1 10 70 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/cbd1028c3542ce17efc38ea5c407d994.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=mB51Ee7IEEfPXFAfWL5r3UlonZN05ZN9nh8KTh-972u4KTwsUEVA3plVQ-kSPBj-rvQtWHEh8C%7E5mona%7Eo3PhyUGUW9M52yaetaW6k827yPHn6QxNVIg1CnuUyFYHMzpN0saUcMfc9z73quYOr7aW%7Ed3RrdGPIPtxaSgUIiVN8nFtCdFXRKdv6y7q4GO2EseyZvnuijv9wec9w5AlrfZcR40Teak3B0RJTANOs5Gf-WLsoeDlmZlXdrck7nuC5pOGr171h%7EpCqY9b8%7Ektd1Jf65Jw72UXZAhp2S0SeUSU8ktTuwtqFZ1v0gFk5m-5LScwvpInRODxXsmjPKTgPQxsw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 1d8e38ccf0df928107151efd575141c4 PDF Text Text .Bare to be Wise 55 1 w.' < ■ A - ■ AN ADDRESS 'jlivered before the “ Heretics ” Society in Cambridge, on the 8th December, 1909 «■ ’ n si? ■£ BY HN McTAGGART ELLIS MeTAGGART ,etor in Letters, Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College in Cambridge, Fellow of the British Academy. ■•',r i a. I® ’. it London: WATTS & CO., JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 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A form of application for Membership, with full particulars, including latest Annual .Report and specimen copy of Literary Guide, can be obtained gratis on application to the Secretary. Copies of new publications are forwarded regularly on account of Members’ subscriptions, or a Member can arrange to make his own selection from the lists of new books which are issued from time to time. To join the Association is to help on its work, but to subscribe liberally is of course to help more effectually. As subscribers of from 5s. to 10s. and more are entitled to receive back the whole value of their subscriptions in books, on which there is little, if any, profit made, the Association is dependent, for the capital required to carry out its objects, upon subscriptions of a larger amount and upon donations and bequests. �national secular society “DARE TO BE WISE” AN ADDRESS Delivered before the “Heretics ” Society in Cambridge, on the 8th December, 1909 BY JOHN McTAGGART ELLIS McTAGGART IR IN LETTERS, FELLOW AND LECTURER OF TRINITY COLLEGE IN CAMBRIDGE, FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY [issued for the rationalist press association, limited] London: WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1910 �II �“DARE TO BE WISE '' M At the other end of the world is a University1 which has adopted for its own the motto which best expresses the nature of a University: Sapere Aude. It is of the duty laid on our Society to follow this injunction that I wish to speak. Our object is to promote discussion upon religion, philosophy, and art. And in discussing religion and philosophy there is a special ■command, Dare to be wise. significance in the In seeking truth of all sorts many virtues are needed, industry, humility, magnanimity. And courage also is often patience, needed in the search, since the observer of nature must often risk his life in his observations. But there is another need for courage when we approach religion and philosophy. And this need comes from the tremendous effect on •our own welfare, and the welfare of our fellow beings, of those aspects of reality with which religion and philosophy are concerned. This effect is, in the first 1 The University of New Zealand. 3 �DARE TO BE WISE 4 place, a characteristic of that reality, the problems about which would usually be called religious. But it spreads to all philosophy, for there is, I think, no question in philosophy—not even among those which border closest on logic or on science—of which we can be sure before­ hand that its solution will have no effect on the problems of religion. The profound importance to our welfare of the truth on these questions involves that our beliefs about those truths will also have a great importance for our welfare. If our lives would gain enormously in value if a certain doctrine were true, and would lose enormously in value if it were false, then a belief that it is true will naturally make us happy, and a belief that it is false make us And happiness and misery have much to miserable. do with welfare. The practical importance to our lives of these matters has not always been sufficiently recognised of late years. This error is due, I think, to excessive reaction from two errors on the other side. The first of these errors is the assertion that, if certain views on religious matters were true, all morality would lose its validity. that all From this, of course, it would follow persons who believed those views and yet accepted morality would foolishly. quite clear. be acting illogically and That this view is erroneous seems to me Our view£ on religious questions may affect �DARE TO BE WISE 5 some of the details of morality—the observance of a particular day of rest, or the use of wine or of beef, for example. But they are quite powerless either to obliterate the difference between right and wrong, or to change our views on much of the content of morality. At least, I do not know of any view maintained by any­ one on any religious question which would, if I held it, alter my present belief that it is right to give water to a thirsty dog, and wrong to commit piracy or to cheat at cards. Another form of this same error is the assertion that certain beliefs on religious matters, though they might not render morality absurd, would in practice prevent those who accepted them from pursuing virtue per­ sistently and enthusiastically. This view seems refuted by experience, which, I think, tells us that the zeal for virtue shown by various men, while it varies much, and for many causes, does not vary according to their views on religious matters. The men who believe, for example, in God, or immortality, or optimism, seem to be neither better nor worse morally than those who disbelieve in them. The second error is the view that certain beliefs on religious matters would destroy the value, for those who accepted the beliefs, of many of those parts of expe­ rience which would otherwise have the highest value. Tennyson, for example, maintained that disbelief in �DARE TO BE WISE 6 immortality would destroy the value of love, even while life lasted :— And love would answer with a sigh, The sound of that forgetful shore Will change my sweetness more and more, Half-dead to know that I shall die.1 Here, again, it seems to me, there is certainly error. Our views as to the ultimate nature and destiny of the universe may affect our judgments as to the generality of certain forms of good, or as to their duration, or as to the possibility of their increase in intensity hereafter. But I do not see how they can affect our judgment of the goodness of these good things, as we find them here and now. Indeed, if we do not start with the certainty that love for an hour on earth is unconditionally good, I do not see what ground we should have for believing that it would be good for an eternity in heaven. These views, then, I admit to be errors, and those do well who reject them as errors. But the reaction from them, as I said, goes sometimes too far, and leads to a denial of the practical importance of the problems of religion. And this is, again, a great mistake. What­ ever may be the true answer to the problems of religion, good will be different from bad, and right from wrong, and much of what we do and feel in this present life will be good, and much will be bad. But if we ask how much good exists in the universe and how much bad ; ' In Memo riant. �DARE TO BE WISE if we ask if the main current of the universe is for right, or for wrong, or indifferent to both ; if we ask what is the eventual destiny of the universe or of ourselves—all these questions must be answered one way or the other according to the solution we adopt of religious problems, and of those problems of philosophy which bear on religion. Are there any questions which affect our welfare more than these? It is true that what primarily affects our welfare is the truth on these matters, and not But a belief that things are our knowledge of the truth. well with the world brings happiness, a belief that things are ill with the world brings misery. And this involves the intense practical importance of our beliefs on the problems of religion. Let us consider what some of these problems are which we call religious. In the first place, there is the general question of optimism or pessimism. universe as a whole more good than bad? Is the It is, of course, possible to maintain that it is impossible for us to answer this question. But some systems maintain that it can be answered, and some of them answer that the good prevails, and some of them hold that it is outbalanced by the evil. The practical importance of the truth on this question does not require to be enforced. For the goodness or badness of the universe is the whole of which every other matter of practical importance is a part. �“DARE TO BE WISE” 8 Our belief on the subject, therefore, must have great influence on our happiness. So far, indeed, as I am only concerned with my welfare in this life, or with that of my friends, the more general question will have little influence, for in these limited fields we have empirical means of judging the present or inferring the immediate future, which are more certain than inferences from the general nature of the universe. But few people limit their interests entirely to those whom they know person­ ally. And then there is always the question whether my own life, and those of my friends, may not, perhaps, extend indefinitely further than that short period in our present bodies which is all that we can now know by observation. And there is another question, equally important. Does the universe become better or worse as time goes on, and, if it becomes either, which does it become ? This is of equal importance, because it is a disposition of our nature—apparently a fundamental and inevitable disposition—to regard good and evil in the future with very different feelings from those with which we regard good and evil in the past. If the world were known to be more evil than good on the whole, we should still regard it cheerfully, if we believed that most of the evil lay in the past, and that the future was predominantly good. And, though the world as a whole were known to be more good than evil, that would afford us but little �DARE TO BE WISE 9 comfort if that part of its course which still lay in the future were more evil than good. Then, to come to less general questions, there is the question of immortality. Our beliefs on this subject, also, will profoundly affect our happiness. Some desire annihilation, some shrink from it, but very few are indifferent. And even of these, I suppose, none would be indifferent as to the further question of what kind the future life would be, if there were a future life at all. Then there is the existence of God. The importance ■of this question for our welfare has, no doubt, been exaggerated, through a failure to comprehend the alternatives. It has been supposed that the only alternative to a belief in God is a belief in some Scepti­ cism or Materialism which would be incompatible with any hope that the universe as a whole was coherent, ■orderly, or good. But this is a mistake. There are systems which hold the universe to be all this, although they deny the existence of God. And, on the other hand, the existence of God would certainly not be by itself a guarantee that the universe was good. That there is some evil in the universe is beyond doubt. If it is there because God did not object to it, how do we know how much evil he may tolerate, or even welcome? If it is there—as most reasonable Theists would say now —because God could not help it, how do we know how much evil it may be beyond his power to prevent? �IO “ DARE TO BE WISE Theism may possibly form a link in a chain of argu­ ment leading to Optimism, but it is far indeed from being a complete proof of Optimism. But in spite of all this it cannot be denied that to many people the belief that there is or is not a God is most intimately connected with their happiness. And even those who are indifferent on this point would certainly not be indifferent on the question whether, if there is a God, he is such as he was supposed to be by the early Jews, or, again, by the Jesuits or the Calvinists of the sixteenth century. Our beliefs on religious questions, then, do profoundly affect our happiness. We can conceive—indeed, we know in history, and in the thought of the present day— beliefs the acceptance of which would make life almost intolerably miserable to anyone whose interests reached beyond the immediate present environment. and his immediate And here we find the need of courage. For, if we are to think on these matters at all, we must accept the belief for which we have evidence, and we must reject the belief for which we have no evidence, however much the first may repel or the second allure us. And, sometimes, this is not easy. When we deal with the knowledge of science, or every-day life, we have no similar struggle. In the first place, it is here often very indifferent to us what the true solution of a problem niay be, provided that, whatever it �DARE TO BE WISE is, we can know it. 11 It may be of great importance to us to know what sort of building will best stand the shock of an earthquake, but comparatively unimportant what sort it is, since, whichever it may be, we can build in that manner in earthquake districts. It may be very important to know which of two medicines will cure a disease, but quite unimportant which it is, so long as we know it and can use it. If, indeed, we have to put the question, Is there any medicine which can cure this disease? then, indeed, it may matter very much to us what the answer is. And in such a case we may be tempted, for a short time, to believe that a cure has been found, when in point of fact it has not. But the temptation does not last for long. When the medicine is tried, and fails to cure, then conviction comes to all except the weakest. But there is no corresponding help in religion and philosophy. For, if there is ever to be any experimental verification of our beliefs on such subjects, at least it will not be on this side of death. If through cowardice we depart from the right path, we must not hope for experience to take us back. The strain is so hard that often and often in the history of thought men have tried to justify their weakness by asserting that we were entitled to believe a proposition if its truth would be very good, or at any rate if its falsity would be very bad. Over and over, in different �I2 DARE TO BE WISE" forms, this demand meets us—not infrequently in the work of the men of whom we should least expect it. Bui, whenever we find it, we must, I maintain, reject it. It may well be that the universe, if this or that belief were false, would be very bad. But how do we know that the universe is not very bad? There is no intrinsic a priori connection between existence and goodness. If we can show that the nature of existence is such that it A good, so much the better. But then the question of the nature of existence is the one which we are setting out to determine, and we have no right to begin by assuming that that nature is good. Nor can we fall back on the argument, which is often used, that our desires for the good—those desires the thwarting of which produce the misery we are avoiding —are as real as anything else in the universe, and form as sound a basis for an argument as anything else. Unquestionably they are real, and form a basis for an argument; but the question remains, What argument can be based on them? If they were to be any good here, the argument would have to be that, because they really exist as desires in us, therefore the universe must be such as will gratify them. And this is invalid. The existence of a desire does not involve the existence of its gratification. Each of us has had many desires which were not satisfied, and which can now never be satisfied. We cannot argue, then, from the pain that a belief �“ DARE TO RE WISE" gives us to the falsity of that belief. 15 And, if we decide to think freely on these subjects, we run the risk of arriving, as others have arrived before us, at conclusions the pain of which may be very great. It is true that, so far as I know, no person who has thought freely on these subjects has arrived at conclusions so maddening as those of some traditional theologies now fading into the past. The ideas of an endless hell, of an unjust God, are fruits of ancient tradition, or of interpretation of alleged revelations—never, I believe, of independent reasoning. But to find no more hope, no more purpose, no more value in the universe than was found by Hobbes, by Hume, or by Schopenhauer—the pain of this, especially to one who has hoped for better results, or, perhaps, has once held them gained—the pain of this is sometimes not trifling. Why should we not endeavour to escape it? Why should we not accept, without inquiry, some traditional’ faith? There may be arguments for it, there may be arguments against it. But others have accepted it without inquiry into these arguments. Why should not we? Such a suggestion has greater attractions than it would have had two generations ago. In Europe, in the present age, a man is not likely to accept any religion in this way, except some form of Christianity. And the Christianity of sixty years ago, while no doubt �“DARE TO BE WISE such that many men could honestly believe it to be true, was such that no man could wish it to be true, unless he was devoid either of imagination or of humanity. Christianity of the present day is still of this type. Much But it would be most absurd and unjust to deny that the type of Christianity which becomes every year relatively more powerful is very different. Its view of the universe is one which might well entitle us to call the universe good. Why should we not accept it without the risks of inquiry? . Or, if we cannot do that, why trouble about these problems at all ? Is not the world we see big enough to occupy lives so short as ours? Shall we not enjoy the good, strive to increase it and to share it, and ask no questions about what is behind, beyond, and—perhaps— above? Yet some follow after truth. reward? And what shall be their May we answer, in words which were written about Spinoza, and which are worthy to have been written by him: “Even that which true and fearless men have preached through all the generations to unheeding ears. Seek the truth, fear not and spare not: this first, this for its own sake, this only ; and the truth itself is your reward—a reward not measured by length of days nor by any reckoning of men ”?x 1 Sir Frederick Pollock, Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy, chap. ix. �DARE TO BE WISE 15 It is most beautiful and most true, but it is not the whole truth. For knowledge of the truth, though a great good, is not the only good, nor perhaps the highest good. If my friend is in pain or estranged from me, if the universe is worthless or worse than worthless, it is no adequate consolation to know that at least I see the evil clearly. And then, is truth always the reward for seeking the truth? Always it cannot be, for if some have attained, the others must have failed who disagreed with them. The reward of the search—are we sure that it will be anything but the search? Can we give any other bidding than that which was once given to a search yet more sacred ? Come—pain ye shall have, and be blind to the ending ! Come—fear ye shall have, mid the sky’s overcasting ! Come—change ye shall have, for far are ye wending ! Come—no crown ye shall have for your thirst and your fasting, But-----1 And here we must stop, before the promise that follows. The crown of our thirst and our fasting may be the opened heavens and the Beatific Vision. It may be nothing but the thirst and the fasting itself. No great inducement, perhaps, all this? inducement is needed. And no There are those who long for truth with a longing as simple, as ultimate, as powerful 1 William Morris, Love is Enough. �i6 DARE TO BE WISE as the drunkard’s longing for his wine and the lover’s longing for his beloved. must. They will search, because they Our search has begun. PRINTED BY WATTS AND CO., 17, JQHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. ��as the drunkart By G. W. 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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 "Dare to be wise" : an address delivered before the "Heretics" Society in Cambridge, on the 8th December, 1909 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McTaggart, John McTaggart Ellis [1866-1925] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 16 p. ; 22 cm. Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited. R.P.A. sixpenny reprints and extra series listed on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1910 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N462 Subject The topic of the resource Religion 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 ("Dare to be wise" : an address delivered before the "Heretics" Society in Cambridge, on the 8th December, 1909), 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 NSS Religion https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d9f0b3eb1475134183109c7b8cb67f68.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=KCO%7EMfvHCfxChhaCH3BYV1SLC1QpG7RWQfea78hyKISXKW4NLDTjj5nx0yFrwhcbUoq2Xsd1ADmR8NzcX-GtV3YCNBT813FkvF0oIX1KqGyezNbNNUhjS8aC3BgKRBCofoUlp1lESj-GToD7XMukL5%7EQNLTB7XUqE1GDOc9JlD5uQ7tuEZ%7EzzJAZiIY4ktoQssKp9jVet7-I7Sud1hB0RM646HGzQLN%7EkYwzEHqH5HDTDa8GNw4GBYzs8JysGl-mUJ-Mef5vxUNIIpd4L8GfR2n1-KGXCOs-O5lSPx3YnOZ1D5rl8n3ussdR1Yhj8z8ODx5FpqoyRH9rCwwu9fCvEA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ba0542bbc7e267e04661ff39962f5693 PDF Text Text Price One Penny. NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY A Hundred Years of Education Controversy JOSEPH McCABE AUTHOR OF “THE TRUTH ABOUT SECULAR EDUCATION,*’ ETC., ETC. London: WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1907 �ZTbe Secular Education ^League, 19, BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND, W.C. Hon. Treasurer: H. S. Leon, Esq., J.P.. Bletchley Park, Bucks. Secretary: H. Snell. Bankers: London Joint Stock Bank, Limited. The Secular Education League has been formed in order to bring before the country and His Majesty’s Government what is regarded by a rapidly-increasing number of people as the only permanent, just, and satisfactory solution of the religious difficulty in national education—viz., that all State-paid education should be confined to secular subjects. It aims at binding together in one effective organisation all who favour the “Secular Solution” of the Educa­ tion problem, without reference to any other convictions—political, social, or religious—that they may entertain. In view of the Education Bill which is announced for next year, the Executive Committee and General Council of the League earnestly invite all who are persuaded of the justice and advisability of Secular Education to enrol themselves upon its list of members. The minimum subscription is One Shilling per annum, and it is important that the League should have the support of all who adhere to its principles. The League has already nearly 1,000 members, including, in addition to many Members of Parliament and well-known public men, about 250 clergy and ministers of all denominations ; and it appeals for help to enable it to carry on its work. PUBLICATIONS DEALING WITH SECULAR EDUCATION. THE TRUTH ABOUT SECULAR EDUCATION : its History and Results. By Joseph McCabe. 6d., by post yd. « THE BIBLE IN SCHOOL: A Question of Ethics. With special reference to the coming Education Bill. By J. Allanson Picton, M.A. 6d., by post 8d. NATIONAL EDUCATION AND THE SECULAR SOLUTION. By A. M. Scott, id., by post i|d. SECULAR SCHOOLS. post 2^d. By the Rev. S. D. Headlam. THE CASE FOR SECULAR EDUCATION. id., by post i|d. THE INEVITABLE IN EDUCATION. by post i|d. 2d., by By H. Snell. By R. Roberts, Any of the above publications will be supplied by Messrs. Watts & Co. id., �2. KI A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY The lamentable conflict in regard to religious teaching in our elementary schools is conceived by many to be an acute crisis that wise and just statesmanship may presently remove. Painful as it is to all citizens that the important work of our schools should, even for a decade, be hampered so grievously, there is a wide hope that some Minister of Education will yet adjust the balance between the claims of the religious bodies, or that their leaders will come to a prudent compromise. Hence, though there is a growing inclination to favour the secular solution, large numbers of people still refuse to look on it as inevitable. Their memory ranges back, at the most, as far as 1870, and they feel that the time has not yet come to despair of finding a satisfactory adjustment of religious claims. History is the memory of nations. Citizens and states­ men are as strictly bound to scan its records in the ordering of great national issues as they are to consult their personal experience in the conduct of private affairs. And the moment one turns to the history of this education controversy one feels that the hope of finding any stable compromise sinks perilously close to zero. For one hundred years the same controversy has raged in England. For one hundred years the representatives of Anglicanism and Nonconformity have sought in vain for a satisfactory adjustment of their claims. For one hundred years educa­ tionists and statesmen have been harassed and impeded in their work by this interminable dispute about religious education in the schools ; and we are to-day not one inch nearer to a settlement of it than our grandfathers were in 1807. This, surely, is a circumstance to be taken into serious account in the actual controversy about the schools. 3 �4 A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY Just one hundred years ago, in the year 1807, Mr. Whitbread, member for Bedford, introduced an educational measure into the House of Commons. Social writers like Adam Smith (1776) had long urged that it was the Government’s duty, and would be to the nation’s advantage, to set up a national school-system. A prominent clergyman (Malthus, in 1798) described the condition of things in this country as “a national disgrace.” Another, Sydney Smithy at the beginning of the century, declared that “ there was no Protestant country in the world where the education of the poor was so grossly and so infamously neglected as in England.” Three centuries after the Reformation and the invention of printing only one in twenty of the population could read and write. There were, of course, schools in the country. Thousands of grammar schools, poor schools, dames’ schools, and Sunday schools were in existence; but their work was ridiculously meagre and ineffective. Mr. Whitbread’s Bill proposed, therefore, that local authorities should have power to set up and maintain schools wherever they were needed. Into the details of the Bill we need not inquire, as it never became law. It passed the Commons, but was rejected contemptuously by the Lords. The Lord Chancellor (Eldon) and the Archbishop of Canterbury denounced it as a peril to their respective orders. It was, in fact, openly acknowledged that the Bill was allowed to pass the Commons only on the understanding that it would be demolished in the Lords. It is important to realise that, though there were at that time other formidable impediments to the education of the people, the chances of the Bill were imperilled by just the same controversy that we wage to-day. There was an aristocratic objection to the education of the workers-—Sir S. Romilly wrote in his diary that most of the Commoners even “ thought it expedient that the people should be kept in ignorance ”—but the chief difficulty was religious. It was regarded as the thin end of the wedge of secular action, and was mainly opposed on that account. The Archbishop of Canterbury denounced it roundly as derogatory to the authority of the Church. The truth was that—many will learn with astonishment— �A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY 5 the same three parties held the educational field in 1807 that we find waging their endless war in it to-day. The most powerful party, the Churchmen, claimed full denominational teaching in the schools; the Nonconformists and many neutral politicians thought—precisely as their grandchildren think—that simple Bible lessons were the ideal ; and the followers of Adam Smith (men like Robert Owen, a great educationist) pleaded for purely secular instruction. It was a golden age of educational reformers, though England was in so backward a condition. Rousseau, Froebel, Pestalozzi, and Herbart had stirred Europe with their ideas. In Manchester a little group of social students, including Coleridge and the great chemist Dalton, discussed them. One of the group was the Quaker Joseph Lancaster, a man of deep religious and philanthropic feeling. He founded a system of elementary schools for the poor (known after 1814 as “The British and Foreign School Society”), and when, says Mr. Holman, the wealthy found that “ children could be taught next to nothing for next to nothing,” he secured considerable support. Another of the Manchester group, Robert Owen, set up in Scotland a large school on purely secular principles, and it soon became one of the wonders of Europe. Foreign Governments sent officials to study it. The father of Queen Victoria was one of its greatest admirers. Thus undenominationalists and secular educationists were both in the field by 1804 ; and the third party quickly made its appearance. A Mrs. Trimmer discovered—as so many Mrs. Trimmers do in our day—that the Lancastrian schools were heretical, and she induced an Anglican clergyman, Dr. Bell, to take the field with a scheme of denominational schools in 1805. Churchmen gathered at once under the new banner, while the Nonconformists rallied round Lancaster ; and the country, just one hundred years ago, was ringing with what flippant writers called “ the conflict of Bel(l) and the Dragon,” or what the historian must call the first act in the drama (or tragedy) of our educational controversy. Two generations have passed away, but the same battle rages round our schools, the same war-cries resound, the same plausible suggestions are thrust on us, and there is the same utter lack of any means of compromise ; except that now we �6 A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY have the plain experience of a hundred years to teach us how impossible all idea of compromise is. The succeeding acts in the drama are in substance but a repetition of the first. The scene changes marvellously as the last traces of feudalism are swept away : the actors pass behind the wings, and new ones come on. But the issue remains the same, and the obstacles remain. The limits of this essay would not suffice to set out the whole story in detail, and I must be content to dwell on a few of the chief stages of it. The struggle between the Denominationalists and Undenominationalists was carried on vigorously and unceasingly. In 1811 Dr. Bell’s supporters founded the “ National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Doctrines of the Established Church,” in opposition to the “ Royal Lancastrian Institution ” (which became the “British and Foreign Schools Society ” in 1814). In both cases the instruction given was of the poorest conceivable type. Dr. Bell recommended a barn as a good structure for a school, and insisted that the children of the workers should not be taught “ beyond their station.” In both sets of schools the monitorial system (the teaching of children by children), a pernicious system, was adopted. They fell incalculably short of Owen’s splendid school at New Lanark, where one found the finest methods then known and a curriculum of equal breadth to that of the modern Council school. By the year 1818 there was still only one in seventeen of the population of England in school, and the coarseness and viciousness of the peasantry and factory-workers were terrible. At this point Lord Brougham (then Mr. Brougham) and other politicians took up the cause of national education once more. There had been a State system of schools in Prussia since 1794, in Holland since 1814, and in France since the rule of Napoleon. In the American States education was far advanced, and we had ourselves set up an excellent system in Scotland in 1803, and voted £23,000 for the Protestant schools in Ireland in the very year that Whitbread’s Bill was rejected. The condition of the country was scandalous, and men like Brougham pleaded that it was time wealthy England did something to remove the gross illiteracy of its people. In 1816 Brougham secured an inquiry into the �A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY 7 educational state of London. In the comparatively small London of that time it was found that 120,000 children had no schooling- whatever. They played in the streets—streets and courts of a foulness inconceivable to us to-day, for London and Paris were, until fifty years ago, inferior to ancient Rome or Babylon in sanitation—until their ninth year, and then they entered the army of illiterate workers, with stunted minds. Brougham then, in 1818, had a Select Committee appointed to deal with educational charities. He had a shrewd idea that, if these endowments were equitably and economically managed, we could set up a system of schools without calling on the national Exchequer. How that scheme was defeated, and educational endow­ ments are to this day diverted from that instruction of the poor for which they were intended, it is not within the limits of this essay to consider. But in 1820 Brougham introduced a general educational measure into Parliament, and this was wrecked on the rock of the religious difficulty. In view of the imperfect municipal life of the time the proposals of the Bill were not without merit. The magistrates and the local clergy were to act in conjunction in building schools wherever they were needed, and the funds were to come partly from local, partly from national resources. It was a fair begin­ ning of a national scheme. But Brougham soon found that one yawning gulf lay across the line of progress, after all scruples about national economy and the danger of educating the workers had been removed. This was the now familiar pitfail of compromise as to religious instruction. Brougham met the Churchmen by giving the Anglican minister almost absolute control over the schoolmaster. He could fix his salary, arrange or modify his secular curriculum, and examine the poor teacher when he willed. But Brougham sought then to conciliate the Nonconformists by excluding all denominational teaching from the curriculum. Simple Bible lessons, the ever-ancient and ever-new device, were expected to satisfy all the sects, and the Lord’s Prayer was the only element of ritual to be admitted. For the sequel we have only to recall our recent experience, and remember that history repeats itself. Neither religious party was satisfied ; neither would abate its claims to any practicable extent. The �8 A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY Bill had to be withdrawn, and for another thirteen years we continued to bear what Malthus had called our “ national disgrace ” because our clergy could not find a compromise in regard to their conflicting claims. I do not mean that the disgrace was removed in 1833, but that year witnessed the first modest beginning of national action in regard to the schools. It will be remembered that 1832 had seen the passing of the great Reform Bill. Enor­ mous expectations had been aroused in the workers of the country, and it was under pressure of a more or less serious danger of civil war that Parliament was at length reformed and the franchise extended. The whole hope of social reform in the country now centred on the reformed House of Commons, but the hope was quickly converted into disap­ pointment as far as education was concerned. Under pressure of Mr. Roebuck and others, Lord John Russell was induced in 1833 to Pass an annual grant for educational purposes of ,£20,000. In that same year the small State of Prussia granted .£600,000 for its schools. But the niggardliness of the grant was not the worst feature. Dreading the religious feeling in the country, the Government decided to hand over the money each year to the two rival societies of voluntary schools. Not only did the Journal of Education warmly protest at the time, but experts are now agreed that this distribution utterly prevented any increase of educational work and augmented religious rivalry. As the grant was given on a basis of funds already provided by the societies, the more wealthy Church-society got the lion’s share. Of £600,000 granted in the next seventeen years, the Church schools got £475,000. A body of educational reformers had by this time formed themselves into a Central Society of Education, and pressed unceasingly for national action. But the Bishop of London and other prelates denounced the Society, and for six years more thwarted its action. By the year 1839 more than half the children of the country were still utterly illiterate, and the majority of the remainder received only a pretence of educa­ tion. Dean Alford was moved to write in that year : “ There is no record of any people on earth so highly civilised, so abounding in arts and comforts, and so grossly and generally ignorant, as the English.” There was, indeed, a minority of �A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY 9 liberal and distinguished Anglican clergy who deplored the situation—men like Whately, Hook, Stanley, and Kingsley; but the overwhelming majority of the clergy of all sects were obstinate in their respective claims. A few words on the situation at this date (1839) from the two leading historians of the subject will make it clear that I do not exaggerate the injury done to education by the religious controversy. Mr. Holman says, in his English National Education (in the “Victorian Era Series”) : “This continued impotence of Parliament to provide a national remedy for what every single member of both Houses admitted to be a national disgrace and danger is probably one of the most striking features in the whole of its history. The only thing that kept the Government from making the mass of the people human was the determination of some to keep them from being made anything less than divine.” And the only other English writer of distinction on English education in the nineteenth century, Mr. Adams, says: “The interdict against a united and national system came from the moral teachers of the people, and was pronounced necessary in the interests of religion.” Even liberal Churchmen like F. D. Maurice would admit no compromise. Any children, he said, ought to be admitted to the Church schools (now receiving ,£20,000 a year from national funds), but they must submit to Church teaching. Two observations on the situation at this period are not without interest in view of our actual controversy. In the first place, we must note that it is the very sincerity and devotedness to their doctrines of the clergy that raised the most formidable obstacle to the progress of education. How­ ever much one may dissent from their doctrines and differ from their estimate of the value to mankind of those doctrines, one may respect their zeal in the interest of what they deem to be of great importance. In the earlier years of the educa­ tion controversy one can understand how they could lose sight of the general civic interest under the stress of their religious zeal. But it is surely time that their modern successors realised the error of thus mixing up civic and ecclesiastical ideals. We look back on a stretch of history in which that mixture has wrought terrible mischief to the civic �IO A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY ideal. The interminable wrangle has shown us that no satisfactory adjustment of their conflicting claims is possible ; and that the civic interest must be studied on a purely civic basis, and the religious interest confined to religious teachers in the religious atmosphere of the church or chapel. The second observation I would make is that there has been a remarkable change since those days in the character of the instruction given in elementary schools. Some politi­ cians still speak of the “ religious atmosphere ” in the denominational school, and maintain that it is not a mere question whether we shall transfer a few religious lessons from the school to the church. The use of this phrase is very largely an empty tradition of the earlier school. Up to the middle of the century the whole curriculum was pervaded with religious ideas. When we listen to-day to the claim that the Anglican or Roman Catholic school has a general permeation of religious feeling, we wonder how it is possible to find this religious atmosphere in the long hours that are filled with lessons on arithmetic, geography, grammar, and such subjects. There is, of course, no religious element whatever in these lessons to-day (and they form four-fifths of the whole curriculum of the denominational school),1 but there was fifty and more years ago. Manuals of arithmetic and geography are still to be found that show a real “ religious atmosphere,” and Mr. Holman gives many details in his interesting history. Arithmetical problems were founded largely on the Old Testament, and geography centred on Palestine much as a medieval map would have done. Now that these lessons have become purely secular, and religious instruction is confined to a few prayers and hymns and half-hour lessons, no very great change will be involved in transferring them to the proper home of religious cultivation. However, let us return to the historical study. Statistics showed that whereas in Prussia one in six of the population attended school, in Switzerland one in seven, and in Holland one in nine, in wealthy England the proportion was one in 1 The present writer was educated in a denominational school, was after­ wards co-manager of a denominational school, and later rector of a denomina­ tional college. �A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY n fourteen. Clearly the voluntary societies were not dis­ charging-the function of educating the nation. Educationists redoubled their pressure. They obtained an increase of the annual grant from ,£20,000 to £"30,000—not a formidable matter, Brougham pleasantly observed to the Lords, seeing that they were that year voting £70,000 for the building of royal stables—and they at last secured a beginning of governmental action in the work of education. One of the most pressing needs in the country was for the efficient training of the teachers. Even in the Lancastrian body six months’ training was thought amply sufficient for an elementary-school teacher. Indeed, what was given in the great bulk of the schools of the country would not be admitted by any modern expert to be “ education ” at all in any real sense. The teachers were miserably inefficient; and when we learn that their average income was only about £22 a year we can imagine what type of people they were. The Government therefore proposed to set up a Normal School (training college) at Kneller Hall. They were at once confronted by the religious difficulty, and their scheme foundered once more on it. They proposed to pay only the teachers of secular subjects in the training college, and leave the students of each denomination free to bring in ministers of their respective bodies for religious lessons. Once more the conflicting interests of the Churches wrecked the scheme, and it was years before there was any effective training of teachers in the country. But Lord John Russell triumphed over clerical opposition in one important respect, and made a beginning of national action. He formed a Committee of the Privy Council on Education, and this slender institution was destined to grow in time into our modern Education Department. But what storms of religious opposition it had to face in its early months I The Bishops of London and Chichester led the vast majority of the clergy in a violent assault upon this intrusion, as they called it, of the State on the Church’s domain. There were Churchmen, like the Bishop of Durham, who saw how gravely national interests were being thwarted, and were willing to compromise. But the vast majority of the clergy were vehemently opposed to State action. �12 A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY Nonconformists proclaimed the new Committee to be “a secular tyranny, ” while Churchmen denounced it as a menace to the Establishment. The religious war of 1906 was tame­ ness itself compared to the war on the new education authority, slight as it was, in 1839. The bishops and the lords temporal actually walked in procession from the House to Buckingham Palace—a unique incident, I think, in the annals of that dignified body—and begged Queen Victoria to abolish the Committee. The young Queen answered them with a truer dignity than their own. She told them that she had sanctioned the Government’s proposals from a deep and well-considered sense of duty to her people, and the Lords went away disappointed. The controversy went on for some time with great vigour, and in fact it was only moderated by another of those fatal concessions to the clergy that hindered the real progress of education. By a more or less secret arrangement the Anglican clergy were granted control over the inspectors of schools who were appointed under the new authority. It was an abdication of its functions that would be listened to with amazement if it were proposed in our time, and it was an unjust arrangement. The religious lessons given in the (undenominational) schools of the British and Foreign Society were controlled by Church inspectors, and the irritation and rivalry were greatly increased. The new Committee fell so far under the dictation of the archbishops that in 1840 it passed a minute directing that “ their lordships were of opinion that no plan of education ought to be encouraged in which intellectual instruction was not subor­ dinated to the regulation of the thoughts and habits of the children by the doctrines and precepts of revealed religion.” This unjust preponderance stirred the Nonconformists to continuous action, while expert educationists tell us that elementary education steadily deteriorated. The passing of the Factory Acts was supposed to have secured some measure of instruction for the children of the factory-workers. In point of fact the Act was flagrantly scouted. Children of tender years were still worked for twelve hours a day, and the education provided for them was farcical. The lodge­ keeper, or the stoker’s wife, would gather them in some dark �A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY 13 shed—often in the coal-house—and laboriously teach them to identify the letters of the alphabet. The country was over­ run with poor widows, crippled workers, and all kinds of impoverished people who earned a few shillings a week by “teaching.” The Central Education Society fought desperately for some improvement, and in 1843 two important efforts were made. Both were wrecked on the perennial religious difficulty. The first was a Bill for the effective instruction of factory children. They were very largely of Nonconformist parentage, yet the Bill unluckily gave higher control to the Anglicans—who had wrecked every measure that did not do so—and the Dissenters naturally resented it. They had now become sufficiently powerful to oppose such measures with effect, and they forced the withdrawal of the Bill. This triumph brought home to them the fact that the extension of the franchise had enormously increased their political power, and this deepened the long political struggle over the schools, and added the further complication of our civic and political life with the conflicting and irreconcilable claims of the clergy. The situation became worse than ever. Let me express it impersonally in the estimate given by Mr. Holman, the impartial historian of the subject. The Dissenters, he says, “ now fought for their own hand in the same way as the Church party did, and combined with the latter and others to resist the exercise of control by the State authorities ; and thus they became real obstructionists to national progress in education.” The Congregationalists alone deserve a partial exemption from this heavy censure. They at least refused to accept State aid, and enjoined their members to support their own denominational schools. The Roman Catholics were in the same logical position until a few years ago. The second effort of the reformers in 1843 was to introduce a Bill, in the name of Mr. Joseph Hume, for purely secular and moral education, but it was counted out. The reformers, however, manfully continued their work, and gradually won some of the great Dissenters to their view. In 1847 they founded in Lancashire—always honourably placed in the history of education—a league for the furtherance of their aims. The famous Corn-law orators, Cobden and John �i4 A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY Bright, lent their support to it. The radicals of the south joined forces with it, and it gradually attained considerable power. From a “Lancashire Association” it became a National Public Schools Association.” There seemed a prospect at last of convincing the country of the impractica­ bility of balancing religious claims in regard to the elementary schools, and rescuing the instruction of the people from this harassing association with theology. In 1850 the League decided to test their strength. The minister of South Place (London) Chapel, Mr. W. J. Fox, a brilliant speaker on social reforms and member of Parliament for Oldham, introduced a comprehensive measure into the House. The inspectors were to report on the deficiency of schools in particular districts, and an efficient provision for universal education was to be made out of the local rates. Denominational schools were not to be superseded, but would in future only be paid for the secular instruction they imparted. On the other hand, the new Government schools, which were to give free education, should be controlled in the matter of giving or omitting undenominational instruction by a kind of local option. The Bill projected a vast advance in the field of elementary education, but it was resented by both religious parties, and was heavily defeated on the second reading. The National Association—supported as it was by Dissenters like Cobden, Fox, Milner Gibson, and W. E. Forster—was fiercely attacked, and denounced as irreligious. They had put before the country, members said in the House, a choice between Heaven or Hell, God or the Devil. So for the sixth time a fair and promising scheme of national improvement was shattered on the rock of the religious difficulty. The various acts in the drama of our educational history are, in fact, so similar in essence, so closely parallel to the act we are taking part in to-day, that one moves rapidly on to the end of the century. Education remained in a state of partial paralysis. Mr. Fox had read to the House a manifesto issued by a large body of London working men, in which they complained pathetically of this paralysis. It concluded : “ The controversy has waxed hotter and more furious; our little ones have been forgotten in the fray, and their golden moments �A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY 15 have been allowed to run irrevocably to waste.” It needs little reflection to convince one that this was no exaggeration. The member of schools in England at the time is no test whatever of the educational work done. The vast majority were ridiculously inefficient. Teachers were given an absurd modicum of training, and inspectors were given no training whatever until 1857. The greater part of the machinery was rusty and antiquated, and the salaries were too slender to attract competent men. Anyone who reads Mr. Kay’s comparison of England with the continental countries in 1850 will be amazed at the appalling statements of this great expert. As late as i860 it was stated in a Government report that out of the two and a-half million children in the country only one and a-half million were at school ; and of these 800,000 were found in flagrantly inefficient schools, under teachers who themselves reached no decent standard of education. London was far below the level of any large Roman town of fifteen centuries earlier. In fact, few children of the Roman towns had been without elementary education. Yet every measure for the betterment of the situation was met with the same resistance. Mr. Forster’s Bill for the education of the poor was rejected in 1867, and the storm that raged about his great Bill of 1870, when the Board schools were founded, is too well known to enlarge upon. Forster found that two-fifths of our children between the ages of six and ten, and one-third between the ages of ten and twelve, had no education whatever ; that, in other words, one and a-half million of our children were still untouched by the influence of the teacher, such as it was. No wonder that he wrote bitterly to Kingsley : “ I wish parsons, Church and other, would all remember as much as you do that children are growing into savages while they are trying to prevent one another from helping.” The rest of the story needs no telling. The familiar device of giving “ simple Bible lessons ” was again dignified with the position of a great political expedient, and thirty­ seven years of hard experience have again proved its futility. Surely it is time that we all, clergy and laity, recognised this plain fact of its uselessness ? Mr. Birrell rightly disavowed any claim to originality in bringing it forward in 1906. It �16 A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY goes back to the time of his grandfather. It was CowperTempleism in 1870. It was Russellism in 1850, and Durhamism in 1840, and Broughamism in 1820, and Lancasterism in 1807. If is discredited by as prolonged and explicit a political experience as was ever given to a suggested compromise. It is as bitterly and powerfully assailed to-day as it was in 1807. As long as it is retained, it holds out a prospect of fresh wrangling with every swing of the political pendulum. The object of this essay is to inform those who fancy that the giving of “simple Bible lessons” is a new and imperfectly-tried device how completely it has proved its impotence. And no other compromise is even proposed to us. Happily the lesson is being read more candidly to-day. The modern Secular Education League has the support of distinguished Roman Catholics and many clergy of the Anglican and Dissenting Churches. They believe that they can sufficiently tend their religious interests in their chapels, and they plead that we no longer hamper our highest civic ideals and embarrass our political issues with religious differences. We cannot call back on to our planet the millions who have passed through England in the nineteenth century without ever having their finer powers developed ; the millions who have gone down into the darkness with stunted souls, after a life of heavy drudgery and the coarsest surroundings. But we can unite in the framing of a unified and thoroughly effective system for training the body, mind, and character of the child, and we may leave the clergy to give the training in their own doctrines in their own institutions. PRINTED BY WATTS AND CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &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 A hundred years of education controversy Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McCabe, Joseph [1867-1955] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 16 p. ; 22 cm. Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Advertisement for the Secular Education League and its publications (published by Watts), inside front cover, i.e. p.[2]. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1906 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N447 Subject The topic of the resource Education Religion 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 (A hundred years of education controversy), 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 Education NSS Religious Education-Great Britain https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/c993c8bbbbcfbc4d90e57fae6a67589b.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=u-8syUTq66IltmbWbytaPrzkzvJYiedYz8bJ1dpO-gzaaSPdkkvBeMtabTTO7bphPxpfhigeTmLMm6mSbsi9Y-2B5MotGaKNpYwtu3U7yURQHpDlpJjXGe1Y9HijWG5CGPx-EKNI80gnJhXMyRoB48xaeW9JQWnLPkIH1jG3UE%7EnTAWSFYgck9Sjqsx2hObBm-s7eax9RzjNg-2tf5gVQVg6r2wc82UbXfBg-79RkdV1i-HNSKSEAvjrG0Ec40GNjTbLkISsT-r2Oj8gRClQbHvBwaFm9lMyDQT5ImkG5V1ZcwHbPZaYZxy6eP%7EuVxFXcw7uiwf7J7MYyM6Bg%7EDbSQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e1cb573d846e9a7d1978fa21c1d70aa5 PDF Text Text NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY A MODERN ZOROASTRIAN �This Cheap Edition of “A Modern Zoroas- trian ” is also published in cloth, price One Shilling. Copies of the original larger type edition, in cloth, Shillings net. bound can be supplied at Two �A MODERN ZOROASTRIAN BY S. LAING, AUTHOR OF “MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT,” “PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE/’ “human origins’* Revised and brought up to date by JOSEPH MeCABE [issued for the rationalist press association, limited] WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. 1904 �I �PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION From some of the criticisms on the first edition of this work I fear that the distinction I endeavoured to draw between the use of the term “ polarity ” in the inorganic and in the spiritual worlds has not been made sufficiently clear. I stated in the Introduction “ That, while the principle of polarity pervades both worlds, I am far from assuming that the laws under which it acts are identical; and that virtue and vice, pain and pleasure, are products of the same mathematical laws as regulate the attractions and repulsions of molecules and atoms.” But this warning has apparently been overlooked by some readers, who have assumed that, instead of analogy, I meant identity, and that it was a mistake to use the same word “ polarity ” for phenomena so essentially distinct as those of the material and the spiritual worlds. Thus my “guide, philosopher, and friend,” Professor Huxley, for whose authority I have the highest respect, observed in a recent article that he had long ago acquired a habit, if he came across the word “ polarity ” applied to anything but magnetism and electricity, of throwing down the book and reading no farther. I must confess that I felt a little disconcerted when I read this passage; but I was soon consoled, for, a month or two afterwards, I came across another passage in the same Review, which said : “ However revolting may be the accumulation of misery at the negative pole of Society, in contrast with that of monstrous wealth at the positive pole, this state of things must abide and grow continuously worse, as long as Istar (the dual Goddess of the Babylonians) holds her way unchecked.” Surely, I thought, here is a case in which the Professor must have thrown down the Review when he came to these words : but when I reached the end I found that it was not the Review, but the pen, which must have been thrown down, for the article is signed “ T. Huxley.” Can there be a more conclusive proof that there are a vast variety of facts outside of magnetism and electricity, connected by an underlying idea, which inevitably suggests analogy to them, and which can be most conveniently expressed by the word “ polarity ” ? Words, after all, are �6 PREFACE only coins to facilitate the interchange of ideas, and the best word is that which serves the purpose most clearly and concisely, Thus, instead of using a waggon load of copper, or the verbiage of a conveyancer’s deed, to express the ideas comprised in such words as “theism,” “ pantheism,” or “ agnosticism,” we coin them for general use, as Huxley did the word “agnosticism,” in order to convey our meaning. Polarity is such a word. It sums up what Emerson says in his Essay on Compensation: “ Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of Nature—in darkness and light; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the undulations of fluids and of sounds ; in the centripetal and centrifugal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce Magnetism at one end of a needle, the opposite Magnetism takes place at the other end. If the South attracts, the North repels. An inevitable dualism besets nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another to make it whole—as spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out, upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay.” These, by whatever name we like to call them, are facts and not fancies, and facts which enter largely into all questions, whether of science, philosophy, religion, or practical policy. Every one who wishes to keep at all abreast with modern culture ought to have some general knowledge of the ideas and principles which underlie them, and which are embraced in the comprehensive word “polarity.” My object in this book has been to assist the reader who is not a specialist in arriving at some general understanding of the subjects treated of, and, I may hope, in awakening such an interest in them as may induce him to prosecute further researches. If I succeed in this, my object will have been attained. S. Laing. �PREFACE The reception given to my former work, on Modern Science and Modern Thought, has induced me to write this further one. I refer not so much to the reviews of professional critics, though as a rule nothing could be more courteous and candid, but rather to the letters I have received from readers of various age, sex, and condition, saying that I had assisted them in understanding much interesting matter which had previously been a sealed book to them. If I am good for anything, it is for a certain faculty of lucid con­ densation, and I have thought that I might apply this to some of the less-known branches of modern science, such as the new chemistry and physiology, as well as, in my first work, to the more familiar subjects of astronomy and geology; while at the same time I might extend it to some of the more obvious problems of religion, morals, metaphysics, and practical life, which force themselves, more and more every day, on the attention of intelligent thinkers. As in the former work the scientific speculations were linked together by the leading idea of the universality of law, so, in this, unity is given to them by the all-pervading principle of polarity, which manifests itself everywhere as the fundamental condition of the material and spiritual universe. For the scientific portion of the work I am indebted to the most approved authorities, such as Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, and Professor Cooke’s volume on the New Chemistry in the International Scientific Series. For the religious and philosophical speculations I am myself responsible; for, although I have derived the greatest possible pleasure and profit from Herbert Spencer’s writings, I had arrived at my principal conclusions independently before I had read any of his works. I can only hope that I may have succeeded in presenting a good many abstruse questions in a popular form, intelligible to the average mind of ordinary readers, and calculated, if it teaches nothing else, to teach them a practical philosophy which inculcates tolerance and charity, and assists them in finding Sermons in stones and good in everything. S. Laing. �CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Introductory PAGE Experiment with magnet—Principle of polarity—Applies universally—Analogies in spiritual world—Zoroastrian religion—Changes in modern environment— Require corresponding changes in religions and philosophies . . . 11 CHAPTER II. Polarity in Matter—Molecules and Atoms Matter consists of molecules—Nature of molecules—Laws of their action in gases —Law of Avogadro—Molecules composed of atoms—Atoms and electrons— Proved by composition of water—Combinations of atoms—Elementary sub­ stances—Qualities of matter depend on atoms—Dimensions and velocities of molecules and atoms—These are ascertained facts, not theories . . 14 CHAPTER III. Ether Ether proved by light—Light-waves—Elasticity of ether—Its universal diffusion —Influences molecules and atoms—Is influenced by them—Successive orders of the infinitely small—Illustrated by the differential and integral calculus— Explanation of this calculus—Theory of vortex rings—Theory of electrons . 20 CHAPTER IV. Energy Energy of motion and of position—Energy can be transformed, not created or destroyed—Notcreated by free will—Conservation of mechanical power—Con­ vertibility of heat and work—Nature of heat—The steam-engine—Different forms of energy—Gravity—Molecular energy—Chemical energy—DynamiteChemical affinities—Electricity—Produced by friction—By the voltaic battery— Electric currents—Arc light—Induction—Magnetism—The magnetic needle— The electric telegraph—The telephone—Dynamo-electric engine—Accumulator 26 CHAPTER V. Polarity in Matter Ultimate elements of universe—Built up by polarity—Experiment with magnet— Chemical affinity—Atomic poles—Alkalies and acids—Quantivalence—Atom­ icity _ Isomerism—Chemical stability — Thermo-chemistry — Definition of atoms—All matte: built up by polar forces . . ■ . -39 CHAPTER VI. Polarity in Life Contrast of living and dead—Eating and being eaten—Trace matter upwards and life downwards—Colloids—Cells—Protoplasm—Monera—Composition of pro­ toplasm—Essential qualities of life—Nutrition and sensation—MotionReproduction—Spontaneous generation—Organic compounds—Polar condi­ . • • . . • • • -44 tions of life �CONTENTS 9 CHAPTER VII. Primitive Polarities—Plant and Animal PAGE Contrast in developed life-Plants producers, animals consumers-Differences disappear insimple forms-Zoophytes-Protista-Nummulites-Corals-Fungi —Lichens_ Insectivorous plants—’Geological succession Primary period, Aims and Ferns—Secondary period, Gymnosperms—Tertiary and recent. Angiosperms — Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons—Parallel evolution of animal life—Primary, protista, mollusca, and fish—Secondary, reptiles Ter­ tiary and recent, mammals . • * • • • 51 CHAPTER VIII. Primitive Polarities—Polarity of Sex Sexual generation—Base of ancient cosmogonies—Propagation non-sexual m simpler forms—Amoeba and cells—Germs and buds Anemones Worms Spores—Origin of sex—Ovary and male organ—Hermaphrodites—Partheno­ genesis—Bees and insects—-Man and woman—Characters of each sex—Woman s position—Improved by civilisation-Christianity the feminine pole—Mono­ gamy the law of nature—Tone respecting women test of character—Women in literature—In society—Attraction and repulsion of sexes Like attracts unlike _ Ideal marriage—Woman’s rights and modern legislation . . • .55 CHAPTER IX. Primitive Polarities—Heredity and Variation Heredity in simple forms of life—In more complex organisms—Pangenesis—-Varie' ties how produced—Fixed by law of survival of the fittest—Dr. Temple s view _ Examples : triton, axolotl—Variations in individuals and species Lizards into birds—Ringed snakes—Echidna . 61 CHAPTER X. The Knowable and Unknowable—Brain and Thought Basis of knowledge—Perception—Constitution of brain—White and grey matter _ Average size and weight of brains—European, negro, and ape—Mechanism of perception—Sensory and motor nerves—Separate areas of brain—Sensory and motor centres—Abnormal states of brain—Hypnotism—Somnambulism— 'Prance_ Thought-reading—Spiritualism—Reflex action—Ideas, how formed _ Number and space—Creation unknowable—Conceptions based on percep­ tions—Metaphysics—-Descartes, Kant, Berkeley—-Anthropomorphism—Laws 65 of nature CHAPTER XI. Religions and Philosophies Religions “ working hypotheses ”—Newman’s illative sense—Origin of religions— Ghosts and spirits—Fetishes—Nature-worship—Solar myths—Planets—Evo­ lution of nature-worship—Polytheism, pantheism, and theism—Evolution of monotheism in the Old Testament—Evolution of morality—Natural law and miracle—Evidence for miracles—Insufficiency of evidence—Absence ot intelli­ gent design—-Agnosticism—Origin of evil—Can only be explained by polarity _ Optimism and pessimism—Jesus, the Christian Ormuzd Christianity without miracles • • • • • • * ^4 CHAPTER XII. Christianity and Morals Christianity based on morals—Origin of morality Traced in Judaism—Origi­ nates in evolution—Instance of murder—Freedom of will—Will suspended in certain states of brain—Hypnotism—-Mechanical. theory Pre-established harmony—Human and animal conscience—Analysis of will—Explained by polarity—Practical conclusion ..••••• 90 �IO CONTENTS CHAPTER XIII. Zoroastrianism Zoroaster an historical person—The Parsees—Iranian branch of Aryan family PAGE —Zoroaster a religious reformer—Scene at Balkh—Conversion of Vishtasp— Doctrines of the “ excellent religion”—Monotheism—Polarity—Dr. Haug’s description Ormuzd and Ahriman—Anquetil du Perron—Approximation to modern thought—Absence of miracles—Code of morals—Its comprehen­ siveness—And liberality—Special rites—Fire-worship—Disposal of dead— Practical results—The Parsees of Bombay—Their probity, enterprise, respect for women—Zeal for education—Philanthropy and public spirit—Statistics— Death and birth rates . . . . . , t .96 CHAPTER XIV. Forms of Worship Byron’s lines—-Carnegie’s description—Parsee nature-worship—English Sunday —The sermon—Appeals to reason misplaced—Music better than words—The • Mass—Zoroastrianism brings religion into daily life—Sanitation—Zoroastrian prayer—Religion of the Future—Sermons in stones and good in everything . 106 CHAPTER XV. Practical Polarities Fable of the shield—Progress and conservatism—English and French colonisa­ tion—Law-abidingness—Irish land question—True conservative legislation— Ultra-conservatism—Law and education—Patriotism—Jingoism and paro­ chialism—True statesmanship—Free trade and protection—Capital and labour —Egoism and altruism—Socialism and laissez faire—Contracts—Rights and duties of landlords—George’s theory—State interference—Railways—Post Office—Telegraphs—National defence—Concluding remarks • . . 109 �A MODERN ZOROASTRIAN Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY Experiment with magnet—Principle of polarity —Applies universally—Analogies in spiritual world — Zoroastrian religion — Changes in modern environment—Require corresponding changes in religions and philosophies. Scatter a heap of iron filings on a plate of glass; bring near it a magnet, and tap the glass gently, and you will see the filings arrange themselves in regular forms. If one pole only of the magnet is brought near the glass, the filings arrange themselves in lines radiating from that pole. Next, lay the bar-magnet on the glass so that the filings are influenced by both poles; they will arrange themselves into a series of regular curves. In other words, the Chaos of a con­ fused heap of inert matter has become a Cosmos of harmonious arrangement assuming definite form in obedience to manifestation of the more general prin­ ciple of polarity, by which energy, when it passes from the passive or neutralised into the active state, does so under the condition of developing opposite and conflicting energies: no action without reaction, no positive without a negative, and, as we see it in the simplest form in law. As the old saying has it, that “every road leads to Rome,” so this simple experiment leads up to a principle which underlies all existence knowable to human faculty—that of Polarity. Why do the iron filings arrange themselves in regular curves? Because they are our magnets, no North Pole without a magnetised by the influence of the larger South Pole—like ever repelling like and The magnet, again, magnet, and each little particle of iron attracting unlike. is converted into a little magnet with may be considered as a special form of two opposite poles attracting and re­ electricity, for, if we send an electric current through a coil of copper wire pelling. What is a magnet? It is a special encircling a bar of soft iron, the bar is at �12 INTRODUCTORY once converted into a magnet; so that a magnet may be considered as the summing up, at two opposite extremities or poles, of the attractive and repulsive effects of electric currents circulating round it. But this electricity is itself subject to the law of polarity, whether developed by chemical action in the form of a current or electricity in motion, or by friction in the form of statical electricity of small quantity but high tension. In all cases a positive implies a negative; in all, like repels like and attracts unlike. Conversely, as polarity produces definite structure, so definite structure everywhere implies polarity. The same principle prevails not only throughout the inorganic or world of matter, but throughout the organic or world of life, and specially throughout its highest manifestations in human life and character, and in the highest products of its evolution, in societies, religions, and philosophies. To show this by some familiar and striking examples is the main object of this book. But here let me interpose a word of caution. I must avoid the error which vitiates Professor Drummond’s interesting work on Natural Law in the Spiritual World, of confounding analogy and identity. Because the principle of polarity pervades alike the natural and spiritual worlds, I am far from assuming that the laws under which it acts are identical; and that virtue and vice, pain and pleasure, ugliness and beauty, are products of the same mathematical changes of sign and inverse squares or cubes of distances as regulate the attrac­ tions and repulsions of molecules and atoms. All I say is that the same per­ vading principle may be traced wherever human thought and human knowledge extend; that it is apparently, for some reason unknown to us, the essential condition of all existence within the sphere of that thought and that know­ ledge ; and that what lies beyond it is the great unknown, behind the impene­ trable veil which it is not given to mortals to uplift. In like manner, if I call myself “a modern Zoroastrian,” it is not that I wish or expect to teach a new religion or revive an old one, to see Christian churches dedicated to Ormuzd, or right reverend bishops exchanging the apron and shovel-hat for the mitre and flowing robes of the ancient Magi. It is simply this. All religions I take to be “ working hypotheses,” by which successive ages and races of men try to satisfy the aspirations and harmonise the knowledge which in the course of evolu­ tion have come to be, for the time, their spiritual equipment. The best proof of any religion is that it exists—i.e., that it is part of the same evolution, and that on the whole it works well, or is in tolerable harmony with its environment. When that environment changes, when loftier views of morality prevail, when know­ ledge is increased and the domain of science everywhere extends its frontier, religions must change with it if they are to remain good working, and not become unworkable and unbelievable, hypotheses. Now, of all the religious hypotheses which remain workable in the present state of human knowledge, that seems to me the best which frankly recognises the existence of this dual law, or law of polarity, as the fundamental condition of the universe, and, personifying the good principle under the name of Ormuzd, and the evil one under that of Ahriman, looks with earnest but silent and un­ spoken reverence on the great unknown beyond, which may, in some way incom­ prehensible to mortals, reconcile the two opposites, and give the final victory to the good. “ Oh ! yet we hope that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill.” So sings the poet of the nineteenth century: so, if we understand his doctrine rightly, taught the Bactnan sage, Zoroaster, some thirty centuries earlier. This, and this alone, seems to me to afford a working hypothesis which is based on fact, can be brought into �INTRODUCTORY 13 indestructibility of matter, the correlation harmony with the existing environment, and embraces, in a wider synthesis, all of forces, and the conservation of energy, that is good in other philosophies and were unknown, or only just beginning to be foreshadowed. As regards life,, proto­ religions. plasm was a word unheard of; scientific When I talk of our new environment, biology, zoology, and botany were in their it requires one who, like the author, has infancy; and the gradual building up of lived more than the Scriptural three-score and ten years, and has, so to speak, one all living matter from a speck of proto­ foot on the past and one on the present, plasm, through a primitive cell, was not to realise how enormous is the change even suspected. Above all, the works which a single generation has made in of Darwin had not been published, and the whole spiritual surroundings of a evolution had not become the general law of modern thought; nor had the civilised man of the nineteenth century. When I was a student at Cambridge, discovery of the antiquity of man, and of his slow development upwards from little more than fifty years ago, astronomy was the only branch of natural science the rudest origins, shattered into frag­ which could be said to be definitely ments established beliefs as to his recent brought within the domain of natural miraculous creation. Science and miracle have been fighting law; and that only as regards the law out their battle during the last fifty years of gravity, and the motions of the heavenly bodies, for little or nothing along the whole line, and science has was known as to their constitution. been at every point victorious. Miracle, Geology was just beginning the series of in the sense in which our fathers believed conquest? by which time and the order in it, has been not only repulsed, but and succession of life on the earth have annihilated so completely that really little been annexed by science as completely remains but to bury the dead. The result of these discoveries has as space by astronomy; and theories of cataclysms, universal deluges, and special been to make a greater change in the recent creations of animals and man, spiritual environment of a single genera­ still held their ground, and were quoted tion than would be made in their as proofs of a universe maintained by physical environment if the glacial period suddenly returned and buried constant supernatural interference. And when I say that space had. been Northern Europe under polar ice. The annexed to science by astronomy, it was change is certainly greater in the last really only that half of space which fifty years than it had been in the pre­ extends from the standpoint of the vious five hundred, and in many respects human senses in the direction of the greater than m the previous five thousand. It may be sufficient to glance shortly infinitely great. The other equally im­ portant half which extends downwards at the equally great corresponding to the infinitely small was unknown, or changes which this period has witnessed the subject only of the vaguest conjec­ in the practical conditions of life and of society. If astronomy and geology tures. Chemistry was, to a great extent, an have extended the dominion of the empirical science, and molecules and mind over space and time, steamers, atoms were at best guesses at truth, or railways, and the electric telegraph have rather convenient mathematical abstrac­ gained the mastery over them for Commerce . and tions with no more actual reality than practical purposes. the symbols of the differential calculus. emigration have assumed international The real causes and laws of heat, light, proportions, and India, Australia, and and electricity were as little known as America are nearer to us, and connected those of molecular action and of chemi­ with us by closer ties, than Scotland was I to England in my schoolboy days. cal affinity. The great laws of the �14 POLARITY IN MATTER—MOLECULES AND ATOMS Education and a cheap press have even in a greater degree revolutionised society; and knowledge, reaching the masses, has carried with it power, so that democracy and freethought are, whether for good or evil, everywhere in the ascendant, and old privileges and traditions are every­ where decaying. With such a great change of environ­ ment it is evident that many of the old creeds, institutions, and other organisms, adapted to old conditions, must have become as obsolete as a schoolboy’s jacket would be if taken to be the habiliment of a grown-up man. But as a lobster which has cast its shell does not feel at ease until it has grown a new one, so thinking men of the present day are driven to devise, to a great extent each for themselves, some larger theory which may serve them as a “working hypothesis” with which to go through life, and bring the ineradicable aspira­ tions and emotions of their nature into some tolerable harmony with existing facts. To me, as one of those thinking units, this theory, of what for want of a better name I call “Zoroastrianism,” has approved itself as a good working theory, which reconciles more intellectual and moral difficulties, and affords a better guide in conduct and practical life than any other; and, in a word, enables me to reduce my own individual Chaos into some sort of an intelligible and ordered Cosmos. I feel moved, therefore, to preach through the press my little sermon upon it, for the benefit of those whom it may concern, feeling assured that the process of evolution, by which “The old order changes, giving place to new,” can best be assisted by the honest and unbiassed expression of the results of individual thought and experience on the part of any one of those units whose aggregates form the complicated organisms of religions and philosophies, of societies and of humanity. Chapter II. POLARITY IN MATTER—MOLECULES AND ATOMS Matter consists of molecules—Nature of mole­ cules—Laws of their action in gases—Law of Avogadro—Molecules composed of atoms— Atoms and electrons—Proved by composi­ tion of water—Combinations of atoms—Ele­ mentary substances — Qualities of matter depend on atoms—Dimensions and velocities of molecules and atoms—These are ascertained facts, not theories. If, in building a house that is to stand when the rains fall and the winds blow, it is requisite to go down to the solid rock for a foundation, so much the more is it necessary in building up a theory to begin at the beginning and give it a solid groundwork. Nine-tenths of the fallacies current in the world arise from the haste with which people rush to conclusions on insufficient premises. Take, for instance, any of the political questions of the day, such as the Irish question: how many of those who express confident opinions, and get angry and excited on one side or the other, could answer any of the pre­ liminary questions which are the indis­ pensable conditions of any rational judgment? How many marks would they get for an- examination paper which asked what was the population of Ireland ; what proportion of that popula­ ' tion was agricultural; what proportion �POLARITY IN MA TTER—MOLECULES AND A TOMS of that agricultural population consisted Of holders of small tenements; what was the scale of rents compared with that for small holdings in other countries; how much of that rent was levied on them for their own improvements; and other similar questions which lie at the root of the matter ? In how many cases would it be found that the whole Superstructure of their confident and passionate theories about the Irish dificulty was based on no more solid foundation than their like or dislike of a particular statesman or of a particular 15 ing the same qualities and behaviour under chemical tests as the original bar of iron from which the filings were taken. This carries us a long way down towards the infinitely small, for mechani­ cal division and microscopic visibility can be carried down to magnitudes which are of the order of nm™ <jth part of an inch. But this is only the first step; to understand our molecules we must ascertain whether they are infinitely divisible, and whether they are con­ tinuous, expanding by being spread out thinner and thinner like gold-beaters party? , . . skin : or are they separate bodies with I propose, therefore, to begin at the intervals between them, like little planets beginning, and, taking the simplest case, forming one solar system and revolving that of dead or inorganic matter, show in space by fixed laws ? Ancient science bow the material universe is built up by guessed at the former solution and the operation of the all-pervading Jaw of embodied it in the maxim “ that nature polarity. What does matter consist of. abhors a vacuum modern science Of molecules, and molecules are made proves the latter. . up of atoms, and these (while themselves In the first place,, bodies combine made up of electrons) are held together only in fixed proportions, which is a ©r parted, and built up into the various necessary consequence if they consist of forms of the material universe, primarily definite indivisible particles, but incon­ by polar forces. . . ceivable if the substance of each is Let me endeavour to make this mtelindefinitely divisible. Thus water is • ligible to the intelligent but. unscientific formed in one way and one only by reader. Suppose the Pyramid of Cheops uniting one volume or molecule of were shown for the first time to a giant oxygen with two of hydrogen ; and any whose eye was on such a scale that he excess of one or the other is.left out and could just discern it as a separate object. remains uncombined. But if the mole­ . He might make all sorts of ingenious cules could be divided into halves, conjectures as to its nature, but.if micro­ quarters, and so on indefinitely, there scopes had been invented in Giant-land, can be no reason why their union should and he looked through one, he would take place always in this one proportion, find that it was built up, layer by layer, . . on a regular plan and in determinate and this only. A still more conclusive proof 1$ lines and angles, by molecules, or what furnished by the behaviour of substances seemed to him almost infinitely small which exist in the form of gases. If a masses of squared stone. For pyramid jar is filled with one gas, a second and write crystal, and we may see by the third gas can be poured into it as human sense, aided by human instru­ readily as into a vacuum, the. result ments and human reason, a similar being that the pressure on the sides of Structure built up in the same. way by the jar is exactly equal to the sum of minute particles. Or, again, divide and the separate pressures of each separate subdivide our iron filings until we. reach gas. This evidently means that the first the limit .of possible mechanical division gas does not occupy the whole space, but discernible by the microscope, each one that its particles are like a battalion of remains essentially a bar of iron, as soldiers in loose skirmishing order, with capable of being magnetised and show­ �16 POLARITY IN matter—molecules and atoms such intervals between each unit that ai substances arises, not from one having second and third battalion can be: more molecules in the same volume than inarched in and placed on the same: another, but from the molecules them­ ground, without disturbing the formation, selves being heavier. If we weigh a and with the result only of increasing the: gallon or litre of hydrogen gas, which is intensity of the fire. the lightest known substance, and then, Now, gas is matter as much as solids weighing an equal volume of oxygen gas, or liquids, and in the familiar instance of find that it is sixteen times heavier, we water we see that it is merely a question know for certain that the molecule or of more or less heat whether the same ultimate particle of oxygen is sixteen matter exists as ice, water, or steam. time heavier than that of hydrogen. The number and nature of the molecules It is evident that in this way the mole­ is not changed, only in the one case cules of all simple substances which can they are close to one another and exist in the form of pure gas can be solidly linked together; in the other, weighed, and their weight expressed in further removed and free to move about terms of the unit which is generally one another, though still held together adopted, that of the molecule of the as a mass by their mutual attractions ; lightest known substance, hydrogen. But and in the third, still further apart, so science, not content with this achieve­ that their mutual attraction is lost, and ment, wants to know not the relative they dart about, each with its own weight only, but the absolute dimensions, proper motion, bombarding the surface qualities, and motions of these little which contains them, and by the resul­ bodies; and whether, although they tant of their impacts producing pressure. cannot be divided further by mechanical In this latter and simpler form of gas means, and while retaining the qualities the following laws are found to prevail of the substances they build up, they are universally for all substances. Under really ultimate and indivisible particles like conditions volumes vary directly as or themselves composites. ,the temperature and inversely as the Chemistry and electricity give a ready • pressure. That is to say, the pressure answer to this latter question. Molecules which contains them remaining the are composites of still smaller bodies, same, equal volumes of air, steam, or and to get near to the ultimate particle, any other substance in the state of gas, we must go on to atoms. All chemical expand into twice the volume if the changes resolve themselves into the temperature is doubled, three times if it breaking up of molecules and re-arrange­ is tripled, and so on; contracting in the ment of their constituent atoms. If the same way if the temperature is lowered. opposite poles of a voltaic battery are If, on the other hand, the temperature inserted in a vessel containing water, remains constant, the volume is reduced molecules of water are broken up, to one-half or one-third, if the pressure is bubbles of gas rise at each pole, and, if doubled or tripled. From these laws the these are collected, the gas at the posi­ further grand generalisation has been tive pole is found to be oxygen, and that arrived at, that all substances existing at the negative pole hydrogen. Nothing in the form of gas contain the same has been added or taken away, for the number of molecules in the same volume. weight of the two gases evolved exactly This, which is known as the Law of equals that of the water which has dis­ Avogadro, from the Italian chemist by ;appeared. But the molecules of the whom it was first discovered, is one 'water have been broken up, and their of the fundamental laws of modern <constituents reappear in totally different chemistry. 1forms, for nothing can well be more This conclusion obviously follows from 1unlike water than each of the two gases That it is it, that difference of weight in different (of which it is composed. �POLARITY IN MATTER—MOLECULES AND ATOMS 17 composed of them can be verified by the sixteen, but eight to one. . If, therefore, reverse experiment of mixing the two the molecule were identical with the gases together in the same proportion of atom of oxygen, we must admit that the two volumes of hydrogen to one of atom could be halved, which is contrary oxygen as was produced by the decom­ to its definition as the ultimate indi­ position of water, passing an electric visible particle of the substance oxygen. spark through the. vessel containing the But if the oxygen molecule consists of mixture, when, with a loud explosion, two linked atoms, O—O, and the hydro­ the gases reunite, and water, is formed gen molecule equally of two, H—H, as in precisely the same quantity as pro­ can be proved by other considerations, duced the volumes of gas by its decom­ everything is explained by assuming that position. Can the ultimate particles of the molecule of water consists of two these gases be further subdivided j can atoms of hydrogen linked to one of they, like those of water, be broken up oxygen, or H„O, and that, when this molecule is broken up by electricity, its and reappear in new forms ? It has long been suspected by physi­ constituents resolve themselves into cists that the atom itself is compound, atoms, which recombine so as to form and that one simple and identical form twice as many molecules of hydrogen, of matter is made up into the atoms of H—H, as of oxygen, O,—i.e. into two the various elements. Recent. expeii- volumes of hydrogen gas to one of ments have thrown so much light on oxygen. Taking the single hydrogen atom as this that it is now all but demonstrated. The new element, radium, is seen to the unit of weight as being the lightest throw off actual particles of its sub­ known ponderable body, and calling this stance. We see, as Sir O. Lodge says, weight a microcrith, or standard of the bits chipped off the atom. A further smallest of this order of excessively small inquiry showed that this decomposition weights, this is equivalent to saying that of the atom is observable, in a great the weight of an oxygen atom is equal to many other cases, as, for instance, in 16 microcriths, and, as water is composed newly-fallen rain. Working on these of one such atom plus two of hydrogen, data, physicists have very generally the weight of its molecule ought to be accepted the theory that the atom is x6 + 2 = i8, which is, in fact, the exact itself composed of a great number of still ratio in which the weight of a volume smaller particles—how small we shall of steam, or water in the form of gas, is see presently. The atom of hydrogen, heavier than an equal volume of for example, is made up of a thousand hydrogen. This key unlocks the whole secret of of these tiny particles (called “ electrons,” the chemical changes and combinations because they are the particles we find in the electric charge), while the atom of by which matter assumes all the various mercury contains 100,000 electrons. The forms known to us in the universe. Thus oxygen enters into a great variety term atom must, therefore, no longer be taken to mean something absolutely of combinations forming different sub­ stances, but always in the proportion indivisible. It is further known that the molecule which is either 16, or some multiple of of oxygen consists of two atoms of 16, such as 32, 48, 64. That is, either oxygen linked together. This appears 1, 2, 3, or 4 atoms of oxygen unite with from the fact that while the weight of other atoms to form the molecules from oxygen, and therefore that of its mole­ which these other substances are made. One atom of oxygen weighing 16 cules, is sixteen times greater than that of an equal volume of hydrogen, and microcriths combines, as we have, seen, therefore of hydrogen molecules, it com­ with two atoms of hydrogen weighing. 2, bines with it in the proportion not of to form a molecule of water weighing c �i8 POLARITY IN MATTER-MOLECULES AND ATOMS 18 me. In like manner i atom of that atoms “ are not merely helps to oxygen, 16 me., combines with one of puzzled mathematicians, but physical carbon, which weighs 12 me., to form a realities.” molecule of carbonic oxide weighing 28 The researches of chemists have suc­ me.; and 2 of oxygen, 32 me., with one ceeded in discovering some seventy-eight of carbon, 12 me., to form a molecule substances which are still spoken of°as of carbonic dioxide weighing 44 me. elementary,” though their decomposiThe same applies to all elementary bihty is now within sight. Their atoms substances. Thus hydrogen, two atoms differ widely in size and weight: that of of which combine with one of oxygen mercury, for instance, being 200 times to form water, combines one atom to heavier than that of hydrogen, and the one with chlorine to form the molecule weights varying from 1 me. for the of hydrochloric acid, which weighs 36.5 hydrogen atom, up to 240 for that of me., being the united weights of one uranium. When we call them elemen­ atom of chlorine, 35.5 me., and one of tary substances, we merely mean that we hydrogen, 1 me. These, with hundreds know no means of decomposing them. of similar instances, are the results not It is now believed that all of them are of theories as to molecules and atoms, compounds, which we cannot take to but of actual facts, ascertained by in­ pieces, of some substratum of uniform numerable experiments made indepen­ matter, and it is remarkable that the dently by careful observers over long weight of nearly all of these elementary periods of years, many of them dating atoms is some simple multiple of that of back to the labours of the alchemists of hydrogen, pointing to their being all the middle ages in pursuit of gold. The combinations of one common substratum atomic theory is the child and not the of matter. The recent discovery of the parent of the facts, and is indeed nothing decomposition of the atom of radium but the summary of the vast variety of leads chemists to hope they may yet experiments which led up to it, as reduce all to a primitive form, and that Newton’s law of gravitation is of the facts all the atoms are so many multiples, or known to us with regard to the attractions clusters, of electrons. They are not all and motions of matter in the mass. But equally important to us. Of the seventy­ as Newton’s law enables us to predict eight elementary substances enumerated new facts, to calculate eclipses and the in chemical treatises, thirty to thirty-five return of comets beforehand, and to are either known only to chemists in compile nautical almanacks, so the new minute quantities, or exist in nature in chemistry, based on the atomic theory, small quantities, having no very material affords the same conclusive proof of its bearing upon man’s relation to matter. truth by enabling us in many cases to The most important are oxygen, hydro­ predict phenomena which are subse­ gen, nitrogen, and carbon. Oxygen quently verified by experiment, and to diluted by nitrogen gives us the air we infer beforehand what combinations are breathe, combined with hydrogen the possible, and what will be their nature. water we drink, and with metals and The actual existence, therefore, of other primitive bases the solid earth on molecules and atoms is as well-ascer­ which we tread. Carbon again is the tained a fact as that of cwts. and lbs., great basis of organised matter and life, or of planets and stars, of solar systems to which it leads up by a variety of com­ and nebulae. Several attempts have been plex combinations with oxygen, hydrogen, made of late years, especially by meta­ and nitrogen. physicians, to show that the atom is only The qualities and relations of elemen­ a hypothesis or convenient fiction. But tary atoms afford a subject of great Sir A. Rucker, in his presidential address interest, but of such vast extent that to the British Association in 1901, proved those who wish to understand it must be �POLARITY IN MATTER—MOLECULES AND ATOMS referred to professed works on modern chemistry. For the present purpose it is sufficient to say that the following conclusions are firmly established. All the various forms of matter are composed of combinations of atoms which form molecules, the molecules being neither more nor less than very small pieces of ordinary matter. The qualities of this matter, or, what is the same thing, of its molecules, depend partly on the qualities of the atoms, which are something quite distinct from those of the molecules, and partly on their mode of aggregation into mole. cules, affecting the form, size, stability, and other attributes of the molecule. All matter, down to the smallest atom, has definite weight and is indestructible. No man by taking thought can add the millionth of a milligramme to the weight of any substance, or make it either more or less than the sum of the weights of its component factors, any more than he can add a cubit to his stature. When Shelley sang of the cloud, “ I change, but I cannot die,” he enunciated a scientific axiom of the first importance. Creation, in the sense of making something out of nothing, is a thing absolutely unknown and unknow­ able to us. If we say we waA?.a ship or a steam-engine, we simply mean that we transform existing matter and existing energies into new combinations, which give results convenient for our purpose. So, if we talk of making a world, our idea really is that, if our powers and know­ ledge were indefinitely increased, we might be able, given the atoms and energies with their laws of existence, to put them together so as to produce the desired results. But how the atoms and their inherent laws got there is a question as to which knowledge, or even con­ ceivability, is impossible, for it altogether transcends human experience. 19 Before finally taking leave of atoms it may be well to state shortly that science, not content with having proved their existence and weighed them in terms of the lightest element, the hydrogen atom, has attempted, not without success, to solve the more difficult problem of their real dimensions, intervals, and velocities. This problem has been attacked by Clausius, Lord Kelvin, Clerk Maxwell, and others, from various sides : from a comparison with the wave-lengths of light ; with the tenuity of the thinnest films of soap-bubbles just before they burst, and when they are presumably reduced to a single layer of molecules; and from the kinetic theory of gases, in­ volving the dimensions, paths, and velo­ cities of elastic bodies, constantly collid­ ing, and by their impacts producing the resulting pressure on the confining sur­ face. All these methods involve such refined mathematical calculations that it is impossible to explain them popularly, but they all lead to nearly identical results, which involve figures so marvel­ lous as to be almost incomprehensible. For instance, a cubic centimetre of air is calculated to contain 21 trillions of molecules—i.e., 21 times the cube of a million, or 21 followed by 18 ciphers; the average distance between each mole­ cule equals 95 millionths of a millimetre, which is about 25 times smaller than the smallest magnitude visible under a micro­ scope ; the average velocity of each molecule is 447 metres per second; and the average number of impacts received by each molecule in a second is 4,700 millions. When we further descend from atoms to electrons, we deal with a far lower order of magnitude still. Taking an atom of hydrogen, the smallest known, we find that the elec­ trons, or small particles which com­ pose it, are 100,000 times smaller still in diameter. �20 ETHER Chapter III, ETHER Ether proved by light—Light-waves—Elasticity of ether—Its universal diffusion—Influences molecules and atoms—Is influenced by them Successive orders of the infinitely small— Illustrated by the differential and integral calculus—Explanation of this calculus— Theory of vortex rings—Theory of electrons. Perhaps the best way to convey some idea of this order of magnitudes to the ordinary reader is to quote Lord Kelvin’s illustration, that if we could suppose a cubic inch of water magnified to the size of the earth—zW, to a sphere of 24,000 miles in circumference—the dimensions of its atoms, magnified on the same scale, or, as he expresses it, its degree of coarse-grainedness, would be something between the size of rifle­ bullets and cricket-balls. If we then suppose the atom to be in its turn magnified to the size of a building 160 feet long, 80 feet wide, and 40 feet high, we must conceive its component electrons to be of the size of a full-stop as printed on this page. Extraordinary as these dimensions are, they are not more so than those at the opposite extremity of the scale, where the distance of stars and nebulae has to be measured by the number of thousand years their light, travelling at the rate of 186,000 miles per second, takes to reach us. Infinitely small, however, as those dimensions appear to our original con­ ceptions derived from our natural senses, they are certain and ascertained facts, if not as to the precise figures, yet beyond all doubt as to the orders of magnitude. In dealing with them, also, we are, to a great extent, on familiar ground. Mole­ cules are nothing more nor less than small pieces of ordinary matter; and atoms are also matter, for they obey the law of gravity, have definite weights, and build up molecules as surely as molecules build up ordinary matter, and as squared stones build up pyramids. But to understand the constitution of the material universe we must go a step further, apart from the familiar world of sense, and deal with an all-pervading medium, which is at the same time matter and not matter, which lies outside the law of gravity, and yet obeys other laws intelligible and calculable by us; of which it may be said we know it and we know it not. We call it ether. Ether is a medium assumed as a necessary consequence from the pheno­ mena of light, heat, and electricity— primarily from those of light. Respect­ ing light, two facts are known to us with absolute certainty. 1 st. It traverses space at the rate of 186,000 miles per second. 2nd. It is propagated not by particles actually travelling at this rate, but, like sound through air, by the transmission of waves. The first fact is known from the dif­ ference of time at which eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites are seen, according as the earth is at the point of its orbit nearest to or farthest from Jupiter—/.<?., from the time light takes to traverse the diameter of the earth’s orbit, which is about 180 millions of miles; and this velocity of light is confirmed by direct experiments, as by noting the difference of time between seeing the flash and hearing the sound of a gun, which gives the velocity of light compared with the known velocity of sound. The second fact is equally certain from the phenomena of what are called inter­ ferences, when the crest of one wave just overtakes the hollow of a preceding one, so that, if the two waves are of equal �ETHER magnitude, the oscillations exactly neu ttftlise one another, and two lights pro­ duce darkness. This is shown in a thousand different ways, and for all the different colours depending on different waves into which white light is analysed when passed through a prism. It is a certain result of wave-motion, and of wave-motion only, and therefore we know without a doubt that light is propagated by waves. But waves imply a medium, through which wave-forms are transmitted, for waves are nothing but the rhythmic motion of something which rises and falls, or oscillates symmetrically about a mean position of rest, slowly or quickly according to the less or greater elasticity of the medium. The waves which run along a large and slack wire are. large and slow, those along a small and tightlystretched wire are small and quick ; and from the data we possess as to light, its velocity of transmission, its refraction when its waves pass from one medium into another of different density, and from the distance between the waves as shown by interference, it is easy to. calcu­ late the lengths and vibratory, periods of the waves, and the elasticity of the medium through which such waves are transmitted. The figures at which we arrive . are truly extraordinary. The dimensions and rates of oscillations of the waves which produce the different colours of visible light have been measured and calculated with the greatest accuracy, and they are as follows :— Dimensions of Light Waves. Colours. Red.......... Orange ... Yellow ... Green Blue Indigo Violet No. of waves in one inch. No. of oscillations in one second. 39,000 460,000,000,000,000 42,000 495,OOO,OOO, OOO,OOO 44,000 518, OOO,000,000, OOO 47,000 554,000,000,000,000 51,000 601,000,000,000,000 54,000 636,000,000,000, OOO 57,000 672,000,000,000,000 21 The elasticity of this wonderful medium is even more extraordinary. The rapidity with which wave-motion is transmitted depends, other things being equal, on the elasticity of the medium, which is proportional to the square of the velocity with which a. wave travels through it. As the velocity of the sound-wave in air is about 1,100 feet in a second, and that of the light-wave about 186,000 miles in the same time, it follows that the velocity of the latter is about a million times greater than that of the former, and, if the density of ether were the same as that of air, its elasticity must be about a million million times greater. But the elasticity is the same thing as the power of resisting compres­ sion, which, in the case of air, we know to be about 15 pounds to the square inch ; so that the ether, if equally dense, would balance a pressure of .15 million million pounds to the square inch —that is, it would require a pressure of about 750 millions of tons to the square inch to condense ether to the density of air. On the other hand, its density, if any, must be so infinitesimally small that the earth, moving through it in its orbit, with a velocity of 1,100 miles a minute, suffers no perceptible retardation. Consider what this means. Air blowing at the rate of 100 miles an hour is a hurricane uprooting trees and levelling houses. If ether were as dense as air, the resistance to the earth in passing through it would be 600 times that, of going dead to windward in a tropical hurricane. But, in point of fact, there is no sensible resistance, for the earth and heavenly bodies move in their calculated paths according to the law of gravity exactly as they would do if they were moving in a vacuum. Even the comets, which consist of such excessively rare matter that, when one of them got en­ tangled among the satellites of Jupiter, it did not affect their movements, are not retarded by the ether, or so slightly that any retardation in the case of one or two of them is suspected rather than proved. But, if the ether has no weight, how can �22 ETHER we call it material, weight being, as we the boundaries of the infinitely great we have seen, the invariable test and know from the fact that light reaches us measure of all matter down to the from.the remotest stars and nebulas, and minutest atom ? And yet how can we that in this light the spectroscope enables deny its existence when it is demon­ us to detect waves propagated and strably necessary to account for un­ absorbed by the very same vibrations of doubted facts revealed to us every day the same familiar atoms at these enor­ by the prism, the spectroscope, elec­ mous distances as at the earth’s surface. tricity, and chemical action, and deduc­ Glowing hydrogen, for instance, is a tions from these facts based on the strict principal ingredient of the sun’s atmo­ laws of mathematical calculation? For sphere and of those distant suns we call the existence of the ether is not based stars, and it affects the ether and is only on the phenomena of light: it is an affected by it exactly in the same manner equally necessary postulate to explain as the hydrogen burning in an ordinary those of heat, electricity, and chemical gas-lamp. action. We must conceive of our atoms In the direction also of the infinitely and molecules as forming systems and small, ether permeates the apparently performing . their movements, not in solid structure of crystals, whose mole­ vacuo, but in an all-pervading medium cules perform their limited and rigidly of this ether, to which they impart, and definite movements in an atmosphere of from which they receive, impulses. it, as is shown by the fact that in sg These impulses are excessively minute, many cases light and heat penetrate and when they occur in irregular order through them. A whole series of re­ they produce no appreciable effect; but markable phenomena arise from the when the vibrations of the ether keep manner in which the vibrations of ether time with those of the atoms, the multi­ which cause light are affected by the tude of small effects becomes summed structure of the molecules of crystals up into one considerable enough to pro­ through which they pass. In certain duce great changes. Just so a rhythmic cases they are what is called polarised, succession of tiny ripples may set a heavy or so affected that, while they pass freely buoy oscillating, and the footfalls of a if the crystal is held in one direction, regiment of soldiers marching over a they are stopped if it is turned round suspension-bridge may make it swing through an angle of co° to its former until it breaks down, while a confused position, so that one and the same crystal mob could traverse it in safety. The may be alternately transparent and non­ latter affords a good illustration of the transparent. It would seem as if its way in which molecular structures may structure were like that of wood, be broken down, and their atoms set free grained, and more easy to penetrate if to enter into other combinations, by the cut with the grain than against it, so that, action of heat, light, or chemical rays when a ray of light attempted to pene­ beyond the visible end of the spectrum. trate, its vibrations were resolved into Conversely, the phenomena of the two, one with the grain which got spectroscope all depend on the fact that through, the other against it which was the vibrations of atoms and molecules suppressed ; and thus the emerging ray, can propagate waves through the ether, which entered with a circular vibration, as well as absorb ether-waves into their got out with only one rectilinear vibra­ own motions, and thus give spectra dis­ tion parallel to the diameter which tinguished by bright or dark lines coincided with the grain. peculiar to each substance, by which it Other crystals of more complicated can be identified. Whatever ether may structure affect transmitted light in a be, this much is certain about it: it more complex way, developing a double pervades all space. That it extends to polarity very similar to that induced in �ETHER the iron filings when brought under the influence of the two poles of the magnet. With this polarised light the most beau­ tiful coloured rings can be produced from the waves of the different colours into which the white light has been analysed in passing through the crystal, which alternately flash out and disappear as the crystal is turned round its axis, and which present a remarkable analogy to the curves into which the iron filings form themselves under the single or double poles of the magnet. _ The importance of this will _ appear afterwards. For the present it is suffi­ cient to show that the waves of ether which cause light really penetrate through the molecules of crystals, but in doing so may be affected by them. RINGS OF POLARISED LIGHT, UNIAXIAL CRYSTALS. RINGS OF POLARISED LIGHT, BIAXIAL CRYSTALS. In dealing with these excessively small magnitudes it may assist the reader who has a slight acquaintance with mathe­ matics, in forming some conception of them, to refer to that refinement of calcula­ tion, the differential and integral calculus. 'And even the non-mathematical reader may find it worth while to give a little attention in order to gain some idea of this celebrated calculus which was the 23 key by which Newton and his successors unlocked the mysteries of the heavens. The first rough idea of it is gained by considering what would happen if, in a calculation involving hundreds of miles, we neglected inches. Suppose we had a block of land to measure, 300 miles long and 200 wide 5 as there are, say, 5,000 feet in a mile, and the error from omitting inches could not exceed a foot, the utmost error in the measurement of length could not exceed Tiroioo oth, and in width 100000 0th part of the conect amount. In the area of 300 x 200 = 60,000 square miles, the limit of error would, by adding or . omitting the rectangle formed by multiplying together these two small errors, not exceed i7B0 0 0'<nr X ndmr = Tsooooiooinmrth part. It is evident that the first error is an excessively small part of the true figure, and the second error a still more excessively small part of the first error. But, as we are dealing with abstract numbers, we can just as readily conceive our initial error to be the iHth or 10 th of an meh as one inch, and, m fact, diminish it until it becomes an in­ finitesimally small or evanescent quantity. In doing so, however, it is evident that we shall make the second error such a still more infinitesimally small fraction of the first that it may be considered as altogether disappearing. The first error is called a differential of the first order and denoted by d, the second a differential of the second order denoted by ^2. Thus, if we call the base of our rectangle x and its height the area will be xy. Let us suppose x to receive the addition of a very small incre­ ment dx, and y the corresponding incre­ ment dy, what will be the corresponding increment of the area, or d.xyl Clearly the difference between the old area xy and the new area (xydx) multiplied by (y + dy). This multiplication gives:— •x + af# y + dy xy +y d x x dy -\-d x . dy xy + xdy +y d x'+ dx .dy �24 ETHER The difference between this and xy is xdyyy dx + dx . dy. But d x . dy is, as we have seen, a differential of the second order and may be neglected. Therefore dxy^x dy=y dx. In like manner dx2 = b: + dx'd-T = 2 xdx + da.2, which last term may be neglected, ’ and d x2 — 2 x d x. In this way the differentials of all manner of functions and equations of symbols representing dimensions and motions may be found. Conversely, the wholes may be considered as made up of an infinite number of these infinitely small parts, and found from them by summing up or integrating the differentials. Thus if we had the equation, d xy +y d x — 2 z d z, we know that the left-hand side is the differential of xy, and therefore that by integrating it we shall get xy; while the right side is the differential of z2, which we shall get by integrating it. The relation expressed therefore is that xy = z2, or, in other words, that a rec­ tangle whose sides are x and y exactly equals a square whose side is z. The use of this device in assisting cal­ culation will be apparent if we take the case of an area bounded by a curved line. We cannot directly calculate this area, but we can easily tell that of a rectangle. Now, it is evident that, if we inscribe rectangles in this area a b c, the more rectangles we inscribe the less will be the error in taking their sum as equal to the curved area. This is apparent if we compare fig. 2 with fig. 3. Suppose we take a point p on the curve, call B N = and P n =y, and suppose n n to be dx, the differentially small increment of x, and p q = dy the corresponding small increment of y. The area of the rectangle p q n n = p n x n n —y d x, and differs from the true curvilinear area P/ n N by less than the little rectangle of p Q x/ Q or of dx. dy. But, as we have seen, if we push our division to the first infinitesimal order, or make N/z and pq differentials of x and y, dx.dy may be neglected—/.<?., multiply the number of rectangles indefinitely, and the sum of their areas will differ from the true area enclosed by the curve by an error which is evanescent. If, then, x and y are connected by some fixed law, as must be the case if the extremity of y traces out some regular curve, the relation between them may be expressed by an equation, which will remain one however often it may be differentiated or again integrated, and whatever modifications or transfor­ mations it may receive by mathematical processes which do not alter the essential equality of the two sides connected by the symbol of equality =. Thus, by differentiating and casting off as evanes­ cent all differentials of a lower order than that which we are working with, we may arrive at forms of which we know the integrals, and by integrating get back to the results in ordinary numbers, which we were in search of, but could not attain directly. The same thing will apply if our symbols are more numerous, and .if they express relations of motion as well as of space, or, in fact, any relations which are governed by fixed laws expressible by equations. If I have succeeded in con­ veying to the readers any idea of this celebrated calculus, they will perceive what an analogy it presents to the idea of modern physical and chemical science, that of molecules, atoms, and ether, �ETHER 25 molecules and atoms; and the collision forming differentials of successive orders of billiard balls, knocked about at of the infinitely small. It is certainly random, to the movement of those most remarkable that, while the former minute bodies and the kinetic theory of was a purely intellectual idea based on gases. In the case of the vortex theory mathematical abstractions, and which the idea is given by the rings of smoke was invented and worked as an instru­ which certain adroit smokers amuse ment for solving the most intricate astro­ themselves by puffing into the air. These nomical problems for nearly two centuries, rings float for a considerable time, without a suspicion that it represented retaining their circular form, and showing any objective reality, the latter idea, their elasticity by oscillating about it and based on actual experiment, seems to returning to it if their form is altered, show that differentials and integrals have and by rebounding and vibrating ener­ their real counterpart in nature, and getically, just as two solid elastic bodies represent fundamental facts in the con­ would do if two rings come into collision. stitution of the universe. If we try to cut them in two, they recede Those who are of a mystic or meta­ before the knife, or bend round it, return­ physical turn of mind may try to prove ing, when the external force is removed, from this that matter and laws of matter to their original form without the loss of are, after all, only manifestations of one a single particle, and preserving their universal, all-pervading . mind ; but in own individuality through every change following such speculations we should of form and of velocity. This persis­ be deserting the solid earth for cloudland, tence of form they owe to the fact that and passing the limit of positive know­ their particles are revolving in small ledge into the region where reflections circles at right angles to the axis . or of our own hopes, fears, religious feelings, circumference of the larger circle which and poetical sentiments form and dissolve forms the ring; motion thus giving them themselves against the background of the stability, very much as in the familiar great unknown. For the present, there­ instance of the bicycle. They burst at fore, I confine myself to pointing out how these undoubted truths of mathe­ last because they are formed and rotate in the air, which is a resisting medium ; matical science, which have verified but mathematical calculation shows that themselves in the practical form of in a perfect fluid free from all friction enabling us to predict eclipses and con­ these vortex rings would be indivisible struct nautical almanacks, correspond with and throw light upon the equally certain and indestructible—in other words, they facts of this succession of infinitely small would be atoms. The vortex theory assumes, therefore, quantities of successive orders in the that the universe consists of one uniform constitution of matter. primary substance, a fluid which fills all An attempt has been made, based on abstruse mathematical calculations, to space, and that what we call matter consists of portions of this fluid which carry our knowledge of the constitution of matter one step further back, and have become animated with vortex identify atoms with ether. This is motion. The innumerable atoms which attempted by the vortex theory of Helm- form molecules, and through molecules holz, Lord Kelvin, and Professor Tait. all the diversified forms of matter of the material universe, are therefore simply so It is singular how some of the ultimate many vortex rings, each perfectly limited, facts discovered by the refinements of science correspond with some of the distinct, and indestructible, both as to its form, mass, and mode of motion. most trivial amusements. Thus the blowing of soap-bubbles gives the best They cannot change or disappear, nor clue to the movement of waves of light, can they be formed spontaneously. and through them to the dimensions of I Those of the same kind are constituted �26 ENERGY after the same fashion, and therefore are endowed with the same properties. Dr. Larmor has urged a further modi­ fication of this theory. But of late years the discovery of radio-action, or the dis­ integration of the atom, has led most physicists to conceive it as a little world of electrons which, infinitesimal in bulk (the electron is as much smaller than the atom as a small speck is from a house), make up the atom by the action of their forces. It is believed to be these electrons that cause the wave­ movements in ether that we perceive as heat and light, and cause the electrical condition of the atom. The inquiry is being pursued very assiduously just now among physicists, and will probably lead to a much higher comprehension of the nature of matter. Chapter IV. ENERGY Energy of motion and of position—Energy can be transformed, not created or destroyed—• Not created by free will—Conservation of mechanical power—Convertibility of heat and work—Nature of heat—The steam-engine— Different forms of energy—Gravity—Mole­ cular energy—Chemical energy—Dynamite— Chemical affinities—Electricity—Produced by friction—By the voltaic battery—Electric currents—Arc light—Induction—Magnetism —The magnetic needle—The electric tele­ graph — The telephone — Dynamo-electric engine—Accumulator. called energy of motion, in the latter energy of position. _ It is important to realise this distinction clearly, for many of the ordered and harmonious arrange­ ments of the universe depend on the polarity, or conflict with alternate vic­ tories and defeats, between those two forms of energy. Thus, if a b is a pendulum suspended at the point a, if we move it from its position of rest a c to a b and hold it there, its whole energy is that of position. If we let it go, it swings backwards and forwards between the positions a b and a d, and but for the resistance of the air and the friction at the point of suspen­ sion, it would so swing for ever. But in Those ultimate elements, however, atoms, electrons, and ether, only give us what may be called the dead half of the universe, which could not exist without the constant presence of the animating principle of force or energy. Energy is the term generally adopted in the lan­ guage of science, for force is apt to be associated with human effort and with actual motion produced, while energy is a comprehensive term, embracing what­ ever produces or is capable of producing motion. Thus, if we bend a cross-bow the force with which it is bent may either reappear at once in the flight of the arrow, if we' let go the spring; or it may remain stored up, if we fix the string thus swinging what happens ? From A b in the notch, ready to reappear when we to a c energy of motion keeps gaining pull the trigger. In the former case it is on energy of position, until when the �ENERGY pendulum reaches c it has annihilated it Energy of position has entiiely dis appeared, and the whole original force expended in raising the pendulum to AB exactly reappears in the force or momentum of the pendulum at its lowest point. But is this victory final ? By no means ; energy of position, having touched bottom, gathers, like Antaeus, fresh vigour for the contest, and from the position a c upwards it gains ground on its adversary, until, when the pendulum reaches a d, it is in its turn completely victorious. The same alternation between energy of motion and of position takes place in all rhythmical movements, such as waves, which, whether in water, air, or ether, are propagated, as in the case of the pen­ dulum, by particles forced out of their position of rest and oscillating between the two energies. Thus, if waves run along an elastic wire A B, the particle p, which has. been forced into the position p, oscillates backwards and forwards between^ and q, beginning with nothing but energy of position at p, losing it all for energy of motion at p, and regaining it at q. All wave-motions, therefore—that is to say, all sound, light, and heat—depend on this primitive polarity. If we have got this definition of the two forms of energy clearly into our heads, we shall be the better prepared for this further generalisation— the grandest, perhaps, in the whole range of modern science : that energy, like matter, is indestructible, and can only be transformed, but never created or annihilated. This is at first sight a more difficult proposition to establish in the case of energy than in that of matter. In the latter case we have nothing in our expe­ rience that can lead us to suppose that wc have ever created something out of 27 nothing; but in the former our first impression undoubtedly is that we do create force. If I throw a stone at a bird, I have an instinctive impression that the force which projects the stone is the creation of my own conscious will; that I had the choice either to throw or not to throw ; and that, if I had decided not to throw, the impelling force would never have existed. But, if we. look more closely at the matter, it. is not really so. The chain of events is this : the first impulse proceeds from the visual rays, which, concentrated by the lens of the eye on the retina, give an image of the bird ; this sends vibrations along the optic nerve to the brain, setting in motion certain molecules of that organ ; these, again, send vibrations along other nerves to certain muscles of the arm and hand, which contract, and by doing so give out the energy of move­ ment which throws the stone. All this process is strictly mechanical; the eye acts precisely like a camera obscura in forming the image; the nerve-vibrations, though not identical with those of the wires of an electric telegraph, are of the same nature, their velocity can be measured, and their presence detected by the galvanometer ; the energy of the muscle is stored there by the slow com­ bustion of the food we have eaten and the oxygen of the air we have breathed. Take any of these conditions away, and no effort of the will can produce the result. If the nerve is paralysed, or the muscle, from prolonged starvation, has no energy left, the stone will not be thrown, however much we may desire to kill the bird. Again, precisely the same circle of events takes place in numerous instances without any intervention of this addi­ tional factor of conscious will. We breathe mechanically, the muscles of the chest causing it to rise and fall like the waves of the ocean, without any deli­ berate intention of taking air into the lungs and exhaling it. Nay, more: there are instances of what was at first accom­ panied by the sensation of conscious �ENERGY 28 will, ceasing to be so when the molecular movements had made channels for them­ selves, as when a piano player, who had learned his notes with difficulty, ends by playing a complicated piece automati­ cally. The case of animals also raises another difficulty. Suppose a retriever dog sees his master shoot at and miss a hare: shall he obey the promptings of his animal instinct and give chase, or those of his higher moral nature which tell him that it is wrong to do so without the word of command? It is hard to see how this differs from the case of a man resisting or yielding to temptation ; and how, if we assign conscious will to the man, we can deny it to the dog. Reasoning from these premises, some philosophers have come to the conclu­ sion that man and all animals are but mechanical automata, cleverly con­ structed to work in a certain way fitting in with the equally pre-ordained course of outward phenomena; and that the sensation of will is merely an illusion arising as a last refinement in the adjust­ ment of the machinery. But here comes in that principle of duality or polarity by which a proposition may be at once true and untrue and two contradictory opposites exist together. No amount of philosophical reasoning can make us believe that we are altogether machines and not free agents; it runs off us like water from a duck’s back, and leaves us in presence of the intuitive conviction that to a great extent Man is man and master of his fate. If this be an illusion, why not everything —evidence of the senses, experiment, natural law, science, as well as morality and religion ? To pursue this farther would lead us far astray into the misty realm of meta­ physics, and I refer to it only as showing that the principle of the conservation of energy, standing as it does in apparent contradiction to our natural impressions, requires a fuller demonstration than the kindred principle of the indestructibility of matter. In the case of ordinary mechanical power it had been long known that the intervention of machinery did not create force, but only transformed it. If a weight of i lb., a, just balances a weight of 2 lb., b, by aid of a pulley, and by the addition of a minute fraction, such as a grain, raises it i foot, it will be invariably found that A has descended 2 feet. In other words, 1 lb. working through 2 feet does exactly the same work as 2 lbs. working through 1 foot. And, whatever may be the intervening machinery, the same thing holds good, and the work put in at one end comes out, neither more nor less, at the other, except for a minute loss due to friction and resistance of air. If a force equal to 1 lb. is made, by multiplying the intermediate machi­ nery, to raise a ton a foot from the ground, exactly as much force must have been exerted as if the ton had been divided into 2,240 parts of 1 lb. each, and each part separately lifted. But, although energy cannot be created, at first sight it seems as if it might be destroyed, as when the ton falls to the ground and seems to have lost all its energy, whether of motion or of position. But here science steps in and shows us that it is not destroyed, but simply trans­ formed into another sort of motion, which we call heat. Some connection between mechanical work and heat had long been known, as in the familiar experiment of rubbing our hands together to warm them; and the practice known to most primitive races of obtaining fire by twirling a stick rapidly in a hole drilled in a block of wood—a practice described by the old Sanskrit word “ pramantha,” which means an instrument for obtaining fire by pressure or friction, and which, trans­ lated into Greek, has been immortalised by the legend of Prometheus. But it was reserved for recent years, and for an English philosopher, Dr. Joule, to give scientific precision and generality to this �ENERGY 29 factors which have united to form it. idea, by actually measuring the amount Thus, if iron is burnt in oxygen gas, the of heat produced by a given amount of product, oxide of iron or rust, weighs work, and showing that they were in all cases convertible terms—so much heat more than the original iron by just as much as the weight of the oxygen which for so much work, and so much work for so much heat. He did this by has been consumed. But heat, light, and electricity add nothing to the weight measuring accurately by a thermometer of a body when they are added to it, and the heat added to a given amount of water by the work done by a set of take nothing away when they are sub­ tracted. The inference is unavoidable paddles revolving in it, set in rapid that heat, like light, is not ponderable motion by a known weight descending matter, but an energy transmitted by through a known space. The unit of waves of the imponderable medium know n work being taken as that sufficient to as ether. This is confirmed by finding raise 1 kilogramme through 1 metre, that, when a ray from the sun is analysed and that of heat as that required to by passing through a refracting. prism, raise the temperature of 1 kilogramme one part of the spectrum show’s light of of water by i° Centigrade, the relation various colours, while another gives heat. between them, as found by a vast number of careful experiments, is that of The hottest part of the spectrum lies in 424 to 1. That is, one unit of heat is the red and beyond it, showing that the heat-waves are longer, and their oscilla­ equal to 424 units of work. In this, and all cases requiring scientific tions slower, than those of light. Heatprecision, it is better to use the units of waves also may be made to interfere, the metrical system than our clumsy and to become polarised, in a manner English standards ; but it may be suffi­ analogous to the phenomena exhibited cient for the ordinary reader to take the by those of light. There can be no doubt, therefore, that metre, which is about 39.37 inches, as practically a yard, and the kilogramme, heat, like light, is an energy or mode of which is 15,432 English grains, as prac­ motion, transmitted by waves of an tically equal to 2 lbs. This is sufficient imponderable ether, and that it acts on to show the much greater energy of the the molecules and atoms of matter by invisible forces which act at minute dis­ the accumulated successive impulses of tances than that of gravity and other those waves on the molecules and atoms forces which do appreciable mechanical which are floating in it, or rather which work, the energy of a weight falling from are revolving in it, in definite groups and a height of more than 1,300 feet being fixed orbits, like miniature solar systems only sufficient to heat its own weight or starry universes. We can now see how heat performs work, and why work by i°. This proof of the convertibility of can be transformed into it. Heat performs work in two ways. work into heat gives much greater preci­ sion to our ideas respecting the real First, it expands bodies—that is, it draws nature of heat and its kindred molecular their molecules farther apart against the and atomic energies. Heat is clearly force of cohesion which binds them not a material substance, for a body together or keeps them moving in definite does not gain weight by becoming orbits at definite distances. It is as if hotter. In the case of all ponderable it increased the velocity, and therefore matter down to the atoms, which are the centrifugal force, of a system of only of the size of cricket-balls compared planets, and so caused them to revolve in to that of the earth, any combination wider orbits. The expansion of mercury which adds matter adds weight, and the in a thermometer affords a familiar in­ weight of the product exactly equals the stance of this effect of heat and the sum of the weights of the separate; readiest measure of its amount. Secondly, �30 ENERGY it increases the energy of the molecular lghting the coal, or, in other words, motions, so that they dart about, collide, separating its molecules more widely by and vibrate with greater force. Thus, as heat, we enable them to exert once more heat increases, evaporation increases their natural affinity for oxygen, and for molecules on the surface are pro­ burn, that is re-combine into carbonic jected with so much force as to dioxide. The heat thus produced turns get beyond the sphere of the cohesive water into steam, which passes through attraction which binds them to the a cylinder, either into a condenser if the system, and they dart off like comets steam js . at low pressure, or into the into space. Finally, as heat increases, outer air if it has been superheated and and more and more work is done, against brought to a higher pressure than that of the centripetal force of cohesion, most the atmosphere. The difference of the substances, and doubtless all if we could pressure or elasticity of the steam in the get heat enough, are converted from boiler, and of the same steam when it is solids into fluids, and ultimately into condensed or liberated, is available for gases, in which latter state the molecules doing work, and, being admitted and have got altogether beyond the sphere of released alternately at the two ends of their mutual attraction, and tend to dart the cylinder, drives a piston up and off indefinitely in the direction of their down, which, by means of cranks and own proper centrifugal motions, unless shafts,. turns a wheel or does whatever confined, in which case they dart about, work is required of it. In doing this collide, rebound, and exercise pressure heat disappears, being converted into on the containing surface. work, and the amount of heat would Conversely, if heat expands bodies, it exactly equal that into which the work is given out when they contract. Thus would be converted according to Joule’s the enormous quantity of heat poured law, if it could all be utilised without the out for millions of years by the sun is loss necessarily incurred by friction, probably owing mainly to the mechanical radiation, and the still more important force of contraction of the original cosmic absorption of latent heat required to matter condensing about the solar convert water at boiling-point into vapour nucleus. of the same temperature. This latter is Again, when gases suddenly expand not really an annihilation of the heat, their temperature falls, which is the but its conversion into work done in principle by which artificial ice is pro­ separating the molecules against the cured, and frozen beef and mutton are force of cohesion. The whole heat, brought from America and Australia, therefore, is transformed into work, producing, such are the complicated rela­ mainly molecular work in tearing mole­ tions of modern society, agricultural cules asunder, and the residue into depression, fall of rents, and a serious mechanical work turning spindles and aggravation of the Irish question. driving locomotives and steamboats. As an example of the converse pro­ The intermediate machinery here, position of the transformation of heat including the water in the boiler, is into mechanical work, the steam-engine merely the means of applying the original affords the aptest illustration. The energy in the particular way we desire, original power came from the sun l he essential thing is the transformation millions of years ago, and did work by or a certain amount of heat into work enabling the leaves of plants to overcome by passing, in accordance with the laws the strong mutual affinity of carbon and of heat, from a hotter to a colder body, oxygen in the carbonic dioxide in the lhe last condition is indispensable, for air, and store up the carbon in the plant, the nature of heat is to seek an equili­ where it remained since the coal era in brium by passing from hot to cold, and the form of energy of position. By no work can be got out of it in the �ENERGY reverse way. On the contrary, work must be expended and turned into heat to restore the temperature which has run down. The case is analogous to that of water, which, if raised by evaporation or stored up in reservoirs at a level above the sea, can be made to turn a wheel while it is running down; but, when it has all run down to the sea level, can do no more work, and can only be pumped up again to a higher level by the expen­ diture of fresh work. Owing to this tendency of heat, we can see that, although matter and energy are to all appearance indestructible, the present constitution of the universe is not eternal. The animating energy of heat is always tending to obliterate differences of temperature, and bring all energy down to one uniform dead level of a common average, in which no further life, work, or motion is possible. For­ tunately this consummation is far off, and for many tens or hundreds of millions of years the inhabitants of this tiny planet may feel fairly secure, and need not, like the late Dr. Cumming, of millenarian celebrity, introduce breaks in the leases of their houses to provide against the contingency of the world coming to an end at an early date. Moreover, recent physicists point out that there may be compensating processes in nature, so that the idea of all energy being finally trans­ formed into heat must not be taken too seriously. Dismissing, then, to the remote future any speculations as to the failure of this essential element of active energy, let us rather consider the various protean forms in which it shows itself. 1. The energy of visible motion, which, as we have seen, may be trans­ formed into an equivalent amount of energy of position. 2. Molecular energy, which causes the cohesive attraction, repulsion, and other proper motions of these minute and invisible particles of matter. 3. Energy of heat and light, which are transmitted by waves of the assumed imponderable medium called ether. 3i 4. Energy of chemical action, by which the small particles of ponderable matter, called atoms, separate and com­ bine into the various combinations of molecules constituting visible matter, in obedience to certain affinities, or inherent attractions and repulsions. 