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SECOND EDITION, NOW READY.
THE
SACRED
ANTHOLOGY
A BOOK OF ETHNICAL SCRIPTURES.
BY
MONCURE
DANIEL
CONWAY.
Triibner & Co^Ludgate Hill.
The second edition of this work contains an Index of Authors,
in addition to the Index of Subjects, List of Authorities, &c.,
and the Chronological Notes have been carefully revised.
The book contains 740 Readings from the Asiatic and Scan
dinavian Sacred Books and ClassicsJarranged according to
subjects in 480 pages royal 8vo, with marginal notes.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
It is certainly instructive to see the essential agreement of so many
venerated religious writings, though for depth of meaning and classicality
of form none of them approaches the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.
The idea of the work is an excellent one, and Mr. Conway deserves great
credit for being the first to realise it.— Westminster Review.
It remains for us to point out some of the remarkable coincidences
in the principles of morals and religion which Mr. Conway’s diligence
and tact have brought together. Hillel and Confucius enunciated the
same warning in almost the same words—“ What you do not wish done
to yourself do not to others.” Beneath a tropic sky, the flamingoes and
green parrots suggest the same lessons as the ravens and lilies of the
field upon the hills of Galilee. A few words sum up with unsurpassed
pathos the parable of the virgins—“A poor man watched a thousand
years before the gate of Paradise ; then, while he snatched one little nap
jt opened and shut.”— Theological Review.
�2
Few more valuable contributions have been made to the popular study
of comparative theology than Mr. Conway’s “ Sacred Anthology,” well
fitted to serve as a volume of devout reading to those who choose without
theological forethought or afterthought to apply it to that use. To the
more speculative student, it curiously illustrates at once the different
genius of the various nations of the world, and the identity of human
nature in its apprehension of the loftiest topics of faith and morals. Few
can read it without feeling their mental horizon enlarged, and without a
deeper sense of the common humanity that lies at the basis of the dif
ferences by which history, climate, and civilisation disguise men and
nations from each other.—Daily News.
The book may fairly be described as a bible of humanity, and as an
ethical text book it might well be adopted in all schools and families
where an attempt is made to instil the highest principles of morality
apart from religious dogma. He has produced a work which a great
number of people have long been desiring to possess, and which is likely
to mark a distinct epoch in the'progress of ethical culture.—Examiner.
The result is most interesting. For the first time, an English reader
may judge for himself of the moral and religious merits of writings which
heretofore have been to him only venerable and shadowy abstractions.
We shall be much surprised if every reader does not lay it down in a
better mental frame than was his when he took it up. It teaches charity
and toleration, and makes men less spiritually arrogant. It is not with
out even greater lessons to those who have ears to hear.—The Echo*
The “ Sacred Anthology ” should find a place on every library shelf.
It is a bible free from bigotry, and were an Universal Church ever estab
lished, might fairly be a lesson book for that church. The labour ex
pended by Mr. Conway in editing, abridging, and selecting, can hardly
be fairly estimated. We can heartily recommend it to Freethought
Societies as a volume in which they may find readings otherwise inaccess
ible to them.—National Reformer.
The principal authorities for the beautiful thoughts and precepts so
skilfully collected by the editor, are given at the close of the volume, to
make his work as complete as possible. Mr. Conway also publishes
chronological notes, and it is scarcely necessary to say that his views
with regard to the dates of our sacred books differ considerably from those
adopted by orthodox divines.— The Pall Mall Gazette.
A very slight examination of the volume will show that it is indeed a
valuable anthology of the scriptures of all races. As complete and
entertaining a volume as one would wish to read. —The Bookseller.
It will be seen that all the sacred books of mankind have their prin
cipal features in common ; that the differences between them are not of
essential nature, but of degrees of manner and style, and that an inspired
spirit variously modified and expressed breathes through all. Mr. M. D.
�Conway has contributed a real service to an enlightened view of this
subject by his “ Sacred Anthology,” a book which we commend to the
attention of all who are accustomed to speak of the bible as the only
word of God.—The Inquirer.
Such of our readers as may have studied a remarkable book, India in
Greece, which appeared some twenty years ago, are well aware of the
extent to which Indian rites and customs after having been transported
to Greece, and thence re-exported to Italy, have become permanently
imbedded in the Romish system. Indeed, we believe there is scarce a
Popish notion, emblem, or ceremony that may not be distinctly traced
to a Pagan source. However, if the original have come from thence,
thence also may be derived an anecdote that may somewhat tend to
diminish its ill effects. For among the wise Hindoo aphorisms (as ren
dered in Mr. Moncure Conway’s recent book), we find the following,
which some amongst us might ponder with advantage at the present
time :—“ Sdnyfisis (? Hindu Rits) acquaint themselves with particular
words and vests; they wear a brick-red garb and shaven crowns; in
these they pride themselves ; their heads look very pure, but are their
hearts so ?” “ Religion which consists in postures of the limbs (mark
this ye clergy of St. Alban’s, Holborn) is just a little inferior to the
exercises of the wrestler.” “ In the absence of inward vision boast not
of oral divinity.” We are not sure that Vishnu’s philosophy would not
compare favourably with that of Pio Nono.—The Rock.
Many years ago, Philip Bailey, of E Festus,” announced as forthcoming
a book entitled “ Poetical Divinity,” the object of which was to show by
quotations from the bards of all time, that they all held substantially the
same creed which we presume was held by Festus himself—Pantheism
plus Universal Restoration. This book never has appeared, but Mr
Conway’s is arranged on a somewhat similar plan, and is altogether a
volume of such a unique yet delightfully varied character that it must
commend itself to readers of every sort. We have seen already the eyes
of a rather strictly orthodox person glistening with eager delight over
many of the maxims and beautiful little moral fables with which it abounds.
—The Dundee Advertise-M^
It would be impossible that such a book, even if it were compara
tively carelessly done, could be without interest; but Mr, Conway’s task
has been most conscientiously performed, and it will be found of the
greatest possible value, for it casts a strong light upon many matters
which are frequently in discussion.—The Scotsman.
Mr. Conway has conferred a signal service on the literature of Theism by
publishing for the first time a comprehensive collection of some of the best
passages from the ancient scriptures of different nations. A few years ago
we, in the Brahmo-Somaj, made an humble effort in that direction, which
resulted in the issue of a small book of theistic texts now in use during
service in most of our churches. Mr. Conway’s excellent publication
is on a far grander scale, embraces a wider variety of subjects, and ex
tends its selection through a much larger range of scriptural^ writings
than we could command.—The Indian Mirror.
�4
There is, I suppose, no book in existence quite like it, perhaps none on
the same plan and of equal scope. He who found no higher use for the
book would rejoice in it as a handbook for scriptural quotations not
otherwise readily accessible, as the number of volumes from which they
have been brought together sufficiently proves. There is nothing we
more need mentally than a tinge of Orientalism, something to give a new
bent and scope to minds fed perpetually on the somewhat narrow and
practical literature of the Western races. Mr. Conway, with his eager
poetic instincts, his warm feeling and wide sympathies, is a good guide
to those in search of what is most impressive to the imagination or
stimulating to the sensibilities.—“ G. W. S.,” in the New York Tribune.
A Significant Book.—Significant of what? Of interest in the
religious life of men who are outside the pale of Christianity, of that
“ sympathy of religions ” which has lately found in the missionary lecture
of Max Muller in Westminster Abbey an exhibition which might
well strike terror into High Church dignitaries, of a growing faith that
the attitude of Christianity towards the other great religions of the world
is not wholly that of a teacher, but may be that of a pupil; of this, at
least—we trust of much beside.—-Rev. John W. Chadwick, in the
“ Liberal Christian” New York.
He then read a few sentences from a book called “ Sacred Anthology,”
which work, he said, was a compilation from the religious works of all
nations, some older than our bible : the book he should leave on the desk
as his bequest to the society.—Report of an Address by A. Bronson
Alcott, Esq., at the opening of a new hall in Massachusetts.
“The Anthology” may be obtained through any Bookseller, or
from the Librarian, the Chapel, 11, South Place, Finsbury.
Price, ios. Postage, 9d.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The sacred anthology: a book of ethnical scriptures [announcement]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of Publication: London
Collation: [4] p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. The publisher's announcement for the second edition. Includes extracts from press reviews of the first edition. Duplicated between pages 200-201 of Joseph Estlin Carpenter's review also in Conway Tracts 6.
Publisher
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Trubner & Co.
Date
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[1889?]
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G5598
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[Unknown]
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Sacred Anthology: a book of ethnical scriptures), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Subject
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Book reviews
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Oriental Literature
Sacred Books
-
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122
John Stuart Mill.
their interests are not fairly represented; that they are not
dealt with in a fair spirit of trust and forbearance; if they
be isolated and estranged by pride and neglect; or sought for
to be cajoled; or hardened by want of sympathy: then,
when . they awaken to the sense of their full power, they
may, in “bettering the example,” be “dangerous;”—but not
else !
Art.
V.—.John Stuart Mill.
Autobiography. By John Stuart Mill. London:
Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer. 1873.
rFHE present memoir which John Stuart Mill has bequeathed
J. to the world contains, not the narrative of a life, but the
growth of a mind. We find none of the smaller incidents and
details that make up the history of the individual, and which
readers commonly look for with a pardonable curiosity and
interest, greater or less in degree, according to the importance of
the place the author of the biography has filled in public estima
tion. It is not therefore surprising that those who had expected
a graphic picture of an entire career, intellectually remarkable,
should feel some disappointment, and conclude that the real
memoir has still to be written. Against any expectation of this
sort Mr. Mill in the first words of the autobiography has done
his utmost to guard. He wrote it, he tells us, not with any con
ception of self-importance, but because education is now a subject
of more profound study among us than at any former period of
our history, and the experiment, as it might well be called, of
which he is an example, may tend to economize the tasks of the
young, and save the many early years that are little better than
wasted; because it might interest and help those, who in an age
of transition are searchers for truth, to see how one engaged in
the same pursuit has profited by a readiness to learn and to un
learn in his forward course; and last, but not least, because he
desired to acknowledge the debt which he believed that in his
moral and intellectual development he owed to others.
. The absence of any minute record of passing events affecting
himself or the persons and objects immediately around him, can
not be regarded as a defect. It is obviously the very condition
under which the work is prepared. We see that the author
rigidly adheres to the purposes indicated. He does not permit
himself to be diverted by any matters, however interesting they
might have been to himself, but which he looks upon as valueless
�John Stuart Mill.
123
to the world. His evident design is, first to convey by the testi
mony of experience of no ordinary kind, a great lesson on the
extent of teaching or education that it is possible for the mature
mind to communicate to the immature; and again, on that neverceasing process of education which continues from youth to man
hood, and thence to the latest period of life, which it is the
business of every mind to gather for itself.
In order that this education should have its proper and benefi
cent influence on character, he shows that it must not simply
operate on the reasoning powers—that there is needed the culture
of the feelings as well as of the reason; that the work is moral
as well as intellectual. Having dwelt on the process for reaching
more perfectly that condition of mental equilibrium the best
suited for forming a right judgment of the result of conduct and
action, we learn the effect which his labour to attain, and his
progress toward that condition, had in confirming or modifying
his. earlier views of the great subjects affecting mankind,
sociological and economical principles, law, religion, and political
government.
Although it is difficult to assent to the judgment Mr. Mill
pronounces upon himself, that in powers of apprehension and
memory, and in activity and energy of character, he was rather
below than above par, yet it is impossible not to perceive from
the facts stated to what an incalculable degree he was indebted
to the early training of his father, which enabled him, as he says,
to start with the advantage of a quarter of a century over his
contemporaries.
James Mill must be regarded as one of the most remarkable
men of his own or any other age. Born without any of the
advantages of fortune, and educated by the aid of one of the
Barons of the Exchequer in Scotland, after whom he named
•his son, he went through the studies of the University of Edin
burgh, and was licensed for a preacher, but finding himself
unable to believe the Church doctrines, he left the profession.
Holding, and always fearlessly asserting, opinions both in politics
and religion more odious at that time to the influential and
wealthy of this country than they have been either before or
since, he maintained himself and his family by his work as a
tutor and an author. Amidst the perpetual interruptions of
settled labour, caused by this necessary struggle for existence,
added to the time employed in the education of his children, he
planned and in about ten years completed the “ History of India.”
In this work lie comments with great severity on many of the
acts of the East India Company in their government, and ex
presses unqualified hostility to their commercial privileges. A
book full of opinions and modes of judgment of a democratic
�124
John Stuart Mill.
radicalism, then regarded as extreme,—he might, as his son truly
observes, have expected it at some future period to win for him
reputation, but certainly not advancement. The Directors of the
East India Company, feeling a far deeper personal responsibility
in the exercise of their powers than perhaps can be expected from
the members of an executive government, whose attention is at
best divided between considerations of party exigency and
regard for the public good, perceived in the author of the History
the qualities of a public servant of inestimable value, and disre
garding his adverse criticisms, appointed him to an important
office in their establishment. It is an event rare in the dispen
sation of public patronage, and should be ever remembered to
their honour. The Autobiography contains very much relating
to the character and works of James Mill, which deserves
an attentive perusal, and there are few who will not agree in the
judgment, that his place w7as an eminent one in the literary and
political history of his country. He died in 1836. “ The
eighteenth century/’ Mr. Mill observes, “ was an age of strong
and brave men and he was a fit companion for its strongest and
bravest. The last of that century, as Brutus was called the last
of the Romans, he had continued its tone of thought and senti
ment into, without partaking of the reaction which was the
characteristic of, the first aste of the nineteenth.
It was the good fortune of Mr. Mill that his education from his
earliest years was conducted by such a teacher. The account of
the progress which he made is full of instruction for a people
now entering upon the work of National Education, and who are
almost everywhere treating the mere instruments of knowledge as
its substitute. While this Autobiography was in the press, an
address was delivered by one who has given as much
study to the subject of Education as any one living,
pointing out the utter insufficiency of an educational method which
assumes that the power to read will develop the love of reading—
the ability to understand and appreciate what is read, to choose
the worthy and reject the unworthy, elevate the taste, arm it
against temptation, and ennoble life !
* What is needed is the
training of the mind, “ to observe nature, animate and inanimate,
to watch and classify ordinary social arrangements, to. trace the rela
tion of cause and effect, to think of the consequences of different kinds
of actions, and to guide conduct accordingly; to forego immediate
enjoyment for the sake of greater good to oneself or others.” We
perceive in the Autobiography, how these, the true objects of
Education, were attained, the mechanical part being subordinated
* See “ Professor Hodgson’s Address as President of the Educational De
partment, Social Science Congress, Norwich,” (Transactions). 1873.
�John Stuart Mill.
125
and acquired almost unconsciously. Mr. Mill tells us that he had
no remembrance of the time when he began to learn Greek.
He had been told that it was when he was three years old. His
earliest recollection on the subject was that of committino- to
memory what his father termed vocables, being lists of common
Greek words, with their signification in English, which he wrote
out for him on cards. Of grammar, until some years later, he
learnt no more than the inflexions of the nouns and verbs, but
after a course of vocables, proceeded at once to translation :—
“ The only thing besides Greek, that I learnt as a lesson in this part
of my childhood was arithmetic : this also my father taught me ; it was
the task of the evenings, and I well remember its disagreeableness. But
the lessons were only a part of the daily instruction I received. Much
of it consisted in the books I read myself, and my father’s discourses
to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of 1813 we
were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood.
My father’s health required considerable and constant exercise, and we
walked habitually before breakfast, generallv in the green lanes
towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him, and
with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers is
mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read ’the
day before. To the best of my remembrance this was a voluntary
rather than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper while
reading, and from these in the morning walks, I told the story to him •
for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner a
great number : Robertson’s histories, Hume, Gibbon ; but my great
est delight, then, and for long afterwards, was Watson’s Philip the
Second and Third............ Next to Watson, my favourite histori
cal reading was ‘ Hooke’s History of Rome.’ Of Greece I had seen at
that time no regular history, except school abridgments and the last
two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin’s Ancient Historv,
beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with great delight
‘ Langhorne’s Translations of Plutarch.’ In English history, beyond
the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading ‘ Burnet’s
History of his Own Time,’ though I cared little for anything in it
except the wars and battles ; and the historical part of the ‘ Annual
Register,’ from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my
father borrowed for me from Mr. Bentham left off. I felt a lively in
terest in Frederick of Prussia during his difficulties, and in Paoli, the
Corsican patriot; but when I came to the American War, I took my
part, like a child as I was (until set right by my father) on the
wrong side, because it was called the English side. In these frequent
talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give
me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, governments
morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to re
state to him in my own words. He also made me read, and give him
a verbal account of many books which would not have interested me
sufficiently to induce me to read them of myself. Arnone others
‘ Millar’s Historical View of the English Government,’ a book of great
�126
John Stuart Mill.
merit for its time, and which he highly valued ; 1 Mosheim’s Ecclesias
tical History,’ ‘McCrie’s Life of John Knox,’ and even 1 Sewell and
Rutty’s Histories of the Quakers.’ . . . Two books which I never
wearied of reading were ‘Anson’s Voyages,’ so delightful to most
young persons, and a collection (Hawkesworth’s, I believe) of ‘ Voyages
round the World,’ in four volumes, beginning with Drake and ending
with Cooke and Bougainville. Of children’s books, any more than
playthings, I had scarcely any, except an occasional gift from a relation or
acquaintance ; among those I had, ‘ Robinson Crusoe’ was pre-eminent,
and continued to delight me through all my boyhood. ” It was no
part, however, of my father’s system to exclude books of amusement,
though he allowed them very sparingly.”
The Latin and Greek stories were carried on from his eighth
to his twelfth year. Among other authors he read much of
Cicero. His strongest predilection was for history, especially
ancient, and writing histories was throughout his boyhood a
voluntary exercise. A spontaneous attempt at a continuation
of Pope’s Iliad, led to a command of his father to continue
his attempts at English versification. Experimental Science,
especially Chemistry—not by actual experiment, but as treated
in scientific works—was also one of his greatest amusements. In
this course of instruction a method was adopted in which the
mind was actively employed without being overtaxed.
“ Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into
them have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by
it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or
phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the
power to form opinions of their own ; and thus the sons of eminent
fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow
up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their
minds, except in the furrows traced for them. Mine, however, was
not an education of cram. My father never permitted anything which
I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory; he strove to
make the understanding not only go along with every step of the
teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything which could be found
out by thinking I never was told until I had exhausted my efforts to
find it out for myself.”
Once be had used the word idea, and his father instantly
asked what an idea was, and expressed displeasure at his in
effectual attempts to define the word. On another occasion, he
used an expression—still commonly repeated by not less than
nine out of ten of the so-called instructed classes—that some
thing was true in theory, but false in practice; provoking the
indignation of his father, who, after making him vainly strive to
define the word theory, explained its meaning, and showed him
the fallacy of the vulgar form of speech he had uttered. In and
after his twelfth year the objects of instruction were chiefly re-
�John Stuart Mill.
127
garded—not the aids and appliances of thought, but the thoughts
themselves. The reading of the scholastic logic, then begun, was
accompanied and followed by the numerous and searching ques
tions of his father in their daily walks.
“ It was his invariable practice, whatever studies he exacted from
me, to make me, as far as possible, understand and feel the utility of
them. ... I well remember how, and in what particular walk in
the neighbourhood of Bagshot Heath (where we were on a visit to
his old friend Mr. Wallace, then one of the mathematical professors
at Sandhurst), he first attempted, by questions, to make me think on
the subject, and frame some conception of what constituted the utility
of the syllogistic logic ; and when I had failed in this, to make me
understand it by explanation. The explanations did not make the
matter at all clear to me at the time; but they were not, therefore,
useless; they remained as a nucleus for my observations and reflec
tions to crystallize upon; the import of his general remarks being
interpreted to me, by the particular instances which came under my
notice afterwards. My own consciousness and experience ultimately
led me to appreciate, quite as highly as he did, the value of an early
practical familiarity with the school logic. I know of nothing, in my
education, to which I think myself more indebted for whatever
capacity of thinking I have attained. The first intellectual operation
in which I arrived at any proficiency was dissecting a bad argument,
and finding in what part the fallacy lay; and though whatever
capacity of this sort I attained, was due to the fact that it was
an intellectual exercise in which I was most perseveringly drilled by
my father; yet, it is also true, that the school logic and the mental
habits acquired in studying it, were among the principal instruments
of this drilling, I am persuaded that nothing, in modern education,
tends so much, when properly used, to form exact thinkers, who
attach a precise meaning to words and propositions, and are not im
posed on by vague, loose, or ambiguous terms. The boasted influence
of mathematical studies is nothing to it, for in mathematical processes
none of the real difficulties of correct ratiocination occur. It is also
a study peculiarly adapted to an early stage in the education of philo
sophical students, since it does not presuppose the slow process of
acquiring, by experience and reflection, valuable thoughts of their
own. They may become capable of disentangling the intricacies of
confused and self-contradictory thought, before their own thinking
faculties are much advanced; a power which, for want of some such,
discipline, many otherwise able men altogether lack; and when they
have to answer opponents, only endeavour, by such arguments as they
can command, to support the opposite conclusion, scarcely even at
tempting to confute the reasonings of their antagonists ; and, there
fore, at the utmost, leaving the question, as far as it depends on
argument, a balanced one.”
There was no author to whom James Mill had thought himself
more indebted for his own mental culture than Plato, or whom
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he more frequently recommended to young students ; and to
the value of this recommendation his pupil bears the like tes
timony. By the Socratic method, the man of vague generali
ties is constrained either to express his meaning to himself
in definite terms, or to confess that he does not know
what he is talking about.The perpetual testing of general
statements by particular instances, the siege in form laid
to abstract terms, the distinctions which limit and define
the thing sought, and separate it from the cognate objects,
Mr. Mill pronounces to be an education for precise thinking
which is inestimable, and one which, even at that early
age, took such hold of him as to become part of his own
mind.
High as the cultivation of the intellect stands, it is not that
alone that is needed for the creation of a better ideal of humanity.
In the parental intercourse there had been, if not a want of
tenderness, at least the absence of its display. His father,
Mr. Mill remarks, resembled most Englishmen in being ashamed
of the signs of feeling, and starving it by want of demonstration.
He found that intellectual culture required correction by joining
other kinds of cultivation with it. Poetry, art, music, to which
he had not before been unsusceptible, began at an early period
to fill a large place in his thoughts. In this part of his self
education he encountered, in his circle of friends, an opposite
theory. There were those who, if possessed of strong suscepti
bilities of temperament, yet found them more painful than
pleasurable—as standing rather in their way than the contrary ;
and who, therefore, regarded the pleasures to be derived from
the fine arts as impediments, rather than aids in the formation
of character.. Mr. Mill considered it too much a part of the
English habit, derived from social circumstances, to count the
sympathies for very little in the scheme of life,—to see little
good in cultivating the feelings, and none at all in doing so
through appeals to the imagination. He more than once adverts
to tnis side of English life—the absence of enlarged thoughts
and unselfish desires, the low and petty objects on which °the
faculties are, for the most part intent, and the habit of taking
for granted that they are always the motives of conduct; and
the effect of this, in lowering the tone of feeling, making people
less earnest, and causing them to look on the most elevated
objects as unpractical, or too remote from realization, to be more
than a vision or a theory.
Several incidents in the Autobiography are introduced to
show, the wholesome and vivifying power which the fancy and
imagination can exercise over the will. Between his eighth and
twelfth years he spent intervals of time at Ford Abbey, the occa-
�John Stuart Mill.
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sional abode of Mr. Bentham, and he regarded these visits as
fruitful in his education. Elevation of sentiments in a people
are nourished by the large and free character of their habitations.
The mediaeval architecture and the spacious and lofty rooms of
Ford Abbey, so unlike the cramped externals of English middle
class life, gave the sentiment of a larger and freer existence. The
house and grounds in which it stood, secluded, umbrageous, and
full of the sound of falling’waters, were to him in themselves a
sort of poetic cultivation. Again, two or three years later, Sir
Samuel Bentham and his wife, whom he refers to as “u daughter
of Dr. Fordyce, and a woman of much knowledge and good
sense of the Edgeworth kind,” invited their brother’s young
friend and disciple to their residence in the South of France, at
the Chateau of Pompignan, on the heights overlooking the plain
of the Garonne between Montauban and Toulouse. He spent
nearly a year in this visit, accompanying his hosts in an excur
sion of some duration to the Pyrenees. This, his first introduc
tion to the highest order of mountain scenery, gave a colour to
his tastes through life. After adverting to the lectures on che
mistry, zoology, and logic which he attended in the winter at
Montpelier, he adds that the greatest, perhaps, of the many
advantages which he owed to this episode in his education was,
that of having breathed for a whole year the free and genial
atmosphere of continental life, though at that time he did not
estimate or consciously feel the advantage he was deriving It
was not until long afterwards that he learnt to appreciate the
general culture of the understanding, which results from the
habitual exercise of the feelings, and is thereby carried down
into the most uneducated classes of several countries on the Con
tinent in a degree rarely equalled in England.
The impulse and force given to the cultivation of new tastes
and sympathies, served to elevate the ideal of a noble and un
selfish life which his previous teaching had done much to form.
