian and Aryan Races;—the Physical and Economic results of Chinese migrations to the West.” On “ Religious Parallelisms and Symbolisms, Ancient and Modern.” Dr. H. Maudsley. On “ Lessons of Materialism.” On “ The Physical Basis of Will.” On “ Common Source of Error in Seeing and Believing.” Mrs. Fenwick Miller. “ The Lessons of a Life :—Harriet Martineau.” Dr. Andrew Wilson. On “ The Origin of Nerves.” Dr. G. G. Zerffi. On “ The spontaneous dissolution of Ancient Creeds.” On “ Dogma and Science.” On “ The Eastern Question; from a Religious and Social point of view.” On “ Jesuitism, and the Priest in Absolution.” On “ Pre-Adamites ; or, Prejudice and Science.” On “ Long and short Chronologists.” On “ The Origin of Christianity from a strictly historical point of View.” The price of each of the above Lectures is 3d., or post-free 3)d. Mr. A. Elley Finch. On “The Pursuit of Truth.” Cloth 8vo„ pp. 106. “ The Inductive Philosophy.” Cloth 8vo„ pp. 100. The price of each of these Lectures is 5s., or post-free 5s. 3d. Two vols. of Lectures (1st and 3rd Selection), cloth-bound, price 5s. each, or post-free 5s. 6d., contain Lectures otherwise out of print, viz.: by the late Mr. Geo. Browning and Professor Clifford, and by Dr. Carpenter, Mr. Clodd, Mr. Edward Maitland, Mr. Plumptre, and Dr. Zerffi. Table of contents of these vols. sent on application. Can be obtained (on remittance, by letter, of postage stamps or order) of the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domvtlle, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W., or at the Hall on the days of Lecturi; or ofTAv. J. Bumpus, Bookseller, 158, Oxford Street, W. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Common source of error in seeing and believing : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 27th February, 1881 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Maudsley, Henry [1835-1918] Description An account of the resource Place of Publication: London Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Presented in Memory of Dr. Moncure D. Conway by his children, July Nineteen hundred & eight. Includes bibliographical references. List of Sunday Society Society lectures on back page. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sunday Lecture Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1881 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N477 CT87 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Common source of error in seeing and believing), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Christianity Bible Christian church Conway Tracts Fallacies Miracles New Testament https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/9a37a3f696a36f81f173b2ca39aa333d.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=igrFi5Q%7Eok3uHUvQxCvDLo3FFI-Ded51Tspy7lAW9TJrjs5LxFIdVLk7w5QX-JSK8uoxuyC-xVqO58m2c%7EYYrsJNiVnsLKq4M4wrooYgyHEbCMy8wu-jFNrzUNlHwFTOoXLPEqxLEniFWjTwqcPw3JM4XbDlk3vLdQUyhvyXorBgBUqVspMMb7gadceAjreUNNPJBm6JbM92f3lfqjPyWPw9%7EPWxLxWhI0UViM0peDGuvZogkAoe2G0otAKn28cQixlCsGg3rMPXROEu3aIkPmaJbDgzXxa7S0LbMuzZO1%7Edm-yQ1dqGtCVmdAZSzpHrx9gKFeb7J12fdvNWCrMV8g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b2b39661fd62a06ed096d1f064bc5cc3 PDF Text Text ■f*. CHRISTIANITY. I. THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY FROM A STRICTLY HISTORICAL POINT OF VIEW, BEING DELIVERED BEFORE THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, SUNDAY, 21st NOVEMBER, 1880, Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R.Hist.S. PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. 1881. PRICE THREEPENCE. �How to obtain a clear and intelligible notion of the Origin of Christianity. The component elements of Christianity. Some questions to be answered by Historians of other creeds. Universalism pervading Christianity The Finite and the Infinite in the East and West. The Jews and their Sects. The Pharisees, Zaducees, Essenes, Ebionites, Therapeutics and Samaritans, Hebraism and Hel­ lenism. Description of the Social Condition of Humanity at the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Universal Love the Essence of Christianity. An Arab Legend. Christ’s conception of the Deity. Reason, Science, and Truth. The Historical Causes of the Spread of Christianity. Buddha and Christ. Difference between Christianity and Buddhism. Early Christian Sects.—Dogmatists, Sophists, Talmudists, Apologists, Fathers, Scholastics, Theologians. General History. Justin Martyr. Conclusion. The Second Lecture to treat of the Fathers “ majorum gentium” and “minorum gentium.” �CHRISTIANITY I. The Origin of Christianity from, a strictly Historical Point of View. ISTORIANS may be divided into three distinct classes— (1.) The Obstructives, (2.) The Destructives, and (3.) The Constructives. Until recently almost all theological historians were, by their very nature, Obstructives—that is, they were compelled to abide by facts as transmitted to them by tradition, or in sacred records, and were therefore neces­ sarily stationary. To inquire was in itself a dangerous action—undermining the very foundations of faith. To this class of historians belong the Brahmans, Bonzes, Rabbis, Priests of the Romish Church, Ulemas, Clergy­ men of the Anglican Church, or other Protestant sects, and their disciples, educated in the same stationary way, forced to regard certain assertions concerning events, or certain calculations concerning the time in which these events happened as facts—though they may have been anything but facts. We may best classify these writers as Orientalists. The past, in the received form of some Sacred Book, was everything with them. The very word History signified to them a sacrilegious attempt to un­ settle the assumed truth of their particular facts,—which alone could be true; whilst they asserted with admirable self-reliance and conceit that the records of all other nations were nothing but falsehoods. Next we have the Destructives, in whom doubt and scepticism work supreme; who do not see how one and the same fact could have happened in two different ways; why one witness should be credited more than another; or how two witnesses could have seen one and the same fact happening in different places, under entirely different circumstances, and with altogether different results. H �4 Christianity. The Destructives began timidly to pull down, they shook the foundation of credulity, they suddenly saw the whole past tumble into ruins. Horrified at the havoc which they had brought about, they stopped half-way, and the past became nothing but a heap of dust, lumber, and fact-rubbish. We may best classify these people as Galileans. They are a necessary element in the progres­ sive development of Humanity, for unless the old tottering building of assumed facts, cemented together with dog­ matic lime and sand were first destroyed, no new building could be erected. And last we have the Gonstructives—those who re-arrange facts on the principles of probability and possibility; who consult the ancient documents of different nations, not with a mind filled with hatred and contempt for everything not contained in their own sacred records, which they were made to choose by mere chance of birth, education, and established custom, but with an equal veneration for those periods in which each tribe, race, and nation, had their own sacred book—sacred because transmitted to them from father to son; and what is more sacred to a son than that which a kind and loving father has left him ? That the ancient nations throughout the world, in the fulness of their grateful hearts, should have assumed that the first father who spoke to them was God Himself, proves only the Sameness and Oneness of Humanity, arti­ ficially divided into innumerable quarrelling sects, tribes, and peoples. The Constructives, therefore, compare, draw analogies, separate the separables, dissect myths, explain symbols, connect equals, inquire, sift, and finally build up their historical edifice on the firm basis of cau­ sation with facts that are facts, and cement them with common sense—discarding all arbitrariness, all exceptional providential interference in favour of Brahmans, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, Bomans, Scotch or Irish—anxious to discover what we have in common as human beings—never fostering dissent, ani­ mosity, contempt or hatred, but sympathy, forbearance, kindness, and love. We may best classify the Construc­ tive Historians as the Hellenic-Teuton element in Hu­ manity. The spirit of these three groups of historians may be �Christianity. 5 studied in. three works recently published on the “ Life of Jesus,” by an anonymous English Professor of one of our Universities, by Renan, the Frenchman, and by Dr. Strauss, the German. The Englishman is obstructive, the Frenchman destruc­ tive, and the German constructive. Dr. Strauss is learned, conscientious, and systematic. He is full of veneration, and yet unflinchingly truthful without predilection, bias, or prejudice, and gives us the true history of the foundation of Christianity. His great merit lies in his having drawn a distinction between the historical and mythical Jesus of Nazareth. Histori­ cally he describes the birth of Jesus, His relation to John the Baptist, the laws of Moses, the Gentiles, and the belief in His being the expected Messiah. The mythical account is divided into three chapters and twelve sub­ divisions concerning the pre-historic myths of Jesus, the mythical account of the life of Jesus, and the mythical record of His suffering, death, and resurrection. Dr. Strauss wrote his work with the view of furthering Protestantism on the firm basis of historical continuity, and eliminating from the glorious teachings of Jesus of Nazareth whatever was merely accidental, secondary, symbolic, and allegorical, borrowed from more ancient creeds, which at the time of Christ were in a state of spontaneous and natural dissolution. For whoever wishes to have a clear and unbiassed notion of the his­ torical Christ, must free Him and His doctrine from the obscuring veil of dogmatism. The Frenchman, Renan, is learned, but his learning is too much tainted with emotional outbursts of refined phrases; his imagination outruns his criticism, and his criticism loses itself in romantic dreams and visions. He is far more bent on destroying an idol of the Romish Church, than on discovering to what extent it had become in time an entity, to dissolve which will need more than the superficial pen-strokes of a witty Frenchman. The English professor is grave—very grave. He pub­ lished his work under the title of “ Ecce Homo,” but he has neither the learning nor the courage of Dr. Strauss, nor the sprightliness and imagination of Renan. He has, however, his inherited predilections, which are apparently �6 Christianity. shaken by his studies and the intellectual atmosphere of the nineteenth century. He has heard of Strauss with conventional horror; he has heard of Renan with in­ herited contempt, and he wishes to free his soul from all doubts by arguing himself out of doubt; and yet, of the three books, this one, written with apparent obstructive faith, is the most destructive. It must necessarily lead to a despairing scepticism, because the positive assertions are made so timidly, that one sees the trembling writer afraid to touch his subject, lest his dogmatic Christ might crumble into dust under his own hands, and turn into a true “ Ecce Homo,”—“ Behold a Man! ” To be able to give a clear and intelligible picture of the origin and spread of Christianity from a strictly historical point of view, we must make ourselves acquainted with the moral, political, religious, and intellectual elements that pervaded Humanity at the advent of Christ. To detach Christianity from the influences of the different creeds that preceded its foundation, is to know nothing of Christianity. The essence of the teachings of all law­ givers and founders of religious systems was the redemp­ tion of man from the bondage of his animal nature, and the development and culture of his higher intellectual and spiritual nature. ' To separate Christianity from the causes of which its origin and working were a necessary effect or sequence, is to transport it into the realm of miracles. But in assuming Christianity to have been a miracle, we raise terrible phantoms of doubt, or rather of piety and veneration for the Biety, in the shape of grave questions which necessarily present themselves to the thinking mind: Why was the advent of this miracle so long delayed ? Why were millions and millions of creatures left with­ out salvation, and, as some pious divines will have it, predestined to eternal damnation ? Why should the sanguinary miracle of a self-sacrificing God have had so partial and slow an effect 1 ■ Why was the miracle not made universally known ? Why had Christianity to be established in torrents of blood, amidst the horrible shrieks of tortured and martyred human sacrifices ? Why was the efficacy of the miracle quite imperceptible, �Christianity. 7 save in such progress as was natural to any creed, sup­ ported by fire and sword, by money, and state authority ? Why should the early Christian authorities have deli­ berately destroyed all writings bearing on the origin, growth, and development of Christianity, if it was a miracle ordained by God ? Why should the Emperor Theodosius have felt him­ self compelled to issue the following proclamation?:— “We decree, therefore, that all writings whatever which Porphyry, or any one else, has written against the Christian religion, in the possession of whomsoever they shall be found, should be committed to the fire; for we would not suffer any of these things so much as to come to men’s ears, which tend to provoke God and so offend the minds of the pious.” In a spirit of true tolerance, the same Emperor ordered, “that all those who should object to the dogma of the Trinity, besides the condemnation of Divine justice, would have to expect to suffer the severe penalties which our authority, guided by heavenly wisdom, may think proper to inflict upon them.” Why should it have been an axiom of the Church “ that it was an act of virtue to deceive and to lie, when b v that means the interest of the Church might be promoted?” Why all these threatening laws, these anxious jealousies, the falsifications of documents, the oppression of learning, the abhorrence of our reasoning power, if this was a miraculously ordained divine act, performed for the sal­ vation of Humanity ? In historically analysing the elements which compose Christianity, we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that it has become the universal storehouse of all the different creeds that have swayed the human mind from the first dawn of its arising consciousness. We find in Christianity the strictest Monotheism mixed with the Trinitarian mys­ teries of the Brahmans, Buddhists, and Egyptians; the Incarnation and Atonement theories of the Indians and Egyptians; the dualistic principle of the Avesta; the Jewish and Persian assumptions of angels and devils; the lofty moral enactments of Confucius and Sokrates; the dreamy idealism of Plato, and the more practical realism of Aristotle. �8 Christianity. Mystics and Rationalists, Believers and Free-thinkers, Fanatics and Latitudinarians, Spirit-rappers and Philo­ sophers, rich and poor, mighty and weak, learned and ignorant, may find in the tenets of Christianity some congenial and sympathetic, some suggestive and comfort­ ing elements. The most important fact with regard to the “ new faith ” was that Christianity became but another name for those universal principles and eternal laws which, if recognised, and put in motion, stimulate the innate dor­ mant moral and intellectual forces of our human nature into activity. This fact must explain the superior vitality of Christianity, which has led Humanity in the West and North-West, of the world slowly, gradually, yet unin­ terruptedly on the path of progress in arts, discoveries, inventions, and sciences to the very highest achievements. The followers of any other creed must endeavour to answer the following questions in their turn: Why did empires and communities professing other beliefs remain stationary in their development, in spite of their undoubted priority in many useful arts and inventions? and why should the Christians have succeeded, by degrees, in working out wise and beneficial laws, in producing poetical works of unsurpassed excellence, and in raising sciences to a climax never attained before ? Suns and planets are measured by Christians; the rays of light analysed; the gradual formation of the earth’s crust is recognised; the different chemical elements, in apparently indivisible atoms, are traced; Christians speak by means of electri­ city at distances of thousands of miles, reducing space in its dimensions; and travel by means of fire and water at an unheard-of speed, reducing time in its duration. The Universalism pervading true Christianity alone can serve as an explanation of this phenomenon. As we may trace in nature positive and negative electricity, so we can see the working of positive and negative intellectual currents in humanity. The currents in the East were generally negative. To look backwards, to hope, as it were, everything from the past, was the characteristic of Oriental nations. The intellectual currents in the West were positive; to look to and to trust in the future, whether worldly or spiritual, �Christianity. 9 was and is the distinguishing feature of the Western World. Man in the East shuns new spheres of thought, and is content to move round and round in the ever unchangeable circle of fixed notions, ceremonies, and customs. Man in the West strives for freedom and an eternal activity; he must have some goal to long for, which presents itself in the form of religious enthusiasm, chivalrous daring, a thirst for inquiry and learning, a contempt for all danger, and a struggle with real or imaginary monsters. The finite submitted in humble acquiescence to the infinite in the East. In the West the finite strove to grasp the infinite, and to bring harmony into the dis­ cordant elements of good and evil, light and darkness, mind and matter, God and nature. These contradictory phenomena led the East very early to endeavour to cast a light upon the mysterious nature of self-conscious man, the mystic phenomena of nature, and to attempt the solution of the riddle of life by means of allegories, sym­ bols, wild fictions, incredible fables, and inspired guesses. The nation that felt the double nature of humanity most keenly, and first proclaimed a more spiritual concep­ tion of a God, was the Jewish. In the mystic schools of the priests of Egypt, their leaders were made acquainted with the universal “ Monotheos,” but the Jews deprived Him of his universality, and transformed Him into a national Deity, who was only a merciful Grod to His chosen people, under certain outward ceremonial con­ ditions, and a God of wrath and merciless persecution to all those who had not the good fortune to belong by mere chance of birth to that chosen people. The Chinese taught Humanity filial love, and social order; the Indians unravelled the beauties of the universe in the eternal Trinitarian process of Creation, Preservation, and Trans­ formation; the Egyptians established the “ I am I” mys­ tery; the Persians endeavoured to practice purity in thoughts, purity in words, and purity in deeds; the Greeks fostered taste and refinement in arts, exalted humane feelings in their poetry, and manifested a deep critical discernment in philosophy; the Homans organised, regulated, conquered, and developed an unsurpassed patriotism ; and the Jews ?—they taught humanity reli­ �10 Christianity, gious exclusiveness, proud and fanatical intolerance, and have had themselves to suffer under these curses for more than 2,900 years. Even at this very moment we see them harassed and persecuted in Germany, a country which boasts of the highest civilization, a country which produced a Lessing, the Apostle of true Christian Tolerance, and a Herder, the founder of “ Humanism.” To the honour of that country, it may be said that every distinguished German, every learned Historian, and every true Christian abhors the anachronistic movement of the Ultramontanes, which is worthy of the dark middle ages of superstition and gross ignorance. The Jews, as ever in the past, are still at war with the Gentiles all over the world; they use ,up the Gentiles for their special purposes, but never look upon them as their equals. The Jews hoping against hope, sublimely singing and prophesying in their despair, loudly proclaiming their thirst after God, their fervid longing for righteousness and holiness, formed with their theological sentiments a terrible sanguinary leaven of a new faith, which was a possibility only after Persian ethics, Brahmanic tenets, Egyptian mysteries and rituals, Buddhistic miracles and dogmas, Jewish prophesies, Greek philosophical researches, and Boman disciplinary organisations, had been pounded together by the pestle of time in the mortar of History. The Jews beeame the most important element in the historical development of Humanity. They inherited the dualistic theory of God and Devil from the Egyptians and Persians, and worked it out theologically through their deeply-learned prophets, who saw the terrible con­ flict manifested in virtue and sin, of which they became conscious at an earlier period and in a higher sense. By means of this consciousness they approached a state of reconciliation; for self-conscious virtue must be based on a self-conscious knowledge of evil, bringing harmony into man’s animal and spiritual nature, developing to the utmost his moral and intellectual faculties. In spite of this higher moral state, they found themselves cruelly oppressed. They prayed, sighed, and mourned at Babylon, and mingled their scalding tears with the waves of the Euphrates; they were driven from state to state; they �Christianity. 11 waited and watched; they fought like despairing lions; they clung to their God, who had so few blessings, and so many sufferings for them on earth. They were still con­ vinced “that the sceptre should not depart from Judah; and unto him should the gathering of the people beand yet they were trampled under foot by Boman Tetrarchs and Praetors, had no political or social freedom, and were themselves divided by religious sects and factions. Amongst these were the Pharisees, who clung to the dead letter of the law. The Gaulonites or Galileans, a still more fanatical branch of the Pharisees, who professed “that no one must obey any mortal in authority, for God alone is our Lord.” (This sentence enables us to understand those Pharisaical survivals who, under the pretence of obeying the self-constituted authority of their God, defy the law of the land, and turn true religion into mockery.) These fanatics hoped everything from the internal dissolution of the Boman Empire. The Pharisees brought into religion the most contemptible spirit of trading; they always tried to make a profitable bargain with their God. Plenty on earth was the reward of godliness. Their piety had to manifest itself in eating and drinking. “ At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread, and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God,” was the foundation of the egotistical creed of the Pharisees. To eat and drink was, with the Jews, the most solemn initiation and termination of all their reli­ gious ceremonies. The Greeks cultivated man’s higher artistic and philosophical aspirations; the Persians ruled, the Bomans legislated; the Egyptians built imperishable monuments; the Indians worked out mystic problems— the Jews did eat and drink. When the seventy (properly seventy-two) elders accompanied Moses on Mount Sinai and saw the God of Israel, they did eat and drink. If we do not correctly study the principles of the different Jewish sects of this period, we can never properly under­ stand the peculiar fanatics, intolerant bigots, eating and drinking pious hypocrites, who still grace our own social organisation, as so many survivals in the flesh of a preChristian world. The Sadducees (the just) were next in importance �12 Christianity. to the Pharisees; they were the broad-minded followers of Zadak. They rejected all artificial explanations of the Scriptures, and studied the prophets most diligently; they had a supreme contempt for all those who continually occupied their minds with mysterious benedictions, sancti­ fications, days of atonement, fasting and feasting, leavened or unleavened bread, palm branches, trumpets, sacred vessels, offerings, defiled or undefiled gifts, trespasses, red cows, the blood of calves and goats, scarlet wool, hyssop, and dead bodies; and despised all those who neglected doing good to their fellow creatures. The Sadducees believed neither in the immortality of the soul, nor in punishment or reward after death. They denied the existence of angels and devils—although they thoroughly believed in the Scriptures. They were notorious for their virtue, honesty, tolerance, learning, and, above all, for their justice and humanity. The Essenes, so called from the Hebrew “ asa ” or the Chaldsean “ asaya,” meaning “to heal”—or according to others “ the retired ”—were still more important. They lived a solitary life ; they devoted themselves to the study of medicine, to the art of working miracles, and to pre­ dicting the future. They practised baptism. In con­ formity with the ancient Indians and Egyptians, water was with them the mysterious life-giving element. Water had been the essence of life when the earth was still barren and uninhabited. They considered water to be the fountain of regeneration, the symbol of life ; man to be good and free from sin was to be born anew of water. Water mystically washed away the sins of the world. Water made the Essenes, like the Indians, twice born. John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth were both Essenes, and were both baptized. The opinions advanced by Matthew Tyndal in a work, published 150 years ago, entitled “ Christianity as old as the Creation,” are borne out by Eusebius, who has a whole chapter under the title, “ The Religion published by Jesus Christ is neither new nor strange; ” and this author also states, in the most unqualified manner, in the 17th Chapter of his 2nd Book that the ancient Therapeutics were Christians, and that their ancient writings were our Gospels and Epistles. The Therapeutics, Ebionites or Essenes were “ Chres- �Christianity. 13 tianae,” from “ Chrestos,” good. They were Eclectics ; they held Plato in the highest esteem, though they scrupled not to add to his doctrines whatever they thought conformable to reason in the tenets and opinions of other philosophers. According to Thomas Burnet, the Essenes were offshoots of the Brahmans and Bud­ dhists, devoting themselves to the contemplation of the transitoriness of human life. At last we must mention the Samabitans, who were the independent among the Jews. They considered Jews and Heathens equal, if good and kind, and because of this very cosmopolitan sentiment were held in abomina­ tion by all the other Jewish sects, who most furiously quarrelled both with the outer world and amongst them­ selves.—When the Jewish Scriptures became more gene­ rally known through the Greek translation, the “ Septuagint” there suddenly sprang into unparalleled activity— Hebraism as the static, Jand Hellenism as the dynamic force, working in Humanity, in History, and Religion. Dogmatism and morals were so closely interwoven in these Scriptures that the study of history became a religious duty. The past was to be taken on faith ; the assertions of the Hebrew writers were not to be doubted; everything was to be declared credible or incredible by reference to some scriptural passage and inquiry, and Scepticism was to be banished from the world. This banishment aroused a mighty spirit of controversy; the classic writers were looked upon as perverse liars, desti­ tute of light, since they had not known the True God who had revealed Himself exclusively to the Jews. An infinite number of lying spirits were assumed to have deluded Humanity. The glorious works of art, sculp­ ture, architecture, poetry and philosophy of the numerous nations of the Earth were suddenly decried as the out­ growths of sin, inherited from Adam. The Greeks had been taught by Satan; the Persians, Assyrians, and Babylonians had been annihilated by the God of Israel for their idolatry; the Indians were children of Beelzebub; the Buddhists horrible Atheists. All the monuments of antiquity became objectionable works, conceived in pride by the fallen angels ; all the historical writings and records of all nations were considered false and untrue, �14 Christianity. and the Jewish records placed above them as the only true revealed Word of God who had forsaken and abandoned all His other creatures, and held communica­ tion exclusively with the Jews. From that moment up to our own times, there has been something wonderfully majestic in this terrible conflict between Hebraism and Hellenism, keeping humanity in a continuous exertion of its moral and intellectual forces; now devoting every thought to theology, then again pro­ moting the loftiest inquiries of science, leading us to a state in which morals and knowledge will no more be considered as antagonistic, but completing elements of man’s progressive development. We have to deal with the beginning of the new his­ torical phase of a spiritual life that took its origin in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. False prophets and philosophical teachers abounded everywhere. Greek mock philosophers discussed the most abstruse spiritual problems in the market-places. Egyptian priests of Osiris, Isis and Horus, divulged the unintel­ ligible symbolisms of their ancient creed; and the Persian worship of Mithras (meaning the Redeemer or Inter­ mediator) was revived with all its deep mysticism. Numbers of Roman legal casuists engaged in searching for lawsuits, discussed everything, whilst knowing very little of anything. The Jewish sects, in spite of their dissensions and mutual hatred, were all equally oppressed and plundered by Herod the Great; superstition, ignor­ ance, despair and credulity were the distinguishing fea­ tures of the Roman world. The East was crowded with dreamers, visionaries, traders in charms, augurs, horoscopists, miracle-workers (Thaumaturgi), soothsayers, cabalists and priests of an infinite variety of gods and goddesses. All was spiritual chaos, like that at the dawn of the Creation of the material world, when Jesus of Nazareth was Born. We have very little reliable historical information con­ cerning the life of “ Christ,” meaning the Anointed. So much we do know, that we may make of Christ what we please; we may comment upon His recorded teachings exegetically or in any othei’ form. We may altogether deny the whole later Ecclesiastical structure, built upon �Christianity. 15 His utterances. We may demonstrate that all that was asserted of Him, was also believed of Melchisedech, Krishna, Osiris, Buddha, Apollo or Mithras. We may trace in Him and to Him all the legends of divine incar­ nations through which man, having become conscious, wished to find an explanation of his own low animal desires, and the lofty intellectual longings of his mind, thus working out divine models of human beings, or gods in human form. We may study the Gospels and their contradictory views, and critically wade through the still more contra­ dictory writings of the Bathers. We may show how dogma after dogma was attributed to Christ, which He neither enunciated nor ever could have thought of, because, whatever contradictions may be recorded of Him, there was no contradiction between His teachings, and His own self-sacrificing life. We may prove how the Councils of the Church changed the true doctrine of Christ, misunderstanding it altogether; we may reject the dictates of certain synods and accept others. We may be Papists, Episcopalians or Methodists, Presby­ terians or Ritualists, Lutherans or Quakers, Dissenters or Shakers, Idealists or Realists, Believers or Free­ thinkers ; we may quarrel and hate one another with the same fervour as did the Jewish sects, and curse every one who does not hold our own opinions as to the sensations of the beatitude, the length of the wings of the angels in heaven, or the horns of the devils in hell. We may laugh at our petty controversialists who talk of vestments and postures, candlesticks, crosses, rubrics, grace, conscience, transubstantiation, real and unreal presence, and the thousand and one unintelligible, anagogical, parabolical, allegorical and symbolic niceties and difficulties, which may all be easily settled, if no one asks questions, and if all men have faith, and do not use their thinking and reasoning faculty, the brightest gift of the Creator, under whatever name He be worshipped. But we cannot deny the immense influence which Christ’s teachings have exercised on the Western mind. Let all the circumstances and details have been what they may, historians must deal with Christ’s Spirit, as it pre­ sents itself, as one of the greatest of historical phenomena. �16 Christianity. For though we may divest Christ of all the miracles, rightly or falsely attributed to Him, we cannot divest Him of one grand immortal fact, “ That he died for Love, murdered by those whom He taught with a heart full of universal love—that the whole of humanity was one great brotherhood ; that every human being was to love his neighbour as himself; that every human being was the cherished child of one Father, who loved all His children equally, and who was in heaven ! ” Had but this simple doctrine of mutual and universal love been taught for the last 1880 years with the same fervour as the mystic dogmas with which Christ’s teachings were perverted, and which were each and all borrowed from Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Indian and Boman religious systems, the world would undoubtedly be more Christian, and humanity would have saved millions of precious lives which have been wasted on the propagation, not of Christianity, but “ of prejudiced credulity, and priestly tyranny.” We have, unfortunately, failed to learn to look upon Christ as He is characterised in the following ancient Arab legend:—“ A dog had stolen some meat from a Jewish butcher’s shop; the dog was stoned, then hanged, then thrown into the street, and the angry Jews formed a circle round the dog, spat on him and cursed him; all at once a mild and gentle voice was heard asking the enraged crowd, whether they could find nothing worthy of admiration in the poor dead animal; there was suddenly a deep silence, and the speaker pointed to the beautiful pearly-white teeth of the dog. The people grumbled, and it was whispered among them that the speaker must be Jesus of Nazareth, for He alone was capable of finding something good even in a dead dog ! ” This is Christianity. The Deity of the Jews was a stern, and revengeful Despot; Christ’s God was a loving Father. The beginning of wisdom with the Jews was fear; with Christ, the beginning of wisdom was love. With the Jews, God was a God of wrath, persecution and slaughter; with Christ, a God of mercy, forgiveness, and boundless love. The God of the Jews, who, like the inexorable Fate of the Greeks, or the sanguinary monsters enthroned in the Imperial purple of Borne, punished the sins of the �Christianity. 17 fathers unto the third and fourth generation, and de­ manded holocausts of murdered sacrifices, was changed by Christ into a God of infinite kindness, rejoicing over one repentant sinner more than over ninety and nine just persons. Christ’s doctrine in its primitive purity was the ever true Law of Peace, Love and Tolerance, satisfying Beason, leading to Science, and to the Search for Truth. These are the fundamental elements of Chris­ tianity, towards which, freed of all dogmatic unintelligi­ bilities, humanity is striving consciously or unconsciously, in spite of the thousands of sects, and the numberless commentators who have done their uttermost to destroy the simplicity and universality of Christ’s teachings. But Beason cannot be stifled by persecution ; Science cannot be annihilated by superstition; and Truth cannot be silenced by blind fanaticism. Christianity checked He­ braism, fostered Hellenism, brought life into the Ancient World, and established Humanism, the last possible phase in the development of Humanity. If we look for the principal historical causes of the sudden spread of Christianity, we have : 1st. The extent of the Boman Empire, with two prin­ cipal languages—Greek and Latin. 2nd. The scattering ofthe Jews and the Jewish Christians. 3rd. The general tendency to mysticism, fanaticism, and symbolism, and the total absence of a correct know­ ledge of the Laws of Nature. 4th. The immense number of freed men, slaves, and beggars. To such people equality was preached; equality before a God in whose eyes the living visible God on earth—the Emperor was no more than the lowest beggar. The poor grew proud, and condescended to admit the rich into their now blessed community; and the rich, terrified by the hungry and haggard looks of the people, enervated by profligacy and licentiousness, were glad to be made partakers of a future kingdom of bliss, since they did not feel very safe on earth, and trembled equally before the covetousness of the tyrants in power, and the daily increasing number of homeless slaves. 5th. The decline of faith in the old gods of the classical world, who were now proved to have been mere idols of stone, or brass, as otherwise they could �18 Christianity. not have permitted humanity to sink to such a depth of immorality as was reached under the Emperors, for men’s lives had no value, justice was nowhere to be found. 