5. Electrical energy, which includes magnetism as a special instance. All these forms of energy may exist, as in the case of visible energy,. either as energies of motion or of position; and the actual constitution of the universe is due in a great measure to the alternation of these two energies. Thus all wave­ motion, whether it be of the waves of the sea grinding down a rocky coast, of the air transmitting sound, or of ether trans­ mitting light and heat, are instances of energies of motion and of position, con­ flicting with one another and alternately gaining the victory. So also a pound of gunpowder or dynamite has an immense energy of position, which, when its atoms are let loose from their mutual unstable connection by heat or percussion, mani­ fests itself in an enormous energy of motion, which is more or less destructive according to the rapidity with which the atoms rush into new combinations. Let us consider these different energies a little more in detail. The energy of visible motion is manifested principally by the law of gravitation, under which all matter attracts other matter directly as the mass and inversely as the square of the distance. The word “attract” must not be taken literally, as the real nature of the force is not yet clear; many physicists think the atoms are pushed towards each other rather than pulled by each other. It is a universal and uniform law of matter, and can be traced without change or variation from the minutest atom up to the remotest double star. The energy of living force might, at first sight, be considered as another of the commonest causes of visible motion ; but, when closely analysed, it will be found that what appears as such is only the result of molecular energy of position stored up �32 ENERGY in the living body by chemical changes equal to a ton for each square inch of f during the slow combustion of food, and section, as exemplified in the tubular s that nothing has been added by any bridge across the Menai Straits, where 1 hypothetical vital force. The conscious space has to be allowed for the free con­ s will seems to act in those cases simply as traction and expansion of the irotl under 1 the signalman who shows a white flag changes of temperature. ' Chemical energy, or the mutual attrac­ may act on a train which has been stand­ ing on the line waiting for. it.. The tions and repulsions of atoms, is even energy which moves the train is due more powerful than that of molecules entirely to the difference of heat, which It displays itself in their elective affinities, has been developed by the combustion or what may be called the likes and dis­ of coal, between the steam in the boiler likes, or loves and hatreds, of these and the steam when allowed to escape ultimate particles. Perhaps the best into the air; and this energy came illustration will be afforded by that “latest originally from the sun, whose rays resource of civilisation,” dynamite. This enabled the leaves.of growing plants to substance, or, to give it its scientific name, decompose carbonic dioxide and store nitro-glycerine, is composed of molecules up the carbon in the coal. Of this force each of which is a complex combination of gravitation causing visible motion we of nine atoms of oxygen, five of hydrogen, may say that it is comparatively a very three of nitrogen, and three of carbon. weak force, which acts uniformly over all Of these, oxygen and hydrogen have a strong affinity for one another, as is seen distances, great or small. Molecular energies, on the other hand, by their rushing together whenever they act with vastly greater force, but at very get the chance and by their union form­ small distances, and appear sometimes, as ing the very stable compound, water. attractive and sometimes as repulsive Oxygen and carbon have also a very forces. Thus solid bodies are . held strong affinity, and readily form the stable together by a force of cohesion which is product, carbonic dioxide gas. Nitrogen, very powerful, but acts only at . very on the other hand, is a very inert sub­ small distances, as we may see if we stance; its molecule consists of two break a piece of glass and try to mend it atoms of itself which are bound together by pressing the broken edges together. by a strong affinity, and can only, be We cannot draw them near enough to coaxed with difficulty into combinations bring the molecular attraction again into with other elements, forming compounds play and make the broken glass solid. which are, as it were, artificial structures, But the same glass acts with repellent and very unstable. We see this in the energy if another solid tries to penetrate air, which consists mainly of oxygen and it, so that we can walk on a glass floor nitrogen, but not in chemical combina­ without sinking into it. Heat, also, by tion, the oxygen being simply diluted by increasing the distance between the the nitrogen, as whisky is with water, molecules, first weakens the cohesive with the same object of diluting the too force so that the solid becomes fluid, and powerful oxygen or too potent alcohol, finally overcomes it altogether, so that it and enabling the air-breather or whisky­ passes into the state of gas in which the drinker to take them into the system centripetal attraction of the molecules is without burning up the tissues too rapidly. extinguished, and they tend to recede: If nitrogen had more affinity for oxygen, further and further from each. other■ it would combine chemically with it, and under the centrifugal force of their ownl we should live in an atmosphere of proper velocities. The great energy off nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. The molecule, therefore, of mtromolecular forces will be apparent fromL the fact that a bar of iron, in coolingr glycerine resembles a house of cards, so io° Centigrade, contracts with a force» | nicely balanced that it will just stand, �ENERGY but will fall to pieces at the slightest •oj| touch. When this is supplied by a slight "q I percussion, the molecule falls to pieces and is resolved into its constituent atoms, which rush together in accordance with their natural affinities, forming an mi immense volume of gas, partly of water rri in the form of steam where oxygen has CClj combined with hydrogen, and partly of ffiS carbonic dioxide where it has combined with carbon, leaving the nitrogen atoms •ol to pair off, and revert to their original ■ol form of two-atom molecules of nitrogen <£4 gas. It is as if ill-assorted couples, who t£$ had been united by matrimonial bonds >St3 tied by the manoeuvres of Belgravian :un mothers, found themselves suddenly freed yd by a decree of divorce a vinculo matri­ :'WS monii, and rushed impetuously into each I JO other’s arms, according to the laws of !3dJ their respective affinities. So striking is 3fij xthe similitude that one of Goethe’s bestyui known novels, the Wahlverwandschaften, takes its title from the human play of sdJ these chemical reactions. The enormous | energy developed when these atomic >10)1 forces are let loose, and a vast volume of asgi gas almost instantaneously created, is aijjs J attested by the destructive force by which the hardest rocks are shattered to pieces and the strongest buildings overthrown. These loves and hatreds, or, as they are termed, chemical affinities and repulsions of the atoms, are the principal means by Iqsi which the material structure of the universe gi is built up from the original elements. ,xlTj The earth, or solid crust of the planet we inhabit, consists mainly of oxidised jcLftdl bases, and is due to the affinity of oxygen . ipi for silicon, calcium, aluminium, iron, and xffd other primary elements of what are called . metals. This affinity enables them to £$ui make stable compounds, which, under -.hi the existing conditions of temperature Umj and otherwise, hold together and are not fe|'s| readily decomposed. Water in like tell manner, in all its forms of waves, seas, lakes, rivers, clouds, and invisible vapour, a is due to the affinity between oxygen poiand hydrogen forming a stable comwound. Salt, again, is owing to the huHiaffinity of chlorine for sodium, and so flw1 33 for nearly all the various products with which we are familiar, oxygen and nitro­ gen in the air we breathe being almost the only elements which exist in their primary and uncombined state in any considerable quantities, and form an essential part of the conditions which render our planet a habitable abode for man and other forms of life. We shall see presently something more of the nature of these affinities, and the laws by which they act; but before entering on this branch of the subject we must consider the remaining form in which the one indestructible energy of the universe manifests itself—viz., that of electricity. Electricity is the most subtle and the least understood of these forms. In its simplest form it appears as the result of friction between dissimilar substances. Thus, if we rub a glass rod with a piece of silk, taking care that both are warm and dry, we find that the glass has acquired the property of attracting light bodies, such as little bits of paper, or balls of elder-pith. Other substances, such as sealing-wax and amber, have the same property. Pursuing our research further, we find that this influence is not, like that of gravity, uniform and always acting in the same direction, but of two kinds, equal and opposite. If we touch the pith-ball by the excited glass rod, it will after contact be repelled; but if we bring the ball which has been excited by contact with the glass within the influence of a stick of sealing-wax which has been excited by rubbing it with warm dry flannel, the ball, instead of being repelled, is attracted. Conversely, if the pith-ball has been first touched by excited ceiling-wax, it will afterwards be repelled by excited ceiling-wax and attracted by excited glass. It is clear, therefore, that there are two opposite electricities, and that bodies charged with similar electricities repel, and with unlike electricities attract, one another. For convenience, one of these electricities, that developed in glass, is called positive, and the other negative; D �34 ENERGY and it has been clearly proved that one cannot exist without the other, and that, whenever one electricity is produced, just as much is produced of an opposite description. If positive electricity is produced in glass by rubbing it with silk, just as much negative electricity is produced upon the silk. Another.primary fact is that some sub­ stances are able to carry away and diffuse or neutralise this peculiar influence called electricity, while others are unable to do so and retain it. The former are called conductors, the latter non-conductors. Thus, glass is an insulator or non-con­ ductor, while metal is a conductor of electricity ; and the reason why the sub­ stances rubbed together, as glass and silk, must be dry is that water, in all its forms, is a conductor which carries away the electricity as fast as it is produced. These facts led to the formation of a theory of the existence of two opposite electric fluids, which, in the ordinary or unexcited body, are combined and neu­ tralise one another, but are separated by friction, and flow in opposite directions, accumulating at opposite poles, or, it may be, one being accumulated at one pole, while the other is diffused through some conducting medium and lost sight of. The latest discoveries in physics have, however, disposed us to conceive the process differently. Electricity is the substratum of matter. Lord Kelvin says that “ the atomic theory of electricity is now universally accepted.” We have seen that it is the tiny particles of the electric charge, the electrons, that make up the atom; and the positive or nega­ tive state of the atom (and therefore of the mass composed of atoms) is thought to depend on the number of its com­ ponent particles. However, there is a great analogy between electrical energy and those of heat and of chemical affinity. The same mechanical work—viz., friction—which generates heat, generates electricity. The chief difference seems to be that friction may be transformed into heat when the same substances are rubbed together, as in the case of obtaining fire by the fric­ tion of wood ; but electricity can only be obtained by friction between dissimilar substances. Thus no electricity is ob­ tained by rubbing glass upon glass, or silk upon silk, or upon glass covered with silk, though a slight difference of texture is sometimes sufficient to separate the electric fluids. Thus, if two pieces of the same silk ribbon are rubbed together, lengthways, no electricity is produced, but if crossways, one is positively, and the other negatively, electrified. In this respect, the analogy is evident to chemi­ cal affinity, which, in like manner, only acts between dissimilar bodies. The analogy is even more striking when we follow up electricity far beyond the simple manifestations of the glass rod and sealing wax, and pursue it to its origin, in the transformations of chemical action and mechanical work, in the voltaic battery, the electric telegraph, the telephone, and the dynamo. The voltaic battery, in its simplest form, is a trough containing an acid liquid in which pairs of plates of different metals are immersed. It is evident that, if the action of the acid on each metal were precisely the same, equal quantities of each would be dissolved in the acid, and the equilibrium of chemical energies would not be affected. But, the action being different, this equilibrium is dis­ turbed, and if the sum of these distur­ bances for a number of separate pairs of plates can be accumulated, it will become considerable. This is done by connecting the plates of the same metal in each cell by a metallic wire, covered by some non-conducting substance. There are, therefore, two wires, one to the right hand, the other to the left, the loose extremities of which are called the poles of the battery. If we test these poles as we did the glass rod and stick of sealing-wax, we find that one pole is charged with positive and the other with negative electricity. In other words, the chemical energy, whose equilibrium was disturbed by the unequal action of the �ENERGY acid on the plates of different metals, has been transformed into electrical energy, manifesting itself, as it always does, under the condition of two equal and opposite polarities. If we connect these two poles with one another, the two electricities rush together and unite, and there is established what is called an electrical current circulating round the battery. As the chemical action of the acid on the metals is not momentary, but continuous, the acid taking up molecule after mole­ cule of the metal, so also the current is continuous. When we call it a current, the term is used for the sake of con­ venience ; for as the current, as we shall presently see, will flow along the wire or other conducting substance for immense distances, as across the Atlantic, with a velocity of many thousands of miles per second, we can no more than in the case of light figure it to ourselves as an actual transfer of material particles swept along as by a river running with this enormous velocity. In a free current of electricity the particles are literally shot forth, but along a solid they are only transmitted from atom to atom, as in the wave motion of heat. Be this as it may, the effect of these electric currents is very varied and very energetic. It can pro­ duce intense heat, for if, instead of uniting the two poles, we connect them by a thin platinum wire, it will, in a few seconds, become heated to redness. If the connecting wire is thicker, heat will equally be generated, but less intense, thus maintaining the analogy to the current which rushes with more im­ petuosity through a narrow than through a wide channel. If the poles are tipped with a solid substance like carbon, whose particles remain solid under great heat, when they are brought nearly together intense light is produced, and the carbon slowly burns away. This produces what is called the arc light, which gives such a strong illuminating power, and is coming into general use for lighting up large spaces. Another transformation is back again into chemical energy, which is shown by 35 the power of the electric current to decompose compound substances. If, for instance, the poles of a battery are plunged into a vessel containing water, the molecules of the water will be decomposed and bubbles of oxygen gas will rise from the positive, and of hydrogen from the negative, pole. Another effect of electrical currents is that of attraction and repulsion on one another. If two parallel wires, free to move, carry currents flowing in the same direction as from positive to negative, or vice versa, they will attract one another ; if in opposite directions, they will repel. Electrical currents also work by way of induction—that is, they disturb the elec­ trical equilibrium of bodies brought within their influence and induce cur­ rents in them. Thus, if we have two circular coils of insulated wire placed near each other, one on the right hand, the other on the left, and connect the extremities of the right-hand coil with the poles of a battery, when the connec­ tion is first made and the current begins to flow, a momentary current in the opposite direction will pass through the left-hand coil. This will cease, and as long as the current continues to flow through the right-hand coil there will be no current through the other; but if we break the contact between the right-hand coil and the battery, there will be again a momentary current through the left­ hand coil, but this time in the same direction as the other. The same effect will be produced if, instead of making and breaking contact in the right-hand coil, we keep the current constantly flow­ ing through it,’and make the right-hand coil alternately approach and recede from the other coil. In this case, when the right-hand coil approaches, it induces an opposite current in the left-hand one ; and when it recedes, one in the same direction as that of the primary. These phenomena of induction prepare us to understand the nature of magnets, and the magnetic effects produced by electrical currents. If an insulated wire is wrapped round a cylinder of soft or �36 ENERGY unmagnetic iron, and a current passed through the wire, the cylinder is con­ verted into a magnet and becomes able to sustain weights. If the current ceases, the cylinder is no longer a magnet, and drops the weight. A magnet is therefore evidently a substance in which electric currents are circulating at right angles to its axis, and a per­ manent magnet is one in which such currents permanently circulate from the constitution of the body without being supplied from without. The earth is such a magnet, and also iron and other substances, under certain conditions. This being established, it is easy to see why an electrical current deflects the magnetic needle. If such a needle is suspended freely near a wire parallel with it, on a current being passed through the wire it must attract if similar, or repel if dissimilar, the currents which are circulating at right angles to the axis of the needle, and thus tend to make the needle swing into a position at right angles with the wire, so that its currents may be parallel to that of the needle. This is the reason why the needle in its ordinary condition points to the north and south, or rather to the magnetic poles of the earth, because its currents are influenced by the earth currents which circulate parallel to the magnetic equator. The deviation of the needle from this direction, caused by any other current, like that passed along the wire, will depend on the strength of the current, which may be measured by the amount of deflection of the needle. The direction in which the needle deflects—viz., whether the north pole swings to the right or to the left, will depend on the direction of the current through the wire. The direction of the circular currents which form a magnet is such that if you look towards the north pole of a freely suspended cylindrical magnet —i.e., if you stand on the north of it and look southwards—the positive current will ascend on your right hand, or on the west side, and descend on the east. It follows that unlike poles must neces­ sarily attract and like poles repel one another, for in the former case the circular currents which face each other are going in the same and in the latter in opposite directions. The reader is now in a position to understand the principle of the electric telegraph, that wonderful invention which has revolutionised human intercourse and, to a great extent, annihilated space and time. It originated in the discovery made by Oersted, a Danish savant, that the effect of an electric current was to make a magnet swing round, in the endeavour to place itself at right angles to it. The conducting power of insulated copper wire is such that it practically makes no difference whether one of the wires connected with the pole of a battery is two feet or 2,000 miles in length, and the earth, being a conducting medium, supplies an equal extension from the other pole, so that a closed electric circuit may be established across the Atlantic as easily as within the walls of a laboratory. If, therefore, a magnetic needle is sus­ pended at the American end, it will respond to every electrical current, and to any interruption, renewal, or reversal of that current established in England. The needle may thus be made to swing to the right or left, by forming or revers­ ing a current through the wire; and it will return to its position whenever the current is interrupted, and repeat its movement whenever the current is renewed. In fact, it may be made to move like the arm of the old-fashioned telegraph, or of a railway signal. It only remains to have a machine by which the operator can form and interrupt currents rapidly, and a code by which certain movements of the needle stand for cer­ tain letters of the alphabet, and you have the electric telegraph. There are many ingenious applications of the machinery, but in principle they all resolve themselves into transformations of energy. Chemical energy is trans­ formed into electric energy, . and that again into mechanical work in moving �ENERGY the needle or other apparatus used. It has now been found possible to dispense with the wires altogether, as. in the Marconi system, and the transmitter and receiver of the electric current are very elaborate. The telephone is another instance of similar transformations. Here, spoken words create vibrations of the air, which cause corresponding vibrations in a thin plate or disc of metal at one end, which are conveyed by intermediate machinery to a similar disc at the other end, whose vibrations cause similar vibrations in the air, reproducing the spoken words at a distance which may be a great many miles from the speaker. The great inventions of modern science which have so revolutionised society are all instances of the law of the conserva­ tion of energy. Man makes the powers of nature available for his purposes by transforming them backwards and for­ wards, now into one, now into another form of energy, as required for the result he wishes to attain. He wants mechanical power to pump water or drive a locomo­ tive or steamboat: he gets it from the steam-engine, by transforming the energy of heat in coal, which came ages ago from the energy of chemical action pro­ duced by the sun’s rays in the green leaves of growing plants. He wants to send messages in a few seconds across the Atlantic : he does it by transforming chemical energy into electricity in a voltaic battery, sending its vibrations along a conducting wire, and converting it at the far end into mechanical power, making a magnetic needle turn on its axis and give signals. If, instead of sending a message, he wants to hold a conversation at a distance, he invents the telephone, by which sound-vibrations of air are transformed into vibrations of a disc, then into electric currents, then into vibrations of a distant disc, and finally back again to spoken words. Or, if he wants light, he turns electricity into it by tipping the poles of his battery with carbon and bringing them close together. '37 The latest inventions of electrical science—the dynamo and the accumu­ lator—afford remarkable instances of this convertibility of one primitive energy into different forms. In the instance just quoted, of obtaining light from electricity by the voltaic battery, the cost has hitherto proved an obstacle to its adoption. The electrical energy is all obtained from-the transformation of the heat produced in the cells by the chemical action on the metal used, which is commonly zinc. Now, the heat of combination of zinc with oxygen is only about one-sixth of that of coal, while the cost of zinc is about twenty times as great. Theoretically, therefore,, energy got by burning zinc costs 120 times as much as that got by burning coal. Practically the difference is not nearly so great, for there is very little loss of energy in the battery by the process, of conversion, while the best steam-engine cannot convert into work as much astwenty per cent, of the heat energy in the coal consumed. Still, after making every allowance, the cost of energy from zinc remains some twenty times as great as from coal, so that, unless some process, is found for obtaining back the zinc as a residual product, there is no prospect of this form of electricity being generally available for light or for mechanical power. The dynamo is an instrument invented for the mechanical generation of elec­ tricity by taking advantage of the prin­ ciple that electrical energy is produced by moving magnets near coils of wire, or coils of wire near magnets. A current is thus started by induction, and, once started, the mechanical power exerted in making the magnet or coils revolve is continually converted into electricity until the accumulated electrical energy becomes very powerful. The original energy comes, of course, from the coal burned in the steam-engine which makes the magnet or coils revolve. The principle of the conservation of energy is well illustrated by the fact that, as the dynamo generates an electric �38 ENERGY current if made to revolve, conversely it may be made to revolve itself if an electric current is sent through it from an exterior source. It is, therefore, available not only as a source of light in the former case, but as a direct source of mechanical power in the latter. It is on this principle that electric engines are constructed and electric railways are worked. Here also it is a question of cost and convenience, for you can only get electricity enough, either to light a street or to drive an engine, by an original steam-engine or other motive power to work the dynamo; and a system of conducting wires to convey the elec­ tricity to the place where the light or power is wanted. Where the motive power is supplied by nature, as in the case of tidal or river currents or water­ falls, it is quite possible that power may be obtained in this way to compete with that obtained directly from the steamengine ; but there are as yet considerable practical difficulties to be overcome in the transmission of any large amount of -energy for long distances. To overcome some of these difficulties the accumulator has been invented, which affords yet another remarkable instance of the transformation of energy. It consists of two lead plates immersed in acidulated water. When a strong electrical current is sent through the water it decomposes it, the oxygen going to one lead plate and the hydrogen to the other. The oxygen attacks the lead plate to which it goes, forming peroxide of lead; while the hydrogen reduces any oxide in the other plate, producing pure lead, and leaving a film of surplus hydrogen on the surface. The charging current is then reversed, so that the latter plate is now attacked and the former one reduced, when the current is again reversed. By continuing this pro­ cess the surfaces of both lead plates become porous, so that they present a large surface, and can therefore hold a great deal of peroxide of lead. The charging current being now broken, the oxygen which has been forcibly separated from the liquid seeks to recombine with hydrogen ; and if the two lead plates are joined by a wire, this effect of the oxygen generates an electrical current in the opposite direction to the original one, which is the current utilised. Electricity is thus stored up in a portable box, where it can be kept till wanted, when it is drawn out by connecting the plates, and, as a large amount of energy has been accumulated, the current which is produced lasts for a considerable time. Unfortunately, accumulators are bulky, heavy, and expensive, and nearly half the energy of the original charging current is lost in obtaining the reversed or working current. They are therefore not as yet adapted for general use, though perfectly capable of supplying either light or motive power, for both which purposes they have been success­ fully applied in special cases. The future both of electric power and electric lighting is now reduced entirely to a question of cost; and though it is hard to beat gas and the steam engine, with cheap coal, and air and water for nothing, it is possible that by using natural sources of power to move dynamos, and by obtaining zinc back as a residual product in batteries, electricity may in certain cases carry the day. A visit to any modern electrical exhibition will show that it is rapidly displacing the older motive forces at every turn. �POLARITY IN MATTER 39 Chapter V. POLARITY IN MATTER Ultimate elements of universe—Built up by polarity—Experiment with magnet—Chemical affinity—Atomic poles—Alkalies and acids— Quantivalence — Atomicity — Isomerism — Chemical stability — Thermo-chemistry —Definition of atoms—All matter built up by polar forces. I almost fear that by this time some of my readers may think that I have seduced them under false pretences to read long chapters of dry science, when they had been led from the introduction to anticipate discussions on the more immediately interesting topics of morals, religions, and philosophies. My excuse must be that these scientific subjects are really of extreme interest in themselves and indispensable as a solid basis for the superstructure to be raised on them. How can I attempt to show that the law of polarity extends to the more complex problems of human thought and life if I fail in establishing its application to the simpler case of inorganic force and matter? It must be recollected also that among the primitive polarities is that of author and reader. It is my part to endeavour to present the leading facts and laws of the material universe in such plain and popular language that the ordinary reader who has neither time nor faculty for special studies may apprehend them clearly without excessive effort or extraordinary intelligence. But it is the reader’s part to supply a fair average amount of attention, and above all to feel an interest in interesting matters. Clever­ ness and curiosity are very much con­ vertible terms, and the clearest exposition is thrown away on the torpid mind which views the marvellous universe in which he has the privilege to live with the stupid apathy of the savage, taking things as they come without caring to know any­ thing about them. ' For the reader’s part of the work I am not responsible; but for my own I am, and I proceed therefore to give in my own way, and with the best faculty that is in me, a clear summary of such of the fundamental facts and laws of nature as seem necessary for the work I have undertaken. From the preceding chapters we are now able to realise what are the ultimate elements of the material universe, and it remains to show how they are put together. The elements are ether, energy, and matter. First, ether: a universal, all-pervading, medium, imponderable or infinitely light, and almost infinitely elastic, in which all matter, from suns and planets down to molecules and atoms, float as in a bound­ less ocean, and whose tremors or vibra­ tions, propagated as waves, transport the different forms of energy, light, heat, and electricity, across space. Secondly, energy : a primitive, indes­ tructible something, which causes motion and manifests itself under its many diver­ sified forms, such as gravitation, mecha­ nical work, molecular and atomic forces,, light and heat, all of which are merely Protean transformations of the one funda­ mental energy, and convertible into each other. Thirdly, matter: the ultimate elements of this are the electrons, or electric particles, which combine to form atoms these in turn build up molecules, or little pieces of ordinary matter with all its qualities, which are the bricks used in building all the varied structures of the organic and inorganic worlds. Of these atoms some seventy-eight have been dis­ tinguished, and, although we suspect that they are merely combinations or trans­ formations of one original matter, it is still convenient to consider them as �4° POLARITY IN MATTER elementary. In like manner we may suspect that matter is in reality only another form of energy, and that the im­ pression of solidity is given by the action of a repellent force which is very energetic at short distances. If this were estab­ lished, we might look forward to the generalisation that energy was the one reality of nature ; but for the present it is a mere speculation, and we must be content to pursue our inquiry into the nature and unions of the electrons. In any case this much is certain, that matter, like energy, is indestructible. We have absolutely no experience of either of them being created or annihi­ lated. Nay, more, we have no faculties to enable us even to conceive how some­ thing can be made out of nothing; and all we know, or can ever know, about these primitive constituents of the universe concerns their laws of existence, their evolutions and their transformations. Minute as the electrons and atoms and molecules are, we must conceive of them : not as stationary and indissolubly con­ nected, but rather as little solar systems ■in which revolving electrons form the atom, revolving atoms form the molecule, and revolving molecules form the matter, held together as separate systems by their proper energies and motions, until some superior force intruding breaks up the system and sets its components free lo form new combinations. What is the principle which thus forms, •un-forms, and re-forms the various com­ binations of atomic and molecular systems by which the world is built up from its constituent elements ? It is polarity. As I began with the illustration of the magnet introducing order and harmony into the confused mass of iron filings, let me take this other illustration from the same source. If we place an iron bar in con­ tact with the pole of a magnet, the bar becomes itself a magnet with opposite poles to the original one, so that, as opposite poles attract, the iron bar adheres to it. Bring a lump of nickel in contact with the further end or free pole of the iron bar, and the nickel also will be magnetised and adhere. Let the lump of nickel be as large as the pole of the iron bar is able to support, and now bring a lump of soft iron near this pole. It will drop the nickel and take the iron. This is exactly similar to those cases of chemical affinity in which a molecule drops one of its factors and takes on another to which its attraction is stronger. If iron rusts in water, it is because the oxygen atom drops hydrogen to take iron, just as the magnet dropped nickel. The polarity of chemical elements is attested by the fact that, when compounds are decomposed by the electric current, the different elementary substances appear at different poles of the battery. Thus oxygen, chlorine, and non-metallic substances appear at the positive pole; while hydrogen, potassium, and metals generally, appear at the negative one. The inference is irresistible that the atoms had in each case an opposite polarity to that of the poles to which they were attracted. This is confirmed by the fact that the radicals—i.e., the elementary atoms or groups of atoms which have opposite polarities—combine readily; while those which have the same polarity, as two metals, have but slight affinity for each other. Like there­ fore attracts unlike, as in all cases of polarity, and the greater- the degree of unlikeness the stronger is the attraction. Thus, the radicals of all alkalies are electro-positive, and appear at the nega­ tive pole of a battery; while those of acids are all electro-negative, and the higher each stands in its respective scale of polarity the more strongly does it show the peculiar qualities of acid or alkali and the more eagerly does it com­ bine with its opposite. Acids and alkalies are, in fact, all members of the same class of compounds called Hydrates, because a single atom of hydrogen is a common feature in their composition. This atom is coupled with a single atom of oxygen, which may be conceived of as the central magnet holding the hydrogen atom at one pole, �POLARITY IN MATTER 4i while at the other it holds either a single hydrogen, just as the magnet dropped atom of some metallic element, such as nickel and took iron. This polarity of chemical elements potassium or sodium, or a group consist­ ing, of such an element together with manifests itself in different ways. In atoms of oxygen, so constituted as to some cases it appears like that of. a present a single pole to the attraction of magnet, in which there are two opposite the central oxygen atom. Thus, if K poles, and two only, one at each end. stands for kali or potassium, N for Thus oxygen (O) is bipolar, and its atom nitrogen, O for oxygen, and H for holds together two atoms of hydrogen hydrogen, we may have the compounds (H) in forming the molecule of water, which may be represented as H + H - O - K O + - H, which is equivalent to iron The former is the molecule of potassic hydrate, which is the most caustic or strongest of alkalies; the latter, that of nitric acid, the most corrosive or power­ ful of acids. These are the extremes of the series, of which there are many intermediate members, all being more or less alkaline, that is caustic and turning litmus-paper blue, when the third element is a simple metallic atom; and acid, corrosive, and turning litmus-paper red, when it is a compound radical of a group of metallic and oxygen atoms. This shows to what an extent whole classes of substances may have a general resem­ blance in their constitution, and yet differ most widely in their qualities by the sub­ stitution of one element for another. These special qualities may be made to diminish and finally disappear by mixing the two opposite substances, or, as it is called, neutralising an acid by an alkali or an alkali by an acid. Thus, if hydrochloric acid, H Cl, be poured into a solution of sodic-hydrate, Na - O - H, the alkaline qualities of the latter diminish and finally disappear, the result of the neutral solution being water, H - O - H, and sodic-chloride, or common salt, Na-Cl. It is evident that this result has been produced by the hydrogen atom in H - Cl and the sodium atom in Na - O - H changing places, the former preferring to unite with oxygen to form water, while the displaced sodium atom finds a refuge with chlorine. The oxygen atom has dropped sodium and taken __________ | n| s |magnet[ N |s_|. Others, again, like hydrogen and chlorine, seem to have only a single pole, as in the case of electricity in an excited glass rod, and „ have to create for themselves the opposite pole, which is the indispensable con­ dition of all polarity, by. induction in another body. Thus, muriatic or hydro­ chloric acid is formed by the union of a single atom of chlorine, which is strongly negative, with a single atom of hydrogen, in which it appears to have induced a positive pole; though the combination is not a very stable one, for, if an element with a stronger positive pole of its own is presented to the chlorine, it drops the hydrogen, just as the magnet drops the nickel. Other atoms are multipolar, and seem as if made up of more than one magnet, or rather as if the atom had regular shape like a triangle, square, or pentagon, and each angle was a pole, thus enabling it to unite with three, four, five, or more atoms of other substances. Thus, one atom of nitrogen unites with three of hydrogen, one of carbon with four of hydrogen, and so on. . Every substance has, therefore, what is called its “ quantivalence,” or power of uniting with it a greater or less quantity of other atoms, and conversely that of replacing in combinations other atoms, or groups of atoms, the sum of whose quantivalence equals its own. Thus, one atom of carbon, which has four poles, combines with four atoms of hydrogen or chlorine, which is unipolar, but with only two of oxygen, which is bipolar; while the oxygen atom combines with two of �42 POLARITY IN MA TTER hydrogen, and that of chlorine with one atom only of hydrogen. The analogy between the single atomic and electrical poles on the one hand, and the dual and magnetic poles on the other, will be evident if we consider what occurs if a pith-ball, electrified positively, is brought near a similar ball electrified negatively. They attract each other, and the one becomes the pole of the other; but if separated, each carries with it its own electrical charge. But the separate balls or poles, though no longer influencing each other, are not isolated, for each draws by induction an electrical charge opposite to its own to the extremity of the nearest conductor, and thus creates for itself a new or second pole. Polarity, in fact, involves opposition of relations, or two poles, and electrical only differs from magnetic polarity in the fact that in the latter the two poles are in the same body, while in the former they are in separate bodies. For pith-balls read atoms, and we have an explanation of the univalent atoms like those of chlorine and sodium which act as single poles : and this is confirmed by the fact that such atoms are never found isolated, but are always associated in a molecule with at least one other atom which forms the opposite pole of the molecular system. Bivalent or magnetic atoms, on the other hand, which have two poles, like those of mercury and zinc, may constitute a complete polar system, and be found isolated, and form the class of molecules which consist of single atoms. This conception of the polarity of atoms enables us to understand the way in which the almost infinite variety of substances existing in the world is built up from a comparatively few simple elements. Atoms and radicals, which are multipolar, can attract and form molecules with as many other atoms or radicals as they have poles. This is called their degree of atomicity, which is the same as their quantivalence; and each of these atoms or radicals may be replaced by some other atom or radical, which presents to any pole a more powerful polarity. Thus, compounds may be built up of great and varied complexity, for the quality of any com-, pound may be greatly altered by any one of the substitutions at any one of the poles. And the molecules, or small specimens of matter, may be thus built up into very complex aggregations of atoms, some single molecules containing more than a hundred atoms. Thus, carbon has four poles, or is quadrivalent, and its atoms possess the power of com­ bining among themselves to an almost indefinite extent and forming groups of great stability. Thus, carbon radicals may be formed in very great number, each affording a nucleus upon which compound radicals may be built up, so that carbon has been aptly called the skeleton of almost all the varied com­ pounds of the more complex forms of inorganic matter as well as the principal foundation of organic life. Nor is this all, for the qualities of substances depend not only on the quali­ ties of their constituent elements, but also on the manner in which these elements are grouped. Two substances may have exactly the same chemical composition and yet be very different. We may suppose that the same elements affect us differently according as they are grouped. Thus, the same bricks may be built up either into a cube or pyramid, which forms are extremely stable and can only be taken to pieces brick by brick; or into a Gothic arch, which all tumbles to pieces if a single brick form­ ing the keystone is displaced. As an instance of this, butyric acid, which gives the offensive odour to rancid butter, has exactly the same composition as acetic ether, which gives the flavour to a ripe apple. They consist of the same number of atoms of the same elements— carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen—united in the same proportions. This applies to a number of substances, and is called Isomerism, or formation of different wholes from the same parts. The principle of polarity, therefore, �POLARITY IN MA TTER aided by the subsidiary conditions of quantivalence, atomicity, and isomerism, gives the clue to the construction of the inorganic world out of some seventy­ eight elementary substances. Of the sub­ stances thus formed, whether of mole­ cules or of combinations of molecules, some are stable and some unstable. As a rule, the simpler combinations are the most stable, and instability increases with complexity. Thus the diamond, which is merely a crystal of pure carbon, is very hard and indestructible; while dynamite, or nitro-glycerine, which is a very com­ plex compound, explodes at a touch. The stability of a substance depends partly on the stable structure of its com­ ponent elements, and partly on their mutual affinity being strong enough to keep them together in .presence of the attractions of other outside elements, which, in the case of most natural sub­ stances at the surface of the earth, con­ sist principally of air and water. Thus, the rocks, earths, metallic oxides, water, carbonic dioxide, and nitrogen are ex­ tremely stable, and resist decomposition, or chemical union with other substances, with great energy. With regard to all substances this law holds good, that the tendency is to fall back from a less stable to a more stable condition, and that such a falling back is always attended with an evolution of heat; while, on the other hand, heat is always absorbed and dis-’ appears whenever the elements of a more stable substance are made to enter into a less stable condition. Thus, when wood bums, there is a falling back from a substance unstable, on account of its affinity for the oxygen in the air, into the stable products, carbonic dioxide and water, and the heat evolved is the effect of this fall. 43 As the tendency of all changes is towards stability, we arrive at the follow­ ing law, which is one of the most recent generalisations of modern chemistry : In all cases of chemical change the tendency is to those products whose formation^ will determine the greatest evolution., of heat. This, however, does not imply that the tendency may not be overcome and unstable products formed, for just as a weight may be lifted against the force of gravity, so may the chemical tendency be overcome by a sufficient energy acting against it. Heat is the principal means of supplying this energy, and by increas­ ing it sufficiently not only are molecules drawn apart and most solids converted into fluids and finally into gases, but there is reason to believe that at extremely high temperatures, such as may prevail in the sun, all matter would be resolved into isolated or dissociated atoms. As­ tronomers, indeed, think they have detected matter with even its atoms disintegrated in some of the stars. Thus, water at a temperature of i,2ooa is resolved into a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen atoms no longer chemically united into water-molecules; and iodinevapour, which below 700° degrees con­ sists of molecules of two atoms, above that temperature consists of single atoms only. The subject might be pursued further, but enough has been said for the present purpose to show that the universe con­ sists of atoms which are endowed with polarity, and that as diminished tempera­ ture allows these atoms to come closer together and form compounds, matter in all its forms is built up by the action of polar forces. �44 POLARITY IN LIFE Chapter VI. POLARITY IN LIFE Contrast of living and dead—Eating and being eaten—Trace matter upwards and life down­ wards — Colloids — Cells — Protoplasm — Monera— Composition of protoplasm — Es­ sential qualities of life—-Nutrition and sensa­ tion — Motion — Reproduction—Spontaneous generation—Organic compounds—Polar con­ ditions of life. Polarity having been established as the universal law of the inorganic world, we have now to pass to the organic, or world of life. At first sight there seems to be a great gulf fixed between the living and the dead which no bridge can span. But first impressions are very apt to deceive us, and when things are traced up to their origins we often find them getting nearer and nearer, until it is difficult to say where one begins and the other ends. Take, for instance, such an antithesis as “ eating or being eaten.” If a hunter meets a grizzly bear in the Rocky Mountains, one would say that no distinction can be sharper than whether the bear eats ■the man or the man the bear. In the •one case there is a man, and in the other •a bear, less in the world. But look through a microscope at a glass of water, and you may see two specks of jelly-like substance swimming in it. They are living creatures, for they eat and grow, and thrust out and retract processes of their formless mass, which serve as temporary legs and arms for seizing food and for voluntary motion. In short, they are each what may be called strictly individual amcebae, forming separate units of the animated creation as much as the man and the bear. But if the two happen to come in contact, what happens ? The two slimy masses involve one another and coalesce, and the resulting amoeba swims -away merrily as two gentlemen rolled into one. Now, in this case what became of their individualities ? Did amoeba A eat amoeba B, or vice versa, and is the resulting amoeba a survival of A or of B, or of both or neither of them? And what becomes of the antithesis of “eating or being eaten ” which was so clear and distinct in the highly specialised forms of life, and is so evanescent in the simpler forms ? This illustration may serve to teach us how necessary it is to trace things up to their origins, before express­ ing too trenchant and confident opinions as to their nature and relations. In the case of the organic and inor­ ganic worlds the proper course obviously is, not to draw conclusions from extreme and highly specialised instances, but to follow life downwards to its simplest and most primitive form, and matter upwards to the form which approaches most nearly to this form of life. Following matter upwards, we find a regular pro­ gression from the simple to the complex. Take the diamond, which is one of the simplest of substances, being merely the crystallised form of a single ultimate element, carbon. It is extremely hard and extremely stable. Ascending to compounds of two, three, or more ele­ ments, we get substances which are more complex and less stable ; and at last we arrive at combinations which involve many elements and are extremely com­ plex. Among these latter substances are some, called colloids, which are neither solid, like crystals, nor fluid, like liquids, but in an intermediate state, like jelly or the white of an egg, in which the mole­ cules have great mobility and are at a considerable distance apart, so that water can penetrate their mass. These colloids are for the most part very complicated compounds of various elements based on a nucleus of carbon, which, from its atom �L r POLARITY IN LIFE 45 Protoplasm is, therefore, evidently the having four poles with strong mutual nearest approach of life to matter; and attractions, is eminently qualified for if life ever originated from atomic and forming what may be called the inner molecular combinations, it was in this skeleton of these complex combinations. form. To suppose that any more com­ Colloids of this description form the last plex form of life, however humble, could stage of the ascending line from inorganic originate from chemical combinations, matter to organic life. . would be a violation of the law of evolu­ Next, let us trace life downwards tion, which shows a uniform develop­ towards matter. There is a constant ment from the simple to the complex, succession from the more to the less and never a sudden jump passing at a complex and differentiated : from man bound over intermediate grades. To through mammals, reptiles, fishes, and understand life, therefore, we must under­ a long chain of more simple forms, stand protoplasm; for protoplasm, closely until at its end we come to the two last as it approximates to lifeless colloid links, which are the same for all animals, matter, is thoroughly alive. . A whole all plants, and all forms of animated family, the Monera, consist, simply of a existence. The last link but one is the living globule of jelly, which has not cell; the last of all is protoplasm. even begun to be differentiated. Every Protoplasm, or, as Huxley calls it, molecule, as in a crystal, is of homoge­ “the physical basis of life,’ is a colour­ neous chemical composition and an less jelly-like substance, absolutely homo­ geneous, without parts or structure in epitome of the whole mass. There are no special parts, no organs told off for fact, a mere microscopic speck of jelly. The cell is the first step in the particular functions; and yet all life­ functions—nutrition, reproduction, sensa­ specialisation of protoplasm, the outer tion, and movement—are performed, but layer of which, in contact with the each by the whole body. The jelly­ surrounding environment, becomes hardened so as to form an enclosing speck becomes a mouth to swallow,.and, turning inside out, a stomach to digest. cell-wall, while a portion of the enclosed protoplasm condenses into a nucleus, in It shoots out tongues of jelly to move and feel with, and presently withdraws which a further condensation makes . . . what is called the nucleolus or second them. With these characteristics it is impos­ smaller nucleus. This constitutes the sible to deny to protoplasm the full attri­ nucleated cell, whose repeated sub­ butes of life, or to doubt that, like the division into other similar cells in geo­ atom in the material world, it is. the metrical progression furnishes the raw primary element of organic or living material out of which all . the varied structures of the world of life are built existence. Given the atom, we can trace up, step by step, the evolution of up. Plants and animals, bones, muscles, and organs of sense, are all composed of matter; so given the protoplasm, we modified cells, hardened, flattened, , or can trace up the evolution of life by otherwise altered, as the case may require. progressive stages to the highest, develop­ If we trace life up to its origin in the ment—man. To understand life, there­ individual instead of in the species, we fore, we must begin by trying to under­ arrive at the same result. All plants and stand protoplasm. What is protoplasm ? In its substance animals, whether of the lowest or highest it is a nitrogenous carbon compound, forms—fish, reptile, bird, mammal, man —begin their individual existence as a differing only from other similar , com­ speck of protoplasm, passing, into a pounds of the albuminous family of nucleated cell, which contains in it the colloids by the extremely complex com­ whole principle of its subsequent evolu­ position of its atoms. It consists of five tion into the mature and completed form. elements, and its average composition is �46 POLARITY IN LIFE said by chemists to be 52.55 per cent, waste preponderates, remaining always carbon, 21.23 oxygen, I5-I7 nitrogen, itself. The distinction will be clear if 6.7 hydrogen, 1.2 sulphur. Its peculiar we consider what happens when water qualities, therefore, including life, are rusts iron. In a certain sense the iron not the result of any new and strange may be said to eat the oxygen, reject the atom added to the known chemical hydrogen, and grow, or increase in weight compounds of the same family, but of by what it feeds on; but the result is not the manner of grouping and motions of a bigger piece of iron, but a new sub­ these well-known material elements. It stance, rust, or oxide of iron. That has in a remarkable degree the faculty living matter should feed internally of absorbing water, so that its molecules is not so wonderful, for its semi-fluid seem to float in it in a condition of semi­ condition may well enable foreign mole­ fluid aggregation, which seems to be cules to penetrate its mass and come in necessary for the complex molecular contact with its own interior molecules ; movements which are the cause or but it is an experience different from accompaniment of life. Living proto­ anything known in the inorganic world plasm, in fact, contains from eighty to that it should be able to manufacture eighty-five per cent, of water. Thus, molecules of protoplasm like its own out many seeds and animalculse, if perfectly of these foreign molecules, and thus dry, may remain apparently as dead and grow by assimilation. For instance, as unchanging as crystals, for years, or when amoebae, bacteria, and other low even, as in the case of the mummy organisms live and multiply in chemical wheat, for centuries, to revive into life solutions which contain no protoplasm, when moistened. but only inorganic compounds con­ But in addition to those material taining the requisite atoms for making qualities in which protoplasm seems to protoplasm, or when a plant not only differ only from a whole group of similar chemically decomposes carbonic dioxide, compounds of the type of glycerine, by exhaling the oxygen and depositing the the greater complexity and mobility of carbon in its stem and leaves, but also its molecules, it has developed the new from this and other elements drawn and peculiar element which is called life. from the soil or air manufactures the Life in its essence is manifested by the living protoplasm which courses through faculties of nutrition, sensation, move­ its channels, the result is that life has ment, and reproduction. manufactured life out of non-living mate­ As regards nutrition, there is this rials. essential difference beween living and If we take sensation, this, in its last non-living matter. The latter, if it feeds analysis, is change, or molecular motion, and grows at all, does so only by taking induced in a body by the action of its on fresh molecules of its own substance environment. Here there is a certain on its outer surface, as in the case of analogy between living and non-living a small nucleus-crystal of ice in freezing matter, for the latter does respond to water. If it feeds on foreign matter and changes in the surrounding environment, throughout its mass, it does so only as in the case of heat, electricity, and in the way of chemical combination, other forces; but living matter is far forming a new product. Living matter, more sensitive, the changes are far more on the other hand, feeds internally, and frequent and complex, and in certain works up foreign substances, by the pro­ cases they are accompanied by a sensa­ cess we call digestion, into molecules tion of what is called consciousness, like its own, which it assimilates, reject­ which in the higher organisms rises into ing as waste any surplus or foreign a perception of voluntary effort or free­ matter which it cannot incorporate. It will as a factor in the transformation of thus grows and decays as assimilation or energies. Thus it happens that in the �’ IN LIFE ________________ 47 are built up, which, in their turn, repeat case of dead matter the changes pro­ the process and reproduce themselves in duced by a change of conditions follow offspring. This is the real mystery of fixed laws, and can be predicted and life; we can partly see or suspect how calculated, while those of living matter its other faculties might arise from an are apparently uncertain and capricious extension of the known qualities and We can tell how much an iron bar will laws of matter and of energy; but we expand with heat; but we cannot say whether, if a particle of food is. brought can discern no .analogy between the nonreproductive nitrogenous carbon com­ within reach of an amceba, it will or will not shoot out a finger to seize it. If the pound, which makes so near an approach to protoplasm in its chemical composi­ amoeba is hungry, it probably will; if it tion, and the reproductive protoplasm, is enjoying a siesta after a full meal, it which is fertile, increases and multiplies, probably will not. . The case of sensation includes that ot and replenishes the earth. Can the gap motion, which is, after all, only sensation be bridged over: can protoplasm be applied in the liberation of energy of manufactured out of chemical elements ? position, which has, by some chemical It is done every day by plants which process, become stored up, either in the make protoplasm out of inorganic ele­ living mass, or in some special organ of ments, and by the lowest forms of life which live and multiply in chemical it, such as muscle. Iron, for instance, moves when it expands by heat or is solutions. It is done also in the life* history of all individuals whose primitive attracted by a magnet; but it moves, like the planets, by fixed and calculable cell or ovum makes thousands or millions of other cells, each containing within its laws ; while living matter moves., as might be expected from the variable enclosing membrane as much protoplasm as there was in the unit from which they character of its sensation, in a manner which often cannot be calculated. There started. But in all these instances there are cases, however, of reflex or involun­ was the living principle to start with, tary motion where, even in the highest existing in the primitive speck of proto­ living organisms, sensation and motion plasm, from which the rest were de­ seem to follow change of environment, veloped. Can this primitive speck be in a fixed and invariable sequence, as in created; or, in other words, can proto­ shrinking from pain, touching or gal­ plasm be artificially manufactured by vanising a nerve ; and it may be that the chemical processes ? The answer must be, No ; not by any apparent spontaneousness and varia­ bility of living motion is only the result process now known. The similarity, of of the almost infinitely greater com­ chemical composition, and the increasing plexity and mobility of the elements of conviction of the universality of natural law and of- evolution, have led to a very living matter. Reproduction remains, which, is the general . belief that such a spontaneous faculty most characteristic of life, and generation of life must be possible, and which distinguishes most, sharply the numerous experiments have been made organic from the inorganic world. In to produce it. For a time the balance the inorganic there is no known process seemed to be very evenly held between by w7hich dead matter reproduces itself, the supporters and opponents of spon­ In fact, starting as the cell does when it contracts in the taneous generation. from the assumption, which at first was middle and splits up into two cells, which, in their turn, propagate an endless common to both sides, that heat equal number of similar cells, increasing in to the boiling point of water destroyed geometrical progression, until they supply all living organisms, spontaneous genera­ the raw material from which all. the tion had the best of it; for it was clearly countless varieties of living organisms proved that living organisms did appear �48 POLARITY IN LIFE in infusions contained in vessels which form of gout", indigotine, the principle of had been hermetically sealed, after being the blue colouring matter of the indigo subjected to this or even a higher degree plant ; and alizarine, that of madder— of heat. But subsequent and more care­ all are now produced artificially, and ful experiments have shown that the have even become important articles of germs or spores of bacteria and other commerce. If. chemists can make the animalcule, which are generally floating indigotine, which the growing plant in the air, can, when dry, withstand a elaborates at the same time as it greater degree of heat, and that when the elaborates protoplasm, may we not hope experiments are made in optically pure some day to make the latter as well as air no life ever appears and the infusions the former product? Now, organic com­ never putrefy. On questions of this pounds of this class are being formed sort all who are not themselves prac­ artificially every day, and it is said that tised experimentalists must be guided chemists have already succeeded in pro­ by authority, and we may be content to ducing several hundreds. Of late years, accept the dictum of Huxley that bio­ in fact, chemists have advanced as far genesis, or all life from previous life, as the artificial manufacture of albuminoid was “ victorious along the whole line.” substances, some of the most character­ But in doing so we must accept Huxley’s istic of organic compounds. But even caution, “that with organic chemistry, if this expectation is never fulfilled, we molecular physics, and physiology yet in may fall back on Huxley’s second reser­ their infancy, and every day making pro­ vation of the enormous difference of digious strides, it would be the height of chemical and physical conditions in the presumption for any man to say that the early stages of the earth’s life from any­ conditions under which matter assumes thing now known. It has been calcu­ the qualities called vital may not some lated that the earth’s temperature, when day be artificially brought together.” it first started on its career as an inde­ And, further, “ that as a matter not of pendent planet, was something like proof, but of probability, if it were given 3,ooo,ooo0 Fahrenheit. At this heat to me to look beyond the abyss of geo­ probably all atoms would be dissociated; logically recorded time, to the still more but as the temperature diminished they remote period when the earth was passing would come closer together, though still through chemical and physical conditions with a great deal of motion, and making which it can never see again, I should wide excursions, which might bring many expect to be a witness of the evolution different atoms together in complex of living protoplasms from non-living though unstable combinations. More­ matter.” Such is the cautious candour over, carbon, which is the basis of all with which scientific men approach such combinations of the class of proto­ problems upon which theologians dogma­ plasm, was far more abundant in those tise with the unerring intrepidity of early days in the form of carbonic ignorance. dioxide gas, before the enormous amount In the meantime, what may be said of vegetable matter in the form of coal as to Huxley’s reservation is this: A and otherwise, had been subtracted considerable step has been made in the from it. In any case, the first protoplasm direction indicated, by the success of must be extremely ancient, for the recent chemistry in forming artificially remains of sea-weeds are found in the what are called organic compounds— oldest strata, and vegetation of any sort that is, substances which were previously implies the manufacture of protoplasm known only as products of animal or from inorganic matter. vegetable secretions. Urea, for instance, The passage from the organic into the the base of uric acid, with which so inorganic world is best traced by follow­ many are unfortunately familiar in the ing the line of Pasteur’s researches on �49 POLARITY IN LIFE ferments. How does the world escape being choked up by the accumulation of dead organic matter throughout innumer­ able ages ? By what are called ferments, inducing processes of fermentation, and putrefaction, by which the course of life is reversed, and the organic elements are taken to pieces and restored to the inorganic world. Pasteur proved, in opposition to the theories of Liebig and other older chemists, that this was not done directly by the oxygen of the air, but through the intermediate agency of living microbes, whose spores, floating in the air, took up their abode and multiplied wherever they found an appropriate habitation. Given an air purified from germs, or a temperature low enough to prevent them from germinating, and putrescible substances would keep sweet for ever. The prac­ tical realisation of this is seen in the enormous commerce in canned meats and fruits, and in the imports of frozen beef and mutton, causing a fall of rents and much lamentation among British landlords and farmers. But then the question was asked, How are your microscopic organisms disposed of? What are the ferments of your ferments ? For even microscopic bacteria and vibrios would, in time, choke up the world by their residue if not got rid of. Pasteur answered that the ferments are destroyed by a new series of organisms ■—aerobes—living in the air, and these by other aerobes in succession, until the ultimate products are oxidised. “ Thus, in the destruction of what has lived, all is reduced to the simultaneous action of the three great natural phenomena— fermentation, putrefaction, and slow combustion. A living being, animal, or vegetable, or the debris of either, having just died, is exposed to the air. The life that has abandoned it is succeeded by life under other forms. In the super­ ficial parts, accessible to the air, the germs of the infinitely little aerobes flourish and multiply. The carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen of the organic matter are transformed by the oxygen of the air, and under the vital activity of the aerobes, into carbonic acid, the vapour of water, and ammonia. The combustion continues as long as organic matter and air are present together. At the same time the superficial com­ bustion is going on, fermentation and putrefaction are performing their work in the midst of the mass by means of the developed germs of the original microbes, which, note, do not need oxygen to live, but which oxygen causes to perish. Gradually the phenomena of destruction are at last accomplished through the work of latent fermentation and slow combustion.” This seems a complete demonstration of the passage of the organic into the inorganic world in the way of analysis, or taking the puzzle to pieces. In the opposite way of synthesis, or putting it together, the nearest approach yet made has been in the manufacture of those organic compounds already referred. to, such as urea, alizarine, indigotine, albuminoids, and other substances which had hitherto only been known as pro­ ducts of animal or vegetable life. Of these a vast number have been already formed from inorganic elements by chemical processes, and almost every day announces some fresh discovery. Under these circumstances, it is unsafe to affirm either, on the one hand, that the problem has been solved and that life has ever been made in a laboratory; or, on the other hand, that there is any such great gulf fixed between the organic and the inorganic, that we can assume a break requiring secondary supernatural interference to surmount it, and ignore the good old maxim that “Natura nihil facit per salturn! Positive proof is wanting, but the probabilities point here, as they do everywhere else throughout the universe, to the truth of the theory of “ original impress ” as opposed to that of “secondary interference.” It remains to show how the funda­ mental law of polarity affects the more complex relations of life and of its various combinations. And here it. is -E �5o POLARITY IN LIFE important to bear in mind that, as the factors of the problem become more intricate and complex, so also do the laws which regulate their existence and action. Polarity is no longer a simple question of attraction and repulsion at the two ends of a magnet or at the opposite poles of an atom. It appears rather as a general law under which, as the simple and absolute becomes dif­ ferentiated by evolution into the complex and manifold, it does so under the con­ dition of developing contrasts. For every plus there is a minus, for every like an unlike; one cannot exist without the other; and, although apparently antagonistic, harmonious order is only possible by their co-existence and mutual balance. This is so important that it may be well to make the idea clearer by an illustra­ tion. The earth revolves round the sun in its annual orbit under the influence of two forces: the centripetal, or force of gravity tending to draw it towards the sun; and the centrifugal, tending to make it dart away into infinite space. During half the orbit the centripetal seems to be gaining ground on the centrifugal, and the earth is approaching nearer to the sun. If this continued, it would revolve ever nearer and soon fall into it; but the centrifugal force is gradually recruiting its strength from the increased velocity of the earth, until it first equals the centripetal, and finally outstrips it, and for the remaining half of the orbit it is constantly gaining ground. If this went on, the earth would fly off into the chilly regions of outer space; but the centripetal force in its turn regains the ascendency; and' thus by the balance of the two forces our planet describes the beautiful ellipse, its harmonious orbit as a habitable globe; while comets in which one or the other force unduly preponderates for long periods are alternately drawn into fiery proximity to the sun, and sent careering through regions void of heat. Compare this passage from Herbert Spencer: “As from antagonist physical forces, as from antagonist emotions in each man, so from the antagonist social tendencies man’s emotions create, there always results not a medium state, but a rhythm between opposite states. The one force or tendency is not continuously counterbalanced by the other force or tendency; but now the one greatly preponderates, and presently by reaction1 there comes a preponderance of the other.” And again: “ There is nowhere a balanced judgment and a balanced action, but always .a cancelling of one another by opposite errors. Men pair off in insane parties, as Emerson puts it.” The reader will now begin to under­ stand the sense in which polarity applies to these complex conditions of an advanced evolution. To return, however, from this digres­ sion to the point at which it began—viz., the origin of life—we have to show how the law of polarity prevails in the organic as well as in the inorganic world. In the first place, the material to which all life is attached, from the speck of protoplasm to the brain of man, is strictly a chemical product of atoms and molecules bound together by the same polar laws of those of inorganic matter. In like manner, all the essential pro­ cesses by which life lives, moves, and has its being are equally mechanical and chemical. If the brain, receiving a telegram from without through the optic nerve, sends a reply along another nerve which liberates energy stored up in. a muscle and produces motion, the messages are received and transmitted like those sent by a voltaic battery along the wires of a telegraph, and the energy is stored up by the slow combustion of food in oxygen, just as that of the steam-engine is produced by the com­ bustion of coal. All this is mechanical, inorganic, and therefore polar. But when we come to the conditions of life proper, we find the influence of polarity mainly in this: that as it develops from simpler into more complex �\ PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—PLANT AND ANIMAL forms, it does so under the law of de­ veloping contrasts or opposite polarities, which are necessary complements of each other’s existence. Thus, as we 51 ascend in the scale oi lite, we nna two primitive polarities developed : that of plant and animal, and that of male and female. Chapter VII. PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—plant and animal Contrast in developed life—Plants producers, framework of its structure from the air, animals consumers—Differences disappear in by breathing in through its leaves the simple forms — Zoophytes —- Protista—Num- carbonic dioxide present. in the atmo­ mulites— Corals—Fungi —Lichens Insecti­ sphere, decomposing it, fixing the carbon vorous plants — Geological succession Primary period, Algse and Ferns—Secondary in its roots, stem, and branches, and period, Gymnosperms—Tertiary and recent, exhaling the oxygen. The animal exactly Angiosperms—Monocotyledons and Dicotyle­ reverses the process, inhaling the oxygen dons—Parallel evolution of animal life — Primary, protista, mollusca, and fish Secon­ of the air, combining it with the carbon dary, reptiles—Tertiary and recent, mammals. of its food, and exhaling carbonic dioxide. Animals or plants? Judging by first impressions, nothing can be more dis­ tinct. No one, whether scientific or unscientific, could mistake an oak tree for an ox. To the unscientific observer the tree differs in having no power of free movement, and. ap­ parently no sensation or conscious­ ness—in fact, hardly any of the attributes of life. The scientific observer, sees still more fundamental differences in the fact that the plant feeds on inorganic ingredients, out of which it manufactures living matter, or protoplasm; while the animal can only provide itself with pro­ toplasm from that already manufactured by the-plant. The ox, who lives on grass, could not live on what the grass thrives on—viz., carbon, oxygen, hydro­ gen, and nitrogen. The contrast is so striking that the vegetable world . has been called the producer, and the animal world the consumer, of nature. In the language of recent science, plants are plasmodomus and animals plasmophagous. Again, the plant derives the material Thus, a complete polarity is established, as we see in the aquarium, where plant and animal life balance each other, and the opposites live and thrive, where the existence of either would be impossible without the other. Sharp, however, as the contrast appears to be in the more specialised and de­ veloped specimens of the two worlds, we have here another instance of the diffi­ culty of trusting to first impressions, and have to modify our conceptions greatly, if we trace animal and vegetable life up to their simplest forms and earliest origins. In the first place, each indi­ vidual vegetable or animal begins its exist­ ence from a simple piece of pure proto­ plasm. This develops in the same way into a nucleated cell, by whose repeated subdivision the raw material is provided for both structures alike. The chief difference at this early stage is that the animal cells remain soft and naked, while those of vegetables secrete a com­ paratively solid cell-wall, which makes them less mobile and plastic. This gives greater rigidity to the frame and tissues of the plant, and prevents the development �52 PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—PLANT AND ANIMAL of the finer organs of sensation and other vital processes which charac­ terise the animal. But this is a differ­ ence of development only, and the origination of the future life from the speck of protoplasm is the same in both worlds. If, instead of looking at the origin of individuals, we trace back the various forms of animal and vegetable life from the more complex to the simpler forms, we find the distinctions between the two disappearing, until at last we arrive at a vanishing point where it is impossible to say whether the organism is an animal pr a plant. A whole family, comprising sponges, corals, and jelly-fish, were once called Zoophytes, or plant-animals, from the difficulty of assigning them to one kingdom or the other. They are now a chief division of the Coelenterata. But when we descend a £tep lower in the scale of existence, we come to a large family—the Protista—of which it is im­ possible to say that they are either plants or animals. In fact, scientific observers have classed them sometimes as belong­ ing to one and sometimes to the other kingdom; and it was an organism of this class, looking at which through a microscope Huxley pronounced it to be probably a plant, while Tyndall exclaimed that he would as soon call a sheep a vegetable. They are mostly microscopic, and are the first step in organised development from the Monera, which are mere specks of homogeneous protoplasm. Small as they are, they have played an important part in the formation of the earth’s crust, for the little slimy mass of aggregated cells has in many instances the power of secreting a solid skeleton, or a minute and delicate envelope or shell, the petrified remains of which form entire mountains. Thus the nummulitic limestone, which forms high ranges on the Alps and Himalayas, and of which the Pyramids are built, consists of the petrified skeletons of a species of Radiolaria, or many-chambered shells, forming the complicated and elegant mansion with many rooms and passages, of the formless, slimy mass which constitutes the living organism. Chalk also, and the chalk-like formation which is accumu­ lating at the bottom of deep oceans, are the results of the long-continued fall of the microscopic snowdrift of shells of the Globigerina and other protistic forms swimming in the sea; and in a higher stage of development the skeletons of corals, one of the family of Zoophytes or plant-animals, form the coral reefs and islands so numerous in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and are the basis of the vast masses of coralline limestone deposited in the coal era and other past geological periods. As development proceeds the distinc­ tion between plants and animals becomes more apparent, though even here the simplest and earliest forms often show signs of a common origin by interchang­ ing some of ihe fundamental attributes of the two kingdoms. Thus, the essential condition of plant existence is to live on inorganic food, which they manufacture into protoplasm, by working up simple combinations into others more compli­ cated. Their diet consists of water, carbonic dioxide, and ammonia; they take in carbonic dioxide and give out oxygen, while animals do exactly the reverse. But the fungi live, like animals, upon organic food consisting of compli­ cated combinations of carbon, which they assimilate; and, like animals, they inhale oxygen and give out carbonic dioxide. Lichens afford a very curious instance of the association of vegetable and animal functions in the same plant. They are really formed of two distinct organisms—a body which is a low form of Alga or sea-weed, and a parasitic form of fungus, which lives upon it. The former has a plant life, living on in­ organic matter and forming the green cells, or chlorophyll, which are the essential property of plants, enabling them under the action of the sun’s rays to decompose carbonic dioxide; while the parasite lives like an animal on the �PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—PLANT AND ANIMAL formed protoplasm of the parent stem, forming threads of colourless cells which envelop and interlace with the original lichen, of which they constitute the prin­ cipal mass, as in a tree overgrown with ivy. Even in existing and highly developed plants we find some curious instances of reversion towards animal life. . Certain plants, for instance, like the pionsea or Venus’ fly-trap, finding it difficult, to obtain the requisite supply of nitro­ genous food in a fluid state from the arid or marshy soil in which they grow, have acquired a habit of supplying the deficiency by taking to an animal diet and eating flies. Conjoined with this is a more highly developed sensitiveness, a power of what appears to be voluntary motion, and a faculty of secreting a sort of gastric juice, in which the flies are digested. The fundamental, property also of decomposing carbonic dioxide and exhaling oxygen depends on. light stimulating a peculiar chemical action of the chlorophyll; and at night leaves breathe like lungs, exhaling not oxygen, but the carbonic dioxide. The records of geology, imperfect, as they are, show a continued progression from these simple and neutral organisms to higher and more differentiated forms, both in the animal and vegetable worlds. These records are imperfect because the soft bodies of the simpler and for the most part microscopic forms of proto­ plasm and cell life are not capable of being preserved in petrifactions, and it is only when they happen to have secreted shells or skeletons that we have a chance of identifying them. Still we have a sufficient number of remains in the different geological strata to enable us to trace development. Thus, in the vegetable world, in the earliest strata, the Laurentian, Cambrian, and Silurian, forming the primordial period, which has a thickness of some 70,000 feet of the earth’s crust—or more than that of the whole of the subsequent strata taken together—we find few other vege­ table remains besides those of the lowest group of plants, that of the Tangles or 53 Algse, which live in water. Forests of these sea-weeds, like .those of the Aleutian Islands, in some of which single tangles stream to the length of sixty feet, and floating masses like those of the Sargasso Sea, appear to have con­ stituted almost the sole vegetation of these primaeval periods. Recently a few specimens of a land-flora are thought to have been found. The rest of the Primary epoch, com­ prising the Devonian or Old Red Sand­ stone, the Carboniferous or Coal system, and the Permian, follow, the average thickness of the three together amounting to about 42,000 feet. In. these the family of Ferns predominates, the remains of which constitute the bulk of the large strata of coal, forming in modern times our great resource for obtaining the energy which, in a trans­ formed shape, does so much of our work. Pines begin to appear, though sparingly, in this epoch. The Secondary epoch comprises the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous or Chalk formation, the average thickness of the three amounting to about 15,000 feet. In this era a higher species of vegetation predominates, that of the Gymnosperms, or plants having naked seeds, of which the pines, or Coniferse, and the palm-ferns, or Cycadese, are the two principal classes. As in the case of the former epoch, traces of the approach­ ing higher organisation in the form of leaf-bearing trees begin to appear towards its close. The Tertiary period extends from the end of the Chalk to the commencement of the Quaternary or modern period. It is divided into the Eocene or older, Oligocene or less old, the Miocene or middle, and the Pliocene or newest Tertiary system; though the division is somewhat arbitrary, depending on the number of existing species, mostly of shell-fish, which have been found in each. The average thickness of the three together is about 3,000 feet. In this formation a still higher class of vegetation of the same order as that now existing, �54 PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—PLANT AND ANIMAL which made its first appearance in In the Primary era the Devonian and the Chalk period, has become predomi­ Permian formations are characterised by nant. It is that of Angiosperms, or a great abundance of fishes, of the plants with covered seeds, forming leafy antique type, which has no true bony . forests of true trees. This group is skeleton, but is clothed in an army of divided into the two classes of mono­ enamelled scales, and whose tail, instead cotyledons or single-seed-lobed plants, of being bi-lobed or forked, has one lobe and dicotyledons or plants with double only—a type of which the sturgeon and seed-lobes. The monocotyledons spring garpike are the nearest surviving repre­ from a single germ leaf, and are of sentatives. In the Coal formation are simpler organisation than the other class. found the first remains of land animals They comprise the grasses, rushes, lilies, in the form of insects and a scorpion, irids, orchids, sea-grasses, and a number and a few traces of vertebrate amphibious of aquatic plants, and in their highest animals and reptiles j while higher up in form develop into the tree-like families the Permian are found a few more of the palms and bananas. highly developed reptiles, some of which The dicotyledons include all forms of approximate to the existing crocodile. leaf-bearing forest trees, almost all fruits Still, fishes greatly predominate, so that and flowers, in fact by far the greater the whole Primary period may be called part of the vegetable world familiar to the age of fishes, as truly as, looking at man, as coming into immediate relation its flora, it may be called the age of with it, except in the case of the culti­ ferns. vated plants, which are developments of In the Secondary period reptiles pre­ the monocotyledon grasses. dominate, and are developed into a We see, therefore, in the geological great variety of strange and colossal record a confirmation of the evolution forms. The first birds appear, being over immense periods of time of the obviously developed from some of the more complex and perfect from the forms of flying lizards, and having many simple and primitive. reptilian characters. Mammals also put If we turn to the same geological in a first feeble appearance, in the form record to trace the development of of small, marsupial, insectivorous crea­ animal life, we find it running a parallel tures. course with that of plants. It was In the Tertiary period the class of believed for a long time that the earliest mammals greatly predominates over all known fossil was the Eozoon Canadense, other vertebrate animals, and we can from the Lower Laurentian, which was see the principal types slowly developing held to be the chambered shell of a and differentiating into those at present protista of the class of Rhizopods, whose existing. The human type appears soft body consisted of mere protoplasm plainly in the Miocene, in the form of not yet differentiated into cells. But large anthropoid apes, the Dryopithecus, this formation is now generally regarded the Pliopithecus, etc. In the Pliocene by geologists as not organic. Still, a we have the remains of the Pithecan­ certain number of remains of lowly thropus (or “ missing link ”) ; and Crustacea, sponges, etc., have been found undoubted human remains are found in in Pre-Cambrian strata. As we ascend the beginning of the Quaternary, if not, the scale of the primordial era, traces as many distinguished geologists believe, of marine life of the lower organisms in the Pliocene and even in the Miocene begin to appear, until in the Silurian .ages. they become very abundant, consisting, So far, therefore, there seems to be a however, mainly of mollusca and complete parallelism between the evolu­ Crustacea, and in the Upper Silurian we tion of animal and vegetable life from find the first traces of fishes. the earliest to the latest, and from the �PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—POLARITY OF SEX simplest to the most complex forms. The facts now plainly establish a pro­ cess of evolution by which the animal and vegetable worlds, starting from a common origin in protoplasm, the lowest and simplest form of living matter, have gradually advanced step by step, along diverging lines, until we have at last arrived at the sharp antithesis of the ox and the oak tree. It is clear, however, that this evolution has gone on under what I have called the generalised law of polarity, by which contrasts are pro­ duced of apparently opposite and anta­ gonistic qualities, which, however, are indispensable for each other’s existence. Thus animals could not exist without plants to work up the crude inorganic 55 materials into the complex and mobile molecules of protoplasm, which are alone suited for assimilation by the more delicate and complex organisation of animal life. Plants, on the other hand, could not exist without a supply of the carbonic dioxide, which is their principal food, and which animals are continually pouring into the air from the combustion of their carbonised food in oxygen, which supplies them with heat and energy. Thus nature is one huge aquarium, in which animal and vegetable life balance each other by their con­ trasted and supplemental action, and, as in the inorganic world, harmonious existence becomes possible by this due balance of opposing factors. Chapter VIII. PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—POLARITY OF SEX Sexual generation—Base of ancient cosmogonies —Propagation non-sexual in simpler forms— Amceba and cells—Germs and buds—Ane­ mones—Worms—Spores—Origin of sex— Ovary and male organ—Hermaphrodites— Parthenogenesis—Bees and insects—Man and woman—Characters of each sex—Woman’s position—Improved by civilisation—Chris­ tianity the feminine pole—Monogamy the law <5f nature—Tone respecting women test of character—Women in literature—In society— Attraction and repulsion of sexes—Like attracts unlike—Ideal marriage—Woman’s rights and modern legislation. “ Male and female created he them.” At first sight this distinction of sex appears as fundamental as that of plant and animal. Mankind, and all the higher forms of life with which mankind has relations, can only propagate their species in one way : by the co-operation of two individuals of the species, who are essentially like and yet unlike, pos­ sessing attributes which are comple­ mentary of one another, and whose union is requisite to originate a new living unit—in other words, by sexual propagation. So certain does this appear that all ancient religions and philosophies begin by assuming a male and female principle for their gods, or first guesses at the unknown first causes of the phenomena of nature. Thus Ouranos and Gaia, Heaven and Earth; Phoebus and Artemis, the Sun and Moon ; are all figured ' by the primitive imagination as male and female; and the Spirit of God, brooding over Chaos and producing the world, is only a later edition, revised according to mono­ theistic ideas, of the far older Chaldean legend which describes the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos by the co-opera­ tion of great gods, male and female. Even in later and more advanced reli­ gions, traces of this ineradicable tendency to assume difference of sex as the indis­ pensable condition of the creation of new �56 PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—POLARITY OF SEX existence are found to linger and crop up in cases where they are altogether inapplicable. Thus, in the orthodox Christian creed we are taught to repeat “ begotten, not made,” a phrase which is absolute nonsense, or non-sense—that is, an instance of using words like counter­ feit notes, which have no solid value of an idea behind them. For “ begotten ” is a very definite term, which implies the conjunction of two opposite sexes to produce a new individual. Unless two deities are assumed of different sexes, the statement has no possible meaning. It is a curious instance of atavism, or the way in which the qualities and ideas of remote ancestors sometimes crop up in their posterity. Science, however, makes sad havoc with this impression of sexual generation being the original and only mode of reproduction, and the microscope and dissecting knife of the naturalist intro­ duce us to new and altogether unsus­ pected worlds of life. By far the larger proportion of living forms, in number at any rate, if not in size, have come into existence without the aid of sexual pro­ pagation. When we begin at the begin­ ning, or with those Monera which are simple specks of homogeneous proto­ plasm, we find them multiplying by self­ division. Amoeba A, when it outgrows its natural size, contracts in the middle and splits into two Amoebse, B and C, which are exactly like one another and like the original A. In fact, B contains one half of its parent A, and C the other half. They each grow to the size of the original A, and then repeat the pro­ cess of splitting and duplicating them­ selves. The next earliest stage in the evolu­ tion of living matter, the nucleated cell, does exactly the same thing. The nucleus splits into two, each of which becomes a new nucleus for the proto­ plasmic matter of the original cell, and either multiply within it, or burst the old cell-wall, and become two new cells resembling the first. The next stage in advance is that of propagation by germs-or buds, in which the organism does not divide into two equal parts, but a small portion of it swells out at its surface, and finally parts company and starts on a separate exist­ ence, which grows to the size of the parent by its inherent faculty of manu­ facturing fresh protoplasm from surround­ ing inorganic materials. This process may be witnessed any day in an aquarium containing specimens of the sea-anemone, where the minute new anemones may be seen in every form, both before and after they have parted from the parent body. It remains one of the principal modes of propagation of the vegetable world, where plants are multiplied from buds even after they have developed the higher mode of sexual propagation by seeds. In some of the lowest animals, such as worms, the buds are reduced to a small aggregation of cells, which form themselves into distinct individuals inside the body of the parent, and separate from it when they have attained a certain stage of development. Advancing still further on the road towards sexual reproduction, we find these germ-buds reduced to spores, or single cells, which are emitted from the parent, and afterwards multiply by divi­ sion, until they form a many-celled organism, which has the hereditary qualities of the original one. This is the general form of propagation of the lower plants, such as algae, mosses, and ferns, and also of a number of the lower forms of animal-like microscopic organ­ isms, such as bacteria, whose spores, floating in the air in enormous quanti­ ties, and multiplying when they find a fit soil with astonishing rapidity, in a few days devastate the potato crop of a whole district or bring about an epidemic of scarlet-fever or cholera. They have their use, however, in creation, and their action is beneficent as well as the reverse, for they are the principal cause of putre­ faction, the process whereby the dead organic matter, which, if not removed, would choke up the world, is resolved into the inorganic elements from which �PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—POLARITY OF SEX it sprang, and rendered available for fresh combinations. We are now at the threshold of that system of sexual progagation which has become the rule in all the higher families of animals and in many plants. It may be conceived as originating in the amal­ gamation of some germ-cell or spore with the original cell which was about to develop into a germ-bud within the body of some individual, and, by the union of the two, producing a new and more vigorous originating cell, which modified the course of development of the germ­ bud and of its resulting organism.. This organism, having advantages in the struggle for life, established itself per­ manently with ever new developments in the same direction, which would be fixed and extended in its descendants by here­ dity, and special organs developed to meet the altered conditions. Thus at length the distinction would be firmly established of a female organ or ovary containing the egg or primitive cell from which the new being was to be developed, and a male organ supplying the fertilising spore or cell, which was necessary to start the egg in the evolu­ tionary process by which it developed into the germ of an offspring combining qualities of the two parents. This is confirmed by a study of embryology, which shows that in the human and higher animal species the distinction of sex is not developed until a considerable progress has been made in the growth of the embryo. It is only, however, in the higher and more specialised families that we find this mode of propagation by two distinct individuals of different sexes firmly established. In the great majority of plants, and in some of the lower families of animals—for instance, snails and earth-worms—the male and female organs are developed within the same being, and they are what are called hermaphrodites. Thus, in most of the flowering plants the same blossom con­ tains both the stamens and anther, which are the male organ, and the style and germ, which are the female. 57 Another transition form is Partheno­ genesis, or virginal reproduction, in which germ-cells, apparently similar in all respects to egg-cells, develop them­ selves into new individuals without any fructifying element. This is found to be the case with many species of insects, and with this curious result, that those same germ-cells are often capable of being fructified, and in that case produce very different individuals. Thus, among the common bees, male bees or drones arise from the non-fructified eggs of the queen bee, while females are produced if the egg has been fructified. In the higher families, however, of animal life the distinction of sex in different individuals has become the universal rule, and it produces a polarity or contrast which becomes ever more conspicuous as we rise in the scale of creation, until it attains its highest development in the highest stage hitherto reached, that of civilised man and woman. Both physical and mental characteristics depend mainly on the fact that the ovary or egg-producing organ is developed in the female, and thus the whole work of reproduction is thrown on her. To per­ form this a large portion of the vital energy is required, which in the male is available for larger and more prolonged growth of organs, such as the brain, stature, and limbs, by which a more powerful grasp is attained of the outward environment. In other words, the female comes sooner to maturity and is weaker than the male. She is also animated by a much stronger love for the offspring, which is part of her own body, during the period of infancy; and thus, in addition to the physical attri­ butes, such as lacteal glands and larger breasts, she inherits qualities of softness, amiability, and devotion which fit her for the office of nurse. Her physical weakness, again, has made her, for un­ told ages, and even now in all the less advanced communities, and too often even in the most advanced, the slave of the stronger male. She has thus in­ herited many of the mental qualities �58 PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—POLARITY OF which are essential to such a state : the desire to propitiate by pleasing and making herself attractive j the gentleness and submissiveness which shrink from a contest of brute force in which she is sure to be defeated j the clinging to a stronger nature for support, which in extreme cases leads to blind admiration of power and the spaniel-like attachment to a master, whether deserving of it or not. As civilisation, however, advances, and as intellectual and moral qualities gain ascendency over brute strength and animal instincts, the condition of woman improves, and it comes more and more to be recognised that she is not made to be man’s slave or plaything,, but has her own personality and character, which, if in some respects inferior, are in others better than those of the male half of creation. Tennyson, the great poet of modern thought, who sums up so many of the ideas and tendencies of the age in concise and vigorous verse, writes :— For woman is not undeveloped map, Nor yet man’s opposite. Not opposite, yet different, so that the one supplements what is wanting to the other, and the harmonious union of the two makes ideal perfection. It is the glory of European civilisation to have done so much to develop this idea of the equality of the sexes, and to have gone so far towards emancipating the weaker half of the human species from the tyranny of the stronger half. It would be unfair to omit mention of the great part which Christianity has had in this good work; not only by direct precept and recognition of religious equality, but even more by the embodi­ ment, as its ideal, of the feminine virtues of gentleness, humility, resignation, selfdevotion, and charity. Ideal Chris­ tianity is, in fact, what may be called the feminine pole of conduct and morality, as opposed to the masculine one of courage, hardihood, energy, and selfreliance. Many of the precepts of Christianity are unworkable, and have to be silently dropped in practice. It would SEX not. answer either for individuals or nations “ when smitten on one cheek to turn the other.” When an appeal is made to fact to decide whether it is a right rule to live as the sparrows do, taking no thought for the morrow, the verdict of ^/is in favour of foresight and frugality. erbert Spencer has stated this polarity very strongly as that of the religion of amity and the religion of enmity; but I think he states the case too adversely for the latter, for the qualities which make men and nations good fighters and vic­ torious in the struggle for existence are in their way just as essential as the gentler virtues, and both alike become defects when pushed to the “ falsehood o extremes. Christianity, therefore, whatever may become of its dogmas, ought always to be regarded with affec­ tion and respect for the humanising effect it has produced, especially in improving the condition of the female half of creation. This improvement in the condition of women has brought about a correspond­ ing improvement in the male sex, for the polarity between the two has come to be the most intimate and far-reaching in­ fluence of modern life. Take the litera­ ture of the novel and play, which aim at holding up the mirror to human nature and contemporary manners, and you will find that they nearly all turn upon love. The word “immorality” has come to signify the one particular breach of the laws of morality which arises from the relations of the sexes. In providing for the birth of nearly equal numbers of each sex, nature clearly establishes monogamy, or union of single pairs, as the condition of things most in accordance with natural laws. The family, also, the first germ of civilisation, is impossible, or can only exist in a very imperfect and half-developed state, without this permanent union of a single husband and wife. Violations of this law lead to such disastrous consequences to indi­ viduals, and are so deteriorating to nations, that they are properly considered as the “ immorality ” far excellence^ and �PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—POLARITY OF SEX condemned by all right-minded opinion. And yet to observe this law is a constant lesson in self-control for a great part of the life—a lesson of the utmost value, for it is a virtue which is at the root of all other virtues. And it is formed and becomes habitual and easy by practice, for just as the muscles of the balletdancer’s leg or blacksmith’s arm acquire strength and elasticity by use, so do the finer fibres of the brain improve by exer­ cise and become soft and flabby by disuse, so that effort in the former case is a pleasure and in the latter a pain. For this reason chaste nations are gene­ rally strong and conquering nations; dissolute Imperial Rome went down before the Goths and Germans, and polygamous Turkey perishes of dry rot in the midst of the progress of the twen­ tieth century. Indeed, there is no better test of the position which either an indi­ vidual, a class, or a nation holds in the scale of civilisation than the tone which prevails among the men with regard to women. Wherever Turkish ideas pre­ vail, we may be sure that, whatever may be the outward varnish of manner, there is essential snobbishness. “Up and down Along the scales of life, through all, To him who wears the golden ball, By birth a king, at heart a clown.” On the other hand, wherever women are regarded with a chivalrous respect and reverence, the heart of a true gentleman beats, though it be under the rough exterior of one of Bret Harte’s cow-boys or Californian miners. Nothing, in fact, gives one more hope in the progress of human society than to find that in the freest countries, and those farthest advanced towards modern ideas and democratic institutions, the tone with regard to women shows the greatest improvement. There is a regu­ lar crescendo scale of progress from Turkey to America. I do not refer so much to the fact that in the newer colonies and countries women can travel unprotected without fear of insult or injury, as to the almost instinctive recognition of their 59 equal rights as intelligent and moral beings, who have a personality and charac­ ter of their own, which places them on the same platform as men, though on opposite sides of it. To understand rightly the real spirit of an age or country, it is not enough to study dry statistics or history in the form of records of wars and political changes. We must study the works of the best poets, novelists, and dramatists, who seek to embody types and to hold up the mirror to contemporary ideas and manners. A careful perusal of such works as those of Dickens, Thackeray, Trol­ lope, and George Eliot at home, and of Bret Harte, Howells, James, and Mrs. Burnett in the United States, will give a truer insight into the inner life of the country and period than any number of blue-books or consular returns. They show what the writers of the greatest genius—that is, of the greatest insight— see as types of the actual ideas and characters surrounding them; and the fact of their works being popular shows that the types are recognised as true. Now, it is certain that the English litera­ ture of fiction and its latest development, that of the American novelists, show an ever-increasing recognition of the female individual as an equal unit with the male in the constitution of modern society. Those dear “ school marms ” of Bret Harte’s and Wendell Holmes’s, who career so joyously through mining camps, receiving courtesy and radiating civilis­ ing influences among the rough inhabi­ tants, or touch the hearts and throw a mellow light over the autumn days of middle-aged professors and philosophers, are far removed from the slaves of pre­ historic savages or the inmates of a Turkish harem. So also in the more complex relations of a more crowded civilisation, in the circles of Washington, New York, and Boston, the ideal Ame­ rican woman is always depicted as bright, intelligent, and independent, with a character and personality of her own; and the suspicion never seems to enter the author’s head that she is in any �6o PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—POLARITY OF SEX respect inferior to the male characters with whom she is associated. The same may be said to a great extent of English literature from the time of Shakespeare downwards. No better portrait than Portia was ever drawn of the “ Perfect woman, nobly planned To soothe, to comfort, and command ; And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of an angel light.” And in the long gallery of good and loveable women, from Rosalind and Irtlogene down to Lucy Roberts and Laura Pendennis, we have not one who is a mere nonentity or child of passionate impulse. Nor is the recognition of woman’s equality less marked in the bad characters. Lady Macbeth is of a stronger nature than Macbeth ; Becky Sharp more clever and full of resources than the men with whom she plays like puppets; Maggie Tulliver, with all her wild struggles with herself and her sur­ roundings, has far more in her than her brother Tom. Compare these characters with those of the school of modern French novels, which turn mainly on adultery and seduction, committed for the most part not in any whirlwind of irresistible passion, but to gratify some passing caprice or vanity, and it is easy to see how wide is the gulf which separates the ideals and moral atmo­ sphere of the two countries. It is not, therefore, from any wish to indulge in what Herbert Spencer calls the “unpatriotic bias,” and depreciate my own country, that I am disposed to think that the younger English-speaking communities are somewhat in advance of ourselves in this matter of the rela­ tions of the sexes, but simply because I think that the feeling is there more widespread and universal. We have in English society two strata in which women are still considered as inferior beings to men : a lower one, where better ideas have not yet permeated the dense mass of ignorance and brutality; and a higher one, where among a certain por­ tion, let us hope a small one, of the gilded youth and upper ten, luxury and idleness have blunted the finer suscepti­ bilities, and created what may be most aptly called a Turkish tone about women. There are many of this class, and unfor­ tunately often in high places, where their example does widespread mischief, whose ideal might be summed up in the words of the Irish ballad :— “ I am one of the ould sort of Bradies, My turn does not lie to hard work ; But I’m fond of my pipe and the ladies, And I’d make a most illigant Turk.” And most “illigant Turks’’they make, though far worse than real Turks, who are born and brought up in the ideas and surroundings of a lower civilisation ; while the tone of our English Turks is far more nauseous and disgusting, as denoting innate selfishness, sensuality, and vulgarity. Of these two classes there seem to be fewer in the newer English communities ; and if they exist, they are in such a small minority that they conceal their existence, and pay the homage of vice to virtue which is called hypocrisy. To return, however, to the more scientific aspects of the question, the polarity of sex displays itself as con­ spicuously as that of the magnet in the fundamental law of repulsion of like for like, and attraction of like for unlike. In each case there must be an identity of essence developing itself in opposite directions. Thus, atoms attract or repel atoms, but not molecules ; for if they seem to do so, it is only in cases in which the molecule contains some atom whose atomicity or polar power has not been fully satisfied. So currents of air or water do not affect electric currents. But given the identity of substance, its differentiation takes place under an everincreasing progression of polarity of affinities and repulsions. A German naturalist, Brahm, discussing the question why birds sing, says : “ The male finds in the female those desirable and attractive qualities which are want­ ing in himself. He seeks the opposite to himself with the force of a chemical �PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—HEREDITY AND VARIATION element.” This is equally true of the | male and female of the human species. A masculine woman and effeminate man are equally unattractive, and, if the quali­ ties are pushed to an extreme extent, the individuals become monstrosities, and, instead of attracting, excite vehement disgust and repulsion. This, which is true physically, is equally true of moral and intellectual characteristics. Each seeks, in the happy marriage or perfect ideal union, the qualities which are most deficient in themselves: the woman, strength, active courage, and the harder qualities; the man, gentleness, amiability, and the softer virtues. In each indi­ vidual, as in each union of individuals, harmony and perfection depend on the due balance of the opposite qualities, and the “ falsehood of extremes ” leads up to chaos and insanity. The man in whom strength and hardihood are not tempered by gentleness and affection becomes brutal and tyrannical; while the woman who has no strength of char­ acter becomes silly and frivolous. Mar­ riage, however, involves the highest ideal, for the well-assorted union of the two in one gives a more complete harmony and reconciliation of opposites than can be attained by the single individual, who must always remain more or less within the sphere of the polarity of his or her respective sex. But here also the same law of polarity operates, for as happy marriage affords the highest ideal, so do 61 unhappy and ill-assorted unions involve the greatest misery and most complete shipwreck of life. Especially to the woman, for the man has other pursuits and occupations, and can to a great extent withdraw himself from domestic troubles; while the woman has no defence against the coarseness, selfish­ ness, and the vulgarity of the partner to whom she is tied, and who may make her life a perpetual purgatory, and drag all her finer intellectual and moral nature down to a lower level. Fortunately, extreme cases are rare, and, though the ideal of a perfect union may seldom be attained to, the great majority of married couples manage to jog on together, and bring up families in comparative comfort and respectability. Evidently, however, in many cases the weaker party does not get fair play, and the laws which are the result of centuries of male legislation are often too oblivious of the maxim that what is “sauce for goose is sauce for gander.” Improvement, however, is coming from the growth of the more healthy public opinion, which stigmatises any invasion of woman’s real rights, and any attempt on the part of her natural protector to bully and tyrannise, as utterly disgraceful; and the waves of this public opinion are slowly but surely sapping the cliffs of legal conservatism, and forcing the intrenchments of stolid injustice behind ermine robes, horsehair wigs, and obsolete Acts of Parliament. Chapter IX. PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—HEREDITY AND VARIATION Heredity in simple forms of life—In more com­ plex organisms—Pangenesis—Varieties, how produced — Fixed by law of survival of the fittest—Dr. Temple’s view—Examples : triton, axolotl—Variations in individuals and species—Lizards into birds—Ringed snakes— Echidna. As the earth is kept in an orbit, which makes life possible by the balance of the antagonistic centripetal and centrifugal forces, so is that life evolved and main­ tained by the balance of the two con­ flicting forces of heredity and variation. �62 PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—HEREDITY AND VARIATION Heredity, or the principle which makes offsprings resemble the parental organ­ isms, may be considered as the centri­ petal force which gives stability to species; while variation is like the centrifugal force which tends to make them develop into new forms, and pre­ vents organic matter from remaining ever consolidated into one uniform mass. As regards heredity, the considerations which have been advanced in the last chapter, on the origin of sex, will enable the reader to understand the principles on which it is based. When a moneron, or living piece of pure protoplasm, or its successor the nucleated cell, propagates itself by simple division into two equal parts, it is obvious that each half must, in its atomic constitution and motions, exactly resemble the original. If amceba A divides into amcebse B and C, both B and C are exact facsimiles of A and of one another, and so are the progeny of B and C through any number of genera­ tions. They must remain identical repe­ titions of the parent form, unless some of them should happen to be modified by different actions of their surrounding environment, powerful enough to affect the original organisation. In propagation by germs or buds, the same thing must hold true, only, as the offspring carries with it not the half,, but only a small portion of the parental organism, its impress will be less powerful, and the new organism will more readily be affected by external influences. When we come to propaga­ tion by spores or single cells, and still more to sexual propagation by the union of single cells of two progenitors, it becomes more difficult to see how the type of the two parents, and of a long line of preceding ancestors, can be main­ tained so perfectly. Of the fact that it is maintained there can be no doubt. Not only do species breed true and remain substantially the same for immense periods, but the characters of individual parents and their ancestors repeat themselves, to a great extent, in their offspring. Thus the cross between the white and black varieties of the human species per­ petuates itself to such an extent that a single cross of black blood leaves traces for a number of generations. In the Spanish American States and the West Indies, where the distinction is closely observed, the term “ octoroon ” is well known, as applied to creoles who have seven-eighths of white to one-eighth of black blood in their composition. In the case of what is called “atavism,” this recurrence to the characters of ancestors is carried to a much further extent. In breeding animals, it is not uncommon to find the peculiar features of generations of ancestors long since extinct cropping up occasionally in individuals. Thus, stripes like those of the ass along the back and down the shoulders occa­ sionally appear on horses whose imme­ diate ancestors for many generations back showed nothing of the sort; and even stripes across the legs like those of the zebra occur quite unexpectedly, and testify to the common descent of the various species of the horse tribe from a striped ancestor. How these ancestral peculiarities can be transmitted through many generations, each individual of which originated from a single micro­ scopic cell which had been fructified by another cell, is one of the greatest mysteries of nature. It may assist us in forming some idea of the possibility of a solution to remember what has been proved as to the dimensions of atoms. Their order of magnitude is that of a cricket-ball to the earth. In a single microscopic cell, therefore, there may be myriads of such atoms circling round one another and forming infinitesimal solar systems, of infinite complexity and variety. Darwin’s theory of “ Pange­ nesis ” supposes that some of the actual identical atoms which formed part of ancestral bodies are thus transmitted through their descendants for generation after generation, so that we are literally “flesh of the flesh” of the primseval creature who was developed into man in the later tertiary or early glacial period. �PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—HEREDITY AND VARIATION Haeckel, more plausibly, suggests that not the identical atoms, but their pecu­ liar motions and mode of aggregation, have been thus transmitted—-a mode of transmission which, with his prevailing tendency to invent long and learned names for everything, he calls the “Perigenesis of plastids.” Weismann has more recently, while denying, that acquired characteristics are transmitted, formed a theory known as that of the “continuity of the germ-plasm.” This implies that a part of a definite substance from the germ-cells (or “ germ-plasm ”) of the parent is not used up in construct­ ing the body of the new organism, but “ reserved unchanged for the formation of the germ-cells of the following genera­ tions.” In any case, however, these must be taken not as solutions of the problem, but as guesses at the truth which show that its solution is not impossible. The opposite principle to heredity, that of variation, is equally important and universal. It is apparent in the fact that, although every individual of every species reproduces qualities of parents and ancestors, no two individuals do so in precisely the same manner; no two are exactly alike. This difference, or individuality, becomes more marked as the organism is higher. Thus, sheep and hounds differ from one another by slight differences, which require the practised eye of the shepherd or hunts­ man to detect; while human beings are so unlike that of the many millions existing in each generation no two exactly resemble one another. The reason of this is apparent if we consider that the higher the organism the more complex does it become, and the less the chance of the whole complicated relations of parent and ancestral organisms being transmitted by single cells so solidly and completely as to overpower and remain uninfluenced by external influences. Variation evidently depends mainly on the varying influences of environment. If the exterior layer of molecules of a lump of protoplasm become differentiated from the interior ones and form a cell­ 63 wall, it is because they are in more immediate contact with the air or other surrounding medium. Internal changes depend on conditions such as tempera­ ture and nutrition. In the case of culti­ vated plants and domestic animals we can see most clearly how varieties are produced by adaptation to changes of environment. These variations, how­ ever, would not proceed very far were it not for the interaction of the opposing forces of variation and heredity, by which latter the variations appearing in indivi­ duals are fixed’ and accumulated in descendants, until they become wide and permanent divergencies. This is done in the case of cultivated plants and domestic animals by man’s artificial selection in pairing individuals who show the same variations; and in nature by the struggle for existence, giving victory and survival to those forms, and in the long run to those forms only, whose variations, slight as they may be in each generation, tend to bring individuals into better adaptation to their environment. It is the great glory of Darwin to have established this firmly by an immense number of interesting and exhaustive instances, and thus placed evolution, or a scientific explanation of the develop­ ment and laws of life, on a solid basis. Every day fresh discoveries and experi­ ments confirm this great principle, and it has almost passed into the same phase as Newton’s law of gravity, as a fundamental law accepted as axiomatic by all men of science, and as the basis of modern thought, to which all religions and philo­ sophies have to conform, accepted by nearly all modern thinkers. I may here quote a passage from an eminent Angli­ can divine, Dr. Temple, for the double purpose of showing how universal has become the acceptance of this Darwinian view of evolution among intelligent men, and how little terrible are its conse­ quences, even to those who look at the facts of the universe through a theo­ logical medium and retain their belief in accepted creeds :— “ It seems in itself something more �64 PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—HEREDITY AND VARIATION majestic, more befitting of him to whom a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years, thus to impress his will once for all on this creation, and provide for all its countless varieties by this one original impress, than by special acts of creation to be perpetually modi­ fying what he had previously made.”1 Scientific men would be content to accept this statement of Dr. Temple’s almost in his own words, except that they might consider his definition of the Great First Cause as somewhat too absolute and confident. Having had to deal so much with actual facts and accurate knowledge, they are apt to be more modest in assertion than even the most enlightened theologian, whose studies have lain rather in the direction of phrases and ideas, which, from their very nature, are more vague and in­ definite, and perhaps rather guesses and aspirations after truth than proofs of it. In any case, there is the authority of a learned and liberal-minded bishop for the position that the scientific way of looking at the universe is not necessarily profane or irreligious. To return to variation: the instances of the operation of this principle, alone or in conjunction with that of heredity, in working out the evolution of species, are exceedingly numerous and interesting. Those who wish to understand the subject thoroughly must study the works of Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley, and other modern writers; but for my present purpose it will be sufficient to refer to a few of the most marked instances which may assist the reader in comprehending how the gradual evolution of life and creation of new species may have been brought about. There is an amphibious animal, called the triton or water-salamander, akin to the frog, whose normal course is to begin life living in the water and breathing by gills, and end it on land with gills meta­ morphosed into lungs. If they are shut up in water and kept in a tank, they 1 Dr. Temple, Religion and Science. never lose their gills, but continue through life in the lower stage of development, and reproduce themselves in other tritons with gills. Conversely, the axolotl, a peculiar gilded salamander from the Lake of Mexico, has its normal course to live, die, and propagate its species in water, breathing by gills; but if an axolotl happens to stray from the water and take to living on dry land, the gills are modified into lungs and the animal gains a place in the class in the school of development. This fits in remarkably with the fact that the embryo of all vertebrate mammals, including man, passes through the gilled stage before arriving at the development of lungs, which assists us in understanding two facts of primary importance in the history of evolution. First, how terrestrial life may have arisen from aquatic life by adaptation to altered conditions. Secondly, how the evolution of the embryo sums up in the individual, in the period of a few days or months, the various stages of evolutions which it has taken millions of years to accomplish in the species. As a parallel to the transformation of gills into lungs, and an aquatic into a land animal, if we turn to the geological records of the Secondary period, we may trace the transformation of a water into an air population, of sea-lizards into flying-lizards, and of flying-lizards into birds. The “ Hesperornis ” is an actual specimen of the transition, being a feathered lizard, or rather winged and feathered creature which is half lizard and half bird. A remarkable instance of the great change of functions which may be pro­ duced by a change of outward conditions is afforded by the common ringed snake, which in its natural state lays eggs that take three weeks to hatch; but if con­ fined in a cage in which no sand is strewed, it hatches the eggs within its own body, and from oviparous becomes viviparous. This may help us to under­ stand how the lowest order of mammals, �THE KNOWABLE AND UNKNOWABLE—BRAIN AND THOUGHT 65 which, -like the Australian echidna or duck-billed mole, lay eggs, may have de­ veloped, first into marsupial, and finally into placental mammals. These examples may assist the reader in understanding how the infinite diver­ sities of living species may have been developed in the course of evolution from simple origins, just as the inorganic world was from atoms, by the action and reaction of primitive polar forces be­ tween the organism and its environment, and between heredity and variation. Chapter X. THE KNOWABLE AND UNKNOWABLE—BRAIN AND THOUGHT how these impressions are made. In all ordinary cases they are made through the channels of the senses ; but it is possible that in certain exceptional cases vibration in the brain, causing percep­ tions, may be conveyed to it through the nerves in other ways. In somnam­ bulism, for instance, it seems to be an ascertained fact that a somnambulist with closed eyes securely bandaged can walk in the dark and avoid obstacles as well as if guided by the sight in full daylight. Before entering on the higher subjects There is a great deal of evidence also of religions and philosophies, it is well that in artificial somnambulism, other­ to arrive at some precise idea of the wise called mesmerism or hypnotism, limits of human knowledge, and of the and also in what is called thought-reading, boundary line which separates the know­ perception may be conveyed from one able from the unknowable. The ultimate brain to another otherwise than by the basis of all knowledge is perception. usual methods of speech or writing. Without an environment to create But these phenomena, however far they impressions, and an organ to receive may be extended, do not affect the them, we should know absolutely nothing. position that impressions on the brain What is the environment and what the are the essential condition of thought. organ of human knowledge ? The If the grey matter of the brain is deficient environment is the whole surrounding or diseased, the mind is affected, and universe, or, in the last analysis, the beyond a certain point becomes extinct. motions, or changes of motion, by which The second and more important reser­ the objects in that universe make impres­ vation is that, although mind and all its sions on the recipient organ. The organ qualities are thus indissolubly connected is the grey matter of that large nervous with matter, it by no means follows that agglomeration, the brain. But here I they are matter or mere qualities of it. must at the outset make two reserva­ In the case of the atoms and energ-ies, tions. In the first place, I do not define we know absolutely nothing of their real Basis of knowledge—Perception—Constitution of brain—White and grey matter;—Average size and weight of brains—European, negro, and ape—Mechanism of perception—Sensory and motor nerves—Separate areas of brain—Sensory and motor centres—Abnormal states of brain — Hypnotism — Somnambulism — Trance — Thought-reading —• Spiritualism —• Reflex action—Ideas how formed—Number and space—Creation unknowable—Concep­ tions based on perceptions—Metaphysics— Descartes, Kant, Berkeley—Anthropomor­ phism—Laws of nature. �66 THE KNOWABLE AND UNKNOWABLE-BRAIN AND THOUGHt essence, and cannot form even a con­ ception of what they are, how they came there, or what will become of them. It is the same with mind, soul, or self: we feel an instinctive certainty of their exist­ ence, as we do of that of matter; and we can trace their laws and manifesta­ tions under the conditions in which they are known to us—viz., those of associa­ tion with matter and motion in the brain. But of their real essence or existence we know nothing, and it is as unscientific to affirm as to deny. Directly we pass beyond the boundary of such knowledge as really can be known by human faculty, and stand face to face with the mystery of the Great Unknown, we can only bow our heads with reverence and say with the poet, “Behold, I know not anything.” I hope thus to steer safely between Scylla and Charybdis—between the arid rocks of materialism and the whirling eddies of spiritualism. Materialist and spiritualist seem to me very like two men disputing as to the existence of life in the sun. “No,” argues the former; “for the known conditions there are totally inconsistent with any life we can conceive.” “Yes,” says the other; “for the belief fits in with many things which I earnestly wish to believe respecting a Supreme Being and a future existence.” To the first I say, ignorance is not evi­ dence; to the second, wishes are not proofs. For myself, while not quarrelling with those more favoured mortals who have, or fancy they have, superior know­ ledge, I can only say that I really know nothing; and this being the case, I see no use in saying that I know, and think it both more truthful and more modest to confess the limitation of my faculties. With this caution, I return to the field of positive knowledge. The brain, spinal marrow, and nerves consist of two substances: one white, which constitutes the great mass consisting of tubes or fibres; the other grey, which is an aggre­ gation of minute cells, so minute that it has been computed that there are several millions of them in a space no larger than a sixpence. The bulk of this grey nerve-tissue is found in the higher animals, and especially in man, in the outside rind which covers the brain; and its amount is greatly increased by the convolutions of that organ giving a greater extent of covering surface. In fact, the convolutions of the average human brain give as much grey matter in a head of average size as would be given by a head of four times the size if the brain were a plane surface. The extent of the convolutions is, therefore, a sure sign of the extent of intellect. They are more numerous and deeper in the European than in the negro; in the negro than in the chimpanzee; in the anthropoid ape than in the monkey or lemur. This grey nerve-tissue is the organ by which impressions from without are turned into perceptions, volitions, and evolutions of nerve force. The white matter is simply the medium of transmission, or we may say the tele­ graph wires by which the impressions are conveyed to the head office and the answers sent. The cell-tissue of the grey matter is thus emphatically the organ of the mind. In fact, if it did not sound too materialistic, we- might call thought a secretion of the grey matter, only in saying so we must bear in mind that it is only a mode of expressing the fact that the two invariably go together; and that if we say with the German philosopher, Ohne Phosphor kein Gedank, it does not mean that thought and phosphorus are identical, but simply that the condition on which thought depends is that of the existence of a material organ of which phosphorus is an ingredient. That this grey nerve-tissue is really the organ of thought has been firmly established by numerous experiments both in man and the lower animals. Injuries to it, or diseases in it, invariably affect what is called the mind; while considerable portions of the white matter may be removed without affecting the thinking and perceptive powers. A �THE KNOWABLE AND UNKNOWABLE—BRAIN AND THOUGHT 67 certain amount of it is indispensable for the existence of intellect; the more there is of it as the brain increases in size and the convolutions become deeper, the greater is the intellect; when these fall below certain dimensions, intellect is ex­ tinguished, and we have idiocy. The average brain of the male white European weighs 49% ounces, of the negro a little under 47. The maximum brains which have been accurately weighed and measured are those of Cuvier and Daniel Webster, the weight of the former being 64^ ounces, and the capacity of the latter being 122 cubic inches ; while the average capacity of the Teutonic race, in­ cluding English, Germans, and Ameri­ cans, is 92 inches, of the negro 83, and of the Australian and Hottentot 75. The brain of the idiot seldom weighs over 23 ounces, and the minimum weight consistent with a fair degree of intelli­ gence is about 34 ounces. The mechanism by which correspon­ dence is kept up between the living indi­ vidual and the surrounding universe is very simple—in reality, as simple as that of any ordinary electric circuit. In the most complex case, that of man, there are a number or nerve-endings, or small lumps of protoplasm, embedded in the tissues all over the body, or highly specialised and grouped together in separate organs, such as the eye and ear, from which a nerve fibre leads direct to the brain, or to the spinal cord, and so up to the brain. These nerve-endings receive the different vibrations by which outward energy presents itself, which propagate a current or succession of vibrations of nerve-energy along the nerve-fibre. This nerve-fibre is a round thread of protoplasm covered by a white sheath of fatty matter, which insulates it like the wire of a submarine telegraph coated with gutta-percha. This nerve­ wire leads up to a nerve-centre, consist­ ing of two corpuscles of protoplasm : the first, or sensory, a smaller one, which is connected by branches with the second, a much larger one, called the motor, from which a much larger nerve-fibre or wire proceeds, which terminates in a mass of protoplasm firmly attached to a muscle. Thus, a sensation is propagated along the sensory nerve to the sensory nerve-centre, whence it is transmitted to the motor-centre, which acts as an accu­ mulator of stored-up energy, a large flow of which is sent through the large con­ ductor of the motor-nerve to the muscle, which it causes to contract and thus pro­ duces motion. It is thus that the simpler involuntary actions are pro­ duced by a process which is purely mechanical. In the more complex cases, in which consciousness and will are involved, the process is essentially the same, though more complicated. The message is transmitted to the brain, where it is received by a cluster of small sensory cells or nerve-centres, which are connected with another cluster of fewer and larger motor-centres, often at some distance from them, by a network of interlacing fibres. But it is always a case of a single circuit of wires, batteries, and accumulators, adapted for receiving, recording, and transmitting one sort of vibrations caused by and producing one sort of energy, and one only. The brain does not act as a whole, receiving indis­ criminately impressions of light, sound, and heat, but by separate organs for each, located in separate parts of it. It is like a great central office, in one room of which you have a printing instrument reading off and recording messages sent through an electric telegraph; in another a telephone ; in a third a self-registering thermometer, and so on. And the same for the motor centres and nerves. One set is told off to move the muscles of the face, another those of the arms, others for the legs and body, and so forth. This is further complicated by the fact that the brain, like the rest of the body, has two sides—a right and left, and that in some cases the motor-apparatus is doubled, each working only on one side, while in others the same battery and wires serve for both. As a rule, the right hemisphere of the brain works the muscles of the left side of the body, and �68 THE KNOWABLE AND UNKNOWABLE—BRAIN AND THOUGHT vice versa, so that an injury to one side of the brain may paralyse the voluntary motion of the limbs on the opposite side, leaving in a perfect condition those on its own side. In the case of the higher functions involving thought, the upper part of the brain, which performs these functions, seems to be a sort of duplex machine, so that we have two brains capable of think­ ing, just as we have two eyes capable of seeing. It is a remarkable fact that the areas of the brain which are appropriated to the lowest and most instinctive func­ tions, which appear first, lie lowest, and as the functions rise the position of their nerve-centres rises with them. Thus, at the very base of the frontal convolutions at the lowest end of the fissure of Rolando we find the motor areas for the lower part of the face, by which the lowest animals and the new-born infant perform their solitary function of sucking and swallowing. Higher up are the centres in the right and left brains for moving the upper limbs—that is, for seiz­ ing food and conveying it to the mouth, which is the next function in the ascend­ ing scale. Next above these are the centres for moving the lower limbs and for co-ordinating the motions of the arms and legs, marking the progression of an organism which can pursue and catch as well as eat its food. And still higher are the centres which regulate the motions of the trunk and body in corre­ spondence with those of the limbs. It is easy to see that this corresponds with the progression of the individual, for the infant sucks and cries for food from the first day, soon learns to extend its hand and grasp objects, but takes some time to learn to walk, and still longer to perform exercises like dancing or riding, in which the motions of the whole body have to be co-ordinated with those of the limbs. And as the develop­ ment of the individual is an epitome of the evolution of life from protoplasm, we may well suppose that the brain was de­ veloped in this order from its first origin in a swelling at the end of the spinal cord as we find it in the lowest verte­ brates. It is a singular fact that the particular motor area which gives the faculty of articulate speech lies in a small patch of about one and a half square inches on the left side of the lower portion of the first brain. If this is injured, the disease called aphasia is produced, in which the patient loses the power of expressing ideas by connected words. The corre­ sponding area on the right side cannot talk; but in left-handed persons this state of things is reversed, and the right side, which is generally aphasial, can be taught to speak in young people, though not in the aged. Higher up in the cortex, or convoluted envelope of the brain, come the areas for hearing and seeing, the latter being the more extensive. The visual centre lies at the hindmost and lowest part of the cortex (the occipital lobe), and the area of hearing is found over the temples. The centre for smell is believed to lie in the frontal lobe. These areas are filled mainly by a great number of sensory nerve-centres or cells, connected with one another in a very complicated network. These seem to be concerned with the multitude of ideas which are excited in the brain by perceptions derived from the higher senses, especially that of sight. The simple movements are produced by a few large motor-centres, which have only one idea and do only one thing, whether it be to move the leg or the arm. But a sensation from sight often calls up a multitude of ideas. Suppose you see the face of one with whom some fifty years ago you may have had some youthful love passages, but your lives drifted apart, and you now meet for the first time after these long years, how many ideas will crowd on the mind, how many nerve-cells will be set vibrating, and how many nerve-currents set cours­ ing along intricate paths ! No wonder that the nerve-corpuscles are numerous and minute, and the nerve-channels many and complicated. When we come to the seats of the �THE KNOWABLE AND UNKNOWABLE—BRAIN AND THOUGHT 69 intellectual faculties, the question becomes still more obscure. The recent investi­ gations of Flechsig, which are generally accepted in substance, locate these faculties between the great sense-centres in the cortex : the sensory-areas occupy­ ing the lower edge, and the thought-areas the upper and central mass of the four great cerebral lobes. They depend in their action on the grey matter consist­ ing of an immense number of minute sensory cells. It has been computed that there are millions in the area of a square inch, and they are all in a state of the most delicate equilibrium, vibrating with the slightest breath of nervous impression. They depend for their activity entirely on the sensory percep­ tive centres, for there is no consciousness in the absence of sensory stimulation, as in dreamless sleep. Perception, how­ ever caused, whether by outward stimu­ lation of real objects or by former per­ ceptions revived by memory, sends a stream of energy through the sense-area, which expands, like a river divided into numerous channels fertilising the intel­ lectual area, where it is stored up by memory, giving us the idea of continual individual existence, and by some myste­ rious and unknown process becoming transformed into consciousness and deliberate thought. And, conversely, the process is reversed when what we call will is excited, and the small currents of the intellectual are concentrated by an effort of attention and sent along the proper nerve-channels to the motor­ centres, whose function it is to produce the desired movement. This mechani­ cal explanation, it