Of his earliest historic readings he says, “ the heroic defence of
the knights of Malta against the Turks, and of the revolted
provinces of the Netherlands against Spain, excited in me an
intense and lasting interest.” His father was fond of putting
into his hands books which exhibited men of energy and resource
in unusual circumstances, struggling against difficulties and over
coming them. The interest which in boyhood he had taken in
the wars and conquests of the Romans culminated in an engross
ing contemplation of the struggles between the patricians and
plebeians, and in his juvenile essays he vindicated the Agrarian
Laws, and upheld the Roman Democratic party. In his fifteenth
or sixteenth year, in 1821 or 1822, after bis visit to France, he
read the history of the French Revolution. Then, he says : —
[Vol. CI. No. CXCIX.l—New Seeies, Vol. XLV. No. I.
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“ I learnt with astonishment that the principles of democracy, then
apparently in so insignificant and hopeless a minority everywhere in
Europe, had borne all before them in France thirty years earlier, and
had been the creed of the nation. As may be supposed from this, I
had previously a very vague idea of that great commotion. I knew
only that the French had thrown off the absolute monarchy of Louis
XIV. and XV., had put the King and Queen to death, guillotined
many persons, one of whom was Lavoisier, and had ultimately fallen
under the despotism of Bonaparte. From this time, as was natural,
the subject took an immense hold of my feelings. It allied itself
with all my juvenile aspirations to the character of a democratic
champion. What had happened so lately, seemed as if it might easilv
happen again ; and the most transcendant glory I was capable of con
ceiving was that of figuring successful, or unsuccessful, as a Girondist
in an English Convention.”
This admiration of great and persistent effort in a worthy
cause, which with advancing years he came more and more to
regard as of incalculable value, in bringing the memory and
imagination to the aid of conduct, had been early rooted in his
mind.”
“ Long before I had enlarged in any considerable degree the basis
of my intellectual creed, I had obtained, in the natural course of my
mental progress, poetic culture of the most valuable kind, by means
of reverential admiration for the lives and • characters of heroic per
sons ; especially the heroes of philosophy: The same inspiring effect
which so many of the benefactors of mankind have left on record
that they had experienced from ‘Plutarch’s Lives,’ was produced on
me by ‘ Plato’s Picture of Socrates,’ and by some modern biographies,
above all by ‘ Condorcet’s Life of Turgot’—a book well calculated to
rouse the best sort of enthusiasm, since it contains one of the wisest
and noblest of lives, delineated by one of the wisest and noblest of
men. The heroic virtue of these glorious representatives of the
opinions with which I sympathized, deeply affected me, and I perpe
tually recurred to them as others do to a favourite poet, when needing
to be carried up into the more elevated regions of feelino- and
thought.”
"
°
It is interesting to trace the abiding influence of the remem
brance of great examples, and of the memories of an heroic
past, in the fact which Mr. Mill mentions, that upwards of thirty
years after the impressions, of which he speaks in the foregoing
extract, had taken root, the thought of completing and giving to
the world as a volume the “ Essay on Liberty,” first arose in
his mind, in mounting in 1865, the steps of the Capitol.
W e have described Mr. Mill in his youth, as a disciple of
Bentham, but this he does notappear thoroughly to have become
until, in 1821 or 1822, he read the Traite de Legislation, which
he terms an epoch in his life. The standard of “ the greatest
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happiness/’ the exposure of the fallacy contained in such
sounding expressions, as “ law of nature,” “ right reason,” and
“ moral sense,” burst upon him with all the force of novelty. The
classification of offences and punishment under the guidance of the
ethical principle, of pleasurable and painful consequences, seemed
to place the moralist and student of jurisprudence upon an
eminence, from which he could survey a mental domain of vast
extent, affording the most aspiring prospects of practical
improvement in human affairs. It opened to him a grand
conception of the changes to be effected in the condition of
mankind through that doctrine. Before this time the book
which had contributed most largely to his education in the best
sense of the word, was his father’s History of India. In this
he was not alone. There are others living who acknowledge, as
he does, their debt to this work, and to its disquisitions on society
and civilization, on institutions, and acts of government, for a
multitude of new ideas, and for a great impulse and stimulus as
well as guidance in their future studies.
After the Traitfi de Legislation followed the reading of most of
the other works of Bentham; of Locke’s Essay, an abstract
was made, and discussed, and the other principal English writers
on mental philosophy were also read. In 1822 he wrote his first
argumentative essay, on the aristocratic prejudice which is
supposed to attribute to the rich, moral qualities superior to those
of the poor, and in the winter of the same year he gathered
together and formed a small society of young men called the
Utilitarian Society.
*
In 1823 his father obtained for him
an appointment in the office of Examiner of India Correspondence
in the service of the Company.
The constant occupation in the India House had the necessary
effect of abridging his opportunities of gratification afforded by
a country life, and by travel. The latter was now restricted to the
short annual holiday.
“ I passed (he says) most Sundays throughout the year in the
country, taking long rural walks on that day even when residing in
London. The month’s holiday was, for a few years, passed at my
father’s house in the country: afterwards a part or the whole was
spent in tours, chiefly pedestrian, with some one or more of the young
men who were my chosen companions ■ and at a later period, in
longer journeys or excursions, alone, or with other friends. France,
Belgium, or Rhenish Germany were within easy reach of the annual
holiday : and two longer absences, one of three, the other of six months,
under medical advice, added Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Italy to my
list. Fortunately, also, both these journeys occurred rather early, so
* A title borrowed from Gait’s “ Annals of the Parish.”
K 2
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John Stuart Mill.
as to give the benefit and charm of the remembrance to a large
portion of my life.”
In a chapter entitled “Youthful Propagandism,” we are told
of the efforts which were made to propagate the main tenets of
Utilitarian Radicalism in the columns of the Globe and Traveller,
the Morning Chronicle, and finally in the Westminster Review.
His part in the first appearance of this Review, had been that
of reading through all the volumes of the Edinburgh Review,
and making notes of the articles which he thought his father
would like to examine for the purpose of his intended paper.
This article, of James Mill, treated the Edinburgh Review as
the political organ of one of the two aristocratic parties constantly
endeavouring, without any essential sacrifice of aristocratical
predominance, to supplant each other. The Quarterly Review
was the subject of an article, as a sequel to that of the
Edinburgh. Mr. Mill was one of the most active of the very
small number of young men who, drawn around his father, had
imbibed from him a greater or smaller portion of his opinions,
and were supposed to form the so-called Bentham school in
philosophy and politics. The chief characteristics of their creed
were in politics, an almost unbounded confidence in the efficacy
of two things ; representative government and complete freedom
of discussion; and in psychology the formation of all human
character by circumstances, through the universal principle of
association, and the consequent unlimited possibility of improv
ing the moral and intellectual condition of mankind by
education. It was in the spirit of what Mr. Mill terms youthful
fanaticism that these opinions were seized by the little knot of
young men of whom he was one. For himself, he conceives that
the epithet of “ reasoning machine” was not altogether untrue,
or may be said to be as applicable to him as it could well be to
any one, for two or three years of his life :—
“ Ambition and desire of distinction I had in abundance, and zeal for
what I thought the good of mankind was my strongest sentiment,
mixing with and colouring all others. But my zeal was little else, at
that period of my life, than zeal for speculative opinions. It had not
its root in genuine benevolence, or sympathy with mankind, though
these qualities held their due place in my ethical standard. Nor was
it connected with any high enthusiasm for ideal nobleness. Yet of this
feeling I was imaginatively very susceptible : but there was at that time
an intermission of its natural aliment, poetical culture, while there was
a superabundance of the discipline antagonistic to it, that of mere logic
and analysis. Add to this, as already mentioned, my father’s teaching
led to the under-valuing of feeling. It was not that he was himself
cold-hearted or insensible; I believe it was rather from the contrary
quality; he thought that feeling could take care of itself; that
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there was sure to be enough of it if actions were properlv cared
about.” ....
“ From this neglect both in theory and in practice of the cultivation
of feeling, naturally resulted, among other things, an undervaluing
of poetry, and of imagination generally, as an element of human
nature.” . . . . “As regards me (and the same thing might be said
of my father), the correct statement would be, not that I disliked
poetry, but that I was theoretically indifferent to it. I disliked any
sentiments in poetry which I should have disliked in prose, and that
included a great deal. And I was wholly blind to its place in human
culture, as a means of educating the feelings; but I was always per
sonally very susceptible to some kinds of it. In the most sectarian
period of my Benthanism, I happened to look into Pope’s Essay on
Man, and though every opinion in it was contrary to mine, I well re
member how powerfully it acted on my imagination.”
A time came when something more was felt to be needed.
The attainment of a condition of physical comfort alone, in which
the pleasures of life would no longer be kept up by struggle, and in
the midst of privation, could afford no sufficient hope of human
happiness. What had been founded in a large degree on the
intellectual and abstract conception of aggregate results, had to be
converted into an exercise of genuine benevolence, and sympathy
with individual distress and suffering. For the mere rational
conviction that such and such things were good and evil, and the
proper objects of praise and blame, reward and punishment, higher
and deeper motives were substituted. At the same time in ex
ternal things, a sense of vague and general admiration of grandeur
and beauty was concentrated and intensified by examples brought
into immediate contact with the mind and eye. The experiences of
the time led him to adopt a theory of life which, while admitting
that all rules of conduct must be tried by their tending to pro
mote happiness as the end of life, yet that end could not be
reached by its direct and sole pursuit, or by making it the princi
pal object of desire.
This has given occasion to a singular
criticism. “ He found,” say the objectors, “ that it was not a safe or
successful course to pursue happiness as a direct end, therefore,”
they add, “ it follows, that it is not the proper end and aim of life,
and the utilitarian principle fails !” This is a confusion of two
things entirely distinct from each other, the particular and the
general happiness, and the diverse methods of their pursuit.
Nothing in the theory that the happiness of the individual should
not be the direct end of his existence, would forbid the direct
pursuit of ordinary pleasures. He may attend the performance
of a play of Shakspeare, or listen to a composition of Mendelssohn,
set out on a spring day for a woodland walk, or ascend an
Alpine hill, with a direct view to the enjoyment which such a
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John Stuart Mill.
use of his time will produce. But if one passes his life in seeking
nothing else but his own direct and personal enjoyment, if he
does not look beyond this to a higher and nobler purpose of
existence—a purpose into which the idea of its bearing upon his
individual happiness does not enter, except as a sense of the
performance of duty in the promotion of the good of others,
which is attended with an unsought pleasure—the narrow objects
he has pursued will ultimately fail him, and the time will come
of decaying natural powers, and of blunted capacities for the
accustomed enjoyment. Breadth of affection is an element in
its durability. “ When people who are tolerably fortunate in
their outward lot do not find in life sufficient enjoyment to make
it valuable to them, the cause generally is, caring for nobody but
themselves. To those who have neither public nor private
affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any
case dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish
interests must be terminated by death; while those who leave
after them objects of personal affection, and especially those who
have also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests
of mankind, retain as lively an interest in life on the eve of death
as in the vigour of youth and health.”* “ I do not,” he said, in
concluding his address to the University of St. Andrews,
“ attempt to instigate you by the prospect of direct rewards,
either earthly or heavenly: the less we think about being re
warded in either way, the better for us. But there is one reward
which will not fail you, and which may be called disinterested,
because it is not a consequence, but is inherent in the very fact of
deserving it; the deeper and more varied interest you will feel in
life, which will give it tenfold its value, and a value •which will
last to the end. All merely personal objects grow less valuable
as we advance in life ; this not only endures but increases.”
He was also now led to give its proper place to internal culture,
as among the prime necessities of human well-being. We have
seen how much of the pleasure lie had before enjoyed had been
derived from the love of rural objects and natural scenery. He
now found in the poetry of Wordsworth, the expression not alone
of outward beauty, but of “ states of feeling, and of thought
coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty.”
“ In. them I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sym
pathetic and imaginary pleasure, which could be shared in by all
human beings; whicli had no connexion with struggle or imperfection,
but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or
social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what
would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils
* Utilitarianism.
Its Meaning, p. 20.
�John Stuart Mill.
135
of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at once better
and happier as I came under their influence.” . . . . “ I needed
to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil
contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turn
ing away from, but with a greatly increased interest in the common
feelings and common destiny of human beings.”
This part of the Autobiography introduces the acquaintance
with Frederick Maurice and John Sterling, the former a disciple
of Coleridge, and the latter of Coleridge and Maurice, and both
were of use in his development. Nothing is more interesting
than the account Mr. Mill gives us of his intimacy with
them :—
“ With Sterling I soon became very intimate, and was more
attached to him'than I have ever been to any other man. He was
indeed one of the most loveable of men. His frank, cordial, affec
tionate, and expansive character ; a love of truth, alike conspi
cuous in the highest things and humblest; a generous and ardent
nature, which threw itself with impetuosity into the opinions it
adopted, but was as eager to do justice to the doctrines and the men
it was opposed to, as to make war on what it thought their errors ;
and an equal devotion to the two cardinal points of Liberty and Duty,
formed a combination of qualities as attractive to me, as to all others
who knew him as well as 1 did. With his open mind and heart, he
found no difficulty in joining hands with me across the gulf which as
yet divided our opinions. He told me how he and others had looked
upon me (from hearsay information) as a made or ‘ manufactured’
man, having had a certain impress of opinions stamped on me, which
I could only reproduce; and what a change took place in his feelings
when he found, in the discussion on Wordsworth and Byron, that
Wordsworth, and all that that name implies, ‘ belonged’ to me as
much as to him and his friends.”
From a brief view of the sources and method of Mr. Mill’s
education, and the primary effect it had on his mind and cha
racter, we pass to the opinions of his mature years, and then
to some of the results of those opinions upon his labours in
moral and political science, as well as in practical politics.
And first, on the subject of religion, the Autobiography sup
plies us with a less perfect account of the opinions of Mr. Mill
than it is understood we may expect from some hitherto unpub
lished essays which will be soon before the world. What is to
be collected from the work before us cannot, however, properly
be passed over in silence. The views of James Mill are clearly
stated.
My father had been early led to reject not only the belief in
Revelation, but the foundations of what is commonly called natural
religion. I have heard him say that the turning-point of his mind
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Joitn Stuart Mill.
on the subject was reading Butler’s Analogy. That work, of which
he always continued to speak with respect, kept him, as he said, for
some considerable time, a believer in the divine authority of Chris
tianity ; by proving to him that whatever are the difficulties in
believing that the Old and New Testaments proceed from, or record
the acts of, a perfectly wise and good being, the same and still greater
difficulties stand in the way of the belief, that a being of such a
character can have been the Maker of the Universe. He considered
Butler’s argument as conclusive against the only opponents for whom
it was intended. Those who admit an omnipotent as well as perfectly
just and benevolent maker and ruler of such a world as this, can say
little against Christianity but what can, with at least equal force, be
retorted against themselves. Finding, therefore, no halting place in
Deism, he remained in a state of perplexity, until, doubtless, after
many struggles, he yielded to the conviction that, concerning the
origin of things, nothing whatever can be known. .... These
particulars are important, because they show that my father’s rejec
tion of all that is called religious belief, was not, as many might sup
pose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence ; the grounds of it were
moral still more than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe
that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining
infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness.”
While he impressed upon his son from the first that the man
ner in which the world came into existence was a subject on
which nothing was known—
“ He at the same time, took care that I should be acquainted with
what had been thought by mankind on these impenetrable problems.
I have mentioned at how early an age he made me a reader of ecclesi
astical history ; and he taught me to take the strongest interest in the
Reformation, as the great and decisive contest against priestly tyranny
for liberty of thought.”
In this negative state of opinion on religion which one of the
critics of the Autobiography gravely attributes to the want, on
the part of both father and son of a comprehension of the higher
mathematics, Mr. Mill grew up.
“ I looked (he says) upon the modern exactly as I did upon the
ancient religion, as something which in no way concerned me. It did
not seem to me more strange that English people should believe what
I did not, than that the men I read of in Herodotus should have done
so. History had made the variety of opinions among mankind a fact
familiar to me, and this was but a prolongation of that fact.”
Of unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, Mr. Mill
observes, there are many species, including almost every variety of
moral type, many of the best of the former being more generally
religious in the best sense of the word, than those who exclusively
arrogate to themselves the title. They repudiate all dogmatism,
and especially dogmatic atheism, which they regard as absurd;
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but they deny that beings endowed with reasoning faculties
are justified in permitting themselves to receive as true the
character and acts commonly attributed to an Omnipotent
Author of all things, who created the human race with the
infallible foreknowledge, and therefore with the intention that
the great majority of them were to be consigned to terrible and
everlasting torment.
“Though they may think the proof incomplete that the universe is
a work of design, and they assuredly disbelieve that it can have an
Author and Governor who is absolute in power as well as perfect in
goodness, they have that which contributes the principal worth of all
religions whatever, an ideal conception of a Perfect Being, to which
they habitually refer as the guide of their conscience ; and this ideal
of good is usually far nearer to perfection than the objective Deity of
those who think themselves obliged to find absolute goodness in [one
whom they are taught to believe is] the author of a world so crowded
with suffering and so deformed with injustice as ours.”
In this aspect, the argument, however orthodox believers
are disposed to repudiate it, ought to be regarded even by
them according to its manifest design, as an effort to vindi
cate the Divine Ideal. It is the belief of those who thus argue
that a low and imperfect conception of the Being which is
adored, radically vitiates the standard of morals, and causes
fictitious excellences to be set up and substituted for genuine
virtues. It is true that—
“ Christians do not in general undergo the demoralizing consequences
which seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner, or to the extent
which might have been expected from it. The same slovenliness of
thought, and subjection of the reason to fears, wishes, and affections,
which enable them to accept a theory involving a contradiction in terms,
prevents them from perceiving the logical consequences of the theory.”
Another cause through which such consequences areavoided may
be found in the great counteracting principles that are embodied
in the Christian doctrine, and which teach forbearance, love of
others, and self-sacrifice.
These, the fundamental teachings of
Christianity, apart from dogma, few would appreciate better than
Mr. Mill. He found in them the corroboration of the doctrine
he advocated. “In the golden rule,” he says, “of Jesus of
Nazareth we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To
do as you would be done by, to love your neighbour as yourself,
constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.”
Mr. Mill attributes one bad consequence to this part of his
education. In giving him an opinion contrary to that of the
world, his father thought it necessary to give it as one which
could not be prudently avowed to the world. This lesson of
keeping his thoughts to himself at that early age was attended
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John Stuart Mill.
with some disadvantages, though his limited intercourse with
strangers, especially such as were likely to speak to him on
religion, prevented him from being placed in the alternative
of avowal or hypocrisy. Looking at the present advance in the
liberty of discussion since the time of which he was speaking,
he thinks that few men of his father’s intellect and public spirit,
with such intensity of moral conviction, would now withhold his
opinions from the world, unless in cases, becoming fewer every
day, in which frankness would risk the loss of subsistence, or be
an exclusion from a sphere of usefulness to which the individual
was particularly suited. On religion—
“ The time appears to have come, when it is the duty of all, who
being qualified in point of knowledge, have on mature consideration
satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false but
hurtful, to make their dissent known; at least, if they are among
those whose station or reputation, gives their opinion a chance of
being attended to. Such an avowal would put an end, at once
and for ever, to the vulgar prejudice, that what is called, very
improperly, unbelief, is connected with any bad qualities either of
heart or mind. The world would be astonished if it knew how great
a proportion of its brightest ornaments—of those most distinguished
even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue—are complete
sceptics in religion; many of them refraining from avowal, less from
personal considerations, than from a conscientious, though now in my
opinion a most mistaken apprehension, lest by speaking out what
would tend to weaken existing beliefs, and by consequence (as they
suppose) existing restraints, they should do harm instead of good.”
As years have passed on, the evidences of the truth of this
view of the progress of thought have multiplied. Mr. Mill
mentions the well-remembered collision of his friend Frederick
Maurice with orthodox opinion, and the penalty to which he
submitted rather than recognise a doctrine utterly inconsistent
with a Divine benevolence. Between himself and Sterling the
distance in opinion we find was always diminishing. Still later
the author of “Literature and Dogma,’1 setting out from a
starting-point as distant as the poles, and pursuing an entirely
different route, has sought like him to raise an ideal conception
of a true Divine Guide. What is the object of that moral and
intellectual culture which Mr. Mill has laboured to prove the
most suitable for mankind, other than that ihev should be taught
to know, “the best that has been thought and said in the
world ?” In what does the Ideal of Perfection, to which
he refers as the best guide of the human conscience, differ
from that “ Enduring Power, not ourselves, which makes for
righteousness ?”
Turning to philosophy let us see what was the especial object
�John Stuart Mill.
139
which Mr. Mill had in view in his examination of that of Sir
William Hamilton. And here the first thing that strikes the
reader is, that even in his most abstract works, those apparently
of a nature purely speculative, and falling within the region of
metaphysics, he had chiefly, if not wholly, in view a great and
practical end. He did not seek merely to establish a barren
theory of remote application, but to assert a truth which to the
extent to which it was accepted and influenced conduct, might
have a practical result in the consideration of the conditions of
human existence. It was nothing less than this which led him
to attack the foundation of a system, that theoretically denies
the effect of the conditions of existence upon the moral as
well as the intellectual state of society, and thus goes far
to discourage and cripple real efforts for improvement.
“ The difference between these two schools of philosophy, that of
Intuition and that of Experience and Association, is not a mere
matter of abstract speculation; it is full of practical consequences,
and lies at the foundation of all the greatest differences of practical
opinion in an age of progress. The practical reformer has continually
to demand that changes be made in things which are supported by
powerful and widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent
necessity and indefeasibleness of established facts ; and it is often an
indispensable part of his agreement to show, how those powerful
feelings had their origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary
and indefeasible. There is therefore a natural hostility between
him and a philosophy which discourages the explanation of feelings
and moral facts, by circumstances and associations, and prefers to treat
them as ultimate elements of human nature ; a philosophy which
is addicted to holding up favourite doctrines as intuitive truths, and
deems intuition to be the voice of Nature and of God, speaking with
an authority higher than that of reason. In particular, I have long
felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions
of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore
the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences,
whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only
might, but naturally could be produced by differences in circumstances,
is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social
questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human
improvement. My father’s Analysis of the Mind, my own Logic,
and Professor Bain’s great Treatise, had attempted to re-introduce a
better mode of philosophizing, latterly with quite as much success as
could be expected; but I had for some time felt that the mere
contrast of the two philosophies was not enough, that there ought to
be a hand-to-hand fight between them, that controversial as well as
expository writings were needed, and that the time was come when
such controversy would be useful.”
The treatise on Liberty Mr. Mill regards as likely to sur
vive longer than anything else he has written, with the possible
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John Stuart Mill.
exception of the Logic. It stood pre-eminent in his estimation,
not only from its intrinsic importance, but as the last and most
elaborate result of the joint labours of himself and his wife, and
consecrated to her memory. None of his other writings was
either so carefully composed or sedulously corrected. “ After it
had been written as usual twice over, we kept it by us, bringing
it out from time to time, and going through it de novo, reading,
weighing, and criticising every sentence.”
The joint revision, which was to have been the work of the
winter of 1858-9, was frustrated by Mrs. Milks death. Its pub
lication was his first undertaking after that event. It is, he
says, the text-book of a single truth—the importance to man
and society of a large variety in types of character, and of giving
full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable
and conflicting directions. A danger was that the growth of social
equality, and of a submission to public opinion, should impose
on mankind an oppressive yoke of uniformity in opinion and
practice. The doctrine of Individuality, the right and duty of
self-development, asserted by insulated thinkers from age to age,
worked out in the labours of Pestalozzi, and having among its
promulgators Wilhelm von Humboldt, Goethe, De Tocqueville,
and others less known but not less ardent in its cause, was with
modifications and differences of detail embodied in this work.
It was, moreover, in direct conflict with Positivism. Agreeing
with Comte that from the necessity of the case, the mass of man
kind, even including their rulers, must accept many of their
opinions on political and social matters, as they do on physical,
from the authority of those who have made those subjects their
especial study ; that Europe during the Middle Ages had greatly
profited by the distinct organization of the spiritual power, and
the moral and intellectual ascendancy once exercised by priests
would naturally pass into the hands of philosophers, he yet repu
diated with his utmost energy the conclusion that a corporate
hierarchy should be formed of the latter. He could not see in
such a body any bulwark against oppression, or security for good
government. The “Systeme de Politique Positive” he regarded
as the most complete system of spiritual and temporal despotism
which had ever emanated from the human brain, except possibly
that of Ignatius Loyola. “ The book stands a monumental
warning to thinkers on society and politics, of what happens
when once men lose sight in these speculations, of the value of
Liberty and Individuality.” The Essay on Liberty has recently
been the subject of an able and appreciative article by Mr. John
*
Morley, to which we may refer our readers.
* Fortnightly Review, August, 1873, pp. 234-256.
�John Stuart Mill.
Ill
On Political Economy, especially in the distinction between
the laws of the production and distribution of wealth, Mr. Mill’s
later views were a material modification of his earlier ones. The
capacity to learn and unlearn, which he regards as essential to
real progress, one of his reviewers describes as a constant state
of vacillation, and an absence of any firm standing ground. Mr.