6th. The sanguinary political and religious persecution which the Emperors repeatedly ordered against the everincreasing Christians. The Greeks and Romans were in general extremely tolerant in religious matters. They had either a personal or a political interest in persecuting some single individual, and used the religious fanaticism of the mob as the means to attain their special political or worldly object. They never had priests in our sense of the word. The early Christians began slowly to find favour at Court in conse­ quence of their universalism. They proved that they did not hold all the exclusive, national opinions of the Jews, who would not recognise any other authority but that of " Javeh—they honestly referred to Christ’s command : “ Render therefore unto Csesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s ”— and the new Religion was at last introduced at Court under the Emperor Alexander Severus, whose mother, Mammsea, was said to have been a true Christian. Decius tried in vain to stamp out the Christians. Under Gallienus they enjoyed peace ; and the last vain attempts to abolish Christianity by means of sanguinary persecu­ tions were made under the Emperor Diocletian. As is invariably the case, cruelty only served the more to develop the whole vitality of Christianity. At this period certain causes were at work, which altogether changed, if not the essence, at least the form of Chris­ tianity. Some sudden disturbances occurred in the provinces, situated between China aud the Caspian Sea, which had been conquered about the first Century of the Christian Era. “ It appears that, in consequence of these convulsions, the Samanaeans, disciples of Buddha, (who probably lived about the time of the Israelitish Kingdom of the Ten Tribes,) departed from their former seat, the ancient Aria, and took refuge in the mountains of Cashmere and Thibet.” Some of these disciples must have also settled in the more western parts of Asia, and must have come into contact with the then more and more spreading Christians, who endeavoured with all the �Christianity. 19 activity of their intellectual power to bring Christianity into a system—a dogmatic system. In many of their details, the tenets of Buddha bear the greatest resem­ blance to certain superadded Christian dogmas; “ For the chief doctrine of the Samanaean Bonzes was, that Buddha was of Royal descent, born of the Virgin Maja, worthy of adoration as next in dignity to God whose ninth incarnation he was, and that he would assume at the end of all earthly things his tenth incarnation as Kali, and appear on a white horse to judge the quick and the dead.” The Samansean priesthood taught men to prepare for this event, to lead a retired contemplative life, to suffer persecution but never to persecute, humbly to submit to any lay power, since this world was a mere fleeting, transitory abode of misery and decay, prepara­ tory to a higher spiritual life to be enjoyed in Eternity in Nirvana, the unceasing contemplation of the Deity in His eternal peace and glory. Christianity absorbed all these elements, but with the Christians, the endeavour to spread this belief in the bliss of redemption became a sacred duty, which they thought thems'elves justified in performing by means of violence, inexorable cruelty, cruci­ fixions, boilings and burnings, by fire and sword “Ad majorem Dei gloriam.” Here the striking difference between Buddhism and Christianity becomes apparent. Buddhism is passive contemplation ; Christianity is positive activity. The one remained stationary, the other progressively developed and is still developing. The one acquiesced in any form so long as the worship of Buddha was the aim ; the other devoted itself to an unparalleled spiritual activity, en­ dowing Christianity with mystic meanings, allegorical beauties, dressed in the shreds of myths and fables, col­ lected from all the religious systems of the ancient world, adorned with Platonic dreams and visions, and Aristotelian sophistries and dialectics. Intolerance and fanaticism spread more and more; and delusion and ignorance served to build up that glorious spiritual Revolution which brought new life into the world. Scarcely had Christ expired on the Cross when a host of pious preachers and teachers inundated the world with descriptions of the details of His private and public life. �20 Christianity. St. Luke informs us “ that many have taken in hand to set forth those things which are most surely believed among us.” There were about 146 independent sacred writings, among which were 34 Gospels, 20 Epistles, 22 Acts, 5 Revelations, and 22 miscellaneous works ; several books published under the name of James, and books under the name of Peter. That these works existed, is undeniable, for the various diverging and quarrelling sects of early Christianity were founded on the very possession of these different sacred books. Letters were forged, interpolations fabricated, omissions resorted to, fictions invented, exaggerations propounded, miracles pro­ claimed, and interpretations given, so that it is exceed­ ingly difficult to gather any reliable facts. To prove how far such deceptions went, we may point out that Gregory, of Tours, in the sixth Century a.d., firmly believed that he possessed the authenticated account of the miracles at the death and resurrection of Christ in the very docu­ ment which Pilate had sent to the Emperor Tiberius. Lucian, in the latter half of the second Century after the birth of Christ, bitterly complained that the Christians were so reserved respecting their mysteries. Tacitus, Pliny, and others could not understand why morals and truth should be proclaimed by miracle­ workers, magicians and necromancers, who began to drive a very profitable trade. At first, Jewish and Pagan priests had heaped opprobrious calumnies upon the Christians on account of the simplicity of their worship, esteeming them little better than Atheists, because they had no temples, altars, sacrifices, priests nor any of that external pomp in which the vulgar are so prone to place the essence of religion. The rulers of the Christians now adopted external, mystic ceremonies, and suddenly the primitive simplicity which had characterised the first followers of Christ was gone, and a multitude of half-Jewish and half-Pagan enthusiasts, visionaries, theosophists, snake-charmers, and adepts abounded in the Chris­ tian communities, and proclaimed themselves to be Ascetic, self-denying, miracle-working Christians. Mysticism and symbolism became the leading elements in Christianity. The mysteries engendered sects, in accordance with the various explanations given to the meaning of the different �Christianity. 21 symbols, allegories, types, prophesies, gospels, epistles, or any vague traditions. Sects persecuted sects, each stig­ matising their opponents as heretics. Every one of these sects pretended to have received certain traditions from the founder of Christianity Himself, or at least from prophets, apostles, or pious men who had stood near to Christ; yet subsequently, all their dogmas were declared to have been heresies by later councils and synods. The Gnostics, Ebionites, Marcionites, Alogians, Manichseans, Novitians, Sabellians, Patripassians, and Arians, &c., may be adduced to prove that Christianity was at first broad-hearted and broad-minded, so long as it was not yet fettered by the inexorable power of the State. Dog­ matists were permitted to put forward new dogmas and mysteries, but unfortunately Constantine, in the fourth century a.d., adopted Christianity as a state religion, and employed learned converted Talmudists and Sophists to shape the simple tenets of Christ, and from that time down to the Reformation everything received a theological basis, and was looked upon from a one-sided religious point of view. Gregory of Nazianzen says of this period ; “ the learned diatribes of Stoics, Platonists, Aristotelians, and even the teachings of the most important Fathers were silenced, and every “ shop-boy” preached and talked on the Trinity in Unity of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, or on the “ Hypostasis,” meaning the subor­ dinate substances of the Trinity. The City of Constan­ tinople was full of working men and slaves who were profound theologians, and preached in their workshops and in the streets. If you wanted of anyone change for a silver coin, he informed you of the distinction between Father and Son; if you asked for the price of a loaf of bread, you were lectured on the inferiority of the Son to the Father; and if you asked whether the bread were baked, the rejoinder was that the Son had been created out of nothing.” It was in vain that Justin Martyr, one of the most zealous defenders of Christianity, proved with trenchant conviction that Christ was the Logos, or “ Universal Reason,” of which mankind were all partakers; and, therefore, those who lived according to the Logos or Reason, were Christians, notwithstanding that they �22 Christianity. might pass for Atheists. Such among the Greeks were Sokrat is and Herakleitos, and the like; and such among the Barbarians were Abraham and Ananias, and many others. So on the other hand, those who had lived in former times in defiance of the Logos or Reason were evil, and enemies to Christ, and murderers of such as lived according to the Logos or Reason; but those who made or make the Logos or Reason the rule of their actions, were and are “ Christians, and men without fear and trembling.” It is deeply to be regretted that Christ’s teachings were deprived of their charming simplicity. But it could not be otherwise. By the daily increasing number of theological Sophists, Greek and Boman Dialecticians, converted Talmudists and Cabalists, who made it their duty to obscure every intelligible passage in the Old and New Testaments; to find types where there were none; to take allegories and metaphors to the letter; and to transform into deep symbols what had been the literal record of some every-day occurrence. Man was to be forced into the narrow Procrustean bed of Dogmatism, and to know nothing but incomprehensible mysteries. Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy raised their spiteful and venomous heads, aud spread like dragons the fire of destructive disunion throughout the world. Councils and Synods denounced and persecuted, excommunicated and succeeded in bringing about a dead silence in the realm of thought, or submissive professions of the pre­ scribed religious formulae. In the sixth century after Christ the Church, with the aid of the lay power, at last was enabled to stamp out by fire and sword all the so-called Heretics, and the Fathers, Apologists, and the Church dignitaries began to rule supreme. The writings of the Fathers are the only important literary products of these times which throw a considerable light on the gradual development of Chris­ tianity from the second to the twelfth century a.d. The Fathers, like the ancient Patricians of Pagan Rome, were divided into two classes. Those from the second to the sixth century a.d. were the “ Patres majorum gentiumwhilst those from the seventh to the twelfth century a.d. were the “ Patres minorum gentium.” �Christianity. 23 During the mediaeval period of history the priests of the Romish Church, occupying themselves with writing on or discussing theology, were called “ Scholastics,” and only since the Reformation the Clergy treating religious mat­ ters philosophically or ethically, assumed the title of “ Theologians” (Scientists of God). We cannot fail to perceive that the struggle between faith or religion, and reason or science was the vital force that made it possible for Christians to progress, morally as well as intellec­ tually. The principal tendency of the most learned and most honest theologians of our day (like Dean Stanley, Prin­ cipals Tulloch and Caird,—Stopford Brooke and many others) is to restore to Christianity that universal spirit of tolerance which will make culture and true civilisation a common good, not dependent on rubrics, eastern postures, vestments, or articles, but on a correct understanding of our nature, humanising even the bigoted middle classes; purifying society and making it a general philanthropic brotherhood, turning capital into a blessing instead of a curse ; and endowing our dogmatic and arbitrary educa­ tional institutions with one analogous system, fitted to bring out all our higher reasoning faculties. Thus the pure spirit of true Christianity will once more sway our hearts and vivify our lifeless and cold, yet eternally quarrelling, denominational sects. Science and art will work together, spiritualising our higher nature, foster­ ing. Hellenic-Teuton culture instead of Romano-Hebrew narrow-mindedness, leading us to a universal bodily and mental happiness, and establishing a practical—not clerical—“ Millenium.” We shall endeavour in future lectures to trace how the ' historical development of Christianity commenced in a controversial thunderstorm, fierce, terrible and destructive at first; followed by a gloomy calm, silent, deadening and obstructive; and at last arousing science, purifying our moral and intellectual atmosphere, spreading the broad daylight of culture in union with morals, enabling humanity to be free, good, and truly constructive. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. 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Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Christianity I: The origin of Christianity from a strictly historical point of view, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday, 21st November, 1880 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Zerffi, G. G. Description An account of the resource In this lecture Dr. G. G. Zerffi explores the history of Christianity, including the origins and spreading of the religion, as well as a comparison with Buddhism. Place of publication: London Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sunday Lecture Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1881 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3431 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Christianity I: The origin of Christianity from a strictly historical point of view, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday, 21st November, 1880), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Christianity Buddhism Christianity https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d40709288e9a1b8f79192f37124fa6f5.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=BW%7E5ZH2gLOO9Ctm0Pzu-JIbG4aI%7EmodDNWN1%7ELUExsfuJint04THY8sqW2G%7Ei1NUGxciEYdYGSwkg7Qf5Sar3H1I5BoGvrp8UTCCTUKHxHnIOxA1-vEJ9ctiChD%7E8IcH5XO44ChfzmdKgcBy-SeLymYOcP0GP5adZBhwGOIn4qNj82ZCig-tDBe8UhIFja9ecmMUlgyHvzsZ7SbhWSyQBiNxzeETXvYOXGXjb%7EkWZcEvDTBOEcNqL8SwFRNMB%7ECzuOJ9qrthcOhE2DJqboRcAtJRsyeRSLSEzy56RFfS5t27-tP6rRsnM63%7EkNCoooxrinOyAMigJ89lIjG0TqD-wA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM edc6798ba90ce687cfc46971744cfba7 PDF Text Text NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY kJ 05^ THE JOINT EDUCATION OF YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN IN THE AMERICAN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. BEING A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, On 27th of April, 1873, BY MARY E. BEEDY, M.A., Graduate of Antioch College, U.S. LONDON:PUBLISHED by the SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. 1873. Price Threepence. �SUifoerttsentent. SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science, —physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improve­ ment and social well-being of mankind. THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES ARE DELIVERED AT ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely (Annually—from November to May). Twenty-four Lectures (in three series), ending 3rd May, 1874, will be given. Members’ LI subscription entitles them to an annual ticket (transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture. Tickets for each series (one for each lecture), or for any eight consecutive lectures, as below : To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d. To the Sixpenny Seats—2s. being at the rate of Three­ pence each lecture. For tickets apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W. Payment at the door One Penny Sixpence ■—and (Reserved Seats) One Shilling. �JOINT EDUCATION OF YOUNG MEM AND WOMEN. HE American colonists carried with them their practical English tendencies. They were impressed with a deep sense of the advantages of education, but it had to be got at the least expense. In the towns and cities they could have schools for boys and schools for girls, but in the sparselypopulated rural districts separate schools were impossible. It was almost more than the farmp.rs could do to pay the cost of one. All the boys and girls within a radius of two or three miles met together in the same school. They were companions and rivals in their pastimes, and it probably did not occur to any one to consider whether there could be any danger in continuing this rivalry in their lessons. In the rapid growth of the population some of these rural centres gradually became vil­ lages and towns, but the joint education of the girls and boys went on. Iwo leading principles in school economy are, to secure the smallest number of classes, and the greatest equality of attainment between the pupils in each class; and these principles favour large schools rather than numerous schools. Schools affording a higher grade of instruction, and known T �4 "Joint Education of as academies, sprang up here and there. These were private enterprises, and the commercial aim was to furnish the best educational advantages for the largest number of pupils at the least ex­ pense. The teacher wanted to make as much money as he could, and the parents had in general but little to spend for the education of their sons and daughters. The same economical views made these joint schools : fewer teachers were required. These academies, with the district schools I have before mentioned, met almost the entire educational demands of the rural and village population. A few of the more ambitious boys went from these academies to the universities, and a few of the girls went to young ladies’ boarding-schools; but these were exceptional cases. You probably know that we have no men of wealth and leisure living in the country. The soil is owned by the men who work it, and the rich men live in the cities. And I suppose you also know that in any generation of American men the large majority of those who lead in commerce, in politics, and in the professions are the sons of farmers^ who in their boyhood worked on the farms and' went to these rural schools in the leisure season; the wives of these men having had for the most part the same rural training. You can readily see from this that the peculiarities of our rural life, the circumstances that gave these men and women the energy to bring themselves to the front Tank of society, were likely to mefit with approval. However, joint education was simply looked upon as one of the necessities of our youthful life till about twenty years ago. Men who rose to positions of wealth and honour upon the basis of the educa­ �Young Men and Women. 5 tion received in these schools did not praise joint education any more than they praised the other natural and frugal habits that attended their rural life. No one had philosophised upon this system, and there was no occasion to think of it. It had simply been the most natural means of meeting a great need. In both the district schools and in the academies the boys and girls did about the same work. They liked. to keep together. Now and then a boy went a little farther in mathematics than the girls did, in the prospect of a business career and a life in the city; or he learned more Latin and Greek in preparation for the university. There was no question about difference of capacity or difference of tastes between boys and girls; there was nothing to suggest it. They liked to do the same things, and the one did as well as the other. Forty years ago, in one of the academies near Bos­ ton, a number of girls went with a set of their school­ boy-friends through the entire preparation for Har­ vard University. The girls knew mathematics and Greek as well as the boys did, and formed a plan for going to the university with them. I cannot say whether the plan grew out of a keen zest forknow­ ledge, or out of an unwillingness to break off the very pleasant companionship. Probably from both. The girls did not think there could be much objection to admitting them at the university. They thought the reason there were no girls at the universities was that none had wanted to go, or had been pre­ pared to go. They proposed to live at home; so there would be no difficulty on the score of college resi­ dence. However, as their request was new, it occurred to them that a little diplomacy might be required in presenting it; so they deputed the most �6 J ’ oint Education of prudent of the party to do the talking, and imposed strict silenee upon the youngest and most impulsive one, from whom I have the story. The girls called upon old President Quincy ; they told him what they had done in their studies,—that they had passed the examinations with the boys, and wished to be admitted to the university. He listened'to their story, and evinced so much admiration for their work and aims that they at first felt sure of success. But President Quincy seemed slow in coming to the point. He talked of the newness and difficulties of the scheme, and proposed other opportunities of study for them, till at length this youngest one, forgetting in her impatience her promise to keep silent, said, “Well, President Quincy, you feel sure the trustees will let us come, don’t you ? ” 0, by no means,” was the reply :“ this is a place only for men.”' The girl of sixteen burst into tears, and exclaimed with vehemence, “ I wish I could anni­ hilate the women, and let the men have every­ thing to themselves! ” This, so far as I know, was the first effort made by women to get into an American university, but the incident was too trifling to make any impression, and I narrate it only as marking the beginning of the demand for university advantages for women. About the same time Oberlin College was founded in Northern Ohio. It grew out of a great practical everyday-life demand. There was a wide-spread desire on the part of well-to-do people for larger educational advantages than the ordinary rural schools provided. They could not afford the expense of the city schools : besides, they wanted their sons and daughters to go on together in their school work ; they were unwilling to subject either to the dangers �Young Men and Women. 7 of boarding-school life without the companionship and guardianship of the other. Oberlin College was founded on the strictest principles of economy. It was located in a rural village in the West, where the habits were simple and the living inexpensive. In the third year of its existence it had 500 students, and since the first ten years it has averaged nearly 1,200, the proportion of young women varying from one-third to one-half. There was a university course of study for the young men, and a shorter ladies’ course for the young women, which omitted all the Greek, most of the Latin, and the higher mathematics. It was not anticipated that the young women would desire the extended university course, but so far as the two courses accorded the instruction was given to the young men and the young women in common. But the young women were allowed to attend any of the classes they chose, and at the end of six years a few of them had pre­ pared themselves for the B.A. examination, and were allowed upon passing it to receive the degree. The college authorities did not seem to consider that B.A. and M.A. were especially masculine designations. They regarded them only as marks of scholastic attainments, which belonged equally to men and women when they had reached a certain standard of scholarship. Not many Women could stay, or cared to stay, long enough to get these degrees. The “ ladies’ course ” required nearly two years’ less-time, and contained a larger proportion of the subjects that women are expected to know. The number of women who have received the university degrees from Oberlin is still less than a hundred, making an average of only two or three for each year. Oberlin sent out staunch men and women. �"8 "Joint Education of Wherever these men and women went it was ob­ served that they worked with a will and with effect. The eminent success of Oberlin led many parents in different parts of the country to desire its advan­ tages for their sons and daughters. But Oberlin was a long way off from New England and from many other parts of the country; besides some thought it an uncomfortably religious place; negroes were admitted, and it was altogether very democratic, much more so than many people liked. So parents began to say, 11 Why can’t we have other colleges that shall provide all the advantages of Oberlin and omit the peculiarities we dislike.” Now began the discussion upon the real merits of this economical system of joint education. It had sprung up like an indigenous plant. It had met a necessity remark­ ably . well, and it was only when, its advantages becoming recognised, it began to press itself into the cities and among people where it was not a ne­ cessity, that it evoked any discussion. This was a little more than twenty years ago. People who had observed the working of the joint schools were alto­ gether in favour of them. The wealthier people in the towns and cities, who were accustomed to having boys and girls educated apart, preferred separate schools, and thought joint education would be a dan­ gerous innovation ; that in the institution adopting it the girls would lose their modesty and refinement, and the boys would waste their time. Leading edu­ cators were divided upon this question: „ those who were familiar with the joint schools were the most uncompromising advocates of that system; those who had known only the schools where girls and boys were educated apart for the most part preferred separate education, where it could be afforded. Not �Young Men and Women. 9 all, however, for many had developed the theory of joint education out of an opposite experience. In girls’ schools they had felt the want of adequate stimulants for thorough work. They had seen the strong tendency in girls to fit themselves for society rather than for the severer duties of life ; they be­ lieved that if girls were associated with boys and young men in their studies, they would not only be better scholars, but that they would remain longer in school, that they would have less eagerness to get out of school into society. And many who were familiar with boys’ schools felt the dangers attendant upon the absence of domestic influence, and saw that it might be very largely supplied by the presence of sisters and schoolfellows’ sisters. They saw too that the tendencies to a coarse physical development, which are found in an ex­ clusive- society of men, might be counteracted by the presence of women. In short, all who were acquainted with joint education gave it their most unqualified approval; while those who knew only the system of separate education were for the most part disposed to favour that, though many of these saw the need of something in girls’ schools which the presence of boys would introduce, and something in boys’ schools which the presence of girls would sup­ ply. The advocacy of joint education was valiantly led by Horace Mann, the greatest American educator, the man who stands with us where Dr Arnold stands in the hearts of English people. About this time Antioch College was founded in Southern Ohio, and Mr Mann was invited to take charge of it. Its object was to provide educational facilities as nearly equal to those found at the best New England universities as possible, and it was �io Joint Education of founded avowedly upon the principle that joint education per se was a good thing; that it was natural; that it was a great advantage to have brothers and sisters in the same school; that girls were both more scholarly and more womanly when associated with boys, and boys were more gentle­ manly and more moral when associated with girls ; and that both girls and boys come out of joint schools with juster views of life, and a larger sense of moral obligation. Other new colleges followed the example of Antioch, and some of the old ones began to open their doors to women. To-day the national free schools and public schools in most of the cities of the North educate boys and girls together. In some of the older cities, particularly Boston, New York, and Phila­ delphia, the schools are for the most part conducted on the original plan of separate schools. The school buildings are not arranged for the accommodation of boys and girls together, and there is still a strong sentiment against the plan, though it is gradually, and I may say rapidly, giving way. In tire Western cities, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St Louis, the boys and girls study together throughout the entire course, that is, till they are ready to go to the universities ; though in St Louis, and perhaps in the other two cities, there are a few of the grammar schools where they are still apart, the buildings not being arranged for the accommodation of both. The system prevails in the rural schools almost without exception, and almost as generally in the public schools' of the towns and cities, with the exceptions that I have mentioned ; there are now over thirty colleges and universities that offer univer­ sity degrees to women on the same conditions as �Young Men and Women. 11 to men. On the other hand, there is still a large number of private schools in the towns and cities which are generally either boys’ schools or girls’ schools. They are for the most part schools esta­ blished for teaching the children of some pai-ticular religious denomination, for fitting boys for a com­ mercial career, or for giving especial drill for the universities; or, in the case of girls’ schools, for giving especial training for society: but the public schools are rapidly drawing into them the children of the best educated families, for the simple reason that they are the best schools of the country. The oldest universities and colleges still keep their doors shut against women. Harvard, within the last year, has appointed a committee to consider the demand made by women, but their report was adverse. The committee recognised the success of the system elsewhere, but thought it not wise to attempt the change in Harvard. Michigan University, a free state university, which stands second to none in educational advan­ tages, except Harvard and Yale, and has double the number of students of either of these, admitted women three years ago. And Cornell University, which has as good prospects as any in the country, has just received its first class of women. I heard it announced with great gravity in the British Association a year-and-a-half ago in Edin­ burgh, that girls had no difficulty in learning arith­ metic, and no one smiled. So completely is this question settled with us, that I think such .an announcement would have been received by a public assembly in America with a derisive laugh. Joint schools and colleges have settled the question whether girls can learn not only arithmetic, but �12 'Joint Education of also the higher mathematics, logic, and metaphysics; and have established beyond a doubt in the minds of American educators, that in acute perception, in the ability to grasp abstruse principles, the feminine mind is in no wise inferior to the mascu­ line. But the question is still open, whether women have the physical strength to endure the continuous mental work requisite for the greatest breadth and completeness of comprehension. This can be determined only by experiments which shall extend through a longer series of years devoted to study. The records at Oberlin indicate that the young women are no more likely to break down in health than the young men are. The records of the city schools do not seem to be quite the same upon this point, but the same difference would doubtless appear if the girls were not in school; and this failure in health cannot be attributed to the school work, but rather to the more indoor life of the girls. The Oberlin statistics also indicate that the women who have taken the university degrees have not diminished their chance of longevity by this severe work in their youth. Women have less phy­ sical strength than men have, but there seems to be in them a tendency to a more economical expendi­ ture of strength. Their energy is less driving, and there is, in consequence, less waste from friction. In regard to the social morality at these schools the results are equally satisfactory. At the rural schools boys and girls. have almost unrestricted companionship; they have just the same freedom in their home intercourse, but improper or even objectionable conduct is a'thing unknown at the schools, and almost equally unknown in the associa­ tion outside the schools. Brothers and brothers’ �Young Men and Women. 13 friends guard the sister, and sisters and their friends o-uard the brother. In cases where it is necessary for the pupils to reside at the school there is more love-making, but it is mostly repressed by want of time; besides, there are few occasions for meeting, except in the presence of the class, and where there is an acquaintance with so many on about equal terms an especial regard for one is less likely to be formed. The admiration of the boys is suie to centre upon the girls who are nearest the head of the class; but these girls have not time to return it and keep their position, and to lose their position would be to lose the admiration; and the same is true with the boys. I am sure it would be surprising to any one who is not familiar with these schools to observe to what very practical and common-sense principles all these otherwise romantic and illusory relations are sub­ jected. In this mutual intellectual rivalship the conjectural differences between the sexes, and the fancied charms of the one over the other, are sub­ mitted to very practical tests. A disagreeable boy is not likely to be considered a hero in virtue of his assumed bearing and physical strength; nor is a silly girl, by* dint of her coquettish airs likely to be thought a fairy with magical gifts. Girls know boys as boys know each other; and boys know girls as girls know each other. Hence the subtle charms that evade human logic find little opportunity to blind and mislead in the constant presence of unmistakeable facts. In all the time I was at Antioch College no word of disreputable scandal ever came to my ears, and in recent years I have repeatedly heard from young men who were there when I was, that in their whole �14 Joint Education of five or six years they never heard the faintest shadow of imputation against any young woman in the institution. And so stern was the morality, that smoking, beer-drinking, and card-playing were all considered crimes,, and banished from the premises. You have now heard my statement respecting the effectiveness of joint education, and, though it is made from a very extended and thorough acquaint­ ance with the system, I shall not ask you to accept it without the support of other and authoritative testimony. Abundant confirmation of my state­ ment will be found in all Official Reports and in treatises that review this system, while no testi­ mony of a contrary character is anywhere to be found. I will first quote from the published . Report of Mr Harris, Superintendent of the Public Schools in St Louis. He is well known to the leading students of German philosophy in all the countries of Europe, and I think I may say in his own country is recognised as standing in the front rank of American educators. No other man has brought so much philosophical insight to the study of dur public school system. I quote from Mr Harris’s Report of 1871 a condensed summary of the results- of this system of joint education as they have developed themselves under his observa­ tion and direction. He says :— - “ Within the last fifteen years the schools of St Louis have been remodelled upon the plan of the joint education of the sexes, and the results have proved so admirable that a few remarks may be ventured on the experience which they furnish. . “ I-—Economy has been secured, for, unless pupils of widely different attainments are brought together in the same classes, �Young Men and Women. 15 the separation of the boys and girls requires a great increase in the number of teachers. “II.—Discipline has improved continually by the adoption of joint schools ; our change in St Louis has been so gradual that we have been able to weigh with great exactness every point of comparison between the two systems. The joining of the male and female departments of a school has always been followed by an improvement in discipline ; not merely on the part of the boys, but with the girls as well. The rude­ ness and abandon which prevails among boys when separate at once gives place to self-restraint in the presence of girls, and the sentimentality engendered in girls when educated apart from boys disappears in these joint schools, and in its place there comes a dignified self-possession. The few schools that have given examples of efforts to secure clandestine asso­ ciation are those few where there are as yet only girls. “ HI.—The quality of instruction is improved. Where the boys and girls are separate, methods of instruction tend to extremes, that may be called masculine and feminine. Each needs the other as a counter-check. We find in these joint schools a prevalent healthy tone which our schools on the separate system lack—more rapid progress is the conse­ quence. “ IV.