will be observed, leaves entirely untouched the question of the real essence and origin of these in­ tellectual faculties, as to which we know nothing more than we do of the real essence and origin of life, of matter, and of energy. A very curious light, however, is thrown on them by phenomena which occur in abnormal states of the brain, as in a trance, somnambulism, and hypnotism. In the latter, by straining the attention on a given object or idea, such as a coin held in the hand or a black wafer on a white wall, or by manual passes on the part of the operator, or, in rare cases, even by a distant projection of will­ power, the normal action of the brain is, in the case of many persons—perhaps one out of every three or four—thrown out of gear, and a state induced in which the will seems to be annihilated, and the thoughts and actions brought into sub­ jection to the will of another person. In this state also a cataleptic condition of the muscles is often induced, in which they acquire enormous strength and rigidity. In somnambulism outward consciousness is in a great measure sus­ pended, and the somnambulist lives forthe time in a walking dream, which he acts and mistakes for reality. In this state old perceptions, scarcely felt at the time, seem to revive, as in dreams, with such wonderful vividness and accuracy that the somnambulist, in acting the dream, does things altogether impossible in the waking state. Thus an ignorant servant-maid is said to have recited half a chapter of the Hebrew version of the Old Testament: the explanation being, that she had been in the service of a minister who was studying Hebrew, and who used to walk about his room recit­ ing this identical passage. It would seem as if the brain were like a very delicate photographic plate, which takesaccurate impressions of all perceptions, whether we notice them or not, and. stores them up ready to be reproduced whenever stronger impressions are dormant, and memory, by some strange caprice, breathes on the plate. Most wonderful, however, are some of the phenomena of trance. In this case it really seems as if two distinct indivi­ duals might inhabit the same body. Jones falls into a trance and dreams that he is Smith. While the trance lasts he acts and talks as Smith; he really is Smith, and even ad­ dresses his former self Jones as a stranger. When he wakes from the trance he has no recollection of it, and �70 THE KNOWABLE AND UNKNOWABLE—BRAIN AND THOUGHT takes up the thread of his own life, just as if he had dozed for a minute instead of being in a trance for hours. But if he falls into a second trance, days or weeks afterwards, he takes up his trance life exactly where he dropped it, abso­ lutely forgetting his intermediate real life. And so he may go on alternating between two lives, with two separate personalities and consciousnesses, being to all intents and purposes now Jones •and now Smith. If he died during a trance, which would he be, Jones or Smith ? The question is ’ more easily asked than answered; but it certainly appears as if with one mode of motion in the same brain you might have one mind and personal identity associated with it, and with another mode of motion dif­ ferent ones. It would take me too far, and the facts are too doubtful, to investigate the large class of cases included under the terras thought-reading, telepathy, psychism, and spiritualism. It may suffice to say that there is a good deal of evidence for the reality of very curious phenomena, but none of any real weight for their being caused by any spiritualistic or - supernatural agency. The same conclu­ sion is given by Mr. Podmore, for many years secretary of the Psychical Research Society, in his well-known works. They all seem to resolve themselves into the assertion that under special conditions the perceptions of one brain can be re­ produced in another otherwise than by the ordinary medium of the senses, and that in such conditions a special sort of cataleptic energy or psychic force may be developed. The amount of negative evidence is of course enormous, for it is certain that in millions upon millions of cases thought cannot be read, things are not seen beyond the range of vision, and coincidences do not occur between deaths and dreams or visions. Neither can tables be turned, nor heavy bodies lifted, without some known form of energy and a fulcrum at which to apply it. This borderland of knowledge is, there­ fore, best left to time, which is the safest test of truth. That which is real will survive, and be gradually brought within the domain of science and made to fit in with other facts and laws of nature. That which is unreal will pass away, as ghosts and goblins have done, and be forgotten as the fickle fashion changes of superstitious fancy. In the meantime we shall do better to confine ourselves to ascertained facts and normal conditions. It is pretty certain that, although the brain greatly preponderates as an organ of mind in man and the higher animals, the grey tissue in the spinal marrow and nervous ganglia exercises a limited amount of the same functions propor­ tionate to its smaller quantity. The reflex or automatic actions, such as breathing, are carried on without refer­ ence to the brain, and the messages are received and transmitted through the local offices without going to the head office. This is the case with many com­ plicated motions which originated in the brain, but have become habitual and automatic, as in walking, where thought and conscious effort only intervene when something unusual occurs which requires a reference to the head office; and in the still more complex case of the pianoplayer, who fingers difficult passages correctly while thinking of something else, or even talking to a bystander. Indeed, in extreme cases, where experi­ ments on the brain have been tried on lower animals, it is found that it can be entirely removed without destroying life, or affecting many of the actions which require perception and volition. Thus, when the brain has been entirely removed from a pigeon, it smoothes its feathers with its bill when they have been ruffled, and places its head under its wing when it sleeps; and a frog under the same conditions, if held by one foot, endeavours to draw it away, and, if unsuccessful, places the other foot against an obstacle in order to get more purchase in the effort to liberate itself. So much for the organ of mind; the other factor, that of outward stimulus, is still more obvious. If thought cannot �THE KNOWABLE AND UNKNOWABLE—BRAIN AND THOUGHT 71 exist without grey nerve-tissue, neither can it without impressions to stimulate that tissue. A perfect brain, if cut off from all communication with the external universe, could no more think and have perceptions than impressions from with­ out could generate them without the appropriate nerve-tissue. Once gene­ rated, the mind can store them up by memory, control them by reason, and gradually evolve fro_m them ever higher and higher ideas and trains of reasoning, both in the individual and the species : in the individual, passing from infancy to manhood, partly by heredity from ances­ tors, and partly by education—using the word in the large sense of influences of all sorts from the surrounding environ­ ment ; in the species, by a similar but much slower development from savagery to civilisation. Thus the whole fabric of arithmetic, algebra, and the higher calculi is built up from the primitive perception of number. The earliest palaeolithic savage must have been conscious of a difference between encountering one or two cave­ bears or mammoths ; and some existing races of savages have hardly got beyond this primitive perception. Some Austra­ lian tribes, it is said, have not got beyond three numerals—one, two, and a great number. But by degrees the perceptions of number have become more extensive and accurate, and the number of fingers on each hand has been used as a standard of comparison. Thus ten, or two-hand, the number of fingers on the two hands, has gradually become the basis of arith­ metical numeration, and from this up to Sir W. Hamilton’s “ Quaternions ” the progression is regular and intelligible. But Newton could never have invented the differential calculus and solved the problem of the heavens if thousands of centuries before some primitive human mind had not perceived that two apples or two bears were different from one. In like manner geometry, as its name indicates, arises from primitive percep­ tions of space, applied to the practical necessity of land-measuring in alluvial | valleys like those of the Nile and Euphrates, where annual inundations obliterated to a great extent the dividing lines between adjoining properties. The first perceptions of space would take the form of the rectangle, or so many feet or paces, or cubits or arm-lengths, forwards,, and so many sideways, to give the proper area; but, as areas were irregular, it wouldbe discovered that the triangle was-, necessary for more accurate measurement... Hence the science of the triangle, circle,, and other regular forms, as we see it developed in Euclid and later treatises, on geometry, until we come to its latest development in speculations as to space of four dimensions. But in all these cases we see the same fundamental principle as prevails throughout the universe under the name of the “ conservation of energy”—always something out of something, never some­ thing out of nothing. This, therefore, defines the limit of human knowledge, or boundary line between the knowable and the unknow­ able. Whatever is transformationaccording to existing laws is, whether known or unknown, at any rate know­ able—whatever is creation is unknow­ able. We have absolutely no faculties to enable us to form the remotest con­ ception of what the essence of these primary atoms and energies really is, how they came there, and how the laws, or invariable sequences, under which they act came to be impressed on them.. We have no faculties, because we have never had any perceptions upon which the mind can work. Reason and imagi­ nation can no more work without ante­ cedent perceptions than a bird can fly in a vacuum. Thus, for instance, the imagination can invent dragons, centaurs, and any number of fabulous monsters, by piecing together fragments of perceptions in new combinations; but ask it to invent a monster whose head shall be that of an inhabitant of Saturn and its body that of a denizen of Jupiter, and where is it? Of necessity, all attempts to define or �72 THE KNOWABLE AND UNKNOWABLE—BRAIN AND THOUGHT describe things of which we have never had perceptions must be made in terms of things of which we have had percep­ tions, or, in other words, must be anthro­ pomorphic. So far as science gives any positive knowledge as to the relations of mind to matter, it amounts to this: That all we call mind is indissolubly connected with matter through the grey cells of the brain and other nervous ganglia. This is positive. If the skull could be removed without injury to the living organism, a skilful physiologist could play with his finger on the human brain, as on that of a dog, pigeon, or other animal, and by pressure on dif­ ferent notes, as on the keys of a piano, annihilate successively voluntary motion, speech, hearing, sight, and finally will, consciousness, reasoning power, and memory. But beyond this physical science cannot go. It cannot explain how molecular motions of cells of nervecentres can be transformed into, or can create, the phenomena of mind, any more than it can explain how the atoms and energies to which it has traced up the material universe were themselves created or what they really are. All attempts to further fathom the depths of the unknown follow a different line, that of metaphysics, or, in other words, introspection of mind by mind, and endeavour to explain thought by thinking. On entering into this region, we at once find that the solid earth is giving way under our feet, and that we are attempting to fly in an extremely rare atmosphere, if, indeed, we are not idly flapping our wings in an absolute vacuum. Instead of ascertained facts which all recognise, and experiments which, conducted under the same con­ ditions, always give the same results, we have a dissolving view of theories and intuitions, accepted by some, denied by others, and changing with the changing conditions of the age, and with individual varieties of character, emotions, and wishes. Thus, mind and soul are with some philosophers identical, with others mind is a product of soul; with some soul is a subtle essence, with others absolutely immaterial; with some it has an individual, with others a universal, existence; by some it is limited to man, by others conceded to the lower animals; by some located in the brain, by others in the heart, blood, pineal gland, or dura mater; with some it is pre-exist­ ent and immortal, with others created specially for its own individual organism; and so on ad infinitum. The greatest philosophers come mostly to the conclu­ sion that we really know nothing about it. Thus Descartes, after having built up an elaborate metaphysical theory as to a spiritual, indivisible substance inde­ pendent of the brain and cognisable by self-consciousness alone, ends by honestly confessing “ that by natural reason we can make many conjectures about the soul, and have flattering hopes, but no assurance.” Kant also, greatest of meta­ physicians, when he has demolished the fallacies of former theories, and comes to define his “ noumenon,” has to use the vaguest of phrases, such as “an inde­ scribable something, safely located out of space and time, as such not subject to the mutabilities of those phenomenal spheres,....... and of whose ontological existence we are made aware by its phenomenal projections, or effects in consciousness.” The sentence takes our breath away, and makes us sympathise with Bishop Berkeley when he says, “ We metaphysicians have first raised a dust, and then complain we cannot see.” It prepares us also for Kant’s final admission that nothing can really be proved by metaphysics concerning the attributes, or even the existence, of the soul; though, on the other hand, as it cannot be disproved, its reality may for moral purposes be assumed. It appears, therefore, that the efforts of the sublimest transcendentalists do not carry us one step farther than the conclusions of the commonest common­ sense—viz., that there are certain funda­ mental conditions of thought, such as space, time, consciousness, personal �THE KNOWABLE AND UNKNOWABLE—BRAIN AND THOUGHT 73 identity, and freedom of will, which we cannot explain, but cannot get rid of. The sublimest speculations of a Plato and a Kant bring us back to the homely conclusions of the old woman in the nursery ballad, in whose mind grave questions as to her personal identity were raised by the felonious abstraction of the lower portion of her petticoat. “ If I be I, as I think I be, I’ve a little dog at home, and he’ll know me.” It is a safe “ working hypothesis ” that, when I go home in the afternoon, my wife, children, and little dog will recog­ nise me as being “ I myself I ”; but why or how I am I, whether I was I before I was born, or shall be so after I am dead, I really know no more than the little dog who wags his tail and yelps for joy when he recognises my personal identity as something distinct from his own, when he sees me coming up the walk. Our conceptions, therefore, are neces­ sarily based on our perceptions, and are what is called anthropomorphic. The term has almost come to be one of reproach, because it has so often been applied to religious conceptions of a Deity with human, though often not very humane, attributes; but, if considered rightly, it - is an inevitable necessity of any attempt to define such a being or beings. We can only conceive of such as a magnified man, indefinitely magnified no doubt, but still with a will, intelli­ gence, and faculties corresponding to our own. The whole supernatural or miracu­ lous theory of the universe rests on the supposition that its phenomena are, in a great many cases, brought about, not by uniform law, but by the intervention of some Power, which, by the exercise of will guided by intelligent design, alters the course of events and brings about special effects. As long as the theory is confined to knowable transformations of existing things, like those which are seen to be affected by human will, it is not necessarily inconceivable or irrational. Inferring like effects from like causes, the hypothesis was by no means unreason­ able that thunder and lightning, for in­ stance, were caused by some angry invisible power in the clouds. On the contrary, the first savage who drew the deduction was a natural philosopher, who reasoned quite justly from his assumed premises. Whether the premises were true or not was a question which could only be determined centuries later by the advance of accurate knowledge. When do we say we know a thing? Not when we know its essence and primary origin, for of these the wisest philosopher is as ignorant as the rudest savage; but when we know its place in the universe, its relation to other things, and can fit it in to that harmonious sequence of events which is summed up in what are called Laws of Nature. Thehighest knowledge is when we can trace it up to its earliest origin from, existing matter and energy, and follow it down­ wards so as to be able to predict its results. The force of gravity affords a good illustration of this knowledge, both where it comes up to and where it falls short of perfection. Newton’s law leaves nothing to. be desired as regards its universal applica­ tion and power of prediction ; but we do not yet fully understand its mode of action or its relation to other forms of energy. It is probable that some day we may be able to understand how the force of gravity appears to act instantaneously at a distance, and how all the transform­ able forces—gravity, light, heat, electricity, and molecular or atomic forces—are but different manifestations of one common energy. But in the meantime we know this for certain, that the law of gravity is not a local or special phenomenon, but prevails universally from the fixed stars to the atoms, from the infinitely great to the infinitely small. This is a fact to which all other phenomena which are really facts and not illusions must conform. In like manner, when we find in caves or river-gravels, under circumstances im­ plying enormous antiquity, and associated with remains of extinct animals, rude �74 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES implements so exactly resembling those in use among existing savages that, if the collection in the Colonial Exhibition of stone celts and arrow-heads used by the Bushmen of South Africa were placed side by side with one from the British Museum of similar objects from Kent’s Cavern or the caves of the Dordogne, no one but an expert could distinguish between them, the conclusion is inevit­ able that Devonshire and Southern France were inhabited at some remote period by a race of men not more advanced than the Bushmen. Any theory of man’s origin and evolution which is to hold water must take account of this fact and square with it. And so of a vast variety of facts which have been reduced to law and become certainly known during the last half-century. A great deal of ground remains unexplored or only partially explored ; but sufficient has been discovered to enable us to say that what we know we know thoroughly, and that certain leading facts and princi­ ples undoubtedly prevail throughout the knowable universe, including not only that which is known, but that which is as yet partially or wholly unknown; for instance, the law of gravity, the conserva­ tion of energy, the indestructibility of matter, and the law of evolution, or development from the simple to the complex. Chapter XI. RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES Religions “ working hypotheses ”—Newman’s harmonious concordance. I said so for illative sense—Origins of religions—Ghosts the following reasons. In a discussion and spirits—Fetishes—Nature-worship—Solar myths—Planets—Evolution of nature-worship at the Metaphysical Society, recorded in —Polytheism, pantheism, and theism—Evolu­ the • Nineteenth Century, on the uni­ tion of monotheism in the Old Testament—■ formity of the laws of nature, Huxley is Evolution of morality—Natural law and represented as saying that he considered miracle—Evidence for miracles—Insufficiency of evidence—Absence of intelligent design— this uniformity, not as an axiomatic Agnosticism—Origin of evil—Can only be truth like the first postulates of geometry, explained by polarity—Optimism and pes­ but as a “ working hypothesis adding, simism—Jesus, the Christian Ormuzd—Chris­ however, that it was an hypothesis which tianity without miracles. Having thus, I may hope, given the reader some precise ideas of what are the boundaries and conditions of human knowledge, we may proceed to consider their application to the highest subjects, religions and philosophies. In the introductory chapter of this work I have said that all religions are in effect “ working hypotheses,” by which men seek to reconcile the highest aspira­ tions of their nature with the facts of the universe, and bring the whole into some had never been known to fail. To this some distinguished advocates of Catholic theology replied, that their conviction was of a higher nature, for their belief in God was a final truth, which was the basis of their whole intellectual and moral nature, and which it was irrational to question. This is, in effect, Cardinal Newman’s celebrated argument of an “illative sense,” based on a complete assent of all the faculties, and which was therefore a higher authority than any conclusions of science. The answer is obvious, that complete assent, so far from �RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES being a test of truth, is, on the contrary, almost always a proof that truth has not been attained, owing either , to erroneous assumptions as to the premises or to the omission of important factors in the solu­ tion of the problem. To give an instance, I suppose there could not be a stronger case of complete assent than that of the Inquisitors who condemned the theories of Galileo. They had in support of the proposition that the sun revolved round the earth the testimony of the senses, the universal belief of mankind in all ages, the direct statement of inspired Scripture, the authority of the infallible Church. Was all this to be set aside because some “ sophist vainly mad with dubious lore ” told them, on grounds of some new­ fangled so-called science, that the earth revolved round its axis and round the sun? “No; let us stamp out a heresy so contrary to our ‘ illative sense,’ and so fatal to all the most certain and cherished beliefs of the Christian world, to the inspiration of the Word of God, and to the authority of his Church.” “Epur si muoveP and yet the earth really did move ; and the verdict of pact was that Galileo and science were right, and the Church and the illative sense wrong. In truth, the distinction between the conclusions of science and those of religious creeds might be more properly expressed by saying that the former are “ working hypotheses ” which never fail, while the latter are “ working hypothe­ ses” which frequently fail. ‘Thus, the fundamental hypothesis of Cardinal New­ man and his school of a one infinite and eternal personal Deity, who regulates the course of events' by frequent miraculous interpositions, so far from being a neces­ sary and axiomatic truth, has never appeared so to the immense majority of the human race ; and even at the present day, in civilised and so-called Christian countries, its principal advocates com­ plain that ninety-nine out of every hun­ dred practically ignore it. It is not so with the uniformity of the laws of nature. No palaeolithic savage ever hesitated about putting one foot after another in 75 chase of a mammoth from a fear that his working hypothesis of uniform law might fail, the support of the solid earth give way, and with his next step he might find himself toppling over into the abyss of an infinite vacuum. In like manner Greeks and Romans, Indians, and Chinese, monotheists, polytheists^ pantheists, Jews and Buddhists, Chris­ tians and Mohammedans, all use standard, weights in their daily transactions with­ out any misgivings that the law of gravity­ may turn out not to be uniform. But religious theories vary from time to time and from place to place, and we can in a great many cases trace their origins and developments like those of other political and social organisms. To trace their origins we must, as in the case of social institutions, look first at the ideas prevailing among those savage and barbarous races who are the best representatives of our early pro­ genitors ; and secondly at historical records. In the first case we find the earliest rudiments of religious ideas in the universal belief in ghosts and spirits. Every man is conceived of as being a double of himself, and as having a sort of shadowy self, which comes and goesin sleep or trance, and finally takes leave of the body, at death, to continue its existence as a ghost. The air is thus peopled with an immense number of ghosts, who continue very much their ordinary existence, haunt their accus­ tomed abodes, and. retain their living powers and attributes, which are exerted generally with a malevolent desire to injure and annoy. Hence among savage races, and by survival even among primi­ tive nations of the present day, we find the most curious devices to cheat or frighten away the ghost, so that he may not return to the house in which he died. Thus, the corpse is carried out, not by the door, but by a hole made for the purpose in the wall, which is afterwards built up—a custom which prevails with a number of widely separated races— Greenlanders, Hottentots, Algonquins, and Fijians; and the practice even �76 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES survives among more civilised nations, such as the Chinese, Siamese, and Thibetans; nor is it wholly extinct in some of the primitive parts of Europe. This idea obviously led to the practice of constructing tents or houses for the ghosts to live in, and of depositing with them articles of food and weapons to be used in their ghostly existence. In the case of great chiefs, not only their arms and ornaments were deposited, but their horses, slaves, and wives were sacrificed and buried with them, so that they might enter spirit-land with an appropriate retinue. The early Egyptian tombs were as nearly as possible facsimiles of the house in which the deceased had lived, with pictures of his geese, oxen, -and other possessions painted on the walls, evidently under the idea that the ghosts of these objects would minister to the wants and please the fancy of the human ghost whose eternal dwelling was in the tomb where his mummy was de­ posited. Another development of the belief in spirits is that of fetish-worship, in which superstitious reverenc.e is paid to some stock or stone, tree or animal, in which a mysterious influence is supposed to reside, probably owing to its being the chosen abode of some powerful spirit. This is common among the negro races, and it takes a curious development among many races of American Indians, where the tribe is distinguished by the totem, or badge of some particular animal, such as the bear, the tortoise, or the hare, which is in some way supposed to be the patron spirit of the clan, and often the progenitor from whom they are descended. This idea is so rooted that intermarriage between men and women who have the same totem is prohibited as a sort of incest, and the daughter of a bear-mother must seek for a husband among the sons of the deer or fox. Possibly a vestige of the survival of this idea may be traced in the coat-of-arms of the Sutherland family, and the wild cat may have been the totem of the Clan Chattan, while the oak tree was that of the Clan Quoich, with whom they fought on the Inch of Perth. Be this as it may, it is clearly a most ancient and widespread idea, and prevails from Greenland to Australia; while it evidently formed the oldest element of the pre­ historic religion of Egypt, where each separate province had its peculiar sacred animal, worshipped by the populace in one nome and detested in the neigh­ bouring one. By far the earliest traces of anything resembling religious ideas are those found in burying-places of the neolithic period. It is evident that at this remote period ideas prevailed respecting ghost or spirit life and a future existence very similar to those of modern savages. They placed weapons and implements in the graves of the dead, and not infrequently sacrificed human victims and held cannibal feasts. Whether this was done in the far more remote palaeo­ lithic era' is uncertain, for very few undoubted burials of this period have been discovered, and those few have frequently been used again for later interments. We can only draw a nega­ tive inference from the absence of idols, which are so abundant in the prehistoric abodes explored by Professor Schlie­ mann, among the very numerous carvings and drawings found in the caves of the reindeer period in France and Germany—namely, that the religion of the palaeolithic men, if they had any, had not reached the stage when spirits or deities were represented by images. For the first traces, therefore, of any­ thing like what is now understood by the term religion, we must look beyond the vague superstitions of savages, at the historical records of civilised nations. As civilisation advanced population multiplied, and the rude tribes of hunters were amalgamated into agricultural com­ munities and powerful empires, in which a leisured and cultured class arose, to whom the old superstitions were no longer sufficient. They had to enlarge their “working hypothesis” from the worship of stocks and stones and fear of �RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES ghosts, to take in a multitude of new facts and ideas, and specially those relating to natural phenomena which had roused their curiosity, or become impor­ tant to them as matters of practical utility. The establishment of an here­ ditary caste of priests accelerated this evolution of religious ideas, and from time to time recorded its progress. The oldest of such records are those of Egypt and Chaldsea, where the fertility of alluvial valleys watered by great rivers had led to the earliest development of a high civilisation. The records also of the Chinese, Hindoos, Persians, and other nations take us a long way back towards the origins of religions. In all cases we find them identical with the first origins of science, and taking the form of attempted explanations of natural phenomena, by the theory of deified objects and powers of nature. In the Vedas we see this in the simplest form, where the gods are simply personi­ fications of the heavens, earth, sun, moon, dawn, and so forth; where we should say the red glow of morning announces the rising of the sun, they express it that Aurora blushes at the approach of her lover, the mighty Sun­ god. It is very interesting to observe how the old Chaldsean legend of the creation of the world has been modified in the far later Jewish edition of it in Genesis, to adapt it to monotheistic ideas. The Chaldaean legend begins, like that of Genesis, with an “earth without form and void,” and darkness on the chaotic deep. In each legend the Spirit of God, called Absu in the Chaldaean, moves on the face of the waters, and they are gathered together and separated from the land. But here a difference begins: in the original Chaldsean legend “ the great gods were then made; the gods Lakman and Lakmana caused themselves to come forth; the gods Assur and Kesar were made; the gods Anu, Bel, and Idea were born.” The appearance of the gods Lakman and Lakmana was the primitive mode of 77 expressing the same idea as that which is expressed in Genesis by saying that God created the firmament separating the heaven above from the earth beneath; Assur and Kesar mean the same thing as the hosts of heaven and the earth; the god Bel is the sun, and so forth. It is evident that the first attempts to explain the phenomena of nature originated, in the idea that motion and power implied life, personality, and conscious will; and therefore that the earth, sky, sun, moon, and other grand and striking phenomena, must be regarded as separate gods. As culture advanced astronomy be­ came more and more prominent in these early religions, and solar myths became a principal part of their mythologies, while astrology, or the influence of planets or stars on human affairs, became an important part of practical life. .The Chaldsean legend referred to contains a mass of astronomical knowledge, which in the Genesis edition is reduced to “ He made the stars also.” It describes how the constellations were assigned their forms and names, the twelve signs of the Zodiac established, the year divided into twelve months, the equi­ noxes determined, and the seasons set their bounds. Also how the moon was made to regulate the months by its disc, “ horns shining forth to lighten the heavens, which, on the seventh day, approaches a circle.” In the still older Egyptian pyramids - we find proof of the long previous exist­ ence of great astronomical knowledge and refined methods of observation; for these buildings, which are at once the largest and the oldest in the world, are laid down so exactly in a meridian line, and with such a close approximation to the true latitude, as would have other­ wise been impossible. In fact, there is every reason to believe that, while they were constructed as tombs for kings, they were at the same time intended for national observatories ; for the arrange­ ment of the internal passages is such as to make the Great Pyramid serve, the purpose of a telescope, equatorially �78 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES mounted, and showing the transit of stars to the Gallery of Dresden, he would see in and planets over the meridian, by refer­ Raffaelle s Madonna di San Sisto what he ence to a reflected image of what was would consider to bean admirable repre­ then the polar star, a knowledge of which sentation of Horus in the arms of Isis. was essential for accurate calculation of . The planets also, still more mysterious the calendar and seasons, for fixing the m their movements than the sun, and proper date of religious ceremonies, and therefore still more endowed with human­ very probably for astrological purposes. like faculties of life, power, and purpose, The prevalence of these solar and were from an early period believed to astronomical myths among a number of exercise an influence on human affairs. different nations separated by wide inter­ Of the universality of this belief we find vals of space and time is very remarkable. traces in . the names of the days of the Egyptians, Indians, Babylonians, Chinese, week, which are so generally taken from Mexicans, and Peruvians had myths the sun, moon, and five visible planets— which were strangely similar, indeed Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and almost identical, based on the sun’s Saturn—to whom special days were dedi­ annual passage through the constella­ cated. If every seventh day is a day of tions of the zodiac. His apparent decline rest, it was originally so because it was and death as he approached the winter thought unlucky to undertake any work solstice, and his return to life when he on the Sabbath, Saturday, or day of the had passed it, gave rise to myths of the gloomy and malignant Saturn. murder of the Sun-god by some fierce As time rolled on and civilisation ad­ wild boar, or treacherous enemy, and of vanced, this simple nature-worship and his triumphant resurrection in renewed deification of astronomical phenomena glory. Hence, also, the passage of the developed into larger and more complex winter solstice was a season of general conceptions. Following different lines rejoicing and festivity, traces of which of evolution, polytheism, pantheism, and survive when the sirloin and turkey smoke monotheism began to emerge as religious upon the hospitable tables of modern systems with definite creeds, rituals, and Christmas. One remarkable myth had a sacred books. These lines seem to have very universal acceptance, that of the been determined a good deal by the birth of the infant Sun-god from a virgin genius of the race in which the religious mother. It appears to have originated development took place. The impres­ from the period, some 6,450 years ago, sions made on the human mind by the when the sun, which now rises at the surrounding universe are very various. winter solstice in the constellation of Suppose ourselves looking up at the Sagittarius, rose in that of Pisces, with heavens on a clear starry night, what the constellation of the Virgin, with will be the impression ? To one, that of upraised arms marked by five stars, awe and reverence; he will feel crushed, setting in the north-west. Anyhow, this as it were, into nothingness in the pre­ myth of an infant god born of a virgin sence of such a sublime manifestation of mother holds a prominent place in the majesty and glory. Another, of a more religions of Egypt, India, China, aesthetic nature, will be charmed by the Chaldaea, Greece, Rome, Siam, Mexico, beauty of the spectacle, and tempted to Peru, and other nations. The resem­ assign life to it, and to personify and blances are often so close that the first dramatise its incidents. A third, of a Jesuit missionaries to China found that scientific turn, will above all things wish their account of the miraculous concep­ to understand it. tion of Christ had been anticipated by Thus, we find the impression of awe that of Fuh-ke, born 3468 b.c. ; and if preponderating among the Semitic races an ancient priest of Thebes or Helio­ generally; and as in their political rela­ polis could be restored to life and taken tions, so in their, religious conceptions, �RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES we find them prone to prostrate them­ selves before despotic power.. With the Greeks, again, the aesthetic idea almost swallowed up the others, and the old astronomical myths blossomed into a perfect flower-bed of poetical and fanciful legends. The Chinese never got beyond a simple pantheism, which looked upon the universe as being alive, and saw nothing behind it ; while the more meta­ physical and physically feebler races of Hindoos and Buddhists refined their pantheism into a system of illusion, in which their own existence and the sur­ rounding universe were literally “ such stuff As dreams are made on,” and to be “ rounded with a sleep ” was the final consummation devoutly to be desired. Monotheism developed itself later, partly from the feeling of the unity of nature forcing itself on the more philoso­ phical minds ; partly from that feeling of reverence and awe in presence of the Unknown which swallowed up other conceptions; and partly, in the earlier stages, from the feeling which exalted the local god of the tribe or nation, first into a supremacy over other gods, and finally into sole supremacy, degrading all other gods into the category of dumb idols made by human hands. In the Old Testament we can trace the development of this latter idea in its successive stages. Until the later days of the Jewish monarchy it is evident that the Jews never doubted the existence of other gods; their allegiance oscillated between Jehovah and the heathen deities sym­ bolised by the golden calf, worshipped in high places, and contending for the mastership in the rival sacrifices of Elijah and the priests of Baal. But the pro­ phetic element gradually introduced higher ideas, and in the reigns of Heze­ kiah and Josiah the worship of Jehovah as the sole God became the religion of the State; and old legends and docu­ ments were re-edited in this sense in the sacred book, which was discovered and 79 published for the first time in the reign of the latter king. The subsequent mis­ fortunes of the nation, their captivity and contact with other religions in Babylonia (from which the old legends had them­ selves been largely though indirectly borrowed), strengthened this mono­ theism into an ardent, passionate, na­ tional faith, as it has continued to be with this remarkable people up to the present day. Christianity and Mohamme­ danism, children of Judaism, have spread this form of faith over a great part of the civilised world; and of the three theories —polytheism, pantheism, and mono­ theism—it may be said that only the two latter survive. Polytheism was bound to perish first, for, slow as the advance of science was, the uniformity of most of the pheno­ mena, which had been attributed to so many separate gods, could not fail to make an impression; and as. ideas of morality came slowly and tardily to. be appropriated as an element of religion, the cruel rites and scandalous fables which so generally accompanied poly­ theistic religions became shocking to an awakening conscience. It is worthy of remark that this ele­ ment of morality, which has now gone so far towards swallowing up the others, was the latest to appear. Even in the Jewish conception Jehovah was for a long time just as often cruel, jealous, and capricious as just and merciful; and St. Paul’s doctrine that, because God had the power to do as he liked, he was warranted in creating a large portion of the human race as “ vessels of wrath,” predestined to eternal punishment, is as revolting to the modern conscience as any sacrifice to Beelzebub or Moloch. If we wish to see how little necessary connection there is between morality and monotheism, we have only to look at Mohammedanism, which, in its extremer forms, may be called monotheism run mad. The Wahabite reformer, we are told by Palgrave, preached that there were only two deadly sins: paying divine honours to any creature of Allah’s, and �8o RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES smoking tobacco; and that murder, adultery, and such-like trivial matters, were minor offences which a merciful Allah would condone. He held, also, that of the whole inhabitants of the world all would surely be damned, except one out of the seventy-two sects of Mohammedans, who held the true faith and dwelt in the district of Riad. This illustrates the insane extremes into which all human speculations run, if a single idea—in this case that of awe, reverence, and abject submission in presence of an almighty power—is allowed to run its course without check and obtain undue preponderance. Apart from these extreme instances, we may say that the two religious theories which have survived to the present day in the struggle for existence are mono­ theism and pantheism. Pantheism is, in the main, the creed of half the human race—of the teeming millions of India, China, Japan, Ceylon, Thibet, Siam, and Burmah. How deeply it is rooted in their conceptions was very forcibly impressed on me in a conversation I had on board one of the P. and O. steamers with an English missionary returning from China. He told me how he had dined one evening with an intelli­ gent Chinese merchant, and after dinner they walked in the garden discussing religious subjects, and he tried to impress on his host the first principles of the Christian religion. It was a starlight night, and for sole reply the Chinese gentleman stretched his hand to the heavens and said: “ Do you mean to tell me all that is dead—do you take me for a fool?” The Chinese “illative sense” was as absolute in its conclusions for pantheism as that of Cardinal Newman for theism. In fact, pantheism, though not the whole truth, and almost as incon­ sistent as polytheism with the real facts of the universe as disclosed by science, has a certain poetical truth in it, to which chords of human emotion vibrate responsively, and is perhaps not so widely in error as some of the extreme theories which treat matter as something base and brutal. Wordsworth’s noble lines— “ A sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; A motion, and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, And rolls through all things ”— are pure pantheism, and yet we cannot but feel ourselves to a great extent in sympathy with them. So also the well-known lines of a greater than Wordsworth, Shakespeare, are pure Buddhism :— “ The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on ; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.” No one can read these lines without feeling that the Buddhist conception is as far as possible from being a trivial or vulgar one, and that the triviality and vulgarity are rather with those who cannot, up to a certain point, under­ stand and sympathise with it. The religions of the East are very philosophical, and have kept very clearly in view this fundamental distinction between the knowable and the unknow­ able. In the Century Magazine of July, 1886, there is an interesting account of a conversation between an American missionary and the Bozu or chief priest of the great temple of the Shin Sect of Buddhists at Kioto in Japan. The priest was an intelligent and highly educated gentleman, who spoke English, and was well versed in the speculations of modern philosophy. The conversation turned on theological questions, and when pressed by the argument for a Divine Creator, from design shown in the uni­ verse implying intelligence, he replied :— “ No; God cannot make matter. Only artificial things show design, only things which can be made. What do you mean by saying a thing shows design? You only mean that by trying a man could make it.” �81 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES And he proceeded to illustrate it thus “You show me a gold ring ; the ring shows design, but not the gold; gold is an ultimate element, which can neither be made nor destroyed. When men can make a world, then they can prove that this one shows design, for the only way they know of design is by what they make.” He went on to argue for the immor­ tality of the soul, and as a consequence for its pre-existence and the transmigra­ tion of souls, from the conservation of energy; and concluded his argument against the creation and government of the world by a comprehensible, anthro­ pomorphic Creator, by adducing the existence of evil. “ There is a sickness,” he said, “ called fever and ague; what do you call the medicine to cure that ?” “ Quinine.” “Yes; now we have not found that long ; a good God would not have let so many people suffer if he could have given them that. A man found it by chance. The sickness and suffering in this life are for wrong done in another life.” We may not accept this unproved theory of the cause of sickness and suffering, but it is very interesting to find that candid and intelligent minds, brought up in a society and religious beliefs so widely different from our own, have arrived practically at the same con­ clusions as John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and other leaders of advanced thought in modern Europe, and drawn almost identically the same line between that which is knowable and that which is unknowable by the human mind. But, however large-minded we may become in seeing the good in other forms of creed, we English of the twen­ tieth century are not going to turn either Pantheists or Buddhists, and prac­ tically the contest of the present day is between the supernatural or miraculous, and the natural or scientific, hypotheses. According to the former, the opera­ tions of the universe are carried on to a considerable extent by what may be called secondary inferences of a super­ natural being, who with will, intelligence, and design, like human though vastly superior, frequently interposes to alter the course of events and bring about something which natural law would not have brought about. The other hypo­ thesis cannot be stated better than in Bishop Temple’s words, that the Great First Cause created things so perfect from the first that no such secondary interferences have ever been necessary; and everything has been and is evolved from the primary atoms and energies in a necessary and invariable succession. The supernatural and the natural theories of the universe are thus brought into direct antagonism. For the supernatural theory it must be conceded that it is quite conceivable, as is proved by the fact that it has been the almost universal conception of mankind for ages, and remains so still for the greater number. It is, as I have said, the inevitable first conception when men began to reflect on the phenomena of the universe, and to reason from effects to causes. I have always thought that Hume went too far in condemning miracles as absolutely incredible a priori. It it is a question of evidence. A priori, I can conceive that the true explanation of the universe might have been natural law, as the general rule, supplemented by miracles; just as readily as that it is law always, and miracle never. The verdict must be decided by the weight of evidence. The two theories must be called, face to face, before the tribunal of fact, and its decision must be respected. This is exactly what has been going on for the last two centuries, and specially for the last half century ; and the record of decisions is now a very ample one. In every single instance law has carried the day against miracle. Instance after instance has occurred in which phenomena which in former ages were attributed without hesitation to supernatural agencies have been con­ clusively proved to be due to natural G �82 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES laws. Take the obvious instance of tered incantations, the new ones quinine 3 thunder. When Horace wrote—which cure the most patients ? In like manner, demonology and witch­ “ Jam satis terris nivis, atque dirre Grandinis misit Pater, et rubente craft, with all their train of cruelties and Dextera sacras jaculatus arces horrors, once universally believed even Terruit orbem,” by men like Justice Hale, have passed he wrote to a public to whom it was an into oblivion as completely as the Lamiee, undoubted article of faith that thunder Phorkyads, and other fantastic figures and lightning, hail and snowstorms, came of the classical Walpurgis-night. Is the direct from .the Father of the gods in world* the better or the worse for this the sky. Even to a late period this was triumph of natural law over super­ the general faith, and the prayers in our naturalism ? rubric for rain or fine weather remain as The triumph has been so complete in a survival of the belief that these things, innumerable instances, without a single when unusual or in excess, are super­ one to the contrary, that belief in the natural manifestations. But Benjamin permanence and universality of natural Franklin said : “ No, there is nothing law has become almost an instinct in all supernatural about lightning. I will educated minds, and even those who bring it down from the clouds and cling to old beliefs must admit that the manufacture it by turning a wheel.” most cogent and irresistible evidence is Appeal being made to fact, the verdict requisite to establish the fact of a real is that Franklin was right, and that supernatural inference. It may be taken lightning-conductors protect ships and as an axiom that, wherever a natural houses better than prayers or incanta­ explanation is possible, a miraculous one tions. Again, when Galileo and the is impossible. Church joined issue as to whether the Now, this is just the point on which, earth was round or flat, inspiration and as knowledge has increased, the evidence authority were cited in vain for the for miracles has become weaker, almost received theoryj fact said it was round, in the exact ratio in which the necessity and it was proved to be so by men for evidence has become stronger. sailing round it. The law of gravity was • Take, for instance, the following case considered a very dangerous heresy, and recorded by Dr. Braid, of Glasgow. Miss for a long time pious divines held out R. had suffered from ophthalmia and against its conclusions, and contended was totally blind. She could not discern that it was no better than atheism to a single letter of the title-page of a book doubt that comets were signs of God’s placed close to her, though some of the anger sent to warn a sinful world. But letters were a quarter of an inch long. Halley calculated the time of his comet’s Dr. Braid placed the patient in a condi­ return according to the laws of gravity, tion of hypnotism, and directed the and, appeal being made to fact, the comet nervous force, or sustained attention of returned true to time. the mind, to the eyes by wafting over This has occurred so often that few them. After a first sitting of about ten are left who doubt the universal preva­ minutes she was able to read a great lence of law in the material universe, part of the title-page, and after four more where former generations saw miracles at sittings she was able to read the smallestevery turn. Nor is the defeat of miracle sized print in a newspaper, and was quite less conspicuous in the spiritual world. cured for the rest of her life. In another Where former ages and rude races saw, case, that of Mrs. S., blindness of the and still see, possession by evil spirits, left eye had occurred owing to an attack modern doctors see fevers, epilepsies, or of rheumatic fever, the structure of the insanity. Once more appeal being made eye, both external and internal, being to fact, the old medicine-men adminis­ considerably injured, and more than �RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES half the cornea covered by an opaque film. After a few sittings the cornea became transparent, and the patient was cured. In both these cases the blind were made to see by processes which were purely mechanical, for hypnotism was induced by the simple means of making the patient strain her attention on some fixed idea or object, commonly on a black wafer stuck on a white wall, and the stimulation of the optic nerve to greater activity did the rest. And if the blind could be made to see, a fortiori the deaf were made to hear, and the lame and halt to walk, by the same mechanical process. Here there is an explanation of nine-tenths of all recorded miracles by purely natural causes. Again, take the well-known case of the Berlin bookseller, Nicolai, who, having fallen into ill-health, for a whole year saw, when awake, visions so real and palpable that he may be said to have lived in the company of disembodied spirits, undistinguishable from actual men and women. This is a common pheno­ menon in vivid dreams, but the Berlin case takes us a step farther, and shows us howsubjective impressions mayassume the form of objective realities, even in the case of a man wide awake, of a sceptical turn of mind, and in full possession of his reasoning faculties. Why, then, should we be driven to the alternative of miracle or imposture to account for similar dreams or visions being taken for objec­ tive realities by enthusiastic minds, living in an atmosphere of religious excitement, in an uncritical age, when supernatural occurrences were considered to be matters of course? And history is full of instances which show how any super­ natural germ, planted in such a medium, propagates itself and extends to millions, almost as rapidly as the bacillus germ does in an epidemic of small-pox. St. Vitus’s dance, or the dancing mania, ran the round of Europe like the potato disease, and even yet survives in the hysterical affections of the sect of Shakers. The gift of tongues spread like wildfire 83 through Irving’s congregation, and only died out because it had fallen on the uncongenial soil of the nineteenth cen­ tury ; even the story of the tail of the lion over the gateway of the old Northum­ berland House being seen by many passers-by to wag because one had asserted it, illustrates the contagiousness of nervous sympathy, and the tricks which “ strong imagination ” can play with the senses. Another great blow has been dealt against the miraculous theory by what can only be called the singular want of intelligence displayed in the exercise of miraculous power as commonly recorded. The raison d'etre, or effect desired to be produced by miracles, is to convert man­ kind from sin, or to attest a divine mission by convincing proofs. Even ordinary human intelligence—and how much more so that of a superior Being— must see that to attain this end the means must be to make the proof convincing. There is no reason in itself why it should not be so. The fact that a man who was alive and signed a will is now dead is attested, as regards the latter proposi­ tion, by a proper medical certificate, and as regards the former by two credible witnesses, who are prepared to come into court, give their names and addresses, depose on oath to the signature, and stand cross-examination. If this testi­ mony is required to establish a fact so antecedently probable as that one parti­ cular man has undergone the common fate of millions of millions of other men —that is to say, that he has died after being alive—how much more must it be requisite to establish the fact so antece­ dently improbable as that one man among those many millions, after having died, came back to life. And yet, where is the recorded miracle for which' even this minimum, amount of testimony is forthcoming? Why are miracles so constantly performed in holes and corners, in obscure localities, among little knots of ignorant and enthusiastic adherents, attested by the vaguest hear| say evidence of unknown or incompetent �84 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES witnesses, and apparently under circum­ so by working a miracle, he had refused, stances inevitably calculated to defeat he would from his point of view have their object and engender doubts in the been guilty of a great sin—that of pre­ minds of reasonable and conscientious venting the coming of the kingdom of men. Take, for instance, the miracles heaven. now said to be wrought at Lourdes. The Again, who were the Pharisees ? No object must be taken to be to convert doubt there were formalists and hypo­ infidel France to the Catholic faith. But crites among them, but the position of obviously this object would be far better the sect in the Jewish nation was almost attained by a single undoubted miracle exactly similar to that of the English wrought at Paris before a commission Puritans in the reign of Charles. They headed by a man like Pasteur, than by were the embodiment of the patriotic any number of miracles scarcely, if at all, and religious spirit of the race, the sons distinguishable from those of Dr. Braid, of the heroic fathers who fought under alleged to occur at an obscure village in Judas Maccabeus against Antiochus, the the presence.of peasants and pilgrims. fathers of the equally heroic sons who Or, take a higher instance, that of the made the last desperate stand against the demand made by the Pharisees to Jesus legions of Titus. . It was their duty, when for a sign to attest his Messiahship. Con­ a claim to Messiahship was advanced, sider the. circumstances of the case, and before departing from the traditions of see if it is at all possible that, if he had their ancestors, to require evidence. The possessed the power of working miracles, universally expected evidence of a tem­ he should have replied, “ Why doth this poral. deliverer being wanting, there generation seek after a sign? verily I say remained only the evidence of miracles, unto you, there shall no sign be given which, moreover, were assigned as the unto this generation” (St. Mark ix. 12). test of a Messiah by all their prophets. In the first place, the statement throws To refuse them a sign, if a sign were discredit upon all the miracles said to possible, was to do injustice to many have been wrought, by the positive and sincere and conscientious men. Nay, explicit declaration that none should be more, it was an act of cruelty if leaving wrought. But beyond this, the very them in their old faith entailed eternal essence of the mission of Jesus was con­ punishment. The same thing applies to tained in the words, “ Repent ye, for the all records of miracles. They are never kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He had wrought under circumstances where they a firm conviction that the kingdom of would be the most effective means for heaven, or a millennium of peace and attaining proposed ends. They are never goodwill, was close at hand, and its wrought under circumstances which leave advent only retarded by the sinfulness them clear of the suspicion of being sub­ and want of faith of his chosen people. jective illusions of misinterpretations of He thought it his bounden duty to do effects due to natural causes. They all he could to remove the obstacle and never convince any but those who are expedite the coming of the kingdom. more than half convinced already. With this conviction, though fully seeing It would be easy to multiply instances the risk and counting the cost, when he showing the inadequacy of the evidence found- that he was making no decided adduced to establish such an exceptional headway by preaching in a remote pro­ and extraordinary fact as the occurrence vince, he determined to go to Jerusalem of a real miracle. But it is unnecessary and make there one great effort to to do so, as all thinking minds have accomplish his object. Can it be doubted come, or are fast coming, to the conclu­ that he would use every means in his sion of Dr. Temple, that “all the count­ power to carry his mission to a successful less varieties of the universe were pro­ conclusion ? If, having the power to do | vided for by one original impress, and �RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES not by special acts of creation modifying what had previously been made.” It is only when we look behind the phenomena of the universe at this Great First Cause that I see anything to object to in the definition of Dr. Temple, and of Christian philosophers generally. They assume it to be a personal Deity, who is to a great extent known or knowable, and therefore must have attributes conform­ able to human perceptions which are the basis of all human knowledge. In other words, however much we may purify and enlarge these attributes, He must be essentially an anthropomorphic God or magnified man. To this theory there seems to me to be this fatal objection, that it gives no account of the origin of evil, or rather that it makes the Divine Creator directly responsible for it. . The existence of evil in the world is as palpable a fact as the existence of good. There are many things which to our human perceptions appear to be base, cruel, foul, and ugly, just as clearly as other things appear to be noble, merciful, pure, and beautiful. Whence come they ? If the existence of good proves a good Creator, how can we escape the inference that the existence of evil proves an evil one ? This is never so forcibly impressed on me as when I read the arguments of those who insist most strongly on the conception of a one, anthropomorphic God. When Carlyle says, “All that is good, generous, wise, right—whatever I deliberately and for ever love in others and myself—who or what could by any possibility have given it to me but One who first had it to give? This is not logic, but axiom.” I cannot but picture to myself the sledge-hammer force with which, if he had approached the question without prepossessions, he would have come down on the cant, the insincerity, the treason to the eternal veracities, which refused to look facts in the face, and apply the same reasoning to the evil. Or if Arnold defines the Deity as the “ Something not ourselves which makes for righteousness,” how of the Some­ thing not ourselves which makes for 85 unrighteousness? The only escape I can find from this dilemma is to accept existing facts and not evade them. It' is a fact that polarity is the law of existence. Why we know not, any more than we know the real essence and origin of the atoms and energies which are our other ultimate facts. But we accept atoms and energies, and accept the law of gravity and other laws; why not accept also the law of polarity, and admit that it is part of the “original impress”: one of the funda­ mental conditions under which, the evolution of Creation from its ultimate elements is necessitated to proceed. This the human mind can understand; beyond it is the great unknown or un­ knowable, in presence of which we can only feel emotions of reverence and of awe, and “ faintly trust the larger hope ” that duality may somehow ultimately be merged in unity, evil in good, and “ every winter turn to spring.” As nations advanced in civilisation, there has always been a tendency among the higher and purer minds to relegate the Great First Cause further and further back into the unknown, and to divest it of anthropomorphic attributes. When Socrates said, “that divinely revealed wisdom of what you speak, I deny not, inasmuch as I do not know it; I can only understand human reason,” he spoke the identical language of Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, and those leaders of modern thought whom theologians call agnostics. Even in religions based on the idea of a single anthropomorphic Deity the same tendency often appears among the highest thinkers. Thus Emmanuel Deutsch, in his learned work on the Talmud, tells us : “ Its first chapter treats of the Deity as conceived by Jewish philosophy. The existence of God is, of course, pre­ supposed. But what of his attributes ? Has he any ? Scripture literally taken seems to affirm this. Yet taken in a higher sense, as understood by the Alex­ andrines, the Talmud, and the Targum, it denies it.” The great Jewish doctors, Ibn Ezra, Jehuda Hilmi, and Maimonides, take �86 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES this view of a divine origin shrouded in ineffable mystery. Maimonides says: “If you give attributes to a thing, you define this thing, and defining a thing means to bring it under some head, to compare it with something like it. God is sole of his kind. Determine him, circumscribe him, and you bring him down to the modes and categories of created things.” Even St. Paul says : “ O the depths of God. How unsearchable are his judg­ ments, and how inscrutable his ways”; and the Creed of our own Church, in the midst of a string of definitions all implying that God is comprehensible, has the words, “the Father incomprehen­ sible.” It is evident that the reasons why these anticipations of the prevailing ten­ dency of modern thought only appeared by glimpses, and among a very limited number of philosophic minds, arose from the fact that the miraculous theory of the universe everywhere prevailed. Every unusual occurrence was supposed to be owing to the direct supernatural interfer­ ence of a Being acting in the main with human attributes, and therefore to be a direct refutation of the theory which denied the possibility of defining His attributes, and relegated Him to the dim distance of an incomprehensible Creator. With the utter breakdown of the miracu­ lous theory, and the certainty that all the countless varieties of the universe arise, not from special interferences, but from one original impress, this theory of a reverent and devout agnosticism becomes impregnable and holds the field against all rivals. It, and it alone, is consistent with the facts of science, the deductions of reason, the axioms of morality, while at the same time it denies nothing, and leaves an ample background on which to paint the visions of faith, and to reflect back to us spectral images of our hopes and fears, our longings and aspirations. Some seek for a solution of the mysteiy, and try to reconcile the existence of evil with that of an almighty and benefi­ cent Creator, by assuming that in the long run everything will come right. Evolution, they say, has led constantly to higher and better things, and when carried far enough will lead to a state of society in which wars will cease, evil passions die out, and universal love and charity _ prevail—in other words, to a millennium. Even if this were true, what of the un­ told millions of the human race who have perished in their sins while evolution was slowly working out this tardy millennium? Are they the chair a canons, whom a Napoleon-like Deity sacrifices with cynical indifference, in the calculated moves of the game of Creation ? Is this their idea of an all-wise and all-merciful Father who is in heaven ? And, again, is it true that evolution works constantly for good and promises to bring about such a millennium ? It is doubtless true that evolution means progress, and the ever-increasing develop­ ment of the more and more complex and differentiated from the simple and uni­ form. But is this all for good, or all for happiness; and is not evolution, like everything else, subject to the primary and all-pervading law of polarity ? We have only to ask the question to answer it. In the case of the individual, which is the epitome of the history of the species, is development from the engag­ ing innocence of childhood always in the direction of goodness and happiness ? So far is this from being the case that, as individuals and societies advance, and become higher and more complex in the scale of organisation, the law of polarity asserts itself with ever-increasing force, and contrasts become sharper. The good become better, the bad worse ; and as we become less “Like the beasts with lower pleasures, Like the beasts with lower pains,” if our happiness becomes more intense, so does our misery become more intoler­ able. I refer not merely to physical conditions, though here the contrast is most apparent. An intelligent traveller who recently circled the world, survey­ ing mankind with a keen and impartial �RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES eye “ from China to Peru,” says, as the result of his experience : “ The traveller will not see, in all his wanderings, so much abject repulsive misery among human beings in the most heathen lands as that which startles him in his civilised Christian home, for nowhere are the extremes of wealth and poverty so pain­ fully presented.” This is perfectly true; but it would be a rash conclusion to infer that civilised and Christian coun­ tries are worse than heathen lands, or that those who march in the van of pro­ gress, and who succeed in the struggle for life, have a larger dose of original sin than the laggards and those who fail. Accumulations of population and accumulations of capital are alike causes and effects of progress in an industrial age. But you can no more have a north without a south pole than you can have this progress without its counterpart of suffering. When an educated gentleman was, like the good vicar, “ Passing rich with forty pounds a year,” how many struggles and how many heart-aches were avoided. When “ merry England” dwelt in rural hamlets and villages, the “bitter cry” of East Lon­ don could scarcely have been written. Turn it as you like, increase of popula­ tion means increase of poverty. Say that only five per cent, fail in the battle of life, from their own or inherited faults—from bad luck, ill-health, weak­ ness of mind, adverse surroundings—five per cent, on thirty millions is a larger figure than five per cent, on ten millions. And the lot of those who fail is aggra­ vated by the success of those who succeed. The scale of living rises, and the cost of living increases, while compe­ tition becomes keener. Increase of population in a limited area means in­ creased difficulty of finding employment j and the complex relations of interna­ tional commerce send panics and crises vibrating throughout the world, which throw millions out of work, or reduce them to starvation wages. In simple forms of society everyone accepts the 87 condition in which he finds himself as a matter of course, while in a more com­ plex civilisation the fiend Envy steps in, and teaches the baser natures who are failures to regard every success as an insult and every successful man as an enemy. Hence Labour rises in mad revolt against Capital; Socialists attack society with dynamite; and Utopian theorists preach a millennium to be attained by abolishing private property and individual liberty. If we turn to the moral aspects of the question, it is still more clear that evolu­ tion does not tend solely to the side of virtue. There is doubtless less ferocious savagery, less rude and unconscious, or half-conscious crime, in civilised societies, but there is far more deliberate and diabolical wickedness. The very tempta­ tions and opportunities which, if resisted, lead to higher virtues, if succumbed to, lead to greater vice. Even the intellec­ tual advance, if perverted, becomes the instrument of greater crimes. A chemist discovers nitro-glycerine, and dynamite becomes a resource of civilisation. There is a saying that there is “no blackguard so bad as a Scotch blackguard,” which, as a patriotic Scotchman, I take to be a tribute to the generally high intellectual and moral character of my countrymen. A powerful polarity is powerful, as the case may be, either for good or evil. Why, then, should we believe that evo­ lution, which, carried thus far, has de­ veloped more strongly the contrast between good and evil, will, if carried a little farther, extinguish it by annihilating the evil ? In fact, the good and evil resulting from the higher evolution of society are so evenly balanced that it depends very much on place, time, and temperament whether we are optimists or pessimists. If my liver acts properly, I am an opti­ mist ; if it is out of order, a pessimist. Personally, I incline to optimism—that is, I think that this world, if not exactly “ the best of all possible worlds,” is yet on the whole a very tolerable world, and that life to the majority, and on the �88 RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES average, is worth living. I think also that progress is certainly towards higher, and very probably towards happier, con­ ditions. It seems to me that in the most advanced English-speaking communities the condition of at least one half—viz., the female half—of the population is distinctly better, and that the working class, who form the majority of the male half, though many are worse off than formerly, are, on the whole, better fed, better clothed, better educated, and better behaved. This, however, is perhaps very much a matter of temperament. Greater minds than mine have seen things differently and inclined to pessimism. Buddhism, and almost all Oriental religions and philosophies, are based upon it, and look to Nirvana or annihilation of personal identity as the supreme bliss. Pauline Christianity assumes that all mankind, except a few chosen vessels, are so hope­ lessly bad as to be predestined to eternal damnation. And even more remarkable, Shakespeare, the universal genius, who, one would say, had as happy a tempera­ ment and led as successful a life as any man, had his moods of despondency in which he could say :— “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone bemoan my outcast state ; Wearying deaf heaven with my fruitless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate.” Or declare with Hamlet that no one would bear the ills of life if “ He himself could his quietus make With a bare bodkin.” With instances like these, and the dis­ gust of life manifested in so many modern societies by the increase of suicides, and the spread of pessimistic theories like those of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, who can deny that the great magnet of modern civilisation has a south as well as a north pole, and that progress is not all towards perfection ? The attempts of theologians to recon­ cile the existence of evil with the good­ ness of an almighty Creator, by relegating the adjustment to a future life, only make the fact of this fundamental polarity more apparent, for their conceptions of a heaven and hell obviously do not reconcile, but only intensify, the opposite polarities. The good are better, the bad worse, the happy happier, and the wretched more miserable, in all these attempts to define the undefinable and to reconcile divine justice with divine mercy. All that remains really clear to each individual is that by his efforts in this life he can do something to keep the balance of polarities somewhat more on the side of good, both in his own indi­ vidual existence and in that of the aggre­ gate of units, of which he is one, which is called society or humanity. The great advantage of this form of religious hypothesis, which for want of a better name I call Zoroastrianism, is that, in the first place, it gets rid of the antagonism between religion and science, for there is no possible discovery of science which is irreconcilable with the fact that there is a necessary and inevit­ able polarity of good and evil, and in the background a great unknown, which may be regarded with those feelings and aspirations which are inseparable from human nature. And, secondly, there is the still greater advantage that we can devote ourselves with a whole heart and sincere mind to the worship of the good principle, without paltering with our moral nature by professing to love and adore a Being who is the author of all the evil and misery in the world as well as of the good. If it were really true that there were such a Being as theolo­ gians describe, who created the immense majority of the human race vessels of wrath doomed to eternal punishment, either from pure caprice or to avenge the slight offered to him by the disobe­ dience of a remote ancestor, what would be the attitude of every healthy human soul towards such a Being? Rather that of Prometheus or Satan than of Gabriel or Michael; of heroic defiance than of abject submission. We may gloss this over in words, but the fact remains, and it is difficult to over- �RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES estimate the amount of evil which has resulted in the world from this confusion of moral sentiments, which has made good men do devil’s work in the belief that it had Divine sanction. The horrors of demonology and witch­ craft had their origin in texts of the Old Testament; religious wars and persecu­ tions arose out of the fundamental error that intellectual acceptance of' doubtful dogmas was the one thing necessary for salvation ; and ruthless cruelty was justi­ fied by an appeal to God’s anger with Saul for refusing to hew in pieces the captive Amal ekites. A follower of Zoroaster would see at once that these were works of Ahriman and not of Ormuzd, and that in taking part in them he was deserting the standard under which he had enlisted, and doing deeds of darkness while pretending to serve the Prince of Light. This idea of being a soldier enlisted in the army of light seems to me to afford one of the strongest practical inducements to hate what is evil and cleave to what is good. A bad deed or foul thought is felt to be not only wrong, but dishonourable : a disloyal going over to the enemy and abandon­ ment of the chief under whom we had enlisted, and of the comrades with whom we had served. This is a very strong motive, and even in the humble ranks of the Salvation Army we can see how powerfully it operates to make men true to their banner. Indeed, a great deal of what is best in genuine Christianity seems to me to resolve itself very much into the worship of Jesus as the Ormuzd or personifica­ tion of the good principle, and determina­ tion to try to follow his example and do his work. It happens to me to receive a good many circulars from the devoted men and women who are doing so much charitable work to assist the poor and fallen, and I observe that the appeals are almost constantly made in the name of Jesus. When the Salvation Army makes an appeal once a year to its members for funds to prosecute their campaign, it is touching to read the replies and ____________ 89 see men parting with an overcoat . or giving up their beer, and women going without a new bonnet or cup of tea, to contribute their mite. But always for the “ love of Jesus,” for the “ Saviour’s sake,” as an offering to the “dear Redeemer.” Theological Christianity says that the one thing needful is to believe in the Catholic Faith as defined by the Athanasian Creed, without which we shall “without doubt perish ever­ lastingly.” Practical Christianity has completely dropped the Holy Ghost as a sort of fifth wheel to the coach, and relegated the Father into ever vaguer and greater distance; while it has fastened more and more on the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as the practical living embodi­ ment of the good principle of the uni­ verse. In a word, Christianity, as it has become more reasonable, more charitable, more pure, and more elevated, has ap­ proximated more and more to Zoroas­ trianism ; and for practical purposes modern Christians are, to a great extent, without knowing it, worshippers of Ormuzd, with Christ for their Ormuzd. To this I see no sort of objection. The tendency to personify abstract principles in something which is warmer, dearer, nearer to ourselves, is ineradic­ able in human nature; and especially among the great masses of mankind who cannot rise to the height of philosophical speculations. It is impossible in . the present age to invent new personifications, or to revive old ones. Jesus has the immense advantage of being in posses­ sion of the field, with all the accumulated love and reverence of nineteen centuries of followers. 'It would be difficult to invent a better ideal or a more perfect example. No doubt the ideal, like all human conceptions, is not absolutely perfect; it is subject to the law of polarity, and its excellences, if pushed to the “falsehood of extremes,” in many cases become faults. It would not do in practice if smitten on one cheek to turn the other, or to take no thought for the morrow and live like the sparrows. The opposition between the flesh and �90 CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS the spirit is also stated so absolutely that it is apt to lead to a barren and ignoble asceticism. But those are ele­ ments which, practically, are not likely to be pushed to excess, and which serve rather to mitigate the tendencies of modern civilisation to an undue pre­ ponderance of the opposite polarities of selfishness, worldliness, and sensuality. Courage, hardihood, self-reliance, fore­ sight, a love of progress, and a desire to attain independence, will always remain prominent virtues, especially of the stronger races, and the gentler teachings of Christianity will long be wanted as an influence to soften, to elevate, and to purify. By all means, therefore, let Christians remain Christians, and see in Christ their Ormuzd, or personification of the good principle. Only let them remember that that there are two sides to every question, and cease to entertain hard and bitter thoughts towards those who follow the truth after a different fashion. Let them delight rather to dis­ cover unity in the spirit than differences in the letter, and, instead of anathematis­ ing with Athanasius those who dissent by one hair’s breadth from the Catholic faith, strive with St. Paul after that charity which “ suffereth long and is kind : beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” This will be easier if they recollect that love and reverence for Jesus, as the personification of the good principle, is in no way connected with the super­ natural dogmas and legends which have come down from superstitious ages, and which are seen every day, more and more clearly, to stand in direct contradiction to the real facts and real laws of the universe. He is the bright example of the highest ideal of human virtue, not on account of miracles, but in spite of them ; not because he was a transcendental abstraction with attributes altogether outside of human experience or concep­ tion, but because he was a man whom other men can love and other men can strive to imitate. The dogmas and miracles may quietly fade out of sight, as so many articles of the Athanasian Creed have already done, like mists before the rising rays of larger knowledge and purer morality, and yet the essence of Chris­ tianity will remain, as a worship of the good and beautiful, personified in the brightest examplewhich has beenafforded —that of Jesus, the son of the carpenter of Nazareth. Chapter XII. CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS Christianity based on morals—Origin of morality —Traced in Judaism—Originates in evolution —Instance of murder—Freedom of will—Will suspended in certain states of brain—Hyp­ notism—Mechanical theory—Pre-established harmony—Human and animal conscience— Analysis of will—Explained by polarity— Practical conclusion. religions ” of the world. The creeds of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia, as well as Buddhism and Confucianism, contain many excellent moral precepts; and the injunction to “do unto others as you would be done by,” and to “ love your neighbour as yourself,” are to be found long before the Sermon on the Christianity occupies a prominent Mount. Recent research into the literary place among what are called the “ ethical remains of Egypt and Babylon give us �CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS 9i an increasingly high estimate of their parallels of latitude or degrees of longi­ moral teaching. In the same way Chris­ tude ; and they invent tribal gods, who tianity became to the majority of its are simply great chiefs, bound by no adherents a rule of conduct. and an laws, but granting favours when appeased incentive, strengthened by divine sanc­ and inflicting injuries when angry. By tion, to lead pure and upright lives. slow degrees, as civilisation advances, This is the sense in which it has always moral ideas are evolved, and the more been understood by the majority of enlightened minds begin to attribute Christians, and its corruptions have come moral attributes to the deities. Earnest much more from above than from below men, prophets, and reformers take up —from theologians, priests, and politi­ these ideas and preach them to the world, cians, rather than from the instincts of and, if circumstances are favourable and the millions; and this it is which enables the soil prepared, they take root . and it to retain such a wonderful vitality even become popular convictions, surviving in modern times, when faith in dogmas in the struggle for life, and becoming and miracles has been so greatly stronger from generation to generation. This evolution of moral ideas is most weakened. In order to appreciate the clearly traced in the religious history of solidity of this basis, it is necessary to understand the origin of morals, and to the Jews, because in their case a more see that the fundamental precepts of complete religious literature has reached moral law are not mere chance inven­ us. In their earlier conceptions, when tions of a few exceptional minds, or the they had passed the stage of polytheism teachings of doubtful revelations, but are and human sacrifices, Jehovah is repre­ the necessary growth and products of sented with all the traits of a jealous and human nature, in the course of the capricious Oriental sultan. The one evolution of society from rude beginnings virtue in his eyes is implicit obedience; to a high civilisation. This gives them the one unpardonable crime, anything a certainty and sanction which could be that looks like disrespect. David is the derived from no other source, and makes man after God’s own heart, though he them what in fact they have become— commits crimes of the foulest descrip­ almost primary instincts of the natural tion, and treats as nullities the moral and normal mind in civilised communi­ commandments against adultery and ties. I proceed, therefore, to endeavour murder. But when he takes a census of to trace shortly the process by which his people, Jehovah is offended, and, moral laws have originated and grown up with a total disregard of justice, visits to their present certainty and cogency in his anger, not on the offender, but on the innocent people whom he decimates the course of evolution. As I have already said, the element by a pestilence. In like manner, Abra­ of morality is one of the latest to be ham is favoured because he is ready to developed in religious conceptions. The obey the inhuman command to sacrifice first impressions of savage races reflect his son ; while Saul loses Jehovah’s the feelings of vague superstitious terror favour because he hesitates to massacre with which they regard unknown pheno­ his captives in. cold blood. The first mena and powers. They are afraid of ideas of a higher moral sense appear ghosts and afraid of thunder long before with the prophets in the troubled times they rise to a belief in a future state of the later kings—-when poor little of rewards and punishments, or to the Palestine was being ground between the notion of an almighty Being acting upper millstone of Assyria and the nether by natural laws. In a higher state of one of Egypt. Sufferings and persecu­ development they personify natural tions, anxieties and tribulations, wrought powers in gods, who have no more idea a ferment in the Jewish mind from which of morality than if they were so many new ideas were generated. Sacrifices �92 CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS had been duly offered, and yet the thee. This is the whole Law, the rest is enemies of Jehovah waxed and his chosen mere commentary.” And again : “ Do people waned. It must be that he was , not judge thy neighbour until thou hast offended with them because he required stood in his place.” something better than the blood of bulls The Talmud anticipates in a wonder­ —justice and mercy. So taught the ful degree, not only the moral precepts of popular preachers of the day—men like the Gospel, but to a great extent its Isaiah and Amos—and by degrees their phraseology and technical terms. “Re­ words found acceptance. It was not, demption,” “grace,” “faith,” “salvation,” however, until the Captivity that these “ Son of man,” “ Son of God,” “ king­ ideas of morality were wrought into the dom of heaven,” were all, as Deutsch Jewish nation so as to become, so to shows, not invented by Christianity, but speak, flesh of their flesh and blood of were household words of contemporary their blood, as they have remained ever Judaism. In one respect only Chris­ since. Whether it was contact with the tianity shows a higher evolution of more advanced moral ideas of religions morality than Judaism—viz., its univer­ like those of ancient Babylon, or of sality. Pure Judaism hardly rises above Buddha and Zoroaster, or through their the idea of “neighbour,” or those who sufferings from the cruelty and injustice were of the same race or common faith ; of their conquerors, the Captivity cer­ while Christianity, as enlarged by St. tainly made them a new nation, attached, Paul, embraces all mankind, and may ardently to morality and monotheism— truly say : “Humani nihil a me alienum thus affecting in a few years, and by puto.” purely human agencies, what, according The idea that morality and religion are to received beliefs, centuries of miracu­ products of a slowly developing evolution lous dispensation had failed to accom­ is denounced by many as degrading and plish. How speedily and how effectually materialistic. In many the instinct of the work was done appears from that the “ good ” is so strong that it seems to most interesting description of the them sacrilege to attempt to explain it. domestic life of a middle-class Jew of They insist that it is either a universal Nineveh, the Book of Tobit—though the instinct implanted from the first in all book may belong to a much later date. mankind, or else that it has been so im­ The simple piety and homely household planted by a divine revelation. They virtues are almost identically the same forget that, to use the vigorous phrase­ as those of many a Jewish family living ology of Carlyle, “It matters not whether to-day in London or Frankfort. From you call a thing pan-theism or pot-theism; that time forward Jewish morality main­ what really concerns us is to know tains a high level, and in the age imme­ whether it is true." Now, it admits of diately preceding Christianity it had no question that, whether we like it or attained great purity and spirituality in not, the evolutionist theory of morality the school of the early doctors of the is the true one. Take an extreme in­ Talmud, and of the Jewish colony of stance, that of murder. We feel an Alexandria. The Sermon on the Mount, instinctive horror at the idea, and even a beautiful as it is, is but an admirable brutal ruffian like Bill Sikes becomes an resume of maxims which are to be found accursed thing to himself and his com­ in the works of Philo and other Jewish panions when he has transgressed the teachers, and which were current in the commandment, “ Thou shalt do no synagogues of the day. Hillel, who was murder.” But is it so everywhere, and president of the Sanhedrin when Christ was it so always? By no means; the was born, on being asked what was the Fiji islander kills and eats a stranger or law, replied : “Do not unto another what enemy without scruple; the Red Indian thou wouldst not have another do unto and Dyak are not accounted men until �CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS they have murdered some one and brought home his scalp or his head as a trophy. Even at a late period among ourselves murder was considered to be rather a civil injury, to be met by com­ pensation, than a crime; and a regular tariff was established of the amount to be paid according as the victim was a slave or a freeman. The origin and progress of the idea that murder is a crime can almost be traced step by step. The wife of a rude savage does something which offends him; a violent perception of anger flashes from the visual organ to the per­ ceptive area of the brain, and a reflex action flashes from it along the motor nerve to the muscles of the arm. He strikes and kills her, almost as uncon­ sciously and instinctively as he walks or breathes. But other perceptions follow on the act. He finds next day that he has no one to cook his food; the image of her dying face photographed on his brain is an unpleasant one ; and thus by degrees a series of secondary perceptions get attached to the primary one of striking when he feels angry. If he gets another wife who again provokes him, the primary perception calls up the secondary ones, and the nerve-centres of his brain, instead of being solicited only in one direction, are acted on in opposite ways by conflicting impressions. He hesitates, and, as the primary impulse of passion is probably the more evanescent, the restraining impulses prevail, and every time they prevail they acquire more strength. Gradually they extend to a conviction that it is both inconve­ nient and disagreeable to kill any one with whom he is closely related either by family or tribal ties, and that, in a word, murder does not pay, and is wrong, unless practised on an enemy. This idea accumulates by heredity, and evi­ dently those tribes or races in whom it is strongest will have an advantage in the struggle for life and be most likely to survive. From this point the idea may be traced historically, deepening and widen­ 93 ing from generation to generation as civilisation advances, until in the higher races it assumes the form of an instinc­ tive abhorrence of murder in the abstract, as we find it at the present day. It is a mistake to suppose that the foundations of morality are in any way weakened by thus tracing them up to their first origins. On the contrary, if we consider the matter rightly, they are placed on a much more solid and un­ assailable basis. If we say that moral laws depend on a universal instinct im­ planted in all mankind, faith in them is shaken whenever we read in history, or hear from the report of travellers, of whole nations, constituting from first to last the immense majority of the human race, who had none of those ideas which we now consider fundamental. If, again, we base them on divine precepts miracu­ lously conveyed, every discovery of science and development of thought which weakens faith in miracles impairs the basis of morals. And on this theory hopeless contradictions arise within the sphere of those very moral laws which we seek to establish, as in reconciling the justice and mercy of the Creator in revealing this inspired code only to limited portions of the human race, and under conditions which leave large scope for legitimate doubt, and which, in point of fact, failed to ensure recognition for its moral precepts among his chosen people for a long period after its promulgation. But on the scientific theory of the evolution of morality by natural laws it stands on an impregnable footing. No one can deny that, as a matter of fact, such instincts do prevail, and have become part of the nature of all the best men and best races, and that each successive generation tends to fix them more firmly. Mathematical laws are not the less certain because they can be traced back to counting on the fingers, and moral laws will continue to have a certainty and cogency scarcely inferior to the axioms of mathematics, although we can trace them back to origins as rude as the attempts of the Australian �94 CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS savage to extend his perceptions of number beyond “ one, two, and a great many.” The real difficulty is not in tracing the origin of these instincts of morality, but in that fundamental difficulty which underlies all theories of reconciling the consciousness of free-will with the material attributes with which it is indissolubly associated. Without freedom of will there can be no conscience, no right or wrong in acting in accordance or other­ wise with the instincts of moral law, however those instincts may have been derived. Now, it is certain that the will, like life, memory, consciousness, and other mental functions, is, so far as human knowledge extends, indissolubly connected with matter and natural laws, in the form of certain motions of the cells which form the grey substance of the nerves and of the nervous ganglia of which the cortex of the brain is the most considerable. This is conclusively proved by experiment. We know that, by removing certain portions of the brain of a dog or of a pigeon, we can destroy the power of motion while preserving the will, and by removing certain other portions we can destroy the will while preserving the powers of motion. Take away a certain portion of the brain of a pigeon, and, although it retains the power of taking food, it has so totally lost the will to exercise this power that it will starve in the midst of abundance, though it can be kept alive by placing the food in its mouth. In like manner, in the human brain there are certain portions which, if destroyed by injury or disease, will paralyse the power of giving effect to the will by muscular movements, while the destruction of other portions will paralyse the will which originates such movements. Numerous cases are recorded in medical treatises in which the will is completely paralysed for the performance of certain functions, and in such cases the anatomist can lay his finger on the spot where the brain is affected, and, when the brain is dissected after the death of the patient, it will be found that his prediction is verified, and that this region of the brain really was diseased. In sleep also, and in abnormal states of the brain such as somnambulism, and mesmerism or hypnotism, the action of the will is suspended. Hypnotism affords the most remarkable instances, for here the will seems to be transferred from the ego or individuality of the patient to that of the operator, and the currents of nervous energy which induce motion in A are set going by impulses in the mind of A, not caused by his own will, but by that of B, conveyed by words, gestures, or other subtle indica­ tions. A ludicrous instance of this is recorded by Dr. Braid, in which an old lady, who had a true puritanical abhor­ rence of dancing as sinful, being hypno­ tised, began capering about the room when a waltz tune was struck up, on being told to do so by the operators. There are some other curious effects produced by hypnotism, in the way of inducing a sort of double consciousness and memory, which makes people in this condition totally forget things which they remember when awake, and remem­ ber things which were totally forgotten in the waking state. These and a variety of other instances point to the conclusion that man is only a conscious machine. In other words, that the original impress, to use Dr. Temple’s words, was so perfect that it provided a pre-established harmony not only for the innumerable phenomena of the material universe as unfolded by evolution, but for the still more innume­ rable phenomena of life in all its manifes­ tations and all its complex relations to outward environment. I say of life, for we •clearly cannot confine the theory to human life. A dog, who with the two courses before him of doing wrong and chasing a rabbit, or doing right and remaining at his master’s heel, chooses one of them, is in exactly the same position as Hercules between the rival attractions of virtue and pleasure. If Hercules acted as a machine, yielding to the pre-estab­ lished preponderance of the stronger �CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS attraction, so did the dog; but if Hercules exerted free-will and felt the approval or blame of conscience, so did the retriever. There is no fundamental distinction, but merely a question of degree, between human conscience and the shame which a dog feels when it knows that it has done wrong, and the pleasure which it manifests when conscious that it has behaved properly. Shall we thus conclude, as Leibnitz and other great philosophers have done, in favour of the mechanical theory ? But if we do, how are we to account for the instinctive ineradicable feeling, which comes home to every one with a convic­ tion even stronger than the evidence, of the senses, that wre really have a choice between opposite courses, and can decide on our own actions—a conviction which is obviously the foundation of all con­ science and of all morality ? Let us try to analyse more closely what Will really means, and under what conditions it is manifested. The circuit which connects any one single percep­ tion with action, through sensory nerve, sensory centre, motor centre, motor nerve and muscle, is as purely mechanical as that of an electric circuit. Reflex motions such as breathing, and even more complex motions which by repeti­ tion have become reflex or instinctive, are also mechanical and involve, no exercise of will. But when perceptions become complex, and one primary evokes a number of secondary percep­ tions—in other words, when the cells of the corresponding portions of grey matter in the cortex of the brain are set vibrating by a variety of complex and con­ flicting molecular motions—the feeling of free-will inevitably arises-. We feel the conviction that there is a.something which we call soul, mind, or, in the last analysis, “I myself I,” which sits, as Von Moltke might do, in a cabinet receiving conflicting telegraphic messages from different generals, and deciding then and there what order to flash out in reply. What can we say to this ? That it is like space and time, one of the cate­ 95 gories of thought, or primary moulds in which thought is cast. We do not know what space and time really are in their essence, or why they are the necessary conditions of thought, any more than we do in the case of will. They may be illusions, but we accept them, and of necessity accept them, as facts. For all practical purposes it is the same to us as if we understood their essence and knew them to be realities. A man. can no more doubt that he is an individual being, with a will which, in a great many cases, enables him to decide which of a variety of impulses shall prevail, than he can hesitate, if he is furnishing a room, to regulate his purchase of carpeting and paper by space of three dimensions, without regard to possible speculations as to quarternions. Perhaps the principle of polarity may assist us in understanding that both theories may be true; or rather that matter and spirit, necessity and free-will, may be opposite poles of one funda­ mental truth which is beyond our com­ prehension. We cannot shake off this principle of polarity, and arrive at any knowledge, or even conception, of the absolute truth in regard to the atoms, energies, and natural laws, which make up the universe of matter and of all the ordinary and material functions of life, why should we expect to do so in the higher manifestations of the same life, which have been arrived at in the later stages of one unbroken course of evolu­ tion from monad to man ?T This, at any rate, is the theory which best satisfies my own mind and enables me to reduce my own individual chaos into some sort of a cosmos. I draw from it the following conclusions :— For all practical purposes assume that u right is right,” and that the moral 1 Recent psychologists tend to distinguish between free-will, in the old sense of purely spontaneous initiative, and self-determination ; thus Dr. Stout in his latest manual. The latter would seem to meet the theoretic requirements of morality, while they reject , the former as inconsistent with the facts of their science. �96 ZOROASTRIANISM instincts, however they have been formed, are imperative laws. Assume also that “ Man is man and master of his fate,” and that we have, to a great extent, the power of deciding what to do and what not to do. But, in doing so, keep the mind open to all conclusions of science, and admit freely that these assumptions are indissolubly connected with natural laws and with material organs, and that man is to a very great extent dependent on his environment and his place in Chapter evolution, both for his moral code and for the force of will and conscience which enables him to conform to it. Learn, therefore, the lesson of a large toleration and of charity in thought and deed, towards those who, from inherited con­ stitution or unfortunate conditions of education and outward circumstances, fall under the sway of the principle of evil, and lead bad, useless, and unlovely lives. Had you and I, reader, been in their place, should we have done better ? XIII. ZOROASTRIANISM Zoroaster an historical person—-The Parsees— Iranian branch of Aryan family—Zoroaster a religious reformer—Scene at Balkh—Conver­ sion of Vishtasp—Doctrines of the “ excellent religion ” — Monotheism — Polarity — Dr. Haug’s description—Ormuzd and Ahriman— Anquetil du Perron — Approximation to modern thought—Absence of miracles—Code of morals —■ Its comprehensiveness — And liberality—Special rites—Fire-worship—Dis' posal of dead—Practical results—The Parsees of Bombay—Their probity, enterprise, respect for women—Zeal for education—Philanthropy and public spirit—Statistics—Death and birth rates. Zoroastrianism is commonly supposed to derive its name from its founder, Zoroaster, a Bactrian sage or prophet, who lived in the reign of King Vishtasp the First. Zoroaster’s name has come down to us from antiquity in much the same relation to this form of religion as that of Moses to Judaism, or of SakyaMouni to Buddhism. As in those cases, certain learned commentators have en­ deavoured to show that the alleged founder was purely mythical and had no real historical existence, basing their argu­ ment mainly on a fact that a number of supernatural attributes, and embodiments of metaphysical and theological ideas, became attached to the name, just as a whole cycle of solar myths became associated with the name of Hercules. But this seems to be carrying scepticism too far. Experience shows that religions have generally originated in the crystal­ lisation of ideas floating in solution at certain periods of the evolution of societies, about the nucleus of some powerful personality. Nearly all the great religions of the world, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, clearly had his­ torical founders, and it would be hyper­ critical to deny that such a man as Jesus of Nazareth really lived because many of his sayings and doings may be traced to applications, more or less erroneous, of ancient prophecies, or because his human nature became transfigured into the Logos and other mataphysical con­ ceptions of the Alexandrian philosophy. In the case of Zoroaster, the argument for his historical existence seems even stronger, for his name is connected with historical reigns and places, and his genuine early history contains nothing �ZOROASTRIA NISM supernatural or improbable.1 He is represented as simply a deep thinker and powerful preacher, like Luther, who gave new form and expression to the vague religious and philosophical ideas of his age and nation, reformed its super­ stitions and abuses, and converted the leading minds of his day, including the monarch, by the earnestness and elo­ quence of his discourses. At any rate, for my purpose I shall assume his personality, for my object is not to write a critical essay on the origin and develop­ ment of the Zoroastrian religion, but to show that in its fundamental ideas and essential spirit it approximates wonder­ fully to those of the most advanced modern thought, and gives the outline of a creed which goes further than any other to meet the practical wants of the present day, and to reconcile the conflict between faith and science. This will be most clearly and vividly shown by assuming the commonly accepted his­ torical existence of Zoroaster to be true, and by confining myself to the broad, leading principles of his religion, without dwelling on its varying phases, or on the mythical legends and ritualistic obser­ vances which, as in the case of all other old religions, have crystallised about the primitive idea and the primitive founder. Zara-thustra, or, as he is commonly called, Zoroaster, and the religion which goes by his name, are known to us mainly from the sacred books which have been preserved by the modern Parsees. The Parsees, a small remnant of the Persians who under Cyrus founded one of the mightiest empires of the ancient world, flying from their native country to escape from persecution after the Mohammedan conquest, formed a colony in India, and are now settled at Bombay. They form a small but highly intelligent community, who have pre­ served their ancient religipn, and, fortu1 Professor Jackson, in his recent Zoroaster, declares that scholars are now “generally agreed ” as to the historical character of Zoroaster, and that the doubts raised by Kern and Darmesteter have been “ dispelled. ” 97 nately, some considerable fragments of their sacred scriptures. The oldest of these are written in the Gatha dialect of the Avesta or Zend language, which is contemporary with Sanskrit, and bears much the same relation to it as Latin does to Greek. The primitive Aryan family at some very remote period became divided into two branches, and radiated from their Central Asian home in two directions. The Hindoo branch migrated to the south into the Punjaub and Hindostan; the Iranian westwards, into Bactria and Persia; while other successive w7aves of Aryan migration in prehistoric times rolled still further west­ wards over Europe, obliterating all but a few traces of the aboriginal population. The period of this separation of the Iranian and Hindoo races must be very remote, for the Rig-Veda is probably at least 4,000 years old, and the divergence between its form of Sanskrit and the Gatha dialect of the Zend is already as great as that between two kindred European languages, such as Greek and Latin. The divergence of religious ideas is also evidently of very early date. In the Hindoo, and all other races of the primitive Aryan stock, the word used for gods and good spirits is taken from the root “ div,” to shine. Thus, Daeva in Sanskrit, Zeus and Theos in Greek, Deus in Latin, Tius in German, Diewrs in Lutheranism, Dia in Irish, Dew in Kymric, all mean the bright or shining one represented by the vault of heaven. But in Iranian the word has an opposite sense, and the “deevs” correspond to our “devils.” The primitive Aryan religions were evidently all derived from a contempla­ tion of the powers and phenomena of nature. The sky, with its flood of light and vault of ethereal blue, was considered to be the highest manifestation of a Supreme Power; while the sun and moon', the stars and planets, the winds and clouds, the earth and waters, were personified, either as symbols of the Deity or as subordinate gods. The original simple faith was thus apt to H �98 ZOROASTRIANISM degenerate into a system of polytheism, and, as the gods came to be represented by visible forms, into idolatry. Zoroasterappears to us, like Mohammed at a later age and among a ruder people, as a prophet or reformer who abolished these abuses and restored the ancient faith in a loftier and more intellectual form, adapted to the use of an advanced and civilised society. The records of his life and teaching have fortunately been preserved in so authentic a form that, distant as he is from us, we can form a singularly accurate idea of who he was and what he taught. Our know­ ledge is chiefly drawn from the Gathas, the oldest section of the Avesta, or Persian Bible. Some 2,500 years ago a sight might have been seen in the ancient city of Balkh—the famous capital of Bactria, the “ Mother of Cities ”—very like that witnessed some eleven centuries later at our own Canterbury. The king and his chief nobles and courtiers were assem­ bled to hear the discourse of a preacher who proposed to teach them a better religion. Vishtasp listened to Zoroaster, as Ethelbert listened to Augustine, and in each case reason and eloquence carried conviction, and the nation be­ came converts to the new doctrine. This conversion was effected without miracles, for it is expressly stated in the celebrated speech of the prophet, pre­ served in the 30th chapter of the Yasna, that he relied solely on persuasion and argument. Ferdousi, the Persian Homer, thus describes the first interview between Zoroaster and Vishtasp: “ Learn,” he said, “ the rites and doctrines of the religion of excellence. For without re­ ligion there cannot be any worth in a king. When the mighty monarch heard him speak of the excellent religion, he accepted from him the excellent rites and doctrines,” The doctrines of this “ excellent reli­ gion” are extremely simple. The leading idea is that of monotheism, but the one God has far fewer anthropomorphic attri­ butes, and is relegated much farther back into the vague and infinite than the god of any other monotheistic religion. Geiger describes it as “one of the purest and most sublime religions that have ever existed.” Ahura-Mazda, of which the more favourite appellation Ormuzd is an abbreviation, means the “All-knowing Lord ”; he is said sometimes to dwell in the infinite luminous space, and some­ times to be identical with it. He is, in fact, not unlike the inscrutable First Cause, whom we may regard with awe and reverence, with love and hope, but whom we cannot pretend to define or to understand. But the radical difference between Zoroastrianism and other reli­ gions is that it does not conceive of this one God as an omnipotent Creator, who might make the universe as he chose, and therefore was directly responsible for all the evil in it; but as a Being acting by certain fixed laws, one of which was, for reasons totally inscrutable to us, that existence implied polarity, and therefore that there could be no good without corresponding evil. Dr. Haug, who is a high authority on all questions connected with the Zend scriptures, says : “ Having arrived at the grand idea of the unity and indivisibility of the Supreme Being, Zoroaster under­ took to solve the great problem which has engaged the attention of so many wise men of antiquity and even in modern times—viz., how are the imper­ fections discernible in the world, the various kinds of evil, wickedness, and baseness, compatible with the goodness, holiness, and justness of God? This great thinker of remote antiquity solved this difficult question philosophically, by the supposition of two primaeval causes, which, though different, were united, and produced the world of material things as well as that of spirit. These two primae­ val principles are the two moving causes in the universe, united from the begin­ ning, and therefore called twins. They are present everywhere—in the Ahura Mazda, or Supreme Deity, as well as in man.” They are called in the Vendidad �ZOROASTRIANISM Spento Mainyush, or the “beneficent spirit,” and Angro Mainyush, or the “hurtful spirit.” The latter is generally known as Ahriman, the Prince of Dark­ ness ; and the former, as Ormuzd, is identified with Ahura Mazda, the good God, though, strictly speaking, Ahura Mazda is the great unknown _ First Cause, who comprehends within himself both principles as a necessary law of existence, and in whom believers may hope that evil and good will ultimately be reconciled. Anquetil du Perron, the first translator of the Zendavesta, in his Critical View of the Theological and Ceremonial System of Zar-thurst, thus sums up the Parsee creed: “ The first point in the theo­ logical system of Zoroaster is to recognise and adore the Master of all that is good, the Principle of all righteousness, Ormuzd, according to the form of worship pre­ scribed by him, and with purity of thought, of word, and of action—a purity which is marked and preserved by purity of body. Next, to have a respect, accompanied by gratitude, for the intel­ ligence to which Ormuzd has committed the care of nature (z>., to the laws of nature), to take in our actions their attributes for models, to copy in our conduct the harmony which reigns in the different parts of the universe, and generally to honour Ormuzd in all that he has produced. The second part of their religion consists in detesting the author of all evil, moral and physical, Ahriman—his productions, and his works; and to contribute, as far as in us lies, to exalt the glory of Ormuzd by enfeebling the tyranny which the Evil Principle exercises over the world.” It is evident that this simple and sublime religion is one to which, by whatever name we may call it, the best modern thought is fast approximating. Men of science like Huxley, philosophers like Herbert Spencer, poets like Tenny­ son, might all subscribe to it; and even enlightened Christian divines, like Dr. Temple, are not very far from it when they admit the idea of a Creator behind 99 the atoms and energies, whose original impress, given in the form of laws of nature, was so perfect as to require no secondary interference. Admit that Christ is the best personification of the Spenta Mainyush, or good principle in the inscrutable Divine polarity of exist­ ence, and a man may be at the same time a Christian and a Zoroastrian. The religion of Zoroaster has, how­ ever, this great advantage in the existing conditions of modern thought, that it is not dragged down by such a dead weight of traditional dogmas and miracles as still hangs upon the skirts of Christianity. Its dogmas are comprised in the state­ ment that there is one supreme, un­ known, First Cause, who manifests him­ self in the universe under fixed laws which involve the principle of polarity. This is hardly so much a dogma as a statement of fact, or of the ultimate and absolute truth at which it is possible for human faculty to arrive. No progress of-science or philosophy conflicts with it, but rather they confirm it, by showingmore and more clearly with every dis­ covery that this is in very fact and deed the literal truth. Religion, or the feeling of reverence and love for the Great Un­ known which lies beyond the sphere of human sense and reason, shines more brightly through this pure medium than through the fogs of misty metaphysics ; and we can worship God in spirit and in truth without puzzling our brains as to the precise nature of the Logos, or exercising them on the insoluble problem how one can be equal to three, and at the same time three equal to one. As regards miracles, which are another millstone about the neck of Catholic Christianity, the religion of Zoroaster is • entirely free from them. There are, it is true, a few miraculous myths about him in some of the later writings in the Pehlvi language, as of his conception by his mother drinking a cup of the sacred Homa; but these are of no authority, and form no part of the religion. On the contrary, the original scriptures, which profess to record his exact words and �V ioo ZOROASTRIANISM precepts, disclaim all pretension to divine nature or miraculous power, and base the claims of the “excellent religion” purely on reason. This is an immense advantage in the “ struggle for life,” when every day is making it more impossible for educated men to believe that real miracles ever actually occurred, and when the evidence on which they were accepted is crumbling to pieces under the light of critical inquiry. The Parsee has no reason to tremble for his faith if a Galileo invents the telescope or a Newton dis­ covers the law of gravity. He has no occasion to argue for Noah’s deluge, or for the order of Creation described in Genesis. Nay, even, he may remain undisturbed by that latest and most fatal discovery that man has existed on the earth for untold ages, and, instead of falling from a high estate, has risen con­ tinuously by slow and painful progress from the rudest origins. How many orthodox Christians can say the same, or deny that their faith in their sacred books and venerable traditions has been rudely shaken ? The code of morality enjoined by the Zoroastrian religion is as pure as its theory is perfect. Dr. Haug enumerates the following sins denounced by its code, and considered as such by the present Parsees : Murder, infanticide, poisoning, adultery on the part of men as well as women, sorcery, sodomy, cheating in weight and measure, breach of promise whether made to a Zoroastrian or nonZoroastrian, telling lies and deceiving, false covenants, slander and calumny, perjury, dishonest appropriation of wealth, taking bribes, keeping back the wages of labourers, misappropriation of religious property, removal of a boundary stone, turning people out of their property, maladministration and defrauding, apos­ tasy, heresy, rebellion. These are positive injunctions. The following are con­ demnable from a religious point of view : Abandoning the husband; not acknow­ ledging one’s children on the part of the father; cruelty towards subjects on the part of a ruler; avarice, laziness, illiber- ality and egotism, envy. In addition, there are a number of special precepts adapted to the peculiar rites of the Zoroastrian religion which aim princi­ pally at the enforcement of sanitary rules, kindness to animals, hospitality to strangers and travellers, respect to superiors, and help to the poor and needy. It is evident that this is the most complete and comprehensive code of morals to be found in any system of religion. It comprises all that is best in the codes of Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity, with a much more ample definition of many vices and virtues which, even in the Christian religion, are left to be drawn as inferences rather than inculcated as precepts. Thus, laziness, cheating, selfishness, and envy are dis­ tinctly defined as crimes and their opposites as virtues, and not merely left to be inferred from the general maxims of “ loving your neighbour as yourself,” and “ doing unto others as you would be done by.” The comprehensiveness and liberal spirit of the code is also remark­ able, for we are repeatedly told that these rules of moralityapply to non-Zoroastrians as well as to Zoroastrians. The applica­ tion of religious precepts to practical life is another distinguishing feature. Thus kindness to animals is specially enjoined, and it is considered a sin to ill-treat animals of the good crea­ tion, such as cattle, sheep, horses, or dogs, by starving, beating, or unneces­ sarily killing them. With true practical wisdom, however, the “falsehood of extremes ” is avoided, and this precept is not, as in the case of Brahminism and Buddhism, carried so far as to prohibit altogether the taking of animal life, which is expressly sanctioned when necessary. This sober practical wisdom, or what Matthew Arnold calls “ sweet reasonable­ ness,” is a very characteristic feature of Zoroaster’s religion, and very remarkable as having been taught at so early a period in the history of civilisation. Another precept, which might well have been made by an English Board of �ZOROASTRIANISM Health in the nineteenth century, is not I to pollute water by throwing impure matter into it. The only special Parsee rites which would be unsuited for modern European society are the worship of the sacred fire and the disposal of the dead. It is true that the former is distinctly understood to be merely a symbol of the Deity, and used exactly as water is in baptism, or as the ascending flame of candles and smoke from swinging incense are, in the Catholic ritual, to bring more vividly before the minds of the worshippers the idea of the spirit soaring upwards to­ wards heaven. Still, in modern society fire is too well understood as merely a particular form of chemical combination, and is too familiar as the strong slave and household drudge of man, to ac­ quire a leading place in a religious ritual where it has not been hallowed by the usage of a long line of ancestors and the traditions of a venerable antiquity. All that can be said is that, if religious rites and ceremonies are to be maintained in an age when science has become the prevailing mode of thought, appropriate symbolism, especially that of music, must more and more take the place of appeals to the intellect on metaphysical ques­ tions, and of repetitions of traditional formulse which have lost all living signifi­ cance. Another Parsee rite, which is even less adapted for general usage, is that of disposing of the dead on towers of silence, where the body moulders away or is devoured by birds of prey. It originates in a poetical motive of not defiling the pure elements, fire, earth, or water, by corruption ; but it is obviously unsuited for the conditions of civilisation and climate which prevail in crowded cities under a humid sky. There is little prospect, therefore, of any general conversion to the sect of Zoroastrians; but what seems probable is the gradual transformation of existing modes both of religious and secular thought into something which is, in principle, very closely akin to the “ ex­ IOI cellent religion ” taught by the Bactrian prophet. The miraculous theory of the universe being virtually dead, the only theory that can reconcile facts with feelings, and the ineradicable emotions and aspirations of the human mind with the incontro­ vertible conclusions of science, is that of a remote and more or less unknown and incomprehensible First Cause, which has given the original atoms and energies so perfect an impress from the first that all phenomena are evolved from them by fixed laws, one of the principal of such laws being that of polarity, which de­ velops the ever-increasing complexities and contrasts of the inorganic and organic worlds, of moralities, philoso­ phies, religions, and human societies. True religion consists in a recognition of this truth, a feeling of reverence in pre­ sence of the unknown, and, above all, a feeling of love and admiration for the good principle in whatever form it is manifested, in the beauties of nature and of art, in moral and physical purity and perfection, and all else that falls within the domain of the Prince of Light, in whose service, whether we conceive of him as an abstract principle or accept some personification of him as a living figure, we enlist as loyal soldiers, doing our best to fight in his ranks against the powers of evil. The application of the all-pervading principle of polarity is exemplified in the realm of art. The glorious Greek drama turned mainly on the conflict between resistless fate and heroic free-will, and is typified in its highest form by ZEschylus, when he depicts Prometheus chained to the rock hurling defiance at the tyrant of heaven. Our own Milton, in like manner, gives us the spectacle of the fallen archangel opposing his indomitable will and fertile resources to the extremity of adverse circumstance and to Almighty power. The greatest of modern dramas, Goethe’s “ Faust,” turns so entirely on the opposition between the human soul striving after the infinite and the spirit �102 ZOROA STRIANISM der verneint, who combats ideal aspira­ tions with a cynical sneer, that it might well be called a Zoroastrian drama. It is a picture of the conflict between the two opposite principles of good and evil, of affirmation and negation, of the beau­ tiful and the ugly, personified in Faust and Mephistopheles, and it is painted on a background of the great mysterious unknown. “ Wer darf ihn nennen ?” “ Who dares to name him, Who to-say of him, ‘ I believe,’ Who is there ever with a heart to dare To utter, ‘ I believe him not ’?” So in poetry, Tennyson, the poet of modern thought, touches the deepest chords when he asks : “ Are God and Nature, then, at strife ? ” and paints in the sharpest contrast on the background of the unknown the conflict between the faith that “ God is love, indeed, And love creation’s final law,” 'and the harsh realities of nature, which “ Red in tooth and claw With ravine shrieks against the creed”; or again in his later work, The Ancient Sage, he says : “ Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son ! For nothing worthy proving can be proven, Nor yet disproven.” In like manner in the works of art which embrace a wider range, and hold up the mirror to human nature, as in Shakespeare’s plays, and the novels of Walter Scott, and other great authors, the interest arises mainly from the polarity of the various characters. We care little for the goody-goody heroes or vulgar villains, but we recognise a touch of that nature which makes all the world akin in a Macbeth drawn by metaphysi­ cal suggestion to wade through a sea of blood ; in Othello’s noble nature caught like a lion in the toils by the net of circumstances woven by a wily hunter; in Falstaff, a rogue, a liar, and a glutton, yet made almost likeable by his ready wit, imperturbable good humour, and fertile resources. Shakespeare is, in fact, the greatest of artists, because he is the most multipolar. He has poles of sympathy in him which, as the poles of carbon attract so many elements and form so many combinations, enable him to take into his own nature, assimilate, and reproduce every varied shade of character from a Miranda to a Caliban, from an Imogen to a Lady Macbeth, from a Falstaff to an Othello. Sir Walter Scott and all our great novelists have the same faculty, though in a less degree, and are great in exact proportion as they have many poles in their nature, and as those are poles of powerful polarity. The characters and incidents which affect us strongly and dwell in the memory are those in which the clash and conflict of opposites are most vividly represented. We feel infinite pity for a Maggie Tulliver dashing her young life, like a prisoned wild bird, against the bars of trivial and prosaic environment which hem her in; or for a Colonel Newcome opposing the patience of a gentle nature to the buffets of such a fate as meets us in the everyday world of modern life, the failure of his bank and the naggings of the Old Campaigner. On a higher level of art we sympathise with a Lancelot and a Guinevere, because they are types of what we may meet in many a London drawing-room, noble natures drawn by some fatal fairy fascination into ignoble acts, but still retaining something of their original nobility, and, while “ Their honour rooted in dishonour stands,” appearing to ordinary mortals little less than “archangels ruined.” Or even if we descend to the lowest level of the penny dreadful or suburban drama, we find that the polarity between vice and virtue, however coarsely delineated, is that which mostly fascinates the uncul­ tured mind. The affinity between Zoroastrianism and art is easily explained when we con­ sider that in one respect it has a mani­ fest advantage over most Christian forms of religion. Christianity in its early �Z OROAS TRIA NISM 103 origins received a taint of Oriental the main causes of the indifference or asceticism which it never shook off, and hostility to religion which is so widely which, in the declining centuries of the spreading among the mass of the popula­ Roman empire, and in the barbarism tion. Children are brought up to con­ and superstition of the Middle Ages, de­ sider Sunday as a day of penance, and veloped into what may be almost called church-going as a disagreeable necessity; a devil-worship of the ugly and repulsive. while grown-up men, especially those of The antithesis between the flesh and the the working classes, resent being, told spirit was carried to such an extreme and that a walk in the country, a cricket­ false extent that everything that was match, or a visit to a library or museum pleasant and beautiful came to be re­ on their only holiday, is sinful. In view of the approximation between garded as sinful, and the odour of the Zoroastrian religion and the forms of sanctity was an odour which the passer­ by would do well to keep on the wind­ modern thought, it is interesting to note ward side of. This leaven of asceticism how the former works among its adherentsis the rock upon which Puritanism, in actual practice. For, after all, the monasticism, and many of the highest practical side of a religion is more impor­ forms of Christian life have invariably tant than its speculative or philosophical split. It is contrary to human nature, theories. Thus, for instance, the Quakers and directly opposed to the spirit of the have a. faith which is about the most life and doctrines of the Founder of the reasonable of any of the numerous sects religion. Jesus, who was ££ a Jew living of Christianity and nearest to the spirit among Jews and speaking to Jews, of its Founder, and yet Quakerism adopted the true Jewish point of view of remains a narrow sect, which is far from making religion amiable and attractive, being victorious in the “ struggle for and denouncing, as all the best Jewish life.” Mohammedanism, again, while doctors of the Talmud did, the Pharisai­ dying out among civilised nations, shows cal strictness which insisted on ritualistic itself superior to Christianity in the work observances and arbitrary restrictions. of raising the barbarous, fetish-worship­ In no passages of his life does the ping negroes of Africa to a higher level. “ sweet reasonableness” of his character And Mormonism, based on the . most appear more conspicuous than where we obvious imposture and absurdity, is the find him strolling through the fields with only new religion which, in recent times, his disciples and plucking ears of corn has taken root and to a certain extent on the Sabbath, and replying to the for­ flourished. Tried by this test, Zoroastrianism has malists who were scandalised, “ The made good its claim to be called the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The ascetic bias subse­ ££ excellent religion.” Its followers, the quently introduced may have been a limited community of Parsees in India, necessary element in counteracting the are honourably distinguished for probity, corruption of Rome; but the pendulum intelligence, enterprise, public spirit, in its reaction swung much too far, and benevolence, tolerance, and other good when organised in its celibacy of the qualities. By virtue of these qualities clergy and monastic institutions asceti­ they have raised themselves to a pro­ cism became the source of great, evils. minent position in our Indian empire, Even at a late period we can see in the and take a leading part in its commerce reaction of the reign of Charles II. how and industrial enterprise. The chief antagonistic the puritanical creed, even shipbuilder at Bombay, the first great of men like Cromwell and Milton, native railway contractor, the founder of proved to the healthy natural instinct of cotton factories, are all Parsees, and they the great mass of the English nation. are found as merchants, traders, and And at the present day it remains one of shopkeepers in all the chief towns of �io4 ZOROASTRIANISM British India and distant places, such as t Aden and Zanzibar. Their commercial probity is proverbial, and, as in England, they have few written agreements, the word of a Parsee, like that of an English­ man, being considered as good as his bond. Their high character and practi­ cal aptitude for business are attested by the fact that the first mayor, or chairman of the Corporation of Bombay, was a Parsee, who was elected by the unanimous vote both of Europeans and natives. The position of women affords perhaps the best test of the real civilisation and intrinsic worth of any community. Where men considerwomen as inferior creatures, it is a sure proof that they themselves are so. They are totally wanting in that ■delicacy and refinement of nature which distinguishes the true gentleman from . the snob or the savage, and are coarse, - vulgar brutes, however disguised under a veneer of outward polish. On the other hand, respect for women implies selfrespect, nobility of nature, capability of rising to high ideals above the sordid level of animal appetite and the selfish supremacy of brute force. The Parsees in this respect stand high, far higher, than any other Oriental people, and on a level with the best European civilisation. The equality of the sexes is distinctly laid down in the Zoroastrian scriptures. Women are always mentioned as a necessary part of the religious com­ munity. They have the same religious .-rites as the men. The spirits of deceased -women are invoked as well as those of men. Long contact with the other races of India, and the necessity for some outward conformity to the practices of Hindoo and Mohammedan rulers, did something to impair the position of females as regards public appearances, though the Parsee wife and mother always remained a principal figure in the Parsee household ; and latterly, under the security of English rule, Parsee ladies may be seen everywhere in public, enjoying just as much liberty as the ladies of Europe or America. Nor are they at all behind their Western sisters | in education, accomplishments, and, it may be added, in daintiness of fashion­ able attire. In fact, an eager desire for education has become a prominent feature among all classes of the Parsee com­ munity, and they are quite on a par with Scotch, German, and other European races in their efforts to establish schools, and in the numbers who attend, and especially of those who obtain dis­ tinguished places in the higher schools and colleges, such as the Elphinstone Institute and the Bombay University. Female education is also actively pro­ moted, and no prejudices stand in the way of attendance at the numerous girls’ schools which have been estab­ lished, or even of studying in medical colleges, where Parsee women attend lectures on all branches of medical science along with male students. Those who know the position of inferiority and seclusion in which women are kept among all other Oriental nations can best appreciate the largeness and liberality of spirit of a religion which, in spite of all surrounding influences, has rendered such a thing possible in such a country as India. Another prominent trait of the Parsee character is that of philanthropy and public spirit. In proportion to their numbers and means, they raise more money for charitable objects than any other religious sect. And they raise it in a way which does the greatest credit to their tolerance and liberality. For instance, the Parsees were the principal subscribers to a fund raised in Bombay in aid of the “ Scottish Corporation and quite recently a Parsee gentleman gave 16,000 towards the establishment of a female hospital under the care of lady doctors, although the benefit of such an institution would be confined principally to Mohammedan and Hindoo women, Parsee women having no pre­ judice against employing male doctors. The public spirit shown by acts like this is the trait by which the Parsee community is most honourably dis­ tinguished, and in respect of which it �ZOROASTRIANISM must be candidly confessed it far sur­ passes, not only other Oriental races, but most European nations, including our own. Whatever the reason may be, the fact is certain that in England, while a great deal of money is spent 111 charity, lamentably little is spent from the enormous surplus wealth of the country on what may be called public objects. There is neither religious influence nor social opinion brought to bear on the numerous class who have incomes far beyond any possible want, to teach them that it should be both a pleasure and a pride to associate their names with some act of noble liberality.. A better spirit we may hope is springing up, and there have been occasional instances of large sums applied to public purposes, such as parks and colleges, by private individuals, principally of the trading and manufacturing classes, such as the Salts, Crossleys, Baxters, and Holloways ; but, on the whole, the amount contributed is miserably small. It is probably part of the price we pay for aristocratic institu­ tions that those who inherit or accumu­ late great fortunes consider it their primary object to perpetuate or to found great families. Be this as it may, a totally different spirit prevails among the Parsees of Bombay, where it has been truly stated that hardly a year passes without some wealthy Parsee coming forward to perform a work of public generosity. The instance of Sir Jamsedjee Jijibhoy, who attained a European reputation for his noble benevolence, is only one conspicuous instance out of a thousand of this “ public spirit ” which has become almost an instinctive ele­ ment in Parsee society. How far the large and liberal religion may be the cause of the large and liberal practice it is impossible to say. Other influences have doubtless been at work. 105 The Parsees are a commercial people, and commerce is always more libera with its money than land. They are the descendants of a persecuted race, and, as a rule, it is better to be persecuted than to persecute. Still, after making all allowances, it remains that the tree can­ not be bad which bears such fruits ; the religion must be a good one which pro duces good men and women and good deeds. Statistical facts testify quite as strongly to the high standard of the Parsee race, and the practical results which follow from the observance of the Zoroastrian ritual. A small death-rate and a large proportion of children prove the vigorous vitality of a race. The Parsees have the lowest death-rate of any of the many races who inhabit Bombay. The aver­ age for the two years 1881 and 1882 per thousand was—for Hindoos, 26.11 ; for Mussulmans, 30.46 f°r Europeans, 20.18; for Parsees, 19.26. The per­ centage of children under two years old to women between fifteen and forty-five was 30.27 for Parsees, as against Hindoos 22.24, and Mussulmans. 24.9> showing incontestably greater vitality and greater care for human life. Of 6,618 male and 2,966 female mendicants in the city of Bombay, only five male and one female were Parsees. These figures speak for themselves. It is evident that a religion in which such results are possible cannot be unfavourable to the development of the mens sana in corpore sano, and that, although we may not turn Zoroastrians, we may envy some of the good results of a creed which inculcates wor­ ship of the good, the pure, and the beautiful in the concerns of daily life, as well as in the abstract regions of theo­ logical and philosophical speculation. �106 FORMS OF WORSHIP Chapter XIV. FORMS OF WORSHIP Byron’s lines—Carnegie’s description—Parsee nature-worship—English Sunday—The ser­ mon—Appeals to reason misplaced—Music better than words—The Mass—Zoroastrian­ ism brings religion into daily life—Sanitation —Zoroastrian prayer—Religion of the future —Sermons in stones and good in everything. 4‘Not vainly did the early Persian make His altar the high places and the peak Of earth-o’ergazing mountains, and thus take A fit and unwall’d temple, where to seek The spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak, Uprear’d of human hands. Come, and com­ pare Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek, With nature’s realms of worship, earth and air, Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer !” —Childe Harold, iii. 91, .A shrewd Scotch-American ironmaster —Andrew Carnegie—in an interesting and instructive record of experiences during a voyage round the world, gives the following description of the worship of the modern Parsees, as actually wit­ nessed by him at Bombay :— “ This evening we were surprised to see, as we strolled along the beach, more Parsees than ever before, and more Parsee ladies richly dressed, all wending their way towards the sea. It was the first of the new moon, a period sacred to these worshippers of the elements; and here on the shore of the ocean, as the sun was sinking in the sea, and the slender silver thread of the crescent moon was faintly shining on the horizon, they congregated to perform their re­ ligious rites. “ Fire was there in its grandest form, the setting sun, and water in the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean outstretched before them. The earth was under their feet, and, wafted across the sea, the air came laden with the perfumes of ‘ Araby the blest.’ Surely no time or place could be more fitly chosen than this for lifting up the soul to the realms beyond sense. I could not but participate with these worshippers in what was so grandly beautiful. There was no music save the solemn moan of the waves as they broke into foam on the beach. But where shall we find so mighty an organ, or so grand an anthem ? “How inexpressibly sublime the scene appeared to me, and how insignificant and unworthy of the unknown seemed even our cathedrals ‘ made with human hands,’ when compared with this looking up through nature unto nature’s God ! I stood and drank in the serene happi­ ness which seemed to fill the air. I have seen many modes and forms of worship—some disgusting, others sadden­ ing, a few elevating when the organ pealed forth its tones, but all poor in comparison with this. Nor do I ever expect in all my life to witness a religious ceremony which will so powerfully affect me as that of the Parsees on the beach at Bombay.” I say Amen with all my heart to Mr. Carnegie. Here is an ideal religious ceremony combining all that is most true, most touching, and most sublime, in the attitude of man towards the Great Unknown. Compare it with the routine of an ordinary English Sunday, and how poor and prosaic does the latter appear ! There is nothing which seems to me to have fallen more completely out of har­ mony with its existing environment than our traditional form of church service. The sermon has been killed by the Press, and has become an anachronism. There was a time when sermons like those, of Latimer and John Knox were living realities ; they dealt with all the burning political and personal questions of the day, and to a great extent did the work now done by platform speeches and �FORMS OF WORSHIP leading articles. If there are national dangers to be denounced, national short­ comings to be pointed out, iniquity in high places to be rebuked, we look to our daily newspaper, and not to our weekly sermon. The sermon has, in a great majority of cases, become a sort of schoolboy theme, in which traditional assumptions and conventional phrases are ground out, with as little soul or idea behind them as in the Thibetan praying­ mill. In the course of a long life I have gained innumerable ideas and experi­ enced innumerable influences, from con­ tact with the world, with fellow-men, and with books; but, although I have heard a good many sermons, I cannot honestly say that I ever got an idea or an influence from one of them which made me wiser or better, or different in any respect from what I should have been if I had slept through them. And this from no fault of the preachers. I have heard many who gave me the impression that they were good men, and a few who impressed me as being able and liberal-minded men —nor do I know that, under the condi­ tions in which they are placed, I could have done any better myself. But they were dancing in fetters, and so tied down by conventionalities that it was simply impossible for them to depart from the paths of a decorous routine. The fact is that the whole point of view of our religious services, especially in Protestant countries, has become a mistaken one. It is far too much an appeal to the intellect and to abstract dogmas, and too little one to the realities of actual life and to the vague emotions and aspirations which constitute the proper field of religion. In the great reaction of the Reformation it was per­ haps inevitable that an appeal should be made to reason against the abuses of an infallible Church; and as long as the literal inspiration of the Bible and other theological premises were held to be un­ doubted axioms by the whole Christian world, there might be a certain interest in hearing them repeated over and over again in becoming language, and in 107 listening to sermons which explained shortly conclusions which might be drawn from these admitted axioms. But this is no longer the case. It is impos­ sible to touch the merest fringe of the questions now raised by the intellectual side of religion in discourses of half an. hour’s length; even if the preacher were perfectly free, and not hampered by thefear of scandalising simple, pious souls by plain language. Spoken words have to a great extent ceased to be the appro­ priate vehicle for appealing either to reli­ gious reason or to religious emotion—books for the former, music for the latter, are infinitely more effective. Music especially seems made to be the language of religion. Not only its beauty and harmony, but its vagueness and its power of exciting the imagination and stirring the feelings, without anything definite which has to be proved and can be contradicted, fit it to be the inter­ preter of those emotions and aspirations which fill the human soul in presence of the universe and of the Great Unknown. Demonstrate, with St. Thomas Aquinas or Duns Scotus, how many angels can stand on the point of a needle, and I remain unaffected; but let me' hear Rossini’s Cujus Animam, or Mozart’s Agnus Dei, and I say, “ Thus the angels sing.” In this respect the Roman Catholic Church has retained a great advantage over reformed Churches. Whatever we may think of its tenets and principles, its forms of worship are more impressive and more attractive. The Mass, apart from all dogma and miracle, is a mysterious and beautiful religious drama, in which appropriate symbolism, vocal and instrumental music, all the highest efforts of human art, are united to pro­ duce feelings of joy and of devoutness. The vestment of the priest, his gestures and genuflexions, the Latin words chanted in stately recitative, the flame of the candles pointingheaven wards, theburning incense slowly soaring upwards, the music of great masters, not like our dreary and monotonous psalmody, but in fullest �108 FORMS OF WORSHIP harmony and richest melody—all com­ bine to attune the mind to that state of feeling which is the soul of religion. In this respect, however, what I have called the Zoroastrian theory of religion affords great advantages. It connects religion directly with all that is good and beautiful, not only in the higher realms of speculation and of emotion, but in the ordinary affairs of daily life. To feel the truth of what is true, the beauty of what is beautiful, is of itself a silent prayer or act of worship to the Spirit of Light; to make an honest, earnest effort to attain this feeling is an offering or act of homage. Cleanliness of mind and body, order and propriety in con­ duct, civility in intercourse, and all the homely virtues of everyday life, thus acquire a higher significance, and any wilful and persistent disregard of them becomes an act of mutiny against the Power whom we have elected to serve. Such moral perversion becomes impos­ sible as that which in the Middle Ages ..associated filth with holiness, and adduced -as a title to canonisation that the saint had worn the same woollen shirt until it fell to pieces under the attacks of vermin. We . laugh at this in more enlightened days, but we often imitate it by setting up false religious standards, and thinking we can make men better by penning them up on Sundays in the foul air and corrupting influences of densely-peopled cities. The identification of moral and physical evil, which is one of the most essential and peculiar tenets of the Zoroastrian creed, is fast becoming a leading idea in modern civilisation. Our most earnest philanthropists and zealous workers in the fields of sin and misery in crowded cities are coming, more and more every day, to the conviction that an improvement in the physical con­ ditions of life is the first indispensable condition of moral and religious pro­ gress. More air, more light, better lodging, better food, more innocent and healthy recreation, are what are wanted to make any real impression on the masses who have either been born and bred in an evil environment, or have fallen out of the ranks and are the waifs and stragglers left behind in the rapid progress and intense competition of modern society. Hence we see that the devoted individuals and charitable institutions who take the lead in works of practical benevolence direct their attention more and more to the rescue of children from bad surroundings; to sending them to new and happier homes in the colonies, to country retreats for the sickly, and excursions for the healthy; and to providing clubs and reading­ rooms as substitutes for the gin-palace and public-house. A recent develop­ ment of this idea, the “People’s Palace” in the East End of London, is a noble offering to the “ Spirit of Light,” by whatever name we choose to call him, in opposition to the “Spirit of Dark­ ness.” To the Zoroastrian prayer assumes the form of a recognition of all that is pure, sublime, and beautiful in the sur­ rounding universe. He can never want opportunities of paying homage to the Good Spirit and of looking into the abysses of the unknown with reverence and wonder. The light of setting suns, the dome of loving blue, the clouds in the might of the tempest or resting still as brooding doves, the mountains, the “ Waste And solitary places where we taste The pleasures of believing what we see, Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be”; the ocean lashed by storm, or where it “ All down the sand Lies breathing in its sleep, Heard by the land ”— these are a Zoroastrian’s prayers. And even if, “ in populous cities pent,” he is cut off from close com­ munion with nature, opportunities are not wanting to him of letting his soul soar aloft with purifying aspirations. A glimpse of the starry sky, even if seen from a London street, may bear in on him the awful yet lovely mystery of the �PRACTICAL POLARITIES io9 literature, science, and art, he can hear Infinite. Good books, good music, true works of art, may all strengthen his love best “ The still sad music of humanity, of the good and beautiful. A dense fog Not harsh nor grating, but of ample power or drizzling rain may obscure the out­ To chasen and subdue,” ward view, but with the inner eye he may and associate himself with movements in stand listening to the lark or under the which his little individual effort is exerted vernal sky, and while his towards making the world a little better rather than a little worse than he found “ Heart looks down and up, Serene, secure ; Warm as the crocus-cup, As snowdrops pure,” thank the Good Spirit that it has. been given to man to write, and to him. to read, verses of such exquisite perfection as Shelley’s “ Ode to a Skylark ” and Tennyson’s “ Early Spring.” Above all, where men congregate in masses, in the great centres of politics, of commerce, of This, rather than wrangling with his fellow-mortals about creeds and attempts to name the unnameable, believe the un­ believable, and define the undefinable, seems to me to be the religion of the future. Call it by what name you like, I quarrel with no one as long as he can find “ Sermons in stones and good in everything.” Chapter XV. PRACTICAL POLARITIES Everything was fresh and cheerful as Fable of the shield—Progress and conservatism —English and French colonisation—Law- of a new-born earth, and so were the abidingness—Irish land question True con­ spirits of the two youthful knights who servative legislation — Ultra-conservatism were pricking forth in search of adven­ Law and education—Patriotism—Jingoism and parochialism—True statesmanship—Free tures. He whose face was turned towards trade and protection—Capital and labour— the West, where the rising sun. had. last Egoism and altruism—Socialism and laissez set, wore a primrose scarf over his cuirass, faire—Contracts—Rights and duties of land­ and had on his shield a quaint device, lords—George’s theory—State interference— Railways—Post Office—Telegraphs—National which, on closer inspection, might be seen to be a tombstone with the inscription, defence—Concluding remarks. “ I was well, would be better, and here I, am.” A well-known fable tells how, in the olden time, two knights were riding in opposite directions along a green road overarched by the trees of an ancient forest. It was a bright morning in early summer, with the green leaves freshly bursting in contrasted foliage; the sun had just risen over the tops of the trees in clouds of golden and crimson glory; dewdrops were glittering like diamonds on every twig and blade of grass ; and the joyous birds carolling their loudest song to greet the opening day. He rode along musing on the heroic legends of the past, and wishing that he had been a knight of Arthur’s round table to ride out with the blameless king against invading heathen. The second knight, whose face was turned towards the rising sun, bore an azure shield with a different device. On it was depicted the good Sir James Douglass charging the serried Paynim army, and, as he charged, flinging before ) him into the hostile ranks the casket �I IO PRACTICAL POLARITIES containing the heart of Robert Bruce, and shouting for battle-cry : “ Go thou aye forward, as was thy wont.” As he rode his fancy wrought the fairy web of a day-dream, in which he saw himself delivering the fair princess Liberty from the fiery dragon Prejudice and the stolid giant Obstruction. The knights met just where an ancient oak of mighty bulk stretched overhead a huge branch across the path, as some aged athlete might stretch out an arm rigid with gnarled and knotted muscles, to show younger generations how Olympian laurels were won when Pollux or Hercules plied the cestus. From this branch a shield hung suspended. “ Good morrow, fair knight,” said he of the primrose scarf; “ prithee tell me if thou knowest what means this golden shield suspended here.” “ I marvel at it myself, good Sir Knight,” responded the other; “ but you mistake in calling the shield golden : it is of silver.” “Your eyes must be of the dullest,” said the first knight, “if you mistake gold for silver.” “Not so dull as yours,” retorted the other, “ if you mistake silver for gold.” The argument waxed hot, and, as usual in such cases, as tempers grew weak adjectives grew strong. Soon, like the old Homeric heroes when Greek met Trojan “ Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,” winged words of fire and fury darted from each mouth, and epithets were ex­ changed, of which “ stupid old Tory ” and “ low, vulgar Radical ” were among the least unparliamentary. At length the fatal words, “ You lie,” escaped simultaneously from both, and on the instant spears were couched, steeds spurred, and, red with rage, they encoun­ tered each other in full career. Such was the momentum that both men and horses rolled over, even as the Templar went down before the spear of Ivanhoe within the lists of Ashby-de-la-Zouch. But, like the redoubted knight Brian de Bois-Guilbert, each sprang to his feet and drew his sword, eager to redeem the fortune of war in deadly combat. Like two surly boars with bristling backs and foaming tusks quarrelling for the right of way in Indian jungle, or tawny lions in Numidian desert tearing one another topieces for the smiles of a leonine Helen, the heroes clashed together, cutting, slashing, parrying, foyning, and traversing, until at length, bleeding and breathless, they paused for a moment, leaning on their swords to recover second wind. Just then an aged hermit appeared on the scene, drawn thither by the sound of the combat. “Pause, my sons,” he said, “and tell me what is the cause of this furious encounter.” “ Yonder false villain protests,” said the one, “that the shield which hangs there is of gold.” “ And that lying varlet persists that it is of silver,” said the other. The hermit smiled, and said : “ Hold your hands, good sirs, for a single moment, and use your remaining strength to exchange places and look at the opposite side of the shield.” They obeyed his words, and found to their confusion that they had been fight­ ing in a quarrel in which each was right and each wrong. “ Father,” they said, “ we are fools. Grant us thy pardon for our folly and absolution for our sin.” “ Absolution,” said the hermit, “ is soon granted for faults which arise from the innate tendency of poor human nature. Wiser and older men than you are prone to see only their own side of a question. Come, then, with me to my humble hermitage; there will I dress your wounds and offer you my frugal fare; happy if from this lesson you may learn for the rest of your lives, before indulging in vehement assertions and proceeding to violent extremities, to ‘ look at the other side of the shield.’ ” The application of this fable to the polarity of politics will be obvious to �PRACTICAL POLARITIES hi every intelligent reader. As the earth is when they are placed in favourable con­ ditions as in new countries, or in old kept in its orbit by the due balance of centripetal and centrifugal forces, so is countries where for ages every civilised society held together by “Freedom has widened slowly down, the opposite influences of conservative From precedent to precedent, and progressive tendencies. .The con­ that this happy ideal is most nearly servative tendency may be likened to the centripetal force which binds the realised. Hence it is that these races mass together, while the progressive one are more and more coming to the front resembles that centrifugal force which and surviving in the struggle for existence. The contrast of English and French prevents it from being concentrated in a colonisation affords a striking instance of rigid and inert central body without life this difference of races. A century and or motion. As Herbert Spencer truly says, “ from antagonistic social tendencies a half ago France stood as well as there always results not a medium state, England in the race for colonial supre­ but a rhythm between opposite states. macy. She had the start of us in Canada, Now the one greatly preponderates, and and her pioneers had explored the Great presently, by reaction, their comes a Lakes, the Mississippi, and a large part preponderance of the other.” So it is of the continent of North America west with the antagonism of conservative and of the Rocky. Mountains. To-day there liberal tendencies. In the societies of are sixty millions of an English-speaking the ancient world, and to the present population in that continent, while French day in the East, the conservative tendency is scarcely spoken beyond the single unduly preponderates, and they crystal­ province of Quebec. Political events lise into inert masses in the form of had doubtless something to. do with despotisms, and of sacerdotal or ad­ this result; but it has been mainly owing ministrative hierarchies. At times the to the innate qualities of the two races, pent-up forces which make for change for even the genius of Chatham might accumulate, and, as in the French have failed to establish our supremacy Revolution, explode with destructive if it had not been backed by the superior violence, shattering the old and bringing intelligence, energy, and staying power in new eras. But unless the balance of the English colonists. The ultimate between liberty and order is tolerably cause of the triumph of the English over preserved in the individual citizens whose the French element in America, and aggregate forms the society, after a period India is doubtless to be found in the more or less prolonged of violent oscilla­ stronger individualism of the former. tions, they crystallise anew into fresh The character of the French is eminently forms, in which another military dynasty, social: they like to live in societies, and or, it may be, administrative centralisa­ shrink from encountering the hardships, tion under the name of a republic, again and still more the isolation, of the life of asserts the preponderance of the centri­ early settlers. They like to be adminis­ tered, and shrink from the responsibility petal force. The happiest nations are those in of hewing out, each for themselves, their which the individual character of in­ own path in the relations of civil life or dividual citizens supplies the requisite in the depths of primaeval forests. It is so to the present day, and they balance. An ideal society is one in which every citizen is at the same time fail conspicuously in creating a large liberal and conservative; law-abiding, French population even at their own and yet with a strong instinct for liberty doors in Algeria; while in their more of thought and action, for progress and distant colonies they conquer and annex, for individual independence. It is but to see their commerce fall into the among the Teutonic races, especially hands of English, Germans, and Chinese, �112 PRACTICAL POLARITIES as in Cochin China, or to stagnate as in New Caledonia. As a witty French writer puts it, the trade of a remote French colony may be summed up as— imports, absinthe and cigars; exports, stamped paper and red-tape. Individual­ ism in this case has been fairly pitted against Socialism, and has beaten it out of the field by the verdict of Fact, which is more conclusive than any amount of abstract argument. To return, however, to the field of politics. Where the essential quality of being law-abiding is wanting in individuals, it is hopeless to look for real liberty. The centripetal force in societies, as in planets, must be supplied somehow, or they would fly into dissolution; and if not by the integration of the tendencies of the individual units, then by external restrictions. Socialists may be allowed to make inflammatory harangues in a non-explosive atmosphere, but hardly to let off their fireworks in a powdermagazine. In order, however, that a nation shall be law-abiding, it is essential that the great majority should feel that, on the whole, the law is their friend. It is not in human nature to love that which injures, or to respect that which is felt to be unjust. The volcanic ex­ plosion of the French Revolution was due to the feeling of the French nation, with the exception of a few courtiers, nobles, and priests, that the existing order of things was their enemy, and law a tool in the hands of their oppressors. Even among English-speaking races we find, in the unfortunate instance of Ireland, that under specially unfavourable circumstances the same effects may be produced by the same causes. What has English law practically meant for centuries to an average peasant of Kerry or Connemara? It has meant an irre­ sistible malevolent power, which comes down on him with writs of eviction to compel him to pay a high rent on his own improvements. More that half the population of Ireland consists of tenants and their families occupying small hold­ ings, paying less than ^io a year of rent. Of an immense majority of these sm.dl holdings two things' may be safely asserted : first, that the total gross value of the produce is insufficient, after paying the rent, to leave a decent subsistence for the cultivator. Secondly, that this rent is levied to a great extent on the improvements of the tenant or his prede­ cessors. Throughout the poorer parts of Ireland the greater part of the soil, in its natural state of bog or mountain, is not worth a rent of a shilling an acre; but some poor peasant, urged by the earth­ hunger which results from the absence of other sources of employment, squats upon it, builds a wretched cottage, delves, drains, fences, and reclaims a few acres of land, so as to bear a scanty crop of oats and potatoes. When he has done so the landlord or landlord’s agent comes to him and says : “ This land is worth ten or fifteen shillings an acre, according to the standard of rents in the district, and you must pay it or turn out and the law backs him in saying so by writs of eviction and police. Put yourself in poor Pat’s place, and say if you would love the law and be law-abiding. It would take me too far from the scope of this volume into the field of contemporary politics if I attempted to point out who is to blame for this state of things, or what are the remedies. It is enough to say that this is the real Irish problem, and to point to it as an instance of the calamitous effects which inevitably follow when the instincts of a whole population are brought by an unfavour­ able combination of circumstances into necessary and natural antagonism with the laws which they are bound to obey. Conservative legislation, by whatever party it is introduced, really means making the law correspond with the common sense and common morality of all except the criminal and crotchety classes, so that the majority may feel it to be their friend. For instance, the most truly conservative measure of recent times was probably that which legalised trades’ unions and gave working-men full liberty to combine for an increase of wages. �PRACTICAL POLARITIES The old legal maxim, that such combina­ tions were illegal as being in restraint of trade, was so obviously an invention of the members of the upper caste who wore horsehair wigs, to give their fellows of the same caste who employed labour an unfair advantage, that it could not fail to cause feelings of discontent and exasperation among the masses of working­ men. By its repeal the sting has been taken out of Socialism, and the British working-man has come to be, in the main, a reasonable citizen, on whom incitements to violence in order to inaugurate Utopias fall as lightly as the howlings of the barren east wind on the chimney-tops. It has led also to reasonable and peaceful adjustment of disputes between employers and labourers by arbitration and slidingscales instead of by strikes and lock-outs. In the United States of America the lawabiding instinct is even stronger. We find that strikes attended with violence are almost always confined mainly to the foreign element of recently-imported immigrants, and that the native-born American citizen considers the laws as his own laws, and is determined to have them respected. The balance between the conservative and progressive tendencies is, however, at the best, always imperfect, and inclines too much sometimes in one and some­ times in the other direction. In England the conservative tendency has had, on the whole, too much preponderance. I do not speak of political institutions, for in these of late years the balance has been pretty equally preserved ; but in practical matters there is still a good deal of old-fashioned stolid obstruction. This is most apparent in law and in education. The common or judge-made law, though on the whole well-intentioned and upright, is fettered by so many technicalities and musty precedents that it fails in a great many instances to be what civil law ought to be—a cheap, speedy, and intelligible instrument for enforcing honest dealings as between man and man. One of our greatest railway contractors once said to me : “ If 113 I want to make an agreement which shall be absolutely binding, I make it myself on a sheet of notepaper; if I want to have a loophole, I send it to my lawyer to have it drawn up in legal language and engrossed on sheets of parchment.” Another man of large experience in com­ mercial and financial matters laid down this axiom : “ If you want to know what is the law in a doubtful case, reason out what is the common-sense view of it, and assume that the direct opposite is probably the law.” These may be extreme instances, as all such epigram­ matic sentences generally are, but it is undeniable that they have a considerable basis of substantial truth; and that law, with its dilatory processes, its enormous expense, and its uncertain conclusions, may be, and often is, not an instrument of justice, but a weapon in the hands of an unscrupulous adventurer or of a dis­ honest rich man to extort blackmail or to defeat just claims. Again, what nation but England would tolerate so long a system of land law, so bristling with antiquated technicali­ ties, so tedious, and so expensive, as almost to amount to a prohibition of the transfer of land in small quantities; or would let the private interests of a mere handful of professional lawyers stand in the way of a codification of laws and a registration of titles ? Education is another subject which shows how difficult it is to move the sluggish ultra-conservative instincts of the English mind in the direction, of progress, when not stimulated by political conflict. What is education ? The word tells its own story; it is to draw out, not to cram in; to unfold the capa­ cities of the growing mind, strengthen the reasoning faculty, create an interest in the surrounding universe—in a word, to excite a love of knowledge and impart the means of acquiring it. For the mass of the population education is neces­ sarily confined in a great measure to the latter object. The three R’s—-reading, writing, and arithmetic—are indispens­ able requisites, and the acquirement of �H4 PRACTICAL POLARITIES these, with perhaps a few elements of history and geography, absorbs nearly all the time and opportunity that can be afforded for attendance at school. For any culture beyond this the great majority must depend on themselves in after life. But there are a large number of parents of the upper and middle classes who can and do keep their children at school for eight or ten years, and spend a large sum of money in giving them what is called a higher education. What is there to show for this time and money, even in the case of the highest schools, which ought to give the highest education? On the credit side, a little Latin and less Greek, plenty of cricket and athletics, good phy­ sical training, and, best of all on the whole, a manly, honourable, and gentlemanlike spirit. But on the debit side, abso­ lute ignorance, except in the case of a few unusually clever and ambitious boys, of all that a cultivated man of the twen­ tieth century ought to know. No French, no German, and, what is worse, no English. The average boy can neither write his own language legibly nor gram­ matically, and, if he goes straight from a public school into a competitive examina­ tion, stands an excellent chance of being plucked for spelling. And, what is worst of all, he not only knows nothing, but cares to know nothing; his reasoning faculty has never been cultivated, and his interest in interesting things has never been awakened. What is the first lesson he has had to learn ? “Propria qucn maribus dicantur mascula dicas ”— that is, words appropriated to males are called masculine—a lesson which elicits as much reasoning faculty and creates as much interest as if he had been made to commit to memory that things made of gold are called golden. Suppose instead of this that the lesson had been that two volumes of hydrogen combine with one volume of oxygen to form water. The exercise to the memory is the same; but how different is the amount of thought and interest evoked, especially if the experiment is made before the class and each boy has to repeat it for himself! How many new subjects of interest woud this open up in the mind of any lad of average intelligence ! How strange that there should be airs other than the air we breathe, which can be weighed and measured, and that two of them by combining shall produce their exact weight of a substance so unlike them as water! Or if the exercise of a class were to look through a microscope at the leaf of a plant or wing of an insect, and try who could best draw what they had seen and write a description of it in a legible hand and in good English, how many faculties would this call into play compared with the dull routine of parsing a Latin sentence or writing a halting copy of Greek iambics 1 Even grammar, the one thing which is supposed to be taught thoroughly, is taught so unintelligently that it awakens no interest beyond that of a parrot learning by rote. From “propria qua maribus” the scholar passes to “ as tn prasenti perfectum format in avif without an attempt to explain what language really means, how it originates from root-words, and how these inflec­ tions of “as” and “avi” are part of the devices which certain families of man­ kind, including our own, have invented as a mechanism for attaching shades of meaning, such as present and past, to the primitive root. Even the alphabet, intelligently taught, opens up wide fields of interesting matter as to the history of ancient nations, and their successive attempts to analyse the component sounds of their spoken words, and to pass from primitive picture-writing to phonetic symbols. But the instructors of the budding manhood of the elite of the nation, like Gallio, “ care for none of these things,” and the organisation of our higher schools seems to be stereo­ typed on the principle that they are made for teachers rather than for scholars, and that the chief raison d'etre is to enable a limited number of highly re­ spectable gentlemen from the Universities to realise comfortable incomes with a maximum of holidays and a minimum of �PRACTICAL POLARITIES 115 gance and insolent ignorance I Reflected trouble. And the parents support the in the latter form from Paris, in hysterical system because so many of them really reverence rank more than knowledge, shouts now of “ A Berlin, a Berlin! and are willing to compound for their and now “ A bas perfide Albion !. we call it “ Chauvinism,” and recognise it sons growing up ignorant, idle, and extra­ as an unlovely exhibition. But call it vagant, if by any chance they can count “Jingoism,” and let it take the form of a lord or two among their acquaintance. Mr. Francis Galton, in the course of the bellowings of some stupid bull, as the red rag, now of a French and now of his interesting inquiries as to the effect a Russian scare, crosses his line of vision, of heredity and education on character and attainments, took the very practical and we are blind to its deformity. Still course of addressing a set of questions to there is another side to the shield, for even “ Jingoism,” which is only another word some hundred and eighty of our most for patriotism run mad, is more respect­ distinguished men as to the hereditary able than the opposite extreme, of a qualities of their ancestors, and the sordid and narrow-minded parochialism, various influences which they considered had done most to promote or to retard which shrinks behind the “ silver streak, measures everything by the standard of their success in life. Of course, he re­ pounds, shillings, and pence, and, with ceived a variety of answers, “ quot. homines tot sententice” but upon one point there what Tenhyson calls “The craven fear of being great,” was a striking unanimity. “ They almost all expressed a hatred of grammar and groans over the responsibilities of ex­ the classics, and an utter distaste for the tended empire. The growth.of such a old-fashioned system of education. There spirit among prominent politicians of the were none who had passed through this advanced Liberal school seems to me old high and dry education who were one of the most alarming symptoms of satisfied with it. Those who came from the day; but I take comfort when I the greater schools usually did nothing reflect that the most democratic com­ there, and have abused the system munity in the world—that of the United heartily.” States—is precisely the one which has And yet the system goes on, and the shown most determination to maintain Eton Latin grammar will probably be its national greatness, if necessary by the taught, and hexameters written, for sword, and has made the greatest sacri­ another generation. Surely the needle fices for that object. If the. “copper­ swings here too strongly towards the heads ” were a miserable minority in negative or obstructive pole. America, why should we be afraid of The instances are so numerous in our “ English copperheads ” ever be­ social and practical life in which it is coming a majority in Old England? . necessary to look at both sides of the In this, as in all similar cases, it is shield that the difficulty is in selection. evident that true statesmanship consists Take the case of patriotism. Patriotism in hitting the happy mean, and doing is beyond all doubt a great virtue—in the right thing at the right time; and fact, the fertile mother of many of the that true strength stands firm in the higher and heroic virtues. Who does middle between the two opposite poles, not sympathise with the legends of while weakness is drawn, by one or other Wallace and William Tell, and scorn of the conflicting attractions into with Walter Scott “ The falsehood of extremes.” “the man with soul so dead Who never to himself has said, 1 This is my own, my native land ’ ” ? And yet how thin a line of partition separates it from narrow-minded arro- When Sir Robert Peel, some forty years ago, announced his conversion by the unadorned eloquence of Richard Cobden, and free trade was inaugurated, �PRACTICAL POLARITIES with results which were attended with foreign trade for the supplies to keep the the most brilliant success, everyone ex­ other half alive. It is the best policy pected that the conversion of the rest of also for a country which, owing to its the civilised world was only a question mineral resources, its accessibility by sea of time, and that a short time. Few to markets, its accumulated capital, and would have been found bold enough to the inherited qualities, physical and predict that forty years later England moral, of its working population, has would stand almost alone in the world unrivalled advantages for cheap pro­ in adherence to free trade principles, duction. Nor can any dispassionate and that the protectionist heresy would observer dispute that in England, which not only be strengthened and confirmed is such a country, free trade has worked among Continental nations, such as well. It has not worked miracles, it has France and Germany, but actually not introduced an industrial millennium, adopted by large and increasing majorities the poor are still with us, and it has not in the United States, Canada, Australia, saved us from our share of commercial and other English-speaking communities. depressions. But, on the whole, national Yet such is the actual fact at the present wealth has greatly increased, and, what day. In spite of the Cobden Club and is more important, national well-being of arguments which to the average has increased with it, the mass of the English mind appear irresistible, free population, and especially of the working trade has been steadily losing ground classes, get better wages, work shorter for the last twenty years, and nation after hours, and are better fed, better clothed, nation, colony after colony, sees its pro­ and better educated than they were forty tectionist majority increasing and its free years ago. trade minority dwindling. This is one side of the shield, and it It is evident there must be some real is really a golden and not an illusory cause for such a universal phenomenon. one. But look at the other side. Take In countries like France and Russia we the case of a country where totally oppo­ may attribute it to economical ignorance site conditions prevail—where there is and the influence of cliques of manu­ no surplus population, unlimited land, facturers and selfish interests; but the limited capital, labour scarce and dear, people of Germany, and still more of the and no possibility of competing in the United States, Canada, and Australia, foreign, or even in the home, market are as intelligent as ourselves, and quite with the manufactures which, with free as shrewd in seeing where those interests trade, would be poured in by countries really lie. They are fettered by no tradi­ like England, in prior possession of all tional prejudices, and their political in­ the elements of cheap production. It stincts rather lie towards freedom and is by no means so clear that protection, against the creation of anything like an to enable native industries to take root aristocracy of wealthy manufacturers. and grow, may not in such cases be the And yet, after years of free discussion, wisest policy. they have become more and more Take as a simple illustration the case of hardened in their protectionist heresies. an Australian colony imposing an import What does this prove? That there duty on foreign boots and shoes. There are two sides to the shield, and not, as is not a doubt that this is practically we fancied in our English insularity, only taxing the immense majority of colonists one. who wear and do not make these articles. Free trade is undoubtedly the best, or But, on the other hand, it makes the rather the only possible, policy for a colony a possible field for emigration for country like England, with forty millions all the shoemakers of Europe, and shoe­ of inhabitants, producing food for less making a trade to which any Australian than half the number, and depending on with a large family can bring up one of �PRACTICAL POLARITIES J17 a larger life possible, it may be sound his sons. Looking at it from the strict point of view of the most rigid political policy to pay it, and the result seems to economist, the maximum production of show that neither it nor free trade is inconsistent with rapid progress j while, wealth, which is the better policy ? The production of wealth, we must recollect, on the other hand, neither of them affords an absolute immunity from the depends on labour, and productive labour depends on the labourer finding his tools evils that dog the footsteps of progress, and from the periods of reaction and —that is, employment at which he can work. A labourer who cannot find work depression which accompany vicissitudes at living wages is worse than a zero j he is of trade. Here, as in other cases, there are two a negative quantity, as far as the accu­ mulation of wealth is concerned. On sides of the shield, and true statesman­ the other hand, every workman who ship consists in seeing, both, and doing finds work, even if it may not be of the the right thing, at the right place, and at ideally best description, is a wealth-pro­ the right time. If free trade .is, as we believe, ultimately to prevail, it will be ducing machine. What he spends on himself and his family gives employment an affair of time. The real trial of pro­ to other workmen, and the work must be tection comes when it has stimulated pro­ poor indeed if the produce of a year s duction to a point which gluts the home labour is not more than the cost of a market and leaves a surplus which must Exports of articles the year’s subsistence. The surplus adds to be exported. the national capital, and thus capital and cost of which has been artificially, raised population go on increasing in geo­ by protection cannot compete in the metrical progression. The first problem, world’s market with the cheaper products Vicissitudes, therefore, for a new or a backward of free-trade countries. country is to find “a fair day’s wages therefore, of prosperity and depression for a fair day’s work ” for as many hands must tend to become more frequent and as possible. The problem of making more severe, and, if production goes on, that employment the most productive a point must be reached where, at what­ possible is a secondary one, which will ever cost, it must either be ai rested or solve itself in each case rather by actual made capable of competing in the wider market. The United States are probably practice than by abstract theory. not far from such a point, and it would This much, however, is pretty clear— that, in order to secure the maximum of have been already reached but for the employment, it must be varied. All are immense and unexhausted resources of not fit for agricultural work, and, even if that vast continent. In France the point they were, if the conditions of soil and has apparently been reached, and we climate favour large estates and sheep find that, with a lower scale of wages or cattle runs rather than small farms, a than in England, it is becoming more large amount of capital may provide and more difficult every day to maintain work for only a small number of that lower scale and the export trade labourers. On social and moral grounds, of its manufactured goods to foreign also, apart from dry considerations of markets. Protection, leading to higher wages political economy, progress, intelligence, and a higher standard of life are more and profits than can be permanently likely to be found with large cities, manu­ maintained, and artificially enhancing factures, and a variety of industrial occu­ the cost of living to the working classes, pations than with a dead level of a few threatens more and more every day to millionaires and a few shepherds, or of introduce strained relations between a few landlords and a dense population capital and labour in most countries of of poor peasants. If protection is the Europe. The relation between capital and price which must be paid to render such �118 PRACTICAL POLARITIES labour affords a good instance of the: manufacturer or mine-owner’s profit may inevitable error of applying hard-and- rise from five to twenty per cent, without fast logical conclusions to the complex quadrupling the rate of wages; but, on and ever-varying problems of actual life. the other hand, it may fall from twenty - Ricardo and other distinguished writers per cent, to five, or even for a time below on political economy have assumed that zero, without a proportionate diminution the two constitute a fundamental antago­ in the price paid for labour. Capital is, nistic polarity. Wealth, they say, is the in fact, the great insurer of labour, the joint product of capital and labour, and, fly-wheel which regulates the motion of as in the case of a cake which has to be the industrial machine. This will be divided between C and L, the more C best illustrated by a practical instance. gets the less is left for L, and vice versit,. The Brighton Railway Company for The theory sounds plausible; but what several consecutive years paid no divi­ says fact ? In the most unmistakeable dend, or only a trifling amount, on the manner it pronounces, as the outcome of shareholders’ capital; but during the practical experience, that the profits of whole of this time it gave steady employ­ capital and the wages of labour rise and ment at good wages to upwards of ten fall together. High profits mean high thousand workmen. The Blaenavon wages, rising profits rising wages, falling Coal and Iron Company in South Wales profits falling wages. It has been proved was for many years a losing concern, and so in a thousand instances, and not one successive capitalists lost the best part of can be quoted where the one factor has a million pounds in it, until at length it varied in an inverse, and not in a direct, was reorganised with a small capital, and ratio with the other. It is obvious that became a fairly prosperous concern. there must be some fallacy in Ricardo’s During the whole of this time it gave argument. The fallacy is this : he employment at fair wages to several assumes the cake to be of fixed dimen­ thousand workmen. Which had the sions, whereas, in point of fact, it varies, better of it in these two cases, capital or sometimes diminishing to zero, or even labour; and where would the workmen to a negative quantity, at others expand­ have been on any communistic or co­ ing to many times its original size. A operative system ? In fact, it will be new goldfield is discovered in a remote apparent to anyone who will' study dis­ country, and forthwith profits rise to passionately the statistics of any line of cent, per cent., and wages to a pound a inquiry, such as the scale of wages, the day; a bad season and depression of price of provisions, and the accumula­ trade overtake an old country, and the tions of savings banks and provident gross value of the produce of many a societies, etc., for the last twenty years, farm is insufficient to cover expenses that the working classes have had the and depreciation, even if the labourers lion’s share of the vast increase which has worked for nothing. The polarity is taken place in the wealth and income of therefore confined to the limited and the nation. I am glad that it is so, for temporary case of the division of the it is better, both morally and politically, profit, where there is a profit, in particular that the condition of the masses should trades and in individual instances. And be improved and their standard of living this is regulated mainly by the accus­ raised than that capital should accumu­ tomed scale of wages and standard of late too exclusively in large masses. living of the workmen, and their oppor­ Still, there is a good deal to be said tunities of finding employment elsewhere for such large accumulations. Let us if dissatisfied with the terms offered to go to the United States of America for them. On the whole, it may be said an illustration, where everything is on a that capital has the best of it on a rising, large scale, and colossal fortunes have and wages on a falling, market. A | been made in a few years. The modus �PRACTICAL POLARITIES 119 the continent—the Northern Pacificoperand! by which most of these fortunes j ruined two successive sets of promoters, have been made may be described ac­ and is only now beginning to be mode­ cording to the way we look at it, either as a railway jobbing or as pioneering the rately successful. But the final result has been that, way in useful enterprise. The construc­ while British India, which went on what tion of the first railway across the conti­ may be called the respectable system of nent to California is a typical instance. getting a pound’s worth of work for every A clique or syndicate of wealthy specula­ pound raised, has only 12,000 miles of tors make surveys and estimates of a railway, the United States, under the line across deserts and over mountain ranges, and ascertain pretty accurately speculative system, has got 120,000 miles. I cannot doubt that the national what it will cost. They form a company with a capital double that cost, and, by wealth of America is greater at the present day than if there had been no subventions from the Government, grants of land, and sale of mortgage bonds, raise Jay Goulds or Vanderbilts, and the con­ the half really required and hold the struction of her railways had been de­ layed on the average for twenty years. other half in shares as profit m paper. The contrast between labour and The line is made, and if the traffic turns capital or free trade and protection is out well, and there is a period of specula­ tion in the money market, the paper is only a particular case of the larger turned into dollars, and, if the line really polarity between what is called in scien­ costs, say, ^10,000,000 or ^20,000,000, tific language egoism and altruism, or, in more popular phraseology, individual­ the promoters realise an equal amount ism and socialism. According to one as profit. . . theory, the best result is obtained by This has two sides to it—it is doubt­ leaving individuals as free as possible to less bad for the public to have to pay rates which give a return on twice the act on their own suggestions of their actual cost, and the possession of a close duties and interests, and confining the monopoly in the hands of a few mil­ intervention of the State to enforcing lionaires may be abused to the detriment laws for the protection of life and pro­ of individual traders. But, on the other perty, and such measures as are obviously hand, the railway could not have been necessary for the safety of society. made in any other way. If it had been According to the other theory, the State necessary to wait until the slow growth ought to interfere wherever the results of of population insured such a traffic as individual liberty lead to abuses, and would induce the ordinary public, to should endeavour to create a society as subscribe for shares at par, you might near to ideal perfection as possible, by have waited for twenty years before administering and regulating the public a single mile of railway was made west and private affairs of its citizens. It is of the Mississippi. Nor is this all. The obvious that the question has two sides enormous profit realised in the first, of —that extreme conclusions in either these enterprises led to a rush of rich direction are, as is always the case, in­ speculators into the lottery of. pushing variably false. Individualism carried too railways ahead of traffic, in which there far would disintegrate society. It would were such magnificent prizes. The con­ be impossible to leave it to the short­ tinent was covered by new railways, built sighted selfishness of every citizen to say to create new traffic rather than to pro­ whether an army and navy should be vide for that which already existed. And maintained for national defence, and the traffic was created—though, as. the taxes should be levied for their support. Individualism also easily passes oyer lottery contained blanks as well as prizes, into a hard and cruel selfishness, which many of the original promoters were ruined. The second great line spanning recognises no obligation beyond the letter �120 PRACTICAL POLARITIES of the law, and acts practically on the success that principle of “Every one for himself, there is to two conditions—first, mar­ no marrying or giving in and the devil take the hindmost.” It is riage; secondly, that a member invented this phase of individualism which makes a patent, rat-trap—conditions which are enthusiasts and men of strong moral hardly likely to survive in the struggle and religious sympathies declaim so for life and become a type for general vehemently against laissez faire, and cry adoption. aloud, like Carlyle, for a hero or bene­ . The nearest approach to Communism volent despot who is to scourge humanity in practical operation on a large scale is into the practice of all the virtues. that of the village communities of Russia On the other hand, Socialism, if not and parts of India, which certainly show confined within rigid limits of experience no signs of being progressive types and common sense, is even more des­ destined to gain ground. On the con­ tructive. in its consequences. Civilised trary,. they fail to fulfil what is the first society is based on the security of private condition of an agricultural community property and the observance of contracts. that of obtaining a fair average pro­ If these are liable, not merely to be duce from the soil; and the more enter­ regulated in extreme and exceptional prising and intelligent moujiks or ryots cases,, but to be absolutely condemned invariably seek to obtain something in principle, as by Socialists of the which they can call their own and are Proudhon school, who declare, “ La not obliged to share with the idle and propnete c'est le vol”-, or overruled and improvident. A conclusive objection to set aside whenever they are thought to all schemes of socialism or communism conflict with humanitarian scruples or is that they not only crush out all indivi­ sentimental aspirations, society would be dual initiative and enterprise in material dissolved into its elements, to crystallise life, but that they also destroy all incen­ anew about some military dictator or tives to individual charity and bene­ other strong form of repressive govern­ volence. Why make sacrifices to help ment, who.could restore it to a state of others if they are already helped at your stable equilibrium in accordance with expense by the State ? This is no theo­ these fundamental laws. retical objection, but has been proved No society based on the community practically by the history, of the poor of goods has ever existed, except on a laws. What scope for individual charity very limited scale and for a very short was there, in a parish like that in Buck­ time, under some strong temporary in­ inghamshire, where under the old poor fluence, such as religious excitement. law the rate has risen to twenty shillings In. the early Christian Church it only in.the pound, and the cultivation of the existed as long as its members were a soil was abandoned ? Or even in less handful of humble individuals who were extreme cases, any one who is acquainted impressed with the idea that the end of with remote rural parishes inhabited by the world was close at hand, and that cotters and small farmers must be aware sacrifices made on earth would be repaid that the poor law operates strongly to at an early day, with compound interest, destroy the feeling of manly indepen­ in heaven. They acted on what was dence and family affection which induced almost as much a principle of enlightened the poor to support their own aged and selfishness as if they had placed their infirm relatives. money on the best possible security at In many parts of Scotland with which the highest possible interest. I am personally acquainted men who a The only existing society, as far as I generation ago would have thought it a am aware, which has everything in disgrace to ask for help to support an common is a small sect of Shakers, in aged father or mother now think it only the United States, which owes its limited fair play, after having contributed for �PRACTICAL POLARITIES 121 years to the poor rate, to try and get | dren, it is absurd to say that they are free agents in contracting for the disposal of something out of it in return. Altruism, as Herbert Spencer_ well their labour, and the State properly puts it, if carried to excess, defeats itself, interferes by Factory Acts to limit the for in annihilating egoistic vices it anni­ number of hours for which they are to hilates egoistic virtues, and the result is work. So in the relations between land-* zero_a result which, as “nature abhors lord and tenant, whenever they meet on a vacuum,” can happily never be at­ equal terms, and the tenant has an tained, and the precepts of the Sermon option of either taking or refusing to on the Mount must always remain take a farm at the rent asked, both sides maxims of private morality rather than must be held to their bargain, however disadvantageous it may turn out for of State regulation. It is of little use, however, to deal with either of them. But if the landlord is such generalities; as long as we confine practically omnipotent, and the tenant ourselves to extreme instances on either has no alternative but to promise to pay side it is as easy as it is idle to refute an impossible rent or to be turned out them. Profitable discussion only begins on the roadside and die of starvation, it when we enter on the wide intermediate is by no means so clear that the State space which lies between the extreme should enforce the bargain unless the frontier provinces, and, instead of argu­ landlord submits to equitable terms. Or ing for absolute conclusions, endeavour again, if the rent is not due to the in­ to discover the happy mean in doubtful trinsic value of the land, but is a con­ cases, where there really are limitations fiscation of the tenant’s improvements, of time and circumstance and a. good it is far from being self-evident that the deal which may be reasonably said on law should look only at landlords’ rights and forget all about landlords’ duties. each side of the question. It is a question rather of fact than of Take, for instance, the case of contract, which has been so much discussed with argument or assertion whether such a reference to the Irish question. Nothing state of things does or does not prevail can be clearer than that the enforcement at any particular time in any particular of contracts is one of the principal duties country. If the contracts were fair of a Government. The principle caveat bargains entered into by free agepts, emptor may occasionally lead to results they ought to be enforced whether prices not altogether consistent with strict have risen or fallen, leaving it to the morality; but there will always be fools humanity and self-interest of landlords in the world, and it is better that they to make reasonable reductions. . But if should pay for their folly than that the they were no more equal bargains than State should be perpetually interfering in those of slaves or factory children, the the vain attempt to protect them. The State might fairly interfere to attach bargain may be a bad one, but it is far equitable conditions to the enforcement better that men should be held to their of inequitable contracts. The antithesis between the rights and bargains than that every loser should have a loophole provided to escape by duties of property, especially in the case appealing to some legal quibble or State- of land, is one which raises many nice and difficult questions. Some theorists, provided tribunal of arbitration. But there are limits to this salutary like Henry George, are for solving it by principle. The contract must be a free ignoring the rights altogether. According one, freely entered into by parties who to them, private property in land is the meet on equal terms. If it is a com­ source of all the evils that afflict modern pulsory one, which the weaker party has society; poverty, depressions of trade, practically no option of refusing, the situa­ low profits, and low wages are caused by tion is altered. Thus, in the case of chil­ the constant drift towards high rents, �122 PRACTICAL POLARITIES due to the possession by a small section of the community of a monopoly in that which is as much a necessity of existence as air or water. Abolish private property in land, and straightway you will have the millennium. In this extreme form the fallacy of the argument is obvious. You cannot stop at land, but must have the courage of your opinion, and go the full length, like Proudhon, of denouncing all property as robbery. For if the right of individual property is the first condition of civilised society, you can hardly exclude that form of it which, in all ages and all countries, has been practically the most powerful incentive to progress and civili­ sation. Compare the United States of America, under their homestead laws, with Russia, under a system of village communes; or the California of to-day with that of fifty years ago under the Jesuit padres; and you will see that the desire to acquire property in land has been what may be called the high-pressure steam supplying the motive power to reclaim continents and multiply populations. Nor in principle is there any argu­ ment for the confiscation of land which would not equally apply to the con­ fiscation of any other sort of property, when theorists, philanthropic at other people’s expense, thought that the owner had more than was good for him, or had acquired it as an unearned increment, without working for it. Suppose two men, A and B, employed as engine­ drivers on an American railway, have each saved a hundred dollars. The rail­ way has been a failure : intended to reach a distant terminus, it has stopped half­ way in a desert, for want of funds, and for years has paid no dividend. The hundred-dollar shares are only worth ten, and the land at the distant terminus is only worth ten dollars an acre. But A and B are sharp fellows, and see that, if speculation ever revives, the line will probably be completed, and both shares and land will become valuable. A buys ten shares with his hundred dollars, and | B ten acres of land. The boom comes, the capital is found, the line completed, and the shares rise to par, and the land to a hundred dollars an acre. A and B have each realised nine hundred dollars by what may be described, as you like to put it, either as an unearned increment or as providence and foresight. On what principle can you confiscate B’s nine hundred dollars because it is in land, and leave A’s untouched because it is in shares ? On the other hand, there is no doubt that when we come to more complex cases, in which land is held in large masses, fenced in, not by the natural right of a man to the produce of his own exertions, but by artificial legal systems of inheritance and settlement, we are on neutral ground, where fair discussion is possible as to the limitations and condi­ tions under which the State may afford its protection. Landed property is more the creature of law, and runs greater risks in case of revolution or communistic legislation than personal property, which is more easily concealed or transferred. It is not unreasonable, therefore, that it should pay a higher insurance in the form of taxation, and especially when it passes by inheritance or settlement, when the new owner’s title is to a great extent artificial and the creation of the law. No one can dispute the abstract justice of a succession duty on all property, landed or personal, in proportion to its amount, passing by operation of law : the only question can be as to the amount, and the expediency of confining it within limits that shall not trench on confisca­ tion or impair the desire to accumulate capital. And in the case of land, there is no doubt that there are a good many instances in which the question of the “ unearned increment ” is raised more forcibly than in the case of ordinary pro­ perty. Take a practical instance within my own knowledge, for an illustration is often better than an argument. There was a mountain property in Wales which, as a sheep or cattle farm, might be worth at the outside ^800 a year. Coal and �PRACTICAL POLARITIES 123 iron were discovered under it, capitalists on the evils which arise from State inter­ sank pits and erected works, two or three ference. There can be no doubt that it sets losing their money; but the works is very undesirable that the State should were carried on, a large amount of labour become a sort of Jack-of-all-trades, and was employed, and in course of time a undertake branches of business which town of some eight or nine thousand can be conducted by private enterprise. inhabitants sprang up. The proprietor’s It is undesirable for two reasons : first, ^800 a year grew into ^8,000 from because the work is certain to cost more fixed rents and royalties, which he has and be worse done; secondly, for the enjoyed for the last thirty years, through still more important reason that it tends good times and bad, without being called to extinguish individual enterprise, on to contribute a penny towards schools, strangle progress with red-tape, and teach churches, roads, sewers, water, or any of a nation to look, like children, to outside the local objects necessary for the civilised guidance, rather than, like men, to their existence of the population of eight own. Still, the question has two sides. thousand, whose labour has added to his Whatever individual enterprise can do wealth. I do not blame him *. the law should be left to it; but there are, in the told him to do what he liked with his complex conditions of modem society, own, and it probably never occurred to a number of things which cannot be him that he was under any moral done by individuals, and which must obligation to go beyond the law. But I either be left undone or done by the do think that the law would have been State, or by some local authority, jointmore just, and better for the interests stock company, or other quasi-monopoly of the community, if it had made some sanctioned by the State. Thus, if it portion of this unearned increment, of were a question of bringing coals from ^■7,000 a year liable for a contribution Newcastle by sea, no one would suggest towards the sanitary and other objects that the State should interfere with the essential for the decent existence of the private enterprise of individual ship­ town which had grown up on this property owners. But to bring them by land and given it this increased value. I requires railways, and railways can only cannot help thinking that centuries of be built by capital beyond the reach of landlord legislation, and of a public private individuals. If the State had opinion based mainly on that of the not delegated a portion of its powers to wealthy and specially of the landed joint-stock companies, not a ton of coal classes, have made our laws in many would ever have been brought by land respects too favourable to the pre­ to London. And if the State may thus occasionally dominant interests, and that the swing of the pendulum now is, and properly delegate its powers with advantage to the is, in the direction of recognising the community, there are cases in which it may, with equal advantage, undertake duties as well as the rights of property. We must take care, however, not to itself branches of the nation’s business. let it swing too far in this direction, for For instance, the Postal Service. .The of the two evils it is better to put up advantages of a cheap and uniform with occasional cases of hardship and system for the collection and delivery of oppression on the part of bad landlords letters throughout the whole kingdom than to endanger the security of property are so great that they far outweigh, any by reforms pushed to extremes at the theoretical objections to State inter­ dictation of impulsive masses, design­ ference. Possibly some of the larger ing demagogues, or sentimental philan­ towns might have been as well or better served by private enterprise, but no non­ thropists. Herbert Spencer, in his works on paying district would have had a postSociology, often dwells with great force office, and the enormous commercial �124 PRACTICAL POLARITIES and educational benefits of the penny­ dozen telegrams asking him to quote post would have been in a great measure special rates, one perhaps for beef from lost to the community. Chicago to London, another for emi­ The case of telegraphs is not so clear. grants from Hamburg to New York via Probably, on the whole, the advantages Liverpool, and all requiring telegraphic of a uniform State management pre­ answers then and there, if the business is ponderate, but there are drawbacks to be done at all. which make it doubtful. Even at a six­ Again, if railways had been in the penny rate a great deal of the telegraphic hands of the State, I do not suppose communication of the large towns and that we should have had half our present active centres of business is taxed to mileage; for the Treasury would never make up for the deficiency of the rest of have sanctioned the outlay of public the kingdom. And invention and im­ money on lines which could not show provement in telegraphy are no doubt the prospect of a fair return on the checked to a considerable extent by capital, and it would have vetoed any creating a State monopoly, whose first multiplication of trains or reduction of duty it is to try to satisfy its masters at rates which threatened loss to the ex­ the Treasury by making the system pay. chequer. I can speak with some autho­ When we come to railways, we are on rity on this point, for I have been both debateable ground, and it is fairly chairman of a railway company and arguable that they should be worked by Secretary of the Treasury, and I am the State for the public good. But the certain that, in the former capacity, I objections here outweigh the advantages. have introduced important innovations, Everyone who has any practical experi­ such as excursion trains and cheap ence of the working of railways must be periodical tickets, by which the public aware that the simplicity and uniformity have greatly benefited, which I should of the penny postal system are totally have vetoed in the latter capacity. inapplicable, and that the traffic of the Still, there may be exceptional cases, country requires, above all things, great as that of Ireland, where an unreason­ freedom and elasticity in meeting, day able number of poor companies, in a by day, the varying contingencies which poor country, wrangling among them­ arise. Here is an illustration: In a selves, and giving a bad service at an certain town in France, on a railway excessive cost, intensify social and worked by the State, it was determined political evils, where the arguments in to have a fete, in order to raise funds for favour of a State purchase may outweigh a hospital, and, as an attraction, to bring the objections; and the extent and down from Paris a small troop of actors nature of State control over British rail­ and have a play in the evening. The ways is always a question fairly open to question turned on the railway consent­ discussion. ing to give them a reduced fare for the In other departments the supply of return journey. The manager of the articles such as water and gas, and the railway was quite willing, but said that enforcement of sanitary conditions, are he had no power to alter the tariff with­ probably best left to local authorities : in out permission from the Minister of the latter case, under some central super­ Public Works. The permission was vision, to see that the duty is not evaded. applied for, and the result was that it Wherever neglect involves danger to arrived exactly on the day twelve months others, as in the case of small-pox and after the fete had been held. other contagious epidemics, it is clear Contrast this with the case of the that the decision cannot be left to indi­ general manager of the London and viduals, and the State is bound to inter­ North-Western Railway sitting in his fere to enforce rational precautions. office at Euston and receiving half a So also the State is bound to undertake �PRACTICAL POLARITIES trades which are essential for the pro­ tection of the nation against foreign enemies. Our dockyards and arsenals may, and doubtless do, often make mis­ takes and turn out expensive work ; but we could not safely leave the building of ironclads and supply of cannon solely to private enterprise, for there is no such large and steady demand for these articles as would induce a number of private firms to erect works and keep up estab­ lishments adequate to supply the wants which might arise in an emergency.. In all such matters, therefore., of national defence we must put up with a certain amount of drawbacks incidental to State management, and confine ourselves to endeavouring to reduce them to a minimum. And this is, to a great ex­ tent, within the power of the nation and its Parliament, by applying common­ sense principles of business to national expenditure, and seeing that, while on the one hand we get as nearly as possible a pound’s worth of work for every pound spent, on the other hand we do not spend nineteen shillings uselessly, because some Chancellor of the Ex­ chequer wants to gain momentary popu­ larity by the “ penny wise and pound foolish ” economy of docking the extra shilling off the necessary estimates. In private life a man gets on by knowing when to spend as well as when not to spend, and true economy has no greater foe than spasmodic parsimony alternating almost certainly with spasmodic extrava­ gance. It would be easy to multiply instances, for there are few phases of political and practical life to which the principle of polarity does not apply, where extremes are not false, and where there is not a good deal to be said on both sides of the question. But the very obviousness of the principle makes it difficult to deal with it generally without degenerating into commonplace, while to trace its application exhaustively in any one instance would require a volume. Those who wish to pursue the subject 125 further will do well to study the works of Herbert Spencer, where they will find the application of general principles to all the problems of sociology treated with a depth of philosophic insight and an abundance and aptness of illustration which I cannot pretend to equal. My ambition is of a humbler nature. I do not expect to set the Thames on fire, or to produce a revolution in modern thought; but I do hope that the views which I have endeavoured to express may do somewhat to make some readers more tolerant and charitable in their judgments, less bitter and one-sided in controversy; and that whatever truth there may be in my ideas will contribute to form a small part, neither more nor less than it deserves, of the great body of truth which is handed down from the present to succeeding generations, and which becomes, long after I am there to witness it, the inheritance of the human race in the course of its evolution. And now, before I take my final leave of the reader, let me for a few moments throw the reins on the neck of fancy, and suppose myself standing with that group of Parsees by the shore of the Indian Ocean, listening to its murmured rhythm, inhaling the balmy air, watching the silver crescent of the new moon, and musing on the wise sayings of the ancient sage ; the sum of the reflections which I have tried to embody in the preceding pages would take form and crystallise in the following sonnet:— Hail 1 gracious Ormuzd, author of all good, Spirit of beauty, purity, and light ; Teach me like thee to hate dark deeds of night, And battle ever with the hellish brood Of Ahriman, dread prince of evil mood— Father of lies, uncleanness, envious spite, Thefts, murders, sensual sins that shun the light, Unreason, ugliness, and fancies lewd— Grant me, bright Ormuzd, in thy ranks to stand, A valiant soldier faithful to the end ; So when I leave this life’s familiar strand, Bound for the great Unknown, shall I commend My soul, if soul survive, into thy hand— Fearless of fate if thou thine aid will lend. �INDEX Abraham, 91 Accumulator, the, 37, 38 Acids and alkalies, 40, 41 Aerobes, 49 /Eschylus, 101 Ahriman, 89, 98, 99 Ahura Mazda, 98 Albuminoid substances pro­ duced, 48 Algae, 52, 53 Altruism, 121 Amoebae, 44, 46, 47, 56, 62 Amos, 92 Analogy and identity, 12 Angiosperms, 54 Animals and plants, distinction between, 51, 52 Anquetil du Perron on Parsee creed, 99 Anthropoid apes, when appear, 54 Anthropomorphism, true and false, 73, 85 Arithmetic, origin of, 71 Arnold’s definition of First Cause, 85 Aryans, division of the, 97 Asceticism in Christianity, 103 Asiatic religious ideas, 80 Astronomy, 13, 77 Atavism, 62 Atomic theory, the, 18 Atoms, 15, 16-20, 22,25, 33,39 ----- size of, 19, 20 -—— structure of, 39 Automata, animals as, 28 Avesta, the, 97 Avogadro, the law of, 16 Axolotl, the development of, 64 Brain, size of the, 67 Descartes on the soul, 72 ----- structure of the, 66 Design, argument from, 80, 81 ----- weight of the, 67 Deutsch, Emmanuel, 85, 92 Buddhism in Shakespeare, 80, Devonian strata, the, 53 88 Diamond, the, 43, 44 Burial customs, 76 Dicotyledons, 54 Dionsea, the, 53 Calculus, the differential and Divisibility of matter, 15, 17 integral, 23-5 Drummond, Professor, on ana­ Cambrian strata, the, 53 logy, 12 Captivity, the, 92 Dynamite, 31, 32 Carbon, 18, 41 Dynamo, the, 37 Carboniferous strata, the, 53 Carlyle on deity, 85 Earth, motions of the, 50 ----- on truth, 92 Education, defects of, 113 Carnegie on Parsee worship, 106 Egyptian tombs, 76, 77 Cell, the, 45 Elasticity, 21 Centripetal and centrifugal Electric currents, 35 forces, 50 ----- engines, 37 Chaldaic legends, 77 ----- - light, 35 Chalk, formation of, 52 ----- railways, 37 Chastity, reasons for, 59 Electricity, n, 16, 33-8 Chemical affinity, 32-3, 40-3 ----- forms of, 33 ------ change, nature of, 16 —— induction of, 35 Chemistry, 13, 16 ----- nature of, 34 Chinese religion, 78, 79, 80 ----- production of, 33, 34 Chlorophyll, 52, 53 ----- storage of, 37 Christian ethic separable from ----- velocity of, 35 dogma, 90 Electrons, 16, 17, 19,20,26,34, ----- virtues, 90 39 Christianity as an ethical reli­ Elementary substances, number gion, 91, 92 of, 18 ----- and poverty, 87 Embryo, the, 57, 64 ----- practical, 89 Energy, 26-7, 39 Coelenterata, 52 ----- - forms of, 31 Cohesion, force of, 32 ----- indestructibility of, 27, 28 Colloids, 44 ----- of motion and position, 26, Colonisation, English and 31 French, hi ----- supposed dissipation of, 31 Communism, 120 ----- - transformation of, 28 Babylon, influence of, on Conceptions and perceptions, 73 Eozoon Canadense, 54 Jews, 92 Conductors of electricity, 34 Ether, 20, 21, 22, 39 Bacteria, 46, 48, 49, 56 Conservatism, value of, in, 112 ----- density of, 21 Balkh, 98 Creation, impossibility of, 19, 71 ----- elasticity of, 21 Bivalent atoms, 42 Credulity in former ages, 82, 86 ----- - pervades all space, 22 Bombay, Parsees at, 97, 103 Cretaceous strata, the, 53 Evil, origin of, 85, 86, 88 Braid, Dr., and hypnotic cures, Crystals, 22 Evolution, alleged good tendency 82, 84 Cumming, Dr., 31 of, 86 Brain, the, 66 ----- - of species, 54, 55, 63-4 ----- - action of the, 68 Darwin, 62, 63 Expansion of bodies by heat, 29 ------ convolutions of the, 66 Days of the week, whence ----- parts of the, 68 named, 78 Faust, the, 101 �INDEX 127 Monotheism, origin of, 78, 79, 80 Moral instinct, the, 93 Morality, evolution of, 91, 92, Jackson, Professor, on Zoro­ aster, 97 93 Japanese Bozu on design, 80-1 ----- origin of, 91-3 Murder, development of moral Jehovah, moral evolution of, 91 censure of, 92 Jesus as Ormuzd, 89 Music in worship, 107 ----- not an ascetic, 103 Jewish morality, development Nationalisation of railways, of, 91, 92 123, 124 Jingoism, 115 Nerves, functions of the, 67 Joule, Dr., 28 ----- structure of the, 67 Jurassi strata, the, 53 ----- varieties of, 67 Newman’s “ illative sense,” 74 Kant on the soul, 72 Newton, 71 Kelvin, Lord, 19, 20, 25, 34 Knowledge, limits of, 65, 66, Nirvana, 87 Nitrogen, 32, 41 7D 73 Nummulitic limestone, 52 ----- nature of, 66-9, 70-1 Nutrition, 46 ----- - of crystals, the, 46 Galileo, the condemnation of, Labour and capital, 118 Land nationalisation, 122 75> 82 Oersted, 36 Larmor, Dr., 25 Gal ton, Mr. F., 115 Old Testament, errors due to, 89 Laurentian strata, the, 53 Galvanometer, the, 27 ----- evolution of ideas in the, Law, conservatism of the, 113 Gas, nature of, 16, 30 Lichens, 52 79 Gathas, the, 98 Oligocene strata, the, 53 Liebig, 49 Genesis, 77 Optimism and pessimism, 87 Light, nature of, 20, 21 Geometry, or;gin of, 71 Organic and inorganic, how George, Henry, criticised, 121 ----- polarisation of, 22 differ, 44-5 ----- velocity of, 20 Germ-plasm, 63 Ghosts, belief in, a root of Light-waves, dimensions of, 21 Organic compounds, artificial production of, 48 Locomotion, animal, 47 religion, 75 Lungs and gills, changes of, 64 Ormuzd, 89, 98, 99 ----- savage beliefs about, 75 Ovary, the, 57 Gift of tongues, the, 83 Oxygen, 16, 17, 18, 41 Magnet, the, 11, 12, 35, 36 Globigerina, 52 Magnetic needle, the, 36 God, origin of the word, 97 Pangenesis, 62 Maimonides on God, 86 Gravitation, law of, 31 Pantheism, 78, 79> 80 Mammals, when appear, 54 Greek religion, 79 Parsee burial rites, 101 Marconi system, the, 37 Gymnosperms, 53 ----- worship, 101 Marriage, 61 Parsees, the, 97 Materialism, 66 Haeckel, 63, 64 Matter, composition of, 17, 19, ----- and education, 104 Haug, Dr., 98, 100 —— and scientific advance, 100 25-6> 39 Heat, 28-31 ----- indestructibility of, 19, 25 ----- morality of, 100, 103 ----- conversion of, 29 —— philanthropy of, 104 Memory, 71 ----- nature of, 29 Parthenogenesis, 57 ■ Menai Bridge, the, 32 Helmholtz, Professor, 25 Pasteur, 48, 49 Mercury, 17, 18, 29 Heredity, 61-3 Patriotism, 115 Metrical system, the, 29 ----- nature of, 62 Pendulum, the, 26 Microbes, 48, 49 ------- reality of, 62 Perception, 65, 66, 69 Milton, 101 Hermaphrodites, 57 ----- brain-centres of, 69 Mind, nature of the, 65, 72 Hesperornis, 64 ----- relation to brain, 65, 66, 72 ----- mechanism of, 69, 7°) 71 Hillel, 92 Perigenesis of plastids, the, 63 Miocene strata, the, 53 Hindoo religion, 79, 88 Permian strata, the, 53 Miracles, evidence for, 81-4 Hume on Miracles, 81 Personality of God, 85, 89 ----- inutility of, 83, 86 Hydrates, 40 Pharisees, the, 84 ----- of Jesus, 84 Hydrogen, 16, 17, 18, 41 Philanthropy in England, 105. Missing link, the, 54 Hydrochloric acid, 18, 41 108 Mohammedanism, 79, 80 Hypnotism, 65, 69, 94 Molecules, 15, 16-20, 22, 25, Pithecanthropus, the, 54 ----- cures by, 82-5 Pliocene strata, the, 53 33 Podmore, Mr., 70 ----- weight of, 16, 17 Illusions, 83 Polarised light, 22 Monera, 45, 52, 56, 62 Indigotine, 48 Polarity, II, 15, 39, 40, 44, 49 Monocotyledons, 54 Individualism, 119 Ireland, land question in, 112,121 Monogamy, 58, 61 5°> 55 'Female characteristics, 57,58,61 Ferdousi. 98 Fermentation, 49 Fetish worship, 76 Fire, Parsee cult ot, 101 Fishes, fossilised, 54 Flechsig, discoveries of, 69 Fluidity, nature of, 32 Food of animals and plants, 5L 52 Force, 26 Freedom of the will, the, 28, 46 Free-will and morality, 94 ■----- and the brain, 94 1—- and automatism, 94 ----- in the animal, 95 Freezing, artificial, 30 Free trade, 116, 117 Friction, 33, 34 Fungi, 52 Isaiah, 92 Isomerism, 42 �128 INDEX Semitic religion, 78 Sensation, how produced, 67 —— nature of, 46 Senses, brain-centres for the, 68 Sermon on the Mount, 92 Sermons, uselessness of, 107 Sex-distinction, the, 55 ----- in mythology, 55 ----- origin of, 57 Sexes, equality of the, 58, 61 Shakespeare, many-sidedness of, 102 Shield, story of the, 109 Silurian strata, the, 53 Singing of birds, 60 Snake, eggs of the, 64 Space and time unknowable, 95 Speech, brain-centre for, 68 Socrates on reason, 85 Solar myths, 77, 78 Socialism, 112, 120 Society, ideal form of, ill Somnambulism, 65, 69, 94 Soul, opinions on the, 72 Sound, velocity of, 21 Spectrum, the, 22, 29 Spencer, Mr. H., 50, 58, 60, 81, hi, 123 Quakers, fewness of, 103 Quantivalence of atoms, the, 41, Spiritism, examination of, 7° Spiritualism, 66, 7° 42 Spontaneous generation, 47, 48, Quaternary period, the, 53 49 Spores, 56, 57 Radiolaria, 52 St. Paul, crude theology of, 79 Radium, 17, 18, 26 ----- ethic of, 90, 92 Railway enterprise, 119 St. Vitus’s dance, 83 Reflex action, Jo, 95 Stability of substances, 43 ----- - motion, 47 Religion a working hypothesis, Stars, distance of, 20 Steam-engine, the, 30 12, 14 Strikes, 113 ----- evolution of, 92 ------ contrasted with science, 75 Sun, heat of the, 30 Supernaturalism, 81 ----- development of, 75-80 Syndicates, 119 ----- the nature of, 74 Synthesis, chemical, 49 ----- origin of, 75, 76 ----- varieties of, 77-80 Tait, Professor, 25 Reproduction, 47, 51, 56 Talmud, the, 92 Reptiles, extinct, 54 Telegraph, the, 36 > Rhizopods, 54 Telepathy, 70 Rig-Veda, the, 97 Roman Catholic Church, its Telephone, the, 37 Temperature of earth at be­ advantages, 107 ginning, 48 Rucker, Sir A., on atoms, 18 Temple, Dr., on evolution, 63, 84 Salt, composition of, 33 Tennyson on evil, 102 Salvation Army, the, 89 ----- on woman, 58 Secondary period, the, 53 Polarity in art, ioi ----- in politics, hi ----- in the will, 95 ----- of good and evil, 85, 87, 8g Polygamy, 59 Polytheism, 78, 79 Postal service, the, 124 Poverty and population, 87 Pramantha, 28 Prayer, 108 Primary epoch, the, 53 Prometheus, legend of, 28 Propagation by budding, 56, 62 ----- by sex, 57, 62 ----- by splitting, 56, 62 ----- by spores, 56, 62 Protection, 116,117 Protista, 52 Protoplasm, 45-7 ----- composition of, 46 Protoplasm, properties of, 46, 47 ----- production of, 47 Putrefaction, 49 Pyramids, the, 15 ----- use of the, 77 Tertiary period, the, 53 Tobit, 92 Totems, 76 Trade unions, 112 Trance, phenomena of, 69 Triassic strata, the, 53 Triton, the, metamorphosis of, 64 Univalent atoms, 42 Urea, 48 Variation, 63 ----- a factor in evolution, 63 ----- causes of, 63, 64 Vendidad, the, 98 Vibratory movements in ether, 22, 27 Virgin-birth, the legend of the, 78 Vishtasp, King, 96 ------------ , conversion of, 98 Voltaic battery, the, 34, 37 Vortex-theory, the, 25 Water, forms of, 33 ----- how formed, 15, 17 Waves, nature of, 21, 27 Weismann, 63 Will, conscious and unconscious, 28, 32 Woman and Christianity, 58 ---- - position of, 58, 59, 60 ----- position of, among Parsees, 104 Wordsworth’s pantheism, 80 Worship, forms of, 106 Zend language, the, 97 Zodiac, the, 77 Zoroaster, 12, 96 ----- birth of, 98 ----- historical reality of, 96-7 ----- teaching of, 98-9 ----- work of, 98 Zoophytes, 52 Zoroastrianism, 14, 96-108 ----- and art, 102 ----- and miracles, 99 ----- as a practical religion, 108 ----- as a reconciling system, 88 ----- ethical teaching of, 100 ----- not weighted with dogmas, 99 ----- teaching of, 99, 100 Zoroastrians, probity of the, 103 � 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 A modern Zoroastrian Description An account of the resource Edition: 2nd ed. Place of publication: London Collation: 128 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. Series title: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints Series number: No. 17 Notes: Includes index. First published, London: Chapman and Hall, 1891. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's advertisements inside and on back cover. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Laing, Samuel [1812-1897] McCabe, Joseph [1867-1955] Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1904 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA730 N431 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Zoroastrianism 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 (A modern Zoroastrian), 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 NSS Religion Zoroastrianism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/e1c4f06470974c62d46a144b32a6a464.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=Qf0OkDNvKXSLeGJn89ihtZJym%7EgVuUwD%7Es%7E3WtncOMMlfmHiEhL-dJsnDQWJPL2p%7EXbV3d54dQjjulpf2bkeFsXDR4-FptTRjwttijeZejr4Eqq72hwLLlB6ObhmnJE5rWDgi5NcAb0ylxP5p%7Ena4aBB3h0amIDhuTLm07P-axRY6V6kcHG6QWhLqqMlIfAUPaoFOJ6LitbHPAkjvngaOzJOSpSNDqVgpjCl7TRgA3bMJFiQYECe10kYSrGx49TacSjX6-Lh8CrnkEFKlNHKq%7Ef5YEXnw%7E%7EUwPgfe996CSeGkuUx2RU2ho2SeWzzMwW%7ErGGvyuNjSeUmiYY3%7EzUkSQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 237256156a8490970c09e64f53e7e78c PDF Text Text ” A.< EXTRA SERIES. “Bold and Bright NEW CATECHISM M. M. MANGASARIAN Lecturer of Independent Religious Society of Chicago WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. [issued for the rationalist press association, limited] No. 5 of this Series is CHARLES T. GORHAM’S “ETHICS OF THE GREAT RELIGIONS” �THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION (Limited). [Founded 1899.] Chairman—GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. Honorary Associates: Leonard Huxley Prof. W. C. van Manen Eden Phillpotts J. M. Robertson W. R. Washington Sullivan Prof. Ed. A. Westermarck Thomas Whittaker M. Berthelot Paul Carus, Ph.D. Edward Clodd Stanton Coit, Ph.D. W. C. Coupland, D.Sc., M.A. F. J. Furnivall, M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt. F. J. Gould Prof. Ernst Haeckel 't Bankers : The London City and Midland Bank, Ltd., Blackfriars Branch, London, S.E. Auditors: Messrs. Woodburn Kirby, Page, & Co., Chartered Accountants, I, Laurence Pountney Hill, London, E.C. • Secretary and Registered Offices: Charles E. Hooper, 5 and 6, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C. A All who approve of the publication, in a cheap and popular form, of works such as the present Reprint can help to produce them, and can join in a systematic propaganda for encouraging free inquiry and sober reflection, and repudiating irrational authority. These are the objects of the R. P. A. (The Rationalist Press Association, Ltd.). The Members of this Association have banded themselves together, not with any view to commercial gain, but solely to promote sound reasoning and the growth of reasoned truth, as essential to the welfare and progress of humanity. Should these aims commend themselves to your judgment you should apply at once for full particulars to , The Secretary, R. P. A., Ltd., 5 and 6, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C. �N46 6 1 NEW tAWCHISM �1 We baptise the twentieth century in the name of Peace, Liberty, and Progress! We christen her—the People’s Century. We ask of the new century a Religion without superstition; Politics without war; Science and the arts without materialism; and wealth without misery or wrong 1 j ] �A NEW CATECHISM M. M. MANGASARIAN, Lecturer of Independent Religious Society of Chicago “ Our growing thought makes growing revelation.”—Geobqe Eliot. “ Believe it, my good friends, to love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world and the seed-plot of all other virtues.”—Tighk-r- [iSSUED FOB THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED] WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. 1904 ��Ml' ' INTRODUCTION BY GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE The author of this book, M. M. Mangasarian—an Armenian by descent—has the distinction of being the Lecturer of the Independent Religious Society of Chicago. He is said to enchant by his addresses a weekly concourse of some two thousand persons—the largest congregation, having regard to quality, known in any country. We have larger religious congregations in England, but they are swelled by the children of Dogma. Mr. Mangasarian’s audiences are composed of the children of Reason, of spiritual and ethical inquirers—a much rarer race. The Open Court Publishing Company, of the lively and tumultuous city of Chicago, has issued several editions of this book for the convenience of American readers. The Rationalist Press Association has, I think, usefully resolved to give to the readers of Great Britain an equal opportunity of possessing this new and original Catechism. The most difficult form of literary composition, which has the quality of interesting the reader, is undoubtedly a Catechism. The author must be an expert diver in the deep sea of polemical thought to recover essential facts, hidden in those depths. A Catechism is a short and easy method of obtaining definite know­ ledge. There are only two persons on the stage—the Questioner and the Answerer. A good Questioner is a distinct creation. He must know what information to ask for. If he be irrelevant, he is useless; if he be vague, he is impracticable. The Answerer must be master of the subject investigated, and definite in ex­ pression. “ The New Catechism ” has these qualities. It is the boldest, the brightest, the most varied and informing of any ' M �6 INTRODUCTION work of the kind extant. The principal fields of human knowledge, which the Churches have fenced round with super­ natural terrors, the Catechism breaks into, cherishing what is fair and showing what has been deformed. The notes, of which there are many, referring both to ancient and contem­ porary sources, are as striking as the text. The book is a cyclopaedia of theology and reason in a nutshell. The Questioning Spirit, whose curiosity has for its wholesome object the verification of truth, is the most effectual instrument of knowledge available to mankind. A well-directed question is like a pickaxe—it liberates the gold from the superincumbent quartz. Whole systems of error sometimes fall to the ground from the force of unanswerable questions. All error has contra­ diction in it, which is revealed by a relevant inquiry, when an artillery of counter assertions might not disclose it. Arguments may be evaded, but a fair and pertinent question creates no animosity, and must be answered, since silence is a confession of error or. of ignorance. The author of this Catechism shows good judgment in devising questions. Answers without parade or pretension come quickly and decisively, often including unforeseen information, which has the attraction of surprise. The answers do not drag along like a heavily-laden team, but flash like a message of wireless telegraphy, unhampered, unhindered, over the ocean of new thought. As suits the celerity of the age, these answers are expressed with brevity. Prodigality in words impoverishes the giver and depraves the taste of the receiver. Mr. Mangasarian, like Phocion, conquers with few men and convinces with few words. There is no better definition, says Landor, of a great captain or a great teacher. Eastern Lodge, Brighton. October 20th, 1902. �AUTHOR’S PREFACE The old Catechisms which were imposed upon us in our youth —when our intelligence could not defend itself against them— no longer command our respect. They have become mildewed with neglect. The times in which they were conceived and composed are dead—quite dead I A New Catechism to express the thoughts of men and women and children living in these new times is needed. This is a modest effort in that direction. �CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Reason Revelation and ». <. II. The Christian Revelation III. The Canon IV. God of the • Bible 25 V. The Earth 31 VI. Man 35 . 40 VIII. The Teachings IX. The Church of Jesus 44 . 50 X. The Liberal Church . 55 XI. The Creeds 59 XII. The Clergy XIII. Prayer 15 19 . VII. Jesus 9 and 1 > « 1 « 1 Salvation XIV. Death . XV. Immortality XVI. The Chief End of Man 64 67 • 71 73 77 �A NEW CATECHISM CHAPTER I. REASON AND REVELATION What is religion ? Faith in the truth.1 Define truth. It is the most perfect knowledge attainable concerning any given question.2 Q. What is meant by “ faith in the truth ”? A. Confidence that such knowledge may be depended upon for the highest ends of life. Q. How can one demonstrate his faith in the truth ? A. By lifting his conduct to the height of his clearest vision or knowledge. Q. How may truth, or the “ most perfect knowledge,” be acquired ? A. Through experience and study. Q. Is there no other way ? A. There is not. Q. Have , you given me the generally accepted definition of religion ? A. No. According to popular opinion religion is what a man believes concerning supernatural beings and what he does to obtain their favour. Q. What is the supernatural ? A. Whatever is at present inexplicable by the known laws of nature. 1. Q. A. 2. Q. A. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 1 Truth is defined by Thomas Aquinas as “adaequatio intellectus et rei." Kirchhoff defines knowledge as a “ description of facts. ” (See Carus’s Primer of Philosophy, pp. 37 and 46.) 2 Knowledge reveals things as they are; hence, truth, which is the highest knowledge, is the reflection of reality. “ Wisdom,” says Schopenhauer, “ is not merely theoretical, but also practical perfection; it is the ultimate true cognition of all things in mass and in detail, which has so penetrated man’s being that it appears as the guide of all his actions” (Zimmern’s Life of Schopenhauer). 9 �io A NEW CATECHISM 9. Q. What is the proper attitude of mind towards all such questions ? A. We should not quarrel about them, but permit them to be discussed freely. 10. Q. Does not “ revelation ” or the “ word of God ” teach us many things which we could not otherwise know ? A. As there are many “ revelations,” we should first decide which one we have reference to. 11. Q. Name some of them. A. The Zoroastrian; Brahman ; Buddhist; Jewish; Chris­ tian ; Mohammedan ; Mormon-------12. Q. Do all these “ revelations ” or bibles claim a divine origin? A. They do. 13. Q. Do they respect one another ? A. On the contrary, each condemns the other as unreliable or incomplete. 14. Q. How ? A. Buddha is reported to have said : “ There is no one else like unto me on earth or in heaven. I alone am the perfect Buddha.”1 15. Q. Give another example. A. Jesus has been quoted as saying : “I am the door of the sheep—all that came before me are thieves and robbers. .......... No one cometh unto the father but by me.”2 16. Q. What would be considered a stronger proof than these ? A. The fact that the disciples of each are trying to convert those of the others.3 17. Q. What does it mean to “ convert ”? A. To make others think and believe precisely as we do. 18. Q. What is the motive ? A. Among others, this, that unless people believe as we do they shall be damned forever. 19. Q. Which of these different Revelations is the true one ? A. Not one of them is either wholly true or wholly false. 1 Oldenberg, Buddha. 2 Gospel of John. It is possible that neither Jesus nor Buddha ever expressed these narrow sentiments. 8 “This true Catholic faith out of which no one can be saved” (from the creed of Pope Pius IV.). “ I detest every.......sect opposed to the holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church ” (words used for the reception of Protestants into the Catholic Church—Catholic Belief, p. 254). This same spirit prevails in the standard Protestant creeds. (See chapter on Prayer and Salvation.) �REASON AND REVELATION 11 20. Q. How are we to know what is true and what is false in them ? A. By using our best judgment. 21. Q. Would not that imply that reason was a higher authority than Revelation ? A. Unquestionably. 22. Q. If we possess the highest authority within ourselves, do we still need a Revelation ? A. We do not; for a Revelation must approve itself to our reason before it can be accepted. 23. Q. If you believed a certain book to contain the “ word of God,” would you not obey it implicitly whether your reason approved of it or not ? A. No. 24. Q. And why ? A. If I obeyed it blindly, my obedience would have no merit; if under compulsion, it would not be voluntary obedience. But if I obey it intelligently and with the approval of my reason, then it would be my reason and not the book that I would be obeying. 25. Q. Give an illustration. A. If any of the “ bibles ” of the world were to teach, for instance, that the earth was flat, we could not believe them, because our own experience and study teach us the very opposite. 26. Q. If, however, “ revelation ” should command you to do what your reason condemned as wrong, would you not obey the “ word of God ” rather than your reason ? A. If I do what my best judgment forbids, I cannot be a moral being. 27. Q. Is it not possible to regard as true what reason recognises to be wrong ? A. It is impossible. Reason is absolute sovereign. No power can compel her to assume as true what she has declared to be untrue. 28. Q. But do any of these “ bibles ” really teach things con­ trary to reason ? A. They certainly do. 29. Q. What, for instance ? A. The creation story. 30. Q. Give another example. A. The deluge. �12 \ A NEW CATECHISM Give one more example. The fall of man. What do we know to-day as to these questions ? We know for sure that there never was any “ fall of man,” or “ universal deluge,” or “ creation,” such as these ancient bibles announce. Q. What other mistakes do these bibles make ? A. They make many other mistakes in history and science ; they contradict themselves in many places, and in more than one instance they teach what we know to be wicked.1 Q. How do you account for these mistakes in the bibles ? A. It is human to err. Q. Are they all the work of man ? A. They are nothing more than the record of the wisdom and folly, the virtues and vices, of man. Q. What are we to do under these circumstances ? A. Follow the best light we have. Q. What is that ? A. Our reason. Q. But may not our reason lead us into error ? A. Yes. Q. Why follow it then ? A. Because we have nothing better, and it is our duty to follow the best light we possess.2 Q. Why do people attach so great an importance to Revela­ tion ? A. For fear that without a Revelation there would be no morality. Q. Is there any reason for such a fear ? A. No. In the name of Revelation, or the “ Word of God,” many of the worst crimes have been perpetrated,3 while 31. Q. A. 32. Q. A. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 1 “ They contradict each other’s chronology, genealogy, geography; and whole substance of both natural and supernatural events; they stand at variance with authentic secular history ” (James Martineau, Essays, Reviews, etc.). 2 “ Lost at nightfall in a forest, I have but a feeble light to guide me. A stranger happens along: ‘ Blow out your candle,’ he says, ‘ and you will see your way the better.’ That stranger is a theologian ” (Diderot). “All religions have demanded the sacrifice of reason. The religion of the future will make that terrible sacrifice unnecessary” (consult the author’s pamphlet on Religion of the Future, p. 6). 3 Theodore de Beza, the successor of John Calvin, as leader of the Reformed Church, of Geneva, publicly praised Poltrote, the assassin of Francis, a Catholic Prince, and promised him a luminous crown in heaven. John Calvin himself, in the name of the “ Word of God,” condemned Servetug to the flames. The assassin �REASON AND REVELATION 42. 43. 44 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 13 on the other hand not a few of the world’s noblest men knew nothing of a Revelation.1 Q. Has there always been a Revelation in the world ? A. No; it is believed that it was only given some five thousand years ago. Q. Was there no morality in the world before that date ? A. There was, undoubtedly; for men, societies, and nations existed long before then. Q. Was a Revelation given to each and every nation on earth ? A. No; the general belief is that the Jews were the only people who were favoured with a Revelation. Q. Were the Jews then the only moral people of the world ? A. By no means ; the Greeks, who had no Revelation, were the most advanced people of antiquity. Q. What does that signify ? A. That morality is independent of a Revelation. Q. Is it well to teach that morality is impossible without a Revelation ? A. It is not; because, in the first place, it would not be true; . and because, in the second place, people, in losing faith in Revelation, would also lose faith in the right. Q. How may faith in the right become permanent ? A. By loving and doing the right for its own sake. Q. What are the other motives to right conduct ? A. The strongest are those which arise from a craving for self-esteem, the altruistic impulse,2 and the sense of duty. of Henry the Third, of France, received almost divine honours at the hands of the Catholics. His name was introduced into the litanies of the Church, his portrait exhibited on the holy altar, and his dastardly deed likened to the holy mysteries of religion. The mother of Clement, the assassin, came to Paris to demand a reward for the crime of her son, and the priests took up a collection for her and carried her in a procession as the blessed woman who had given birth to the murderer of a king who favoured the heretics (comp. Esprit de la Ligue, Estoile, vol. iii., p. 94; also Jules Simon, La Liberte de Conscience, pp. 86, 87). Many similar examples could1 easily be given to show that a revelation has, instead of curbing the passions, frequently made them more violent. All the bloodshed recorded in the Old Testa­ ment was committed with a “ And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, etc.” 1 Socrates, Phocion, Epaminondas, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and many others of pagan times. Of Chilon, one of the seven sages of Greece, it is recorded that at his deathbed he summoned his friends, to whom he declared that in a long life he could recall but a single act that saddened his dying hour. It was that, in an unguarded hour, he had permitted friendship to obscure his sense of justice. 2 To respect ourselves we must respect humanity, of which we are a part, and when we confer'feilue upon ourselves we confer value also upon our race. �14 A NEW CATECHISM 50. Q. What is meant by “ the sense of duty ”? A. The feeling that we ought to do those things which increase life and make it beautiful, and to refrain from those things which bring shame and misery and wrong in their train. 51. Q. Is it always pleasant to do our duty? A. The old religions teach that duty is “ a cross,” and that to be good is to sacrifice ourselves. 52. Q. What is the consequence of such teaching ? A. It makes people afraid of the good life, and associates it in their mind with gloom and depression. 53. Q. What else? A. It makes people suppose that only the wicked can be happy in this world. 54. Q. What is the right conception of duty ? A. That it is not “ a cross,” or a self-sacrifice, but harmony, beauty, and joy. We sacrifice ourselves, and make life “ a cross,” when we disobey the laws1 of the body and the mind. J 1 For a definition of law consult concluding chapter. �CHAPTER II. THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION 1. Q. Which of the “ Revelations ” you have mentioned has exerted the greatest influence in the world? A. Without doubt, the Christian. 2. Q. How? A. It has helped to shape the history of the first-class nations of the world. 3. Q. Has this influence been good or bad? A. It has been both good and bad. 4. Q. Where is the Christian Revelation to be found? A. In a book called the “ Holy Bible,” and consisting of the Old and New Testaments. 5. Q. Give me the most accurate information concerning the “ Holy Bible.” A. It is a collection of sixty-six books, written by different authors at different periods in different languages and in different countries of the world. 6. Q. How is it, then, that we have them all in one volume? A. They were collected gradually into one volume by religious synods and councils. 7. Q. Which are the oldest books in the Bible? A. Those contained in the Old Testament—about thirtynine in number. 8. Q. What do these books write about? A. The rise and progress of the Jews, their laws and manners, their wars and persecutions. 9. Q. Is it any different from the history of any other primitive people ? A. Not materially. 10. Q. Does it give us any intellectual or moral truths at first hand ? A. No. Truth or knowledge is a conquest, not a Revela­ tion. 15 �18 A NEW CATECHISM 33. Q. If the original manuscripts are lost, how do you account for the words, “ Translated out of the original Greek,” on the title-page of the New Testament? A. The revisers have finally dropped the word original from the title-page, not thinking it honest to keep it there any longer. �CHAPTER III. THE CANON OF THE BIBLE 1. Q. What is meant by the “ canon ” of the Bible? A. “ Canon ” is a Greek word meaning “ rule,” and is used to qualify the collection or catalogue of books which ecclesiastical councils have declared to be of divine' authority in matters of faith and practice. 2. Q. Has the “ canon ” of the Bible remained the same fromthe beginning ? A. No. The early Christians, being mostly Jews, regarded only the Old Testament as the authoritative word of God.1 8. Q. What do the apostolic fathers2 say on this subject? A. We infer from their writings that they did not regard' the New Testament as of equal authority with the Old. 4. Q. When did the New Testament come to be placed on a level with the Old Testament ? A. The schism between the Jewish and Gentile Christians gave rise to the idea of a Catholic Church3 possessing authority to decide all matters pertaining to doctrine and practice. To realise this idea it was necessary to have a generally accepted “word of God.” The demand in time created the supply, and a “ canon ” of the New Testament was the result. 5. Q. How early is the first reference to such a “ canon ” ? A. The latter half of the second century.4 1 After the Old Testament, tradition was the chief source of knowledge in the early Church. 2 Hermas, Barnabas, Papias, Polycarp, Ignatius, Justin, and Clement have scarcely any express citation from the New Testament. They apply the word “Scriptures” only to the Old Testament (see Davidson, Introduction, etc.). Hegesippus, writing in the year 180 a.d., appeals only to the “ Old Testament and the Lord ” as the source of all authority. 8 “ The formation of a Catholic Church and of a canon was simultaneous ” (Davidson). 4 Fisher, Christian Doctrine, p. 72. 19 �20 A NEW CATECHISM 6. Q. What were the books contained in the earliest “ canons ”? A. The Christian fathers Justin, Tertullian, Irenseus, Origen,1 and many others, give each a different list. 7. Q. What was the canon of Muratori ? A. It appeared about the year 170 a.d., and did not contain Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, nor those of Peter, 1 John, and James. 8. Q. What was the canon of the Emperor Constantine ? A. It was produced in the year 352 a.d., and contained the present number of books except the Book of Revelation. 9. Q. What was the Syrian “ canon ” ? A. It lacked the Second Epistle of Peter, Third of John, the Epistle of Jude, and the Book of Revelation. 10. Q. What other books in the Bible have been questioned ? A. The Epistles of Paul, the Epistle of James, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles ; and Job,2 Esther, and others, in the Old Testament. 11. Q. What was Luther’s Bible ? A. Luther did not regard the Book of Revelation and the Epistle of James as a part of God’s word. 12. Q. What is the position of the modern creeds on the question of the “ canon ” ? A. Article VI. of the 39 Articles of the Church of England reads : “In the name of Holy Scriptures we do under­ stand those canonical books of the Old and New Testa­ ments of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.”3 But this is both obscure and misleading, as there is scarcely a book in the New Testament the authenticity of which has not been questioned in the Church. 13. Q. Does the Catholic Bible agree in all respects with the Protestant ? A. No, the Catholic Bible contains seventy-two “ inspired ” books. 14. Q. How is that ? A. The Catholics accept as inspired many of those which the Protestants reject as apocryphal. 1 Origen speaks of three classes of Scriptures : the authentic, the unauthentic, and middle class. In the middle class he included James, Jude, 2nd Peter, and 3rd John, which are in our Bible. 2 Luther rejected the Book of Job as being no more than “ a sheer argumentum fab'tila.” 8 The position of the other Christian denominations is very much the same. �THE CANON OF THE BIBLE 21 15. Q. How does the Catholic Church treat those who deny inspiration to these apocryphal books ? A. The Council of Trent1 decreed a curse against them. 16. Q. When was the Catholic Bible translated? A. It is claimed to have been translated by St. Jerome in the fourth century. 17. Q. What was this translation called ? A. The Latin Vulgate.2 18. Q. Has the Catholic Bible been revised at all ? A. Yes, by the Popes Sixtus V. and Clement VIII. 19. Q. When was the present Protestant translation of the Bible made ? A. In 1611, under King James of England. 20. Q. Has it been revised since ? A. Yes, in 1884 a new translation was produced. 21. Q. Does it differ at all from the King James version ? A. It certainly does. 22. Q. Are the variations important ? A. Some are very important. 23. Q. What are they ? A. The verse in 1 John v. 7 : “For there are three that bear record in heaven—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one.” This verse, which has been quoted in defence of the doctrine of the Trinity, does not appear in the new version. 24. Q. What else ? A. The notes which have been inserted in the margin of the new version throw doubt upon many passages hitherto accepted as of unquestionable authority. 25. Q. Give an example. A. In the last chapter of the Gospel according to Mark a note in the margin reads: “The two oldest Greek manuscripts and some other authorities omit from verse 9 to the end.”3 Another note reads: “ Some other authorities have a different ending to the Gospel.” 26. Q. Are these missing verses important ? A. Yes. They relate to the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, and, above all, to the doctrine of eternal damnation. 1 One of the infallible councils (see Introduction to Catholic Bible, Douay vers ion). 3 An English version of this was made in 1609. 8 Missing eleven verses. �22 A NEW CATECHISM 27. Q. What may also be inferred from the marginal words, “ some other authorities have a different ending to the Gospel ” ? A. That the translators had many manuscripts from which to select “ the word of God.”1 28. Q. Are these the only translations that have been made ? A. No. Many scholars have made independent transla­ tions, believing the authorised versions to be inaccurate. 29. Q. Do Catholics and Protestants regard the Bible in the same light ? A. They do not. 30. Q. Explain the difference. A. The Catholics bold that it is the Church that gives to the “ word of God ” its authority.2 31. Q. What is their argument ? A. They quote St. Augustine, who confessed that “ there were more things in the Bible he did not understand than things he did understand.” If so great a doctor of the Church could not understand the “ word of God ” without an infallible interpreter, say the Catholics, much less can ordinary mortals.3 ■ 32. Q. Do Catholics permit private interpretation of the Bible? A. They do not. “33. Q. Do they permit the people to read the Bible ? A. Only with approval of their Bishop.4 34. Q. What is the Protestant doctrine of the Bible? A. That it is the infallible “ word of God,” which each must read and interpret for himself. 35. Q. How can fallible man interpret the Bible infallibly ? A. It is claimed that the Holy Spirit reveals the true meaning of the Scriptures to all. 1 The American committee, failing to have their recommendations accepted by the English, had the same published as an Appendix to the Revision........Speaking of the authorship of one of the books, Justin Martyr loosely remarks, “A man among us named John wrote it.” And Luke prefaces his Gospel with the significant words : “ Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth, etc., it seemed good to me to write also ” (Luke i. 1-3). Is this the infallible language of inspiration ? 2 “ We Catholics... .not only would not, but simply could not, believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God unless we had the authority of the Church for it ” (Rev. John Scully). 3 Catholic Belief, by the Rev. Louis S. Lambert, chap. viii. 4 “ To guard against error, it was judged necessary to forbid the reading of Scriptures in the vulgar languages without the permission of spiritual guides” (Catholic Bible, Pref.). �THE CANON OF THE BIBLE 23 36. Q. Does the Holy Spirit reveal the same meaning to all readers? A. Evidently not, for there are many contrary interpreta­ tions. 37. Q. Are all the Protestants agreed on the question of baptism ?x A. They are not. 38. Q. Or on the question of Predestination ? A. They are not. 39. Q. Or on eternal punishment ? A. They are not. 40. Q. On the doctrine of Atonement ? A. They are not. 41. Q. On the Divinity of Jesus ? A. They are not; though they claim to have infallible Reve­ lation on all these disputed matters. 42. Q. Had there been no infallible Revelation on these questions, would the Churches have been more at variance concerning them? A. It is not likely. 43. Q. What would help to reconcile the disagreeing sects? A. A new Revelation to make plain the meaning of the old. 44. Q. What is the principal objection against an inspired book ? A. It limits the possession of truth to one people or race, and makes it a thing of the long past. 45. Q. What else? A. It makes all further research and investigation unneces­ sary ; it gives to a sect or a Church power to suppress new truth, and to persecute all who help to broaden the horizon of the mind. 46. Q. What is the testimony of history in this respect ? A. (1) It is said that Omar ordered the Alexandrian Library to be reduced to ashes, because the Koran contained all that was worth knowing. (2) In the same spirit, the Catholic Church, believing the Bible sufficient for all human needs, made war upon Greek and Roman culture until not a trace of it was left in Europe for nearly one thousand years. (3) In modern times all scientists and 1 “In what way the washing of new-born babies” ensures their salvation is still a subject of discussion in the Churches (see James Martineau’s works). �24 47. 48. 49. 50. A NEW CATECHISM discoverers have been branded as infidels, if not perse­ cuted to death, for announcing conclusions different from those of the “ word of God.” Q. What is the inference from these examples ? A. That an infallible book stands in the way of the progress of mankind. Q. How is the Bible regarded to-day in Europe and America ? A. Largely as the literature of primitive and uninformed peoples. Q. Is it still worshipped anywhere as an infallible authority ? A. Only among the least educated people.1 2 Q. What is the right use of the Bible ? A. To accept whatever is helpful in it, and to reject the rest.3 1 Martin Luther denounced the astronomers in these words: “ People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament.... The fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy. But sacred history tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth.” When printing was invented it was hated by the Church as the black art, and a Governor of Virginia said: “ I thank God that in those days there was not a printing press nor a school in all Virginia to breed heresy.” 2 “ It may be said in benevolent apology for the teaching of Spurgeon [Moody, Dowie, and Talmage] that it has its taint of vulgarity; but vulgar people exist and must have their religion ” (James Martineau). But let it not be forgotten that men and women of culture, science, and refinement exist too, who have an equal right to a religion of their own (see James Martineau’s Speeches, etc., p. 433). 3 When the Church was all-powerful no one was permitted to reject any portion of the Bible. The eighteenth and nineteenth verses of the last chapter of ‘ ‘ Revela­ tion,” threatening with awful plagues all who shall add or take away from the written Word, were quoted as sanctioning the persecution against scientists and philosophers. The writer of a heretical book had to sign the following document to escape burning at the stake: “The author has laudably made his submission and reprobated his book ” (Auctor laudabiliter se subjecit et opus reprovavit). �CHAPTER IV. GOD 1. Q. Tell me something of the popular ideas about God ? A. The majority of people think of God as the Person who has created the heavens and the earth and all that they contain. 2. Q. What else ? A. That he knows everything, sees everything, possesses everything, and is everywhere. 3. Q. What do they believe about his character ? A. That he is just and holy. 4. Q. What else ? A. That he is a God of love. 5. Q. Have they always thought of him as a God of love? A. No. God grows better as man improves in intelligence and character. 6. Q. Explain your meaning. A. The god of the savage was a savage and a bandit; the god of Job, the Arab chief, was an Oriental despot; the god of the Jews was a man of war and revenge; and the god of many Christians is a being who punishes the errors of this brief life with unending torments.1 7. Q. What other ideas are there of God ? A. That he is deeply interested in what we think, say, and do. 8. Q. And why? A. To reward us for the things that give him pleasure, and to punish us for the things which offend him. 9. Q. What name is God known by ? A. By different names in different countries. The Greeks 1 Though belief in eternal torments is still professed by church-goers, it is difficult to find any one in our day who acts as if he really believed in so horrible a doctrine. Abraham Lincoln said that, if this doctrine were true, no one.should take the time to attend to anything else in life, but remain praying on his knees from the cradle to the tomb. 25 �26 A NEW CATECHISM call him Zeus; the Romans, Jove; the Persians, Ormuzd; the Hindoos, Brahm ; the Jews and Christians, Jehovah or Elohim ; the Mohammedans, Allah. 10. Q. What other names have men given to God ? A. “ The Supreme Being,” “ The Infinite,” “ The First Cause,” “The Over Soul,” “TheEternal Energy,” “The Universe,” “ Nature,” “ Mind,” “ Order,” etc. 11. Q. But when people say “ God ” do they not all mean the same thing ? A. Not exactly, for some mean a person ; others, an idea, a law ; or the unknown or unknowable power which finds expression in the phenomenal world; to others, again, God is “ The Whole,” or the Point of Confluence of the forces of matter and mind.1 12. Q. Have people always believed in a god ? A. In some form or other the majority of people have always believed in a god or gods. 13. Q. Have there been more than one god ? A. According to popular belief, yes. 14. Q. What are people believing in more than one god called ? A. Polytheists; while those believing in one god are called Monotheists. 15. Q. Name a few of the polytheist people in the world. A. The Egyptians, Hindoos, Greeks, and Romans. 16. Q. Who were the Monotheists ? A. The Jews, Christians,2 and Mohammedans. 17. Q. Have these latter always believed in one god ? A. No. Polytheism was the earliest belief of all nations.3 18. Q. What were the gods of the polytheists ? A. The sun, moon, invisible spirits, shadows, giants, fairy men and women, animals, trees, mountains, rocks, rivers —almost everything. 19. Q. How do you know that these objects were regarded as gods? A. Because they prayed to them, built churches or temples for them, made images and idols to represent them, and sacrificed to them. 1 See chapter on Prayer for discussion on the personality of God. 2 Would the belief of the Christians in the Trinity exclude them from this list ? 8 The claim that to the Jews the Unity of God was divinely revealed is not supported by the facts. It is clearly shown by the Old Testament accounts that the Jews believed in other gods, and that their god was jealous of them. �GOD 27 20. Q. Did they consider all these gods of equal importance ? A. No, the intelligent few looked upon the many gods as the servants or symbols of the one god who was above all. 21. Q. And the ignorant ? A. They believed some to be stronger, more friendly, more beautiful, and wiser than others. 22. Q. How did the belief in gods originate? A. That question has given rise to many theories. 23. Q. Mention a few of them. A. There is first the theory that ignorance led the earliest people, who were much like children, to fear what they did not understand, and to ascribe what they feared to the agency of invisible beings, patterned after themselves only on a very much larger scale. Second: The theory that the feeling of human helplessness or dependence is responsible for the belief in beings more powerful than ourselves. Third : According to another theory, man, who is a sociable being by nature, feels the necessity of entering into fellowship with the invisible forces about him, for which purpose he personifies them. Fourth: The theory that death is the chief cause of the belief in gods. 24. Q. In what way ? A. It is said that, if we could live on this earth for ever, we would get along without imagining the existence of supernatural beings. It is the knowledge that we will die which makes us think of another life, and of beings who control life and death. The animals have no gods, because they have no knowledge of their mortality. 25. Q. Is the number of gods increasing ? A. It is decreasing. 26. Q. Why? A. As people advance in knowledge and power, they feel more and more able to take care of themselves. 27. Q. Have the educated people fewer gods than the ignorant? A. Yes. The belief in many gods prevails only in the least civilised countries. 28. Q. How about the belief in one god ? A. It is still very largely held. 29. Q. Are there any people who do not believe in a god? A. There are. �28 A NEW CATECHISM 30. Q. Why do they not ? A. Because they say a being such as he is conceived to be by the popular mind is beyond the sphere of our knowledge. 31. Q. Cannot the existence of a god be demonstrated? A. Some think it can, and others, again, that it cannot.1 32. Q. State a few of the principal arguments for the existence of a god. A. The first is the argument based on the law of causality. 33. Q. What is that ? A. Every effect or existence must have a cause. The universe is an existence, therefore the universe has a cause, which is—God. 34. Q. Is not that a strong argument ? A. It is very strong, but not conclusive. 35. Q. Why not ? A. If every existence must have a cause, God, who is an existence, must have a cause too. 36. Q. But could not God have his existence from all eternity ? A. If he could exist at all without a cause, then the argu­ ment that there is no existence without a cause falls to the ground. 37. Q. What else ? A. If God could exist from the beginning without a cause, so could the universe. 38. Q. What would follow if we admitted that God, too, had a cause ? A. Then we would wish to know what was the cause of that cause, and so on, building an eternal chain without beginning or end.2 39. Q. What is the next argument ? A. The argument from perfection. 40. Q. Explain that. A. It is said that, though we ourselves are imperfect beings, we still carry in our minds, as in a mirror, the idea or reflection of a perfect being. 41. Q. What is the inference ? A. That this reflection in the mirror of the mind of a perfect 1 Consult Kant’s Critique, Caro’s L'Idee de Dieu dans la Critique Contemporaine, Guyau’s L’lrreligion de L’Avenir (translated). 2 Read chapter on Kant in History of Philosophy, by George Henry Lewes. �GOD 42. Q. A. 43. Q. A. 44. Q. A. 45. Q. A. 46. Q. A. 47. Q. A. 48. Q. A. 49. Q. A. 50. Q. A. 29 being proves the existence of such a being, which is— God.1 Explain further. If we have in our minds the image of a perfect being, this being must also possess existence, for if he lacked that he would not be perfect. What would follow ? It would follow that our idea of God proves that God exists, for, if such a being did not exist, we could not have thought of him as existing. What is the value of this argument ? It is not considered so strong as the first. Why? Perfection is a quality, existence is a condition, and the argument confounds the one with the other. We may have in our minds, for instance, the image or dream of a perfect city hidden away in the bosom of the ocean or floating on the clouds, without there being any such city in existence to correspond to the picture in our mind. Give me another illustration. For many centuries people entertained the idea that the world was flat, yet that idea in their mind could not have been the reflection of the earth, for such an earth never existed. Do these perfectly good or perfectly bad beings exist only in our minds ? Yes. What is the next argument ? It is called the argument from design.2 What is that ? Just as a watch, the works of which are so constructed as to strike the hour, proves beyond a doubt a watch­ maker, the world, by its more wonderful mechanism, proves a world-maker. What is the value of this argument ? There is no similarity between a watch and a world. It is not so easy to agree on what the world was made for as it is to tell what a watch was made for. 1 This was Descartes’s celebrated argument, which, with slight modification, was presented also by Malebranche, Leibnitz, Reid, and many others. 2 Paley and Bishop Butler were the great advocates of this argument. �A NEW CATECHISM 51. Q. Are not the marks of design in nature as unmistakable as those in the watch ? A. If they were, there would be no mysteries. We would then know everything. 52. Q. Do you mean to say we do not understand the world as fully as we do a watch ? A. Yes, and that we cannot, therefore, explain it as satis­ factorily as we can a watch. 53. Q. What else may be said against this argument? A. A watch could prove only a watch-maker, not also one who created the materials out of which the watch was made. 54. Q. What then ? A. Even admitting a world-maker, we would still have to prove a world-creator. 55. Q. In view of these difficulties, what is the right attitude of mind towards this question? A. One of earnest investigation. We should neither be dogmatic nor flippant, but continue to seek for light. 56. Q. In what sense may the word “ god ” be properly used ? A. As representing the highest ideals of the race. What­ ever we believe in with all our heart, and seek to possess with all our might, is our God. 57. Q. Would it not follow from that that some people’s gods are better and nobler than others ? A. Undoubtedly ; each man is the measure of his own Ideal or God. 58. Q. Explain further. A. As we see only as much and as far as the structure of our eyes will permit, so we can only think and desire according to the compass of our mind. 59. Q. Who, then, made God ? A. Each man makes his own God.1 1 It is proper also to speak of God as representing the constitution of the universe ; yet even then he, or she, or it, would be to us no more, and no less, than a picture in our mind. A subjective God is all we can have any relations with. �CHAPTER V. THE EARTH 1. Q. How old is the earth ? A. The years of the earth run into the millions. 2. Q. Has it always been inhabited ? A. For a long time the earth was too hot to permit of life.1 8. Q. What is the origin of the world ? A. Scientists tell us the world was once a sailing cloud of fire, the molecules or particles of which were prevented from coming together by the excessive heat. 4. Q. What happened then ? A. In the course of long ages the heat declined, giving the atoms a chance to come together. 5. Q. What was the result of this concentration of atoms ? A. The sun was formed—a vast ball of fire, which, as it rotated and revolved, cast off pieces which became worlds. The earth is one of them. 6. Q. How did life begin on the earth ?2 A. As the earth, which is like a bubble in a Niagara of worlds, became cooler, it shrank and contracted and divided into land and water. 7. Q. And then ? A. With this process of cooling, the thick, smoky atmo­ sphere which had enveloped it before disappeared, letting the sun’s rays penetrate to the earth. 8. Q. What happened then ? A. “ The earth became with young.”3 9. Q. In what form did life first appear ? A. In the form of specks, which floated on the surface of waters and repeated themselves. 1 Virchow on the Teachings of Science (Clifford); Martyrdom of Man (Win­ wood Reade). 2 Tyndall's Belfast Lectures, 1874; Revue d'Anthropologie: Philosophie Zoologique (Lamarck); The Origin of Species (Charles Darwin, 1859); The Physical Basis of Life (Huxley). 8 Winwood Reade. �32 A NEW CATECHISM What are these specks called ? In scientific language they are called embryonic plants. What was the next form of life ? Then appeared other specks which lived on the first. These were more complex in organism, and are called embryonic animals. Q. Were these animated specks the ancestors of man ? A. The history of our race begins with them. Q. Are you sure you have given me the true story of the earth ? A. No. This is only an hypothesis or a guess. Q. Has it any value whatever ? A. It has great value, because it is not a random guess, but the result of the patient labours of the greatest scientists of the world. Q. What is this hypothesis called ? A. The theory of evolution. Q. Are there any other theories on the subject ? A. There is also the theory of creation. Q. Which is the oldest ? A. The creation story. Q. What is that ? A. According to this theory, the heavens and the earth and all that they contain were created in the space of six days by the “ word of God.” Q. Was anybody present when God created the heavens and the earth ? A. There could not have been. Q. On whose authority, then, is the statement based? A. On the authority of men who were not eye-witnesses. Q. Why is their word accepted ? A. It is claimed that God told them how he made the world. Q. How do we know that ? A. The men themselves say so. Q. Are we expected to accept their word fipon their own authority ? A. It is the only proof they offer. Q. The theory of creation, then, is a guess too ? A. It is. 10. Q. A. 11. Q. A. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. �THE EABTH 83 25. Q. Of the two which should we prefer ? A. The one which commends itself to the most enlightened minds and best explains the known facts. 26. Q. In accepting either theory do we thereby bind ourselves to it for ever ? A. No ! We reserve to ourselves the liberty of exchanging it for a better one whenever we can do so. 27. Q. Who is the author of the theory of Evolution ? A. Charles Darwin is the man with whose name, more than with that of any other, the doctrine of Evolution is associated. 28. Q. Who is the author of the story of creation ? A. Moses is perhaps the most frequently quoted authority on the subject. 29. Q. Compare the two men. A. Darwin was a student and a scientist who spent all his life interrogating nature; Moses was not a scientist, he made no independent investigations, but accepted the views about the origin of the earth which were current in that remote age. 80. Q. How do people distinguish between the ideas of Darwin and those of Moses ? A. The ideas of Darwin are called Science; those of Moses Theology.1 81. Q. What is the standing of Moses with modern scientists? A. As a scientist he has no standing at all. 32. Q. Is it proper to point out the mistakes of a man considered infallible? A. If he makes mistakes, yes. 33. Q. Has any violence ever been used to advance Darwin’s views ? A. No. 34. Q. To advance those of Moses? A^gYes—men have been put to death by fire and the sword. 35. Q. Whose views prevail to-day ? A. Darwin’s^ 1 Even Moses, in trying to explain the world, was obeying a scientific impulse— the story of the creation was the best solution he could invent. But the science of Moses has become the theology of the Churches. D �34 A NEW CATECHISM 86. Q. What does that signify ? A. That error cannot be maintained by force, and that no miracle in the calendars or bibles of the world can compare with the triumph of truth.1 1 Mohammedanism is to-day the religion of nearly two hundred millions of people ; but let us think of the bloodshed and of the long ages of persecution and the large sums of money which were required to perpetuate Islam. The same may be said of Christianity; it has cost two thousand years of war, persecution, inquisition, and oceans of human lives and of money. But let us turn our eyes upon this other picture: A short time ago some scientists, foremost among whom was Charles Darwin, announced a new doctrine—the doctrine of Evolution, which was as new, as radical, as revolutionary, as either Mohammedanism or Christianity, and yet it has overcome the most determined and fanatical opposition, and is, at the present day, accepted and taught in all the world. Yet to achieve this stupendous triumph it has required only about a half-century of time, and absolutely without the remotest suggestion of persecution—without so much as singeing the hair of a single human being. Could anything be a greater compliment to the puissance of truth ? In the course of a few years science has established a grander empire than the Bibles of the world, in spite of the bloody seas they have sailed through for the past thousands of years. �CHAPTER VI. MAN What is man 21 A rational animal. How old is man ? Hundreds of thousands of years old. Who are his ancestors ? The mammalia.2 How do you know ? In the composition, structure, and function of his organsman is exactly like an animal. Q. Specify a few of the points of resemblance between man and the animals. A. Man has not a muscle or a bone or an organ which is not paralleled in the animals. Q. What else ? A. They are both composed of the same materials, possess the same physical parts, and are subject to the same laws of life and death. Q. Does man differ at all from the animals ? A. Intellectually and morally, man is superior to all the animal^F Q. In what other way do they differ ? A. The animal seeks only the gratification of his appetites; man, the realisation of his ideals. Q. What else ? A* Man lives and labours for the future, for posterity—for his fellows not yet born ; the animals exhibit no sense of the beyond. 1. Q. A. 2. Q. A. 3. Q. A. 4. Q. A. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 1 Consult IVatwaZ History of Man (Pichard), Man’s Place in Nature (Professor Huxley), Descent of Man (Charles Darwin), Unite de L’Espece Humaine (de Quatrefages, Paris, 1861), Early History of Man (Tylor), Antiquity of Man (Lubbock). a The highest class of vertebrata—all the animals which nurse their own young only. 35 �86 A NEW CATECHISM 10. Q. In what relation does man stand to the animal ? A. He is descended or ascended from the animal.1 11. Q. What is the strongest proof that man has ascended from the animal ? A. The fact that the human embryo before birth passes through stages of development, when he has gills like a fish, a tail, great toes, a body covered with hair, and a brain like that of a monkey. 12. Q. What is the meaning of this ? A. That man in his long existence has climbed through all these forms of life to his present state. 13. Q. Do you mean to say that there was a time when man was an animal like some of those known to us to-day ? A. For many, many years he was like the monkey, the gorilla, the chimpanzee, or the orang-outang. 14. Q. How long ago was that ? A. It is difficult to say, but probably hundreds of thousands of years ago. 15. Q. Man was not specially created, then ? A. No. He grew slowly upwards—from lower forms of life. 16. Q. Have there ever been any eye-witnesses of an animal evolving into a man ? A. No. Nature works in secret. The lower animals have passed into man by soft, slow, imperceptible gradations —as one view dissolves into another. 17. Q. Is this growth or development confined to his body ? A. His mind or reason is just as much an evolution as his body. 18. Q. Why do not all animals develop into men ? A. For the same reason that all savages have not developed into civilised peoples. 19. Q. What is that ? Unfavourable conditions. 20. Q. Explain this. A. Progress results from necessity. Both animals and savages remain stationary as long as they can preserve themselves in comfort. They invent and develop new resources only when compelled or threatened by danger and death. 1 “The abyss which, through the ignorance of man, was placed between him and the brute world does not exist ” (Dr. G. L. Duprat, Professor in University, Lyons, France). �MAN 37 21. Q. Explain further. A. Men and animals are the expression of the conditions under which they live. When these change, men and animals change with them. 22. Q. What one thing ha,s contributed to the development of man more than anything else ? A. The struggle for existence. 23. Q. Are there any other opinions on the genesis of man ? A. Yes. A great many people still believe that he was created by God, all at once and perfect, some six thousand years ago/ 24. Q. What is meant by “ created perfect ” ? A. Made in the likeness of God. 25. Q. Is it claimed that man was once as perfect as God ? A. I do not think so. 26. Q. Then he was imperfect, compared with God ? A. Yes. 27. Q. Why do they say, then, that man was created perfect? A. I believe they mean he was as perfect as a man could ever hope to be. 28. Q. Why is he not perfect now ? A. It is said that he fell from perfection by an act of dis­ obedience against his creator. 29. Q. How could a perfect man commit a crime ? A. It is said that the creator for his own glory permitted the crime. 30. Q. Then he obeyed God instead of disobeying him ? A. Yes, if he was helping to carry out the eternal purpose of God. 31. Q. What were the consequences of man’s fall ? A. Sin, suffering, and death, for all mankind. 32. Q. Was there no evil in the world before the fall of man ? A. There was, according to science; and also according to the Bible, for it says Satan tempted Adam.1 2 1 The American Association for the Advancement of Science, by almost unani­ mous vote, “ declared Adam and Eve to be myths” (comp. Report of Asso., 1901, Aug. 29th). Notwithstanding the unanimity of men of science on this point, the world over, the clergy still continue the tra-la-la of empty phrases about the first man, etc. But can the clergy afford to ignore the doings and sayings of the men of science ? 2 As both Satan and hell existed before Adam, man cannot be held responsible for the introduction of evil into the universe. �38 33. Q. A. 34. Q. A. 35. Q. A. 36. Q. A. 37. Q. A. 38. Q. A. 39. Q. A. 40. Q. A. 41. Q. A. 42. Q. A. ■43. Q. A. 44. Q. A. 45. Q. A. 46. Q. A. 47. Q. A. A NEW CATECHISM What is the popular belief about Satan ? That he is the great enemy of God and man. What else ? That he is as powerful for evil as God is for good. How old is the devil ? Almost as old as God—in the popular mind. How may the belief in a devil be explained ? Mankind, in its childhood, in attempting to account for the existence of light and darkness, life and death, love and hate, accepted the simplest solution—that of sup­ posing two different beings, the one good and the other bad—ruling the world. Is he also as wise as God ? No, but he is believed to be very cunning. What is said to be the object of his existence? To tempt and ruin men, and to spoil the work of God. Who is responsible for his existence ? The common belief is that he was, like the first man, a perfect being—an archangel, who, desiring to be a god himself, was put out of heaven. Why does not god destroy the devil ? For the same reason that is said to have influenced him in permitting the fall of man. What is that ? His own glory. Will there always be a devil and a hell ? According to many people, yes. Why do people believe in such stories about the devil, etc. ? Because their fathers and mothers believed in them. What do you think of such beliefs ? The opinions and beliefs of people concerning sub­ jects they have not diligently studied are of little value. What are the effects of a belief in the devil ? It makes men superstitious, melancholy, cowardly, and cruel. How may the belief in a devil be outgrown ? Through enlightenment. What is the most fearful thing in the world? Fear. �MAN 89 48. Q. Why? A. Because, by paralysing both mind and body, fear deprives us of the ability to defend ourselves; and when we cannot defend ourselves we become the sport of political and religious scarecrows. �CHAPTER VII. JESUS 1. Q. A. 2. Q. A. 3. Q. A. 4. Q. A. 5. Q. A. 6. Q. A. 7. Q. A. 8. Q. A. 9. Q. A. 10. Q. A. 11. Q. A. What is the prevailing belief about Jesus? That he was a god and the son of a god. What else ? That he was also a man like ourselves. Was he both god and man ? • That is the popular belief. What are the evidences of his divinity ? It is said that he was conceived of the Holy Ghost; that he was without sin; that he worked miracles, and that he proclaimed himself the equal of God. What is the value of these cl aim r ? They cannot be accepted as evidence. Why not ? In regard to the Immaculate Conception we may say that of Jesus, as a “miracle,” we can have no opinion what­ ever. But could people be prevented from believing in bip miraculous birth ? No ; because people generally believe without any regard to the evidence. What is such belief called ? Credulity. How do the educated people differ from the vulgar in thia respect ? The educated proportion their beliefs to the evidence. What about the miracles of Jesus ? As we have not ourselves seen any of his miracles, they cannot have the same weight with us as with those who were supposedly eye-witnesses. Continue the argument. And as but few of those who saw the miracles considered them conclusive—for many hesitated and asked for more 40 �JESUS 41 signs—we, who. have not seen them at all, would be justified in treating the miraculous element in the life of Jesus as we treat the same in those of Buddha, Moses, and Mohammed. 12. Q. Explain further. A. Without entering into the discussion of ini rn,el eg in general, it could be said that, inasmuch as they are an appeal to the senses of those who may have been present, it has to be shown, in the first place, that their senses did not deceive them, and, in the second place, that their testimony is infallible, before we can accept them as evidence. 