Mill had no fear of such reproaches. In the days of his most
extreme Benthamism he tells us that he had seen little further
than the old school of political economists, into the possibilities
of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. He sub
sequently became less indulgent to ordinary social opinion, and
less willing to be content with secondary and more superficial
improvements. Any diminution of the evil involved in the fact
that while some are born to riches, the vast majority inherit
nothing but poverty—except such amelioration as might result
from a voluntary restraint on the numbers of the latter—had
before appeared chimerical. While still repudiating the tyranny
of the society over the individual which most Socialistic systems
involve, he came to look forward to a time when the division of
the produce of labour will depend less on the accident of birth,
and it will be more common for all to labour strenuously
to procure benefits that shall not be exclusively their own, but
shall be shared by the society of which they are members. The
capacity of all classes to learn by practice to combine and labour
for public and social purposes, and not solely for narrowly inte
rested ones, had always existed, and was not hindered by any
essential difficulty in the constitution of our nature. Why should
it be more difficult to persuade a man to dig or weave for his
country than to fight for it ? In the gradual formation of such
opinions, and their publication in the second and third editions
of the Principles of Political Economy, we must not pass over
the share which Mr. Mill attributes to his wife. No one who
knew him will feel surprise at the place which her memory fills
in the Autobiography. Few narratives appeal more powerfully
to every mind sensitive to human affections than the story of
their partnership of thought, of feeling, concurrent labour, and
entire existence ; and in truth there seem to have been qualities
existing in each which made their association with one another
eminently valuable. One happily possessed that which the other
needed. The chapter on Political Economy which Mr. Mill
believes has had the most influence on opinion,—that on “ The
Probable Future of the Labouring Classes,” he informs us is entirely
due to his wife. She pointed out the need of such a chapter,
and the imperfection of the book without it. It certainly
deals with that part of the subject in which the reflections of
an acute woman, conversant with the social necessities of the
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John Stuart Mill.
people around her, would be likely to be of great value. Tho
roughly sensible of the folly of premature attempts to dispense
with the inducements of private interest in social affairs, they
welcomed all experiments, such as co-operative societies, which
whether they succeeded or failed, would be an education for
those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity for
acting upon motives pointing directly to a more general good.
Speaking of this work, he says :—
“ It was chiefly her influence that gave to the book that general tone
by which it is distinguished from all previous expositions of political
economy that had any pretensions to being scientific, and which has
made it so useful in conciliating scientific minds which those previous
expositions had repelled. This tone consisted chiefly in making the
proper distinction between the laws of the production of wealth, which
are real laws of nature, dependent on the properties of objects, and the
modes of its distribution, which, subject to certain conditions, depend
on human will. The common run of political economists confuse these
together, under the designation of economic laws, which they deem
incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort ■ ascribing the
same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable conditions of
our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the necessary con
sequences of particulai' social arrangements, are merely co-extensive
with these: given certain institutions and customs, wages, profits, and
rent will be determined by certain causes ; but this class of political
economists drop the indispensable presupposition, and argue that these
causes must, by one inherent necessity, against which no human means
can avail, determine the shares which fall, in the division of the pro
duce, to labourers, capitalists, and landlords. The ‘ Principles of
Political Economy’ yielded to none of its predecessors in aiming at the
scientific appreciation of the action of these causes, under the conditions
which they presuppose; but it set the example of not treating those
conditions as final. The economic generalizations which depend, not on
necessities of nature, but on those combined with the existing arrange
ments of society, it deals with only as provisional, and as liable to be
much altered by the progress of social improvement.”
An observation is often made that Mr. Mill was not a practical
politician. Indeed, his more virulent detractors have not shrunk
from attributing to him an “ utter incapacity to grapple with
practical legislation or the real business of life.” The ground of
this conclusion is not very difficult to discover. It arises from a
radical difference in the sense of duty. To those who measure
the value of the business of life, and the practical character of those
who undertake it, by the immediate prospect of success, by the
probability of their acquiring some personal distinction or profit,
in fact, by the question whether the work is likely “ to pay,”
Mr. Mill’s labours will naturally appear mistaken and absurd.
We can fancy the supreme contempt with which such critics
�John Stuart Mill.
113
must have read in the Autobiography, “the idea, that the
use of my being in Parliament was to do work which others were
not able or not willing to do, made me think it my duty to come
to the front in defence of advanced Liberalism, on occasions when
the obloquy to be encountered was such as most of the advanced
Liberals in the House preferred not to incur.” Mr. Mill was one
of those who are dissatisfied with human life as it is, and whose
feelings are wholly identified with its radical amendment. With
such there are two main regions of thought, one that of ultimate
aims, the constituent elements of the highest realizable ideal of
human life; the other that of the immediately useful and
practically attainable. Some test of the value of these criticisms
may be found by selecting one or two of the principal subjects
within the domain of politics, to which a portion of the labours
of Mr. Mill have been directed. For this purpose let us take,
first, the general question of Government, in the aspect in which
it is presented to modern inquirers ; and secondly, the legislation
affecting the proprietorship or occupation of land.
First, on government, Mr. Mill thought that in his father's
“Essay on Government,” the premises were too narrow, and
included but few of the general truths on what, in politics, the
important consequences depend. He was dissatisfied with the
answer to the criticisms of Macaulay, and thought a better reply
would have been, “I was not writing a scientific treatise on
politics, but an argument for Parliamentary reform.” His pro
gress in logical analysis subsequently helped him to a different
conception of philosophical method as applicable to politics, of
the pedantry of adopting and promulgating asystematized political
creed. He acquired a conviction that the true system of political
philosophy was something much more complicated and manysided than he had previously had any idea of, and that its object
was to supply, not a set of model institutions, but principles from
which the institutions suitable to any given circumstances might
be deduced. This train of thought produced a clearer conception
than he had ever before had of the peculiarities of an era of
transition in opinion, and he ceased to mistake the moral and
intellectual characteristics of such an era for the normal attributes
of humanity. He looked forward to a period of unchecked
liberty of thought, and unbounded freedom of individual action
in all modes not hurtful to others, combining the best qualities
of the critical with the best qualities of the organic times.
A complete view of his most matured opinions on the subject
will be found in the Considerations on Representative Govern
ment. The problem stated is the combination of complete
popular control over public affairs, with the greatest attainable
perfection of skilled agency. James Mill, as well as his son,
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John Stuart Mill.
were in comparison with others who hold democratic opinions,
comparatively indifferent to monarchical or republican
forms; and, in this work, the existence of a constitutional
monarchy—with an hereditary king—is considered, as in many
cases, a favourable condition for the attainment of good govern
ment. He may, by his position, have an interest in raising
and improving the mass, under circumstances such as those
which make up a great part of the history of the English Par
liament. In other cases where none, or only some fraction of
the people feels a degree of interest in affairs of State necessary
to the formation of a public opinion, and the suffrage is only
used by the electors to serve their private interest, or that of
the locality, or of particular persons, of whom they are adhe
rents or dependents, the selfish and sordid factions of which
the assembly is likely to be composed, if struggling for the Pre
sidency or chief place in the Government, would, as in the case
of Spanish America, keep the country in a state of chronic revo
lution and civil war. A despotism of illegal violence would be
exercised by a succession of political adventurers, and represen
tation would have no effect but that of preventing that stability
of government by which some of the evils of a legal des
potism are mitigated. In such a case, the struggle for place—
under an hereditary king—would be far less mischievous. The
tranquillity of Brazil, as compared with that of the other parts
of the South American continent, is an illustration of this argu
ment. In our own government, Parliament virtually decides
who shall be Prime Minister, or who shall be the two or three
individuals from whom the Prime Minister shall be chosen,
without nominating him, but leaving the appointment of the
head of the administration to the Crown, in conformity with the
general inclinations which the Parliament has manifested. This
initiative method, in the formation of the executive government,
seemed to Mr. Mill to stand on as good a footing as possible. In
this conclusion he will have the sympathy of most of the English
people, who will not readily be persuaded that the periodical
election of a President would be an improvement in Govern
ment.
The evil effect produced on the mind of any holders of power,
whether an individual or an assembly, by the consciousness of
having only themselves to consult, was the consideration which
appeared to him of the greatest weight in favour of a second
chamber. Without it the majority in a single assembly, might
easily become overweening and despotic. It was this which
induced the Romans to have two Consuls. In every polity there
should be a centre of resistance to the predominant power. If
any people, possessing a democratic representation, are, from
�John Stuart Mill.
145
their historical antecedents, more willing to tolerate such a centre
of resistance in the form of a second Chamber or House of
Lords than in any other shape, this constitutes a strong reason
for so constructing it. It did not, however, appear to him
the best or most efficacious shape. Of such a body, the con
struction of the Roman Senate seemed to be the best example.
He suggests how a chamber of statesmen might be formed of
the heads of the Courts of Law ; those who had been Cabinet
Ministers ; the more distinguished chiefs in the Army and Navy ;
the diplomatic servants of long-standing; governors of colonies
and dependencies. In England it was highly improbable, from
its historical antecedents, that any second chamber could possibly
exist which is not built on the foundation of the House of
Lords; but there might be no insuperable difficulty in adding
the classes mentioned, to the existing body, in the character of
peers for life.
It is in the constitution of the Representative Assembly that
his hopes of good Government depend, and he devotes a chapter
to the consideration of its infirmities and dangers. The greatest
among these is the delivery over of the management of public
affairs to the representatives of a numerical majority alone, and the
placing of all the unrepresented classes at their mercy. It is as
possible, and as likely, for this numerical majority, being the
ruling power of a democracy, to be as much under the dominion
of sectional or class interests, or supposed interests, as any other
ruling power. The constituencies to which most of the highly
educated and public-spirited persons in the country belong—those
of the large towns—are in great part either unrepresented or mis
represented. This had been thought irremediable, and from
despairing of a cure, people had gone on for the most part to
deny the disease. An attempt to obtain a somewhat more true
representation, proposed by Earl Russell in one of the Reform
Bills, met with no support. The late Mr. Marshall subsequently
suggested the method of the cumulative vote, to rescue at least
some portion of a constituency from the tyranny of the numerical
majority. This system is now tolerably well understood from the
experience of the school board elections, and consists in enabling
the electors of every constituency, having more than one represen
tative, not only to give, as before, one vote to each person to be
chosen, but, instead of that, to give all their votes to one, or dis
tribute them as they please among the candidates. The effect of
this system may be made clearly intelligible in a few words, which
will show also its infirmities, as a vehicle for bringing into the
elected body any complete expression or representation of the
individual thought or study of the members of a large community.
Thus suppose 100 persons are about to elect a committee of 4 to
[Vol. CI. No. CXCIX.J—New Series, Vol. XLV. No. I.
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John Stuart Mill.
settle some business which concerns them, and that 21 out of the
100 place their confidence in A, while 51 prefer B, C, D, and
E, as those through whom their interests will be better secured.
Under the old system, the latter might have elected the whole
committee ; and not only the 21 desiring to be represented by A,
but as many as 28 others might have been excluded from any
voice in their deliberations.
With the cumulative system,
every voter may give his 4 votes to any one or more candidates,
and thus 21 persons may give their single candidate 84 votes;
the other 79 persons cannot altogether poll more than 316 votes,
one of their candidates at least must, therefore, be left with no
more than 79 votes, and the election of the candidate of the
united 21 is thus secured. It will be thus seen that though it is
a great improvement on the exclusive majority system, it yet re
quires that the holders of opinions differing from the majority
shall combine and adhere rigidly together in voting for the same
person in order that their success may be certain. If one or two
of the 21 had failed to poll for their candidate, the efforts of all
the rest of the 21 might be thrown away; or the 79, not
submitting to direction, may, if there were more candidates than
5, have less representatives than they are entitled to by their
numbers. Meetings, verbal and written communications, and the
guidance of party leaders are necessary ; and every sort of mani
pulation may thus be brought to bear. If the voter does not
approve of the candidates presented to his constituency, he is
helpless ; and if he does, he cannot, without placing himself in
the hands of the party leaders or agents, be certain that his
vote will have any effect.
The method of popular election, which has since been known
under the various appellations of the Minority, Personal, Propor
tional, and Preferential, system, had been put forward in a crude
form in 1857, and in its matured shape in 1859.t This
*
system effected the object that Mr. Mill had thought desir
able as an antidote to the exclusive representation, and there
fore exclusive rule of local majorities, and was at the same
time subject to none of the infirmities and inconveniences of the
cumulative system, inasmuch as it enabled every single elector,
while he exercised the most extensive choice practicable, to give
an independent vote, with the certainty that it will not be thrown
away. The scheme was made known to Mr. Mill in 1859, after
the publication of his “Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform,” and it
immediately obtained his assent and adoption. After a careful
* “ The Machinery of Representation.” Maxwell, 1857.
j- “A Treatise on the Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and
Municipal.” Longmans, 1859.
�John Stuart Mill.
147
examination of the proposed plan, in a letter suggesting an
*
alteration in a matter of detail, he said that it appeared to him
“ to have exactly, and for the first time, solved the difficulty of
popular representation, and by so doing to have raised up the
cloud of gloom and uncertainty that hung over the futurity of
representative government, and therefore of civilization?’ In a
conversation on the subject which took place a few weeks after
wards Mr. Mill expressed his belief and expectation that the idea
of such an improvement as was proposed would soon have a pro
minent place in the minds of statesmen and reformers ; and those
who were present have not forgotten that almost his first inquiry
was, whether the plan had been brought to the attention of
Mr. Gladstone. “ Had I met with the system,” Mr. Mill says,
in his Autobiography, “ before the publication of my pamphlet,
I should have given an account of it there. Not having done
so, I wrote an article in Fraser’s Magazine, reprinted in my
miscellaneous writings, principally for that purpose. In his
“ Considerations on Representative Government,” he devotes the
greater part of a chapter to this subject.t After explaining the
mode in which the votes would be given and counted, and re
ferring to Mr. Fawcett’s pamphlet on the system, he explains its
immediate result, that all parties sufficiently numerous to be en
titled to be represented would be sure of being so ; that the re
presentation would be real and not merely nominal, or what is
called “ virtualthat the tie between the elector and represen
tative would commonly have a strength, value, and permanence
now unknown ; that while localities would secure adequate atten
tion, general andnational interestswould be paramount; that every
person in the nation honourably distinguished among his country
men would have a fair chance of election, and with such
encouragement such persons might be expected to offer them
selves in numbers hitherto undreamt of; that when the electors
were no longer reduced to Hobson’s choice, the majorities would
be compelled to look out and put forward men of higher calibre,
and their leaders could no longer foist upon the people the
first person who presents himself with the catchword of the party
in his mouth, and three or four thousand pounds in his pocket;
that it would correct the tendency of representative government
towards collective mediocrity; that though the representatives of
the majorities would be the most in number, they must speak
and vote in the presence and subject to the criticism of their
opponents, and before the public.
* March 3, 1859.
f Chapter vii. “True and Talse Democracy i Representation of All, and
Representation of the Majority only.”
L2
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John Stuart Mill.
11 The multitude have often a true instinct for distinguishing an able
man when he has the means of displaying his ability in a fair field
before them. If such a man fails to obtain any portion whatever of his
just weight, it is through institutions or usages which keep him out of
sight. In the old democracies there were no means of keeping out of
sight any able man : the bema was open to him ; he needed nobody’s
consent to become a public adviser. It is not so in a representative
government; and the best friends of representative democracy can
hardly be without misgivings that the Themistocles or Demosthenes
whose counsels would have saved the nation, might be unable during
his whole life to obtain a seat. But if his presence in the represen
tative assembly can be insured, or even a few of the first minds in the
country, though the remainder consists only of average minds, the
influence of these leading spirits is sure to make itself sensibly felt in
the general deliberations, even though they be known to be in many
respects opposed to the tone of popular opinion and feeling.............
This portion of the assembly would also be the appropriate organ of a
great social function, for which there is no provision in any existing
democracy, but which in no government can remain permanently un
fulfilled without condemning that government to infallible degeneracy
and decay. This may be called the function of Antagonism. In every
government there is some power stronger than all the rest; and the
power which is strongest tends perpetually to become the sole power.
Partly by intention, and partly unconsciously, it is ever striving to
make all other things bend to itself, and is not content while there is
anything which makes permanent head against it, any influence not in
agreement with its spirit. Yet, if it succeeds in suppressing all rival
influences, and moulding everything after its own model, improvement
in that country is at an end, and decline commences. Human im
provement is a product of many factors, and no power ever yet consti
tuted among mankind includes them all; even the most beneficent
pow’er only contains in itself some of the requisites of good, and the
remainder, if progress is to continue, must be derived from some other
source. No community has ever long continued progressive, but while
a conflict was going on between the strongest power in the community
and some rival power: between the spiritual and temporal authorities;
the military or territorial and the industrious classes ; the king and the
people; the orthodox and religious reformers. When the victory on
either side was so complete as to put an end to the strife, and no other
conflict took its place, first stagnation followed, and then decay. The
ascendancy of the numerical majority is less unjust, and on the whole
less mischievous, than many others, but it is attended with the very
same kind of dangers, and even more certainly ; for when the govern
ment is in the hands of one or a few, the many are always existent as
a rival power, which may not be strong enough ever to control the
other, but whose opinion and sentiment are a moral, and even a social,
support to all who, either from conviction or contrariety of interest,
are opposed to any of the tendencies of the ruling authority. But
when the democracy is supreme, there is no one or few strong enough
for dissentient opinions and injured or menaced interests to lean upon.
�John Stuart Mill.
149
The great difficulty of democratic government has hitherto seemed to
be, how to provide in a democratic society what circumstances have
provided hitherto in all the societies which have maintained themselves
ahead of others—a social support, a point d’appui, for individual
resistance to the tendencies of the ruling power ; a protection, a rallying
point, for opinions and interests which the ascendant public opinion
views with disfavour. For want of such a point d'appui, the older
societies, and all but a few modern ones, either fell into dissolution or
became stationary (which means slow deterioration) through the exclu
sive predominance of a part only of the conditions of social and mental
well-being.
11 Now, this great want the system of personal representation is fitted
to supply, in the most perfect manner which the circumstances of
modern society admit of. ... . The representatives who would be
returned to Parliament by the aggregate of minorities, would afford that
organ in its greatest perfection. A separate organization of the instructed
classes would, if practicable, be invidious, and could only escape from being
offensive by being totally without influence. But if the elite of these
classes formed part of the Parliament, by the same title as any other of its
members—by representing the same numberof citizens,the same numeri
cal fraction of the national will—their presence could give umbrage to
nobody, while they would be in the position of highest vantage, both for
making their opinions and counsels heard on all important subjects,
and for taking an active part in public business. Their abilities would
probably draw to them more than their numerical share of the actual
administration of government; as the Athenians did not confide re
sponsible public functions to Cleon or Hyperbolus (the employment
of Cleon at Pylos and Amphipolis was purely exceptional), but Nicias,
and Theramenes, and Alcibiades, were in constant employment both
at home and abroad, though known to sympathize more with oligarchy
than with democracy. The instructed minority would, in the actual
voting, count only for their numbers, but as a moral power they would
count for much more, in virtue of their knowledge, and of the influence
it would give them over the rest. An arrangement better adapted
to keep popular opinion within reason and justice, and to guard it
from the various deteriorating influences which assail the weak side
of democracy, could scarcely by human ingenuity be devised. A de
mocratic people would in this way be provided with what in any
othei’ way it would almost certainly miss—leaders of a higher grade
of intellect and character than itself. Modern democracy would have
its occasional Pericles, and its habitual group of superior and guiding
minds.”*
Subsequently in Parliament, in moving, as an amendment to
Mr. Disraeli’s Reform Bill, the introduction of clauses for the
distribution of seats according to the proportional system, Mr.
Mill brought it forward in an expository and argumentative
* “ Considerations on Representative Government.”
3rd edit. p. 148-152.
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John Stuart Mill.
speech * The House was, however, as might be expected, un
prepared for its consideration. The debate is not, however,
uninteresting, as much perhaps for what was not, as for what
was, said. Mr. Mill, in his Autobiography, adds on this sub
ject : —
“ I was active in support of the very imperfect substitute for that
plan, which in a small number of constituencies, Parliament was
induced to adopt. This poor makeshift had scarcely any recommen
dation, except that it was a partial recognition of the evil which it
did so little to remedy. As such, however, it was attacked by the
same fallacies, and required to be defended on the same principles,
as a really good measure; and its adoption in a few parliamentary
elections, as well as the subsequent introduction of what is called the
Cumulative Vote in the elections for the London School Board, have
had the good effect of converting the equal claim of all electors to a
proportional share in the representation, from a subject of merely
speculative discussion, into a question of practical politics, much
sooner than would otherwise have been the case.”
The view which Mr. Mill took of the absolute need of this
change in the method of creating representative bodies, is in no
small degree justified by the attention which it has since received
in our ownf and in nearly every other country where free institu
tions exist.£ Its fundamental principle is, in fact, a corollary of
that oi Individuality. It puts forward in a practical shape the
necessity of freedom for individual action. It liberates every
voter from the condition of being an instrument of those around
him, and enables him to bring all he knows and feels,—his matures!
judgment, to his aid in the choice of the man in whose hands he
would place power. We know that there are many who are
ignorant or stupid, and to whom this discretion would be of little
use. It is enough to say that they would be no worse off than
they now are, and could do far less harm in corrupting and
degrading the constituency of which they are a part. On the
other hand, there are large numbers whose intelligence and
public spirit ought not to be wasted and lost to the nation. A
careful observer of the English mind and manners, and one who
certainly takes no optimist view of the present or future condi
tions of society, in his latest publication, remarks that “no nation
in the world possesses anything like so large a class of intelli* “Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates,” 30 May, 1867, vol. clxxxvii. pp.
1343-1362.
t See “ The Debate on Mr. Morrison’s Bill—Hansard’s Parliamentary De
bates,” vol. ccxii. pp. 890-926
+ “ The Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal.” A
Treatise. By Thomas Hare. 4th edit. Appendices A to 0, pp. 292-380.
See also on the Empirical Character of the Three-cornered Constituency
Clause, and the Cumulative Vote.—Ibid. pp. 16-19. Longmans, 1873.
�John Stuart Mill.
151
gent, independent, and vigorous-minded men in all ranks of life,
who seriously devote themselves to public affairs, and take the
deepest possible interest in the national success and well-being
while he truly adds that, “the character of our public men is
the sheet-anchor on which our institutions depend. So long as
political life is the chosen occupation of wise and honourable
men, who are above jobs and petty personal views, the defects
of Parliamentary Government may be endured ; but if the per
sonal character of English politicians should ever be seriously
lowered, it is difficult not to feel that the present state of the
constitution would give bad and unscrupulous men a power for
evil hardly equalled in any other part of the world.”* The
safeguard surely is to place it distinctly and certainly in the
power of every intelligent and vigorous-minded elector to give a
vote which shall secure the return of a wise and honourable man.
Secondly, on the Land Laws. A pamphlet, entitled “England
and Ireland,” published before the season of 1868, after an argu
ment to show the undesirableness, for Ireland as well as for
England, of separation, contained a proposal for settling the
land question by giving to the tenants a permanent tenure, at a
fixed rent, to be assessed after due inquiry by the State :—
“If no measure short of that which I proposed would do full jus
tice to Ireland, or afford a prospect of conciliating the mass of the
Irish people, the duty of proposing it was imperative; while if, on
the other hand, there was any intermediate course which had a claim
to a trial, I well knew that to propose something which would be
called extreme, was the true way not to impede, but to facilitate a
more moderate experiment. It is most improbable that a measure
conceding so much to the tenantry as Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Land
Bill, would have been proposed by a Government, or could have been
carried through Parliament, unless the British public had been led to
perceive that a case might be made, and perhaps a party formed, for
a measure considerably stronger. It is the character of the British
people, or at least of the higher and middle classes who pass muster
for the British people, that to induce them to approve of any change,
it is necessary they should look on it as a middle course : they think
every proposal extreme and violent unless they hear of some other
proposal going still further, upon which their antipathy to extreme
views may discharge itself. So it proved in the present instance;
my proposal was condemned, but any scheme for Irish Land Reform,
short of ruin, came to be thought moderate by comparison. I may
observe that the attacks made on my plan usually gave a very incor
rect idea of its nature. It was usually discussed as a proposal that
the State should buy up the land and become the universal landlord;
though, in fact, it only offered to each individual landlord this as an
* “ Parliamentary Government.” By James Eitzjames Stephen, Q.C. Con
temporary Review, Dec. 1873, p. 3.
�152
John Stuart Mill.
alternative, if he liked better to sell his estate than to retain it on
the new conditions ; and I fully anticipated that most landlords would
continue to prefer the position of landowners to that of Government
annuitants, and would retain their existing relation to their tenants,
often on more indulgent terms than the full rents on which the com
pensation to be given them by Government would have been based.”