—The development of individual character is, as already indicated, far more sound and healthy. . It has been found that schools composed exclusively of girls or boys require a much more strict surveillance on the part of the teachers. Confined by themselves and shut off from inter­ course with society in its normal form, morbid fancies and interests are developed which this daily association in the class-room prevents. Here boys and girls test themselves with each other on an intellectual plane. Each sees the strength and weakness of the other, and learns to esteem those qualities that are of true value. Sudden likes, capri­ cious fancies, and romantic ideas give way to sober judgments not easily deceived by mere externals. This is the basis of the dignified self-possession before alluded to, and it forms a striking point of contrast between the girls and boys edu­ cated in joint schools and those educated in schools exclu­ sively for one sex. Our experience in St Louis has been entirely in favour of the joint education of the sexes, in all the respects mentioned and in many minor ones.” �16 Joint Education of I give Mr Harris’s statement as representative of the sentiment of those who are engaged in public school instruction in America. As I said before, in some of the older cities, where the public schools were earliest organised, the joint system has been accepted as yet only partially, and the teachers, who are only familiar with the separate system, gene­ rally prefer it. But a very large proportion of the public schools of the country are joint schools, and a still larger proportion of the instructors and managers of public schools favour the system of joint education. Mr Harris’s testimony applies to city schools, when the pupils reside at home. I now quote to you from another authority, addi­ tionally valuable inasmuch as it represents the results of this system of education upon young men and women who reside at the school and away from the guardianship of parents. In 1868 a meeting was called of all the College Presidents of the country, to discuss questions relating to college discipline and instruction. As Oberlin was the oldest college that had adopted the system of joint instruction, a strong desire was felt to secure a critical and comprehensive statement of the results of the system there. Dr Fairchild, the present President of Oberlin, was deputed to make the Report. He had at that time been connected with Oberlin seven years as a student and twenty-five years as professor, and has long had the reputation of being the most accomplished scholar and acute thinkei' among the Oberlin professors. His statements may therefore be accepted as absolute in point of fact, and as wholly representative of the opinion of those who have conducted the instruction and discipline at �Young Men and Women. !7 Oberlin. But my chief reason for selecting this out of the accumulated published testimony is that it .seems to me the best digest of the subject that I have seen. Dr Fairchild says :— “ 1st.—On the point of economy In the higher depart­ ments of instruction, where the chief expense is involved, the. expense is no greater on account of the presence of the ladies. “ 2nd.—Convenience to the patrons of the school:—It is a matter of interest to notice the number of cases where a brother is followed by a sister, or a sister by a brother. This is an interesting and prominent feature in our work. Each is safer in the presence of the other. “3rd.—The wholesome incitements to study, which the system affords :—The social influence arising from the consti­ tution of our classes operates continuously and upon all. Each desires for himself the best standing he is capable of, and there is no lack of motive to exertion. It will be observed, too, that the stimulus is of the same kind as will operate in after life. The young man going out into the world does not leave behind him the forces that have helped him on. They are the ordinary forces of society. “ 4th.-—The tendency to good order that we find in the system :—The ease with which the discipline of so large a school is conducted has not ceased to be a matter of wonder to ourselves. More than one thousand students are gathered from every State in the Union, from every class in society, of every grade of culture, the great mass of them bent on im­ provement, but numbers are sent by anxious friends with the hope that they may be saved or reclaimed from every evil tendency. Yet the disorders incident to such gatherings are essentially unknown among us. Our streets are as quiet by day and by night as in any other country town. This result we attribute greatly to the wholesome influence of the system of joint education. College tricks lose their attrac­ tiveness in a community thus constituted. They scarcely appear among us. We have had no difficulty in reference to the conduct and manners in the college dining-hall. There is an entire absence of the irregularities and roughness so often complained of in the college commons. “ 5th.—Another manifest advantage is the relation of the B �18 Joint Education of school to the community. A cordial feeling of goodwill and the absence of that antagonism between town and college which in general belongs to the history of universities and colleges. The constitution of the school is so similar to that of the community that any conflict is unnatural; the usual provocation seems to be wanting, “ 6th.—It can hardly be doubted that people educated under such conditions are kept in harmony with society at large, and are prepared to appreciate the responsibilities of life, and to enter upon its work. If we are not utterly de­ ceived in our position, our students naturally and readily find their position in the world, because they have been trained in sympathy with the world. These are among the advantages of the system that have forced themselves upon our attention. The list might be extended and expanded, but you will wish especially to know whether'we have not encountered disad­ vantages and difficulties which more than counterbalance these advantages. “ As to the question whether young ladies have the mental vigour and physical health to maintain a fair standing in a class with voung men, I must say, where there has been the same preparatory training, we find no difference in ability to maintain themselves in the class-room and at the examina­ tions. The strong and the weak scholars are equally distri­ buted between the sexes. “ Whether ladies need a course of study especially adapted to their nature and prospective work ?—The theory of our school has never been that men and women are alike in mental constitution, or that they naturally and properly occupy the same position in their work of life. The educa­ tion furnished is general, not professional, designed to fit men and women for any position or work to which they may pro­ perly be called. The womanly nature will appropriate the material to its own necessities under its own laws.' Young men and women sit at the same table and parta.ke of the same food, and we have no apprehension that the vital forces will fail to elaborate from the common material the osseous, fibrous, and nervous tissues adapted to each frame and constitution. . <£ Apprehension is felt that character will deteriorate on the one side or the other,—that young men will become frivolous or effeminate, and young women coarse and mas­ culine. �Toung Men and Women. T9 “ That young men should lose their manly attributes and character from proper association with, cultivated young women is antecedently improbable and false in fact. It is the natural atmosphere for the development of the higher qualities of manhood—magnanimity, generosity, true chivalry, and earnestness. The animal man is kept subordinate in the prevalence of these higher qualities. “We have found it the surest way to make men of boys and gentlemen of rowdies. “ On the other hand, will not the young woman, pursuing her studies with young men, take on their manners, and aspirations, and aims, and be turned aside from the true ideal of womanly life and character ? The thing is scarcely con­ ceivable. The natural response of woman to the exhibition of manly traits is in the correlative qualities of gentleness, delicacy, and grace. “ It might better be questioned whether, the finer shadings of woman’s character can be developed without this natural stimulus ; but it is my duty not to reason, but to speak from the limited historical view assigned me. “You wish to know whether the result with us has been a large accession to the number of coarse, strong-minded women, in the disagreeable sense of the word; and I say, without hesitation, that I do not know a single instance of such a product as the result of our system of education. “ Is there not danger that young men and young women thus brought together in the critical period of fife, when the distinctive social tendencies act with greatest intensity, will fail of the necessary regulative force, and fall into undesirable and unprofitable relations ? Will not such association result in weak and foolish love affairs ? It is not strange that such apprehension is felt, nor would it be easy to give an a priori answer to such difficulties ; but if we may judge from our experience, the difficulties are without foundation. The danger in this direction results from excited imagination, from the glowing exaggerations of youthful fancy, and the best remedy is to displace these fancies by every-day facts and realities. “Theyoung man shut out from the society of ladies, with the help of the high-wrought representations of life which poets and novelists afford, with only a distant vision of the reality, is the one who is in danger. The women whom he sees are glorified by his fancy, and are wrought into his day �io Joint Education of dreams and night dreams as beings of supernatural loveliness. It would be different if he met them day by day in the class­ room, in a common encounter with a mathematical problem, or at a table sharing in the common want of bread and butter. There is still room for the fancy to work, but the materials for the picture are more reliable and enduring. Such associa­ tion does not take all the romance out of life, but it gives as favourable conditions for sensible views and actions upon these delicate questions as can be afforded to human nature. “ But is this method adapted to schools in general, or is the success attained at Oberlin due to peculiar features of the place, which can rarely be found or reproduced elsewhere, and can it be introduced into men’s colleges with their tradi­ tional customs and habits of action and thought ? Might not the changes required occasion difficulty at the outset and peril the experiment ? On this point I have no experience, but I have such confidence in the inherent vitality and adaptability of the system that I should be entirely willing to see it subjected to this test.” I am sorry not to give you a more lengthened account of Dr Fairchild’s Report, but the time warns me to hasten. Respecting economy, school discipline, social order, and the improved character of both young men and young women, and the high scholar­ ship attained by young women, you see that Dr Fairchild’s statement fully corroborates my own and that of Mr Harris. He agrees with us that the grade of scholarship of the young men is in no wise lowered by this joint work, but, on the con­ trary, that the average is higher. To be definite upon this point, my own opinion is that those marvellous feats of scholarship that sometimes occur in boys’ schools are not so likely to occur in a joint school, where a little more of the domestic and social element is found. On the other hand, from a long and close observation, I feel fully justified in saying the average scholarship is higher. �Young Men and 'Women. 21 There is a more general stimulus for good scholar­ ship. The standard of respectability is somewhat different from what it is in a school exclusively for boys. A boy may secure the respect of his boy­ associates by being an adept on the playground or generally a good fellow, but as he is known to the girls only through his class work, he feels more especially bound to make this creditable. I should like to accumulate authority upon these points, but I must ask you to accept my statement that the opinions I have' given you are those held by the very large majority of the educators of the country. In this system of joint education you see that the difficulty of getting funds to establish schools scarcely appears as an obstacle to the higher edu­ cation of women. It requires so little more to edu­ cate girls along with boys than it does to educate boys alone, and lack of the masculine incentive to study is largely supplied to the girls by class rivalry. The girls like to remain at school, and they like to do as much work and as good work as the boys do; and the boys are equally eager to keep the companionship of the girls, and to keep up the competition in all the departments of the work. There is a mutual rivalry which both enjoy, and the girls work with zest, without thinking whether there is to be any reward beyond the simple enjoy­ ment of their work, without considering whether it will ever bring them any farther returns. The work of the girls in the joint schools has done much to force up the standard in the exclu­ sively girls’ schools. These schools could not afford the disparaging comparison. So the teachers intro­ duce the same studies as are found in the joint �22 Joint Education of schools, and do the best they can to get as good work from their girls. But in most of the girls’ schools I have ever visited, the work will not com­ pare with the work of girls in the joint schools. When Dr Fairchild says he does not know a ' single instance in which a coarse, strong-minded woman, in the disagreeable sense, has been the pro­ duct of the Oberlin system of education, it must not be understood that there have been no women of that type at Oberlin, for there have been, and Oberlin lias done much to soften them and refine them, but it could not wholly change their natures and previously-acquired habits. Upon this point there is a pernicious popular delusion, and I am at a loss to account for its origin. It is not association with men that developes this type of character. The reverse of this is the case, as Dr Fairchild has indicated. It is true that many highly-intellectual and highly-educated women have been peculiar, have developed peculiarities or idiosyncrasies of character or habit which lessened their companion­ able and womanly attractiveness, but these women have generally worked by themselves, away from society, apart from the companionship of men. Joint schools are the most complete corrective of these tendencies. Whatever elevates women in the eyes of men they are disposed to cultivate in the presence of men, and whatever elevates men in the eyes of women they cultivate in the presence of women. There is little danger of careless toilet with young women who are constantly meeting­ young men; little danger of angular movement, of unamiable sharpness, of egotism, and pronounced self-assertion. The disagreeable women, the women contemp- �Toung Men and Women. 23 tuously called strong-minded, are women who have not known a genial social atmosphere. Crotchety men and crotchety women are the product of isola­ tion from society, and formerly women could not mount the heights of knowledge except in isolation. The attractive women, the women who seem to have a genius for womanliness, are the women who have been much in the society of men,—women at court, women in political and diplomatic circles, women who are familiar with the thought and’ experience of men, women who talk with men and work with men. Social intercourse at these joint schools is not of course left to chance. Girls and boys need and get as careful attention at school as in their homes. Usually they enter and leave the school building by different doors, and indeed meet only when they are receiving instruction from the teachers, where they occupy separate forms on different sides of the room. Among the older pupils, at all times, except at the lecture hours, the girls usually have their own rooms and the boys theirs,'and no communication between them is possible, except as the teachers choose to grant permission, which is not asked with­ out explaining the occasion. The boys do not appear to care very much to talk to the girls, at least they would not be willing to have it seen that they did. At the boarding-schools the young men and young women usually have their private apart­ ments in different buildings, but meet in a common dining-hall in the building occupied by the young ■ women. Here they arrange themselves as they like, the size of the company and the presence of teachers being quite sufficient to exclude objection­ able manners. At the times allowed for recreation �24 .• Joint Education of the arrangements are such as to preclude for the most part opportunities for young men and young women to meet, though there are very frequent receptions at .the homes of the professors or at the general parlours, when they meet as they would at any ordinary social party. At a few of the smaller boarding-schools much more freedom, of intercourse has been allowed, and with very admirable results ; but this requires great wisdom and care on the part of the teachers, more than they are generally able to give in a large school. Where the pupils live at home no very especial care is required on the part of the teachers, further than would under any circumstances be necessary to secure general good order. This system of education developes self-reliance and a sense of responsibility, to such a degree that, as I quoted from Dr Fairchild, it is a constant sur­ prise to see how little direction they need. A good many times while I was at Antioch College, young men who had got into disgrace, or had been dis­ missed from young men’s colleges, were sent there to be reclaimed from their bad habits, and it is surprising what effect this home-like association had upon them. I have already mentioned Michigan University as the best institution that has as yet opened its doors to women. This was done three years ago. For ten years the question had been pending before the trustees. A letter was addressed to Horace Mann, asking for minute information concerning the working of Antioch, and seeking counsel in reference to the advisability of attempting the tame plan at the Michigan University. Mr Mann replied, that though he was an ardent advocate �Toung Men and Women. ' 25 of joint education and was satisfied with the results achieved at Antioch, he should be afraid to attempt the plan in a large town, where college residence was not required. This ‘letter settled the matter for the time. The trustees said:— “ We cannot, endanger the morality of our students, and the reputation of our institution, to accommo­ date the few women who wish to come. We give them our sympathy, but can at present do nothing more.” But every now and then, with the change of trustees, the question was revived. The men of this new rich State felt ashamed to do so much less for their daughters than for their sons, and they were particularly sensitive to the argument that the privileges of the institution could be extended to the young women with almost no increase in the expenses. Three years ago the opposition found itself in the minority, and a resolution was passed admitting women to all the classes of the university. The dangers Horace Mann feared have not, and in all probability will not come. Even the young­ men, who in anticipation dreaded an invasion of women into their realm of free-and-easy habits, now unite in the most cordial approval of the plan. They find a genial element added to their college life in place of a chafing restraint. The first year only one woman came into the Arts-classes. This bold venturer was the daughter of a deceased professor, by whom she had been trained up to a point a good deal in advance of the requisites for entrance. This enabled her to step at once into the front rank of the class of two hundred young men, who had been in the university a year before her. No sooner was she there than the dread and anticipated restraint on the part of the �26 * 'Joint Education of young men were forgotten, and the most chivalric feeling sprang up in its place. For a whole year Miss Stockwell was alone in the Arts-classes among seven or eight hundred young men, yet nothing ever occurred to make her feel in the slightest degree uncomfortable. She took her B.A. degree last summer as the first Greek scholar in the university. There are now a hundred young women or more in the various departments of the university. The Professor of Civil Engineer­ ing has been in the habit of giving to his class every year a particular mathematical problem, a sort of pons asinorum, as a test of their ability. Not once during fifteen years had any member of the class solved it, though the professor states that during that time he has propounded it to fifteen hundred young men. Last year, as usual, the old problem was again presented to the class. A Miss White alone, of all the class, brought in the solution. The best student in the Law school last year was a woman. I could tell you many other stories of the suc­ cesses of women in these joint schools, but it would not be safe to conclude from these accounts that the young women in America are superior to the young men ; for, as you would naturally suppose, the few women who at present avail themselves of university training, in opposition to the popular notion of what is wise and becoming, are for the most part above the average of the women of the country. I think I may say, however, that girls are a little more likely to lead the classes in the schools than boys are. They are, perhaps, a little more conscientious in doing the work assigned them, and have a little more school ambition. �Toung Men and Women. 27 I quote the following from the Annual Report of the Michigan University for the year ending 1872 :— ■ “ In the Medical Department the women receive instruc­ tion by themselves. In the other departments all instruction is given to both sexes in common. “ It is manifestly not wise to leap to hasty generalisations from our short experience in furnishing education to both sexes in our university. But I think all w’ho have been familiar with the inner life of the university for the past three years will admit that, thus far, no reason for doubting the wisdom of the action of the trustees in opening the uni­ versity to women has appeared. “Hardly one of the many embarrassments which some have feared have confronted us. The young women have addressed themselves to their work with great zeal, and have shown themselves quite capable of meeting the demands of severe studies as successfully as their classmates of the other sex. Their work, so far, does not evince less variety of apti­ tude or less power of grappling even with the higher mathe­ matics than we find in the young men. They receive no favour, and desire none. They are subjected to precisely the same tests as the men. Nor does their work seem to put a dangerous strain upon their physical powers. Their absences by reason of illness do not proportionably exceed those of the men. Their presence has not called for the enactment of a single new law, nor for the slightest change in our methods of government or grade of work. “If we are asked still to regard the reception of women into our classes as an experiment, it must certainly be deemed a most hopeful experiment. The numerous inquiries that have been sent to us from various parts of this country, and even from England, concerning the results of their admission to the university, show that a profound and wide-spread interest in the subject has been awakened.” I can say for myself, that I have never known any one who has spent a few days at one of these colleges who has not become a convert to the scheme. There is in America a strong and constantly growing conviction, that the best plan for educating . �28 "Joint Education of both boys and girls is for them to reside at home and attend day schools; that this avoids the defects attendant upon the system of governesses and tutors, and also the dangers that are inherent in the congregated life of boarding-schools; and as American families seldom leave home for, at most, more than a few weeks in midsummer, this plan is easily carried out. In accordance with this con­ viction, the citizens of Boston have recently erected and endowed a large university in the centre of their city, although the time-honoured Harvard stands scarcely two miles beyond their precincts. The Boston University, which starts with larger available funds than those of Harvard, will be opened this autumn, and as a second step in the direction of the popular educational sentiment, the trustees have decided to offer its advantages and honours to young women on the same conditions as to young men. There is evidently a disposition in America to open all lines of study to women, and a few women have entered each of the three learned professions, but the time is too short and the number too small for us to be able as yet to generalise upon the fitness of women for professions, or their inclination to choose them. Most of our women—I think I may almost say all of our women—expect to marry, and most of them do marry. We have not that redundancy of women to trouble and puzzle the advocates of domesticity that you have here; and as fortunes are more easily made, men are not timid in incurring domestic responsibilities. As a consequence of this, the industrial occupations that women seek, other than domestic, are expected to be only temporary, �Young Men and Women. ig and are such as may be entered upon without much especial professional training, and may be given up without involving much sacrifice of pre­ vious study or discipline. I think I may say there is a very general disposition to seek those that will especially contribute to their fitness for domestic­ life. This brings me to a peculiar feature of American education—the prevalence of women teachers. In the public schools of St Louis there are forty men teachers and over four hundred women teachers; only about one-twelfth of the whole number are men, and this I think would be about the general average for the cities of the north. The primary schools are taught exclusively by women—most of the grammar schools have only a man at the head of them, and in the high schools there is about an equal number of men and women. In two of the most successful grammar schools in St Louis there are only women teachers. Recent experiments in placing women at the head of several of the grammar schools in Cleveland, Ohio, give still stronger confirmation of the marked governing power of women as contrasted with men. Women teachers have been employed in the schools in preference to men as a matter of economy, but underneath this cloak of economy an unex­ pected virtue has been found. It is now pretty well settled that with equal experience and scholarly attainments women teach better than men do, and that they manage the pupils with more tact; that is, they succeed in getting from the pupils what they want, with more ease and less disturbance of temper. Where women do precisely the, same work as �jo Joint Education of men in teaching, they get less pay. Wages have followed the law of supply and demand. The guar­ dians of the public school treasures have generally not felt at liberty to offer more than the regular market prices for work. But I am glad to say the more enlightened public feeling is beginning to make a change in this respect. A few women are paid men’s wages—are paid what they ought to have, rather than what they could command in an open market. Teaching in America, as I have indicated, is for the most part a temporary occupation ; it is chiefly done by young people between the ages of eighteen and thirty who have no intention of making it a profession. The women marry and the men enter other occupations. How much the schools lose by the immaturity and inexperience of the teachers it is difficult to estimate accurately; but that they gain much by the freshness and enthusiasm of these young minds is unquestionable. Young teachers get into closer sympathy with pupils, and can more readily understand the movements of their minds and apprehend their difficulties. The plan of teaching for a few years is very popular among young people, from the general belief that it furnishes the best possible discipline for a successful life. This experience in teaching is considered valuable for young men, but still more valuable for young women, and many young women who have no need to earn money teach for a few years .after leaving school, sometimes from their own choice, but much oftener from the choice of their parents, who wish to supplement the daughter’s education with the more varied discipline that teaching affords. �Toung Men and Women. 31 Thus the teaching of women is encouraged from four considerations :— First. According to the present arrangement of wages it is economical. Second. Women seem to have an especial natural aptitude for the work as compared with men. Third. The general welfare of society demands that wage-giving industries shall be provided for women. Fourth. Of all the employments offered to women, teaching seems the best suited to fit them for domestic life, the life that lies before the most of them, and so positive are its claims in this direction that it is being sought as an employment with that single end in view. A few years of teaching forms so prominent a feature in the education of leading American women, that I could not omit it in any general consideration of this subject. Note.—The Times of' January 3rd, 1874, gives the following extracts from “Circulars of Information,” just published by the United States Bureau of Education:—The total number of degrees conferred in 1873 by the Higher Colleges was 4,493, and 376 honorary. One hundred and ninety-one ladies received degrees. Illinois has thirteen Colleges, in which women have the same or equal facilities with men ; Wisconsin has four, Iowa three, Missouri four, Ohio ten, and Indiana nine; New York has seven, and Pennsylvania, seven. PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The joint education of young men and women in the American schools and colleges : being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on 27th of April, 1873 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Beedy, Mary E. Sunday Lecture Society Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 31 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Advertisement for Sunday Lecture Society on p.[2], delivered at St George's Hall, Langham Place. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Haymarket, London. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sunday Lecture Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1873 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N058 Subject The topic of the resource Education Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The joint education of young men and women in the American schools and colleges : being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on 27th of April, 1873), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Coeducation-United States Education NSS Women https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/37346aba43f3530c55ff3d3342e6a340.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=Tk7QnRmvTNxqmBkD61qmzdjLVSKdQyAuYmPsfuOlIVZfKUida2wlN1V29qUve1g6Pz-zSIHElpPhVNBkbX-1Aljm7WcFe-1Sgqb6fX2zFfvuPqU24Qqu6eBuJrlujfy20b-UU-%7EfBtRVyxVkbuSJU1kHtdSnpKi2XuL3rkgbFobxztnnn3DJe8%7ExBVPq9xK5QNikIqDEKUX2mtNgGm4ANLavHKyQVXhSR6JBV6V5A89Wwww3dAdbwXIRKhKrm3Tn8s25yiWbS17JJxuf805Duex6FERpthANa5KfnG%7ElMiyXcdBs-4FFhYPFrlCczXTxDKQM1W9eNXhdDY9ter9NMw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM afdad8eec029684613474ae6b821147c PDF Text Text NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY THE PAST AND PRESENT OF THE HERESY LAWS. DELIVERED BEFORE THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 1st DECEMBER, 1878, BY ‘ W. A. HUNTER, M.A., Barrister-at-Law, Professor of Jurisprudence, University College London. ’ Hontian: PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, 1878. PRICE THREEPENCE. �SYLLABUS. Mr. Lecky’s views on the causes of Persecution. Dogma and Persecution arose from the struggle of the clergy for political supremacy. I. Punishment of Heresy as a crime. 1. By the Ecclesiastical Courts. 2. By judge and law. 3. By statute. 4. Proposed article in the New Criminal Code. II. Deprivation of Civil Rights of Heretics. 1. Nullification of contracts tainted with heresy. 2. Illegality of heretical trusts. 3. Guardianship of children. 4. The refusal of evidence. Oaths. Witnesses. III. Heresy in morals. IV. The Persecuting Spirit as perverting the administration of justice. �HISTORY OF THE HERESY LAWS. HE History of Persecution presents to the philosophic mind a strange problem. Why should men cruelly maltreat and murder their fellow-men, who do them no harm, because of a mere difference of opinion regarding super-terrestrial objects ? The question is not easy to answer. It implies, on the part of the persecuting sects, intellectual blindness and moral callousness. For surely —from a mere intellectual standpoint—nothing can be more absurd than to punish a man for his belief. To inflict evil upon a man because his reason does not recommend a popular creed may make him a hypocrite, but by no possibility a believer. It implies not less moral obliquity. For the simplest rule of morals is that we should do unto others as we would have others do unto us. But the persecutor never admits that it is right to punish him for his opinions. His opinions, he tells us, are right opinions, and it would be highly criminal to punish a man for holding right opinions. Thus reasons the bigot with himself. Sometimes indeed he tries to evade this difficulty. He will tell us, with engaging candour, that persecution is always right in principle, however unfortunate it may sometimes be in its applica­ tion. He will assure us that he persecutes because he believes it right to suppress error; and he admits that if his party is the weaker it would be right to persecute him in turn. By this ingenuous admission he hopes to shelter himself under the golden rule; but it is to be observed that such a confession is never made when there is any opportunity of testing his sincerity. If this candid gentleman were to find himself among the persecuted, he would be the first to call out most lustily against the wickedness of his persecutors. When, therefore, we take a persecutor and calmly examine him, we find his moral sense as much at fault as his intellect; both his T �4 The Past and Present intelligence and his conscience are clouded; in a word, he is both a rogue and a fool. In putting the issue on that broad and simple basis I make an assumption. I assume that the bigot is sincere according to his light. I assume that he reverences truth; that he wishes to see truth prevail among man­ kind, and that error be driven away. It is from this point of view that Mr. Lecky, the distinguished historian of Rationalism in Europe, discusses that most melancholy chapter in the history of the human race, the rise and progress of persecution. He ascribes the tremendous energy of the spirit of persecution to the doctrine of eternal punishment for religious error, and in a vigorous passage he thus denounces a cause of untold suffering to the human race:—* “If men believe with an intense and realising faith that their own view of a disputed question is true beyond all possibility of mistake, if they further believe that those who adopt other views will be doomed by the Almighty to an eternity of misery which, with the same moral dis­ position but with a different belief, they would have escaped, these men will, sooner or later, persecute to the full extent of their power. If you speak to them of the physical and mental suffering which persecution produces, or of the sincerity and unselfish heroism of its victims, they will reply that such arguments rest altogether on the inadequacy of your realisation of the doctrine they believe. What suffering that man can inflict can be comparable to the eternal misery of all who embrace the doctrine of the heretic? What claim can human virtues have to our forbearance, if the Almighty punishes the mere profession of error as a crime of the deepest turpitude ? If you en­ countered a lunatic who, in his frenzy, was inflicting on multitudes around him a death of the most prolonged and excruciating agony, would you not feel justified in arrest­ ing his career by every means in your power—by taking his life if you could not otherwise attain your object? But if you knew that this man was inflicting not temporal but eternal death, if he was not a guiltless though danger* “ Rationalism in Europe,” Lecky, vol. ii. page 1. �of the Heresy Laws. 5 ous madman, but one whose conduct you believed to involve the most heinous criminality, would you not act with still less compunction or hesitation ? ” Mr. Lecky enforces his argument by a short and striking sentence from Thomas Aquinas, the great orthodox logician of mediaeval Catholicism. “If dealers in false money or other malefactors are forthwith justly delivered to death by secular princes, much more ought heretics, the moment they are convicted of heresy, to be at once, not merely excommunicated, but justly put to death.” This sentence is worthy a moment’s consideration. It has the appearance of an argument; in form it professes to be reasoning; but even a glance is sufficient to show that it possesses merely the form and not in any degree the substance of reasoning. The premiss is that dealers in false money are justly put to death; the conclusion is that heretics ought to be put to death. But, heretics are not coiners of bad money; and it would just be as logical to say—because murderers are justly executed, therefore those who eat meat on Fridays ought to be executed. The conclusion has simply no relation to the premiss whatever. Viewed as a logical proposition, which it pro­ fesses in form to be, the saying of St. Thomas Aquinas is a rank and childish absurdity. But, if we are to under­ stand it aright, we must discard the pretentious form of logic in which it is enveloped. What it really means is that the writer, and those whom he addressed, considered heresy to be a worse crime than coining false money or murder, and upon that assumption St. Thomas Aquinas is logical enough in saying it ought to be visited with the penalty of death. If it