13. Q. We have, then, only the word of man that Jesus worked miracles ? A. That is all. 14. Q. If a man, claiming to be a god, should raise the dead in our presence, would not that prove his claim ? A. It certainly would not. 15. Q. Why? A. Because, even if he should create also a new world in our presence, he would only be doing a few things which we could not do ourselves. Because a man can raise the dead, etc., it does not follow that he can do everything.1 16. Q. What would he have to do to prove he was a god ? A. Everything !. But in the nature of things no man can give proof that he can do everything. 17. Q. And therefore ? A. No man can prove himself a god. 18. Q. What is the strongest argument against miracles as an evidence of divinity? A. The fact that miracles were also performed by the devil and hi§ agents.2 19. Q. Did Jesus admit the power of others besides himself to work miracles ? A.Yes, when he said : “If I cast out devils by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out ?” 1 See Chap. I., “Reason and Revelation.” A safe rule in these matters is always to prefer the least wonderful to the most wonderful: it is more probable that the men who reported the miracles of Jesus were mistaken, as those who reported the miracles of Mohammed are supposed to be, than that the dead, for instance, rose from the grave. 8 Supernatural powers are attributed to the devil and his angels in all the religious scriptures of the world ; the magicians of Egypt competed with Moses, and Simon Magus with the Apostles in performing miracles. �42 A NEW CATECHISM 20. Q. Hag there ever been a religion that has not claimed power to work miracles ? A. We do not know of any. 21. Q. What about the claim that Jesus was without sin ? A. “ And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit,” says the evangelist. If Jesus grew better as he grew older, he could not have been perfect from his birth.1 22. Q. Tell me now about the man Jesus—when was he born, and where ? A. He was born in Palestine about two thousand years ago. 23. Q. Do the writers of the time speak about Jesus and his works ? A. There is positively no important mention of Jesus in any writing outside of the New Testament.2 24. Q. What is the meaning of that ? A. That either he was not considered a sufficiently important personage to write about, or that he was not known to these writers at all. 25. Q. What is the story about him in the New Testament? A. That he did many good and wonderful deeds; that he was arrested and tried for calling himself “ King of the Jews ” and “ Son of God that he was condemned and crucified, and that he rose again from the dead. 26. Q. What else ? A. That he showed himself after his Resurrection to his disciples, and ascended on the clouds to heaven. 27. Q. How long did Jesus live on earth ? A. From thirty-three to fifty years, according to tradition and the gospels.3 28. Q. Was his public career long ? A. No. His public life covered probably a little over a year, though the Apostle John seems to make it three and a half. 29. Q. Did Jesus have a family? A. He was not married. 30. Q. Did he have brothers and sisters ? A. Yes, he was one of a large family of children. 1 See Chap. VIII., “Teachings of Jesus.” 2 Seneca, Ovid, Epictetus, Josephus, Philo, Pliny, Tacitus, Juvenal, and Quintilian lived about the time of Jesus and his Apostles. 8 There was a tradition in the early Church that Jesus lived to be nearly fifty years old. �JESUS 43 31. Q. Did all the members of his family believe in him ? A. Not all of them. 32. Q. Have there been others before or since Jesus who claimed to be divine, and to have worked miracles ? A. There have been many.1 33. Q. Have these, too, their followers ? A. Yes, and their temples and altars, to this day. 34. Q. Were they all impostors ? A. Not at all. Most of them believed they were divinely chosen to teach or to rule the people. 35. Q. Does their sincerity make true all they taught ? A. No. Sincerity cannot change the chaff into wheat. 36. Q. What is the proper attitude towards these ancient teachers ? A. One of gratitude for their services, and of honest criticism of their errors. Hundreds of years before Jesus was born, Gautama, the Rdteha. was worshipped as the Sinless One. He was supposed to be born without a father, and to have worked miracles. The same was said of Serafis, Appollonias, and many others. The Chinese believe that Laotze, the founder of one of the religions of that empire, was born at the age of eighty-four, with grey hair; his gestation was prolonged that he might have wisdom from his birth. �CHAPTER VIII. THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS What were the ideas of Jesus ? Mostly those of the people of his time and country. Of what nationality was Jesus ? He was a Jew. What was the political condition of the Jews at that time ? A. They were a subject race, having been conquered by the Romans. Q. Was that the first time the Jews had lost their freedom ? A. No. It may be said that they had spent the greater part of their existence in slavery and oppression, first - in Egypt, then in Assyria, and finally under the Persians and Romans. Q. What was their intellectual standing ? A. Owing to the long period of political oppression under which the Jews lived, the arts, industries, sciences, literature, and philosophy were necessarily neglected. Q. What were the Jews distinguished for ? A. For their religion. Q. What was the great hope held out by this religion ? A. The hope of a Messiah—a Christ1 who would deliver the Jews from foreign bondage. Q. What did Jesus teach in regard to this national hope ? A$J He offered himself as the Messiah of the Jews. Q. Did he deliver the Jews from their foreign yoke ? A. No. The Jews are still without a state or kingdom of their own, and continue to be oppressed in many lands. Q. Do they still look forward to “ a Christ” ? A. Most of them do, but the educated among them have abandoned the hope of a Messiah, and have wisely adopted the countries in which they live as their own. 1. Q. A. 2. Q. A. 3. Q. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. The word Christ is derived from “ Kristus,” a Greek word, meaning anointed. 44 �THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 45 11. Q. What other political ideas did Jesus have ? A. He believed that all the kingdoms of the earth belonged to the devil, but that some day he would himself be recognised as the king of kings.1 12. Q. What was his attitude towards Caesar ? A. He recognised his authority, and commanded others to do the same. 13. Q. Did Jesus denounce war ? A. No; at least not directly. 14. Q. Or slavery ? A. He kept silent on that question. 15. Q. Did slavery exist in his day? A. Slavery of the worst kind existed almost everywhere at the time. 16. Q. What did he say in regard to peace and goodwill ? A. That he did not come “ to bring peace, but a sword.” 17. Q. What else ? A. To his disciples he said: “ My peace I give unto you.” . 18. Q. Have all who called themselves Christians lived in peace with one another ? A. No. They have repeatedly waged war against one another, and have persecuted one another. 19. Q. Which have been the worst persecutors in the world ? A. Without doubt, those who have called themselves Christians. 20. Q. Could the teachings of Jesus be held responsible for it ? A. Only a part of it. 21. Q. For example ? A. When he said that they who did not believe on him were the children of the devil and would be damned.2 22. Q. Did Jesus wish to compel people to believe on him ? A. No; but if they did not, they would be punished severely. 1 See Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness. 2 The following are a few of the sayings of Jesus on this subject:—“But those, mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me” (Luke xix. 27). “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words.... it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for them ” (Matt. x. 14). “And he that believeth not shall be damned ” (Mark xvi. 10). “ Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire ” (Matt. xxv. 41). “ He that will not hear the church, let him be to thee as a heathen ” (Matt, xviii. 17). Read also what Jesus is reported to have said about throwing into the fire the “ branch” that abideth not in him ; about those who refuse to confess him before men; also, his words, “ Many are called, but few are chosen,” etc. �46 A NEW CATECHISM 23. Q. What did his followers do ? A. To save people from this awful punishment, they perse­ cuted or compelled them to become Christians. 24. Q. Define persecution. A. It is an attempt to maintain an opinion by violence. 25. Q. Explain further. A. It is a conspiracy to conquer the reason without en­ lightening it.1 26. Q. Has persecution ever helped the truth ? A. Never. It has only caused much suffering, and tempted people to commit perjury from fear. 27. Q. What is the lesson we should learn of this ? A. That freedom and fraternity are better than hate and persecution.2 28. Q. Did Jesus believe in liberty of conscience ? A. No religious teacher claiming divine authority ever has. 29. Q. What other subjects did Jesus talk about ? A. About love, faith, charity, brotherhood, goodness, justice, and forgiveness. 80. Q. How are his teachings on these subjects regarded ? A. Very highly. 31. Q. What were some of the most beautiful sayings of Jesus? A. His parable of the Good Samaritan; the Prodigal Child ; the shepherd’s care for the lost sheep; the wise and foolish virgins ; the sower who went out to sow his seed; the widow and her mite; and his gracious invitation to the weary and heavy laden to come unto him for rest. 32. Qu What is the value of these sayings of Jesus? A. They are as sweet as any human words can be. 33. Q. Did Jesus ever say or do anything which it would be wrong for us to imitate ? A. Yes. In moments of anger and impatience he “ cursed ” and called his enemies evil names.3 He used physical force4 against the money changers; disregarded the « «The mouth from which such heresies proceed should be stopped with blows from a Bludgeon, and not with arguments.”—From a letter to Pope Innocent II. by St. Bernard (comp. Abelard, by de Reimusat and Jules Simon). See also chapter on “ Creeds.” 2 See conclusion of chapter on “ The Earth.” 8 Luther defended his vehemence often by quoting the example of Jesus: “ What think ye of Christ.... when he calls the Jews an adulterous and perverse generation, a progeny of vipers, hypocrites, and the children of the devil ? What think ye of Paul, who calls his enemies of the gospel dogs and seducers ?” (Luther’s Table Talk). * See the story of his using a whip against the money changers. �THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 84. Q. A. 35. Q. A. 86. Q. A. 87. Q. A. 38. Q. A. 39. Q. A. 40. Q. A. 47 laws of health and cleanliness; destroyed the property of his neighbours— Give me particulars. In those days, in the Orient, people ate with their hands, as no knives or forks were used, and when Jesus was asked why his disciples did not wash their hands before eating he defended the unclean habit by saying that nothing which went in from the outside could hurt anybody.1 This is also the doctrine of the Dervishes, who never wash. Is it true that nothing going in from the outside can hurt us ? No. Disease germs, foul gases, poisonous foods or drugs, intoxicating liquors, etc., frequently hurt both mind and body. When did Jesus destroy property belonging to his neighbours ? When he caused to be drowned a herd of two thousand swine, without first securing from their owner the right to do so.23 Would anyone be permitted to do to-day what Jesus did on that occasion ? Our laws punish such acts. But if Jesus was God, could he not do as he pleased ? If that be the defence, then it were foolish for us to have any opinion whatever of him. If Jesus could do as he pleased without regard to right or wrong, as we under­ stand them, then we would have no standard by which to judge, even that he was good. We cannot respect or love anybody who is merely an enigma. Would it be fair to infer from the above instances that Jesus was severe and unjust ? No. There are many passages which describe him as the gentlest, kindest, and friendliest of men—one who “ went about doing good.” Is not that a contradiction ? Not unless we regard him as a God, for there is in all men a better and a lower nature. The best of men are not always at their best; neither was Jesus. 1 No doubt the monks and anchorites of the Middle Ages who cultivated “ dirt ” as a virtue remembered this reputed saying of Jesus. 3 Matt. viii. 28-34. �18 A NEW CATECHISM 41. Q. Is it well to disclose both sides of a man’s character ? A. It is necessary to do so. We cannot understand human nature unless we understand also the contradictions of human nature. 42. Q. What did Jesus teach about marriage? A. He preferred celibacy,1 and commended the example of those who became eunuchs23 the kingdom of heaven’s for sake.3 43. Q. What did Jesus teach about the future, or the “kingdom of heaven ”? A. He taught that the other world was more important than this, and, instead of endeavouring to right wrong conditions here and now, he counselled non-resistance to evil.4 44. Q. What did he say to those who wept and suffered, and were persecuted and robbed of their liberties and rights ? A. To rejoice and be exceeding glad, for they would have their reward in the other world.5 45. Q. What effect would such teaching have ? A. While it might help some people to bear the ills of life, it would unnerve the many for all efforts to right their present wrongs. 46. Q. What other effect would it have ? A. It would encourage the rich and the powerful to answer the cry for justice of the oppressed by suggesting to them that they ought to be satisfied with the reward promised them in the next world. 1 How the Church has interpreted Jesus’s teaching on this subject may be seen from the following: “ If any one shall say that the married state is to be preferred to the state of virginity or celibacy, let him be accursed........” (Canon of the Council of Trent). 2 In one of the Apocryphal Gospels a woman asks Jesus how long this sinful world will last. To which Jesus answers : as long as you women marry and bear children. 3 It is curious how the Catholics, who believe in celibacy of the priesthood, make St. Peter—a married man—their favourite Apostle, while the Protestants, who believe in marriage, show a decided preference for St. Paul, the celibate. 4 “Him that taketh away thy cloak, forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee, and from him that taketh away thy goods, ask them not again ” (Luke vi. 29, 30). “ Resist not evil; unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other ” (Luke vi. 29). 5 Matt. v. 12 ; also: “Blessed be ye poor, and ye that weep now, and mourn, for great is your reward in heaven ” (Matt. v. 3, 4, and Luke vi. 20-23). “ But woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your reward ” (Luke vi. 24, 25). �THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 49 47. Q. Would the poor have any right to complain of their con­ dition now if they are to be rewarded for it in the future ? A. No; for they could be assured that justice would be done to them in the next world, and that, since their op­ pressors would be punished there, they should be left unmolested here.1 48. Q. Is it right to be contented with poverty and oppression ? A. It would be treason against our fellows to encourage these evils by submitting to them. 49. Q. Is it blessed to be poor, weak, and wretched ? A. It is miserable. 50. Q. What should we do, then ? A. Do everything to better our condition, now and here. 51. Q. Sum up the views of Jesus on the question of justice. A. Those who have their reward now, like Dives, for instance, will open their eyes in hell; while those who, like Lazarus, suffer here, will go to Abraham’s bosom.2 52. Q. Did not Jesus denounce the evil doers ? A. Yes, he spoke in tones of righteous indignation against all who, knowing the good, preferred the evil. 53. Q. On the whole, then, has the influence of Jesus been good or bad ? A. His words of love and goodness have made the centuries fragrant, but his theological doctrines have caused much hatred and bloodshed. 1 Comp, parable of the wheat and the tares growing together until the day of the harvest. 2 Luke xvi. 19. E �CHAPTER IX. THE CHURCH 1. Q. Define the word “ Church.” A. It is derived from the Greek “ kuriakon,” which means [the house] of the Lord. 2. Q. Define the idea. A. At first the Church was a republic of fellow-believers— an organisation in the Spirit; then arose gradually a distinction between clergymen and laymen. Teaching in the Church was monopolised by the priest and the bishop, who also claimed the power to save and to damn the soul for ever. From a republic the Church became a corporation. 8. Q. Which are the oldest Churches ? A. The Catholic, Greek, Armenian, and Nestorian ; and the modern Churches are the Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, etc. 4. Q. What other Churches are there ? A. The Liberal—namely, Unitarian, Universalist, and Un­ sectarian. 5. Q. Do they fellowship with one another ? A. More now than formerly. The progress of the sciences has stopped all sectarian persecutions which once dis­ honoured humanity. 6. Q. Do they ever co-operate in the field of charity and reform ? A. More in this country than in any other, which is a very hopeful sign, for it shows that the spirit of toleration is spreading. 7. Q. What has contributed to this broadening process ? A. Education and commerce ; also the labours and examples of brave men and women. 8. Q. Which is the most formidable Christian Church to-day ? A. The Catholic. fiO �THE CHURCH 61 9. Q. How did the Catholic Church arise? A. It was organised about the time the Roman Empire became converted to Christianity. The Emperor Con­ stantine1 was the first imperial head and protector of the Catholic Church. 10. Q. What kind of a man was he ? A. He was both cruel and weak. Among many other crimes he murdered his wife and son; notwithstanding, he pre­ sided in his imperial robes at the important councils of the Church.23 11. Q. What effect did his imperial patronage have upon the early Church ? A. It made the Church covetous of wealth and influence, and the clergy ambitious, intriguing, partisan, and intolerant. 12. Q. What else ? A. It makes the prelates, pontiffs, and popes claim authority over all things, both temporal and spiritual. 13. Q. Did the Catholic Church prosper ? A. It became in time more powerful than the Roman Empire. 14. Q. What use did the Church make of this vast power ? A. It added to its pecuniary and political resources, domi­ nated the consciences of people, put to death all the heretics, and announced that no one could have God for a father unless he accepted also the Church for a mother.9 15. Q. What is the verdict of history on the persecutions of the Catholic Church ? A. That it has caused more unnecessary suffering in the world than any other institution.4* 16. Q. Is the Catholic Church sorry to-day for her past ? A. The Catholic Church believes it can never do wrong, therefore it has no regrets.^ 1 Comp. Jules Simon’s La Liberte de Conscience, pp. 32-35. 2 Constantine, in his silken robe embroidered with threads of gold, presided at the Council of Nice, called to take action against the Aryan heresy. At the Council of Chalcedon the priests presented the following address to the emperor : “ You have established the Faith, exterminated the heretics. That the king of heaven may preserve the king of the earth is the prayer of the Church and the clergy,” etc. 3 Consult Winwood Reade’s Martyrdom of Man. 4 See Lecky’s History of European Morals. 6 Consult Jules Simon on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, Liberte de Conscience, pp. 43-84. In his Histoire de France Henry Martin quotes those terrible words of the Catholic priest in reply to the complaint of the soldiers that they could not tell the Catholics from the heretics : “ Kill, kill all,” answered the priest, “ God will know his own ” (Tuez, tuez, Dieu reconnaitra les siens). The joy of Catholic �52 17. Q. A. 18. Q. A. 19. Q. A. 20. Q. A. 21. Qr A. 22. Q. A. 23. Q. A. A NEW CATECHISM Why does she not persecute to-day? The State will not permit it. Has the influence of the Catholic Church been only bad? No, she has also served humanity in many ways—by protecting the poor, by encouraging art, and by bringing about a European coalition against Asiatic invaders. How did the Catholic Church lose its prestige ? In the sixteenth century a German monk rebelled and succeeded in splitting up the Church. This was Martin Luther,1 the author of the religious movement known as the Reformation. Do all the Protestant Churches date from the Reforma­ tion ? Except the Church of England. Who was the founder of that ? Henry VIII., of England, who quarrelled with the Pope. What was the occasion of the quarrel ? The king wished to put away his wife for another woman, but the Pope would not give his consent.2 What did the king do then ? He founded a new Church, of which he became the abso­ lute master, and which let him do as he pleased.3 Europe over the massacre of St. Bartholomew was so great that the French Parlia­ ment ordered an annual procession in Paris to commemorate the event. Fortu­ nately, the decree was never carried out. In Rome, however, Gregory XTTT. organised a procession which went about the streets chanting and praising God for the massacre of the heretics. This same Pope also ordered a fresco representing the scenes of murder on the night of St. Bartholomew, which may be seen to this day in the Sistine Ch? pel. In a sermon preached before this Pope only a few days after the massacre, Muret, the priest, said: “ 0 memorable night! Most glorious of all the festivals of the Church. In that night even the stars shone more brilliantly,” etc. The address concludes by calling Charles IX., Catherine his queen, and the Pope the most blessed in all the world, for being instrumental in bringing about the massacre of the Huguenots (Les Predicateurs de la Ligue Labitte !). 1 On his death-bed Martin Luther was able to say that he had conquered three Popes, one king, and one emperor. 2 There were other points of dispute, but the desire of the king to put away Queen Katherine for a younger woman precipitated the breach between England and Rome. For a long time after, the Church of England remained, except in name, Roman Catholic in belief and practice. Consult Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History. It is said that Charles V., being related to the English Queen, used his influence to prevent the Pope from granting a divorce. Henry married six times, sent three of his wives to the block, and also beheaded Sir Thomas Moore for refusing to acknow­ ledge him as the supreme head of the Church. Leo X. had called Henry VIH. “The Defender of the Faith,” for having written against Luther. 3 Henry VIII. altered the coronation oath to read: ‘ ‘ The King shall then swear that he shall maintain and keep the lawful rights and liberties of old time granted by the righteous Christian Kings of England to the Holy Church of England, not �TEE CHURCH 24. Q. A. 25. Q. A. 26. Q. A. 27. Q. A. 28. Q. A. 29. Q. A. 30. Q. A. S3 What is the name of the Church of America ? America has no State or National Church. Are all Churches tolerated here ? Yes, and all religions ; but while the State in America makes no appropriation for the Church, in exempting Church property from taxation it indirectly compels the people to support the Churches. Is the Church to-day on an equal footing with the State in any country ? No. The Church, which once ruled both kings and peoples, is now the servant of the State everywhere. What does that imply ? That a Church which obeys the secular power, instead of commanding it, cannot be a divine institution.1 Is there any recognition of Christianity in the American Constitution ? No. The word “ God ” or “ Christian ” is not men­ tioned in the American Constitution.2 Have the Protestants ever persecuted in the name of religion ? Almost as much as the Catholics, but the Protestants are ashamed of their past persecutions.3 Were the persecutors, whether Catholic or Protestant, always bad men ? No. It was frequently their sincerity which led them to persecute. Believing sincerely that heresy would cause damnation of souls, they used both fire and sword to exterminate it.4 prejudicial to his jurisdiction and dignity royal." Here we have the first clear pronunciamento of the supremacy of the Secular over the Spiritual state. The West­ minster divines, who formulated one of the most autocratic creeds, presented the same to Parliament as “ their humble advice.” 1 Formerly the Church met this objection with the plea that the King was the “anointed terrestrial Governor under Christ, and that obedience to him was obedience to God.” But the force of this argument has passed away with the “divine right ” of kings. The modern State exercises its authority as coming from Man—not as coming from God. 2 George Washington, in his message to the Senate, in 1776, stated that the American Government was “in no sense founded on the Christian religion.” 8 Schaff, Greeds of Christendom. 4 It has also been suggested that the heretic was burned at the stake because it was easier to silence him by fire than by arguments. The Church in those days claimed the right to kill all whom it could not convert. Consult Story of the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc. • �54 A NEW CATECHISM 31. Q. Why is not heresy denounced to-day as vehemently as before ? A. Because we have learned that honest doubt is more religious than blind belief.1 82. Q. Can a man who does not know how to doubt know how to believe ? A. Not intelligently. 33. Q. What do we call the faith that is unintelligent? A. Superstition. 84. Q. Analyse and define superstition. A. To attribute to an object virtues or powers which it does not possess is a superstition. 35. Q. Give an example. A. To carry on one’s person a chain, an image, or a crucifix, believing it to possess beneficent powers or virtues, would be a superstition. .'.36. Q. What is an object called when invested with imaginary virtues ? A. A fetish. 1 “There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds ” (Tennyson, In Memoriam, xcvi.). �CHAPTER X. THE LIBERAL CHURCH t>«p t> <p P > < O >0 t>«p 1. Q. How do the Liberal Churches differ from the orthodox ? A. The Unitarian and other Liberal Churches submit, in a measure, the doctrines of religion to the test of reason. 2. Q. Do not the orthodox do the same ? A. Not to the same extent, for they believe that revelation is a higher authority than reason. 3. Q. What are the beliefs of the Liberal Churches ? A. It is very difficult to tell, for the Liberal Churches follow neither revelation nor reason exclusively, but try to do a little of both. Cannot revelation be reconciled with reason ? When revelation agrees with reason, there is only reason. It is when it disagrees with reason that there is, or is thought to be, also a revelation. Illustrate your meaning. When revelation teaches that man is mortal, it is only repeating what we know ; but when it teaches that man was created perfect, it teaches what is contrary to our reason or experience, and so becomes or assumes the character of a revelation. What are some of the orthodox doctrines which Liberal Churches reject? The atonement; eternal punishment; plenary inspira­ tion of the Bible ; a personal devil; total depravity, etc. Mention a few of the orthodox doctrines which the Liberal Churches accept ? A personal God; the sinlessness of Jesus; immortality of the soul; the duty of prayer; the superiority of the Bible to any other literature, and the rites of baptism and communion. Some Liberal Churches are more rational­ istic than others. How do the Liberal Churches prove their position ? Generally from the Bible. 55 �56 A NEW CATECHISM 9. Q. How do the orthodox prove theirs ? A. Exclusively from the Bible. 10. Q. What is the main emphasis of the Liberal Churches ? A. They make little of theology, and a great deal of character. 11. Q. Are the Liberal Churches growing ? A. Not numerically, but their influence has been large in the religious world. They have compelled the orthodox to abandon many crude and foolish beliefs and practices, and have helped to withdraw the attention of people from theology to science, philosophy, and ethics. The Liberal Churches have rendered Religion the inestimable service of recalling her from barren dialectics to concrete realities. 12. Q. What other religious movements are there in this country ? A. Spiritualism, Theosophy, Christian Science, etc. 13. Q. What do Spiritualists teach ? A. That we can communicate with the spirits of the dead. 14. Q. How do they attempt to prove the claim ? A. By quotations from the Bible, and the testimony of men and women now living. 15. Q. Who are these ? A. Generally mediums, who make their living by giving seances or sittings. 16. Q. What is the reputation of these mediums ? A. It is not of the very best. 17. Q. What is Theosophy ? A. The doctrine that there are “wise men,” or “adepts,” or “ masters,*’ who have become divinities, and who direct human affairs and reveal the future to the living. 18. Q. What are the other doctrines of Theosophy ? A. The doctrine of Karma or Justice, and of Reincarnation.1 19. Q. What is the value of Theosophy as a religion ? A. It is a mere speculation. 20. Q. What is Christian Science? A. The belief that a certain New England woman has recently received a special revelation from God. 1 “We reap in this life as we have sown in some previous existence ” is the funda­ mental idea in Buddhism, and in all the religious philosophies of the Orient. �THE LIBERAL CHURCH 57 21. Q. State the nature of the revelation. A. Nothing exists but God; God is health and purity; therefore disease and sin are illusions. 22. Q. Is that logical ? A. No ; because, if God is all, whose illusions then are sick­ ness and sin ? 23. Q. Is disease an illusion of the “ mortal mind ”?1 A. Disease is the effect of a cause or causes, such as drunkenness, debauchery, dirt, etc. If these causes are illusions, then are their effects illusions too. 24. Q. Can the evil effect of drunkenness, or dirt, be treated away without first removing their causes ? A. It is not possible. 25. Q. What else do Christian Scientists claim ? A. They claim to treat successfully, for a sum of money, all manner of diseases except those pertaining to surgery.2 26. Q. What do Christian Scientists do with money ? A. They use it for the necessary wants of the body. 27. Q. Do the Christian Scientists believe in the body ? A. No. 28. Q. What would be an impartial judgment of Christian Science ? A. Like all human systems, it contains both truth and error. 29. Q. Have we any religious movements in this country from which the supernatural element is altogether absent ? A. There are the Ethical, Positivist, and other rationalistic organisations, which make science the highest authority in matters of faith and conducts 80. Q. What is the nature of their teaching ? A. It is purely practical. To make the highest use of this life without any reference to a life before, or a life after; without any reference, either, to gods, demons, heaven, or hell. 31. Q. Do they deny God and the future ? A. No; because they know that they do not know enough, as yet, on these questions to speak definitely and positively about them. 1 The Christian Scientists, by calling evil “mortal mind,” have only changed the name without doing away with the thing. 2 See Mrs. Eddy’s defence for going to a dentist (“ Miscellaneous �58 A NEW CATECHISM 82. Q. Is that a proper attitude of the mind ? A. Yes, and it is also the most hopeful, for until we know our ignorance we will not seek for knowledge.1 83. Q. Is knowledge of your ignorance the beginning of wisdom ? A. Yes, and the promise of coming enlightenment.2 1 “ Nothing keeps a man from knowledge and wisdom like thinking he has both ” (Sir Wm. Temple). 2 As this Catechis m is written from the standpoint of the non-supernatural, it will be unnecessary to give in this place a fuller exposition of the philosophy of these Independent Societies. �CHAPTER XI. THE CREEDS 1. Q. What is a creed ? A. A rule of faith, or an authoritative expression of the doctrines of a Church.1 2. Q. What is the origin of the word ? A. It is taken from the first word in the Apostles’ Creed (credo—I believe). 3. Q. What is the origin of the idea ? A. The differences and disagreements among believers are responsible for the creeds of Christendom.2 4. Q. How early did dissensions arise in the Church ? A. The first dissension was between the Apostles Peter and Paul; the former representing the Jewish, and the latter the Gentile, party in the Church. 5. Q. Was the dissension serious ? A. The Apostle Paul considered it so; for he charged Peter with dissimulation, hypocrisy, and unrighteous conduct.34 6. Q. What was the primary object of a creed ? A. To enforce uniformity of belief, and to excommunicate the heretics? v. Q. What, then, did these creeds really try to do ? A. To prevent anybody from thinking independently. 8. Q. Which is considered the oldest Christian creed ? A. The Apostles’ Creed, which we know for certain was not written by the Apostles. 1 Called also a “ symbol,” or “ confession ’’ of faith—Symbolicum Apostolicum. 2 It is claimed that Jesus called for a creed when he said : “ Every one who will confess me before men, him will I also confess before my father who is in heaven ” (Matt. x. 32, 33; Rom. x. 9, 10). 3 Read the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians; and also the first chapters of Revelation and the Acts of the Apostles. 4 Heresy is from a Greek word, and means "toexamine,” ar " to select.” �60 A NEW CATECHISM 9. Q. Why, then, is it so called? A. For the same reason that the Gospels have been ascribed to the Apostles—to give them a greater authority. 10. Q. Who, then, is the author of the Apostles’ Creed ? A. The question of its authorship is involved in as great an obscurity as that of the Gospels.’ 11. Q. What are the fundamentals in this creed ? A. Belief in the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception of Jesus, and the resurrection of the flesh. 12. Q. What proofs are given to establish these claims ? A. None whatever. They are assumed to be true. 18. Q. Do the Mohammedans and Buddhists offer proofs for the doctrines of their creeds ? A. No, they assume theirs too. 14. Q. How are we to know which assumption is the truth ? A. The general custom has been to assume that the creed of the country one is born in is the true one. 15. Q. Is this a good custom ? A. It is a very bad custom, for it deprives us of the greatest privilege of life—the pursuit of truth; it makes truth a denominational or sectarian possession, the creature of climate and geographical boundaries; and it makes us believe that, while we ourselves are inspired and chosen of God, all others are heathens. 16. Q. Tell me now of the Nicene Creed. A. This was formulated by an assembly of 318 bishops in the city of Nicsea, near Constantinople, in the year 325. It excommunicated the Arians1 and fulminated a curse against them for questioning the doctrine of the Trinity. 17. Q. What is the next important creed ? A. The Athanasian, which is the most unpleasantly dogmatic and intolerant of all ancient creeds, and which is unique in its damnatory clauses. Yet it was held in high esteem,2 and was sung as a hymn in all the Churches, and is still in force in official Christendom. 18. Q. What is the creed of the Greek Church ? A. The Greek or the Eastern Church holds that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only, and not also from 1 The followers of Arius, who had heretical views about the divinity of Christ. 2 See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. i., p, 41. �THE CREEDS 61 the Son. For this heresy it was excommunicated by the (jatholic Church, but the Greek Church in return ex­ communicated the Catholic Church. 19. Q. What is the creed of the Church of England ? A. It consists of Thirty-nine Articles adopted at various times, and finally authoritatively promulgated in 1628 by Charles I. as “ His Majesty’s Declaration.” 20. Q. What was its object? A. “ For the abolishing of diversity of opinions,” and to drive out of the country popish and Calvinistic doctrines. 21. Q. Was subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles compulsory in England ? A. Yes. Even the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge required of every graduate to subscribe to the Thirtynine Articles before he could receive his diploma; a Bill of Parliament compelled all teachers and preachers to subscribe to them. 22. Q. Did this Bill accomplish its object ? A. No. 23. Q. Can compulsion prevent people from thinking ? A. It can only prevent them from teaching as they think. 24. Q. What are people who think one thing and teach another called ? A. Hypocrites. 25. Q. What follows ? A. That compulsion only makes hypocrites. 26. Q. Which is the most important of modern creeds ? A. The Westminster Creed, formulated by an assembly con­ sisting of one hundred and fifty members elected and convened by an Act of Parliament in 1643 during the brief reign of Presbyterianism in England. 27. Q. What are the leading ideas of this creed ? A. Predestination, salvation of elect infants1 only, the damnation of all peoples and nations not Christian, and the use of physical force against all heretics. 28. Q. How does it define the Doctrine of Damnation ? • A. As a ‘‘judicial decree of God ” by which, “on account of Adam’s fall”...... “God was pleased to ordain” others “ to dishonour and wrath ”—to “ everlasting death ”...... 1 “ Modern Calvinists admit the probability of salvation of all infants ” (Schafi, vol. i., p. 795). �62 A NEW CATECHISM 29. Q. A. 30. Q. A. 31. Q. A. 82. Q. A. 33. Q. A. “ and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished.”1 How does it recommend physical force against heresy ? It says : “ The civil magistrate hath authority, and it is his duty to take order that the unity and peace be pre­ served in the Church, that all heresies be suppressed, all abuses in worship prevented ”;2 and Article IV., in Chapter XX., reads : “ They (the heretics) may lawfully be called to account, and proceeded against by the power of the Civil Magistrate.” And verse 109 of the Catechism states that the “ Ten Commandments forbid tolerating a false religion.”3 Is an absolutely creedless Church possible ? No. An organisation, whatever its end, must have a platform, a declaration of principles, to serve as a bond of union, which, in the larger sense, is a creed. Why, then, are creeds denounced? Not because they contain a statement of belief, but because the statement is narrow, intolerant, and unpro­ gressive. Which is the best creed ? The creed which is most in accord with the facts of science, and which keeps abreast of the increasing knowledge of man. State the difference between a creed founded on authority and one founded on science. The one is finished, the other is still growing; the one is an echo of the past, the other is an accent and a voice of the present; the one is a statement, the other is a movement; the one can be accepted only on conditions impossible to the reason, the other welcomes all the strain which the progress of knowledge can bring to bear upon it.4 1 Original sin was considered so wicked that one of the clergymen declared : “ If a man had never been born, he would yet have been damned for it.” 2 The American Churches have modified this clause. 8 “ It is not only lawful to punish to the death such as labour to subvert the true religion, but the magistrates and people are bound to do so unless they will provoke the wrath of God against themselves ” (John Knox, History of Mary I., Queen of England; E. P. Dutton & Co.). 4 “ There is a fire-fly in the southern clime, Which shineth only when upon the wing. So is it with the mind: when once we rest, We darken.” —Bailey, in Festus. �THE CREEDS 63 84. Q. Should we ever subscribe to a creed which forbids freedom of thought and speech ? A. No. The dignity of man is in his reason, the dignity of reason is in freedom; to destroy freedom is to destroy reason, and without reason we would cease to be human.1 35. Q. Why is freedom of speech indispensable ? A. Because without freedom we can never know whether the priest or the teacher says what he wishes to say, or only what he must say. 1 “Yet one thing there is that ye shall not slay, Even thought.” —Swinbubne. �CHAPTER Xn. THE CLERGY 1. Q. A. 2. Q. A. 3. Q. A. 4. Q. A. 5. Q. A. 6. Q. A. 7. Q. A. What is a clergyman ? A man who has received “ holy orders.” From whom has he received them ? From the Church, and by the laying-on of hands.1 Why is he called a clergyman ? The word is derived from “clerus” or “clericus,” which in Greek, signifies a “ lot,” or anything by which a vote is cast. What does this signify ? That the clergymen were elected by the casting of lots.2 What other explanation is there ? It has also been supposed that the Greek word clericus means “rank,” which term was applied to the Apostles and the early teachers to indicate their authority.3 By what other names is a clergyman known ? Priest, prelate, pontiff, bishop, pope, etc. What do the clergy claim ? That Jesus, the King, has committed “the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven to officers of the Church,” by virtue whereof “ they have power respectively to retain and remit sins ”...... “to shut that kingdom,” and “ to open it.”4 1 “ Receive the Holy Ghost by the imposition of our hands ” is the formula oi ordination. 2 This was the opinion of St. Augustine and also of Jerome. St. Mattias was elected by the Apostles to take the place of Judas by casting lots. The usual custom was to write the names of the different candidates and put them in a box ; then, having offered prayers, the box was shaken, and the first name that fell out was considered “ chosen of the Lord. ” 3 Bauer, the German scholar, is the advocate of this theory. 4 See Westminster Creed. The following words of Jesus are quoted both by Catholics and Protestants to establish this claim : “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven ” (Matt. xvi. 19). Compare this with what is said in chapter on “ Prayer ” about controlling God. 64 �THE CLERGY 8. Q. A. 9. Q. A. 10. Q. A. 11. Q. A. 12. Q. A. 13. Q. A. 14. Q. A. 15. Q. A. 16. Q. 65 Have the priests exercised great power in the world ? Yes, and have enjoyed also exceptional privileges. What were these privileges ? Exemption from civil duties, taxes or contributions to public works. In many countries a clergyman, what­ ever his crime, could not be made to appear before a civil magistrate.1 What use have the clergy made of these privileges ? On the whole, they have abused them, for which cause they have been deprived of nearly all of their old privileges. How can a man become a clergyman to-day? By submitting to an examination to prove his adherence to the creed of the Church to which he applies for admission. Are these examinations as strict as formerly ? No, the candidates for holy orders may now exercise what is called “ mental reservation.” What is that ? It is the liberty, while subscribing to the creed just as it is, to read one’s own meaning into it—to accept it as true theologically only, and not also philosophically. The candidate may answer the question, “ Bo you believe ?” by “I do,” while in his own mind he may add: “ Not as it is commonly interpreted, but as I interpret it. ” Illustrate this by an example. He may say, “ I believe in the ‘ word of God,’ ” but mean by it not only the Christian Scriptures to which the creeds limit inspiration, but all that he considers true and pure wherever found. In the same way he may believe in the divinity of Christ, meaning by it that all good and noble men are divine. Do the people always understand his meaning ? If he wished to be understood, he would not resort to “ mental reservation.” Should a clergyman not in full accord with his Church continue to remain in its fellowship ? 1 Comp. Benefit of Clergy in England. In Catholic countries, if anyone struck a priest he was excommunicated for life, absolution being withheld from him until the hour of death. F �66 A NEW CATECHISM A. To a conscientious and fine-fibred soul, such a relation would be intolerable.1 17. Q. But should not a clergyman wait until his people are ready for the new ideas ? A. Yes, if he means to follow his people, but not if he wishes to be a teacher and a guide. 1 James Martineau quotes the praise of a Frenchman lavished on this class of clergymen : “ Our clergy, to be sure, are all perjured ; but, then, how charmingly liberal ” (Essays and Reviews, vol. ii., p. 187). �CHAPTER XIII. PRAYER AND SALVATION 1. Q. What is prayer ? A. It is a supplication addressed to God, or a desire for com­ munion with him. 2. Q. Do people ever pray also to the laws of nature ? A. No. 3. Q. Or to great ideals or visions ? A. No; prayer is always addressed to a person, because a person alone can hear and answer prayer. 4. Q. Do all who pray believe in a personal God ? A. They should; for if God be not a person, he would not be different from the laws of nature or the ideals of the mind. 5. Q. What is a person ? A. One who knows that he is himself and no other. 6. Q. Can God be a person? A. He cannot be a God and a person at the same time. 7. Q. Why? A. To be a god is to be infinite; to be a person is to be finite. The infinite cannot be conscious of itself, for such consciousness would imply that it distinguished itself from something else, and was not, therefore, the “ All!” To be able to say, “ This is I,” the infinite must also be able to say, “ That is not I,” which would mean that the infinite was not infinite. 8. Q. Can there not be an infinite person ? A. No, as there cannot be an infinite finite. 9. Q. How did the habit of prayer originate ? A. It originated in the desire of people to appease the anger and secure the favour of invisible beings. 10. Q. Give an example. A. At the close of a long drought the Pope, Archbishop, or minister composes a prayer for rain, which is addressed to God, believing that he permitted the drought and can be entreated to discontinue it. 67 �68 A NEW CATECHISM 11. Q. Are such prayers ever answered ? A. Yes, because a drought cannot last for ever. 12. Q. Does it not happen frequently that while some are pray­ ing for one thing others are as earnestly praying for just the opposite ? A. Yes, people are asking God to do in one place what others somewhere else are just as earnestly entreating or advis­ ing him not to do. 13. Q. What do such prayers imply ? A. That God is an individual ready to adapt himself to the convenience of everybody. 14. Q. Has God any control over the weather ? A. No more than over the law of gravity. 15. Q. Do people ever pray to have the law of gravity suspended for their sake ? A. Not any more. 16. Q. Why? A. They have learned that the law of gravitation is invio­ lable. 17. Q. When will they stop praying about the weather? A. When they learn that the laws governing it are equally inviolable. 18. Q. Is it as useless to pray for wisdom, knowledge, and goodness ? A. Yes; for these virtues cannot be given to us—they are acquired through long effort. 19. Q. But does not prayer help some people to acquire these gifts ? A. They think it does, just as an Asiatic thinks he owes all his good fortune to the amulet on his person or the tattoo on his arm; or the zealot that he owes his to the Virgin Mary, or to the candles he burns on some saints altar. 20. Q. What is meant by prayer as praise ? A. God, it is said, demands that his creatures should address him continually in terms of glorification and endear­ ment; and, therefore, one object of prayer is to satisfy this desire of God. 21. Q. Does such an idea do honour to any person ? A. No. A really great and good being would grow weary of the genuflections and laudations of interested votaries. �PRAYER AND SALVATION 69 22. Q. Where did such an idea come from ? A. Brom the Orient, where the sultans can only be approached with prostrations, presents, and salaams. 23. Q. What is the moral argument against prayer ? A. It makes men look for help from without and by miracle, and thus cripples and maims their manhood. 24. Q. What else ? A. It is an attempt to corrupt God by offering him bribes. When we ask God to do better for us than we deserve, we ask him to do us a favour for which we offer sweet words of praise, build churches, give money, go on a pilgrimage, etc. 25. Q. Is prayer, then, a petition for a favour ? A. Yes, because it is said that we have no rights, and that God can, if he so wishes, refuse us everything. 26. Q. Is salvation a favour too ? A. Yes,, as shown by the malefactor on the cross, who received the gift of salvation a few moments before he expired. 27. Q. What are the views of Paul on this question? A. He says: “ That a man is justified by faith without the works of the law, for to him that worketh not, but believeth, his faith is counted for righteousness the inference being that we cannot, by anything we do, merit salvation. And the Westminster Creed says: “Much less can men not professing the Christian religion be saved, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature; and to assert and maintain that they can is very pernicious, and is to be detested.”1 1 Luther said: “Every doer of the law and every moral worker is accursed, for he walketh in the presumption of his own righteousness. He that says the gospel requires works for salvation, I say, flat and plain, he is a liar ” (Table Talk). And. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, was as positive in his opinion that salvation is not something which we may conquer for ourselves, for he says: “We are well pleased that our parishioners grow more diligent and honest, that they practise both justice and mercy; in a word, that they are moral men ; but the truth is, the Methodists know and teach that all this is nothing before God ” (John Wesley's Works, vol. iii., p. 99). “ Salvation is an act of mercy, and may be granted even to one who has no merit ” (Catholic Belief, p. 363 ; Father Lambert). The doctrine of salvation by grace alone is unmistakably taught in the following texts from the New Testament : John vi. 44 ; Ephs. ii. 8. This is also the position of St. Augustine in his work on “ Grace.” It is this doctrine which has placed so high a value on the sacraments and offices of the Church, as well as the mediation of the priest as a means of salvation. �70 A NEW CATECHISM 28. Q. What is the effect of such teachings ? A. They make morality, character, and justice secondary to Church rites, prayers, and dogmas,1 and they imply also that we may impose our will upon God. 29. Q. Explain that point. A. The Atheist says he is without God; the Deist says, There is a God, but he has no relations whatever with us; the Theist says, God exists and rules over men, but by prayers, and praise, penance and sacrifices, we can influence his will. Consequently, all these views amount to a practical denial of God. 30. Q. How ? A. There is little difference between a God who does not exist and one who exists only outside of human affairs, or one who can be influenced by us. 81. Ql What is the least desirable form of prayer ? A. Public prayer, because it is not silent, but loud; not spontaneous, but formal; not personal, but professional; not short,, but long; not free, but compulsory; and because it is oftener addressed to the congregation than to God. Jesus said distinctly that we should not pray in public. 32. Q. What is true prayer ? A. To learn diligently the laws of life, and to obey them. 33. Q. What should we teach people to do instead of praying ? A. To think.2 1 The Catholic religion is an order to obtain heaven by begging, because it would be too troublesome to earn it. The priests are the brokers for this transaction ” (Zimmern’s Life of Schopenhauer, p. 124). This criticism applies with equal force to the Protestant denominations. 2 The late Master of Balliol said that the longer he lived the less he prayed, but the more he thought. Read also Emerson’s essay on “ Self-Reliance.” The lost* according to Dante, are those who can no longer think. Kant says that “ He who has made great moral progress ceases to pray, for honesty is one of his principal maxims..’ . He said also that to pray before the people is “to appeal to their sensu­ ality ”—it is to “ stoop down to them.” �CHAPTER XIV. DEATH How long has there been death in the world ? As long as there has been life.1 What is the relation of life to death ? They are different manifestations of the same powerJ What is that ? Movement. What happens to the body at death ? It begins to return to life again. The particles of which the body is composed dissolve, separate, and pass into their original elements—water, lime, iron, phosphorus, etc. Thus disengaged, they mix with the sun and the air, and, having renewed their youth, return to combine again in new bodies. 5. Q. Do they always meet in the same body ? A. No. If they did, the dead would rise again. 6. Q. Is death a punishment ? A. Not any more than life. 7. Q. Why do people fear death ? A. They have been taught to look upon it as the curse of God for the sins of man, and that it marks the beginning of an irrevocable doom; but people are rapidly out­ growing these fears. 8? Q- Is death desirable ? A. Not until we know more about it. 9. Q. But is it always a misfortune ? A. When it ends a useful career, separates lovers, and makes orphans of children, it seems a calamity. But when it brings deliverance to the weary, the aged, and the suffer­ ing, it is a blessing.2 1. Q. A. 2. Q. A. 3. Q. A. 4. Q. A. 1 This is true in a general sense, and as applied to recognised forms erf life. To speak exactly, something must have lived before anything could die; while some of the very simplest organisms do not die, but multiply by dividing into halves, each of which becomes a whole organism. 2 “ Among the many half-pagan legends that were connected with Ireland during 71 �72 A NEW CATECHISM 10. Q. Could there be any progress in the world without death ? A. As the old leaves must fall from the branches wto make room for the new and greener ones, so must we die to make place for the better men and women of the future. 11. Q. How may we learn to overcome the fear of death ? A. 1. By trying to accommodate ourselves to those laws of nature which will not accommodate themselves to us. 2. By cultivating in us the same mind that was also in the bravest and noblest of our race. 3. By remember­ ing that we are here to learn how to live, and not how to die. 12. Q. What is the philosophical conception of death ? A. That it either secures happiness or ends suffering. 13. Q. How did Socrates view death? A. That if it ended life, it was not a misfortune; but that if it freed the soul from the body, it certainly was “ the greatest of boons.”1 14. Q. Is it wrong to mourn for the dead ? A. It is natural; for, while we must face our fate like men, we must also feel it like men. 15. Q. How may we triumph over death ? A. By loving and serving some noble cause, in which we may continue to live long after we have passed away. 16. Q. Who have been the greatest benefactors of man ? * A. Those who have relieved his mind of one more fear, and helped him a step further on the road to mental emancipation. the Middle Ages, one of the most beautiful is that of the islands of life and death. In a certain lake in Munster, it is said, there were two islands; into the first death could never enter, but age and sickness, and the weariness of life, were all known there, and they did their work until the inhabitants, tired of their immortality, learned to look upon the opposite island as upon a haven of repose ; they launched their barks upon its gloomy waters ; they touched its shore, and they were at rest ” (Lecky’s History of European Morals, vol. i., p. 214). 1 “ There is no subject on which the sage will think less than death ” (Spinoza, Ethics, iv., 67). “Death does not concern us, for when we are, death is not, and when death is, we are not” (Epicurus, Diog. Laert., x. 27). Noble minds are free from “the superstitious fears that are the nightmare of the weak” (Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. i., p. 213). To lose what we cannot miss is not an evil. �CHAPTER XV. IMMORTALITY 1. Q. What does immortality mean ? A. Deathlessness, or life without end. 2. Q. Does it mean that men will never die ? A. No ; but that they will live for ever after death. 8. Q. In the same form as now ? A. That is a disputed question. 4. Q. Will the body, too, live again and for ever ? A. It is generally claimed that the soul alone is immortal. 5. Q. What is the soul ? A. According to popular views it is a spark, a flame, or an essence temporarily lodged in the body, but which, at death, returns to its author—God. 6. Q. Have all men a soul ? A. It is so believed. 7. Q. Have the animals a soul too ? A. Few people believe they have. 8. Q. Can the body live without the soul ? A. No. 9. Q. Can the soul without the body ? A. People think it can. 10. Q. Have they any knowledge of it ? A. Not exactly. 11. Q- Has anything been ever seen without a body of some kind ? A. No; though some claim to have seen spirits. 12. Q. Can we see anything that has neither form, colour, nor extension ? A. It is not possible. 13. Q. Can we even think of a spirit without giving it form and body in our mind ? A. We cannot. 73 �74 A NEW CATECHISM 14. Q. What follows ? A. That soul and body are, so far as we have a right to speak or think, inseparable, and that, if one is immortal the other must be so too. 15. Q. Is the desire for immortality general ? A. Yes, but not universal. The ancient Jews evidently had no . clear concept of another life; neither have the Chinese of to-day. 16. Q. State the accepted doctrine of immortality. A. The soul, at death, leaves the body and goes to another world, to live there evermore. 17. Q. What is this other world also called? A. Heaven, Paradise, the Isles of the Blest, and so on. 18. Q. What kind of a place is it ? A. There are as many different views of heaven as there are religions. 19. Q. What are some of them ? A. To the Buddhist, heaven means the cessation of all desire, or Nirvana ; to the Mohammedan, it is a place of pleasure and dance; to the Christian, an eternal Sabbath. 20. Q. Is everybody expected to go to heaven ? A. No ; only those, it is claimed, who have the true faith ; all others, according to the creeds, will go to hell. 21. Q. Where is that ? A. That, too, is in the other world. 22. Q. Will good and great men and women who have not the “ true faith ” be excluded from heaven ? A. The creeds say they will.1 And hence the hope of immortality for the majority of people is not a hope at all. 23. Q. Are heaven and hell both eternal ? A. That is the ordinary belief.2 24. Q. What further view is there of the other world ? A. That there is neither a heaven nor a hell, but that the other world or life is the continuation of this. 25. Q. Will it be a better world than this ? A. It will if we make it so. 1 “ Peoples earth with demons, hell with men. And heaven with slaves.” —Shelley. ® Henry Ward Beecher was the first among modern orthodox preachers to protest against this doctrine (comp, the Author’s The Passing of Orthodox Religion). �IMMORTALITY 75 26. Q. Does this view deny the possibility of a conscious here­ after ? A. No, but it leaves the question open. 27. Q. What are the arguments in favour of a conscious im­ mortality ? A. One of the strongest is that the belief in it is universal.1 28. Q. Does that prove it ? A. No, many universal beliefs have turned out to be illusions —e.g., the belief that man and the world were specially created by divine fiat; that the sun, the moon, and the stars were made to give light to our planet, and to revolve about it; and the belief in witchcraft, magic, alchemy, etc.2 29. Q. What is the next argument ? A. It is said that man, as a soul or a thinking mind, is too precious not to be preserved for ever. 80. Q. Does that prove his immortality ? A. Not any more than Caesar’s opinion of himself proved his divinity. 31. Q. What is the next argument ? A. The moral argument, which is the strongest. 32. Q. State that. A. As there is much undeserved suffering in this world, we instinctively look forward to another where all accounts shall be squared; where the tears shall be wiped from the eyes of the sorrowing, and lovers shall meet again. 33. Q. Is this argument conclusive ? A. It is very strong, but not conclusive. If God is as good and as powerful now as he will ever be, and yet permits crime and sorrow, there is no reason to expect a radical change in his management of the universe at some future time. 84 Q. What is the proper conception of an after life ? A. That all we now think, say, and do will go to build the world of the future, in which we shall all live again and for ever as influences, tendencies, examples, and moral 1 Since all religions maintain immortality, then, if there is really no such thing, the whole world is deluded. This is the argument which Pomponatius of Padua answered by saying: “As there are three religions—those of Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed—they are all three false, and then the whole world is deluded ; or two, at least, are false, and then the majority are deluded.” 2 Even Lord Bacon, the founder of the Inductive Method, and Sir Thomas Browne and Sir Matthew Hade shared the popular faith in witches. �76 A NEW CATECHISM and intellectual forces. We are the continuation of the life that has preceded us, and the source of the life that shall follow us. The soul of man is the sum of all his faculties and powers, his thoughts and acts and affections. These, no more than the particles which compose his body, perish at death, but become incorporated into new forms of life, and so on for ever.1 85. Q. What effect would such a belief have upon us ? A. It would encourage us to cultivate and treasure up only what is true and noble—to become the brain and soul of the future.2 1 “ Death appears under this aspect no longer as an annihilation ; for our soul is as little wiped out as the law of causation can be suspended” (Paul Caras, Whence and Whither, p. 135). 2 When we have outgrown the illusion that existence is limited to our individual person, when we expand our being into that of humanity, which is immortal, and through which we continue to live for ever—death will, indeed, be no more than “ the blinking of an eyelid, which does not interrupt sight.” �CHAPTER XVI. THE CHIEF END OF MAN 1. Q. What is the greatest thing in the world ? A. Life with honour; for without life we cannot have any­ thing else that is good. 2. Q. What, then, is the duty of man ? A. To seek those things which increase and elevate life. 3. Q. What do we call those acts which make life larger and better ? A. Virtues; and those which diminish and degrade life, vices. 4. Q. By what other names are they called ? A. Right and wrong; moral and immoral; good and bad. 5. Q. How do we learn what is vice and what is virtue ? A. Through experience; the accumulated experience of humanity, as well as our own. 6. Q. Do we learn all we know about right and wrong from experience ? A. Positively all. 7. Q. Do we not need a revelation to tell us infallibly about right and wrong ? A. No. If we ourselves cannot discern the right from the wrong, a revelation will be of no more help to us than to the animals. 8. Q. What other proofs could you offer that a revelation is not necessary for the purposes of the moral life ? A. A revelation is only an accident,1 while the moral life is a law of human nature. 9. Q. What is a law ? A. An obligation imposed upon us by a higher authority.23 10. Q. What constitutes authority ? A. Superior knowledge, goodness, and power. 1 An event which happens only once and under irregular or miraculous condi­ tions may be termed an accident. 3 “ Law ” is used also in the sense of a formula, or an observed mode of action. 77 �78 A NEW CATECHISM 11. Q. Give me some examples. A. The authority of the parent over the child; of the teacher over the pupil; of the State over the individual; of mankind over the State, and of Nature over all. 12. Q. What is Nature ? A. The sum of all the forces which keep the world in move­ ment. 13. Q. Why is the authority of Nature the highest ? A. She is the first and oldest parent and teacher of man. 14. Q. Why obey Nature ? A. Because we have learned through the experience of ages that we must.1 15. Q. What if we do not ? A. She will replace us quickly by those who will. 16. Q. There is no alternative, then ? A. None whatever. 17. Q. What provision has Nature made to induce obedience to her laws ? A. She has joined together action and reaction, cause and consequence. 18. Q. Explain this. A. To each thought, word, and act Nature has given the same power she has to the seed—to grow and bear fruit after their kind. 19. Q. What other means does Nature employ to compel obedience ? A. She has lodged in us a representative of her authority, which we may call “ conscience.” 20. Q. Analyse and define it. A. Conscience is the mingled voices of the Past and the Future in each individual. Man is the vibrating focus of the collective experience and tendencies of the Past, and the hopes, visions, and ideals of the Future—the pressure of the one and the attraction of the other find a voice in him ; this voice is conscience.2 1 “ But I follow cheerfully, And did I not— Weak and wretched, I must follow still” (Epictetus). a Our habits ally us with the past, our freedom with the future; the conflict between habit or instinct and freedom or will is the struggle between the Past and the Future for supremacy. Man is the battleground of the struggle. Professor Clifford defines conscience as “ the accumulated instincts of the race pouring into each one of us, and overflowing as if the ocean were poured into a cup ” (p. 134). �THE CHIEF END OF MAN 79 21'. Q. Is that the commonly accepted definition? A. No. Many people believe conscience is “ the voice of God in the soul but, as this voice is not infallible, nothing is gained by calling it the “ voice of God.” 22. Q. What other theories are there ? A. ^>me philosophers teach that conscience is a separate, spiritual faculty or organ, whose function it is intuitively to tell the right from the wrong. It is also held that there is such a thing as the Moral Law, which is eternal and absolute, and whose commandments are imperative.1 But these are metaphysical speculations. 23. Q. What is the teaching of Evolution on this subject ? A. That just as light fashioned the eye, and sound the ear, with all their wonderful mechanism, human relations formed, through the education and experience of ages, the moral sense; and that morality is acquired just as language, music, love, or humanity. 24. Q. Why should we do the right according to thift theory ? A. For its utility, beauty, and joy. 25. Q. Is it obligatory to do the right ? A. Yes, if we wish the well-being of everybody as well as of ourselves. 26. Q. What is the reward of goodness and justice ? A. To be just and good.2 27. Q. But will we be just and good without future rewards and punishments ? A. If we will not, others will, and by the law of the Survival of the Fittest theirs will be the kingdom and the power and the future. 28. Q. Is the right increasing in the world ? A. Through many oscillations backward and forward, man­ kind is gaining steadily, though very slowly. 29. Q. Why are there still wrong and suffering in the world ? A. Because we do not obey all the laws of Nature. 30. Q. Why do we not obey them ? A. Largely from ignorance. 31. Q. Is it right that we should be punished for our ignorance? A. Yee, if it is the only way we can be made to learn and observe these laws. 1 The Categorical Imperative of Kant has been likened to a God made to order, a “ deus ex machina.” a “Do you seek any greater reward ?” (Epictetus). �■ A NEW CATECHISM Q. What is the thing we need most to make the world ana ourselves better ? A. KNOWLEDGE ; for we cannot do anything unless we know how to do it; and, in order to act in the best way, we must know what is for our highest good.1 Q. What else will knowledge do ? A. It will employ the immense forces now stagnating in ignorance, replace prejudice by sympathy, oppression and greed by justice and humanity, war and bloodshed by peace and brotherhood. Q. What is the saviour of the world—the true Christ of humanity ? A. Truth! which is the most perfect knowledge we can possess; and confidence that such knowledge may be depended upon for the highest aims of life. Q. What, then, is the chief end of man ? A. To seek the supreme wisdom by the reason, and practise the sovereign good by the will,2 and for the good of humanity. The aim of science is knowledge, the aim of art is action ; but we can neither produce nor create without knowledge. It is equally irrelevant to insist that a correct philosophy of life is unnecessary for the ends of Virtue. Thought or Knowledge is the seed of which Conduct is the flower and fruit. It is true, how­ ever, that our knowledge improves and increases as often as we “do” what we “ know.” Charlemagne, in a letter to Sturm, the Abbot of Fulda, wrote : “ Although action is better than knowledge, still it is impossible to act without1 ’ ” knowledge.” a Giordano Bruno and De Tocqueville. THE END. ■■ fe'VK � 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 A new catechism Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mangasarian, Mangasar Mugwiditch Holyoake, George Jacob Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 80 p. : ill. (port.) ; 23 cm. Series title: R.P.A. Extra Series Series number: No. 6 Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited. First published in 1902. Publisher's advertisements inside and on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1904 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context E052 N466 Subject The topic of the resource Religion 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 (A new catechism), 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 Catechisms NSS https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/9a6614aa4e32e506592f6e8ac0ce5348.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=I7AF6P2baj6phGgpELPwLOKG3rmtBr36rhAksxtR2pnwZYHBJF8ZqOQV1kBbOIl0oYJqLVkj6qEgA5JkwB%7E7m%7E5%7EK8kPJXr-RqQdmVkdOl66glD9e9B7N9GeVDo6WARhnuBNXqC-y1nCSBtmk-N4v7r8dZNRsMS9HuMiBNx5aywAGlj2m8w3HnHc0HeEDBqxQAFwJOItYekHyUy8Tkn917B8zRH0bfM51Rd4Gqft2bnc5EE3J36pZar30Dr%7EN03RCMS8lU0RED01y68rxBhBS9fDAKxizazvPCwkbXMWln5zisIcdGNE6AsILNCSIZcMBm3zWSAhYtrWMRtV4fbCnA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 808ec0848457e086da0b0464311c6f8d PDF Text Text NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. BY SAMUEL LAING, Author of “Modern Science and Modern ThoughtilA Modern Zoroastrian,” “Problems of the Future,” etc. ISSUED FOR THE Jress OmmifteL London : WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET St. Price One Penny. �OUR PROPAGANDIST PRESS COMMITTEE. This Committee has been formed for the purpose of assisting in the production and circulation of liberal publications. The members of the Committee are Mr. G. J. Holyoake, Dr. Bithell, Mr. F. J. Gould, Mr. Frederick Millar, and Mr. Charles A. Watts. It is thought that the most efficient means of spreading the principles of Rationalism is that of books and pamphlets. Many will read a pamphlet who would never dream of visiting a lecture hall. At the quiet fireside arguments strike home which might be dissipated by the excitement of a public debate. The lecturer wins his thousands, the penman his tens of thousands. The aim of the various writers will be to obtain converts by persuasiveness rather than undue hostility towards the popular creeds. All who are in sympathy with the movement are earnestly re­ quested to contribute towards the expenses as liberally as their means will allow. The names of donors will not be published without their consent. On the ist of January of each year a report and balance-sheet will be forwarded to subscribers. The books of the Committee are always accessible to donors. Contributions should be forwarded to Mr. Charles A. Watts, 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C. Cheques should be crossed “Central Bank of London, Blackfriars Branch.” PUBLICATIONS ISSUED FOR THE COMMITTEE BY MESSRS. WATTS & CO. Agnostic Problems. Being an Examination of Some Questions ■of the Deepest Interest, as Viewed from the Agnostic Standpoint. By R. Bithell, B.Sc., Ph.D. Cheap Popular Edition, cloth, 2s. 6d. post free. Agnosticism and Immortality. By S. Laing, author of “ Modern Science and Modern Thought,” etc. id., by post ij^d. Special terms for quantities. Humanity and Dogma. By Amos Waters, id., by post i%d. .Special terms for quantities. LIBERTY OF BEQUESTS COMMITTEE. 'This Committee has been formed for procuring the passing of a law legalising bequests for Secular and Free Thought purposes. As the law now stands, all legacies left for the diffusion and main­ tenance of Secular or Free Thought principles can be confiscated. Subscriptions in furtherance of the object of this Committee may ,be sent to Mr. Charles A. Watts, 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C., or to the care of the Hon. Secretary, Mr. H. L. Braekstad, 138, Loughborough Park, London, S.W. �AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. a To be, or not to be, that is the question ”—a question which has been asked before and after Hamlet, in all ages and countries where mankind has risen from blank savagery to thought and intelligence. The love of life, the horror of annihilation, are instincts common to men and to the whole animal creation. In civilised man this instinct rises beyond the vague terror of death and fear of the unknown. He “ looks before and after his sense of justice longs for a future life to redress the wrongs and sufferings of the present one; his affections crave for a sight of faces which he has loved and lost; all the feelings of his complex nature cry out for some assurance of a continued existence. On the other hand, all positive knowledge and experience fail to give him this assurance, and rather tell him that, as his individual existence began with birth, so it will terminate with death. How stands this most momentous of all problems in the light of modern science, and of that development of it which is fast invading modern thought under the compendious term of “ Agnosticism ” ? To attack a problem we must begin by clearly defining its conditions. What do we mean when we talk of a “ future life ” and of “ immortality ” ? Clearly, for all practical purposes, we mean a life in which we retain our personal identity and individual consciousness. To be absorbed in some metaphysical essence, or soul of the universe, as some tiny rivulet is in the pathless ocean, is tantamount to annihilation. Extremes meet, and the Nirvana, which is the ultimate goal of the most �2 AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. purely metaphysical religion, that of Buddhism, lands us practically in the same conclusion as that of the Mate­ rialist, to whom life and consciousness are but functions of particular modes of cell-motions. It is important to keep this distinction well in mind, for it bears upon the next stage of the inquiry—viz., what are the historical facts of the problem ? What are the views of it which have been entertained by different nations and in different ages ? Do they show such a general consensus of opinion as may establish at any rate a frima facie case for any definite conclusion, and show it to be a necessary product of the evolution of the human mind ? Or are they so conflicting as to neutralise one another, and show that no common con­ clusion holds the field, which remains open for inquiries conducted with all the latest resources of modern know­ ledge ? The answer must be that the latter is undoubt­ edly the true state of the case. If we take immortality to mean the preservation of conscious personal identity after death, the majority of mankind have had no such belief. The countless millions of Brahmins and Buddhists do not get nearer to it than to assume some vague absorption into the soul of the universe, after more or less transmigration through other forms of life. Plato and his followers had much the same idea, in a more refined and philoso­ phical form, of an unconscious pre-existence in the universal- spirit before birth, and return to it after death —a speculation which we find in the creeds of almost all our modern poets, and which is stated with much force and precision by Wordsworth in his ode on “Immortality.” Other nations, such as the Chinese and Japanese, have no distinct ideas on the subject beyond a vague veneration for departed ancestors, and their educated classes accept either the Agnosticism, pure and simple, of Confucius, or some vague concep­ tion of Buddhistic philosophy. The lower classes, and savage and semi-civilised races generally, have a sort of rude faith in ghosts, which are scarcely distinguishable from the evil spirits in which unknown or injurious forces of Nature are personified. The first dawn of a belief in a continued personal �AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. 3 existence after death is found in the interments of the neolithic period, in which weapons and food were de­ posited for the use of a departed chief in the happier hunting-ground of another world, and slaves were sacri­ ficed so as to give him an appropriate retinue. From this germ arose the Egyptian creed, which was for so many centuries by far the most powerful and practical exemplification of a belief in a future existence by a great civilised nation. They looked, as Herodotus tells us, on their tombs as their permanent abodes, and the homes in which they lived as mere temporary occu­ pations. Their idea was that every existence, animate or inanimate, consisted of two parts, the material body and the seol, or incorporeal spirit, which could wander about in dreams, and, after death, continue a shadowy existence, living on shadowy food, and taking pleasure in shadowy geese and kine and other belongings. But this seol must have a corporeal body, or semblance of its old material self, as a basis for its existence, and hence the care and expense which were lavished on mummies and on paintings on the walls of tombs. It is remarkable that, wherever the faith in a personal immortality of the soul has been at all strong, it has been associated with an equally strong faith in the resurrection of the body. The old Egyptians and the early Christians equally shared this belief; and even in the more shadowy mythology of the Greek and Roman world due funeral rites to the body were considered necessary to save the departed soul from wandering, as a shivering, bodiless ghost, on the banks of the melan­ choly Styx. Another remarkable nation, the Jews, entirely ignored the idea of a future existence—a most singular circum-, stance, considering that they were so long in contact with the Egyptians, with whom it was the pervading fact of their daily life, and that the Jews were supposed to be a chosen people, specially instructed by Jehovah. And yet nothing can be clearer than that, from the time of Moses down to that of Ecclesiastes—and even later, as held by the Sadducees, the conservative aristocracy, who clung most tenaciously by the old law—the pure Jewish faith was that death was annihilation, and rewards �4 AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. and punishments were dispensed either to the individual in this life or to his posterity. Nothing can be more explicit than the words of Ecclesiastes which are put in the mouth of the great preacher, King Solomon, as the result of his long expe­ rience and deep wisdom : “ A living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward.” And again : “ There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest.” It is not a little surprising that a religion like Chris­ tianity, in which eternal life and future rewards and punishments are such essential elements, should have originated from the matter-of-fact and almost Materialistic creed of Mosaic Judaism. Orthodox theologians will,, of course, say that it was because it pleased God to con­ ceal these things from former generations, and to teach them for the first time by a new revelation. The retort is obvious : if Jehovah were a just and benevolent Deity,, why should he mislead his own chosen people by allowing Moses, Abraham, and other pious patriarchs after his own heart, to believe and teach the direct opposite of these essential truths ? But the retort, however obvious, is effective only against the idolaters of the Bible; for its sincere students it is more to the purpose to observe that the assumption that these Christian dogmas are taught by Divine inspiration is met at the very outset by this staggering objection. What Jesus, St. Paul, and the Apostles taught respecting the immortality of the soul was this: that our personal identity after death would be preserved by a resurrection of the body, which was to take place in the lifetime of some of the existing generation. This is stated over and over again in the most distinct and positive terms, and, if the prophecy failed, there is absolutely nothing in the New Testament to teach us anything certain as to any future life. The last judgment is, in like manner, inextricably mixed up with the advent of Jesus in a cloud, with a trumpet and angels, within the prescribed time. Now, it is historically certain that the prophecy was a mistake; 1800 years have elapsed, and the end of the �AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. 5 world, the bodily resurrection, and the Day of Judgment, as described by Jesus and St. Paul, have not come. It is equally certain that, scientifically, no resurrection of the material body is possible. Death resolves the atoms and energies of which it was composed into new and simpler forms, which enter into totally different combi­ nations. What becomes, then, of the superstructure of a personal identity after death, when it is based on two pillars which have crumbled into dust? It is.as though it had never been made, and the fact remains that in no religion of ancient or modern times can we find any reliable information, or general consensus of opinion, as to that greatest of all mysteries—what may be “ behind the veil.” If from Theology we fall back on Science, we have real and accurate information up to a certain point; but the final step escapes us. We know in the most precise and accurate manner that all we call soul, spirit, thought, memory, will, perception, and con­ sciousness are indissolubly connected with definite motions of minute cells in the cortex or grey enveloping matter of the brain. Given the motions of given cells, and the corresponding effects will follow with the same certainty as if we were nothing but an electric battery, with nerves for conducting wires. And, conversely, without the proper inducing motions of nerve-cells the effects will not follow. This has been proved by such innumerable experiments that I shall confine myself to noticing a few which have the most direct bearing on the question of soul or personal identity. Memory is clearly at the bottom of this feeling of personality. It links together past perceptions, and makes us feel that they are not isolated phenomena, but have an unity and connection, as having happened to one and the same person—viz., ourselves. Now, it is quite possible to obliterate portions of the memory by destroying portions of the grey matter of the brain appro­ priated for remembering that particular class of impres­ sions. For instance, there is in the back part of the brain a tract of grey matter, connected by a collection of fine conducting wires, called the optic nerve, with the retina, which enables us to see. Surrounding this is another tract of grey matter, connected with the former, �6 AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. which serves as a sort of register office for messages sent from the eye to the central telegraph office—or, in other words, which is appropriated to the memory of visual perceptions. Destroy the first or central office, and we can no longer see. Leave it untouched, but destroy the second or register office, and we can see, but no longer remember what is seen. In like manner with the sense of hearing: there is a central office by which we hear, and a connected register office by which we remember what we have heard. Destroy the latter, and all memory of all we have ever heard passes away from us. Memory, therefore, is clearly proved to be not merely a general function of the brain en masse, but a special function of special portions of the brain, told off for the purpose of converting mechanical impressions received from the outer world, through the senses, into registered messages, which form the raw material of what we call memory, which is itself the substratum of consciousness. The will is another faculty which is commonly attri­ buted to personal identity, and yet it also is indissolubly associated with brain motion. Nothing can well be more mechanical than straining the eye to look at a black wafer stuck on a white wall. And yet, by this purely mechanical process, a state called hypnotism can be frequently induced, in which the will is apparently lost, and the will of another personality—that of the operator—is substituted for it. Thus, in the well-known experiment of Dr. Braid, a puritanical old lady, to whom dancing was an invention of Satan, was sent capering about the room to a reel tune, when told to do so by the Doctor. Nay, further, it is shown, by the careful experiments scientifically conducted at the Salpetriere by eminent French physicians, that a suggestion to an hypnotised patient may affect his or her brain move­ ments in such a way as to give rise to the corresponding actions of nerves and muscles weeks after the suggestion was made and the hypnotic state had passed away. Thus a moral person may be irresistibly impelled to commit an atrocious crime on a specified person at a specified date, which would have been utterly repugnant to the patient’s normal nature. �AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. 7 In like manner, visible things may be rendered invis­ ible, and invisible things visible, by this hypnotic sug­ gestion. And, what is even more extraordinary and more directly materialistic, these suggested emotions and perceptions may be transferred into one another by the action of a magnet. A case is recorded in Binet and Fere’s volume on the Salpetriere experiments in which a patient told to hate one of the doctors endeavoured to strike him; but, on a magnet being held near the back of her head, hate was changed into love, and she tried to embrace him. Another case is interesting as bearing on the question of personal identity. A female patient, -On being told that she was one of the doctors, imme­ diately assumed his gait and manner, and stroked an imaginary moustache; and, being asked if she knew her real self, replied : “ Oh, yes, there is an hysterical patient of that name who is not over-wise.” The same phenomenon of a dual personality is fre-quently found in persons who have received some injury to the brain, and are subject to trances. They have two personalities—one of a real, the other of a trance life, which are quite distinct and each unconscious of the •other; so that Smith may be alternately Jones or Smith, .as he falls into or awakes from a succession of trances. In other words, the brain is like a barrel organ, which plays one tune in its normal state and a different one when the stops have been altered by some abnormal influence. In short, the last word of physiological science is that all which we call soul, mind, conscious­ ness, or personality, are functions of matter and motion. Observe, however, that, when we ticket the facts with the word function, we explain nothing, but simply sum up the results by affirming that, as far as human experi­ ence goes, the two phenomena go necessarily and inevit­ ably together. There is another class of experiments recorded by the eminent French physician, M. Binet, in the columns of the Open Court, which bears very directly on this .question of a conscious personality. It is not uncommon with hysterical patients to find portions of the body or particular limbs which are subject to what is called .ansesthesia. That is, they are insensible to pain, as in �8 AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. the case of chloroform, and cut off from all connection with the conscious self, as completely as if they were external pieces of matter. But, if certain motions are suggested to the paralysed limb, the same results will follow as if they had been dictated by will and accom­ panied by consciousness. Thus, if a pen be put in the ansesthetic hand between the thumb and the index finger, without the subject seeing or being in any way conscious of it, he will seize it, and his other fingers and arm assume the attitude necessary for writing. Suppose, next, we make the pen write a familiar word, such as the subject’s name ; after a short interval, the unconscious and paralysed hand will write the word over again, some­ times five or six times. And, what is still more extra­ ordinary, if we purposely write the word with a wrong or superfluous letter, when the subject repeats the word the anaesthetic hand will hesitate when it comes to the mistake, and, after several attempts, frequently end by correcting it. Now, in this experiment we have clearly proved, as Binet says, an unconscious perception, an unconscious reasoning and memory, and an unconscious volition. It is clear, therefore, that, in such a case, the essential elements, not merely of unconscious reflex movements of nerve and muscle, but of all that we are accustomed to consider as mind or spirit, have been reduced to un­ conscious or mechanical conditions. As Huxley puts it, you may suppress consciousness, and yet all physiolo­ gical phenomena will continue to be performed auto­ matically just as before; objects will continue to be perceived, unconscious reasonings will develop, followed by acts of adaptation. This is not “ Agnosticism,” but science and hard fact, with which the orthodox believers in soul or spirit have to reckon, just as much as those who fail to discover in the problem anything that can be solved by human faculty. In fact, no one can state this more explicitly than one of the ablest of modern theo­ logians, Principal Caird, in his sermon preached before the British Medical Association in 1888, in which he says : “ Of the thoughts, emotions, volitions, which in endless multiplicity and variety constitute our conscious life, there is not one which is not correlated to some �AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. 9 physical change or motion in the brain-matter of the thinker; and, as far as we know, the growth, develop­ ment, decline, the healthy or morbid action of the human mind, is invariably connected with corresponding changes of nervous or brain tissue.” But Dr. Caird, who is not a mere commonplace theologian, but candid, sincere, and. thoroughly acquainted with the latest discoveries of science, falls back on two arguments to refute the con­ clusions of Materialism—the first scientific, the second metaphysical. The first invokes the principle of the “ Conservation of Energy.” Dr. Caird argues that the soul, as distinct from the body, is an energy, and, there­ fore, indestructible. In the first place, if it were true, it would point rather to the Brahminical and Buddhistic doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and ultimate merger in the one universal and eternal energy. But the premise involves the fallacy so common in all theo­ logical arguments, that known to theologians as the petitio principn. It assumes a soul which is at one and the same time immaterial and material. That is, imma­ terial as being subject to none of the ordinary laws of matter, such as gravity, form, and extension; material as being subject to the law of indestructibility, which is known to us only as another attribute of ordinary matter and energy. If there be a soul or spirit, how do we know that this law applies to it; or, if it did, that it is not transformed into some sort of dead or potential energy after the active energy comes to an end with the disso­ lution of the material frame, in association with which we alone have any knowledge of it ? For there is no fact more certain than that we have absolutely no know­ ledge of any soul apart from this association. No man of sane mind will assert that he has any recollection of anything that occurred before he was born, or that he has received any authentic message from any world of spirits inhabited by the dead. The last word of science is—“ Behind the veil.” The second or metaphysical argument is that the very existence of matter implies thought. We know nothing of matter and motion in themselves, but only as they appear to us, which is after they have been transfigured, by something antecedent to and independent of them, �IO AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. which we call thought or consciousness. It is argued, therefore, that all phenomena require us to assume the existence of an universal mind in which they are con­ ceived, and that, to constitute the reality of the outward world, the presence and the comparing, discriminating and unifying activity of thought is pre-supposed. There­ fore, there is an universal, eternal thought or soul of the universe, which, expressed in anthropomorphic language, is called God, of whom we may say, with St. Paul: “ Of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things.” This seems a stupendous superstructure of assertion to raise on the slender foundation that, as a matter of fact, according to the experience of the inhabitants of our tiny planet, thought or consciousness, and brain or nerve motion, do commonly, though, as we have seen, not invariably, go together. It is not by any means clear, even in man’s limited sphere of knowledge, which of the two is the post hoc and which the propter hoc; and no real assurance can result from the double guess - first, that our own mind is the propter hoc, or originat­ ing fact of our own existence; and, secondly, that, if so, the same is true of all existence in the universe. The fact is that these metaphysical solutions of the mysteries of the universe never give any certain assur­ ance even to the acutest philosopher, and to the great mass of mankind they are not even intelligible. More­ over, it is to be remarked that, even if philosophers could establish the truth of their proposition as to mind and thought, it would not take us one step further towards proving what is the real object of our hopes and fears —the continuance of our personal identity after death. On the contrary, Dr. Caird’s whole argument tends to the conclusion of Brahmins, Buddhists, and Platonists that individual existences come from, and return to, the great universal soul or energy of the universe, like the waves which rise and fall, rippling for an instant the surface of the pathless ocean. To carry this one step further and arrive at a personal God, with intelligence and feelings like those of a magnified man, even such an acute reasoner as Dr. Caird has to fall back on wishes rather than reasons. He finds that “ a God outside of knowledge, the dark, impenetrable background of the �AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. II phenomenal world,” is not 11 the boon he wants,” and he accordingly postulates something nearer to him and more in accordance with his personal aspirations and feelings. But wishes are not proofs, and there are many things which, although we desire them ever so ardently, do not come to pass. What can be more intense or more legi­ timate than the longing of a mother to receive some message from a lost child ?—and yet it has never been gratified. How many lovers have been parted, how many minds extinguished, in the full maturity of powers which might have benefitted mankind, and where are their hopes and fears, their ardent affections, their far-reaching plans ? Buried in the grave, where there is “ no work, nor device, nor knowledge ” beyond that “ undiscovered bourne from which no traveller returns.” And it is to be noticed that, even if we were to admit as proved the arguments for a personal God and an inspired revelation, we should not be one step advanced towards any certain assurance of a personal immortality. For what this personal God is assumed to teach us by His inspired record in the Bible is this : Firstly, by the Old Testament, that there is no future life; secondly, by the New Testament, that there is a future life, but coupled with the condition of a resurrection of the body within the lifetime of a generation who have all been dead for 1800 years. Clearly there is nothing in this which approaches within a hundred miles of anything like certain and definite knowledge. What, then, is the attitude of Agnosticism towards this great question of personal immortality ? All gnostic forms of religions and philosophies—that is, all systems which teach that the question is knowable, and within the range of human faculties, either with or without the aid of revelation—break down under critical and candid investigation. If I were placed in the position of a conscientious juryman, who was told that the court is competent and the case closed, and that I was bound to deliver a verdict “Aye” or “No” upon the evidence as it stands, I should feel constrained, however reluctantly, to say “ No.” But this would not be my true deliver­ ance. I should much prefer to return a verdict of “Not proven,” or rather I should say the court has no jurisdic- �12 AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY. tion, and should walk out without giving any verdict at all. This an Agnostic may do with perfect good faith. He believes that our little knowable world is encircled by a great Unknowable, in which all things are possible. He stands, like the Ulysses of the poet, on the margin of that great ocean beyond the setting sun, on which so many millions of millions have embarked, and not one has returned. He, too, like the rest, must soon follow, and turn his prow westwards. What fate is in store for him ? Shall the gulfs wash him down and merge forever his frail bark of hopes in the fathomless depths of a sleep where there are no dreams; or shall he perchance arrive at some fortunate islands of the West where' he may survive in some newer and better life, “ See the great Achilles whom we knew,” and, dearer than the great Achilles, once more behold the faces of those whom he has loved and lost ? He knows not: no voice on earth, no message from thq dead, ever reaches him, and one thing only remains— to possess his soul with patience, and to oppose “ one equal temper of heroic hearts ” to the decrees of destiny and of the irrevocable future. But in the meantime he may dream his dreams and indulge in his visions without fear of contradiction, and without vitiating his manhood by pretending to believe as certain where there is no certainty. Surely this is better than to pin his faith on assurances of certainty which break down under the first touch of the Ithuriel spear of candid and critical investigation, and leave him either shivering in the cold creed of “ dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return,” or wrapped in an unhealthy mantle of prejudices and prepossessions, impervious to the invigorating breezes of truth, of candour, and of sincerity. �WATTS & CO.’S LIST. A Lay Sermon. By S. Laing (Author of “ Modern Science and Modern Thought and “A Modern Zoroastrian ”). This booklet is an impartial and vigorous statement of the attitude of Agnosticism towards Christianity, and sets forth the moral advantages likely to accrue from the acceptance of Agnosticism. Single copies 6d, by post 7d; 13, 5s post free ; 50, 18s carriage paid. Agnosticism and Christianity. Thoughtful, lucid, practical, liberal in sentiment, and high in moral tone. It is a delightful little book, which does the spirit and the temper good to read, for it is large in charity, never offensive, and most welcome in counsel......... full of thought most lucidly expressed.—Secular Review. Agnostic Morality. By R. Bithell, B.Sc., Ph.D. Single copies 6d, by post 7d ; 13, 5s post free ; 50s, 18s carriage paid. “ Agnostic Morality ” is excellent....... Dr. Bithell has a fair grasp of the subject, and much perspicacity.—Progress. By B. Russell. A Concise and Popular Exposition, in Language Understanded of the People. 4d, by post 5d. The Case for Agnosticism. The Popular Faith Exposed. By Julian. This is a critical and scholarly examination of Orthodox Christianity, and is strongly recommended. Single copies 6d, by post 7^5 13, 5s post free ; 50, 18s carriage paid. Bible Words: Human, not Divine. By Julian. This is a pamphlet setting forth, in common-sense language, and free from exaggeration and vituperation, the most glaring absurdities and contradictions of the Bible. Price 3d, by post 3%d ; 13, 2s 6d post free ; 50, 9s carriage paid. The Future of Morality, as Affected by the Decay of Prevalent Religious Beliefs. By M. S. Gilliland, Single copies 4d, by post 4%d; 13, 3s 6d post free ; 50, 12s carriage paid. The Confession of Agnosticism. By G. M. McC. Chapter I. Introductory. Chapter II. Misconceptions. Chapter III. Fundamentals. Chapter IV. The Perfect Life. Chapter V. The Other Side of Agnosticism. Chapter VI. Faith and Manners. Single copies 6d, by post 7d ; 13, 5s post free ; 50, 18s carriage paid. The Excellent Religion. An Essay on the Relations be­ tween Agnosticism, the Polar Theory of Being, and the Higher Theism. By G. C. Griffith-Jones (Lara). Single copies 6d, by post 7d ; 13, 5s post free 5'50, 18s carriage paid. A Friendly Correspondence with Mr. Gladstone about Creeds. By S. Laing. This pamphlet contains the Articles of the Agnostic Creed drawn up at the request of Mr. Gladstone. 6d, by post 7d. London : Watts & Co., 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C. �Demy 8vo, handsomely bound in cloth, price 2s. 6d. post free, CHEAP POPULAR EDITION OF AGNOSTIC PROBLEMS. BEING AN EXAMINATION OF SOME QUESTIONS OF THE: DEEPEST INTEREST, AS VIEWED FROM THE AGNOSTIC STANDPOINT. By RICHARD BITHELL, B.Sc., Ph.D. The volume is fascinatingly interesting, remarkably complete, and sothoroughly explains the Agnostic position that the merest tyro in metaphysics may grasp its contents....... “Agnostic Problems” has filled a gap that had remained too long open ; and, without any desire to flatter Dr. Bithell, it may be truthfully said that it has filled it with such solid material that it will re­ quire more than all the united strength of the opponents of Agnosticism to shatter one single stone of the substantial edifice thus put together. The work is one that ought to be read by every thinking man, be he Christian, Jew, Agnostic, or Atheist.—Secular Review. Handsomely bound in cloth, price is. 6d., by post is. 8d., Stepping-Stones to Agnosticism. By F. J. GOULD. With Introduction by G. J. Holyoake. Contents.—I. Ecce Deus; or, A New God. II. Miracles Weighed in the Balances. III. Our Brother Christ. IV. The Immortal Bible. V. The Noble Path. VI. Agnosticism Writ Plain. Bound in cloth, price 2s., by post 2s. 3d., AGNOSTIC FIRST PRINCIPLES. Being a Critical Exposition of the Spencerian System of Thought. By ALBERT SIMMONS (Ignotus). With Preface by Richard Bithell, B.Sc., Ph.D. London : Watts & Co., 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &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 Agnosticism and immortality Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Laing, Samuel [1812-1897] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 12 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Issued for the Propagandist Press Committee. Publisher's list inside and on back cover. Date of publication from Cooke, Bill. The blasphemy depot (RPA, 2003), Appx. 1. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1890] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N428 Subject The topic of the resource Agnosticism Immortality 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 (Agnosticism and immortality), 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 Agnosticism Immortality NSS https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/01445ca0e8c72a4f0b8b4be09e0b17e4.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=kNqs7zwZuAUrKW0xP2Yw2Ly4ZC7nEewWVoQqk87P%7EPQ4GtfMacyX6cZ-MQMtB3PN50G0V5hBozzVcTlSA3wfeMQ3bPYLM4kPER5a61VipIjoi0joI4jhIofQjldlBq3B6XJk3Fv%7EgLy2xh%7ErxVk3LidkHKEIzVmQcYBecHrVyeBbJFEqmftph9hkPfFS9z%7ECArR1ccV5zq9pKX7QOWnpdB9Xxlj2NlZBZRCd3K07BUXjMDTbtuWr5ukWaHmyFjU8t1x9-f6rIZKr4tRcmeSywq4ubUppyP%7EbgZx80zxGQHeNMPFCC9uSPgvKsD1fc-L0-NNn5wVFCRekI46xArbQjQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7d31400272d5c17196bd7550965e7f6b PDF Text Text BIBLE MORALITY. 'Secularists have no desire to extol the Bible above its merits, nor to depreciate it below its deserts. We gladly admit that it contains some useful precepts; but these, as a rule, are intermixed with so many teachings of an in­ jurious character that their beauty is often overshadowed and their utility annulled. Its coarse language in many places renders it unfit for general perusal, and destroys its value as a standard for every-day life. The true worth of literature should be its moral tone. Novels are appreciated by the intelligent reader in proportion to their being “ adorned ” with a moral. And dramas fail to gain the approval of the thoughtful public unless virtue is inculcated in a chaste form. So with the Bible : if in its ethical tone it is defective, or if it is questionable in its injunctions or indelicate in its records, it cannot with advantage be accepted as an absolute monitor in human conduct. All correct codes of morals should be clear in their authority and practical in their application. This is the more necessary when severe penalties—as in the case of Christian ethics—are threatened for non-acceptance and dis­ obedience. Now, the ethics of the Bible are both contradic­ tory and impracticable. The same line of conduct is enjoined in one passage, and just as explicitly prohibited in another. One man is blamed because he is not cruel enough, and will not go on slaying the Lord’s enemies; another man’s chief glory consists in being a mighty man of war and a great destroyer of men, women, and children; while other passages proclaim, “Thou shalt not kill,” and enjoin mercy and “loving-kindness.” The most absolute rest is enjoined on the Sabbath, and the fiercest denunciations are hurled at the most vigorous Sabbatarian. Retaliation for wrong is counselled, and forgiveness is enjoined. We are told to “ love one another,” and we are commanded to hate our �2 BIBLE MORALITY. own flesh and blood. Industry is advised and also dis­ couraged; lustful pursuits are condemned and also permitted. Thus Biblical morality is destitute of the first fundamental condition of all just ethics. Among the general principles taught in the Bible and ex­ pounded by orthodoxy in this country is that belief, not conduct, is the foundation of virtue, and that uncharitable­ ness towards opponents is justifiable. One of the first in­ structions which a parent should enforce upon a child is never to impute bad motives in matters of belief or non­ belief. No lesson is more valuable than this, none more calculated to render the child’s life happy and unsuspicious, and to make its influence in the world more useful and beneficial. The Bible permits just the opposite. Accord­ ing to Christian teachings, if a man does an act of kindness, we are not to accept it with gratitude simply as an act of kindness, but we are to judge from the motives of his con­ duct. Did he perform the act from love to God, or did he do it only from respect for his fellow man ? If the former, his services will go up as a sweet smelling offering to Deity; if the latter, he merely performed a “ splendid vice.” The motive, not the act, is the thing to be considered. If men slay, ravish, and destroy for the glory of God, the motive not only condones, but consecrates, the act. Hence, in the early history of Christianity, the practice of lying for the good of the Church was not only allowed, but considered praiseworthy. To require universal belief in one particular faith, and to condemn to eternal perdition those who are unable to comply therewith, is not the most moral doctrine. Truly, a book that teaches that “many are called but few are chosen,” or, in other words, that the majority of our fellow creatures are to be cast into a burning lake, cannot assist to promote the happiness and good of mankind. The tendency of such teaching as this cannot have a beneficial effect, inasmuch as it often produces mutual hatred between man and man. Artificial and unjust distinctions of govern­ ment and of classes have often produced ill-feeling between man and man; but that evil has been increased by the religious distinctions based upon Biblical teaching. The natural law of love is simple and clear. It is a duty to love all men until we have reason to believe that the trust is mis­ placed or abused. It then becomes necessary to slightly �BIBLE MORALITY. 3 modify our conduct as an act of self-defence; hence the enactment of laws for the repression of crime and the curtail­ ment of injury. If a man’s belief teaches him that he can persecute, we have a right to be upon our guard, for we know from bitter experience that such belief has frequently shaped itself into conduct. But whatever man believes about matters that do not affect his conduct should produce in us neither love nor hatred towards him. His belief may be ever so curious, absurd, unreal, and fantastic, ever so ridiculous and self-contradictory, and in proportion of its partaking of those qualities it may excite and amuse us; but it ought not to make us respect or dislike him one whit more. With the Bible it is quite different: its defect con­ sists in its teaching us to love and respect certain people who believe certain things which have no direct beneficial bearing on their conduct; while we are to avoid those whose lives may be a model of purity and benevolence, but who cannot subscribe to a certain faith. The great principle of Bible morality is supposed to be contained in the Ten Commandments. The Decalogue, we are assured, enunciates moral lessons, against which no sub­ stantial objections can be brought. There are two versions of the Decalogue given in the Old Testament, varying in certain not unimportant particulars. Moses brought down, we are informed, the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai, where he had been having a tete-d-tete with the Lord. They were written on stone, and were copied off for future generations in Exodus xx. They are also given in Deuter­ onomy v.; but that was merely from memory, when Moses had become somewhat advanced in age. It is not surpris­ ing, therefore, that he should insert certain interpolations in the second giving of the law which are absent from the first. How this incongruity can be reconciled with the doc­ trine of the Divine inspiration of the Bible may be left for Christians to decide among themselves. The Decalogue is divided into two parts : that which relates to man’s duty to God, and that which relates to the mutual duties of man to man. It is worthy of notice that, although the second half contains six commands, and the former half only four, nevertheless the first half is a great deal longer than the second. Most of the commands of the second half are con­ tained in the most condensed form. The second, third, �4 bible morality. and fourth Commandments are all developments of the first. 7 he first really contains or assumes the three which succeed it. The first? which is, “ Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” of course involves the second against idolatry, the third against blasphemous swearing, and the fourth en­ joining restful remembrance of the creation of the world by God. It is curious, while God in these Commandments had so much to say in giving a complete code of conduct to his creatures, and confining himself as he did within the limits of a certain number of Hebrew characters, written on a stone small enough for a man to carry down the side of a steep mountain, that he should have wasted so much time in telling them how to behave to him, and have left so little space to contain what was far more important—viz., the rules to regulate our conduct to each other. The whole prescribed duty of man to man is contained in seventy­ seven words. The second Commandment brings out that particular character of the Christian God which is so con­ spicuous in other parts of the Bible. We are not to make and bow down to images. Very good advice, we readily admit. But why are we not to do so ? Is there any appeal to the generous and reverential sentiments of the human heart ? Surely a noble and good God would have said something similar to this : “ Thou shalt not bow down thy­ self to them, nor serve them; for I, the Lord thy God, am a great, beneficent, and generous God, with a wide, allembracing love. Thou shalt not degrade thy soul nor debase thy being by worshipping the gods of the heathen. I am your only father, who made and cares for you, and your place of reverence and trust is in the all-sustaining hollow of my hand.” Had the Deity said this, and proved his sincerity by appropriate actions subsequently towards his subjects, it would have done more to have won the affec­ tions of his children to him than the whole of his present recorded sayings contained from Genesis to Revelation. But no; we find that a sordid appeal is made partly to the mean fears, and partly to the paternal affections, of the Jews. They are forbidden to worship other gods: “ For I, the ILord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of rthe fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” Fancy a great, Almighty (God, creator of the earth, being jealous of the estranged �BIBLE MORALITY. 5 affection of an unfortunate Jew! But this is in keeping with the general character of the Christian Deity, and most of his particular and immediate acquaintances. The part of the Decalogue which has reference to us, as members of society, is so brief, in comparison to that which has been occupied by theology and the requirements of God, that little room is left for the introduction of rewards and punish­ ments which are to follow the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of so important a behest as “ Thou shalt not kill.” But the punishment of idolatry, a most cruel, unjust, and revengeful one, is given at full length. The fifth Commandment, “ Honour thy father and mother,” is certainly, as far as it goes, an excellent one. It comes home to the heart of everyone who has the feelings of love and duty within him. We can take no possible exception to its request. But the reason given for its fulfilment is as selfish as it is untrue. Yielding to no one in the belief that filial affection and re­ verence are not only duties, but carry with them (as all virtues do to some extent) their own reward in the satisfac­ tion of an approving sense of right, it has yet to be shown that the keeping of the first part of this command will secure the accomplishment of the second. Honouring parents does not invariably carry with it the fulfilment of the pro­ mise, “ Thy days shall be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” The best of sons have frequently been called upon to pay the last debt of nature when still in the bloom and vigour of their manhood, while some of the worst of characters live to a comparatively old age, a grief to their parents and a disgrace to themselves. Though, therefore, we would echo the command, “ Children, obey your parents,” we would also say : Do so, not from any selfish hope of personal gain or long life, but for the love you should have for those who have toiled for and protected you through years of infancy and helplessness. Duty, gratitude, and affection should be the inspiration to obedience, not the grovelling incentive given by the Bible. But may not this be taken as a fair sample of Bible teaching ? When­ ever we discover a noble thought, a just precept, or a gener­ ous sentiment, we generally find it surrounded by much that is impracticable, misleading, and fallacious. The sixth, seventh, and eighth Commandments call for no special remark, save that, when they point out the extremes of �6 BIBLE MORALITY. certain vices, and forbid their indulgence, they fail to state how far persons may go in their direction without commit­ ting fatal errors; and this difficulty is all the greater when we reflect that these were the very Commandments which most of God’s favourites had the greatest predilection for break­ ing- The chief object of the ninth Commandment is its limitation. Why should the word “ neighbour ” be intro­ duced in the prohibition of false swearing? It is equally a wrong to swear falsely against a stranger as against a neigh­ bour. The tenth Commandment is the only one of the second part of the Decalogue which errs by excess of Puri­ tanism. There can be no harm, for instance, in coveting a neighbour’s house if sufficient compensation is offered to in­ duce him to give up the lease; and, if we did not occasionally covet our neighbour’s oxen, beefsteaks and surloins would be even more scarce among the working classes than they are at present. Speaking broadly, the one great objection to the Decalogue is the absence of any noble, inspiring principle of conduct. It teaches no real love, no true charity; it is a penal code, not a rule of life. Orthodox believers are continually proclaiming that love is the foundation of Biblical ethics; the fact is, however, that, if human actions were regulated by some teachings of the Bible, there would be but few manifestations of love. To kill the inhabitants of a conquered city, and to save none alive (Deut. xx. io-i6),is a peculiar mode of exhibiting love to our fellow men. The conduct of Christ was not calculated to inspire us with a superabundance of love when he said: “Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my father which is in heaven ” (Matt. x. 33); or when he stated : “ But those mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither and slay them before me” (Luke xix. 27). Here we have an indication of that unforgiving and revengeful spirit which destroys true affection. If there be any truth in the popular notions of sin and forgiveness, it was not moral for Christ to act as he did when speaking in a parable to his disciples. They, not being able to understand him, asked him for an explanation of what he then said. His reply was : “ Unto you is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but, unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables; that seeing, they may see and not perceive, �BIBLE MORALITY. 7 and hearing, they may hear and not understand, lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins be forgiven them ” (Mark iv.). This is not only partial and unjust, but a planned determination to teach so mysteriously that people should not learn the truth, in case they should thereby be saved. Such a mode of advocacy would be deemed in­ jurious, indeed, in these days, and is only equalled by the following “ inspired ” information to certain persons : “ And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteous­ ness ” (2 Thess. ii. n, 12). We are advised to be holy, even as God is holy; but what is holiness according to Bible morality? If a “Divine” sanction to a thing constitutes it holy, then deceit, murder, lying, and the deepest kind of cruelty are allied with Scriptural holiness. In 2 Kings x. God is represented as rewarding the following crimes, and thereby giving the Bible sanction to the worst kind of im­ morality. Jehu, having become King of Israel, commences his reign with a series of murders. Having resolved upon the destruction of the house of Ahab, Jehu commences his task in a manner possible only to those who fight with the “ zeal of the Lord.” Killing all who were likely to obstruct him in the carrying out of his base object, he arrived at Samaria, his purpose being to slay all the worshippers of Baal. In order, therefore, that he might entrap them all into one slaughter house, he announced that he was a great worshipper of Baal, and that he had come to offer a mighty sacrifice to this idol. By this craft he succeeded in drawing all the worshippers of Baal together. When the unfortunate victims were assembled, tendering their sacrifices, Jehu ordered his captains to go in and slay them, allowing none to escape. Accordingly, they were all sacrificed to the treachery of this “ servant of the Lord.” And this conduct is approved by God; for in verse 30 is recorded : “ And the Lord said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in executing that which is right in mine eyes, and hast done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in mine heart, thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.” Bible morality is further illustrated in the case of Samuel (1 Samuel xvi. 1-4). This prophet is commanded by God to go on a certain mission under false �8 BIBLE MORALITY. pretences, and with a direct falsehood upon his lips. Now, is it moral to deceive and murder ? If not, why did God command and encourage such vices ? And why should men be invited to imitate the example of one who practised such immoralities ? Biblical ethics are alleged to be based upon the “holiness of God.” In order to ascertain what that “holiness ” really is, it is only necessary to read Genesisxxx. and xxxi., where immorality, ingratitude, deceit, and theft are found to be ascribed to Jacob, who was encouraged and beloved by God; Exodus ix. 13-16, where people are' seen to have been raised up by God for the very pur­ pose of being “cut off from the earth;” Exodus xxxii., for an account of the anger, injustice, and cruelty of Moses, culminating in the slaughter of thousands of human beings at the command of God ; Joshua vi., viii., and x., for a record of his reckless murder of thousands of human beings, among whom were men, women, and children, at the special command of God; 2 Samuel xii. n-31, for adultery and cruelty in connection with David; and then peruse Psalms xxxviii. and cix. for a confession of a life of deceit, lying, and licentiousness. Yet we are told that David “ was a man after God’s own heart,” and that he “kept God’s com­ mandments, and did that only which was right in his eyes ” (1 Kings xiv. 8). Such maybe Biblical morality; but it is certainly opposed to Secular ideas of ethical philosophy. The teachings of the Bible in reference to slavery are barbarously unjust. According to its permit, men and women can be bought and sold like cattle, the weak being compelled to serve the strong. In Exodus xxi. 2-6 we have a most cruel law for regulating this “ Bible institution,” the cruelty and injustice of which law are two-fold. First, if the slave when he is bought be single, and if, during his seven years of slavery, he marries and becomes a father, then, at the expiration of his time, his wife and children are his master’s, and the slave goes out free. Is this moral ? What becomes of the poor man’s paternal affections ? Isthe love for his wife nothing ? Is he to be separated from that he holds dear, and to see the object of his affectionsgiven to the man who for seven years had robbed him of his independence and his manhood? If, however, the poor victim’s love for his wife and children be stronger than his desire for liberty, what is his fate? He is to be brought �BIBLE MORALITY. 9 to the door, have his ear bored with an awl, and doomed to serve his master forever. Thus Bible morality makes per­ petual slavery and physical pain the punishments of the exercise of the purest and best feelings of human nature. Where is the moral lesson in the statement: “ And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after; for oxen or for sheep, or for wine or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth ; and thou shalt eat there before the Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou and thine household ” ? If this is not giving a license to the worst of passions, words have no meaning. But Bible morality strikes at the manhood and happiness of man. It stifles our tenderest affections, and urges the exercise of the cruellest passions by teaching that a man may kill the wife of his bosom if she dare to entice him secretly from his God (Deut. xiii. 6-9). Where is the man who will so far belie his nature as to accept such morality as this ? Unfortunately, Bible teachings have frequently caused a complete severance and breaking up of the ties of affection in families. The Bible commands its believers to leave father, mother, sister, and brother to follow Christ. According to its teachings, it is justifiable to break up a certain and a human bond that we may get a problematical chance of a problematical blessedness in a problematical future. There are few, doubt­ less, who have not learned in their own sad experience how the family tie has been often disunited by Christian teach­ ings. Brothers and sisters have been separated for years from the home of their childhood because they dared to emancipate themselves from the shackles of the prevailing faith. Accepting the term “ moral ” as expressing whatever is calculated to promote general progress and happiness, what morality is contained in the following passages from the Bible : “ Take no thought for your life “ Resist not evil “ Blessed be ye poor“ Labour not for the bread which perisheth “ Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward “ Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called“ Submit yourself to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake “ Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God............ Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the �IO BIBLE MORALITY. ordinance of God, and they that resist shall receive to them­ selves damnation”? Were these injunctions obeyed, health, independence of character, and political progress would be ignored. For the reforms we have hitherto secured we are indebted to men and women who practically disregarded the Bible, and based their conduct upon the principle of utility. To teach, as the Bible does, that wives are to be subject to their husbands in everything (Eph. v.); to “set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth ” (Colos. iii.); to “ love not the world, neither the things that are in the world ’* (i John ii.); to “ lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth” (Matt, vi.), is not to inculcate the principle of equality, or to inspire man with a desire to take an interest in “the things of time.” Whatever service the Bible may render in gratifying the tastes of the superstitious, it cannot, to men of thought and energy, be of any great moral worth. To persecute for non-belief of any teaching, but more particularly of speculative questions, is not in accordance with ethical justice. Is it true that the Bible encourages persecution for the non-belief in, or the rejection of, its teachings ? If yes, so far at least is its moral worth lessened. For belief in the truth of a doctrine, or the wisdom of a precept, is, to the honest inquirer, the result of the recogni­ tion on his part of sufficient evidence in their favour. When­ ever that evidence is absent, disbelief will be found, except among the indifferent or the hypocritical. Now, in the Bible there are many things that the sincere thinker is com­ pelled, through lack of evidence, to reject. What does the New Testament inculcate towards such persons? When Christ sent his disciples upon a preaching expedition he said (Matt, x.) : “Whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city shake off the dust of your feet.” This, we are informed by Oriental writers, was a mode in the East of showing hatred towards those against whom the dust was shaken. The punishment threatened those who refused the administra­ tions of the disciples is most severe, for “ it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.” In St. John xv. we read : “If a man abideth not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” This accords with the gloomy �BIBLE MORALITY. II announcement (2 Thess. i.): “ The Lord Jesus shall be re­ vealed from heaven, with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe.” Again (Mark xvi.) : “ He that believeth not shall be damned.” St. Paul exclaims (Gal. i.): “If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” He also says (1 Tim. vi. 3-5): “ If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to the wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ ....... he is proud, knowing nothing......... From such withdraw thyself.” “ Of whom is Hymenseus and Alexander ; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme” (1 Tim. i. 20). In these passages persecution and punishment are clearly taught for disbelief. And that such teaching has had an immoral tendency the excommu­ nications, the imprisonments, and sacrifice of the lives of heretics in connection with the history of Christianity abun­ dantly prove. Orthodox Christians contend that the Bible is a necessary factor in the educational system of all nations. While admitting the necessity of instruction in the affairs of daily life, they allege that a question of far greater importance is the preparation for existence “beyond the grave.” They profess to be impressed with the notion that there is a city of refuge in store for them when they arrive at the end of life’s journey; and, having to encounter many storms and difficulties ere they reach this supposed haven of rest, they feel assured that the Bible is a sufficient guide to carry them safely over the sea of time, and land them securely in the harbour of eternity. They therefore rely on this book as if it were unerring in its directions and infallible in its commands. Now, there is ample reason to doubt the capability of this Christian guide. Its inability, however, as an instructor and guide does not arise from any lack of variety of contents. The Bible contains a history of the cosmogony of the earth, and the story of man’s fall from what is termed his first estate of perfection and happiness. Then we have the �12 BIBLE MORALITY. history of God’s chosen people, from their uprise to their national extinction, with a record of the Jewish laws, speci­ fying those acts most calculated to propitiate the favour and secure the rew’ard of heaven, and those which are con­ demned, with their appropriate and stipulated punishments. We have also glimpses of the histories of other nations, the causes of their fall, and the account of their national sins, which drew down upon them that wrath of heaven which extinguished or sorely punished them. Following this, there is the story of Job—the lessons to be derived from the sudden collapse of his worldly greatness, and his soliloquies upon the mysteries of nature and of providence. Next come the Psalms—a copious manual of praise, prayer, cursing, and penitence, followed by the woes, lamentations, and mis­ fortunes of a host of prophets—some practical, some mystical, and some evangelical—together with the four different versions of the life, actions, and death of Christ; a short account of the early doings of the Church, recorded in several epistles written by sundry apostles, culminating in the strange and extraordinary nightmare of St. John the Divine. Now, any man who fails to discover in so large a field materials by which to regulate his life must do so, not from the scarcity, but the valuelessness, of the article supplied. In estimating the real value of the Bible as a moral guide it must be taken as a whole, by which is meant those books of the Old and New Testaments which are bound together and commonly called the Word of God. And here a ques­ tion arises that, if the knowledge of the whole Bible be necessary to our future happiness, which according to St. John it is, why is it that so many of the books that originally constituted the Bible are lost ? If the testimony of the book itself can be accepted, we have only a portion of what at one time composed the Bible. In Numbers a quotation is given from a book called “ The Book of the Wars of the Lord;” in Judges and Samuel we read of “The Book of Jasher;” in Kings mention is made of “The Book of the Acts of Solomon and in Chronicles of “ The Account of the Chronicles of King David.” We further read of “The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah ” and “ The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel.” Allusion is also made to “ The Book of Nathan the Prophet ” and to �BIBLE MORALITY. 13 “The Book of Gad the Seer.” Notwithstanding the loss of these books, Christians exclaim, How wonderfully their book has been preserved ! Even the portions that are re­ tained are so full of mistakes, errors, and corruptions that its intelligent supporters are compelled to give the greater part of it up as incapable of defence, while those who still contend for its “ divinity ” hesitate to come forward and support it in public debate. Another question suggests itself: Are we to consider the Old. Testament as the Word of God ? If so, upon the Christian hypothesis, its teachings are equally as deserving of our respect as are those of the New Testament. If, on the other hand, the Old Testament is not intended for our acceptance, why is it preached and enforced as God’s Word ? True, it is sometimes stated that the Hebrew writings are useful for instruction, although they are not of the same authority with Christians as the New Testament. But here it is overlooked that the New Testament is founded upon the Old, and often appeals to it to corroborate its statements. Furthermore, the New Testament distinctly says that the Old was written by good and holy men for our instruction, etc. Besides, does not Christ emphatically state that he did not come to destroy its authority ? “ Think not,” says he, “ that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven ; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” Here is a command not to break even one of the least of the com­ mandments. Again, Christ says: “The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat; whatsoever they bid you ob­ serve, that observe and do.” Among a collection of Chris­ tian stories occurs the following anecdote :—A person once asked a poor, illiterate old woman what she deemed to be the difference between the Old and New Testaments, to which she replied : “ The Old Testament is the New Testa­ ment concealed, and the New Testament is the Old Testa­ ment revealed.” This has been triumphantly quoted by Christian writers to show the harmony existing between the �14 BIBLE MORALITY. two books. But it is absurd and contradicts facts. The assumption is, that the Old Testament is the partial statement of a body of truths, from which the New Testament differs not in kind, but only in degree. It is supposed that nothing in the New Testament contradicts what is stated in the Old, but only reveals and amplifies with a clearer light what had already been stated partially and under allegorical semblance in the Old. Now, so far is this from being correct that it would be difficult to find any two alleged bodies of sacred truths which differ from and contradict each other more than the divine revelation made through Moses and the prophets, and the revelation made through Christ and his Apostles. For instance, Moses taught that retaliation was a duty, while Christ strictly prohibits it. With Moses persecutors were put to the edge of the sword; with Christ, however, they were to be blessed. Under the old system, good works and a virtuous life were the conditions of Divine favour and reward, and bad works and a vicious life were to incur Divine disfavour and punishment. Under the new system, faith is the all-in-all, the essential condition of salvation. A proof of the inadequacy of the Bible as a guide and instructor is furnished by what are termed the “ liberal Christians.” Here we have men of the best intentions and of high intellectual acquirements refusing to accept the Bible as an absolute guide, or as an infallible instructor. With such persons the Bible has no value as “ infallible revela­ tion.” If, however, the Bible is not an infallible record, it is simply a human production, and has no more claim upon us, except what its merits inspire, than any other book. Is it not rather inconsistent to contend, as these liberal Chris­ tians do, that certain portions of the Bible are “ divine,” while the other parts are simply human ? If every Chris­ tian sect put forward similar contentions, there would be but few parts of the “ Holy Scriptures ” that would not be divine and human at the same time, according to the respec­ tive opinions of different classes of believers. But how are we to decide what is “ divine ” and what is human ? To what standard shall we appeal ? What criterion have we by which to test its genuineness ? Shall we accept the authority of the Protestant or the Catholic Church ? Shall we judge from the standpoint of the Trinitarians or the Unitarians? For the Bible to be trustworthy as a guide it should be �BIBLE MORALITY. 15 reliable in its statements and harmonious in its doctrines. That it is not so will be evident from the following reference to its pages. The Bible teaches that God is omniscient and omnipresent; yet in Gen. xi. 5 we read that the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of menbuilded; and in Gen. xviii. 20, 21: “And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me ; and, if not, I will know.” It teaches that God is immutable ; yet, on several occasions, we find him changing his mind, repenting, and sometimes turning back from his repentance; as in the great instance (Gen. vi. 6) : “ And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at the heart ” (also 1 Sam. xv. 10, 11). God told Balaam to go with the men (Num. xxii., 20), and was angry with him because he went (Num. xxii. 21, 22). It teaches that God is invisible, yet we read (Gen. xxxii. 30) : “And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel; for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved and (Ex. xxiv. 9, 10): “Then up went Moses, and Aaron, and Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and they saw the God of Israeland, again (Ex. xxxiii. 11,23): “ And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend....... And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts; but my face shall not be seen and, finally (Gen. xviii.), we have the remarkable though perplexed account of the Lord paying a visit to Abraham in the plains of Mamre, and eating with him of cakes, butter, milk, and veal. It teaches that God is all good ■, yet we read (Isa. xlv. 7): “I form the light and create darkness : I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things and (Lam. iii. 38): “ Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good ?” and (Ezekiel xx. 25): “ Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live.” It teaches that God is no respecter of persons ; yet we read (Gen. iv. 4, 5): “And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering ; but unto Cain and his offering he had no respect;” and (Ex. ii. 25) : “ And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them;” and (Rom. ix. 11-13) : “For the children being not yet �16 BIBLE MORALITY, born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God, according to election, might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth ; it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” And, in fact, nearly the whole Bible story is that of a chosen people, preferred above all other nations, surely for no superior goodness on their part! It teaches (Ex. xx. 5) that God is a jealous God, “ visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;” yet we read (Ezekiel xviii. 20): “ The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.” It teaches that Christ is God (John i. 1, 14; Heb. i. 8); yet we read (John viii. 40) : “ But now ye seek to kill me, a man that has told you the truth, which I have heard of God;” also (1 Tim. ii. 5): “ One mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.” It teaches (John x. 30) that Christ and his father are one ; yet we read (John xiv. 28): “For my father is greater than I.” It teaches (John xvi. 30; Col. ii. 3) that Jesus knew all things ; yet we read (Mark xi. 13): “And seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find anything thereon; and, when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet■” and, far more significant (Mark xiii. 32) : “ But of that day and that hour knoweth no man ; no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” It teaches of Jesus (John viii. 14): “ Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true; for I know whence I came, and whither I go ;” yet we read (John v. 31): “ If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.” It teaches further (1 Tim. ii. 6) that he gave himself a ransom for all; yet we read (Matt. xv. 24): “ I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel;” and (Mark vii. 26, 27): “The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled; for it is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it unto the dogs.” It teaches that miracles are proofs of a divine mission (Matt. ix. 6; John v. 36 ; Heb. ii. 4); yet (Deut. xiii. 1-3; Matt. xxiv. 24; 2 Thess. ii. 9) warns against false prophets and anti-Christs, who shall show great signsand wonders. It teaches in many passages of the New �BIBLE MORALITY. 17 Testament that the end of the world is at hand, as in Matt, xxiv., 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52; 1 Thess. iv. 15; 1 Peter iv. 7; yet we read (2 Thess. ii. 2, 3): “ That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means.” Further, on this subject, we read (Matt. x. 23), in which Jesus is addressing the Apostles he sent forth : “Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be comeyet we read (Matt. xxiv. 14) : “ And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come and, similarly (Mark xiii. 10): “And the gospel must first be published among all nations.” It teaches (Luke i. 33 ; Heb. i. 8) that the kingdom of Christ shall endure forever; yet we read, in one of the most remarkable passages of the New Testament (1 Cor. xv. 24, 25, 28) : “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet........ And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all-in-all.” It teaches that the Holy Ghost is God (Acts v. 3, 4); yet we read (John xv. 26): “ But when the Com­ forter is come, whom shall I send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father and, again (John xiv. 16): “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter and, again (Acts x. 38); “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power.” Finally, it teaches that “ all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable” (2 Tim. iii. 16); yet we read (1 Cor. vii. 6, 12): “ But I speak this by per­ mission, and not of commandment....... But to the rest speak I, not the Lord and similarly (2 Cor. xi. 17) : “ That which I speak, I speak it not after the Lord, but as it were fool­ ishly, in this confidence of boasting.” The foregoing are but a few of “ apparent discrepancies,” or, as we call them, direct self-contradictions; and, be it remembered, they concern the essentials of Christianity— the three persons of the God, the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and the end of the world. The Bibliolater may �18 BIBLE MORALITY. be encouraged in the endeavour to reconcile them by the assurance that an indefinite further number, just as perplex­ ing, await solution. Those Christians who are too enlightened to accept the Bible, as it has chanced to come down to us, as in every word the very Word of God, and too free-minded to submit to the authority of a tradition which has varied with all climes and ages, or a Church whose history is a record of blunders, compromises, falsifications, self-contra­ dictions, probably unequalled in the annals of any merely secular institution whatever, manage to remain, in their own estimation, Christians, by believing that God’s saving revela­ tion to mankind is made in the Bible, and that everyone may read it for himself if he studies the volume in a re­ verent and prayerful spirit. They admit many errors of copyists, reject many passages, and even books, as decidedly spurious, and regard many others as doubtful; yet maintain that, all deductions made, there is left a clear and sufficient Divine message, whose essential character is untouched by .any of the errors or defects, and unchanged by any of the various readings. Now, this theory is certainly the most illogical which a Christian can hold ; for that of the thorough Bibliolater is consistent in its blind submission of reason to faith ; and the Roman and Church views are equally consistent in their blind submission to faith and tradition and ecclesiastical authority; while this new theory seeks and pretends to •conciliate things which are essentially irreconcilable—reason and faith, freethought and revelation, liberty and servitude, the natural and the supernatural. But, as it is the theory of some of the best and ablest of our religious fellow-citizens, and of those who are most heartily with us in much sound Secular work, it practically claims a fuller consideration here than it intrinsically merits. In the first place, it is evidently open to the fatal objec­ tion that it makes man the measure and standard of his God, setting up certain Scriptures as supernatural and Divine, then subjecting them to the arbitrament of human nature, the reason and conscience of the creature. Each of those who hold it says in effect: “ Here are books pur­ porting to contain the Word of God, and I believe they do contain it, but mixed with many vain words of men; �BIBLE MORALITY. 