With regard to the English land system, Mr. Mill says that
the criticisms of the St. Simonians had some effect in showing
the very limited and temporary value of the old political economy,
which assumes all the rules affecting private property and
inheritance as indefeasible facts, and the abolition of entails and
primogeniture—the freedom of production and exchange, as the
dernier mot of social improvement. The question here, as in
other subjects, was the way in which all practicable ameliorations
could be justly and wisely aided, by the promulgation of
sound principles and adopting the means best suited to lead
to their application. Asserting emphatically the value of
private property as the root of industry, the ultimate object
appeared to be that of uniting the greatest individual liberty
of action with a wide diffusion and accessibility of the owner
ship of land—the raw material of the globe. With this view
Mr. Mill took the chief part in framing the programme of the
Land Tenure Reform Association, to which he gave his name and
cordial support. We find in this programme the result of a
careful study both of what he thought desirable, and what he
deemed at once possible—the distant ideal, and the course to be
immediately taken towards its accomplishment, or to bring us
nearer to a better condition of things. It contains all that is
comprehended in the words “free land” as recently interpreted,
but it does not stop there. Concurring with those who believe
that merely opening the ownership of land to competition in the
money market, however valuable it may be in one of the aspects
of economical improvement, would do but very little towards
placing it under the control of the workman or giving him a
direct interest in it; he regarded it as an indispensable condition
that some part of the land of the kingdom should be placed
within the reach of the industrious labourer, so as to be attainable
in the shape of property of reasonable duration. The programme
of the Association consists of ten articles. The earlier clauses
contain the old tenets of the “free land” reformers. We will
take the clauses in their inverse order, the last seven being
especially the work of Mr. Mill. A prominent object, we find, is
the mental culture of the classes which have the least opportunity
for such improvement, by encouraging and fostering their tastes
for rural scenery, for history, and art. The things to which he
felt himself so greatly indebted—the love of nature and of
�John Stuart Mill.
153
beauty, and the cultivation of the power of recalling in the
imagination what is memorable and great in former ages, he
would bring home to all, as things not to be forgotten in the
daily struggles for material results. The programme (X.) claims
the preservation of all natural objects or artificial constructions
attached to the soil, of historical, scientific, or artistic interest;
that (IX.) the less fertile lands, and especially those within reach
of populous districts, should be retained in a state of wild
natural beauty, for the general enjoyment of the community, and
the encouragement in all classes of healthful rural tastes, and
of the higher order of pleasures. The next clauses deal with
land already belonging to the public, or dedicated to permanent
uses, not of a private character. They ask (VIII.) that land of
which Parliament alone can authorize the inclosure shall be
retained for national uses, compensation being made for manorial
and common rights; that (VII.) lands belonging to the crown,
to public bodies, or charitable and other endowments, be made
available to be let for co-operative agriculture, and to small
cultivators, as well as for the improvement of the dwellings
of the labouring classes; and no such lands to be suffered (unless
in pursuance of those ends, or for exceptional reasons) to pass
into private hands. To protect such lands from alienation to
private uses, which is rapidly taking place ; to obviate all legal
impediments to a voluntary dedication of land to public objects,
and to secure their prudent and productive administration under
skilled district agents of local appointment, exercising their
powers without partiality to any class, Mr. Mill approved the
action of the Association in the preparation and introduction
of the “Public Lands and Commons Bill/’ of 1872 His view of
*
endowments it is known differed materially from that of Turgot.
It forms the subject of the first article in his “Dissertations and
Discussions/
Notwithstanding, he observes, the reverence due
to that illustrious name, it is now allowable to regard his opinion
of that subject as the prejudice of the age. Mankind are
dependent for the removal of their ignorance and defect of
culture, mainly on the unremitting exertions of the more
instructed and cultivated, to awaken a consciousness of this
want, and to facilitate the means of supplying it. “ The
instruments for the work are not merely schools and col
leges, but every means by which the people can be reached,
either through their intellect or their sensibilities, from
* See “ Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates,” vol. ccxii. p. 583. (Erroneously
printed as “ Commons’ Protection, &c., Bill ”) 3 July, 1572.
t “The Kight and Wrong of Stale Interference with Corporation and
Church Property.” Published in The Jurist for May, 1833.
�154
John Stuart Mill.
preaching and popular writing, to national galleries, theatres,
and public games. Here is a wide field of usefulness open to
foundations.”
His article on this subject, first published in 1833, shadowed
forth the policy which has now, in spite of the opposition of
bodies and persons interested in retaining local patronage, and
influence arising from the power of dealing with estates, and
selecting beneficiaries, been partially adopted by the Govern
ment and Parliament. The only point as to which Mr. Mill’s
opinions had undergone a change was on the question of the
utility of endowments being held in the shape of land. In the
essay referred to, he spoke of the evils of allowing land to pass
into mortmain—adding that trustees ought to have no concern
with the money, except applying it to its purposes. Their time
and attention should not be divided between their proper busi
ness and the management of landed estates. He now felt that
the only objections to the application of the produce of land to
the uses of endowments would be obviated altogether by sepa
rating the management of the property from the administration
of its income. If the management were placed under competent
local agents, having charge of large districts, responsible alike to
the public and the several institutions, and always accessible to
the offers of cultivators and tenants of all classes, vast tracts of
land in the country, and extensive areas covered with houses in
cities and towns, would be opened to co-operative associations
and others, whom the prejudices of private owners, in favour of
fewer or more wealthy occupiers, might exclude. The Bill therefore
proposed to repeal the mortmain Act of George II., which pre
vents land only from being devoted to charitable uses, leaving
all other property to be so disposed of. It is not surprising that
the House ■was unprepared for such a measure. It is only
after repeated agitation that it is likely to succeed; but such
tentative proceedings are obviously the practical course. A
reform bill was introduced many successive years before it passed.
It will, some day, probably be thought wrnrth while to appoint a
committee or commission to examine the subject. It will be
found that nothing could be more moderate or just than the
proposed measure : it secured the interests of the objects of the
trust, and left the trustees unencumbered with alien duties, and
at liberty to employ their undivided attention exclusively to the
business of making the best use of the fund.
*
The great im* This subject is discussed in a Paper read at the Social Science Associa
tion, on the 27th Jan. 1873—“On Lands held by Corporations, and on the
Policy either of their Alienation or of Providing for their Management with
regard to the Public Utility.”
�John Stuart Mill.
155
pediment in the way of measures such as these, is the fact that
almost every constituency contains a few persons, forming a
compact body of much influence, whose importance in the loca
lity may be lessened by the withdrawal of public property from
their control. Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, in the article before
referred to, points out the power of a small knot of persons in a
constituency to turn the balance against any candidate who
has the courage to take an independent view differing from
*
them.
The two next articles of the Land Tenure Programme (V. VI.)
are for the encouragement of co-operative agriculture and the
tenancies of small cultivators. Of the remaining clause (IV.),
proceeding from Mr. Mill, the claim of the State to intercept
by taxation the unearned increase in the rent of land, it is un
necessary here to say much. It has, perhaps, been subjected to
more adverse criticism than any other part of the programme;
but it exhibits the elaborate care with which, in any great
change, he endeavoured to guard existing interests. All who
have read or heard the explanation which Mr. Mill has repeat
edly given of this suggestion know well that not the value of
one farthing, of any realized or existing property, would be taken
thereby from any proprietor. To characterize the proposal,
therefore—as has been done recently—as one involving the
virtual confiscation of the estates of the great landowners, and
whereby, as regards the present, most landed proprietors would
be reduced to ruin, is a gross misrepresentation.
So much space has been occupied in thus attempting to
convey a just idea of the vast field over which Mr. Mill’s labours
have extended, and upon which his autobiography, is full of
interest and instruction, that a multitude of subjects must still
remain untouched. Of his work on the Subjection of Women,
and in the cause of extending to them the political franchise,
we need not speak. They have been more or less discussed
in most houses and families.
In December, 1859, appeared “A Few Words on Non-Inter
vention,”! in which he pointed out the situation of Great Britain,
“ as an independent nation, apprehending no aggressive designs,
and entertaining none, seeking no benefits at the expense of
others, stipulating for no commercial advantages, and opening
its ports to all the world; yet, finding itself held up to obloquy
as. the type of egotism and selfishness, and as a nation which
thinks of nothing but outwitting and outgeneralling its neigh* Contemporary Review, December, 1873, pp. 6, 7.
f Fraser’s Magazine, vol. lx., p. 766.
�156
John Stuart Mill.
hours. This was the continental estimate of English policy.
What was the cause of this ? First, was it not our common
mode of argument for or against any interference in foreign
matters, that we do not interfere in this or that subject ‘ because
no English interest is involved ?’ Secondly, how is the impres
sion against us fostered by our acts ? Take the Suez Canal—a
project which, if realized, would give a facility to commerce, a
stimulus to production, an encouragement to intercourse, and
therefore to civilization, which would entitle it to high rank
among the industrial improvements of modern times. Assume
the hypothesis that the English nation saw in this great benefit
to the world a danger, a damage to some peculiar interest of
England—such as, for example, that shortening the road would
facilitate the access of foreign navies to its Oriental possessions,
that the success of the project would do more harm than good
to England—unreasonable as the supposition is. Is there any
morality, Christian or secular, which would bear out a nation in
keeping all the rest of mankind out of some great advantage,
because the consequence of their obtaining it may be, to itself,
in some imaginable contingency, a cause of inconvenience ? If
so, what ground of complaint has the nation who asserts this
claim, if in return the human race determines to be its enemies ?
In the conduct of our foreign affairs in this matter, England had
been made to appear as a nation which, when it thought its own
good and that of other nations incompatible, was willing to pre
vent others even from realizing' an advantage which we ourselves
are to share.” The subsequent history of the Suez Canal has
proved the errors of English diplomacy here pointed out. The
remainder of the article on the few and rare cases—if any—in
which interference in the domestic affairs of one nation by
another is permissible, has probably not been, and will not be,
without its influence in the subsequent and future history of the
world.
Mr. Mill’s sympathy with the downtrodden and oppressed,
whether as slaves, while there still existed a slave power in
America, or in the condition of their emancipated brethren in
Jamaica, is well known. He saw from the first, as many
clear-sighted persons in our country did—though perhaps they
formed a minority—that the Civil War in America “ was an
aggressive enterprise of the slave owners, under the combined
influences of pecuniary interest, domineering temper, and the
fanaticism of a class for its class privileges—to extend the terri
tory of slavery.” A passage in his article on “ The Contest in
America,”*
justifyingthe determined course taken by the North, is
* Fraser’s Magazine, Jan. 1862.
�John Stuart Mill.
157
worth quoting as an emphatic rejection of a misplaced feeling of
humanitarianism—a feeling which in a fitting case no one would
have respected more than he. He says : —“I cannot join with those
who cry Peace, Peace. I cannot wish it should be terminated
on any conditions but such as would retain the whole of the
territories as free soil. War in a good cause is not the greatest
evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not
the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral
and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing 'worth a war is
worse.”
There are some who say they find in this Autobiography evi
dence of self-sufficiency and self-glorification, and that it is
defaced by egotism ' Such charges appear amazing, not only to
those who remember Mr. Mill's entire freedom from self-asser
tion, and readiness to attribute to others even the merit of works
or suggestions proceeding from himself, but to the readers of the
Autobiography, who find throughout instances of the same selfabnegation. He is only bold and uncompromising in the asser
tion of what he deems right. Instead of egotism, he is, at other
times, charged with sentimentality and weakness in ascribing
such praise to others. One distinct proof of the absence of any
thought of self-sufficiency or egotism is found in a passage in the
Autobiography which hasprobably no parallel inanyother personal
memoir : “ Whoever,” he says, either now or hereafter, may
think of me, and of the work I have done, must never forget
that it is the product, not of one intellect and conscience, but of
three.” It is a painful example of the low pitch to which lite
rary criticism may at this day sink, to read a comment on it such
as this: “All touches of natural affection have been sedulously
kept under or suppressed ; his brothers and sisters are only men
tioned as annoyances or checks to progress.”* So far from
* The tone of complacent triumph with which the author of an Article in
Fraser’s Magazine, for Dec. 1873, acquaints his readers of the “rapid change
of the public mind concerning Mr. Mill,” and of the “ startling collapse of his
reputation which has happened,” since, as he says, Mr. Mill’s admirers met the
“mildest protest” against his fame with “clamour and abuse,” might provoke
a smile. He has probably reiterated this announcement so many times that at
length he fancies himself “the public,” as the three tailors in Tooley Street
styled themselves, “ We, the people of England.” It will, however, be a
somewhat curious chapter in the literary annals of the day, if he should inform
his readers in some future paper when and whence this “ mildest ” of protests
issued, and who were the “audacious” delinquents who tried, and how, to
put down discussion. Was it put down because the answer was so complete
that nothing was left to be said ? At present, however, those who listen to
every breath relating to the venerated object of their regard, have heard only
of one unjust attempt to cast reproach on a pure and honourable life, which,
when indignantly challenged, was found to be utterly unsupported by even the
pretence of evidence. It cannot, however, but be regretted that a periodical
�158
John Stuart Mill.
his brothers and sisters being mentioned as hindrances, Mr. Mill
tells us expressly that, from the discipline involved in teaching
them, which after his eighth year his father required, he derived
the great advantage of learning more thoroughly, and retaining
more lastingly, the things which he was set to teach. The
insinuation that natural feeling was wanting, leads us to borrow
a passage from the current number of the Workman’s Magazine
(p. 385): “ It was our good fortune,” says the writer, “ to know
Mr. Mill in early life. One of our class-fellows at University
College was James Bentham Mill, a younger brother of John,
and we (the younger ones) soon became very intimate friends.
Strong mutual sympathies led to interchanges of visits during
the long vacations and after we had left the college, so that we
had frequent opportunities of seeing and conversing with the
elder brother in his pretty cottage home at Mickleham, where
the whole family spent all the summer months for several years.
. . . John Stuart Mill was, of course, then unknown to fame,
but we well remember the impression he made on us by his
domestic qualities, the affectionate playfulness of his character
as a brother in the company of his sisters, and of the numerous
younger branches of the family.”
Without further noticing comments such as that which has led
us to introduce this reminiscence, it seems strange, as a corre
spondent of the Spectator touchingly remarks, “ to hear accused
of heartlessness and coldness in his affections the man over whose
grave a chorus of friends has just been pouring the strains of
sorrowing love and gratitude, to hear of the ‘ meagre nature,’
‘ the want of homely hopes,’ £ the monotonous joylessness ’ of him
whose delight in nature and in music, whose knowledge of flowers,
whose love of birds, whose hearty happiness in country walks,
with friends, whose long genial talks with those friends, have
been so variously and beautifully delineated.”
We are able to add to that chorus another strain issuing from
the voices of some who, a few years ago, visited him in his
southern home, and there learnt his genial powers of participa
tion and sympathy with various and dissimilar tastes. Mr. Mill’s
fondnessfor natural studies and appreciation of historic associations
had taken him much through Provence and Languedoc, parts
of which they visited with him. None failed to be struck
with the uncommon degree of affection and reverence with
which he and his step-daughter were met in their neighso high in character as Fraser's Magazine should have admitted into its columns
an Article that, first misrepresenting Mr. Mill, both as respects his words and
works, then proceeds to draw unfounded inferences from them, which nothing
but a prurient imagination could have suggested.
�John Stzuirt Mill.
159
bourhood, and journeying with them was made doubly plea
sant from their cordial and warm reception by those to whom
they were known. Mr. Mill’s conversation carried all vividly
back to the Roman and mediaeval days, of which the ruins in the
country round Avignon reminded him. Under his guidance
every spot became replete with interest: “ One day we traversed
the hills above Vaucluse'”—we copy from the journal of one to
whom Mr. Mill was before unknown—“over the mountains, among
the wildest stony paths, through gorges, over dwarf box, lavender,
thyme, cistus, rosemary, fragrant as it was crushed under our
feet, botanizing, talking, till finally we descended, as the day
closed, to Petrarch’s fountain. Whether visiting the flourishing
town of Carpentras, or ascending Mont Ventoux, he directed
attention to a multitude of interesting objects, taking himself
the most laborious part and exhibiting no symptom of fatigue/’
“ Apart from the charm of his converse,” writes another, “ there
was the unceasing kindness with which he pointed out to one the
rarer flowers, to another the geological formation, and again the
peculiar construction of the several ancient remains; and all saw
and felt his delight at having brought them to the summit of the
hill, on which stands the excavated and almost deserted town and
castle of Les Baux, at a moment ■when they could behold the
beauties of the lovely light of sunset shedding its glory over the
valley of the Rhone.”
“ The life of one,” says the writer we have quoted, “ who lives
and strives in opposition to the ideas of his age, will scarcely be
expected to be a very bright and cheerful one ; but it is noble in
stead, and many a one will feel that for such nobleness he would
exchange all that the world calls pleasant.” We have gathered
enough from Mr. Mill’s works, and the testimony of others, to
show that a career of unselfish devotion to the highest object on
which man can be employed—the welfare of his fellow creatures
—is consistent with every rational enjoyment of life, while it
incalculably increases the capacity to enjoy it.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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John Stuart Mill
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Hare, Thomas [1806-1891]
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: p. 122-159 ; 22 cm.
Notes: A review essay of Mill's Autobiography, London: Longman, Green, Reader, and Dyer. 1873. The attribution of reviewer and name of journal from Virginia Clark's catalogue. Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Westminster Review 45 (January 1874).
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Book reviews
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (John Stuart Mill), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Autobiographies
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
John Stuart Mill
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Text
850
Recollections of Shelley and Byron.
worships his kind are bounded, as we have said, by the limita
tions which he knows are incident to humanity; idealize as he
may, he can never free himself of the belief that no perfect man
or woman has ever trod this planet. How, then, is it possible
that any one but the ignorant and unreflective can ever feel the
glow of genuine devotion when he bows himself to a being whose
nature he knows to have been but a fragmentary representative of
the ideal of man, or when he worships his best conception of this
ideal itself knowing it to be an idol of his own creation ? These
fatal weaknesses of Positivism have no application to the Theist:
the fervour of his adoration is deadened by no secret conscious
ness that the object of his worship is marred with imperfection;
for however great and glorious may be the attributes he ascribes
to it, he feels assured that they are infinitely surpassed by the
Reality itself.
Art. II.—Recollections
of
Shelley
and
Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron.
Trelawny. London: Edward Moxon. 1858.
Byron.
By E. J.
R. TRELAWNY has done well in giving this manly and
carelessly written little volume to the world: it will at least
revive the personal memory of two Englishmen who, though long
dead, can never be altogether of the past. Without telling much
of either with which we were not previously acquainted, the infor
mation communicated is the result of intimate personal know
ledge, and, gathered during the intervals of a familiar acquaint
ance, comes out with such freshness and vigour, that it possesses
nearly all the merit of novelty; and the striking features of cha
racter are brought forward in much stronger relief, than in the
tame and wearisome biography of whioh one at least was the
victim. It is the least enviable appanage of genius that it perpe
tuates by its own lustre those faults and weaknesses which repose
in the graves of meaner men; the biographer, even though a
friend, cannot ignore these; and while he avoids giving them
undue prominence, cannot forget that truth has its claims, as well
as genius.
We recognise Shelley in these sketches as he appeared in his
works—the gentle, guileless, noble soul who persisted in putting
himself wrong with the world, and who rashly and fearlessly
launched his indignant sarcasm at the cant and bigotry and sei-
M
�Shelley's Personal Appearance.
351
fishness of society, without indicating any rational plan for its
regeneration. Had he possessed a friend sufficiently influential
and judicious to have delayed the publication of “ Queen Mab”
for ten years, Shelley’s lot might have been far different. How
could he reasonably expect forbearance from a society whose
creed, by a portion of it sincerely venerated, he so recklessly out
raged ? The wisest man feels himself to be an infant if he at
tempts to understand the doctrine of Original Sin ; and yet it was
this problem that the youthful and inexperienced Shelley dared to
grapple in his poem, in a spirit of unparalleled rashness and pre
sumption.
Mr. Trelawny was for some time, as is well known, the compa
nion of Byron and Shelley during their voluntary exile in Italy.
Too manly and too honest to believe in the justice of the tremendous
calumnies which drove Shelley from England, and deprived him
of his children, he was yet, like all who ever came to personal
knowledge of Shelley, astonished to find what manner of man
was this of whom all who did not know him spoke so ill. We
see him as Mr. Trelawny saw him, more than thirty years since,
in the following scene:—
“ Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall thin stripling held out
both his hands; and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his
flushed, feminine, and artless face, that it could be the poet, I re
turned his warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and cour
tesies, he sat down and listened. I was silent from astonishment; was
it possible this mild-looking, beardless boy could be the veritable mon
ster at war with all the world ?—excommunicated by the fathers of
the Church, deprived of his civil rights by a grim Lord Chancellor,
discarded by every member of his family, and denounced by the rival
sages of our literature as the founder of a Satanic school ? I could
not believe it; it must be a hoax. He was habited like a boy, in black
jacket and trousers, which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor,
as is the custom, had shamefully stinted him in his 1 sizings.’ ”
His wife’s personal appearance, nee Godwin, the authoress of
“Frankenstein,”is sketched on the same occasion:—
“ The most striking feature in her face was her calm, grey eyes.
She was rather under the English standard of woman’s height, very
fair and fight-haired, witty, social and animated in the society of
friends, though mournful in solitude; like Shelley, though in a minor
degree, she had the power of expressing her thoughts in varied and
appropriate words, derived from familiarity with the works of our
vigorous old writers. Neither of them used obsolete or foreign
words.”
The artless and natural character of Shelley endeared him to
the few who had the privilege of personal knowledge; and,
as appears from these sketches, contrasted very favourably with
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Recollections of Shelley and Byron.
the artificial manner and undisguised egotism of Byron—but, in
truth, the latter was only himself when in the stillness of night
he was engaged in composition, and absorbed into forgetfulness
of his physical deficiences and his chronic starvation.
Mr. Trelawny gives a more minute and circumstantial detail
than has previously appeared, of the miserable circumstances at
tending the deaths of Shelley and his companion Mr. Williams.
The letter which the latter had despatched to his wife on the pre
vious day, informing her and Mrs. Shelley of their proposed return
to the home in the Gulf of Spezzia, where both ladies were
anxiously expecting their husbands, who had been unexpectedly
detained in Leghorn, is surely, breathing as it does the warmest
affection, destined to be so sadly quenched, the most touching
document ever preserved from oblivion. The condition of the two
bodies, when thrown ashore after many days, was such as to make
incremation the most eligible means of disposing of the remains ;
and this proceeding was conducted in both cases—for they were
not burned together—with great care by Mr. Trelawny, in an iron
furnace constructed on purpose. Lord Byron may have given way
to some apparent levity on the occasion; but it was but to conceal
an emotion he deeply felt, but which he lacked the moral courage
to evince publicly. Shelley’s toy skiff, the Don Juan, in which
they embarked with inauspicious omens on that melancholy even
ing, does not appear to have been capsized during the gale, not
withstanding the ominous remark of the Genoese mate of the
Bolivar about the superfluous gaff-topsail; but from her damaged
condition, when afterwards weighed by the exertions of Captain
Roberts, was probably run down by some Italian speronare
scudding before the gale.
Shelley stands far higher in the opinions of his country
men now than when his gentle spirit and ardent love of truth
were quenched for ever in the waves of the Mediterranean. It is
not necessary to vindicate his character from calumnies which are
long forgotten; but if there are any who, not knowing, yet care to
know, how gentle, how generous, how accomplished, and how
unselfish he was, it is written in this late testimony of one who
knew him well, and knowing him well in life, had the hard task
assigned him of communicating his premature death to the de
spairing widow.
Shelley formed a correct and candid estimate of his own writ
ings when he said, “ They are little else than visions which im
personate my own apprehensions of the beautiful and just—they
are dreams of what ought to be, or may be.” He read too much,
was altogether too much imbued with the ideas of others. His
were the azure and vermilion clouds that float in insubstantial
beauty through the atmosphere of an Alpine sunrise, rather than
�Byrons Movements after Shelley’s Death.
353
the enduring creation of grandeur, strength, and beauty which we
recognise in a great poem.
After Shelley’s death, Byron moved from Pisa to Albaro, near
Genoa, where he occupied the Casa Saluzzi; but the loss of one
whom he must have looked on as a friend, and respected for the
nobleness of his nature, together with the failure of the Liberal,
which could hardly succeed undei* the auspices of two such
editors as Hunt and himself, made him dissatisfied with an inac
tive existence, and he looked round for some field, not of enter
prise, but excitement. He was quite unfit constitutionally to en
counter real fatigue or privation; he had courage, no doubt;
contempt of life, and tameless pride, but neither possessed the
physical or mental robustness to see in well-planned, and longsustained action a career of distinction or usefulness. After much
wavering, he determined to revisit Greece, and bought a vessel to
convey himself and his lares to the land which was to witness
his own dissolution, and thus to derive from him another of its
many claims to classic interest. The choice of his vessel seems
to have been decided more by motives of economy than from any
regard to its nautical capabilities, and when its defects were indi
cated by a more critical judgment than his own, he was consoled
by the reflection that he had got it a bargain.
It was on the 13th of July, 1823, that lie sailed in the Hercules
from Genoa with Mr. Trelawny, Count Gamba, and an Italian
crew ; slowly they stood eastward up the Mediterranean, and so
wretched were the sailing qualities of the vessel, that even with
a fair wind the average progress was but twenty miles a day.
They put into Leghorn, which they quitted for Cephalonia, on the
23rd of July.
“ On coming near Lonza, a small islet converted into one of its
many prisons by the Neapolitan government, I said to Byron, ‘ There
is a sight that would curdle the blood of a poet laureate.’ ‘ If
Southey were here,’ he answered, ‘ he would sing hosannahs to the
Bourbons. Here kings and governors are only the jailors and hangmen
of the detestable Austrian barbarians. What dolts and drivellers the
people are to submit to such universal despotism. I should like to see
from this our ark, the world, submerged, and all the rascals drowning on
it like rats.’ I put a pencil and paper into his hand, saying, ‘ Perpe
tuate your curses on tyranny,’ &c. He readily took the paper and set
to work. I walked the deck, and prevented his being disturbed. . . .