be a greater crime to doubt or deny any proposition which the Church of Borne puts forward as true—for that is the meaning of “ heresy ” in the mouth of St. Thomas Aquinas—if that be a greater crime than forgery or murder, then truly it is difficult to say that heretics ought not to be slain. But, is heresy a crime worse than murder ? In the days of Thomas Aquinas this was a question that admitted neither denial nor doubt. To have said a word for the heretic would have been to incur imminent risk of the fate of the heretic. At the present day, so �6 The Past and Present deep, so wide, is the revolt from the Church of Borne, that a person who should gravely maintain the thesis of the saintly doctor would incur universal ridicule. The greatest spiritual dominion which Europe has ever known has been broken up. The sceptre has departed from Borne, and the Pope has no longer the power of killing those whom he calls rebels; he can do no more than brandish the empty thunderbolts of excommunication. That is why heresy is no longer a crime. Heresy was to the spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope what treason is to the secular authority of kings. Heresy denied the right of the priesthood to lord it over the consciences of men. By denying the dogmas which the priests promulgated the heretic assailed them in their tenderest point. If their dogmas were not true, then were they downright impostors, and the very bread they ate was got by false pretences. The most cursory examination of the history of the Christian Church shows that dogma w’as the bond by which the priesthood reared the extraordinary fabric of the papacy, an institution which claimed to over-ride sovereigns, and to exercise the power, without incurring the responsibility, of secular government. To support dogma the crime of heresy was invented. The aggrandise­ ment of the priesthood was the end to be accomplished; the punishment of heretics was the means. To achieve so holy an end the priests had no scruple in recommending the destruction of those who stood in the way. The end not merely justified but sanctified and glorified the means. Is it a marvel, when the clergy had preached for some hundreds of years the sacred doctrine of the murder of their enemies and illustrated it, whenever they had the chance, by practical example, that in the days of St. Thomas Aquinas every voice in Christendom acknow­ ledged the guilt of heresy ? It seems to me, therefore, that Mr. Lecky, in tracing the practice of persecution up to the doctrine of eternal punishment for erroneous belief, misses a most important element in the problem. Without grave confusion of ideas mankind could never have fallen into the horrible crime of persecution; but, even under the narrowest doctrine of eternal punishment, men would have stopped �oj- the Heresy Laws. 7 short of murdering heretics, but that their hatred was inflamed by the sinister ambition of an insatiable priest­ hood. The ghastly catalogue of crime would not have been so long had there been no dupes; but it never would have existed at all if there had not been a design­ ing oligarchy of churchmen building up for themselves a throne higher than that of the oldest and proudest monarchies of Europe. Worldly ambition, using as its tools the fears and passions of its dupes, is the real parent of persecution. Jesus Christ said, my kingdom is not of this world; but the priests, who pretended to be His followers, resolved that their kingdom should be of this world, and that they should sit on the necks of kings, and they pursued this scheme of universal dominion with pitiless cruelty. The tortures of the inquisition will be remembered with a shudder when the blackest crimes perpetrated by individual ambition have fallen into oblivion. It is well to bear this in mind. The true source of persecution is not erroneous religious opinion, but priestcraft. Heresy, it is asserted, is disloyalty to truth. But not for that reason was it punished with death. It was disloyalty to the priests that fired their bitter indignation, and rooted out of their breasts those feelings of tenderness and humanity which we may believe they shared at their birth with the generality of mankind. This sad story in the history of our race is well illustrated by the relation of Christianity to the Roman Empire. Books have been written to show the benign influence which Christianity is alleged to have exercised on Roman Civilization and Roman Law. It was under Constantine, and by his help, that in the year a.d. 312, Christianity was adopted as the religion of the Roman Empire. I have carefully read the jurisprudence of Rome before Christi­ anity was introduced and afterwards. And what do I find? That a spirit of humanity and justice was breathed into the dry bones of heathen law ? Nothing of the sort. Humanity and justice reached their highest development under such heathens as Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. You will search in vain through the Law of Rome for any traces of reform under Christianity; �8 The Past and Present but, there are two things of which you will get more than enough. You will get laws intended to aggrandise the priests, to shield them from civil and criminal responsibility, and to enable them to extort money with ease and hoard it with safety. You will, also, find many statutes passed to despoil of their property, to banish, and even to kill, all those sects of Christians who did not bow the knee to Rome, but were guilty of the crime of understanding the teaching of Christ differently from the Roman Bishops. Rew people are aware of the ruthless violence with which all dissent from the Church of Rome was stamped out. Before a century had passed under the Christian emperors, the catalogue of Rome’s victims were to be reckoned by hun­ dreds of thousands. In a statute passed in the year a.d. 428 against heretics we have a curious enumeration of sects, as regards some of whom even ecclesiastical antiquaries are silent. They were:—Arians and Macedonians, Pneumatomachi and Apollinariani and Novatiani or Sabbatiani, Eunomiani, Tetraditae, Valenteniani, Papianistse, Montanists or Priscillianists, Marcianists, Borboriani, Messaliani, Eutychitse or Enthusiastse, Donatists, Audiani, Hydroparastatae, Tascodrogitae, Batrachitae, Hermeieciani, Photiniani, Pauliani, Marcelliani, Ophitae, Encratitae, Apotactitae, Saccophori, and worst of all Manichaeans and Nestorians. Here is a list of about thirty sects who were broken up and destroyed by the criminal law. That is how the marvellous unity of the Catholic Church was obtained. It won its conquests by blood and iron; by the same means it maintained them ; but it lasted long enough to show that truth is stronger than tyranny, and that the sword of the Spirit can cut deeper than any weapons of steel. In the course of time the priests invented an ingenious plan for perpetuating their dominion. Owing to the pro­ found ignorance of the population, it was easy to teach the people that the principal calamities that affected them were due to the prevalence of heresy. In one of the enactments of the Christian Emperor, Justinian, we find the philosophy of heresy, from the priestly point of view, stated with the most naive absurdity. The reason for killing heretics was that famines, earthquakes, and pesti- �of the Heresy Laws. 17 deprivation of civil rights in respect of contract or trusts seriously interferes with or even hampers the propaganda of heretical opinions. While, however, such a state of the law does nothing to protect orthodoxy, it does act as an encouragement to immorality, and enables a few persons, on rare occasions, to break their promise with impunity. But the portion of the law which we have now to consider does not possess this harmless character. The law, when­ ever it operates at all, works with the cruellest injustice.. The law as to the guardianship of children may be summed-up in a sentence—it sacrifices the mother to the father, and it sacrifices both father and mother to religious bigotry. The rule of law is almost inexorable that a child must be brought up in the religion of its father, even after he is dead, and when he has never expressed even the slightest wish that the widowed mother should be robbed of the care of her offspring. A Protestant widow will be compelled to bring up her infant daughter in the Roman Catholic faith, if the father was a Roman Catholic in profession merely, and was really indifferent as to the religion his children should be taught. I cannot use more forcible language to describe this law than that which was employed by V. C. Wickens in a case where he was obliged to give judgment against a mother:— “To direct that this ward shall be brought up in the Roman Catholic faith will be to create a barrier between a widowed mother and her only child; to annul the mother’s influence over her daughter on the most important of all subjects with the almost inevitable effect of weakening it on all others; to introduce a disturbing element into a union which ought to be as close, as warm, and as abso­ lute, as any known to man; and lastly, to inflict severe pain on both mother and child. But it is clear that no argument which would recognize any right in the widowed mother to bring up her child in a religion different from the father’s can be allowed to weigh with me at all. According to the law of this court a mother has no such right.” (Hawksworth v. Hawksworth, 6 L.R. Ch.). The recent Agar-Ellis case still more illustrates the strength of the father’s legal position. Even an express antenuptial promise, without which the marriage would �18 The Past and Present never have taken place, that the children should be brought up in the religion of the mother, had not, in a Court of Equity, so much as the weight of a feather to outweigh the father’s claims. So strong is the father’s power, that he cannot legally divest himself of it by such a contract as would suffice to settle ten million pounds. By the law as it stands, a man may induce a woman to marry him by promising her the enjoyment of what she may regard as a particular boon — the preparation of her infant children for eternity—and when the marriage takes place, he can cast his promise to the winds, and bring up the children in principles which, according to the mother’s belief, will assign them to everlasting torments. But the rights of the father, while strong as a band of iron to crush the mother, snap like a reed when they come into collision with the interests of orthodoxy. Charity, parental affection, the sweet influences of home—all must give way to the paramount object of stuffing the child with a particular set of theological opinions. Even eccentric, although not blasphemous, opinions on religion have been held sufficient to rob a father of his children. In giving judgment in Thomas v. Roberts (3 D.Gr. & S. 758), Lord Justice Knight Bruce, then Vice-Chancellor, is reported as distinguishing the degree of eccentricity which might not be absolutely fatal from that which in law disqualifies a man from having the custody of his own children. “ I doubt whether a man, who, having been ordained a minister of religion, as a Christian in a Christian com­ munity, has designedly and systematically given up attending any place of worship (whatever his private feelings and whatever hymns he may sing) ought in any condition of circumstances to be permitted in this country to have the guardianship or care of an English child, for whose maintenance and education there exist any other means of providing, though the child be his own. But that particular question I think it not, in the present instance, necessary to decide, and I wish to be understood as giving no opinion upon it.” “ However this may be, I apprehend that in England a man who holds the opinion that prayer—I mean prayer in the sense of entreaty and supplication to the Almighty �of the Heresy Laws. 19 —is no part of duty; who considers moreover that there is not any day of the week which ought to be observed as a Sabbath, as a day of peculiar rest, or as one of peculiar holiness, or in a manner distinct from other days, must be deemed to entertain opinions noxious to society, adverse to civilization, opposed to the usages of Christendom, contrary (in the case of prayer at least) to the express command of the New Testament, and, finally, pernicious necessarily in the highest degree to any young person unhappy enough to be imbued with them. I say in England.” This passage needs no remark, for the final limitation converts the whole reasoning into absurdity; but I may observe that the Vice-Chancellor is a good deal more straightlaced in his orthodoxy than Saint Paul. We read in Romans (xiv. 5), “ One man esteemeth one day above another ; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” 4. Refused of the Evidence of Heretics—Oaths.—The confusion of ideas that so long covered the question of admissibility of witnesses with deep darkness attests in a remarkable degree the weakness of the human under­ standing when it is swayed by strong passion. Eirst of all, our judges and writers on law have uniformily assigned, as one of the conclusive and irresistible arguments for religious persecution, that the administration of justice rests upon oaths, and oaths rest upon religion, therefore, to weaken religion is to shake the administration of justice. With more truth it might be urged that it is only the power to punish false evidence with imprisonment that prevents oaths degenerating into an unmeaning farce; for experience shows that men will habitually take oaths which they never mean to observe, as in the case of so many official oaths, when no temporal punishment is annexed to the perjury. To refuse the testimony of an unbeliever involved even a more glaring solecism. If an unbeliever dissembled or denied his opinion, the English law accepted his testimony without hesitation or scruple; but if he openly avowed his opinions, and thereby showed his conscientiousness, honesty, and courage, he was dismissed from the witness �20 The Past and Present box as unworthy of credence. At last, in the years 1869 and 1870, the grave reproach on our law was removed, and now, in England, although not in Scotland, a solemn affirmation is to be taken instead of an oath by those who were formerly disqualified from giving evidence through defect of religious belief. III.—Resteiction on Feeedom oe Discussion in Mosals. Recent events in Germany have attracted notice to a subject akin to religious heresy, namely, social or moral heresy. Under the influence of a disgraceful panic, the German Parliament has allowed itself to be­ come the author of a political inquisition. It has sanc­ tioned a law bad in principle, and still worse in respect of the authority by which it is to be carried out. Power has been given to the Executive Government to rob and maltreat all persons guilty of the heresy of Socialism, by which is understood opinions hostile to the existing social institutions, and aiming at a reconstruction of human society in respect of its deepest foundations. The teaching of experience has been ignored, for, if one thing is certain, it is that persecution of Socialist heretics will increase their power, and add to the danger of their error. It may be a gross error to say with Proudhon, for example, that property is theft, or to say, with Mr. Noyes, that the institution of the family is a relic of bar­ barism ; but surely the proper way to deal with their errors is to exhibit the fallacy of their reasoning, and not to knock them down by brute force. Just as improve­ ment in the art of government is impossible without free and unsparing discussion of proposed and actual legisla­ tion ; just as true views regarding the constitution of the universe and the destiny of man are impossible under a regime of clerical terrorism ; just as a scientific knowledge of nature is only possible in a country which freely handles even the most revered names, so progress in morals, an improvement in the conduct of mankind, can only be attained by unqualified freedom in discussing every moral question. If, in a country where polygamy is sanctioned, it is a crime to condemn polygamy, or in a �of the Heresy Laws. 21 country where monogamy is established, it is a crime to say anything against monogamy, how is it possible for mankind to change for the better? Whatever reasons exist in favour of political or religious liberty apply with equal force for freedom in the sphere of human conduct or morals. Yet it is a strange fact, and one not generally known, that so far as the law is concerned, England has the unenviable distinction of anticipating the recent fanatical legislation of Germany. Until within the last year most Englishmen supposed that to preach a moral heresy in this country was even less a crime than to doubt the infallible truth of the XXXIX. Articles. Yet, at the present moment, it is undoubtedly law that any one who publishes a book on any subject that can be comprehended in the vague designation of “ morality ” does so with a halter round his neck, for if his opinions are unpopular, or if they should happen to differ from those of twelve men picked up by chance and put in a jury box, he is liable to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour. The way in which this has come about inspires us with a pro­ found sense of the mystery of the law. The case of blasphemy helps us partially to understand it. Blasphemy, in its popular acceptation, means language insulting to the Deity; by a process of judicial interpretation it was held that it meant any opinions contrary to the generally accepted doctrines of Christianity. The word “ obscene,” one should think, had a perfectly distinct, not to say a “ pungent ” meaning; but, inasmuch as all obscenity is contrary to morality, it has been decided by a process of logic, which the students of Aristotle will find it difficult to follow, that whatever is contrary to morality is obscenity. In this way it has now been established that any publication of opinions which a jury may be pleased to regard as contrary to their notions of morality is an indictable offence. We have all great respect for English juries in their right place ; but it is hardly the right place for a jury to sit on the chair of infallibility and ape the ridiculous pretensions of the Pope of Rome. It is a subject, I think, of unqualified regret that the new Criminal Code aggravates the mischief of �22 The Past and Present recent decisions If that code should become law, the advocates of what may be considered moral heresy may say with truth, that whereas the Common Law whipped them with cords the Criminal Code lashes them Sith scorpions. IV-—Bervertino Administration- or Justice. Heresy may be struck out of the Criminal Law, it may cease to deny to the citizen his civil rights, and there is sp . re lgious antipathies to cause a miscarriage of justice. I may mention, by way of illustration, the IRBI °f Tha<?ai?gh V‘ Edwards’in the Common Pleas, in cm ?! rCtS we^e simple- Mr- Bradlaugh had hired a fieid to deliver a lecture in Devonport, as the public halls m the town had been forbidden to him. The superintendent of the police interfered to prevent the meeting, and finally arrested Mr. Bradlaugh and put him in prison. The next day, Mr. Bradlaugh was brought before the magistrates, and, as there was not even a pretence for the charge of assault trumped-up against him, he was discharged. He then brought an action against the superintendent of police for false imprisonment. The tacts were notorious, and even the prejudiced jury who tried the case could not refuse a verdict for Mr. Bradlaugh; but they gave only a farthing of damages, and so compelled him to pay his own costs. Upon that ground Mr. Bradlaugh moved in the Court of Common - ea® . a n®w as the damages were ridiculously insufficient. Lord Chief Justice Erie, in giving judgment, Finsing a new trial, expressed the somewhat strange Ï idea that it was a real blessing to a freethought lecturer to deprive him of his liberty without excuse. Upon the same ground a jury of farmers might think that a ducking m a horse pond was a real benefit to the misguided secthe ^pourers’ Union. The Chief Justice ®ai^’ d.re.are opinions which are in law a crime. . H the plaintiff wanted to use his liberty for the purpose ot disseminating opinions which were in reality of that pernicious description, and the defendant prevented him from doing that which might be a very pernicious act to those who heard him, it might be that thé jury thought �of the Heresy Laws. 23 the act of imprisonment was in reality not an injury, but, on the contrary, an act which, in its real substantial result, was beneficial to the plaintiff, and so the nominal wrong would be abundantly compensated by the small sum given.” This brief sketch of the Heresy Laws brings before us one of the most melancholy aberrations of legislation. These laws have caused prodigious suffering, but they never conferred on the human race one iota of counter­ vailing advantage. They represent a dead loss to the credit side of human happiness, and the passions which gave rise to them are an unmitigated and unredeemed evil. Black is the guilt of those who have abused their position as the guides and instructors of mankind to pl a,nt in the infant mind the seeds of unfounded and irrational hatred, and so have helped to pile up that great mountain of persecution of man’s inhumanity to man, which has made countless thousands mourn. �SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literatuie, and Art; especially in their bearing upon the impiovement and social well-being of mankind. THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES ARB DELIVERED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely. (Annually—from November to May). i o?YE^??YKOrrR lectures (in three series), ending 20th April, lo/y, will be given. Members £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket transferable (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reserved-seat tickets, available for any lecture. Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,— To the Shilling- Reserved Seats—5s. 6d. To the Sixpenny Seats—2s., being at the rate of Three­ each lecture. pence For tickets, and for list of the Lectures published by the Society, apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W. Payment at the door:—One Penny;—Sixpence;—and (Reserved Seats) One Shilling. Kenny & Co., Printers, 25, Camden Road, London, N.W. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. 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Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The past and present of the heresy laws : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society [.....]1st December, 1878 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hunter, W.A. Sunday Lecture Society Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 23 p. ; 17 cm. Notes: Publisher's advertisements on back page. Includes Mr Lecky's views on the causes of persecution. Includes bibliographical references. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sunday Lecture Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1878 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N318 Subject The topic of the resource Heresy Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The past and present of the heresy laws : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society [.....]1st December, 1878), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Heresy Heresy-Great Britain-Law and Legislation NSS https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/27fdb2b9e00077c6746a10fdbc6d8977.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=CZJedGVlBw60Xx2Qa2Eoala3nlFlYNWDaKNXuEKV4Bulwej5u3ws2YWeNKV0Bw%7EdWoogvUOXraNrTpHfCjXtkcPfCT2-YUQ4TERvfyBEgm2PV5mgI7XB0c0rbOT4aUjJH%7Ec384DC4%7ER7FxFBvh7kprPOxgeTsL6PFMTFdiWiif6RmUNMQmSdlbQSlZD5%7Erog%7Ew6lYKhp8DHXPeDJYs1f9kvRRf6-Bcy7Qz-MI026idmXH3HRBJ4llpXSPGF7nbAj5pDJd9BecdSkotnicp1TR-e-KaIs-%7En7VmBAQ2k2G6u8aIpuq0dI52%7EzLvYY5a9eVzKB2YpqZf%7EDSKjpSf37xg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c7de91b3deb6f4f92e9780a458630021 PDF Text Text DREAMS AND GHOSTS. DELIVERED BEFORE THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 7th FEBRUARY, 1875. BY G. G. ZERFFI, Ph.D., F.R.Hist.S., F.R.S.L., Lecturer on Historic Ornament, National Art Training School, South Kensington. Author of Goethe's 1 Faust, with Commentaries,' '■Spiritualism and Animal Magnetism,’ <fc, <fc. BOND ON: PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. 1875. Price Threepence. �SYLLABUS. Naturalism and Spiritualism. Astrologers and Philosophers. Perceptions either sensual or cerebral. Dreams. Object and subject blended into one. “ Noctambulatio.” Dreams of reality. Hallucinations. Nikolai of Berlin. Abercrombie. Brierre de Boismont. Natural or Supernatural agencies. Hysteria and Revivals. Are Ghosts possible ? How to treat those who see them. Shakespeare’s Ghosts. Some practical points to be taken into con­ sideration. Conclusion. . �DREAMS AND GHOSTS. IND is assumed to be opposed to Matter, Nature to be different from Spirit, and Reality to be unconnected with Ideality. These assumptions, and a continuous misuse of words, have for thousands of years produced misunderstandings of the utmost importance to Science and the welfare of Humanity. Mysticism and Rationalism, Naturalism and Spiritualism, have been arrayed against one another like two hostile armies ; and whilst the one party took everything literally, and required a certain notion to be attached to every word, as the result of a clear perception, the other roamed into the field of the allegorical or parabolical, performed tropological gambols with exquisite cunning, and terrified us by an anagogical treatment of the simplest matters. If a certain substance was stated to be black or white, it might be black only in substance, whilst in essence it was white ; all depended whether it was taken in its reality or in its ideality. A fluid may be in substance, say, oil, but in essence fire ; allegorically it may be food for hungry souls; tropologically it may represent virtue gliding smoothly through the heavenly gates, and anagogically it may be spiritual balm on our wounded hearts to cool their passionate throbbing for the vanities and pleasures of this world. The difficulties were made still greater by the combinations of these four categories ; a thing might be to one mind allegorico-tropological, whilst to another it appeared litero-anagogical. The term B M �4 Drtams and Ghosts. allegorical is used when you say one thing and mean another ; the terms tropological or symbolic are synonymous, and imply when you mean one thing and say another; and anagogical, is to argue from generalities to particulars; namely, “ all men are sinners ; Joe Smith is a man, therefore he must be a sinner.” A syllogism, which, at all events, is not very complimentary to Joe Smith. For centuries, nay for thousands of years, science had often no other task than to sift the allegoricotropologico-anagogical nonsense that was propounded by mystics, dogmatists, and metaphysicians, who brought confusion into the simplest phenomena of this world. The differences between mystics and rationalists often existed in mere words,—the one trying to oppose a common-sense explanation upon which the other insisted. Obstinacy on both sides made the struggle still fiercer and hindered the real progress of knowledge. I said in one of my Lec­ tures, that the “unknown” had always a mysterious charm for man. Astrologers need not know as much as philosophers. The astrologer gazes at the stars, sees threads millions of miles in length extending from certain stars to particular individuals, and talks of the influence these mystic ties must exer­ cise on the destinies of those thus attached to heavenly bodies. If the individual believes in this star-theory, the philosopher tries in vain to detach him from his star, and all he can do is to prove the impossibility of the man’s having anything to do with the star or the star with him. So it is with the great question in dispute concerning mind and matter. If people start with the conviction that there is something above nature, or as they call it “ supernatural,” that impressions on our senses are possible, even though an outward object to create such impressions be wanting, that there exists beyond nature a realm peopled by various strange beings, how are we to proceed to argue the point ? �Dreams and Ghosts. 5 ■ What is Supernatural ? The very expression, though continually used, designates in itself a “ nonentity.” All things must exist in space and time; space and time are the first conditions of anything existent, but all nature with its attributes of space and time fills the Uni­ verse, and there is undoubtedly no room for any­ thing above or beyond nature as a Universe. Super-earthly or supersensual might have some meaning as referring to that which is beyond our globe, but supernatural has certainly no sense. In discoursing on dreams and ghosts, I shall endeavour to avoid being dogmatic, and simply take up certain psychological phenomena, lay them before you, and you will be kind enough to draw your own conclusions. First of all it must be borne in mind that our perceptions of the outer world are not only sen­ sual (by means of our senses) but also intellectual (by means of ideas produced in the brain), that is cerebral. The senses produce nothing but mere sensations in their special organs, furnishing thus the material from which intellect, by applying the laws of causation, forms the outer world under the existing conditions of space and time. All our perceptions when in a waking and nor­ mal state, are certainly results of impressions on our senses, which produce an effect of which our intellect causes us to become conscious. Now is it possible that impressions may reach our brain from quite a different source than the outer world, impressions produced by our own organisation, work­ ing on our brain exactly like impressions of the outer world ? If this be possible, we should endeavour to find out the relation in which such a phenomenon would stand to its effect, and whether such effect would afford us means of making ourselves acquainted with its real cause; and we should be at once obliged, as in the material world, to investi- �6 Dreams and Ghosts. gate the apparition, that is the outward impression on our senses in its relation to its own reality. People do dream, have dreamt, and will dream; Apparitions, or to speak more colloquially, ghosts have been really seen. Dreams and spectral visions are the strong points of those who assume an Empire of Spirits altogether independent of matter. There was probably a time in the phase of the progressive development of humanity, when man was not yet able to discrimi­ nate between dreams and reality. I am inclined to consider the whole period during which myths, nur­ sery tales, miracles, and pious wonders, such as flying monks and nuns who “ levitated ” from the ground, were assumed to be realities—a period of dreams. For the question, whether perceptible visions, as perfect and distinct as those caused by the impres­ sions of the material world can be produced in the brain, must be answered in the affirmative ; pheno­ mena known to us all, phenomena, the effects of which we experience nearly every night, prove this with incontestable force, namely Dreams ! What are dreams ? They are not, as has been assumed, a mere play of our fancy, an echo of our imaginary faculty, or an epilogue of those outward impressions which we received when still awake. Fancies, as the effects of our imagination, are weak, imperfect, and transi­ tory ; so that the most vivid imagination is scarcely able to reproduce the image of an absent person, even for a few seconds. In oui' dreams everything affecting our perceptive faculty appears as exterior to ourselves as are the impressions received from the outer world. All objects appear clear and defined, exactly as in reality, not only with regard to our­ selves, but perfectly finished in all their details, surrounded by all real impediments; every body with its shadow, every object with its peculiar form and special substance. That our dreams are entirely ■. �Dreams and Ghosts. 7 objective is shown by the actions that take place in them being often contrary to our expectations and our wishes. Our astonishment is excited by the dramatic truth of the characters and their actions; so much so that it may almost be asserted that a person dreaming is, for the time, a kind of Shake­ speare. The deception produced by dreams is sometimes so great that, reality stepping into its rights when we awake, has to combat our vivid impressions to prove that what has been was only the airy creation of a dream. This goes far to prove that dreams are not a function of our brain, and totally distinct from its power of imagination. Aristotle already called “ sleep a special sense,” and made the obser­ vation that in dreams our imagination is often engaged in representing extraneous objects. This leads us to the conclusion that during dreams our faculty of imagination is at our disposal, and that this cannot be at the same time the in strum ent or organ of our dreams. Dreams resemble madness, they may be called a short and passing madness, whilst madness is a long and sometimes lasting dream. The essential con­ dition of dreams is sleep, in which the normal activity of our brain and senses is suspended. Only when this activity ceases dreams begin to work; just as the pictures of a magic lantern appear in a room deprived of light. It is a further -fact that in our very dreams our reasoning faculty is often at work: we reason about their incongruity, their ridiculous combinations. There is, therefore, in us a force by means of which we can fill space with forms, we can hear and understand voices, can see, smell, and taste with­ out any outward influences on our senses ; which influences are necessary when we are awake; we ourselves, therefore, are the sole cause, object, and empirical basis of our thoughts, though in no �8 Dreams and Ghosts. way identical with them. In working on our imagination this force does not gather impressions through our senses from without—but undoubtedly from within. For our senses are closed to the outer world, and all the objects of our dreams appear to be the creations of our own subjectivity. Object and subject are thus blended into one. Let us not lose sight of this important assertion ; for I intend to lead you step by step to the most incredible phenomena, which, however, are facts, and may be explained in a very rational way. We must.only give up the old “shell and kernel theory,” and see that there is no contest between the within and without, but that mind and matter, however complicated, marvellous, and incomprehensible their functions may be, are one. The “ gross and brutal materialism” and the “moonshiny, dreamy idealism” formulae must be given up. If dreams are facts whilst we are asleep, might dreams not be possible whilst we are half or entirely awake ? The Scotch have for this state an excellent term —they call it “ second sightwhilst one sight through our eyes is going on, another faculty of seeing, as in our dreams, is at work in us. We see and at the same time create what we see. Our imagination is impressed, but its impressions are produced by an inner force of our own. The term “ second sight,” however, is applicable to a “ species ” of our mental and bodily functions, we cannot use it for the genus. To designate that indisputable and undeniable force in us which produces per­ ceptions without any outward influences on our senses, we will use the expression “ organ of dreams.” So soon as we assume an organ we naturally wish to know its construction and mode of acting, and, in fact, are anxious to see the machine and its working; I must content myself at this moment with merely giving you some further effects of which this organ must be the cause. �Dreams and Ghosts. 9 There are undoubtedly different degrees of dreams; of some we are only dimly conscious, of others we often are in doubt whether the incidents of our dream did not happen in reality. We have dreams in which we dream only of those realities which surround us. What we dream is at the same time true and real. It is as if our skull were trans­ parent, as if the outer world were directly affecting our brain, instead of impressing it by means of our senses. This mysterious state we might call “half­ dreams,” or, still better, “ dreams of reality.” These dreams often reach a higher phase when the horizon of the dreamer is enlarged so as to enable him to see beyond the walls of his bedroom. Our “ organ of dreams ” appears often to lead us to distant places, often utterly unknown to us, never before seen. Instances of this are numberless. Recently a gentleman wrote to a newspaper “ that he was lifted up, or rather levitated on the tower of St. Mark at Venice; that he looked down upon the town, seeing it in all its reality as clearly as if he had known the place before, though he had never been at Venice.” Of course he might have seen many engravings or paintings of the town, and have read many descriptions of it; to this he does not allude, but, at all events, we can have no reason to doubt that, whilst asleep, he was trans­ ferred to Venice, and was impressed by the visionary city as though it had been the real one. A still higher effect of which the “ organ of dreams ” may be assumed to be the cause is “ Noctambulatio,” described by the Greeks as “upnobateia” (sleep-wandering), that is somnambulism. It is very common in Austria and Germany, France and Italy; less common in England, but more fre­ quent in Scotland. Somnambulists dream, and at the same time often perform their daily occupa­ tions ; some have copied music, others have made �IO Dreams and Ghosts. notes of sermons, others have put their rooms in order, others have climbed dangerous heights, or walked on parapets; and though their senses are perfectly asleep, all the sensual functions are performed. They see, they feel, they avoid chairs, tables they move about, and hear the noise they make; this is also the case with people arti­ ficially put into this peculiar state. The brain appears to be in the deepest sleep, that is in perfect inactivity—what organ is there active in us ? Have we after all really a double life; is there something active in us whilst our brain, the organ of our mighty intellectual faculties, is at rest ? If so, there must be in us a separate Spirit that enters and leaves our body, and is strangely occupied not only when still attached to us, but also when it has left the shell and floats through the infinite. But is this so ? I think that the theory of psycholo­ gists and physiologists is much more likely to be near the truth, than the assumption that there are lively sprites in us which are altogether independent of our material organisation. Modern psycholo­ gists assume that in such a state as I have alluded to, a total depression of the vital functions of-the brain and an accumulation of all vital force in the ganglia take place. These ganglia have their centre in the “ plexus Solaris,” or “ cerebrum abdominale,” (the brain of the stomach), which con­ sists of a few annular vessels filled with a nervous fluid, standing in the same relation to the ganglia as the brain to our nervous system. This has given origin to the hypothesis that dreams have a special organ, which during a total depression of the func­ tions of the brain is most active, so much so “ that apparently an accumulation of all the vital force takes place in the ganglia, whose larger tissues, with the ‘plexus Solaris,’ are turned into a sensorium, which, as if by substitution, performs the functions of the brain, dispensing with the aid of �Dreams and Ghosts. 