19 therefore, what suits me I shall consider Divine, and what does not suit me I shall reject.” Numerous clever attempts ■have been made to smooth away this sharp self-contradic­ tion ; but, so far as we are aware, and as was to be expected, not one that can be deemed even plausible by any candid outsider. There is but one mode of getting rid of it—a mode swift and effectual, obvious, and facile in theory; but, as long experience proves, very hard to put into practice— .and this is to surrender the initial claim of Divine inspira­ tion of the books, when, of course, it would be quite natural and consistent to sit in judgment on them, as on any other human writing, welcoming what in them we find good and true, rejecting what we find bad and false. It is indeed alleged that the special grace of the Holy Spirit always illumines and guides every one who studies these books in the proper frame of mind; but, as we find, in fact, that no two serious students read quite alike—each .reading in accordance with his peculiar temperament, intel­ lect, training, and circumstances, precisely as he would read were there no Holy Spirit in question—the said special grace, having no perceptible effect, may be safely left out of the calculation. Innumerable sectaries, all alike devout and sincere, all alike drawing their inspiration from the Bible, have differed widely on the very fundamental doc­ trines of Christianity; and we never heard of the Holy Spirit doing anything towards bringing these brethren into unity. A Christian eclectic submits the Bible to the test of his own reason and conscience, which have been educated and purified, not by the book itself, nor by any supernatural grace, but by the results of a long and gradual progress in secular enlightenment and civilisation ; which progress has been at nearly every step opposed on the authority of the book, and in the name of the religion founded on it. Doc­ trines that now revolt the common conscience did not in former centuries revolt the consciences of men who were taught by the book and purified by the Holy Spirit. It is not by special grace, nor revelation of the Holy Scriptures, but by critical scholarship, that men have come now to decide as to the genuineness and authenticity, the date and authority, of the various portions. Until free learning was revived at the classical or heathenish Renaissance, the Holy Spirit was content to leave all the most pious Biblical �20 BIBLE MORALITY. students in very deep darkness as to nearly all the points ott which our eclectic Christians are now so clearly enlightened. The family ideal set forth in the Bible is certainly not one of a high ethical nature. The domestic relationship of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and Solomon could not be emulated to-day without practising gross injustice,and submitting to utter moral degradation. The IndoEuropean race has developed in morals as in knowledge, and two thousand years ago, when Germanicus led the Roman legions, he beheld with wonder the respect with which the ignorant, rude, and warlike Germans treated their wives and daughters. It is an insult to civilised women for any one to commend the family ideal of those who made woman a slave. Even Christ is represented as treating women as if they were necessarily inferior to men ; while his conduct to his mother, his commendation and personal practice of celibacy, and his encouraging others to renounce their own obligations to their families, are not calculated to shed a halo of peace and happiness within the home circle. Moreover, St. Paul’s doctrine of the absolute submission of wives to their husbands can hardly be offered us to admire as an ideal. The Secularist family ideal is far superior to that of the Bible, inasmuch as it is on a level with the ethics of our societarian development. It teaches that marriage should be the result of mutual affection, and that such a union creates the responsibility of undivided allegiance, mutual fidelity, and mutual consideration. It affirms that in the domestic circle there should be no one-sided, absolute authority; that husband and wife should be partners in deed, not only in theory, animated alike by the desire to promote each other’s happiness. The basis of Bible morality, being God’s will, is very delusive, for the simple reason that, if such a will has been recorded, it is not known to us; and the conjectured repre­ sentations of it given to us by theologians of all ages are impracticable and conflicting. In the Bible there is not to be found only one will ascribed to its Deity, but many; and those are as contradictory as they are various. For instance, murder, adultery, theft, deceit, and other crimes can be proved from the Bible to be opposed to the expressed desire of God, as given in the Scriptures; while upon the �BIBLE MORALITY. 21 same authority these crimes can be shown to accord with God’s will. The result is, it is impossible to regulate human conduct upon the sanctions of either the “ inspired ” records. It is this peculiar nature of Bible teachings which was, prob­ ably, the cause of the early Christians lying for the glory of the Church (see Mosheim’s “ Ecclesiastical History ”), and of Christians at a more modern period robbing and murder­ ing those whom they termed heretics. In doing what they did in this persecuting business, the Bible believers, no doubt, thought that they were acting in accordance with •“God’s will,” as set forth in the “ Divine revelation.” The founders and promoters of those body-and-mind-destroying institutions, the Inquisition and the Star Chamber, were in all probability sincere, and many of them in the affairs of every-day life, apart from theology, good men. In religious matters, however, they were cruel and inhuman in the extreme. Why was this ? Because, no doubt, in punishing even to death those who opposed the true faith, they thought they were following the Bible as a guide (see Deuteronomy xiii. 6-9). The acceptance of the Bible as a standard of morality involves also the recognition of teachings and doctrines that are conflicting and impracticable. In one place we are told that faith alone will save us (Romans iii. 27, 28); while in another portion of this same “ authority ” we are assured that works are necessary to secure salvation (James ii. 24). In St. John we read, “No man cometh unto the Father but by me ” [Christ] (xiv. 6); and in the same gospel it is recorded, “ No man can come to me [Christ] except the Father draw him ” (vi. 44). This makes salvation depend, not upon man, but upon God. In John it is written, “ For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one while Timothy states distinctly that “ there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” The New Testament teaches that Christ brought glad tidings for all men ; yet we are assured that he came but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel—that many are called, but few are chosen. In one chapter we learn that all sin can be forgiven, while in another part of the same book it is said that the sin against the Holy Ghost is never to be for­ given. In Timothy we read : “ For this is good and accept­ �22 BIBLE MORALITY. able in the sight of God our Saviour, who will have all mento be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.’7' But this cannot be if it is true that “ for this cause God shall send them strong delusions, that they should believe a lie.” If the delusions are sent by God, and if in conse­ quence mankind believe a lie, and get punished hereafter for such belief, it is only fair to suppose that God’s will was that they should not come to a knowledge of the truth; which contradicts what is stated in Timothy. John assuresus that “ whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” This is very consoling when we read the following : “ If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters—yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” To be a disciple of Christ you must hate your brother ; you are thus a mur­ derer, and “no murderer hath eternal life.” If you wish, therefore, to have eternal life, you must not become a dis­ ciple of Christ. Martyrdom by death may not always be the best way to advance a principle, inasmuch as more good can generally be done by living for a cause than by dying for it. But Christians say the martyrdom of the early Christians proves the truth of their doctrines, and in support of their contention they quote the words of Jesus : “ And I [Jesus] say unto you, My friends, be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.” These words, it is thought, prove that Jesus taught and held life cheaply, in order to advance more readily his doctrines. It appears, however, from John that Christ did what many of his followers now do—taught one thing and practised another; for on one occasion John says, “ Jesus walked in Galilee; for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.” What are we to do in this case—follow Christ’s teaching, or his example ? To follow both is impossible. Some persons condemn all war upon the ground that it is anti-Scriptural, and in their justi­ fication they quote Matthew, where he says : “ Then said Jesus unto them, Put up again thy sword into its place; for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” The soldier, on the other hand, tells the peace man that we ought to possess swords ; for in Luke it is said : “ He that hath no sword let him sell his garments and buy one.” �BIBLE MORALITY. 23 Both would be equally justified, and both would be equally condemned, by the New Testament—a very perplexing position to be in. But the man fond of fighting would keep his sword, believing that the more Christianity became spread the more use there would be for the sword, as Christ declared: “ Think not that I am come to send peace on earth : I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” If Christ had succeeded in his object -—and he has partially—the advocate of the sword would have had good grounds for justification. St. Paul considers charity the highest of virtues, without which all other acquirements are as nothing. But then he immediately destroys the efficacy of such teaching by the following command : “ As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” We are told that “ wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom.” But we are also assured that in much wisdom there is much grief, and that he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. It is folly to guide man to wisdom, telling him that it is better than riches, while he is taught that “ the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God.” Where is the incentive for a youth to acquire knowledge when St. Paul says, “It is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the pru­ dent ” ? From these samples of the incoherent nature of Bible statements and teachings, it will be seen how impossible it is to rely implicitly on such a book as a guide in human conduct. True, Christians may urge that there is no con­ tradiction in the cases cited; that the Bible is God’s Word, and must therefore be all true. It is in vain that the student points out that this revelation abounds with impos­ sibilities and absurdities, for he is reminded that with God all things are possible, therefore let “ God be true, and every man a liar.” It is further urged that the mistakes occur through our lack of comprehension ; that the Scrip­ tures would be plain enough if we could only “ see our way clear ” to accept them as gospel; and that the depravity of our nature prevents us viewing revealed truth in a spiritual �24 BIBLE MORALITY. light. These are the sentiments of many who profess to accept the Bible as a guide. Truly, we must become as little children if we endorse the doctrine of Scriptural infalli­ bility. The conduct of those who, in the face of such incon­ sistency, contend for Bible infallibility is something more than foolish; it is criminal. To shelter all that the Bible contains under the halo of “ divinity ” is to pay homage to the worst of human weaknesses. If a man is to pursue an intellectual career; if he is to foster a manly independence; if he is to live a life of integrity, he must not be bound either by ancient folly or modern orthodoxy; but, unfettered, he should learn the lessons afforded by a knowledge of the facts of nature, and from the discoveries of science acquire those rules which through life will be a surer counsellor than the Bible, and a safer guide than theology. � 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 Bible morality Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Watts, Charles Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 24 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: From the NSS pamphlet collection. Title in KVK given as 'Bible Morality: Its Teachings Shown to be Contradictory and Defective as an Ethical Guide'. Publication given in KVK as London : Watts and Co., [19--]. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [19--] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA1582 N658 Subject The topic of the resource Bible Ethics 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 /><p>This work (Bible morality), identified by <span><a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p> 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 Bible-Criticism NSS Philosophy and Religion https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/a23bab24c7f801996b78c48a5980b5f6.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=ndA0jVDxAbq02kgVx2OuYqE14YaLDq9ju4sbmy1r9I8LUmATXrFzJm496aBzeD5dB4VePKFCmrDgC7VDx6HwhHUzuyp7mG3-LzFZoC-m0QXBwVHtsbP-fBhbHQSCaupkV94koCRoOtHZ%7EwmkoLYnemS8OW7xcnWQ7r-yYxVJx7lp38zO17GDYSjFr51FCLRtkbUU5Wv6vAE1uA8GSa-ap3PWiSWi%7ELsPpz4A2nH3YNdOSTRy4ra-EWtwTsCsn1pwGiafhL52YBq1EVOX5sFZmsnz5kDd-MyLSXLxEo%7ERKBkDJbX7zfZywHIQhYGLHPX1HAjD563obYitBj32yYhg7A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 1a6cbf8707dd7b0b2aade17c51c38a63 PDF Text Text NATIONAL MAKERS RUTH, SAMUEL, DAVID SOLOMON & OTHERS MOSES JOSHUA AND JUDGES Jk BY ARTHUR B. MOSS. London: WATTS & Co., 84, FLEET STREET, E.C. Price One Penny. ��BIBLE-MAKERS. ------- u ... j -n'I. oil n3XGVA,ni.?.9ffj;. , Git*, !Rrri»rf fBiw fritH MOSES. ‘ ‘ 1 J Emerson says that “the sacred books of each nation express for each the supreme result of their experience.” This is undoubtedly true. By reference to the sacred writings of a people we can, to a very large extent, form a correct estimate of their intellectual and moral ad­ vancement. A Bible, in fact, should be the result of the joint labours of the best scientist, moralist, social reformer, historian, poet, dramatist, and novelist of the time in which it is written. Not that these eminent personages collaborate to produce a book, as dramatic authors now-a-days do to produce a play, one supplying the plot, the other the dialogue, and in some instances a third being called in to compose some music for a song or two, introduced for the special reason of giving the hero or heroine a chance of displaying his or her vocal talent, and relieving, in some degree, the heavy character of the piece; but each writer supplying, independent of the other, essays on those subjects with which he feels himself most conversant, sometimes venturing an opinion on matters upon which his knowledge is of the scantiest kind. Moses, or whoever the author of the Pentateuch may have been, belonged to the class of versatile writers sometimes to be found on the staff of our daily journals, who feel themselves competent to write on all subjects in heaven above and earth beneath; who can with ease polish off an article either to refute Darwin, turn Mill’s logic inside out, expose its many weaknesses, and, as a light diversion, pulverise the arguments in Mr. Glad­ stone’s latest speech into the most minute particles of rubbish it is possible to conceive, and with one whiff of journalistic wisdom scatter all that remains to the four winds of heaven. Accordingly, we find Moses figuring �4 BIBLE-MAKERS. first as a scientist, then as a historian, then as a bio­ grapher ; next, after bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt safely through the Red Sea, as a poet; and lastly as a moral teacher. Of course, it would be unreasonable to expect Moses to write ahead of the knowledge of the times in which he lived, unless, like the theologian, we credit him with being divinely inspired—a claim which, as far as I can judge, he never put forward on his own behalf. jr When Moses, on his own responsibility, made Jahveh create the earth in six days, throw into the infinite expanse the sun, moon, and stars, and finally make man and woman after his own image, he merely reflected'the current beliefs of the best informed persons of the time. Had he done more than this, he would not have succeeded in pleasing the people for whom he wrote ; and to be a successful man even in one’s own day is no small task : it is indeed to gain a position after which many strive very arduously, but which few manage to attain. To be successful through ages, to win the admiration, of the fWpeople as they increase in wisdom and goodness, is given only to a few men of rare genius, whose works shed im­ perishable lustre upon the nation in which they are born, only that it may be spread through various sources to all the peoples of the earth. “ Sufficient for the day is the success thereof” is the motto of most men of the world. A popular dramatist, upon being spoken to by a friend, a short time ago, anent the unenduring character of his work, and asked why he did not consider the judgment posterity would pronounce upon it, caustically replied : “ What do I care for posterity ? Posterity does not pay me.” And Moses and others among the Biblical writers regarded posterity with the same air of ’supercilious disregard, having seem­ ingly much more care for the certain popularity of the hour than the enduring regard of subsequent generations. Not alone in his unscientific disquisitions did Moses show that he did not possess an idea above the common pre­ vailing sentiments of the Jewish people, but he told them to act towards slaves and blasphemers in precisely the' way we may fairly suppose they would have chosen to act when left to be guided by tl^gir own uncultivated �BIBLE-MAKERS. 5 feelings and judgment. He told them to buy slaves “ of the heathen round about them,” and to brutally ill-treat them, if it pleased them so to do. He commanded them not to “ suffer a witch to live,” and to barbarously stone blasphemers to death. Mohammed, in establishing a new religion many years later, was equally careful in the Koran (chapter entitled “ The Cow ”) to warn his fol­ lowers of the fate of unbelievers, who, he said, would not believe, whether they were admonished or not. Fr; In his poetical efforts Moses was singularly tame : he sang not the song of love or labour, but of strife and warfare; and it lacked the true poetic ring. But, if his poetry was bad, his history was worse. When he records the doings of the Israelites, even though he himself is commander-in-chief, priest, and deliverer, he writes a comedy of errors, which at last degenerates into the broadest of farce. His tragic seriousness is drily and un-consciously humorous, so much so that I can fancy the late Mr. Compton causing shouts of merriment over the solemn delivery of Moses’ inimitably grotesque’ account of the plagues. Even when he is describing such a sad and shameful occurrence as the flood—a god-wrought crime unparalleled in the history of the world for its vindictiveness and cruelty—he gives Noah the stupendous task of collecting all the animals prior to packing them “ close as herrings ” in the ark, and the tragedy is un­ necessarily delayed while this unspeakably cornig, busi­ ness is enacted. As to Moses’s biographical sketches, they are sadly wanting in many important respects. He does not give us a particle of information concerning the earlier life of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, though we should be much better able to estimate their qualities if we knew howr they were trained, who were their instructors and companions, and what were the social conditions by which they were surrounded. He gives us an account of such unimportant affairs as the quarrels of Abraham’s and Lot’s servants, of Jacob’s dream, and of the angel’s acrobatic performances on the ladder; but of the career of the magnanimous Esau he supplies us only with the faintest possible out­ line. '.uo.' ..i ;• ■ As a writer of unconsciously grotesque and amusing �6 BIBLE-MAKERS. narrative, Moses was, perhaps, the equal of any of the Biblical writers. Nothing can surpass in this respect the story of Balaam’s visit to Balak on his talkative donkey, except it be the candid account of his own death and burial. But, taken altogether, spite of its many imper­ fections of style and its ludicrous stories, its tales of vice and crime and bloodshed, the Pentateuch is exceedingly interesting reading, especially to the Freethinker, who, discarding the silly notion of Divine inspiration, is better able to estimate its true value as indicating the moral and intellectual advancement of a people who, though they plume themselves on being the “chosenchildren of God,” have been one of the most unfortunate among the races of men. JOSHUA AND JUDGES. Many things, it will be admitted, are extremely doubtful in reference to the authorship of the books of the Bible; but no manner of doubt can, I imagine, exist in any thoughtMamind that Joshua was no more the writer of the book that bears his name than Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. For the purpose of having names to refer to as the accredited authors of the various books of the Bible, it will be convenient to assume that these persons were in reality responsible for the books of which they are the alleged authors. And it may at once be said that the contents of the Book of Joshua show that that personage entertained not only a very good opinion of himself, but a very poor one of everybody else. When an author is writing reminiscences of his career as a general, and describing, in vivid language, the rapine and murder of which the soldiers under his command were guilty, it is positively in bad taste to say a word on his own behalf, as though pleading for promotion or a pen­ sion, and to declare that “ his [Joshua’s] fame was noised throughout all the country.” Joshua seemed to think that fame and notoriety were much the same.. In this, however, as in most other things, he greatly erred. Any murderer may get notoriety if he only display enough brutality or callousness in the execution of the deed ; but fame can be achieved only by meritorious conduct, and �BIBLE-MAKERS. 7 we have no evidence that Joshua understood even what that meant. Being the successor of Moses, he thought it incumbent upon him to imitate, as far as possible, the deeds of wanton cruelty, deceit, and villainy which cha­ racterised his predecessor. Or, supposing that Joshua did not do these things, but merely recorded them as having happened for the edification of future generations, then he must have imagined that the people would be satisfied with stories of bloodshed, or of wonders wrought by the Lord for the special behoof of his chosen people. He must have thought, too, that the credulity of his readers was practically unlimited, and that it did not matter much how stupid the event was that he recorded, so long as something similar was said to have occurred before, or that nobody could doubt that such and such a miracle had been performed, if only the Lord could be placed in the background—behind the curtain, as it were —to act as the performer. As a historian Joshua was a dead failure. He was too ignorant to understand even ordinary events, and extraordinary occurrences simply bemuddled what little reason he may have possessed. Like all careless students of nature, he was prone to grossly exaggerate the things he saw, and to exaggerate still more mon­ strously the things that he did not see, but only heard spoken of by his friends and co-workers. He would have done very well for the war correspondent of the Daily Telephone ; for his special telegrams of one day could have been very easily contradicted on the day following by some other correspondent who was an “eye­ witness ” to the event recorded, but did not see it “ in the same light ” of the gentleman who did the special. In point of truth, Joshua was one of that class of writers —always assuming that he wrote anything at all—who could have done his correspondence, and appeared to have been on the field, just as well in the back parlour of a Fleet Street restaurant as in a rude tent near the seat of war. When Joshua wrote the account of the sun standing still upon Gideon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, he forgot for the nonce in which department of the literary staff of the said journal he was engaged, and thought �8 BIBLE-MAKERS. that his views on astronomical phenomena would be quite as acceptable to the Jewish public as his opinion on the best method of decapitating the Midianites. It was as though the sporting correspondent of a paper had ventured to send in, unsolicited, a descriptive account of an archbishop’s last sermon, or the musical critic had supplied an article on the “ germ theory of disease.” If Joshua meant that the sun stood still in order to allow him to win a battle, he must have been joking; for, as every little boy now knows, the sun, so far as this earth is concerned, never moves. But what about the moon ? Was not the light of the sun enough? Did Joshua imagine that a night-light would be of assistance in the daylight—a rushlight an important auxiliary to the sun ? If we suppose that Joshua tried to be poetic in referring to the sun and moon, his figurative language must have got slightly mixed-—he made too much of the moon. As Thomas Paine pointed out, as a figurative declaration Joshua’s is inferior to one by Mohammed, who, when a person came to expostulate with him upon his doings, retorted : “ Wert thou to come to me with the sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left, it should not alter my career.” For Joshua to have eclipsed Mohammed he should have put the sun in one pocket of his waistcoat and the moon in the other, and used them as watches—one to time his doings by day, the other to regulate his conduct by night; or, as Paine remarks, “ carried them as Guy Fawkes carried his dark lanterns, and taken them out to shine as he might happen to want them.” In addition to being special reporter, historian, poet, and commander for the Israelites, Joshua varied these occupations by occasionally acting as executioner. Among his many achievements I find that he burned the city of Ai and hanged the king, and performed the office of executioner (without a special request) to five other crownedheads. I must not, however, dwell atgreaterlength upon the writings or doings of Joshua, but come at once to the gentlemen who describe themselves as “Judges.” What these persons were judges of we have no means of knowing. It is pretty clear, however, that they could not very well have been judges of a man’s capability, A �BIBLE-MAKERS. 9 single-handed, of destroying brute beasts or his fellow creatures, else they would not have favoured us with the silly account of Samson’s encounter with a lion, or his great feat with a jawbone. As a profane wag once re­ marked, if Samson could have slain a thousand people with another ass’s jawbone, it is extremSy difficult to understand why he could not have done it with his own. On the subject of dreams the Judges were authorities. If any wandering lunatic dreamed a dream, these writers were sure to allow it to come true. Indeed, a very large portion of the Bible is made up of accounts of religious dreams, and the “ Bible makers,” being themselves mostly dreamers, attached great importance to the interpretation of visions which the dreamers themselves had half for­ gotten. And so, in the seventh chapter, we are told that when Gideon had come into the city of the Midianites “ there was a man that told a dream unto his fellow, and said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent, and smote it that it fell, and overturned it that the tent lay along. And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, a man of Israel; for into his hand hath God delivered Midian and all the host.” The writers of the book of Judges then proceed to show that the barley loaf in the dream did really mean the sword of Gideon; and though no tent was overturned by either the loaf or the sword, nor even the walls of the city, the Midianites were put to flight, pursued, and those of them that were unfortunately overtaken were mercilessly slain, even to the princes who were taken prisoners. Judges, with its stories of dreams, battles, and the man whose strength lay in his hair, may be considered very good pabulum upon which to feed religious babes and sucklings ; but it is decidedly poor stuff upon which to rear children of a large and more vigorous growth ; and of such are the children of earth. RUTH, SAMUEL, AND DAVID. Sandwiched between Judges and Samuel is the book of Ruth. How it came to be incorporated in the Bible �IO BIBLE-MAKERS. it would be difficult to tell, without great faith and a prayerful spirit; and, unless we suppose that some lewd fellow, thinking that a little more pruriency would be an improvement, by some dexterous and surreptitious means slipped the book in, there is no accounting for its appear ance among the sacred writings at all. It is, however a pretty love-story. It tells of a poor simple girl from the country, who came up to town to see her cousin, Boaz, and, having successfully repelled the advance ments of numerous young men who were infatuated with her charms, steals slily to bed with her cousin, who blesses her for her unselfish kindness, and ultimately rewards her by making her his wife. As no more mention is made of them, we will be generous enough to suppose that they lived happily ever after. If Miss Ruth, however, wrote this brief autobiographical sketch, it must be ^confessed that she was as candid in revealing her failings as Jean Jacques Rousseau was in revealing his, if, indeed, she meant this little business with her cousin to be considered as an iniquity at all. We come now to Samuel. He was the son of Elkanah. He wrote a book, or a number of books, and followed his predecessor, Moses’s, example in being careful to give a full account of his own death and burial. His father he described as “ a certain man of Ramathaim Zophim and Mount Ephraim.” Most fathers are “ certain men.” He gives an account of a man named Saul, who was seeking his father’s asses, which had gone astray. The children of Israel at the same time were in search of a king. The asses were found; so was Saul, who was at once anointed king by Samuel, who, from an early age, was a prophet of the Lord. His early appointment to this profession took place in this wise: he received a “ call ” from the Lord, who, hiding himself in an obscure corner of the sky, had an inoffensive game at bo-peep with the child Samuel, and, after allowing the lad to make a couple of wrong guesses as to who it was that had called him, permitted him to guess correctly the third time, and thus save his bacon, and become a per­ petual prophet of the Lord of Hosts ever after. Samuel faithfully recorded the lives of such illustrious kings as Saul and David ; gave a graphic description of �BIBLE-MAKERS. II the unequal encounter between David and Goliath, in which he showed how easy it was for a little boy with a sling and a stone to kill a giant; and, further, how diffi­ cult it is for a harpist—a Jew-harpist—by dulcet strains of music to soothe the savage breast of a king, after having taken from him the favour of the people. Samuel also demonstrates that a high degree of mental culture was not an indispensable accomplishment of a prophet. David prophesied upon a harp ; many of the people prophesied with cymbals and with song; and some, no doubt, produced the same result upon the bango, or with the bones ; but King Saul put them all to the blush. Finding that everybody was going in for prophesying, he divested himself of all his raiment, and lay on his back and prophesied as hard as any of them. This, as an honest historian, the prophet Samuel has faithfully set down, not in a spirit of malice or uncharitableness,Jbutj in that of candour and truth, that ordinary folk might understand the strange doings of the godly. Samuel’s account of the life of David is filled with interest. Thackeray’s “ Four Georges ” or Carlyle’s “ Cromwell ” are not more graphic. If only the letters of David to his various mistresses had been preserved, what a splendid addition they would have made to this fascinating biographical sketch ! Great affection, unselfish devotion, David unquestionably displayed towards Jona­ than ; but how infinitely small it was compared with the unbounded love he showed towards the wives of Nabal and Uriah. David robbed, outraged, and murdered wherever he went; and, in true prophetic strain, Samuel describes him as a “ man after God’s own heart,” clearly showing that he knew the character of God very well; he, therefore, represented David as much “ after the image of his maker ” as possible. It is said that David, at the end, repented ; so, too, did Charles Peace—at the rope’s-end. Worthy couple! The books of Kings and Chronicles, which are merely a combination or repetition of the stories of Samuel, I pass over, as also the book of Job, a Gentile production which deserves to be considered on its merits, apart altogether from the place it occupies in men’s minds on account of being one of the books of the Bible. �12 BIBLE-MAKERS. We come now to the Psalms of David, which throw a flood of light upon the inner life of the king and prophet. They are a collection of songs—not comic; mostly expressive of praise to Deity. What many-sided­ ness of nature ffihese poetic expressions disclose ! What infinite piety,jjhombined with consummate rascality— what unctuousness, covering the imperious dogmatism of a king and a priest! How anxious David is that the religious shall have no “ fellowship with the ungodly that the Lord shall rebuke the unbeliever, and afflict him with great suffering ! David’s God was essentially a butcher and a king. Give heed to this poetic strain :— O clap your hands, all ye people ; shout unto God with the voice of triumph. For the Lord Most High is terrible ; he is a great king over all the earth. He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet. He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved. Selah. (Psalm xlvii.) As for the Atheist, David loathed him with every drop of his blood. He regarded him as a fool, and said as much. Most people call those persons names whom they cannot answer :— The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity : there is none that doeth good. (Psalm liii.) In a more humble mood was the Psalmist when he penned the following :— Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty ; neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother : my soul is even as a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever. (Psalm cxxxi.) But in his true colours David is seen when, from the lowest depths of his fiendish heart, he gives vent to his views as to how God should treat those who had been his (David’s) and God’s enemies :— Set thou a wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at his right hand. �BIBLE-MAKERS. I When he shall be judged let him be condemned, and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few, and let another take his office ; let his chil­ dren be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg; let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath, andi^et the strangersspoil his labour. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him ;* reither let there be any to favour his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off, and in the generation following let his name be blotted out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord, and. let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. ' u Oh, what a difference between the sentiments of the Atheist poet, Shelley, and the Theist poet, David ! The one wrote for the ignorant and cruel and despotic people of ages that have gone ; the other, in incomparably grand verse, breathed the pure and lofty sentiments of the humanity of the future. SOLOMON AND OTHERS. Interspersed among much that was unwittingly funny, and more that was deliberately barbarous, it was only natural that the Bible-makers should supply a few chapters of gloomy sermonising, to lend a kind of moral respectability to the whole work. King Solomon wa|f ♦ therefore, specially retained to supply the article. Credited with almost unlimited knowledge and wisdom, but pos­ sessing, if we may judge from his writings and conduct, a very infinitesimal quantity of either; a notorious man of the world; devoid altogether of principles or sincerity —a more appropriate person could scarcely have been chosen for the task. No men are more prone to preach —and sometimes very good sermons too—than those whose practice is in flagrant and diametrical opposition to their teachings. From the judge upon the bench to the unpaid magistrate in an obscure country town, or from the opulent bishop to the poor underpaid curate, we have hundreds of examples of men who, in their official position, give admirable lessons to the public as to how they should conduct themselves morally—lessons which they themselves not only never attempt to put into �14 BIBLE-MAKERS. practice, but which they persistently and deliberately disregard. The Spartans, it is said, used to make a slave drunk, and set him before their sons, so that the exhibition might disgust them, and thus influence them against the excessive use of intoxicating drinks. Solomon seems to have '^een chosen as a contributor to the pages of the Bibl,|j^n the same principle. Having divided his attention?, mainly between wine and woman, espe­ cially the latter; monopolising several hundred wives and three hundred concubines, he was considered to be a high authority upon the things of life in general, and upon women and wine in particular. And a very gloomy opinion it was—pessimistic to the last degree. The reclaimed drunkard is often considered the best advocate of temperance; the converted burglar the most admirable teacher of morality; the reformed prize­ fighter the best example of the influence of the meek and lowly Jesus. In Solomon the qualities of all these persons were combined. He had had experience of life in all its varied aspects ; he had prostituted his physical and mental faculties for the sake of transitory pleasures; and at last, when he had become a decrepit, used-up debauchee, he yelled out, in the agony of his despair: “ Vanity—all is vanity !” To Solomon childish laughter seemed fiendish, innocent playfulness agonising folly, honest toil madness; and he summed up life as com­ prising nothing but “ vanity and vexation of spirit.” He had wasted his life, and he longed for death to escape from wThat, to him, was a dreary and miserable existence. And while he was in this unpleasant mood he contributed twelve chapters to the Holy Bible, for which the long-faced, lugubrious gentlemen of orthodoxy will ever thank and praise him. Having finished Ecclesiastes, Solomon apparently rested for a time, and then rushed into song, which, being written when the author was in a better state of mind—in fact, in quite an affectionate mood—with, doubtless, one of his many wivd^gitting upon his knee caressing him, are, therefore, much more pleasant, though not altogether decent, compositions. The meta­ phor, at times, is very coarse, as the reader will see, if he glance cursorily over chapter seven and the first few �BIBLE-MAKERS. i5 verses; and one cannot avoid the conclusion that the writer was inebriated at the time with something of a stronger nature than exuberant verbosity. The book of the prophet Isaiah follows. Isaiah was a dreamer, and all the terrible events which ^e foresaw as certain to happen he had had revealed to him in a vision. Many of these predictions were perfectly safe. They were not to take place till the “ last day,” and, as that interesting period is unlikely to come very soon in a world that is, as the Prayer Book properly says, “ without * end,” the events are not likely to be carefully verified. When we are assured that “ it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all the nations shall flow into it,” we can only remark that, if ever the mountain of the House of Lords—or Lord’s House, which is the same thing—should get elevated at all, it is not unlikely that it will be exalted much higher than the hills— probably elevated off the face of the earth • and so that prophecy will be fulfilled. As to the composition itself, I think it may not unfairly be said that it is the most in­ coherent and meaningless jargon to be found in the Bible, save and except, perhaps, the ravings of St. John, the divine maniac, in the book called Revelation, which reveals nothing but the hopeless imbecility of the writer. . • <■“ > Prophesying was once a good businessW^Every priest practised it, and every ignoramus believed in it. Old women of both sexes gave it their countenance and support. The Bible-makers knew the importance of it, and so, to every single historian or poet on the staff, they kept four prophets. After Isaiah come Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the former of which contains nothing of importance, and the latter only a parable concerning a boiling pot and a faithful narrative of the disgusting practices of Aholah and Aholibah, two painted harlots of Babylon. These, with Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Zechariah, and Malachi, and one or two others that are never read, complete the first part of the Bible. Most of these last-named writers were in the prophetic line, and their prophecies need a �16 BIBLE-MAKERS. revelation before they can be understood. I don’t profess to understand them, and I do not know any sensible person who does; but, if there are any who understand them, or think they do, they are sure to be numbered among the Bible-makers of the future. .’zui.wiil otd- 7. TU'vJtol. ■■ *; U ‘ 1 vh- YR jj i-•> : G'hi 1 j:.d - ■' lid • r hWi t.’f.ij c.i ,, . JJJ. U- JJ jTpW C'?' fr<-'..b-- ..-I'* .J . : v;i IO iMLhlL'on: ulj ' ■ '-■Ji r ’ *t. i'? W ' ' i i< ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR. m' ' .TfR ■ ; 7 ..... , ; . I ,7U C-’L ' i- SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS ............................ o i THE MIRROR OF FREETHOUGHT ............................ x o THE BIBLE GOD AND HIS FAVOURITES .. .. ox FICTITIOUS GODS................................................................... ox CHRISTIANITY UNWORTHY OFGOD.............................. ox THE SECULAR FAITH ...................................................... ox IS RELIGION NECESSARY OR USEFUL? .. ox HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS........................... ox THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW .. .. .. o i BRAIN AND SOUL .. .. .. ................ ... o i BIBLE SAINTS AND SINNERS....................................................ox AND ' WAS JESUS AN IMPOSTOR? (One Hundred Pages. In Boards. Price One Shilling.) A Discussion between two Freethinkers—-Agnes Rollo Wilkie and Arthur B. Moss. The most blasphemous book of the age. Freethinkers enjoy it ; Jews like it amazingly ; Christians detest it. It strikes at Jesus the God, demonstrates the hollowness of his pre­ tensions, shows that he deceived himself and his followers, and that through them the world has been deceived ever since. Jjrm .It GUO Pt inted arid Published by Watts R Co., 84, Fleet Street,. EXS i � 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 Bible-Makers: Moses, Joshua and Judges, Ruth, Samuel, David, Solomon & others. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Moss, Arthur B. Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: List of works by the same author available from Watts & Co. on back page. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1885] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N498 Subject The topic of the resource Bible 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 (Bible-Makers: Moses, Joshua and Judges, Ruth, Samuel, David, Solomon &amp; others.), 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 Bible-O.T.-Criticism NSS https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/220fc4d0ceb1ff88ab72be4cec04cd90.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=NCavT8SwzKkbXz8z3DboO%7E4RvH-T788b--oFuHWNuPfTYl5sOApzF2kEcJ-5o9hWqfXAY28GxqgZSKkNbFSDTNh5X8SJy%7Eywxz%7EdsYQTAENH892bkyvTsQm-JEJbW3%7EKTie2j5v%7EW8PFz-MsvCr85FrkzUL9Ir2MS0-rQsRLIJgGJhdc0-eJh1TfRIlQHXv0CrBiY3SGSGbsfp4YV7tUjY1P%7Er%7ETvrwI31b-1e1tDjhBpL8xykcsL5sSRRZJqkQ15Nuaj7Vw2YUWki7uDqa28IdwoxWmw2xee92zVAaC4g9eVqCmpC6II7zRS0FtZV7xFzadP9B4Z7dQDHBG7EZdYA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 17c111347c521a661a287ea65bc76f61 PDF Text Text jqATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY BRUNO AND SPINOZA ARTHUR B. MOS S. [price one penny.] LONDON: WATTS & Co., 84, FLEET STREET, E.C. �ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR. BUDDHA, SOCRATES, AND JESUS......................................... THE MIRROR OF FREETHOUGHT .. .. .. .. THE BIBLE GOD AND HIS FAVOURITES............................ FICTITIOUS GODS ................................................................... CHRISTIANITY UNWORTHY OF GOD ............................ THE SECULAR FAITH................................................................... IS RELIGION NECESSARY OR USEFUL? .. .. .. HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS ........................... THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW .. .. .. .. o i to or o i o i o i 02 01 01 London : Watts & Co., 84, Fleet Street; or (to order) of all Booksellers. jSS* For Mr. Moss’s List of Subjects of Freethought, Political, and Social Lectures apply—89, Catlin Street, Potherhithe Neu Road, S.F. �BRUNO AND SPINOZA. Freethought has had no more ardent lovers, philo­ sophy no more diligent students, persecution no more fearless victims, than Bruno and Spinoza. Living in an age when religious heresy was considered the most horrible of crimes, these philosophers proved themselves of such sterling metal that they were prepared to face any persecution and undergo any punishment in their zealous pursuit of truth. The first a hot-blooded Italian, with a passionate love for the study of science and philor sophy, which difficulties intensified rather than dimi­ nished ; the other, a quiet, inoffensive Dutch Jew, with the highest order of mind—these men confronted, singlehanded, the insidious monster, Superstition, and, by their teaching and living, dealt such a tremendous blow at the creature’s head that it has lain writhing in agony ever since. The Church answered Bruno by imprisonment and the stake; but the martyred Italian’s name is now for ever destined to live in the memory of all true lovers of intellectual freedom. Spinoza was anathematised and cast out of the Jewish community, to work no longer for a sect, but for mankind. Giordano Bruno was born at Nola, near Naples, mid­ way between Vesuvius and the Mediterranean, in the year 1548. Of his parents we know nothing; all we know is that Giordano, or Filippo—for that was his baptismal name—was put to an excellent training college, and at an early age gave promise of turning out a brilliant scholar. “ He was a true Neapolitan child,” says Lewes, “ as ardent as its volcanic soul, burning atmosphere, and dark thick wine; as capricious as its varied climate.” Filled with the ardour of an apostle, he had that restless vigorous nature peculiarly fitting a teacher of doctrines that were to revolutionise the world of thought. He was �4 . . BRUNO AND SPINOZA. born in stirring times. Copernicus had only been dead a few years; the printing press was in use; discoveries in science of a very important character had agitated the minds of thoughtful persons throughout the civilised world. Possessed of a rich fancy, a polished eloquence, a varied humour, and chivalrous bearing, Bruno at once made a good impression upon all with whom he came in contact. Young and handsome, with all the phrenzied style of the poet, he was the beau ideal of a preacher; and it is as a young priest that we first get a glimpse of him in the Convent of San Domefiico Maggiorie, where he lectured on his system of religious philosophy. So strikingly original were his views that an accusation of heresy was soon drawn up against him, but set aside on account of his youth. A second accusation of a similar character was made eight years subsequently, and was also withdrawn. Doubtless the Dominicans thought that in time the heretical tendencies of Bruno’s mind would tone down, and he would become a shining light among their order. But not so. Bruno’s restless spirit of in­ quiry could not be subdued; ever and anon it broke forth in different directions. First, the young priest’s mind was filled with doubts concerning the mysterious doctrine of Transubstantiation; the doctrines of the Trinity and the Atonement were next called in question, and, worse than all, he was bold enough to attack the great pillar of all faith, the chief authority of the age— Aristotle. Discarding altogether the Aristotelian theory of the relation of the sun to the earth, Bruno openly declared his belief in the Copernican theory of astro­ nomy, the plurality of worlds, and his complete rejection of the Scripture teaching respecting the origin of man­ kind. The natural consequence of this avowed heresy was that he was feared, and, as he could not be answered by arguments, was replied to by that most forcible weapon of the priesthood, persecution. Unable to withstand his opponents, he fled; and we next find him in a con­ vent at Rome. Here he stayed but a brief while, for, finding that his persecutors were at his heels, he left the Holy City, and continued his journey to Noli, at which place he found employment as a schoolmaster for a few months. At the age of thirty he began his adventurous course �BRUNO AND SPINOZA. 5 through Europe, staying at Geneva, Lyons, Toulouse, Paris, London, and the Oxford University itself, where he taught successfully for some time. At Toulouse Bruno remained about two years, during which time he filled the ’office of Public Lecturer. Often he held disputations on his favourite subjects, and while there found time to compose several works. In 1583, after having held the position of Lecturer Extraordinary at the Sorbonne, in Paris, appointed thereto by Henry III., for more than two years, Bruno came to England with a letter of introduction to the French Ambassador in London. Here he was received at the Court of Elizabeth, and met with a cordial welcome from all save his own countrymen. While in London he had the great happiness of Sir Philip Sydney’s friendship—a friendship that lasted to the day of hia death. Bruno spoke in flattering terms of English" freedom, and of the beauty and grace of English women generally, and expressed great admiration for the charac­ ter of Elizabeth. Not long after his arrival in England he was invited to a splendid fete given by the Chancellor of Oxford in honour of the Count Palatine Albert de Lasco. At this fete it was customary to have public dis­ cussions, at which all comers were challenged. Oxford, on this occasion, put forth her dialectical giants to defend Aristotle and Ptolemy. Bruno stepped into the arena, and, in the debate, shone to great advantage, igno­ miniously defeating his adversaries, whom he said could only reply by abuse. After this Bruno asked permission to lecture at the University, which request was granted. He discoursed on cosmology and on the immortality of the soul, his lectures producing a great sensation. His admiration for the learned Professors of Oxford was apparently not great, for we find him describing them as “ a constellation of pedants, whose ignorance, pre­ sumption, and rustic rudeness would have exhausted the patience of Job.” In England Bruno spent the quietest part of his life, and it was in this country that the greater part of his Italian works was composed. In time, however, his audacious opinions, and the eloquence with which he advanced them, roused such opposition that he found it necessary to quit the country. He returned to Paris �6 BRUNO AND SPINOZA. for awhile, and afterwards to Germany, where, in 1586, he matriculated as Theologies. Doctor Romanensis, in the University of Marburg, in Hesse. Shortly after this we find him at Wiirtemberg, lecturing to large and admiring audiences. So pleased was Bruno with the intellectual liberty manifested at this place that he afterwards called it the “ Athens of Germany.” There seems every reason to believe that Bruno might have won high honours here, and have gained a position that would have enabled him to live in ease and comfort; but his restive spirit would not admit of it. He was allured on from place to place to preach, in the true spirit of a reformer, his unpopular views. At last we find him ensnared, by one Mocenigo, into visiting Venice. Wishing to gain what knowledge he could from Bruno, and being desirous, no doubt, of patronising a man of great genius, Mocenigo induced the Italian philosopher to be his guest. Bruno, with inexplicable haste, accepted. Disappointment on both sides soon followed; for, instead of fawning to his patron, Bruno treated him with conspicuous coolness, and sought the company of others, which so exasperated' Mocenigo that he denounced him to.the Inquisition as a reprobate and a heretic. On this charge Bruno was tried, transferred to Rome, and cast into prison, where, for seven weary years, he languished without books to read and without the companionship of one human being. At intervals he was subjected to torture, with a view of extorting from him a retractation of his heresy; but in vain. Finding that he would not retract, he was brought, on February 9th, to the Palace of San Severino, and received the sentence of excommunication, after which he was handed over by the Cardinals to the secular authorities with the recommendation of a “punishment as merciful as possible and without effusion of blood,” which was the usual formula for burning alive. When Bruno heard the sentence he turned haughtily upon his persecutors and said : “ I suspect you pronounce this sentence with more fear than I receive it.” A week’s delay was accorded him, in the expectation that he would recant; but the expiration of this time found him as firm as ever. On February 17 th, 1600, Bruno was led to an open �BRUNO AND SPINOZA. 7 space in Rome, and there, in the presence of fifty Cardinals and a crowd of pilgrims from many nations, was burnt to death. The faggots were lighted, the flames lept about him and consumed his flesh, and, in a little while, a few ashes were all that remained of the brave thinker. Bruno perished—the idle wind scattered his ashes ; but the martyred Freethinker’s name and work live to-day, and will be remembered with admira­ tion and gratitude in every land where the sons of Freedom dwell. As a system of philosophy, Lewes thinks that “ Bruno’s has only a historical, and not an intrinsic, value.” Bruno was a Pantheist, and, in his writings, anticipates some of the theories that were afterwards formulated with greater skill by Spinoza. . The Italian philosopher was an ardent lover of nature, considering that her wonders formed the proper study for mankind—in fact, nature Bruno regarded as the “ garment of God, the incarnation of the divine activity. Unlike the poet, Pope, he did not “ look through nature up to Nature’s God.” Nature, to him, was everywhere present, and the divine essence permeated nature through and through. The important scientific truth of the indestructibility of matter and force Bruno appears to have thoroughly appreciated. Writing on this subject, he says : “ What first was seed becomes grass, then an ear, then bread, chyle, blood, semen, embryo, man, a corpse, then again earth, stone, or some other mass, and so forth. Here we perceive something.which changes in all these things, and ever remains the same. Thus there really seems nothing constant, eternal, and worthy of the name of a principle, but matter alone. Matter, considered absolutely, com­ prises all forms and dimensions. But the variety of forms which it assumes is not received from without, but is produced and engendered from within.. When we say that something dies, it is merely a transition to a new life, a dissolution of one combination and the commencement of another.” Or, to quote Professor Tyndall’s Belfast address, referring to Bruno, the learned Professor said that the Italian philosopher’s opinion was that “ matter is not the mere naked, empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother, who brings forth all things as the fruit �BRUNO AND SPINOZA. of her own womb.” And yet, despite the fact that he looked upon Nature as containing within herself the power of producing all phenomena, he nevertheless believed that “ God was the infinite intelligence, the cause of causes, the principle of all life and mind, the great activity, whose action we name the universe.” Thus Bruno’s creed was Pantheistic. It is quite true, as modern theologians say, that Bruno was not an Atheist, though he was burned as one y but assuredly he died the death of a martyr to vindicate the great principle of Freethought. His writings soon may be forgotten, his philosophy regarded only with curiosity ; but the memory of his honest, brave life and noble death will live till the last syllable of recorded time. SPINOZA. Spinoza was not only a great thinker who deserved to rank high among the most eminent of the world’s philo­ sophers, but he was something more than this : he was a great man, in the true sense of the word. His life was a poem in itself. Honest, independent, modest, and virtuous, he walked quietly through the earth, almost friendless and alone—censured only by those who knew not the purity of his life, and who were mentally incap­ able of understanding the depth and truth of his philo­ sophy. But, though he was condemned and calumniated by the ignorant of his own day, Spinoza has since been transformed by some into a Saint; and those who once were disposed to look upon him with feelings akin to horror and detestation now speak of him with respect and admiration. The fact is, Spinoza’s life will bear the severest criti­ cism. Tested by the strictest principles of morality, it was a life of such purity, goodness, generosity, and un­ selfishness that even “ our friend the enemy ” is con­ strained to admit that it was altogether blameless. Baruch Despinoza, or Bendictus de Spinoza, was born on November 24th, 1632, at Amsterdam, and was the eldest and only son of a wealthy merchant, a descendant from Portuguese Jews, who had sought refuge in Holland from the terrible cruelties of the Inquisition. There were two other children in the family besides young Benedict—Miriam and Rebecca. �BRUNO AND SPINOZA. 9 Of the early life of Spinoza we know very little. Our attention is first drawn to him while he is studying at a Jewish Academy, at which establishment he is endeavour­ ing to qualify himself for a theological career. He is a very promising pupil, and the Rabbi, Saul Levi Morteira, predicts for him a prosperous career. At the age of fifteen so well read was Spinoza that, in the extent and accuracy of his Biblical knowledge, he was a match for any Rabbi. He put puzzling, questions to his teacher, to which answers of a satisfactory character were seldom forthcoming. At length his Sceptical spirit became so manifest that his teacher was bewildered and alarmed. At first Morteira tried to check Spinoza’s disposition of inquiry ; but, of course, the attempt proved fruitless. His Scep­ ticism showed more alarming symptoms. He actually gave expression to a doubt concerning the truth of Scripture, and suggested that Biblical statements were hopelessly at variance with common sense. This was too much for some of the Jewish students, to whom Spinoza confided some of his opinions.' Rumours regarding his heresy having reached the ears of the heads of the Jewish Synagogue, Spinoza was called upon to make submission and acknowledge his sin. This he resolutely refused to do. Finding that he could no longer conscientiously remain a member of the Synagogue, he withdrew. This was not enough. An interval was allowed, in which. Spinoza was to reconsider his opinions, and, in the event of his not submitting, a threat of excommunication was made. All ttys, how­ ever-, so far from bridging the difficulty, had the effect of widening the gulf between them. No doubt Spinoza’s parents implored their son to give up his opinions, and believe what they believed. No doubt his sisters urged him, with many a tear, not to be so headstrong. But not even their persuasive eloquence—which, doubtless, was allowed to have its full weight—could alter his resolution. His was a strong conviction, which no appeal to the emotions could alter. The arguments of Spinoza’s teacher having failed, threats followed; then a bribe was tried, and a pension of one thousand florins annually proposed to him; but all without avail. His determination was unalterable. The Rabbis , were en­ �10 BRUNO AND SPINOZA. raged at this refusal, and, it is believed, instigated some scoundrel to attempt the assassination of Spinoza. The attempt, however, was not successful. The ruffian waylaid the young heretic, and smote him from the rear; but the dagger penetrated the coat collar, and inflicted but a slight wound in the neck. Spinoza kept the coat for some years as an evidence of the sort of deeds religious fanaticism will lead men to perpetrate. A greater exhibition of fanaticism soon followed ; for on July 6th, 1656, a large crowd was gathered in the Jewish Synagogue at Amsterdam to witness the excom­ munication of the heretical Spinoza. We can imagine the pious horror expressed on the faces of the enraged assembly. Amid the wailing note of a great horn and the solemn lamentations of a fanatical crowd, the chanter rose and delivered the following anathema :— . With the judgment of the angels and the sentence of the saints we anathematise, execrate, curse, and cast out Baruch de Spinoza, the whole of the sacred community assembling in presence of the sacred books, with the six hundred and thirteen precepts written therein, pronouncing against him the anathema wherewith Joshua anathematised Jerico, the malediction wherewith Elisha cursed the children, and all the maledictions written in the book of the law. Let him be accursed by day and accursed by night ; let him be accursed in his lying down and accursed in his rising up, accursed in going out and accursed in coming in. May the Lord never pardon or acknowledge him ; may the wrath and displeasure of the Lord burn henceforth against this man, load him with all the curses written in the book of the law, raze out his name from under the sky ; may the Lord sevfer him for ever from all the tribes of Israel, weigh him with all the maledictions of the firmament contained in the book of the law ; and may all ye who are obedient to your God be saved this day. Hereby, then, are all admonished that none hold converse with him by word of mouth ; none hold communication with him by writing ; that no one do him any service, no one abide under the same roof with him, and no one approach within four cubits’ length of him ; and no one read any document dictated by him or written by his hand. This reads very like the terrible curse in “The Jackdaw of Rheims”:— “ But, what gave rise to no little surprise, No one seemed one penny the worse.” �BRUNO AND SPINOZA. II Spinoza seems to have treated the anathema and ex­ communication with the contempt they deserved. The world was wide, and, for a young man with his talents and classical knowledge, there were many opportunities of getting a good living. He soon found an engage­ ment in the educational establishment of Dr. Francis Van den Ende, a man of exceptional attainments and of very liberal views. Van den Ende had a charming daughter, and Spinoza appears to have formed a deep attachment for her; but, when the young lady had grown to womanhood, Spinoza found that there was a wealthy rival in the field. The allurements of wealth and position presented so many charms as to quite fascinate Miss Van den Ende, and she accepted her wealthy suitor in preference to Spinoza. Young Spinoza bore his fate with becoming fortitude : hereafter he devoted himself to another mistress—to Philosophy, whom he served with all the ardour of his nature. “Experience having taught me,” he says, “ that all the ordinary affairs of life are vain and futile, and that those things which I dreaded were only in themselves good or bad according as they moved my soul, I finally resolved on inquiring if there was anything truly good in itself, and capable of being communicated to man, a good Which, everything else being rejected, could fill the soul entirely—whether, in short, that good existed which, if possessed, could give supreme and eternal happiness.” And he came to the conclusion that the “ supreme good ” was only to be attained by “ the union of the mind with all nature ”—in other words) by the study of philosophy. The rest of Spinoza’s life may be told in a few lines. By acquiring the art of grinding and polishing lenses for optical purposes, he was enabled to earn a fair liveli­ hood—at all events, sufficient for his small wants. His daily bread he earned by the labour of his hands. In the evenings he devoted himself to study and to writing. In 1658 he left Amsterdam, after his services had again been solicited by the chief of the Synagogue, and we next find him residing at the house of a Christian friend, at Rhynsburg. Here he formed many happy friendships, among them being that of Dr. Meyer, Simon de Vries, and, above all, Henry Oldenburg. �JJ2 BRUNO AND SPINOZA. In 1664 we find Spinoza at Voorburg, and two years subsequently he occupied the same rooms at Hague as Dr. Colerus, his biographer, afterwards lived in. Among Spinoza’s best friends here was Jean de Witt, an enthusiastic Republican. The friendship of these two grew into a brotherly affection, and lasted till death parted them. From De Witt Spinoza accepted a small pension; *but many handsome gifts from other sources he modestly declined, saying that he had enough to satisfy his wants. For some years he suffered uncomplainingly from a' chronic form of consumption. One day.in the winter he was seized with a sudden difficulty in breathing; unhappily the attack lasted several hours, and terminated fatally, Spinoza passing peacefully away on. Sunday, February 21st, 1679, at the age of forty. Like Bruno, Spinoza was a Pantheist. He believed in God; but his God was not a person, but an essences He believed in the one existence, “ the one substance beneath all appearances, the cause of all things ’’-^in fact, there was very little difference between Spinoza’s Pantheism and modern Atheism, which makes the universe the one existence. Spinoza’s chief works—those by which he has won general recognition, and, among the cultured, great favour—are his “ Tractatus Theologico Politicus,” which demonstrates the comparatively late origin and unreliability of the Pentateuch ; and his profound work on “ Ethics.” That Spinoza was a great logician is acknowledged on all hands. Every problem with which he dealt was subjected to a most searching analysis. And, though modern Freethinkers may not be able to accept his con­ clusions, for him they cannot but have the profoundest admiration, not alone on account of his greatness as a philosopher, but on account of the nobility of his life, its simplicity, its purity, its courage, its earnest devotion to truth, and, above all, its unpretentious heroism. WATTS & GO., PRINTERS, 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON. � 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 Bruno and Spinoza Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Moss, Arthur B. Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 12 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1885] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N500 Subject The topic of the resource Philosophy Italy 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 (Bruno and Spinoza), 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 Benedictus De Spinoza Giordano Bruno NSS Philosophers-Italy Philosophy-Italian https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/a4cd45f0b1562153be06c1b000b33d0e.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=KoiF9-iU64h3z218PA7oBgjub0rXtB8wPbO3EvCkmjBu68eJu4WyafTvve34g6%7Eluf16HKVZkEptTymhxG1rM8tbiV5GBZfBRYGiY9FSnpWX49cfbbM01cOAuW3FN7G8v1rfzDdVA1DgaMRYAs46WU92evVI3ie0KeHdOJO%7E7Nw3l%7E3i3h%7Er5KU3fMWCNNjRxHCFrl19i8tPK7Ajf1XaEN0i%7Eq6WY6N8UJxLN0Q8B9fxheEoWa2jf9NTHzg0T%7EunvOqAKrEL3yMYrrsIBwryss2mNUAi49wwZHIjrdyQ-PKR0fU4EdOH%7EISKn3bsMGGiRE8lZYZ1omgxquX-hOx4Iw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 85a4aee1d54dec0c5c67b2541c19de07 PDF Text Text WEV. ■,■.••-■•* CHARLES WATTS’S WORKS. The Teachings of Secularism Compared with Orthodox Christianity. Is , by post Is. 2d. Christianity : Origin, Nature, its Secularism ; Destructive The Glory of Agnosticism and and Influence. 4d., by post 5d. Constructive. 3d., by post 4d. Unbelief. 3d., by post 4d. Christian Theism ; Which is the More Reason­ and able ? 3d., by post 4d. A Reply to Rather Lambert’s “Tactics post 7d. of Infidels.” 6d., by Theological Presumption : An Open Letter to the Rev. Dr. R. F. Burns, of Halifax, N.S. 2d,, by post 2jd. The Natural and the Supernatural} or, Belief and Knowledge. 3d., by post 4d. Evolution and Special Creation. 3d., by post 3jd. Contents :—What is Evolution ?—The Formation of Worlds—The Beginning of Life upon the Earth—Origin of Man—Diversity of Living Things—Psychical Powers—The Future of Man on Earth. Happiness Science in Hell and Misery in Heaven, 3d., by post 3jd. Bible. 4d., by post 5d. and the Bible Morality : Its Teachings Shown to be Contradictory and Defective as an Ethical Code. 3d., by post 3|d. The Bible Up Date. 2d., by post 2|d. to The Superstition of the Christian Sunday. 3d., by post 4d. Education: True and False. (Dedicated to the London School Board.) 2d., by post 2jd. Secularism: Its Relation to the Social Problems of the Day. 2d., by post 2Jd. Christianity : Defective (and Unnecessary. Watts. 3d., by post 3|d. Secularism; Is it By Mrs. Charles Founded on Reason, and is it Sufficient to Meet the Needs of Mankind ? Debate between the Editor of the “Evening Mail” (Halifax, N.S.) and Charles Watts. With Prefatory Letters by G. J. Holyoake and Colonel R. G. Ingersoll, and an Introduction by Helen H. Gardener. Is., by post Is. 2d. �HA/T78 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION: Why Christianity is Still Professed. BY CSS’fMS W®TTg Author of ‘ ‘ The Teachings of Secularism Compared wit Orthhodox Christianity," “Secularism: Constructive and Destructive,” “ Evolution and Special Creation,” “The Glory of Unbelief,” “Saints and Sinners: Which?” “ Bible Morality,” “ Christianity: Its Origin, Nature and Influence” “ Agnosticism and Christian Theism : Which is the More Reasonable ?” “ Reply to Father Lambert,” Etc., Etc. LONDON: WATTS & CO., 17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET ST., E.C. PRICE THREE PENCE. �1 �CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION, It would be difficult to select two other words which are used x as extensively as “ Christianity ” and “ civilization,” about which there are such vague and conflicting notions as to their meaning. If we ask Christians for a definition of their faith, it will be found that the answers given are as varied as they are numerous. The reply of a Roman Catholic will differ widely from that of a Protestant, while the meaning given to Christi­ anity by a member of the Church of England would not be the same as the one furnished by the adherents of the many dis­ senting sects. A decided lack of harmony would be perceptible between the definitions offered by Unitarians and Trinitarians, by Quakers and Salvationists, by Swedenborgians and Christadelphians. The expounders of what is termed the “higher criticism ” present a conception of Christianity the very oppo­ site to that taught by the school represented by Dr. Talmage and the late C. H. Spurgeon. The same diversity as to the nature of the Christian faith obtains among nations. In Spain it has proved a cruel oppression, in Rome a priestly domination, in America a commercial commodity, in Scotland a gloomy nightmare, and in England an emotional pastime. This dis­ similitude as to the character of the “ new religion ” appeared immediately after the alleged death of Christ. According to the New Testament, Paul preached a system of a philosophical character compared with that of Jesus. The Christianity of Paul was widely different from that of his “ divine Master.” The character of Christ was submissive and servile, that of Paul defiant and pugnacious. We could no more conceive Christ fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus, than we could suppose Paul submitting without protest or resistance to those �4 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION ; insults and indignities which are alleged to haye been heaped upon Christ. Neither could we for one moment imagine Paul advising his disciples when anyone smote them on one cheek to offer them the other. Paul introduced by his personal character a certain amount of boldness and energy into the Christian propaganda, and by the character of his mind he largely modified the Christian system. In fact, each successive age has left its mark and impress upon Christianity. No system was ever less rigid and more plastic. It has certainly come up to the injunction of St. Paul “ to be all things to all men.” Persons of the most contrary dispositions and of the most opposite natures have been its great illustrators, expounders, and living representatives. It has found room for all temperaments ; the ascetic and luxurious enjoyer of life ; the man of action and the man of contemplation ; the monk and the king : the philanthropist and the destroyer of his race; the iconoclastic hater of all ceremonies, and the superstitious devotee. All these opposites have found refuge within the pale of Christianity. But this heterogeneous family is by no means the result of any all-embracing comprehensiveness in the system of Christ, but rather the effects of a theology characterized alike by its indefinite, incomplete, and undecisive principles. These different and contradictory views which are entertained as to what Christianity really is, prove that its truths are not self-evident, but that they depend, for their interpretation and manifestation, upon the education and surroundings of their professors. This deprives the faith of any just claim to infal­ libility and to a “ divine origin.” For, if the reason of man has to decide its meaning, one uniform conception of what it teaches is impossible, and the criterion by which its claims are tested is a human one. The term “ Secular Christianity ” we regard as a misnomer, for the system has no consistent signifi­ cation if the notion of what is called the supernatural is ignored. The inspiration that induced Christ to say and do what is ascribed to him in the four gospels, was considered to have �WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED. 5 emanated from above. The power that moves and regulates the whole system of Christianity is designated by its believers as supernatural. Christ did not teach from purely secular motives, but through the belief that he was doing the will of his ‘ Father in heaven.” The leading features of the teachings of the New Testament are: reliance upon a supernatural power, faith in Christ, belief in the efficacy of prayer, and in the immortality of the soul; also that poverty is a virtue, that submission is a duty, and that love to man should be subordin­ ate to love to God. These principles, however consoling they may be to some, must, from their nature, check the pi ogress of civilization. The extent of their retarding influence depends upon the degree of1 veneration in which they are held by their professors. With some Theists and Unitarians these theologi­ cal notions are less dangerous, because such Christians are less dogmatic and less orthodox. But with a Wesleyan, a Baptist, or a member of the Salvation Army, such notions frequently lead to conduct antagonistic to general improvement. With these latter Christians, Christ is “all in all,” and they are ever ready to exclaim : “No foot of land do I possess, A stranger in the wilderness, I all their goods despise. I trample on their whole delight, And seek a city out of sight, A city in the skies.” For: ” Nothing is worth a thought beneath, But how I may escape the death That never, never dies.” Such is the complex character of the Christian religion, which its enthusiastic devotees boast has been the cause of modern civilization. “ See,” they exclaim, “ how it made men free, established liberty, abolished the corruptions of Rome, liberated the human mind from heathen darkness, gave peace to the world, and introduced a new and pure religion.” To put the matter mildly, all this is pure assumption and nothing �6 i 1 a CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION: more, and this we hope to show beyond all possible doubt. We shall endeavor to prove that Christianity does not contain the elements which have produced civilization, butthat modern progress is the result of agencies the very antithesis to New Testament teachings. Before doing this, however, we ask, when and where did Christianity cause the changes above mentioned ? What we call civilization means a condition of society where movements are in operation that will banish barbarism, and in its place establish culture and the right of personal freedom. Now, in what nation has Christianity ac­ complished this result ? It is no credit to any faith to have destroyed Roman learning, and then to have plunged Europe into a state of mental darkness.. Yet this is what the early Christians did, as the history of the Middle Ages amply testifies. The monuments of Christianity are huge buildings erected at the expense of the blood and muscle of unremunerated laborers. True, Christianity produced architecture, and so it did monk­ ish lying chronicles. It incited Europe to a state of ferment, and also inspired the Crusaders to wage their unholy wars; it lighted the fires of Smithfield and Oxford, and it established the Holy Inquisition and the Star Chamber, wherein human beings were tortured and cruelly put to death. The adherents of this “ new religion ” have spread war, strife, and desolation among nations in their attempt to subdue races who were -no more savages than were the Christians themselves. This was the work of the promoters of the “new and pure religion. ’ Christianity was erected upon the ruins of Greek and Roman philosophy, but it failed to give birth to principles that could be practically carried out in daily life. All that tends to pro­ duce a state of civilization and to supply the needs and ensure the refinement of a people, does not date its inception from the introduction of Christianity, for that lacks not only any scheme of education, but much of its teaching encourages un­ thrift and favors despotism. We are told that the Christian clergy were the scholars of the nation for a thousand years, although the Christian Mosheim �WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED. 7 says, in his “ Ecclesiastical History,” that “ The bishops in general were so illiterate, that few of that body were capable of composing the discourses which they delivered to the people.” Even the clergy, who were comparatively learned, kept all their knowledge to themselves, while the general masses were steeped in ignorance and moral degradation. Christianity has estab­ lished churches, but when did it give the artisan any ownership in them ? For centuries the Christian Church has been the opponent of all literary, political, and social advancement. It did not found mechanics’ institutes, free schools, or unsectarian universities. But it did close the avenues of learning against those who did not swear by its faith. Its Protestant supporters argued against giving Roman Catholics and Jews their civil rights. Henry (afterwards Lord) Brougham, once asked in the House of Commons how the bishops could condemn perjury, when they declared before God that they were moved by the Holy Ghost to accept many thousand pounds a year for preach­ ing “Blessed be ye poor ?” The fact is, money is at the root of religion, as established in England, and we see in every cathedral pile an emblem of a petrified faith. Many able expounders of Christianity, failing to recognize the true causes of civilization, urge that it has produced what they term “ a change of heart,” and that this change has a more beneficial effect upon the general conditions of society than secular agencies have. Now, we fail to discover any proof of this allegation. Western civilization is the result of the culti­ vation of the intellect far more than it is of the fostering of the emotions. In transforming society from what it was to what it is, the teachings of science have proved more efficacious than the preaching of sermons, and the brain power of such master­ minds as Galileo, Newton, Watt, and Stephenson has been a greater civilizing factor than all the emotional force manifes­ ted by the host of divines who have contributed to the history of the Christain faith. We hope to show that the improve­ ments of modern life are not the outcome of putting into practice the injunctions of Christ, but rather the consequence �8 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION : of following the truths born of such geniuses as those whose names we have mentioned. The discovery of coal and of electricity, the mechanical inventions of the last two hundred years, the control of the lightning, and the navigation of the seas, have been the potent agencies in bringing about modern civilization. But these agencies have been secured through the medium of cultivated intellects and are not the result of any Christian “ change of heart.” Experience amply testifies that if we keep our bodies in a healthy condition and properly drain our land, the probability is that if epidemics come upon us they will soon depart, and' these duties are neglected, it is likely that diseases may not only visit us, but that they will linger in our midst despite any “ change of heart ” that might have taken place. If, however, by this phrase is meant, that men should cease to do evil and learn to do good, then we do not deny the advantages of such a change, but we contend that intelligence and secular agencies are necessary to render such advantages serviceable for all civilizing purposes. We further assert that before a person’s character is changed for the better, the conditions which surround him must be improvedr; for, as Spencer has shown, a moral character cannot emanate from immotal surroundings. Thus the very “ change of heart ” spoken of depends upon the superior environment caused by external influences. Moreover, we find that this “ change of heart ” has not induced Christians to seek to remove slavery, religious inequalities, political z wrongs and social injustice ; neither has it inspired them with a desire to encourage education or to favor the discovery and the application of the sciences. In the face of these facts, it cannot be consistently said that the Christian’s “ change of heart ” has brought about the civilization of the nineteenth century. Persons with unbiased minds, and who are capable of general­ izing facts, will doubtless recognize that civilization is not the result of any one thing, or of the efforts of any one man, and least of all of those of a person who possibly might have lived �WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED. 9 in Palestine two thousand years ago. The progress of a nation is to be attributed to efforts of many men of different genera­ tions ; and also to a combination of circumstances that have been in operation during all ages, preparing the way for the advancement of a higher condition of things. For instance, if it had not been for the scientific discoveries of a Watt, a Dalton, and a Black of the last century, the application of the sciences with which their names are associated would not have been capable of being so easily applied to the ends of general utility in this present age. It is equally true that for the freedom from theological intolerance which we possess to-day, we are indebted to the persistent and fearless advocacy of the Freethought pioneers of past ages, as well as to the efforts of Freethinkers of more recent times. We are aware that many of the most able thinkers entertain different views from ours as to the cause of human progress, but the question is, Whose views are supported by historical facts and by general experience ? If the sources of civilization are contained in the New Testament, how is it that at the time when its teachings were observed, more than at any other period, civilization was comparatively unknown ? It is only within the present century, when scepticism and reliance on mundane resources have been and still are so prevalent, that real progress to any great extent has been accomplished. Moreover, we know too well that two of the principal civilizing agencies—science and general knowledge—have been bitterly opposed and continually retarded by those very persons who professed to be the exemplars of Christ’s teachings. When the facts of modern science were first proclaimed, they were denounced as untrue by Christians who for centuries constantly condemned them as being antagonistic to the welfare of the people. New truths that were demonstrated by early scientists were regarded by believers in Christianity as instances of the insanity of the discoverers, and every fossil wonder disclosed was referred by Christians to the limited explanation of the Noachian deluge. Finding threats and intimidation failed to �IO CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION: check the advance of truth, persecution and imprisonment were the weapons used by Christian hands towards those who investigated the laws of nature, and who sought to make such laws known to their fellow creatures. Dr. Ferguson, in. his work, “The Penalties of Greatness, ” acknowledges that.the Roman Catholic Church was the first to extinguish the light of reason. But truth existed in spite of the deadly agencies which' surrounded it. Not only did this . Christian Church employ means to prevent the least difference of opinion. on religious subjects, by the' invention of the most finished instru­ ments of torture, but science itself became the object of burning jealousy and persecution, and men were made to deny the very laws of nature. Dr. Dick, in his work, the “ Philosophy of .Religion,” shows that the Protestant Church exhibited a similar spirit of perse­ cution. The same may be said of Christians in their morerecent treatment of such men as Lyell, Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall. Dr. White’s “Warfare of Science ” contains innum­ erable facts showing how scientific men have been' denounced by Protestants and charged with promulgating theories that were said to be injurious to the welfare of mankind, And yet the very knowledge that these men endeavored to impart is now admitted to be among the most potent factor? in sustaining and improving our civilization. For as Buckle observes, “ Real knowledge, the knowledge on which, all civilization is based, solely consists in an acquaintance with the relations which things and ideas bear to each other and to themselves ; in other words in an acquaintance with physical and mental laws.” No one can seriously question the fact that general education has played a, most important part in producing and in increasing civilization, yet it has taken the Christian world nearly eighteen hundred years to arrive at the conclusion that ,it is - necessary that the people should have adequate means of instruction at their command. Every step taken towards obtaining a national system of education has been determinedly opposed �WHY IS CHRISTIANITY STILL PROFESSED. II by men who were the leading expounders of the Christian faith. And the most resolute opponents of our present public schools areto be found in the Christian ranks. Buckle states that where Christian governments “have not openly forbidden the free dissemination of knowledge, they have done all they could to check it. On all the implements of knowledge and on all the means by which it is diffused, :such as papers, books, political journals, and t.he like, they have imposed duties so heavy that they could hardly have done worse, if they had been the sworn advocates of popular ignorance. Indeed, looking at what they have actually accomplished, it may be emphatically said that they have taxed the human mind.” Civilization is not an invention, but a growth ; a process from low animal, conditions to higher physical, moral, .and intellectual attainments. The real value of civilization consists in its being the means whereby the community can enjoy-per­ sonal comfort and general happiness. Now the elements that have contributed to such a societarian condition, are those that Christianity has not concerned itself with, either as originator or as promoter. The lesson of all history teaches the fact that the. progress of a people depends upon their knowledge of, and their obedience to organic and inorganic laws. This great truth has not been sufficiently recognized by the expounders of Christianity. On the contrary, following in this particular the example of their Master, they have urged that man’s principal attention should be directed to the alleged supernatural, and to the considerations of a life beyond the grave. The secular affairs of existence have been deemed, by the consistent professors of Christianity, as being of only secondary importance. This disregard of mundane duties is, no doubt, the logical sequence of believing such teachings of the New Testament, as : “ He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it - until life eternal” (John 12 : 25). Also, “Everyone that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife,' or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hun- �12 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION,' dred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life ” (Matt. 19 : 29), This is actually offering a premium for neglecting the require­ ments of this world, and for ignoring the natural promptings of humanity. In any accurate history of the advancement of the human race, the influence of external forces must be duly considered. The emotions of our nature have doubtless played an active part in civilizing processes, but external conditions have also proved potent factors in all progressive movements. For instance, the geographical position and climate of nations have always had a marvellous effect upon the .temperaments and the beliefs of individuals, thus either marring or improving the development of civilization. An observant traveller can readily discern the difference between the temperament of the inhabitants of the Swiss and of the Italian sides of the Alps, or between those who reside on the English and on the French side of the Channel. The Swiss are as solemn as their snow­ capped mountains, and the Italians are as lively as the English larks whose songs accompany the dawn of the summer mcrn. The mental calibre of the French, as a rule, differs in many respects from that of the English ; and a faith that may satisfy an Oriental mind, would probably be found inadequate to meet the requirements of the Western intellect. This is a feature in the process of civilization that Christianity has not taken into account ; for it prescribes the same faith for all nations and for all people, despite the varied climates and the different localities in which they are born and trained. Buckle has shown that man’s progress is the result of his physical environment; for it has been found to be impossible to establish a high civilization in certain countries, and under certain climatic influences. Take, for instance, the people of Asia, and of Africa ; also the Abyssinians. In spite of all the efforts of Christian missionaries civilization in those countries is at its lowest ebb. As a writer aptly remarks; “ If it were the Church that created civilization, then we should see similar results in different latitudes, and among different races. But the facts �WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED. T3 are opposed to this claim. Wherever there is a high civilization, there is a good soil and a temperate climate.” This fact proves that it is not to Christianity that we owe civilization, but rather that it depends for its manifestations upon the healthy conditions of society and its surroundings. Briefly summarized, it appears to us that the principal causes of modern civilization are : The development of the intellect, this rules the world to-day; the expansion of mechanical genius, this provides for the increased needs of the people ; the exten­ sion of national commerce, this causesan inter-change of ideas ; the invention of printing, this provides for the circulation of newly-discovered facts ; the beneficial influence of climate, this affects the condition both of body and mind ; the knowledge and the application of science, these reveal the value and the power of natural resources; the spread of scepticism, this provides for the vindication of the right of mental freedom : the practical recognition of political justice, this forms the basis of all just governments ; and finally, the establishment of the social equality of women with men, this secures the eman­ cipation of women from that state of domestic servitude and general inferiorityin which theology had for centuries kept them. The question here to be considered is, are the causes of civiliza­ tion just named, even indicated in the New Testament? We sub­ mit they are not, for if the following injunctions were implicitly obeyed, there would be a complete stagnation of all civilization. “ Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world,” “ For what is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?” “ Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness and all these things [food, clothes, etc.] shall be added unto you. Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple,” “ Take no thought for your life,” “Resist not evil,” “ Blessed be ye poor,” “ Labor not for the meat which perisheth,” “ Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called,” “ Submit yourself to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake,” “ Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no �*4 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. ' power but of God. .... Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God-, and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation?’ “ Wives submit your­ selves to your own husbands,” “ As the Church‘is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands in everything,” ‘ What therefore God hath joined; together let‘no man put asunder,” “ Servants be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the frowaird,” " Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,” Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away,” “ Lend hoping for nothing again,” “ He that taketh away thy goods ask them not again,” Forgive your brother who who sins “ until seventy times seven,” “ Whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of thaf city, shake off the dust of your feet,” “ If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed,” “ If any man teach otherwise, an’d consent not to the wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ .... he is proud, knowing nothing. ...... from such withdraw thyself,” “Of whom is• HymenSeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.” ... Here are a few passages from the Scriptures, the highest Christian authority, which enjoin conduct that cannot possibly promote .civilization, but must necessarily retard it. The teachings herein set forth are, neglect of the world, personal indifference to human needs, non-resistance of wrongs, to regard poverty as a blessing, abject submission to “ the powers that be,” the subjection of woman, the giving up all for Christ, reckless lending without any conditions for the return of the loan, and the encouragement of a bitter spirit of prosecution. Well may the late John S. Mill exclaim, in his work on Liberty, “ That not one Christian in a thousand guides or tests his individual conduct by reference to those [New Testament] laws.” The reason why those laws cannot be obeyed in the nineteenth century is because, as Mill further states, the �WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED. i5 morality of Christ is,, “ in many important points incomplete and one-sided, and unless ideas and feelings not sanctioned by it had contributed to the formation of European life and character, human affairs would have been in a worse condition than they now are Other ethics than any which can be evolved from exclusively Christian sources must exist side by side with Christian ethics to produce the tn oral regeneration of mankind.”, f. . ■ ...It.may be asked by. professors pf the Christian faith, .“If Christianity is so unprogrest?ive in its nature,, and so muchopposed to a high condition of civilization. as.: ypu allege ■ that it is, how is it that the profession of Christianity is so extensive to-day?” . . . . . In estimating th,e position that a system occupies in a. com-’ munity, it is necessary to distinguish between its profession and its practice. It must be evident to.the impartial observer, that while the name Christianity is still retained in our midst, its essential principles have become impotent as a factor in daily, life. As. James Cotter Morison observes in his “Service of Man”: “There seems to be no exception to:the rule, that the older religions grow, the; more infirm dodhey become, the less hold do they, keep on ; the minds, of welhinformed and thoughtful men. . Their truths, once accepted without question, are gradually doubted, and i,n the end denied by , increasing numbers. . . . All the chief dogmas of the Christian. . . . Creeds have been for several centuries before the* world.. They: were once, not only believed, but adored. Now .the: numbers who doubt or dispute .them are increasing every day.- Time has. not been their friend, but their enemy. , ... Religious truth begins with undoubting’ acceptance, and after a shorter or. longer period of supremacy, with the growth of knowledge and more severe canons of criticism, passes gradually into the cat­ egory of questioned and disputed theories, ending at last in the class of rejected and exploded errors.” The proceedings at recent Congresses and Conferences, amply justify the truth of the above statements . At the present time the Churches �l6 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION .' are rent by intestine divisions, and assailed on all sides from without by all that is vigorous, intelligent, liberal, free, and progressive in our modern civilization. Christianity stands now as the mythologies of Greece and Rome stood at the period when it arose. The gods were more numerous than ever before, the temples more magnificent, the sacrifices and festivals more splendid, the priesthood more arrogant; but living faith had deserted them, the intellect of the age despised them, and its loftiest morality condemned them ; therefore, despite their wealth, pomp, and power, they were irrevocably doomed to destruction. History repeats itself, hence a similar state of the decay that marked the career of the religions of Greece and Rome, has characterized the history of Christianity. The truth of this allegation will be obvious to those who study the variety of stages through which the faith has passed. True the name has been retained, but not the faith the name was once sup­ posed to represent. People in different nations and different ages have accepted the term Christianity, and applied it to a theological and ceremonial system arranged in accordance with their education and their habits. The Christianity introduced into this country by Augustine in the sixth century, was not the Christianity taught in the East. The faith of the Middle Ages was not the faith that is professed in the nineteenth century. Dean Milman, in his “ History of Civilization,” observes : “ Its (Christianity’s) specific character will almost entirely depend upon the character of the people who are its votaries . . . It will darken with the darkness and brighten with the light of each succeeding century.” Lord Macaulay says with no less truth than brilliancy : “ Christianity conquered Pagan­ ism, but Paganism infected Christianity. The rites of the Pantheon passed into her worship, and the subtleties of the Academy into her creed.” Francis William Newman, in his “ Phases of Faith,” also remarks : “ I at length saw how untenable is the argument drawn from the inward history of �. * ' “if 27:: i.U rf?,' WHY IS CHRISTIANITY STILL PROFESSED. 17 Christianity in favor of’its superhuman origin. In fact, this religion cannot pretend to self-sustaining power. Hardly was it started on its course when it began to be polluted by the heathenism and false philosophy around it. With the decline of national genius and civil culture it became more and more debased. So far from being able to uphold the existing morality of the best Pagan teachers, it became barbarized itself, and sank into deep superstition and manifold moral corruption. From ferocious men it learned ferocity. When civil society began to coalesce into order, Christianity also turned for the better, and presently learned to use the wisdom first of Romans, then of Greeks ; such studies opened men’s eyes to new appre­ hensions of the scripture and of its doctrine. By gradual and human means, Europe, like ancient Greece, grew up towards better political institutions and Christianity improved with them.” Thus, according to these authorities, it will be seen that the adherence to’ Christian theology which was observable in its primitive history is no longer perceptible. The aim and desire of modern reformers are to base morals, politics, and commerce on the principles of utility. Human instincts are found to be too strong, the necessities of life too potent, the exigencies of existence too imperative to allow the standard of two thousand years ago to regulate the actions of to-day. The political world is now conductedon secular principles ; scientific research is unfettered by theology, and is therefore secular ; and the practical ethics of modern society are utilitarianism and are therefore secular. Our civilization is indissolubly connected with these three important facts. So extensively is the change—produced by the sceptical tendency of the age—progressing that we are continually hearing of some avow'al either upon the part of a prelate, a clergyman, or a learned professor, of a new view of the Chris­ tian faith, or of a modification of the once popular theology. The nature of the new departure depends, of course, upon the intellectual status and the social position of those, who either �i8 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION: give up altogether the profession of their old beliefs, or who so modify those beliefs that they may be considered more in harmony with the requirements of the age. But a general agreement appears to exist amongst the superior intelligent expounders of Christianity that the ideas that were for centuries entertained as to the character of their faith, and of its sanc­ tions, can no longer be supported in the face of modern criti­ cism. It cannot be doubted that many of the new views that are being promulgated as to what Christianity really is, strike at the very root of the system as it was taught in former times. Still, despite this fact, there is such a manifest desire to retain the name of Christian upon the part of a large section of so­ ciety, that it may be useful to inquire what the magic influences are that impel so many persons to tenaciously cling to a name that represents no practical principle in the actions that govern the well-being of the community. It has been frequently urged by orthodox believers, that if all the facts of Christianity could be disposed of, Christian ex­ perience would still remain, and that it is this which gives the consolation that no criticism can destroy. Probably this will explain why a large number of persons continue to adhere to the profession of Christianity. It, however, reduces the basis of their faith to the level of fanaticism, for the same reason could be given with equal force in justification of the mani­ festation of the wildest enthusiasm associated with the worst forms of superstition. It is the old idea that a thing is true because one feels it to be so. This is an assumption that assuredly should find no support from thinking persons, inas­ much as it could be cited to prove the truth of the greatest errors that have ever degraded the human mind. The savage, who worships his idol of wood and stone, derives consolation from his abject prostration. Why should Christian mission­ aries seek to rob him of his source of supreme comfort ? The answer is, because the poor savage is thought to be mistaken in his useless and humiliating devotion. For a similar reason we remind the orthodox professor that the consolation exper­ �WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED 19 ienced from a faith destitute of any practical value, and which consigns the majority of the human race to everlasting torture is unworthy of man, and would be a disgrace to any God. Besides, the probability that such consolation is based on fiction is not very complimentary to the power of truth. 1 he lesson of experience is, that it is more serviceable to the world to revere what is true than to sacrifice the general results of reality for the selfish satisfaction of personal consolation. It is, however, impossible to argue profitably with people who do not use their mental faculties, and hence the greatest delusions that take possession of the human mind often remain unchecked and irremovable. On the other hand, when the intellect is brought into play, the result is the growth of new ideas. The attempts made by any of the clergy to explain away theobjectionablefeaturesof certain doctrines are prompted, possibly, by their desire to retain their position in the Church, which is their only means of obtaining the necessaries of life. Those who have qualified themselves only for the theological profession know the difficulties that beset them when doubts enter their minds as to the truth of the creeds they profess. They may preach “ Blessed be ye poor,” but personally they dread poverty, and they do their best to avoid sharing its “ blessings.” They may advise their congre­ gations, in the words of Jesus, to “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Behold the fowls of the air : for they sow not neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.” So far, however, as the clergy themselves are concerned, they find it necessary to be at times exceedingly anxious for the morrow, and, rather than having faith that their “ heavenly Father ” will feed and clothe them, their concern is how to get cash to purchase food, drink, and clothes. It is not surprising, therefore, that clergymen and ministers with more than “a living wage” hesitate to give up the name by which they live. A change would perhaps mean ruin, and self-preservation is the first law of nature even among �20 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. clericals, where personal and family interests are concerned. Besides, every man has not the courage to sever his connec­ tions with old institutions, old friends, and the comforts oflife. Thus a second reason is discovered why many persons remain professors of Christianity. They see no chance of providing for their daily bread outside of the Christian body, and con­ sequently they prefer to bear the ills they have—in clinging to an empty name—than fly to others they know not of. In some cases men remain Christians in name because they persuade themselves that they can harmonize their new depar­ ture with modern discoveries. It has been so with astronomy and geology. At first these sciences were denounced as being heretical, now they are accepted as agreeing with Christian teachings. It was the same with that terribly destructive agent Evolution, which to theology meant revolution The only way a man could remain in the Christian ranks, and agree with Darwin’s theory, was to contend that it agreed with the Bible, and, as a sort of final indication of friendship for the distinguished sceptic, they buried him in Westminster Abbey. It is remarkable how. easy some people find it to rest under false convictions, particularly when such convictions are backed by pecuniary gain and found to be in accordance with fashion­ able opinions. Then people become like Goldsmith’s vicar in his “ Deserted Village,” ‘ ‘ Remote from towns he ran his godly race, Nor e’er had changed, nor wished to change his place ” The tendency at the present time within the Churches is to raise new theological ghosts as fast as the old ones are laid. We are now face to face with a fresh enemy to the long cherished notions of the Christian profession. It is a movement that commenced years ago outside the pulpit, and it bears the high and dignified name of “The Higher Criticism.” Looking at the results already achieved by this destructive criticism, the question again arises, Why do men remain professors of Christianity ? The answers that we have already given explain why some of the clergy continue in the fold, but what are the �WHY CHRISTIANITY IS STILL PROFESSED. 21 reasons that so many of the laity linger therein ? The reply is in the first place because they are too intellectually indolent, and they find it more convenient to accept things as they are than to examine and study the value or otherwise of what they are asked to believe. If we look at the attendance at an ordinary church or chapel, who do we discover occupying the pews ? Mostly women and children, who do not concern themselves about criticism, either higher or lower. In fact the indifferent section of believers constitute the large majority of professors of Christianity. Such persons never doubt and never inquire. Changes of opinion are the result of causes that seldom affect the intellectually lazy. With them it is not a question of mental honesty, hut a case of inactivity of mind, which results in a deep slumber, that only ignorance induces. To excite the general mass of mankind to any perceptible degree of serious thought, a volcanic eruption in the intellectual world would be required. So long as persons are contented to “ shut their eyesand open their mouths,”or while they are too idle to use their faculties in thinking for themselves, they will probably remain Christians in name. Orthodox folks are too prone to rely upon others as to what they shall believe ; it saves a degree of mental exercise for which the many have but little taste or inclination. This seems to account for the persistence of belief in all ages and in all countries, whether Christian or not. Hence millions of our fellow-mortals remain in the faith and follow the customs of their fathers, having no desire for, or conception of change. In all the great religious communities of the world we find that men adopt a faith ; it is not really a belief at all, for the road to intelligent belief is through the portals of doubt and investigation, in the absence of which true belief is not formed As a further illustration that indifference is a prominent ' cause of the name of Christianity being perpetuated, we may mention the case of shopkeepers and commercial men, whose indifference is intensified by self-interest. They attend church either to please their customers or to gain some relief from �22 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. the anxieties pertaining to their weekly labors. They listen to the sermons, but they pay little or no heed to what they hear. It is the fashion to attend “ a place of worship,” and they consider that their business success depends upon their going with the multitude, at least outwardly. The clergyman or minister is too shrewd to talk to such persons about the grave discussions going on in popular reviews, or new books of here­ tical tendency. And if the preacher does allude to the subject, it is for the purpose of showing that if his hearers have heard that anything has gone wrong with the faith or the Church, they need not be alarmed, it is only the spite of “ infidelity,” and he will see to the matter and put all things right. Sup­ posing the educated, reading young men of his con­ gregation express any doubts, the minister may deliver a course of sermons, not allowing any discussion, in which he boldly asserts that the Bible and the Church still rest on an impregnable rock, against which many sceptics have been dashed to pieces in trying to blast it with “infidel ” powder. He concludes by urging that the faith of Jesus has its hold upon the human heart, satisfying al) its desires and longings, and that to yield up this faith would be followed by conse­ quences appalling to contemplate. These appeals to ignorance and uncontrolled emotion succeed, for a time, in suppressing doubt, stopping inquiry, and securing a profession of a faith in the acceptance of which reason and investigation have had no part. In addition to those who remain professing Christians from interested motives, from aversion to change, or through inherit­ ing the belief of their parents, there are others who have what they term “ intelligent convictions ” of the truth of the faith they avow'. They believe in Jesus as an historical character, whose life is truly recorded in the gospels. Conflicting texts may be found in the scriptures, doubts may be expressed by Bible critics as to the genuineness of the gospels, it may be found difficult to explain many events described in the New' Testament. Nevertheless, the professors of Christianity from �WHY IS CHRlSTlANrTY STILL PROFESSED ? 23 “conviction” accept the declaration that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Believers of this class are easily made professors of Christianity, and are as easily kept so, for they feel sure that their belief secures for them safety in “ the world to come.” The doctrine of rewards and punishments has always been a powerful factor in the promulgation of the orthodox faith. The Devil has been the clergyman’s best friend, and now that it is acknowledged that the belief in the existence of such a being was a delusion, and that hell was a fiction, Christianity is losing its former influence over the human mind—the faith has to be reconstructed to suit requirements of this sceptical age. Of course those who believe “ in Christ and him crucified,” have only an ideal founded upon an imaginary Christ. They ignore. the elementary facts of nature, for in the constitution of man and of nature in general there is going on a perpetual struggle for existence, which does not harmonize with the alleged love, of God for the world. It may be said that the existence of so much suffering and misery in the world is a mystery, but if this is so, it does not dispose of the fact that such drawbacks to man’s happiness are here, and no God of love is apparently disposed to remove them. Besides, it is difficult to believe that “ God so loved the world,” that he sent his son to be tortured on the cross to achieve a purpose which God, if he. were all-powerful, could have accomplished without this exhibition of cruelty and injustice. Those persons who remain ’Christians because of their desire to believe that Christ was. really their crucified Savior, can never full}' recognize the. horrible nature of “ the agony and bloody sweat,” the sufferings; endured by the man of sorrow and grief,, and the sadness experienced by him when abandoned by his,God: at the hour of death. They also ignore, in the person of Christ, the scientific fact , that death is the terminatiQn of life, for he is supposed to have performed more wonderful things after his death than he did before. �24 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. Briefly stated, it may be said that the thoughtless multitude adhere to the profession of Christianity because they are either too indifferent to oppose it, or they cling to the belief through tear of punishment hereafter; or still further, they adhere to the old faith in consequence of their inability to understand what-is to replace the orthodox belief. Among persons of intellectual ability there are two considerations that principally induce them to favour the continuation of the profession of the Christian name. They suppose that it is to their interest to be thought in accord with the fashionable belief of the day, and they are impressed with the idea that the masses are kept in check by believing that the doctrine of hell-fire is a true one. Thus the profession of Christianity is perpetuated through mental laziness, lack of intellectual capacity, consideration of self-interest, or through the notion that fear, even if based on fiction, is necessary to keep the uninformed in order and sub­ jection. While the triumphs of political and scientific inquiry, in dismissing from men’s minds despotic and erroneous views, have been numerous, theology is still making desperate struggles to cling to its old positions. It will require, probably, more than one generation of educated persons to eliminate from the human mind the ideas that cause men and women to remain professors of Christianity. Although we may believe, with Shelley, that the evil faith will not last for ever, it dies hard nevertheless. In the persistent warfare with this evil, supported as it has been by so many varying interests, many brave reformers have exhausted their energies, while other toilers have had to give up the battle. The magnitude of the undertaking to reform the religious world reminds us of Butler’s lines :— Reforming schemes arc none of mine, To mend the world’s vast design ; Like little men in a little boat, Trying to pull to them the ship afloat. � 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 and civilization: why Christianity is still professed Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Watts, Charles [1836-1906] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 24 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Date of publication from Cooke, Bill. The blasphemy depot. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1894] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA1578 N661 Subject The topic of the resource Christianity 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 (Christianity and civilization: why Christianity is still professed), 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 Christianity Civilisation NSS https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/41a863e635f91b7813f9dc3f034aca18.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=GG5fctlCwqJMryG7aRc25Mm5%7EZ6ov8wyMY9iBlBNLyJOl44501ap2dPZhqcJ%7EHpKsZcd172bTzSRzfm%7ESjk%7E23%7EkTcAJ-WOwCYeG88fxvpSG09Fq0SM14grcfCoWKZKW9CZzvKUy17KQkFbVdILIaL65FKGzSEZf5MY32pzYMEZ289PMvaDk8G8zwjg0D%7EfSFlt3JerdsINyJoPPdQidR93yd9XzB9L8DvqOe0YSa6vrybuB5uTNHPXIqtrx3AdkuvTvc9LMraqE1Gz7qUf0aJE2%7EA2XiPMM2SK7U9yCasXli-qYPkC1HbyYOPqeSEFmdPaVOH22z2iPasEpUKKSLw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7f3c810331ac8822e4423af78cd8026e PDF Text Text ß tmi NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY CONCERNING CHILDREN BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS [STETSON] GILMAN AUTHOR OF “WOMEN AND ECONOMICS,” “IN THIS OUR WORLD, “THE YELLOW WALL paper” [issued for the rationalist press association, limited, BY ARRANGEMENT WITH MESSRS. G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS] London : WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1907 ��CONTENTS PAGE I. II. The Precious Ten The Effect ------ Minding of on the - - - Two IV. V. - - 20 - The Burnt Child Dreads the Slipper Two Together - - - 27 Mind III. and 7 - 14 - - - - - - 35 A Place for Children - - - - - 41 VII. Unconscious Schooling - - - - - 48 VIII. Presumptuous Age - - - - - 53 VI. Teachable Ethics IX.The Respect Due X. XI. XII. to - Youth - Too Much Consideration Six Mothers - - - - - - - - - - - -66 - - - - 69 - 75 - 82 - 89 - Meditations on the Nurse-Maid - - XIII. Children and Servants XIV. Social Parentage - - - - - Mothers, Natural and Unnatural- XV. 56 - - - - 61 �TO MY DAUGHTER KATHARINE, WHO HAS TAUGHT ME MUCH OF WHAT IS WRITTEN HERE �INTRODUCTION This book is, broadly speaking, a plea for human motherhood. It is written by a woman studying her own child and learning through her own experience. But it is written by a free woman, whose life is not overmastered, but sustained, by natural affection and primal instinct. For the book is an attempt to define the workings of the deep impulse of love for offspring as it separates itself from its lower forms and, rising from the narrow channels prepared for it in the brute brain, fills with warm and vivifying waves all those higher reaches of mental and moral life which are summed up in the word “ humanity.” The book is more than original. It is a pioneer book. It breaks new ground. Its attitude to the young child is at once impersonal and yet more reverent than anything we have met even in the works of the greatest philosophers and child-students. This tiny slave of slaves, whose fetters we have hidden for centuries under roses—this little being “fretted with sallies of his mother’s kisses,” but from whom an abject submission is often exacted as the first of child-virtues—is now introduced to us as a human being with feelings; a being who does not like, small as he is, to be treated as a slave or as a standing joke and a thing to be played with 1 The writer shows us “ the clear-eyed child struck dumb and crimson by the rude laughter of his elder over an act which had no element of humour for him,” or burning with a sense of injury in being punished for speaking rudely back to an elder who has first spoken as rudely in provocation. It was the task of the modern psychologist to show us that the child is not a small man or woman. It is the task of Mrs. Gilman to show that the child is nevertheless human. “ But surely,” it may be said, “ all this is obvious already. The mother’s eye sees so much !” And, indeed, the mother’s eyes do see a great deal, and are much occupied. Unfortunately, however, human eyes cannot be everywhere at the same time. It is curious to see how, as we mount in the scale of vision, range is sacrificed to quality; so that, for example, a cat’s eyes have a smaller range than a rabbit’s. A human being’s vision is a much more complicated and interesting thing than even a cat’s, but it is not exercised over a widening area. On the contrary, the highest types of people are inclined to be myopic. This, then, raises the striking question : “ What are mothers looking for? What are they attending to?” It would appear that they are attending a little too exclusively to external things. Thus a mother usually knows “that Johnnie does not like meat, that Jessie hates potatoes, that Maud is near-sighted,”1 and so on ; but it is only a minority 1 It is only the better kind of mother who gleans even this kind of informa­ tion, as the revelations of the past few years in elementary schools abundantly show. �6 INTXOD UCTION who know how the moral or the mental life of their children is affected by one influence and another. They leave that higher kind of knowledge to others, and do not carry their motherhood so far afield. Consequently, of course, that confined mother-love becomes morbid, rampant; so that one lady declares her “personality gets between the sheets when she makes her child’s bed.” Still, the lowly duties have to be done. Cooking, washing, mending, scrubbing—all these are necessary, and who is to do them if not the mother ? Certainly these things have to be done, though not always, it is to be hoped, in primitive ways or at the tremendous cost involved in the doing of them to-day. Mrs. Gilman shows that a home may become a kind of backwater, that a shrine may become a prison. The human mother is to-day facing the problems of her life not only without much training, but in utter isolation. Other orders of workers are trained ; she learns by experiment, and at the expense of her children. But, what is much more to the point, other workers form themselves into groups and communities, into guilds, societies, associations. She, who has so much to learn from her fellow workers, is alone. And the result is that, of all industries, housework remains the least open to improvement and reform; while the mothers’ contribution towards the elucidation of social problems is very small. Mrs. Gilman shows us human motherhood at the door of the home that was once a prison. Shut up in this isolated home, she, the isolated mother, with all her labour and love, has not known how to buy her dear one safety or happiness. She sends him forth at last—nay, she sends him forth daily in childhood—and to meet what? Why, infectious disease, impurity, evil influences of every order, all the risks and plagues of the unmothered world ! From these she should have helped to save him only by being herself a protecting and saving force beyond the borders of her home. And what is progress but the power of entering into an ever-growing number of human relationships ? Alas, she has halted for ages in her own kitchen, and her motherhood has been laid literally “ among the pots.” This book raises the hope that it may yet appear “ as doves,” winged at last, and touched with the gold of the morning. For, briefly, this book shows how education is a social problem; how, for the economy of power, domestic work should be socialised, and also why the work of taking care of the young should be specialised. Finally, it sets forth the duty of mothers in keeping in view their higher office and task, and so finding an ever-widening realm and expression for the love which is the greatest redemptive force active in human life. Margaret McMillan. April ¿th, rgop. �CONCERNING CHILDREN I. THE PRECIOUS TEN According to our religious belief, the last, best work of God is the human race. According to the observation of biologists, the highest product of evo­ lution is the human race. According to our own natural inner conviction, this twofold testimony is quite accept­ able : we are the first class. Whatever our merits when com­ pared with lower species, however, we vary conspicuously when compared with one another. Humanity is superior to equinity, felinity, caninity; but there are degrees of humanness. Between existing nations there is marked difference in the qualities we call human ; and history shows us a long line of advance in these qualities in the same nation. The human race is still in the making, is by no means done ; and, however noble it is to be human, it will be nobler to be humaner. As conscious beings, able to modify our own acts, we have power to improve the species, to promote the development of the human race. This brings us to the children. Individuals may improve more or less at any time, though most largely and easily in youth ; but race improvement must be made in youth to be transmitted. The real progress of man is born in him. If you were buying babies, investing in young human stock as you would in colts or calves, for the value of the beast, a sturdy English baby would be worth more than an equally vigorous young Fuegian. With the same training and care, you could develop higher faculties in the English specimen than in the Fuegian speci­ men, because it was better bred. The savage baby would excel in some points, but the qualities of the modern baby are those dominant to-day. Education can do much, but the body and brain the child is born with are all that you have to educate. The progress of humanity must be re­ corded in living flesh. Unless the child is a more advanced specimen than his father and mother, there is no racial improvement. Virtues, we still strive for are not yet ours : it is the unconscious virtues we are bom with that measure the rise of nations. Our mechanical products in all their rich variety serve two purposes—to show the measure of the brains that made them and to help make better ones. The printing-press, for instance, marked a century of ability ; but its main value is to develop centuries of greater ability. Society secretes, as it were, this mass of material where­ with to nourish its countless young ; and as this material is so permanent and so mobile, it is proportionately more advantageous to our posterity than the careful preparation of some anxious insect for her swarm of �THE PRECIOUS TEN progeny. Unless the creature is born better than his creators, they do not save him. He sinks back, or is over­ come by others, perhaps lingering decadent among the traces of lost arts, like degenerate nomad savages who wander among the ruins of ancestral temples. We see plenty of such cases, individually, showing this arrested social development—from the eighteenth-century man, who is only a little behind his age and does not hinder us much, to the dragging masses of dull peasantry and crude savagery which keep us back so seriously. This does not include the reversions and degenerates, the abso­ lutely abortive members of society, but merely its raw stock, that heavy proportion of the people who are not bred up to the standard of the age. To such we may apply every advan­ tage of education, every facile conve­ nience of the latest day ; and, though these things do help a little, we have still the slow-minded mass, whose limited range of faculties acts as a steady check on the success of our best intellects. The surest, quickest way to improve humanity is to improve the stock, the people themselves; and all experience shows that the time to improve people is while they are young. As in a growing cornstalk the height is to be measured from joint to joint, not counting the length of its long, down-flowing leaves, so in our line of ascent the height is to be measured from birth to birth, not counting the further development of the parent after the child is born. The continued life of the parent counts in other ways, as it contri­ butes to social service ; and, in especial, as- it reacts to promote the further growth of the young. But the best service to society and the child is in the progress made by the individual before parentage, for that progress is born into the race. Between birth and birth is the race bred upward. Suppose we wish to improve a race of low savages and we carefully select the parents, sub* jecting them to the most elaborate educational influences, till they are all dead. Then we return, and take a fresh set of parents to place under these advantageous conditions* leav? ing the children always to grow up in untouched savagery. This might be done for many generations, and we should always have the same kind of savages to labour with, what improve­ ment was made being buried with each set of parents. Now, on the other hand, let us take the children of the tribe, subject them to the most advantageous conditions, and when they become parents discontinue our efforts on that generation and begin on the next. What gain was made in this case would be incorporated in the stock; we should have gradually improving relays of children. So far as environment is really to develop the race, that development must be made before the birth of the next generation. If a young man and woman are clean, healthy, vigorous, and virtuous before parenthood, they may become dirty, sickly, weak, and wicked after­ wards, with far less ill effect to the race than if they were sick and vicious before their children were born and thereafter became stalwart saints. The sowing of wild oats would be far less harmful if sowed in the autumn instead of in the spring. Human beings are said to have a longer period of immaturity than other animals; but it is not pro­ longed childhood which distinguishes us so much as prolonged parenthood. In early forms of life the parent promptly dies after having reproduced the species. He is of no further use to the race, and therefore his life is discontinued. In the evolution of species, as the parent becomes more and more able to benefit the young, he is retained longer in office ; and in humanity, as it developes, we see an �THE PRECIOUS TEN increasing prolongation of parental usefulness. The reactive value of the adult upon the young is very great, covering our whole range of conscious education ; but the real worth of that education is in its effects on the young before they become parents, that the training and improvement may become ours by birth, an inbred racial progress. It may be well here to consider the objections raised by the Weismann theory that “acquired traits are not transmissible.” To those who believe this it seems useless to try to improve a race by development of the young with a view to transmission. They hold that the child inherits a certain group of faculties, differing from the parents perhaps through the “ ten­ dency to vary,” and that, although you may improve the individual inde­ finitely through education, that improvement is not transmissible to his offspring. The original facul­ ties may be transmitted, but not the individual modification. Thus they would hold that, if two brothers inherited the same kind and amount of brain power, and one brother was submitted to the finest educational environment, while the other was entirely neglected, yet the children of the two brothers would inherit the same amount of brain development: the training and exercise which so visibly improved the brain of the educated brother would be lost to his children. Or, if two brothers inherited the same physical constitution, and one developed and improved it by judi­ cious care and exercise, while the other wasted strength and contracted disease, the children of either would inherit the original constitutional tendencies of the parent, unaffected by that parent’s previous career. This would .mean that the whole tremendous march of race-modifica­ tion has been made under no other influence than the tendency to vary, 9 and that individual modification in no way affects the race. Successivegenerationsof individuals may be affected by the cumulative pressure of progress, but not the race itself. Under this view the Fuegian baby would be as valuable an invest­ ment as the English baby, unless, indeed, successive and singularly connected tendencies to vary had worked long upon the English stock and peculiarly neglected the Fuegian. In proof of this claim that “acquired traits are not transmis­ sible,” an overwhelming series of experiments are presented, as wherein many consecutive generations of peaceful guinea-pigs are mutilated in precisely the same way, and lo 1 the last guinea-pig is born as four-legged and symmetrically-featured as the first. If it had been so arranged that the crippled guinea-pigs obtained some advantage because of their injuries, they might have thus become “fittest”; and the “tendency to vary” would perhaps have launched out a cripple somewhere, and so evolved a trium­ phant line of three-legged guinea-pigs. But, as proven by these carefully conducted scientific experiments, it does not “ modify the species ” at all to cut off its legs—not in a score of generations. It modifies the imme­ diate pig, of course, and is doubtless unpleasant to him ; but the effect is lost with his death. It has always seemed to me that there was a large difference between a mutilation and an acquired trait. An acquired trait is something that one uses and developes, not something one has lost. The children of a soldier are sup­ posed to inherit something of his courage and his habit of obedience, not his wooden leg. The dwindled feet of the Chinese ladies are not transmitted ; but the Chinese habits are. The individual is most modified by what he does, not by �IO THE PRECIOUS TEN what is done to him ; and so is the race. Let a new experiment be performed on the long-suffering- guinea-pig. Take two flourishing pairs of the same family (fortunately, the tendency to vary appears to be but slight in guinea-pigs, so there is not serious trouble from that source), and let one pair of guinea-pigs be lodged in a small but comfortable cage, and fed and fed and fed—not to excess, but so as to supply all guinea-piggian desires as soon as felt—them and their descendants in their unnumbered generations. Let the other pair be started on a long, slow, cautious, delicate, but inexorable system of exercise, not exercise involving any advantage, with careful mating of the most lively—for this would be claimed as showing only the '‘tendency to vary ” and “ survival of the fittest ”— but exercise forced upon the unwilling piggies to no profit whatever. A wheel, such as mitigates the captivity of the nimble squirrel, should be applied to these reluctant victims ; a well-selected, stimulating diet given at slowly increasing inter­ vals ; and the physical inequalities of their abode become greater, so that the unhappy subjects of scientific research would find themselves skip­ ping ever faster and farther from day to day. If, after many generations of such training, the descendants of these cul­ tivated guinea-pigs could not outrun the descendants of the plump and puffy cage-fed pair, the Wiesmann theory would be more strongly re­ inforced than by all the evidence of his suffering cripples. Meanwhile the parent and teacher in general is not greatly concerned about theories of pan-genesis or germ-plasm. He knows that, “as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined,” and that, if the fathers have eaten sour grapes, the children’s teeth are pretty certain to be set on edge. Inherit we must to some degree ; and whatever comes to us by that method must belong to the parent before he is a parent. Traits acquired after parentage are certainly not trans­ missible, whatever may be the case before. Our inherited constitution, temper, character, tendency, is like an entailed estate. It is in the family, belongs to the family in succession, not to the individual. It is “owned ” by the individual in usufruct, but cannot be sold, given away, or other­ wise alienated. It must be handed on to the next heir, somewhat better or worse, perhaps, for the current ownership. When the new heir takes possession of his estate, he confers with the steward, and becomes thoroughly acquainted with his hold­ ings. Here are the assets—this much in permanent capital, this much in income, which he may use as he will. It would be possible for him to over­ spend that income, to cut down the timber and sell it, to incur debts, impoverishing the next heir. Perhaps this has been done, and he finds him­ self with neglected lands, buildings in disrepair, restricted resources, and heavy debts. In such case the duty of the heir is to live carefully, avoid­ ing every extravagance, and devote all he can save to clearing off the encumbrances on the estate, thus handing it on to the next heir in better shape than he received it. If this is not done, if one generation after another of inheritors draws relentlessly on the burdened estate and adds to its encumbrances, there comes a time when the heavy mort­ gages are foreclosed, and that estate is lost. So with the human constitution. We inherit such and such powers and faculties; such and such weaknesses, faults, tendencies to disease. Our income is the available strength we have to spare without drawing on our capital. Perhaps our ancestors have overdrawn already, wasting their �THE PRECIOUS TEN nerve force, injuring- their organisms, handing' down to us an impoverished physique, with scarce income enough for running expenses, yet needing a large sinking fund for repairs. In this case it is our plain duty to live “ within our means ” in nerve force, however limited, and to devote all we can spare to building up the constitution, that we may transmit it in an improved condition to the next heir. If we do not do this, if suc­ cessive generations overdraw their strength, neglect necessary rest and recreation, increase their weaknesses and diseases, then there comes a time when the inexorable creditor called Nature forecloses the mortgage, and that family is extinct. The heir of the entailed estate in lands and houses has an advantage over the heir of blood and brain. He does not trans­ mit his property until he dies. He has a lifetime to make the needed improvements. But the inheritor of poor eyesight, weak lungs, and a bad temper has a shorter period for repairs. If a woman, she is likely to become a mother by the time she is twenty-five —perhaps sooner ; the man, a father by thirty. Taking the very early marriages of the poor into consideration (and they are a heavy majority of the popula­ tion), we may take twenty-five as the average beginning of • parenthood. Of course there is still room for imprefvement before the later children appear; but the running expenses increase so heavily that there is but a small margin to be given to repairs. The amount of nerve force hitherto set aside to control the irritable temper will now be drawn upon by many new demands ; the time given to special exercises for the good of the lungs will now be otherwise used. How­ ever good the intentions afterwards, the best period for self-improvement is before the children come. This reduces the time in which to develop humanity’s inheritance to twenty-five ii years. Twenty-five years is not much at best; and that time is further limited, as far as individual responsi­ bility goes, by subtracting the period of childhood. The first, say, fifteen years of our lives are comparatively irresponsible. We have not the judgment or the self-control to meddle with our own lives to any advantage ; nor is it desirable that we should. Unconscious growth is best, and the desired improvement during this period should be made by the skilful educator without the child’s know­ ledge. But at about fifteen the indi­ vidual comes to a keen new conscious­ ness of personal responsibility. That fresh, unwarped sense of human honour, the race-enthusiasm of the young; and the fund of strength they bear with them ; toge­ ther with the very light expenses of this period, all the heavy drains of life being met by the parent—these conditions make that short ten years the most important decade of a life­ time. It is no wonder that we worship youth. On it depends more than on the most care-burdened age. It is one of the many follies of our blunder­ ing progression that we have for so long supposed that the value of this period lay merely in its enjoyable­ ness. With fresh sensations and new strength, with care, labour, and pain largely kept away, youth naturally enjoys more heartily than age, and has less to suffer ; but these are only incidental conditions. Every period has its advantage and accompanying responsibilities. This blessed time of youth is not ours to riot through in cheerful disregard of human duty. The biological advantage of a longer period of immaturity is in its cumula­ tive value to the race, the older parent having more development to transmit. The human animal becomes adult comparatively early—that is, becomes capable of reproducing the species ; �12 THE PRECIOUS TEN and in states of low social grade he promptly sets about it. But the human being is not only an individual animal : he is a social constituent. He may be early ready to replace himself by another man as good, but he is not yet able to improve upon the past and give the world a man much better. He is not yet developed as a member of society —trained in those special lines which make him not only a healthier, stronger, rounder individual, but a more highly efficient member of society. Our people to-day are not only larger and longer-lived than earlier races, but they are capable of social relations immeasurably higher than those open to a never-so-healthy savage. The savage as an individual animal may be equal—in some ways superior —to the modern man, but as a social constituent he is like a grain of sand in a heap compared to some ex­ quisitely fitted part of an intricate machine—a living machine, an orga­ nism. In this social relation man may grow and develop all his life ; and that is why civilisation, socialisa­ tion, brings us useful and honourable age, while savagery knocks its old folk on the head. But while the social structure grows in beauty, refinement, and power, and eighty years may be spent in its glorious service, that service must be given by individuals. Unless these individuals improve from age to age, showing a finer, subtler, stronger brain and unimpaired physique, there can be no genuine or enduring social improvement. We have seen re­ peatedly in history a social status lodged in comparatively few indi­ viduals, a narrow, fragile, upper-class civilisation ; and we have seen it always fall—fall to the level of its main constituents, the mass of the people. One per cent, of sane men in a society of lunatics would make but a foolish state ; one per cent, of good men in a society of criminals would make a low grade of virtue ; one per cent, of rich men in a society of poor peasants does not make a rich com­ munity. A society is composed of the people who compose it, strange to say—all of them ; and as they are, it is. The people must be steadily made better if the world is to move« The way to make people better is to have them born better. The way to have them born better is to make all possible improvement in the indi­ vidual before parentage. That is why youth is holy and august: it is the fountain of human progress. Not only that “ the child is father to the man,” but the child is father to the state—and mother. The first fifteen years of a child’s life should be treated with a view to developing the power of “judgment ” and “will,” that he may be able to spend his precious ten in making the best possible growth. A boy of fifteen is quite old enough to under­ stand the main principles of right living and to follow them. A girl of fifteen is quite old enough to see the splendid possibilities that lie before her, both in her individual service to society and the almost limitless power of motherhood. It is not youth which makes our boys and girls so foolish in their behaviour. It is the kind of training we give the little child, keeping back the most valuable faculties of the brain instead of helping them to grow. A boy cast out upon the street to work soon manifests both the abilities and vices of an older person. A girl reared in a frivolous and artificial society becomes a practising coquette while yet a child. These conditions are bad, and we do not wish to parallel them by producing a morbidly selfconscious and prematurely aged set of youngsters. But if the child has been trained in reason and self-control— not forced, but allowed to grow in �THE PRECIOUS TEN the natural use of these qualities—he will be used to exercising them when he reaches the freer period of youth, and not find it so difficult to be wise. It is natural for a child to reason, and the power grows with encouragement and use. It is natural for a child to delight in the exercise of his own will upon himself in learning to “ do things.” The facility and pleasure and strong self-control shown by a child in playing some arbitrary game prove that it is quite natural for him to govern his acts to a desired end, and enjoy it. To a desired end, however. We have not yet succeeded in enlisting the child’s desires to help his efforts. We rather convince him that being good is tedious and unprofitable, often poignantly disagreeable; and when he passes childhood he is hampered with this unfortunate mis­ belief of our instilling. But, with a healthy brain and will, a youth of fifteen, with the knowledge easily available at that age, should be not only able and willing, but gloriously eager for personal develop­ ment. It is an age of soaring ambi­ tion ; and that ambition, directed in lines of real improvement, is one of Nature’s loveliest and strongest forces to lift mankind. There is a splendid wealth of aspira­ tion in youth, a pure and haughty desire for the very highest, which ¡3 ought to be playing into the current of our racial life and lifting it higher and higher with each new generation. The love of emulation, too, so hurtful in the cheap, false forms it so often takes, is a beautiful force when turned to self - improvement. We underrate the power of good intention « of our young people. We check and irritate them all through childhood, confusing and depressing the upward tendencies, and then wag our aged heads pityingly over “ the follies of youth.” There is wisdom in youth, and power, if we would but let it grow. A simple, unconscious childhood, shooting upwards fast and strong along lines of rational improving growth, would give to the opening consciousness of youth a healthy background of orderly achievement, and a glorious foreground—the limit­ less front of human progress. Such young people, easily appreciating what could be done for themselves and the world by right living, would pour their rich enthusiasm and un­ strained powers into real human growing—the growing that can be done so well in that short, wonderful ten years—that must be done then, if the race is to be born better. Three or four generations of such growth would do more for man’s improve­ ment than our present methods of humaniculture accomplish in as many centuries. �THE EFFECT OF MINDING ON THE MIND II. THE EFFECT OF MINDING ON THE MIND Obedience, we are told, is a virtue. This seems simple and conclusive, but on examination further questions rise. What is " a virtue ”? What is “ obedience ”? And, if a virtue, is it always and equally so ? “ There is a time when patience ceases to be a virtue.” Perhaps obedience has its limits, too. A virtue is a specific quality of any­ thing, as the virtue of mustard is in its biting quality ; of glass, trans­ parency ; of a sword, its edge and temper. In moral application a virtue is a quality in mankind whereby we are most advantaged. We make a distinction in our specific qualities, claiming some to be good and some bad ; and the virtues are those where­ by we gain the highest good. These virtues of humanity change in relative value with time, place, and circum­ stance. What is considered a virtue in primitive life becomes foolishness, or even vice, in later civilisation; yet each age and place can show clear reason for its virtues, trace their introduction, rise into high honour, and gradual neglect. For instance, the virtue of endur­ ance ranks high among savages. To be able to bear hunger and heat and cold and pain and dire fatigue—this power is supreme virtue to the savage for the simple reason that it is supremely necessary to him. He has a large chance of meeting these afflic­ tions all through life, and wisely prepares himself beforehand by wil­ fully undergoing even worse hard­ ships. Chastity is a comparatively modern virtue, still but partially accepted. Even as an ideal it is not universally admired, being considered mainly as a feminine distinction. This is good proof of its gradual introduction— first as solely female, a demand from the man, and then proving its value as a racial virtue, and rising slowly in general esteem, until to-day there is a very marked movement towards a higher standard of masculine chastity. Courage, on the other hand, has been held almost wholly as a mascu­ line virtue, from the same simple causes of sociological development ; to this day one hears otherwise intel­ ligent and respectable women own themselves, without the slightest sense of shame, to be cowards. A comparative study of the virtues would reveal a mixed and changeful throng, and always through them all the underlying force of necessity, which makes this or that quality a virtue in its time. We speak of “ making a virtue of necessity.” As a matter of fact, all virtues are made of necessity. A virtue, then, in the human race is that quality which is held supremely beneficial, valuable, necessary, at that time. And what, in close analysis, is obedience ? It is a noun made from the verb “ to obey. ” What is it to obey? It is to act under the impulse of another will—to submit one’s behaviour to outside direction. It involves the surrender of both judgment and will. Is this capacity of submission of sufficient value to the human race to be called a virtue? Assuredly it is — sometimes. The most familiar instance of the uses of obedience is among soldiers and sailors, always promptly adduced by �THE EFFECT OF MINDING ON THE MIND the staunch upholders of this quality. L They do not speak of it as particu­ larly desirable among farmers or merchants or artists, but cling to the battlefield or the deck, as sufficient illustrations. We may note, also, that, when our elaborate efforts are made to inculcate its value to young children, we always introduce a rail­ road accident, runaway, fire, burglar, or other element of danger ; and, equally, in the stories of young animals designed for the same pur­ pose, the disobedient little beast is always exposed to dire peril, and the obedient saved. All this clearly indicates the real basis of our respect for obedience. Its first and greatest use is this : where concerted action is necessary, in such instant performance that it would be impossible to transmit the impulse through a number of varying intelligences. That is why the soldier and sailor have to obey. Military and nautical action is essentially collective, essen­ tially instant, and too intricate for that easy understanding which would allow of swift common action on individual initiative. Under such cir­ cumstances, obedience is, indeed, a virtue, and disobedience the unpar­ donable sin. Again, with the animals, we have a case where it is essential that the young should act instantly under stimuli perceptible to the mother and not to the young. No explanation is possible. There is not speech for it, even if there were time. A sudden, silent danger needs a sudden, silent escape. Under this pressure of con­ dition has been evolved a degree of obedience absolutely instinctive and automatic, as so beautifully shown in Mr. Thompson’s story of the little partridges flattening themselves into effacement on their mother’s warning signal. With deadly peril at hand, with no brain to give or to receive explanation, *5 with no time to do more than squeak an inarticulate command, there is indeed need for obedience; and obedience is forthcoming. But is this so essential quality in rearing young animals as essential in human education ? So far in human history our absolute desideratum in child­ training is that the child shall obey. The child who “minds” promptly and unquestioningly is the ideal; the child who refuses to mind, who, per­ haps, even says, “I won’t,” is the example of all evil. Parental success is judged by ability to “make the children mind”; to be without that is failure. All this has no reference whatever to the kind of behaviour required. The virtue in the child is simply to do what it is told in any extreme of folly, or even danger. Witness the immortal fame of Casabianca. Being told to “ stay,” this sublime infant stayed, though every instinct and reason was against it, and he was blown up unflinching in pursuance of duty. The effect of minding on the mind is here shown in extreme instance. Under the pressure of the imposed will and judgment of his father the child restrained his own will and judgment, and suffered the consequences. The moral to be drawn is a very circuitous one. Although obedience was palpably injurious in this case, it is held that such perfect surrender would in most cases be highly beneficial. That other popular instance, begin­ ning Old “ Ironsides ” at anchor lay In the harbour of Mahon, is more practical. The judicious father orders the perilously poised son to Jump ! Jump, boy, far into the deep ! and he jumps, and is hauled out by the sailors. As usual, we see that the reason why obedience is so necessary . is because of imminent danger, which �16 THE EFFECT OF, MINDING ON THE MIND only obedience can escape. With desired act. Almost any mother can this for a practical background, and recall this baulked feeling, like the with the added proviso that, unless annoyance of an arrested sneeze. obedience is demanded and secured To this instinct our gradually when there is no danger, it will not enlarging humanness has added the be. forthcoming when there is, the breadth of wider perceptions and the child is (i trained to obey ” from the weight of growing ideas of authority, first. No matter how capricious and with the tremendous depth of tradi­ unnecessary the command, he must tion and habit. Early races lived in “mind,” or be punished for not constant danger, military service was “minding.” We may fall short of universal, despotism the common success in our efforts ; but this is our government, and slavery the general ideal—that a child shall do what he is condition. The ruling despot exacted told on the instant, and thus fulfil his obedience from all ; and it was by whole scale of virtue,, as well as meet each grade exacted remorselessly from all the advantages of safety. its inferiors. No overseer so cruel as Our intense reverence for the virtue the slave. Where men were slaves of obedience is easily traceable. In to despotic sovereigns, their women the first place there is the deep-seated were slaves to them ; and the women animal instinct, far outdating human tyrannised in turn over their slaves, history. For uncounted ages our if they had any. But under every brute mother ancestors had reared one else were always the children, their brute young in automatic obedi­ defenceless absolutely, inferior physi­ ence—an obedience bred in the bone cally and mentally. Naturally, they by those who obeyed and lived, any were expected to obey. ’ As we built deficiency in which was steadily ex­ out of our clouded brains dim and purgated by the cutting off of the sinister gods, we predicated of them hapless youngster who disobeyed. the habits so prominent in our earthly This had, of course, a reflex action rulers ; the one thing the gods would on the mother. When one’s nerve­ have was obedience, which, therefore, impulse finds expression through grew to have first place in our primi­ another body, that expression gives tive . religion. The early Hebrew the same sense of relief and pleasure traditions of God, with which we are as a personal expression. When one all so familiar, picture him as in a wills another to do something which continuous state of annoyance because the other promptly does, it gives one his “children” would not “mind.” an even larger satisfaction than doing In the centuries of dominance of the what one wills one’s self. That is Roman Catholic Church, obedience the pleasure we have in a good dog— became additionally exalted. The our will flows through his organism power and success of that magnificent uninterrupted. It is a temporary organisation depended so absolutely extension of self in activity that does on this characteristic that it was given not weary. high place in the vows of religious This is one initial reason for the societies—highest of all by the J esuits, parental pleasure in obedience and who carried.it to its logical extreme, displeasure in disobedience. When the subordinate being required to the parent emits an impulse calling become as will-less as a corpse, for expression through the child, and actuated solely by the commands of the child refuses to express it, there his superior. Even militarism offers is a distinct sense of distress in the no better instance of the value and parent, quite apart from any ulterior power of obedience than does “ the advantage to either party in the Church. ” �THE EFFECT OF MINDING ON THE MIND It now becomes clear why we so naturally venerate this quality : first, the deep brute instinct; second, the years of historic necessity and habit ; third, the tremendous sanction of reli­ gion, It is only a few centuries since the Protestant Reformation broke the power of Church dominance and suc­ cessfully established the rebellion of free thought: It is less than that since the American Revolution and the French Revolution again trium­ phantly disobeyed, and established the liberty of the individual in matters temporal. Since then the delighted brain has spread and strengthened, thinking for itself and doing what it thought; and we have seen some foretaste of what a full democracy will ultimately bring to us. But this growth of individual freedom has but just begun to penetrate that strong­ hold of all habit and tradition, the Home. Men might be free, but women must still obey. Women are beginning to be free, but still the child remains—the under-dog always; and he, at least, must obey. On this we are still practically at one— Catholic and Protestant, soldier and farmer, subject and citizen. Let us untangle the real necessity from this vast mass of hoary tradi­ tion, and see if obedience is really the best thing to teach a child—if “ by obedience ” is the best way to teach a child. And let careful provision here be made for a senseless inference con­ stantly made when this question is raised. Dare to criticise a system of training based on obedience, and you are instantly assumed to be advo­ cating no system at all, no training, merely letting the child run wild and ’“have his own way.” This is a most unfair assumption. Those who know no other way of modifying a child’s behaviour than through “making him mind ” suppose that, if he were not made to mind, he must be utterly neglected. Child-training, to their minds, is to be accomplished only i7 through child-ordering; and many think the training quite accomplished if only the subject is a model of obedience. Others, a little more open-minded, and who have perhaps read something on the subject, assume that, if you do not demand obedience of the child, it means that you must “explain” everything to him, “ reason ” with him from deed to deed ; and this they wearily and rightly declare to be impossible. But neither of these assumptions is correct. One may question the efficacy of the Salisbury method without being thereby pledged to vegetarianism. One may criticise our school system, yet not mean that children should have no education. The rearing of children is the most important work, and it is here con­ tended that in this great educational process obedience, as a main factor, has a bad effect on the growing mind. A child is a human creature. He should be reared with a view to his development and behaviour as an adult, not solely with a view to his behaviour as a child. He is tem­ porarily a child, far more permanently a man ; and it is the man we are training. The work of “parenthood” is not only to guard and nourish the young, but to develop the qualities needed in the mature. Obedience is defended, first, as being necessary to the protection of the child, and, second, as developing desirable qualities in the adult. But the child can be far better protected by removing all danger, which our present civilisation is quite competent to do ; and “ the habit of obedience ” developes very undesirable qualities. On what characteristics does our human pre-eminence rest? On our breadth and accuracy of judgment and force of will. Because we can see widely and judge wisely, because we have power to do what we see to be right, therefore we are the domi­ nant species in the animal kingdom, B �18 THE EFFECT OF MINDING ON THE MIND therefore we are consciously the children of God. These qualities are lodged in indi­ viduals, and must be exercised by individuals for the best human pro­ gress. If our method of advance were that one person alone should be wise and strong, and all other persons prosperous through a strict subservience to his commands, then, indeed, we could do no better for our children than to train them to obey. Judgment would be of no use to them if they had to take another’s ; will power would be valueless if they were never to exercise it. But this is by no means the condi­ tion of human life. More and more is it being recognised that progress lies in a well-developed average intel­ ligence rather than in a wise despot and his stupid serfs. For every indi­ vidual to have a good judgment and a strong will is far better for the com­ munity than for a few to have these qualities and the rest to follow them. The “habit of obedience,” forced in upon the impressible nature of a child, does not develop judgment and will, but does develop that fatal facility in following other people’s judgment and other people’s wills which tends to make us a helpless mob, mere sheep, instead of wise, free, strong indi­ viduals. The habit of submission to authority, the long, deeply impressed conviction that to “ be good ” is to “ give up,” that there is virtue in the act of surrender—this is one of the sources from which we continually replenish human weakness, and fill the world with an inert mass of mind­ less, will-less folk, pushed and pulled about by those whom they obey. Moreover, there is the opposite effect—the injurious reaction from obedience—almost as common and hurtful as its full achievement— namely, that fierce, rebellious desire to do exactly the opposite of what one is told, which is no nearer to calm judgment than the other. In obeying another will or in resist­ ing another will nothing is gained in wisdom. A human creature is a selfgoverning intelligence, and the rich years of childhood should be passed in the guarded and gradual exercise of those powers. Now, this will no doubt call up to the minds of many a picture of a selfish, domineering youngster, stormily ploughing through a number of experimental adventures, with a group of sacrificial parents and teachers prostrate before him. Again an unwarranted assumption. Con­ sideration of others is one of the first laws of life, one of the first things a child should be taught ; but con­ sideration of others is not identical with obedience. Again, it will be imagined that the child is to be left to work out laboriously for himself the accumulated experiments of humanity, and deprived of the profits of all previous experience. By no means. On the contrary, it is the business of those who have the care of the very young to see to it that they do benefit by that previous experience far more fully than is now possible. Our system of obedience cuts the child off from precisely this advantage, and leaves him longing to do the forbidden things, generally doing them, too, when he gets away from his tutelage. The behaviour of the released child, in its riotous reaction against authority as such, as shown glaringly in the action of the average college student, tells how much judg­ ment and self-control have been developing behind the obedience. The brain grows by exercise. The best time to develop it is in youth. To obey does not develop the brain, but checks its growth. It gives to the will a peculiar suicidal power of aborting its own impulse, not con­ trolling it, but giving it up. This leaves a habit of giving up which weakens our power of continued effort. �THE EFFECT OF MINDING ON THE MINE) All this is not saying that obedience is never useful in childhood. There aite occasions when it is; and on such occasions, with a child otherwise intelli­ gently trained, it will be forthcoming. •We make a wide mistake in assuming that, unless a child is made to obey at every step, it will never obey. A grown person will obey under sharp, instant pressure. If there is a sudden danger, and you shriek at your friend, “ Get upquick !” or hiss a terrified “ Sh I Sh ! Be still 1” your friend promptly obeys. Of course, if you had been endeavour­ ing to “boss” that friend with a thousand pointless caprices, he might distrust you in the hour of peril; but if he knew you to be a reasonable person, he would respond promptly to a sudden command. Much more will a child so respond where he has full reason to respect the judgment of the commander. Children have the automatic habit of obedience by the same animal inheri­ tance that gives the mother the habit of command ; but we so abuse that faculty that it becomes lost in righteous rebellion or crushed sub­ mission. The animal mother never misuses her precious authority. She does not cry, “Wolf! Wolf!” We talk glibly about “the best good of the child,” but there are few children who are not clearly aware that they are “ minding ” for the convenience of “ the grown-ups ” the greater part of the time. Therefore, they suspect self-interest in even the necessary commands, and might very readily refuse to obey in the hour of dang'er. It is a commonplace observation that the best children—z.e., the most submissive and obedient — do not make the best men. If they aré utterly subdued, “too good to live,” they swell the Sunday-school list of infant saints, die young, and go to heaven ; whereas the rebellious and unruly boy often makes the best citizen. The too obedient child has learned only to do what he is told. If not told, he has no initiative; and if told wrong, he does wrong. Life to him is not a series of problems to be solved, but a mere book of orders ; and, instead of understanding the true imperious “force” of natural law, which a wise man follows because he sees the wisdom of the course, he takes every “must” in life to be like a personal command—a thing pro­ bably unreasonable, and to be evaded if possible. The escaped child, long suppressed under obedience, is in no mood for a cheerful acceptance of real laws, but imagines that there is more “ fun ” in “having his own way.” The foolish parent claims to be obeyed as a god ; and the grown-up child seeks to evade God, to treat the laws of Nature as if she, too, were a foolish parent. Suppose you are teaching a child arithmetic. You tell him to put down such and such figures in such a position. He inquires, “Why?” You explain the reason. If you do not explain the reason, he does not understand the problem. You might continue to give orders as to what figures to set down, and in what places ; and the child, obeying, could be trotted through the arithmetic in a month’s time. But the arithmetic would not have gone through him. He would be no better versed in the science of numbers than a type-setter is in the learned books he “ sets up.” We recognise this in the teaching of arithmetic, and go to great lengths in inventing test problems and arranging easy stages by which the child may gradually master his task. But. we do not recognise it in teaching the child life. The small acts of infancy are the child’s first problems in living. He naturally wishes to understand them. He says, “Why ?” To which we reply inanely, “ Because I tell you to!” That is no reason. It is a force, no doubt, a pressure, to which the B 2 �20 TWO AND TWO TOGETHER child may be compelled to yield. But he is no wiser than he was before. He has learned nothing except the lesson we imagine so valuable—to obey. At the very best, he may remember always, in like case, that “ mamma would wish me to do so,” and do it. But, when cases differ, he has no guide. With the best inten­ tions in life, he can but cast about in his mind to try to imagine what some­ one else might tell him to do if present: the circumstances them­ selves mean nothing to him. Docility, subservience, a quick surrender of purpose, a wavering, untrained, easily shaken judgment—these are the qualities developed by much obedience. Are they the qualities we wish to develop in our citizens ? III. TWO AND TWO TOGETHER “ If not trained to obedience, what shall the child be trained to?” natu­ rally demands the outraged parent. To inculcate that first of virtues has taken so much time and effort that we have overlooked the subsequent qualities which require our help, and feel rather at sea when this sheet­ anchor is taken from us. But it is not so hard a problem, when honestly faced. A child has a body and a mind to be nourished, sheltered, protected, allowed to grow, and judiciously trained. We are here considering the brain training ; but that is safely compar­ able to—is, indeed, part of—the body training, for the brain as much as the lungs or liver is an organ of the body. In training the little body, our main line of duty is to furnish proper food, to insure proper rest, and to allow and encourage proper exercise. Exactly this is wanted to promote right brain growth. We do not wish to over-stimulate the brain, to develop it at the expense of other organs ; but we do wish to insure its full natural growth, and to promote its natural activities, by a wise selection of the highest qualities for preferred use. And we need more knowledge of the various brain functions than is com­ monly possessed by those in charge of young children. The office of the brain we are here considering is to receive, retain, and collate impressions, and, in retaining them, to hold their original force as far as possible, so that the ultimate act, coming from a previous impres­ sion, may have the force of the original impulse. The human crea­ ture does not originate nervous energy ; but he does secrete it, so to speak, from the impact of natural * forces. He has a storage battery of power we call the will. By this high faculty we see a well-developed human being working steadily for a desired object, without any present stimulus, directed to that end, even in opposi­ tion to present stimulus tending to’ oppose that end. This width of per­ ception, length of retention, storage of force, and power of steady, selfdetermined action distinguish the advanced human brain. �TWO AND TWO TOGETHER Early forms of life had no brains to speak of. They received impressions and transmitted them in expressions without check or discrimination. With the development of more com­ plex organisms and their more com­ plex activities came the accompanying complexity of brain, which could co­ ordinate those activities to the best advantage. Action is the main line of growth. Conditions press upon all life, but life is modified through its own action under given conditions. And the relative wisdom and success of different acts depend on the brain power of the organism. The superiority of races lies in better adaptation to conditions. In human life, in the long competition among nations, classes, and indivi­ duals, superiority still lies in the same development. Power to receive and retain more wide, deep, and subtle impression ; power more accu­ rately and judiciously to collate these impressions ; power to act steadily on these stored and selected impulses rather than on immediate impulses— this it is which marks our line of advance. The education of the child should be. such as to develop these distin­ guishing human faculties. The uni­ verse, speaking loudly, lies around every creature. Little by little we learn to hear, to understand, to act accordingly. And this we should teach the child, to recognise more accurately the laws about him and to act upon them. A very little child does this in his narrow range exactly as does the adult in wider fields. He receives impressions, such as are allowed to reach him. He stores and collates those impressions with increasing vigour and accuracy from day to day ; and he acts on the sum of those impressions with growing power. Naturally, his range of impression is limited, his power of retention is limited, his ability to relate the 21 impression retained is limited; and his action is at first far more open to immediate outside stimulus, and less responsive to the inner will-force, than that of an adult. That is the condi­ tion of childhood. It is for us gently, delicately, steadily to surround the child with such conditions as shall promote this orderly sequence of brain function rather than forcibly to deve­ lop and retain his more primitive methods. Before going further, let us look at the average mental working of the human creature, and see if it seems to us in smooth running order. We have made enormous progress in brain development, and we manifest wide differences in brain power. But clearly discernible through all the progress and all the difference is this large fault in our mental machinery—: a peculiar discrepancy between the sum of our knowledge and the sum of our behaviour. Man being conscious and intelligent, it would seem that to teach him the desirability of a given course of action would be sufficient. That it is not sufficient every mother, every teacher, every preacher, every discoverer, inventor, reformer, knows full well. Instruction may be poured in by the ton ; it comes out in action by the ounce. You may teach and preach and pray for two thousand years, and very imperfectly Chris­ tianise a small portion of the human race. You may exhort and command and reiterate; and yet the sinner, whether infant or adult, remains obdurate. No wonder we imagined an active Enemy striving to oppose us, so difficult was good behaviour in spite of all our efforts. It has never occurred to us that we were pursuing an entirely erroneous method. We uttered like parrots the pregnant proverb, “ Example is better than precept,” learning nothing by it. What does that simple saying mean ? That one learns better by �22 TWO AND TWO TOGETHER observation than by instruction, espe­ cially when instruction is coupled with command. This being a clearly estab­ lished fact, why have we not profited by it ? Because our brains, all of our brains from the beginning of time, have been blurred and blinded and weakened by the same mistake in infant education. What is this mistake ? What is it we have done so patiently and faith­ fully all these years to every one of the human race which has injured the natural working of the brain ? This : we have systematically checked in our children acts which were the natural sequence of their observation and inference ; and enforced acts which, to the child’s mind, had no reason. Thus we have carefully trained a world of people to the habit of acting without understanding, and also of understanding without acting. Because we were unable entirely to subvert natural brain processes, because our children must needs do some things of their own motion and not in obedience to us, therefore some power of judgment and self-govern­ ment has grown in humanity. But because we have been so largely suc­ cessful in our dealings with the help­ less little brain is there so little power of judgment and self-government among us. Observe, too, that our most intelli­ gent progress is made in those arts, trades, professions, sciences, wherein little children are not trained; and that our most palpable deficiencies are in the morals, manners, and general personal relations of life, wherein little children are trained. The things we are compelled to do in obedience we make no progress in. They are either obeyed or disobeyed, but are not understood and improved upon ; they stand like the customs of China. The things we learn by understanding and practising are open to further knowledge and growth. A normal human act, as distin­ guished from the instinctive behaviour of lower animals or from mere excitoJ motory reaction, involves always these three stages—impression, judgmentexpression. These are not separate! but are orderly steps in the great main fact of life—action. It is all a part of that transmission of energy which appears to be the business of the universe. The sun’s heat pours upon the earth, and passes through whatever substance it strikes, coming out trans­ formed variously, according to the nature of the substance. Man re­ ceives his complement of energy, like every other creature—physical stimu­ lus from food and fire, psychical stimulus from its less known sources ; and these impressions tend to flow through him into expression as natur­ ally as, though with more complexity than, in other creatures. * The song of the skylark and Shelley’s “Skylark” show this wide difference in the amount and quality of transmission, yet are both expres­ sions of the same impressions, plus those wider impressions to which the poet’s organism was open. The distinctive power of man is that of connected action. Our im­ mense capacity for receiving and retaining impressions gives us that world-stock of stored information and its arrested stimulus which we call knowledge. But wisdom, the higher word, refers to our capacity for con­ sidering what we know—handling and balancing the information in stock, and so acting judiciously from the best impression or group of im­ pressions, instead of indiscriminately from the latest or from any that happens to be uppermost. This power, in cases of immediate danger, we call “presence of mind.” Similarly, when otherwise intelligent persons do visibly foolish things, we call it “ absence of mind. ” The brain, as an organ, is present in both cases; but in the former it is connected with �TWO AND TWO TOGETHER 23 action, in the latter the connection is them. A child’s limitless credulity is broken. The word “ thoughtless,” the open door of imposition, and is as applied to so large a share of our ruthlessly taken advantage of by walk and conversation, describes this mother and father, nurse and older same absence of the mind from the companion generally. As a feature in brain-training, this, place where it is wanted. In training the brain of the child, of course, works absolute harm. It first importance lies in cultivating prolongs the infant weakness of the this connection between the mind and racial brain, keeps us credulous and the behaviour. As with eye or hand, open to all imposture, hinders our we should induce frequent repetition true growth. What we should do is of the desired motions, that the habit to help the child to question and find of right action be formed. If the out—teach him to learn, not to believe. child is steadily encouraged to act in He does learn, of course. We cannot this natural connection, in orderly shut out the workings of natural laws sequence of feeling, thought, and from him altogether. Gradually he action, he would grow into constant discovers that fire is hot and water “ presence of mind ” in his behaviour. wet, that stone is hard to fall on, and Habits work in all directions ; and a that there are “pins in pussy’s toes.” habit of thoughtful behaviour is as His brain is always being healthily easy to form as, really easier than, a acted upon by facts, his power of habit of obedience—easier, because it discrimination he practises as best he would be the natural function of the may, and his behaviour follows brain to govern behaviour if we did* inevitably. Given such a child, with such and not so laboriously contradict it. We have preferred submission to intelli­ such an inheritance of constitution gence, and have got neither—not and tendency, submit him to certain intelligence because we have so impressions, and he behaves accord­ violently discouraged it, and not sub­ ingly. He has felt. He has thought. mission because the healthy upward He is about to do. Here comes in We concern forces of human brain-growth will not our universal error. submit. Those races where the chil­ ourselves almost wholly with what dren are most absolutely subservient, the child does, and ignore what he as with the Chinese and Hindu, where feels and thinks. We check the parents are fairly worshipped and behaviour which is the logical result blindly obeyed, are not races of free of his feeling and thinking, and sub­ and progressive thought and healthy stitute another and different beha­ viour for his adoption. activity. Now it is a direct insult to the The potential attitude of mind involved in our method is shown in brain to try to make the body do that perfect expression of “childish something which the brain does not faith ”—“ It’s so because mamma says authorise. It is a physical shock : it so ; and if mamma says so, ’tis so if causes a sort of mental nausea. There ’tain’t so.” That position makes it are many subconscious activities very easy for mamma as long as which go on without our recognition: “ childish faith ” endures ; but how but to call on the body consciously to does it help the man she has reared go through certain motions, undi­ in this idyllic falsehood-? The pain­ rected by previous mental processes, ful truth is that we have used childish is an affront to any healthy brain. It weaknesses to make our government is sharply distasteful to us, because it easy for us, instead of cultivating the is against the natural working of the powers that shall make life easy to machinery. The vigorous functional �24 TWO AND TWO TOGETHER activity of the young- brain cries out against it; and the child says, “Why?” “Why” is an articulate sound to express the groping of the brain for relation, for consistency. We have so brow-beaten and contro­ verted this natural tendency, so forced young growing brains to accept the inconsistent, that consistency has be­ come so rare in human conduct as to be called “ a jewel.” Yet the desire for consistency is one of the most inherent and essential of our mental appetites. It is the logical tendency, the power to “ put two and two to­ gether,” the one great force that holds our acts in sequence and makes human society possible. We demand consistency in others, and scoff at the lack of it, even in early youth. “ What yer talkin’ about, anyway?” we cry. “There’s no sense in that!” We expect con­ sistency of ourselves, too. It is funny, though painful, to see the ordinary warped brain trying to square its own conduct with its own ideals. Square they must, somehow, however strained and thin is our' patchwork connection. We check the child’s act, the natural sequence of his feeling and thought, so incessantly as to give plenty of basis for that pathetic tale of the little girl who said her name was Mary. “ And what is your last name?” “ Don’t,’’ .said she. “Mary Don’t.” By doing this we constantly send back upon the brain its own “impulses, and accustom it to such continual discouragement of natural initiative that it gradually ceases to govern the individual behaviour. In highest success, this produces the heavy child, whining, “ What shall I do now?” always hanging about, fit subject for any other will to work on ; and the heavy adult, victim of ennui, and needing constant outside stimulus to “ pass away the time.” The slowness, the inertia, the opaque conservatism, and the open­ ness to any sort of external pressure— easiest, of course, on the down side— which so block the path of humanity, largely come back to that poor child’s surname, Mary Don’t. It is thoroughly beaten into us when young, and for the rest of life we mostly “Don’t.” But beyond the paralysing “Don’t!” checking the natural movement of the organism, comes a galvanising “ Do ! ” shocking it into unnatural activity. We tell the child to perform a certain action toward which his own feeling and thought have made no stir whatever. “Why?” he demands. And we state as reason our authority, and add an immediate heaven or hell arrangement of our own making to facilitate his performance. He does it. Hell is very near. He does it many, many times. He becomes habituated to a course of behaviour which comes to its expres»sion, not through his own previous impression and judgment, but through ours—that is, he is acting from another person’s feeling and thinking. We have asserted our authority just before his act, between it and his thought. We have made a cleft which wudens to a chasm between what he feels and thinks and what he does. Into that chasm pours to waste an immeasurable amount of human energy. The struggles of the dethroned mind to get possession of its own body again, as the young man or woman grows to personal freedom, ought to strike remorse and shame to the parental heart. They do not, because the devoted parent knows no more of these simple psychic processes than the Goths knew of the priceless manuscripts they destroyed so cheerfully. With the slow, late kindling of the freed mind, under the stimulus, perhaps, of noble thoughts from others, or just the inner force of human upgrowth, the youth tries to take the rudder, and steer straight. But the rudder­ chains are stretched to useless �TWO AND TWO TOGETHER slackness, or rusted and broken. He feelsnobly. Hethinksnobly. Hestarts to do nobly, but his inner pressure meets no quick response in outer act. The connection is broken. The habit of "Don’t” is strong upon him. Fol­ lowing each upward impulse which says, " Do !” is that automatic check, artificial, but heavily driven in, which has so thoroughly and effectually taught the brain to stop at thinking, not to do what it thought. What he felt and thought was not allowed to govern his action these fifteen years past. Why should it now ? It takes years of conscientious work to re­ establish this original line of smooth connection, and the mended place is never so strong as it would have been if it had not been broken. Also, the work of those who seek to educate our later youth, and of those who are for ever pouring out their lives to lead the world a little higher, is rendered a millionfold more difficult by this same gulf, this terrible line of cleavage which strikes so deep to the roots of life, and leaves our beautiful feelings and wise thoughts to mount sky-high in mag­ nificent culture, while our action, which is life’s real test, grovels slowly along, scarce moved by all our fine ideas. A more general discourager of our racial advancement than this method of brain-training we could hardly have invented. It is universal in its appli­ cation, and grinds down steadily on all our people during the most im­ pressionable years of life. That we grow as we do in spite of it is splendid proof of the beneficent forces of our unconscious life, always stronger than our conscious efforts ; and that our children grow more freely, and so have more power of initiative and self-government, is the best work of our democracy. “But what else can we do?” will ask the appalled parents. Without authority they feel no grip upon the child, and see themselves exposed to infant tyranny, and the infant grow­ ing up neglected and untrained. This shows how little progress we have made in child-culture, how little grasp we have of the real processes of edu­ cation. Any parent, no matter how ignorant, is wiser than a baby and larger. Therefore, any parent can direct a child’s action and enforce it, to some extent. But to understand how to modify the child’s action by such processes as shall keep it still his own, to alter his act by first altering his feeling and thought, and so keeping the healthy sequence unbroken—that is a far more subtle and difficult task. A typical instance of this difference in method may be illustrated in that common and always difficult task, teaching a child table manners. Here is a case in which there is no instinct in the child to be ¿appealed to. The noise, clumsiness, and carelessness to which we object are not at all unpleasant to him. In what way can we reach the child’s range of reasoning, and convince him of the desirability of this artificial code of ours? We can, of course, state that it displeases us, and appeal to his goodwill not to give us pain. This is rational enough; but con­ sideration for others, based on a mere statement of distaste—a distaste he cannot sympathise with—is a rather weak force with most children. It is a pity to overstrain this delicate feeling. It should be softly tested from time to time, and used enough to encourage a healthy growth ; but to appeal continually to a sympathy none too strong is often to strain and weaken it. In table manners it seldom works well. The alleged dis­ tress of the parent requires too much imagination, the desired self-control has too slight a basis. But there is a far safer and better way. Carefully work out in your own mind the real reason why you wish the child to conform to this �26 TWO AND TWO TOGETHER particular code of table ethics. It is not wholly on the ground of displeas­ ing you by the immediate acts. The main reason why they displease you, and why you are so concerned about the matter, is that this is the accepted standard among the people with whom you associate and with whom you expect the child to associate-, and if he does not conform to this code he will be excluded from desirable society. Reasons why table manners exist at all, or are what they are, require further study ; but the point at issue is not why it is customary to eat with the fork instead of the knife, but why your child should do so. When he gets to the point of analysing these details, and asks why he should fold his napkin in one case and leave it crumpled in another, you will of course be prepared with the real reasons. Meanwhile, the real reason why the child should learn not to do these undesirable things is that such manners, if pursued, will deprive him of desirable society. We usually content ourselves with an oral statement to this effect : “ Nobody will want to eat with you if you do so!” Right here let a word be said to those who are afraid of over-stimulating a child’s brain by a more rational method of training. Training by observation and deduc­ tion is far easier to a young brain than training by oral statements. To take into the mind by ear a state­ ment of fact, and to hold that state­ ment in memory and preserve its force to check a natural action, is a difficult feat for an adult. But to see that such a thing has such a conse­ quence, and “ take warning” by that, is the “early method,” the natural method, the quickest, easiest, surest way. So, instead of saying to the child, “ If you behave so, people will not want to eat with you,” we should let him see that this is the case, and feel the lack. f-Jis most desirable society is usually that of his parents ; and his first entrance upon that plane should be fairly conditioned upon his learning to play the game as they do. No compulsion, no penalties, no thought of “ naughtiness,” merely that, if he wants to eat with them, why, that is the way they eat, and he must do so, too. If he will not, exit the desirable society. By very gradual steps—not by long, tiresome, grown-up meals, but by a graduated series of exercises that should recognise the physical difficulty of co-ordinating the young faculties on this elaborate “ manual of arms a child could learn the whole performance in a reasonable time, and lose neither nervous force nor clear­ ness of perception in the process. As we do these things now, pulling this string and that, appealing to feelings half developed, urging reasons which find no recognition, using com­ pulsion which to the child’s mind is arbitrary and unjust, we may super­ induce a tolerable system of table manners ; but we have more or less injured the instrument in so doing. A typewriter could, perhaps, be worked with a hammer, but it would not improve the machine. We have had far more consideration for “ the machinery of the household ” than for the machinery of a child’s mind, and yet the real foundation-claim of the home is that it is necessary to rear children in. If the ordinary condi­ tions of household life are unsuitable to convey the instruction we desire, it is for us so to arrange those condi­ tions as to make them suitable. There are cases, many cases, in a child-time, where we cannot command the conditions necessary for this method of instruction, where the child must act from our suggestion with no previous or accompanying reasoning. This makes it all the more necessary that such reasoning should be open to him when we can command it. Moreover, the ordinary events in a young- life are not surprises. �THE BURNT CHILD DREADS THE SLIPPER to the parent. We know in advance the things that are so unexpected to the child. Why should we not be at some pains to prepare him for these experiences ? The given acts of each day are not the crucial points we make of them. What is important is that the child shall gradually establish a rational and connected scheme of life and method of action, his young faculties improving as he uses them, life growing easier and plainer to him from year to year. It is for the parent, the educator, the brain­ trainer, to study out details of method and delicate applications. The main purpose is that the child’s conduct shall be his own-—his own chosen course of action, adopted by him through the use of his own faculties, not forced upon him by immediate external pressure. 27 It is our business to make plain to him the desirability of the behaviour we wish produced, carefully estab­ lishing from day to day his percep­ tions of the use and beauty of life, and his proven confidence in us as interpreters. The young brain should be regularly practised in the first easy steps of sequential reasoning, arguing from the interesting causes we so carefully provide to the pleasant or not too painful effects we so honestly let it feel, always putting two and two together as it advances in the art and practice of human conduct. Then it will grow into a strong, clear, active, mature brain, capable of relating the facts of life with a wider and juster vision than has been ours, and acting unflinchingly from its own best judg­ ment, as we have striven to do in vain these many years. IV. THE BURNT CHILD DREADS THE SLIPPER The question of discipline is a serious one to every young mother; and most mothers are young to begin with. She feels the weight of maternal responsibility and the necessity for bringing up her child properly, but has studied nothing whatever on the subject. What methods of discipline are in general use in the rearing of children? The oldest and commonest of all is that of meeting an error in the child’s behaviour with physical pain. We simply hurt the child when he does wrong, in order that he may so learn not to do wrong. A method so pontmon and sp old as this ought to be clearly justified, or as clearly con­ demned, by its results. Have we succeeded yet in simplify­ ing and making easy the training of children—easy for the trainer and for the trained; and have we developed a race of beings with plain, strong, clear perceptions of right and wrong behaviour and an easy and accurate fulfilment of those perceptions ? It must be admitted that we have not; but two claims will be made in excuse : first, that, however unsuc­ cessful, this method of discipline is better than any other ; and, second, that the bad behaviour of humanity is dup to pur ipherpnt depravity, and �28 THE BURNT CHILD DREADS THE SLIPPER cannot be ameliorated much even by­ physical punishment. Some may go further, and say thatwhatever advance we have made is due to this parti­ cular system. Unfortunately, we have almost no exact data from which to compute the value of different methods of child-training. In horse-training something definite is known. On one of the great stock ranches of the West, for instance, where some phenomenal racers have been bred, the trainers of colts not only forbid any rough handling of the sensitive young animals, but even rough speaking to them. It has been proven that the intelligent and affec­ tionate horse is trained more easily and effectually by gentleness than by severity. But with horses the methods used are open to inspection, and also the results. With children each family practises alone on its own young ones, and no record is kept beyond the casual obser­ vation and hearsay reports of the neighbours. Yet, even so, there is a glimmer of light. The proverbial uncertainty as to “ ministers’ sons ” indicates a tendency to reaction when a child has been too severely re­ strained ; and the almost sure down­ fall of the “mamma’s darling,” the too-much-smothered and over-in­ dulged boy, shows the tendency to foolish excesses when a child has not been restrained enough. Again, our general uncertainty as to methods proves that even the currently accepted “ rod ” system is not infallible. If it were, we should have peace of mind and uncounted generations of good citizens. As it is, we have the mixed and spotty world we all know so well—a heavy percentage of acknowledged criminals, a much larger grade of those who just do not break the law, but whose defections from honesty, courage, truth, and honour weigh heavily upon us all. Following that comes the vast mass of “good people,” and their behaviour is sometimes more trying than that of thè bad ones. Humanity does gain, but not as fast as so intelligent a race should. In penology something has been learned. Here, dealing with the extreme criminal, we are slowly estab­ lishing the facts that arbitrary and severe punishment does no’t propor­ tionately decrease crime ; that crime has causes, which may be removed; and that the individual needs to be treated beforehand, preventively, rather than afterward, retributively. This would seem to throw some light on infant penology. If retributive punishment does not proportionately decrease crime in adult criminals, perhaps it does not decrease “naugh­ tiness ” among little children. If there is an arrangement of conditions and a treatment which may prevent the crime, perhaps there may be an arrangement of conditions and a treat­ ment which will prevent the naughti­ ness. One point may be clearly established to begin with, and that is the need of an open court for our helpless little offenders. Whatever else we think of human nature, we know it to be fallible, and that a private individual cannot be expected to administer justice in secret and alone. Suppose Mr. Jones steals a cow from Mr. Smith, is Mr. Smith capable of being himself both judge and execu­ tioner? Does not the very concep­ tion of justice involve a third party, someone to hold the scales, to balance, to decide ? And, if circum­ stances compel much power to be invested in an individual for a season, should not that individual be pre­ viously instructed from some code of law which many have sanctioned, and afterward be held responsible to public judgment ? A ship captain, for instance, has absolute authority for a while ; but his authority rests on law, and. if he �THE BURNT CHILD DREADS THE SLIPPER breaks that law, he is liable to punish­ ment. Moreover, if he goes too far while in command, he is liable to dangerous mutiny as well. But in domestic discipline the child is abso­ lutely in the power of the parent. There is no appeal. There is no defence. There are no witnesses. The child offends against the parent, and the offended one is both judge and executioner. A number of chil­ dren may commit exactly the same offence, as, for instance, if six boys all go swimming when forbidden ; yet they are liable to six several punish­ ments at the hands of their six several mothers or fathers—punishments bear­ ing relation to the views, health, and temper of the parent at the time rather than to the nature of the mis­ deed. The only glimmer of protection which the child gets from an enlight­ ened community is in the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children —a small, feeble body, acting in few localities, and intervening only to save the child from the parent when gross physical cruelty is practised. That in many cases parents are even violently cruel to little children gives reason to believe that many others are a little cruel; and that still more, while not cruel, are unwise. There is no society for the preven­ tion of over-indulgence to children, for instance; yet this is a frequent injury to our young people. What­ ever the views of the separate parents, and whatever their standard of jus­ tice, a great improvement would be made if there were some publicity and community of action in their methods. A hundred men together can decide upon and carry out a higher course of action than they could be trusted to follow severally. Our beautiful growth in justice and equity (for grown people) has always required this openness and union. Many a mdther, tired and cross with her housework, does things to her child which she would be ashamed to retail to a cool and unprejudiced circle of friends. And many another mother consistently and conscientiously inflicts punishments which she would learn to be ashamed of if she heard them discussed by her respected associates with a consensus of disapproval. In the ordinary contact of neigh­ bourly life some little development of this sort goes on; a few sporadic Mothers’ Clubs lead to more concerted discussions ; and to-day the Mothers’ Congress, lately become the Parents’ Congress, and other bodies, together with a growing field of literature on the subject, is leading to far wider and deeper thought, and some experi­ ment. But the field is as wide as the world, and very little is yet accom­ plished. We have swung wide from the stern severity of earlier times, so that our children are notoriously 11 indulged ” ; but merely to leave off a wrong method, without introducing a better one, is not all that can be hoped. The discipline of life lies before us all. The more carefully and wisely we teach and train our children, the less they and others need suffer after­ ward. But there does seem to be some grave deficiency in our method of domestic discipline. Here is little Albert being educated. He is not going to school yet. He is “ not old enough.” That is, he is not old enough to be taught anything syste­ matically by persons whose business it is to teach ; but he is old enough to be learning the A B C of life at the hands of those with whom he chances to be. A child learns every day. That cannot be helped. What he learns, and how, we can largely dic­ tate ; but we cannot keep his brain shut until he gets to school, and then open it for three or four hours a day only. What does little Albert learn ? Put yourself in his place for a little while. Here are ' new sensations coming to him momently, through the eager nerves of sense. Here is a �3° THE BURNT CHILD DREADS THE SLITPER new brain, fresh to receive impres­ sions, store them, and act upon them. The pleasure of perceiving is keen, the pleasure of his limited but grow­ ing reflection is keen, and the pleasure of action is best of all. Life is full of interest. All the innumerable facts which form our smooth background of behaviour, in the knowledge of which we avoid the water and the fire and go down hill circumspectly, are to him fresh discoveries and reve­ lations. He has to prove them and put them together, and see how they work. The feelings with which we have learned to associate certain facts and actions do not exist to him. He knows nothing of “ should ” or “should not,” except as he learns it by personal trial or through the reaction of other persons upon him. This open state of mind we early destroy by labelling certain acts as good and others as bad ; and, since we do not see our way to exhibiting the goodness or badness to the baby brain in natural colours, we paint them in sharp black and white, with no shading. He has to gather his sense of relatively good and bad from the degree of our praise and punish­ ment ; and strange indeed are his impressions. The loving and cuddling which delight his baby soul are associated with so many different acts, and in such varying proportion, that he does not clearly gather whether it- is more virtuous to kiss mamma or to pull grandpa’s whiskers; and it takes him some time to learn which dress he must not hug. But if the good things confuse him, the bad ones are far more complex and uncertain. Little Albert is, we will say, inves­ tigating his mother’s work-basket. A tall object stands before him. He just bumped his head against it, and it wiggled. He felt it wiggle. He reaches forth an inquiring hand, and finds graspable wicker legs within reach. To grasp and to pull are natural to the human hand and arm. To shake was early taught him. Things were put in his hands, the shaking of which produced an agree­ able noise and admiration from the beloved ones. So he shakes this new object, and, to his delight, something rattles. He puts forth his strength, and, lo! the tall, shakable object falls prostrate before him, and scatters into a sprawling shower of little things that clink and roll. Excellent! Lovely ! Have not persons built up tall creations of vari-coloured blocks, and taught baby to knock them down and rejoice in their scattering? But mamma, to whom this group of surfaces, textures, colours, move­ ments, and sounds, means much besides infantile instruction, asserts that he is “naughty,” and treats him with severity. “ If you do that again,” says irate mamma, “ I’ll whip you !” If Albert has not already been whipped, the new word means nothing. How is an unwhipped child to know what whipping means ? She might save her breath. The lesson is not taught by words. But if she promptly whips him, and does so inevitably when he repeats the offence, he does learn a definite lesson— namely, that the act of pulling over a work-basket results in a species of physical pain, via mamma. Then the unprejudiced young brain makes its deduction—“The pulling over of things causes physical pain, named whipping.” This much being established, he acts on the informa­ tion. Presently he learns, with some little confusion, that going out of the gate without leave is also productive of whipping—dissimilar acts, but the same result—and lays this up with the other : “ Pulling over things and going out of gates are two causes with the same result—whipping.” Then comes another case. He begins to investigate that endless ■wonder and attraction, the fire. Tf ever cause and effect were neatly and �THE BURNT CHILD DREADS THE SLIPPER forcibly related, it is in this useful and dangerous element. So simple and sure is its instructive and deter­ rent action that we have built a proverb on it—-“The burnt child dreads the fire.” But the mother of Albert has a better plan than mother Nature. She interposes with her usual arbi­ trary consequence-—“ If you play with fire, I will whip you,” and Albert learns anew that this third cause still produces the same unpleasant result ; and he makes his record—“Pulling things over, going out of gates, playing with fire, result in whipping.” And he acts accordingly. Then one day he makes a new and startling discovery. Led by some special temptation, he slips out of the gate and safely back again, unseen of any. No whipping follows. Then his astonished but accurate brain hastily revises the previous informa­ tion, and adds a glaring new clause—“ It is not just going out of gates that makes a whipping come : it is being seen !” This is covertly tried on the other deeds with the same result. “Aha 1 Aha !” clicks the little record­ ing machine inside. “ Now I know ! Whipping does not come from those things : it comes from mamma ; and if she does not see me it doesn’t come 1 Whipping is the result of being seen! ” Of course, a little child does not actually say this to himself in so many words ; but he does get this impression very clearly, as may be seen from his ensuing behaviour. The principle in question, in con­ sidering this usual method of disci­ pline, is whether it is better to asso­ ciate a child’s idea of consequences with the act itself or with an indi­ vidual, and conditioned upon the chance of discovery. Our general habit is to make the result of the child’s deed contingent upon the parental knowledge and displeasure rather than upon the deed itself. As 3i in this hackneyed instance of the fire, instead of teaching the child by mild and cautious experiment that fire burns, we teach him that fire whips. The baby who is taught not to play with fire by the application of a rear­ ward slipper does not understand the nature of the glittering attraction any better than before; and as soon as he learns that whippings are contingent upon personal observation, he fondly imagines that if he can play with fire without being seen no pain will follow. Thus the danger we seek to avert is not averted. He is still liable to be burned through ignorance. We have denied the true lesson as to the nature of fire, and taught a false one of arbitrary but uncertain punish­ ment. Even if the child is preter­ naturally obedient and never does the things we tell him not to do, he does not learn the lesson. He is no wiser than before. We have saved him from danger, and also from know­ ledge. If he is disobedient, he runs the same risk as if we had told him nothing, with the added danger of acting alone and nervously. Whereas, if he were taught the simple lesson that fire burns, under our careful supervision to see that the burn was not serious, then he would know the actual nature of fire, and dread it with sure reason, far more than he dreads the uncertain slipper. This has been dwelt upon so fully by previous writers that there would seem small need of further mention ; but still our mothers do not read or do not understand, and still our babies are confronted with arbitrary punishment instead of natural conse­ quence. The worst result of this system is in its effect on the moral sense. We have a world full of people who are partially restrained from evil by the fear of arbitrary punishment, and who do evil when they imagine they can do so without discovery. Never having been taught to attach the evil consequence to the �32 THE BURNT CHILD DREADS THE SLIPPER evil act, but, instead, to find it a remote contingency hinging on another person’s observation, we grow up in the same attitude of mind, afraid not of stealing, but of the policeman. If there is no slipper, why not tip over the work-basket; if there is no policeman, why not steal ? Back of slipper and police we hold up to the infant mind a still more remote con­ tingency of eternal punishment; but this has to be wholly imagined, and is so distant, to a child’s mind, as to have little weight. It has little weight with grown persons even, and, neces­ sarily, less with a child. The mental processes involved in receiving by ear an image of a thing never seen, of visualising it by imagi­ nation and then remembering the vision, and finally of bringing forward that remembered vision to act as check to a present and actual tempta­ tion, are most difficult. But where a consequence is instant and clear— when baby tries to grab the parrot, and the parrot bites—that baby, without being promised a whipping or being whipped, will thereafter religiously avoid all parrots. A baby soon learns to shun certain things for reasons of his own. What he dislikes and fears he will not touch. It is no effort for the young mind to observe and remember a prompt natural consequence. We do make some clumsy attempts in this direction, as when we tie up in an ill-tasting rag the thumb too often sucked. If thumb-sucking is a really bad habit and a general one, we should long since have invented a neat and harmless wash, purchasable in small bottles at the drug store, of which a few applications would sicken the unhappy suckling of that thumb most effectually. But thumb-sucking we do not consider as wrong, merely as undesirable. When the child does what we call wrong, we think he should be “punished.” Our ideas of domestic discipline are still of the crudely savage era; while in social discipline, in penology, we have become tolerably civilised. Some will say that the child is like a savage, and is most open to the treatment current at that time in our history. It is true that the child passes through the same phases in personal development that the race passed long ago, and that he is open to the kind of instruction which would affect a primitive-minded adult. But this means (if we are seeking to benefit the child) not the behaviour of one savage to another, but such behaviour as would elevate the savage. One of the most simple and useful elements in primitive discipline is retaliation. It is Nature’s law of reaction in conscious form. To retaliate in kind is primitive justice. If we observe the code of ethics in use among children, it resolves itself into two simple prin­ ciples : that of instant and equal retaliation; or, when that fails, the dread ultimatum which no child can resist—“I won’t play ! ” A child who is considered “ mean ” and disagree­ able by his fellows meets the simple and effectual treatment of snubbing, neglect, ostracism. These two principles may be applied in domestic discipline gently, a.ccurately, fairly, and without ill-feeling ; and their effect is admirable. “ What is the difference between this and the other method?” will be asked. “Is not this also descending to the plane of childishness, of savagery, to which you were just now objecting ? ” Here is the difference. To apply a brutal and arbitrary punishment to the person of the offender is what savages do, and what we do to the child. To receive a just and accurate retaliation is what child and savage understand, are restrained and instructed by. We should treat the child in methods applicable by the savage, not with the �THE BURNT CHILD DREADS THE SLIPPER behaviour of savages. For instance, you are playing with a little child. The little child is rude to you. You put him down, and go away. This is a gentle reaction, which, being repeated, he soon learns to associate with the behaviour you dislike. “ When I do this,” observes the infant mind, “the play stops. I like to play. There­ fore I will not do the thing that stops it.” This is simple observation, and involves no ill-feeling. He learns to modify his conduct to a desired end, which is the lesson of life. In this case you treat him by a method of retaliation quite perceptible to a savage, and appealing to the sense of justice without arousing antago­ nism. But if you are playing with the little one, he is rude to you, and you spank him, he is conscious of a personal assault which does arouse antagonism. It is not only what a savage could understand, but what a savage would have done. It arouses savage feelings, and helps to keep the child a savage. Also, it helps to keep the race a savage ; for the child who grows up under the treatment common in that era finds it difficult to behave in a manner suitable to civilisation. Discipline is part of life; and, if met early and accepted, all life becomes easier. But the discipline which the real world gives us is based on inexorable law, not on personal whim. We make the child’s idea of right and wrong rest on some person’s feeling, not on the nature of the act. He is trained to behave on a level of primitive despotism, and cannot successfully adjust himself to a free democracy. This is why our children, who get less of the oldfashioned discipline, make better citizens than the more submissive races who were kept severely down in youth, and are unable to keep themselves down in later life. There is a painful paucity of ideas 33 on child-training in most families, as clearly shown in the too common confession, “ I’m sure I don’t know what to do with that child!” or, “What would you do with such a child as that ?” If we may not use the ever-ready slipper, the shrill, abusive voice, the dark closet, or threat of withheld meal, what remains to us in the line of discipline ? What is to be done to the naughty child? We need here some knowledge of what naughtiness really is. The child is a growing group of faculties, the comparative development of which makes him a good or bad member of society. His behaviour has, first, the limitations of his age, and, second, of his person­ ality. A child is naturally more timid than a grown person, and a given child may be afflicted with more timidity than is natural to his age. Acts which indicate such a condition show need of training and discipline. A certain amount of selfishness is natural to childhood : acts indicating unusual selfishness call for correction. So with the whole field of childish behaviour : whatever acts show evil tendencies need checking ; but the acts natural to every child only show that he is a child—which is not “ naughty ”! If we considered the field beforehand, asked ourselves what we expected during this day or this year in the behaviour of such a child, and were not displeased when he behaved within those lines, much unnecessary pain and trouble would be saved to both parties. Then, when things really indicative of evil were done, we should carefully examine and test the character so manifested, and begin to apply the suitable discipline. For example, it is natural to child­ hood to be inconsiderate of others. The intense little ego, full of strong new sensations, has small sympathy for the sensations of his associates. �34 THE BURNT CHILD DREADS THE SLIPPER The baby may love the kitten, and yet hurt it cruelly because he does not know how kittens feel. This is not naughty, and needs only the positive training which shall hasten his natural growth in extension of sympathy. To show him the right methods of handling the pet, and especially of not handling it; to teach him to enjoy watching the kitten’s natural activities and to respect its preferences—all that is education, and needs no “ discipline.” But if the child shows a pleasure in hurting the kitten after he knows it hurts, then you have real evil to deal with. A character is indicated which may grow to callous indifference to the feelings of others, and even to their actual injury. These acts are“ wrong,” and wise, strong measures are neces­ sary. There are two main lines on which to work. One is to take extra measures to cultivate sympathy, using nature study, and to examine and care for such pronounced cases of suffering as must arouse even the most dominant interest. The too-callous child might be taken to a children’s hospital, and helped to minister to the needs of the small sufferers. His pets, meanwhile, should be large and strong creatures, which he would depend on more or less, and his enjoying their company made abso­ lutely contingent on right treatment. Special attention should also be paid to all such acts as showed considera­ tion of others—to encourage and reward them. Again, if a child shows a tod violent or sullen temper, or is distinctly sly and untrustworthy, these are serious indications, and need careful and thorough treatment. But the great majority of acts for which children are punished are not at all evil. “Carelessness,” for in­ stance, is incident to the young brain -—-essential to it. The power always to co-relate properly and remember is an adult power, and not always strong in the adult. We need, of course, to encourage a growing care­ fulness, but not to expect it nor punish its natural lack. Clumsiness is also incidental to the young nerve connections. The baby drops things continually, the child frequently; the adult will hold an object even while the mind is other­ wise engaged, the habit of the flexomotor nerves being well established. Enterprising experiment is not only natural to childhood, but a positive virtue. That is the quality which leads the world onward, and the lack of it is a Chinese wall against pro­ gress. One enormous field of what we call naughtiness in our little ones lies in offences against things. First and foremost, clothes. Wet­ ting, soiling, and tearing clothes— what a sea of tears has been shed, what wails and sobs, what heavy and useless punishments inflicted, because of injured clothing ! Yet almost every accident to clothing comes from the interaction of two facts—first, the perfectly natural clumsiness and care­ lessness of childhood ; and second, our interminable folly in dressing a child in unchildish garments, and placing him in unchildish conditions. There is no naughtiness involved except in the parent, who shows a stupidity abnormal to her age. Chil­ dren are frequently reproached for wearing out their shoes. What does the intelligent parent expect ? Is the child to sit in a chair, lie down, or ride the bicycle continually? If the child is seen to cut his shoes with knives or grind them on a grindstone, that may be discouraged as malicious mischief; but the inevitable stubbing and scuffing of the eager, restless, ungoverned little feet should have been foreseen and allowed for. We do strive to buy the heaviest possible mass of iron-shod leather for our boys, and then we scold them for being noisy. �TEACHABLE ETHICS 3^ To surround a growing creature behaviour which is sure to appear, with artificial difficulties, to fail to this is not the kind of discipline which understand or allow for the natural makes wise, strong, self-governing difficulties of his age, and then to citizens. punish with arbitrary retribution the V. TEACHABLE ETHICS Our g'eneral knowledge of ethics is small and unreliable, and our practice in ethics even smaller and more un­ reliable. The good intentions of mankind are prominent ; but our ideas of right behaviour are so con­ tradictory and uncertain, our execu­ tion of such ideas as we hold so partial and irregular, that human behaviour continues to be most un­ satisfactory. This condition we used cheerfully to attribute to the infirmity of human nature, taking ignominious consolation from the thought of our vicious tendencies and hopeless weak­ ness. The broad light of evolutionary study has removed this contemptible excuse. We now know human nature to be quite as good as the rest of nature, wherein everything is good after its kind ; and that, furthermore, our human kind has made great improvement in conduct so far, and is capable of making a great deal more. We are not weak: we are strong. We are not wicked : we earnestly desire to be good. But we are still very ignorant of the science of ethics, and most inept in its practice. We learn mathematics, and apply our knowledge with marvellous results. We learn physics, and use what we know therein to work miracles in the material world. Ethics is as plain a science as physics, and as easy of application. Ethics is the physics of social relation. The cause of our slow growth in ethics is this :— The prominent importance of right action and constant need of some general standard to appeal to, strongly impress the human mind in its very earliest stage of development. In­ capable as yet of scientific methods of study, ignorant, supremely credulous and timid, conservative and super­ stitious to a degree, primitive man promptly made “ a religion ” of his scant observations and deductions in ethics, and forbade all further study and experiment. Where other sciences have their recognised room for pro­ gress, a slowly accumulating, and often changing, knowledge behind, and a free field of uncertainty in front, ethics was promptly walled in with the absolute and the supernatural. The few lines of action then recog­ nised as “ moral ” or “ immoral ” were defined in the most conclusive manner, and no room left for later study. It is most interesting to note the efforts of conscientious men in later ages to make an intelligible, consistent scheme of ethics out of these essentially incorrect early attempts. By these efforts a religion grew from a simple group of dogmas c 2 �36 TEACHABLE ETHICS and rites to the complex ramifications of many commentators; and the occa­ sional vigorous and progressive brain that saw more light has always had to suffer and struggle long to intro­ duce new truth. We have forbidden, under awful penalties, all openminded study in these lines ; and this especially hindering mental attitude has kept the most general and simple of the sciences in a very backward condition, so that we go through school and college with no real enlightenment on the subject. Thus a young man, quite proficient in languages, physics, and the higher mathematics, will be shamefully defi­ cient in even the lowest ethics (right behaviour in regard to himself), and show no acquaintance whatever with the higher branches of the subject. We err very commonly in right treat­ ment of ourselves, more commonly in treatment of one another; and our confusion of idea and behaviour increases with the square of the distance, our behaviour to other nations or other kinds of animals being lowest of all. We have a common scheme of behaviour, coming from various influences and condi­ tions, which we cannot ourselves account for by any ethical rules ; and this everyday, working ethics of ours shows how social evolution uncon­ sciously developes needed conduct, even where our conscious intelligence fails to recognise or recommend such conduct as ethical. Thus we have developed many stalwart and timely virtues in spite of rather than because of religious approval, and many serious vices flourish without religious oppo­ sition. A conspicuous instance of this is in the pious contentment of a wealthy church corporation, the income of which is derived from tenement houses which are hotbeds of evil ; and in the often observed conduct of an irreli­ gious man, who practises the com­ monplace necessary virtues of daily business life. But this power of social evolution developes the imme­ diate virtues essential to close per­ sonal intercourse more quickly than the higher range of virtue needed in national and international affairs. Thus we often see “ a good family man,” friend, and perhaps even an honest business dealer, shamefully negligent or corrupt in political duty. It would seem that the same brains which have brought us forward to such enormous knowledge in other lines might have made more progress in this. Some special cause must have operated, and be still operating, to prevent a normal growth in this deeply important field. Much might be said here of the influence of religious custom ; but the still closer and more invariable cause lies not in the church, but in the home. Where in social relation our neces­ sary enlargement and progress have forced upon us nobler characteristics, in the domestic relation small change has been made. The privacy and con­ servatism of the family group have made it a nursing ground of rudimen­ tary survivals, long since outgrown in more open fields ; and the ethical code of the family is patently behind that of the society in which it is located. The primitive instincts, affections, and passions are there; but justice, liberty, courtesy, and such later social sentiments are very weak. New truth is seen by new brains. As the organ we think with grows from age to age, we are able to think farther and deeper ; but, if the grow­ ing brain is especially injured in any one department in early youth, it will not grow as fast in that one line. As a general rule—a rule with rare excep­ tions—-we do thus injure the baby brain in the line of ethical thought and action. In other sciences we teach what we know, when we teach at all, and practise fairly; but, �TEACHABLE ETHICS in teaching a child ethics, we do not give even what we have of knowledge, and our practice with him and the practice we demand from him are not at all in accordance withour true views. In glaring instance is the habit of lying to children. A woman who would not lie to a grown friend will lie freely to her own child. A man who would not be unjust to his brother or a stranger will be unjust to his little son. The common cour­ tesy given any adult is not given to the child. That delicate consideration for another’s feelings, which is part of our common practice among friends, is lacking in our dealings with chil­ dren. From the treatment they receive, children cannot learn any rational and consistent scheme of ethics. Their healthy little brains make early inference from the conduct of their elders, and incite behaviour on the same plan ; but they speedily find that these are poor rules, for they do not work both ways. The conduct we seek to enforce from them does not accord with our conduct, nor form any consistent whole by itself. It is not based on any simple group of principles which a child can under­ stand, but rests very largely on the personal equation and the minor variations of circumstance. Take lying again as an instance. 1. We lie to the child. He discovers it. No evil is apparently resultant. 2. He accuses us of it, and we punish him for impertinence. 3. He lies to us, and meets severe penalties. 4. We accuse him of it, rightly or wrongly, and are not punished for impertinence. 5. He observes us lie to the visitor in the way of politeness with no evil result. 6. He lies to the visitor less skilfully, and is again made to suffer. 7. He lies to his more ignorant juniors, and nothing happens. 8. Meanwhile, if he receives any definite ethical instruction on the subject, he is probably told that God hates a liar, that to lie is a sin ! 37 The elastic human brain can and does accommodate itself to this con­ fusion, and grows up to repeat the whole performance complacently with­ out any consciousness of inconsistency; but progress in ethics is hardly to be looked for under such conditions. It is pathetic to see this waste of power in each generation. We are born with the gentler and kinder impulses bred by long social interrelation. We have ever broader and subtler brains ; but our good impulses are checked, twisted, tangled, weighed down with many artificial restrictions, and our restless questionings and suggestions are snubbed or neglected. A child is temptingly open to instruc­ tion in ethics. His primitive mental attitude recognises the importance of the main principles as strongly as the early savage did. His simple and guarded life makes it easy for us to supply profuse and continuous illus­ trations of the working of these prin­ ciples ; and his strong, keen feelings enable us to impress with lasting power the relative rightness and wrongness of different lines of action. Yet this beautiful opportunity is not only neglected, but the fresh mind and its eager powers are blurred, confused, discouraged, by our senseless treat­ ment. Our lack of knowledge does not excuse it. Our lingering religious restriction does not excuse it. We know something of ethics, and prac­ tise something, but treat the child as if he was a lower instead of a higher being. Surely we can reduce our ethical knowledge into some simple and teachable shape, and take the same pains to teach this noblest, this most indispensable of sciences that we take to teach music or dancing. Physics is the science of molecular relation—how things work in relation to other things. Ethics is the science of social relation—how people work in relation to other people. To the individual there is no ethics but of self-development and reproduction. �38 TEACHABLE ETHICS The lonely animal’s behaviour goes no farther. But gregarious animals have to relate their behaviour to one another—a more complex problem ; and in our intricate co-relation there is so wide a field of interrelative be­ haviour that its working principles and laws form a science. However complex our ultimate acts, they are open to classification, and resolve themselves into certain general principles which long since were recog­ nised and named. Liberty, justice, love—we all know these and others, and can promptly square a given act by some familiar principle. The sense of justice developes very early, and may be used as a basis for a large range of conduct. “To play fair” can be early taught. 11 That isn’t fair !” is one of a child’s earliest per­ ceptions. “ When I want to go some­ where, you say I’m too little ; and when I cry, you say I’m too big ! It isn’t fair !” protests the child. In training a child in the perception and practice of justice we should always remember that the standard must suit the child’s mind, not ours. What to our longer, wider sweep of vision seems quite just, to him may seem bitterly unjust; and, if we punish a child in a way that seems to him unjust, he is unjustly punished. So the instructor in ethics must have an extended knowledge of the child’s point of view—that of children in general and of the child being in­ structed in particular—and the illus­ trations measured accordingly. It ought to be unnecessary to remark that no more passion should be used in teaching ethics than in teaching arithmetic. The child will make mistakes, of course. We know that beforehand, and can largely provide for them. It is for us to arrange his successive problems so that they are not too rapid ot* too difficult, and to be no more impatient or displeased at a natural slip in this line of develop­ ment than in any other. Unhappily, it is just here that we almost always err. The child’s slowly accumulating perceptions and increas­ ing accuracy of expression are not only confused by our erroneous teach­ ing, but greatly shocked and jarred by our manner, our evident excitement in cases of conduct which we call “matters of right and wrong.” All conduct is right or wrong. A differ­ ence in praise or blame belongs to relative excellence of intention or of performance ; but the formation of a delicate and accurate conscience is sadly interfered with by our violent feelings. It is this which renders ethical action so sensitive and morbid. Where in other lines we act calmly, according to our knowledge, or, if we err, calmly rectify the error, in ethics we are nervous, vacillat­ ing, unduly elated or depressed, because our early teachings in this field were so over-weighted with intense feeling. Self-control is one of the first essen­ tials in the practice of ethics—which is to say, in living. Self-control can be taught a child by gently graduated exercises, so that he shall come calmly into his first kingdom, and exercise this normal human power without self-consciousness. We do nothing actively to develop this power. We simply punish the lack of it when that lack happens to be disagreeable to us. A child who has “tantrums,” for instance—those helpless, prostrate passions of screaming and kicking—is treated variously during' the attack; but nothing is done during the placid interval to cultivate the desired power of control. Self-control is involved in all conscious acts. Therefore, it should not be hard so to arrange and relate those acts as steadily to deve­ lop the habit. Games in varying degree require further exertion of self-control, and games are the child’s daily lessons. The natural ethical sense of humanity is strongly and early shown in our �TEACHABLE ETHICS games. It is a joy to us to learn “the rules” and play according to them, or to a maturer student to grasp the principles and work them out; and our quick condemnation of the poor player or the careless player, and our rage at him who “ does not play fair,” show how naturally we incline to right conduct. Life is a large game, with so many rules that it is very hard to learn by them ; but its principles can be taught to the youngest. When we rightly under­ stand those principles, we can leave off many arbitrary rules, and greatly simplify the game. The recognition of the rights of others is justice, and comes easily to the child. The generosity which goes beyond justice is also natural to the child in some degree, and open to easy culture. It should, however, always rest on its natural precursor, justice; and the child be led on to generositygradually, and by the visible example of the higher pleasure involved. To divide the fruit evenly is the first step. To show that you enjoy giving up your share, that you take pleasure in his pleasure, and then, when this act is imitated, to show such delight and gratitude as shall make the baby mind feel your satis­ faction—that ■ is a slow but simple process. We usually neglect the foundation of justice, and then find it hard to teach loving-kindness to the young mind. Demands on the child’s personal surrender and generosity should be made very gradually, and always with a clearly visible cause. Where any dawning faculty is over­ strained in youth, it is hard and slow to re-establish the growth. One simple ethical principle most needful in child-training, and usually most painfully lacking, is honesty. Aside from direct lying, we almost universally use concealment and evasion; and even earlier than that we assume an artificial manner with babies and young children which 39 causes the dawning ethical sense strange perturbations. It is a very common thing to demand from little children a show of affection without its natural prompt­ ing. Even between mother and child this playing at loving is often seen. “ Come and kiss mamma ! What 1 Don’t you love mamma? Poor mamma! Mamma cry!” And mamma pretends to cry, in order to make baby pretend to love her. The adult visitor almost invariably simulates an interest and cordiality which is not felt, and does it in a palpably artificial manner. These may seem small matters. We pass them without notice daily, but they are important in the foundation impressions of the young brain. Children are usually very keen to detect the pretence. “ Oh, you don’t mean that; you only say so ! ” they remark. We thus help to develop a loose, straggling sense of honesty and honour, a chronic ethical inaccuracy, like a bad “ ear ” for music. The baby-educator should see to it that she show only real feelings to the child ; and show them in large letters, as it were. Do not say, “ Mamma is angry,” or “ Mamma is grieved,” or “ Mamma is ashamed,” but be angry, grieved, or ashamed visibly. Let the child observe the effect of his act on you, not hear you say you feel thus and so, and see no signs of it. We depend far too much on oral state­ ments, and neglect the simpler, stronger, surer means of conveying impressions. The delicacy of percep­ tion of a child should be preserved and tenderly used. We often blur and weaken it by giving false, irregular, and disproportionate impressions, and then are forced to use more and more violence to make any impression at all. All this sensitiveness is to ethics what the “ musical ear ” is to music. In injuring it, we make it harder for the growing soul to discriminate delicately in ethical questions—a �4° TEACHABLE ETHICS difficulty but too common among us. The basis of human ethics, being social, requires for its growth a grow­ ing perception of collective and inter­ relative rights and duties. Our con­ tinual object with the child is to estab­ lish in his mind this common con­ sciousness and an accurate measure in perception. It is at first a simple matter of arithmetic. Here is the group of little ones, and the equal number of cookies ; palpably, each should have one. Here is one extra cookie. Who shall have it ? Robby, because his is the smallest. Jamie cries that his is as small as Robby’s. Is it? The fact is ascertained. Divide the extra cookie, then, that’s fair. Or here is one who was not well yester­ day and had no cookies. Give it to him. These things are not to be ostentatiously done nor too continu­ ally, but always with care and accu­ racy, as lessons more important than any others. The deeper and larger sense of social duty—not the personal balancing of rights, which is easy to even the youngest mind, but the devotion to the service of all, the recognition that the greater includes the less—this must be shown by personal example long before it can be imitated. Parents neglect this where it would help them most, and substitute, to meet the child’s inquiries, only per­ sonal authority and compulsion. If the parent would constantly manifest a recognition of duty and perform­ ance of it even against desire, it would be a great help to the child. Most children imagine that grown persons do just as they want to, and that the stringent code of behaviour enforced upon them is requisite only in childhood, and enforceable only because of their weakness. Much of the parent’s conduct can be used as an object-lesson to the child ; but its skilful employment needs clear ethical perception and much educational ability. For instance, if the mother elaborately explains that she is obliged to do something which seems to the child absurd, or if she claims to have to do a certain thing which the child can see that she really enjoys, the impressions made are not correct ones. A recognition of the importance of right teaching of ethics to the child would help adult conduct in most cases. And if the child were receiving proper grounding in ethics from a special educator, he could come home and perplex his parents with problems, as a bright child often does now in other sciences. This, of course, points to the need of accepted text-books on ethics, and will allow of disputes between autho­ rities and disagreement on many points ; but these conditions exist in all sciences. There are different authorities and “schools,” much dis­ agreement and dispute and varying conduct based on our various scien­ tific beliefs. But out of the study, discussion, and ensuing behaviour comes the gradual proof of what is really true ; and we establish certain generally accepted facts and prin­ ciples, while still allowing a margin for divergence of opinion and further knowledge. Our dread of studying ethics as a science on account of this divergence of opinion is a hereditary brain ten­ dency, due to the long association of ethical values with one infallible reli­ gious text-book—Koran or Bible or Talmud or Zend-Avesta. “ It is written ” was the most con­ clusive of statements to the ancient mind. The modern mind ought by this time to have developed a wide and healthy distrust of that which is written. While our “ written ” ethics has remained at a standstill always until the upward sweep of social conduct demanded and produced a. better religion, our unnoticed practice of ethics has worked out many common rules. In the fearless study of this held of �A PL A CE FOR CHILDREN practical ethics lies our way to such simple text-books as may be used to teach children. There is no question as to whether we should or should not teach ethics to very little childien. We do, we must, whether we will or not. The real question is what to teach and how. They learn from our daily walk and conversation, and they learn strange things. Most palpable of all among the wrong impressions given to our children is that of the pre-eminent importance of the primi­ tive relations of life, and the utter unimportance of the great social rela­ tions of our time. Whatever ideas of right and wrong the child succeeds in gathering, they are all of a closely personal nature, based on inter­ personal conduct in the family rela­ tion, or in such restricted and shallow social relations as are covered by our code of “ company manners.” The greatest need of better ethics to-day is in our true social relation— the economic and political field, of action in which lie our major activities, and in which we are still so grossly uncivilised. Not until he goes to school does the child begin to appre­ ciate any general basis of conduct ; and even there the ethics of the position are open to much clearer treatment. As the mother is so prominent a 4i factor in influencing the child’s life, it is pre-eminently necessary that she should be grounded in this larger ethics, and able to teach it by example as well as by description. She needs a perception of the proportionate duties of mankind—an understanding of their true basis, and a trained skill in imparting this knowledge to the child. If she cannot properly teach ethics, she should provide a teacher more competent. At present the only special ethical teaching for the child outside the family is in the Sundayschool ; and Sunday-school teachers are usually amiable young ladies who are besought on any terms—with no preparation whatever—to give this instruction. Once we boldly enter the field of ethical study, and reduce its simple principles to a teachable basis—when we make clear to. our­ selves and our children the legitimate reasons of right conduct—the same intelligence and ambition which carry us on so far in other sciences will lift the standard of behaviour of our race, both in theory and practice. Mean­ while, with such knowledge and prac­ tice as we have to-day, let us see to it that we give to little children our best ethics by precept and example, with hopes that they may go on to higher levels. VI. A PLACE FOR CHILDREN The one main cause of our unfairness to children is that we consider them wholly in a personal light. Justice and equity, the rights of humanity, require a broader basis than blood relationship. Children are part of humanity, and the largest part. Few of us realise their numbers, or think that they constitute the majority, of human beings. The average family, �4<2 A PLACE FOR CHILDREN as given in the census returns, consists of five persons—two adults and three minors. Any population which in­ creases has a majority of children, our own being three-fifths. This large proportion of human beings constitutes a- permanent class —another fact we fail to consider because of our personal point of view. One’s own child and one’s neigh­ bour’s child grow up and pass out of childhood, and with them goes one’s interest in children. Of course, we intellectually know that there are others ; but to the conscious mind of most persons children are evanescent personal incidents. The permanence of childhood as a human status is proven by the survival among them of games and phrases of utmost antiquity, which are handed down, not from father to son, but from child to child. If an isolated family moves into a new country, and its children grow up alone, they do not know these games. We should bear in mind in studying children that we have before us a permanent class, larger than the. adult population. So that in question of numerical justice they certainly have a right to at least equal attention. But when we remember also that this large and permanent class of human beings is by far the most important, that on its right treatment rests the progress of the world, then, indeed, it behoves' us to consider the attitude of the adult population towards the junior members of society. As members of society, we find that they have received almost no atten­ tion. They are treated as members of the family by the family, but not even recognised as belonging to society. Only in modern history do we find even enough perception of the child’s place in the State to provide some public education ; and to-day, in some more advanced cities, some provision for public protection and recreation. Children’s playgrounds are beginning to appear at last among people who have long maintained public parks and gardens for adults. Also, in the general parks a children’s quarter is often now provided, with facilities for their special care and entertainment. But except for these rare cases of special playgrounds, except for the quite generous array of school-houses and a few orphan asylums and kindred 'institutions, there are no indications in city or country that there are such people as children. A visitor from another planet, examining- our houses, streets, furni­ ture, and machinery, would not gather much evidence of childhood as a large or an important factor in human life. The answer to this is prompt and loud : “ Children belong at home! Look there, and you will see if they are considered or not.” Let us look there carefully. The average home is a house of, say, six rooms. This is a liberal allowance, applicable only to America. Even with us, in our cities, the average home is in a crowded tenement—only two or three rooms ; and in wide stretches of country it is a small and crowded farmhouse. Six rooms is liberal allowance—kitchen, dining­ room, and parlour, and three bed­ rooms. Gazing upon the home from the outside, we see a building of dimensions suited to adults. There is nothing to indicate children there. Examining it from the inside, we find the same proportionate dimensions, and nothing in the materials or arrangement of the internal furnish­ ings to indicate children there. The stairs are measured to the adult tread, the windows to the adult eye, the chairs and table to the adult seat. Hold I In a bedroom we discover a cradle—descended from who knows what inherited desire for swinging boughs !—and in some cases, a crib. In the dining-room is often a high chair (made to accommodate the �A PLACE FOR CHILDREN adult table), and sometimes in the parlour a low chair for the child. If people are wealthy and careful, there is, perhaps, a low table, too ; but the utmost that can be claimed for the average child is a cradle or crib, a high chair, and a “little rocker.” There can be no reasonable objection to this, so long as the child is con­ sidered merely as a member of a family. The adult family precedes and outlasts the child, and it would be absurd to expect them to stoop and suffer in a house built and fur­ nished for children. So we build for the adult only, and small legs toil painfully up our stairs and fall more painfully down them. But the moment we begin to address ourselves to the needs of children as a class, the result is different. In the school-house all the seats are for children, except “teacher’s chair”; in the kindergarten the tiny chairs and tables are perfectly appropriate ; in the playground all the appointments are child-size. “What do you expect?” protests the perplexed parent. “ You say yourself, I cannot build my house child-size. Do you expect me to add a child-size house in the back yard ? I cannot afford it.” ■ No, the individual parent cannot afford to build a child-house for his own family, nor, for that matter, a school-house. We, collectively, whether through general taxation, as in the public school, or combination of personal funds, as in the private school, do manage to provide our children with schoolhouses, because we recognise their need of them. Similarly, we can provide for them suitable houses for a far more early and continuous education—when we see the need of them. Here the un­ touched brain-spaces make no re­ sponse. “ What do you mean?” cries the parent. “ Do you wish us to club together, and build a — a — public nursery -for our children?” This seems sufficiently horrific to stop all 43 further discussion. But is it ? May we not gently pursue the theme ? We can and do cheerfully admit the advantages of a public school and a public school-teacher for our children. Some of us admit the advantages of a public kindergarten and a public kindergartner for our children. The step between child-garden and baby­ garden is slight. Why not a public nursery and a public nurse ? That, of course, for those classes who gladly provide and patronise the public school and kindergarten. The swarm­ ing, neglected babies of the poor, now “ underfoot ” in dirty kitchen or dirtier street, part neglected and part abused, a tax on the toiling mother and a grievous injury to the older children who must care for them—these would be far better off if every crowded block had its big, bright baby-garden on the roof, and their young lives were kept peaceful, clean, and well cared for by special nurses who knew their busi­ ness. A public nursery is safer than the public street. One hot reply to this proposition is that “statistics prove that babies in institutions die faster than babies even in the poorest families.” Perhaps this is so. But consider the difference in the cases. Children in institutions are motherless, generally orphans. No one is proposing to remove the mothers of the babies in the baby-garden. “ But they would be separated from their mothers!” Children who go to school are separated from their mothers. Children who go to the kindergarten are separated from their mothers. Children who play in the streetareseparated from theirmothers. If the mothers of these children had nothing else to do, they could give all their time to them. But they have other things to do ; and, while they are busy, the baby would be better off in the baby-garden than in the street. To those who prefer to maintain the private school and the private kinder­ garten, a private baby-garden would �44 A PLACE FOR CHILDREN be equally available. “ But we do not want it. We prefer to care for our children at home,” they reply. This means that they prefer to have their little ones in their own nursery, under the care of the mother, via the nurse. The question remains open as to which the children would prefer, and which would be better for them. Perhaps certain clear and positive assertions should be made here, to allay the anxiety and anger about “ separating the child from the mother.” The mother of a young baby should be near enough to nurse it, as a matter of course. She should “take care of it ”; that is, see that it has everything necessary to its health, comfort, and development. But that is no reason why she should admini­ ster to its every need with her own hands. The ignorant, low-class, poor mother does this, and does not pre­ serve the lives of her children thereby. The educated, high-class, rich mother does not do this, but promptly hires a servant to do it for her. The nursery and the nurse are essential to the baby ; but what kind of nursery and nurse are most desirable ? The kind of servant hired by the ordinary wellto-do family is often not a suitable person to have the care of little chil­ dren. A young child needs even more intelligent care than an older one. A group of families, each paying for its children’s schooling, can afford to give them a far higher class of teacher than each could afford to provide separately. So a group of families, each paying for its children’s “nursing,” could afford to provide a far superior class of “nurse” than each can provide separately. ¿lere again rises the protest that it is not good for small children—babies —to be “ herded together ”—see infant mortality in institutions. Again, an unfair comparison is involved. The poorest kind of children, motherless and fatherless, are crowded in undue numbers in “ charitable ” or “ public ” institutions, and submitted to the perfunctory care of low-grade, ill-paid attendants, among accommodations by no means of the best. We are asked to compare this to small groups of healthy, well-bred children, placed for certain hours of the day only in carefully planned apartments, in all ways suitable, under the care of high­ grade, well-paid, expert attendants and instructors. The care of little children is not servants’ work. It is not “ nurses ’ ” work. A healthy child should have his physical needs all properly supplied, and, for the rest, be under the most gentle and exquisite “training.” It is education, and education more valuable than that received in college, which our little ones need ; and they do not get it from nurse-maids. Then rises the mother. “ I can teach my baby better than any teacher, however highly trained.” If the mother can, by all means let her. But can she? We do not hear mothers protesting that they can teach their grown-up sons and daughters better than the college professors, nor their middle-aged children better than the school-teachers. Why, then, are they so certain that they can teach the babies better than trained baby­ teachers ? They are willing to consult a doctor if the baby is ill, and gladly submit to his dictation. “ The doctor says baby must eat this, and go there, and do so.” There is no wound to maternal pride in this case. If they have “ defective ” children, they are only too glad to place them under “expert care,” not minding even “ separation ” for the good of the child. Anyone who knows of the marvel­ lous results obtained by using specially trained intelligence in the care of defec­ tive children must wonder gravely if we might not grow up better with some specially trained intelligence �A PLACE FOR CHILDREN used on our normal children. But this we cannot have till we make a place for children. No woman or man, with the intelligence and educa­ tion suitable for this great task, would be willing to be a private servant in one family. We do not expect it of college-teacher or school-teacher. We could not expect it of baby-teacher. The very wealthy might of course command all three ; but that has no application to mankind in general, and is also open to grave question as to its relative value. A private staff of college professors would not be able to give the boy the advantages of going to college. We cannot have separately what we can have collectively. Moreover, even if the teacher be secured, we have not at home the material advantages open to us in the specially prepared place for children. A house or range of apartments for little children could be made perfectly safe—which is more than the home is. From the pins on the carpet, which baby puts in his mouth, the stairs he falls down, the windows he falls out of, and the fire he falls into, to the doors to jam the little fingers and the corners and furniture he bumps him­ self upon, “the home” is full of danger to the child. Why should a baby be surrounded with these superfluous evils ? A room really designed for babies to play in need have no “ furni­ ture ” save a padded seat along the wall for the “grown-ups” to sit on, a seat with little ropes along the edge for the toddlers to pull up and walk by. The floor should be smooth and even, antiseptically clean, and not hard enough to bump severely. A baby must fall, but we need not pro­ vide cobblestones for hisfirst attempts. Large soft ropes, running across here and there, within reach of the eager, strong little hands, would strengthen arms and chest, and help in walking. A shallow pool of water, heated to suitable temperature, with the careful 45 trainer always at hand, would delight, occupy, and educate for hours daily. A place of clean, warm sand, another of clay, with a few’simple tools : these four thing’s—water, sand, clay, and ropes to climb on—would fill the days of happy little children without further “toys.” These are simple, safe, primitive pleasures, all helpful to growth and a means of gradual edu­ cation. The home cannot furnish these things, nor could the mother give her time and attention to their safe management, even if she knew how to teach swimming, modelling, and other rudimentary arts. The home, besides its difficulties and dangers, is full of unnecessary limitations. It is arranged on a scale of elegance such as the adult income can compass ; and the natural activities of childhood continually injure the household decorations and conveniences. Perfectly natural and innocent conduct on the part of the child is deleterious to the grown-up home, so patently so that owners of fine houses are not willing to let them to families with children. A nice comment this on the home as a place for children I Must a home be shabby and bare ? Or must the child be confined to his bed ? Why not develop the home to its own perfection — a place of beauty and comfort and peace—and let the chil­ dren have a home of their own for part of the day, wherein the order and beauty and comfort are child­ size ? The child could sleep under his mother’s eye or ear, and gradually aspire to the adult table when he had learned how to be comfortable there, and not injure the comfort of others. He could soon have his own room if the family could afford it, and express his personality in its arrangement ; but the general waking time of little children could be much better passed in a special house for children than in the parental kitchen, parlour, bed­ room, or back yard. “ But why not �46 A PLACE FOR CHILDREN the private nursery—the sunny room for the child and his toys ? Is not that enough?” The private nursery means the private nurse, who is, as a class, unfit to have the care of little children. She is a servant; and the forming ideas of justice, courtesy, and human rights in general are much injured by the spectacle of an adult attendant who is a social inferior. A servant is not a proper person to have charge of these impressionable years. Moreover, however perfect the private nursery and private nurse might be, there remains its isolation to injure the child. We grow up unnecessarily selfish, aborted in the social faculties proper to our stage of advance, because each child is so in the focus of family attention all the time. A number of little ones to­ gether for part of every day, having their advantages in common, learning from infancy to say “we” instead of “ I,” would grow up far better able to fill their places as helpful and happy members of society. Even in those rare cases where the mother does actually devote her entire time to her children, it would still be better for them to pass part of that time in an equally wise and more dis­ passionate atmosphere. Our babies and small children ought to have the society of the very best people instead of the society of such low-gradewomen as we can hire to be nurses in our homes. And, while they need pre-eminently the mother’s tender love and watchful care, they also need the wider justice and larger experience of the genuine child-trainer. So long as we so underrate the importance of childhood—and that in proportion to the youth of the child— those persons who should benefit our babies by their presence will not do so. Very great and learned men are proud to teach youths of eighteen and twenty in colleges ; but they would feel themselves painfully ill-placed if set to teach the same boys at ten, five, or two years old. Why ? Why should we not be eager for an intro­ duction to “ Professor Coltonstall ! He’s the first man in America in infant ethics ! Marvellous success I You can always tell the children who have been under him !” You cannot have this professor in your nursery. But your children and those of fifty other eager parents could be benefited by his wisdom, experience, and exquisitely developed skill in a place in common. The argument does not appeal to us. We see no need for “wisdom,” “experience,” “trained skill ” with a baby. We have not realised that we despise our babies; but we do. Anyone is good enough to take care of them. We even confide them to the care of distinctly lower races, as in the South with its negro nurses. “ Social equality ” with the negro is beyond imagination to the Southerner. That grossly inferior race can never be admitted to their companionship ; but to the companionship of the baby— certainly. Could anything prove more clearly our lack of just apprecia­ tion of the importance of childhood ? The coloured nurse is, of course, thought of merely as the servant of the child ; and we do not yet consider whether it is good for a child to have a servant, or whether a servant is a good educator. The truth is we never think of education in connection with baby­ hood, the term being in our minds inextricably confused with school­ houses and books. When we do honestly admit the plain fact that a child is being educated in every waking hour by the conditions in which he is placed and the persons who are with him, we shall be readier to see the need of a higher class of educators than servant-girls, and a more care­ fully planned environment than the accommodations of the average home. The home is not materially built for the convenience of a child, nor are its necessary workings planned that �A PL A CE FOR CHILDREN way ; and, what is more directly evil, the mother is not trained for the posi­ tion of educator. We persist in con­ founding mother and teacher. The mother’s place is her own, and always will be. Nothing can take it from her. She loves the child the best; and, if not too seriously alienated, the child will love her the best. The terror of the mother lest her child should love some other person better than herself shows that she is afraid of comparison—that she visibly fears the greater gentleness and wisdom of some teacher will appeal to the young heart more than her arbitrary methods. If the mother expected to meet daily comparison with a born lover of chil­ dren, trained in the wisest methods of child-culture, it would have an improv­ ing influence on the home methods. One of the great advantages of this arrangement will be in its reactive effect on the mother. In her free access to the home of the children, she will see practically illustrated the better methods of treating them, and be in frequent communication with their educators. The mother’s know­ ledge of and previous association with the child will make her a necessary coadjutor with the teacher, and by intercourse with the larger knowledge and wider experience of the teacher the mother will acquire new points of view and wiser habits. As the school and kindergarten react beneficially upon the home, so this baby-school will react as bene­ ficially, and perhaps more so, as touching the all-important first years. The isolated mother has no advantage of association or comparison, and falls into careless or evil ways with the child, which contact with more thoughtful outside influences would easily prevent. She could easily retain her pre-eminent place in the child’s affections, while not grudging to the special teacher her helpful influence. Also, the child, with the free atmosphere of equality around 47 him for part of each day, with associa­ tion with his equals in their place, would return to his own place in the home with a special affection, and submit with good will to its necessary restrictions. In all but isolated farm life, or on the even more primitive cattle range, it would be possible to build a home for little children, and engage suitable persons to take charge of them daily. It would take no more time from the housework—if that is the mother’s trade—to take the child to its day play-school than it takes to watch and tend it at home and to prevent or mend its “mischief.” “Children are so mischievous,” we complain, regarding their ingenious destruction of the domestic decora­ tions. A calf in a flower-garden would do considerable mischief, or kittens in a dairy. Why seek to rear young creatures in a place where they must do mischief if they behave differ­ ently from grown people ? Why not provide for them a place where their natural activities would not be in­ jurious, but educational ? In cities it is a still simpler question. Every block could have its one or more child homes, according to the number of children thereabouts. The children of the rich would be saved from the evil effects of too much care and servants’ society, and the children of the poor from the neglect and low associations of their street-bred lives. The “ practical ” question w’ill now arise, “Who is to pay for all this?” There are two answers. One is, the same people who pay for the education of our older children. The baby has as good a right to his share of our educational funds, private and public, as the older child ; and his education is more important. The other answer is that an able-bodied mother, relieved of her position as nursery governess, would be able to contribute some­ thing towards better provision for her I children. �48 UNCONSCIOUS SCHOOLING VII. UNCONSCIOUS SCHOOLING A small boy came from an oldfashioned city—a city where he went to school from day to day, and sat with his fellows in rigid rectangular rows, gazing on bare whitewashed walls adorned with a broad stripe of blackboard; where he did interminable “sums” on a smeary little slate, and spelled in sing-song chorus “ Baker ! Baker! b, a, bay ; k, e, r, ker— Baker! ” He came to a new-fashioned city, where the most important busi­ ness on earth—the training of children -—was appreciated. The small boy did not know this. He saw that the city was clean and bright and full of wide spaces of grass and trees ; and he liked it. It pleased him, as a child ; it was the kind of place that looked as if it had been planned with some thought of pleasing children. Soon he came to a great open gate, with shady walks and sunny lawns inside, buildings here and there in the distance, and, just at hand, some strange figures among the bushes. A pleasant-looking lady sat reading in the shade, with a few children lying in the grass near by, reading too. Our small boy stood irresolute ; but the lady looked up, and said : “Come in, if you like. Look around all you want to.” Still he felt shy ; but one of the reading little boys rose up, and went to him. “ Come on,” he said, cheerfully. “ I’ll show you. There’s lots o’ things, you’ll like. Oh, come on!” So he entered with uncertain steps, and made for one of the queer figures he had seen in the shrubbery. “ It’s an Indian !” he said. “ Like a cigar store!” But the resident little boy resented his comparison. “’Tisn’t, either ! ” cried he. “ It’s ever so much nicer ! Look at his moccasins and his arrows, and see the scalps in his belt! See the way he’s painted ? That shows he’s a Sioux. They are great. One of the best kinds. They live up in the North-west—Minnesota and round there ; and they fight splendid! That one over there is a Yuma Indian. Look at the difference !” And he took the visitor about, and showed him an interesting collection of samples of American tribes, giving off rivers of information with evident delight. From Indians their attention was taken by a peculiarly handsome butterfly that fluttered near them, pursued hotly by an eager little girl with a net. “ That must be a—well, I forget the name,” said the resident little boy. “ Do you like bugs ?” “ What kind o’ bugs ? ” inquired the visitor, rather suspiciously. “ Oh, tumble bugs and burying beetles and walking-sticks, and all kinds.” “Walking-sticks! What’s that got to do with bugs ?” “ Didn’t you ever see the walkingstick one ? Oh, come on in! I’ll show you ! It’s this way.” And off they run to a big rambling building among the shady elms. The visitor hangs back, somewhat awed by the size and splendour of the place, and seeing grown people about ; but his young guide goes in unchecked, merely whispering, “ Got to keep still in here,” and leads him down several passages into a large, quiet hall, lined with glass cases. Such a wealth of “ bugs ” as were here exhibited had never before been seen by the astonished visitor ; but, �UNCONSCIOUS SCHOOLING when the walking-stick insect was pointed out to him, he stoutly denied that it was a “ bug ” at all. . A whis­ pered altercation resulted in appeal to the curator, a studious youth, who was taking notes at a large table bestrewn with specimens. Instantly dropping his work, he took the object under discussion from its case, focussed a magnifying glass upon it, and pro­ ceeded to exhibit various features of insect anatomy, and talk about them most interestingly. But as soon as he detected the first signs of inatten­ tion and weariness he changed the subject—suggested that there was some good target practice going on in the West Field ; and the two boys, after a pleasant walk, joined a number of others who were shooting with bows and arrows, under careful coach­ ing and management. “ I can’t shoot except Saturdays,” said the guide, “ because I haven’t joined a team and practised. But, if you want to, you just put your name down ; and by and by you can hit anything. There’s all kinds of old-fashioned weapons— and the new ones, too.” “What do you call this, anyhow ?” demands the visitor. “Call what? This is the West Field: they do all kinds of shooting here. You see that long bank and wall stops everything.” “ Yes ; but the whole place—is it a park ?” “ Oh, yes, kind of. It’s Weybourne Garden. And that was the museum we went to—one of ’em.” “ Is it open always ?” “Yes.” “ And you don’t have to pay for anything ?” “ No. This part is tor children. We learn how to do all sorts of things. Do you know how to build with bricks ? I learned that last. I built a piece of a real wall. It’s not here. It was one that was broken on the other side, and I built a good piece in !” 