After a long spell he said, ‘ You think it is as easy to write poetry as
to smoke a cigar—look, it’s only doggrel. Extemporising verse is non
sense ; Poetry is a distinct faculty—it wont come when called. You
may as well whistle for a wind; a Pythoness was primed when put
into the tripod. I must chew the cud before I write. I have
thought over most of my subjects for years before writing a line.’ . . .
‘ Give me time—I can’t forget the theme ; but for this Greek business
[Vol. LXIX. No. CXXXVI.]—New Sekies, Vol. XIII. No. II. A A
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Recollections of Shelley and Byron.
I should have been at Naples writing a fifth canto of ‘ Childe Harold,’
expressly to give vent to my detestation of the Austrian tyranny in
Italy.’ ”
But his own earlier lines might well have recurred both to the
poet and to his biographer, for surely none could be more appli
cable to the scene before their eyes then, as before ours now, when
we look on Naples :—
“ It is as though the fiends prevailed
Against the seraphs they assailed,
And fixed on heavenly thrones should dwell
The freed inheritors of hell—
So fair the scene, so formed for joy,
So cursed the tyrants that destroy.”
“ The poet had an antipathy to everything scientific; maps and
charts offended him............ Buildings the most ancient or modern he
was as indifferent to as he was to painting, sculpture, or music. But
dll natural objects, or changes in the elements, he was generally the
first to point out, and the last to lose sight of.” p. 187. [The italics
are our own.]
Mr. Trelawny echoes an old remark of Baron Macaulay’s
(Warren Hastings), which every one’s experience will confirm,
as to the effect of a sea voyage in testing temper and character,
and says—“ I never was on shipboard with a better companion
than Byron : he was generally cheerful, gave no trouble, assumed
no authority, uttered no complaints, and did not interfere with
the working of the ship; when appealed to, he always answered,
‘Do as you like.’” There was much enjoyment of life on board
this dull sailer, the Hercules; and the voyage, if protracted, was
under clear, warm skies, and in smooth water. One scene nar
rated has a grimly comic element: apropos to some remark,
Byron exclaimed, “ Women, you should say; if we had a woman
kind on board, she would set us all at loggerheads, and make a
mutiny; would she not, captain?” “I wish my old woman were
here,” replied the skipper; “ she would make you as comfortable
in my cabin at sea as your own wife would in her parlour on
shore.” Byron started, and looked savage. The skipper went
on unconscious, &c. &c.
Byron had written an autobiography, it seems, conceived in
manly, straightforward fashion,—in a vigorous, fearless style, and
was apparently truthful as regarded himself. It was subse
quently entrusted to Mr. Moore, as literary executor, and by him
suppressed, following the advice of others, it would seem. “ I
told Murray Lady Byron was to read the manuscript if she
wished it, and requested she would add, omit, or make any com
ments she pleased, now, or when it was going through the press.”
(p. 197.) They reached Zante and Cephaloniaat last; and after
�. Byron’s second Visit to Greece.
355
an absence of eleven years, Lord Byron again saw the Morea,
which he loved so well—
“ The sun, the sky, but not the slave the same.”
The reckless greediness of the Suliote refugees at Cephalonia
disgusted him; and the intelligence he received about the pros
pects of liberty in Greece, or the probability of assistance from
the Western Powers, so long withheld, being far from encourag
ing, he determined to remain some time at Cephalonia, but pre
ferred living on board to accepting the warmly-proffered hospi
tality of Colonel Charles Napier, or of the other residents in the
island.
•“ One day, after a bathe, he held out his right leg to me, saying—
‘ I hope this accursed limb will be knocked off in the war.’ ‘ It wont
improve your swimming,’ I answered; ‘ I will exchange legs, if you
will give me a portion of your brains.’ £ You would repent your bar
gain,’ he said, &e. &c.” (p. 20.)
The Greeks, it appears, very rationally desired a strong cen
tralized authority to suppress the hordes of robbers—much more
numerous than usual, since the outbreak of the war with Turkey
■—and talked, at least a portion of them did, of offering the
crown to Byron; he might have bought it, perhaps, afterwards
at Salona, and the Greeks would have had a king for three
months, if he had not abdicated before, worthy of their classical
renown certainly, but not quite the man to disentangle, or divide
the political and social complications in which they were en
tangled. The beauty of Ithaca, visited at this time, seems to
have justified the persevering partiality of Ulysses for his island
kingdom; but there is an inexcusable piece of rudeness to the
abbot of a Greek convent on that island, recorded against Byron.
The poor man had received him with all the honour in his power
or knowledge, but proceeded, unluckily, to inflict an harangue of
such length and solemnity, that Lord Byron, who had missed
the indispensable siesta, broke into ungovernable wrath, and
abused his entertainer with much more emphasis than euphony,
from which his character, and wish to please, should certainly
have protected the abbot. No wonder that the astounded abbot
could find no better excuse for the conduct of the English peer
and poet than madness—“ Ecolo e matto poveretto.”
Mr. Trelawny left Lord Byron at Cephalonia, for he was long
in moving when once settled, and never saw him again in life.
Anxious to know something of the state of matters in the Morea,
the former passed over, accompanied by Mr. Hamilton Browne.
They found only confusion, intrigue, and embezzlement; and after
transacting a little business, his companion, Mr. Browne, went
to London, accompanying certain Greek deputies, who were comAA2
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Recollections of Shelley and Byron.
missioned to raise a loan there, which, wonderful to relate, they
succeeded in doing ; though the worthy stockbrokers could hardly
have been moved to liberality, or rather credulity, by their
classical sympathies; while Mr. Trelawny, quitting the Morea,
made for Athens, and joined a celebrated robber chief, who had
assumed political functions in the disturbed and anarchic state
of the country, and bore the classical name of Odysseus. In
January, 1824, Mr. Trelawny heard that Byron had gone to
Missolonghi, and then, that he was dead; worn out with fatigue,
anxiety, and disgust, his frame, already shattered by repeated
attacks of remittent fever, acquired during former residence in
the marsh-girt cities of Ravenna and Venice, succumbed in the
prime of life to the miasma which in greater or less intensity,
according to the season, constitutes the atmosphere of Misso
longhi. Mr. Trelawny was at Salona, but left for Missolonghi
directly, which he entered on the third day from his departure,
and found it “ situated on the verge of the most dismal swamp I
had ever seen.”
“ No one was in the house but Fletcher, who withdrew the black
pall and the white shroud, and there lay the embalmed body of the
Pilgrim—more beautiful even in death than in life. The contraction
of the skin and muscles had effaced every line traced by time or
passion; few marble busts could have matched its stainless white, the
harmony of its proportions, and its perfect finish. Yet he had been
dissatisfied with that body, and longed to cast its slough. How often
have I heard him curse it. I asked Fletcher to bring me a glass of
water; and on his leaving the room, to confirm or remove my doubts
as to the cause of his lameness, I uncovered the Pilgrim’s feet, and
was answered—both his feet were clubbed, and the legs withered to
the knee: the form and face of an Apollo, with the feet and legs of a
.sylvan satyr.”
The remaining chapters are exclusively autobiographical, and
are not without interest, for Mr. Trelawny’s name has become
historical in Gordon’s “ History of the Greek Revolution.” His
adventures are not commonplace; and his intimate connexion
with the family and fortunes of Odysseus afforded an opportunity
of seeing and knowing more of the wilder and worthier elements
of Romaic character than has fallen to the lot of any other edu
cated Englishman. For some time he held watch and ward in
the fortified, inaccessible cave on Mount Parnassus, where Odys
seus had placed his family and property, with a garrison of a few
men, and his brother-in-law, Mr. Trelawny, in command. He
was at last desperately wounded in a very treacherous manner,
by a Scotchman named Fenton, whom he had unduly trusted,
but who had been bribed to act as a spy on Odysseus and him
self, He tells his story, regardless of criticism, in a frank and
�Byron’s early Poetry.
357
candid manner; and it must be a captious critic indeed, who can
object to the consciousness of that superior physical strength and
vigour, which sustained with ease exertions that exhausted the
more delicate powers of the two celebrated companions, whose
names lend so much interest to his book, and to whose intel
lectual pre-eminence he renders respectful and affectionate
homage.
We have so recently recorded our opinions on Shelley’s
*
writings, that we shall now offer a few remarks on some portion
of Lord Byron’s poetry, which, with all its popularity, has not,
it appears to us, been always rightly estimated. He unaffectedly
repudiated the opinion so generally entertained, that he was the
hero of his own compositions—that the monotonous protagonists
of his early and brilliantly successful Eastern tales, no less than
the blase and reflective “ Childe,” or the fortunate and brilliant
“Don Juan,” were drawn from the inspiration of a too partial
egotism. We are inclined to believe in the sincerity of his pro
test, and to attribute to dramatic poverty the uniformity of his
characters, and to his own physical imperfection the bodily
strength and activity by which his heroes are so generally distin
guished. In those short pieces which were the fruits of his early
travels, and which at once attracted the attention of every reader
by the unequalled brilliancy of the language, we perceive the
immature judgment and the vehement sensation of his character;
the verse flows onward in a torrent of splendour, and a false lustre
is given to the passion whose fruit is ashes; beauty of form, and
the easy and over-valued achievements of physical courage, are
the artless and ordinary attractions of his actors; there is no
depth or refinement of character, no difficult invention; the
poems are but pictures of ordinary merit, in splendid frames.
But a deeper knowledge dawned upon him—a larger experience
of his own heart, though little of the actual world from which he
shrunk; and if he, as most men have done, regretted the delu
sions of the master-passion, and wished that the deception had
lasted for ever, or had never existed, yet his later strains, in their
deeper tone and wider sympathies, evince that better self-know
ledge, without which no man has successfully mapped even the
narrowest province of the human heart; for that knowledge is itself
but the evidence and the record of sufferings which the conflicts
of reason with passion must ever produce.
In the crude though not inharmonious products of his youth,
we see how little he had felt his strength, and how he was fettered
by the rules which had been the guide of his model and antithesis
Pope; nowhere does he dare to be original, and the spirit which
* Vide Number for January of this year.
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Recollections of Shelley and Byron.
dictated his first and weakest satire, was but the natural resent
ment of an Englishman who had no mind to he bullied: the mere
mechanical versification gives small promise of the matchless
powers which produced “ Don Juan ” and “ Beppo;” and in the
matter, there is nothing to warn us of that contemplative and
deeply poetical thought which is so apparent in the “Prophecy of
Dante,” and in the two later cantos of “ Childe Harold.” Even
those unequalled satiric powers which culminated in the “ Irish
Avatar,” are but shadowed, not developed, and the commonplace
abuse and half-affected contempt of his first satire are calculated
to produce a very different effect from the withering ridicule and
careless contempt which overwhelmed those who provoked the
displeasure of his later years.
The German critics, with a severity of taste that does them
honour, place the three great poets, whose names at once occur
to us—Homer, Shakspeare, and Goethe—so far above all rivalry,
as to accord to these alone that supremacy and universality of
intellect which we call poetic genius; and this may be just, but
the human mind is so constituted in its appreciation of poetry,
as sometimes to derive superior pleasure from strains which have
emanated from minds of far inferior order. We like best that
poetry which addresses most strongly and directly the prevailing
sentiments of our own characters; and hence thousands in whom
the finest of Homer’s rhapsodies, Shakspeare’s “ Tempest,” or
Goethe’s “ Iphigenia,” would awake no other sentiment than cool
admiration, would be moved to tears or to enthusiasm by Pindar,
Campbell, or Gray. It is no less certain that men of even the
keenest intellect merely, are not unfrequently deficient in poetic
taste and judgment. We know, for example, that Napoleon pre
ferred Ossian, and Robert Hall Virgil to Homer; and that
Lord Byron himself, utterly wanting in dramatic power, but little
appreciated the true strength of Shakspeare.
Poetry, indeed,
especially of the first order, must be felt in the heart as well as
judged by the head, and the greatest merit is least apparent to a
superficial glance; long study, contemplation, and comparison
are required to comprehend the consummate excellence of a
masterpiece, whether it be from the hand of Shakspeare or the
pencil of Raphael.
But if the very few of the first order of poets completely satisfy
all the requirements of the most refined and matured intellect,
the poetry of Lord Byron will always appeal strongly to those,
and they are not a few, whose passions, at some period of their
lives, have proved too strong for the control of reason, and where
regret, if not remorse, has followed the fruitless contest—a contest
which has left the mind vacant for want of strong excitement,
�Characteristics of Byron’s Poetry.
359
and wearied with a scene which offers no sufficient substitute for
what has been lost. Flashes of the melancholy wisdom which
follows on such experience are frequent in his later works, and
their deep, and perhaps not barren truth, may sink with some
thing of a healing and enlightening influence into hearts whose
scars are not yet callous.
There is, too, a strong and ardent reverence for the nobleness
of intellect, ever felt most strongly by those most highly endowed;
that reverence which, rightly considered, is the only true religion,
and a scorn, as strongly expressed, for the vulgar or tinsel idols
of mob idolatry.
His spirit had wrestled with itself in vain; the vehement and
unwise desire for something denied to mere mortality was his;
the self-condemnation of performance so grievously inadequate to
the lofty resolution, which more or less dwells in every heart,
rebelling against the sway of low desires, was strong upon him;
so that he hated life, and sought at first wildly, but afterwards
more calmly, to give that feeling utterance : but the “ voiceless
thought” could not so be spoken, and he, the most eloquent,
went to his grave without succeeding in the vain effort to
unburden his full heart. Not by words, however eloquent, can
man satisfy himself, or vindicate liis life to others. Consistent
action alone can satisfy the conscience, or justify us to our own
hearts; and when action is denied or unsought, we strive for the
relief, however inadequate, that words can furnish. Thus Chaucer:
“ For when we may not do, then will we speken,
And in our ashen colde, is fire yreken.”
Had any suitable career of action been open to him, or had he
lived in feudal times, he might have surpassed Bertrand de Born
in thirst for irregular warlike achievement, and in the strains that
celebrated it; the monotony of a modern.military career, and the
subordination which can recognise no superiority but professional
rank, where the opportunity of achievement is an accident, and
routine the rule of life, was utterly unsuited to his character and
his physical constitution. No better career offered to him than that
miserable one of Missolonghi, and here he gave evidence of a
moderation and self-command little to have been expected from
a man whose vanity and egotism were not less conspicuous than
his genius; this desire for an active career is translated into his
eastern stories, and his heroes are rather models of what he
wished to be, than what he was.
His forte, however, as he knew, was vivid description, varied
and illuminated by flashes of earnest thought, and the results of
a melancholy, if a short experience.
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Recollections of Shelley and Byron.
In sustained diamatic, or epic power, he was deficient; but
this is an imperial endowment, and, in his own language,
“ Not Hellas could unrol
From her Olympiads two such names.”
His “Manfred,” despite Mr. Moore’s crude criticism, is a dramatic
failure ; and when he calls this creation of Lord Byron’s “ loftier
and worse ” than Milton’s Satan, the critic shows how little of
the dramatic or epic element he must have himself possessed.
“ Manfred ” is not a great creation—he is but a dreamer, who,
finding no pleasure in an earthly pursuit, itself a morbid and
unhealthy feeling, strives to o’erpass the limits of mortality, and
to coerce the Spirits whom the elements obey. Such a desire, as
common as it was vain, before men had emerged from the super
stitious element of the middle ages, evinces no elevation or great
ness of character, and if with dauntless courage he defies the
spirits whom he had evoked by his spells, and provoked by his
contempt of their power, he does so as one who knows they
cannot injure him, and who seeks death rather than shuns it.
The great blot of the piece, however, is the doubt that encom
passes the fate of Astarte; the imagination can conceive no adequate
cause for the terrible implacability which could reign in the bosom
of a beatified spirit, and deny to a despairing brother one word
of consolation in his awful abandonment. If she could condemn
him, how can he be forgiven ?
Such a subject, however attractive to a writer of strong imagi
nation, and however promising in appearance, proves much more
difficult to treat adequately, if, indeed, it can ever be so treated
at all, than scenes and characters of a more earthly nature, where
strictly human agents appeal to a kindred reason and sympathy.
The communion of the supernatural with the natural has been
a favourite theme, and a certain stumbling-block, to the greatest
poets. Homei' succeeded best, because he invented little, taking
the materials within his reach—and his gods and goddesses are
but human beings, with a loftier physical and mental stature; it
was easy to introduce them implementing the inferior powers of
their favourite heroes, but we feel that, in all that should distin
guish the supernatural Being above the human nature, the greatest
of all, the tyrant Zeus, was inferior. Like some vulgar earthly
ruler, he uses his power but to gratify passions unworthy of
a God------ and the charm of divine beauty and celestial grace
which hovers for ever round the name of Aphrodite, is insufficient
to overcome the disgust with which we regard her threat to
Helena, when the latter indignantly refuses to return to her van
quished and fugitive paramour.
And when, in the “ Tempest,” Shakspeare introduces Ariel to-
�The Supernatural as an Element of Poetry.
361
delude and torment a set of drunken menials, or frighten a brutal
and ignorant drudge, he scarcely redeems the character of that
“ dainty” creation by his services in reconstructing the shattered
ship, or even in deceiving the wretches who were plotting the
death of the Duke. An inspired genius may walk through pro
prieties at will, as he so constantly does, but even Shakspeare
might have remembered in the “Tempest,” “NecDeus intersit,” &c.
When Goethe, following the popular superstition, introduces
the Devil, thinly disguised, as the companion and mentor of
Faust, he goes easily enough with the pair through the tempta
tions and the punishment of his neophyte and of Margaret—an
episode too common in daily life to require the Devil as its agent
—and Faust, when on the blasted heath he upbraids Mephisto
with the cruel fate of her he should have protected from all harm,
and curses himself as the dupe of a pitiless fiend, does but vent
the reproaches many a man has heaped on himself, shuddering, if he
had a conscience, at the cruel treachery which has rent a heart that
beat only for him. But when the great German leaves the popular
guide to invent a sphere of supernatural action, when Faust
appears in scenes where the author has no guide from tradition,
and subject to temptations of a less human character, we see how
little mere mortal wit can observe any semblance of probability,
or appearance of cohesion, in attempting that for which there is
no actual precedent in human experience. There is but one
Magician, and he has long laid aside all pretensions above morta
lity. Patient and sagacious interrogation of nature, in disclosing
the hidden properties of matter, has evoked powers which the
genii of the lamp might have envied, and wealth, which would
have satisfied the avarice of the alchemists.
The greatest can but draw the supernatural from knowledge of
the natural, and we have but human nature exaggerated in the
majority of instances; Shakspeare’s Ariel, and the spirits in
“Manfred” are nearly the only exceptions. Homer is greatest
where he describes the actions of men, and the submissive grace
and tenderness of women. Shakspeare stirs the heart, and
awakens our admiration most strongly when he depicts the
loving constancy of the gentler sex, and the masculine heroism of
Coriolanus or of Henry the Fifth. Goethe has an easy task when
he echoes the sarcastic mockery, or paints the demon heart of
Mephisto; but the master-hand is seen in the calm and natural
beauty of the “ Iphigenia,” and above all in his unequalled delinea
tion of the female nature; he who could draw such characters
as Gretchen, Clara, Mignon, and Adelheid von Weislingen, has
surpassed all others, Shakspeare himself, in this the most inte
resting province of observation and invention.
And Lord Byron, though he has clothed his demons with
�362
Recollections of Shelley ancl Byron.
majesty and power, though he has avoided the vulgar error of
too easily vanquishing evil by good, Satan by Abdiel, yet hardly
introduces these for purposes worthy their supernatural powers,
unless it be to justify the magnificent “ Hymn of the Spirits” in
worship round the throne of Ahrimanes.
In the first two cantos of “ Childe Harold,” the objective
element is strongly ascendant, written as they were at a period of
life when the world was still fresh, and the essential identity of
human nature, under all its phases, hardly appreciated. The
boundless command of his own language, and the liveliest sus
ceptibility to the beauty or grandeur of nature, produced a poem
which riveted immediately the attention of contemporaries, partly,
indeed, due to a comparative novelty of style, and the want of
sustained originality, in the poetry which immediately preceded
its publication; something too may have been owing to the lesser
preoccupation of the public by the floods of ephemeral and
amusing literature which dissipate the intellectual tastes of the
readers of our day. It is in the two latter cantos, and especially
the last, in which wTe find his powers completely matured, whether
reflective or descriptive. In these cantos he has carried those
important elements of poetry to their highest excellence, though
of invention, the test of the highest genius, we find no traces.
There is throughout a want of cohesion, if we consider “ Childe
Harold ” as an attempt at poetic creation, for the “ Childe” is a
voice, not a living pilgrim; but if we recognise Lord Byron him
self under an alias, narrating what he saw, and expressing in
just and vivid language what he felt, we have a poem, the various
merit of which it is difficult to over-estimate.
The vigour of description therein displayed is indeed without a
parallel; who has equalled, or even approached, the power displayed_ in stanzas 27, 28, 29 of the fourth canto ; in them we
see actually brought before us by the magical force of his lan
guage, the exquisite and fugitive beauties of an Italian sunset,
which would have mocked the pictorial art of Claude or Turner
to transfer to canvas. Mere words are made to appeal to the
mind more effectively than the consummate skill of the masters of
painting could appeal to the sense of vision. Even Homer is
here surpassed for a moment, for nowhere does he bring before
us so striking and so difficult a phase of nature’s ever-varying
countenance; not even in the familiar passage in the eighth
Rhapsody—
S’ or ev ovpavu aarpa (]>aeivi)v apuju (teXt]vt]v
<baivErai apLirpe7TEa. k. t. X.
though it well deserves the homage Byron pays it in the fourth
canto of the “ Prophecy of Dante”—
�Childe Harold.
363
a The kindled marble’s bust may wear
More poesy upon its speaking brow
Than aught less than the Homeric page may bear.”
In stanza 102, canto 3, we even seem to hear and see the
busy summer forest life of birds and insects in the woods of
Clarens, the rustle of the leaves in the early summer breath of
June, and the very plash of Alpine waterfalls; the beautiful
living solitude, unspoilt by the intrusion of man, comes before
us as if in spirit, or in a dream we were transported to the Swiss
wilderness ; it is transferred to paper as delicately and with truer
colouring than could have been effected by the calotype: but these
scenes in their quiet loveliness yet suggest reminiscences of the
world which the author and the reader have for a moment for
gotten, and the vigorous sketches of Gibbon and Voltaire, who
had long lived within sight of that beautiful scenery, come like
a cloud over the mind which had just been revelling in the
laughing sunshine of a Swiss landscape. Applied to graver
scenes, the same matchless power nearly rivals the merit of inven
tion, and when by the lake of Thrasymene (c. iv., w. 62, 63, 64),
he recals the strife that made Rome to reel on her seven-hilled
throne, and strove with inexorable fate to reverse her stern de
cree, the ancient battle comes before us as by a lightning-flash
darted into the abysses of the past; as the soldiers of Carthage
and of Rome pass before us in their deadly struggle.
Nothing can be more exquisite than the various harmony of
the stanzas from 86 to 104 of canto iii.: in these every variety of
emotion and of feeling is characterized; of admiration, reverence,
love, awe; and in the apostrophe to “ Clarens, sweet Clarens,”
that passion which he felt with so much of its earthly alloy is
exalted to a refinement almost unearthly, and to a dignity which
truly belongs to it, as in its purity the least selfish of human
desires.
Was there ever a tribute to the Divinity of Love so exquisite
as that contained in stanza 100 of canto iii.?—
“ O’er the flower
His eye is sparkling, and his breath hath blown
His soft and summer breath, whose tender power
Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour.”
Such language may fairly excite a rapturous admiration, resem
bling that which he professes, and only professes to have felt,
when beholding the marble loveliness of the Medicean Venus.
But in a different mood, and with feelings disappointed or
blunted, he afterwards recurs to this, the dream of youth, and the
disenchantment of maturity; and as a warning against the in
dulgence of that passionate and eager credulity, what homily or
�350
Recollections of Shelley and Byron.
worships his kind are hounded, as we have said, by the limita
tions which he knows are incident to humanity; idealize as he
may, he can never free himself of the belief that no perfect man
or woman has ever trod this planet. How, then, is it possible
that any one but the ignorant and unreflective can ever feel the
glow of genuine devotion when he bows himself to a being whose
nature he knows to have been but a fragmentary representative of
the ideal of man, or when he worships his best conception of this
ideal itself knowing it to be an idol of his own creation? These
fatal weaknesses of Positivism have no application to the Theist:
the fervour of his adoration is deadened by no secret conscious
ness that the object of his worship is marred with imperfection;
for however great and glorious may be the attributes he ascribes
to it, he feels assured that they are infinitely surpassed by the
Reality itself.
——
C7I
Art. II.—Recollections of Shelley
and
Recollections of the Last Lays of Shelley and Byron.
Trelawny. London: Edward Moxon. 1858.
Byron.
By E. J.