11 the senses to receive impressions from without, and still exercising all the faculties of the brain, some­ times even with greater perfection than when awake.”—(See my work, ‘Spiritualism and Animal Magnetism.’ London: Robert Hardwicke. 1872. Second Edition, page 33.) By this means we may trace a positive, self-conscious force in us, and a negative or unconscious force ; a positive and nega­ tive element in our nature. The equilibrium of these forces or elements may be disturbed ; the brain or the positive force may be with all its glo­ rious structure, its intricate and complicated wind­ ings, its admirable power of consciousness, if de­ ranged, lowered, depressed, exhausted under the in­ fluence of the ganglia, and the brain of the stomach may rule the brain of the head. That is, the “ organ of dreams ” becomes master of the “ organ of intellect.” It is a well-authenticated fact that somnambulists move with great decision, extreme quickness, that they conform to anything surround­ ing them ; that they observe everything with the “ organ of dreams,” that they dare more when led by this mysterious organ than when awake. Our nerves of motion originate in the spine, they are connected by the “ medulla oblongata ” with the cerebellum, the regulator of our motions, which again is connected with the cerebrum, the seat of our consciousness and perception. Now, how is it possible that perceptions which determine our motives for movements, when transferred to the tissue of the ganglia in the stomach, should direct the steps of a somnambulist with the swiftness of lightning ? All we can assume is that the cerebral force of the somnambulist in such a state is not entirely asleep, but only sufficiently awake to direct his steps, to receive impressions through organs which are different from our senses; thus dreams, half-dreams, and somnambulism are but effects of a special organ in us which becomes the more active �12 Dreams and Ghosts. the more passive our brain is. We must consider a still stranger state, arising from a complication of the disturbed balance between the functions of the brain and those of the “ plexus Solaris.” Let us assume a state in which our brain is, at least, partially awake; we see the objects in our room with perfect clearness; the lamp on our writing table, the books on our shelves, the pictures, &c., and still we suddenly see a figure before us,— a dear relation not long dead, a beloved child, whose last parting words still resound in our ears. Such cases are recorded by perfectly credible persons. How is this ? Our answer would be: we do not doubt your assertion; we believe your having seen your dead mother, but you were in a half-dream ; your brain was, in spite of its partial capacity of receiving certain impressions through your senses, depressed, and your ganglionic system hard at work to make you dream, whilst in this state. All cases of hallucinations and spectral visions may be reduced to this natural cause. If we admit that our “ organ of dreams ” can produce impressions on our senses when asleep, we may assume, with great probability, and without leaving the firm ground of physical possibility, that this organ may work in us whilst our senses of vision and hearing are awake. The perceptive faculties of our brain ’ will be influenced exactly as in our dreams, though we be not asleep. The phantom or object of our visual organ will stand before us in a given form, as perfect as any object of our dreams. But its immediate cause of existence must be looked for in our own inner organism. These phantoms, in accordance with the faculties of our “ organ of dreams,” will assume form, colour; emit sounds which will affect us like the language of living beings; and if our organ of dreams is in an excited state of activity, the phantoms presenting themselves will be hazy in appearance, pale, greyish, ghastly, nearly transpa- �Dreams and Ghosts. 13 rent; their voices will be hollow and whispering, or hoarse and whistling. A heavy supper (say, a Welsh rare-bit,) nervous debility, over-work, great grief, or a glass of grog as an overdose, will produce the most important changes in these phantoms ; but as soon as the visionary tries to bring his faculty of reasoning into play, that is, as soon as his positive or cerebral force becomes master of the negative or abdominal element, the phantoms vanish. Nothing can more speedily cure our propensity to see spectres than a firm will to verify, by close investigation, the reality, the substance of the apparition. Spectres, like dealers in mysticism and dogmatic incredibilities, prefer above all the twilight, or rather no light at all. Visionaries of whatever sort and stamp do not like to be disturbed in their manipu­ lations by candles and gas-jets, and least of all by some rays of common sense and sound logic. Mid­ night, dark abodes with painted windows, have been set down from old as the time and places when not only Erin’s but “ any clouds are hung round with ghosts.” That visions and apparitions are facts produced by our own selves cannot be denied, but they do not prove anything extraneous to us, or the existence of some undiscovered country from whose bourne some travellers do return. We may now investigate their causes, and we shall find that some very material physical derangement of our constitution is the principal one. Already Hippokrates and Galen drew the attention of medi­ cal men to phenomena of this kind, and tried to classify the diseases according to the visions of the sick person. It is pretty well known that those suffering from “ delirium tremens ” generally see rats, cats, mice, serpents, black dogs, elephants, devils with big horns, grotesque monkeys, or some terrifying monster of the animal kingdom. So much so, that even the visionary realm of ghosts �14 Dreams and Ghosts. appears to abominate drunkenness as something loathsome and bestial. Those suffering from con­ sumption have pleasant visions; bright, sunny plains, beautiful cool woods, present themselves to their eyes; they see angels in long robes with broad, airy wings, and hear strange melodies resounding through space. The sooner people having such visions con­ sult a physician the better. Madness is, not neces­ sarily always, but frequently accompanied by hallucinations. There are some rare cases, perfectly authenticated, in which apparitions have been seen by individuals who at least were in a state of perfect bodily health. The most known is that of Nikolai,' the celebrated author and bookseller of Berlin. This case was laid before the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, 1799. Nikolai’s statement was the follow­ ing :—“ On the 24th of February, 1791, after a sharp altercation (the excited, nervous state of the vision­ ary is to be taken into special consideration), I suddenly perceived, at the distance of ten paces, a dead body. (The great accuracy with which the distance is recorded shows at once that Nikolai was altogether dreaming; whoever heard of a man seeing a dead body before him and trying to measure the distance between the apparition and himself.) I inquired of my wife whether she did not see it. My question alarmed her. The apparition lasted eight minutes. (Another peculiarity of these kind of visionaries is that they always are most particular with regard to dates and time. Is anybody childish enough to suppose that a man seeing a dead body takes out his watch, and counts the minutes, and notes them down ? The tale, as told, bears in its intrinsic evidence all the usual traces of impossi­ bility which we may study in all reports on so-called “ supernatural ” matters.) At four in the afternoon the same vision appeared. I was then alone and much disturbed by it. I went to my wife’s apart- �Dreams and Ghosts. ment. The vision followed me. At six I perceived several figures that had no connection with the former vision.” Nikolai was undoubtedly dreaming whilst awake : he was bled by a judicious medical man, and the vision did not return. “A. stranger in Edinburgh died suddenly in an omnibus. The corpse was exposed, and a medical man called in to report on the cause of death. After several days’ close study of a medical subject, he perceived, on raising his eyes, the form of the dead stranger opposite him, as distinctly as he had seen him on the table of the police office.” The.over­ wrought cerebral faculty was under the dominion of the sympathetic nerve, which, in its turn, still affected by the impression of the corpse, represented it to the debilitated powers of the brain. Abercrombie, in his ‘ Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers ’ (11th Ed., Lond., 1841, p. 380), relates the case of a man who was beset with hallu­ cinations all his life. “ His disposition was such that, when he met a friend in the streets, he was uncertain whether he were a real person or a phantom.” Unscientifically trained persons often give them­ selves up to credulity, and to that craving after abnormal supernatural agencies which has done so much evil throughout the whole progressive develop­ ment of humanity. They take these kind of visions for granted, and jump at the conclusion that, as visions were seen, they must be substances or essences from another world. I recommend any­ body suffering from “ Psycho-mania,” or from “ Table-danceology,” or paralysis of the brain from knock-conversation, or who has “levitation fits,” or “ air-floating paroxysms,” to read Brierre de Boismont ‘On Hallucination,’ 1845. His cases are, unhappily, neither systematically arranged nor psychologically or physiologically explained; yet they must convince anybody believing in super- �16 Dreams and Ghosts. sensual agencies, that strange things may happen, all taking their origin in a derangement of our ner­ vous and cerebral system, without troubling any spirits from another world. If spirits really exist, why have they not yet proven themselves useful ? Why do they not appear half-an-hour before a ship burns down, and 400 human beings are killed and drowned, to warn the captain ; or why do they not alter the signals of a railway in right time to prevent a collision and to save an infinity of wretchedness ? Because they do not choose to do it—might be the answer of some “ Supernaturalistbut why should spirits come and talk nonsense at the bidding of A or B, and why not teach us in an evening the multiplication table, or give us some information which might be turned to some use or comfort for humanity ? Hysteria on the one hand, and a reaction against the growing materialistic and utilitarian tendencies of our times on the other, drive those who are endowed with a vivid emotional nature into the regions of ghostly shadows. They tremble that there should be no more mysteries; no more tidings from another world, no more communications with dear pretty angels, no horrible monsters to frighten young and old babies ! Why do they not throw themselves into the arms of poetry and art, num­ berless spirits and fancy-wrought forms may be brought up from the depths of our cultivated minds. We ought not allow ourselves to be dragged into a lowering of our cerebral powers, our faculty of reasoning, by the inordinate use of our sympathetic nerves, or the unconscious emotional, ganglionic element in us. For there can be no doubt that an unusual mental excitement, paired with bodily depression, may abnormally develope the emotional element in us, and produce the most destructive and pernicious results. This statement was born, out during the period of St. John s “ dance mania 5 �Dreams and Ghosts. 17 people in their paroxysms saw the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary. We do not doubt these visions ; we only are convinced that Christ and the Virgin Mary were no realities; they formed no more the outer phenomena that impressed the visionaries than do the forms we see in our dreams, but the excited organs of dreams produced them. For Ghosts are impossibilities—they can neither be seen nor heard; except they are bodies—but then there is an end of the so-called spiritual kingdom. So that those who call themselves Spiritualists, are the greatest materialists, and work into the hands of those who intend to reduce everything to mere ponderable and calculable substances. In order to see—a body or a substance is required, which by means of reflection of the rays of light acts on our retina; in order to hear—a body or substance is required to act by means of the vibra­ tion of the air on our tympanum. All that visionaries or ghost-see-ers may justly assert, is that they are conscious of the impression on their per­ ceptive faculties of something that reflects light, creates sounds, though there is nothing which could produce these phenomena—that is they dream—for all other phenomena, if they really happen, how­ ever mysterious they may appear, however incredible, are mere deceptions a la Dr. Lynn, or Maskelyne and Cooke, and of course not worthy of any scientific treatment. The danger in playing with the so-called super­ natural ” is that the derangement in one individual becomes contagious. One hysteric girl in a school is capable of infecting all the others. But for any such derangement the best cures are rational ones, or wherever these do not suffice a drastic physical one will do. An English physician was called into a ladies’ school, where one hysterical girl had infec­ ted many others ; after he had in vain tried various remedies, he one day observed to the mistress of the �18 Dreams and Ghosts. establishment in the hearing of the patients that there remained but one chance of effecting a cure,— the application of a red-hot iron to the spine of the patients so as to quiet their nervously excited sys­ tem. Strange to say, the red-hot iron was never applied, for the hysterical attacks ceased as if by magic. The same was the case with a revival­ mania in a large school near Cologne ; Government sent an inspector down ; the boys pretended to have visions of Jesus Christ, but the implacable officer threatened to close the school if any other spiritual inspector should interfere with his business, and the students should be for ever excluded from pursuing their studies : the effect was as magical as the red-hot iron remedy—the revivals ceased at once. Shakespeare, that master-mind, who knew the most hidden recesses of our hearts, whose writings form the most complete and exhaustive psycho­ logical essays, who made many a ghost “ revisit the glimpses of the moon, to make night hideous,” has solved the “Spirit Question” in a clear, commonsense, and exhaustive way in “ Macbeth,” when he makes the ambitious thane exclaim :— “ Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand 1 Come, let me clutch thee ! I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight ? Or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ? ” To beware of false creations in science and religion, not to allow our heat-oppressed brain an unruly dominion over our intellectual faculties, is conveyed by those few lines of our immortal bard. The brief consideration of dreams and ghosts which I have placed before you may be summed up in the following points :— �Dreams and Ghosts. ’9 1. That we have an organ in us which can act on the perceptive faculties of our brain from within. 2. That this “ organ of dreams ” has its seat in the centre of our ganglionic system or the sym­ pathetic nerves, namely in the “ plexus Solaris.” 3. That our cerebral faculties may be lowered and the faculty of our ganglia heightened. 4. That spectral visions, religious excitements, emotional extravagances, mysticism, and symbolic charlatanism are merely products of a deranged balance between our vegetable or ganglionic and our cerebral or intellectual life. 5. That there is nothing in nature that ought not to be capable of explanation from a natural point of view, as there is no room for anything to be above or without nature. 6. That instead of admitting in some instances our ignorance of the laws of nature with regard to certain phenomena, to assume some “ supernatural ” interference is an insult to the all-pervading spirit of the Creator, who cannot allow his spirits to wander about to serve small table-talk. Anything beyond the horizon of human intellect is of evil. This evil peopled heaven and earth with gods, goddesses, angels, and demons ; it formed a strong element in our double nature, and took its origin in our craving to fathom the unfathomable. It is, in fact, nothing but a piece of pride. We think ourselves better than others when we have dear little apparitions which others have not; we consider ourselves chosen, elected, specially inspired, small prophets, benighted evangelists, and mighty instru­ ments to testify that God takes us more into his councils than others. The roaming in the Empire of Ghosts, the taking of dreams for realities, the neglect of this world for the sake of other distant unknown worlds is nothing but inordinate pride. If I have erred in trying to explain hypotheti- �20 Dreams and Ghosts. cally some curious phenomena of our nature, I can only plead that the striving of finite beings in whom the cerebral functions are not lowered by tropological or anagogical studies should be after truth in the sense of the immortal Lessing :— “If God were to hold in His right hand all truth, and in his left the everlasting active desire for truth though veiled in eternal error, and were to bid me choose, I would humbly grasp his left, praying, Almighty Father, grant me this gift— absolute truth is for Thee alone.” SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science, —physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind. THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES ARE DELIVERED AT ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely. (Annually—from November to May). Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 2nd May, 1875, will be given. Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket (transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture. Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,— To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d. To the Sixpenny Seats— 2s., being at the rate of Threepence each lecture. ’ For tickets apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W. Payment at the door :—One Penny ;—Sixpence and (Reserved Seats) One Shilling. PRINTED BY C. W. RRYNELL, LITTLE PULTBNBY STREET, HAYMARKET. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dreams and ghosts. A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society on Sunday Afternoon, 7th February, 1875 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George) Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 20 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sunday Lecture Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1875 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT12 Subject The topic of the resource Spiritualism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Dreams and ghosts. A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society on Sunday Afternoon, 7th February, 1875), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Dreams Ghosts Naturalism Spiritualism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/e5ea1921476dfe56b20f3a4bb3448b5a.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=i9dpaE2z9LDbKQSeN8aZWAH82Xw4MutEeKj3WMKKtJj3N1kJrhLJII-StmGOWy4BGK1AMC8BS7hgtDEeU5nAi2cVDSI9qwlSaPPdeNqPh2sR5qo44FzOJbs9SCiBg6CFadsvQcLQ1-FlDLvV8sVWc1ugenpJusnuvWLbQD6Y4ZPP64D9B6JzLOGmHKVyZoy5yOl7AgUHnSMg6YAtvIHjbYXqYEtLu4-nDtDdUJ2jfH3npvNMV6c4wI4IDMZAt5rOIJkDDyQExLMFaH3-yLnyzryIyzPDE0r2KxJMq6IckMl0iwBuEoz5PcOIwCN2Z5VY6bCFAyEvVmvMQY9SQ6eFFg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ac78ec5f77c3b911b1164ce26339f987 PDF Text Text national secular society BODY AND MIND. & DELIVERED BEFORE THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 1st NOVEMBER, 1874. BY Professor W. K. CLIFFORD, F.R.S. Reprintedfrom the ‘Fortnightly Review,' by kind permission of the Editor. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. 1875. Price Threepence. �♦ SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science, —physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind. THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES ARE DELIVERED AT ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely. (Annually—from November to May). Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 2nd May, 1875, will be given. Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket (transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture. Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,— To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d. To the Sixpenny Seats—2s., being at the rate of Threepence each lecture. For tickets apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W. Payment at the door :—One (Reserved Seats) One Shilling. Penny ;—Sixpence ;—and �BODY AND MIND. HE subject of this Lecture is one in regard to which a great change has recently taken place in the public mind. Some time ago it was the custom to look with sus­ picion upon all questions of a metaphysical nature as being questions that could not be discussed with any good result, and which, leading inquirers round and round in the same circle, never came to an end. But quite of late years there is an indication that a large number of people are waking up to the fact that Science has something to say upon these subjects ; and the English people have always been very ready to hear what Science can say—understanding by Science what we shall now understand by it, that is, organised common sense. When I say Science, I do not mean what some people are pleased to call Philosophy. The word “philosopher,” which meant originally “ lover of wisdom,” has come in some strange way to mean a man who thinks it his business to explain everything in a certain number of large books. It will be found, I think, that in proportion to his colossal ignorance is the perfection and symmetry of the system which he sets up; because it is so much easier to put an empty room tidy than a full one. A man of science, on the other hand, explains as much as ever he can, and then he says, “ This is all I can do ; for the rest, you must ask the next man.” And with regard to such explanations as he has given, whether the next man comes at all, whether there is any next man or any further explanation or no (and we may have to wait hundreds or even thousands of years before another step is made), yet if the original step was a scientific step, was made by true scientific methods, and was an organization of the normal experience of healthy men, that step will remain good for ever, no matter how much is left unexplained by it. Now the supposition that this subject in itself is neces­ sarily one which cannot be discussed to good purpose, that is to say, in such a way as to lead to definite results, is a T �4 Body and Mind. mistake. The fact that the subject has been discussed for many hundreds of years to no good purpose, and with­ out leading to definite results, by great numbers of people, is due to the method which was employed, and not to the subject itself; and, in fact, if we like to look in the same way upon other subjects as we have been accustomed to look upon metaphysics—if we regard every man who has written about mathematics or mechanics as having just the same right to speak and to be heard that we give to every man who has written about metaphysics—then I think we shall find that exactly the same thing can be said about the most certain regions of human science. Those who like to read the last number of the Edinburgh Revieiv, for example, will find, from an article on “ Comets,” that it is at present quite an open question whether bodies which are shot out from the sun by eruptive force may not come to circle about the sun in orbits which are like those of the planets. Now that is not an open question ; the supposition is an utterly absurd one, and has been utterly absurd from the time of Kepler. Again, those who are curious enough to read a number of pamphlets that are to be found here and there, may think it is an open question whether the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its dia­ meter may not be expressed by certain finite numbers. It is not an open question to Science; it is only open to those people who do not know any Trigonometry, and who will not learn it. In exactly the same way there are numbers of questions relating to the connection of the mind with the body which have ceased to be open questions, because Science has had her word to say about them; and they are only open now to people who do not know what that word of Science is, and who will not try to learn it. The whole field of human knowledge may be divided roughly, for the sake of convenience, into three great regions. There are first of all what we call par excellence the Physical Sciences—those which deal with inanimate matter. Next, there are those sciences which deal with organic bodies—the bodies of living things, whether plants or animals, and the rules according to which those things move. And lastly, there are those sciences which make a further supposition—which suppose that besides this physical world, including both organic �Body and Mind. 5 and inorganic bodies, there are also certain other facts, namely, that other men besides me, and most likely other animals besides men, are conscious. The sciences which make that supposition are the sciences of Ethics and Politics, which are still in the practical stage, and especially the more advanced science which is now to be considered ■—Psychology, the Science of Mind itself; that is to say, the science of the laws which regulate the succession of feelings in any one consciousness.. Each of these three great divisions began in the form of a number of per­ fectly disconnected subjects, between which nobody knew of any relation; but in the history of science each of them has been woven together, in consequence of connections being found between the different subjects included in it, into a complete whole ; and the further progress of the history of science requires that each of these great threads, into which all the little threads have been twined, should themselves be twined together into a single string. Now with regard to the first, two groups, the group of mechanical sciences as we may call them, or the physics of inorganic bodies, and the group of biological sciences, or the physics of organic bodies—the gulf between these two has in these last days been firmly bridged over. A description of that bridge, and an account of the doctrines which form it, will be found in Professor Huxley’s admirable lecture delivered at Belfast before the British Association, which is printed in the November number of the Fortnightly Review. That bridge, as we have it now, is, in the con­ ception of it, mainly due to Descartes ; but parts of it have been worked out since his time by a vast number of physio­ logists, with the expenditure of an enormous amount of labour and thought. Such facts as that discovered by Harvey, that the movement of the blood was a mere question of Hydrodynamics, and was to be explained upon the same principles as the motion of water in pipes—facts like these have been piled up, one upon another, and have gradually led to the conclusion that the science of organic bodies is only a complication of the science of inorganic bodies. It would not be advisable here to describe in detail the stones which compose this bridge ; but we have to ask whether it is possible to construct some similar bridge between the now united Science of Physics, which deals �6 Body and Mind. with all phenomena, whether organic or inorganic, in fact with all the material world, and the other science, the Science of Consciousness, which deals with the Laws of Mind and with the subject of Ethics. This is the question which we have now to discuss. In order to make this bridge a firm one, so that it will not break down like those which philosophers have made, it is necessary to observe with great care what is the exact difference between the two classes of facts. If we confuse the two things together to begin with, if we do not recog­ nise the great difference between them, we shall not be likely to find any explanation which will reduce them to some common term. The first thing, therefore, that we have to do is to realise as clearly as possible how profound the gulf is between the facts which we call Physical facts and the facts which we call Mental facts. The difference is one which has been observed from primeval times, when man or his prehuman ancestor found it not good to be alone ; for the very earliest precept that we find set forth in all societies to regulate the lives of those who belong to them, is, “Put yourself in his place;” that is to say, ascribe to other men a consciousness which is like your own. And this belief which the lowest savage got, that there was something else than the physical organization in other men, is the foundation of Natural Ethics as well as of the modern Science of Consciousness. But in very early times an hypothesis was formed which was supposed to make this belief easier. If you eat too much you will dream when you are asleep ; if you eat too little you will dream when you are awake, or have visions; and those dreams of savages whose food was very precarious led them to a biological hypothesis. They saw in those dreams their fellows, other men, when it appeared from evidence furnished to them afterwards that those other men were not there when they were dreaming. Consequently, they supposed that the actions of the organic body were caused by some other body which was not physical in the ordinary sense, which was not made of ordinary matter, and this other body was called the Soul. Animism, as Mr. Tylor calls this belief, was at first, then, an hypothesis in the domain of biology. It was a physical hypothesis to account for the peculiar way in which living things went about. �Body and Mind. 7 But then when people had got this belief in another body which was not a physical body, after a long series of years they reasoned in this way. It is very difficult indeed to suppose that the ordinary matter which makes a man’s body can be conscious. This Me is quite different from the flesh and blood which make up a man; but then as to this other body, or soul, we do not know anything about it, so that it may as well be conscious as not. That hypo­ thesis put upon the soul, whose basis was in the phenomena of dreams, the explanation of the consciousness which we cannot help believing to exist in other men. I have men­ tioned this early hypothesis on the subject, because out of it grew the almost universal custom of holding at this time of the year the Festival of the Dead which we preserve in our All Souls’ Day. But now let us see what it is that Science can tell us, and what we can believe in place of that early hypothesis of our savage ancestors. In the first place, let us consider a little more narrowly what we mean by the body, and more especially what we mean by the nervous system ; for it is the great discovery of Descartes that the nervous system is that part of the body which is related directly to the mind. This can hardly be better expressed than it is by the first of that series of propositions which Pro­ fessor Huxley has stated in his lecture. I. “ The brain is the organ of sensation, thought, and ■emotion; that is to say, some change in the condition of the matter of this organ is the invariable antecedent of the state of consciousness to which each of these terms is applied.” We may complete this statement by saying not only that some change in the matter of this organ is the invariable antecedent, but that some other change is the invariable concomitant of sensation, thought, and ■emotion; and that is rather an important remark, as you will see presently. Let us now look at the general structure of the brain and see what it is like. We can easily make a rough picture of it, which will serve our present purpose (see p. 12). A parachute is a round piece of paper, like the top of a parasol, with strings going from its circumference to a cork. Let us imagine a parachute with two corks, a red and a blue one; each of these corks being attached by �8 Body and Mind, strings, not only to the circumference of our piece of paper, but to innumerable points in the inside of it. Moreover, let innumerable other strings go across from point to point of the paper, like a spider’s web spun in the inside of a parasol. And the corks themselves must be tied to each other and to a third cork, say the white one, while from all three streamers fly away in all directions. This is our diagram. Now the sheet of paper repre­ sents the cerebral hemispheres, a great sheet of grey nervous matter which forms the outside of your brain, and lies just under your skull. Our red and blue corks are two other masses of grey matter lying at the base of the brain, and called the optic thalami and the corpora striata respectively. The white cork is another mass of grey matter called the medulla oblongata, which is the top of the spinal cord. Our strings which tie part of the para­ chute together, and our streamers which go out in all directions from the corks represent the nerves, white threads that run all over the body. And they are of two kinds; there are some which go to the brain from any part of the body, and others which come from the brain to it. As regards the position of the nerves this is the same thing for both of them, but it is not the same thing with regard to what they do. The nerves which are called Sensory nerves, and which go to the brain, are those which are excited whenever any part of the body is touched. When your finger is touched a certain excite­ ment is given to the nerves which end in your finger, and that excitement is carried along your arm and away up to the medulla, represented by our white cork. But when you are going to move your arm the excitement starts from the brain, and goes along the other set of nerves which are called Motor nerves, or moving nerves, and goes to the muscles which work the part of the arm which you want to move. And that excitement of the nerves by purely mechanical means makes those muscles contract so as to move the part which you want to move. We have then a con­ nection between the brain and any part of the body which is of a double kind: there is the means of sending a message to the brain from this part of the body, and the means of taking a message from the brain to this part. The nerves which carry the message to the brain are called �Body and Mind. 9 the “Sensory nerves” because they accompany what we call sensation; the nerves which carry the message from the brain are called “Motor nerves” because they are the agents in the motion of that part of the body. All this is expressed in Professor Huxley’s second and third propositions. II. “ The movements of animals are due to the change of form of the muscles, which shorten and, become thicker; and this change of form in a muscle arises from a motion of the substance contained within the nerves which go to the muscle.” III. “ The sensations of animals are due to a motion of the substance of the nerves which connect the sensory organs with the brain.” I pass on to his fourth proposition:— IV. “ The motion of the matter of a sensory nerve mag be transmitted through the brain to motor nerves, and thereby give rise to a contraction of the muscles to which these motor nerves are distributed; and this reflection of motion from a sensory into a motor nerve may take place without volition^ or even contrary to it.” Let us take that organ of sense which always occurs to us as a type, of the others, because it is the most perfect— the eye. The optic nerve which runs from the eye towards the brain may be represented by one of our streamers going tothe red cork, to which it is fastened by a knot that is called the “ Optic ganglion.” Supposing that you move your hand rapidly towards anybody’s eye, a message with news of this movement goes along the nerve to the optic ganglion, and it comes away back again by another streamer, not direct from the ganglion, but from a point on the blue cork very near it, to the muscles which move the eyelid, and that makes the eye wink. You know that the winking of the eye, when anybody moves his hand very rapidly towards it, is not a thing which you determine to do, and which you con­ sider about; it is a thing which happens without