49 A big clock struck somewhere. “Now I must go to dinner with mother,” said the guide. “The gate you came in at is on my way. Come on !” And he showed the wondering visitor out, and left him at his own door. The young stranger did not know where he had been. He did not faintly imagine it. Neither, for that matter, did the other children, who went there every day, and with whom he presently found himself enrolled. They went to certain places at certain hours, because they were only “ open ” then with the persons present who showed them how to do desirable things. There were many parks in the city, with different buildings and depart­ ments ; and in them, day by. day, without ever knowing it, the children of that city “ went to school.” The progressive education of a child should be, as far as possible,, uncon­ scious. From his first eager interest in almost everything, up along the gradually narrowing lines of personal specialisation, each child should be led with the least possible waste of time and nervous energy. There would be difficulties enough, as there are difficulties in learning even desir­ able games; but the child would meet the difficulties because he wanted to know the thing, and gain strength without losing interest. So soon as a child-house is built and education seen to begin in earliest babyhood, so soon as we begin to plan a beautiful and delicately adjusted environment for our children, in which line and colour and sound and touch are. all made avenues of easy, unconscious learning, we shall find that there is no sharp break between “ home ” and “school.” In the baby-garden the baby will learn many things, and never know it. In the kindergarten the little child will learn many things, and never know it. He will be glad and proud of his new powers, coming D �go UNCONSCIOUS SCHOOLING back to share the astonishing new information or exhibit the new skill to papa and mamma ; but he will not be conscious of any task in all the time, or of special credit for his perform­ ance. Then, as he grows, the garden grows, too; and he finds himself a little wiser, a little stronger, a little more skilful every day—or would if he stopped to measure. But he does not measure. His private home is happy and easy, with a father and mother interested in all his progress ; and his larger home—the child-world he grows up in—is so dominated by wise, subtle educational influences that he goes on learning always, studying a good deal, yet never “going to school.” In the wise treatment of his baby­ hood, all his natural faculties are allowed to develop in order and to their full extent, so that he comes to a larger range of experiment and more difficult examples with a smooth - working, well - developed young mind, unwearied and unafraid. The legitimate theories of the kinder­ garten carefully worked out helped him on through the next years in the same orderly progression ; and, as a child of five or six, he was able to walk, open-eyed and observant, into wider fields of knowledge. Always courteous and intelligent specialists around him, his mental processes watched and trained as wisely as his sturdy little body, and a careful record kept, by these experienced observers, of his relative capacity and rate of development. So he gradually learns that common stock of human knowledge which it is well for us all to share—the story of the building of the earth, the budding of the plant, the birth of the animal, the beautiful unfolding of the human race, from savagery towards civilisa­ tion. He learns the rudiments of the five great handicrafts, and can work a little in wood, in metal, in clay, in cloth, and in stone. He learns the beginnings of the sciences, with experiment and story, and finds new wonders to lead him on, no matter how far he goes—an unending fasci­ nation. For his sciences he goes to the museum, the laboratory, and the field, groups of children having about the same degree of information falling together under the same teacher. For the necessary work with pen and pencil there are quiet rooms provided. He has looked forward to some of these from babyhood, seeing the older ones go there. Each child has been under careful observation and record from the very first. His special interests, his pre­ ferred methods, his powers and weak­ nesses, are watched and worked with carefully as he grows. If power of attention was weak at first, he is given special work to develop it. If observation was loose and inaccu­ rate, that was laboured with. If the reasoning faculty worked with diffi­ culty, it was exercised more carefully. He has been under such training from babyhood to twelve or fifteen years old as to give a full and co-ordinate development of his faculties—all of them ; and such a general grasp of the main lines of knowledge as to make possible clear choice of the lines of study for which he is best adapted. With such a childhood the youth will have much more power of learning, and a deep and growing interest—an unbroken interest—in his work. The natural desire of mankind to know, and also to teach, and the steadily enlarging field of knowledge open to us, should make education the most delightful of processes. With our present methods the place of teacher is usually sought merely for its meagre salary, by women who “have to work,” instead of being eagerly aspired to as the noblest of professions, and only open to those best fitted. The children are so �UNCONSCIOUS SCHOOLING over-taxed and mishandled that only the best intellects come out with any further desire to learn anything. Humanity’s progress is made through brain-improvement, by brain-power. We need such schooling as shall give us better brains and uninjured bodies. Fortunately for us, the value of edu­ cation is widely felt to-day, and new and improved methods are rapidly coming in. Our school-houses are more beautiful, our teachers better trained and more ambitious, and the beneficent influences of the kinder­ garten and of the manual training system are felt everywhere. But while much is being done, much more remains for us. With such honour and such pay as show our respect for the office of teacher, and such acquired training and natural capacity as shall allow of no incapables, we could surround our children from birth with the steady influence of the wisest and best people. More and more to-day is the school opening out. It connects with the public library, with art and industry, with the open fields ; and this will go on till the time is reached when the child does not know that he is at school—he is always there, and yet never knows it. Where residence was permanent, the teachers of different grades could constantly compare their growing records, and the child’s unfolding be watched steadily, and noted with a view to still further improvement in method. Travelling parties of chil­ dren are not unknown to us. These will become more common, until every child shall know his earth face to face—mountain, river, lake, and sea—and gain some idea of political division as well. Two main objections to all this will arise at once : one, that of expense ; the other, that a child so trained would not have learned to “ apply himself”—to force himself to do what he did not like ; that itwas all too easy. The ground of too much expense cannot be held. Nothing is too expensive that really improves educa­ tion ; for such improvement cuts off all the waste product of society—the defective and degenerate, the cripple, thief, and fool—and saves, millions upon millions now spent in main­ taining or restraining these injurious classes. Not only that, but it as steadily developes the working value of humanity, turning out more and more vigorous and original thinkers and doers to multiply our wealth and pleasure. Grant the usefulness of improved methods in education, and they can never be expensive. Even to-day the school-children become a far better class of citizens than the streetarabs who do not go to school ; and such school advantages as we have lower our expense in handling crime and disease. When we provide for every child the very best education real education of body, brain, and soul—with the trained hand and eye to do what the trained will and judg­ ment command, it is difficult to see where the “ criminal class ” is to come from. As to its being too easy, and not developing sufficiently stern stuff in our youngsters, that has two answers. In the first place, this proposed line of advance is not without its difficulties. Whether a child is learning to sew or to shoot or to lay bricks, to solve examples in fractions or to play chess, there are always difficulties. To learn what you don’t know is always a step up. But why need we add to this the difficulty of making the child dislike the work ? t( Because it is necessary in this world to do what you don’t like I” is the triumphant rejoinder. This is an enormous mistake. It is necessary in this world to like what you do, if you are to do anything worth while. One of the biggest of all our troubles is that so many of us are patiently and wearily doing what we D 2 �52 UNCONSCIOUS SCHOOLING do not like. It is a constant injury to the individual, draining- his nervous strength and leaving him more easily affected by disease or temptation; and it is a constant injury to society, because the work we do not like to do is not as good as it would be if we liked it. The kind oi forcing we use in our educational processes, the “attention” paid to what does not interest, the following of required lines of study irrespective of inclination—these act to blunt and lower our natural inclina­ tions, and leave us with this mis­ chievous capacity for doing what we do not like. A healthy child, rightly surrounded with attractive opportunities, the stimulus of association, and natural (not forced) competition, will wTant to learn the things most generally neces­ sary, just as he wants to learn the principal games his comrades play. He has his favourite games, and does best in them, and will have his favourite studies and do best in them, which is no injury to anyone. In this unconscious method the child learns with personal interest and pleasure, and not under pressure of class competition, reward, or punishment. He knows, of course, that he is learning, as he knows when he has learned to swim or to play golf; but he is not laboriously “ going to school ” and “ studying ” against his will. The benefit of such a process is that it will supply the world with young citizens of unim­ paired mental vigour, original powers and tastes, and strong special inter­ ests, thus multiplying the value and distinction of our products, and main­ taining the health and happiness of the producer. As a matter of practical introduc­ tion, we are already moving in this direction, with the “ laboratory method,” the natural sciences now taught so widely, and all the new impetus through the study of peda­ gogy. But those most capable and most interested, those who see the value of this trend and are doing all they can to promote it, are most keenly con­ scious of the difficulties which still confront them. These difficulties are not far to seek. They lie in the indifference, the criminal indifference, of our citizens, notably the women. Sunk in the constant contemplation of their own families, our female citizens let the days and years pass by, utterly ignoring their civic duties. While women are supported by men, they have more time to spare for such broad interests than men have ; and one would naturally think that even the lowest sense of honour would lead them to some form of public useful­ ness in return for this immunity. As the English nobleman—the conscien­ tious one—sees in his wealth and leisure, his opportunities for study and cultivation, only a heavy obliga­ tion to serve the State which so well serves him, so should our women of leisure—the thousands of them—feel in their free and sheltered lives a glorious compulsion to serve the best interests of that society which main­ tains them. The care of children is certainly the duty of women. The best care of children means the best education. The woman who has not done her best to improve the educational advantages of her city, State, and country—of the world—has not done her duty as a citizen or as a woman. And, as education comes through every impression received by the child, we must improve home and street and city and all the people, to make a clean, safe, beautiful world, in which our children may receive the unconscious schooling to which they have a right. �PRESUMPTUOUS AGE 53 VIII. PRESUMPTUOUS AGE The ineffable presumption of aged persons is an affliction too long endured. Much is told us of the becoming modesty of youth. Is no modesty becoming a period of life when experience has given some measure to merit ? Why should youth be modest ? Youth believes it can do all things, and has had no proof to the contrary. But age : age which has tried many times and been met by failure: age, which has learned its limitation by repeated blows, and become content with hard-worn compromise —why should age be so proud ? In itself it is no distinction, being but the common lot of man. Those who do not attain to it are by general consent of superior merit. “ Whom the gods love die young.” Age is not desired and striven for— not won by honourable effort. It comes gradually upon us all, falling like rain upon the just and the unjust. Taken simply in itself, it proves no more than that the aged individual, if a man, has had sufficient strength and ingenuity to keep himself alive ; and, if a woman, that she has been sufficiently pleasing and well-behaved to be kept alive by others. In very early times, when the world was young and life more exciting and precarious than now, perhaps the above qualities were a sufficient dis­ tinction. The constitution which survived the rigours of a crude and uncertain diet and of an undiluted climate was a thing to be proud of; and the visible proof that one had survived one’s enemies did indicate some superiority. But in a civilisation which takes special care of the infirm—where green young cripples grow to a ripe old age, and a bed-ridden pauper may outlive many muscular labourers— mere prolongation of existence is no self-evident proof of either power or wisdom. Of two men born in the same year, the more valuable man, doing more valuable work, is quite as likely to die as an innocuous, futile, low-grade person, paddling feebly with the tide. Of two women, one may smilingly repeat herself by the dozen, and drift sweetly on from amiable juvenility to as amiable senility; while another, working strenuously and effectively, dies in her earnest youth or middle age. Survival is no longer a fair test of value. The wisdom of the ancients is not the standard of our time. We do not think that a previous century knows more than ours, but rather less ; and if Methuselah were with us yet—and retained his faculties—he would be too much confused between the things he used to believe and what he was learning now to be a valuable authority. When learning was but accumulated tradition, the old had an advantage over the young, and im­ proved it. Now that learning is dis­ covery the young have an advantage over the old. If wisdom consisted merely in the accumulation of facts, the long-time observer would assuredly have more of them than the new-comer. But the wisdom that consists in a free and unbiassed judgment—a new per­ ception of the relation of things— comes better from a fresher brain. This is not to say that age may not �Presumptuous co-exist with superiority, but that age, per se, is not superiority. There are many aged persons in the workhouse who are quite visibly inferior to many young persons in the House of Commons. This suggests a painful antithesis which is better omitted. Granting the origin of this arrogance of the aged to have had some basis in primitive time, it is easy to see how it has descended to us by the same principle that main­ tains the fag system. _ Humanity has always its overlap­ ping generations ; and the child who is crushed by the incontrovertible statement, “ I am older than you are ! ” waits to recoup himself on children yet to be. In his subordinate position in youth he has no chance to escape from this injustice, or to retaliate; and he strikes a balance with fate by assuming the same superiority over the new-comer. It is probable that we shall never outgrow the assumption until we have a generation of children taught to respect conduct for its merits, not for simple duration, holding a wise, strong, good person, however young, to be superior to an ignorant or vicious one, however old. When the.sense of justice and the sense of logic of the child are not outraged in youth, we shall find more modesty as well as more wisdom in old age. It is always interesting to see our psychic development following the laws of nature, like any other growth. Under the law of inertia the human mind, starting under a given concept, continues to enlarge in that direction, unless arrested or diverted by some other force. So this conception of age as essential superiority, naturally enough begun, has been followed to strange and injurious extremes. And under the law of conservation of energy—following the line of least resistance—the aged naturally en­ croached upon the young, who were able to make no resistance whatever. ape The respect and care for aged persons, which is so distinguishing a mark of advanced civilisation, is due to two things : first, the prolonged serviceability of parents ; and, second, the social relation which allows of usefulness to even the very old. In an early savage tribe the elderly parent is of no special value to the newly matured young, and the tribal service has more use for juvenile warriors than for the ancient ones : wherefore the old folk are of small account, and do not meet much encouragement to prolonged living. But with us, though the child is grown quite sufficiently to hunt and fight and reproduce his kind, he is not. yet properly equipped for the social service. He needs more years yet of parental assistance while he accumulates knowledge in his profes­ sion or skill in his trade. Therefore, parentag'e is a long'er and more elaborate operation with us than with lower races, animal or human, and the parent consequently more appreciated. This position is fondly taken advantage of by the designing aged, ofttimes with a pious belief in their righteous ground which is most convincing. Because the human parent is of far more service to the young than earlier parents, therefore our elders calmly assume that it is the duty of the young to provide for and serve them —not only to render them natural assistance when real incapacity comes, but to alter the course of their young and useful lives to suit the wishes of the old. Among poor and degraded classes we see children early set to work for the parents instead of parents working for the children—a position as unnatural as for a hen to eat eggs. Life is not a short circle, a patent self-feeder. The business of the hen is to hatch the egg, and of the egg to grow to another and different hen —not to turn round and sacrificially nourish the previous fowl. �PRESUMPTUOUS AGE 55 The duty of the parent is a deep- remains a withered offshoot, weak seated, natural law. Without the and fruitless. These cases are common enough. parent’s care of the child, no race, But consider from another point of no life. The duty of the child to the parent was largely invented by view the serene presumption of the parents, from motives of natural self­ elder woman. Because she had done interest, and has been so long sanc­ —so far—her duty by the child that tioned and practised that we look on was, she now claims a continuous hold without a shudder and see a healthy on the grown woman and a return for middle-aged mother calmly swallow­ her services. In still earlier days this claim was ing the life of her growing daughter. A girl is twenty-one. She has been made even more strenuously. The properly reared by her mother, whom child awe-fully addressed the father we will suppose to be a widow. as “ author of my being,” and was Being twenty-one, the girl is old supposed to “ owe ” him everything. enough to begin to live her own life, The child does not owe the parent. and naturally wishes to.. I do not Parental duty is not a loan. It is speak of marrying—that is generally the never-ending gift of nature an allowed—but of so studying and work­ unbroken, outpouring river of love ing as to develop a wide, useful and labour from the earliest begin­ life of her own in case she does not nings of life. The child, while a child, has also some duty to the marry. “ Not so,” says her mother. “ Your parent; but even there it is reflex, duty is to stay with me. I need and based in last analysis on the child’s advantage. you.” Meanwhile it is a poor parent who Now, the mother is not bed-ridden. She is, we will say, an able-bodied cannot win the affection and command woman of forty-five or fifty. She the respect of the young creature could easily occupy herself , in one of growing up so near, so that a beautiful several trades ; but, being in posses­ relation shall be established between sion of a house and a tiny income, them for the rest of life. This love she “does not have to work.” She and honest admiration, this affec­ prefers to live in that house, on that tionate friendliness, and all the ties income, and have her daughter live . of long association, would naturally with her. The daughter prefers to prompt the child to desire the society go to New York, and study music or of the parent, and, of course, to pro­ art or dressmaking, whatever she is vide for illness and old age ; but that fit for. But here is her dear mother is a very different position from the claiming her presence at home as a one taken by an able-bodied, middleduty; and she gives it. She does aged parent demanding the surrender her duty, living there with her mother of a young life. Parentage is not a profession with in the capacity of—of what ? In no capacity at all. Fancy a young man a sort of mutual insurance return to living at home in the capacity of a it. The claim that humanity is born “son,” with no better occupation saddled with this retro-active obliga­ than dusting the parlour and arrang­ tion requires more convincing proof ing flowers 1 In course of time the than has yet been offered. An obligation we all have, young mother dies. The daughter has lost her position as a “ daughter,” and and old, and to this the child should has no other place in life. She has be trained : the vast and endless never been allowed to form part of service of humanity, to which .our the living organism of society, and lives are pledged without exception. �56 THE RESPECT DUE TO YOUTH Seeing the parent devout in this honourable discharge of duty—realis­ ing that his own training is with a view to that greater service when he is grown—the child would go onward in life with the parent, not backward to him. But we have not yet forgotten the habits and traditions of the patriarch­ ate. We demand from the young respect because we are older, not because we deserve it. Respect is a thing which is extorted willy-nilly by those who deserve it, and which cannot be given at will. If a parent loses his temper and talks foolishly, how can a child respect this weakness? To demand respectful treatment shows one cannot command it; and, if it is not commanded, it cannot be had. Any false assumption is a block to progress. So long as the aged expect to be looked up to on account of the length of time in which they have not died, so long will they ignore those habits of life which should insure reverence and love at any age. People ought to be living with wise forethought and circumspection, in order that they may be respected when old—-not carelessly lulled with the comforting belief that, no matter how foolish they are, age will bring dignity. So, too, if parents did not so fatuously demand respect merely because they are parents, but would see to it that they deserve and win respect by such visible power and wisdom as the child must bow to, we might look for a much quicker advance in these desir­ able qualities. The power of learning things does not cease at maturity. Many a great mind has gone on to extreme old age, open, eager, steadily adding to its store of light and power. Such keep the freshness and the modesty of youth. Far more numerous are the little minds which imagine that years are equivalent to wisdom, and, because they are grown up, decline to learn further. Yet these, far more than the wise men, sit back complacent on their age, and talk with finality of “ my experience ” ! Experience is not merely keeping alive. Experience involves things happening and things done. Many a young manof to-day has done more and felt more than a peaceful, stationary nonagenarian of yesterday’s rural life. That very brashness and self-assump­ tion of hot youth, which brings so complacent and superior a smile to the cheek of age, would not be so pro­ minent but for previous suppression and contemptuous treatment. A lofty and supercilious age makes a rash and incautious youth ; but youth, trained to early freedom and its rich and instructive punishments, would grow to an agreeable age, modest with much wisdom, tender and considerate with long power. IX THE RESPECT DUE TO YOUTH Since we have so carefully and tho­ roughly beaten back the new braingrowth which should distinguish each successive generation, and fostered in every way the primitive mental habits of our forefathers, the natural conse­ quence is a prolonged survival of very early tendencies. Outside, in the necessary contact and freedom of the world’s life, crude ideas must change, �THE RESPECT DUE TO YOUTH and either become suited to the times or lost entirely. But in the privacy of the home, under the conditions of family life and the dominant influence of feminine conservatism, we find a group of carefully cherished rudiments which never could have survived with­ out such isolation. Among primitive races the stranger is an object of legitimate derision. The differences in his speech and manner are held as visible inferiorities, and his attempts to assimilate are greeted with unchecked merriment. This attitude of mind is still common in children, who are passing through the same stage of culture individually. Amongintelligent and well-bred grown people such an attitude of mind is rightly despised. To them the stranger is entitled to respectful consideration because he is a stranger ; and nothing could be ruder, in the estimation of such persons, than to laugh at the stranger’s efforts to learn our language and manners. How great is the difference between this common good breeding in the world at large and the barbaric crudity of our behaviour at home to that most sacred stranger, the child ! He comes to us absolutely ignorant of our methods of living, be they wise or unwise ; and he must needs learn every step of his way in the paths we have prepared for him. Unfortu­ nately, we have prepared very little. A few physical conveniences, perhaps, in the way of high chairs and cradles, or nursing-bottles to supplement maternal deficiency; but in psychic conveniences—in any better recogni­ tion of the childish attitude of mind and its natural difficulties—we make small progress. Calm, wondering, unafraid, the stranger enters the family circle. He has no perspective, no gradations of feeling in regard to the performances he finds going on about him. He has neither shame for the truths of real life nor r.espect for the falsehoods of 57 artificial life. In soberness and eager interest he begins the mysterious game of living. Now, what is the attitude of the family towards this new-comer ? How does the intelligent adult treat the stranger within his gates ? He treats him with frequent ridicule and general gross disrespect. Not “unkindly,” perhaps—that is, not with anger and blows or undue deprivations—but as if being a child was a sort of joke. A healthy child is merry with the free good spirits of a spring-tide lamb ; but that pure mirth has nothing in common with ridicule. Who of us has not seen a clear-eyed child struck dumb and crimson by the rude laugh­ ter of his elders over some act which had no element of humour except that it was new to him? We put grandpa’s hat on the downy head of the baby, and roar with laughter at his appear­ ance. Do we put baby’s cap on grandma, and then make fun of the old lady’s looks ? Why should we jeer at a baby more than at an old person ? Why are we so lacking in the respect due to youth ? Every child has to learn the lan­ guage he is born to. It is certain that he will make mistakes in the process, especially as he is not taught it by any wise system, but blunders into what usage he can grasp from day to day. Now, if an adult foreigner were learning our language, and we greeted his efforts with yells of laughter, we should think ourselves grossly rude. And what should we think of our­ selves if we further misled him by setting absurd words and phrases before him, encouraging him to further blunders, that we might laugh the more ; and then, if we had visitors, inciting him to make these blunders over again to entertain the company ? Yet this is common household sport, so long as there is a little child to act as zany for the amusement of his elders. The errors of a child are not �5* THÈ RESPECT DUE '1'0 YOUTH legitimate grounds of humour, even to those coarse enough to laugh at them, any more than a toddling baby’s falls have the same elements of the incongruous as the overthrow of a stout old gentleman who sits down astonished in the snow. A baby has to fall. It is natural, and not funny. So does the young child have to make mistakes as he learns any or all of the crowding tasks before him; but these are not fair grounds for ridicule. I was walking in a friend’s garden, and met for the first time the daughter of the house, a tall, beautiful girl of nineteen or twenty. Her aunt, who was with me, cried out to her in an affected tone, “ Come and meet the lady, Janey I” The young girl, who was evidently unpleasantly impressed, looked an­ noyed, and turned aside in some con­ fusion, speaking softly to her teacher who was with her. Then the aunt, who was a very muscular woman, seized the young lady by her shoulders, lifted her off the ground, and thrust her blushing, struggling, and protest­ ing into my arms—by way of intro­ duction ! Naturally enough, the girl was overcome with mortification, and conceived a violent dislike for me. (This story is exactly true, except that the daughter of the house was aged two and a half.) Now, why—in the name of reason, courtesy, education, justice, any lofty and noble consideration—why should Two-and-a-half be thus insulted ? What is the point of view of the insuiter? How does she justify her brutal behaviour ? Is it on the obvious ground of physical superiority in age and strength ? It cannot be that, for we do not gratuitously outrage the feelings of all persons younger and smaller than ourselves. A stalwart six-foot septuagenarian does not thus comport himself towards a small gentle­ man of thirty or forty. It cannot be relationship ; for such conduct does not obtain among adults, be they never so closely allied. It has no basis except that the victim is a child, and the child has no personal rights which we feel bound to respect. A baby, when “ good,” is considered as a first-rate plaything—a toy to play with or to play on, or to set going like a machine-top, that we may laugh at it. There is a legitimate frolicking with small children, as the cat plays with her kittens ; but that is not in the least inconsistent with respect. Grown people can play together and laugh together without jeering at each other. So we might laugh with our children, even more than we do, and yet never laugh at them. The pathetic side of it is that children are even more sensitive to ridicule than grownpeople. They have no philosophy to fall back upon; and—here is the hideously unjust side—if they lose their tempers, being yet unlearned in self-restraint, if they try to turn the tables on their tormentors, then the wise “grown­ up ” promptly punishes them for “ dis­ respect.” They must respect their elders even in this pitiful attitude; but who is to demand the respect due to youth ? There is a deal of complaint among parents over the “ impertinence ” of children. “ How dare you speak to me like that !” cries outraged autho­ rity. Yet “ that ” was only the expres­ sion used just before by the parent to the child. “Hold your tongue!” says the mother. “ Hold yours !” answers the child, and is promptly whipped for impertinence. “ I’ll teach you to answer me like that ! ” says angry mamma. And she does. In the baby’s first attempt to speak we amused ourselves mightily over his innocent handling of rude phrases —overheard by chance or even taught him, that we might make merry over the guileless little mouth, uttering at our behest the words it did not under­ stand. Then, a year or so older, �THE RESPECT DUE tO YOUTH when he says the same things, he is laboriously and painfully taught that what is proper for a parent to say to a child is not proper for a child to say to a parent. “Why?” puzzles the child. We can give no answer, except our*large assumption that there is no respect due to youth. Ask any conscientious mother or father why the new human being, fresh from God as they profess to believe, not yet tainted by sin or weakened by folly and mistake, seiene in its mighty innocence and serious beyond measure, as its deep eyes look solemnly into life—why this wonderful kind of humanity is to be treated like a court fool. What can the parent say ? From the deeper biological stand­ point, seeing the foremost wave of advancing humanity in each new generation, there is still less excuse for such contemptuous treatment. In the child is lodged the piled-up progress of the centuries, and as he shall live is that progress hastened or retarded. Quite outside of the natural affection of the parent for the offspring stands this deep, human reverence for the latest and best Specimen of its kind. Every child should represent a higher step in racial growth than its parents, and every parent should reverently recog­ nise this. For a time the parent has the advantage. He has knowledge, skill, and power ; and we feel that in the order of nature he is set to minister to the younger generation till it shall supplant him. To develop such a noble feeling has taken a long time, and many steps upward through those cruder sentiments which led towards it. Yet it is the rational, conscious feeling into which the human being translates the whole marvellous law of parental love. To the animal this great force expresses itself merely in instinct ; but, as such, it is accepted and fulfilled, and the good of the young subserved unquestioningly. In low 59 grades of human life we have still this animal parental instinct largely predominating, coloured more or less with some prevision of the real glory of the work in hand. Yet so selfish is human parentage that in earlier times children have been sold as slaves in the interests of parents, have been and still are set to work prematurely ; and in certain races the father looks forward to having a son for various religious benefits accruing to him, the father. Sentiments like these are not con­ ducive to respect for youth. The mother is not generally selfish in this sense. Her error is in viewing the child too personally, depending too much on “instinct,” and giving very little thought to the matter. She loves much and serves endlessly, but reasons little. The child is pre­ eminently “ her ” child, and is treated as such. Intense affection she gives, and such forms of discipline and cultivation as are within her range, unflagging care and labour also ; but “respect” for the bewitching bundle of cambric she has so elaborately decorated does not occur to her. Note the behaviour of a group of admiring women around a baby on exhibition. Its clothes are prominent, of course, in their admiration ; and its toes, fingers, and dimples gene­ rally. They kiss it and cuddle it and play with it, and the proud mamma is pleased. When the exhibitee is older and more conscious, it dislikes these scenes intensely. Being “ dressed up ” and passed around for the obser­ vation and remark of the grown-up visitors is an ordeal we can all remember. Why cannot a grown person advance to make the acquaintance of a child with the same good manners used in meeting an adult? Frank­ ness, naturalness, and respect—these are all the child wants. And pre­ cisely these he is denied. We put on an assumed interest—a sort of stage �6o THE RESPECT DUE TO YOUTH manner—in accosting the young, and for all our pretence pay no regard to their opinions or confidence, when given. Really well-intentioned per­ sons, parents or otherwise, will repeat before strangers some personal opinion, just softly whispered in their ears, with a pair of little arms holding fast to keep the secret close ; dragging it out remorselessly before the persons implicated, while the betrayed child squirms in wretched­ ness and anger. To do this to a grown-up friend would warrant an angry dropping of acquaintance. Such traitorous rude­ ness would not be tolerated by man or woman. But the child—the child must pocket every insult, as belonging to a class beneath respect. Is it not time that we summoned our wits from their wool-gathering —however financially profitable the wool may be—and gave a little honest thought to the status of child­ hood ? Childhood is not a patho­ logical condition, nor a term of penal servitude, nor a practical joke. A child is a human creature, and entitled to be treated as such. A human body three feet long is deserv­ ing of as much respect as a human body six feet long. Yet the bodies of children are handled with the grossest familiarity. We pluck and pull and push them, tweak their hair and ears, pat them on the head, chuck them under the chin, kiss them, and hold them on our laps, entirely regardless of their personal preferences. Why should we take liberties with the person of a child other than those suitable to an intimate friendship at any age ? “ Because children don’t care,” someone will answer. But children do care. They care enormously. They dislike certain persons always because of disagreeable physical contact in childhood. They wriggle down clumsily, all their clothes rubbed the wrong way, with tumbled hair and flushed, sulky faces, from the warm “ lap ” of some large woman or bony, woolly-clothed man, who was holding them with one hand and variously assaulting them with the other, find rush off in helpless rage. No doubt they “get used to it,” as do eels to skinning; but in this process of accustoming childhood to brutal dis­ courtesy we lose much of the finest, most delicate development of human nature. There is no charge of cruelty, unkindness, or neglect involved in this. Discourtesy to children is practised by the most loving and devoted parents, the most amiable of relatives and visitors. Neither is it a question of knowledge on the part of the elder. These rudenesses are practised by persons of exquisite manners, among their equals. It is simply a case of survival of an undeveloped field of human nature—a dark, uncultivated, neglected spot where we have failed to grow. The same forces which have so far civilised us will work farther when we give them room. We have but to open our minds and widen our sphere of action to become civilised in these domestic relations. It is the citizenship—the humanness —of the child we need to recognise, not merely its relative accomplish­ ments compared to ourselves. Also the tendencies and restraint born of power and freedom should teach us to respect the child precisely because of its helplessness. The principle that urges even the bullying schoolboy to “take a fellow of his own size,” and which forbids torturing a captive, killing an unarmed man, or insulting an inferior, ought to put more nobility into our conduct in relation to the child. As so much weaker, strength should respect him ; and, as one bound to supersede us, wisdom should recognise his power. �TOO MUCH CONSIDERA TION 61 X. TOO MUCH CONSIDERATION The child comes to the table. He looks a little weary, knowing the task before him. “Now, what will you have?” asks his fond mamma. “What would you like, dear ? ” The child gazes at the dishes there present, and is somewhat attracted towards one or more of them ; but his brain thrusts upon him images of other viands, and memories of triumph in securing some vaguely remembered delicacy. He wavers in his mind, and wiggles his knife uncertainly. “ I guess—I’ll have ” Mamma is all attention. “ Have some of this nice potato!” she urges. He had inclined towards the potato pre­ viously, but rebels at its being urged upon him. Also, the cooing adjective affronts him. He has heard things called nice before, usually when he did not want them. “No, I don’t want any potato,” he says. “I want—I’ll have some sweet potato !” Unhappily there is no sweet potato, and the good mamma smilingly excuses the lack. “We will have some to-morrow,” she promises; and, to distract him from thought of the impossible, “Won’t you have a chop?” “No—yes—I’ll have one chop. On this plate, not on that plate. I won’t have it on that plate !” “ But this plate is warm, dear.” “ I want it on my own plate !” “Very well. Will you have some gravy?” “Yes, I guess so. Not on the potato ! Don’t put it on the potato ! I won’t eat it if you put it on the potato !” In time he eats, though not with eagerness. In his young mind is a vague sense of annoyance and dis­ comfort, as if he were in some way defrauded of his dinner. The present dinner, rather gloomily going down, is contrasted with other possible dinners, not now to be attained. What he has suffers by comparison with all the things he has not, and a dim memory of previous disappoint­ ments oppresses him. “ He never did eat well,” says his mother. “We have hard work to find what he will eat.” There may be some digestive disturbance, but there is a quite needless psycho­ logical disturbance added. Choice is a wearying thing, even to the trained scanner of menus. To select a meal exactly to one’s taste, and not be haunted by the unchosen dishes, means the prompt and skilful exercise of a widely culti­ vated taste. Most of us gladly prefer to have some experienced cook and caterer set a good meal before us. A pleased anticipation at a well-known dinner-table is a more agreeable frame of mind than that of one who must needs select, spurred by a tall darkey with a pencil. A child has not a cultivated taste, nor the calmness of experience. A choice, even from objects before him, is uncertain enough. He is apt speedily to regret and wish to change. To be called upon to order a meal is a real tax upon him. While he exerts himself in this direction, any propo­ sition is likely to be resented ; and, to one who is on tiptoe in effort to decide, an insinuating suggestion from without is extremely irritating. This method of consulting a child’s �62 TOO MUCH CONSIDERATION preferences before he has them, intro­ ducing alternatives not present, and then harassing the wavering young mind with persuasive propositions, rapidly developes a halting, fretful, back-stitch sort of temper, always wishing it had done the other thing. The old-fashioned method was to compel a child to eat “ what was set before him,” all of it, quite regardless of his personal taste or constitutional limitations. Nothing but palpable nausea convinced these obdurate parents of earlier generations that there were some things the little victim could not eat. This was a foolish and cruel method. Children differ widely in digestive power and preference, and their tastes are marked and sensitive. Eating what he does not like is far more painful to a child than to an adult. But his tastes and limitations can be discovered without concentrating his own attention on them. It is bad to treat a child’s tastes with less consideration than those of older human beings ; but there is no reason why they should be treated with more. The simple lesson can be taught of eating what he likes and leaving what he dislikes without vociferous proclamation of these preferences ; and, if he really thinks of something else he would like to have for dinner, teach him to ask for it for another time. He can readily understand that cooking takes time, and extra dishes cannot be served at a moment’s notice. A family is usually composed of several persons, all of whom should be treated with justice. If it is reduced to two only—if there is only mother and child to decide between— the decision should be fairly balanced. The practical issues of daily life are almost always open to a child’s under­ standing. Mamma, we will say, is reading. Mabel is busy with doll’s dressmaking. “ O mamma! will you please g'et me the scissors?” “ Can you not get them as easily, dear ?” “ I don’t know just where they are, and I’ve been fussing ever so long with this yoke ; and now I’ve got it just right, and I’m afraid, if I put it down, I’ll forget again !” Mamma looks at the flushed, earnest little face, lays her book down, and gets the scissors. Again. Mamma is stuffing the turkey. “ Mabel, will you please bring me down the largest needle on my cushion?” “ Oh, but, mamma, I’m so busy with my paints 1” “Yes ; but you are upstairs already,’ and my hands are in the stuffing. Please hurry, dear.” Mabel brings the needle promptly^ She knows that mamma is considerate of her, and she is considerate of mamma. It is by no means necessary to argue over every little service, but a few test cases keep in mind the idea of justice. If what a child wants will give more pleasure to the child than trouble to the adult, do it. If it is more trouble to the adult than pleasure to the child, do not do it ; and let the child understand, first, last, and always, the balance of human rights. I knew a girl of thirteen who had not yet learned to keep herself covered at night. She slept with her mother ; and, if she wakened chilly, she would murmur, without opening her eyes, “Mother, cover me up!” And her mother would do it. This was unfair to the child. It allowed her to corm mit a gross injustice ; and her mother was “ compounding a felony,” as it were, in indulging her. The child was already awake, and quite capable of pulling up the blankets. There was no reason why her tired mother should lose sleep for the purpose« The practical way to exhibit this would be for the mother to waken the child with the same demand. A few applications would be sufficient. �TOO MUCH CONSIDERA TION If verbal remonstrance was preferred (usually an inferior method), the mother might quietly reply : “ By no means. You are perfectly able to do it. It is not fair to waken me for that. I do not get to sleep again as quickly as you do, and am tired next day.” A child already reasonably trained would easily see the force of that argument. A big boy is persistently late to breakfast. This annoys his mother at the time, and delays her work afterwards. She saves and keeps hot various viands for him, taking many extra steps ; and her day’s work is rendered a little more difficult. If the breakfast hour is that most con­ venient to the family needs, simply explain to the boy that breakfast is at such a time only ; that he will be called in due season ; and that, if he is not down within the given time, he will find no breakfast whatsoever. This course, firmly followed, works like a charm. Most people dislike going without breakfast. A child should have sufficient sleep, of course ; but, if his hours are reasonable, there is no justice in incommoding the working mother for the sake of a little natural laziness. With very little children we ingeni­ ously manage to ignore some of their really important questions and actions, and at the same time to let them trample on our ears and brains with senseless iteration of unnecessary words. A small boy is eating his supper, while his mother puts littlesister tobed. “Mother!” he bawls. “Mother! Mo-o-ther !” At last she leaves her task to come to him, he still shouting ; and this is his communication : “ Mother ! This is baker’s bread !” “Yes, dear,” says the too tender mamma, and goes back again. That child should have been met, not with anger or punishment, but with very simple sarcasm and protest. 63 “Yes, that is baker’s bread—and that is a plate—and that is a spoon. I knew all these things when I arranged your supper. Do you think it is fair to call me downstairs just to say that?” The bubbling fluency of a child’s mind, the tendency to repetition and sometimes foolishness, is natural enough, and not to be blamed ; but we should help the child to outgrow it instead of submitting to his weari­ some reiterance. “But, my dear, you said that before. I understand. Now do not say it again.” To say, “Yes, dear,” a dozen times to the same question or statement is not strengthening to the child’s mental habits. Similarly, when a child asks palpably foolish questions—foolish by his own standard—he needs not con­ sideration, but mild ridicule. And, if he can answer his own question, let him : it is no kindness to do all his work. Children are not benefited by a too soft and yielding environment, nor do they always love best those who treat them with too much con­ sideration. Fairness, not severity nor constant concession, is what a child appreciates. If we behave fairly to the child (as we would to a grown person), giving to him the healthy reaction of common justice, we help him to live easily and rightly in the world before him. Even love is open to measurement by results. The love we have for our children is not developed in us as a pleasurable exercise, but is distinctly for the child’s benefit. “ The maternal sacrifice ” is what our scientific friends call it. In studying early forms of life, we find the mother sacrificing everything for the good of the young, from which we draw the general inference that it is for the good of the young to have the mother sacri­ fice everything. More discriminating study will show us a great difference in maternal methods. Where the mother’s loss is the gain of the young, she cheerfully submits to it; �64 TOO MUCH CONSIDERATION but where the young is not benefited by her loss, we do not find it. The eggs of the hen are carefully brooded by the mother ; the eggs of the frog are left floating on the water in suitable places. There is no special virtue in the hen’s brooding, or vice in the frog’’s neglect ; the mother does what is necessary for the young. The mother cat licks her little ones elaborately, and teaches them to make their toilettes similarly. The cow licks the calf for a while, but gives it no instructions in washing its ears with its paws. The mother-love is essential to the best care of the young, and therefore it is given us. It is the main current of race preservation, and the basis of all other love-development on the higher grades. But it is not, there­ fore, an object of superstitious venera­ tion, and in itself invariably right. The surrender of the mother to the child is often flatly injurious, if carried to excess. To put it in the last extreme, suppose the mother so utterly sacrifices herself to the child as to break down and die. She then robs the child of its mother, which is an injury. Suppose she so sacrifices herself to the child as to cut off her own proper rest, recreation, and development. She thus gives the child an exhausted and inferior mother, which is an injury to him. There are cases, perhaps, where it might be a mother’s duty to die for her child ; but, in general, it is more advan­ tageous to live for him. The “ un­ selfish devotion ” of the mother we laud to the skies, without stopping to consider its effect on the child. This error is connected with our primitive religious belief in the doc­ trine of sacrifice—one of those early misconceptions of a great truth. It is necessary for the good of humanity that the interests of the one be subordinate to the interests of the many ; but it does not follow that an indiscriminate surrender of one’s own interests always benefits society. On the contrary, a steady insistence on the rights of the individual is essential to the integrity of the social structure and its right working’s. So it is necessary for the good of the child that the interests of the mother be subordinated to his interests, but it does not follow that her indiscrimi­ nate surrender of personal interests always benefits him. On the contrary, a too self-sacrificing mother tends to develop a selfish, short-sighted, lowgrade personality in the growing life she seeks to benefit, where her honest maintenance of her own individual rights would have had a very healthy effect. Not what the child wishes, nor what the mother wishes, is the standard of measurement, but what is really beneficial to the child. If the mother is frankly and clearly un­ selfish in their daily intercourse, and then as frankly and clearly demands her own share of freedom and con­ sideration, the child gets a fairer view of human rights than if he simply absorbs his mother as a natural victim. Little Mary has a visitor. Her mother is most polite and entertain­ ing, is with them when they desire it, and lets them alone when they prefer. Then her mother has a visitor. “ Mary,” she says, “ I am to have company this week. I shall of course have to give a good deal of time and attention to my friend, as you did to Hattie when she was here. So you must not feel badly if you do not see as much of mamma as usual.” There must be the previous polite conduct of mamma to point to. The childish mind needs frequent and con­ spicuous proof that mamma is for­ getting herself for his pleasure ; and then he should be rationally called upon to forget himself for her pleasure, when it is plainly fair and necessary. The beautiful principles of kinder­ garten teaching are frequently mis­ applied in the too conciliatory and �nniigpFiìiiii.iwii. i t aSGK TOO MUCH CONSIDERA TION self-denying methods of. the wellmeaning mamma. Kindness, polite­ ness, constant love, and all due con­ sideration, the child should have; but justice is as important to him as affection. It must always be remem­ bered that the mother’s love is not an end in itself, nor the expression of it a virtue in itself. It is to be measured, like every other natural function, by its use. When a child is reared in an atmo­ sphere of unreasoning devotion and constant surrender, he grows up to expect it, and to carry a sense of grievance if he does not get it. The natural tendency of the mother to love her own young is strong in us— the maternal passion ; but, like all passions, it needs conscientious and rational restraint. The human soul has grown to such a stage of develop­ ment that we are capable of loving and serving great numbers of people. The woman, who is still confined to the same range of interests which occupied her in the earliest grades of human life, inherits her share of this socially developed power of loving, and concentrates it all upon her own immediate family. Like an ever-enlarging burningglassj still focussed upon one spot, the healthy, natural affection of the animal mother for its young has grown to what is really an immense social affection, too large for one family to sustain profitably. The child will get a far more just and healthful idea of human relation when he finds himself lifted and led on by a mother whose life has a purpose of its own, than when he finds himself encompassed and overwhelmed by a mother who has no other object or interest than himself. The whole question has to be con­ stantly measured by comparing it with the rest of life. Are our methods with children those which best fit men and women for doing their share to maintain and develop human life ? 65 Does not the most casual survey of life to-day show people practising much amiability and devotion at home, strenuously loving their own immediate families and friends, and most markedly deficient in that general love for one another which is not only the main commandment of our religion, but the plainest necessity for social progress ? And is not this deficiency to be accounted for, not by any inability on our part for social devotion—for every day’s list of acci­ dents shows the common fund of heroism and self-sacrifice to be large —but by the training which makes it the habit of our lives to love and serve only those nearest to us ? The mother is the strongest forma­ tive influence in the child’s life. If he sees that she thinks only of him, lives only for him, what is he to learn by it? To think only of himself? Or only of her ? Or only of his children ? Does the best care of a child require the concentrated and unremittent devotion of an entire mother? A larger intelligence applied to the subject may show us that there are better ways of serving our children than those we now follow. The woman who grows up in the practice of considering the needs of people in general, and of so ordering her life as to benefit them, will find a new power and quality in her love for her own dear ones. With that widening of the soul-range of the mother will come a capacity to judge the child as one of the people of the world, besides being her own especially beloved. A study of what all children need will help her to understand what her own child needs far more accurately than when she thinks of him as the only one. The continuous application of the mother to the child is not so advantageous as the quality of her companionship and influence, and her sacrificial devotion too often weakens his sense of justice and makes him selfish. E �66 SIX MO THERS XI. SIX MOTHERS Broad-minded mothers of this time are keenly interested in child-study, in that all too familiar and yet unknown field of “ infant psycho­ logy. ” They are beginning to recog­ nise not only the salient’fact that “all children are different,” but the equally important one that all children have points in common. The need of union and discussion among mothers is resulting in the mothers’ clubs and parents’ con­ gresses, which form so noble an example of the progressive thought. But so far, with all the kindly interest and keen desire for improved methods of child-culture, the mother has to return and grapple with her individual problem alone. Here are one or two simple and practical suggestions, the careful pur­ suance of which, with some clear record of proceedings, would not only be of immediate assistance to the mothers concerned, but to all the other mothers yet to be aroused to the importance of such action. Let us suppose six mothers, to take a very low number—six mothers in one town, one village, or one city, even in the open country, so that they could reach each other easily ; six mothers, who were' friends and “social equals,” and who were wil­ ling to admit the deficiencies, of our general present methods of child­ culture, and also willing to improve those methods. It is permissible for each mother to imagine that her own methods are superior to those of the other mothers, as this will give her a beautiful sense of helpfulness in allowing these superior methods to be observed and studied by the less able, A conscious sense of inferiority is also no obstacle, for a mother having that feeling would be eager to im­ prove by study of the better ways. These six mothers divide the work­ ing days of the week among them, agreeing that each shall on her chosen day take charge of the children of the other five. This might be for a part of the day or the whole day, as is thought best—let us suppose it merely for the afternoon ; and it could be limited, as desired, to children of a certain age, and still further reduced, as a mild beginning, to one child apiece from each family. This would give, as a minimum, five extra children on one afternoon a week to each mother. The maximum would be of course uncertain ; but, if all the children of each mother were thus to go visiting for any part of the day, it would give to each one day in which that larger responsibility was undertaken, and five days free. There would remain Sunday, in which each family, complete, would be at home. Now let us take a hypothetical case, and suppose that our six mothers, with considerable trepidation, have chosen one child apiece that they were willing to entrust for the afternoon to the watchful care of these familiar friends. The children, be it rigidly insisted, are to know nothing whatever of the pur­ poses or methods involved. All that little Johnny Black knows is that Mrs. White has asked him to come over on Monday afternoon and play with Alice and Billy White, and some other chil­ dren that he knows, too; that presently Mrs. Green has them come to her house on Tuesday, and Mrs, Brown �SIX MOTHERS on Wednesday ; that his mamma lets them all come and play with him on Thursday—in short, that his after­ noons have become full and rich and pleasantly exciting-, like some wonder­ ful procession of parties. “Not like regular parties, either,” Johnny would explain. “You don’t have to dress up—much—just be clean, to begin with. And they don’t have ice-cream and macaroons—only just milk and crackers when you get hungry ; and—well, ’tisn’t so much regular games and p’r’aps dancin’— like a party—we just play. And Mrs. White, or whichever one ’tis, she generally has some nice young lady in with her; and they sort of keep things going—as if ’twas a real party. It’s nicer some ways, I think.” “ And which place do you like best, Johnny ?” “ Oh, I do’ know ! Billy White has the biggest yard. But Jim Grey has the best swing ; and there’s a pond at Susy Green’s—a real pond—and no­ thing but girls live there ! Then it’s lots of fun when they come to our house, ’cause I can show ’em my rabbits and make Jack do all his tricks.” Yes, the children all enjoy it. It means variety, it means company, it means a wider and closer acquaint­ ance and all the benefits of wellchosen association and larger environ­ ment. It fills a part of the day. There is no more aimless asking, “What shall I do now?” with the vague response, “ Oh, run away and play ! ” or the suggestion of some wellworn amusement. It means, too, a little more sense of “ company manners ” and behaviour, and, on the other hand, abetter appre­ ciation of home life. And to the mother—what good will this do her ? Each mother would have one day in the week in which to observe children carefully—not her own specially beloved children, but just children, ns such, 67 Her observation and care should be absolutely unobtrusive ; the moment the little ones knew they were being watched, the value of the plan would be greatly impaired ; and, to stop at a minor detail, from the palpable neces­ sity for doing this work without the child’s consciousness, mothers would learn to cover the machinery of govern­ ment at home. It is one of our grossest and most frequent errors in the management of children that we openly discuss our efforts and failures. They know that we are struggling to produce certain results in their beha­ viour, usually in a futile manner. With, however, a large and definite purpose resting so absolutely on the child’s unconsciousness, more wisdom in this line would soon develop. The mother who now says, “What would you do with a child like that ?” or “ I’m sure I don’t know what to do with that child!” before the child in question, would soon perceive that such an attitude in an educator does not produce confidence in the object of the education. Quietly and un­ ostentatiously, and often with the assistance of some keen girl-friend, these mothers would soon learn to observe accurately, to generalise care­ fully, to deduce cautiously, and then to put the deduction into practice and observe the results. As beginners, pioneers, they should make their first steps very modestly. For the first season some one trait should be chosen for study—say self­ control or courage or consideration of others. Having decided on their line of observation, let each mother make a little note of how high each child in the group stands in this line. How much self-control has my Johnny, as measured by his age, as compared with others of his age ? When did I first notice self-control in Johnny? When have I seen it greatest ? Does he gain in it ? What should be done to help Johnny gain in self-control? And then go over the E 3 �68 SIX MOTHERS same questions with regard to the other children. Then, with self-control as the characteristic, the natural develop­ ment and best education of which they wish to study, the afternoon parties begin. At first the children might be left absolutely free to play in ordinary lines. Then, after the first observations were recorded, deli­ cate experiments could be introduced, and their results added to the record. It is very difficult for the individual mother rightly to estimate her own children. “ Every crow thinks her babe the blackest.” Yet the character of the child is forming without regard to any fond prejudice or too severe criticism ; and his life’s happiness depends on his interaction with people in general, not simply with beloved ones at home. The measure of Johnny’s self-control may not seem important to the parental love which covers or the parental force which compels ; but to Johnny’s after­ life its importance is pre-eminent. When one sits for a portrait to a fond and familiar friend, and sees all fond­ ness and familiarity die out from the eyes of the artist, feels one’s per­ sonality sink into a mass of “ values,” it brings a strange sense of chill remoteness. So, no doubt, to the mother heart the idea of calmly esti­ mating Johnny’s self-control and com­ paring it with Jim Grey’s seems cold enough. To have Mrs. Grey estimate it—and perhaps (terrible thought!) to estimate it as less than Jim’s—this is hard, indeed. Yet this is precisely what is to be obtained in such a combination as this, and in no other way—the value of an outside observer, through Mrs. Grey’s estimate. Nobody’s opinion alters facts. The relative virtues of Johnny and Jim remain unchanged, no matter what their respective mothers think or what their irrespective mothers think. But each mother will derive invaluable side-lights from the other mother’s point of view. Each opinion must be backed with illustration. Instances of observed behaviour must be massed before any judgment has value. “ I think your Jim is so brave, Mrs. Grey. When the children were with me the other day, the cow got loose ; and the girls all ran. Some boys ran, too ; and Jimmy drove her back into the cow-yard.” “But Jimmy was the oldest,” says Mrs. White. “ Perhaps, if he’d been as young as my Billy, he wouldn’t have been so brave.” “ And he is afraid of the dark,” says Mrs. Brown. “At my house he wouldn’t go into the back cellar after apples, even with the other children. Isn’t he afraid of the dark, Mrs. Grey ?” Mrs. Grey admits this, but cites instances to show courage in other directions. And always five dispas­ sionate observers to the one deeply loving and prejudiced. If it should happen that Jimmy is generally admitted brave beyond his years, with the one exception of fear­ ing darkness, and that exception traceable to a nurse-maid’s influence, the mother of Jimmy is rejoiced ; and a strong light is thrown on the nurse question. If it prove that by general opinion there is a lack of courage such as should belong to his years, there is cause for special study and special action in this line. Most valuable of all, the habit of observing a child’s behaviour as an expression of character is formed. The six mothers would of course meet to compare notes, preferably in evenings, when children were all in bed and fathers could be present ; and the usual difficulty of leaving home in‘the evening could be met in such an important case as this by engaging some suitable person to come in for an hour or two and stay with the sleeping little ones. �MEDITATIONS ON THE NURSE-MAID 69 All such details would have to be this would be a stimulus and help to arranged according to personal and uncounted thousands of ungrouped local conditions ; but the end to be mothers who are struggling on alone. It is by such effort as this, such attained is of such enormous value that considerable effort is justified in interchange of view and combined reaching it. Even in the beginning study, and the slowly accumulating a usefulness would be found in the record of established facts, that united interest, the mutual helpfulness humanity progresses in any line of of the combined women, drawn to­ similar work—in floriculture or horti­ gether by the infinite and beautiful culture or agriculture, or what you possibilities of their great work. In will ; and this greatest of all our the light of other eyes, they would labours, humaniculture, sadly lacks see their own children in new lights, the application of the true social law and, by careful following of agreed —that in union is strength. The child needs not only love, but lines of treatment, soon learn with some finality what would and what wisdom and justice ; and these grow best in the human soul through com­ would not be useful in a given case. The observations and experiments bination. of one earnest group of mothers like XII. MEDITATIONS ON THE NURSE-MAID “The trouble with these household problems which vex women so much is that we do not give our minds to them sufficiently,” said earnest little Mrs. Blythe. “Now I mean to give my mind to this nurse-maid problem, and work it out.” It is high time that somebody did. And it is not only on my own account: this is something which affects us all —all who have nurse-maids, that is. I suppose the mothers without nurse­ maids have their problems too : but I must consider mine now. Now, what is the matter with the nurse-maid ? She does not suit me. She has palpable faults and deficien­ cies. I want a better nurse-maid. So far I have trusted to the law of supply and demand to produce her, but it does not seem to work. I demand her, just as I have demanded a better housemaid for some, time ; but the supply is not forthcoming. So now I mean to think it out, and see if I cannot find a way to the invention, discovery, or manufacture of a better nurse-maid. And I mean to be very clear and logical in my thinking about it, so as to come out in the end with proof. I want to prove what is the matter with the nurse-maid, and how to make her better. In the first place, what are my objections to the nurse-maid now? She is careless and irresponsible. She is ignorant. She is ill-mannered. She is often deceitful. I can’t trust her. Now, it doesn’t seem right that my child should be placed in the care of �70 MEDITATIONS ON THE NURSE-MAID an ignorant, ill-mannered, careless, and irresponsible person—even if not also untrustworthy—does it ? And it does not relieve me of the care as it ought. I have to take care of the child and the nurse-maid too. What I want is a careful, responsible, wise, well-mannered, honourable young girl. She ought to have special training too. It is really dreadful the way these ignorant girls under­ take to care for children. We need schools—training schools—and diplo­ mas. They could have practice classes on the children of the poor— or in institutions ; and yet that idea does not quite suit me either. My child is very individual and peculiar, and I don’t believe that practising on poor children would fit a nurse-maid to take care of my child. But nice people would not want their children to be practised on. They would have to take the poor ones : it would do them good, anyway. They get no care now ; their mothers are shockingly ignorant and neglectful. But, after all, I don’t have to arrange the training schools. I only know that she ought to have special training, and it ought to be practical as well as theoretical; and that means practising on some children some­ where, somehow. And they certainly would have to be poor, because rich people would not let their children go to be practised on. Maybe the poor people would not either. Then it would have to be orphans, I guess, combining nurse-training schools with orphan asylums, and foundlings, too. Well now, these nurse-maids would go to these training schools to im­ prove themselves, would they ! Come to think of it, they only go to nursing because they need the pay ; and, even if the training schools were free, they’d have to wait longer for their money. And, if they got no more with training than without, they would not go, I’m afraid. We should certainly have to pay them more trained than untrained. That is per­ fectly logical, I’m sure. And, of course, that would be an obstacle. If' the training schools were not free, we should have to pay them more yet —enough to make it worth while to study the business of caring for chil­ dren. A short course might do—six months or a year. I’ve heard my mother say that she knew something about taking care of children by the time Charley was born. But that was—well, I was eight, and I’m the third—that was about twelve years. Oh, but she wasn’t in a training school ! That would teach them faster. There would be more children to practise on. Let me see: if it took my mothef twelve years to learn by practising on five children (Charley was the fifth— four children), how many children would it take to learn on in one year ? I’ll get John to do that for me : I’m not good at figures. Besides, it’s different—altogether different; for my mother was a mother, so she knew how, to begin with, and nurse-maids are not. So—to be strictly logical— it ought to take nurse-maids longer, I’m afraid. The training schools will have to be free : I’m pretty sure of that. And that means public or private endowment. We might as well think it all out clearly. Should it be added to the public­ school system—open to all girls— perhaps compulsory? Why not? Why wouldn’t it be a good thing for all girls to know something of the care of children ? But could we do that ? Public schools are in politics ; and that is awful. It would take for ever to get it that way; and my child wants a nurse-maid now ! Private endowment, I guess. So many rich people want to help the masses. This would furnish employment, raise wages, and give us nurse-maids. I’m sure it would appeal to any phil­ anthropist. Yes, some rich person must endow �MEDITATIONS ON THE NURSE-MAID things now. I know ever so many a training school for nurses that young mothers who are taking child­ sounds like hospitals; for child-nurses study now ; and about nutrition, too. —that sounds like wet-nurses; tor But the trouble is they can’t depend nurse-maids—why need they be maids, on the nurses to carry out instruc­ though ? Well, if they were married, tions. If they were only trustworthy I they would have children of their own, Will the training schools make them of course, and couldn’t take care of honourable ? I suppose so. . They ours. One would think, though, that would get some sense of the impor­ motherhood would give them more tance and dignity of their work. They experience—that they would know would be graded and marked, ot how to care for children better. But, course, in their diplomas, so that one then, they wouldn’t want to leave their own children to take care of could pick out the dependable ones ; and that would gradually elevate the ours. And they couldn’t take care of them together. A mother would standard. The trouble is, of course, when they go out. Children must be naturally do more for her own : she out of doors ; and, in cities where we wouldn’t be fair. have no yards, they cannot be under A training school for nurse-maids. the mother’s eye, so they must be out After all, “ maid ” does not mean with the nurse-maid. That’s perfectly “unmarried” in this connection . it logical. Then there are the other means simply “servant.” And “nurse” nurse-maids. One cannot keep them comes from the time when mere nursing was all that was required a isolated : that’s out of the question. And if they have admirers, as they kind of a survival of old customs. do, of course—young girls always How these things do open up, when will have admirers, and training one thinks about them ! Why “ nurse­ schools will not alter that—why, it maid ” at all ? Why not have a new they meet their admirers, it has a and attractive name ? That would help tendency to make them careless. make them go to the training school, That is natural. We must allow for too. such things. And it is a perfectly Nurse, nursing—it isn’t nursing our children want. They are not sick, natural temptation to. take the baby to see their own families.. We forbid and they don’t stay babies all the it, of course ; but I admit that it is a time they need this person. What is it that our children need? Of temptation. And there are all those course, they do need direct, personal awful risks of diseases and things. Now, if' their families were nicer care; and, when they are babies, people and lived in nicer places—but they need real “ nursing ”—just some­ body to—to—well, they have to be then they wouldn’t want to be nurse­ maids I But if the training school fed—and that only needs a knowledge raises wages and standards, that will of infant physiology and nutrition ; have an effect on the class of people to keep the bottles clean, of course, and be very accurate, and follow who take up the work. It certainly is the noblest, most directions. They don’t need to know beautiful, most important work in the so much, after all : the doctor tells world—the training of children. I what to give it to eat, and what not to. And the mother understands the wonder why our own girls do not child’s needs 1 Still, even for babies, take it up—our college girls., But then, of course, they wouldn’t be they need some kind of training—the “nurse-maids.” Perhaps, if it had nurses, I mean—not the mothers: . it is divinely implanted in the mother. another name— Now let me think, and be fair. And, then, mothers are studying these �72 MEDITATIONS ON THE NURSE-MAID Would I want my sister Jessie to be a. nurse-maid? She is taking a kindergarten course, and we all approve of that: it does help one so in all those problems that perplex a mother! But, if she went to Mrs. MacAdoo’s as a nurse-maid------ The MacAdoos are nice people, too ; and the children are as nice as any I know. They have a Swedish nurse-maid now -a big, hearty, wholesome-looking girl, but stupid. WLy, she cannot answer the simplest questions Harold asks, hardly; and he’s always asking them. Jessie has him in the kinder­ garten where she is. I don’t mean that she’s the principal, but she is training there ; and she tells me what a bright child he is, and what stupid things Christine has told him. And you see he has Jessie only three hours a day, and Christine all the time he’s awake. . Jessie is taking a special course in infant psychology, and she says Christine is doing him a world of harm. But she is so good-natured and faithful that they keep her. They don’t realise that her being stupid is any harm to the children, I suppose. But, if Jessie had him all the time, Harold certainly would develop more rationally and more easily. And yet I am sure Jessie would not take Christine’s place. You see we visit the MacAdoos, and it would be so awkward. Now, I think—logically— I am approaching a—I forget the name of it, but it’s a thing there’s no way out of. We would like our nurse-maids to be ladies, but ladies are not willing to be nurse-maids. Now, will the training school make ladies—or, at least, partial ladies—of our nurse-maids? And, if it does, will that make them disin­ clined to be nurse-maids ? Or can we arrange the position of the nurse­ maid so that ladies will be willing to take it ? What is the real difference between Jessie’s position and Chris­ tine’s? Why, Jessie has ' a lot of children come to her part of the time ; | and Christine has a few children, and goes to them all the time. And Jessie has or will have when she’s graduated and has a kindergarten of her own, as I daresay she will-—she has control of the children while they are with her, and can carry out principles. The mothers even consult her some­ times. But Christine has to carry out the mother’s orders. She does what she is told or ought to. No, Jessie never would be willing to take Mrs. MacAdoo’s orders about the children. Mrs. MacAdoo is exceptionally stupid about children, I do think. She doesn’t think Christine’s telling them stories about things to frighten them is any harm—says they’ll outgrow it. And anybody who knows anythingof infant psychology knows how dangerous it is to frighten children. And yet, of course, to be perfectly fair, I wouldn’t want a nurse-maid to dictate to me about my child. It is out of the question—absolutely. Why, it would destroy the mother’s influence and authority altogether ! And—come to think of it—I suppose a trained nurse-maid would have views of her own, and they might conflict with the mother’s-----Now, where I have got to so far— it is beautiful, thinking things out clearly—we want our children taken care of by ladies, honourable, intelli­ gent, educated, refined, and specially trained for the business. I’m quite certain about that. Like Jessie, for instance. She is just born for it-—always did love children, and knew how to manage them from the time she was a little girl. And she’s study­ ing all the science of it and practising in the kindergarten—on the same kind of children, too. Jessie is the ideal. It is really wonderful to see her with them. They love her, and they do what she says, too; but she never seems to be making them do anything; they just do it. Those MacAdoos behave very much better with her �MEDITATIONS ON THE NURSE-MAID than they do with their mother. I believe most of the children do, for that matter. Except little Cassie Wells. She has the most devoted mother I ever saw. It is a lesson to us all. She never lets her out of her sight, I do believe. Often comes to the kindergarten, just to be with her. And, you see, Cassie just depends on her for everything ; and nobody else can do anything with her. It is beautiful—such absolute dependence and absorption. Yes, as I said, Jessie is the ideal. But, then, Jessie is not a nurse-maid, and never would be. Of course, if there was any way that Jessie could have the children with her and have her way with them, as she does in the kindergarten------ But you can’t do that with little children ; you cannot separate the child from its mother ! When they are older, they go to school, of course ; and, when they are older yet, they go to college, and so on. But the little child needs its mother every hour. And, as its mother cannot possibly give it every hour, we have to have the nurse-maid. If mothers had no other claims, then, of course, you would have the highest ideal relation. Cassie Wells’s mother has given up everything else. She doesn’t go out with her husband at all. Says that society has no claim beside that of the child. Of course, he stays at home with her—mostly. I’m sure a man ought to value his wife’s society more than any other, especially when she is such a devoted mother. She takes all the periodicals about children, and reads all the books ; and then she modifies it all to suit her particular child. I never knew any mother so conscientiously given up to the care of a child. She really talks of nothing else. *And, when that child is sick—and she is extremely delicate and always having dangerous illnesses—her mother is simply glued to her bedside ; they can’t drag her away. It . is a pity that the child is not better material ; 73 for she isn’t particularly bright, nor very well behaved, I think. But, then, her mother is doing everything that can be done. Jessie says that child is being mothered too much—that she needs more freedom and an impartial out­ side management. But, then, Jessie is a good deal of a theorist; and, after all, she isn’t a mother. Nothing can really equal the mother’s care for her own child I Still, we simply can’t do it—all of us—as families increase. We owe something to our husbands, I am sure ; and we have our social duties ; and our health is not always equal to such a strain. No, the mother must have help; and that means the nurse-maid. It’s no use talking about Jessie. Even if she would do it, there’s not enough of her to go round 1 We never can expect that “ faculty with children ” in every­ body ; they simply don’t have it. Most girls don’t care much for chil­ dren, nor know anything about them. Of course, after they become mothers it is different. Then it all comes to them. Now, if nurse-maids could be mothers first------ But I argued that out before. If they were, they wouldn’t be mothers of our children; and motherhood only teaches how to do what is best for one’s own children. Besides, we couldn’t hire them then, because we would not separate mothers from their own children; and, if they had their children and ours, too, they would not treat them fairly. And we would not want them brought up with ours, either. No, they’ve got to be “maid,” that’s sure. Now, the average young girl does not know or care much about children. Therefore she has to be trained. (What a comfort it is to be really logical !) And, as there is no place to train them now, we have got to make a place. It all comes round to the training school for nurse-maids. That’s the logical outcome. �74 MEDITATIONS ON THE NURSE-MAID Again, since we must have private nurse-maids under our orders—really a servant—we cannot expect ladies to take such positions. And—this ought co be bracketed with that last—since we cannot, of course, pay more than so much, that is against ladies doing it, too. Some people can, I know. Jessie told me of a very nice girl she knew, a classmate in college and a trained kindergartner, who was unable to get such a position as she wanted, and took a place with some very rich people as a sort of lady nurse-teacher to the children. But she said it was perfectly horrid, especially in travel­ ling, having to eat with servants and be treated as such. I can see that it would take a kind of heroism, and we cannot really count on heroic nurse­ maids. No, it has to be from the lower classes that we take our nurse­ maids. I think that is proved. The average employer sjmply couldn’t pay them enough to attract a higher class of labour. These are really questions of political economy in part, you see. The ordinary young girl of 'the lower classes—that is the raw mate­ rial of our nurse-maid. Naturally, she is ill-mannered or unmannered, and careless and ignorant, and all those things. Therefore, we must train her. In order to do that we must first provide the training school, and, second, make her go to it. Now I wonder how we could do that. The higher wages would be an object, of course ; that would have to be insisted on. And we might “ create a senti­ ment.” That’s it! That’s what we must do—create a sentiment! But it’s no use doing anything till we’ve got the school. And I worked that out as having to be done by private endowment. That involves agitation, of course; and we must set about it. We can get teachers in plenty, there is so much interest in child-study now; and it will be a splendid thing for the lower classes to take their young girls and train them thoroughly in the theory of child­ culture. It will make them so much better mothers afterwards, when they do marry, after spending some years in taking care of our children—putting their theories in practice ! But wait. That looks queer. Looks as if the rich people were furnishing elaborate instruction free to young women of the lower classes, and then paying them good wages for practising on the children of the upper classes, so that the poor women might be better mothers afterwards. I must have made a mistake some­ where. I’m going to reverse that position, and see how it would work. Suppose young girls of the upper classes took elaborate instruction in child-culture, and then practised on the children of the lower classes, in order to be better mothers afterwards. That seems more satisfactory, some­ how ; yet it means a lot of work. It would do our girls good—I can see that—and do the children of the lower classes good, and, no doubt, make the girls better mothers. Besides, I’m wasting time—“ arguing in a circle,” John would say ; for that upper-class-girl hypothesis wouldn’t give us nurse-maids. Now, where was I? Mothers have to have help— i.e., nurse-maids. These have to be private servants at low wages : there­ fore, ladies would not do it. There­ fore, we must have our children taken care of by girls from the lower classes. They are not suitable persons to take care of children as they stand : therefore, we must train them. Now, I mean really to work for this thing—to create a sentiment. I’ll begin early in the autumn, as soon*as we get back. And I’m so glad I’m going to have such a lovely summer to make me fit for it. You see, I’m very much pulled down. Little John has been such a care, and the nurse-maids I’ve had have been so unreliable. Why, the child has been �CHILDREN AND SERVANTS sick again and again just through their carelessness. I’m sure of it. And mother said I simply must go away and build up, for the child’s own sake ; and John agreed with her—for once. And there’s such a lovely arrangement for the summer; nothing ever happened more conveniently. You see, Jessie is such an enthusiast about children. And she has planned to be at home this summer. Our home is perfectly lovely, anyway, and very healthy—quite in the country, and yet within easy reach of town. They’re going to have the Summer School of Child-study there at Seabay this year, and Jessie has several of her class visiting her. And she said, in her solemn, funny way, that they must have specimens to work onfirst-class specimens 1 She insisted on little John, of course, and she’s persuaded Clara and George to let her have their three for a while ; and the little MacAdoos are to be there, too. It will be a regular picnic for the children. It took a long time to bring me round to it. But, then, it’s my own lovely home. I know how healthy it is. And mother will be there. And one of Jessie’s friends is a doctor, and in a children’s hospital, too. She ought to‘see that every­ thing is right for their health. So, if they are happy in that lovely old 75 place, and healthy and well taught and safe, why, I suppose I can leave. Of course, I wouldn’t for anything on earth but health. Mrs. Wells was perfectly horrified when I told her. They asked Cassie, too; but she wouldn’t hear of it. She said nothing but death should ever separate her from her child. And, dear me, Cassie looked so white that it really seemed as if it would. She made me feel guilty again ; but John can’t come to any harm with my mother’s expe­ rience and Jessie’s knowledge and natural talent. That’s the main thing. Jessie always cared more for children than I did—except little John, of course. They’ve fixed the place up on purpose for children. Such arrangements for bathing and digging and mud-pieing and gardening, and so on, you never saw. There is some­ thing for those chicks to do all the blessed time, and these nice girls—• my own friends—to be with them every minute. You see, they take turns and relieve each other, so they are always fresh for the children. And then, being so enthusiastic and scientific, it isn’t drudgery to them. They are studying all the time. And how glad I shall be to get back in the fall! Then I can work up that training school for nurse-maids. XIII. CHILDREN AND SERVANTS In the growing discontent with our present methods of household service, while we waver between long-held prejudice, old and dear, and the irresistible pressure of new conditions, it is worth while to weigh well the relation between this present method of house-service and our present method of child-culture. The home is the place in which we �76 CHILDREN AND SERVANTS rear young children. It is also the place in which we perform certain kinds of labour, mainly cooking, cleaning, and sewing. In the vast majority of our homes, fully ninetenths of them, as shown by the United States Census Report, giving the number of domestic servants in proportion to the number of families, these industries are carried on by the mother. She is the domestic servant. In the remaining one-tenth of our homes the labour is performed by hired servants, the maid-of-all-work still greatly predominating. The questions here suggested for con­ sideration are : first, Is a mother, who is also a house-servant, able to supply proper conditions and care to young children ? And, .second, Is the company of domestic servants other than their mothers, and constant association with their industries, a desirable condition for the education of young children ? It is, of course, difficult to consider with any clearness of perception facts which have been always familiar. The association of child and servant is so old that it makes no impression on our consciousness. It will, per­ haps, bring out the relation more vividly to change the sex of the servant. Suppose a man is left with boys to educate. Suppose he engages a tutor for his boys. He is willing to pay well for a man with the proper ability, character, and training to come and benefit his children by instruction and association. Would such a man be willing to engage a tutor who was also a janitor ? Would he be willing to spare the time required to fill a janitor’s position from the time required to fill the tutor’s position ? Or would he be willing to engage a man who had so little fitness for the profession of tutor as to be content to act as janitor also ? Again, in sending his boys to school to be educated, would a man be willing to have that school also run as a restaurant, a laundry, and a tailor shop? Would he think these industries and the society of the persons engaged in them good educa­ tional influences ? It is clear that a man would not be willing to do these things. Yet all men cheerfully entrust their children during their most im­ pressionable years to the society and care of domestic servants and the con­ stant association with domestic indus­ tries. In most cases the servant is also the mother. In other cases the servant is not the mother. In either case the child grows up in association with domestic servants and service. Let us not too readily conclude that this is an evil, but examine it carefully, in its physical and psychical effects. Physically, the child is born into a certain kind of shop or factory. The conditions of any labour in the home are particularly open to criti­ cism; oursweating-shop investigations show that in glaring instance. Inti­ mate association with a trade, and especially a dirty or dangerous one, does not seem advantageous to a child’s health and progress. In nine homes out of ten the child is directly associated with the trades of his mother, who is a cook, a laundress, a cleaner in general; and the baby is early accustomed to the fumes and heat of the kitchen, to grease and ashes and dust, to all the kitchen­ work, laundry-work, chamber-work, and endless miscellaneous industries of his mother. In the other tenth of our homes the child grows up a little removed, but not far, from these same industries. They go on under his eyes none the less, but with a certain ban upon them, as servants’ work. Any mother and housewife knows the complications continually arising between children and servants. Early associations are deep and lasting. Domestic servants are not, as a rule, either at all trained in the right treat­ ment of children or in such personal �CHILDREN AND SERVANTS development of character and manners as would make them desirable com­ panions for the young. Yet com­ panions they are—incessant, intimate, unavoidable. The formative influence of a nurse-maid or of a maid-of-allw'ork is of varying weight in different cases, but always a factor in the child’s development. The education of a child consists in every impression received by the growing brain, not merely those received when we are instructing it. We might give an hour a day to careful instruction in good manners ; we might ourselves be models of propriety ; but, if the child is also in the society of con­ spicuously ill-mannered persons every day, an effect will surely be produced by them. It may be suggested that an end is to be attained through exhibiting the deficiencies of servants, and exhorting the child to despise them, as the Spartans used the Helots for an awful example; but, even if this were gained, there would follow with it a spirit of scorn and contempt for fellow-crea­ tures most injurious to true social development. A little child should be surrounded with the best influences of all sorts, and with behaviour not to avoid, but to imitate. The long period of imma­ turity, which is one of our human distinctions, has its value in the accu­ mulated improvements which may be built into the race in that time. It is a period of enrichment, of clear growth. To expose the young to disadvanta­ geous conditions, especially the very young, is a method of education find­ ing no precedent in nature and no justification in reason. The adult, with developed powers, may find in some degree of difficulty a stimulus to further effort; and, if confronted with injurious conditions, may strive the harder to escape or change them. But the new person, the child, has no background. He can make no com­ parisons. He accepts his first environ­ 77 ment unquestioningly as “ the world ” ; it is all the world he knows. For the very reason that we were all born and reared in the domestic factory, we find it hard to imagine any other conceiv­ able surroundings for a young human being to meet life in. We have accepted it without dream of criticism. Yet in physical conditions alone the household industries furnish a large and constant element of danger to the child. A most casual retrospect of the accidents common to childhood, which so shock us in the daily Press, shows this with startling clearness. Children suffer from accidents by fire, by boiling water, by sharp instru­ ments, by injurious substances taken into the stomach. The industry of cooking alone involves the free use of fire, a constant succession of hot pro­ ducts, many sharp instruments for cutting and stabbing, and various food elements healthful in combina­ tion, but often injurious when taken separately by one ignorant of their nature. The kitchen and the laundry are responsible for many horrible and sudden deaths among young children, and many more painful accidents. Given the essential ignorance and as essential experiments of childhood, and we may well wonder how it has so long seemed good to us to bring up our babies among such large chances of danger. If we reared them in stables^ we should expect them to be kicked occasionally ; if we placed them in saw-mills, we should look for some deficit in fingers ; and a child in a cook-shop has his steady average risk of injury by fire, steel, or poison; in the laundry the added chance of drowning. Apart from these main sources of danger, he finds in sweep­ ing, dusting, and all the uncounted activities of household toil much that is detrimental to health and safety. To avoid these dangers our first effort has been to train the child to a prompt and instant obedience, such as conditions of imminent danger and �78 CHILDREN AND SERVANTS military rule alone can justify, and also to check his natural and most valuable tendency to investigate and experiment. The labours of the household must go on; economic laws are peremptory ; and the servant, who is educating the baby so uncon­ sciously, cannot stop work to explain or illustrate. On the contrary, the very presence of the child is inimical to the proper performance of these imperative indus­ tries ; and the flushed and hurried servant cries: “ Run away now. Mamma’s busy!” Where is the child to run to ? This is home. When is mamma not busy ? To perform pro­ perly the household labour of an average family, which is of five persons in an average house, say, of six rooms, takes ten hours a day of swift, intelligent, skilled labour. During what part of this time can the household labourer give due attention to the child ? Or is it sufficient education to watch a servant at work, and to help a little when one is old enough ? If the industries involved were properly divided, specialised,, and developed, much that is valuable might be gathered from their obser­ vation, and from guarded experiment, by children who are old enough. A child can receive valuable instruction in a woollen-mill or a blacksmith shop, but it does not follow that these places are suitable as nurseries. The lack of any true educational value in the position is sufficiently shown by the ceaseless centuries of ignorance in these very trades. All women, for all time, reared in this intimate association with domestic service and domestic servants, have failed to work out any better grade of performance than that which still furnishes the staple of conversation among them. It is quite evident, from the results so painfully visible around us, that the education of our children by house-servants developes neither general intelligence nor special pro­ ficiency. The intellectual progress of humanity has shown close connection with the extension of industry in larger lines, with a growing speciali­ sation, a wider distribution, and, of course, with the beautiful growth in special methods of education. But this kitchen education, though we have enjoyed its advantages for so long, does not seem to show good results. The educational value of the mother seems not to be in proportion to her occupation as a house-servant, but the reverse. It would seem that our children grow in intelligence and good behaviour rather in spite of the domestic industries than because of them. Any mother who is awake to the limitless possibilities of child­ culture, and who begins to work out some well-considered plan for its pursuance, knows the ceaseless inter­ ruptions of her efforts, and the per­ emptory monopolisation of her time, by the demands of household labour. So far, with true womanly patience— a patience which ceased to be a virtue some years ago—she has accepted the condition as inevitable, and plodded on, consoling herself with a “ day unto day” philosophy, and with “doing the best she could ”; and many moralists consoled her, saying, “Blessed be drudgery!” Drudgery has a certain value, no doubt. It developes certain characteristics— namely, those of a competent and contented drudge. The question raised here is merely whether this kind of work and the characteristics developed by it are suitable educa­ tional associations for young children. What are the qualities developed by house-service ? Let us suppose that we are all, fathers as well as mothers, occupied solely in household labour. The effect may be studied from one point of view in those countries where there are more men- �CHILDREN AND SERVANTS servants than with us, and where the profession is sometimes followed for generations. The typical character of a butler or footman, a parlour­ maid, cook, or general servant, may be traced through all personal varia­ tion. Given any sort of person, and put him or her through a lifetime of domestic service, and certain charac­ teristics appear, modified to. a large degree by personality, but typical none the less. This palpable result of house-service is familiar to us all, and not desired in ourselves or our children. Admitting all personal good qualities in the indi­ vidual servant, that in his bearing which distinguishes it from the bearing we call “ soldierly ” or “ gentlemanly,” or even “business-like,” is the natural result of his form of labour—of personal domestic service. Where the purpose of action is to serve one individual or a very few individuals— and this not so much in ministering to general needs as in catering to personal tastes—those who thus labour are checked in development by the measure of the tastes they serve. That is the restrictive tendency, resisted according to personal power and ability, but always producing some result. A race of men who were one and all contented to be butlers and footmen would not give as noble a fatherhood as the world needs ; and a race of women who are contented to be cooks and house­ maids do not give as noble a mother­ hood as the world needs. Sharp exception will, no doubt, be taken to the use of the word “servant” to designate the nine out of ten women who “do their own work.” There is a difference, we freely admit. They do the same work in the same way, but they have different motives. They do it from a sense of duty, oft-times, instead of a desire for wages ; for they get no wages. They do it simply because they have to, sometimes, fueling it to be merely a disagreeable 79 necessity. They do it from a more direct self-interest than the servant, as well as from a greater self-sacrifice. Few, very few women love it, and continue to do it a day beyond the time when their husbands can afford to hire another woman. Whatever the “moral quality” of intention and the value of one’s “ frame of mind,” the reactive effect of one’s daily labour is inexorable. No matter how high and holy the purpose of the toiling house-wife, no matter whether she glories in her task or hates it, her brain is daily modified by its kind of exercise as surely as her fingers are greased by the dish-water, cracked by the soap-suds, and made callous by the broom. The amount of labour and care required to run a household com­ fortably is not small. It takes no mean intelligence to administer a home. So does it require intelligence, labour, and care to run a retail dry­ goods shop or a railroad train. The point to study is whether this par­ ticular species of labour and care is conducive to the best child-culture. Can the average woman successfully manage the mingled industries of her household and the education of her children ? It may be replied at once, with some triumph, “Yes, she does 1” To which wé merely rejoin, “ Does she?” We know that the household industries are carried on in some fashion; and that children grow up amid them (such of them as do not die), and are—when grown—the kind of people we see about us. People did live and rear children in caves, in tents, in huts, in feudal castles. It is a question not of the bare possibility of maintaining the race, but of the relative advantages of methods of culture. Our rate of infant mortality is shamefully large, and due mainly to what physicians term “preventable diseases.” It is quite open to discussion whether those diseases are not often traceable to the insanitary conditions of household �8o CHILDREN AND SERVANTS labour, and their continued pre­ valence to the limitations of the kitchen-bred intellects of nine-tenths of our mothers. No human being, be she never so much a mother, can be in two places at once, or do full justice to several varied functions with one distracted brain. That the mother comes so near it in many cases is a splendid tribute to the power of love ; that she fails in such degree is no reproach to her, so long as she is unable to alter the industrial conditions under which her motherhood is restricted. Now that economic progress makes it possible to introduce new and wide improvements, the mother does become responsible if she fails to see and take advantage of the change. Our complex and ill-developed house­ hold labours tend to produce certain special mental capacities in those who perform them. The housewife must hold in mind the entire contents of the home—all its furnishing, decora­ tions, utensils, and supplies. She must keep a running account of stock and make good the incessant and irre­ gular deficiencies of linen-closet, ward­ robe, cupboard, and pantry, as well as the wear and tear on the machinery and furnishings. This developes one order of brain—the administrative. The house-servant must exhibit skill in several distinct trades, and a swift facility for disconnecting the mind and readjusting it as promptly. This developes another order of brain—the executive—the development seriously hindered in special perfection by the attendant facility for disconnection. Neither of these mental powers is that of the educator, especially the educator of babies. The capacity for subtle, long-con­ tinued, nicely-balanced observation in lines of psychic development; the ever-present, delicate sympathy which knows the moment to suggest and the hour to refrain—these mental attri­ butes belong neither to the adminis­ trative nor to the executive ability. We find in the maternal dealings with children, when conspicuously efficient, precisely what should be expected of the expert manager and skilful servant. The children are well managed and well served, but they are not well educated. When the mother—the housewife­ mother, the servant-mother—begins to look into educational processes, she is appalled. It is easy to show her, if she has a clear and at all educated mind, what conditions would be best for babies, what kind of observation and treatment ; but she knows full well that she cannot furnish these conditions. She has neither place, time, strength, skill, nor training for this delicate and careful method. Her work, her daily, hourly, inexor­ able work, fills the place, consumes the time, exhausts the strength, does not develop the skill, and prevents the training of the educator. Many mothers do not even recognise the possibility of better methods, and strenuously resent the suggestion that they are not doing all that could be done. They resent even the kindergarten, many of them. The relatively slow progress of the kindergarten method is as good a proof as could be offered of the lack of educational perception among mothers. They are willing to “ serve ” their children endlessly, wait on them, wash, sweep, and cook for them. They are willing to “ manage ” their children carefully and conscien­ tiously, and do not recognise the need of better educational treatment for babies. This attitude is a perfectly natural result of the reaction of the absorbing household industries on the mind of the mother. Her interest is eager and alert in all that concerns the material management of the family, from wall-paper and carpets to some new variety of hose-supporter, down to the least detail of decoration on an embroidered muslin cap for the baby. �CHILDREN AND SERVANTS In any matter of greater beauty or economy, or in some cases of sanitary improvement, the housewife-mother’s mind is open. In indefatigable zeal in direct service—no task too difficult, too long, too tedious—the servant­ mother’s hand is ever-ready. But the same devoted, loving, conscientious mother will fail appallingly to keep in touch with the mind-growth of the baby; will often neglect and even seriously injure its development in what is, after all, the main field of human life. The young human being needs far more than to be fed and clothed and waited on, however lovingly ; or even than to be taught in schools in a few set lines of study. We have made splendid progress in external things, in material forms and methods of production and distribu­ tion. We have travelled far and deep in scientific study, climbed high in art, and grown through grand religions. Our one great need—a need that grows daily greater in the vivid light of these swift-moving years—is for a better kind of people. The progress in human character does not keep pace with our external improvement. We are not trained in the right management of our own faculties; and come out. of “ the home ” into “ the world ” well fed enough, well dressed enough, but with such un­ kempt, unbuttoned, dangling strings of neglected character as bespeak the orphan soul. Ask any mother to describe her children’s complexion, costume, and tastes in eating. She will do it glibly, profusely, and with feeling. Johnny would never touch meat till he was ten ; Maud would eat nothing else ; Jessie could never bear potatoes. Maud was very near-sighted. She had early taken her to an oculist. She would probably have to wear glasses always. Jessie was so hard on shoes. She used two pairs to Maud’s one—even worse than Johnny. Now ask her to describe the distinc­ 81 tive mental characteristics of each, at what age they developed, and what measures she has taken from year to year to check Jessie’s personal vanity, to increase Maud’s courage, to develop patience in Johnny. Ask her what she has tried for croup, and she will discourse freely. Ask her what she has tried for the gradual reduction of self-consciousness, and she looks puzzled. The human race is capable of beautiful development in character, as we see in occasional instances. That such beautiful development is largely assisted by right education, especially in the very first years, is proven by a thousand experiments. That most of us grow up without any intelligent psychic training, without wise atten­ tion and skilful care in soul-growth, is but too evident. Better education for the young of the human race, that education which the child never knows of, but which surrounds him with helpful influences from his first con­ sciousness, is an imperative need. Some attempt at this work is made by all conscientious mothers, and wonderful success is sometimes attained by a mother of special genius for child-culture (and who, by the way, is seldom distinguished as a housekeeper) ; but our general average in humaniculture is low. Nothing in the range of human effort is more important than the right education of children, which means the improvement of the race. The first years are of special value, the first influences and associations of pre-eminent importance. If the household industries are incompatible with the best child­ culture, they should be withdrawn from the household, specialised and professionalised, like all the other industries once considered essentially domestic. When a broader intelli­ gence is brought to bear on our infancy, when we do not grow up under the unavoidable assumption �82 MOTHERS, NATURAL AND UNNATURAL that the principal business of life is furnish skilled labour by the hour; to “ keep house,” there will be a better the “ Prepared Food Association ” is chance for the growth of those civic solving another problem. The way virtues so pitifully lacking in us now. out of these household difficulties is So many marks of progress in these opening fast. It needs only a fuller lines are now evident that any intel­ recognition among women of the ligent woman can see the way open value of this change to bring it in before her. The public laundry is with greater rapidity and success. sapping the foundations of our For the sake of our children let us domestic industry; the “ Domestic free the home from its archaic Service Bureau ” is beginning to industries. XIV. MOTHERS, NATURAL AND UNNATURAL We use the word “ natural ” in many senses—sometimes with warm ap­ proval, as indicating that which is best; sometimes with disapproval, as low and discreditable. “ Natural affection ” is one familiar phrase, and “ unnatural monster ” another, which show a firm belief in the rightness of the working laws of the universe. On the other hand, the whole story of human development lies in changing those conditions and habits which were once natural to the slow, laborious, hard-won advantages of civilisation. “The natural man,” or man “in a state of nature,” is a remote ancestor; and we do not allow unchecked freedom to animal passions and appetites among us on the ground that they are “natural.” It is natural to take revenge for injuries ; it is natural to eat too much ; it is natural to be too careless in youth and too cautious in old age. “ Natural ” means according to the laws of nature; and the laws of nature have a wide and long range. In applying the word to any one creature, we have to limit it by time and circumstance. It is natural for an absolutely wild creature, which has never seen man, not to be afraid of him. It is natural for the same creature, when hunted, to fear man, and shun him. If long tamed, like the cat and dog, it is natural to come trustfully to the well-known friend. Nature is essentially changeful. Its laws remain the same, but the inter­ action of those laws produces ever­ varying results. The “ nature ” of any given creature varies with its circumstances—give it time—as in the above case of the dog and cat; but the whole scale of behaviour is “ natural ” in its place and time. “A state of nature ” is not a period with an exact date, nor any one grade of conduct. That conduct which is most advantageous to a creature under given circumstances is natural. The only conduct which is “ unnatural ” would be that which was exhibited in contradiction to the laws of nature, if such were possible. In this sense an ascetic life is unnatural, as meaning destruction to �MOTHERS, NATURAL AND UNNATURAL the individual and race ; but, in the sense that the ascetic fondly believes he is acting for his ultimate benefit, his conduct is “natural,” after all. A wild rose is “ natural,” a garden rose or hot-house rose is “ cultivated,” a velvet rose on a bonnet is “ artificial.” Yet it is as natural for man to cultivate and imitate for his own good pleasure as for a bee to store honey. When we were in what we usually call a “state of nature,” we did not keep clean, wear clothes, go to school or to church. Yet cleanliness and clothing, education and religion, are natural products of “human nature.” When we apply the word to human conduct, we ought to be clear in our own minds as to whether we mean “ natural —i.e., primitive, uncivilised, savage—or natural—suited to man’s present character and conditions. Primitive man did not send his children to school, but we do not consider it unnatural that we do send ours. Primitive woman carried her naked baby in her arms; modern woman pushes her much-dressed infant in a perambulator. But there is nothing unnatural in preferring the perambulator. It is natural to do what is easiest for the mother and best for the baby; and our modern skill and intelligence, our knowledge and experience, are as natural to us as ignorance, superstition, and ferocity were to our primal ancestors. With this in mind, let us look at the use of the term “ natural ” as applied to mothers. What sort of mother do we praise as natural, and what sort do we blame as “unnatural”? Is our term used with reference to a period of development, “ natural ” motherhood meaning primitive, savage motherhood? Or is it used with reference to the exercise of that intelligence, acquired knowledge and skill, and array of conveniences, which are natural to civilised man to-day ? I think it will be found that in most cases we unconsciously use it in the 83 first sense, natural meaning merely primitive or even animal, and with but too good reason, if we study the behaviour we are describing. Motherhood is pre-eminently a “ natural ” function in both senses. It might almost be called the natural function, as reproduction seems to be more important in the evolution of species than even self-preservation. It would seem as if the instinct of self-preservation were given merely to keep the creatures alive for purposes of reproduction ; for, when the two forces come into conflict, the repro­ ductive instinct is the stronger. The reproductive functions are per­ formed by both male and female; but, as the species developes and more conscious effort is applied to the great task, the female has the larger share. In furnishing nutrition to the young, order mammalia gives the entire task to the mother ; and their care, pro­ tection, and defence are mainly hers. With the human species, in propor­ tion to its development, the scales have turned the other way. With us the father furnishes food, shelter, and protection, save for the first period of suckling. In many cases the mother fails even to provide this assuredly “ natural ” contribution to the child’s nourishment. This would be a good opportunity to call her “unnatural”; but, if she is sufficiently assiduous with the bottle or wet-nurse, we do not. Beyond that period the human mother merely waits upon and watches her children in the shelter provided by the father, and administers to them such food, clothing, and other supplies as he furnishes. Her educational office, too, has largely passed from her, owing to the encroachments of the school and kindergarten. She still moulds their morals and manners as far as she is able, and has command of their edu­ cation during the earliest and most important years. Now, is it “natural” for a mother F 2 �84 MOTHERS, NATURAL AND UNNATURAL to take no part in getting food for children? If ever there was a natural function pertaining to motherhood, that seems to be one. If we use the word in its primitive sense, she cer­ tainly is “ an unnatural mother ” for relinquishing this primal duty. But, if we use it in the other sense, she is quite natural in accepting the condi­ tions of civilised life as far as they are advantageous to the child. Is it “ natural ” for a mother to submit her children to the instruction of other extra-maternal persons, or to call the doctor when they are sick, engage the dentist to fill their teeth, and hire persons to help take care of them ? These things are not primitive surely, but neither are they “unnatural.” The “ nature ” of motherhood is to provide what is best for the child ; and the multiplied services and facili­ ties of our socially developed lives are as natural to us as our smooth white skins, once “ naturally ” brown and shaggy. In all fair thinking, speaking, and writing, we should decide clearly upon our meaning, and see that it would be very unnatural for modern women to behave as was natural to primitive women. The main duty remains the same— to benefit the child. Methods and materials are open to choice and change. Motherhood is as open to criticism as any other human labour or animal function. Free study, honest criticism and suggestion, con­ scientious experiment in new lines— by these we make progress. Why not apply study, criticism, suggestion, and experiment to motherhood, and make some progress there ? “ Progress in motherhood ” is a strange phrase to most of us. We would as soon speak of progress in digestion. That shows how we persist in con­ founding the physical functions of reproduction with the elaborate pro­ cesses that follow ; and yet we do not apply our scornful term of “ unnatural mother ” to the weak, unhealthy woman who cannot compete with a cow in this stage of mother­ hood. We should think fairly one way or the other. Success in the physical functions of maternity we shall do well to keep up to a level with the performance of the “ lower animals.” The ensuing processes are the ones open to progress. No bottle is as good as the breast. “You cannot improve on nature!” But you can improve in methods of clothing, feeding in later years, house and school building, teaching, and every other distinctly human process. If the human mother does not com­ pare favourably with other animals in the physical processes of reproduction, she is therein “unnatural.” If she does not keep up with the opportuni­ ties of her race and time in all the ensuing care of the child, she is therein unnatural. Such care and culture as was natural to give a cave-baby would be unnatural to-day. Is not the average mother of to-day too prone to content herself with a very lowgrade performance of a modern mother’s duties, on the plea that her methods are “ natural ”—namely, primitive? The grade of “ care ” given by the mother of to-day is too often exactly that of the mother of many thousand years ago. We depend almost alto­ gether on what is known as “ the maternal instinct,” which is a “natural instinct,” to be sure, just as it is a natural instinct for the male to fight. The right education of a child to-day requires more than instinct to produce the best results. Because we have not used the helpful influences of association, study, and experience in this most important labour of life, we keep our progress as a living species far below the level of our progress in material improvements. When anything is said of improving the human stock, we instantly think �MOTHERS, NATURAL AND UNNATURAL of the methods of breeders of cattle, and are at once convinced of the undesirability and impossibility, of applying- any such means to humanity. But there remain open to us two immense avenues of improvement, both free to mothers. One is the mother’s modifying influence upon the race through selection—that duty of wise choice of a superior father for her children, which is “ natural ” enough to the lower animals, but which we agree to ignore in the bringing up of our young women. Careful and conscientious training to this end would have a great effect upon the race. This does not mean the self-con­ scious forcing of a young heart to marry a “superior” man without the blessed leading of true love, but such open knowledge of what constituted an inferior or positively injurious man as would lower the likelihood of nice girls loving the undesirables. The other and far more practical road of racial advance is in improving the environment of our young children, both materially and psychically, by the intelligent co-ordinate action of mothers. If we improve the indi­ vidual as far as possible, it is better not to meddle too much with the subtle forces which lead to mating. These processes are not cerebral, and ought not to be made self-conscious. But educational processes are con­ scious, and should be studied. The “ natural ” mother gives no thought to her approaching duties during youth. The animals do not, the savages do not, and our charming young girls do not. Is it not time for us to show a generation of mothers sufficiently “ unnatural ” to give honest thought and study to the great duty which lies before them ? Clear-headed, intelligent girls, as yet unhampered by the blind brute instinct of maternal passion, might be able to plan together for the good of the child, as they never would be able to plan separately 85 for the good of their own individual children. A year or two of thorough study and practice in the arts and sciences of child-culture would soon convince the girl as to whether she was adapted to be an educator of little children or merely a mother. I say “merely a mother” in this rather derogatory way, alluding to the process.of bearing young and perhaps suckling them. This is an essentially physical function, common to all the higher animals, and usually fulfilled by them much better than by us. The continuous and subtle processes of education which come after, and the wise care required for the physical health and comfort of the child, do not come “naturally” to every mother. It is here that the skill and training are needed. Maternity is one thing, and education another. It cannot be too strongly reiterated that maternal love does, not neces­ sarily include wisdom. It is “natural ” for every mother to love her children, but it does not follow that she knows what is best for them. The animal mother does know by instinct; and we, content to take our pattern of motherhood from the beasts, have imagined that we needed nothing more. The individual animal has the neces­ sary knowledge of its kind lodged in each specimen. One bear, lion, or sheep can teach its young all that any of them know, and care for them one as well as another. There is an immense difference between this “ natural ” condition, and ours, where individuals differ so widely in wisdom, and where the material conditions essential to the good of the child are not open to every mother to select from as instinct dictates, and procure according to her individual skill, but are produced by us collec­ tively, and only to be secured by com­ bined intelligence. For our mothers to insure good conditions for their �86 MOTHERS, NATURAL AND UNNATURAL children requires more than maternal instinct. The “ natural ” mother of to-day is reared without an inkling- of what lies before her; and no pre-acting instinct warns her of the effect of her girlhood’s wasted opportunities. She marries still by “instinct,” which often leads her astray ; or, when she uses her conscious reason, it is g-enerally in lines of financial advan­ tage, irrespective of the to-be-father’s health or character. She fulfils the physical functions of maternity rather reluctantly and with poor success, being frequently much the worse for the performance, and then rather boasting of her enfeebled condition, as if it was in some mysterious way a credit to her. Then she brings to the care and education of her children merely her rudiments of maternal instinct—an instinct so far painfully lacking in wise prevision of the event and preparation for it. Where failing health or “ social duties” or any other causes prevent her constant attendance on the child, the rich mother hires a low-class woman to take care of him ; and, if the poor woman has too much work to be able to attend constantly upon the child, she gets along as she indi­ vidually can without taking much care of him. Or, if she is of that small class who do really “take care of” their children personally, the care she gives is the mere chance outcome of her personal character and conditions, and may or may not be beneficial. All this conduct we call “natural,” and see no blame in it. We assume that every mother knows how to care for her children ; and, if we only see her keeping at it incessantly, we never criticise the methods or results. That is not, in general, a charge against motherhood. We do criticise indi­ vidual cases very freely, yet make no deduction from our own wide observations. Now let us picture an “unnatural ” mother. As a young girl, she thought­ fully considers her approaching duties. She says to herself: “I am to be a mother ; to contribute my personal share to the improvement of humanity by bringing into the world someone better than I am. I must do all I can to be better personally, in character and physique, for the child’s sake. Whatever I may be able to do for it afterwards, I will give it good endow­ ment at birth.” And then this un­ natural young girl proceeds to train herself in all right living, avoiding anything in dress or food or late hours that might injure her health, because she hopes to be a mother some day. She studies child-culture eagerly, hoping that she may be fit for the splendid work, but is disappointed here perhaps, having a strong musical temperament, or a good head for busi­ ness, or capacity for prompt and skilful manual labour, but not the faculties that go to make the good educator. This is a blow, for she considers the training of little children as the highest work on earth; but she recog­ nises that only about one in twenty has the requisite capacity ; and the knowledge gained in her careful study in these lines shows her the impor­ tance of giving children the best con­ ditions, which involves association with those specially erjdowed with the teacher’s power. So she studies her own profession cheerfully, resolved to make good progress there, to be a mother her children can be proud of, and to be able to guarantee them all they need. She loves and marries, led by the deepest force in organic life, but governed by a clear and conscious wisdom even here. If she has the misfortune to be attracted to a man diseased or immoral or defec­ tive, she will not accept him, for the sake of her children. But marry she will, for this is the law of life ; and the exceptions go to extinction. This �MOTHERS. NATURAL AND UNNATURAL fair woman, vigorous and beautiful, with her well-trained body, clear mind, and tender spirit of mother-love waiting within her, would not go unloved. She marries. She bears healthy, beautiful children, and nourishes them at her proud and loving breast. She has provided beforehand for their care and training, knowing from the study and expe­ rience she has given the subject, and the reading she has kept up, what are now the best obtainable conditions. Her home has been chosen with a view to its proximity to the best baby­ garden and child-home she knew, where some of the teachers were old friends of hers, and all were known by reputation. Having chosen a profession with a view to the physical limitations of motherhood, and prepared during her plentiful time of waiting such arrange­ ment of hours and substitutes as shall enable her to meet the mother’s duties properly, she takes a complete vaca­ tion for the months that need it ; and then gradually resumes her work for part of the day, as her hours between nursing the child lengthen. She goes gladly to her work because she loves it, is well trained for it, and by doing it she serves her child. She comes more gladly to the child, the deep primal instinct coming out strongly ; and at night the healthy little one sleeps near her in the quiet home. Between the hours of nursing, the baby sleeps peacefully or wakes happily, in the beautiful home that his mother, and other mothers work­ ing with her, have made for their children ; and is watched and cared for by the wise and tender women who have proved their fitness for this precious work. His mother is not worried about him. She knows that in that home there is no possible danger, in that trained care no least neglect; and that, if any sudden illness smote him, the visiting physician is there daily, 87 and others in instant call. This place was made for babies, and is not in charge of servants. She is at ease about the child. Eagerly she goes to him when work is done. No weari­ ness, no anxious uncertainty, only the glad, triumphant mother-love which is content in knowing that the best possible conditions are secured to the child, and a constantly renewed delight in its health and beauty and good progress. Owing to her pre­ vious study, she knows enough not to undo the good effects by foolish­ ness at home. She is in daily com­ munication with the teachers—and nurses and doctors, if necessary. She does not lose touch with the little life. Her untired affection surrounds him always, and to the child she is pro­ bably the most agreeable of the several agreeable persons in whose society he finds himself. Unless she falls terribly below the common standard, he will love her the best; for the beautiful background of nurs­ ing won and held his dawning affec­ tion, and the sweet home-coming every night is a constantly strength­ ening tie. Any clean, comfortable, human home should be suitable for a healthy child to sleep in ; but it is in his impressionable day-time hours that he needs more appropriate sur­ roundings. It will be seen that this unnatural mother has her child in her own care for sixteen hours out of the twentyfour, and during the eight hours of a working day she herself places him in what she knows to be better con­ ditions than her own home could offer. If she does chance to possess that degree of educational genius essential to the best care of young children, her eight hours of work will be spent in taking care of them, and the remaining sixteen in still taking care of her own. Thus the exceptional mother, who is also an educator, will have her own all the time ; and her unusual ability will benefit many �88 MOTHERS, NATURAL AND UNNATURAL other little ones for part of the time. The “ natural ” mother, of course, believes that her own care of her own child is better than anyone else’s. She can give no proof of this, and would be very unwilling to submit to any examination or competition. She simply thinks she is the best educator because she is a “mother.” The sickness and death of her children, or the accidents which happen to them, or their inferior development and dis­ agreeable behaviour, she never takes as proof of her incompetence. Where an experienced teacher could remove half-a-dozen bad habits in as many months without the child’s knowing it, the mother scolds and spanks along the years, or resignedly lets the small people trample upon the rights of their elders, in serene conviction that her methods must be right; for is she not their mother ? The unnatural mother, who is possessed of enough intelligence and knowledge to recognise her own deficiencies, gladly entrusts her chil­ dren to superior care for part of the time, and constantly learns by it her­ self. The mother-love, which is so far strained by the difficulties of rearing children in the home as frequently to give way to irritability, weariness, and even bad temper, would be kept fresh and unworn by the eight-hour rest; and the child would never learn to despise his mother’s irascibility and lack of self-control, as, unfortunately, so many children do. To the child, happy and busy in his day hours of education, the home-coming would be an ever new delight, and the home— “ papa and mamma’s house ”—a lovely place to respect and enjoy. Many will wonder why the mother is described as “working” during eight hours. The able-bodied and able-minded human being who does not work is a contemptible object. To take from the labour of others so large a share of human products as is necessary to our comfort to-dayf and contribute nothing in return, is the position of a devouring parasite. Most women do work, hard and long, at house-service. The “natural” mother is content to mingle her “ sacred duties ” of child-care with the miscellaneous duties of a house­ servant ; but the “ unnatural mother,” for the sake of her children, refuses to be the kitchen-maid, parlour-maid, and chamber-maid of the world any longer. She recognises that her real duties are too important to be hindered in their performance any longer by these primitive inconveniences ; and, with combined intelligence, she and the others arrange their households on a basis of organised professional service, with skilled labour by the hour, and so each has time to perform some professional service herself, and pay well for the better performance of the “ domestic ” tasks. This subject is treated in a special volume on Women and Economics, but here it is sufficient to present the position of the mother, the “un­ natural ” mother, who would refuse to maintain any longer our grossly defective system of household service (either by herself or by a hired woman), on the ground that it was not conducive to the best development of her children. To those who for any reason prefer, or are compelled by circumstances, to pursue the profession of private house-servant, it will, however, be of inestimable advantage to have their children taken out of the dirt and danger, and placed in proper conditions, while the mother follows her profession at home. The natural mother cares only for her own chil­ dren. She loves and labours without knowledge, and what experience she gains by practising on her own chil­ dren is buried with her. The un­ natural mother cares for children—■ all of them—and knows that she can �SOCIAL PARENTAGE best serve her own by lifting the standard of child-culture for all. We have urgent need of the un­ natural mother—the mother who has added a trained intellect to a warm 89 heart ; and, when we have enough of them, the rarest sound on earth will be that now so pitifully common—the crying of a little child. XV. SOCIAL PARENTAGE The mother does her duty by her children as best she can. The father does his duty by his children. But we do not do our duty by our chil­ dren. The relation of the State to the child is little thought of, much less understood. We have discussed it only as an alternative to the parental relation, involving the removal of the child from the home and family, and the substitution of civic for domestic care. Such a proposal naturally excites the hot opposition of parental love and instinct, and cannot stand. It has been tried more or less thoroughly, as in Sparta, but does not appeal to the human heart or head, and is not in the least what is here under discussion. The true rela­ tion of the State to the child includes the parental relation, and in no way controverts the love and instinct of those invaluable public function­ aries. It is not necessary, or in any way desirable, for the State to remove the , child from the parent. Parents are evolved for the purpose of rearing children, and possess highly special­ ised and urgent impulses in that direction—far too useful forces to be ignored. But the civilised human parent lives as part of an elaborate society — a State ; and. as a member of the State, he holds a new relation to his child, she holds a new relation to her child ; they, and they are the State, hold a new relation to their children. This is what we so generally ignore. The individual parents do their individual duty fairly well ; but the collective parents, who constitute society, fail shamefully in their col­ lective duties. What is a society ? It is an organisation of human beings, alive, complex, exquisitely developed in co-ordinate inter-service. What is it for ? It is for development, growth, progress, like any other living thing. How does a society improve ? By combinations of individuals evolving social processes which react favour­ ably upon the individual constituents, and develop in them better social faculties. For instance, early combi­ nations of individuals evolve low forms of legal protection for the citizens of the early State. Under those protective enactments, citizens grow up in comparative peace, and become capable of enacting further and superior laws. In recent and particular instance, our American forefathers established a system of public education, under which many citizens were developed to a degree of intelligence sufficient to see the need and the means of ex­ tending and improving that education. �90 SOCIAL PARENTAGE Education is a social process, impos­ sible—in any human degree—among detached individuals. The education of children is a dis­ tinctly social process. Much of it may be carried on by the parents, but it is for social improvement and as members of society that they do this. Here is where our parents, who constitute society, fail to see the nature and extent of their work. They have an exaggerated idea of “ parental responsibility ” to the child, and no idea at all of social responsi­ bility to the child. That social de­ velopment which has enlarged the mind and soul of the beast-savage to our present capacity for love and service we still imagine to be purely parental, and endeavour to con­ centrate it all on our own children, failing utterly in our duty to each other’s children. No such gross error can work good results. This disproportionate con­ centration of feeling on the individual child, and neglect of the child in general, produces a world full of people with a congested family life, full of morbid sensitiveness and potential difficulty and suffering, and a weak, ansemic social life, full of mutual neglect and dereliction of duty. The well-known illustration of education can be used again still farther to show this. Suppose a small community, wherein the parents are all very anxious for the education of their own children, and profoundly indifferent to the education of any­ body else’s children. Suppose these parents all labour religiously to buy books, pictures, statues, music, and to have the best of tutors for their own children. It can be seen without much mathe­ matical effort how inferior would be the supplies purchasable by the indi­ vidual parent’s funds compared to those purchasable by their collective funds. Separately, they could not compass a good teacher to each family, nor good pictures, nor many books and instruments, nor any statuary and music to speak of. Collectively and for less money, they could have all these things in far higher degree of excellence. It is social parentage, such as we have, which gives us the school as we have it. It is the weakness and irresponsibility of our social parentage which leaves the school as it is, and fails to push on to something far fuller and better. What thought, what care, what service, does the average mother give to other people’s children? None. She does not imagine it to be her duty. She imagines that her duty lies only towards her own children, and that it is no faintest fault of hers if other children suffer. If she sees little ones visibly neglected and injured, she merely blames their individual parents, and gives no further thought to the matter. Now, once for all, what is the advantage of living in a society instead of living alone ? It is that we do not have to spend all our time and strength in very imperfectly taking care of ourselves, as the separate individual would be obliged to do, but are more and more perfectly taken care of by one another. We all share in the advantages of living together-—the protection not only of numbers, but of our specialised defenders, civil and military ; the vast accumulations of knowledge and skill acquired by many and trans­ mitted to all ; the increasing measure of mutual love, in which we thrive and grow. The more perfectly a society can distribute these advantages to all its citizens, the more swiftly and healthfully does it advance and improve. Public peace and safety, public justice, public education, the public hall, the public road, the public library and gallery and museum and bath — these are what react so �SOCIAL PARENTAGE favourably upon the individual, and make better homes and citizens. The father is, to some extent, awake to the duties of social parentage ; the mother, hardly at all. The difference is this : the father serves his children by means of serving other people ; the mother serves her children personally, with her own hands. Suppose a number of families (we can­ not call it a community, because it would not be one) wherein the fathers endeavoured to serve their children personally with their own hands only, each man building, weaving, farming, fishing, black­ smithing, making dishes and tools and instruments, and trying in all ways to meet the family needs himself personally. It will readily be seen how little the families of these men would have. The time, strength, and skill of one man do not go far, if he tries to do all things himself. Why do women imagine that their time, strength, and skill severally will serve better than in combination? Why are they con­ tent to give their children only what they can do themselves alone, thus depriving them of the rich possibilities of civilised motherhood, combined, collective, mutually helpful ? The term “ city fathers,” and its painful lack of companionship in city mothers, shows the wide gulf between the development of social parentage in men and women. The accidents to little children from electric and cable cars are pitifully numerous. What mother has taken any steps to prevent these accidents ? Indivi­ dually, each tries to protect her own, as does the animal or savage. Collec­ tively, they do nothing ; yet it is the lack of this collective motherhood which makes our cities so unsafe for children. The idea that, if each takes care of her own, all will be cared for, is as false for women as it is for men. If each man took care of his own, and not of the others, we should have no 91 soldiers, no policemen, no govern­ ment, no society, only that social chaos called anarchy. Social health and progress demand collective action, the largest mutual­ ity, the care and service of all, which is the only guarantee of safety and prosperity to each. Our fatherhood is, to a considerable degree, socialised. Our motherhood is flatly anarchistic, refusing all co-ordination. An earnest—hotly earnest—woman once disputed this suggestion of mutual service in motherhood, thus : “When I make the bed for my child, I put some of my personality between the sheets. My child sleeps better if I make his bed for him.” I gazed at her calmly. “ Does your child walk better if you make his shoes for him ?” I asked. It is a pretty sentiment that the mother’s love in some mysterious way makes all she does for the child superior to what another could do. But apply the test of fact. Can she, with all her love, make as good a shoe as the shoemaker, as good a hair-brush, tooth-brush, tumbler, tea­ cup, pie-plate, spoon, fork, or knife, as the professional manufacturers of these things? Does mother-love teach her to be a good barber ? Can she cut her darling’s hair so as to make him happy ? Can she make a good chair or table or bookor window? How silly it is to imagine that this “personality” inserted between the sheets makes the bed more conducive to healthy sleep than any other clean, well-aired, well-made bed ! Let the mother put the child to bed by all means, if she wishes. In . the last sweet words and the good-night kiss is truly the place for personality. That is a mother’s place, and not a tradesman’s. But there is no more need for maternal personality between the sheets of a bed than between the leaves of a book or the bricks of a wall. In our pfirrow-mindedness we have �92 SOCIAL PARENTAGE assumed that to care for any other children would mean to neglect our own. As if the human heart, the mother-heart, could love but one or six, and not more ! As a matter of fact, we neglect our own by not caring for others. That is, we fail to take those general measures for the pro­ tection and development of all children which would so greatly benefit our particular children. Only to-day, at last, we see in some advanced com­ munities the mothers’ club and con­ gress, the women’s civic associations, and other forms of union for the im­ provement of social conditions, all helping to enlarge the application of mother-love, and set that great force free to bring on the better day for children. These clubs and societies are jeered at by the majority of mothers, who proudly say that they are too busy taking care of their children to go to a mothers’ congress and learn how. Imagine, again, a majority of men, each saying he was too busy teaching his children to go to a school meeting and plan for the education of them all! It is nqt a shifting of duty that is required—to cease to take care of one’s own in order to take care of others instead. So ingrained are our primitive habits, so unable are we to conceive of anything but the onewoman method, that our only idea of change is a simple exchange of responsibility. It is not exchang­ ing that is needed, but an enlarg­ ing, an embracing of the less in the greater. The mothers of the world are re­ sponsible for the children of the world ; the mothers of a nation for the children of a nation ; the mothers of a city for the children of a city. We may ignore and deny this claim, but it is there none the less; and, because we do not do our duty as social parents, a corrupt society injures our children continually. The diseases of other children infect ours. What have the mothers ever done to prevent these diseases ? They nurse their own sick little ones religiously, and bury them with tears; but what do they do before or after to learn the cause and prevention of these “ family afflic­ tions,” to spread their information, and enforce measures to put a stop to them ? The bad habits of other children affect ours—their ignorance, their ill manners, their sins. Our children suffer individually from bad social conditions, but cannot be saved individually. When the Philadelphia water supply is so foul as to poison young and old, mothers are responsible for not doing their share to make the city water fit for their families to drink. It is not a private filter on a private faucet that will do it, but public purity in the public works. In Boston, in 1899, the Society of Collegiate Alumnae exposed a dis­ gracefully insanitary condition in the public schools—undisturbed filth in cellar and vault, unwashed floors, a slovenly neglect of the commonest sanitary decency worthy of an Oriental slum. Any mother in Boston would have been filled with shame to have such an exposure of her own private housekeeping. There is room for shame at this exposure of their public house-keeping, school house-keeping, city-keeping. Like an ostrich with his head in the sand, the mother shuts herself up in the home and imagines that she is safe and hidden, acting as if “ the home ” was isolated in space. That the home is not isolated we are made painfully conscious through its material con­ nections— gas-pipes, water-pipes, sewer-pipes, and electric wires—all serving us well or ill according to their general management. Milk, food, clothing, and all supplies brought in bring health or disease according to their general management. The mere physical comfort of the home needs collective action, to say nothing of �SOCIAL PARENTAGE the psychic connection in which we all live, and where none is safe and clean till all are safe and clean. How far does the duty of the State extend, and how much should be left to individual responsibility ? This is the working point to which this dis­ cussion tends. A more serious socio­ logical question could hardly be pro­ pounded. Seeing that progress is the law of nature, that the human race is under pressure of every force—conscious and unconscious—to go on, to im­ prove, to grow better, and that we, as social beings, move forward through social improvement, the main weight of care seems to rest on society rather than the individual. It is astonishing to see how far this has gone already. Whereas once the beast father and mother were the only ones to protect or serve the young, now society does far more for the child than the parents. The father does more than the mother, and that by means of his social rela­ tion. He provides for his child by being a carpenter, lawyer, mason, .or other social functionary. In this social relation he is able to provide for it the comfort and safety of a modern society. Out of that relation he would be able to provide for it only with his bare hands alone, and less com­ petent than the hardy savage. We need not be alarmed at some new overtures on the part of society, if we but look at what society is doing now. That we do not think of this is due to our tradition that we “ take care of ourselves.” We do not. No civilised man “ takes care of himself.” We take care of each other. But, granting this to some degree, we have heretofore supposed that the benefits of civilisation belonged only to adults —for that matter, only to adult males !—and were to be distributed to children through the individual parent. Thus, if the parent was inferior, the child was expected not only to inherit his inferiority, but to suffer from it 93 always through inferior maintenance, breeding, and education. The gradual reaching out of society to protect and care for the child is one of the most interesting lines of his­ toric development. The parent had power to kill a child. The State denied the right, and protected the child against the parent. The parent had power to sell the child. The State denied that. The parent might cast off and neglect the child. The State compels him to maintain it, if he can; and, if not, the State supports the child. The parent might teach the child, have it taught, or leave it un­ taught. Now the State orders that the child must be taught, either at home or at school, and furnishes the school fee. So far the line of advance has been from absolute parental con­ trol to a steadily enlarging State control, from absolute parental sup­ port to more and more of State support. The question of more or less in present details may be de­ bated indefinitely to no conclusion. The principle is what we should study. The condition of childhood in our human sense—the long period of immaturity—is a social condition. As we advance in social relation, becom­ ing more and more highly specialised, the gulf between infancy and maturity increases. The young animal and the adult animal are far more alike than a Gladstone and his baby. It does not take very long to mature the group of faculties required for maintaining individual life. It does take long to mature the group of faculties required to maintain social life. To rear a man—i.e., an adult male of genus homo—is no very diffi­ cult task. It is accomplished by Bushmen, Hottentots, Eskimo, every living kind of human creature. To rear a physician, an engineer, a chemist—this takes longer. Inci­ dentally, this is one reason why a I girl’s “majority” is placed at eighteen, �94 SOCIAL PARENTAGE a boy’s at twenty-one. She is sup­ posed to need only individual maturity —physical maturity. He is supposed to take more time to become a man, because he is a member of society, and so has to learn more things. It is not a question of adolescence, of physiological change. The boy of eighteen could be a father as well as the girl a mother ; but he is not as well able to take his social position, to serve mankind in his craft, art, trade, or profession. Note here the early maturity and marriage of the less developed grades of society, filling those simpler social functions which require less specialisation, and the proportionate postponement of this period in the more highly special­ ised. Our long period of immaturity is a social condition, and not an indi­ vidual one. That we may reach the full growth needed in the advanced member of society, we must be minors longer than would be necessary if we were not members of society. The exceeding childishness of the civilised child is also a social condition. The nearer we are to the animals, the more capable and bright the very little ones. In the Southern States of America it was common to set a little black child to take care of an older white one: the pickaninny matures much more rapidly. So, again, in our own lower social grades the little chil­ dren of the poor are sharper, better able to care for themselves, than children of the same age in more developed classes. It is no proof of greater intelligence in the adult. It is retrogression—a mark of bad social conditions. Civilised society is responsible for civilised childhood, and should meet its responsibilities. The sweet con­ fidence of a modern child, as com­ pared to the alert suspicion of a baby savage, shows what ages of social safe-guarding have done. In the beautiful union of our civilised growth, even so .far, we have made possible the child ; and it is for us still further to protect and develop this most ex­ quisite social product—this greatest social hope and power. Society’s relation to the child is impersonal. It is not limited by parenthood. The parental relation is lower, more limited. Parentally, we care only for our own ; socially, we care for all. Parentally, we are animals ; socially, we learn to love one another. We become, approximately, Christians. Christianity is a social condition. In our present degree of social progress we produce, by our special­ ised co-ordinate activities, that safe and comfortable material environ­ ment, those comparatively developed virtues, which we call “civilisation.” But, in applying this common product to the advancement of the child— which is our best and quickest way to incorporate progress in the race itself—we allow the incapacity of the individual parent to limit the child’s advantages. We deny to the child the conditions necessary to his best development, unless his particular father is able to provide them. Our theory here is that the father would not work so hard if the State pro­ vided for his child ; some thinkers combating even the public school and public library on this ground. This is an outworn economic fallacy. The inferior father cannot work beyond a certain grade because he has not the capacity ; and, if the child has only the advantages the inferior father can provide for him, he grows up to be another inferior father and lowgrade worker. The most deadly result of this foolish neglect of the young citizen is seen in the ensuing action of the biological law, “ Re­ production is in inverse proportion to specialisation.” Because we leave the child to grow up unspecialised, untrained, save for the puny efforts of his single low-grade parent, therefore he, in turn, helps to fill the �SOCIAL PARENTAGE world with very numerous and very inferior progeny. We are hampered by the rapid re­ production of the very lowest classes of society, weighted down by their defects and limitations, forced to wait—the most advanced of us—for the great rear-guard of the population. We must wait because a society is alive, and includes all its members. It cannot outstrip its own inferior parts, however neglected and behind­ hand they may be. And their numbers —numbers resultant from, their low condition—complicate the problem hopelessly. That is, hopelessly on this old fallacious notion that the child can have no help from all the strong, rich world, save what his father and mother can filter through their personal limitations. We are beginning to change this by our efforts at free public education. We shall change it more and more as we grow consciously awake to our true social responsibility to the child. We cannot afford to have one citizen grow up below the standards of common comfort, . health, and general education. To the scared cry, “ But, if you take the respon­ sibility off these people, they will simply flood the world with wretched » 95 babies ! ” comes the answer of natural law, “Improve the individual, and you check this crude fecundity.” It is because they are neglected and inferior that they have so many children. Make higher-class people of the chil­ dren, and you check this constant influx of low-grade life, and gradually introduce a better-born population. When the wise, beneficent parental love of human society for its young really does its duty, tenderly remov­ ing obstructions from the path of all our little ones, we shall give to them those common human advantages without which they cannot grow to the happiness which is their right, the usefulness which is their duty. All parents who are able to do more for their children would be free to do so, as those who can afford private schools, or educate their little ones at home, are not compelled to send them to the public schools. As now society provides the school for the young citizen, on the ground of public advantage, without regard to the inability of the parent, so we must learn to provide a far richer and more complete education, and all else that the parent falls short in, because it is necessary for the good of society, and because we love our children. �� 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 Concerning children Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilman, Charlotte Perkins [1860-1935] McMillan, Margaret Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 95 p. ; 22 cm. Notes: Printed in double columns. First published: Boston, MA.: Small, Maynard, 1900. Published for the Rationalist Press Association. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1907 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G2431 N281 Subject The topic of the resource Child rearing 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 (Concerning children), 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 Child Rearing Child Rearing-Moral and Ethical Aspects NSS