R. TRELAWNY has done well in giving this manly and
carelessly written little volume to the world: it will at least
revive the personal memory of two Englishmen who, though long
dead, can never be altogether of the past. Without telling much
of either with which we were not previously acquainted, the infor
mation communicated is the result of intimate personal know
ledge, and, gathered during the intervals of a familiar acquaint
ance, comes out with such freshness and vigour, that it possesses
nearly all the merit of novelty; and the striking features of cha
racter are brought forward in much stronger relief, than in the
tame and wearisome biography of which one at least was the
victim. It is the least enviable appanage of genius that it perpe
tuates by its own lustre those faults and weaknesses which repose
in the graves of meaner men; the biographer, even though a
friend, cannot ignore these; and while he avoids giving them
undue prominence, cannot forget that truth has its claims, as well
as genius.
We recognise Shelley in these sketches as he appeared in his
works—the gentle, guileless, noble soul who persisted in putting
himself wrong with the world, and who rashly and fearlessly
launched his indignant sarcasm at the cant and bigotry and sei-
M
�
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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Title
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Recollections of Shelley and Byron
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: p. 350-368 ; 22 cm.
Notes: Review essay of "Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron" by Edward John Trelawny. London: Edward Moxon, 1858. Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Westminster Review 13 (April 1858).
Publisher
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[s.n.]
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1858
Identifier
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CT42
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[Unknown]
Subject
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Book reviews
Poetry
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Recollections of Shelley and Byron), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
English Poetry
George Gordon Byron
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Poetry in English
Romantic Poetry
-
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558239e8d47f0d8894988ea861c4aaca
PDF Text
Text
‘
RECENT MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE.
441
we think, redeems Motley from all misconstruction, placing him in
the position of nn unjustly treated public servant.
This memoir is the simple expression of tender and fervid
friendship, not without fair discrimination, by one who loved its
subject for high and fine qualities, with which his own nature can
sympathize. The author calls it only an outline, which may be of
service to a future biographer. No other hand than his own should
venture to complete it.
Mr. Conway appends to his name on the title-page of “ Demon
ology and Devil-Lore ” his degree-mark of B. D. of Divinity Col
lege, Harvard University. He omits a motto. We suggest “Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens.” He would scornfully ask if it is
not plain on every page that he worships no false gods ? Perfectly
so, and equally plain, for all the pages show that he worships no
gods at all. Granted that he may have convinced himself that the
religion of our day is a “ creed outworn.” Then, if he attacks it, it
is his duty to commend a substitute. At least, let him not deal
bitterly or sneeringly with “the fair humanities of old religion.”
For millions these are still the breath of life. If the writer really
believes Christianity to be a superstition, he will not strive to scoff
men out of it any more than he would wish to frighten them into it.
The double title of the book denotes a distinction between its
subjects. Devils are not demons. They differ in age, demons
being the eldest creation of human fancy and fear. They differ in
character, the acts of demons being impelled by the necessity of
their nature, while devils work with a malignant will. As the au
thor states the distinction, the first personate the obstacles with
which men have had to contend in the struggle for existence, as
hunger, cold, destructive elements, darkness, disease. The latter
represent the history of the moral and religious struggles through
which churches and priesthoods have had to pass.
The idea of -a personal spirit of evil is the correlative of that of
a personal divinity. The primal thought of man that imaged the
last as a source of good must have been driven by the evil in nature
to shape the first as its cause.
One race copied or inherited the thought from another, and re
ligion followed religion in adapting it to its needs. This principle
of dualism is carefully traced out by the author through a varied
series of legends and impersonations. We look in vain, however,
for the ultimate statement of the matter, which is really this : The
origin of evil has nowadays almost ceased to be discussed. Evil is
�442
THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.
held either to be permitted by the Supreme Being as a discipline,
or, less theologically and more scientifically, to be the clinging taint
and weakness of the lower order of things out of which humanity
has emerged. In either case there is no need of a personal evil
spirit, and none the less need of a guiding divinity, for whom the
author seems to find no place.
The author traces the modern idea of an evil spirit to the con
flict of religions. Nothing is more normal, in ancient systems, he
says, than the belief that the gods of other nations are devils. When
the new religious system prevails, the old idol is treated with re
spect, and assigned some function in the new theologic regime.
The logic of this theory does not recommend it; but it is ingenious
ly carried out through speculations too subtile to be even summa
rized. In the course of them many traditions of our religion, now
conceded to be myths, are handled with the needless irreverence
and obtrusive contempt which weaken the author’s hold on the read
er’s convictions.
Ingenious, however, and elaborate, his book certainly is. Its
researches present the story of every kind of goblin, imp, specter,
dragon, and thing that walketh in darkness, that has made human
life piteous since it began. It is rich in curious legends and myths
of the darker sort, and it is a startling proof of the halting prog
ress of mankind, that some of the most ancient and horrible of
these superstitions, as the dread of the vampire and the were-wolf,
prevail at this day in certain parts of Europe.
Few women could employ the evening of a life in tracing the
remembrances of its early prime more agreeably than Mrs. Kemble
does. Her story ends abruptly, dramatically, with the words “1
was married at Philadelphia, on the 7th of June, 1834, to Mr.
Pierce Butler, of that city.” Scarcely more than a third of hex
conscious and active life is represented by those twenty-five years.
Yet there is nothing immature in this girlhood. It is filled with
little incidents, bright people, clever sayings. There is not much
sentiment, but plenty of honest, hearty family affection. The whole
memoir is so spirited, sunny, and confidential, that one reads it.
twenty pages at a time, with the kind of interest felt in reading a
piay.
The book is a record in substance as well as by its title. Soon
after her return to England from a French seminary, an acquaint
ance grew up between Miss Kemble and a Miss H----- S----- ,
which on their separation was continued by correspondence. Her
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
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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
[Demonology and Devil-Lore]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [New York, NY]
Collation: 441-442 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review, by an unknown reviewer, of Moncure Conway's work 'Demonology and Devil-Lore' from North American Review,128, April 1879.
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[s.n.]
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[1879]
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G5605
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[Unknown]
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Book reviews
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work ([Demonology and Devil-Lore]), 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
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Demonology
Moncure Conway
-
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a9264985b5030a6b5dbbf72f244431f0
PDF Text
Text
The Bookseller, Feb. 1, 1879. ____________________________________
Handbook of Drawing. By William Walker,
Ictur^ and Teacher of Free-hand Drawing in
Owens College, &c. With upwards of 200 Woodcuts and Diagrams. (Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.)—Everthing that a tyro in the art of drawing can reasonably ask for, in the way of oral
instruction, is provided in a useful little manual.
The drawing-master treats him as a creature
endowed with brains, as well as ambitious of
deftly handling the pencil and chalk. From one
thing to another, he leads him on ; from purely
technical rules and instructions, to the more
refined elements of the art, which everyone must
master who would pass from a mere dauber or
copyist to the higher sphere of an artist. When
the pupil has learnt to draw straight and curved
lines, and shade his surfaces so as to look as
like nature as he can make them, he is instructed
in the subtler secrets of proportion, symmetry,
and character in art work; in taste, style, and
“ motive ; ” a word which we gladly welcome as
naturalised at last in our art-language. Per
spective also is sufficiently illustrated for the
purposes of free-hand drawing. The diagrams
are generally good. A little more graphic force,
and a little less conventionality, particularly in
examples of leafage and tree-drawing, would
make the illustrations really excellent.
Demonology and Devil Lore. By Moncure
D. Conway, M.A. Two Vols., with numerous
Illustrations. (Chatto and Windus.)—In a work
full of curious and recondite learning, the history
of demon worship is traced back to its rightful
origin, as the complement of the solar myth ; and
the offspring of the prevalent notion affirming
the existence of the dual and antagonistic
principles of Good and Evil in nature. Starting
from this point, the author,in great detail, discusses
the many forms assumed by the Devil of human
imagination in his sinister and deadly influences
inimical to mankind, as animals, serpents,
dragons, and what not. The mortal strife main
tained between the Deity and the Demon under
various aspects is traced from one myth to
another, concluding with more modem manifes
tations of a similar character, as in witchcraft,
sorcery, and the Faust and Mephisto legend.
We shall return to the subject when we can
command space more adequate to its vast im
portance and engrossing interest.
The Dramatic Works of G. E. Lessing. Trans
feted from the German.
Edited by Ernest
Bell, M.A. With a Short Memoir by Helen
Zimmern. Two Vols. (George Bell and Sons.)
—Lessing, the parent of modern German
thought, the master to whom Goethe, Schiller,
and many others looked up with imitative
Ireverence, is gradually making his way in
England, through recent translations of his
works and Mr. Sime’s Memoir. The more he
is known the better will he be appreciated.
Miss Zimmern has condensed into a few pages
the particulars of his life. Art and literature
were its predominant occupations. His treatise
on the Laocoon group established his reputation
as an art critic. The limits he drew between
painting and poetry have taken their place
among the canons of art which may be
regarded as axiomatic. A project for the
1 or .noiii
proves. The order of their composition, in
point of date, has been inverted, for no very
J Y397 on
it bus zsib
sufficient reason we think ; three tragedies and
B -haoaiq
a dramatic poem, “ Nathan the Wise,” preced
|■ •ratal js :
ing the comedies, although composed at a later
1iiiolsO
period. “ Sara Sampson " and “ Emilia Galotti ”
Ikmsa n
among the tragedies, and “ Minna Von Barn
helm ” as a comedy, will always hold their own
1 nwo trarl
I aqjsdiaq
as works of genuine art, although not perhaps
I sit ritiv
of the very first order; for, except with the
■ bus stcti
work of the Immortals, the lapse of time and
I tairrqoq
change of manners seriously affect the popular
I elttii sro
estimate of such things. But with some little
| e'gniazsJ
allowance made on this account, Lessing's
| nrarii lo
dramas are very readable. Several of them
now appear for the first time in English.
I sWjS.
The Englishman's Critical and Expository Bible
: .veil 9flj
Cyclopedia. Compiled and Written by the Rev.
A. R. Fausset, M.A., Rector of St. Cuthbert’s, , I.e'iisddJi
! labboH)
York, &c. Illustrated by 600 Woodcuts. (Hodder
R lo iroiaivi
and Stoughton.)—In these days of the division of
I dona lo
literary, as of all other labour, a work of such
' ,naq algn
magnitude as this, emanating from a single pen,
E gni'isvsar
entitles its author to the praise of persevering
modal 9£
industry. It has cost him, he tells us, the labour
of seven years. His predominant idea in under- 1 I -labrm ni
I bairuml fl
taking it was to put Bible students, both learned
and unlearned, in possession of the fruits of 1 lo giirnl
aril efriJS’
modern criticism and research, as regards the
historical and other external features of Scrip l-qrio2 lo
J bus Isnh:
ture, while also conveying “ those doctrinal and
experimental truths which the written word it |->r biovz 1
self contains.” The results of the Palestine f enitaeisT
laristam
Exploration supplied him with fresh material
bus yriqsfor elucidating obscure points of topography and
.gedomea:
history. Egyptian and Assyrian researches,
-noo emo;
also, are not overlooked, nor the welcome con
srit lo ya
firmation they afford to the accuracy of the
rfaflgnS ,1
sacred writers. Other commentators, English
and German, have been made available in clear ! -rselo ni 9
banistnoo
ing away difficulties. The information contained
ni .yllsoit!
in the Cyclopaedia is arranged alphabetically, in
sfllii ano'
pages of three columns, the numerous little
.ixst orii.
wood-engravings taking their place in the text.
aloihts dor
Scripture references are worked into each article
iHSitoqnii
as they are required; notices of more important
personages running into short biographies inter i-i91ni g9id
oiiosbib b
woven with reflections of a moral and didactic
bns Insia
character. Readers of Ultra-Protestant and
noitansfq:
Calvinistic views will appreciate the explanation
ynsm lo li
of doctrinal matters. In his treatment of many
controverted passages of Scripture, the author 1 Toriins ad
decidedly adopts the literal interpretation. The adT .noil
"'mirmnaili
reader may be interested to find the “Millennium
discussed as a future event; “ Antichrist and bus " tarn
“ Babylon ” are explained, in a somewhat obso ■-ogdo tariv
,dismal al
lete sense, as the Church of Rome. We remark,
with some surprise, the absence of “ Grace . as l as "aosiO
the title of a separate article. And in the article I aloiiis aril
.
on the “Holy Ghost,” His “procession” in ani "noiaas
eternity, from the Father and the „Son, is !Jai ,no2 a
strangely confused with His “ Mission to the J adl ol "n<
Apostles after Christ’s Ascension.
Elizabeth Eden. A Novel in Three Volumes. By [ y8[ .sonuri
M. C. Bishop. (Low and Co.)—“ Love is too boot si 9V0,
strong to die. Elizabeth bowed her head on his S aid no hsoi
breast. She could not say anything definite in Fni ofinrteb
her sense of overpowering devotion to her I had ot no
ro,.
'>
. -'S
r-.l 4-1-ia -• '_1e story _ of j to
-T-^-7
_
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Demonology and Devil-lore
Description
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: Unnumbered page ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A short review of Moncure Conway's work 'Demonology and Devil-lore' from 'The Bookseller, February 1st, 1879. Reviewer not named. Printed in double columns. Bottom of page torn off but does not affect the text of the Conway review.
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1879
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G5594
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[Unknown]
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Book reviews
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Demonology and Devil-lore), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Demonology
Moncure Conway
-
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Conway’s Sacred Anthology.
191
attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable ; let him rather rest
at a point where faith supplements instead of conflicting
with reason; and with the reverence, more especially his own,
which forbids him to close his soul against the spiritual
influences he dimly but intensely feels around him, let him
combine that other form of reverence, born of the loyal
search for scientific truth, which equally forbids all prema
ture claim to have pushed back the boundaries of the
*
unknown.
Ernest Myers.
TIL—CONWAY’S SACRED ANTHOLOGY.
Col
lected and edited by Moncure Daniel Conway. London :
Triibner and Co. 1874.
The Sacred Anthology, a Book of Ethnical Scriptures.
When Demetrius Phalereus was forming the royal library
at Alexandria, he recommended Ptolemy Philometor to pro
cure from Jerusalem a copy of the laws of the Jews. Whe
ther or not we trust the plea of their divine origin with
which Josephus has credited him,-|- it seems clear that the
great confluence of religions in the third century B.C. at the
meeting-point between the East and West, was beginning to
attract considerable attention. How far Demetrius carried
his intention of “making a collection of all the books
throughout the world,” it is no longer within the power of
the historian to trace. Had the communities of Hindus and
Persians been sufficiently numerous, it is possible, as Ewald
* Since writing the above, 1 have been interested to find the following pas
sage in Mr. J. S. Mill’s Autobiography (p. 39). Speaking of his father, James
Mill, he says: “He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil
was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and
righteousness. His intellect spurned the subtleties by which men attempt
to blind themselves to this open contradiction. The Sabaean or Manichaean
theory of a Good and an Evil Principle, struggling against each other for the
government of the universe, he would not have equally condemned ; and I have
heard him express surprise that no one revived it in our time. He would have
regarded it as a mere hypothesis; but he would have ascribed to it no deprav
ing influence.”
+ Jos. Ant. xii. 4.
�192
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
has suggested * that the sacred writings of these races also
might have been gathered and translated at the same time.
The opportunity, however, slipped away, and no further
efforts seem to have been made in the study of comparative
religion. But the influence of the wide culture of the Alex
andrian schools was not wholly lost, and re-appears in the
first Apologists for Christianity. The doctrine of the “ Sper
matic Word” enabled them to look with genial eyes upon
every attempt to arrive at the knowledge of divine things :
they did not desire to claim for one race alone the exclusive
possession of the oracles of God; they eagerly welcomed
the testimonies to their own truths which had fallen from
the lips of the wise and good in other ages and in other lands ;
“whatever things,” affirmed Justin Martyr, “have been
rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians ;-fand Clement attributed inspiration to' Plato or Cleanthes
as readily as to Moses or Isaiah. £ The fall of Rome, the
Mohammedan conquests, the decay of Western learning, all
contributed to disperse completely what little interest had
ever been felt in the Oriental faiths ; and Protestantism in
its turn, founded on the finality of the Bible, reversed the
scepticism of the Pharisees of old, and was unwilling to
believe that any good thing could come from anywhere but
Nazareth. Only here and there some mind of rarer insight
and elevation, like Cudworth’s, detected the broken har
monies of a “symphony of religions” which it was reserved
for a later day to rescue from the confusion of tongues in
which it at first appeared wholly lost.
In India, indeed, the experiment had been already tried.
In the sixteenth century, the Emperor Akbar gathered round
him at his court at Delhi, Jews and Christians, Brahmans
and Zoroastrians. Week by week the learned of all deno
minations assembled at the palace to discuss the most intri
cate questions of theology. Nights and days alike were
spent in investigation, and the august student displayed a
spirit of inquiry which was in truth fundamentally opposed
to every Islamitic principle, and excited the gravest disap
proval of one of the contemporary historians of his feign.
The result of the imperial researches was in the highest
* History of Israel, Vol. V. p. 251.
+ Cohort, vi.
+ Second Apology, xiii.
�Conway’s Sacred Anthology.
193
degree disastrous in the eyes of this worthy Mohammedan.
“ There gradually grew, as the outline on a stone, the con
viction in his heart that there were sensible men in all reli
gions” ! Well indeed might the believer ask, “ If some true
knowledge were thus everywhere to be found, why should
truth be confined to one religion, or to a creed like the
Islam, which was comparatively new, and scarcely a thou
sand years old ? why should one sect assert what another
denies? and why should one claim a preference without
having superiority conferred on itself?”*
These questions have not yet wholly ceased to perplex
some minds nearer home. Vague and indefinite ideas about
revelation still obscure “ the true light which lighteth every
man that cometh into the world;” and it is probable that
no better contribution to liberal theology could be made at
the present day than a collection of the best utterances of
morality and faith produced by other races and creeds such
as Mr. Conway has aimed at compiling. In the East alone,
the labours inaugurated by Anquetil du Perron and Sir Wil
liam Jones a century ago, have already proved marvellously
fruitful; and the study of comparative philology has paved
the way for the no less important study of comparative
religion. The soundness of the scholarship of Sir William
Jones remains, we believe, unimpeached, and those who
have followed in his steps have simply extended, without
having to correct, his discoveries. Du Perron’s work, how
ever, has not stood equally well the test of subsequent ex
plorations in the same field. His unwearying energy and
splendid devotion brought the Zend Avesta to light; but
the progress which has since been made in the knowledge
of Zend has to some extent thrown doubt upon the trust
worthiness of his translation; and as Mr. Conway gives his
readers no precise marginal references, it is to be regretted
that he has nowhere stated how far he has availed himself
of it. But the Brahmanic and Zoroastrian religions are not
the only Oriental faiths which have established themselves
on sacred books. Within fifty years Buddhism has gene
rated a literature which threatens to rival its own canon in
voluminousness ; and the writings of Lao-tsze and Confucius
* Badaoni, quoted by Max Muller, Introduction to the Science of Religion,
p. 89.
�194
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
are yielding up their meaning to the indefatigable deter
mination of recent investigators. From Mr. Conway’s cata
logue of authorities, however, we miss some familiar names,
such as those of Eugene Burnouf and Stanislas Julien ; nor
can it be said that this miscellaneous list at the end of the
volume compensates for the want of exact indications of
the sources from which the separate passages have been
derived.
The materials which modern inquiry has placed at the
disposal of the compiler of a sacred anthology, are indeed
embarrassing from their extent and variety. But if they
are to throw any light on the inner relations of different
religions to one another, they ought to be carefully sifted and
methodically grouped. These requirements we cannot think
that Mr. Conway’s collection satisfactorily fulfils. It appears
deficient in principles both of choice and of arrangement.
A glance at the subjoined table will shew the range of
*
nationalities which have contributed to it. Mr. Conway has
wisely passed the limits which he seemed at first sight to
impose on himself by the use of the term “ Scriptures,” and
has for the most part drawn his “testimonies” from a much
wider area. But it is to be regretted that he has adhered
to the canonical restrictions in some cases and not in others.
The numerous Persian poets who supply so many charming
fancies and wise apothegms would no doubt be the first to
disclaim the faintest supposition of rivalry with the Pro
phet, yet here they meet on equal terms. Three millenniums
divide the Dabistan from the Zend Avesta, but in Mr. Con
way’s pages they stand side by side; the fables of Hito* The following table is a rough classification of the passages ascribed to each
religion or nationality :
3
Sabzean..................... ..............
Persian (Mohammedan) .. . 185
Tartar ..................... ..............
2
Hindu (Brahmanic).......... . 140
1
African..................... ..............
Hebrew, Old Test, in- ) 1 AK
1
Chaldzean................. ..............
eluding the Apocrypha )
English..................... ..............
1
Christian ........................... . 102
1
Japanese................... ..............
Buddhist ........................ . 49
Russian..................... ..............
1
Arabian (Mohammedan) .. . 44
Syrian ..................... ..............
1
. 40
Chinese...............................
Theurgists ............. ..............
Parsi .................................. . 30
1
Unknown ................. ..............
Talmud........... ................... . 12
1
—
Scandinavian .................. . 12
4
Total................. .............. 740
Egyptian ........................... .
Turkish ........................... .
4
�Conway's Sacred Anthology.
-
195
pades& take their place along with the hymns of the Rig
Veda and the laws of Manu ; and the chronicles of Ceylon
are on a par with the sermons of Buddha. The cordon, which
is relaxed for the Mohammedans and the Parsis, the Brah
mans and the Buddhists, is tightly drawn for the Christians,
whose literature is apparently regarded as complete with
the last book of the New Testament. Yet it may be doubted
whether, among ordinary readers, Augustine, Tauler, and
Pascal are so much better known than Sadi or V^mana, as
to justify their entire exclusion and if the Imitatio Christi
was too familiar, some of the old Latin hymns might have
represented a spirit of devotion unknown in the East. It
is probably the same fear of intruding upon his readers what
they were already acquainted with, which has led Mr. Con
way to ignore the poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome
altogether. Happily this dread did not compel the psalm
ists and apostles to be silent also ; but no other cause could
have kept out Homer and let in the Eddas
.
*
Yet Sophocles
is at least as well worth reading, and almost as little read,
as Hafiz; it is difficult to see why Marcus Aurelius should
be unheard while Vladimir II. is permitted to speak; the
extracts from the Gospels, under the head of the “ Ethics
of the Intellect,” might well have been supplemented with
passages from the Apology of Socrates ; Plutarch or Seneca
could have furnished maxims quite as good as those of
Turkey, Japan, or England; and in the section entitled
“ Sanctions,” we look in vain for one of Plato’s wonderful
myths, such as that of Er the son of Armenius. Nor can
we think that Mr. Conway does justice to the oldest civilis
ation in the world, in omitting all reference to the Egyptian
“ Book of the Dead.” It may be that the doctrine of im
mortality appears there in a form <too pronounced for his
taste ; but the remarkable conceptions of personal and social
duty implied in the confessions of the soul before the fortytwo assessors in the “Hall of the Two Truths” deserve
recognition in any work which is designed like this to secure
a wider appreciation for “the converging testimonies of ages
and races to great principles.” The mystic sayings of Hermes
Trismegistus”* are pallid and obscure by the side of the
vows and aspirations of the funeral ritual so touchingly
called the “ Book of the Manifestation to Light.”
CLVII.
VOL. XI.
P
�196
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
Of hardly less importance, however, than the selection of
the ethnical Scriptures is their classification. If the object
is to enable the reader to compare together different types
of religion, the quotations ought snrely to be arranged ac
cording to the faiths from which they spring; and extracts
taken from works separated by a long range of time should
be set as far as possible in chronological order, so as to
exhibit the phases of development through which any par
ticular religion has passed. Mr. Conway, however, has pre
ferred a division by subjects rather than by creeds; and has
gathered his materials under the somewhat Emersonian
titles of “ Laws,” “ Nature,” “ Character,” “ Conduct of Life,”
and the like. An arrangement of this kind might have been
advantageously combined with a classification according to
religions, if a few well-defined orders of thought had been
adopted. The opening section of “ Laws,” however, contains
precepts upon every variety of virtue, and deals largely
with “ Charity,” “ Love,” and “ Humility between “ Wis
dom” and “ Knowledge,” “ Religion,” “ Theism,” and “ Wor
ship,” it is somewhat difficult to draw any clear line ; and
these headings do not facilitate the inquirer in ascertaining
whether any given passage is included. This task is, indeed,
rendered harder by the absence of any table of sources. To
each extract a title is prefixed, and of these, it is true, a list
is supplied; but (to take instances only from the Christian
Scriptures) not every one would seek for the parable of the
owner of the vineyard and his two sons under the desig
*
nation, “ The Established Church,” nor would many divine
that “ Demand for a Cause” signified the story of the young
ruler who went away sorrowful, having made what Dante
called “ the great refusal.” To any one, therefore, who takes
up the volume for the first time, the index of titles is almost
useless; and the book is simply a mass of citations, many
of them of high moral and religious value, but unavailable
for critical comparison, and beyond the reach of verification.
Mr. Conway has apparently, however, desired to provide
his readers with some little apparatus which should help
their judgment, and has accordingly appended a series of
Chronological Notes on the various works which have sup
plied him with quotations. But the information imparted
* With the connected discourses, Matt. xxi. 23—32.
�Conway's Sacred Anthology.