your in­ terference with it; and in fact it is not you who wink your eye, but your body that does it. This is called Automatic ■ or involuntary motion, or again it is called Reflex action, because it is a purely mechanical thing. A wave runs along that nerve, and comes back on another nerve, and that without any deliberation; and at the point where it �IO Body and Mind. stops and comes back it is just a reflection like the wave which you send along a string and which comes back from the end of the string, or like a wave of water which is sent up against a sea-wall, and which reflects itself back along the sea. V. The. motion of any given portion of the matter of the brain excited by the motion of a sensory nerve, leaves behind it a readiness to be moved in the same way in that part, and anything which resuscitates the motion gives rise to the appropriate feeling. This is the physical mechanism of memory.” We can, perhaps, make this a little more clear in the following manner :—Suppose two messages are sent at once to the brain ; each of them is reflected back, but the two disturbances which they set up in the brain create, in some way or other, a link between them, so that when one of these disturbances is set up afterwards the other one is also set up. It is as if every time two bells of a house were rung together, that of itself made a string to tie them together, so that when you rang one bell it was necessary to ring the other bell in consequence. That, re­ member, is purely a physical circumstance which we know happens. There is a physical excitation or disturbance which is sent along two different nerves, and which pro­ duces two different disturbances in the brain, and the effect of these two disturbances taking place together is to make a change in the character of the brain itself, so that when the one of them takes place it produces the other. Now there are two different ways in which a stimulus coming to the eye can be made to move the hand. In the first place, suppose you are copying out a book; you have the book before you, and you read the book whilst you are copying with your hand, and consequently the light coming , into your eye from the book directs your hand to move in a certain way. It is possible for this light impinging upon the eye to send a message along the optic nerve into the ganglion, and that message may go almost, though not quite, direct to the hand, so as to make the hand move, and that causes the hand to describe the letter which you have seen in the book; or else the message may go by a longer route which takes more time. A simple experiment to dis­ tinguish between these processes was tried by Donders, the great Dutch physiologist. He made a sign to a man at a �Body and Mind. 11 distance, and when he made this sign the man was to put down a key with his hand. He measured the time which was taken in this process, that is to say, the time which was taken by the message in going from the eye to the gan­ glion, and then to the hand. Measurements of the rate of nerve-motions have also been made by Helmholtz. The velocity varies to a certain extent in different people, but it is something like one hundred feet a second. But Donders also made another measurement. Suppose it is not decided beforehand whether the man is to move the key with his right or his left hand, and this is to be determined by the nature of the signal, then before he can move his hand he has to decide which hand he will use. The time taken for that process of decision was also measured. That process of decision, when looked at from the physical side, means this. The message goes up from the eye to the ganglion. It is immediately connected there with the mass of grey matter represented by our red cork. From that mass of grey matter there go white threads away to the whole of the surface of the cerebral hemispheres, or the paper of our parachute, and they take that message, therefore, which comes from the eye to the ganglion away to all this grey matter which is put round the inside of your skull. There are also white threads which connect all the parts of this grey matter together, and they run across from every part of it to almost every other part of it. As soon as a message has been taken to this grey matter, there is a vast inter­ change of messages going on between those parts; but finally, as the result of that, a number of messages come upon other white threads to another piece of grey matter, which is represented by our blue cork ; from that the message is then taken to the muscles of the hand. There are then two different ways in which a message may go from the eye to the hand. It may go to the optic ganglion, and then almost straight to the hand, and in that case you do not know much about it—you only know that something has taken place, you do not think that you have done it yourself; or it may go to the optic ganglion, and be sent up to the cerebral hemispheres, and then be sent back to the sensory tract and then on to the hand. But that takes more time, and it implies that you have deliberated upon the act. �12 Body and Mind. and H is the hand. The curve C C represents the cerebral hemispheres, or the top of our parachute. If the action is so habitually associated with the signal that it takes place involuntarily, without any effort of the will, the message goes from the eye to the hand along the line E B B H. This may happen with a practised performer when it is settled beforehand which hand he is to use. But if it is necessary to deliberate about the action, to call in the exercise of the will, the message goes round the loop-line, E B C 0 B H ; from the eye to the optic thalami, from them to the cerebrum, thence to the corpora striata, and so through the medulla to the hand. Besides this fact which we have j ust explained, the fact of a message going from one part of the body to the brain and coming out in the motion of some other part of the body, there is another thing which is going on continually, and that is this. There is a faint reproduction of some excitement which has previously existed in the cerebral hemispheres, and which calls up, by the process which we have just now described, all those that have become associated with it; and it is continually sending down faint messages which do not actually tell the muscles to move, but which begin to tell them to move as it were. They are not always strong enough to produce actual motions, but they produce just the beginnings of those motions: and that process goes on even when there is apparently no sensation and no motion. If a man is in a �Body and Mind. i3 brpwn study, with his eyes shut, although he apparently sees and feels nothing at all, there is a certain action going on inside his brain which is not sensation, but is like it, because it is the transmission to the cerebral hemispheres of faint messages which are copies of previous sensations ; and it does not produce motion, but it produces something like it; it produces incipient motion, the beginnings of motion which do not actually take effect. Sometimes a train of thought may so increase in strength as to produce motion. A man may get so excited by a train of thought that he jumps up and does something in consequence. And the sensory impressions which are taken from the ganglia to the hemispheres may be so strong as to produce an illusion ; he may think that he sees something, he may think that he sees a ghost, when he does not. This con­ tinuous action of the brain depends upon the presence of blood ; so long as a proper amount of blood is sent to the brain it is active, and when the blood is taken away it becomes inactive. And it is a curious property of the nervous system that it can direct the supply of blood which is to be sent to a particular part of it. It is possible, by directing your attention to a particular part of your hand, to make a determination of blood to that part which shall in time become a sore place. Some people have given this explanation, which seems a very probable one, of what has happened to those saints who have meditated so long upon the crucifixion, that they have got what are called stigmata, that is, marks of wounds corresponding to the wounds in what they were thinking about. That, then, is the general character of the nervous system which we have to consider in connection with the mind. There is a train of facts between stimulus and motion which may be of two kinds ; it may be direct or it may be indirect, it may go round the loop-line or not; and also there is a continuous action of the brain even when these steps are not taking place in completeness. More­ over, when two actions take place simultaneously they form a sort of link between them, so that if one of them is afterwards repeated the other gets repeated with it. That is what we have to remember chiefly as to the character of the brain. Now let us consider the other class of facts and the con­ �14 Body and Mind. nections between them—the facts of consciousness. An eminent divine once said to me that he thought there were only'two kinds of consciousness—to have a feeling and to know that you have a feeling. Now it seems to me that there is only one kind of consciousness, and that is to have fifty thousand feelings at once, and to know them all in different degrees. Whenever I try to analyse any particular state of consciousness in which I am, I find that it is an ex­ tremely complex one. I cannot help at this moment having a consciousness of all the different parts of this hall, and of a great sea of faces before me; and I cannot help having the consciousness, at the same time, of all the suggestions that that picture makes, that each face represents a person sitting there and listening or not, as the case may be. And I cannot help combining with them at the same moment a number of actions which they suggest to me, and in par­ ticular the action of going on speaking. There are a great number of elements of complexity which I cannot describe, because I am so faintly conscious of them that I cannot remember them. Any state of our consciousness, then, as we are at present constituted, is an exceedingly complex thing ; but it certainly possesses this property, that if two feelings have occurred together, and one of them afterwards occurs again, it is very likely that the other will be called up by it. That is to say, two states of consciousness which have taken place at the same moment produce a link between them, so that a repetition of the one cafis up a repetition of the other. Again I find a certain train of facts between my sensa­ tions and my exertions. When I see a thing, I may go through a long process of deliberation as to what I shall do with it, and then afterwards I may do that which I have deliberated and decided upon. But, on the other hand, I may, by seeing a thing, be quite suddenly forced into doing something without any chance of deliberation at all. If I suddenly see a cab coming upon me from the corner of a street where I did not at all expect it, I jump out of the way without thinking that it is a very desirable thing to get out of the way of the cab. But if I see a cab a little while before, and have more time to think about it, then it occurs to me that it will be unpleasant and undesirable to be run over by that cab, and that I can avoid it by walking �Body and Mind. !5 out of the way. You here see that there are in the case of the mind two distinct trains of facts between sensation and exertion. There is an involuntary train of facts when the exertion follows the sensation without asking my leave, and there is a voluntary train in which it does ask my leave. Then, again, there is this fact : that even when there is no actual sensation and no actual exertion, there may still be a long train of facts and sensations which hang together; there may be faint reproductions of sensation which are not so vivid as are the sensations themselves, but which form a series of pictures of sensations which pass continually before my mind; and there will be faint beginnings of action. Now the sense in which there are faint beginnings of action is very instructive. Any beginning of an action is what we call a judgment. When you see a thing, you in the first instance form no judgment about it at all—you are not prepared to assert any proposition— you merely have the feeling of a certain sight or sound presented to you ; but after a very short space of time, so short that you cannot perceive it, you begin to frame pro­ positions. If you consider what a proposition means, you will see that it must correspond to the beginning of some sort of exertion. When you say that A is B, you mean that you are going to act as if A were B. If I see water with a particularly dull surface, and with stones resting upon the surface of it, then, first of all, I have merely an impression of a certain sheet of colour, and of ‘ certain objects which interrupt the colour of that sheet. But the second thing that I do is to come to the conclusion that the water is frozen, and that therefore I may walk upon it. The assertion that the water is frozen implies a bundle of resolves ; which means, given certain other conditions, I shall go and walk upon it. So, then, an act of judgment or an assertion of any kind implies a certain incipient action of the muscles, not actually carried out at that time and place, but preparing a certain condition of the mind such as afterwards, when the occasion comes, will guide the action that we shall take up. Now, then, what is it that we mean by the character of a person ? You judge of a person’s character by what be thinks and does under certain circumstances. Let us see �16 Body and Mind. what determines this. We can only be speaking here of voluntary actions—those actions in which the person is con­ sulted, and which are not done by his body without his leave. In those voluntary actions what takes place is, that a certain sensation is communicated to the mind, that sensation is manipulated by the mind, and conclusions are drawn from it, and then a message is sent out which causes certain motions to take place. Now the character of the person is evidently determined by the nature of this manipulation. If the sensation suggests a wrong thing, the character of the person will be bad; if the sensation suggests in the great majority of cases a right thing, you will say that the character of the person is good. So, then, it is the character of the mind which determines what it will do with a given sensation, and what act will follow from it, which determines what we call the per­ sonality of any person ; and that character is persistent in the main, although it is continually changing a little. The vast mass of it is a thing which lasts through the whole of every individual’s life, although everything which happens to him makes some small change in it, and that constitutes the education of the man. Now, then, the question arises, is there anything else in your consciousness of a different nature from what we have here described ? That is a question which every man has to decide by examining his own consciousness. I do not find anything else in mine. If you find anything else in yours, it is extremely important that you should analyse it and find out all that you possibly can about it, and state it in the clearest form to other people ; because it is one of the most important problems of philosophy to account for the whole of consciousness out of individual feelings. It seems to me that the account of which I have only given a very rough sketch, which was begun by Locke and Hume, and has been carried out by their successors, chiefly in this country, is in its great general features complete, and leaves nothing but more detailed explanations to be de­ sired. It seems to me that I find nothing in myself which is not accounted for when I describe myself as a stream of feelings such that each of them is capable of a faint repeti­ tion, and that when two of them have occurred together the repetition of the one calls up the other, and that there are �Body and Mind. 17 rules according to which the resuscitated feeling calls up its fellows. These are, in the main, fixed rules which de­ termine and are determined by my character ; but my cha­ racter is gradually changing in consequence of the education of life. It seems to me that this is a complete account of all the kinds of facts which I can find in myself ■ and, as I said before, if anybody finds any other kinds of facts in himself, it is an exceedingly important thing that he should describe them as clearly as he possibly can. We have described two classes of facts ; let us now notice the parallelism between them. First, we have these two parallel facts, that two actions of the brain which occur to­ gether form a link between themselves, so that the one being called up the other is called up; and two states of consciousness which occur together form a link between them, so that when one is called up the other is called up. But also we find a train of facts between the physical fact of the stimulus of light going into the eye and the physical fact of the motion of the muscles. Corresponding to a part of that train, we have found a train of fact between sensation, the mental fact which corresponds to a message arriving from the eye, and exertion, the mental fact which corre­ sponds to the motion of the hand by a message going out along the nerves. And we have found a correspondence between the continuous action of the brain and the con­ tinuous existence of consciousness apparently independent of sensation and exertion. But let us look at this correspondence a little more closely; we shall find that there are one or two things which can be established with practical certainty. In the first place, it is not the whole of the physical train of facts which corresponds to the mental train of facts. The beginning of the physical train consists of light going into the eye and exciting the retina, and then of that wave of excitation being carried along the optic nerve to the gan­ glion. For all we know, and it is a very probable thing, the mental fact begins here, at the ganglion. There is no sensation till the message has got to the optic ganglion for this reason, that if you press the optic nerve behind the eye you can produce the sensation of light. It is like tapping a telegraph, and sending a message which has not come from the station from which it ought to have come; B �18 Body and Mind. nobody at the other end can tell whether it has come from that station or not. The optic ganglion cannot tell whether this message which comes along the nerve has come from the eye or is the result of a tapping of the telegraph, whether it is produced by light or by pressure upon the nerve. It is a fact of immense importance that all these nerves are exactly of the same kind. The only thing which the nerve does is to transmit a message which has been given to it; it does not transmit a message in any other way than the telegraph wire transmits a message— that is to say, it is excited at certain intervals, and the succession of these intervals determines what this message is, not the nature of the excitation which passes along the wire. So that if we watched the nerve excited by pressure the message going along to the ganglion would be exactly the same as if it were the actual sight of the eye. We may draw from this the conclusion that the mental fact does not begin anywhere before the optic ganglion. Again, a man who has had one of his legs cut off can try to move his toes, which he feels as if they were still there ; and that shows that the consciousness of the motor impulse which is sent out along the nerve does not go to the end to see whether it is obeyed or not. The only way in which we know whether 'our orders, given to any parts of our body, are obeyed, is by having a message sent back to say that they are obeyed. If I tell my hand to press against this black board, the only way in which I know that it does press is by having a message sent back by my skin to say that it is pressed. But supposing there is no skin there, I can have the exertion that precedes the action without actually per­ forming it, because I can send out a message, and con­ sciousness stops with the sending of the message, and does not know anything further. So that the mental fact is somewhere or other in the region B 0 0 B of the diagram, and does not include the two ends. That is to say, it is not the whole of the bodily fact that the mental fact cor­ responds to, but only an intermediate part of it. If it just passes through the points R B, without going round the loop from C to 0, then we merely have the sensation that something has taken place—we have had no voice in the nature of it and no choice about it. If it has gone round from C to C we have a much larger fact—we have that �Body and Mind. J9 fact which we call choice, or the exercise of vojition. We may conclude, then—I am not able in so short a space as I have to give you the whole evidence which goes to an assertion of this kind; but there is evidence which is suffi­ cient to satisfy any competent scientific man of this day— that every fact of consciousness is parallel to some disturb­ ance of nerve matter, although there are some nervous dis­ turbances which have no parallel in consciousness, properly so called ; that is to say, disturbances of my nerves may exist which have no parallel in my consciousness. We have now observed two classes of facts and the parallelism between them. Let us next observe what an ^enormous gulf there is between these two classes of facts. "The state of a man’s brain and the actions which go •along it are things which every other man can perceive, observe, measure, and tabulate • but the state of a man’s own consciousness is known to him only, and not to any other person. Things which appear to us and which we •can observe are called objects or pAenomewa. Facts in a man’s consciousness are not objects or phenomena to any ■other man ; they are capable of being observed only by him. We have no possible ground, therefore, for speaking of another man’s consciousness as in any sense a part of the physical world of objects or phenomena. It is a thing entirely separate from it; and all the evidence that we have goes to show that the physical world gets along entirely by itself, according to practically universal rules. That is to say, the laws which hold good in the physical world hold good everywhere in it—they hold good with practical universality, and there is no reason to suppose anything else but those laws in order to account for any physical fact; there is no reason to suppose anything but the universal laws of mechanics in order to account for the motion of organic bodies. The train of physical facts between the stimulus sent into the eye, or to any one of our senses, and the exertion which follows it, and the train of physical facts which goes on in the brain, even when there is no stimulus and no exertion, these are perfectly complete physical trains, and every step is fully accounted for by mechanical conditions. In order to show what is meant by that, I will endeavour to explain another supposi­ tion which might be made ; that when stimulus comes �20 Body and Mind, into the eye there is a certain amount of energy transferred from the ether, which fills space, to this nerve; and this energy travels along into the ganglion, and sets the ganglion into a state of disturbance which may use up some energy previously stored in it. The amount of energy is the same as before by the law of the conserva­ tion of energy. That energy is spread over a number of threads which go out to the brain, and it comes back again and is reflected from there. It may be supposed that a very small portion of energy is created in that process, and that while the stimulus is going round this loop-line it gets a little push somewhere, and then, when it comes back to the ganglia, it goes away to the muscle and sets loose a store of - energy in the muscle so that it moves the limb. Now the question is, Is there any creation of energy any­ where ? Is there any part of the physical progress which cannot be included within ordinary physical laws ? It has been supposed, I say, by some people, as it seems to me merely by a confusion of ideas, that there is, at some part or other of this process, a creation of energy ; but there is no reason whatever why we should suppose this. The difficulty in proving a negative in these cases is similar to that in proving a negative about anything which exists on the other side of the moon. It is quite true that I am not absolutely certain that the law of the conservation of energy is exactly true; but there is no more reason why I should suppose a particular exception to occur in the brain than any­ where else. I might just as well assert that whenever any­ thing passes over the Line, when it goes from the north side of the Equator to the south, there is a certain creation of energy, as that there is a creation of energy in the brain.. If I chose to say that the amount was so small that none of our present measurements could appreciate it, it would be difficult or indeed impossible for anybody to disprovethat assertion ; but I should have no reason whatever for making it. There being, then, an absence of positive evidence that the conditions are exceptional, the reasons which lead us to assert that there is no loss of energy in organic any more than in inorganic bodies are absolutely overwhelming. There is no more reason to assert that there is a creation of energy in any part of an organic body, because we are not absolutely sure of the exact nature of �Body and Mind. 21 the law, than there is reason, because we do not know what there is on the other side of the moon, to assert that there is a sky-blue peacock there with forty-five eyes in his tail. Then it is not a right thing to say, for example, that the mind is a force, because if the mind were a force we should be able to perceive it. I should be able to perceive your mind and to measure it, but I cannot; I have abso­ lutely no means of perceiving your mind. I judge by analogy that it exists, and the instinct which leads me to come to that conclusion is the social instinct, as it has been formed in me by generations during which men have lived together, and they could not have lived together unless they had gone upon that supposition. But I may very well say that among the physical facts which go along at the same time with mental facts there are forces at work. That is perfectly true, but the two things are on two utterly different platforms—the physical facts go along by themselves, and the mental facts go along by themselves. There is a parallelism between them, but there is no inter­ ference of one with the other. Again, if anybody says that the will influences matter, the statement is not untrue, but it is nonsense. The will is not a material thing, it is not a mode of material motion. Such an assertion belongs to the crude materialism of the savage. Now the only thing which influences matter is the position of surrounding matter or the motion of surrounding matter. It may be conceived that at the same time with every exercise of volition there is a disturbance of the physical laws; but this disturbance, being perceptible to me, would be a physical fact accompanying the volition, and could not be the volition itself, which is not perceptible to me. Whether there is such a disturbance of the physical laws or no, is a question of fact to which we have the best of reasons for giving a negative answer ; but the assertion that another man’s volition, a feeling in his consciousness which I cannot perceive, is part of the train of physical facts which I may perceive, this is neither true nor untrue, but nonsense ; it is a combination of words whose corresponding ideas will not go together. Then we are to regard the body as a physical machine, which goes by itself according to a physical law, that is to say, is automatic. An automaton is a thing which goes by �22 Body and Mind. itself when it is wound up, and we go by ourselves when* we have had food. Excepting the fact that other men areconscious, there is no reason why we should not regard the human body as merely an exceedingly complicated machine which is wound up by putting food into the mouth. But it is not merely a machine, because consciousness goes with it. The mind, then, is to be regarded as a stream of feelings which runs parallel to, and simultaneous with, a certain part of the action of the body, that is to say, that particular part of the action of the brain in which thecerebrum and the sensory tract are excited. Then, you say, if we are automata what becomes of thefreedom of the will ? The freedom of the will, according, to Kant, is that property which enables us to originate events independently of foreign determining causes ; which,, it seems to me, amounts to saying precisely that we areautomata, that is, that we go by ourselves, and do not want anybody to push or pull us. The distinction between an automaton and a puppet is, that the one goes by itself when it is wound up and the other requires to be pushed or pulled by wires or strings. We do not want any stimulusfrom without, but we go by ourselves when we have our food, and therefore so far as that distinction goes we arc automata. But we are more than automata, because we areconscious ; mental facts go along with the bodily facts. That does not hinder us from describing the bodily factsby themselves, and if we restrict our attention to them we must describe ourselves as automata. The objection which many people feel to this doctrine is derived, I think, from the conception of such automata as are made by man. In that case there is somebody outside the automaton who has constructed it in a certain definite way, with definite intentions, and has meant it to go in that way; and the whole action of the automaton is deter­ mined by such person outside. Of course, if we consider, for example, a machine such as Frankenstein made, and imagine ourselves to have been put together as that fearful machine was put together by a German student, the con­ ception naturally strikes us with horror ; but if we consider the actual fact, we shall see that our own case is not an analogous one. For, as a matter of fact, we were not made by any Frankenstein, but we made ourselves. I do not �Body and Mind. ^3 mean that every individual has made the whole of his own character, hut that the human race as a whole has made itself during the process of ages. The action of the whole race at any given time determines what the character . ot the race shall be in the future. From the continual storing up of the effects of such actions, graven into the character of the race, there arises in process of time that exact human constitution which we now have. By that process ot Natural Selection all the actions of our ancestors are built into us and form our character, and in that sense it may be said that the human race has made itself. In that sense also we are individually responsible for what the human race will be in the future, because every one of our actions goes to determine what the character of the race shall be to-morrow. If, on the contrary, we suppose that in the action of the brain there is some point where physical causes do not apply, and where there is a discon­ tinuity, then it will follow that some of our actions are not dependent upon our character. Provided the action which goes on in my brain is a continuous one, subject to physical rules then it will depend upon what the character of my brain is ; or if I look at it from the mental side, it will depend upon what my mental character is; but if there is a certain point where the law of causation does not app y, where my action does not follow by regular physical causes from what I am, then I am not responsible for it, because it is not I that do it. So you see the notion that we. are not automata destroys responsibility; because, if my actions are not determined by my character in accordance with the particular circumstances which occur, then I am not re­ sponsible for them, and it is not I that do them. Moreover, if we once admit that physical causes are not continuous, but that there is some break, then we_ leave the way open for the doctrine of a destiny or a providence outside of us, overruling human efforts and guiding history to a foregone conclusion. Now of course it is the business of the seeker after truth to find out whether a proposition is true or no, and not what are the moral consequences which may be expected to follow from it. But I do think that if it is right to call any doctrine immoral, it is right so to call this doctrine ; when we remember how often it has paralysed the efforts of those who were climbing �24 Body and Mind. honestly up the hillside towards the light and the right and how often it has nerved the sacrilegious arm of the society °r adventurer wlao was conspiring against I want now, very briefly indeed, to consider to what extent these doctrines furnish a bridge between the two c asses of facts. I have said that the series of mental facts corresponds to only a portion of the action of the organism Hut we have to consider not only ourselves, but also those animals which are next below us in the scale of organisalon, and we cannot help ascribing to them a consciousness which is.analogous to our own. We find, when we attempt to enter into that and to judge by their actions what sort of consciousness they possess, that it differs from our own in precisely the. same way that their brains differ from our rams. There is less of the co-ordination which is implied by a message going round the loop-line. A much larger number of the messages which go in at a cat’s eyes and come out at her paws go straight through without any loop-line at all than do m the case of a man ; but still there is a Lttle loop-line left. And the lower we go down in the scale of organisation the less of this loop-line there is; yet we cannot suppose that so enormous a jump from one creature to another should have occurred at any point in the process of evolution as the introduction of a fact entirely different and absolutely separate from the physical fact. It is impossible for anybody to point out the particular place in the line of descent where that event can be supposed to have, taken place. The only thing that we can come to, if we accept the doctrine of evolution at all, is that even in the very lowest organisms, even in the Amceba which swims about in our own blood, there is something or other, incon­ ceivably simple to us, which is of the same nature with our own consciousness, although not of the same complexity that is to say (for we cannot stop at organic matter, knowing as we do that it must have arisen by continuous physical processes out of inorganic matter), we are obliged to assume, m order to save continuity in our belief, that along wit every motion of .matter, whether organic or inorganic, there is some fact which corresponds to the mental fact in ourse ves. The mental fact in ourselves is an exceedingly ■complex thing ; so also our brain is an exceedingly complex �Body and Mind. thing. We may assume that the quasi-mental fact which corresponds and which goes along with the motion of. every particle of matter is of such inconceivable simplicity, as compared with our own mental fact, with our consciousness, as the motion of a molecule of matter is of inconceivable simplicity when compared with the motion in our brain. This doctrine is not merely a speculation, but is a, result to which all the greatest minds that have studied this question in the right way have gradually been approxi­ mating for a long time. Again, let us consider what takes place when we perceive anything by means of our eye. A certain picture is pro­ duced upon the retina of the eye, which is like the picture on the ground-glass plate in a photographic camera ; but it is not there that the consciousness begins, as I have shown before. When I see anything there is a picture produced on the retina, but I am not conscious of it there ; and in order that I may be conscious the message must be taken from each point of this picture along the special nerve-fibre to the ganglion. These innumerable fine nerves which come away from the retina go each of them to a particular point of the ganglion, and the result is that, corresponding to that picture at the back of the retina, there is a disturbance of a great number of centres of. grey matter in the ganglion. If certain parts of the retina of my eye, having light thrown upon them, are disturbed so as to produce the figure of a square, then certain little pieces of grey matter, in this ganglion, which are distributed we do not know how, will also be disturbed, and the impres­ sion corresponding to that is a square. Consciousness belongs to this disturbance of the ganglion, and not to the picture in the eye; and therefore it is something quite different from the thing which is perceived.. But at the same time, if we consider another man looking at some­ thing, we shall say that the fact is this there is something outside of him which is matter in motion, and that which corresponds inside of him is also matter in motion. The external motion of matter produces, in the optic ganglion something which corresponds to it, but is. not like it. Although for every point in the object there is a point, of disturbance in the optic ganglion, and for every connection between two points in the object there is a connection be- �26 Body and Mind. tween two disturbances, yet they are not like one another. Nevertheless they are made of the same stuff; the object outside and the optic ganglion are both matter, and that matter is made of molecules moving about in ether. When I consider the impression which is produced upon my mind of any fact, that is just a part of my mind ; the impression is a part of me. The hall which I see now is just an impression produced on my mind by something outside of it, and that impression is a part of me. We may conclude from this theory of sensation, which is established by the discoveries of Helmholtz, that the feeling which I have in my mind—the picture of this hall—is some­ thing corresponding, point for point, to the actual reality outside. Though every small part of the reality which is outside corresponds to a small part of my picture, though every connection between two parts of that reality outside corresponds to a connection between two parts of my picture, yet the two things are not alike. They correspond to one another, just as a map may be said in a certain sense to correspond with the country of which it is a map, or as a written sentence may be said to correspond to a spoken sentence. But then I may conclude, from what I said before, that, although the two corresponding things are not alike, yet they are made of the same stuff. Now what is my picture made of ? My picture is made of exceedingly simple mental facts, so simple that I only feel them in groups. My picture is made up of these elements ; and I am therefore to conclude that the real thing which is out­ side me, and which corresponds to my picture, is made up of similar things ; that is to say, the reality which under­ lies matter, the reality which we perceive as matter, is that same stuff which, being compounded together in a particular way, produces mind. What I perceive as your brain is really in itself your consciousness, is You ; but then, that which I call your brain, the material fact, is merely my perception. Suppose we put a certain man in the middle of the hall, and we all looked at him. We should all have perceptions of his brain ; those would be facts in our con­ sciousness, but they would be all different facts. My perception would be different from the picture produced upon you, and it would be another picture, although it might be very like it. So that corresponding to all those �Body and Mind. 27 pictures which are produced in our minds from an external object there is a reality which is not like the pictures, but which’ corresponds to them point for point, and which is made of the same stuff that the pictures are The actual reality which underlies what we call matter is not the same thing as the mind, is not the same thing as our per­ ception, but it is made of the same stuff. To use the wor o/the old disputants, we may say that matter is not of the same substance as mind, not Z^m^.but it is ot ZiA-e substance, it is made of similar stuff differently com­ pacted together, homoi-ousion. , , , ., ~ With the exception of just this last bridge connec g the two great regions of inquiry that we have been discuss­ ing, the whole of what I have said is a body of doctrine which is accepted now, as far as I know, by all compe e people who have considered the subject There are of course, individual exceptions with regard to particular points, such as that I have mentioned about the possible creation of energy in the brain ; but these are few, an they occur mainly, I think, among those who are sa exceedingly well acquainted with one side of the subJ that they regard the whole of it from the pom o v of that side, and do not sufficiently weigh what may come from the other side. With such exceptions as those, and with the exception of the last speculation of all, & doctrine which I have expounded to you is the doctrine of Science at the present day.’ These results may now be applied to the considera of certain questions which have always been 0 grea interest. The application which I shall make is a pure y tentative one, and must be regarded as merely indica ingthat such an application becomes more possible every day. The first of these questions is that of the possible existence of consciousness apart from a nervous system of mind without body. Let us first of all consider the effect upon this question of the doctrines which are. admitted by all competent scientific men. All the consciousness a we know of is associated with a brain in a certain definite manner, namely, it is built up out of elements m the same way as part of the action of the brain is built up out ot elements: an element of one corresponds to an element in the other ; and the mode of connection, the shape ot the �28 Body and Mind. building, is the same in the two cases. The mere fact that all the consciousness we know of is associated with certain complex forms of matter need only make us exceedingly cautious not to imagine any consciousness apart from matter without very good reason indeed ; just as the fact of all swans having turned out white up to a certain time made us quite rightly careful about accepting stories that involved black swans. But the fact that mind and brain are associated in a definite way, and in that particular way that I have mentioned, affords a very strong presumption that we have here something which can be explained; that it is possible to find a reason for this exact correspondence. If such a reason can be found, the case is entirely altered • instead of a provisional proba­ bility which may rightly make us cautious, we should have the highest assurance that Science can give, a practical certainty.on which we are bound to act, that there is no mind without a brain. Whatever, therefore, is the probability that an explanation exists of the connection of mind with brain in action, such is also the probability that each of them involves the other. If, however, that particular explanation which I have ventured to offer should turn out to be the true one, the case becomes even stronger. If mind is the reality or substance of that which appears to us as brain-action, the supposition of mind without brain is the supposition of an organised material substance not affecting other substances (for if it did it might be perceived), and therefore not affected by them; in other words, it is the supposition of immaterial matter, a contradiction in terms to the funda­ mental assumption of uniformity of nature, without practically believing in which we should none of us have been here to-day. But if mind without brain is a con­ tradiction, is it not still possible that an organisation like the brain can exist without being perceived, without our being able to hold it fast, and weigh it, and cut it up ? Now this is a physical question, and we know quite enough about the physical world to say, “ Certainly not.” It is made of atoms and ether, and there is no room in it for ghosts. The other question which may be asked is this : Can we regard the universe, or that part of it which immediately surrounds us, as a vast brain, and therefore the reality �Body and Mind. 29 which underlies it as a conscious mind ? This question has been considered by the great naturalist Du Bois Reymond, and has received from him that negative answer which I think we also must give. For we found that the particular organisation of the brain which enables its action to run parallel with consciousness amounts to this—that dis­ turbances run along definite channels, and that two disturbances which occur together establish links between the channels along which they run, so that they naturally occur together again. Now it will, I think, be clear to every one that these are not characteristics of the great interplanetary spaces. Is it not possible, however, that the stars we can see are just atoms in some vast organism, bearing some such relation to it as the atoms which make up our brains bear to us ? I am sure I do not know. But it seems clear that the knowledge of such an organism could not extend to events taking place on the earth, and that its volition could not be concerned in them. And if some vast brain existed far away in space, being invisible because not self-luminous, then, according to the laws of matter at present known to us, it could affect the solar system only by its weight. On the whole, therefore, we seem entitled to conclude that during such time as we can have evidence of, no intelligence or volition has been concerned in events happening within the range of the solar system, except that of animals living on the planets. The weight of such probabilities is, of course, estimated differently by different people, and the questions are only just beginning to receive the right sort of attention. But it does seem to me that we may expect in time to have negative evidence on this point of the same kind and of the same cogency as that which forbids us to assume the existence between the Earth and Venus of a planet as large as either of them. • Now about these conclusions which I have described as probable ones, there are two things that may be said. In the first place it may be said that they make the world a blank, because they take away the objects of very impor­ tant and widespread emotions of hope and reverence and love, which are human faculties and require to be exercised, and that they destroy the motives for good conduct. To this it may be answered that we have no right to call the �3° Body and Mind. world a blank while it is full of men and women, even though our one friend may be lost to us. And in the regular everyday facts of this common life of men, and in the promise which it holds out for the future, there is room enough and to spare for all the high and noble emotions of which our nature is capable. Moreover, healthy emotions are felt about facts and not about phantoms; and the question is not “ What conclusion will be most pleasing or elevating to my feelings ? ” but “What is the truth ? ” For it is not all human faculties that have to be exercised, but only the good ones. It is not right to exercise the faculty of feeling terror or of resisting evidence. And if there are any faculties which prevent us from accepting the truth and guiding our conduct by it, these faculties ought not to be exercised. As for the assertion that these conclusions destroy the motive for good conduct, it seems to me that it is not only utterly untrue, but, because of its great influence upon human action, one of the most dangerous doctrines that can be set forth. The two questions which we have last dis­ cussed are exceedingly difficult and complex questions; the ideas and the knowledge which we used in their discussion are the product of long centuries of laborious investigation and thought; and perhaps, although we all make our little guesses, there is not one man in a million who has any right to a definite opinion about them. But it is not necessary to answer these questions in order to tell an honest man from a rogue. The distinction of right and wrong grows up in the broad light of day out of natural causes wherever men live together; and the only right motive to right action is to be found in the social instincts which have been bred into mankind by hundreds of generations of social life. In the target of every true Englishman’s allegiance, the bull’s-eye belongs to his countrymen, who are visible and palpable and who stand around him ; not to any far-off shadowy centre beyond the hills, ultra monies, either at Rome or in heaven. Duty to one’s countrymen and fellow-citizens, which is the social instinct guided by reason, is in all healthy com­ munities the one thing sacred and supreme. If the course of things is guided by some unseen intelligent person, then this instinct is his highest and clearest voice, and because �Body and Mind. 3i of it we may call him good. But if the course .of things is not so guided, that voice loses nothing of its sacred­ ness, nothing of its clearness, nothing of its obligation. In the second place it may be said that Science ought not to deal with these questions at all; that while scientific men are concerned with physical facts, they are clans leur droit, but that in treating of such subjects as these they are going out of their domain, and must do harm. What is the domain of Science ? It is all possible human knowledge which can rightly be used to guide human conduct. In many parts of Europe it is customary, to leave a part of the field untilled for the Brownie to live in, because he cannot live in cultivated ground. And if you grant him this grace, he will do a great deal of your household work for you in the night while you sleep. In Scotland the piece of ground which is left wild for the devil to live in is called “ the good man’s croft.” Now, there are people who indulge a hope that the ploughshare of Science will leave a sort of good man’s croft around the field of reasoned truth ; and they promise that in that case a good deal of our civilising work shall be done for us in the dark, by means we know nothing of. I do not share this hope ; and I feel very sure that it will not be realised. I think that we should do our work with our own hands in a healthy straightforward way, and not leave any croft to the good man from which his arrow may fly by night and in which his pestilence may walk in the noonday. It is idle to set bounds to the purifying and organising work of Science. Without mercy and without resentment she ploughs up weed and briar; from her footsteps behind her grow up corn and healing flowers; and no corner is far enough to escape her furrow. Provided only that we take as our motto and our rule of action, Man speed the plough. PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Body and mind, a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, 1st November, 1874 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Clifford, William Kingdon [1845-1879] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 31 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Printed by G.W. Reynell, London. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sunday Lecture Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1875 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N091 Subject The topic of the resource Science Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Body and mind, a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, 1st November, 1874), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Mind and body NSS https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/11b8f59e1dacdba31593ef3ffc03ccb7.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=cfh3dGrTsX6Ez9gyAAaKKJ-8efXdvhldBGVE-f8KC5HwidSgwNVz2Wx2nqaWWkZGq847WX7SMRpiSdmglGA4NMVCjh5lnYJSsLl-x5rR0e8oGwUDvfijUKHjyBId60xm0v2McdVGo2iTLqHBbHQFKpsuATBOBC-3PdeY390uiycAHDon9yooOp2c9uxrppGTwqM-y4Uy-SM7KCdgBCk62yKcNMzMOjOWHDowYOghYXNmgW4iQfLQetDIEbN5tLP1L17WsDItzIp0RcKL14B-eYCU%7EowCV9ogEDUcT5L6d1xKOuvmN6vQMpXBwLWTpFlozAztoEvzux4JXOIVj0LQGg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 35ed8a89b663fb39252e4964ba3c09e4 PDF Text Text NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY THE INFLUENCE OF ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN MIED DELIVERED BEFORE THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 25th FEBRUARY, 1877, By A. ELLEY FINCH. ISanUcm : PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. 1877. PRICE THREEPENCE. �The Society’s Lectures by the same Author, now printed, are—on “ Erasmus ; his Life, Works, and Influence upon the Spirit of the Refor­ mation.” (Price 3d.) “ Civilization : a Sketch of its Rise and Progress, its Modern Safe-guards, and Future Prospects.” (Price 3d.) “ The Inductive Philosophy : including a Parallel between Lord Bacon and A. Comte as Philosophers.” With Notes and Authorities, (pp. 100, cloth 8vo., price 5s.) “ The Pursuit oe Truth ; as Exemplified in the Principles of Evidence —Theological, Scientific, and Judicial.” With Notes and Authorities, (pp. 106, cloth 8vo., price 5s.) Can be obtained of the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W., or at the Hall on the days of Lecture; or of Mr. John Bumpus, 158, Oxford Street. �SYLLABUS. Earliest notions respecting the Stars. Genesis. Socrates. Astronomy as Science is the result of mental calculation based on exact observation of the Heavenly Bodies, by aid of the Telescope and other modern scientific instruments. The Human Understanding previously to the growth of Astronomical Science was under the dominion of the Imagination. Illustration of the pre-scientific type of mind—Plato. The conception of the size and nature of the World was imaginary. Illustration from their description by Cosmas. The destiny of the Universe, and man’s position in it were also imaginary. Illustration from the works of the Fathers and Schoolmen. Sketch of the true System of the World as made known through the great Astronomical Discoveries. Hipparchus (160 a.c.)—Ptolemy (140 a.d.) —Copernicus (1542)—Invention of the Telescope (1609)—Kepler (1619)— Galileo (1632)—Sir Isaac Newton (1687)—Lagrange and Laplace (1776— 1825)—Adams (1846), and others. Astronomical Discovery has displaced the theological scheme of existence by the substitution of a scientific platform; correcting, enlarging, and elevating men’s views by transferring the intellectual position of the observer from the Earth to the Sun. In demonstrating the stability of our Solar System it has destroyed the theological dogma of the approaching end of the World, with all its demoralizing influences. It reveals the Universe as a realm of Law, and Laws of Nature as Laws of Reason. It proves a Reign of Reason to be paramount the Dominion of the Imagination. Illustration from astronomical measurements, magnitudes, and distances beyond the realization of the Imagination. It exhibits the reason of man as part of the universal reason, and both as correlated with a material basis. Illustration from the discovery and connection of Conic Sections, the curvature of the Planetary Orbits, and the Law of Gravitation. It unfolds an Order of Nature as the criterion of Truth, the area of Knowledge, and the standard of Proportion. In displaying a real power of Prediction, it has rescued Science from Theology and Metaphysics. . It has sapped Superstition, i.e., Belief inconsistent with the unbiassed dictates of Reason and the verified course of Nature. In encom-aging a love of inquiry in the spirit of Truth, it has invigorated Culture and reformed Education. In eradicating vicious views and false beliefs, it has purified Moral Principles and augmented Human Happiness. Illustration of the scientific type of mind—J. S. Mill. ’ Plato and Mill—a parallel. ILLUSTRATIVE DIAGRAMS. 1. Conic Sections.—2. The Orbit of a Planet round the Sun.—3. Phases of the Planet Venus as shown by the Telescope.—4. Our Solar System. ��IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN MIND. HE earliest astronomical sentiments of the human race find their simplest expression in our nursery Tdating back probably to those primevalfamiliarwhen, in therhyme, times cloudless serenity of an oriental night, Shepherd-priests of the Chaldean plains, awe-subdued and silent, intently watch the star-studded expanse, glittering so mysteriously above and around them— “ Twinkle, twinkle little Star, How I wonder what you are ! ” That the stars were very small bodies, that they could never be more to man than objects of wonder, were the intellectual beliefs of ages—even in the time of the cultured Greeks, we find the great Athenian Socrates pronouncing Astronomy (that science which now exhibits the highest perfection, and most exact power of prediction to which the human mind has ever attained) to be a Divine mystery, impossible to understand, and impious to investigate ; whilst their illustrious Philosopher, Anaxagoras, was accused of blasphemy, for daring to dispersonify their Sun-God Helios, in attempting to assign invariable laws to the Solar phenomena ! But a writer, more ancient than Socrates, perhaps no less illustrious than the Grecian Sage, has ventured to narrate to us, as a fact, the Creation of the little Stars. Thus, he writes—“ And God made two great Lights .... He made the Stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.” Those twinkling points of light are thus regarded as �6 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the some small addition to the Sun and Moon, without the least suspicion that each one of their glorious host was itself a mighty Sun, in comparison with whose bulk that of our earth shrinks to insignificance ! Now, one of the most certain, as well as important, of the discoveries of modern Critical Research, has shown us that the Pentateuch is the composition of several writers, put together out of different sources, prior documents or legends; and it may, I trust, be said without improperly shocking the prejudices of any intelligent person, that the statement I have cited from the book of Genesis, as to the inferior size, and apparent purpose of the Stars, is entirely contradicted by the discoveries of Astronomical Science, and that the fact of such a statement having for so long a period retained its hold over human beliefs, as supernaturallyinspired truth, must now be attributed mainly to its sublime audacity. Mere observation of the Heavens, or Star-gazing, however long continued, could never have created a Science of Astronomy. The Chinese, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Phoenicians, all in ancient times, made and recorded numerous observations of the Heavenly bodies, but they seldom arrived at scientific conceptions. Physical Science indeed is not of Asiatic descent, its parentage is European. Astronomical Science, that knowledge which enables us to com­ prehend the past and future state of the system of the World, has resulted from a series of marvellous discoveries made by the intellect of European Man. As Science, Astronomy is even yet the youthful offspring of the unprejudiced reason, being the result of mental calculation, based upon an accurate observation of the Heavenly bodies, by aid of the Telescope, and other modern scientific Instruments. The discovery of the real motions of the Earth ; and the other Planets revolving round the Sun; of the laws which regulate these motions; of the principle of universal gravitation, as the cause of these laws; of the actual form of the planetary orbits, and the rate of speed at which they are traversed; so that the future position of the vast celestial orbs, rolling incessantly through space, can be accurately predicted; has been work accomplished, not so much by the human eye, as by the human brain. If, when surveying the history of human opinion, we attempt �Development of the Human Mind. 7 to range its several schools on one side or the other of a single line of demarcation, we find that the minds of men seem separable into two almost opposite types. The one being that in which the Imagination is found to predominate as the ruling intellectual faculty, the other type being that in which the Beason is regarded as the ultimate arbiter of both what is true and what is right. This remarkable mental distinction appears to have prevailed from very early times. In reference to its organic source, the poet Coleridge has, in one of his writings, remarked, that all men are born to be disciples either of Plato or of Aristotle; these intellectual chiefs of classical antiquity, showing throughout their writings the very marked mental distinction to which I am alluding. With respect to the bearing of this two-fold intellectual organi­ zation upon the times in which we are living, and the subjects that are being so passionately discussed in our day, I will venture to designate the one, which looks to Imagination as its supreme and ruling mental power, The theological type of mind: and the other, which relies on Beason as its ultimate appeal and last resort, The scientific type of mind. Both types do indeed make use of reason and imagination too, but they are distinguished by this peculiarity, that the theological type reasons from premises which the exalted imagination supplies, under various specious disguises, such as intuitions, facts of consciousness, innate ideas, and the like; whilst the scientific type of mind controls the imagination by the reason, and reasons from premises, directly or indirectly, derived from experience of the facts of Nature. Of the theological type of mind, Plato is perhaps the most memorable example with which history supplies us. One of the most brilliant thinkers the world has ever produced, he may be said to be the father of that Metaphysical Philosophy which constitutes the body of doctrine that the mind builds up by means of abstract ideas, largely evolved from its inner consciousness, or, at least, based upon its own intuitions and emotions. Hence it is the Philosophy of Plato that has been the great secular authority with Theologians ; its abstractedness from the visible or natural world recommending it strongly to their imaginations and feelings. This theological type of mind not only characterised the culture of antiquity, it coloured deeply the thoughts of men throughout the middle ages, continuing its overshadowing influence, until, as �8 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the I am about to show you, it was, to a great extent, displaced by the development of Astronomical Discovery. Meanwhile, however, so paramount was its spirit, that the historian of “ Civilization in Europe,” Monsieur Guizot,- has declared that, previously to the 17th century, all opinions were saturated with it; that questions philosophical, political, historical, were all regarded from a theological point of view ; that even the mathematical and physical sciences were subordinated to the dogmas of theology. We cannot wonder that, in such an intellectual condition of Society, man’s conception of the size and nature of the globe he inhabited should be purely imaginary. Passing over the views of heathen antiquity, embodied for the most part in the fascinating fables of the Greeks, and selecting an illustration from times believed to be illuminated on the subject by the teaching of inspired Scriptures, I will cite a work of acknowledged ability, and un­ deniable authority at the time when it was published, viz., the treatise of Cosmas on the Nature of the World. In the reign of the Emperor Justinian, about the year 535, there was living at Alexandria a monk named Cosmas, noted for his inquisitive mind, his scientific attainments, and his knowledge of the relation between Science and Scripture. At the request of some learned men he composed and published a considerable work, entitled “ Christian Opinion concerning the World.” According to this authority the World was a flat parallelogram or plain. In the centre is the Earth we inhabit, surrounded by the Ocean, and encircled by another Earth. To the north is a high conical mountain, around which the Sun and Moon revolve. When the Sun is behind the mountain, it is Night, when the Sun is in front of the mountain, it is Day. The Sky is fixed to the edges of the outer Earth. It consists of four high walls rising to a great height, and then meeting in a vast concave roof. The whole is an immense edifice, of which the World is the floor. The idea that the World could possibly be inhabited on any other side than its flat upper surface was treated generally with incredulous scorn. The great Fathers Augustin and Lactantius especially deriding it, as the preposterous notion that men could exist hanging down­ wards with their feet higher than their heads ! Such being the generally received opinion, even amongst the learned, of the nature of the Earth and Sky, we must not be surprised to find that their opinions of the destiny of the World, �Development of the Haman Mind.. 9 and man’s position in it, were also purely imaginary. In fact their whole system of theological belief rested on the notion that the Universe was ordained for Man! Of course, if our Earth were the great central object of the Universe, man, being the highest existing object on Earth, would be, apparently, the centre of all things. Accordingly, every startling phenomenon was believed to have some bearing upon his proceedings. The darkness of the Eclipse, the Comet’s fiery tail, the dazzling Meteor, were all pointed at as preternatural portents, manifestations of Divine Displeasure, intended to operate on the mind of man, as threatenings, or warnings to him. His whole career is linked with them— “ The warrior’s fate is blazon’d, in the skies ! A world is darken’d when a hero dies ! ” Turning from the ideal World and its phantoms, which the imaginations of men have created, to the consideration of that real Universe which Astronomical Science has revealed to us, we find that from the earliest ages the scientific type of mind has existed along with the theological type, although, owing to the want of material in the shape of ascertained physical facts and laws of nature (which have been of slow, and comparatively recent, discovery), there were no means for its discipline, or scope for its growth. Still, its nature being to require facts as the basis of reasoning, and to draw its conclusions from real premises, it has ever been the great instrument of scientific discovery. The scientific type of mind was conspicuous in Plato’s great disciple, Aristotle, whose method of arriving at real knowledge contrasts very remarkably with that of his illustrious master. Aristotle’s method was not to begin with ideas furnished by the mind, but, with the facts of sense derived from observation of Nature. A thingy with him was not to be regarded as true, because the Imagination had suggested it, or because it was amenable to dialectical treatment, but, because the Reason could verify it inductively by an appeal to experience. The Astronomers have been from a very early period the chief exemplars of the scientific type of mind, showing how (in the words of Professor Tyndall) “ Imagination, bounded and con­ ditioned by co-operant Reason, becomes the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer.” Observations of the Heavenly bodies, �10 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the as accurate as could be made by means of the unassisted senses, or with such rude instruments as at the time could be constructed; carefully, continuously, and systematically recorded, built up by degrees a body of ascertained celestial facts; and, so far back as about 200 years before Christ, we recognise Astronomy (which chiefly then consisted of such observed facts) developing into Science, by virtue of the early Greek geometers applying to it mathematical calculations, whereby they were enabled to detect the principle of uniformity, or law, which regulates the motions of the Heavenly bodies, and so became enabled to predict, to a certain extent, what would be the state of the sky at a future time. It was during the reign of the Ptolemies (descendants of Philip of Macedon), commenced at Alexandria, some 300 years before the Christian era, that Astronomy, under the munificent patronage of those princes, began to be cultivated as a science of combined observation and theory. The History, Method, and Instruments of Ancient Astronomy formed the subject of an interesting lecture delivered here in the month of April last by our friend Mr. Seabroke. I can now only refer to a few leading names, but, I may single out Hipparchus, who flourished at Alexandria about 160 years before Christ. It is to him that the origin of Astronomy, as a science of mental calcula­ tion, is chiefly to be attributed. He, being a mathematician as well as an observer, well knew that mere observation cannot constitute Science, and the mode in which he applied, his reasoning faculty to obtain theoretical results is in the highest degree interesting. One of his many discoveries I will mention, since it is the earliest known example, in the history of Astronomy, of the correction of an apparent fact of sense, by the intellectual com­ parison of two distant observations. In the days of Hipparchus, the length of the tropical year (an important astronomical datum) was supposed to consist of exactly 365 days and a quarter of a day. Hipparchus approached this problem with doubt and enquiry. Hr first himself observed a solstice (that is the position of the sun on the longest day), and then proceeded to compare it with a solstice observed by the astronomer Aristarchus 147 years earlier, and thereby he found that the Sun arrived at the same place twelve hours sooner than it should have done if the year were of the length I have mentioned. Hipparchus thereupon worked out mentally the correction, viz., that the true length of the year �Development of the Human Mind. 11 was less than 365 days and a quarter by -j^oth part, and that is now known: to be almost exactly the true length of the tropical year. But the great importance of this mental calculation of Hipparchus is not so much its result, as its having inaugurated the scientific method of obtaining real astronomical knowledge. The works of this illustrious man have not come down to us. They perished, along with many other priceless relics of the past, in that great calamity for the human race, the conflagration of the Alexandrian Library. Hence our knowledge of the discoveries of Hipparchus is derived from the work of his celebrated successor, the Astronomer and Geographer, Ptolemseus, or Ptolemy, who flourished about the year 140. He is the author of one of the greatest astronomical books in existence, the Syntaxis, as it is called in Greek, more generally known by its Arabian name of the Almagest—a most valuable monument of antiquity, since it con­ tains nearly all the knowledge we possess of the Astronomy of the Ancients. Many of you know that Ptolemy adopted, as the basis of his theory, that system of the world which places the Earth immovable in the centre of the Universe. The Sun, the Moon, and the Planets being supposed to revolve severally in orbits of different magnitudes ; the entire Heavens turning round the earth in every twenty-four hours. It had, of course, been matter of very early observation that some few of the more brilliant of the stars move continually about in a very erratic manner. Hence was given to them the name of Planets (from the Greek verb 7rXavaw, to wander). To account for the irregular motions of the Planets, Ptolemy, and his astronomical precursors, had invented an ingenious theory of epicycles and eccentrics, based upon imaginary circular orbits, which was considered sufficient to explain them. Such in brief was the supposed nature of the Universe that became so well known as the Ptolemaic System, and which, in the long conflict between Science and Theology, maintained its ground for upwards of thirteen centuries ! Now, the Ptolemaic System did sufficiently account for all the appearances that the Heavens presented to the ordinary observer. With reference to the Stars, for instance, it is the same thing to the spectator whether the Heavens, that is all space with its contents, revolve round him in one direction, or the earth on which he stands revolve within them in the opposite direction, that is, �12 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the the diurnal phenomena would be in no way different. To believe, however, that the fixed Stars really revolved round the Earth in twenty-four hours required the most enormous stretch of credulity, for, it was generally conceded, what indeed it had become impossible rationally to doubt, that the fixed Stars must be bodies immensely distant from the Earth, as it had been also matter of observation that these Stars, no matter from what point they were viewed, mani­ fested not the slightest variation of position amongst themselves. The nicest measurement of the apparent angular distance of any two Stars from each other, at whatever point of the Earth’s surface (I might almost say the Earth’s orbit) it is performed, gives results actually identical; that is, the fixed Stars present to the spectator no parallax (the astronomical name for any variation of such angular distance when found to exist). In other words, the dimensions of the Earth, large as it is, are simply imperceptible when compared with the vast distance which separates the Stars from the Earth. If, then, the Stars were so immensely distant, and of such enormous size, as they were thus shown to be, to suppose that they could nevertheless revolve round the Earth in twenty-four hours is rationally inconceivable. To the theological type of mind this difficulty of conception was of course as nothing, but, to the scientific type of mind, the difficulty is insuperable; for science, being based on the conviction of the uniformity of Nature, views the Heavenly bodies and their movements, not as without, but, as within the pale of analogy and experience, and regards Astronomy, not as a mystery, but as a Science of cause and effect. When, therefore, about the year 1537, Copernicus (adopting the opinion of Pythagoras) propounded his geometrical conception, based upon the supposition of the Earth’s double motion, its rotation on its axis, and its translation through space in an orbit round the Sun, a rationally conceivable account was given of every motion that the Heavens presented to the Astronomer; an account showing that they could all intelligibly cohere without contradicting each other, and without any violation of the nature of things as concluded from human experience. It was, indeed, though not altogether original, a marvellous conception, for Copernicus neither did nor could, in the then state of science, explain the mechanical origin of the movements he supposed, or assign them any dependence on physical causes. That, however, �Development of the Human Mind. 13 was subsequently done, as we shall presently see when glancing at the discoveries of Kepler, of Galileo, and of Newton. *This is an ordinary representation of the chief features of the Copernican or Solar System, showing the Sun in the centre, and the several principal Planets in their respective orbits 'round the Sun. It represents what the eye would see if looking down on the system from a great elevation on the north side. It has, however, one misleading feature, to which I beg your particular attention. It shows the orbits of the several Planets as Circles. Such is not the real fact. It was indeed long supposed that the Planets moved in circles round the Sun. It was strenously argued that they must do so. It was, however, discovered that they don’t—that they move not in circles, but in ovals of peculiar mathematical form. Many were the objections raised against the startling theory of Copernicus, The chief of them was that it contradicted Scripture, which had taught people that it was the Sun, and not the Earth, that moved. Amongst others, it was urged, with regard to the Planets that are nearer to the Sun than the Earth—Venus for example—that if she so revolved round the Sun, she would show, when looked at from the Earth, various phases as our Moon does, that is, she would be seen at times partly in shadow, and so exhibit a broken, or crescent-like shape; whereas, in point of fact, nothing of the kind, as respects the Planet Venus, had ever been observed. Many of you have probably often gazed upon this brilliant and singularly dazzling star without ever having observed any peculiarity of shape about it. In truth, the objection was, at the time, un­ answerable, and was by many accepted as fatal to the truth of the theory. But, the year 1609 saw the production of one of the most wonderful instruments ever invented by human ingenuity, which may be said virtually to have connected the eye of the mind with the eye of the body by means of a new sense, enabling the observer to see the Heavens with a precision, and to an extent, hitherto undreamt of, and, when the Telescope, in the grasp of Galileo, was turned towards the Planet Venus, the phases attri­ buted to her by the Copernican theory appeared, actually as the testimony of the Heavens themselves, in attestation of its accuracy! * See Diagram, page 14. �14 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the �Development of the Human Mind. Here you see the phases of the Planet as the Telescope shows them. They are photographic as well as telescopic appearances, but they show clearly the various opti­ Ld cal sizes and shapes of the Planet Q_ resulting from her moving in an O orbit round the Sun interior to o CO that of our Earth. Lil Still several important details _l remained unexplained. For in­ Ld stance—the observed motions of Ithe Planets seemed still so erratic, Ld that the complicated scheme of I cycles and epicycles had been H retained by Copernicus to account > for them. At length the actual CD form of the orbits of the Planets was discovered by the Astronomer Z £ Kepler, and subsequently eluci­ o dated in a manner that proves I a most remarkable coincidence, not co to say identity, between the reason co of man and the reason that regu­ < lates the movements of the Uni­ co verse ! Now, some 1800 years before D Z the Astronomer Kepler discovered id the precise form of the planetary > orbits round the Sun, and the Ll beautiful laws which regulate them, O the Mathematicians of Ancient Greece had acutely divined, that if co Ld a right-angled triangle be made co to revolve round one of its sides < containing the right angle, there I will be described a figure having 0very remarkable properties, des­ tined (though undesigned by them) to lead eventually to very sur­ prising results. 