197
must be said to be exceedingly meagre: to those who are
already acquainted with Oriental literature it is superfluous,
while to the uninitiated it is tantalisingly inadequate. The
Chinese books are dealt with first; but though Lao-tsze and
*
Confucius- were the founders of religions entirely distinct,
no hint is afforded us of their divergence. The list of Parsi
writings extends over a period of three thousand years, but
we look in vain for any estimate of the relations between
the Zend Avesta and the Dabistan at its two extremes. It
would be perhaps needless to discriminate the Sama Veda
and the Yagur Veda from the Pig Veda (the Atharva Veda
does not appear at all); but some indication of the epic
character of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata would
have been acceptable. But the obliteration of all distinc
tions between the authoritative books of an established
religion and works of poetry or history, ought not to have
caused any confusion between the literatures of rival faiths.
Among the Hindu writings, however, between the Vedas and
the laws of Manu, three works are enumerated which are not
Hindu at all, but Singhalese—not Brahmanic, but Buddhist.
The Mahavamsa, placed by Mr. Conway about B.C. 477—
459, is a kind of royal chronicle, different parts of which
bear different dates. The language in which it is written is
not the Sanskrit of the Vedas, but the Pali of the Buddhist
Scriptures. The author or compiler of the first thirty-seven
chapters was Mah&nama, the uncle of Dhatusena, king of
Ceylon from 459 to 477 A.D.; the next section, written by
a priest named Dharmakirti, carried down the history to
1267; and a third hand has concluded it at 1758. The
Raja-Waliya, which Mr. Conway ascribes to the fourth cen
tury B.C., is of uncertain age; but the oldest portion of it
is probably not so old as the corresponding part of the Mah&vamsa. The same date is affixed to the Raja-Ratnakara,
though the Singhalese in which it is written is of a more
modern form than that of the Raja-Waliya already named.
The author was a certain Abhaya-Raja, who lived about the
middle of the sixteenth century of our era I Even Upham’s
translation, included by Mr. Conway among his “ principal
authorities,” if not altogether trustworthy, would at least
* Mr. Conway separates them by an interval of a century and a quarter.
Max Muller, however, and other writers speak of them as at any rate during a
part of their lives contemporary.
P 2
�198
Conway’s Sacred Anthology.
have enabled him to assign these works to their proper
place among the Buddhist writings, subsequent to the col
lection of the “ Three Baskets.”*
The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures hardly meet with
more satisfactory treatment. Of the Pentateuch we are told
that “ the tendency of modern criticism is to the conclusion
that a large number of very ancient fragments, historical,
legendary and poetic, were sifted, fused, or to use Ewald’s
expression, compounded, into the books which we now have ;
and that they assumed their present shape in the eleventh
century B.C.” The primitive document which lies at the
foundation of the books of Genesis and Exodus may possibly
be ascribed to the period of Samuel, or placed a little later
than that of Solomon. But if Mr. Conway had taken the least
pains to acquaint himself with the views of Ewald, he could
hardly have overlooked the fact that that great historian, in
common with the vast majority of recent critics, postpones the
completion of the Pentateuch till after the composition of
the book of Deuteronomy, which he assigns to the seventh
century.-f- Nor have subsequent investigators contented
themselves with leaving the question there. Prof. Russell
Martineau, in accordance with the views of some of the
Dutch scholars, has shewn in the pages of this Review J that
there is good ground for believing that a large portion of the
Levitical legislation did not come into existence before the
return from the captivity. If the Pentateuch is thus brought
to the front too early, the book of Job seems not admitted
till too late. Its date is, it is true, somewhat difficult to
determine: Mr. Conway, however, adopts a view of its origin
* See “Le Bouddha et sa Religion,” by M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, pp.
327, 328. We do not know exactly what use has been made by Mr. Conway
of Upham’s translation ; but its grave deficiencies might have been corrected by
the work of Tumour, which, though incomplete, is of far higher value. The
further dates assigned to such books asDhammapada (246 B.C.) and Kuddhaka
P&tha (250 B.C.) must likewise be received with some caution. The White
Lotus of the Good Law is also referred to the year 246 B.C.; it is not, like
Dhammapada and Kuddhaka P&tha, included in the “Three Baskets” acknow
ledged in Ceylon, which do not appear to have been reduced to writing till about
88 B.C ; it is in Sanskrit, not Pali; but it does not seem possible to fix the
year of its production with precision.—As I have been unable to resort to stan-'
dard works on this subject, I must express my obligations for the greater part
of my information to T. Rhys Davids, Esq., late of Ceylon.
+ History of Israel, I. p. 127, IV. p. 220, sqq.
J Theol. Rev. for Oct. 1872, p. 474, sqq.
�Conway's Sacred Anthology.
199
which prevents him from finding a place for it till after the
Jews had been brought in contact with some of the nations
of the East in the sixth century. In the margin of the
section “ Sorrow and Death,” where an abridgement of it
*
appears, he characterises it as “ Hebrew or Persian.” This
designation is explained in the Chronological Notes by the
statement that it is a version probably of a Persian form of
a Brahmanic story of similar character. As well might we
say that Hamlet was a “version” of a French form-f- of a
Danish tale. If there be any book in the Old Testament
which bears the stamp of strong individual genius, surely it
is the book of Job. It stands entirely outside of the limits
of pure Mosaism, but it is Semitic and not Aryan. Its
author was not shut up in the domestic politics or faith of
Israel; but it was from the wisdom of Teman and the civi
lisation of Egypt that he drew much of his argument and
his imagery. The Satan who presents himself among the
sons of God bears no resemblance to the Zoroastrian Ahri
man ; and the story of his ineffectual endeavours to prove
that Job did not “serve God for nought” may have been
the common property of the wide East as that of Othello
was of Europe, but it needed a Hebrew Shakspeare to weld
it into the earliest, and in some respects the greatest, tragic
drama of the world. With the same want of critical per
ception (as we must consider it), Mr. Conway cites the open
ing and the closing chapters of the book of Isaiah as if they
all alike came from the same pen ; and upon this principle
compiles into one passage verses from oracles against Philistia, against Moab, and against Babylon, separated by
nearly two centuries. The result is described as “The
Tyrant’s Fall/’J For this, perhaps, the wretched divisions
of our English Bible are in part responsible; but this plea
does not excuse a similar treatment of soma, of the Psalms.
Who would think it fair if some continental collector were
to put together stanzas from Milton, Wesley, and Faber, and
present the compound as a specimen of an English hymn ?
We may pass over Mr. Conway’s notices of the Septua* P. 393, sqq.
+ That of the novelist Belleforest.
J dcx. , made up apparently from Is. xiii. 2, 3, 11, 12, xiv. 7, 12, 16, 26,
30, and xvi. 5.
>
’
’
�200
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
gint and the Apocrypha, as they are of slight importance ;
*
but graver issues are raised by his views of the growth of
the New Testament. The Apocalypse, the book of Acts,
and the Epistles of Paul, are the only books which he saves
for the first century. The judgment which treats the book
of Revelation and the letters of Paul as the earliest Christian
documents which we possess, is no doubt a sound one ; but
its correctness seems almost fortuitous, for the next sentence
sweeps away the Epistles to the Ephesians, the Galatians,
the Colossians, and Timothy (together with that to the
Hebrews and those bearing the names of Peter, James, John
and Jude), as of uncertain date and apocryphal authorship.
Why the Epistle to the Galatians should be thus boldly
struck out, we are at a loss to conceive ; the hardiest critics
(with the exception of Bruno Bauer *-) have never ventured
f
to impugn its authenticity; and it is difficult to know on
what grounds it should be thrown overboard while the Epistle
to the Philippians is retained. A still stronger reversal of
accepted decisions is to be found in the priority assigned to
the book of Acts. If there is any point on which all schools
are agreed, it surely is that this book supplemented, instead
of preceding, the Gospel of Luke. Mr. Conway, however,
thinks otherwise. In virtue, perhaps, of the narrative of
the voyage of Paul to which the use of the first person lends
so fresh an air, he reserves a place for this work among the
earliest productions of the primitive church. The four Gos
pels are all relegated into the second century, that of Mat
thew being referred to its first quarter, that of Mark being
set down near its last, while intermediate positions are pro
vided for those of Luke and John. This theory, however,
brings down the composition of the Gospel of Mark hazard* Mr. Conway places the version of the Septuagint in the year 250 B.C. It
is, however, clear that the translation was not made all at once ; but the point
is of minor interest except as it helps us to fix the date of the book of Wisdom,
the author of which seems to have been acquainted with the Greek rendering
of the Pentateuch and Isaiah. The period assigned by Mr. Conway (B.C. 250
—300) would thus appear to be too early.—The “four books of Esdras, ranging
from B.C. 150—31,” are in reality only two. The Vatican MS. contains two
books of Esdras, the first being the book known by that name in our Apocrypha,
and the second being the canonical Ezra. In the Vulgate, however, the canon
ical Ezra stands first; Nehemiah is designated the second book of Esdras; what
we know as the first book of Esdras follows in the third place; and the so-called
second book, of which no Greek text exists, comes fourth and last.
f Davidson’s Introduction to the New Testament, I. p. 101.
J
-Sj'
'.f
3
�SECOND EDITION, NOW READY.
SACRED ANTHOLOGY
THE
j
i. 'ilif r.f ■!
a
BOOK OF ETHNICAL SCRIPTURE^
BY MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY.
Triibner & Co., Ludgate Hill.
The second edition of this work contains an Index of Authors,
in addition to the Index of Subjects, List of Authorities, &c.,
and the Chronological Notes
carefully revised.
The book contains 740 Readings from the Asiatic and Scan
dinavian Sacred Books and Cla^jfes, arranged according to
subjects in 480 pages royal 8vo, with marginal notes.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
It is certainly instructive to see the essential agreement of so many
venerated religious writings, though for depth of meaning and classicality
of form none of them approaches the HebrewSfcmd Christian Scriptures.
The idea of the work is arj^cellentone, and Mr. Conway deserves great
credit for being the first to realise it.— We^^B^i^keview.
It remains for us to point out so^ of the remarkable coincidences
in the principles of morals and reli||on which Mr. Conway’s diligence
and tact have brought together. HillaMand Confucius enunciated the
safhe warning in almost the same words—“ WhaWou do not wish done
to yourself do not to others.” Beneath a tropic sky, the flamingoes and
green parrots suggest the same lessons as the ravens and lilies of the
■field upon the hills of Galilee. A few words sum up with unsurpassed
pathos the parable of the virgins—“ A poor man watched a thousand
years before the gate of Paradise ; then, while he snatched one little nap
it opened and shut.”— Theological Review.
�2
Few more valuable contributions have been made to the popular study
of comparative theology than Mr. Conway’s “ Sacred Anthology,” well
fitted to serve as a volume of devout reading to those who choose without
theological forethought or afterthought to apply it to that use. To the
more speculative student, it curiously illustrates at once the different
genius of the various nations of the world, and the identity of human
nature in its apprehension of the loftiest topics of faith and morals. Few
can read it without feeling their mental horizon enlarged, and without a
deeper sense of the common humanity that lies at the basis of the dif
ferences by which history, climate, and civilisation disguise men and
nations from each other.—Daily News.
The book may fairly be described as a bible of humanity, and as an
ethical text book it might well be adopted in all schools and families
where an attempt is made to instil the highest principles of morality
apart from religious dogma. He has produced a work which a great
number of people have long been desiring to possess, and which is likely
to mark a distinct epoch in the progress of ethical culture.—Examiner.
The result is most interesting. For the first time, an English reader
may judge for himself of the moral and religious merits of writings which
heretofore have been to him only venerable and shadowy abstractions.
We shall be much surprised if every reader does not lay it down in a
better mental frame than was his when he took it up. It teaches charity
and toleration, and makes men less spiritually arrogant. It is not with
out even greater lessons to those who have ears to hear.—The Echo.
The “ Sacred Anthology ” should find a place on every library shelf.
It is a bible free from bigotry, and were an Universal Church ever estab
lished, might fairly be a lesson book for that church. The labour ex
pended by Mr. Conway in editing, abridging, and selecting, can hardly
be fairly estimated. We can heartily recommend it to Freethought
Societies as a volume in which they may find readings otherwise inaccess
ible to them.—National Reformer.
The principal authorities for the beautiful thoughts and precepts so
skilfully collected by the editor, are given at the close of the volume, to
make his work as complete as possible. Mr. Conway also publishes
chronological notes, and it is scarcely necessary to say that his views
with regard to the dates of our sacred books differ considerably from those
adopted by orthodox divines.— The Pall Mall Gazette.
A very slight examination of the volume will show that it is indeed a
valuable anthology of the scriptures of all races. As complete and
entertaining a volume as one would wish to read.—The Bookseller.
It will be seen that all the sacred books of mankind have their prin
cipal features in common ; that the differences between them are not of
essential nature, but of degrees of manner and style, and that an inspired
spirit variously modified and expressed breathes through all. Mr. M. D.
�Conway has contributed a real service to an enlightened view of this
subject by his “ Sacred Anthology,” a book which we commend to the
attention of all who are accustomed to speak of the bible as the only
word of God.— The Inquirer.
Such of our readers as may have studied a remarkable book, India in
Greece, which appeared some twenty years ago, are well aware of the
extent to which Indian rites and customs after having been transported
to Greece, and thence re-exported to Italy, have become permanently
imbedded in the Romish system. Indeed, we believe there is scarce a
Popish notion, emblem, or ceremony that may not be distinctly traced
to 9. Pagan source. However, if the original have come from thence,
thence also may be derived an anecdote that may somewhat tend to
diminish its ill effects. For among the guse Hindoo aphorisms (as ren
dered in Mr. Moncure Conway’s recent book), we find the following,
which some amongst us might ponder with advantage at the present
time:—“Sdnyasis (?Hindu Rits) acquaint themselves with particular
words and vests; they wear a brick-red garb and shaven crowns; in
these they pride themselves ■ their heads look very pure, hut are their
hearts so ?” “ Religion which consists in postures of the limbs (mark
this ye clergy of St. Alban’s, Holborn) is just a little inferior to the
exercises of the wrestler.” “ In the absence of inward vision boast not
of oral divinity.” We are not sure that Vishnu’s philosophy would not
compare favourably with that of Pio Nono.—The Rock.
Many years ago, Philip Bailey, of “Festus,” announced as forthcoming
a book entitled “ Poetical Divinity,” th^object of which was to show by
quotations from the bards of all time, that they all held substantially the
same creed which we presume was held by Festus himself—Pantheism
plus Universal Restoration. This book never has appeared, but Mr
Conway’s is arranged on a somewhat similar plan, and is altogether a
volume of such a unique yet delightfully varied character that it must
commend itself to readers of every sort. We have seen already the eyes
of a rather strictly orthodox person glistening with eager delight over
many of the maxims and beautiful little moral fables with which it abounds.
—The Dundee Advertiser.
It would be impossible that such a book, even if it were compara
tively carelessly done, could be without interest ; but Mr. Conway’s task
has been most conscientiously performed, and it will be found of the
greatest possible value, for it casts a strong light upon many matters
which are frequently in discussion.—The Scotsman.
Mr. Conway has conferred a signal service on the literature of Theism by
publishing for the first time a comprehensive collection of some of the best
passages from the ancient scriptures of different nations. A few years ago
we, in the Brahmo-Somaj, made an humble effort in that direction, which
resulted in the issue of a small book of theistic texts now in use during
service in most of our churches. Mr. Conway’s excellent publication
is on a far grander scale, embraces a wider variety of subjects, and ex
tends its selection through a much larger range of scriptural^ writings
than we could command.—The Indian Mirror.
�4
There is, I suppose, no book inexistence quite like it, perhaps none on
the same plan and of equal scope. He who found no higher use for the
book would rejoice in it as a handbook for scriptural quotations not
otherwise readily accessible, as the number of volumes from which they
have been brought together sufficiently proves. There is nothing we
more need mentally than a tinge of Orientalism, something to give a new
bent and scope to minds fed perpetually on the somewhat narrow and
practical literature of the Western races. Mr. Conway, with his eager
poetic instincts, his warm feeling and wide sympathies, is a good guide
to those in search of what is most impressive to the imagination or
stimulating to the sensibilities.—“ G. W, S.,” in the New York Tribune.
A Significant Book.—Significant of what? Of interest in the
religious life of men who are outside the pale of Christianity, of that
“ sympathy of religions ” which has lately found in the missionary lecture
of Max Muller in Westminster Abbey an exhibition which might
well strike terror into High Church dignitaries, of a growing faith that
the attitude of Christianity towards the other great religions of the world
is not wholly that of a teacher, but may be that of a pupil; of this, at
least—we trust of much beside.—Rev. John W. Chadwick, in the
“ Liberal Christian” New York.
He then read a few sentences from a book called “ Sacred Anthology,”
which work, he said, was a compilation from the religious works of all
nations, some older than our bible : the book he should leave on the desk
as his bequest to the society.—Report of an Address by A. Bronson
Alcott, Esq.,at the opening of a new hall in Massachusetts.
“The Anthology ” may be obtained through any Bookseller, or
from the Librarian, the Chapel, 1I, South Place, Finsbury.
Price, ios. Postage, 9d.
■f
f J
�201
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
-ously late; nor are we aware of any strong grounds for
postponing it till after the appearance of the fourth Gospel.
Altogether it must be said that the value of the book
before us is needlessly impaired by these rash remarks.
For the general purposes of comparative religion, it is unne
cessary to enter into the “ results of modern criticism ” of
the Christian Scriptures. Their position in the history of
thought is sufficiently well known to enable their contents
to be correctly estimated by the side of the Vedas or the
Koran without any previous determination of the authorship
of Epistles or the order of the Gospel narratives. The in
version of a couple of books of the New Testament is of
light consequence compared with the transposition of writ
ings belonging to one language or religion into another a
millennium or so too soon ; but such critical lapses throw
an air of inexactness over the whole work, and somewhat
detract from our appreciation of the genial sympathy which
has evidently directed its preparation. It may be hoped
that in a future edition Mr. Conway will substitute for his
Chronological Notes an introduction such as he well knows
how to write, which may pass in rapid review the genius
of each great faith, assign to the various phases of its de
velopment the books respectively belonging to them, and
thus assist his readers in taking a general survey over the
wide field through which he is so admirably qualified, by
the range of his own reading and the delicacy of his per
ceptions, to be their guide.
It remains to point out as briefly as possible some of the
remarkable coincidences in the principles of morals and
religion which Mr. Conway’s diligence and tact have brought
together. Hillel and Confuciusd" enunciated the same
*
warning in almost the same words,
“ What you do not wish done to yourself^ do not to others
and the Arab sages supply a similar repetition^ of the more
pointed Hindu proverb,
“Do not force on thy neighbour a hat that hurts thine own
head.Ӥ
To return good for evil ceases to be a virtue peculiarly
enjoined on (would that we could also say practised by)
* XXVII.
+ X.
J XII.
§ XLI.
�202
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
Christians ; for the followers of Lao-tsze are hidden to “ re
compense injury with kindness;”* the Buddhist finds in
Dhammapada the command,
“ Let a man overcome anger by love; let him overcome evil
by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, and the liar
by truth+
and Mohammed assigns the deeper reason already revealed
by Jesus,
“For God loveth that you should cast into the depths of your
souls the roots of his perfections.’’^;
All class distinctions are abolished, and the foundations
of universal brotherhood are laid by the simple question of
Vemana,
“ Of what caste is He who speaks in the pariah
In this vast circle, however, particular duties are not to
be lost in general obligations, and Indian wisdom provides
in a breath for the aged and the young:
“ Educate thy children; then thou wilt know how much thou
owest thy father and mother
for servants—
“ What sort of master is that who does not honour his servants
while they discharge their duty 1 .... By taking up the whole
time of a servant, by increasing expectation, by denying reward,
the ill-disposed master is recognised. Favourable discourse to a
servant, presents that denote affection, even in blaming faults
taking notice of virtues, these are the manners of a kind master.
He who knows how to consider his servants, abounds in good
ones ;”5T
and for animals.
**
Beneath a tropic sky, the flamingoes
and green parrots++ suggest the same lessons as the ravens
and the lilies of the field upon the hills of Galilee ; and the
Persian poet discloses the same source of hidden wealth as
Christ:
“ Place your affections on the Creator of the universe : that
will suffice.” U
From this quarter, also, comes a tale of a treasure hid in
* DXCIX.
f
II COXXXIX.
HI C00LXI.
H DOLIV.
CCCOLXXXI.
I OCCXLI.
** CCCXXVIII.
§ OOCCXLIV.
++ CCCCLXVH.
�Conway*ts Sacred Anthology.
,203
•a field, which relates that the finder, unlike the buyer in
*
the gospel story, insisted on sharing his discovery with the
original owner, who in his turn refused to receive it; and
a few words sum up with unsurpassed pathos the parable
of the virgins:
“ A poor man watched a thousand years before the gate of
Paradise. Then, while he snatched one little nap—it opened,
and shut.”+
From the far North rings out a note of blended caution
and trust in human nature:
“No one is so good that no failing attends him, nor so bad as
to be good’for nothing
while a Chinese proverb compresses into one brief maxim
the art of living with others :
“ When alone, think of your own faults; when in company,
forget those of others.” §
In spite of this advice, however, divisions may be inevit
able here; but in the future, if Mohammed’s insight is
correct, they shall disappear:
“ All have a quarter of the heaven to which they turn them;
but wherever ye be, hasten emulously after good; God will one
day bring you all together.” ||
Should any hapless soul be left to struggle with an adverse
destiny, one spirit, at any rate, was ready to bear it com
pany even in its conflicts and its pains, for, in one of the
finest extracts of the book, Kwan-yin, a Fo (Chinese Budd
hist) prophetess, answers by implication the “ comfortable”
doctrine of the sovereign mercy of God in the torments of
the damned, and declares :
“ Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation,
never enter into final peace alone ; but for ever and everywhere
will I strive for the universal redemption of every creature
throughout all worlds. Until all are delivered, never will I leave
the world of sin, sorrow, and struggle, but will remain where
I am.”T
But her self-imposed privations shall at length have an
* DLX.
+ CCCCLXXVIII.
X Saemund’s Edda, cccclxx.
§ CCCCLXXXIV.
|| LXXXIV.
U COOLIII.
�204
Conway's Sacred Anthology.
end, if the Arabian saying (relating, it is true, to a wholly
different order of conceptions) may be trusted:
“In the last day, when all things save paradise shall have
passed away, God will look upon hell, and in that instant its
flames shall be extinguished for ever.” *
It must be confessed, however, that we have here morality,
sometimes “ touched with emotion/’ and sometimes destitute
of it, rather than religion. And so far as Mr. Conway’s
extracts enable us to judge, it appears that religion, in the
sense of personal communion with God, finds more fervent
expression in the Semitic than in the Aryan mind. This
is observable even in the treatment of nature, which is but
the vesture of the unseen Will. The metaphysical phrases
of the hymns to Brahma "f and Vishnu J do not thrill us
*
like the joyousness of the hundred and fourth psalm ; and
it is to the Koran that we must go to strike another note in
the same chord of sympathy with universal life.
“ Hast thou not heard how all in the heavens and in the earth
uttereth the praise of God ? The very birds as they spread their
wings ? Every creature knoweth its prayer and its praise. Ӥ
The relations between Deity and his creatures are those
of reason rather than affection ; their quality is that of light,
not warmth. It is the Mohammedan traditions ||—even in
their Persian dress, for the genius of religion triumphs over
nationality—which exhibit with most beauty the deep sense
of the abiding presence of God, to which the habit of prayer,
in the bazaar, on the river-bank, or by the road-side, as
well as in the mosque, bears such touching witness. Spiri
tual religion is not, indeed, ignored. Hindu pilgrimages
gave birth to the pungent protest,
“Going to holy Benares will make no pig an elephant ;”1T
and the land of the fakirs further humiliates ritualism with
the quiet saying,
“ Religion which consists in postures of the limbs is just a
little inferior to the exercises of the wrestler.”**
But only here and there do we seem clearly to touch the
“ higher pantheism” which blends in one the spiritual forces
+ C.
* D00XV.
|| CLXVI., CLXVII.
’
H CLXIV.
I Oil.
** COXXVID.
§ Oil.
�Comvay's Sacred Anthology.
205
of the universe, without however destroying the individual
ity of the soul. Of this, the following passage of the Zend
Avesta may serve as an example:
. “ God appears in the best thought, the truth of speech and the
sincerity of action, giving through his pure spirit health, pros
perity, devotion and eternity to this universe. He is the Father
of all truth.”*
It is natural, therefore, that of the language of penitence,
of consciousness and confession of sin, there should be Httle
trace among the Aryan hymns. The Vedic prayer, “to be
united by devout meditation with the Spirit supremely blest
and intelligent,” f contains no provision for the wounded
and struggling conscience ; the passionate utterances of the
fifty-first psalm would be unintelligible to the mystics of
the far Fast; even in the midst of the sorrow and misery
by which he is surrounded, it is by his own strength that
man is to rise to higher things—it is by the path of intel
lectual enlightenment rather than by that of moral conflict
that his progress is to be made; and so the whole range of
Aryan literature does not appear capable of producing any
thing like the parable of the Prodigal Son.
The last section of Mr. Conway’s book is entitled “ Sanc
tions.” Its general purport is to illustrate the well-known
couplet,
“ Our acts our angels are, or good, or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”|
But how far this unseen attendance will follow us, is left
obscure. “ Let the motive be in the deed,” it is well said in
the Bhagavat Ghita ;§ and Rama truly declares that
“ Virtue is a service man owes himself: though there were no
heaven nor any God to rule the world, it were not the less the
binding law of life.” ||
The belief in immortality need not, however, be confounded
with “otherworldliness;” and we are surprised that the
intense moral conviction which formerly shaped itself into
* CXVII.
CLXX.
I See in particular the four vivid pictures from the book of Ardai Viraf the
Persian Dante (one of which, however, has strayed a long way from its compa
nions), DCXXXVII., DOCXXVII., DCOXXX., DOXXXII.
§ DCLXVI.
|| dlvi. ; the whole passage is of remarkable force and elevation.
F
�206
Report of the Committee of Council on Education.
the doctrines of heaven and hell, and now re-appears as the
striving after perfection, receives no fuller recognition as the
prophecy of an endless destiny. It is not at least for want
of testimonies. The oldest monuments of human thought
*
the ripest genius of human wisdom, the deepest insight of
human love, have all contributed their choicest fruits to
nurture the faith of an undying life. The noblest races, and
minds which seem to stand above race and belong to man
kind, have found in this hope the spring and the spur of all
aspiration, and the prospect of the solution of problems in
determinable here. The new philosophy may perhaps be
summed up in the words of Omar Kheyam (eleventh
century, A.D.), with which Mr. Conway closes his selection:
11 Resign thyself, then, to make what little paradise thou canst
here below; for as for that beyond, thou shalt arrive there, or
thou shalt not.”
But it must at any rate be remembered that on this great
theme the “ symphony of religions ” does not in reality thus
fade away in a doubt.
J. Estlin Carpenter.
TV.—THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL
ON EDUCATION FOR 1872-73.
There are not many subjects on which the press has been
more busy during the last few years than on all the various
topics which have arisen in connection with plans for Na
tional Education. Government returns of the most compre
hensive nature extending over many volumes, reports as
to educational methods adopted at home and abroad, the pub
lications of associations founded for the promotion of anta
gonistic principles, volumes published by earnest workers
in defence of their own plans and criticising the opinions
and proposals of others, pamphlets and leading articles
without number—all shew how deep an interest is felt in
* We have not space to multiply quotations from the Egyptian Book of the
Dead, the Hindu Vedas, or the Iranian Zend Avesta, to say nothing of Plato.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Conway's Sacred Anthology
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Carpenter, J. Estlin (Joseph Estlin)
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Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 191-206 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review by Joseph Estlin Carpenter of Moncure Conway's work 'The Sacred Anthology' from 'Theological Review' 11, April 1874. Includes bibliographical references.
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Book reviews
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Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Sacred Books
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& Bibliographer.
251
full and consecutive account that has yet been published of the restoration
and remodelling of the Benedictine Order in England, abridged from the
two folio volumes of Weldon’s original “ Memoirs,” which were finished
in 1709, it is to be hoped that the wants hitherto felt have, in some
measure, been supplied. The editor has appended to his introductory
remarks a full and interesting biographical sketch of Bennet Weldon, the
pious and learned author of these “ Notes.”
Travels in South Kensington, with Notes on Decorative Art ana
Architecture in England. By MONCURE D. Conway. Triibner &
Co. 1882.
In this handsomely-illustrated volume, the author of “ Sacred Anthology,”
&c., tells in an amusing, and at the same time instructive manner, a great
deal that is worth knowing concerning the rise and progress of the South
Kensington Museum, from its establishment in 1857 down to the present
time, and discourses at length
on its collection of objects,
its educational or art training
method and character, and
on what is to be learnt that
may be useful in architecture
and decoration by a study of
its contents. “ The little six
penny guidebook sold at the
door,” as our author tells us,
“ is necessarily provisional ;
the historical and descriptive
volume which such an institu
tion requires must remain a
desideratum so long as the
Museum itself is changing
and growing daily before our
eyes.” In the volume under
notice, Mr. Conway has at
tempted to do no more than
convey his impression of the
value of the collection as a
whole, as a medium of edu
cation. He has illustrated
his remarks with engravings
of several interesting objects,
including a Chasse, or reli
IVORY TANKARD (AUGSBURG, I7TH CENT.)
quary (13th century), pastoral
staves (14th century), an ancient Persian incense-burner, an Italian salt
cellar (15th century), and the Cellini sardonyx ewer, mounted in enam
elled gold, and set with gems (Italian, 16th century). This last-named
engraving, and also that of an ivory tankard (Augsburg, 17th century), we
are enabled, by the kindness of the publishers, to reproduce as examples
of the illustrations.
The second half of Mr. Conway’s book, dealing with “ decorative art
and architecture in England,” embraces a wide range of subjects, from the
railway-bridge at Charing-cross and the Albert Memorial in Hyde
Park, to the decoration of Penkiln Castle in Ayrshire, and of Sir Walter
Trevelyan’s house at Wallington, in Northumberland.
�252
The Antiquarian Magazine
Mr. Conway concludes his work with a short and graphic account of
that “ Utopia in brick and paint in the suburbs of London,” called Bedford
Park, in the neighbourhood of Turnham-green,—a little red-brick town,
made up of the quaintest of “ Oueen Anne” houses.
Kelly's Directory of the Six Home Cotinties. o. vols. Edited by E. R.
Kelly, M.A., F.S.S. London : Kelly & Co. 1882.
A quarter of a century ago Kelly’s Post Office Directory for the Six
Home Counties was a modest volume of less than 1,500 pages ; but such
has been the increase of population in the suburbs of London of late
years, that it has been found necessary to divide the work into two parts,
each forming a volume, and embracing the home counties north and
south of the Thames respectively. The first volume, dealing with Essex,
Herts, and Middlesex, extends to over 1,500 pages, the corresponding
portion of the same book in 1845 having been comprehended in rather
less than 300 pages ; whilst in the second volume the County of Surrey
alone claims 915 out of a total of 2,474 pages. In contrasting the present
edition with those of earlier years, one cannot fail to be struck with the
great improvement which has taken place in the historical portion of the
work, and consequently, the antiquarian and archaeologist may now find
plenty of food to suit his taste in the notices of the several parishes, for
not only is mention made of the foundation of its church, schools, and
other institutions, but short descriptions are added of its ancient castles,
fortifications, ho^telries, and manor-houses, where such are to be found.
Exception must be taken, perhaps, in some instances to the editor’s state
ments with respect to the styles of ecclesiastical architecture ; but in such
matters there is ample room for differences of opinion, for it must be
remembered that until a very recent date nearly every Norman building
was set down as “ Saxon.” However, it may be safely stated that in by
far the majority of instances Messrs. Kelly’s descriptions are thoroughly
correct.
Les Melanges Poetiques d’Hildebert de Lavardin. Par B. HAUREAU,
Membre de l’Institut. 8vo. Paris : Pedone-Lauriel.
The works of Hildebert de Lavardin, Archbishop of Tours, were pub
lished in 1708 by the Benedictine monk Beaugendre, in one folio volume ;
they comprise, as most scholars are aware, not only metaphysical treatises,
but a considerable number of poems, which procured for their author,
among his contemporaries, the reputation of an elegant writer and of an
enthusiastic admirer of classical antiquity. We might easily fill pages
with quotations testifying to the popularity enjoyed in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries by him who was universally designated as the “ egregius versificator,” but want of space prevents us from doing so, and we
shall merely transcribe, by way of specimen, the following elegiac couplets
of Laurentius, Abbot of Westminster:—
‘ ‘ Inclytus et prosa, versuque per omnia primus,
Hildebertus olet prorsus ubique rosam.
Diversum studium fidei subservit eidem ;
Multa camcena quidem tendit ad illud idem.”
Students of mediaeval literature are, of course, anxious to know whether
Hildebert de Lavardin deserves all the praise which has been lavished
upon him, and they would naturally turn either turn to Beaugendre’s
edition or to the reprint given in the Abbe Migne’s collection, and by the
Abbe Bourasse. Unfortunately, the learned Benedictine, who was nearly
eighty years old when he undertook to publish the Archbishop’s works,
�
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Travels in South Kensington
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 251-252 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review by an unknown reviewer of Moncure Conway's work 'Travels in South Kensington' from 'The Antiquarian Magazine & Bibliographer', May 1883.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1883]
Identifier
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G5610
Subject
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Book reviews
Creator
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[Unknown]
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Travels in South Kensington), 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>
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Text
Language
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Kensington (West London)
Moncure Conway
South Kensington Museum
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��
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
[Necklace of Stories and other reviews]
Identifier
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G5613
Description
An account of the resource
Collation: 1 leaf.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Extracts, handwritten, from reviews of Conway's works. 'Necklace of Stories' (Spectator, Athenaeum, Academy? 'Demonology and Devil-lore' (London World, March 19).
Subject
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Book reviews
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1832-1907
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1881]
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ([Necklace of Stories and other reviews]), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
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PDF Text
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V. 4
Notices of Books.
5vm>-
277
Church of England, and accepts the Articles, the Creeds
(even the Athanasian) and the Prayer Book, in a sense
•which is quite satisfactory to his own mind. The fact is
an interesting example of the possible pliability of a vigo
rous and an honest intellect, but hardly a contribution to
the scientific knowledge and clearness of thought of by
standers. Mr. Hutton may very well plead that we ought
not to look for completeness of exposition in a volume of
essays which are avowedly occasional; and we admit, with
the utmost frankness, the justice of his plea. But we cannot
help thinking that it belongs to the genius of this school
of Broad-church thinkers to lay great stress on a few preg
nant ideas, and to decline the task of bringing them into
mutual order and proportion. Only if it be so, they must
be content to look at their form of belief as only a phase of
transition, it may be of very temporary duration, towards a
clearer and more scientific, if not a deeper and a simpler,
faith.
There is much in the form of Mr. Conway’s “Earthward
Pilgrimage,”* and also in its wealth of allusion and its tone
of earnest scepticism, which reminds one of Mr. Carlyle’s
Sartor Resartus. At all events, we imagine that Mr. Carlyle
is a writer with whom Mr. Conway would very willingly be
associated, and from whom he has probably drawn a portion
of his inspiration. The conception of the book is that of
honest revolt against the religious attitude depicted by Bun
yan in his Pilgrim’s Progress. The author affects to place
himself in the position of that celebrated Pilgrim, and de
scribes the weariness that at length came upon him after
sitting on a purple cloud with a golden trumpet, and the
eagerness with which he sought to exchange the region of
idle worship for the so-called City of Destraction with its
earnest work. The Interpreter by whom he is accompanied
gives an unsparing exposure of Christian doctrine as ordi
narily taught in England ; and the succeeding chapters are
continued in the same key. In the chapter called An Old
Shrine, the author takes as his text the inauguration of the
Archbishop of Canterbury. He went to the ancient city “ to
witness the consecration of a plain old Scotch gentleman to
* The Earthward Pilgrimage.
Camden Hotten. 1870.
By Moncure D. Conway.
U2
London- Tohn
n
S% CAp^-VVW
�Notices of Books.
278
the task of presiding over the work of maintaining in Great
Britain the worship of a dead Jew.” “ The Thirty-nine Arti
cles shall mean many things, but one thing definitely shall
they mean: thirty-nine pieces of money to him who shall
betray Reason for them.” In a chapter called Contrivance,
he criticises as vain and needless the effort made by the
Rev. James Martineau and others to preserve to Theism
“ the great religious heart and history of Christendom.” He
affirms,
“•— that every religious form or rite was once real, every watch
word of conservatism was once the watchword of radicalism, all
things old were once new. The Litany, idly repeated by happyhearted youth, who. yesterday were at croquet and cricket, was
the outburst of stricken hearts amid convulsions of nature, war,
plague, and famine : uttered now, it is the mummy of a revival,
set up where a real one is impossible. The first silent Quaker
meeting was accidental; the emotion of that hour is vainly sought
for by the formal imitations of its silence. And so the rantings,
shoutings, love-feasts, communions, baptisms, are attempts to
recover the ecstasies of shining moments by copying the super
ficial incidents that attended them,—attempts as absurd as the
famous fidelity with which the Chinese manufacturers imitated
the tea-set they were required to replace, even to the extent of
preserving all the cracks and flaws of the originals.”—“That
which calls itself conservatism adheres to forms that must become
fossil, whereas any true conservatism must rescue the essence by
transferring it to forms which have their life yet to live.”*
' In the chapter on Voltaire, it is rather a one-sided com
parison, to say the least, to place him in the same class
with “the greatest freethinker who ever trod the earth,
whose death-cry was, ‘ My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?’ A terrible freethinker’s end! Yes, every
drop of his blood w’as paid for free thought! ”f In a
chapter called The Rejected Stone, commencing with a
striking report of theological discussions under the railway
arches at St. Pancras, he says :
“What convictions have we corresponding to those which
sculptured the Phidian Jove or the Milonian Venus, or painted
the great Italian pictures, or built St. Peter's dome? None.
Then for the present no real Art. The one thing we really believe
< in is Scepticism : this is the inspiration of our Science, of our
Pp. 102, 103.
+ Pp. 253, 254.
�279
Notices of Books.
clamour foiwnore education, of our democracy ; they are all the
utterances of the clear and vigorous Misgiving which distinguishes
this age.”*
>.
It may comfort some readers to find that the author is
not, at all events, an infallible prophet, for in the chapter
called the Pilgrim’s Last Reflections, he remarks, though
his book was published only last year :
“ Already it seems doubtful if the West can see another Wel
lington or another Napoleon I. It requires warlike ages to pro
duce such men; and such ages require peoples capable of being
thoroughly drilled and massed.”!
We must find room for the following passage from the
conclusion:
“ There is a story of the Holy Grail which the Laureate has
passed by, but which we may remember. In the days when men
wandered through the world seeking that cup, made of a single
precious stone, holding the real blood of Christ, a Knight left
England to search for the same in distant lands. As he passed
from his door, a poor sufferer cried to him for help. Absorbed
in his grand hope, the Knight heeded him not, but went on. He
wandered to the Holy Land, fought in many wars, endured much,
• but found not the precious cup and at last, disappointed and
dejected, he returned home. As he neared his own house, the
same poor sufferer cried to him for help. ‘ What dost thou re
quire V asked the Knight. The aged man said, ‘ Lo, I am perish
ing with thirst.’ The Knight dismounted and hastened to fetch
a cup of water. He held the half-clad sufferer in his arms, raised
his head, and proffered the water to his parched lips. Even as
he did so the cup sparkled into a gem, and the Knight saw in
his hand the Holy Grail, flushed with the true blood of Christ.
And you, my brothers, may wander far, and traverse many realms
of philosophy and theology, to find the truth which represents
the true life-blood of the noblest soul; but you shall find it only
when and where you love and serve as he did. If you can but
give to the fainting soul at your door a cup of water from the
wells of truth, it shall flash back on you the radiance of God.’ |
/
f
Even from the very fragmentary description of the book
which we have been able to give, it will be perceived that
it is strong meat for men of full age, rather than milk for
babes. There is, we think, a good deal of paradox, arising
Pp. 335, 336.
+ P. 397.
Pp. 405, 406.
�280
Notices of Books.
from the violence of the writer’s reaction from what he
regards as antiquated creeds and superstitions ; but the book
is full of suggestive thoughts, poetically and pointedly ex
pressed ; and though to a thoughtful and judicious reader
he may sometimes seem extravagant, one-sided and unfair
in his statements and representations, the general impres
sion left by the whole is that it is the earnest and healthy
scepticism of a man of real genius. A vigorous mind will
be none the worse for the rough handling of many approved
maxims and professions of faith. At the same time, there
is something to be said in favour of that religious attitude
which the author sets out with condemning. However
needful and noble a duty it may be in this present world
to contend with evil in its various forms of suffering and
sin, the very repose and refreshment which we habitually
seek among congenial minds in our domestic and social
circles, direct our aspirations to a future sphere where suf
fering and sin will be unknown. We can conceive of work
and progress without the necessity of painful strife with
evil. Moreover, we cannot help feeling doubtful how far the
general realization of the author’s views and tone of thought
would really tend to the formation of that generous devotion
to holy duty which we are accustomed to reverence as the
ideal of a Christian character, and which the author himself
admires and commends. Certainly it is most strikingly
exemplified by many of those whom he regards as held in
bondage to superstitious creeds. We cannot help fearing
that the ultimate result of the emancipation for which he
contends would be an Epicurean, rather than a spiritual,
condition of mind. Mr. Conway adopts as the motto of his
title-page a maxim from Confucius : “ Respect the gods, but
keep them at a distance.” Surely that soul has attained to
a higher and holier region of thought and life, which habi
tually rejoices to feel, with Jesus, “I am not alone, for my
Father is with-me.”
A careful inquiry into the theology of the New Testa
ment must be valuable to every candid mind, whether it
agrees or not with the conclusions arrived at. Such a work
is the translation of Dr. Van Oosterzee’s Handbook Defin*
* The Theology of the New Testament. A Handbook for Students. By
the Rev. J. J. Van Oosterzee, D.D. Translated from the Dutch, by Maurice
J. Evans, B.A. London : Hodder and Stoughton.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Earthward Pilgrimage
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 277-280 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review, by an unknown reviewer, of Moncure Conway's work 'The Earthward Pilgrimage' from 'The Bookseller'. Date unknown.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5606
Subject
The topic of the resource
Book reviews
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Unknown]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The Earthward Pilgrimage), 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
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Unitarianism
-
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PDF Text
Text
383
P^Bi.mMSe god of wind and messenger of heaven, to ascertain th® cause of this indifference. Pavana returning, reports to the gods that the corruptions which had
crept into their religion and the rise of Christianity had weakened the old faith. Tn
a rage, the entire Pantheon sallies forth in battle array to attack the intruders, but is
confronted by a Seraph, who overwhelms the foe with a glance, informing the old
gods that—
“ Jehovah will no longer bear
Your lawless presence here;
For He’s sole King, must ever reign I
Hence to the abodes of night 1
Hence to the brimstone sod !
The land where darkness reigns unblest,
And weary spirits never rest;
Where sinners be, sinners away
From hallow'd ground far driven ;
Immortal life to ye belong,
Go taste immortal pains,
With sighs and wails and blasphemies,
Amid the funeral screams of hell.’’
Though not perfectly simplified or polished, this poem is conceived in a spirit of
sympathy and kindness, and will be liked by all who are truly religious withou*
being strictly critical. One could readily conceive that the “Vision of Sumeru,” and
many other of the smaller poems, might have been far better in Hindi : so much do
they seem like goo d work not very well translated.
We have received a valuable contribution to mythological literature in Demonology
ancl Devil-lore, by Moncure Daniel Conway (Chatto & Windus : 1879). Acomplete
history of the devil and all his angels, with that of all the lurid horrors and smoky
phantoms accompanying them, would, if written with the accuracy which even the
mob who read with ease now exact, be a tremendous task. It would be ahistory of
religion, of superstition, of occult philosophy, of half the popular legends known,
and would make deep inroads on poetry. As the reverend author admits, “any attempt
to catalogue the evil spectres which have haunted mankind were like trying to count
the shadows cast upon the earth by the rising sun.” The older demonographers,
such as Bodinus, and Bakker in his Monde Enchante, satisfied themselves by simply
giving all they could collect, and by entertaining the reader with interminable stories^
But in an age when even many soundly religious people havefgrave or quiet
misgivings as to a personal devil, these marvellous legends are simply regarded as
fairy-tales. As history and theories of evolution are becoming popular, the stories
lose, however, none of their interest, only the interest is transferred to another field,
that of explaining and illustrating change or progress. The thinking world is as
much interested as ever in the history of the diabolical idea, its tremendous influence
on mankind is still too apparent to be treated with indifference; but faith in the
details is now lost in examination of a leading fact, as belief in the Elohim became
absorbed in the unity of Yahveh. Such is the ground taken by Mr. Conway, an
honest and sincere Rationalist, yet one who is, like most of the Boston Unitarian
clergymen, too deeply penetrated by a conviction of what is good and pure in
Christianity to believe that God could ever allow man, in his helplessness, to be
tempted and tormented by a devil. His book is not an attempt to tell all that might
be told about Demonology, and herein lies its merit and its fault. Recognising the
impossibility of detailing the devil with all that is devilish, he has subordinated the
innumerable illustrations to a theory of development which is well enough conceived,
whatever other theorists may think of it; and it is this very fidelity to the principle
or theory which induced classification or method, which leads him to indulge in
many pages of disquisition, which some readers will wish had been devoted to
mere facts. On the other hand, it must be admitted that this disquisition never
degenerates into idle rhapsody or padding. Thousands of readers—and we may
well say thousands of a book of which three thousand copies have already been
sold—will prefer Mr. Conway's preaching to his facts ; others who do not, will be
of the class who are capable of drawing their own conclusions. In fact, there is
much good writing among these disquisitions, a vast fund of humanity, un
deniable earnestness, and a delicate sense of humour, all set forth in pure English.
It is much to say that we have found the nine hundred pages of these two large
volumes, without exception, interesting.
The early religions were generally without a devil. The Hindus, notwithstanding
�384
THE CONTEMP ORA W&REVIEW*
their Rakhshas and fiends, maintain that their vast Pantheon contains no su<
creature. The gods were both good and evil. There were punishing demon
demons of storms and of death, but no such quintessence of malignity, decei
anti-godness, cruelty and petty meanness, as is incarnate in the Christian Sata
In “The Sketch-Book of Meister Karl,” Satan is represented as vindicating his raise
d’etre on the ground that he represents the necessary suffering and pain atte
dant upon the destruction of the old, leading to higher beauty in the new,
creation. itself, but is promptly snubbed by the author, who informs him that j
is ^nothing of the kind, but “only the transitory ugliness of the ruins of t’
tempest and the pestilence.” The old religions represented the devil as he repi
sented himself to the writer: Christianity has made him an abstract of the revoltin
Mr. Conway, beginning with Dualism, proceeds to the degradation of divinities ai
ex-gods into devils, and then finds causes for the existence of others in hunger, het
cold, the elements and animals,in enemies and barrenness, obstacles,illusion,darknes
disease and death. From these he proceeds to a history of the decline of demo
and their generalization as shown in art and in the decay of mythologies. T
next step is of course an account of the principal types of demons or devils, such
the serpent and dragon. Hence we have connections and affinities with these—su
as Fate, Diabolism, or the direct connection of incarnate evil with demons, and h
tories of degraded powers, such as Ahriman, Elohim, Visramitra, the consuming fi
and others. The second volume is in part occupied with the numerous deductio
from these types through the Middle Ages down to the present day. The great me
of the work consists, not merely in great research and a shrewd selection of striki
examples and interesting illustrations, but in the clearness with which Mr. Conw
develops his ideas. Its demerit is an exaggerated susceptibility to simile, and
readiness to assume derivations and connections without proving them—the gre
sin of all symbolists from Creuzer, Godfrey Higgins, and Faber, down to Inms
Not that we would class Mr. Conway with these blunderers ; on the contrary, he h
tried hard to avoid their company, but he often unconsciously falls into their fault
the fault, it is true, of a poetic mind, but one to be guarded against when one is n
writing poetry. We* should do injustice to this work did we not mention th
1
Mr. Conway writes like a man without prejudice against aught save tyranr
Abstractly speaking, his freedom from bigotry is almost naively amusing. Had
been a Calvinist he would probably have prayed, as did the Scotch clergyman, for t
conversion of “ the puir deil.” As it is, he sets forth his own very broad faith in t
following words, with which he concludes his first volume :—
“It is too late for man to be interested in an ‘ Omnipotent’ Personality, who
power is mysteriously limited at the precise point when it is needed, and whose moi
government is another name for man’s own control of. nature. Nevertheless tl
Oriental pessimism is the Pauline theory of Matter, and is the speculative protoplas
out of which has been evolved in many shapes that personification which remai
for our consideration—the Devil.”
These be plain words, but we have thought it best to cite them, that the read'
whether heterodox or orthodox, may know exactly what he may expect in this i
teresting and singular work.
THE PROFESSIONAL STUDIES OF THE CLERGY.
To the Editor of the Contemporary Review.
Sir,—I have to acknowledge an error of some importance in my account of the varic
courses of theological study now pursued in the different Divinity Schools of England.
In describing the subjects for the Theological Tripos at Cambridge, I set down or
the variable portions, omitting the fixed and more important part of the course whim
make it fully equal in character and value to the Theological Honour Course at Oxfoi
I cannot charge myself entirely with the mistake, as I applied to Cambridge for t
list of subjects, and was furnished with no more than I set down. I have similarly
omitted to credit King’s College, London, with having lately added Logic or Moi
Philosophy to its ciu’riculum ; while I learn that Logic is also the alternative of t'
compulsory subjects at Lampeter.
I am glad to make these corrections, and trust that if I have done unintentiou
injustice elsewhere, that it may be brought to my notice.
Your obedient servant, R. F. Ltttledale.
1
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Dublin Core
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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[Demonology and Devil-Lore]
Date
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[188-]
Identifier
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G5603
Description
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 383-384 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review, by an unknown reviewer, of Moncure Conway's work 'Demonology and Devil-Lore from 'Contemporary Review' [Date and issue number unknown].
Subject
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Book reviews
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[Unknown]
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[s.n.]
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work ([Demonology and Devil-Lore]), 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>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
Demonology
Moncure Conway