15 �16 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the K This is a right-angled triangle and, if I were to make it revolve round its vertical side as _ a fixed axis, the figure so described would obviously be> this. A This figure, in its solid this, sugar-loaf shape, is termed a Cone, / \ and, if it be intersected C or cut by a plane in certain particular -- directions, there are pro- . duced several distinct forms of Curves. This is the figure of a right Cone.* If it be intersected in a line parallel to its base, the resulting closed curve is a Circle. If cut through at an angle to its base, the resulting closed curve is an Ellipse. If cut parallel to one of its sloping sides, the resulting curve is a Parabola, and if the plane cut only one side of the cone, and not parallel to the other, the curve produced is the Hyperbola. Now these Curves, or Conic Sections, are susceptible of mathe­ matical treatment of a singularly interesting and elegant character, and the ancient Greek Geometers, particularly Apollonius and Archimedes, have left us mathematical works showing that they took intense delight in following out such speculations. Why they should have been thus fascinated cannot be doubtful to us, for the vast development of physico-mathematical science in our day has shown conclusively that the intellect of man is so constituted as to be ever in affinity with scientific truth, to have a natural relish and love for it; and the Greek Geometers, in their invention of Conic Sections, had lighted upon a truth of Nature of the most expansive and recondite character, although they neither knew nor suspected what they led to, and what the illustrious Kepler, by their assistance, discovered, viz.: That the Planets actually move round the Sun in that one of these Conic Sections termed an Ellipse (the Ellipse and a planet’s Orbit are, you observe, in form identicalt); and, moreover (as was demonstrated by Sir Isaac Newton), regard being had to the laws of motion (discovered by Galileo), and the principle of universal Gravitation (discovered by Newton himself), it would be physically impossible for the Heavenly bodies to move in any other orbit than one or other of the Conic Sections ! Thus then there became revealed the immense chain of truths that connects geometrical propositions conceived by the reason of man with the most sublime and majestic phenomena of Universal See Diagram, page 17. + See Ibid, and Diagram, p. 23. �C O N IC 17 HYPERBOLA SECTIONS. Development of the Human Mind. �18 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the Nature, showing them to be the unerring results of the operation of mathematical, that is, intellectual, Laws I As our argument particularly regards Astronomical Discovery as resulting chiefly from the exercise* of the human reason, I will try to show you somewhat more distinctly some of the great intellectual truths that the genius of Kepler, of Galileo, and of Newton, combined, succeeded in establishing. Copernicus had not in reality attacked the principle of the Ptolemaic or Epicyclical theory. He had rather sought to render it more simple; and, though he had correctly pointed out that the Sun was the centre of the planetary system, he had not discovered that the Sun had any physical connection with the Planets as the centre of their motions. Now, Kepler, in the course of his con­ summate researches, demonstrated the important fact, that the planes of the orbits of all the Planets, and the lines of force joining their apsides (the points of their orbital extremities) passed through the Sun; thereby establishing a most important relation between the Sun and the Planets. This family connection (as it has been called) Kepler further demonstrated by discovering the three remarkable laws which regulate all the planetary motions. The first of these celebrated Laws is : That a Planet moves in the Conic Section termed an Ellipse, having the Sun, not in the centre, but in one of its foci. The second law is : That the Planet’s radius vector (an imaginary line joining the Planet to the Sun*) will, as it moves, describe about its centre equal areas in equal times. A full explanation of these two laws would involve us in mathematics, but presently I will give you an illustration showing the peculiar combination of force by which the elliptic orbit is formed, and equal areas swept out by the Planet’s vector in equal times. Kepler’s third law applies to all the Planets considered in conjunction with the Sun as their common focus, and may be expressed thus : That the squares of the times of the planetary revolutions are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the Sun; which is a result of the Sun and the whole of the Planets reciprocally affecting one another. It is a necessary inference from this law that it must be one and the same force (subsequently discovered, as we shall see, by Sir Isaac Newton), modified only by distance from the Sun, that retains all the Planets in their respective orbits round about the Sun. See Diagram, p. 23. �Development of the Human Mind. 19 Such were the three remarkable Laws whose discovery we owe to the sagacity of Kepler. Their immutable truth may be taken as conclusively proved, inasmuch as, since Kepler’s time, the number of discovered bodies in our Solar System has more than trebled, and all have in turn verified these laws. Upon these propositions of Kepler it was reserved for Sir Isaac Newton to bring to bear those matchless powers of generalization which enabled him to discover the cause of the whole of them, aided, however, by the acute discoveries of the laws of motion by Galileo (Galileo, whose persecution by the infallible Church, on account of his scientific verification of the Earth’s motion, is at last becoming a common place of history !). Galileo then discovered the first great Law of motion or inertia, viz.: That all motion is rectilinear and uniform—that is, a body impelled by a single force will move in a right line, and with an invariable velocity. He also discovered the Law of acceleration, which regulates the motion of a falling body, viz.: That the velocity and the space traversed are proportioned—the one to the time and the other to its square. He also discovered that most important law of the co-existence of force, viz.: That any motion common to all the bodies of any system whatever does not affect the particular motions of such bodies with regard to each other. At length came the grand discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, up to which I have desired to lead you through the discoveries of his predecessors, because it is commonly supposed that Newton’s discoveries were something immeasurably superior to, and utterly unlike, everything that had gone before—That in short “ Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said—‘ Let Newton be!’—and all was Light! ” This, however, is more of a poetic fancy than a scientific truth. The magnificent genius of Newton required no such flattery at the hands of his countryman. In point of fact Newton’s illustrious precursors, whose discoveries we have been considering, and other Astronomers, especially Huyghens, Borelli, Halley, and Hooke, whom I can now only name, had approached exceedingly near to what Newton accomplished, so that his grand discoveries, though going further, really supplement and harmonise with their previous labours, illustrating clearly the law of continuity that regulates, by successive steps, the graduated progress of human intelligence. �20 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the It should be remarked too, because it has been often thought other­ wise, that though Newton, in the propositions of the “ Principia,” has described his discoveries through the medium of a singularly con­ cise mathematical synthesis, yet (as pointed out by Laplace in his “ Systéme du Monde”) Newton actually made those discoveries by following the analytical method of Induction, so luminously ex­ pounded by Lord Bacon in the aphorisms of the “Novum Organum.” The great discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, as mathematically developed in his immortal “ Principia” (published in the year 1687), were mainly these. His chief discovery was that of the Law or Principle of Universal Gravitation, viz.: That every particle of matter in existence attracts every other particle with a force, vary­ ing inversely as the square of their mutual distances, and directly as the mass of the attracting particle. It is related that Newton was led to arrive at the knowledge of this fundamental law of the Universe by observing an apple fall from a tree before him, and, though the anecdote is not well authenticated, there seems nothing improbable in conceiving that, though a common incident to common minds, it should have roused such a mind as Newton’s to reflect upon it. It is certain, however, that he first tested his discovery by applying it to the observed motions of the Moon, and it is an attested fact, that, on finding his calculations were about to show results verifying his hypothesis, he became so agitated as to require the assistance of a friend to complete them. Thus Newton developed his grand thought, that the movements of the Heavenly bodies occur according to the same laws as the move­ ments here on Earth! Newton’s second great discovery consisted in demonstrating as mathematical truths the laws of the planetary motions discovered by Kepler, showing that they are the result of the attraction of gravitation, a centripetal (or centre-seeking) force varying inversely as the square of the distance of the Planets from the Sun as their focus, and proving mathematically that no curve can be the trajectory of a body moving in obedience to such a force other than the curve of one or other of the Conic Sections ! These amazing discoveries enabled Newton to ascertain that the most mysterious Comets are members of our Solar System, moving periodically round the Sun in elongated ellipses. Now, as soon as it is ascertained that a Comet moves in an ellipse, it is known that the Comet must return to us—the ellipse �Development of the Human Mind. 21 being a closed curve.* Hence Newton was able to calculate and define precisely the elliptic orbit which takes the great Comet, whose reappearance has been recorded but four times within the period of human memory, exactly 575 years to go away and come back to us again ! Thus became established the fundamental truths of the Coper­ nican system; the Ptolemaic theory of eccentrics and epicycles completely overthrown; the elliptical theory established in its stead; and the motions of the Heavenly Bodies, especially the Planets, shown to be the effects of mathematical laws. The elliptic elements of the Planetary Orbits I will now very briefly try to explain. The orbital motion of a Planet round the Sun is the resultant of two forces. The one is a force, which, by itself, would simply cause the Planet to move in a right line and with constant velocity. How such a force originated, or what the cause of it, is, at present, unknown. It may be, as Mary Somerville defined it, an impulse or momentum imparted to the Planet when it was first projected into space. The other force is one, whose nature as we have seen, was discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, viz.: The attraction of Gravitation. By itself, it would simply cause the Planet to fall or be drawn into the Sun, by reason of the Sun’s vastly superior re­ lative size. This latter force, combined with the former, deflects the right line of the Planet’s motion into a curve. I will give you a simple illustration of the combination of these forces :— Suppose this small ball to represent a Planet, and this large ball the Sun, my hand as imparting to the Planet its momentum, or force of projection, and this string, connecting the two, to represent the force of gravitation attracting the Planet to the Sun. Now, if the force of the Planet’s projection were perpendicular to the force of gravitation, and if the two forces acted simply in balanced combination, the velocity of the Planet would be constant, and its Orbit round the Sun would be exactly the Conic Section termed a circle. (The small ball is whirled round.) Now, if the force of gravitation were to cease, that is, if my string were to break, the Planet would not continue a curved motion, but would fly off its orbit at a tangent. (Marked on the * See Diagram, page 17. �22 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the diagram.*) If the Planet’s momentum were destroyed, the Planet, yielding to the force of gravitation, would fall, or be drawn into the Sun. The two forces, however, do not affect the Planet equally; the direction of its momentum not being perpendicular but oblique to the force of gravitation, and the force of gravitation varying inversely as the square of the distance of the Planet from the Sun. Hence the Planet moves, not with a constant, but with an ever­ varying velocity, and in an Orbit, which is not circular but elliptic, or oval. A B C D show the elliptic path of P a planet round S the Sunt. The Planet moves from C to D in the same time that it moves from A to B, although the distances differ, by reason of the area C S D being equal to the area A S B. Now this equal movement is thus effected. Bear in mind that the force of gravitation varies inversely as the square of the distance of the Planet from the Sun; so that when this varying force of gravitation (represented again by this string) is increased, which of course it is as the Planet approaches the Sun, there is an increase of its angular and linear velocity, and a rapid quickening of its periodic time, showing the compensation by which its equable description of areas is maintained under a constantly diminishing distance. Thus (as the small ball is whirled round, the string is wound upon the handle), you observe that as the distance of the Planet from the Sun decreases, its motion becomes more rapid. Now, such is the nature of the Planet’s motion taking place in one part of its orbit, viz., from C to D, where it is being drawn nearer to the Sun. On the other hand, when the varying force of gravitation is diminished, which of course it is as the Planet passes away from the Sun, then the Planet’s time is slower, whilst the velocity is lessened. Thus (as the small ball is whirled round, the string is unwound from the handle), you observe, that as the distance of the Planet from the Sun increases, its motion becomes slower. Now, such is the nature of the Planet’s motion taking place in another part of its orbit, viz., from A to B, where it is receding further off from the Sun. The combination then of the oblique direction of the Planet’s * See Diagram, page 23. t Ibid. �Development of the Human Mind. ORBIT OF A PLANET ROUND THE SUN. Slowest in Aphelion. Fastest in Perihelion. 23 �24 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the momentum, with the ever-varying force of gravitation, compels the Planet to move in the Conic Section, termed an Ellipse, and causes the radius vector of the Planet to sweep out equal areas in equal times. Such is the rationale of the astonishing phenomena first dis­ covered to be Physical Laws by Kepler, and afterwards demon­ strated as mathematical truths by Newton ! Remarkable corollaries have since been dedueed from the Coper­ nican System, especially by the Astronomers Clairaut, Lagrange, and Laplace. We owe to the Astronomer Lagrange the demonstration of the stability of the system. The conclusion he arrived at was indeed most astounding. He discovered that the mean distances of the several planets are really not subject to any variation whatever. They are merely affected by a series of inequalities and inclinations that in successive periods mutually compensate themselves ; so that, throughout an indefinite lapse of ages the mean motions of „ the planets, including our Earth, must have remained, and must still remain, unaltered—a striking proof of the unerring order which reigns among the vast bodies of the Universe, and of the immutable laws by which they are controlled in their courses. The great geometer Laplace supplemented his abstruse astrono­ mical researches by the composition of a work (Traité de Méchanique Céleste), showing that the entire mechanism of the celestial bodies is strictly in accordance with the principles and laws of mathematical science. This profound and luminous treatise of Laplace is the most wonderful performance perhaps (Newton’s immortal “ Principia ” excepted) that has ever proceeded from the human pen. In it, all that had been perceptible to the eye of scientific analogy, or could be theoretically deduced from the great Newtonian principle of Cosmical order, is so fully developed and mathematically demonstrated, that at length this material mechanism of the Heavens comes to strike the astonished student as being, in itself, the very highest exponent of mind ! I cannot conclude this rapid and imperfect sketch without some reference, however slight, to the brilliant discovery of the Planet N eptune by the Astronomers Leverrier and Adams, in the year 1846. The Planet Uranus* showed such perturbations of its orbit as made it appear a conspicuous exception to the laws of Kepler. The cause of these perturbations was surmised by Adams to be See Diagram, p. 14. �Development of the Human Mind. 25 the attraction of some undiscovered body in the Heavens, at such a distance, and of such a mass, as would exhibit an attractive force sufficient to account for them. On this hypothesis Adams proceeded to calculate from the • irregularities in the motions of Uranus, as data, what should be the mass and the elements of the orbit of the disturbing body, and what therefore would be the exact spot in the sky in which it should be found, and he forwarded his calculations to the Astro­ nomer Royal. The disturbing body, thus pointed at, was soon afterwards found (by Dr. Galle) in the place indicated, being the planet to which the name of Neptune* has been given. The amazing difficulty of working out such a recondite mathe­ matical problem can be conceived. Indeed, the intellectual grandeur of this discovery surpasses probably everything preceding it, and, by the test of resolving the inverse problem of perturbations —that is, “ given the disturbance, to find, as unknown quantities, the orbit of the disturbing body, and its place in that orbit,” corroborates conclusively the truth of the theoretical views of Copernicus, of Kepler, and of Newton. Thus have I essayed to lead you to the threshold of the Sanctuary of Astronomical Science. Time does not permit, even if I possessed the power, to lift the veil, that we might behold the intellectual treasures of the Shrine within ! Here then we may pause; to contemplate with more intelligence than the Chaldean of old, but, with none the less reverence, the glorious splendours of the starry host! “Heaven’s golden alphabet, emblazed to seize the sight! “ The prospect vast, what is it ? viewed aright, ’Tis Nature’s system of Divinity; ********* ’Tis elder Scripture, writ by God’s own hand, Scripture authentic, uncorrupt by man. ********* ’Tis unconfined To Christian Land or Jewry; fairly writ, In Language universal to Mankind, A Language worthy the Great Mind that Speaks ! ” Though my sketch of so lofty a theme has necessarily been of the slightest character, I hope I have succeeded in showing you that the noble Study of Astronomy, though, by reason of the * See Diagram, p. 14. �26 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the stupendous phenomena with which it deals, does not, like Chem­ istry, permit of experiment, yet presents to us the purest type of true scientific method, viz., the free and unbiassed exercise of the ■highest powers of Reason upon the most carefully observed facts and phenomena of Nature; proving that these are subject to invariable Laws, and imparting to man, whose life, even whose species, occupies a mere point in the duration of the World, knowledge that embraces myriads of ages. And now let us endeavour to realise the more striking eifects of the marvellous Astronomical Discoveries that have revealed to us the true system of our Universe. The first idea that must occur to us is, that our point of outward view should be the surface of the Sun. Taking our intellectual stand at the Sun,* the Heavenly bodies of our system appear before us in all the Majesty of the Divine Order of their due proportions. Our Earth is seen, as it really is, not the world, but comparatively a very small globular star, not the centre of anything, but, circula­ ting in its place and season, among the other planets, round the Sun.f The petty theological schemes, that were composed by men when they believed the earth to be a flat plain, the centre of the Universe, disappear altogether, like ghosts before the rising light of dawn! Our views then, whether religious or otherwise, are at once corrected, expanded, and elevated, to a degree that must convince us that not only are isolated statements in the Hebrew Scriptures discredited, but that the whole Theology of the Christian Lathers is deprived of its fundamental basis. Our knowledge, derived from Astronomy, of the small size, and double motion, of the Planet we inhabit, has, in truth, destroyed intellectually every system of theological belief that has been based on the notion that the entire Universe was ordained for man. But, more than this, Astronomical discovery has proved to us that the order maintained on Earth, and throughout our System, is not dependent upon theological dogma, however much belief in it be backed up by authority and tradition, but, results from the universal simple gravitation of its parts. Eor gravitation not only regulates every physical efiect; there can be no mental calculation, no moral feeling, no social custom into which the law of gravita­ tion has not, in some shape, at some time, entered as a factor. See Diagram, p. 14. t Ibid. �Development of the Human Mind. 27 Another most important consequence has been this. Previously to the proof obtained through Astronomical discovery of the per­ manence of the surrounding physical conditions of life (so con­ clusively demonstrated by Lagrange), the very conception of stability in human association was inadmissable. Anything like a social science was impossible. Even attempts at social improve­ ment seemed waste of energy, for, in the ignorance of its astro­ nomical conditions, it was believed that the World was shortly coming to an end ! and, indeed, as a device designed by Priestcraft for exciting terror, the notion that the World was shortly coming to an end was assiduously asserted, and as credulously accepted. In the early ages of Christianity this terrorising conception was thoroughly believed in. The Christian Gospels were interpreted as being saturated with its spirit. John the Baptist and Christ himself were understood to be clear and emphatic that the end of all earthly things was at hand! Of course such a prospect com­ pletely paralysed all attempts to improve the conditions of social life. To retreat from the World to a monastery or a nunnery, there to await the awful event, seemed the only wise and holy course. In the 10th century the minds of men were- so impregnated with this appalling opinion that people of wealth and intelligence actually commenced their last Wills and solemn documents with language such as this: “In the expectation of the approaching end of the World I devise and bequeath,” so and so. In the 16th century the inhabitants of Europe were nearly driven mad with fright by a theological prediction of a second Deluge being about to happen. The people of Toulouse in Erance building themselves a huge vessel, after the pattern of Noah’s Ark, to save themselves from the expected impending destruction! But the predicted day came and passed, and still the Seasons run their appointed courses. The disastrous influence of this demoralising dogma can of course be imagined. Astronomical discovery, in showing the permanent stability of our Solar System, has at length, in the minds of nearly all rational persons, utterly exploded it. Another scarcely less important deduction from Astronomical Science is this : it exhibits the Universe as a region of uniformity or realm of Law, and the Laws of Nature as Laws of Beason. Eor, it is obvious, from the regidarity of its grand disclosures, that our World is ruled by Natural Law, and not by Supernatural �28 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the Will. That one reason pervades and governs all Nature, and that, unless the laws of our Reason and the laws of Nature were identical, it would be impossible to comprehend the latter to the extent Astronomers have done. It has proved to us also that the reign of Reason dominates the dominion of the Imagination; for Astronomical Science, fathoming the abysses of space, has measured magnitudes, computed distances, and calculated results (proved in verified predictions) that are utterly beyond the realisation of the human Imagination. Astronomical discovery also shows (I know not why we should shrink from its avowal) that the Reason pervading the Universe, and the Reason of man flow from, or are correlated with, a mate­ rial source. The Astronomer, who has weighed the worlds, penetrated space to the depths of infinity, and learnt the laws that rule every motion of the heavenly bodies, still finds himself in presence of a mystery, and, reflecting upon the material brain that produces thought, the material cone that yields its curve, the material globes of heaven winging their measured flight in orbits, whose curvature thought has formulated, the material principle of universal gravi­ tation, that human thought has unveiled, the material energy that brings us light from the remotest stars, feels impelled to ask (and, like the physicist, he asks in vain)—divorced from Matter, where is Mind to be found ? Astronomical discovery has also revealed to us an Order of Nature, as the Criterion of objective Truth, and the Area of real Knowledge. It has also supplied us with a just Standard of Pro­ portion—as regards external Nature, in proving to us that our Earth is not the World, but only a very small proportionate part of it—as respects the Human Mind, in proving to us, that the Imagination cannot rightfully be the dominating intellectual faculty, since the Reason is shown to excel it. Astronomical discovery has also armed man with a real power of Prediction, that is, a power enabling him to foretell beforehand events that will happen, and to indicate clearly the precise time and place at which they will appear. All of you know that, either in the Nautical Almanac, or the periodical press, it is pointed out long previously when there will occur an eclipse of the Sun or Moon, or an occultation or transit of a Planet, or an extraordinary high Tide, even the return of a Comet, and you know, by your own �Development of the Human Mind. 29 experience more or less, that such prediction is exactly fulfilled to the day and hour. In this precise power of prediction, Science, whose great object is prevision, savoir pour prévoir—-to see in order to foresee-—has effectually rescued herself from all Theology and Metaphysics, whose mystifying and interminable controversies, now continued through more than 2,000 years, have never been able to prophecy accurately anything. The whole compass of sacred literature does not contain a single undisputed instance of a theological prophecy being even so much as intelligible until after the happening of the event, which then indeed, but not until then, is alleged to have been predicted. Another most ennobling influence on the human mind of Astro­ nomical Science has been its extirpation of Superstitions, or Beliefs inconsistent with the unbiassed dictates of Beason, and the expe­ rienced course of Nature. This it has accomplished in showing that the basis of all our real knowledge may be traced by our Beason to the laws of Astronomical phenomena, and so accounted for, without any necessity of resorting to the supposition of super­ natural interference, or the intrusion into the course of life of any providential power contrary to the order of Beason. Again, Astronomical discovery, in encouraging a love of enquiry in the spirit of Truth, has both invigorated Culture and reformed Education. Previously to the growth of Astronomical Science and the subsidiary sciences to which it led, especially biological science, with which Astronomy is closely connected (it being impossible to form a scientific conception of the conditions of vital existence without taking into account the Astronomical elements that charac­ terise the planet which is the home of that existence), the principle branches of the higher Academical Culture consisted in the study of the Mythology, the History, and the Literature of Classical Antiquity, the verbal Logic of Aristotle, and the Theology and Metaphysics of the early Christian and Middle Ages, usually accompanied by a course of Mathematics, though, respecting the utility of mathematics, a difference of opinion actually prevailed. That intellectual refinement and fastidious taste were produced by the discipline of these studies is undoubted. They were, however, not rarely accompanied by a want of appreciation of the Truths of Nature, by a tendency to believe whatever was inculcated by authority, and by an inordinate reverence for whatever was old': and the result was sometimes seen in an emasculation of mind, or �30 The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the atrophy of the investigating and sceptical faculties. The essence of such a curriculum might almost be distilled into a single phrase —The Cultivation of Credulity ! Science has very considerably improved all this, and if we look at the course of studies now pursued at our academies,-even at the old conservative Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, we per­ ceive that an attempt is honestly being made to impart to Youth some portion of that positive or scientific knowledge which forms the backbone of our European Civilization; and that the object in view, in the training of the mind, is no longer to impress upon the scholar—“ To acquiesce, to remember, and to believe ”—but,- “ To doubt, to enquire, and to compare.” In one important study, that of Mathematics, their transition, through the advance of physical science, from pure to applied—that is, their alliance with, or appli­ cation to, the facts and processes of Nature, has converted mathe­ matics, from being used as a basis of mere dialectics, into the most powerful deductive instrument for the discovery of the Laws of Natural Phenomena, and for the verification of scientific knowledge. Lastly, I will add, that, when we call to mind the false theolo­ gical views of the nature of the World we inhabit, the spurious theological beliefs respecting its method of government, which Astronomical discovery has exorcised, setting free the mind from the fear which they inspired, we cannot doubt how greatly it has aided in the purifying of Moral Principles, and in the increasing of Human Happiness. Human happiness, the greatest good of social man. Virtuous happiness was the goal which the speculations of Plato were intended to reach, and it was the ethical standard at which were aimed the lifelong studies of one whom I am now going to name in contrast with Plato,—John Stuart Mill. If the occasion permitted, willingly would I dwell on the many points in common that characterised and adorned the genius of these greatly-gifted men; each of whom was endowed with an order of mind the loftiest which our species has ever exhibited. But the one, Plato, as we have seen, lived before the rise of Astronomical Science, and those subsidiary sciences that have followed its lead; whilst the other, Mill, presents to us the ripest results of scientific culture. Both were enthusiasts in their love of right and hatred of wrong; but Plato was a visionary, Mill an utilitarian. To summarise the Philosophy of Plato has ever been �Development of the Human Mind. 31 a logical impossibility, for he never seems to have had any steady convictions to guide him. Though the most influential thinker of antiquity, it is difficult to point out any real important truths that he can be said to have established. His subjective method of enquiry accounts for this. He thought that the source of know­ ledge was Reflection, which gives us ideas—and not Experience, which gives us facts. Hence there is a shadowy unsubstantial vein pervading his writings, which, when deprived of the halo of their exquisite style and language, so charming to the lover of literature, leave a void in the mind of the student seeking to attain some solid foothold for support and counsel in the battle ot actual life. How different is this from Mill, who has taught us that all real knowledge is derived from Experience, and that the grand sources of human suffering are conquerable by human energy and scientific effort. I will mention, by way of further contrast, but a single work of each—-Plato’s “Republic”—Mill’s “Political Economy.” The college recluse may indeed continue to prefer the former, and scornfully smile at the simplicity of our juxtaposition of these celebrated Treatises ; but, to the man of common sense and common humanity, whose pulse beats strongly with the desire of doing something practical towards elevating the moral and material con­ dition of the humblest of his fellow creatures, and who fain would leave his little corner of the world better and happier than he found it—the superiority, in solid truth, in moral worth, in social utility, of the great work of Mill, does not admit of the shadow of a doubt. �SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind. THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES ARE DELIVERED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely (Annually—from November to May). Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 29th April, 1877, will be given. Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket transfer­ able (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reservedseat tickets available for any lecture. Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,— To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d. To the Sixpenny Seats—2s., being at the rate of Threepence each lecture. For tickets apply (by letter) to the Hon Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W. Payment at the door:—One Penny;—Sixpence;—and (Reserved Seats) One Shilling. Kenny & Co., Printers, 25, Camden Road, London, N.W. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The influence of astronomical discovery in the development of the human mind : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society on Sunday afternoon, 25th February, 1877 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Finch, A. Elley Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 31 p. : ill. (diags.) ; 18 cm. Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sunday Lecture Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1877 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N218 Subject The topic of the resource Astronomy Science Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The influence of astronomical discovery in the development of the human mind : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society on Sunday afternoon, 25th February, 1877), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Astronomy Mind NSS